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BR 45 ’.H362 v.9 
 Robinson, Arthur William, 
 
 1856-1928. 
 
 Personal life of the clergy 
 

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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/personallifeofclOOrobi_O 
 

 * 
 
 

 
 
J£>ant>f)oofe0 for tfie Clergy 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 y 
 
 ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, B.D. 
 
 VIOAR OF ALLHALLOWS BARKING 
 BY THE TOWER 
 
 THE PERSONAL LIFE OF 
 THE CLERGY 
 
 .5 
 

THE PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 OF THE CLERGY 
 
 BY 
 
 V 
 
 ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, 
 
 B.D. 
 
 VICAR OF ALLIIALLOWS BARKING BY THE TOWER 
 EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF WAKEFIELD 
 
 FOURTH IMPRESSION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CG 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 1904 
 
WE HAVE GOOD HOPE . . . THAT YOU 
 HAVE CLEARLY DETERMINED, BY GOD’S 
 GRACE, TO GIVE YOURSELVES WHOLLY 
 TO THIS OFFICE, WHEREUNTO IT HATH 
 PLEASED GOD TO CALL YOU : SO THAT, 
 AS MUCH AS LIETH IN YOU, YOU WILL 
 APPLY YOURSELVES WHOLLY TO THIS 
 ONE THING, AND DRAW ALL YOUR CARES 
 AND STUDIES THIS WAY. 
 
 The Ordering of Priests. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Importance of the subject. The secret of Influence : 
 
 what it is not^ and what it is . . . . 1 
 
 Note 1 .—Archbishop Benson on ‘ Spiritual Power’ . 15 
 
 Note 2.— Bishop Paget on the ‘ Secret of Power’ . 17 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Our part and duty in the matter. ‘ Force is not an 
 attribute of God.’ We must co-operate. In 
 what sense Grace does not make life easier . 19 
 
 Note.—‘An easy lesson hard to learn ’ . .30 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The first necessity. Penitence. ‘The great want 
 in modern life.’ Some of the causes which 
 have been at work. Need of teaching: and 
 of example. The Priest must be the Penitent 32 
 
 Note.—From the Private Devotions of Bishop 
 
 Andrewes ....... 54 
 
 b 
 
VI 
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A further necessity. The difficulty of Prayer. Not 
 obvious why we should pray. Our ground 
 of certainty. Practical conclusions 
 
 Note.—William Laws description of Ouranius 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The final necessity. Devotion to our Lord. How 
 it is quickened and sustained. Provision for 
 the knowledge of Christ. Why ‘ we have 
 goodness but lack character ’ ... 
 
 Note 1 .—The Imitatio Christi in modern life . 
 
 Note 2 .—Extract from a Sermon by Charles Marriott 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A danger. Secularisation. The widened conception 
 of the Mission of the Church : and of the 
 work of the Clergy. The gain and possible 
 loss. Our Lord and the social question. The 
 clergyman in society. ( In the world ’ but 
 ‘ not of ’ it. 
 
 Note 1 .—Dean Church on the work of the Clergy 
 Note 2. —Professor Harnack on the f Progress of 
 Civilisation ’..... . 
 
 PAQB 
 
 57 
 
 77 
 
 83 
 
 101 
 
 103 
 
 104 
 
 128 
 
 129 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Another danger. Over-occupation. Spiritual 
 fatigue ‘the most impressive characteristic’ of 
 our generation. Parable of the Sower. The 
 activity which is due to indolence. Doing 
 more by doing less ..... 
 
 Note. —Professor Seeley on ‘ the ambition of becom¬ 
 ing distinguished for activity ' . 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A third danger. Depression. All sadness not 
 necessarily un-Christian. Symptoms of the 
 evil. Causes and precautions 
 
 Note. — F. W. Robertson on Elijah's despondency . 
 
 • • 
 Vll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 130 
 
 144 
 
 145 
 159 
 
 Postscript . 
 
 . 161 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 This volume is intended to be preparatory. 
 The aim of the series is to do something, if 
 it may, to promote the efficiency of clerical 
 work. It will seek to do this by presenting 
 such results of the experience of the past as 
 are likely to be of service in stimulating and 
 guiding to fresh endeavours of thought and of 
 enterprise. Experts will be asked to sum up 
 shortly and suggestively what they think it 
 most necessary to say in regard to the studies 
 and practical problems which especially concern 
 the clergy at the present time. 
 
 There is no doubt that assistance of this kind 
 will be welcomed by many. Never were the 
 demands upon us more incessant and severe than 
 they are now; never was there more need for 
 such direction as will help towards a greater 
 clearness of judgment and a more profitable 
 
 expenditure of energy. It cannot but be of real 
 
 A 
 
2 Personal Life 
 
 value that we should be told by those who are 
 able to tell us how we may best keep ourselves 
 in touch with the theological, philosophical, 
 historical, or scientific knowledge which is being 
 accumulated so abundantly by students in all 
 these departments; and how too we may deal 
 most satisfactorily with the questions which 
 crowd in upon us in connection with what is 
 commonly understood as practical work—ques¬ 
 tions educational and missionary and social; 
 questions as to schools and services and preach¬ 
 ing and visiting and guilds and clubs and 
 finance. 
 
 There is, however, one condition upon which 
 this usefulness must depend. These aids will 
 be of value to us—does it seem paradoxical to 
 say it ?—only if we realise that they ought not 
 to be allowed to hold the first place in our con¬ 
 sideration. If we are to make a true beginning 
 in our attempts to increase the efficiency of our 
 work, we must not begin with them. Hence 
 it has been decided that the opening volume 
 of the series must be devoted to an inquiry 
 of a wholly different kind. 
 
 It may be well that we should spend a short 
 time in justifying this decision, not indeed by 
 
Its Importance 3 
 
 arguments of an abstract character, but by 
 looking at the matter in the practical light in 
 which it is likely to make the most lively im¬ 
 pression upon us. 
 
 We are so constituted as naturally to wish 
 for success. The wish is a right and a noble 
 one. It may, of course, like other right and 
 noble things, be sadly perverted and degraded. 
 It may sink into a vulgar desire for any sort 
 of approbation, or for the even less creditable 
 satisfaction which too often accompanies material 
 reward. But in its essential nature, and as 
 originally implanted, it is by no means so poor 
 a thing. Rather is it to be likened to the 
 longing for completeness and the yearning after 
 perfection which haunt and possess the soul of 
 the artist; may we not go even further and 
 affirm that it is akin to the delight which the 
 supreme Creator takes in His work, and to His 
 determination that what He has made shall be 
 4 very good ’ ? 
 
 We wish to succeed. We have our ideals of 
 what a lecture, a sermon, a congregation, or a 
 parish should be; and we cannot easily rest until 
 we have attained to something like the realisa- 
 
4 Personal Life 
 
 tion of our dream. We should not be better 
 workmen, nor should we be better men, were 
 it otherwise with us. 
 
 We wish to succeed, and accordingly, when 
 we see what looks like success in the work of 
 another, we are greatly attracted by it, and are 
 fired by the ambition to go and do what he has 
 done. We too would sway the multitude, would 
 secure the confidence of classes of people whom 
 it is specially hard to win, would gather about 
 us a body of devout communicants and earnest, 
 intelligent workers. We too would make a last¬ 
 ing impression for good upon the souls that are 
 committed to our charge. 
 
 Alas! we know but too well that motives far 
 short of the highest may enter into such an 
 ambition; yet, nevertheless, the desire in itself— 
 let us say it again—is a lawful and honourable 
 one. It is the wish to make full proof of our 
 ministry, to be workmen who have no need to 
 be ashamed, to be in a position to present with¬ 
 out blemish 4 the beautiful flock 1 which the 
 Chief Shepherd will one day require at our 
 hands. He Himself, when speaking of the way 
 in which His own earthly life had 4 glorified ’ 
 the Father who sent Him a knew the satisfaction 
 
5 
 
 Its Importance 
 
 of saying—‘ I have finished the work which Thou 
 gavest Me to do.’ 
 
 We have said that the sight of success is a 
 thing that greatly attracts us. It is indeed 
 pathetic to observe how those who appear to 
 have achieved it are watched and questioned by 
 their fellows who, as often as not, are much older 
 men than themselves. What was it did it ? 
 where was the source of attractiveness ? was there 
 anything special in the methods employed ? was 
 it this ? or w r as it that ? 
 
 Even more pathetic is it to witness the 
 attempts which are made to imitate the efforts 
 and to reproduce the effects of others. For the 
 most part, it goes almost without saying, they are 
 made in vain. There is of course much, very 
 much, to be learned from any one who has really 
 succeeded in anything; but the learning must go 
 far deeper than surface imitation. This is where 
 so many lamentably fail. They set themselves to 
 reproduce externals, plans and schemes ; or possibly 
 no more than manners, which at secondhand in¬ 
 evitably pass into mannerisms. Then, too, it is 
 essential that we should keep in mind the ele¬ 
 mentary principle that no two of us were ever 
 intended to be exactly alike; so that even were 
 
6 Personal Life 
 
 we to succeed in our endeavours to fashion our¬ 
 selves after the pattern of somebody else, it could 
 only be by the forfeiture of what was distinctive 
 in ourselves, and as such a needed contribution to 
 the life around us. 
 
 What, then, is the secret of influence ? If it 
 does not, as we have been saying, consist in a 
 copying of what is most noticeable in the lives 
 and practices of others, still less does it depend 
 upon external conditions of station or wealth. 
 Material resources may even be detrimental where 
 it is a question of exerting the influence which 
 is to do most for the upraising of men. It is 
 recorded that Innocent IV. and Thomas Aquinas 
 were standing together as the bags of treasure 
 were being carried in through the gates of the 
 Lateran. ‘You see,’observed the Pope with a 
 smile, ‘the day is past when the Church could 
 say, “Silver and gold have I none”!’ ‘Yes, 
 Holy Father,’ was the saint’s reply, ‘ and the 
 day is past also when the Church could say 
 to the lame man, “ Rise and walk ” ! ’ 
 
 It is natural to imagine that intellectual 
 gifts count for a great deal in the matter of 
 such influence. Beyond question they do; and 
 
7 
 
 Its Importance 
 
 yet it is even more certain that they are 
 not the chief factor, not even an indispensable 
 factor. The most able and learned have not 
 seldom been those who have most conspicuously 
 failed. 
 
 Again, there can be no doubt that methods of 
 organisation may be made extremely effective. 
 Yet it is often only too evident that these in 
 themselves have a tendency to become fatally 
 mechanical, until a condition of things may easily 
 be reached in which the apparatus of machinery 
 is kept going rather for its own sake than for 
 any particular good that is expected to result 
 from it. 
 
 But there is one illusion from which we find it 
 most difficult of all to part. With our practical 
 English temperament, we are always disposed to 
 the belief that anything, or nearly anything, is to 
 be accomplished by means of hard work. We 
 are extremely slow to learn that, Work is not 
 necessarily influence. Were it otherwise, this 
 country of ours would be vastly more Christian 
 than it is. At no time in its history was there 
 more doing than at present. To go into a 6 well- 
 worked ’ parish, with its unceasing round of ser¬ 
 vices, its multiplied agencies, its endless activities, 
 
8 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 is to a visitor fairly bewildering. As we turn the 
 pages of the Church’s 6 Year Book ’ and read the 
 records of meetings and societies, conferences and 
 committees, involving perpetual discussions and 
 hurryings to and fro, we almost marvel that in 
 this little island we can still hear ourselves speak! 
 Small wonder that from all sides there comes the 
 complaint that the hours of the working day are 
 too few, and that there is ‘ no time ’ to read, or to 
 think, or to pray. 
 
 It is not meant to suggest that all these 
 activities are fruitless, very far from it. All 
 that is deprecated is the supposition—should 
 we not rather say, the superstition ?—that work 
 is its own justification, and that simply to have 
 got through so much of it is in itself a cause 
 for congratulation. On the contrary, never did 
 earnest workers need more than now to be 
 brought face to face with the fact that it is 
 possible to 4 labour in vain,’ to ‘spend their 
 strength for nought,’ to toil day and night 
 and yet take little or nothing. 
 
 The lesson of the true secret of influence, if 
 we have learned it, was probably brought home 
 to us in some such way as this We had tried 
 
Its Importance 9 
 
 our experiments; we had gone on trying them 
 for years. We had acted upon one plan after 
 another, had adopted enthusiastically this sug¬ 
 gestion and that, had spurred ourselves to con¬ 
 stantly increasing efforts. And then, when the 
 consciousness was deepening that we were as far 
 from the secret as ever, it pleased God of His 
 goodness, and He could scarcely have granted a 
 greater boon, to send our way some simple soul 
 whose every word seemed to tell, whose very 
 presence carried a benediction; who, without 
 our ability it may be, and with no special 
 methods, evidently succeeded where we had 
 most elaborately failed. The sight sent us to 
 our knees to ask to be forgiven, and taught the 
 way to begin from the very beginning again. 
 What we had learnt was this. We had been 
 made to realise that influence is the power that 
 distils from a life that is lived in communion 
 with God. 
 
 Shortly before his death, the late Lord Sel- 
 borne paid a visit to Wales and addressed a 
 gathering of churchmen there. It was at a 
 time of much uncertainty, when many were 
 anxiously wondering how the position of the 
 
10 Personal Life 
 
 Church in the principality was to be upheld. 
 The speaker said a great deal that was wise, but 
 there was one counsel which more than any other 
 fixed itself in the memories of his hearers. ‘Be 
 spiritual 1 —he urged—‘ be spiritual, be spiritual.’ 
 That was the advice upon which he insisted most 
 earnestly; and never in all his life did the great 
 lawyer give truer counsel than that. 
 
 Thought and work are, after all, only the 
 outcome and expression of life. It is by the 
 quality of the life which underlies them that 
 their character and worth is determined. Intel¬ 
 lect is good, as an instrument is good; but 
 intellect by itself is powerless. Organisation is 
 good, but only on the condition that, as in the 
 prophet’s vision, there are not merely ‘ wheels/ 
 but also ‘the Spirit within the wheels.’ It is 
 not what we say, not even what we do, but 
 what we are, that tells. ‘ Do not speak to 
 me,’ said the American transcendentalist, with 
 a pardonable exaggeration; ‘ what you are 
 
 thunders so loud that I cannot hear what you 
 say!’ 
 
 It would not be difficult to multiply illustra¬ 
 tions and instances to show that to-day as of 
 old ‘ the life is the light of men.’ 
 
Its Importance 11 
 
 A Mission was being conducted in a pit village 
 of the county of Durham. The schoolmaster of 
 the place was a hard-headed north countryman; 
 and it might have seemed that he was inclined 
 to be somewhat hard-hearted too. At any rate, 
 he had no great belief in Missions, and did not 
 think much of emotional religion. He was ex¬ 
 tremely reserved about the whole matter. But 
 there was one topic upon which he was always 
 ready to talk. Speak to him of a man who 
 five-and-twenty years before had been the vicar 
 of the district, and at once a chord was set 
 vibrating within him. Asked one day whether 
 he thought that his old vicar, who had become 
 famous in the Church, was still the same humble 
 and genuine man that he had been in the days 
 when he had known him first, he replied at once 
 in tones that were almost indignant; 6 Why,’ 
 he said, ‘ you have only to shake that man’s hand 
 to feel that he is full of the Holy Ghost! ’ He 
 could not have explained it, but he could quite 
 well recognise the fact. 
 
 Not indeed that it has always been necessary 
 to shake a man’s hand before coming to a similar 
 conclusion. The Archbishop of York told his 
 Ordination candidates a year or two ago of a 
 
12 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 young clergyman who had been appointed to a 
 country parish. His stay in it, as it proved, was 
 not to be for long. He was scarcely more than 
 thirty when he died. After an interval had 
 passed, a friend who had known him well visited 
 the place, eager to discover what kind of im¬ 
 pression he had made. Meeting a labourer, he 
 
 asked him the question, c Did he think Mr.- 
 
 had done any good ? 1 Again there was no sort 
 of hesitation in the answer, c I never saw that 
 man cross the common yonder, sir, without 
 being the better for it . 1 
 
 Does it seem too high, too impossible an 
 aim, that the people should be the better for 
 the simple fact of our presence among them, 
 and that even our slightest actions should 
 speak to them of good ? Can we really be 
 satisfied with any conception of our mission 
 and responsibility less than that P Is not the 
 life of the priest intended to be a sort of 
 sacrament to his people ? Should they not be 
 able to see in it ‘an outward and visible sign 
 of an inward and spiritual grace , 1 a 6 pledge 1 
 which will assure them of the reality of that 
 which is beyond merely natural powers, and a 
 
Its Importance 13 
 
 4 means ’ whereby they are to be encouraged 
 and helped to attain it? 
 
 Whether we think so or not, men do take 
 knowledge of us. They are well able to per¬ 
 ceive it when we are in a low state of spiritual 
 vitality, and they seldom fail to be aware of 
 the fact when the inner life of their teachers is 
 healthy and strong. 
 
 Are we then saying too much when we say, 
 and say decidedly, that the consideration of the 
 Personal Life of the Clergy must of necessity 
 be set in the forefront of any attempts to 
 increase the efficiency of clerical work; and 
 that all other considerations must be regarded 
 as subordinate to this one ? 
 
 The treatment of such a subject is a matter 
 of peculiar delicacy and difficulty. In many 
 ways what is to be said will fall, perhaps must 
 inevitably fall, far short of what both writer 
 and readers could wish. It is, however, per¬ 
 missible to believe that it will not be without 
 its use if it should have the effect of con¬ 
 vincing any one of us of the necessity of going 
 into the whole question much more thoroughly 
 for himself. It certainly will not be in vain, 
 
14 Personal Life 
 
 if it should lead us to cast ourselves more 
 humbly upon that higher wisdom which is ever 
 most ready to help us just at the point at which 
 we have honestly tried, and failed, to help one 
 another. 
 
Note I 
 
 The following passages occur in an address by 
 Archbishop Benson, on 4 Spiritual Power,’ which 
 formed part of his Third Visitation Charge:— 1 
 “ If we look to Scripture we find the word 
 * Power ’ used almost indiscriminately in the Au¬ 
 thorised Version to render two very different 
 words, ’Egovo-ia, ‘authority 1 (externally conferred 
 power), and Avva/u 5 4 potency,’ 4 ability ’ to which 
 our usage of 4 power ’ more properly belongs. 
 
 44 Both ought to co-exist in the Church. Our 
 Lord taught and worked with 4 authority ’ as 
 well as with 4 power,’ and the Apostles received 
 4 power ’ as well as 4 authority,’ and the Christian 
 clerus ought to have both. But they may be 
 separated in the Church. The Scribes and 
 Pharisees 4 knew not the power of God,’ but they 
 still 4 s$te in Moses’ seat ’ and their 4 authority ’ 
 was to be attended to. In the Church of Israel 
 when the priesthood ceased, the prophets had 
 ‘power’ but no levitical ‘authority.’ 
 
 “And so history shows how in sinful times 
 4 power ’ has departed from 4 authority ’ and has 
 
 1 See Fishers of Men, pp. 110 ff. 
 
 16 
 
16 
 
 Note 
 
 reappeared in enthusiasms, in separations, in alien¬ 
 ated communities not to be reunited till their 
 crisis comes. And fearlessly we must say that 
 terrible as is the putting asunder of what God 
 hath joined together, yet ‘power’ without 
 ‘ authority ’ is a more living thing, a more saving 
 thing, than ‘ authority ’ without power. . . . 
 
 “What so hollow as for authority to have 
 to vindicate itself conscious of departed power ? 
 But alas! the man feels it must be done, and 
 so does an institution. . . . Thus, failing the 
 power, a working substitute for it is provided. 
 The authority remains, it must act; if its inner 
 force flags a little it must be propped up. There 
 is no original intention to deceive : rather to 
 keep up the standard when the heart sank. 
 Gradually the service of religion is mechanised, 
 and even then it is so soothing and so fair, as 
 it gently becomes more material and sensuous, 
 that it is delighted in. It is even a kind of 
 conscientiousness which searches for working sub¬ 
 stitutes when the acquisition and exercise of that 
 real spiritual power which lies in the awful con* 
 tact with Christ’s holiness and judgment is too 
 painful and constant.” 
 
Note II 
 
 Speaking to those engaged in teaching at the 
 universities and in public schools, Bishop Paget 
 has said:— 
 
 “ ‘ For their sakes I consecrate myself.’ There 
 is the ultimate secret of power ; the one sure way 
 of doing good in our generation. We cannot 
 anticipate or analyse the power of a pure and 
 holy life; but there can be no doubt about its 
 reality, and there seems no limit to its range. 
 We can only know in part the laws and forces of 
 the spiritual world; and it may be that every 
 soul that is purified and given up to God and to 
 His work releases or awakens energies of which 
 we have no suspicion—energies viewless as the 
 wind ; but we can be sure of the result, and we 
 may have glimpses sometimes of the process. 
 
 “ Surely, there is no power in the world so un¬ 
 erring or so irrepressible as the power of personal 
 holiness. All else at times goes wrong, blunders, 
 loses proportion, falls disastrously short of its 
 aim, grows stiff* or one-sided, or out of date— 
 ‘ whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; 
 whether there be tongues, they shall cease; 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 Note 
 
 whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish 
 away’; but nothing mars or misleads the in¬ 
 fluence that issues from a pure and humble and 
 unselfish character. 
 
 “ A man’s gifts may lack opportunity, his 
 efforts may be misunderstood and resisted; but 
 the spiritual power of a consecrated will needs no 
 opportunity, and can enter where the doors are 
 shut. By no fault of a man’s own, his gifts may 
 suggest to some the thoughts of criticism, com¬ 
 parison, competition; his self-consecration can do 
 no harm in this way. Of gifts, some are best for 
 long distances, some for objects close at hand or 
 in direct contact; but personal holiness, deter¬ 
 mining, refining, characterising everything that 
 a man says and does, will tell alike on those he 
 may not know even by name, and on those who 
 see him in the constant intimacy of his home.” 
 —The Hallowing of Work , pp. 16 f. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 OUR PART AND DUTY IN THE MATTER 
 
 In what is to be written in these pages no 
 apology will be offered for simplicity of style 
 or directness of statement. Things will be said 
 with which we are all of us perfectly familiar, 
 and which we are constantly saying to others. 
 The fact that they are thus familiar and often 
 on our lips is not a reason for omitting them 
 here; it is rather a reason why we should be 
 asked to consider them the more carefully, and 
 apply them to ourselves. 
 
 It is no mere paradox to assert that we all 
 of us, clergy and lay-people alike, most need to 
 learn the things which we have known the longest. 
 And who is likely to urge them upon us of the 
 clergy, if we do not urge them on ourselves? 
 It may encourage us to remember how freshly 
 familiar truths can appear when we bring our¬ 
 selves to view them from the standpoint of our 
 particular needs and hopes. No things after all 
 
 19 
 
20 Personal Life 
 
 are really so ‘ new ’ as the things which are both 
 ‘new and old.’ 
 
 In this chapter we shall consider, and try 
 to lay to heart, a most elementary lesson. So 
 elementary is it that we are in serious danger 
 of neglecting it altogether. The lesson is this, 
 that, what we are to be must in great measure 
 depend upon the efforts we are prepared to make. 
 If we are to become more spiritual men, it can 
 only be because we are firmly determined that 
 it shall be so. 
 
 We cannot assert this principle with too much 
 emphasis, nor can we make too sure of the founda¬ 
 tion upon which the assertion rests. 
 
 To begin with, let us dismiss the fear that 
 there is any inconsistency between what we 
 shall now say and what has been said already. 
 In the preceding chapter we had occasion to 
 maintain very strongly that failure must in¬ 
 evitably result when ‘ work ’ is made a substitute 
 for the influence which can only flow from 
 spirituality of life. It might therefore at first 
 sight look as if we were now going to restore 
 the thought of work to the position of primary 
 importance from which we had hitherto been 
 
21 
 
 Our Duty 
 
 trying to dislodge it. But indeed it is not so. 
 There is no sort of inconsistency in saying, on 
 the one hand, that effort is no substitute for 
 grace; and on the other, that grace demands 
 from us the most untiring co-operation of effort. 
 
 If we are teaching rightly, we are perpetually 
 insisting upon both these truths. We tell our 
 hearers that the duties to which they are pledged 
 by their Christian profession are such as they 
 cannot hope to perform in their own strength, 
 and that they must be continually dependent 
 upon a higher power. At the same time we 
 tell them that this power can never be theirs 
 against their will; that God’s help is in fact 
 only given to those who will help themselves. 
 
 It is no small part of our message to make 
 men see that it is ever God’s way to treat them 
 with respect. Wonderful as it is, He asks our 
 leave to bless us. As we do not think of entering 
 the dwelling of another until we have obtained 
 his permission, even so the heavenly visitor says 
 of Himself, 4 1 stand at the door and knock.’ 
 Everything must depend upon our readiness to 
 allow the Divine power to have free course in 
 our hearts and lives. 
 
22 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 That, then, which we teach to others we must 
 also teach ourselves. It may help to make the 
 lesson real to us if we reflect how thoroughly of 
 a piece are God’s dealings with the whole of His 
 creation, so far as we have knowledge of them. 
 
 In an early Christian document, the so-called 
 j Epistle to Diognetus , there is a memorable sen¬ 
 tence which deserves to be written in letters of 
 gold — ‘Force is not an attribute of God.’ 1 A 
 little consideration is enough to enable us to see 
 how universal the application of this great law 
 of liberty is. 
 
 The supreme distinction between ourselves and 
 the creatures beneath us lies in the fact that, 
 whereas they obey involuntarily, without any 
 clear consciousness of what obedience means, the 
 service expected from us is a service of deliberate 
 choice. 
 
 If thou would’st attain thy highest, go look on a flower; 
 
 What it does will-lessly, do thou willingly. 2 
 
 The flower is for ever doing; opening its petals 
 to welcome the influences of heaven, gathering 
 through roots and leaves the elements which con¬ 
 tribute to its upbuilding, yielding always to the 
 
 1 § 7. fila ybp oil TpScrean r<£ 0ey. 
 
 * Schiller. 
 
23 
 
 Our Duty 
 
 laws of its being. Even so, in like manner, is it 
 for the man to strive and mount upwards towards 
 the fulfilment of his ideal. 
 
 True it is that in God 4 we live and move and 
 have our being,’ and that without Him we 4 can 
 do nothing.’ The new birth is His act. Chris¬ 
 tian character is His creation. All its beauty, 
 all its fragrance, are a witness to His presence in 
 the soul. Yet it is not less true that Christian 
 character is the result of human endeavour. The 
 Christian is not only born but made. It is our 
 part, our necessary part, to ‘work out’ that 
 which God is working in us. It is for us to 
 4 labour striving according to His working which 
 worketh in us mightily.’ 
 
 God, we believe, never enforces; but He is 
 ever waiting to enable. ‘Force is not an attri¬ 
 bute of God ’; but, 4 Twice I have also heard the 
 same, that power belongeth unto God.’ 1 And 
 God’s power becomes ours as we accept and 
 obey it. 
 
 That progress in the spiritual life has been 
 made to depend upon our efforts appears even 
 more convincingly to be part of the great order 
 
 1 Ps. lxii. 11. 
 
24 Personal Life 
 
 under which we live, when we pass from the 
 merely physical sphere to the intellectual, and 
 take our illustrations from facts and experiences 
 connected with mental proficiency which no one 
 would think of disputing. In this connection, 
 as it may be well to be reminded, we are con¬ 
 stantly employing expressions which we have 
 borrowed, in the sense in which we employ them, 
 from religion. We speak, that is to say, of 
 ‘gifts,’ and of ‘talents,’ and of ‘endowments,’ 
 which belong to us, if they are ours at all, as 
 part of our heritage. We have powers and 
 faculties which we did not originate in ourselves. 
 But the recognition of this fact does not lead 
 us to imagine that we have no responsibility in 
 regard to them. We know quite well that we 
 must cultivate them diligently, if they are to 
 avail us anything. Otherwise the failure will 
 be great in proportion to the opportunity. 
 
 Gifts do not relieve their possessors from the 
 necessity of hard work. ‘ Genius,’ in the oft- 
 quoted definition, ‘ is an infinite capacity for 
 taking pains.’ It is the merest delusion to sup¬ 
 pose that anything really great has ever been 
 achieved without effort. True no doubt it is 
 in a sense that ‘every man does his best thing 
 
25 
 
 Our Duty 
 
 easiest 1 ; but unremitting has been the toil which 
 has gained for him the facility. And the result, 
 when it comes, is rightly described as a 4 work 1 
 of genius. 
 
 Those who have had the best right to speak 
 have been unanimous in their testimony that 
 nothing really worthy of attainment, in art, or 
 in literature, or in science, is to be reached with¬ 
 out labour—continuous, systematic labour. True 
 again it is in a most real sense that the 4 yoke is 
 easy ’ and the 4 burden is light,’ for the task is 
 congenial and the reward is not wanting; but 
 the stoop of the back and the furrows on the 
 brow make it evident that there is a yoke to be 
 carried and a burden to be borne. 
 
 When some one inquired of Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 how long it had taken him to paint a certain 
 picture, he answered, 4 All my life. 1 
 
 4 If I omit one day’s practice,’ so Rubinstein is 
 reported to have said, 4 1 know it the next day, 
 the critics know it the day after, and the public 
 the day after that.’ 
 
 When Dr Liddon was asked to give some 
 lectures to younger men about preaching, he 
 refused, declaring that he 4 could only tell them 
 to take pains.’ 
 
26 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 ‘If the scholar feels reproach when he reads 
 the tale of the extreme toil and endurance of the 
 Arctic explorer, he is not working as he should.’ 1 
 
 If then it be true that, 
 
 The heights by great men gained and kept, 
 
 Were not attained by sudden flight; 
 
 But they while their companions slept. 
 
 Were toiling upwards through the night, 
 
 how is it to be supposed that it can be other¬ 
 wise with great saints? If it takes years of 
 practice to perfect a musician, how much practice 
 must it not take to perfect a Christian? Will 
 eight hours a day do it ? Nay, those who have 
 longed the most to attain proficiency in the 
 highest art of holy living have not been content 
 with so little. Their prayer has been that every 
 moment of conscious, and indeed of half conscious 
 existence, might be devoted to the task. They 
 have desired that even in their dreams they might 
 be nearer and still nearer to heaven. Of one, who 
 was remarkable for self-control and a singular 
 sweetness of disposition, it was said that he 
 ‘ took infinite pains with himself.’ 
 
 Yet it is by no means uncommon to hear 
 1 Emerson in Concord , p. 219, 
 
27 
 
 Our Duty 
 
 language which is calculated to leave the impres¬ 
 sion that all that is required in order to produce 
 the highest type of Christian excellence is a fuller 
 operation of Divine grace. There is a sense in 
 which this is undeniably true; but it may be 
 most dangerously false if what is intended is that 
 there is no immediate need for any action of our 
 own. Let us not be deceived by what may 
 appear to be good words. They may not be the 
 less misleading because they assume a look of 
 humility. Let us not presume to cast the blame 
 of our own shortcomings upon God. If He is 
 straitened, we may be sure that it is not in Him¬ 
 self, but in us. He gives grace freely; but it 
 cannot be given where it is certain that it will be 
 received in vain. 
 
 Shall we say then that grace is ‘an infinite 
 capacity for taking pains ’ ? St Paul would not 
 have quarrelled with that definition. Indeed it 
 seems to underlie his own confession, when he 
 says: ‘ By the grace of God I am what I am; 
 and His grace which was bestowed upon me was 
 not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly 
 than they all.’ 1 
 
 1 1 Cor. xv. 10. 
 
28 Personal Life 
 
 Might we not go a step further, and say what 
 may seem an even bolder thing ? Might we not 
 dare to assert that a gift of more grace would 
 not make life easier for us, but harder ? The 
 presence of genius, as we have seen, does not absolve 
 men from the necessity of toil. Nay rather, it is 
 this very presence which more than anything else 
 binds and pledges them to spend laborious days; 
 which assigns them to the task of surmounting 
 the most formidable difficulties. Even so, it 
 would appear, does the presence of grace pledge 
 us to labour upon labour. 4 For this very 
 cause’ we are bound to give all diligence that 
 we may add virtue to virtue in our endeavour 
 to 4 press toward the mark for the prize of the 
 high calling, 1 and to ‘apprehend 1 that for which 
 we were 4 apprehended of Christ Jesus. 11 
 
 If we are to grow in grace, then, let us be 
 assured that we have our part to do. If we are 
 to receive the 4 more life and fuller, 1 we must 
 open our hearts to welcome and bend our wills 
 to obey. If we desire a place in the 4 kingdom, 1 
 we must prepare to hear the challenge, 4 Can ye 
 drink of the cup P 1 4 Can ye be baptized with the 
 
 1 2 Pet. i. 6; Phil. iii. 12, 14. 
 
29 
 
 Our Duty 
 
 baptism ?' If we long to exercise influence for 
 the blessing of others, we must be ready to 
 sanctify ourselves for their sakes, and must not 
 count it strange that in the process there is much 
 to endure. 
 
 Happy for us if the lesson has been learned 
 at the outset of our ministerial life. A young 
 clergyman had called to see Bishop Benson at 
 Truro. At the close of the interview, the bishop 
 passed across the table a sheet of paper on which 
 he had written the concluding sentence of the 
 first book of the Imitatio: ‘ Tantum proficies, 
 quantum tibi ipsi vim intuleris. 1 Take that for 
 your motto, he said. 
 
 Let us settle it in our minds, whether early or 
 late, that if we are not advancing in spirituality 
 of life, the fault is to be sought within. We can 
 only make progress as we bring pressure to bear 
 upon ourselves. It is ‘ through faith and patience ’ 
 —‘faith,’ which gratefully traces all good gifts 
 to their source in God, and ‘ patience,’ which as 
 gladly accepts and bravely fulfils the conditions 
 upon which we can use them with profit—that 
 we, like those before us, may hope to ‘ inherit the 
 promises.’ 
 
Note 
 
 It is strange how slow we are to lay hold of some 
 of the most elementary principles of spiritual life. 
 Nothing, for example, seems to many of us to be 
 harder to grasp than the fact of the utility of 
 effort when rightly made in harmony with the 
 Divine intention. We make efforts, right efforts, 
 and they appear to fail; our good resolutions 
 come, as we imagine, to nothing. Then we lose 
 heart, and are inclined to abandon endeavour. 
 It is, we say, ‘ no use trying.’ The insufficiency 
 of such reasoning we should see without difficulty 
 if we were to put an analogous case in the 
 sphere of more ordinary education. A child, 
 let us say, has been practising a music lesson. 
 He has worked hard, but when the master 
 comes, the result is absolute failure. The 
 child is discouraged and perplexed, and declares 
 that he will try no more. Accordingly for the 
 next lesson he makes no preparation, but never¬ 
 theless he does remarkably well. And now his 
 conclusion is triumphant: ‘ When I tried the 
 
 hardest I did the worst; and when I didn’t try 
 
 at all I got on best ’! For us the child’s logic 
 
 so 
 
Note 
 
 31 
 
 serves but to raise a smile. We see, of course, 
 that the final success was due to the previous 
 work. At the moment the work did not tell, 
 probably on account of excitement or self-con¬ 
 sciousness which upset the nervous balance; but 
 in the end the effect became apparent. 
 
 Is it not a similar conclusion that we ought 
 to draw for ourselves when we have tried most, 
 prayed most, struggled most, and seem to have 
 overcome the least ? It may really have been so, 
 for the moment; but we may not think that, on 
 that account, the effort expended has been labour 
 lost. There is such a thing as the conservation 
 of spiritual energy. The result will most certainly 
 appear, perhaps when we are entirely unconscious 
 of the cause to which it is to be traced. No 
 effort, no aspiration, no genuine attempt at self- 
 discipline, is ever thrown away. 4 In due season 
 we shall reap, if we faint not.’ 
 
 4 My brethren,’ said Richard Baxter at the 
 close of a sermon, 4 1 have given you an easy 
 lesson, hard to learn.’ There are in religion 
 many easy lessons hard to learn. This is one of 
 them ; we shall have others to note as we proceed. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 NEED OF PENITENCE 
 
 Once we have firmly laid hold of the thought that 
 it is essential to our progress that we should use 
 all diligence in order that the grace which is given 
 to us may not be received in vain, it becomes our 
 wisdom to go on to ask how in particular we 
 are to set about the task of self-discipline. No 
 acceptance of general principles, however true, 
 can be enough for our purpose; indeed, as we 
 must be aware, general resolutions do not as a 
 rule lead to much. What then, we must inquire, 
 are the directions in which we are especially 
 bound to put forth endeavour ? Where is it that 
 we are likely to be weakest and most at fault ? 
 The answers to these questions may well differ 
 for different men, as they must certainly differ 
 for different times. All we can attempt is to 
 indicate what will be the true answers for many 
 of us, possibly for most of us, at the present 
 time. 
 
 32 
 
Penitence 
 
 33 
 
 Those who, by their work as Missioners or 
 Conductors of Retreats, are brought into closest 
 relations with the personal experience of their 
 fellows, would probably not hesitate long if called 
 upon to say what they believed to be the greatest 
 need in the religious life of to-day. They would 
 say that it is the need for a deeper Penitence. 
 
 Nor would this testimony be confined to the 
 clergy. Some of us may remember an article 
 which appeared in one of the magazines a few 
 years since from the pen of Mr Gladstone, in 
 which he dealt with certain theological difficulties 
 
 then much discussed in connection with a widely 
 circulated work of fiction. The most remarkable 
 thing in that article was the assertion of the 
 writer’s conviction that the great majority of all 
 such difficulties have their origin in an inadequate 
 sense of sin. 
 
 In a conversation with a friend, reported in 
 print soon after his death, the same great Church 
 layman went even further and declared most 
 deliberately that in his opinion this absence of a 
 due sense of sin was 6 the great want in modern 
 life.’ 6 “ Ah,” said he slowly, “ the sense of sin— 
 that is the great want in modern life; it is want¬ 
 ing in our sermons, wanting everywhere ! ” This 
 
 0 
 
34 Personal Life 
 
 was said slowly and reflectively, almost like a 
 monologue.’ 1 
 
 Perhaps the most effective way of making our¬ 
 selves realise the extent of the need is to contrast 
 the condition of things familiar to us now with 
 the state of religious teaching and feeling in days 
 not very far removed in the past. 
 
 We are accustomed to set over against each 
 other the main characteristics of the Evangelical 
 and Tractarian schools of religious thought. We 
 find no difficulty in describing the differences 
 which distinguished the one from the other— 
 differences of standpoint, of aim, and of method. 
 It might be wished that we were equally accus- 
 
 1 Talks with Mr Gladstone , by Hon. L. A. Tollemache, 
 p. 96. Compare also the words of Amiel, with reference 
 to modern philosophies : ‘ The cardinal question is that of 
 sin ’ ( Journal , Eng. Tr., p. 5). As evidence that the defect 
 is being widely recognised in many directions, it is signifi¬ 
 cant to find a statement like the following in a recently 
 published work on the social situation :—‘ The beginning of 
 social amelioration is in the recognition of that personal 
 responsibility which the Bible does not hesitate to call sin. 
 . . . For a very large part of social disorder, the chief re¬ 
 sponsibility lies in the passions and ambitions of individual 
 men, and no social arrangement can guarantee social welfare 
 unless there is brought home to vast numbers of individuals 
 a pro founder sense of personal sin.’—F. G. Peabody, Jesus 
 Christ and the Social Question , p. 116, 
 
Penitence 
 
 35 
 
 tomed to take note of the points which, in spite 
 of these differences, they firmly maintained in 
 common. Among such agreements we shall 
 find that none was more marked than the entire 
 unanimity with which the teachers of both 
 schools insisted upon the absolute necessity of 
 a true appreciation of the nature and guilt of 
 sin. The language in which the teaching was 
 conveyed might differ, but the meaning and 
 intention were the same. 
 
 The Evangelicals were determined that none 
 who came under their influence should be left 
 in any doubt about the matter. They in¬ 
 structed their converts at the outset as to the 
 need for repentance. They never wearied of 
 speaking about 4 conviction ’ of sin, and the 
 4 burden ’ of sin, and the 4 corruption 1 of 
 human nature, and its 4 fallen condition ’ in the 
 sight of a holy God. And these were much 
 more than phrases to them : they were stern 
 and tremendous realities. Their meaning had 
 been learnt by actual and painful experiences. 
 These were the subject of their sermons and 
 of their hymns. We have the confidential re¬ 
 cords of them in their letters, and in the diaries 
 which they blotted with their tears. 
 
36 Personal Life 
 
 Nor was it otherwise with the teachers of the 
 opposite school, unless indeed it might be main¬ 
 tained that these were even more precise and 
 systematic in their dealings with the matter. 
 What they aimed at perpetually was to 4 deepen 
 penitence , 1 to lead to a truer 4 contrition.’ 
 They spared no effort, and they shrank from no 
 process of personal humiliation. Self-examina¬ 
 tion with them was raised into a science. They 
 scrutinised motives as under a microscope, and 
 by a particular 4 confession,’ not merely of sin 
 but of sins, they sought to lead themselves and 
 their penitents to an ever-increasing apprehension 
 of their need of pardon and grace. 
 
 The essential conviction was one and the 
 same with them both; indeed, at times the very 
 language in which it was expressed was identical. 
 Passages from the writings of Simeon and of 
 Pusey have been set side by side in a recent 
 biography; and so much alike are they that it 
 would not be possible, from internal evidence 
 alone, to tell from which they had come . 1 
 
 From such a retrospect we turn our eyes to 
 religion as we know it now. We mark its 
 1 See Liddon’s Life of Pusey, vol. iii. pp. 96, 98. 
 
Penitence 
 
 37 
 
 activities, its ever widening range of social in¬ 
 terests, its larger outlook upon historical and 
 scientific inquiry, its more accurate exegesis. 
 There is so much that is useful and good. We 
 are thankful for the advance that has been 
 made in so many directions. And yet, if it be 
 true that we are losing our penitence, there is 
 need to pause and consider. What if it should 
 prove that the foundations upon which we are 
 building are insecurely laid ? And what if the 
 building itself be of less consequence than we 
 have been inclined to suppose ? 
 
 Those who went before us did go deep, and 
 they did train saints. The fruit of their work 
 was to be seen in men and women who were 
 humble and unworldly in their aims, who 
 genuinely cared for souls, who took delight in 
 their religion, and made the reality of it felt 
 in their lives. And it is impossible not to 
 connect these effects with the profound self- 
 knowledge, the trembling sense of personal un¬ 
 worthiness, which teachers and taught alike 
 earnestly declared to have been at the basis of 
 them. If we have changed all that, we have need 
 to reflect very seriously both as to our present 
 condition and our future prospects. 
 
38 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 Perhaps the best hope for us lies in the fact 
 that we are for the most part quite ready to 
 admit that there has been this change, perplexed 
 though we may be to know how to account for 
 it, or to deal with the situation to which it has 
 given rise. 
 
 This certainly is not the place in which to 
 attempt anything like a complete investigation 
 into the influences which have been at work 
 to lessen for us the sense of the seriousness of 
 sin. It must be enough if, by way of suggestion, 
 we can indicate some of the chief of them. 
 
 The most evident has been the force of re¬ 
 action. There was a sternness, we might even 
 say a severity, about the older teaching and its 
 ways. Truths were set forth in statements 
 which were repellent to many minds. At the 
 same time the outward arrangements of worship 
 were too often slovenly and dull. The recoil 
 from this state of things led to a determination 
 to make religion attractive at almost any cost. 
 The winning aspects of it were to be continually 
 presented. On all sides it was insisted that 
 services should be 6 bright ’: until not a few of 
 us have grown heartily tired of the word, and 
 
Penitence 
 
 39 
 
 would gladly restore somewhat of the old 
 solemnity and wholesome restraint. 
 
 But of course we shall have to go deeper 
 than this if we are to discover the fundamental 
 causes of the change of which we are thinking. 
 When we do penetrate beneath the surface we 
 quickly find ourselves in the presence of a 
 cause which is as fundamental as any could be. 
 This is nothing less radical than an entirely 
 altered conception of the character of God as 
 shewn in His relations with men. 
 
 To the teachers who preceded us the dominant 
 conception of theology was, without question, 
 that of the Moral Government of God. They 
 took the thought from those who had gone before 
 them. We recall the phrase as occurring per¬ 
 petually in the writings of Bishop Butler . 1 The 
 idea was uppermost in the minds of most of those 
 who thought seriously in the century that followed 
 him, whether they were philosophers, or divines, 
 or evangelists. They all made that conception 
 the starting-point of their thinking, and they 
 never allowed themselves to lose sight of it. 
 The Divine attributes upon which they dwelt 
 
 1 It is related of this great bishop that in his last solemn 
 moments he ‘ expressed it as an awful thing to appear before 
 the Moral Governor of the world.’ 
 
40 Personal Life 
 
 and insisted were such as were most directly 
 connected with it. They spoke much of justice, 
 and will, and power to administer punishment. 
 To them the true human attitude was an atti¬ 
 tude of submission and obedience. All else was 
 revolt, such as would inevitably draw upon itself 
 the penalties of a broken law. To these thinkers 
 it was therefore natural to give great prominence 
 to the prospect of judgment, and to the dis¬ 
 grace and guilt of sin. 
 
 We have but to bring before our minds such 
 an outline of the religious position, as it existed 
 at a time well within living memory, in order 
 to heighten our consciousness of the extraordi¬ 
 nary revolution that has occurred in our modern 
 theological thinking. 
 
 There may be exaggeration in the story as 
 it is sometimes told, how a statesman, having 
 been struck by a phrase as it fell from the lips 
 of a preacher, repeated it during the course of a 
 speech in his place in the House of Commons, 
 only to discover that others were as ready to 
 grasp at it as he himself had been. The phrase 
 was—‘the Fatherhood of God.’ What is cer¬ 
 tain is that the truth when it came seemed new. 
 To most it was a surprise: to many it was a 
 
Penitence 
 
 41 
 
 revelation. It rapidly passed from lip to lip, 
 it found its way into books, it took possession 
 of hearts. Men believed it passionately. They 
 came prepared to listen to those, and to those 
 only, who would develope it for them. Their 
 English reverence for the sanctities of the home 
 made them ready to receive it. They found it 
 in the Gospels. They saw that it underlay the 
 great prayer of their childhood. Before long 
 the demand became general for a theology which 
 should be entirely expressed in the terms of this 
 single truth. 
 
 Now we need not hesitate for an instant to 
 express our deep thankfulness for all that we 
 have gained in the course of this transition. 
 We could scarcely over-estimate the debt that 
 we owe to those through whom it has been 
 effected. We have such cause to be grateful as 
 men have for sunshine and summer heat. There 
 has come to multitudes a fresh unveiling of light 
 and love. Never in the history of Christendom 
 were more people more intelligently able to 
 pronounce the first great sentence of the Creed 
 —‘ I believe in God the Father Almighty.’ A 
 wholly new significance has been given to the 
 message of the Incarnation of the Son; fresh 
 
42 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 and unlooked for help has been found by many 
 who, under the older teaching, had been soreky 
 perplexed by the doctrine of Christian Regene¬ 
 ration. And we might easily lengthen our list 
 of such benefits. 
 
 At the same time it requires little effort to 
 enable us to see that so marked a change of 
 standpoint would be likely to make a very real 
 difference to the consideration of such subjects 
 as the certainty of judgment and the sinfulness 
 of sin. 
 
 Nor is it difficult to understand how, as time 
 went on and the new ideas more completely took 
 the place of the old, the effect upon the popular 
 religion would become increasingly noticeable. 
 As an exclusive insistence upon the 6 Moral 
 Government ’ had produced a sternness and 
 asperity from which the religious instinct in 
 men might rightly welcome relief; so, too, an 
 exclusive insistence upon the 4 Fatherhood 1 would 
 tend to produce results which in their turn might 
 prove to be even more unsatisfactory. Father¬ 
 liness dissociated from firmness may for a while 
 be attractive as a doctrine, but it can only lead 
 to a laxity alike of thought and of practice. 
 Happily, in the long run, it must cease to be 
 
Penitence 
 
 43 
 
 popular, because it must cease to be believable. 
 Love is never more terribly wronged and de¬ 
 graded than when represented as merely good¬ 
 nature. Such a travesty can retain no lasting 
 hold on mind, or heart, or conscience. 
 
 We are so much accustomed to dwell upon 
 the gains which modern theology has owed to 
 modern science, that we are probably inclined 
 to overlook the fact that there have been some 
 very real, even if only temporary, losses as well. 
 Thus, for example, it will scarcely be questioned 
 that the scientific doctrine of evolution, greatly 
 as it has aided us in attaining to a more intel¬ 
 ligent appreciation of the history of the training 
 of the race, and greatly as it has strengthened 
 the foundation upon which we rest our hopes 
 for the future, has also done not a little to 
 weaken the general sense of the seriousness of 
 sin, by seeming to encourage the notion that 
 evil may after all be but a stage, and a neces¬ 
 sary stage, in the development of good; a notion 
 from which it is easy to pass on to the denial 
 that we can have any real responsibility in the 
 matter. 
 
 So also, for our generation at all events, the 
 
44 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 gain from the I influence of science upon religious 
 thought has been seriously counterbalanced by a 
 widespread weakening of the meaning of Law. 
 The word is on all lips; every one is talking of 
 the operation of law, of the reign of law, of 
 obedience to law. But the word, when we test 
 it, weighs lighter than it did. Owing to its 
 constant employment in reference to the material 
 sphere, it has for multitudes ceased to bear any 
 moral signification at all. From its old meaning 
 of the authority of a superior will, it has come 
 to denote no more than inevitable sequence. 
 Here again, then, we recognise one among the 
 influences which have tended to lessen the sense 
 of moral responsibility which was once firmly 
 established in the general religious mind. 
 
 To these more important causes we may add 
 others which are none the less real because we 
 cannot dignify them by the epithets theological 
 or scientific. If we are to be perfectly candid, 
 we shall have to admit that the condition of 
 things which we are trying to account for is to 
 be traced in no small degree to a habit of mind 
 but little removed from indolence. On all hands 
 the demand is being made for the minimising of 
 
Penitence 
 
 45 
 
 labour in every possible way. Nor is the shrink¬ 
 ing from sustained exertion only to be observed 
 in the region of manual toil. It is equally ap¬ 
 parent in the region of the intellect. Those who 
 are best qualified to judge are continually warn¬ 
 ing us that our age is one of diffusion rather 
 than depth. There is much information, with 
 little understanding. Everything is being made 
 easy. We have popular lectures which give us 
 in an agreeable form the results of the studies 
 of others. Leading articles are cut up into sec¬ 
 tions, with headlines to indicate their purport; 
 while newspapers are filled with pictures so as 
 to save us still further the effort of thinking. 
 
 We must not wonder if the same tendencies 
 make themselves felt in the highest and most 
 difficult sphere. We want to be good, but with 
 the least possible trouble. Speak of the im¬ 
 portance of definite belief, or of the value of 
 self-discipline and mortification of the flesh, urge 
 the necessity of living by rule—and to many you 
 will appear as some belated survival of a less 
 enlightened age. We flatter ourselves that at 
 last, thanks to modern improvements, we have 
 got 6 Reading without tears ’; and we can see no 
 reason why we should not have 4 Religion without 
 
46 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 tears ’ as well! And, indeed, we have plenty 
 of it. But what is its worth? how deep does 
 it go, or how high? has it joy, has it peace? 
 what is its vision? and what is its power of in¬ 
 fluence ? 
 
 It is when we ask questions like these that we 
 see why it is that, although we have reason to 
 be grateful for real gains which have come to us 
 in recent years, we have yet little cause to be 
 satisfied with the general result. We certainly 
 cannot be content with the new, so long as we 
 miss the solemnity, the strength, the spirituality 
 of the old. 
 
 Enough then, by way of suggestion, as to the 
 influences which have operated to weaken our 
 sense of the meaning of sin : enough at all events 
 to guide us in regard to the directions in which 
 we may look, and must work, for a remedy. 
 
 Shall we not hope, for instance, that there may 
 be a reaction from the reaction ? that without 
 necessarily returning to the former extreme of 
 harshness, we may at least come to an agreement 
 that 4 the fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
 wisdom,’ that reverence is the atmosphere in 
 which alone the life of the soul can grow, and 
 
Penitence 
 
 47 
 
 that the religion which stirs the emotions but 
 fails to arouse the conscience is a sadly defective 
 religion ? 
 
 If this is to be, we must have a stronger 
 preaching and teaching than has been common 
 of late. There must be a more definite invoking 
 of the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to convince 
 of sin. And we must not shun to declare ‘ the 
 whole counsel 1 of God, as set forth by our Lord 
 and His Apostles. What is especially needed is 
 the fuller theology which will harmonise the two 
 conceptions of the character of God: which will 
 shew us the ‘Father of our spirits’ as at the 
 same time the ‘ Judge of all the earth’; which, 
 when it leads us to address Him, will teach us 
 to say ‘ Our Father, Which art in heaven, 
 Hallowed be Thy name ’; and to add with an 
 equal fervour of conviction, ‘ Thy kingdom come, 
 Thy will be done.’ 
 
 We must proclaim, as Christ did, the great 
 principles of the ‘ Father’s kingdom ’; and must 
 shew that love is not only compatible with, but 
 inconceivable apart from, the wrath which is 
 ‘ revealed from heaven against all ungodliness 
 and unrighteousness of men.’ People must be 
 made to feel that ‘ the New Testament is a severe 
 
48 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 book ,’ 1 and to see that the aim of its teaching 
 is nothing less than salvation from sin. The 
 Cross must be set forth not only as ‘ the mirror 
 of the love of God,’ but also as the measure of 
 the guilt of man. 
 
 Then too we have need to school ourselves 
 afresh to speak about the Judgment Day. It 
 will not be an easy task, in the existing mood of 
 feeling, to treat this momentous theme in such a 
 way as to carry conviction to the understanding 
 and the conscience. We must find out how to 
 do it. 
 
 It may perhaps be worth while to relate an 
 incident from the experience of one amongst us, 
 as an instance of how the attempt may be made. 
 He had been summoned to what proved to be 
 the deathbed of a man in the parish in which 
 he was serving. The man was a sculptor of no 
 small pretensions: some of his figures are to be 
 seen on the west front of one of our cathedrals. 
 He was evidently very ill. The good priest 
 could not but ask him how far he was prepared 
 for the great change if it came. The reply was 
 of the kind we have heard so often. He did 
 
 1 Dean Church. 
 
Penitence 
 
 49 
 
 not know that he had any particular reason to 
 fear; he had done his best, and could think of 
 many who had not succeeded as well. 
 
 We recognise the type, and we are well aware 
 of the difficulty of making much impression upon 
 it. The clergyman was silent for a few moments. 
 Then what he said was this:— 
 
 4 Suppose I were to take a block of your stone, 
 and a mallet, and one of your chisels; and were 
 to set to work to carve out a head like one of 
 those in your studio. I should do my best, and 
 the result might be better than I had expected; 
 and my friends might say that they had no idea 
 that I had it in me to do anything of the kind : 
 until I really began to be quite pleased with my 
 work. But what if I brought it to you ? You 
 would wish to be kind, but you would see at a 
 glance that there was nothing to praise. You 
 might tell me that, with years of labour and 
 training, I might possibly make a tolerable 
 sculptor; but you would know well enough that 
 what I had accomplished so far was simply 
 nothing at all; that there was no sort of merit 
 or distinction about it, that, in fact, the stone 
 had been ruined and wasted. And why would 
 
 you judge so? Why, of course, because you 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 would look at the matter with an artist’s eye; 
 you would measure the work by the standard of 
 your ideal of what it should have been, and you 
 would therefore be able to estimate the extent 
 of the failure.’ 
 
 Then he went on to point out the application 
 of the parable. We men take our lives into our 
 own hands, and set about to fashion them ac¬ 
 cording to our own notions of what they should 
 be. We imagine that we have succeeded fairly 
 enough, and we are assured that it would be 
 well for society if more of the lives about us 
 were as good. But the time will come when we 
 must appear before God for His judgment: and 
 what will that be ? He, the great Artist, has 
 had His ideal for each one of us. He would 
 have shewn it to us, and have realised it in 
 us, if we had been willing to be taught and 
 directed. As it is, our efforts are too often 
 made in direct opposition to His purposes. He 
 can judge us only by the extent to which His 
 ideal has been attained. Much, therefore, that 
 may seem respectable to us, must appear as the 
 most lamentable failure in His eyes. 
 
 The man listened attentively, and candidly 
 admitted that this way of looking at the matter 
 
Penitence 
 
 51 
 
 did ‘make a difference." It was a new light, 
 because it shewed him his actions in their rela¬ 
 tion to the Divine intention, about which he had 
 never taken a thought. 
 
 Only as we can help people to believe that 
 God has a high intent for each one of us, and 
 that to defeat this is to disappoint Him and to 
 inflict a grievous wrong upon ourselves, shall we 
 be able to deliver them from the easy-going creed 
 which encourages them to imagine that, because 
 they are in the hands of goodness, it can matter 
 little what they do, or leave undone. Our 
 teaching will not have accomplished what it 
 should until it has produced a keen conviction 
 that to sin against law is grievous, to sin 
 against light is more grievous, but to sin against 
 love is most grievous of all . 1 
 
 Then also we shall do well to lay greater stress 
 than many of us have been wont to lay, upon the 
 gracious ordering whereby a supernatural glad¬ 
 ness flows forth as the effect of forgiveness into 
 the truly repentant heart. There is no joy on 
 earth which can exceed it. We must sing the 
 praises of repentance, ‘that stoop of the soul 
 1 See Bishop Walsham How, The Closed Door , p. 96. 
 
52 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 which in bending upraises it too.’ The tear-drop 
 lens has been to many a one the gate of pearl 
 through which he has caught his first real 
 glimpses of the kingdom drawing nigh. 
 
 But—and it is to this that all our consideration 
 has been leading us—there is an indispensable 
 condition apart from which we can hope to do 
 little or nothing. The priest must be the 
 penitent. It is for him to lead the way. He 
 more than others must feel the need and make 
 the effort. The true theology which we pro¬ 
 claim must first have been preached to ourselves. 
 We must bend low before the Cross; and we must 
 ever act as those who are to be manifested before 
 the Judgment Seat. Ours must be the blessed¬ 
 ness of pardon; and ours the 4 sorrow for forgiven 
 sin / 1 • 
 
 We have but to think of the interval that 
 divides the utterances of the fifth and the sixth 
 chapters of the book of Isaiah, in order to realise 
 ho w different in their effects may be the teachings 
 
 1 A holy man wondered much why souls are so stunted, 
 why there is not a more vigorous growth. He thought of all 
 sorts of things. ‘ Is it the want of asceticism ? Is it the 
 want of love ? or prayer ? ’ At last he discovered that it 
 arises from ‘want of sorrow for forgiven sin.’—Dr Pusey’s 
 Spiritual Letters , p. 295. 
 
Penitence 
 
 53 
 
 of the same teacher in regard to sin. The con¬ 
 tinuous ‘Woe’ of chapter v. is tremendous, and 
 it might seem as if nothing could stand against 
 it; yet who of us does not feel that he has 
 passed into another atmosphere, charged with 
 an altogether different power to move and to 
 melt, when in chapter vi. the same speaker is 
 heard to exclaim, ‘Woe is me , for I am undone 1 ? 
 
 Denunciations of evil are strangely unavailing. 
 Our pulpits might ring with them, and our 
 hearers be no better. But the pleading of the 
 man who speaks of sins as he only can speak, who 
 has felt the uncleanness and shame of them in his 
 own soul, appeals with a power such as no force 
 of words can give. 
 
 Never were people more ready to detect un¬ 
 reality in a preacher than those to whom we 
 minister to-day: and never do they more quickly 
 perceive it than when the subject is the subject 
 of sin. If we are to convince them we must 
 before all else be sincere. If we are not, we 
 had better be silent until we can speak what we 
 know. Then we may not always succeed; till 
 then we shall certainly fail. 
 
Note 
 
 (From the Private Devotions of Bishop Andrewes) 
 
 The Aggravation of Sin 
 
 Its measure, 
 its harm, 
 its scandal. 
 
 Its quality, 
 
 Its iteration,—how often ? 
 
 Its continuation,—how long P 
 The person,—by whom ? 
 
 his age, condition, state, enlightenment. 
 Its manner, 
 
 Its motive, 
 
 Its time, 
 
 Its place, 
 
 Its folly, ingratitude, hardness, contempt. 
 
 An Act of Confession 
 
 O God, Thou knowest my foolishness, 
 and my sins are not hid from Thee. 
 I also acknowledge them, 
 
 and my sin is ever before me. 
 
 54 
 
Note 
 
 55 
 
 Lord, Thou knowest all my desire, 
 
 and my groaning is not hid from Thee. 
 
 Thou knowest, Lord, that I speak the truth 
 in Christ, and lie not; 
 my conscience also bearing me witness 
 in the Holy Ghost, 
 
 that I have great heaviness and continual 
 sorrow in my heart, 
 
 because I have thus sinned against Thee; 
 that I am a burden to myself in that I cannot 
 sorrow more; 
 that I beseech from Thee 
 a contrite heart. 
 
 Woe is me! 
 
 That I did not reverence nor dread 
 
 the incomprehensibleness of Thy Glory, 
 
 Thy tremendous Power, 
 the awful ness of Thy Presence, 
 
 Thy strict Justice, 
 
 Thy lovable Goodness. 
 
 And now, O Lord, humbling myself 
 under Thy mighty hand, 
 
 for Thy great mercy, and for the glory of Thy Name, 
 be merciful unto my sin: 
 for it is great; for it is exceeding great. 
 
 For the multitude, the great multitude, 
 of Thy loving-kindnesses. 
 
 Lord, O Lord, be merciful unto me, of 
 sinners the greatest. 
 
56 
 
 Note 
 
 O my Lord, where sin hath abounded, 
 there let Grace more exceedingly abound, 
 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; 
 
 O Lord, hearken and do; 
 defer not for Thine own sake, O my God 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DIFFICULTY OF PRAYER 
 
 Bishop John Selwyn used to tell that, as his 
 father, the first Bishop of New Zealand, was one 
 day sitting in his study in Norfolk Island, a 
 knock was heard at the door. A head looked 
 in, which was at once recognised as that of a 
 catechist from a distant station. 6 Why have 
 you come ? 1 inquired the bishop. ‘1 want to be 
 filled up; and the people tell me that I want to 
 be filled up,’ was the man’s reply. 
 
 How simple and true a confession : and how 
 often, if we were quite sincere, we might make 
 it of ourselves. No kind of work makes such 
 demands as ministerial work. After much ‘giving 
 out ’ we become exhausted, and we are not alone 
 in recognising the fact. It is ‘more life and 
 fuller that we want.’ How are we to get it ? 
 
 To begin with, we must realise that we are 
 entirely dependent upon the Divine supply to 
 satisfy our need. We must come to the source 
 
 67 
 
58 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 of power, deeply conscious of our own unworthi¬ 
 ness and insufficiency ; 4 poor in spirit,’ 4 hunger¬ 
 ing and thirsting ’ to be 4 filled.’ That is the 
 primary condition, the first necessity. It used 
 to be maintained that 4 nature abhors a vacuum.’ 
 Whether this be strictly true or not, we have 
 good cause to believe that grace abhors a vacuum. 
 The humble soul is not the soul which is sent 
 empty away. 
 
 But our duty does not end when we have 
 brought ourselves to feel our need of grace. 
 There is a further necessity. We must prepare 
 ourselves to seek it by diligent Prayer. It is one 
 thing to state the necessity in words, and another 
 to give effect to it in practice. Indeed, this again 
 is a matter which urgently calls for our serious 
 attention. 
 
 We have already spoken of one grave defect in 
 the religious life of our time. We shall have to 
 refer to others. We do so because it is a safe 
 rule that we should look within ourselves for the 
 failings and shortcomings which are most readily 
 seen without. We are intimately linked with the 
 life around us. We share in its movements, and 
 are influenced by the forces which tell upon its 
 character. It is for this reason that we do 
 
59 
 
 Prayer 
 
 wisely to study it even when our immediate 
 purpose is the consideration of the needs of our 
 own individual life. 
 
 Now on all sides to-day we have the complaint 
 that there is little power of prayer. How con¬ 
 stantly are we being told by one and another, 
 
 4 We find it so hard to pray. We can spend time 
 in visiting, in attending committees, in teaching, 
 in managing institutions, with far more ease and 
 satisfaction than we can spend it in prayer. Our 
 prayers are so poor and distracted. When we 
 have been on our knees only a few minutes it 
 seems like an hour. We know that it ought not 
 to be so, yet so it is and we do not seem able to 
 help it.’ 
 
 All of us must have had this said to us again 
 and again. Few of us need to travel outside 
 our own inner experience for the corroborative 
 evidence that will convince us that such con¬ 
 fessions are true. 
 
 But if this be so, it must mean that there is 
 utterly a fault among us. It is not necessary to 
 adduce a long series of instances to prove that 
 the great spiritual leaders and workers of the 
 past have invariably been distinguished by the 
 importance which they have assigned to prayer; 
 
60 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 and this, again, in spite of the fact that they 
 may have differed most widely in their other 
 beliefs and opinions. 
 
 Luther wrote of himself in the busiest part of 
 his life, 6 1 have so much to do that I cannot get 
 on without three hours a day of praying.’ 1 Of 
 Borromeo, the saintly Cardinal of Milan, and of 
 our own Bishop Andrewes, it was said that they 
 were in the habit of spending five hours each day 
 in meditation and prayer. 
 
 We are made painfully conscious, when we read 
 of experiences like these, that in spite of all our 
 activities and studies we have need that some 
 one should teach us afresh the very principles of 
 religious life and w r ork. There must be some¬ 
 thing radically wrong when modern reformers, and 
 even modern divines, are perpetually announcing 
 that it is only with the greatest difficulty that 
 they can 4 find time 1 for any prayers at all. 
 
 A more serious symptom could scarcely be. 
 Prayer has been aptly described as 4 the pulse of 
 the soul.’ Where prayer is strong and frequent, 
 there the soul is in health and prospers ; when 
 
 1 Quoted in a valuable paper by the late Rev. H. Wright, 
 published under the title Secret Prayer a Oreat Reality. 
 (Bemrose, price Id.) 
 
61 
 
 Prayer 
 
 prayer is intermittent and feeble, the life flags, 
 moral duties begin to wear a forbidding aspect, and 
 even the practical activities, which at first seemed 
 able to take care of themselves, are found to lack 
 the inward support without which they too, 
 sooner or later, must inevitably fail. 
 
 If, then, we had need to seek out the causes 
 for the lack of penitence, we have certainly no 
 less need to seek out the causes for our want 
 of Prayer. 
 
 In looking for these, most of us will be inclined 
 to turn first in a direction in which our thoughts 
 have gone already. It is natural to suggest that 
 a principal cause is to be discovered in the 
 questionings that have arisen in consequence of 
 the scientific teachings which have been specially 
 characteristic of modern intellectual life; and 
 here again it might be supposed that, in par¬ 
 ticular, the prominence given to the thought of 
 4 law,’ in the sense of universal and unalterable 
 sequence, must have led, in no small measure, to 
 the paralysis which has made it so difficult for us 
 to be in earnest about our prayers. 
 
 Without denying that there is truth in such a 
 view, it is probably true also to say that a little 
 
62 Personal Life 
 
 while ago there would have been more reason to 
 attach importance to this particular influence 
 than there is at the present time. It is now 
 far more generally recognised than it was, that 
 law implies of necessity a lawgiver; and that 
 4 government by law ’ is only an inaccurate 
 expression for what is in reality government 
 according to law. Moreover, the least considera¬ 
 tion of what is perpetually taking place in our 
 own experience suffices to shew us, that the 
 range within which we can avail ourselves of our 
 knowledge of the working of laws, so as to pro¬ 
 duce effects which we desire, is a very wide one. 
 It follows that it is manifestly impossible to set 
 limits to the operations of a mind and will pos¬ 
 sessed of wisdom and power immeasurably superior 
 to our own. For those by whom these funda¬ 
 mental axioms are intelligently grasped, the diffi¬ 
 culties as to prayer, which arise from purely 
 scientific considerations, become reduced—it is 
 scarcely too bold to say—to quite inconsiderable 
 proportions. 1 
 
 1 I would call attention to the following remarkable 
 words: ‘ The supposition that there is any inconsistency 
 between the acceptance of the constancy of natural order, 
 and a belief in the efficacy of prayer, is the more un¬ 
 accountable as it is obviously contradicted by analogies 
 
63 
 
 Prayer 
 
 On the whole, therefore, it is probable that 
 we must seek the explanation we are in search 
 of in another direction altogether; and it may 
 well be that, when it is found, it will prove to be 
 surprisingly simple. 
 
 We are essentially a practical people, and as 
 such are strongly utilitarian. We are ready 
 enough to make effort when we are certain that 
 we shall be repaid for our pains. Now with 
 many, perhaps with most of us, the question 
 which we need to have answered in regard to 
 prayer is this: Does it practically make much 
 difference whether we pray or do not? If we 
 were convinced that it did, we should have 
 more heart to pray, and to persevere in 
 prayer in spite of anything that might tempt 
 us from it. 
 
 Our question in fact reduces itself to this: 
 Granted that the Divine Being is as free—and of 
 
 furnished by everyday experience. The belief in the efficacy 
 of prayer depends upon the assumption that there is some¬ 
 body, somewhere, who is strong enough to deal with the 
 earth and its contents as men deal with the things and 
 events which they are strong enough to modify or control ; 
 and who is capable of being moved by appeals such as men 
 make to one another.’—Professor Huxley, Nineteenth Century , 
 Nov. 1887. 
 
64 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 course He must be—to comply with our requests 
 as we are ourselves when asked to do some service 
 for one another; can we be absolutely certain 
 that He wishes us to pray, and that He has made 
 the fulfilment of His purposes in any real sense 
 to depend upon our prayers ? 
 
 We may frankly admit that it is by no means 
 obvious that this should be so. Even if we start 
 from the conception of God as our Father, the 
 conception which we feel to be the highest that 
 we can form of Him, it by no means follows as 
 of necessity that we should go to Him with the 
 account of our needs and desires. An earthly 
 parent might quite conceivably say to his 
 children, 4 Believe me, I am wiser than you are; 
 I know what is best for you. I will do what is 
 right. It is not in the least necessary that you 
 should ask me for anything.’ 
 
 Without question, the Heavenly Father might 
 have so ordered His dealings with us. He is 
 infinitely above us. We are shortsighted and 
 ignorant. He is wise and good. It might indeed 
 seem reasonable that we should leave ourselves 
 in His hands, and receive in silence what He 
 saw best to send. We might even argue that it 
 
65 
 
 Prayer 
 
 must be presumptuous on our part to suggest 
 what His gifts are to be. 
 
 Quite possibly, if we had to be guided by our 
 reasonings alone, we might arrive at the con¬ 
 clusion that this on the whole is the attitude 
 most fitting for us to adopt. As we know, not 
 a few persons have thought right to adopt it. 
 
 And yet, even if we could reason ourselves 
 into taking this point of view, it is not likely 
 that most of us could remain satisfied with 
 it. Something within us would most assuredly 
 rebel; a deep, strong instinct of the heart 
 would rise in wrath to challenge the conclu¬ 
 sion of the intellect. After all, we should 
 feel that a true parent would be much more 
 likely to use a different language. He would be 
 much more likely to say, c My children, I care for 
 you; I know all your needs; but I desire to be 
 to you far more than a provider. I want your 
 confidence and your affection. I would have 
 you brought into the very closest relations with 
 myself. My will is that you should tell me 
 your thoughts and your wants. Ask me for 
 whatever you think would be good for you. If 
 it is good, I will grant it; if not, I will give 
 what is better. 1 
 
66 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 Who does not see at once that this would be a 
 much more fatherly way ? Which of us does not 
 feel that a God whose pleasure it was to treat 
 His children thus— 4 a God so nigh in all that we 
 call upon Him for’—would be a God towards 
 whom we could be much more readily drawn in 
 reverence and in love. 
 
 But happily, as Christians, we are not left to 
 be guided by either our reasonings or our feel¬ 
 ings in so vitally important a matter. There is a 
 Voice which speaks to us with final authority in 
 regard to the great truths of the spiritual world. 
 4 No man hath seen God at any time; the only 
 begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
 Father, He hath declared Him.’ And no part of 
 the revelation is more emphatically clear than 
 the teaching as to the duty of prayer. 
 
 For an example we need go no further than 
 the opening sermon in which are preserved for us 
 those most elementary utterances of our Lord’s 
 public ministry which have been happily described 
 as the 4 commonplaces of Christ.’ It is to the 
 sixth chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel that we are 
 accustomed to turn for well-known statements as 
 to the dependence of men upon the care and the 
 
Prayer 67 
 
 forethought of their Father in heaven. If He 
 provides for the birds and the flowers, much more 
 will He provide for His children. He knows the 
 things they have need of. Such are the assur¬ 
 ances which are to ennoble life, and banish the 
 anxieties which contract and degrade it. 
 
 Are we then to argue that no room is left for 
 prayer ? By no means. Almost in the same 
 breath, our Lord goes on to say, 4 Ask and it 
 shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock 
 and it shall be opened unto you; for every 
 one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh 
 findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be 
 opened.’’ And then, as if it were His intention 
 to answer by anticipation the questionings that 
 were likely to arise, and to render misgiving 
 impossible, our Lord proceeds to apply the con¬ 
 clusions which are most rightly to be drawn 
 from the analogy of the home : 4 If ye then being 
 evil know how to give good gifts to your children, 
 how much more shall your Father which is in 
 heaven give good things ’—and let us notice 
 especially the emphasis laid upon the words which 
 immediately follow— 4 to them that ash Him f 1 
 
 It is not our purpose to write a treatise on 
 
68 Personal Life 
 
 the Scriptural doctrine of prayer, or we should 
 make it our business to show how this teaching 
 of our Lord was foreshadowed in the writings of 
 the Old Testament, as for instance in 1 Kings 
 xviii. 1, 42; Ezek. xxxvi. 36, 37; Ps. ii. 8, 
 passages which will repay most attentive con¬ 
 sideration—and how completely it entered into 
 the thought and experience of His Apostles. 
 
 What it does concern us to make sure of here 
 is the central fact that it is the Divine will, as 
 that will is expressed to us by Him Who knew 
 it as none other can know, that ‘men ought 
 always to pray’ (St Luke xviii. 1); that God 
 requires our prayers, and that it is His habit to 
 grant us His gifts in response to them. 
 
 To express all this in the simplest mono¬ 
 syllables —if we want we must ask. That is the 
 principle of prayer. ‘Ask and ye shall have.’ 
 4 Ye have not because ye ask not.’ 
 
 There is no hint in the teaching of our Lord 
 that by our prayers we can change the Divine 
 intentions. The perfect prayer will always find 
 its fullest expression in the petition, ‘Thy will 
 be done ’ (see St Matt. vi. 10, and xxvi. 42). A 
 wish to alter the will of the Father would be 
 presumptuous indeed; would seem to be almost 
 
69 
 
 Prayer 
 
 a blasphemy. Very different is the office of 
 prayer as understood in the Christian sense. 
 
 Prayer is for us the appointed means whereby 
 God has ordained to accomplish His purposes 
 of blessing. When He determines to bless, He 
 moves His servants to pray. The ‘prayer of 
 faith ’ is the prayer which is inspired by a certain 
 conviction as to a definite intention on the part 
 of God. ‘This is the confidence that we have 
 in Him, that if we ask anything according to 
 His will He heareth us: and if we know that He 
 hear us whatsoever we ask, we know that we 
 have the petitions that we desired of Him.’ 1 
 
 Would it not make all the difference to our 
 estimate of the value of prayer if we could grasp 
 afresh this simple truth that God waits for our 
 prayers, and makes it His rule to give in response 
 to them ? Let us think of some of the practical 
 results that might be expected to follow from 
 such a belief. 
 
 1. In the first place we should realise more 
 than we have done that Prayer is work. We 
 have no difficulty in persuading ourselves that 
 prayer is preparation for work. It is in very 
 
 1 1 St John v. 14 f. 
 
70 Personal Life 
 
 truth much more; Orare est labor are —to pray is 
 to work. To pray is to put into operation a 
 cause in order to produce an effect. 4 The sup¬ 
 plication of a righteous man availeth much in its 
 working." 1 4 Prayer moves the Arm that moves 
 the worlds, To bring salvation down. 1 Time is 
 well spent that is spent on our knees in the 
 study or in the church. 
 
 2. Those who pray much are increasingly con¬ 
 vinced that Prayer is high work. Have we not 
 been guilty of making a serious mistake in the 
 way in which we have sometimes allowed our¬ 
 selves to speak about prayer ? How common it 
 is to hear it suggested, 4 If you cannot do any¬ 
 thing else, at least you can pray. 1 Surely that 
 must be wrong. Surely it would be more true 
 to say, 4 If you can pray, if you have in any 
 degree acquired the holy art, then for God’s sake 
 and man’s sake do not do anything else. Give 
 yourself to it; continue on the mount with hands 
 upraised. There will be no lack of fighters down 
 below, who will triumph by the help of your 
 prayers. 1 
 
 In order to realise the place in work which 
 should be assigned to prayer, we need but recall 
 
71 
 
 Prayer 
 
 the thought of the consecutive stages of the 
 ministry of our Lord. At its beginning that 
 ministry chiefly consisted of the active occupa¬ 
 tions of preaching, and teaching, and healing. 
 Then followed the passive stage of suffering. 
 That also was work, and higher work. Have we 
 not many a time found ourselves saying as we 
 stood by the side of the sufferer, 4 My brother,’’ or 
 4 My sister, think not that you are condemned 
 to idleness, or set aside as useless, because you 
 can no longer go hither and thither and do the 
 things that you did. Believe it, you have been 
 called to a more mysterious and more far-reaching 
 service. The best blessings that have come to 
 our race have come through pierced hands. We 
 may not understand it fully, but nevertheless it 
 is true that our greatest benefactors have been 
 the sufferers. Rejoice that to you also has been 
 granted some share of their privilege.’’ 
 
 But His ministry did not end with suffering. 
 After He had suffered He rose and went on high. 
 He had said, 4 It is expedient for you that I go.’ 
 4 1 go unto My Father ... and I will pray.’ Now 
 4 He ever liveth to make intercession for us.’ 
 4 Thou art our Moses out of sight: Speak for us 
 or we perish quite. - * Must we not believe that 
 
72 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 this, the mediatorial ministry, is a stage yet 
 higher than either of the preceding ? 
 
 Time was when the Church saw it to be her 
 wisdom to call aside those of her children who 
 had clearly a vocation for prayer, in order that 
 they might devote the chief energies of their 
 lives to the holy task of intercession. Such a 
 time may come again. In the meanwhile we 
 must do all we can to make it clear that we 
 know' of no work that ranks higher than the 
 work of prayer. 
 
 3. Those who have rightly grasped the import¬ 
 ance of prayer will not marvel greatly if they find 
 by experience that Prayer is hard work. All 
 high w'ork is hard work. 
 
 No man in England within recent years has 
 possessed the faculty for abstract thinking in a 
 greater degree than did Samuel Taylor Coleridge; 
 yet it was Coleridge who declared that, 4 Of all 
 mental exercises earnest prayer is the most 
 severe.’ It is not difficult to see why it must 
 be so. For earnest prayer, all the higher powers 
 must needs be employed—reasoning, imagination, 
 affection, conscience, and will—and further, all 
 must be bent and united in a single aim. 
 
73 
 
 Prayer 
 
 It is no easy thing to 4 gird up ’ the powers of 
 mind and spirit. We have often had occasion 
 to observe how extremely difficult the man whose 
 days are spent in manual labour finds the per¬ 
 formance of some simple task which happens to 
 necessitate an unwonted use of his intellect. We 
 have seen, for instance, how the perspiration will 
 start to the brow of a labourer as he awkwardly 
 handles the pen and makes his attempts to enter 
 his name in the vestry registers. Half a day’s 
 work in the fields would have taken less out of 
 him! And there are multitudes who have not 
 any more power of using their souls. A very 
 few minutes spent in a serious effort of prayer 
 leave them completely exhausted. 
 
 Nor is the feeling of strain confined to begin¬ 
 ners. Even those who by continual use have had 
 their spiritual senses exercised have known what 
 it was to be brought by their pleading in prayer 
 to the verge of an utter prostration. Like Jacob 
 of old, who 4 had power with God and prevailed,’ 
 they have carried for long the marks of the 
 conflict. 
 
 Nay further, we may even appeal to the ex¬ 
 perience of Him who is greater than the greatest 
 of His saints. 
 
74 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 If we would really know what the labour of 
 prayer may involve, we must go to the Garden 
 and see Him under the olives bowed down to the 
 earth. There as He 6 prayed,’ and 4 prayed again 
 more earnestly,’ so great was His agony that—we 
 note it with reverence and wonder— 4 His sweat 
 was as it were great drops of blood falling down 
 to the ground.’ 
 
 4. Once more, with no hesitation let us say it, 
 Prayer is our work. 4 We will give ourselves 
 continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the 
 word ’—and in that order—was the determina¬ 
 tion of the Apostles. 4 Let him call for the 
 elders of the church, and let them pray,’ was the 
 direction of St James. He can have little of the 
 true spirit of a priest who has no longing to bear 
 some part in that ministry of intercession in 
 which he knows that his great High Priest is 
 ceaselessly engaged. 
 
 But if prayer is to be with us a work, it will 
 have to be regulated by method. It has been 
 truly insisted that 4 no one will make much of 
 prayer who does not make a business of it.’ We 
 may not wait for times of special emotion, ready 
 as we must be to use them when they come. 
 
Prayer 7 5 
 
 There must be a definite rule. We must win 
 ourselves to our high task by varying the details 
 of it. Subjects must be assigned to the different 
 days: lists of intercession must be kept, and 
 answers must be noted as they are received. A 
 book systematically used for this purpose becomes 
 in the course of years a most unassailable witness 
 to the efficacy of persevering prayer. 
 
 Would indeed that we might realise that this 
 is the work to which we have been specially 
 called, and of which it is not too much to say 
 that God is ever waiting to accept it at our 
 hands. There are those who may be qualified to 
 undertake many parts of the work of a parish; 
 but who will make good the losses that are in¬ 
 curred by an unprayerful priest ? On the other 
 hand, who can measure the gains, in all depart¬ 
 ments of work, where the pastor is known and 
 felt to be a man of prayer ? 
 
 ‘ Whilst we may find instances of success, and 
 sometimes of great and unlikely success, 1 said the 
 late Bishop Wilberforce, 6 in the ministry of those 
 who have lacked almost every other qualification, 
 there can, I believe, be no instances found of a 
 successful ministry which was not full of prayers. 11 
 
 1 Addresses to Candidates for Ordination , p. 144. 
 
76 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 It would be possible to tell of one of our 
 number who for years has made intercession the 
 central reality of his life and work. He is the 
 vicar in a village of which the church stands 
 apart on the summit of a considerable hill. 
 When the nights are dark and the wind is rising, 
 it has long been his practice to go up to the 
 church and kindle the beacon on the tower as a 
 guide to the fisher-folk away in the offing. They 
 see the light, as it flashes over the waters, and 
 they know that the good priest who sustains it is 
 spending the intervals of the night down in the 
 church in prayer for their souls and their bodies. 
 It is little marvel that there is almost nothing 
 they will not do for him in return. 
 
 Let us be the best students, and preachers, and 
 organisers we may; but above all, and before all, 
 let us covet to pray. So only shall we ourselves 
 be filled with the Holy Ghost, and be made cen¬ 
 tres of spiritual influence. Happy indeed are the 
 parishes where the priests, and the people after 
 them, have learned to pray ! 
 
Note 
 
 The following passage from William Law’s 
 Serious Call (chap, xxi.) illustrates remark¬ 
 ably the effects of a habit of prayer upon both 
 the worker and the work :— 
 
 4 Ouranius is a holy priest, full of the spirit of 
 the Gospel, watching, labouring, and praying for 
 a poor country village. Every soul in it is as 
 dear to him as himself; and he loves them all, as 
 he loves himself; because he prays for them all, 
 as often as he prays for himself. 
 
 If his whole life is one continual exercise of 
 great zeal and labour, hardly ever satisfy’d with 
 any degrees of care and watchfulness, ’tis because 
 he has learn’d the great value of souls, by so 
 often appearing before God, as an intercessor for 
 them. 
 
 He never thinks he can love, or do enough for 
 his flock; because he never considers them in any 
 other view, than as so many persons, that by 
 receiving the gifts and graces of God, are to 
 become his hope, his joy, and his crown of 
 rejoicing. 
 
 He goes about his Parish, and visits every- 
 
 77 
 
78 
 
 Note 
 
 body in it, but he visits in the same spirit of 
 piety that he preaches to them ; he visits them to 
 encourage their virtues, to assist them with his 
 advice and counsel, to discover their manner of 
 life, and to know the state of their souls, that he 
 may intercede with God for them according to 
 their particular necessities. 
 
 When Ouranius first entred into holy orders, 
 he had a haughtiness in his temper, a great con¬ 
 tempt and disregard for all foolish and unreason¬ 
 able people ; but he has pray'd away this spirit, 
 and has now the greatest tenderness for the most 
 obstinate sinners; because he is always hoping, 
 that God will sooner or later hear those prayers 
 that he makes for their repentance. 
 
 The rudeness, ill-nature, or perverse behaviour 
 of any of his flock, used at first to betray him 
 into impatience; but it now raises no other 
 passion in him, than a desire of being upon his 
 knees in prayer to God for them. Thus have his 
 prayers for others alter'd and amended the state 
 of his own heart. 
 
 It would strangely delight you to see with 
 what spirit he converses, with what tenderness 
 he reproves, with what affection he exhorts, and 
 with what vigor he preaches; and 'tis all owing 
 to this, because he reproves, exhorts, and preaches 
 to those for whom he first prays to God. 
 
 This devotion softens his heart, enlightens his 
 
Note 
 
 79 
 
 mind, sweetens his temper, and makes everything 
 that comes from him, instructive, amiable, and 
 affecting. 
 
 At his first coming to his little village, it was 
 as disagreeable to him as a prison, and every day 
 seem’d too tedious to be endured in so retir’d a 
 place. He thought his parish was too full of 
 poor and mean people, that were none of them 
 fit for the conversation of a Gentleman. 
 
 This put him upon a close application to his 
 studies. He kept much at home, writ notes upon 
 Homer and Plautus, and sometimes thought it 
 hard to be called to pray by any poor body, 
 when he was j ust in the midst of one of Homer’s 
 battels. 
 
 This was his polite, or I may rather say, poor, 
 ignorant turn of mind, before devotion had got 
 the government of his heart. 
 
 But now his days are so far from being tedious, 
 or his Parish too great a retirement, that he 
 now only wants more time to do that variety of 
 good which his soul thirsts after. The solitude 
 of his little parish is become matter of great 
 comfort to him, because he hopes that God 
 has plac’d him and his flock there, to make it 
 their way to heaven. 
 
 He can now not only converse with, but gladly 
 attend and wait upon the poorest kind of people. 
 He is now daily watching over the weak and 
 
80 
 
 Note 
 
 infirm, humbling himself to perverse, rude, 
 ignorant people, wherever he can find them; 
 and is so far from desiring to be considered as 
 a Gentleman, that he desires to be used as the 
 servant of all; and in the spirit of his Lord 
 and Master girds himself, and is glad to kneel 
 down and wash any of their feet. 
 
 He now thinks the poorest creature in his 
 Parish good enough, and great enough, to 
 deserve the humblest attendances, the kindest 
 friendships, the tenderest offices, he can possibly 
 shew them. 
 
 He is so far now from wanting agreeable 
 company, that he thinks there is no better con¬ 
 versation in the world, than to be talking with 
 poor and mean people about the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 All these noble thoughts and divine senti¬ 
 ments are the effects of his great devotion; he 
 presents every one so often before God in his 
 prayers, that he never thinks he can esteem, 
 reverence, or serve those enough, for whom he 
 implores so many mercies from God. 
 
 Ouranius is mightily affected with this passage 
 of holy Scripture : The effectual fervent prayer of 
 a righteous man availeth much. 
 
 This makes him practise all the arts of holy 
 living, and aspire after every instance of piety 
 and righteousness, that his prayers for his flock 
 
Note 81 
 
 may have their full force, and avail much with 
 God. 
 
 For this reason he has sold a small estate that 
 he had, and has erected a charitable retirement 
 for ancient, poor people to live in prayer and 
 piety, that his prayers being assisted by such 
 good works, may pierce the clouds, and bring 
 down blessings upon these souls committed to 
 his care. 
 
 Ouranius reads how God himself said unto 
 Abimelech concerning Abraham, He is a prophet; 
 he shall pray for thee , and thou shalt live. And 
 again, how he said of Job, And my servant Job 
 shall pray for you; for him will I accept. 
 
 From these passages Ouranius justly concludes, 
 that the prayers of men eminent for holiness of 
 life, have an extraordinary power with God; 
 that He grants to other people such pardons, 
 reliefs and blessings, through their prayers, as 
 would not be granted to men of less piety and 
 perfection. This makes Ouranius exceeding 
 studious of Christian perfection, searching after 
 every grace and holy temper, purifying his heart 
 all manner of ways, fearful of every error and 
 defect in his life, lest his prayers for his flock 
 should be less availing with God, through his 
 own defects in holiness. 
 
 This makes him careful of every temper of his 
 heart, give alms of all that he hath, watch, and 
 
82 
 
 Note 
 
 fast, and mortify, and live according to the 
 strictest rules of temperance, meekness, and 
 humility, that he may be in some degree like an 
 Abraham, or a Job in his Parish, and make such 
 prayers for them as God will hear and accept. 
 
 These are the happy effects, which a devout 
 intercession hath produc’d in the life of 
 Ouranius.’ 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 DEVOTION TO OUR LORD 
 
 We have endeavoured to indicate some of the 
 directions in which effort is^ most likely to be 
 valuable in enabling us to gain more fully for 
 ourselves the power of Divine grace, and to 
 become the instruments whereby that power may 
 be brought to bear afresh upon the hearts and 
 consciences of others. We have named Penitence 
 and Prayer as two conditions, indispensable at all 
 times, upon which it would seem to be necessary 
 to lay particular emphasis at the present time. 
 
 We must go further yet. Much as we should 
 rightly insist upon the need of both penitence 
 and prayer, we may not suppose that they re¬ 
 present all that is to be required of those who 
 are to attain to a full growth of Christian 
 experience. Indeed we have only to reflect for a 
 moment to feel that this is so. In themselves 
 
 neither penitence nor prayer are distinctly and 
 
 # 
 
 exclusively Christian. All other religions have 
 
 83 
 
84 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 in some degree made them a part of their 
 discipline. At the most they represent the 
 preparation of the soil in which the higher life 
 is to develop, and the welcoming of the influences 
 which promote that development, rather than 
 the completed perfection of flower and fruit. 
 For this another condition must needs be ful¬ 
 filled. 
 
 On the closing page of the Gospels there is 
 contained what we might not inaptly describe 
 as an examination paper intended to test pro¬ 
 ficiency in discipleship. It consists of but three 
 questions, and they are all alike: 4 Lovest thou 
 Me?’ Christianity can only have its perfect 
 work in us as we set ourselves to learn the lesson 
 of absolute Devotion to our Lord. 
 
 However often we may have pondered the 
 matter, and however familiar the thought of 
 it may be to us, we cannot do otherwise than 
 give it its place when we are dealing with the 
 requirements of personal life. And again we 
 shall make it our aim to be as simple and 
 practical as possible. 
 
 To begin with, then, let us ask. In what does 
 devotion consist ? 
 
Devotion to Our Lord 
 
 85 
 
 Devotion—the noblest fact in human story— 
 may be of two kinds. There is, in the first place, 
 devotion to a Cause; as, for example, to the cause 
 of knowledge, or justice, or social reform. Men 
 have given themselves, times without number, 
 to serve the interests of these ; and very splendid 
 and uplifting their devotion has been. 
 
 And there is a yet loftier devotion than this. 
 It is devotion to a Person: the loyalty of a pupil 
 to his master, or a soldier to his leader; the 
 affection of parent and child, of husband and 
 wife, of brother, or sister, or friend—an even 
 more enkindling and powerful devotion. 
 
 Some one has exquisitely said that, c To love is 
 the perfect of the verb to live.’ Devotion is love 
 when it has found the object which can draw 
 from it the very best that it has to give. 
 
 When we ask which of these devotions it is 
 that our Lord requires from His followers, we 
 have to answer unhesitatingly that He requires 
 them both. He calls upon us to consecrate all 
 that we have unreservedly to His cause, bidding 
 us count ourselves happy if we may suffer for it. 
 But, first and foremost, He asks for devotion 
 to Ilis Person. It is ‘For My sake, and the 
 
86 Personal Life 
 
 Gospel’s.’ We must many times have felt it to 
 be in the highest degree remarkable that He, 
 who more than all besides was 4 meek and lowly 
 in heart,’ should so often and so earnestly insist 
 that His Person is to be the object of supremest 
 affection. 4 He that loveth father or mother 
 more than Me is not worthy of Me.’ 4 If any 
 man come to Me, and hate not his father, and 
 mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and 
 sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be 
 My disciple.’ No language which He could have 
 used could have spoken more strongly than that. 
 
 And there can be no question that, all through 
 the ages, He has obtained what He has asked. 
 High as is the demand, the response has not 
 proved to be impossible. From its earliest days 
 the passion for Christ’s Person has been the un¬ 
 failing characteristic of a living Christianity. 
 The beautiful legend that the heart of Ignatius, 
 when recovered after his martyrdom, was found 
 to be inscribed with the name of Christ, is true 
 to the spirit of the faith as it has existed from 
 the first. It was the love of their Master that 
 inspired generation after generation of confessors 
 to bear their witness in defiance of threatenings 
 and tortures. The flame of devotion burned with 
 
Devotion to Our Lord 
 
 87 
 
 an ardour which no power on earth was able to 
 quench. The world, which was not in the secret, 
 when it witnessed the joy and tested to the 
 utmost the endurance of the Christians, could 
 only conclude that they must be possessed by 
 some quite unintelligible madness. 
 
 Would that some one might write down for us 
 a history of the exploits which from those days 
 to our own have had their origin in devotion to 
 the Person of our Lord ! When it is written, it 
 may well carry on its forefront the remarkable 
 words, familiar to most of us, which are said to 
 have been uttered in his exile by Napoleon I. 
 
 4 Jesus Christ was more than man. ... I have 
 inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic 
 devotion that they would have died for me, . . . 
 but to do this it was necessary that I should be 
 visibly present with the electric influence of my 
 looks, of my words, of my voice. When I saw 
 men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame 
 of self-devotion in their hearts. . . . Christ alone 
 has succeeded in so raising the mind of man 
 toward the Unseen, that it becomes insensible to 
 the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm 
 of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a 
 demand which is beyond all others difficult to 
 
88 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher 
 may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, 
 or a father of his children, or a bride of her 
 spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the 
 human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. 
 He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith 
 His demand is granted. Wonderful! In de¬ 
 fiance of time and space, the soul of man, with 
 all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexa¬ 
 tion to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely 
 believe in Him experience that supernatural love 
 towards Him. This phenomenon is unaccount¬ 
 able : it is altogether beyond the scope of man’s 
 creative powers .’ 1 
 
 Let us be certain, then, that Christians are 
 Christ’s men—disciples, soldiers, freedmen, of 
 their Lord. And let us be certain also that, if 
 the power of Christianity is to be renewed at any 
 time, it can only be by the renewal of this holy 
 attachment to the Person of Christ. Zeal for 
 doctrines, adherence to system, these sooner or 
 later will slacken and give way. Only one motive 
 can be relied on to keep us at our task, amid 
 
 1 The above is the translation given by Dr Liddon in his 
 Bampton Lectures. For evidence of the historical accuracy 
 of the reported conversation, see the long note on pages 
 150 and 151 of that work. 
 
Devotion to Our Lord 
 
 89 
 
 discouragements and disappointments, and when 
 the heats of youth are over. One power alone 
 will suffice to expel selfishness, to curb impa¬ 
 tience, to inspire gentleness, and to banish 
 timidity. 
 
 Our practical question, therefore, is this: How 
 can devotion to our Lord be quickened and 
 strengthened in our hearts? By what that we 
 can do should we strive to increase it ? Emotions 
 are hard to excite, and still harder to maintain; 
 indeed, as we know, they are not by any means 
 always subject to our control. How then can we 
 hope to be able to make this highest passion the 
 master force in our lives ? 
 
 The answer may be given in two parts:— 
 
 1. Love to our Lord is, as a rule, the outcome 
 of a consciousness of His love to us. The highest 
 devotion has ever been the fruit of 4 the faith of 
 the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself 
 for me.’ 
 
 Political economists tell us of a 6 magic of 
 property.’ By this is meant the quite new in¬ 
 terest which a man is wont to feel in a thing 
 when he can say of it that it is his very own; 
 an interest which inclines him to make efforts, 
 
90 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 t 
 
 and even sacrifices he would never otherwise have 
 dreamt of making. This ‘ magic of property 1 has 
 something corresponding to it in spiritual experi¬ 
 ence. It is when the truth is brought home to us 
 that we have a strictly personal interest and 
 share in the great facts of the Divine redemption, 
 that we are able to appropriate their value and 
 force in such a degree as to make them the joy 
 and inspiration of our lives. 
 
 May we not rightly say that it is one purpose 
 of the Sacraments thus to bring home to our 
 hearts and minds our personal interest in ‘our 
 common salvation 1 ? Who but has felt the soul¬ 
 stirring power of the words, ‘ The Body of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee ’ ? 
 
 The great moments of life are those in which—- 
 at the altar, in some quiet spot of nature, over 
 a book, or through the experience of an earthly 
 friendship — there has been granted a new 
 hint or assurance of the ‘love of Christ which 
 passeth knowledge. 1 It has been the story of 
 that love which has arrested the attention and 
 agitated the heart of many a lad and girl in the 
 freshness of early youth; yes, and of many an 
 earnest priest and vigorous layman, filling them 
 with the longing to do something for Him who 
 
Devotion to Our Lord 91 
 
 counted no surrender too great to make for 
 them. 
 
 2. But if the love to our Lord, which has 
 been awakened by the thought of all that He 
 has done for us, is to continue as a permanent 
 force in our lives, it must needs be strengthened 
 and sustained by devout meditation upon what 
 He was, and therefore is, in Himself. It is 
 while we are thus 4 musing ’ that 4 the fire burns.’ 
 From the first feelings of gratitude and admira¬ 
 tion the true disciples pass little by little to the 
 self-forgetful adoration of perfected devotion. 
 
 Do we realise as we should how remarkable is the 
 provision that has been made for our growth in the 
 knowledge of Christ ? The more we think of it, 
 the more we are impressed by its variety and 
 completeness. With no fear of contradiction we 
 may assert that, in the whole compass of recorded 
 history, there exists no such wealth of materials 
 for the knowledge of any individual as can com¬ 
 pare with that which we have in the Gospels for 
 the knowledge of our Lord. In those wonderful 
 biographies we have pictures of what He was, 
 taken from four very different points of view. In 
 one we are allowed to see clearly what in another 
 is left in shade. We can combine them as we 
 
92 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 do the pictures in the stereoscope. As we con¬ 
 tinue to gaze, the natural surroundings, the 
 historical conditions, the lake, the Judaean hills, 
 the Mount of Olives, the keenly marked Jewish 
 faces, stand out graphically before us; and, above 
 all, the minutest details of the principal figure, 
 His deeds, His words, His very looks, become 
 extraordinarily vivid and real. 
 
 So perfectly is this the case that the words of 
 Erasmus, bold as they may appear, contain no 
 exaggeration. That scholarly student did not 
 scruple to say: 4 These writings bring back to 
 you the living image of that most holy mind, 
 the very Christ Himself speaking, healing, dying, 
 rising, in fact so entirely present, that you would 
 see less of Him if you beheld Him with your eyes.’ 1 
 
 And long before the days of Erasmus thought¬ 
 ful men had learned to understand how inex¬ 
 haustible are the resources of knowledge which 
 are available to us in the Gospel presentations 
 of our Lord. They saw with loving delight that 
 there is no relationship, no set of social condi¬ 
 tions, no problem of suffering, no one of the 
 numberless circumstances of the most ordinary 
 
 1 The original of the passage is prefixed to the Greek 
 Testament edited by Drs Westcott and Hort. 
 
Devotion to Our Lord 
 
 93 
 
 life, which does not receive its illumination from 
 Him who is the Light of the world. 
 
 How delightfully ardent and simple, for in¬ 
 stance, are the following words in which one such 
 spoke of the details to be noted by those who 
 would make full use of the sacred narrative. Our 
 feeling as we read his list is that he might have 
 gone on with it for ever! 
 
 ‘Always and everywhere have Him devoutly 
 before the eyes of your mind, in His behaviour 
 and in His ways; as when He is with His dis¬ 
 ciples and when He is with sinners; when He 
 speaks and when He preaches; when He goes 
 forth and when He sits down; when He sleeps 
 and when He wakes; when He eats and when 
 He serves others; when He heals the sick, and 
 when He does His other miracles; setting forth 
 to thyself in thy heart His ways and His doings, 
 how humbly He bore Himself among men, how 
 tenderly among His disciples, how pitiful He 
 was to the poor, to whom He made Himself 
 like in all things, and who seemed to be His 
 own special family; how He despised none nor 
 shrunk from them, not even from the leper; 
 how He paid no court to the rich, how free He 
 was from the cares of the world, and from trouble 
 
94 Personal Life 
 
 about the needs of the body; how patient under 
 insult, and how gentle in answering, for He 
 sought not to maintain His cause by keen and 
 bitter words, but with gentle and humble answer 
 to cure another’s malice; what composure in all 
 His behaviour, what anxiety for the salvation of 
 souls, for the love of whom He also deigned to 
 die; how He offered Himself as the pattern of 
 all that is good; how compassionate He was to 
 the afflicted, how He condescended to the im¬ 
 perfection of the weak, how He despised not 
 sinners; how mercifully He received the penitent, 
 how dutiful He was to His parents, how ready 
 in serving all, according to His own words, 
 “ I am among you as he that doth serve ”; how 
 He shunned all display and show of singularity; 
 how He avoided all occasions of offence; how 
 temperate in eating and drinking, how modest 
 in appearance., how earnest in prayer, how sober 
 in His watching, how patient of toil and want; 
 how peaceful and calm in all things.’ 1 
 
 We live in the age of books. They pour out 
 upon us from the press in an ever-increasing mul- 
 
 1 Ludolfus de Saxonia (1330). Procem. in Vitam Christi; 
 quoted by Dean Church, Human Life and its Conditions , pp. 
 
 192 f. 
 
Devotion to Our Lord 95 
 
 titude. And we are always reading. Manuals, 
 text-books, articles, books of devotion, books of 
 criticism, books about the Bible, books about 
 the Gospels, are devoured with avidity. But 
 what amount of time and labour do we give to 
 the consideration of the Gospels themselves P 
 
 We are constantly tempted to imagine that we 
 6 get good 1 more quickly by reading some modern 
 statement of truth, which we find it compara¬ 
 tively easy to appropriate because it is presented 
 to us in a shape and from a standpoint with 
 which our education, or it may be party asso¬ 
 ciation, has made us familiar. But the good 
 that we acquire readily is not that which enters 
 most deeply into our being, and becomes an 
 abiding possession. 
 
 It would be well if we could realise quite 
 simply that nothing worth the having is to be 
 gained without the winning. The great truths 
 of nature are not offered to us in such a form 
 as makes it easy to grasp them: the treasures 
 of grace must be sought with all the skill and 
 energy which are characteristic of the man who 
 is searching for goodly pearls. 
 
 The patient, intelligent study of the fourfold 
 Gospel is a task not of weeks but of years. But 
 
96 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 here again, as in the case of prayer, we should 
 be encouraged to persevere if only we could be 
 certain that the effort expended would secure a 
 return such as can be obtained by no other 
 means. And may we not be certain? 
 
 It is no uncommon thing to hear com¬ 
 plaints about the want of force in religious 
 people to-day. ‘We have goodness,’ said an 
 acute observer who lately passed from among us, 
 ‘but we lack character.’ Amid much that is 
 excellent there is little that makes an impression. 
 Can it be doubted that one chief reason for 
 this is to be traced in the too general failure to 
 go direct to the original sources of our knowledge 
 of the Person of our Lord ? 
 
 Sometimes, as we know, an illustration will at 
 once convey to the mind a more rapid and exact 
 description of that which we wish to make plain 
 than could be conveyed by the most cogent of 
 logical statements. Let us try what such help 
 can do for us in the present case. 1 
 
 You are a visitor, let us suppose, in Florence, 
 
 1 The illustration which follows was suggested to me many 
 years ago by a nonconformist minister, whose name I can¬ 
 not remember, as we were travelling together on the con¬ 
 tinent. I have never ceased to be grateful to him for it. 
 
Devotion to Our Lord 97 
 
 and have found your way into the studio of an 
 artist there. Your attention is immediately 
 arrested by a painting of a masterpiece which you 
 have seen in one or the other of the world-famous 
 galleries. You venture a question as to the price 
 it might be expected to fetch. The amount 
 named is so large as to be virtually prohibitory. 
 In a moment or two, however, another painting 
 is produced which for aught you are able to see 
 exactly resembles the first. This you are told 
 you may have at a much more moderate figure. 
 The difference is so marked that you express your 
 astonishment, and ask an explanation. The reason 
 given is this. That first copy was made in the 
 gallery. In order to obtain the necessary per¬ 
 mission, the painter had to put down his name on 
 a list and to wait, it may have been several years, 
 until his turn arrived. At last he had found 
 himself in the presence of the Raffael, or the 
 Titian, or the Correggio, whichever it may have 
 been. There you could have seen him seated 
 with his easel and canvas. But days passed by 
 before he began his work. Intently he pored 
 over each line, and each tone of colour. After a 
 while the face began to grow upon him, until the 
 
 vision of it passed down with him into the street, 
 
 G 
 
98 Personal Life 
 
 followed him to his home, and haunted his im¬ 
 agination as he lay on his bed at night. Then 
 he took up his brush, and it seemed as if the 
 spirit of the old master had possessed him, and 
 were directing his hand. The picture completed, 
 he carried it off* with pride. Many have been the 
 reproductions that he has made from it since. 
 One of these you may have, as he tells you; but 
 the first he will not part with if he can help it. 
 He knows, if you do not, that there is all the 
 difference in the world between a copy of a copy, 
 and the copy of the original. 
 
 And is not this just the difference that we so 
 often feel, and find so difficult to account for? 
 We meet with persons who have seriously resolved 
 to set before themselves a standard of spiritual 
 attainment. What they have done is this. They 
 have fixed upon an individual whom they admire, 
 whom they have seen, or of whom they have read 
 in a book; and they have determined to be 4 like 
 that.’ The result is what we see. There is much 
 that is praiseworthy, little perhaps with which it 
 would be easy to find any particular fault; and 
 yet we are conscious that something is wanting— 
 indeed we might almost go so far as to say every¬ 
 thing is wanting—which gives its distinction and 
 
Devotion to Our Lord 
 
 99 
 
 interest to character. Yes ! this is what is wrong; 
 at the most they are copies of copies. 
 
 Then it happens, once and again, alas! all too 
 rarely, that we meet with a different experience. 
 We are privileged to know some one who has 
 said, 6 I will go straight to the Gospels. I will 
 set my gaze upon Him who alone is full of grace 
 and truth. In Him only shall I behold the ideal of 
 beauty. In His fulness alone can I hope to dis¬ 
 cover what my own particular life was intended 
 to be. Let me know more and more what He 
 was like. Let me be filled with His Spirit; 
 if so be that I may, in ever so small a degree, 
 shew forth any of the lineaments of His perfect 
 manhood/ And again we have seen the result. 
 There has been a freshness, a fearlessness, a 
 freedom from conventionality, combined with a 
 humility, a reverence, a patience, which have un¬ 
 mistakably betokened a character that has derived 
 its impress and drawn its inspiration from the 
 highest possible source. In short, what we have 
 seen is a copy of the Original. 
 
 Happy would it be if we could count that day 
 a lost day which has not added something to our 
 understanding of that Original. When shall we 
 
100 Personal Life 
 
 believe that there is no honour which earth has 
 in its power to bestow, that is for a moment to 
 be compared with the honour we receive when 
 those to whom we minister are constrained to take 
 knowledge that there is anything in our lives 
 which in any way reminds them of their Lord ? 
 
Note I 
 
 A striking example of what the Imitatio 
 Christi can mean under the most modern condi¬ 
 tions is to be found in the remarkable passage in 
 which his biographer describes what the Person 
 of Christ had become to Frederick Robertson 
 of Brighton. Those who remember it will be 
 thankful to see it again. 
 
 ‘ The Incarnation was to him the centre of all 
 History, the blossoming of Humanity. The Life 
 which followed the Incarnation was the explana¬ 
 tion of the life of God, and the only solution of 
 the life of man. He did not speak much of 
 loving Christ: his love was fitly mingled with 
 that veneration which makes love perfect; his 
 voice was solemn, and he paused before he spoke 
 His Name in common talk; for what that Name 
 meant had become the central thought of his 
 intellect, and the deepest realisation of his spirit. 
 He had spent a world of study, of reverent 
 meditation, of adoring contemplation on the 
 gospel history. 
 
 ‘ Nothing comes forward more visibly in his 
 
 letters than the way in which he had entered into 
 
 101 
 
102 
 
 Note 
 
 the human life of Christ. To that everything is 
 referred—by that everything is explained. The 
 gossip of a drawing-room, the tendencies of the 
 time, the religious questions of the day, . . . the 
 loneliness and the difficulties of his work, were 
 not so much argued upon or combated, as at once 
 and instinctively brought to the test of a Life 
 which was lived out eighteen centuries ago, but 
 which went everywhere with him. 
 
 6 Out of this intuitive reception of Christ, and 
 from this ceaseless silence of meditation which 
 makes the blessedness of great love, there grew 
 up in him a deep comprehension of the whole, as 
 well as a minute sympathy with all the delicate 
 details of the character of Christ. Day by day, 
 with passionate imitation, he followed his Master, 
 musing on every action, revolving in thought the 
 interdependence of all that Christ had said or 
 done, weaving into the fibres of his heart the 
 principles of the Life he worshipped, till he had 
 received into his being the very impression and 
 image of that unique Personality. His very 
 doctrines were the Life of Christ expressed in 
 words. The Incarnation, Atonement, and Resur¬ 
 rection of Christ were not dogmas to him. In 
 himself he was daily realising them. They were 
 in him a life, a power, a light. This was his 
 Christian consciousness . 1 —Life and Letters , pp. 
 416 f. 
 
Note II 
 
 The following extract from a Sermon preached 
 by the Rev. Charles Marriott (Parker, 1843) was 
 included by Bishop King in an address to the 
 members of the last Lambeth Conference at their 
 Devotional Day:— 
 
 6 What is reason, but a partaking of the Light 
 that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world? what is poetry, but the burning of the 
 heart when He is near ? what is art, but the 
 striving to recollect His lineaments ? what is 
 history, but the traces of His iron rod or His 
 Shepherd’s staff? ’ 
 
 6 Meditation on Him, prayer to Him, learning 
 of Him, conformity to Him, partaking of Him, 
 are the chief business of the Christian life.’ 
 
 To this last the Bishop added—I have his 
 permission to quote the words: 
 
 ‘ Oh! if we had only made it so, how much 
 happier, how much stronger, we might have 
 been; how much stronger to help others, and 
 to make them happy ! ’ 
 
 103 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SECULARISATION 
 
 It would be possible, no doubt, to name other 
 directions in which we have need to direct our 
 efforts if we are to succeed in upraising our 
 level of personal life; but for our immediate 
 purpose what has been said may be sufficient. 
 Experience as teachers of others must have shewn 
 us that far more is gained as a rule by concen¬ 
 trating attention upon a few plain duties, than 
 by setting out comprehensive schemes, which 
 by their balanced completeness may satisfy the 
 mind, but which through lack of definiteness fail 
 to appeal to the conscience and influence the will. 
 Penitence, and prayer, and the meditation which 
 has for its object the increase of devotion to 
 our Lord—these must produce far-reaching effects 
 upon our life and upon our ministry. 
 
 But while it might not be wise to add to the 
 list of duties, it may be of value that we should 
 direct our thoughts to some of the dangers 
 
 104 
 
Secularisation 
 
 105 
 
 which specially beset the spiritual life of Clergy 
 to-day. It is, of course, true that no mere 
 avoidance of dangers can ever be enough to keep 
 us in the way of highest attainment; yet a clear 
 recognition of the perils that surround us is of 
 real use in helping us to walk more warily and 
 resolutely in it. 
 
 It is not an easy thing to single out such dangers 
 as we should agree to consider the most serious and 
 widespread at the present time. The attempt must 
 be made therefore with some hesitation. Here 
 again it may be sufficient to mention but three. 
 
 The first place shall be given to the danger 
 of secularisation; to the temptation, that is to 
 say, which would lead us to devote ourselves to 
 a variety of pursuits other than those which 
 properly belong to us, to such an extent as to 
 obscure our character and weaken our influence 
 as spiritual leaders. 
 
 Next we shall do well to think of the danger 
 of over-occupation ; and under that head we 
 shall include the risks which we incur when we 
 persist in the attempt to do too many things 
 even of the kind that may be rightly included 
 in our proper sphere. 
 
106 Personal Life 
 
 And, lastly, something must be said of de¬ 
 pression, the disposition to despair of ourselves 
 and of others, which is often the penalty of a 
 disregard of these earlier dangers, but which may 
 also threaten the peace and well-being of those 
 who have been the most successful in avoiding 
 them. 
 
 First, then, the danger of Secularisation. 
 
 As we take note of what is going on around 
 us, we cannot fail to be struck by the fact of a 
 remarkable widening of the ordinary conceptions 
 of public and individual duty. Never before 
 has there been throughout society as a whole a 
 keener or more sympathetic sense of the obliga¬ 
 tions which bind class to class, and man to man. 
 Never has there been a time when more hearts 
 more readily responded to the appeals which are 
 made by misery and wrong; or when more hands 
 were eager to 4 do something ’ to improve the 
 conditions and prospects of those who seem to 
 be carrying an unequal share of the burdens of 
 hardship and suffering. 
 
 In the movement to alleviate and remedy the 
 evils of ignorance and pauperism and disease, the 
 Church has been anxious to take an active and a 
 
Secularisation 
 
 107 
 
 leading part. Reading the problems of the age 
 in the light of her inherited beliefs, she has been 
 led to the most comprehensive views of the 
 meaning of those beliefs, and of the whole pur¬ 
 pose and scope of Christianity. Her message 
 has been increasingly applied to phases and de¬ 
 partments of human life and activity which had 
 not been generally thought of as included in its 
 range. The desire has grown stronger and 
 stronger to prove that all interests, all occupa¬ 
 tions, all recreations, so far as they were not 
 actually wrong in themselves, were to be regarded 
 as entitled to a place in the programme of the 
 Church. 
 
 With this broadening of the conception of the 
 mission of the Church, there has come of necessity 
 a widening of the sphere of work in which the 
 Clergy are expected to engage. The large cul¬ 
 ture, which is so valuable a part of their training, 
 has made it possible for them to take their places 
 freely and naturally in social efforts beside their 
 fellows of the laity; the democratic tendency, 
 which is everywhere felt, has given a further 
 impulse to their inclination to enter sympa¬ 
 thetically into all that in any way contributes 
 to the life of the people: and, yet more, the 
 
108 Personal Life 
 
 earnest desire to win those who have seemed to 
 be least accessible to the influences of religion 
 has prompted them to devote time and energy 
 to the study of their problems, as well as to 
 schemes for their comfort and even for their 
 amusement. 
 
 In any widening of understanding and sym¬ 
 pathy we may heartily rejoice. It must be for 
 good that the Gospel of the Incarnation is felt to 
 be in the largest sense the Gospel of Life. It can 
 only be matter for thankfulness whenever the 
 clergy are foremost in urging the responsibilities 
 which should weigh more heavily than they do 
 upon all who have wealth and position: nor can 
 they be too eager in welcoming efforts on behalf 
 of those who are the least able to take care of 
 themselves. 
 
 It by no means follows however that, amid 
 these causes for thankfulness, there may not be 
 reasons for anxiety, and even for alarm. In our 
 mixed life the evil stands ever at the side of the 
 good: and we have continually to be on our 
 guard against the 4 defects of our qualities, 1 even 
 when these are at their best. In this case what is 
 to be feared is that the widening of which we 
 have spoken is being gained at a very serious cost. 
 
Secularisation 
 
 109 
 
 An artist and a clergyman were seated side 
 by side, not long ago, at a London dinner-table. 
 In the course of their conversation the artist 
 said : 4 Ours is a philanthropic age ; ours is not a 
 religious age.’ Generalisations are confessedly 
 dangerous, and we might well demur to so sweep¬ 
 ing a statement. No one of us would have let it 
 pass altogether unchallenged; and yet there is 
 probably not one of us but would feel compelled 
 to admit that a measure of truth underlies it. 
 And certainly a statement of this kind, coming 
 from a thoughtful layman, is calculated to make 
 us pause and consider whether there is not a real 
 peril before us all in the direction in which things 
 are moving so easily. 
 
 The fear is lest, with the enlarging of the 
 meaning of duty in one direction, there has been 
 also a narrowing and lessening of its meaning in 
 another, and that the very highest direction. 
 
 The word Duty is on all lips. We are proud 
 of our pride in it. But what do we com¬ 
 monly mean by it? Is not the duty intended 
 almost invariably that which a man owes to his 
 fellow creatures; or possibly sometimes that 
 which he owes to himself? How rarely is it the 
 duty which he owes to his God! Even when all 
 
110 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 possible allowance has been made for the almost 
 impenetrable reserve that characterises an English¬ 
 man in regard to matters in which his intimate 
 motives and feelings are involved, there are signs 
 enough of a tendency which, if unchecked and un¬ 
 corrected, can only lead to a gradual secularisation 
 of aims and ideals. 
 
 Unless the wisest of our teachers have been 
 deceived, and unless the deepest lessons of history 
 are to be distrusted, the end of philanthropy it¬ 
 self will not be far distant when once philanthropy 
 is allowed to usurp the place which belongs to 
 religion. 
 
 If the danger is real for others, we may be sure 
 that it is real for us. We have already spoken 
 of reasons which make it natural that the clergy 
 should be inclined to throw themselves sympa¬ 
 thetically into the philanthropic movements of 
 the time: we might easily add to them. Our 
 position as officers of a national Church offers us 
 a vantage ground for action. Many are glad to 
 welcome our assistance and leadership. There is 
 the feeling that such activity helps to make the 
 Church popular. We are anxious, it may be, to 
 rebut a charge of narrowness. We feel that 
 
Secularisation 
 
 111 
 
 there is a gain in whatever brings us into living 
 touch with the actual facts of ordinary experience. 
 We see so perpetually the evils that are crying 
 out for redress : and we have reason to know that 
 we have gifts and qualifications which would 
 enable us to deal effectively with them. 
 
 The fact that we may thus easily be drawn 
 into the current which is setting so strongly about 
 us, makes it the more necessary to speak plainly 
 of the effects which have followed, and are not 
 unlikely still to follow, in the life and ministry of 
 those who with excellent intentions yield them¬ 
 selves unreservedly to the prevailing tendency. 
 
 No one would think of denying that there 
 are, as there have been in the past, remarkable 
 examples to prove that it is possible for men 
 endowed with exceptional vitality to throw them¬ 
 selves into activities of the most varied kinds, and 
 at the same time preserve their sense of propor¬ 
 tion and with it the distinctive tone and character 
 of the sacred office to which they were ordained. 
 But then these are exceptional men. It is only 
 too evident that, for the average man amongst us, 
 such an attempt is more likely than not to lead to 
 serious failure. 
 
 Instances have occurred in which it is scarcely 
 
112 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 too much to say that the priest and pastor has 
 been merged and lost in the social leader and 
 political reformer; or, more disastrous yet, in 
 which he has descended to a level at which he has 
 been regarded as little more than a successful 
 provider of popular amusements. Even where 
 things have stopped far short of this—and we 
 freely admit that the extreme cases are rare—it 
 has frequently happened that, in his anxiety to 
 be forward in promoting schemes of practical 
 benevolence, a clergyman has allowed himself to 
 become immersed in affairs of the nature of the 
 ‘serving of tables,’ to the consequent neglect of 
 the directly spiritual parts of his pastoral work. 
 
 Nowhere can the process of secularisation be 
 more clearly traced than in the preaching de¬ 
 livered from our pulpits. The old-fashioned 
 doctrinal and expository discourse might not 
 be well suited to the needs or capacities of a 
 modern audience, but it might be instructive for 
 many of us if it were possible to have the judgment 
 of some of our predecessors upon the hurried, 
 disjointed, up-to-date deliverances which too 
 often do duty for sermons to-day. 
 
 The adopting of lay costume, and the abandon¬ 
 ment of a certain gravity of demeanour, may seem 
 
Secularisation 
 
 113 
 
 small things in themselves; but they are not 
 small things if they mean that, as the result of 
 our desire to be 4 all things to all men , 1 we have 
 made it not more easy but more difficult for them 
 to turn to us in the hour when they become con¬ 
 scious of their need of the higher aid which it is 
 our mission to bring them. 
 
 The truth is that we have need constantly to 
 go back to the first principles of our ministerial 
 vocation, and to renew our sense of its purpose 
 and aim. We should be greatly helped to do 
 this were we to make it a practice to read care¬ 
 fully from time to time the service which was 
 used at our ordination as Priests. How plainly 
 it set forth to us the expectations we were to 
 form of the life-work opening before us. How 
 good it is for us to compare those expectations 
 with our actual experience! 
 
 Notice the three words on which marked 
 emphasis is laid in the Exhortation addressed by 
 the Bishop to the candidates. 4 Dignity , 14 Diffi¬ 
 culty , 1 4 Duty 1 : these may fitly sound as watch¬ 
 words in our ears. We dare not lower our 
 conception of our responsibility as 4 Messengers, 
 Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord . 1 It is 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 necessary that we should often be reminded that 
 it can be no light task to 4 compass the doing of 
 so weighty a work, pertaining to the salvation of 
 man ’; and that we may only hope to accomplish 
 it as we 4 apply ourselves wholly to this one 
 thing, and draw all our cares and studies this 
 way.’ The serious pondering of the Ordinal, 
 with its solemn injunctions and no less solemn 
 promises, would do much to 4 print in our 
 remembrance 1 that our main concern after all is 
 not the re-arranging of the social order, however 
 powerfully we may contribute indirectly to this 
 by our labour for the Church of God, and by our 
 endeavours to 4 set forwards quietness, peace, and 
 love among all Christian people.’ 
 
 The Ordinal tells us that if we are to 4 wax 
 riper and stronger’ in our ministry, it must be 
 4 by daily reading and weighing of the Scriptures.’ 
 We have already considered the necessity for a 
 continued study of the Gospels. We may add to 
 what has been said that there are special reasons 
 why, at this particular time, we should try to get 
 a just view of the attitude which our Lord 
 assumed towards social questions. The idea has 
 become widely prevalent that this attitude was 
 
Secularisation 
 
 115 
 
 very much more that of the modern reformer 
 than has ordinarily been recognised by the Church 
 in the past; and all of us know how readily an 
 idea that is popularly accepted may possess the 
 minds even of thoughtful students in a degree 
 greatly in excess of the measure of truth which it 
 represents. That in this case the popular view 
 may be seriously challenged, and that a reaction 
 from it is not unlikely to set in before long, may 
 perhaps be gathered from such utterances as the 
 following, coming to us as they do from very 
 different quarters. 
 
 In a valuable work just published, Professor 
 Peabody of Harvard writes : 4 There was 
 
 political oppression about Him to be remedied, 
 there were social unrighteousness and iniquity to 
 be condemned; but Jesus does not fling Himself 
 into these social issues of His time. He moves 
 through them with a strange tranquillity, not as 
 one who is indifferent to them, but as one whose 
 eye is fixed on an end in which these social 
 problems wdll find their own solution. 
 
 4 In short, Jesus will not be diverted by the 
 demand for a social teaching from the special 
 message of spiritual renewal which He is called 
 to bring. In many of the processes of applied 
 
116 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 science, there are certain results known as by¬ 
 products, which are thrown off or precipitated on 
 the way to the special result desired. It may 
 happen that these by-products are of the utmost 
 value; but none the less they are obtained by 
 the way. Such a by-product is the social teach¬ 
 ing of Jesus. It was not the end toward which 
 His mission was directed; it came about as He 
 fulfilled His mission. To reconstruct the Gospels 
 so as to make them primarily a programme of 
 social reform is to mistake the by-product for the 
 end specifically sought, and in the desire to find 
 a place for Jesus within the modern age, to forfeit 
 that which gives Him His place in all ages .’ 1 
 
 Again later he says: c The teaching of Jesus 
 . . . recognises that the problem of adjusting 
 social environment must be a new problem with 
 each new age; it concerns itself, therefore, with 
 the making of persons who shall be fit to deal 
 with the environment which each new age in its 
 turn presents .’ 2 
 
 Our other quotation shall be from the remark¬ 
 able lectures recently delivered by Professor 
 Harnack to the students of the university at 
 
 1 Jesus Christ and the Social Question, pp. 78 f. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 113. 
 
Secularisation 
 
 117 
 
 Berlin. This is how he speaks of the relation 
 of the Gospel to 4 questions of mundane develop¬ 
 ment ’ :— 
 
 4 What the Gospel says is this : Whoever you 
 may be, and whatever your position, whether 
 bondman or free, whether fighting or at rest, 
 your real task in life is always the same. There 
 is only one relation and one idea which you must 
 not violate, and in the face of which all others 
 are only transient wrappings and vain show; to 
 be a child of God and a citizen of His kingdom 
 and to exercise love. How you are to maintain 
 yourself in this life on earth, and in what way 
 you are to serve your neighbour, is left to you 
 and your own liberty of action. This is what 
 the Apostle Paul understood by the Gospel, and 
 I do not believe that he misunderstood it . 11 
 
 It is possible that most of us would wish to 
 modify these statements in some particulars be¬ 
 fore adopting them as our own; but perhaps 
 the very decisiveness of them may make them 
 the more useful as a corrective of exaggerated 
 representations on the opposite side. The work 
 of the Church is still that of her Master. While 
 far from indifferent to matters which affect 
 1 What is Christianity 1 p. 116. 
 
118 Personal Life 
 
 material well-being, she may never lose sight of 
 a further goal. 6 Man doth not live by bread 
 alone." The kingdom is ‘ not of this world." 
 We want better houses for the people ; but we 
 want still more—as it has been aptly put— 
 6 better people for the houses." As clergy we are 
 to welcome most cordially all that is being done 
 to improve the social conditions about us, but we 
 may rightly feel that the fact of such improve¬ 
 ment makes it not the less but the more essential 
 that our witness for the spiritual order should be 
 as emphatic and convincing as possible. 
 
 It may help us if we remember that the clergy 
 are, not perhaps most liked, but certainly most 
 respected, when it is recognised that they know 
 and do their proper work. It might also be 
 good for us to bear in mind that, whilst men of 
 all occupations greatly value our sympathy, we 
 are not to conclude that they wish for our inter¬ 
 ference, least of all in cases where an exact 
 understanding of complicated facts and nicely 
 adjusted conditions is indispensable if a just 
 judgment is to be formed. 
 
 Hitherto we have been thinking about the 
 
Secularisation 
 
 119 
 
 danger of secularisation as it presents itself in 
 more public ministrations and in connection with 
 certain well-marked tendencies of the present 
 time. Some words must be added upon another 
 aspect of the matter. The peril may approach 
 us on quite different ground, and when we are 
 even less likely to be on our guard against it. 
 
 Here we are concerned with a side of the 
 question which is by no means exclusively 
 modern. All writers on the spiritual life have 
 felt it to be necessary to give warnings against 
 the possible effects of a too unreserved mixing 
 in society and a too free participation in its 
 pleasures and pursuits. The need for such 
 counsels is not less now than in former times, 
 and certainly the difficulty both of giving and 
 using them is as great to-day as it can ever have 
 been. 
 
 Nothing could be more hopeless than any 
 attempt to draw a line and say, This or that is 
 the limit which - may never be overpassed. It 
 would be most undesirable, even were it possible, 
 that any uniformity of type should be established 
 amongst us. It would be a serious thing if the 
 links were to be weakened which have united the 
 English clergy with the general life of society 
 
120 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 and of the country. Probably the wisest teachers 
 would be the least disposed to lay down rules, 
 and the most ready to concede the largest 
 possible amount of personal liberty. 
 
 There can be few of us who would not feel 
 strongly in sympathy with such words as these, 
 spoken some years ago by the late Dean 
 Vaughan in one of his addresses to younger 
 
 4 It is a question often asked, and never to be 
 hastily, or perhaps conclusively, answered—How 
 much ought a clergyman to enter into society ? 
 There is one answer which is easily given, and 
 which satisfies the spiritual haste and indolence 
 and selfishness of many—Refrain ! And there is 
 something in the experience of all persons who 
 would lead a godly life, which responds to that 
 counsel. Who has not come away from a large 
 and promiscuous gathering, from a dinner or an 
 evening party, with a deep consciousness that it 
 has been time wasted, or worse? How natural 
 to draw the inference! For me, at least, this is 
 an unprofitable thing. Others, better men than 
 I am, more devoted, more consistent, may do this 
 thing safely or even with advantage; for me, it is 
 perilous—it is injurious. 
 
Secularisation 
 
 121 
 
 ‘ Yet let us reflect for a moment what this says. 
 It says that our religion will not bear touching 
 or handling—that it can live and breathe only in 
 solitude ; that for us life is not redeemed, only a 
 way is made out of it into another. . . . 
 
 4 It is the experience of many who have not 
 seen their way to this isolation, that when they 
 have gone into society with an earnest prayer for 
 blessing, they have found, ere the evening closed, 
 some opportunity which would otherwise have 
 had no existence, for giving and receiving good— 
 it may be, in the privacy which so often waits 
 upon publicity, the unheard discourse with a 
 casual neighbour whose soul is suddenly opened 
 to one who bears in his face the attribute of 
 4 helper ’—they have found reason, thus or other¬ 
 wise, to rejoice that they had not wrapped them¬ 
 selves in the unsociable mantle of a religion all 
 for itself—they have felt that henceforth they 
 must pray more, and trust more, and expect 
 more, and then God will more largely bless— 
 they will reproach themselves, not others, if they 
 are often frustrated and disappointed in such 
 intercourse — they will feel, nevertheless, that 
 neighbourhood is relationship, and that they 
 have no right to call common or irreligious 
 
122 Personal Life 
 
 that interchange of kindliness which God has 
 cleansed .’ 1 
 
 Side by side with this noble utterance let us 
 set another from an earlier leader of a different 
 school. In a letter written by John Keble to a 
 friend newly ordained we find him saying:— 
 
 C I do not think the glory of God best pro¬ 
 moted by a rigid abstinence from amusements, 
 except they be sinful in themselves, or carried to 
 excess, or in some other way ministering occasion 
 to sin. . . . Nor can I well imagine any greater 
 service to society than is rendered by him, who 
 submits to its common routine, though some¬ 
 thing wearisome, for this very reason: lest he 
 should offend his neighbours by unnecessary 
 rigour. 
 
 ‘ Besides, if our neighbours’ pleasures be harm¬ 
 less, and we have it in our power to increase 
 them, without breaking any law of God or man, 
 is it quite agreeable to the spirit of Christian 
 Charity to refuse to do so ? Is it quite agree¬ 
 able to such passages as “ Rejoice with them 
 that do rejoice”; or to our Saviour’s example in 
 working the miracle in Cana, and in submitting 
 to the reproach of being a man gluttonous and 
 1 Addresses to Young Clergymen , pp. Ill f. 
 
Secularisation 
 
 123 
 
 a wine-bibber, rather than offend unthinking 
 sinners by too much preciseness ? Is it quite 
 agreeable to the general spirit of the Gospel ? 
 which directs us, even when we fast, not to be 
 of a sad countenance, and which, next to inculcat¬ 
 ing the necessity of a thorough inward change, 
 seems anxious to discourage any violent outward 
 one, except when it is a plain duty. . . . Almost 
 every time I look into the New Testament, I feel 
 the more convinced, that the more quietly and 
 calmly one sets about one’s duty, and the less 
 one breaks through established customs, always 
 supposing them innocent in themselves, the more 
 nearly does one act according to the great 
 Exemplar there proposed .’ 1 
 
 We dare not overlook the fact, however, that 
 this liberty of the Gospel has its dangers. All 
 liberty calls for care in the using. Whilst we 
 may fully agree that a policy of ascetic absten¬ 
 tion is no true policy, we may nevertheless feel 
 the need of adopting precautions, and even of 
 placing restrictions upon ourselves, lest that 
 
 1 Letters of Spiritual Counsel , xii. This was written as early 
 as 1817. It is the more interesting, therefore, to note that the 
 same view is restated in a letter (xiii.) bearing date 18G0. 
 
124 Personal Life 
 
 which is lawful and beneficial in itself should 
 prove to be an injury to ourselves and to others. 
 
 It is not a little significant that Mr Ruskin, 
 when speaking of the personal life of the artist, 
 has said that he should be a man who is fitted 
 to move in the best society and who yet 6 keeps 
 out of it’! We may easily grasp the meaning 
 of such a remark, even though we may believe 
 that its author did not intend it to be taken 
 quite literally. And, surely, if it be true that 
 the man whose function it is to minister to the 
 higher tastes of his generation has need to be 
 warned against the possible effects upon himself 
 of surroundings and associations which might 
 distract him from a single-eyed pursuit of his 
 ideals; it must be not less true that he also is 
 bound to be most watchful who has been called 
 and set apart that he may witness to realities 
 6 which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard , 1 and the 
 knowledge of which is to be gained and retained 
 by the employment of instincts and faculties far 
 more delicate and liable to be blunted than even 
 the finest perceptions of sense. 
 
 If we look for guidance to the example of our 
 Lord, we are struck by the way in which the 
 years and days of His public and social ministry 
 
Secularisation 
 
 125 
 
 were balanced, so to speak, by spaces of silence 
 and retirement. Our peril lies in the tempta¬ 
 tion to suppose that we can have much of the 
 one with but scant provision for the other. 
 We need the preparation of solitude if we are 
 to carry influence with us as we pass out into the 
 stream of life . 1 
 
 Moreover a certain skill and wisdom is required 
 if we are to exert our influence with the best 
 effect. We may not assume, as we are perhaps 
 inclined to do, that such moral and spiritual 
 force as we possess will make itself felt inde¬ 
 pendently of any special intention on our part. 
 It is often said that the greatest influence is uncon¬ 
 scious influence. Possibly this general statement 
 admits of more qualification than is commonly 
 supposed. 
 
 Archbishop Benson, when speaking to one of 
 his junior clergy on the subject of the influence 
 which is to be exercised through social inter¬ 
 course, warned him that the nature of this in¬ 
 fluence in any particular instance would greatly 
 
 1 ‘ Certe nec ipsi actioni expedit consideratione non prae- 
 veniri.’ ‘ Memento proinde, non dico semper, non dico saepe, 
 sed vel interdum reddere te ipsam tibi.’—St Bernard, Be 
 Consul, i. 5. 
 
126 Personal Life 
 
 depend upon the character of the footing upon 
 which the acquaintance began. There were, he 
 said, in his own case persons with whom it was 
 always easy and natural to speak of the highest 
 topics; and there were others with whom it had 
 never ceased to be difficult to introduce them. 
 The difference he believed to be due to the fact 
 that with the first the higher ground had been 
 taken at the outset, while with the others this 
 had not been so. This experience is one which 
 may furnish matter for reflection to us all. 
 
 Certainly the wisest of our laity would pray us 
 to see to it that nothing should induce us to 
 lower our standards of the priestly life. They 
 look to us to help them in ways in which they 
 cannot be helped by one of themselves. They 
 call us 4 reverend ’: it is for us to take care, in 
 all simplicity and with no affectation or assump¬ 
 tion, that we are such men as they can highly 
 esteem. 
 
 We may learn a great deal by carefully mark¬ 
 ing the verdicts which are passed upon a ministry 
 that has ended. It is most instructive to observe 
 with what accuracy its main lines and character¬ 
 istics are usually discerned, and to note how 
 surely the aims and successes are wont to be 
 
Secularisation 
 
 127 
 
 appraised at their real worth, when for a moment 
 the presence of death seems to have sobered the 
 judgment and made men look with other eyes 
 than those with which they commonly regard 
 the events that are happening about them. At 
 these times even the least religiously minded are 
 able to recognise, and are not slow to reverence, 
 the life-work of the man who has made it his 
 chief business to lift them nearer to God. 
 
 It is not easy to say how in a particular in¬ 
 stance the danger of which we have been thinking 
 is to be met and overcome. We may not pre¬ 
 sume to decide for one another. Each man’s 
 work will be judged by his Master. Only let 
 us keep in our ears the warnings of that Master 
 as to the salt which loses its savour through a 
 too continuous contact with the earth, and let 
 us remember how again and again He set it 
 before His disciples as their aim that they should 
 be fi in ’ the world but 6 not of ’ it. 
 
Note I 
 
 In an Ordination sermon preached in Salisbury 
 Cathedral, in 1876, Dean Church spoke thus to 
 the candidates:— 
 
 ‘It is much indeed, if there were nothing more, 
 to be members of so illustrious a public body as 
 the clergy of England; to be the inheritors of 
 such a history, to be the guardians of the moral 
 interests of so great a nation. But though you 
 are this, you are more; and woe to you if you 
 forget it. Besides all this, you are the servants 
 and ministers of the Crucified. He on high is 
 your Master, and to Him your account has to 
 be made. It is for His purposes that you are 
 chosen: it is His gifts, His word, His sacraments, 
 that you have to convey to men. 
 
 ‘You may, indeed, in a wonderful and in¬ 
 creasing measure, be the ministers of the highest 
 earthly blessings to men: but it is the blessings 
 of the world unseen, blessings for weary and 
 endangered souls, blessings for those who have 
 no other hope left them, blessings purchased by 
 the blood of the Eternal Sacrifice, and running 
 
 on through death into an everlasting life—it is 
 
 128 
 
Notes 
 
 129 
 
 with these that you are specially charged. Do 
 nothing, admit nothing, in the way of employ¬ 
 ment, in the way of recreation, in what you allow 
 to yourselves, which shall confuse and obscure 
 the thought that yours is a spiritual ministry 
 and stewardship held direct from Jesus Christ, 
 and that you, as He had, have to do with souls. 1 
 —Human Life and its Conditions , pp. 185 f. 
 
 Note II 
 
 ‘ Gentlemen, when a man grows older and sees 
 more deeply into life, he does not find, if he 
 possesses any inner world at all, that he is ad¬ 
 vanced by the external march of things, by the 
 “ progress of civilisation. 11 Nay, he feels himself, 
 rather, where he was before, and forced to seek 
 the sources of strength which his forefathers also 
 sought. He is forced to make himself a native 
 of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the 
 Eternal, the kingdom of Love; and he comes to 
 understand that it was only of this kingdom that 
 Jesus Christ desired to testify, and he is grateful 
 to Him for it. 1 —Adolf Harnack, What is Christi¬ 
 anity? p. 121. 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 OVER-OCCUPATION 
 
 The danger of which we have been thinking is 
 a most serious one; but there is another against 
 which we have not less need to be on our guard. 
 Indeed, it is probably not too much to say that 
 in it we may find the explanation of the larger 
 part of the failure to attain to the highest ideals, 
 whether in our own lives or in those for whose 
 progress we are responsible. When we trace the 
 indifference, the apathy, the lack of spiritual 
 energy, so noticeable in the world and in the 
 Church, to their ultimate source, we are led to 
 the conclusion that this source is not really hard 
 to discover, and that it admits of being described 
 in language which is perfectly plain. The symp¬ 
 toms are simply those of exhaustion; and the 
 exhaustion is due to the fact that the vital 
 powers, interests, and sympathies have been too 
 constantly stimulated and too indiscriminately 
 drawn upon. 
 
 130 
 
131 
 
 Over - Occupation 
 
 To take an illustration. A great deal of the 
 inability to believe, and the indisposition to 
 make the efforts required by religion, which is 
 often accounted for as the effect of the unsettle¬ 
 ment produced by scientific thought, should in 
 all probability be regarded as traceable to this 
 cause of which we are now to speak. 
 
 There are some brave, clear words written 
 by Dr Pritchard, the Oxford professor, on this 
 matter which deserve to be carefully noted and 
 remembered. In answer to the question, ‘ Is it 
 true that the pursuit of Science has any inherent 
 tendency towards religious scepticism ? 1 he gave 
 it as his firm conviction that, ‘It is preoccupa¬ 
 tion of mind , rather than science, which is, and 
 ever has been, the prolific parent of scepticism 
 and of indifference in religion; 1 and he went 
 on to ask, 6 Are not the preoccupations of high 
 position, the preoccupations of ambition, of 
 literature, of money-getting and of money- 
 spending, of conceit, of sensual habits, and even 
 of idleness, at least as unfriendly to the hearty 
 acceptance of the Christian revelation, as are 
 the preoccupations of scientific pursuits ? ’ 1 
 
 1 Occasional Thoughts of an A stronomer on Nature and Reve¬ 
 lation, pp. 10 f. 
 
132 Personal We 
 
 The same thing, in effect, was said in a no 
 less striking way by the late Mr. R. H. Hutton, 
 the editor of the Spectator. He was deploring 
 4 the meagre amount of life which remains to be 
 thrown into the search for spiritual truth after 
 all the other excitements of life have been pro¬ 
 vided for.’ 4 There is now,’ he insisted, 4 no 
 adequate economy of human strength for the 
 higher objects of life, too much a great deal 
 being lavished on its petty interests. 1 4 If men 
 come to Christ with exhausted natures they will 
 never know what there is in Kim. . . . No doubt 
 Christianity offers a new life of its own, and an 
 inexhaustible spring of that life; but it offers it 
 only to those who can give a life for a life, who 
 can give up the whole mind and heart that a new 
 mind and a new heart may be substituted for 
 them. 1 4 A generation, of which the most im¬ 
 pressive characteristic is its spiritual fatigue, will 
 never be truly Christian till it can husband its 
 energy better, and consent to forego many petty 
 interests that it may not forego the religion of 
 the Cross. 11 
 
 1 See the article reprinted in Aspects of Religious and 
 Scientific Thought , pp. 21 f. 
 
133 
 
 Over- Occupation 
 
 These testimonies are of great value, coming as 
 they do from men of our own time who have had 
 unusual opportunities of forming a judgment as 
 to the temper of their age. But we may go back 
 to much earlier and higher authority, and find 
 the same moral enforced by One who spoke for 
 human nature in every age. 
 
 It is more than likely that already there has 
 flashed upon our memories the recollection of our 
 Lord’s first parable of the Sower and the Seed. 
 Of all the parables none is more calculated to 
 arrest the attention of those who to-day are seek¬ 
 ing guidance as to the best means of making 
 progress in spiritual life. None certainly is more 
 surprisingly in line with the direction taken by 
 our latest thinking, or more closely in touch 
 with our needs and our difficulties. 
 
 Religion, as it is set forth in this parable, is a 
 strangely simple thing. Its beginnings are from 
 God. Good influences, impressions, suggestions, 
 inspirations, come to us—as the terms in which 
 we describe them imply—from a source outside 
 and above ourselves. They are as seeds scattered 
 upon the soil of our nature. If we may venture 
 upon a simple retranslation, which would bring 
 the old language almost startlingly into accord 
 
134 Personal Life 
 
 with our most recent modes of thought and ex¬ 
 pression, we might say that they are germs with 
 which the spiritual atmosphere about us is 
 charged. 
 
 But the fact that they come to us is only half 
 the truth. If it is certain that ‘ we do not make 
 our thoughts,’ it is equally certain that 6 they 
 grow in us.’ They come to us, and they become 
 part of us—conditioned by their association with 
 us, strengthening with our strength and develop¬ 
 ing with our development. They grow in us 
 into convictions, into actions, into habits, into 
 character, into destiny. Thus it is that the seed 
 is 4 the word of the kingdom,’ carrying with it 
 the potentiality and the promise of all that is 
 highest in human life, both here and hereafter. 
 
 This, which is the general teaching of the 
 parable, is the preparation for the particular 
 lessons which follow. The religious life has its 
 beginnings from God. Its progress is largely 
 dependent upon ourselves. There are accord¬ 
 ingly conditions which must be fulfilled by us, 
 in proportion to the fulfilment of which will be 
 the growth unto perfection. These conditions, 
 as we have them stated, are of the most elemen¬ 
 tary kind. 
 
135 
 
 Over- Occupation 
 
 In the first place, the seed must get in; it 
 must meet with a welcome, and be permitted to 
 win an entrance into mind and heart. In the 
 next place, it must get down; it must be laid 
 hold of by the deeper parts of the nature, until 
 it has penetrated the conscience and taken its 
 place among the principles which shape the 
 thoughts and guide the will. Lastly, it must 
 get room. Space must be secured for it, so that 
 it shall not be overshadowed and starved by 
 any rival growths. The other conditions might 
 be complied with, and yet the results be sadly 
 disappointing, if this final condition were to 
 remain unfulfilled. 
 
 It is the insistence upon this final condition 
 that brings us face to face with the danger 
 
 4 
 
 against which we have such special need to be 
 on our watch to-day. Here, from the lips of our 
 Lord Himself, is the very warning which the 
 writers whom we have previously quoted urged 
 us to consider. How much do we not owe to 
 the form in which His lesson is conveyed ? How 
 easy it is to see the force of truth thus luminously 
 illustrated. The facts are there all obvious 
 before our eyes. The soil of our being can 
 
136 Personal Life 
 
 S upply the needed sustenance to but a limited 
 number of growths. The attempt to include 
 more than can be healthily maintained must 
 prove injurious to them all ; and, in the stress 
 of the competition, the most delicate and sensitive 
 of the seedlings will naturally fare the worst. 
 
 How plain then is our duty when we are 
 called upon to advise. When persons come to 
 us and tell us, as they continually do, that their 
 faith and hope have become weakened and dim, 
 and that their hold upon the unseen is feeble and 
 faltering; when they complain that it is only 
 with the greatest difficulty that they can give 
 their attention for any length of time to spiritual 
 things, while all other interests seem to have 
 more power to occupy their thoughts and enlist 
 their sympathies, it ought not to be difficult for 
 us to see what course we should follow. 
 
 In a large majority of such cases the right 
 prescription is a simple one. We have but to 
 say: 6 Your life is too crowded, you have 
 allowed too many interests to enter in and 
 absorb your vital strength; too many plants 
 are struggling for existence in the garden of 
 your nature. It is simply another case of “no 
 room to live .’ 1 You will have to thin out. You 
 
137 
 
 Over - Occupation 
 
 must see to it that the good seed gets its proper 
 chance. Reduce the number of excitements and 
 engrossments, make more free spaces for stillness 
 and quiet thought, and see if you do not soon 
 begin to feel the gain in the strengthening of 
 what is best in your life . 1 
 
 But here, as always, before we can hope to get 
 our counsel attended to, we must have gained 
 the wisdom and the courage to apply it to our¬ 
 selves. We may not suppose that we need it 
 less than others. It is quite likely that we need 
 it more; and this for the very reason that the 
 conflicting interests in our case are not so readily 
 to be distinguished according to their characters, 
 whether secular or religious. We have indeed 
 temptations to yield to distractions which would 
 draw us away from higher tasks into activities 
 which lie outside our proper sphere. Of these 
 we have spoken in the previous chapter. In 
 regard to these, as has been admitted, the line 
 is not to be easily drawn ; but the difficulty of 
 discrimination becomes immensely increased when 
 the selection of interests and occupations has to 
 be attempted, not without, but within the depart¬ 
 ments for which we are directly responsible. 
 
138 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 How familiar the problem sounds as we begin 
 to describe it 1 Work, as ever, has resulted in 
 more work. The demands upon us have gone 
 on increasing. Engagements thicken. There 
 are people to be visited, services to be taken, 
 sermons and addresses to be prepared, meetings 
 to be attended, appeals to be issued, letters to 
 be answered. And there is i no time, 1 as we say, 
 for careful study, for devotional reading, for the 
 daily offices, or for patient intercession. A general 
 restlessness has entered the life, we find it increas¬ 
 ingly difficult to be still; and with it all the growth 
 of the spirit is retarded. Though many things 
 are done, we are painfully aware that but little is 
 really accomplished. 
 
 No doubt a certain amount of ordering and 
 regulating would in many instances do much to 
 remedy the evil. Even to write down on a slip 
 of paper at the beginning of the day an outline 
 of the work to be attempted in it, might be 
 of considerable service in securing reasonable 
 arrangement and consequent economy of strength, 
 not to speak of the relief from the strain of 
 a perpetual uncertainty as to what should be 
 undertaken next. 
 
 But with some of us a treatment of a more 
 
139 
 
 Over - Occupation 
 
 drastic sort is required. Before regulation can 
 usefully begin there must be a change which is 
 tantamount to revolution. We must determine 
 that, whatever happens, it shall be 4 First things 
 first.’ The highest interests must have the 
 foremost place in our lives. The spirit must be 
 secured its close times for uninterrupted com¬ 
 muning with the sources of its strength. The 
 hour of meditation must be protected as men 
 were wont to guard the well in the fortress. 
 The mind must be braced and refreshed by in¬ 
 tercourse with the best thought of the present 
 and the past. And for the rest, the watchword 
 must be multum non multa. We must simply 
 decline, with whatever sorrow, to undertake more 
 things than we can hope to do well. 
 
 4 Mastery,’ said Lord Acton, in his inaugural 
 lecture at Cambridge, ‘is acquired by resolved 
 limitation.’ 
 
 Dr Liddon used to tell how, at the outset of 
 his ministerial career, when, as he put it, he 4 was 
 in danger of becoming a popular preacher,’ he 
 had received from Dr Pusey a piece of advice 
 which had been to him of the utmost value. It 
 was this : 4 Limit your work.’ 
 
 It may sound paradoxical to say, Limit your 
 
140 Personal Life 
 
 work, that you may extend your influence; but 
 the principle involved is a true one. It is quality 
 and not quantity that tells. The work done by 
 the worker in a healthful condition of mind and 
 spirit, calmed and sustained by the consciousness 
 of the Divine approval and guidance, which in¬ 
 evitably disappears in an atmosphere of hurry 
 and bustle, is the work that is really fruitful of 
 results that remain. 
 
 Let it not be imagined that such limitation of 
 work will open the door to idleness. It would be 
 more true to say that it is the most certain way 
 of deliverance from it. Possibly, if the truth 
 were known, it would be seen that much of the 
 activity of to-day is in reality the effect of indo¬ 
 lence. The line of least resistance is that which 
 we are naturally disposed to take. We find it 
 much easier to employ our bodily powers than 
 to exert our intellectual faculties; and most of 
 all do we shrink from the effort involved in the 
 use of our souls. How many of us who are 
 perpetually saying that we have 4 no time’ to 
 think, or to pray, would be more likely to do 
 either if we were set down in the depths of the 
 country ? Verily there is an indolence which 
 
141 
 
 Over - Occupation 
 
 disguises itself from itself under the cloak of 
 untiring activity. 
 
 Nor need we be greatly afraid lest such a 
 limitation of work—perhaps we should rather 
 say of works—should prove to be prejudicial to 
 our parishes. Many a parish would be greatly 
 the gainer if its clergy were less ready, and 
 indeed eager, to do everything themselves. 
 
 We are continually being told of the slowness 
 with which lay-help is developed amongst us; 
 and, as often as not, in the same breath it is 
 said that the clergy are having the life crushed 
 out of them by persistent overwork. The fault 
 may in a measure be that of the laity, but must 
 we not acknowledge that in a large number of 
 instances it has been the clergy themselves who 
 have been chiefly to blame ? 
 
 How many a time it would have been good if 
 some one could have gone to the over-occupied 
 parish priest, who was on his feet rushing hither 
 and thither from morning to night, and have 
 said: 4 Brother, you forget that there is such a 
 thing as 44 the sacred principle of delegation.” 
 It is sometimes true to say, If you want a thing 
 well done, don't do it yourself! It m^y cost you 
 not a little to train some one else to do it, and 
 
142 Personal Life 
 
 there is a certain amount of distress in seeing 
 the thing done not exactly as you would have 
 done it: but by giving the work to another you 
 would summon fresh powers into action, powers 
 which in all probability would continue to operate 
 long after you are gone. If you go on as you 
 are going, you will be inflicting a serious wrong 
 upon others, as well as an injury upon yourself.’ 
 
 Who does not know of cases where the weak 
 health of a vicar has actually proved to have 
 been a blessing in disguise ? The people have 
 rallied to help him by undertaking a score of 
 things which, had he been more robust, he would 
 probably have thought it easiest to do for him¬ 
 self. The result has been that new interests 
 have entered their lives, and given a new direc¬ 
 tion to their thoughts and energies ; while he has 
 become, far more effectively than might other¬ 
 wise have been possible, the head and the heart 
 of the parochial organisation. 
 
 Would indeed that we had all of us more 
 courage to believe that whatever makes a clergy¬ 
 man a more vitally powerful man, capable of 
 being and doing his very best, must ultimately 
 tend to the highest well-being of his parish. If 
 
143 
 
 Over- Occupation 
 
 we really believed this, we should be more alive 
 than we are to the danger of being much occupied 
 in 4 many things ’; and should realise that no 
 array of statistics to be tabulated in a year¬ 
 book can compensate for the lack of the 4 one 
 thing needful ’—the growth and development of 
 personal spiritual life. 
 
Note 
 
 Since writing the above I have met with a 
 valuable corroboration of what I have ventured 
 to say by the late Sir J. R. Seeley. 
 
 4 Not only in the Church,’ he maintained, 4 but 
 among the teaching class at the Universities and 
 in schools, as idleness was the besetting sin of the 
 last age, industry is the besetting sin of the pre¬ 
 sent ; or, more correctly, the idleness has been 
 succeeded by a merely external and superficial 
 industry. Our conversion seems to have begun 
 not at the heart but at the extremities. The 
 hands and feet have thrown off their listlessness 
 and move to and fro indefatigably; the tongue, 
 throat, and lungs tax themselves prodigiously; 
 but the change will be more in form than in 
 substance till it penetrates to the brain and will. 
 In all the professions a man’s first duty now is to 
 renounce the ambition of becoming distinguished 
 for activity; the temptation chiefly to be avoided 
 is that of undertaking more than he can do in 
 first-rate style. 
 
 4 The quality of work must be improved, and 
 for that end, if necessary, the quantity reduced. 
 A higher and calmer sort of activity must be ar¬ 
 rived at—economy in energy, expenditure without 
 waste, zeal without haste .’—Lectures and Essays , 
 4 The Church as a Teacher of Morality,’ pp. 282 f. 
 
 144 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DEPRESSION 
 
 Great are the blessings, and great is the power 
 of cheerfulness. 4 Give me the man, 1 wrote 
 Carlyle, 4 who sings at his work. 1 
 
 If it be the case, and none of us would be 
 likely to question it, that a happy contentment 
 adds charm and value to all other sorts of labour, 
 such a disposition is specially to be desired in the 
 case of those who are appointed to minister in 
 holy things. If it be true, as Faber has declared, 
 that 4 melancholy in a creature is a kind of 
 injurious reflection upon the Creator,’ how pre¬ 
 judicial must habitual sadness be on the part 
 of men whose mission it is to witness for God 
 and to win others to serve Him ? Could 
 anything be more calculated to counteract the 
 effect of their message than an impression that 
 they are themselves disappointed, or even em¬ 
 bittered, by their experiences of life ? They of 
 all men should, in the well-known phrase of the 
 
 145 „ 
 
146 Personal Life 
 
 good Bishop Hackett, 4 serve God and be 
 cheerful.' 
 
 So much we should all of us find it easy to 
 say; yet, at the same time, we might rightly feel 
 that the statement of the case would scarcely 
 be complete if left to stand in this unqualified 
 shape. There is need to distinguish, and to 
 define our meaning more carefully, for while we 
 may be ready enough to allow that a cheerful 
 bearing is, as a rule, most attractive, and of the 
 greatest assistance in commending a Gospel of 
 glad tidings, there are other aspects of the matter 
 which ought not to be ignored. We may assent 
 to the general proposition that it is desirable to 
 avoid the feeling and appearance of sadness as 
 we go about our work, and yet we may have 
 considerable doubt as to how far it is always 
 possible to do this; and further still, as to 
 whether it can, under all circumstances, be right 
 to attempt it. 
 
 Was there not truth, as well as cleverness, in 
 the reply of the bishop who had been posed by 
 a notorious sceptic with the question, 4 Why is 
 it that all the Christians that I meet are so 
 melancholy P ’ Said the bishop, 4 The sight of 
 
Depression 147 
 
 you, Mr. -, would make any Christian 
 
 melancholy.’ 
 
 Had not the author of the once popular 
 Proverbial Philosophy some reason on his side 
 when he wrote, 4 No man can look on the world, 
 and be both happy and good 1 ? Is there not a 
 happiness which is largely the result of shallow¬ 
 ness ? 
 
 Dare we proceed on the assumption that to a 
 Christian believer this life of ours presents no 
 difficulties of the graver sort ? Would it not, 
 on the contrary, be more true to maintain that 
 to a Christian the disorders and enigmas of the 
 world are perplexing and embarrassing just in 
 proportion as his heart is tender, and his zeal for 
 the Divine honour is great ? 
 
 Is it not the fact that the idealist—be he 
 artist, or poet, or prophet—-by the very con¬ 
 stitution of his nature, is more liable to alterna¬ 
 tions and revulsions of feeling than are others 
 whose gifts are of a different order ? If he has 
 his hill-top moments of vision, he has also his 
 descents into the shadows. He is haunted by 
 conceptions of beauty, or goodness, or truth, 
 which he imperfectly apprehends, and yet more 
 imperfectly expresses; and the sense of his failure 
 
148 Personal Life 
 
 brings with it often the very keenest distress. 
 But is it not a noble pain P Is there not a 
 blessedness which belongs to those who 6 mourn,' 
 and to those who experience the 4 hunger and 
 thirst 1 of the spirit ? 
 
 Was it not the 4 Man of Sorrows’ who went 
 about doing good as none other ever did ? And 
 are we not constantly saying that suffering is that 
 which equips and qualifies for the most difficult 
 tasks; that it is only through suffering that we 
 can hope to gain the delicacy of sympathy which 
 is essential to those who are to minister to the 
 wounded of heart and of soul ? 
 
 Clearly then, as we said, there is need to 
 distinguish. We may not decide off hand that 
 all sadness is a wrong or an unprofitable sadness. 
 There is a Christian distress at the sight of the 
 world as it is; a sorrow which is the evidence not 
 of death in the soul, but of life. Such a distress, 
 we may even make bold to affirm, so far from 
 repelling those who witness it, has in it a strange 
 power to arrest men’s attention, and to win them 
 to seriousness of thought and endeavour. 
 
 We must be careful not to cast any slight 
 upon the noble and unselfish sorrow which has 
 such good reasons to give for itself, and which 
 
149 
 
 Depression 
 
 has seldom been entirely absent from the lives of 
 the greatest thinkers and workers. Such sorrow 
 has in it nothing of the bitterness of despair; 
 indeed, not the least wonderful thing about it 
 is, that it is wont to be accompanied by a deep 
 and mysterious joy. 
 
 It is not then of this sorrow that we are to 
 think as we proceed to consider the last of the 
 dangers which we shall attempt to describe. 
 There is a sadness of very different origin and 
 character, which has no such purifying or arrest¬ 
 ing power. It arises not from the presence, but 
 from the absence of ideals. It owes nothing of 
 its poignancy to solicitude for the Divine honour. 
 It contributes nothing that can be of value to 
 the service of man. Such is the sadness which is 
 properly described as Depression. 
 
 The symptoms of it are unhappily too familiar 
 to us all. It shews itself in moodiness and indis¬ 
 position for effort, in a morbid self-consciousness 
 and weary dissatisfaction with persons and cir¬ 
 cumstances. 6 Heaviness, gloom, coldness, sullen¬ 
 ness, distaste and desultory sloth in work and 
 prayer, joylessness, and thanklessness—do we not 
 know something of the threatenings, at least, of a 
 
150 Personal Life 
 
 mood in which these meet ? The mood of days 
 . . . when, as one has said, “ everything that 
 everybody does seems inopportune and out of 
 good taste ”; days when the things that are true 
 and honest, just and pure, lovely and of good 
 report, seem to have lost all loveliness and glow 
 and charm of hue, and look as dismal as a flat 
 country in the drizzling mist of an east wind; 
 days when we might be cynical if we had a little 
 more energy in us; when all enthusiasm and 
 confidence of hope, all sense of a Divine impulse, 
 flags out of our work; when the schemes which 
 we have begun look stale and poor and unattrac¬ 
 tive as the scenery of an empty stage by daylight; 
 days when there is nothing that we like to do— 
 when without anything to complain of, nothing 
 stirs so readily in us as complaint. 11 
 
 Some of us are, of course, more disposed by 
 temperament to fall into depression than others, 
 but there can be few of us who have not cause to 
 dread the miseries of it. We can scarcely take 
 too serious a view of the danger, and of our 
 responsibility in regard to it. 
 
 What we may hope to be able to say about 
 precautions and remedies will probably seem, 
 1 Bishop Paget, The Spirit of Discipline, pp. 59 f. 
 
151 
 
 Depression 
 
 when it is written down, to be bald and in¬ 
 adequate ; but nevertheless it will be worth while 
 to gather together some of the counsels and sug¬ 
 gestions which have been offered from time to 
 time, and which we should probably think it only 
 natural to offer, if the advice were intended for 
 others rather than for ourselves. 
 
 To begin, then, with ordinary and elementary 
 considerations that bear upon the subject. A 
 great deal depends simply upon bodily health. 
 We who labour with our brains have more need 
 to concern ourselves about principles and rules 
 of diet than those have who work with their 
 hands. It may make a great difference, too, 
 whether the study in which we do our thinking is 
 a room that gets a fair share of the sunshine. 
 Then it must be remembered that the clergy 
 have no more right than others to imagine that 
 they can go on ignoring that necessity of our nature 
 which underlies the appointment of one day’s rest 
 in seven, and expect to escape with impunity. It 
 is extremely difficult to secure the weekly break, 
 and we shall only succeed in doing it if we regard 
 the duty as one which we owe to those for whom 
 we work as much as to ourselves. 
 
152 Personal Life 
 
 Passing to intellectual conditions, we cannot 
 shut our eyes to the fact that the mind has its 
 needs no less than the body. It also demands 
 recreation and reinvigoration. With some of us 
 the relief and renewal are most successfully sought 
 in one way, with some in another. Congenial 
 social intercourse, a good novel, or it may be a 
 good play, afford what is evidently the best 
 means of healthful unbending to many; while 
 those who are differently constituted, are equally 
 the better for the tonic effect of a really stiff* 
 book on some subject the furthest removed from 
 any which ordinarily occupies their thoughts. 
 
 For all of us it would seem to be essential that 
 we should from time to time withdraw from our 
 work for the sake of our work. We note how the 
 artist at intervals steps back from his canvas, that 
 he may gain a broader and juster impression of 
 what he is about. Even so it is of the greatest 
 importance that the parish priest should occasion¬ 
 ally step back from his task and its immediate 
 surroundings. Seen from the distance things 
 stand out in truer proportions. Troubles and 
 difficulties, for instance, which close at hand fill 
 the entire horizon, wear a quite altered aspect 
 if looked at from an outside standpoint from 
 
153 
 
 Depression 
 
 which it is possible to measure their real signifi¬ 
 cance, or insignificance, in relation to the work as 
 a whole. When, moreover, the withdrawal has 
 been combined with something of the nature of a 
 Retreat, in which the worker not only steps back 
 but rises up and attains to a fresh vision of what 
 he and his fellows are doing from the point of 
 view of the Master Artist under whom he and 
 they are engaged, how delightful the refresh¬ 
 ment may be; and with what added insight and 
 courage and patience he may go down from the 
 mount to toil on at the bit of the great design 
 with which he has been entrusted. 
 
 Questions of money have not a little to do with 
 freedom of mind. It may seem commonplace to 
 insist upon the necessity of keeping accounts, and 
 of avoiding debt, and of living within the limits 
 of income whatever the income may be; yet 
 failure in these duties must mean misery, and 
 may mean disaster. No men have more cause 
 than the clergy to believe in the truth of the pro¬ 
 mise that to those who c seek first the kingdom ’ 
 all things necessary for life and for godliness shall 
 ‘ be added 1 ; but neither exegesis nor experience 
 affords any grounds for supposing that the fulfil¬ 
 ment of that promise is to be expected where, 
 
154 
 
 Personal Life 
 
 through carelessness, in the ordinary acceptation 
 of the word, the common precautions of foresight 
 and prudence have been neglected. 1 
 
 It is well that we should have it impressed upon 
 us that the disciplined life is the healthy life. 
 Great is the peace of those who have trained 
 themselves into the love of order and law. Much 
 of the feeling of weakness and unsatisfactoriness, 
 which is the torment of many, is to be traced to 
 nothing else than a want of method and of the 
 most ordinary self-control. 
 
 Such are some of the observations which first 
 suggest themselves in connection with this subject 
 of depression. We enter upon much less sure 
 ground when we proceed to deal with the matter 
 not so much as a physical failing, or an intel¬ 
 lectual weakness, but as a spiritual temptation. 
 
 There can be no question at all that it is to be 
 so regarded and treated. As the danger of secu¬ 
 larisation may be said to have its ultimate source 
 
 1 Speaking of the bearing of Christ’s instructions to the 
 disciples upon those who are now called to the Christian 
 ministry, Professor Harnack says :—‘ At the very least, it 
 ought to be a strict principle with them to concern them¬ 
 selves with property and worldly goods only so far as will 
 prevent them being a burden to others, and beyond that to 
 renounce them .’—What in Christianity ? p. 96. 
 
Depression 155 
 
 in the power of the World to lower to its own 
 levels the standards and aspirations of the re¬ 
 ligious life; and as the danger of over-occupation 
 can be traced to the desire of the Flesh to sub¬ 
 stitute its own activities for those of the spirit: 
 so, on a final analysis, we are driven to the con¬ 
 clusion that the danger of depression derives its 
 chief terrors for us from the fact that it is a most 
 fatally successful snare of the Devil. 
 
 There is One from whom we draw our thoughts 
 of hope: even so there is one principal author of 
 discouragement and despair. Many and subtle 
 are the devices by which he seeks to entice us 
 from the light, that he may fill our souls with 
 gloom. If we are to escape them we must stand 
 continually on our guard against them. 
 
 Especially are we bound to keep watch ovei 
 our thoughts and desires. If we are to be pre¬ 
 served from much misery, we must watch our 
 ambitions. The loftier we pitch these the better. 
 They can work us nothing but good when they 
 rise to the longing that we may attain to our 
 best, and be allowed to do something here and 
 hereafter to forward the great purposes of God. 
 They tend to be mischievous so soon as they 
 become bound up with the craving for immediate 
 
156 Personal Life 
 
 recognition and the desire for a merely personal 
 reward. That way lies the possibility of all 
 manner of disappointment and vexation. 
 
 Closely allied to the pride of a false ambition 
 is the pride of a wrong dependence upon our own 
 powers. It has been truly said, and we shall do 
 well to ponder the remark, that 6 Despondency is 
 self-confidence which has failed." 
 
 Then, too, we must jealously guard our satis¬ 
 factions. Our eyes must be ever unto the hills 
 from whence cometh our strength. The heart 
 that tries to sustain itself upon human commen¬ 
 dation will discover with bitterness that the de¬ 
 mand will ever increase, while at the same time 
 the sense of emptiness will be more and more pain¬ 
 fully felt. ‘ Whosoever drinketh of this water 
 shall thirst again." If we are wise, we shall taste 
 the cup of human praise with something of fear 
 and trembling. There is no more certain cause 
 of depression than the accepting of lower satis¬ 
 factions. The higher may seem hard to reach, 
 and may at first have less power to stir and in¬ 
 spire the heart, but the effect of them grows with 
 experience, and their glow is the glow of health 
 and not the flush of excitement. 4 At Thy right 
 hand there are pleasures for evermore." 
 
157 
 
 Depression 
 
 Again, if we are to escape unnecessary distress, 
 we shall keep most diligent watch upon our criti¬ 
 cisms. We little realise how potent an enemy to 
 peace is the habit of judging our brethren. Criti¬ 
 cisms, like curses, 4 come home to roost.’ The 
 critical spirit inevitably grows to be morbidly 
 self-conscious and sensitive. So certain is it that, 
 4 With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured 
 to you again.’ 
 
 For the rest there is the supreme remedy of 
 humble faith in God and patient acceptance of 
 His appointment. For the believer in the Cross 
 of Christ difficulties may and do remain in the 
 world as he sees it. He cannot presume to 
 suppose that he possesses the final clue to the 
 problem of Infinite Wisdom. He works on in 
 the assurance that what he knows not now he 
 will know hereafter. If God has not fully shewn 
 him His mind, He has done what is better—He 
 has shewn him His heart; for 4 There is no sacri¬ 
 fice that God has not made for man ’! To one 
 who believes this difficulties may remain, but 
 doubt has gone for ever. 
 
 We can trust Him wholly with His world. We 
 can trust Him with ourselves. We are sure that 
 
158 Personal Life 
 
 He cares far more to make the best of us, and to 
 do the most through us, than we have ever cared 
 ourselves. He is ever trying to make us under¬ 
 stand that He yearns to be to us more than aught 
 in the universe besides. That He really wants 
 us, and needs us, is the wonder and strength of 
 our life. 
 
 To those with whom these are the chief cer¬ 
 tainties of existence there may indeed come hours 
 of darkness and mysterious trial, assaults of the 
 evil one, and chastisements for sins that are past: 
 but behind all a light is shining from before 
 which, sooner or later, the clouds must break and 
 the shadows must flee away. 
 
Note 
 
 No modern treatment of the subject of ministerial 
 depression is more full of pathos and suggestive¬ 
 ness than that which is to be found in a sermon 
 by F. W. Robertson upon the despondency of 
 Elijah ( Sermons, ii. pp. 73 f.). Every word 
 comes pulsing from the inmost heart of the 
 speaker. A few sentences may give an impression 
 of its general purport, but it should be carefully 
 studied as a whole. 
 
 4 We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Of 
 that constitution, which in our ignorance we call 
 union of soul and body, we know little respecting 
 what is cause and what is effect. We would fain 
 believe that the mind has power over the body, 
 but it is just as true that the body rules the 
 mind. Causes apparently the most trivial: a 
 heated room—want of exercise—a sunless day— 
 a northern aspect—will make all the difference 
 between happiness and unhappiness, between faith 
 and doubt, between courage and indecision.’ . . . 
 
 4 What greater minds like Elijah’s have felt in¬ 
 tensely, all we have felt in our own degree. Not 
 one of us but what has felt his heart aching for 
 
 159 
 
160 
 
 Note 
 
 want of sympathy. We have had our lonely 
 hours, our days of disappointment, and our 
 moments of hopelessness—times when our highest 
 feelings have been misunderstood, and our purest 
 met with ridicule. Days when our heavy secret 
 was lying unshared, like ice upon the heart. And 
 then the spirit gives way : we have wished that 
 all were over—that we could lie down tired, and 
 rest like the children, from life—that the hour 
 was come when we could put down the extin¬ 
 guisher on the lamp, and feel the last grand rush 
 of darkness on the spirit.' 1 
 
 After tracing with extraordinary insight the 
 Divine treatment of Elijah’s case by the adminis¬ 
 tration of 4 food, rest, and exercise,’ 4 by the heal¬ 
 ing influences of Nature,’ by 4 work to be done,’ 
 and by 4 the assurance of victory,’ the preacher 
 concludes :— 
 
 4 Remember the power of indirect influences : 
 those which distil from a life, not from a sudden, 
 brilliant effort. The former never fail: the latter 
 often. There is good done of which we can never 
 predicate the when or where. . . . Get below 
 appearances, below glitter and show. Plant your 
 foot upon reality. Not in the jubilee of the 
 myriads on Carmel, but in the humble silence of 
 the hearts of the seven thousand, lay the proof 
 that Elijah had not lived in vain.’ 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 No attempt has been made in these pages to 
 disguise the fact that the life of the clergy is 
 a difficult one. 4 Difficulty,’ as we saw, is the 
 central watchword of the three in the Exhorta¬ 
 tion of the Ordinal. The day has certainly gone, 
 if ever there was such a day, when men might 
 persuade themselves that by entering into Holy 
 Orders they were securing an agreeable and not 
 very arduous career. From the clergy more 
 than from any other workers is expected self- 
 sacrifice in devotion to their work. None of us 
 would complain that this is so. We are grateful 
 for the support which we receive when those about 
 us demand from us that we should be our best. 
 We feel that our own standards ought to be 
 even higher than theirs for us. 
 
 After all, life in this world is only a choice of 
 difficulties. If we avoid them in one direction it 
 is but to meet them in another. It will cost us 
 much to be true to our vocation, but the penalty 
 
 161 T 
 
162 Postscript 
 
 will be greater if we are not. It is 6 hard to be 
 a Christian,’ but it is harder not to be ! When 
 those who have once seen the vision and 4 tasted 
 the heavenly gift ’ draw back, they invite experi¬ 
 ences compared with which the trials of the saint 
 are light and sweet. The really 4 hard ’ thing is 
 to 4 kick against the pricks.’ 4 The way of trans¬ 
 gressors is hard.’ 
 
 We dare not then be daunted by the difficulties 
 before us. There is One who knows them all, and 
 who is ready to meet them with us. 4 Faithful is 
 He that calleth, who also will do it.’ What is 
 wanted on our part is patience and hope. We 
 must 4 do the next thing,’ set our foot on the 
 next round of the ladder, however elementary or 
 unattractive the duty may seem. We must re¬ 
 member, as we have said already, that every true 
 effort is sure to be repaid. We must be willing 
 to learn by our failures. Perhaps most of all, we 
 must be resolute in putting from us the ignoble 
 and cowardly suggestion, 4 If only I might begin 
 somewhere else, and make a new start under fresh 
 conditions, I could be this or the other.’ Rather 
 let us thank God, if we have done badly where 
 we are, that He still leaves us the opportunity 
 
Postscript 163 
 
 of making a reparation before the eyes of those 
 who have been wronged by our negligence. 
 
 We can always begin again, if we are humble 
 and put our confidence in God. It will not be 
 easy, but it is possible. We may not ask for 
 more. 
 
 THE END 
 
 .Vrinted by Ballantyne, Hanson &= Co. 
 Edinburgh <5^ London 
 
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8 
 
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 9 
 
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 11 
 
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12 
 
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IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 13 
 
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 A SELECTION OF WORKS 
 
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IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 15 
 
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i6 
 
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IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
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IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 19 
 
 Oxford (The) Library of Practical Theology .—continued. 
 
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20 
 
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22 
 
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 23 
 
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