PRINCETON, N. J. . 
 
 BX 5133 .H6 05 
 Holland, Henry Scott, 1847- 
 1918 . 
 
 On behalf of belief 
 
 Number 
 
a 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Crown Svo. Js. 6d. 
 
 CREED AND CHARACTER 
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 The Story of an Apostle's Faith — The Rock, The Secret, The Fellow- 
 ship, The Witness, The Resources, The Mind, The Ministry, 
 of the Church — The Solidarity of Salvation — The Freedom of 
 Salvation — The Gift of Grace — The Law of Forgiveness — The 
 Coming of the Spirit— The Beauty of Holiness The Energy of 
 Unselfishness — The Fruit of the Spirit — Thanksgiving — The 
 Activity of Service — Character and Circumstance. 
 
 Crown Svo. Js. 6d. 
 
 LOGIC AND LIFE 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Logic and Life— The Venture of Reason — The Spirit and its Inter- 
 pretat on — The Cost of Moral Movement — Christ the Justifica- 
 tion of a Suffering World — The Sacrifice of Innocence — The 
 Sacrifice of the Fallen — The Sacrifice of the Man — The Sacri- 
 fice of the Redeemed — The Spiritual Eye — The Breaking of 
 Dreams — Sheep and Shephert — Love the Law of Life— The 
 Messing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost— The Meekness of God— The Powers that be— The 
 Sword of St. Michael — The Kingdom of Righteousness — The 
 Pruning of the Vine — The Sleep and the Waking. 
 
 Small Svo. 2s. 
 
 GOOD FRIDAY 
 
 Being Addresses on the Seven Last Words, delivered at 
 St. Paul's Cathedral, on Good Friday, 1884. 
 
 Crown Svo. 3.J. 
 
 CHRIST OR ECCLESIASTES 
 
 Sermons preached in St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 RIV1NGTONS: LONDON. 
 
ON BEHALF OF BELIEF 
 
ON BEHALF OF BELIEF 
 
 SERMONS 
 
 PREACHED IN S. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 
 
 KY THE REV. 
 
 H. S. HOLLAND, M.A. 
 
 Canon and Precentor of S. Paul's 
 " 0 yet consider it again " 
 
 RIVINGTONS 
 WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON 
 
 MDCCCI.XXXIX 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/onbehalfofbeliefOOholl 
 
TO 
 
 THE VERY REVEREND 
 
 RICHARD W. CHURCH, 
 
 DEAN OF S. PAUL'S, 
 WHOSE NAME HAS EVER BEEN A SUCCOUR AND A JOY: 
 AND WHOM, NOW, IT IS MY HIGH AND HAPPY PRIVILEGE 
 TO BE PERMITTED 
 TO KNOW, TO SERVE, AND TO LOVE. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The Apostles' Creed is mainly a plain state- 
 ment of matters of fact ; yet, as a formula of 
 belief, it appeals, of course, not to the critical 
 and calculative understanding which is used 
 in the discussion or the examination of 
 historical evidence, but to the spiritua and 
 apprehensive faculties, which lay hold of 
 eternal verities. It does so because the 
 belief which it asks for is not the mere belief 
 that the facts occurred. Such a belief would 
 be quite possible, without anything that could 
 be called " faith." What it asks for, as 
 "faith," is the committal of the self to these 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 facts as to spiritual acts, in which the eternal 
 Love and Will of God have entered upon the 
 scene of our human story, and have taken 
 definite action therein. To these acts God 
 stands committed. And to these acts He 
 asks man to commit himself — to commit 
 himself in his entire being, so that he 
 may pass under their power and pressure, 
 and accept all their consequences, and yield 
 himself to that which God, in them, sets 
 moving. So surrendering himself, he brings 
 to bear upon himself the full force of those 
 energies which the Eternal Love has evoked 
 on his behalf. 
 
 This self-surrender to the power of the 
 Divine action is "faith," and it is, therefore, 
 an affair of the will, of love, of the spirit of 
 dedication. No examination of historical 
 evidence can produce it, or justify it, or 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 explain it. All such discussion is below the 
 mark ; it cannot touch the secret springs ; it 
 cannot reach home to the vital matter. 
 
 This is why, in things of faith, a weariness, 
 an insufficiency, belongs to all apologetic 
 handling of historical evidence. 
 
 And, indeed, the believer cannot enter on 
 such a discussion without a sincere and pro- 
 found sense of apology for having to force 
 into the foreground matter so inadequate. 
 Yet his spiritual surrender of himself involves 
 the facts being there : his faith rests abso- 
 lutely on the assumption that God's Love has, 
 as a fact, taken this action on his behalf. 
 And, if this assumption is questioned, he is 
 obliged to see to its justification. 
 
 It is to help towards this justification that 
 I have ventured to print the first four sermons 
 in this little book. They may possibly suggest 
 
Xll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 to some the coherence of the entire Creed, 
 which knits its ideal and its historical ele- 
 ments together into a unity so close and 
 compact that it is impossible to effect a 
 severance — impossible to separate, by any 
 analysis, kernel from husk, where each element 
 is kernel and husk by turns. 
 
 To these four sermons are added four 
 others, which attempt to complete the pleas, 
 already begun in another book, for that 
 necessary and vital correspondence between 
 faith and the Church, which is universally 
 assumed in the apostolical writings. 
 
 The last four sermons endeavour to justify 
 and interpret that loyalty to natural facts, 
 which, far from being traversed, is rather 
 sanctioned and confirmed by belief in a Risen 
 Master, and in His Redemptive Church. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Concerning the Resurrection. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Criticism and the Resurrection i 
 
 " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain." — 
 i Cor. xv. 17. 
 
 The Critical Dilemma 25 
 
 "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain." — 
 i Cor. xv. 17. 
 
 The Gospel Witness 50 
 
 " Whereof we are all witnesses." — Acts ii. 32. 
 
 The Elemental Enigmas 77 
 
 " We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the 
 Son to be the Saviour of the world." — I John iv. 14. 
 
 Concerning the Church. 
 
 Corporate Faith 102 
 
 "Holding the Head, from 7uhich all the body by joints 
 and bands having nourishment ?ninistered, and knit 
 together, increaseth with the increase of God." — 
 Col. ii. 19. 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain." — I Cor. xv. 17. 
 
 The voice that speaks gives no uncertain sound. 
 It is firm and vigorous enough. Here, certainly, 
 is no shadowy outline, no vague emotion, no loose 
 and unsteady outbreak of mystic rapture. The 
 issue is stated in most sharp and decisive direct- 
 ness. No disguises, no veiling modifications, slip 
 between. We still feel the shock of the startling 
 frankness, of the unhesitating decision with which 
 the voice rings out its terrible alternative : " If 
 Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet 
 in your sins." 
 
 Yet it is the earliest voice with which we find 
 Christianity speaking. 
 
 Let us remember where we are as we listen. 
 We are back behind the written Gospels ; earlier 
 
 B 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 by some interval than the first three ; earlier by 
 thirty or forty years than the date at which tradi- 
 tion supposes the fourth to have been written. We 
 are listening to the first voice with which historic 
 Christianity speaks through recorded documents. 
 As soon as we find it at all, it is speaking in these 
 decisive tones. 
 
 Nor are those tones, when you hear them, new. 
 S. Paul is appealing to a familiar truth, long 
 held, long known to his hearers ; appealing to it 
 as the established fact on the strength of which 
 they had been converted ; appealing to it as to 
 solid and undeniable ground, beyond all dispute or 
 denial, on which he or they can take their stand in 
 the new argument that has sprung up as to their 
 own bodily resurrection. For already men were 
 hotly discussing whether their own resurrection 
 would be an actual, concrete, physical act in 
 time, or an ideal, spiritual truth ; so early, so 
 rapidly were disputes at work which forced them 
 to consider the value of facts. And it is in order 
 to bring into the discussion some point of indis- 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 3 
 
 putable, unwavering certainty, wherewith to dispel 
 the mists of a shifty, idealistic treatment, to 
 touch solid ground, to have grip on something 
 that could not fail, or totter, or crumble, or dissolve, 
 that St. Paul takes his hearers back to the very 
 ground of all belief, to the first premise of all dis- 
 cussion, to the core and heart of the Creed, " the 
 Resurrection of Christ." Here, at any rate, he 
 argues, is no idea, but a fact ; no spiritual ideal, 
 but an actual event. And just by the force of 
 this, its concrete, solid, matter-of-fact actuality, it 
 determined the question of their own resurrection 
 in a sense directly contrary to that of the idealists. 
 
 " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain." 
 That earliest voice of the faith rings still in our 
 ears, with its loud challenge to face, and measure, 
 without flinching, the great issue that is ever before 
 us. How sharply it pierces our souls, as we stand 
 puzzled and distressed by all the sore anxieties 
 which beset the discussions which have busied 
 themselves with the origin of the Christian religion ! 
 We have been flooded with new knowledge of 
 
 o 
 
4 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 the old days in which S. Paul uttered this bold 
 cry — new knowledge of the ways, and habits, 
 and conditions of those earliest believers — ways 
 and manners so strangely different from our own. 
 We have gained knowledge, too, of a multitude 
 of other religions, with their strange parallels to 
 our own, yet with dissimilarities at least as strange. 
 And, moreover, we have been given, too, not new 
 knowledge only, but new methods of knowledge — 
 methods, before unused, of comparison, of insight, of 
 discovery, of judgment. And all these we cannot 
 but bring to bear upon the matter of our belief ; 
 for we carry them with us, as we read the old 
 books with minds already trained to appreciate 
 the new materials and exercise the new methods. 
 
 Now, this being our case, it is of vital importance 
 that we should make absolutely clear to ourselves 
 what is the exact problem which the origin of the 
 Christian religion offers to our critical examina- 
 tion. What is its distinctive characteristic ? 
 
 It has, no doubt, many resemblances to the rise 
 and movement of other religions ; and these re- 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 5 
 
 semblances will permit of comparisons, and of 
 speculative reconstructions, and of suggestive prob- 
 abilities, by which we may pass across from the 
 critical study of these other faiths to throw light 
 on dark places in our Christian record. 
 
 But these cannot ever carry us, of course, to the 
 heart of the problem ; for that must always lie, not 
 in the resemblances, but in the differences. 
 
 The crucial task of all criticism is to fix on, to 
 signalize, to detach, to notify, to examine that par- 
 ticular and unique point in a religious creed which 
 marks it off from all other facts of the same 
 general kind. 
 
 And this it will accomplish by searching for its 
 main, and central, and peculiar thought. What, 
 it will ask, is the idea which originates and 
 animates this or that religion ? What is the 
 formation and conception at its root ? What 
 is it which accounts for its existence, and jus- 
 tifies its ardour, and prompts its primary activity, 
 and moulds its growth, and directs its work, and 
 distributes its limits and parts into their due place 
 
6 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 and proportion ? What is that without which the 
 religion under review is a mere medley of those 
 spiritual elements which are the common matter 
 of all religion ? What is that by recognition of 
 which all these common elements cease to be a 
 chaos of possibilities, and come together into a 
 distinct and forcible reality, rationally coherent, 
 emphatically and vividly distinguishable from all 
 other spiritual phenomena ? On that point in each 
 religion, whatever it be, criticism must relentlessly 
 fasten ; round and about that point it must loyally 
 circle. 
 
 Now, there can be no doubt at all where 
 the central, and originative, and distinctive point 
 is to be discovered in the Christian religion. St. 
 Paul has signalized it for us, once for all, in words 
 that can never lose their tingling force of truth : 
 " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are 
 yet in your sins." 
 
 Belief in the Resurrection is the root of Chris- 
 tianity. Everything runs back to it ; everything 
 flows from it. 
 
CRITICISM AMD THE RESURRECTION. / 
 
 For if there is any matter about which the 
 Christian documents give authentic and unquali- 
 fied evidence, it is to the absolute insufficiency of 
 our Lord's earthly Life and Mission to give the 
 momentum which originates a new religion. 
 Nothing had been done at all, antecedent to the 
 bitter end on Calvary, which can the least account 
 for the after-consequences. Nothing stable had 
 been rooted and established ; nothing had taken 
 more than the most tentative shape. There was 
 no decisive and intelligible idea planted in the 
 hearts of men with effective precision. Much had 
 been dimly hinted ; much seemed about to be 
 happening. There was great talk of a kingdom 
 that should come, of a Church that should be 
 built. But nothing did come ; nothing had hap- 
 pened ; the kingdom did not appear ; the Church 
 was not built. Now and again the hopes of the 
 crowd rose, and they cried aloud on some happy 
 day, " Surely it has come ! Is not this Messias ? 
 Was it ever seen in this fashion ? We will make 
 Him a king." And then He Himself deserted 
 
8 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 their hopes, defeated their longings, broke up their 
 zeal. He fled ; He hid ; He scattered them. He set 
 Himself to bewilder, to baffle, to disappoint them. 
 Nothing came of it all, but a sense of splendid 
 promise that yet never took shape or substance. 
 No wonder that John the Baptist himself wondered 
 at the fruitless postponement, and sent to inquire 
 from the prison whether the kingdom was ever 
 going to show itself. 
 
 And the few, the very few who clung in dumb 
 loyalty to the Person Whose sublimity held them 
 in thrall, they could not tell what it was that they 
 had been called to receive, what thrones they were 
 to occupy. They were lost in the enigmas offered 
 them. Now they seemed to have got the thread 
 of the Master's teaching ; now it was lost. When- 
 ever they thought that they understood, they 
 found themselves the more perplexed. If they 
 tried to make assertions of their own, they only 
 blundered. Always, to the very last, they remained 
 below the level of understanding demanded of 
 them ; without any fixed or intelligible creed to 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 9 
 
 proclaim ; possessed of nothing, that did not shatter 
 into hopeless fragments under the shock of the 
 naked Cross. 
 
 What a brief moment, after all, it had been ! 
 The broken bits of a couple of years were all that 
 they had to look back upon ; only a dozen or 
 eighteen months of closer intercourse with the 
 Master ; and these months had been months not 
 of gathering success or of steadying assurance, but 
 months of failure, months of confusion, months of 
 ever-darkening disaster, — months of flight or of 
 desertion, of dreary pause, of disheartening sus- 
 pense, of blind misunderstanding, of impenetrable 
 mystery. 
 
 Once, and once only, had there looked like 
 a gleam of daylight. Once, and once only, 
 had there begun to be a moment at which the 
 Master seemed to be preparing to act. Once, and 
 once only, did He set Himself to own the Messiah- 
 ship in a way that was comprehensible, and the 
 dawn of the kingdom, so long deferred, seemed at 
 last to draw near. It was that day for which He 
 
IO CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECI ION. 
 
 had prepared so carefully and so long, when He 
 bade them bring the ass, and lay their garments 
 upon it, and He rode as the prophetic King into 
 Zion, and beneath Him were the strewn robes for 
 royal feet, and about Him the waving palms of 
 triumph, and before Him and behind Him the 
 multitudes who shouted the Messianic greeting, 
 " Hosanna in the highest." At last it was to begin ; 
 at last He would act. Ah ! the despair ! He 
 takes but the first step, and, lo ! it is His last. 
 He makes but one challenge, and, lo ! all is over. 
 Down breaks the storm that had hung so long in 
 black menace above Him. Down it sweeps — the 
 roaring storm of hate, of cruelty, of rage. Down 
 it sweeps, in one overpowering rush, and He is gone 
 — gone ! without a struggle, without an effort ; 
 gone ! broken, defeated, crushed ; not a shred 
 remains of that fair promise ; not a wreck is left 
 behind of that shattered vision of hope and joy. 
 All have forsaken and fled. No power breaks forth 
 to shield Him ; no refuge opens to Him a door of 
 escape ! His enemies have Him, hold Him, work 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. I I 
 
 their will on Him ; they taunt Him for His im- 
 potence, without fear, without rebuke. Ah ! well 
 indeed if a horrible dread can be shut off from 
 those stricken souls — a dread lest it is not only 
 the work of man, but even the very curse of God 
 Himself, that has fallen upon Him Who was hung 
 on a tree ! 
 
 Surely, in our love for the sweet memory of our 
 Lord on earth, a Man among us so tender and 
 so strong, we forget how it would have looked 
 if nothing had ever followed ; how terribly short 
 and swift its passage ; how miserably small and 
 unstable its actual achievement ! Nothing in that 
 brief Life, taken by itself, can account for Chris- 
 tian belief in the Lord, or for the creation of 
 the Church. It is the Resurrection which alone 
 gave constructive force to the Life that lay behind 
 it. A vision of unutterable beauty, indeed, that Life 
 would ever have been ; but a vision that came 
 and passed and vanished before men's bewildered 
 eyes had had time to secure it, or their hearts to 
 apprehend what was there, for a fleeting moment, 
 
12 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 in their midst. A few deep, incomparable words 
 would have lingered about their memories ; a few 
 marvellous hours would never be forgotten, in 
 which the sick had known the touch of power, and 
 the sorrow and sighing had all fled away. Some 
 dozen men and a knot of women would have 
 nursed a sick and fading secret, low buried in their 
 silent souls — the secret of what once they had 
 believed, as, in the tranced mystery of one historic 
 evening, they had heard a quiet voice in their ears, 
 which said, " Take, eat ; this is My Body. Do this 
 in memory of Me." 
 
 But the very memory of this high promise, of 
 this passing vision, far from driving them forth on 
 a victorious mission, could but break their hearts 
 with despair, as they recalled the utter and absolute 
 ruin in which it had been so swiftly engulfed ! 
 
 In the Resurrection, it was not the Lord only 
 Who was raised from the dead. His Life on 
 earth rose with Him ; it was lifted up into its 
 real light. That which had been but a sugges- 
 tion, but a fragment, but a disappointment, but a 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 1 3 
 
 failure, won, for the first time, out of the Resurrec- 
 tion a force that gave it significance and cohesion. 
 The Spirit had come upon it ; and that which had 
 been all partial and piecemeal now first cohered 
 together and showed itself substantial, and became 
 a living thing. Now, first, the promises gained 
 reality, the vision became concrete, the symbolic 
 acts obtained solid footing, the deep words lost 
 their shadowy, intangible remoteness. A light 
 flashed back from Easter morning, and poured 
 daylight on what had been so dark. The events 
 that had seemed so tangled and confusing now 
 strung themselves together on a clear and com- 
 prehensible method. The cue was given, and all 
 was intelligible. 
 
 We feel this in every word and motion of the 
 Apostles. Every one knows, every one is as- 
 tonished at, the entire change that has passed 
 over them, between the Gospels and the earliest 
 records stored for us in the Acts. The natural- 
 ness and yet the strangeness of this change is 
 one of our most convincing evidences of the 
 
14 
 
 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 reliability of those primitive documents. The 
 simplicity with which the transformation is told is 
 overpoweringly persuasive. The men who, in the 
 Gospels, never can win possession of the Lord's 
 mind, never are level with His meaning, never can 
 follow His transitions, never can ask a question 
 without blundering, never can get sure of them- 
 selves, never can help misunderstanding His 
 teaching, never can get out of themselves, never 
 can understand to what the Master is leading 
 them, not though He take them aside and pre- 
 pare them, and shut Himself up with them to 
 school them, and reiterates again and again the 
 deliberate purpose with which He goes to Jeru- 
 salem ; the men who were still, after all the 
 miracles, without understanding — having ears, heard 
 not ; the men who understood none of those things, 
 but the " saying was hid from them, and they 
 perceived not the things that were said ; " the men 
 who could despair, as Thomas, or could forsake, 
 as all did, or could deny, as Peter ; — these very 
 men are found, in the first chapter of the Acts, in 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. I 5 
 
 complete and secure possession of the Lord's secret. 
 Yet they are the same men, with the same charac- 
 ters. Who can mistake them ? John, with the 
 same impressive silence ; Cephas, with the same 
 impetuous speech. Not that they are not still 
 liable to painful complexities and struggles in the 
 working out of the details ; but of one thing they 
 can never doubt again — they can never doubt what 
 the significance was of the days during which they 
 had walked and talked with Jesus during His 
 sojourn on earth. That, from beginning to end — 
 from the baptism of John until the day of His 
 taking up — has become a consistent, coherent, in- 
 telligible act, complete and whole in all its parts. 
 All the words that ever fell from the Master's lips 
 — words which then baffled, startled, upset, dis- 
 tressed them — are now to them clear and limpid 
 as the day. Every syllable carries its meaning 
 with it. And His mind is laid open to them, and 
 they apprehend it with easy freedom ; and their 
 faith in Him is no longer a blind, personal fascina- 
 tion — " Lord, to whom shall we go ? " it is rational, 
 
1 6 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 articulate, and secure. It knows its grounds ; it 
 puts out its reasons ; it handles its premises ; it is 
 in possession of itself ; it is beyond the possibility 
 of mistrust or of bewilderment. They speak 
 with emphasis, these men who once babbled like 
 children ; they act with decision, these who once 
 were so incapable of initiation. 
 
 It is the Resurrection that has made the change. 
 The Resurrection is the core of truth, in which and 
 to which all adheres. It is to them the animating, 
 formative fact, which interprets, which justifies, 
 which supports, which quickens the fabric of faith 
 and life. They have got fast hold of the key ; 
 therefore every lock once closed flies open. They 
 stand in the light, and therefore stumble no 
 longer. The path is clear, the gate is open ; 
 they know the road they have to travel. " Lord," 
 they had once cried in blank bewilderment, " we 
 know not whither Thou goest, and how can we 
 know the way ? " Now they understand whither 
 He has gone ; and therefore He Who is the Resur- 
 rection is at once made to them also the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life. 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. ij 
 
 What, then, are we to say of a school of criti- 
 cism, with which we are all familiar, which finds 
 a parallel to our Gospel in the stories of those 
 heroes whose lives were so momentous and so 
 masterful, that when they died no one could 
 believe them to have passed away ? So long and 
 so deeply had they occupied the world's drama, 
 that the stage seemed empty without their name 
 to fill it ; so that still men's eyes looked for some 
 mysterious return of the vanished presence, and 
 still their ears listened for some rallying cry 
 from the voice that could not, surely, be lost for 
 ever. 
 
 Such dim hopes, faintly lingering round the grave 
 of some King Arthur, or some Frederic Barbarossa, 
 or even round the close of some hideous nightmare, 
 like the tyranny of Nero, embody and symbolize 
 nothing else but the profound impression which 
 their actual lives had built up and established, 
 until it had become a part of the common material 
 of general human existence. The violence of its 
 swift removal leaves behind a vague pain, a hunger, 
 
 C 
 
1 8 
 
 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 a wonder ; and these may relieve themselves in 
 mythical expectations, in mysterious rumours, in 
 haunting hopes, which gather like clouds at even- 
 ing round a setting sun, and glow with ravishing 
 splendour for some rare moments, before they pale 
 and scatter under the chill wind of that night 
 which is ever creeping up, ashen and relentless. 
 So a "cloud of myth" may hang loose about the 
 hero's vanishing ; but the myth is meaningless and 
 unintelligible, except as a reflex of the impressive- 
 ness and solidity and importance of the real life 
 lived. It witnesses to that and to nothing else. 
 Strip it away and the life remains, real, comprehen- 
 sible, valid. 
 
 But what fragment of parallel is there here to 
 the Gospel ? With our Lord, it is not the life which 
 makes the supernatural myth intelligible, but it is 
 the supernatural act which alone makes the life 
 intelligible. Here is no faint supernatural vapour, 
 embosoming a solid core of impressive natural 
 incidents. Nay ! It is the human career which is 
 so fragmentary, so slight, so rapid, so fleeting, 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 1 9 
 
 until it is endowed with a solid core of substance 
 and force by the marvel of the Resurrection. On 
 that it stands; it is compacted by that ; out from the 
 Resurrection flows the energy which carries the 
 entire story. It is by believing in His Resurrec- 
 tion that His followers first lay hold of the real 
 significance of His Life on earth, and first acquire 
 that vital faith in Him which constitutes them 
 missionaries of a new religion. 
 
 This is the cardinal fact that has got to be 
 accounted for ; and any criticism, therefore — let us 
 be sure of this — which fails to find the primary and 
 original and formative germ of Christianity in 
 the belief in a risen Lord ; any criticism which 
 supposes that this belief can be treated as surplus- 
 age, as a merely decorative accident, as the mythical 
 expression of enthusiasm, as comparable to the 
 apotheosis of a great heroic figure ; any criti- 
 cism which begins by omitting all this super- 
 naturalism from its calculation, and sets itself to 
 extract from the human story which preceded 
 the death the motive impulse which explains the 
 
20 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 faith ; — any such criticism as this, whatever form 
 it take, has missed the point which it undertakes 
 to explain. It has slipped off the scientific track ; it 
 has ruled itself out of court. Far from offering us 
 a solution, it simply fails to meet the issue, for it 
 omits the one essential and characteristic and vital 
 element in the problem to be solved. 
 
 Beloved, we may discard such criticism from 
 discussion, yet it remains that there are anxious 
 and serious questions which beset and oppress us. 
 Yes, indeed ; and, before attempting to answer 
 them, let us remember the one condition under 
 which they can be met and solved. We shall 
 only obtain certainty and conviction when the 
 Resurrection has become to our own little human 
 story on earth that which, in its unique degree, 
 it was to the earthly Life of the Lord. It must 
 become, I mean, the key which makes our own 
 story intelligible, the cypher by which all its strange 
 hieroglyphics can be read off and interpreted. 
 
 We who so sorely pine for certainty of intellectual 
 conviction have to ask ourselves, first of all, 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 21 
 
 whether we are living a life which demands our 
 resurrection in Christ as its only adequate solution — 
 a life which is built on that sure hope, formed after 
 that pattern, sustained by that underlying motive ; 
 a life which schools itself after the discipline which 
 such a hope imposes, curbing and bending the 
 motives and the desires of the flesh so that they 
 seek not here, in this fair but unstable earth, their 
 home and their promise, but are ever forcing them- 
 selves into the strong current of the victorious 
 will, which sets from within our deepest selves 
 towards that far land of purity and peace to which 
 He calls us, Who is the Living One, and was dead, 
 and, behold, He is alive for evermore ! Unless 
 this be, in some measure, true, we could not know 
 the certainty of Christ's Resurrection. 
 
 Let us ask ourselves, Would your ways and mine 
 be incomprehensible if there were no Resurrection? 
 Have we any motives, real and animating, on which 
 we act, which would be meaningless if we were not 
 to rise again ? Have we made any moral venture 
 on the strength of this assurance? Is there any- 
 
22 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 thing on earth that we could rightly have and hold, 
 and yet which we deny ourselves, and treat as 
 worthless, in face of the far more glorious hope 
 set before us ? Are we so living that we should be 
 of all men most miserable, most silly, most befooled, 
 if Christ be not raised ? 
 
 Ah ! surely, it is not only intellectually that the 
 Resurrection is apt to seem to us but a piece of 
 poetical supernaturalism, a decorative incident 
 which satisfies the dramatic feelings, a relief to our 
 artistic judgment, a beautiful picture at the end of 
 an heroic life, an imaginative and visionary ideal. 
 It too often is no more than this to our faith, as 
 well as to our reason. It hangs loosely outside 
 our own spiritual story. It lays no direct or forcible 
 pressure upon our moral life. Yet, so long as this 
 is so, we have not touched the core of the Christian 
 verity. We have not reached its central secret, 
 its heart of grace. Believe me, our faith is still 
 vain if the Resurrection of Christ be not the 
 fount and spring of all our living, the support on 
 which we buttress ourselves, round which the 
 
CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 23 
 
 very fibres of the practical will wind and bind 
 themselves. Our faith is vain if the risen Christ 
 be not the rock on which we rest, the refuge 
 which we hide, the fortress out of which we 
 descend to walk the lower ways of earth. Our 
 faith is vain if the risen Christ be not the formative 
 or energetic reality which dominates our mind, and 
 regulates our practice, and shapes our thought, and 
 controls our passions, and organizes our motives, 
 and builds our character, and lays hands upon our 
 entire self, to rule, possess, transform it. That is 
 the " Christian life ; " that is " walking in Christ." 
 S. Paul can acknowledge nothing short of that. 
 
 Alas ! it is because this resurrection life is 
 so little true of us that our faith is so empty 
 and vain. Alas ! it is because this walking in the 
 risen Christ is so strange to us, so unattempted, 
 that we find ourselves lightly discussing the possi- 
 bility of omitting the Resurrection from our Creed, 
 and yet remaining as good Christians as we were 
 before. God grant us grace, in fear and humilia- 
 tion, to measure, by our readiness to imagine this 
 
24 
 
 CRITICISM AND THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 possibility, the terrible interval which separates 
 our practical daily religion from the faith of that 
 Apostle who cried aloud to his trembling converts, 
 " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are 
 yet in your sins." 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain." — I Cor. xv. 17. 
 
 Historical criticism is in the air. It is the force 
 which stirs our brain into thinking. We are all 
 under the sense of its quickening influence. And 
 one of the tasks to which it invites us is that of dis- 
 engaging the essence of our Christian religion from 
 its accidents ; of distinguishing the motive force 
 which dictates the forward movement of the faith 
 from all the incidental material which the central 
 force puts to its own use and service. We are to 
 free this, the solid kernel of original truth, from the 
 husk in which the conditions of the century and the 
 chances of the time have secreted it. Now, all our 
 success, as we said, in such a search depends on 
 our accurate and precise apprehension of what con- 
 stitutes the actual root and heart of the Christian 
 
26 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 religion. And what this is, the religion itself alone 
 can make evident. It is its own authority on such 
 a matter. It alone can disclose, in its acknowledged 
 creeds, through its recorded history, the secret of its 
 vitality, the forces on which it relies, the powers 
 and motives to which it makes its effective appeals. 
 Historical criticism has got to discover, not what 
 you or I may consider ought to have been the 
 central assertion of Christianity, but simply what 
 was it? What did it actually assume and prove to 
 be its root-idea ? By what proclamation did it win 
 adherents ? What was the essential core of its 
 message to the world ? 
 
 And if this is our task, it is strange indeed — as 
 we have already tried to show — that we ever allow 
 ourselves to imagine that this kernel would be 
 found in the human career of Jesus of Nazareth, if 
 only we could free it from its mythical and super- 
 natural husk and allow it to terminate naturally 
 with His heroic Death. Such a hope is bound to 
 be fruitless, just because, if ever it could attain 
 its end, if ever it could wring a consistent human 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 27 
 
 story out of documents written expressly to convey 
 the exactly opposite impression, then it must 
 inevitably find that it had dropped, in the process, 
 all the vital elements which constitute the force of 
 the faith. For the supernatural resurrection, as we 
 tried to show, is not one of a series of details the 
 omission of which can be discussed as a practical 
 possibility, as if it might be cut out, and yet the 
 rest of the Creed remain what it was. For it is 
 itself not a detail in the Creed, but the starting- 
 point of the Creed itself. It is itself the substance 
 of the revelation, the pregnant germ out of which 
 the entire fabric of belief emerges, constructs itself, 
 shapes its parts ; without which it not only has 
 no historical basis, but also has no intellectual 
 principle of cohesion. 
 
 This is surely a most familiar truth ; and yet, in 
 view of the many earnest souls who still give them- 
 selves the profitless labour of this search after a 
 purely natural basis for their belief in Jesus, it seems 
 necessary to remind ourselves at length why it is so 
 terribly true that " if Christ be not raised, our faith 
 
28 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 is vain." Let us note, therefore, the various ways 
 in which the Resurrection thus creates the Creed. 
 
 The Resurrection, we said, gave the disciples the 
 clue by which the fragmentary and abrupt life of 
 our Lord was interpreted and justified. How, then, 
 did it do this ? What was the interpretation ? 
 First, it threw on it the light of prophecy. " He 
 rose again the third day, according to the Scrip- 
 tures." "According to the Scriptures." The 
 entire body of ancient Scripture opened out its 
 heart to the astonished and rejoicing Apostles. 
 True, the early methods of exegesis are not ours, 
 are very strange to us — present to us difficul- 
 ties of their own. With this we have not to do 
 now. But no strangeness of method can blind 
 us to the fact that, in grasping the Resurrection, 
 the Apostles had hold of a principle of interpreta- 
 tion which reconciled for them, and, under every 
 variety of critical method, has reconciled ever since, 
 the dilemma presented in prophecy by the double 
 conception of a suffering and dying and yet vic- 
 torious Messiah. The darkest passages of Isaiah 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 29 
 
 and of the Psalms, speaking of a desolation, an 
 agony, a death, which nevertheless issue in some 
 strange outburst of triumphant exaltation — these 
 passages, which had been the bewilderment of 
 patient souls who had waited long for the redemp- 
 tion of Israel, — these were now become clear as the 
 very day to the disciples. The paradox that once 
 tormented was solved. God, then, was not, as 
 those perplexing contrasts suggested, at cross-pur- 
 poses with Himself ; the promise of the Messiah 
 was no black enigma, in which the visions traversed 
 each other, and the voices broke off into harassing 
 contradictions. Now they saw it to have had one 
 unwavering purpose, which moved on to its fixed 
 goal, unbroken by any counter-current. It was one 
 Person Who drew every thread into the web of 
 His own story. It was one manifestation which 
 summed up all diversities of detail, which united, 
 into one consistent act, elements most antithetical. 
 The Scriptures, with all their fragments lying side 
 by side, partial and unreconciled, come together 
 bone to bone. " Oh, fools that they had been, and 
 
30 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had 
 spoken ! Thus it was written : thus it behoved 
 Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the 
 third day ! " 
 
 " It behoved Christ to suffer," if it behoved Him 
 to rise again. Ah ! here is a new point. Let us 
 follow their argument out as they worked it. 
 
 Christ's sufferings — Christ's death. These are no 
 longer what they were. They had been in them- 
 selves the most miserable and the most signal 
 victory that the power of evil had ever won. They 
 had expressed and embodied the despair of good, 
 trodden down in its blood under the tyrant heels 
 of the oppressor. But, seen as leading on to the 
 Resurrection, seen as involved in the Resurrection, 
 they become wholly new things. A new level is 
 taken, a fresh perspective. They are seen to belong 
 to that high drama of salvation which God, through 
 the long ages, had slowly been unrolling. God, in 
 leading His Messiah down to the cross and the 
 grave, was leading Him unto His victory. The 
 Resurrection is God's justification of the Crucifixion. 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 31 
 
 It is His proof that all is well, that all on Calvary- 
 had a purpose in it. Easter does not repudiate 
 Good Friday ; rather, it reconciles Good Friday 
 with that mind of God which was disclosed in the 
 Resurrection. This is the strange news which all 
 the old Scriptures had foreseen, and, by foreseeing 
 had shown to be intentional and deliberate. "Christ 
 must have suffered." "Suffering was the gate through 
 which He ought to have entered into His glory." 
 God, then, in all the misery, knew what He was 
 doing. It was no terrible accident that brought 
 the Messiah to His bloody end ; no hideous night- 
 mare in which the holiest life had been blindly 
 trampled out, as by the brute hoofs of beasts. 
 Nay, God's hand was on it ; God's dominion never 
 wavered ; God's hold upon circumstance never 
 slackened ; God's scheme achieved itself in har- 
 monious security, in perfect sequence. The hate, 
 the malice, the cruelty, the sin, which had seemed 
 to themselves to be so active in carrying out their 
 own wicked counsels — they had never for a moment 
 escaped the strong control of the Divine govern- 
 
32 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 ment ; never, for one brief second, in their worst 
 vehemence, ceased to grind, with their necks under 
 His yoke, in the blessed service of His Will. " I 
 wot, brethren, that through ignorance ye did it.' 
 " With wicked hands," indeed, they had done it ; 
 yet, for all their wickedness, they had but accom- 
 plished "the determinate counsel and foreknow- 
 ledge of God." 
 
 Christ ought to have suffered ; " it behoved ; " 
 it was right. All the Scriptures said it ; and 
 what they had said so long before must be part 
 of a fixed design, of a scientific necessity, other- 
 wise how could it be anticipated ? And why ? 
 Why ought He to suffer? How could the Cross 
 belong to the Divine plan ? The moment they 
 asked themselves this they knew the only possible 
 answer. " Sacrifice," " Atonement," " Reconcilia- 
 tion by blood "-—all the deep thoughts by which 
 Christianity has shaken the world — these broke out 
 upon the hearts of the Apostles, in a flash of mag- 
 nificent insight, from the first moment in which the 
 sun of Easter shot its rays back over Calvary. "It 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 33 
 
 behoved Christ to have suffered ! " It was a decree 
 of God, a Divine necessity ; and it was this because, 
 as a Jew knew down to the very depth of his heart, 
 sin could not cease but in sacrifice — because, without 
 shedding of blood, there could be no remission of 
 sins ! 
 
 Oh, the daylight ! Oh, the rapture of illumina- 
 tion ! Oh, the mystery that throbbed in their 
 enkindled souls and struggled for free loud utter- 
 ance ! " Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the 
 wisdom and the knowledge of God ! How un- 
 searchable the judgments, and His ways past 
 finding out ! " The Resurrection has transformed 
 the dark deed of Golgotha from a martyrdom into 
 a sacrifice, from an heroic memory into a Divine 
 and living atonement. 
 
 " Look back at the Cross," the Apostles cry. 
 " What a transfiguration ! That black, ungainly 
 tree, so cruel, so hard, so blind, so terrible ! Who 
 could have believed the report ? Unto whom was 
 the arm of the Lord revealed ? Ah, we ourselves, 
 even we, had deemed Him stricken, smitten of God, 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 afflicted, despised, rejected, from whom men hide 
 their face ! And, all the time, it was the Lord, 
 Whom it pleased to bruise Him. We see it now, 
 clearly enough. The Lord declares it to us by 
 raising Him from the dead. Jesus died for our sin 
 by the same law by which He rose again for our 
 justification. It was for our transgressions He was 
 wounded, for our iniquities He was being bruised ; 
 it was the chastisement of our peace that was, at 
 that awful hour, laid upon Him ; and by those 
 stripes, at which our sick memories shuddered with 
 such speechless horror — lo ! by those very stripes 
 we were being healed." 
 
 Nor is it only backward that the Resurrection 
 works. Not only does it give constructive force to 
 the earthly life, and illuminative vitality to the 
 ancient Scriptures, and transfiguring glory to the 
 Cross : but it looks forward ; it opens a way to new 
 possibilities ; it sets moving a wholly new world of 
 thought, and power, and hope, and action ; it up- 
 lifts the entire scene of human destinies to a fresh 
 level of energy and gifts. 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 35 
 
 And it is here, above all, that we become con- 
 scious of the fallacy that was hidden in this foolish 
 parallel between the belief in the Resurrection 
 of the Lord and the fond myths and rumours 
 that linger about a hero's grave. These are the 
 last echoes of his loud activity, the closing 
 glories that encircle and dignify his departure. 
 But the essence of the Resurrection is that it is 
 not the end, but the beginning. That which, in 
 other stories, is the last flash of the dying sun, is 
 here the first streak of the coming dawn. The 
 activity of the Lord is in reserve, is withheld, until 
 the Resurrection is past. His world-wide mission, 
 His claim to the kingdom, His supremacy over sin, 
 His paramount headship, His discharge of saving 
 energy, His creation of the new manhood — these 
 only become His by the resurrection from the dead, 
 which declares Him then, first, to be the Son of 
 God " with power." 
 
 " With power ! " The supernatural story of the 
 Resurrection and Ascension records, not His linger- 
 ing departure, but His full arrival, in effectual 
 
36 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 strength, upon the drama of history. He goes, 
 only in a way that gives Him power to come again, 
 and to begin His great work, and establish His 
 kingdom. So we are carried by the Resurrection 
 to the grand beliefs which actually have built up 
 His Church. We see why it was believed that the 
 Sacrifice on the Cross abides, as an eternal fact, 
 in His risen Body, offered and presented before 
 God in high Heaven, where for ever He enters 
 within the vail, bearing His blood ; and for ever 
 His blood intercedes, speaking better things than 
 that of Abel, as it cries aloud for our forgiveness. 
 
 We see why the last memorial meal is endowed 
 with an everlasting validity, rooted there, at the 
 deepest heart of the Church, not as the sad shadow 
 of a lost Presence remembered with tears, but as 
 the " Eucharist," " the glad thanksgiving," the prin- 
 cipal feast, the centre of all praise and song and 
 adoration, the spring of unfailing joy, the living 
 Bread, coming down for ever and ever from the 
 eternal Heaven, that man may eat thereof and 
 not die. 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 37 
 
 And again we see why, here on earth, there now 
 rises, according to this belief, a fabric endowed with 
 the strength of His risen Body, a CHURCH formed 
 after the pattern of that Body now high in the 
 Mount of God, and so becoming here, among men, 
 that temple of His Body, which was to be raised 
 again in three days, laid together, limb by limb, 
 member by member, filling up the stature of His 
 Body, holding fast by its risen Head, and growing 
 with " the increase of God.'' 
 
 And all this is effected by that great Spirit 
 Whom, by His Resurrection, He liberates — the 
 Advocate, the Comforter ; Whom He discharges 
 from the Father — the Gift of all gifts, the Pledge 
 of all certainty, all security, all peace. 
 
 But why go on ? Why weary you ? Surely 
 it is plain enough, the moment we reflect at all, 
 how it is that " if Christ be not raised, our faith 
 is vain." For, clearly, these are the ideas, these 
 are the forces, by which alone Christianity has, 
 as a fact, won its way and conquered the world. 
 These are the beliefs that have dictated all its 
 
38 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 preaching, have moulded its theology, have en- 
 thralled its hearers, have converted hearts, have 
 framed the structure of its Church, have inspired 
 its worship, have nerved its courage, have vital- 
 ized its hope, have given it " the victory that over- 
 cometh the world." Yet of all these beliefs the 
 Resurrection is the core and kernel ; without the 
 Resurrection there is not one syllable of all this 
 true. There is no pleading Cross ; no blood of 
 sprinkling ; no prevailing intercession ; no Church, 
 which is the Body ; no Eucharistic worship ; no 
 gift of the Comforter ; no Christian walk in the 
 newness of life. 
 
 Nor, again, is it only the mysteries of redemp- 
 tion and of worship that rest solely on the Resur- 
 rection as their key. We have but to recall the 
 Epistles of S. Paul to see that every jot and tittle 
 of Christian ethics begin and end in nothing but 
 the Resurrection. The practical life of the believer 
 is, for S. Paul, absolutely nothing else but this — 
 the reproduction in one's self of the resurrection- 
 life, of that eternal act in which Christ rose from 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 39 
 
 the dead. He Who raised Jesus from the dead will 
 work in us the same work, by the same mighty 
 operation quickening our dead limbs into His 
 righteousness, that, " like as Christ was raised from 
 the dead through the glory of the Father, so we 
 also might walk in newness of life." " Present your- 
 selves, therefore, unto God, as alive from the dead, 
 and your members as instruments of righteousness 
 unto God." The ethical goal is simply to " attain, 
 by any means, unto the resurrection from the 
 dead." 
 
 And, moreover, see the pressing difficulty that 
 meets us if we follow the criticism that hopes to 
 find the kernel of Christianity in the human career 
 stripped of its supernatural husk. The human 
 Jesus, Whom we propose to discover, if He be what 
 we are supposing, cannot have Himself initiated or 
 originated any one of the main ideas, which are the 
 root and strength of the Creed in His Name. He 
 cannot have suggested Resurrection, or Atonement, 
 or perpetual Intercession, or the sending of the 
 Comforter. There is hardly a word of the early 
 
40 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 Apostolic message to the world, recorded in the New 
 Testament, which can owe anything to the man 
 Jesus Who is preached. The conceptions which 
 dominate all the thought, and construct all the 
 language, and create all the appeals, and mani- 
 pulate all the motives — these all take their first rise 
 solely in the supernatural story, with which never- 
 theless the Master can have had nothing whatever 
 to do. S. Paul must be the real originator of that 
 Christ he preached — S. Paul, who, nevertheless, 
 believed, with passionate fervour, that he and his 
 own mind had ceased to exist or to act, since now 
 it was not he that lived, but Christ Who lived in 
 him. 
 
 Yes ; it is the supernatural story which is, as 
 a matter of fact, the only kernel of Christianity. 
 This Idea of the Resurrection, of life out of death, 
 of God come in the flesh, of atonement through 
 blood, of the transfigured Intercessor, of the eternal 
 Eucharist — this is the very core, the inspiration, 
 the valid truth which has been won for man by 
 Christ. This abides everlastingly verifiable — the 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 41 
 
 key and standard of all human advance, of all 
 spiritual purification. 
 
 And at this point a wholly different school of 
 critics strikes in. It accepts the dilemma ; it 
 agrees eagerly with our argument. Our only 
 mistake lies in supposing that this Idea, evoked 
 into full life by the consciousness of S. Paul, must 
 be encased in the miraculous story of a human 
 career and death. This historical record is but 
 the legendary wrapping by which the Idea ap- 
 pealed to the earlier imagination and emotion. But 
 that is no longer needful, and, moreover, introduces 
 the problem of the miraculous. It is now the task 
 of the critical reason to strip off this mere garment 
 of outward facts, which so picturesquely symbolize 
 the purer truth. It is its office to prove the need- 
 lessness of this historical husk, to disengage from 
 beneath the records the supreme spiritual essence 
 in its veritable form. This is its task ; and it is, 
 therefore, wholly on the wrong tack when it devotes 
 itself to desperate searches after an historical per- 
 sonage, and definite, consistent historical events, 
 
42 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 hidden behind the supernatural legend. Nay, it is 
 just these historical events which it ought not to 
 cling to, but to omit ; for it is they that are the 
 legend, while the idea which it is proposed to dis- 
 card as legend is the only veritable and verifiable 
 reality. 
 
 Now, those who so speak have this superiority 
 over the rival school of criticism, in that they, 
 at least, perceive where the core of our faith 
 lies. They do not begin by omitting from their 
 account all the main forces which initiated and 
 impelled the Christian movement ; they do not 
 put themselves out of court by failing to face the 
 problem, or to offer, at any rate, some solution of 
 its difficulty. Christianity stands on the Resur- 
 rection ; that they see well enough. Only, since 
 miracles cannot happen, Christianity must stand, 
 not on an historical event, but on a spiritual Idea. 
 
 Yes, these men see the point. And yet, if we face 
 what is involved, with what a vigorous rebound 
 our human instincts, our spiritual judgment, sweep 
 back on the return wave of thought ! 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 43 
 
 For do they mean, then, these men, that now, at 
 this moment of our history, when every gathering 
 motive, every motion of imagination, every effort 
 of reason, are all bent on realizing the power of our 
 common manhood, the significance of flesh and 
 blood ; now, when all of us are become so intensely 
 alive to the touches of tender human nature, by 
 which the whole world is made kin ; now, when, 
 under the pressure of this prevailing sympathy, 
 all eyes and all hearts are turning, with a growing 
 passion of attraction, towards that gracious human 
 figure, which moves through the pages of those 
 Gospel records — that sweet and masterful figure, 
 so overwhelming in its simplicity, in its humanity, 
 in its compassion, in its kindliness, in its patience, 
 in its heroism, in its pathos ; now, when, amid 
 the drear and dragging years of man's painful 
 history, all our keen researches, so damaging 
 to a thousand reputations, have left to us but this 
 one figure, which no scrutiny can impoverish and 
 no discovery reduce — but this one figure on which 
 Ave can endure to rest the eyes of our critical con- 
 
44 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 science with untainted reverence — but this one 
 figure, before which we sink our voices and own 
 the spell of some diviner secret than we can cover 
 or account for, some secret of human dignity and 
 peace that abides unflawed and unexampled ; — 
 do they mean that now, of all times, I am to be 
 asked to surrender all this human story of Jesus of 
 Nazareth as a child-fancy, which is immaterial to 
 the idea it conveys — as a husk, which can be cast 
 off as worthless now that the kernel is secured ? 
 What ! to " know no more of Jesus after the flesh " 
 — is that to mean that I am to remember no more 
 Him Who sat on the hill and in the boat, and 
 spake as man never spake ; Him Who called to 
 Him all the weary and heavy-laden ; Him Whom 
 all the sick and the suffering and the forlorn 
 knew as their one Friend; Him Who drew to Him 
 publican and harlot ; Him Who had compassion 
 for the widow in her tears, and for the crowd in 
 their hunger ; Him Who was pitiful to children, and 
 took them in His arms, Who sat in the house at 
 Bethany, and loved Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus ; 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 45 
 
 Him Who forgave His murderers, and bade fare- 
 well to His Mother from the Cross, and won to 
 Himself the heart of the dying thief; Him Who 
 bowed His head under the olives, shaken by a 
 passionate distress; Him Who, loving ever His 
 own, loved them to the uttermost, and, even on the 
 night He was betrayed, bade them remember Him 
 always ? Am I to surrender Him — to treat Him as 
 needless ? Ah, my God ! is it my heart only that 
 knows that that surrender can never be made ? Is 
 it not my thought, my reason, that protest with indig- 
 nant refusal, knowing, with a certainty which nothing 
 can ever dispute, that the Christian Idea is a mere 
 lifeless ghost, impotent, and hollow, if there be 
 once withdrawn from it the vital force which is 
 given it by its identification with that warm, living, 
 breathing humanity, which is Jesus of Nazareth, 
 the Son of Mary, the Man of our flesh and of our 
 blood, Who " was crucified, dead, and buried "? 
 
 How, then, shall we deal with the desperate 
 situation ? If, assuming that the Resurrection is 
 impossible, we go with the one critical school, and 
 
4 6 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 cling to the mere human story, then we are driven 
 to omit, as husk, all the ideas and hopes which 
 have been the very life-blood of the faith. If we 
 go with the other critical school, and hold fast to 
 these life-giving hopes and ideas as the kernel of 
 the matter, then we must lose the gracious human 
 figure, so winning and so tender, which is, they 
 tell us, but the myth in which the Idea has been 
 enwrapped. 
 
 Are we caught in this horrible dilemma ? Is 
 there no way out of the snare ? Ah ! poor bewil- 
 dered soul, distracted with sore amazement, there 
 is one way, and one only, by which Christ need not 
 be divided ; by which the two halves come together, 
 making of twain one perfect man ; by which you 
 retain both the forces which have, as a fact, built and 
 established the faith — (i) the force of the spiritual 
 ideal, (2) together with the force of the Gospel story. 
 Both are yours, both are fused into one jet, both 
 coalesce into a single simple fact, if only it be true, 
 indeed, that the women did look into an empty 
 tomb on that strange Easter morning long ago 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 47 
 
 and saw no body there ; if it be true that two men 
 did indeed rise out of their sorrow at the sudden 
 news, and ran fast, and stooped down, and looked 
 in, and saw the linen clothes lie, and the napkin 
 that was round His head, not with the linen clothes, 
 but laid rolled up by itself ; if, indeed, by the side 
 of a weeping woman who was possessed with but 
 one thought, how to find the dead body of her 
 Lord, it be true that there stood One Who said to 
 her, " Mary ; " if, indeed, to two men journeying 
 to Emmaus there was joined a third, Whose speech 
 made their hearts burn, and Who was known in the 
 breaking of bread ; if, indeed, through doors and 
 walls, amid the trembling friends in that upper 
 chamber in Jerusalem, there came again and yet 
 again One Whose voice calmed them, Whose breath 
 fell on them, Whose hands and side they saw ; if, 
 indeed, by the lake, in the morning, there was a 
 figure that drew near, and they knew it, and could 
 not even ask themselves, in their wonder, " Is it the 
 Lord ?" knowing, as they did, that it was the Lord. 
 Oh, if this be but so, beloved, then, and then 
 
4 8 
 
 THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 alone, everything is clear, and consistent, and in- 
 telligible, and rational, and natural, and orderly. 
 Natural and orderly ! Yes, indeed, it is not the 
 miracle of the Resurrection that causes unnatural 
 disorder ; it is its absence, its removal, that makes 
 everything dislocated and irrational. 
 
 How whole and fitly framed together this earth 
 of ours became to those who at the first saw and 
 believed the Scriptures ! How clear, intelligible, 
 solid ! Entanglement, contradiction — all were gone. 
 They moved with freedom and gladness in a world 
 of which they now held the key, over which they 
 now found an easy mastery. 
 
 Oh that the scales might but fall from our eyes, 
 and that we might see as they saw, and taste of 
 their joy — the joy of seeing again their Lord, the 
 joy which no man could again take from them ! 
 Oh that we might be no longer tossed about with 
 every wind of doctrine ; no longer hover round 
 and round in vexed eddies of uncertainty ; that 
 we, who swore we would never believe it until we 
 could put our hands into the print of the nails, 
 
THE CRITICAL DILEMMA. 
 
 49 
 
 might find ourselves confessing, " My Lord and 
 my God " ! How firm our tread would be, how 
 rational our outlook, how deep our peace, if only 
 it might be ! 
 
 Yet we cannot believe it of ourselves ; we cannot 
 argue ourselves into it. Through the Spirit alone 
 is faith made possible to us. Send down, then, 
 send down on us, risen and ascended Master — 
 send down Thy Holy Ghost, Thy Advocate, for 
 Whom we wait ! Touch our hearts, illuminate our 
 reason, unseal our lips, that we also, by the faith 
 of the operation of God, may become living 
 witnesses to Thy Resurrection ! 
 
 E 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 " Whereof we all are witnesses." — Acts ii. 32. 
 
 That is the key-note which the Apostles never 
 tire of repeating. " You killed the Prince of Life, 
 Whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we 
 all are witnesses." " God raised Him from the 
 dead ; and He was seen many days of them that 
 came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem." 
 " We are witnesses of all things which He did both 
 in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem ; Whom 
 . . . God raised up the third day, and showed. Him 
 openly ; not to all the people, but unto witnesses 
 chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and 
 drink with Him after He rose from the dead." 
 
 " Witnesses of the Resurrection." " With great 
 power gave the Apostles witness of the Resurrec- 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 51 
 
 tion of the Lord Jesus." And all this they did, in 
 loyalty to His own prophetic Word: "Ye also 
 shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me 
 from the beginning." 
 
 " Whom God raised from the dead, whereof we 
 all are witnesses." On this Apostolic witness the 
 Church is built ; and it may be well to recall how 
 that Apostolic testimony has come down to us 
 of to-day, and what grounds we have for asserting 
 that we possess it in its adequate and authentic 
 shape. 
 
 For, indeed, from the way people speak, I cannot 
 but suppose that they are unaware of the results 
 at which the criticism of the Gospels has finally 
 arrived. They seem to think that the critical dis- 
 cussion of their authenticity has been increasingly 
 disastrous ; they are apparently perfectly ignorant 
 of the strength of the case for the Gospels, which 
 that discussion has increasingly disclosed. Forgive 
 me, then, if I go over matters which may seem to 
 many familiar and trite, and attempt to describe 
 the situation which fifty years of intense and 
 
52 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 complete examination of our Apostolic witnesses 
 have now secured to us. 
 
 What, then, is our authority for the Gospel nar- 
 rative ? To what centre, to what body of witnesses, 
 to what date can we track it home ? We used to 
 suppose that the answer to such questions would 
 turn entirely on the written Gospels — the books 
 that are in our Bible. And, so supposing, we were 
 annoyed to discover that it was exactly in the 
 matter of the written record that our information 
 was most hazy. When were they written down ? 
 Who exactly wrote them ? Where were they 
 written ? How soon were they quoted ? In all 
 this we had but a few fragments of tradition to 
 guide us — good enough tradition, but still slight, 
 and indefinite, and lacking in precision ; transmitted 
 accidentally, as if not much trouble had been taken 
 to certify it with warrantable names, facts, details. 
 Above all, in date and place was the uncertainty 
 at its height. And then we discovered also that 
 direct quotations from these Gospels by name, 
 and exact references to them, were strangely late, 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 53 
 
 strangely long in coming ; and it staggered us to 
 hear that it is well on in the second century 
 before we can positively assert that the Church 
 is clearly using and quoting the very books as 
 we have them in our hands to-day. It was at this 
 point of the discussion that the critical results were 
 most negative and most alarming, and it is at this 
 antiquated point that much of the public popular 
 mind still remains ; so that even men of high repu- 
 tation, in our first-class magazines,, can talk of the 
 Gospel story as " uncertified hearsay," and ask 
 whether they are to accept the tremendous miracle 
 of the Resurrection on evidence given a hundred 
 years after it occurred, in books whose authorship 
 and date are merely traditional. 
 
 Now, to use such language is to be grossly 
 ignorant of the course later criticism has taken. 
 For, as soon as we had recovered from the surprise 
 of discovering this vagueness of certification for the 
 written book, we looked closer ; and we found at 
 once, that this vagueness was due to the fact that 
 the Christian Church did not dream of finding 
 
54 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 the first authority for its story in the written Word. 
 It took it a hundred years to accustom itself to 
 turn to these books as its primary authorities. Its 
 earliest mind was strongly against writing. Writing 
 was not its most natural method of preserving its 
 story. It distrusted the accidents that beset it, the 
 changes, the blunderings ; it disliked the deadness 
 of a dumb document. Our Lord had not written 
 one word ; He had definitely preferred to use living, 
 human memories, written on the tablets of the heart ; 
 and the loyal impulses of the Church all set in the 
 channels which He had marked down. Only very 
 slowly, as the pressure of lengthening circumstances 
 compelled her to face new possibilities, was she 
 forced to see the necessity of depositing, in black 
 and white, her witness to the Resurrection. And 
 there can be no more convincing proof of her un- 
 willingness to trust to writing than her own tradi- 
 tion that it was only when the death of the last 
 Apostle grew ominously near that S. John could 
 be induced to write down his record. 
 
 Here, then, was the real issue which criticism 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 55 
 
 had raised. It had shown how casually and how 
 gradually the Church came into possession of her 
 written story. But what did that prove ? Did it 
 prove that the story itself was casual, late, uncer- 
 tified ? that she was careless whence her story 
 came to her ? Far from it ! It only proved that 
 it was not in writings that we are to look for the 
 authorized witness which the earliest Church 
 warranted. She had other methods of giving and 
 securing her testimony, which she preferred to 
 writing. What, then, were those methods ? Were 
 they careful, reliable methods ? Had they behind 
 them certificated authority ? Did the Church 
 take heed how to secure to them this warrant ? 
 
 What is the answer ? Let us turn to the docu- 
 ments themselves and see. One of these Gospel 
 writers has left on record the exact situation in 
 which he wrote. He has told us what was his 
 own title to write, and where his authority to do 
 so lay. Nothing can be plainer or simpler, or 
 better tally with what we have been saying. And 
 we cannot doubt that his account of his own situa- 
 
56 
 
 THE GOSPEL W7TXESS. 
 
 tion is common, certainly to S. Mark, himself a 
 man of secondary rank, and probably to the written 
 form of S. Matthew. 1 
 
 S. Luke opens his Gospel with the familiar ex- 
 planation. And see how important. First, his own 
 name. Let us note that. We had imagined that 
 all the validity turned on the authority of the par- 
 ticular writer : and when this was at all doubted 
 or disputed, the story itself, we thought, lost all its 
 warrant. But S. Luke never dreams of claiming such 
 a position for himself. He is not the authority for the 
 facts he narrates ; he could not be. He, converted 
 by S. Paul (so far as we know), could not be sup- 
 posed to have seen anything himself ; he had, 
 probably, never seen the face of the Lord. He is 
 in a wholly subordinate position. He is a careful, 
 painstaking pupil, who has had exceptional oppor- 
 tunities of receiving the completer Christian in- 
 struction. That is why he proposes to write his 
 Gospel ; it will be a reliable record of what is 
 
 1 The Gospel of S. John stands on a different footing altogether 
 from the first three, and requires a separate treatment. 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 57 
 
 familiarly taught. But the story itself does not 
 date itself from his book ; far from it. It is per- 
 fectly well known already. Those for whom he 
 writes it already know every word of it. Theo- 
 philus and he himself have sat together in the 
 Christian schools, and have got it all by heart. 
 The story exists long before it is written, and it is 
 this existing story that has authoritative warrant. 
 " Eye-witnesses of the facts " they were, who so 
 taught it to S. Luke and his friend ; " ministers of 
 the Word," he calls them — certified personages 
 whose peculiar and appointed office it was to bear 
 the authentic witness. Here, in the background, 
 lay the valid authority, on the strength of which 
 the story was to be believed. On the word of these 
 warranted men, Luke himself, and those for whom 
 he wrote, already firmly believed it. 
 
 Why, then, is it written down ? Simply for its 
 permanent and trustworthy preservation in memory 
 — to report it correctly. This humble task, which 
 many were attempting, of copying out a correct 
 and exact version of the things familiarly taught, 
 
58 
 
 THE GOSPEL WIT.XESS. 
 
 of supplying a reliable and accurate report — this 
 a devoted and attentive pupil like S. Luke had 
 singular opportunities for fulfilling. 
 
 It is, then, behind him that his authority lies ; 
 and now the critical question divides itself into two : 
 (i) What is known of this Gospel story which 
 preceded the writings ? Whither and to whom can 
 we trace it ? Is that story certified by adequate 
 warrant ? That is the all-important point. And, 
 then, (2) Do our written Gospels correctly report 
 this primitive and original story ? 
 
 Now, each of these two questions, so divided, 
 admits of an absolutely certain answer. 
 
 How can we trace the original Gospel story 
 which the written Gospels are content to report ? 
 Let us go straight to our earliest sources of in- 
 formation. 
 
 Long before the story was written down, we 
 have Christian documents which refer to it con- 
 stantly ; and these documents have this great 
 merit, that, beyond all conceivable dispute or dis- 
 cussion, their exact authorship, date, occasion, 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 59 
 
 meaning, are all determined. S. Paul's early 
 epistles are the first form in which we possess the 
 Apostolic witness. What notice do they give of a 
 Gospel story ? It is impossible to measure the 
 vivid and habitual reference they make to it, until 
 we have remembered a matter which we find it 
 difficult to realize, i.e. that S. Paul, wherever he 
 uses his favourite term of " my gospel," means 
 by that word, not a theology, not a theory of Justi- 
 fication, but, primarily, the story of the Lord's 
 Birth, Death, Resurrection, with its necessary inter- 
 pretation. Take the salient instance I Cor. xv. I. 
 He speaks of a " gospel " which he " preached unto 
 them," " wherein they stand," " by which they are 
 saved," " if they hold it fast." What is it ? What 
 is this gospel which he received, which he delivered 
 over to them ? It is a record of facts ; it is the 
 assertion of certain historical events in their exact 
 validity. It is the fact that " Christ died for our 
 sins, . . . rose again, . . . was seen of Cephas, . . . 
 of the twelve, ... of James, ... of all the Apostles." 
 That is the gospel, which, "whether it were I or 
 they, so we preached, and so ye believed." 
 
6o 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 He refers again, in the eleventh chapter, to this 
 solemn thing which he delivered, " which they 
 received." What again is it ? The fact that our 
 Lord "on the night . . . took bread." Cf. Rom. i. i. 
 What is the "gospel" to which S.Paul is "separated"? 
 It is the same record of actual facts — the gospel 
 of the Son, Who was born " of the seed of David 
 according to the flesh ; declared to be the Son of 
 God with power, ... by the resurrection from the 
 dead." And as it is grounded on sheer facts, so it 
 terminates in a future fact — the fact that, on a certain 
 day, God will judge the secrets of men's hearts by 
 Jesus Christ, " according to my gospel." " Re- 
 member," he cries, with his last breath, " that Jesus 
 Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the 
 dead, according to my gospel." 1 
 
 This is his gospel — a story of the Lord's Life, 
 presented in its absolute and world-wide signi- 
 ficance ; that He was born of a woman, under the 
 Jewish law ; that He died and was buried ; that 
 
 1 Cf. Gal. i. The "other gospel" is "another Jesus," i.e. a 
 different presentation of the Historic Personality. 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 6 1 
 
 He rose again ; that He will, on a certain day, 
 judge the world. And this story is known, ob- 
 viously, by heart to every soul to whom he writes. 
 He can make the slightest possible references 
 to it, with the absolute certainty of being under- 
 stood. He recalls it to them in detail as the 
 very groundwork of their lives, in the strength of 
 which they stand and are saved ; a thing known 
 everywhere and by all, received and delivered in a 
 manner they knew well, and from a source they 
 knew well. 
 
 The Church possessed, then, in the years 54-56, 
 a fixed and familiar story of the Lord. Whence 
 did it get it ? From whom was it received ? Who 
 were its authorities ? Now, here we get on very 
 sure ground. For the battle of S. Paul's career, 
 as recorded in his earliest epistles, turns largely 
 on this very point. What is that bitter personal 
 controversy, which is ever coming to the surface, 
 at Corinth, or in Galatia ? Wherein lies its 
 venom ? Simply in this — that he brings a gospel, 
 which, based as it is on definite historical events, 
 
62 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 can only be authorized by a certain definite 
 body of men, who were alone privileged to give 
 the testimony of selected and appointed eye-wit- 
 nesses. These men were well known to all ; they 
 were that Apostolic company, established at Jeru- 
 salem, of whom the " chief pillars," the " nota- 
 bilities," were Cephas, James, John. From them 
 every gospel must come ; every emissary who 
 preaches it must carry their credentials. This is 
 the prime necessity on which the security of the 
 Church rests. 
 
 Who, then, is Paul, that he should authorize the 
 Gospel ? Does he bring such credentials ? And, 
 if not, how can he deliver it ? If he may preach 
 it, then it can only be as an agent, acting under 
 the authority of the Twelve. But, then, what claim 
 has he to found Churches, to stand to them as 
 Apostles alone can stand ? 
 
 Here is the point on which the opposition takes 
 its stand. And we can still feel clearly enough, 
 in the strain and fervour of S. Paul's language, 
 how strong the case against him looked, how con- 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 63 
 
 vincing and clear were the positions taken. And 
 we can measure by that how firm and rooted were 
 the assumptions on which the arguments against 
 him rested. The heat and passion of that terrible 
 struggle have burned itself into the epistles that 
 record it ; but that agony of S. Paul will not have 
 been in vain, or without compensating fruit to the 
 Church, if it abides as an overwhelming evidence to 
 us to-day, of the rigorous care which the earliest 
 Church took in securing valid testimony to its 
 Gospel story. 
 
 From one source alone can it allow that story to 
 come ; the standing of its teachers turns wholly on 
 their right relation to that source. 
 
 And, now, what is that source ? It is the Twelve, 
 permanently fixed at Jerusalem, headed by Cephas, 
 James, John. The witness is given by a selected, 
 official, certified body — "the witnesses chosen before 
 of God," " ordained to be witnesses of the Resur- 
 rection " — carefully defined, set apart for this par- 
 ticular function from out of those who were with 
 the Lord from one fixed date, the Resurrection of 
 
6 4 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 Jesus, to another, the Ascension. 1 And it is given 
 at Jerusalem ; i.e. the men who claim to have seen 
 the event with their own eyes make that claim in 
 the very spot and scene where, as they say, it took 
 place. From this spot they refuse to move. They 
 are witnesses to a fact, and the only fit place where 
 that witness can be given is there where it could 
 best be confuted. There they stand — the heart of 
 the witnessing Church ; and round them the whole 
 organization of the Church frames itself — frames 
 itself as an organization to carry their certified story 
 abroad, along authentic and authorized channels ; 
 so that far away in Asia Minor, and in Achaia, 
 and in Rome, there shall be but one test for all 
 teachers — " What are your relations to the notables, 
 the pillars, the Apostolic teachers at Jerusalem ? " 
 
 The one taunt against S. Paul is, " You are 
 trying to rebel against that supreme authority." 
 
 And observe, that the taunt has such a sting in 
 it, just because S. Paul's " Gospel story " is identical 
 with that taught by the Twelve. That is why his 
 
 1 Acts i. 21, 22. 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 65 
 
 foes can challenge him with being a mere emissary 
 from the Apostles at Jerusalem. And he is careful 
 to allow that he and the Twelve have been in 
 communication. It is true (he must admit it) that 
 he went up to Jerusalem to make earnest inquiries 
 of S. Peter ; only he pleads that that was not 
 necessary to his authority, which is proved by 
 his not going up for three years. Again, at another 
 time, fourteen years later, he consented, " lest he 
 should run in vain," and his work be broken up, 
 to lay his own Gospel story by the side of theirs ; 
 and they found nothing amiss in it — nothing to 
 add or diminish. As to the Gospel itself, as told 
 by him and by them, there was absolute identity ; 
 only they agreed to separate ministries. S. Paul's 
 story, then, is the story told by Peter, James, and 
 John at Jerusalem. 
 
 And now we can measure, from other sources, 
 the strict importance which these Apostles attri- 
 buted to their essential office of authorizing the 
 story. For we are told in the Acts that, as soon as 
 the work of the Church grew, they singled out two 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 functions to which they limited themselves, resign- 
 ing into other hands all business which interfered 
 with these two; and these were — (i) worship; (2) the 
 ministry of the Word, and that is, in fact, simply 
 the teaching of the Lord's life, the imbedding in 
 the living memory, through the machinery of cate- 
 chetical schools, the events which S. Peter sums up 
 in his vivid speeches — "Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
 approved of God by mighty works and wonders ; 
 Him the Jews crucified and slew ; Him God raised 
 up ; and of this we are witnesses." 
 
 Those schools are coeval with the Church ; and 
 so vital was it for the Apostles to stand at Jeru- 
 salem and deliver this witness to the Church, that 
 absolutely their first act, on finding themselves 
 alone, is to complete their full number, that the 
 testifying body may be entire and four-square ; and 
 we know, by S. Peter's speech, how painstaking 
 they were to secure that the new man shall be 
 wholly qualified as a reliable eye-witness. So vital, 
 again, was it to abide in the one spot of testimony, 
 that we are startled to find them abandoning active 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 6 7 
 
 missionary work, for the sake of retaining the solid 
 witnessing force at the centre. That is why so 
 little seems to have been done by the Twelve 
 themselves in spreading the Gospel abroad. 
 
 And consider the length of time covered by 
 the dates of which we are speaking. S. Paul, in 
 the Epistle to the Galatians, carries us back to the 
 year 37, for his own conversion, at the very latest ; 
 and before his conversion comes his persecution, 
 witnessing to the story then told by these same 
 men. There, in Jerusalem, the Twelve stood then ; 
 seventeen years later, they are still there ; at the 
 date of the Epistle to the Corinthians, there they 
 are yet to be found — Cephas, James, John. For 
 twenty-five years, at least, after the facts which they 
 assert, they remain making that assertion in Jeru- 
 salem itself ; they only drag themselves away when 
 the gathering siege forces them to flight. Then, 
 at last, as that scattering of the witnessing band 
 becomes imminent, is the story seemingly entrusted 
 to written records, which may compensate for the 
 possible loss of the living instruction. But by this 
 
68 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 time the story has been long and firmly rooted ; 
 the written Book is intended only to secure it to the 
 believing memory ; while everywhere and for ever 
 two pillars have been set up, which will perpetuate 
 the living authority of that Apostolic witness : 
 (i) the pillar of the Creed, ever rehearsed before 
 God in public assembly, ever committed to the 
 instructed heart of every single convert — in itself 
 nothing but a shortened gospel, a positive summary 
 of certain historic facts, which took place at a 
 fixed date, at a certified historical moment — "under 
 Pontius Pilate ; " and (2) the pillar of the Wor- 
 ship, of which the central act enshrines the per- 
 petuated memory of a certain night, the very night 
 in which the Master was betrayed ; when He did 
 that which the Gospel story records, which all had 
 received, which all had had delivered down to 
 them — " that our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, 
 and gave thanks," and bade them rehearse that act 
 for ever "in memory of Him." 
 
 Here, then, is our testimony. We are asked 
 where, when, and from what witnesses our story 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 6 9 
 
 was first delivered. Our answer is both secure and 
 complete. The Gospel story of our Lord's Life, 
 Death, and Resurrection was most certainly told 
 to the Church by a knot of living men, selected 
 as eye-witnesses for this very purpose ; selected 
 according to definite rules, with a defined purpose, 
 that they might tell this story. They told it, 
 headed by three great names, Peter, John, and 
 James, the Lord's own brother, at Jerusalem, the 
 spot where the facts occurred ; they told it in full 
 consciousness of the importance of securing war- 
 ranted accuracy. We note how careful, how definite, 
 how formal are the pains spent on the certification 
 of the living witness, as contrasted with the vague 
 uncertainties which surround the origin of the 
 written records. We are in presence of men who 
 recognize, with all their might, the urgency of the 
 task set them. They are bent on securing this 
 valid, and formal, and official witness, from the 
 very first hour of their being left alone ; their 
 earliest act was to fill up their total strength of 
 testimony ; they gave themselves up to the task 
 
70 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 of securing the living memory of this story through- 
 out the whole Church. They were accepted by 
 all as its sole authorities, S. Paul being only added 
 to their number, in the face of furious opposition, 
 on the distinct ground that his witness was first- 
 hand even as theirs, and his story identical with 
 theirs. They had a special class of officers set 
 apart to carry their story abroad in its certified 
 and authentic form, called Evangelists. And all 
 this they did, not for some broken moments, but 
 continuously from the very first year following our 
 Lord's death, for at least twenty-five years on 
 end, in that one place where all could best be 
 confuted. On the reality of this story they rested 
 their whole case ; on this witness of the Twelve 
 the Church's foundations were laid. Round about 
 this Apostolic witness, the whole organization of 
 the Christian body was framed ; the continuity of 
 the Apostolic organization is for the sake of pre- 
 serving the unbroken continuity of the testimony. 
 On that story, on a statement of historical facts, the 
 Creed is built and the worship fashioned ; round 
 that story the entire Church is grouped. 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 71 
 
 Men talk lightly and ignorantly of " uncertified 
 hearsay." Would it be possible to use a phrase 
 which would describe the facts more wrongly, or 
 contradict them more perversely ? The entire 
 Church exists for the sake of certifying to the 
 testimony, for the sake of testifying to the truth 
 and validity of the facts ; the Church exists in order 
 to bear its warranted witness that Jesus Christ was 
 indeed " born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under 
 Pontius Pilate," " was raised the third day from 
 the dead," " whereof we all are witnesses." 
 
 There remains our second question. Granting 
 that this Gospel story, so originated and vouched, 
 was known by heart to the entire Church from the 
 year 34 onward, do our written Gospels correctly 
 report to us what that story was ? That is a very 
 simple question, and it permits of a very plain, 
 simple, and certain answer. For not only has the 
 course of criticism absolutely justified their supreme 
 excellence, regarded as a report of the current and 
 earliest story ; but we are saved from all troublesome 
 discusssion of the probabilities of their accuracy, 
 
72 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 by this simple fact, that, as to whether or no those 
 writings correctly reported the certified story, the 
 Church itself was in a position to judge. It knew 
 the story as it was told and taught by the warranted 
 witnesses ; and in that knowledge it approved and 
 adopted those Gospels — approved and adopted 
 them with such unhesitating and world-wide deci- 
 sion, that all other attempts at writing it down 
 were surrendered, and vanished. A Church that 
 had taken such persistent pains to secure, from the 
 first, that it had hold of the story from the authentic 
 sources, cannot conceivably have adopted inade- 
 quate reports of what it familiarly knew. 
 
 " Whereof we all are witnesses." It was the 
 earliest and the highest office of the Church to bear 
 testimony, to give proofs, to warrant its Creed. 
 That is still its primary office, its most urgent task. 
 It is itself to be the strong assurance before men 
 that the Gospel story is a true record of fact. To 
 anoint it to this office, the Spirit of God came 
 down at Pentecost, and abides in the heart of the 
 Church for ever. And it is for testimony, for proofs, 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 73 
 
 that men are now asking — asking with scorn, with 
 cruelty, with carelessness sometimes, but asking, 
 far more often, in an agony of dread, under the 
 sway of an intellectual panic, which is felt creeping 
 over them like a contagion, as a plague-breath that 
 chills, and unnerves, and paralyzes, and sickens. 
 Testimony, evidence, proof, witness — for these they 
 anxiously, feverishly ask. To give these is no 
 accident of our Christian life ; it is the very essence 
 and aim of our membership in Christ's Body. 
 
 And we can offer our witness with a glad con- 
 fidence ; for we can most assuredly track back, 
 with absolute certainty, to a warranted, and certified, 
 and authentic source, that story which is the very 
 core of our personal lives to-day. 
 
 But yet, let us ever repeat and remind them and 
 ourselves, it must still be " the Spirit that beareth 
 witness " — the Spirit that, through us, testifies, and 
 convinces, and wins. What does that involve ? 
 The evidence we offer can never be mathematical, 
 formal, dead. It can never be worked out as an 
 algebraical formula, as a proposition of Euclid, as 
 
74 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 a piece of experimental science ; for the facts of 
 which we offer proof are historical — that is, they are 
 human, they are living. The probability of their 
 occurring will turn entirely on our personal estimate 
 of human life and of its possibilities, its heights 
 and its depths, its character and its aims, its origin 
 and its end. And what that estimate will be must 
 always depend on our spiritual condition. 
 
 Such evidence as we offer speaks from Spirit to 
 spirit, from God to man. And if, therefore, we 
 have already, under an intellectual panic, sur- 
 rendered our consciousness of a spiritual world 
 above, around, beneath us, which can touch, and 
 help, and lift us, then no external evidence can 
 ever restore our nerves, or lay hold of our imagina- 
 tion, or win our confidence, or move our rational 
 assent. 
 
 Have we such a spirit-world, above, around, 
 beneath us, wide, open, illimitable, in the heart 
 of which this mighty deed of God in Christ takes 
 place, " by which He raised Jesus from the dead " ? 
 A spirit-world, far, far above our heads, wherein 
 
THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 75 
 
 lies heaven and its thousand times ten thousand ? 
 A spirit-world, deep down below our feet, wherein 
 is the darkness of the pit, and sin, and death, and 
 that old serpent the devil, and the abyss of wrath ? 
 A spirit-world, around us, in face of us, wherein 
 is God our Father — God, not idle or remote, but 
 near, active, invoking, pursuing, persuading, be- 
 seeching, opening to us His Heart of Love, made 
 new, made our own in the pity and tenderness of 
 Jesus ? A spirit-world, unveiled by the ministering 
 motions of the Holy Spirit ? Have we such a 
 world as this : and are we looking out into it, not 
 with the cold, hard inspection of a critical and 
 unconcerned spectator, but with the eyes of a 
 human spirit, personal, alive, profoundly interested ; 
 with a spirit that seeks a heavenly country, a spirit 
 that is weighted with the sense of its own infirmity, 
 a spirit that knows the awful shadow of spiritual 
 wrong ? 
 
 So we must be looking, according to this measure 
 of our destiny, according to this standard of its 
 possibilities, if ever we are to judge the witness of 
 
7 6 
 
 THE GOSPEL WITNESS. 
 
 the Spirit that God has raised Jesus from the dead. 
 So looking, so judging, and so alone, can the way 
 be thrown open by which the Spirit of God may 
 descend and find a way to our souls,- and may take 
 of the things of Christ and show them unto us. 
 So alone can we have at last the witness in our 
 own hearts — that sweet unction from the Holy 
 Spirit of Pentecost by which we may "know all 
 things." 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 " We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be 
 the Saviour of the world." — I John iv. 14. 
 
 All those, and they are very many, who have read 
 the Life of Charles Darwin have felt the instinctive 
 fascination of that high character. Never, surely, 
 has a life been told which left a more engaging 
 picture on the memory. His bright geniality, his 
 delightful companionableness, his simple nobility, 
 his domestic kindliness — these are notes that speak 
 home to English hearts. There is nothing that 
 charms an Englishman so surely as the sight of 
 supreme gifts and magnificent fame, which yet are 
 totally devoid of all posing, all artificiality, all 
 vanity, and are worn lightly and easily, with the 
 honest and homely simplicity of a man who finds 
 himself able to do something very great for his 
 fellows, and does it as modestly and quietly as if 
 
78 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 it were the commonest and humblest duty in the 
 world. Shakespeare has left us an ideal here of 
 the bearing and behaviour of genius, which we are 
 not likely to forget ; and we take it to our hearts 
 whenever, as in Charles Darwin, we recognize this 
 touch of the national spirit. 
 
 And how complete in him the happy portrait is ! 
 So patient, and steady, and careful he is in the 
 slow preparation of his great idea ; so absolutely 
 true in his deliberate consideration of all that 
 makes against it ; so trustful in his quiet certainty 
 that the difficulties which baffle him will be found 
 to disappear ; so exquisitely tempered, both in his 
 gay chivalry to his theory, and yet in his graceful 
 deference to his two dear yet unconvinced friends. 
 Never, surely, was a new position fought for with 
 more consummate self-control and such unbroken 
 geniality. And then the limitless success, the 
 overwhelming honour of the victory, never, for one 
 moment, ruffle the sweet, simple, good-humoured 
 honesty of the man. Pleasant, human, modest, he 
 remains to the last wholly what he had ever been. 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 79 
 
 No vice seems to come over him ; life's conditions 
 are amiable and honourable from start to close ; 
 no flaw thwarts the graceful, friendly, hearty 
 presence. It is a delightful record. 
 
 And why is it, then, that, as we lay it down, we 
 are vexed with a vague sense of bewilderment ? 
 We have to reflect, to draw upon ourselves, in 
 order to discover ; and, so reflecting, we see why we 
 are puzzled. For we have been absorbed in the 
 interest and the nobility of a man's life, from out 
 of which have utterly vanished the two elemental 
 enigmas which lie at the base of all our spiritual 
 history. The philosophical enigma, themoral enigma 
 — these do not appear in the drama of Darwin's days. 
 Of course no one can effect a gigantic revolution 
 in scientific thought without coming across the 
 intellectual questions which beset our knowledge 
 of reality. Darwin finds himself challenged, com- 
 pelled to say something — to declare what he holds 
 about ultimate truth. But this challenge is forced 
 on him from outside. There is no sign at all of 
 his being himself the least bit in touch with specu- 
 
8o 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 lative problems. His own scientific formula has 
 this especial merit, that it succeeds in separating 
 off the proper and peculiar ends which science has 
 in view, from all those ulterior questions to which 
 philosophy and religion apply themselves ; it en- 
 ables these ultimate questions to be put by, to 
 be held in reserve, to be dismissed from the imme- 
 diate business in hand. And this dismissal once 
 clearly accomplished, all difficulty for Darwin is 
 over. 1 He is never the least afflicted or perplexed 
 by the problems that concern the reality of the 
 objects that we know, or of the subject that knows 
 them. He confesses himself totally uninterested 
 in such metaphysical questions. No shadow of 
 intellectual uneasiness discolours his radiant world 
 of fact. His good, bright, eager mind is wholly 
 captivated with the intense enjoyment of scientific 
 observation, experiment, discovery. And there he 
 ends. Young men, full of anxious problems, thrust 
 
 1 He confesses himself exercised over the question of ' ' design " 
 in Nature : but this question concerns the practical, rather than the 
 speculative, intellect. 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 81 
 
 upon him their own turmoil, and he has, when 
 pressed, to call himself an " Agnostic." But the 
 big name covers no deep philosophical position ; it 
 only means the mental temper and attitude of an 
 honest and cheerful Englishman, to whom and for 
 whom these burning questions do not practically 
 or vitally exist. 
 
 And as with the intellectual, so with the moral 
 enigma. For that smooth, even, upright career, 
 it too does not exist. No hot breath of struggle ; 
 no cruelty of passion ; no stubbornness of the rebel 
 will ; no selfish egotism ; no encrusted pride ; no 
 torturing vanity ; no inward misery at some deep, 
 silent sore ; no fretting wilfulness ; no profound 
 hunger after a peace that has been lost. No ! 
 there is no sense of wrong ; no curse ; hardly even 
 an effort — so easy, so straight, so happy is his path. 
 Looking back from out of the very shadow of 
 death at his fair and sunny days, he can call up no 
 remorse, he tells us, for any great sin ; only he 
 can just wish he had done a little more good in the 
 world. 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 Nor does his experience of men throw any blight 
 on this broad cheerfulness. He had a chivalrous 
 ardour against the harshness of slavery, the one in- 
 stance of social evil with which he came in contact. 
 But his habits kept him far aloof from all that is 
 gross, fierce, base, horrible. Encompassed by loving 
 friends, himself one of the most lovable of men, 
 he passes from youth to manhood, from manhood 
 into the dignity of old age, without check or hitch, 
 without slur or damage ; and when he is laid in his 
 honourable grave, has the accuser of his brethren 
 anything at all that he can lay against him ? 
 
 The enigmas of human life, the intellectual and 
 the moral enigmas — these have disappeared ; and 
 no wonder that we are bewildered at such immense 
 omissions in a character of such supreme value. 
 
 And yet, even though such a case bewilder us, it 
 will at least relieve us of an earlier trouble which 
 probably daunted us. We had, perhaps, supposed 
 that we had to count the whole force of Mr. Darwin's 
 mind as against us in our Christian belief. We 
 had darkly wondered to ourselves why it was that 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 83 
 
 the greatest scientific intellect of the day should 
 see no justification for our creed. We knew our 
 own smallness, our narrow intellectual gift ; we 
 admired his splendid powers ; how is it that our 
 faith and the evidences of our faith, if they, indeed, 
 be true and strong, do not commend themselves to 
 a man of this high capacity and excellent judgment ? 
 Can that be a revelation from God which, however 
 forcibly it appeals to us, cannot win its way to the 
 greatest and purest intellect of the day ? Such 
 questions lurk about us very deeply ; they cow 
 and daunt our faith, even when it seems to us 
 firm ; for they throw a cloud of suspicion over our 
 own powers of judgment. How can we trust our 
 own faculties, however sure their report, if the ex- 
 perience of another, who is of infinitely superior 
 weight, contradicts ours ? So our belief creeps into 
 its shell, and cowers, and fears to assert itself, and 
 loses its nerve. 
 
 What a relief, then, to discover that this other 
 had never had the experiences to which we make 
 our primary appeal ; was not ever in possession of 
 
84 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 the facts which are to us so convincing ; that he 
 had not travelled into the country of which we are 
 talking ! What a relief to find that he has never 
 given judgment against our creed, simply because 
 the matters that constitute its justification never 
 fell within his range and horizon ! It is as if we, 
 who were being ravished with some melodious 
 music, had been disturbed at noticing another 
 listener, who remained totally unconcerned and 
 inattentive, without a sign of emotion on his face ; 
 so that we were dumbfounded, and had begun to 
 question our own delight and to distrust our own 
 taste, and to wonder whether that by which we 
 were fascinated could indeed be so beautiful, if it 
 left another's heart so absolutely untouched ; and 
 were then suddenly to discover that he was stone- 
 deaf. Back with a rush would come our confidence, 
 our security ; his unconcern would cease even to 
 throw a shadow of suspicion on our joy. So in 
 the case of Charles Darwin. We may, indeed, 
 wonder at the limitations of human genius, which 
 seem to be set it by the very conditions of its 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 85 
 
 development, so that supreme excellence and 
 energy in one department may be purchased at 
 the cost of absolute quiescence in other directions. 
 But, at any rate, we know where we stand as 
 to the evidence and credentials of our faith ; we 
 understand why they should have so little effect 
 there, where the case to which they apply does 
 not exist. For an answer is sure to look futile 
 to the man who has never asked the question to 
 which it responds. A solution cannot commend 
 itself when the problem which it solves has never 
 been felt. A hazardous and tremendous effort at 
 a rescue is bound to seem silly and uncalled for by 
 those who recognize no peril to which they are 
 liable. 
 
 And, as we know well, the entire justification of 
 Christianity lies in those twin enigmas, which were 
 so strangely absent from this great life of which 
 we have been speaking. Christianity assumes that 
 those enigmas are at the very- root of a man's 
 spiritual existence. It assumes that round them his 
 whole spiritual history turns. It assumes that man's 
 
86 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 primary and vital office is to know God, to know 
 the ultimate Truth of truths, to know the Very God. 
 It assumes that man is aware that he ought to be 
 capable of this high achievement, and that his inner 
 motions are all bent on achieving it, and that he 
 will at all hazards seek, and ask, and knock ; that 
 he will have ever in his soul the quickening cry, 
 " O that I knew where I might find Him, that I 
 might come into His presence ; " that he will press 
 hither and thither, urged by an unceasing hunger, 
 as he makes his one importunate demand on all 
 who can teach, " Show us the Father, and it suf- 
 ficeth us." Christianity assumes all this, and 
 assumes that man, nevertheless, cannot, by this 
 searching, find out God ; cannot come into His 
 presence ; cannot see with his eyes and hear with 
 his ears that which he is for ever pursuing ; — cannot, 
 because he has lost the thread, has confused the 
 track, has got entangled and perplexed ; so that 
 the distinctions between creature and Creator have 
 vanished, and all has become hazy, and miserable, 
 and harassing, and ineffectual. And, moreover, it 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 assumes that this intellectual impotence is knit up, 
 as man finds, with some horrible moral wrong, which 
 perverts his insight, and blurs his vision, and defeats 
 his judgment, and yet cannot be undone, or aban- 
 doned, or cured ; nay, which gathers increase out 
 of his intellectual confusion, and deepens and 
 darkens as his knowledge of God grows more 
 chaotic, and roots itself ever firmer as his hold on 
 spiritual truth loosens. And so the wrong ever 
 worsens, and the weakness ever spreads, and the 
 disease ever sickens ; and man, who was made to 
 know God, and, in knowing Him, to become holy 
 as God is holy, lapses day by day further and 
 further from the capacity to know Him, and day 
 by day, therefore, sinks lower under the weight of 
 sin, and falls further and yet further from the holi- 
 ness of God, and becomes ever less able to commune 
 with God, or to bring his life into the searching 
 light of the Holy Presence. 
 
 All this is assumed before Christianity can begin. 
 And it is assumed, not arbitrarily, not fancifully, 
 not speculatively, so that it can be confounded 
 
88 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 by some stray and rare instances, where all this 
 assumption finds no counterpart; but on the in- 
 vincible evidence offered by the history of two 
 thousand years — the history of man's best and 
 purest efforts to attain this knowledge ; the history 
 especially of one immense, and prolonged, and 
 stubborn attempt that was inaugurated by Abra- 
 ham, the father of the faithful, and was carried on 
 by Moses, and Samuel, and David, and Isaiah, and 
 Ezekiel, and Ezra, and was embodied in the entire 
 story of a nation, and was recorded in psalm, and 
 chronicle, and prophet, and on which were spent 
 the blood of heroes, and the devotion of priests, 
 and the patience of martyrs, and the love of saints. 
 There is the overwhelming evidence which nothing 
 can shake. The case has been proved out and out, 
 long ago. S. Paul had complete right to sum up 
 the whole situation : " by . . . the Law " — by things 
 as they stand — can " no flesh be justified." Man 
 ought to know God, yet he cannot ; man ought 
 to be holy, yet it is impossible. O miserable man, 
 what shall deliver him ? 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 8 9 
 
 That is the question of questions, to which the 
 Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the one answer. 
 Only, to understand, to estimate the answer, you 
 must first have asked the question. That is what 
 we mean by calling Christianity historical, by 
 speaking of its preparation. It is historical ; it 
 appears at one hour, not at another — at an hour in 
 which man's history has arrived at a certain critical 
 entanglement. It comes to meet certain conditions, 
 a certain situation, in which a long past has resulted. 
 Except in relation to that situation, it is, of course, 
 unintelligible ; except as releasing man from that 
 critical entanglement, it is, of course, unjustifiable. It 
 has a preparation ; and any who would understand 
 it must have travelled along the road that leads 
 up to it, must have undergone that preparatory 
 discipline. 
 
 Christianity arrived in the world in face of the 
 pressure of these enigmas. Is this pressure, my 
 brethren, less to-day than it was then ? The 
 intellectual enigma, for instance : Man is made 
 to know God, and yet fails to know Him. That 
 
90 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 was the verdict, the summing-up of S. Paul, on the 
 state of human wisdom before the Resurrection : 
 " The world by its wisdom knew not God." Would 
 he be at all inclined to change or modify that 
 verdict to-day ? Would he see any reason to re- 
 consider it ? Alas ! has not the evidence in its 
 favour multiplied a thousandfold in the years 
 that have passed since he spoke ? So that now, 
 to-day, at the end of all our seeking to find 
 God, we find, on every side, that men are so de- 
 spairing of success in the search that they are 
 seriously doubting whether the search ought ever 
 to have been made — whether it be not true that 
 man was never made to know God. All around 
 us reason is in retreat. It is surrendering problem 
 after problem ; it is abandoning position after posi- 
 tion ; it is shutting itself up within the narrow 
 boundaries of its own unexplained experience, and 
 refusing to venture out a step beyond that walled 
 fortress. It fears to trust itself; it makes no claims 
 to know anything. It names itself Agnostic ; and 
 that means that it throws up the cards, that the 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 91 
 
 game is lost. All its ancient heroic ventures into 
 the unseen, the real, the true, the absolute — these 
 are over. It capitulates ; it resigns itself to accept 
 its own ignorance ; it deems it useless to prolong 
 the struggle. Nothing can be known as it is. 
 Why do we talk of the progress of intellect ? 
 Surely the intellect of the day is in full retreat 
 from out of all the country it once claimed to 
 occupy. It is openly professing defeat. It can 
 find no road, as it once hoped, out of its own limited 
 horizon, out beyond the range of its local and 
 earthly faculties. Man was not made to know the 
 reality of things ; man cannot know God. This 
 is the melancholy message which reason is enforcing. 
 
 Yet, to accept it is to commit suicide ; to accept 
 it is to stifle all spiritual aspiration, to slit the 
 nerves of all human hope. To accept it is to close 
 our Bible for ever, to confess that the entire move- 
 ment recorded in the Bible — from the first call of 
 Abraham down to the last farewell of S. John — 
 was a childish and aimless blunder; that patriarch, 
 and prophet, and apostle have simply led the world 
 
92 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 astray on a false scent ; that our Lord has carried 
 the madness of man to its height when He told us 
 that in Him we do know God. For us, such a 
 confession is impossible ; such an act of suicide is 
 forbidden ; for we stand by the belief that to know 
 God is eternal life. We anyhow cannot escape the 
 enigma by denying that there is one. We cannot 
 bring our Bibles to be burned. 
 
 And yet, if man is ever to know God, there is 
 at this moment but one road left open, there is 
 but one offer for him to consider. For all other 
 claimants are retiring ; they are eagerly profess- 
 ing their inability to open him a way into the 
 ultimate truth. Only one claimant remains, chal- 
 lenging us to follow Him. It is He Who has 
 risen ; Who has passed out beyond our earthly 
 boundaries, beyond our temporal experiences, 
 beyond our limited horizon, and has broken 
 through the gates of brass and smitten the bars of 
 iron asunder that so cruelly curb our vision. It 
 is He Who has gone up into the land beyond 
 death, the reality beyond the show ; gone up into 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 93 
 
 the very abyss of God ; yet, so going, seated at 
 the very heart of God's eternal power, He still is 
 what we know Him to be, still wears the nature 
 which we understand, still is intelligible to our head 
 and our heart ; and still He cries to us out of the 
 centre of the abyss, " If ye know Me, ye know My 
 Father also ; he who sees Me sees the Father ; for 
 I am in the Father, and the Father in Me." 
 
 In knowing Christ, ascended to God's right hand, 
 we know God Himself. That is the glorious fruit 
 of the Resurrection which we celebrate to-day. 1 
 For to-day is the feast of that knowledge of God 
 that has been won by the Resurrection. Carried 
 into God through the Christ, following up into the 
 Godhead the flesh-bearing Jesus Whom we know 
 and love, we have a medium through which the 
 light of God Himself can pass to us — can pass un- 
 diminished, unblurred, undistorted, through the 
 mediation of Him Who, known to us in the flesh, 
 is yet " Very God of Very God." He Who sees 
 the Very God pledges Himself to us that the know- 
 
 1 Preached on Trinity Sunday. 
 
94 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 ledge He gives us of God is real — that in seeing 
 Him we do indeed see the Father. And so, out 
 of the Resurrection, there slowly has broken out 
 upon us, from the abyss of heaven, that mighty 
 truth about God which gives its name to this 
 Sunday — the teaching of the Trinity, which is the 
 translation into thought of the truth that " God is 
 love," which was declared to us in His raising Jesus 
 Christ from the dead. " God is love : " a Being 
 Whose essence is built up in loving relationships — 
 in a Father Who, out of eternal love, begets a Son ; 
 in a Son Who, in eternal love, gives back to the 
 Father His own blessed image ; in a Spirit Who 
 proceeds, in love, from each, and in love takes 
 of each and gives to the other. Here is indeed a 
 solution of the intellectual enigma, " We must know 
 God, yet we cannot ; " for it meets the dilemma 
 full and fair in the words, " No man hath seen God 
 at any time ; nevertheless, the only begotten Son, 
 Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath re- 
 vealed Him to us ; " He Who is lifted up into 
 the glory which He had before the world, has 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 95 
 
 taken the Name of the Father and manifested it 
 unto us. 
 
 And the moral enigma — the dark curse of moral 
 impotence, the misery of seeing the better and 
 doing the worse — that black enigma still en- 
 compasses us with no less terror, yea, rather 
 with a deeper depression than in the days when 
 S. Paul read out its secret. And from that 
 dismal depression who is able to release himself, 
 unless Christ be now alive at the right hand of 
 God, seated in power, and hath " all things in sub- 
 jection under His feet " ? " If Christ be not raised, 
 ye are yet in your sins." The awful dilemma — 
 " still in our sins." If Christ has not risen, then 
 the weight of woe has never been lifted off the 
 earth, the mastery of the evil tradition has never 
 been broken, the entail never been cut off. The 
 ancient wrong, so strong and rooted, has never suf- 
 fered defeat. The tyranny is unshaken ; nay, it is 
 established yet firmer, since it overcame Christ, the 
 Champion of God, and beat down into a bloody 
 grave the fairest, purest, noblest soul that ever 
 
9 6 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 breathed. If Christ has never been raised, then 
 the world has never been overcome as He promised ; 
 the prince of this world has never been judged ; the 
 strong man who holds us in miserable possession 
 has never been bound ; the blow has never been 
 struck which broke the iron bars ; the honour 
 and Name of God have never been vindicated. 
 
 And if so, then that tremendous picture drawn by 
 S. Paul, of the world before Christ, is still the only 
 conclusion. Evil is slowly and steadily winning. 
 There is no man who can give it the lie, can wrestle 
 with it and survive. No, not one. The set of sin 
 is too mighty ; the flood is ever rising, and there 
 is no saving act of God that has come in to with- 
 stand it. 
 
 And we ! We, then, have no buoyant hope of 
 victory behind us ; no blessed assurance, in the 
 midst of our tribulation, that He Who is our 
 Captain hath already, long ago, overcome the 
 world. No ! Struggle as we may against the 
 hateful thing, the battle has gone against us. We 
 are on the beaten side ; we are under the doom of 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 97 
 
 a moral defeat ; we shall not have the force, or the 
 courage, or the nerve, or the purity to carry the 
 fight through. We shall fall. For there are weak 
 spots in our armour ; there are bad memories within, 
 treacherous and cowardly ; there are wounds and 
 sores which will break out under this fierce strain. 
 Those only have any confidence who have never 
 tasted our cup, never known our anguish, never 
 been touched with our infirmities. Some few such 
 there are, rare souls, who are sunny and of good 
 cheer, because some happy chance has lifted them 
 sheer out of the battle and has spared them all 
 the strain. One such we have been now remember- 
 ing. But such a confidence can never be ours. 
 For we know what the battle means — its tremen- 
 dous heat, its endless onset ; and we know our 
 own faint-heartedness, our own inadequacy, our own 
 taint, our own treachery. " We are yet in our 
 sins if Christ be not raised." " Yet in our sins." 
 We may fight on ; but in our camp there is no 
 cry of victory, no shout of a king, and we fight 
 as those that sadly foreknow the inevitable end. 
 
 H 
 
9 8 
 
 THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 We may hope, struggle, but it will be in vain ; 
 the thrust of evil will be too strong for us. We 
 shall yield ; we shall break at last ; we shall sink ; 
 we shall go under ; and, when we die, we shall 
 leave behind us an earth that still groans as 
 heavily as of old, under the same tyrannous empire 
 of wrong — an earth that ever darkens down under 
 a sorrow that can never be appeased. 
 
 Here, then, is the moral issue that depends on 
 Christ's Resurrection. You and I, in our con- 
 flict with an old sin, deep-seated and strong — a 
 sin that is wound into our very being, that has 
 dug its fangs into our flesh, that has poisoned our 
 spiritual springs — under what conditions are we 
 fighting ? That is a very vital, a very critical 
 question. Are we fighting with the assurance of 
 victory — the assurance that God has Himself struck 
 the great triumphant blow on our side, in that 
 He raised Jesus Christ from the dead ? Are we 
 fighting in the sure consciousness that the yoke of 
 the oppressor is broken ; that it cannot hold us 
 fast bound in our misery and crime; that the fetters 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 99 
 
 must fall ; that the horrid snake of sin must loosen 
 its coils if we but endure bravely ; that all power 
 in heaven and earth is ours, since we are Christ's, 
 and Christ is God ; that already we have in us 
 the hope and pledge of invincible purity, so that 
 nothing can ever compel us to fall so long as we 
 are but faithful ; that within us the Spirit of God 
 wars gallantly ; that above us the prevailing inter- 
 cession of the Son ever proceeds ; that ever and 
 again, as the sin renews its power and makes new 
 inroads and stains us with fresh defilement, the 
 Blood of Jesus is sprinkled over us to cleanse us 
 from all our sins ; that ever the Blessed Father 
 bends over us with shielding love, as He sees in us 
 the image and the face of His Son ? Is that our 
 battle ? Are those our succours ? They are so 
 only if Christ rose the third day from the dead. 
 
 Do we say, " Ah ! how slow and poor the 
 winnings, even if all this be true " ? Well, let us 
 measure, by that poverty of our slow and scanty 
 victory, what our defeat would be if those succours 
 were all withdrawn, if all that hope had fled out 
 
IOO THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 
 
 of our days, if that blow for God had never been 
 struck, if Christ had never been raised ! Alas ! 
 if with all this belief we get forward so little, how 
 utter, how dark the collapse if all that makes 
 victory not incredible, not hopeless, were gone ! 
 
 Look deep into our own sick hearts. Look out, 
 far and wide, over the groaning earth. Can we 
 doubt on which side the victory will lie " if Christ 
 be not raised " ? For, indeed, there are ominous 
 signs about us — menaces of a vast moral over- 
 throw. The day may be upon us when evil shall 
 come in as a flood. Where shall we be, if the 
 Lord have indeed raised no standard against it ? 
 Believe me, this is no mere question whether a 
 miraculous fact did, or did not, take place long 
 ago. It is a matter of life or death to our spiri- 
 tual hopes to-day, whether or not, as we faintly 
 push forward against the terrible forces of sin, we 
 have behind us the powers of the Triune God, 
 pledged to our eternal succour by the Resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ ; whether or no He, our Risen 
 Lord, now holds the keys of death ; whether or 
 
THE ELEMENTAL ENIGMAS. 10 1 
 
 no the issues of the fray are all in His hands ; 
 whether or no we can count on it, in the blind 
 heat of the battle, that He sees and knows how 
 we fare, and what we need, and invokes the Father's 
 love upon us, and feeds us with the Spirit's conso- 
 lation. 
 
 Without this, who dares hope ? With this, who 
 dares fail ? 
 
CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 " Holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands 
 having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with 
 the increase of God." — Col. ii. 19. 
 
 We all are apt to roughly contrast with one another 
 the inner acts of individual faith, and the outer 
 system, or Church, into which those individual 
 believers are grouped. So contrasted, we can argue 
 for ever as to the relative importance, authority, 
 validity, predominance of the one element or the 
 other. Who can ever decide on their true propor- 
 tions to one another? From one point of view, 
 the individual believers seem but as the stones of 
 a vast and beautiful building, which embodies the 
 mind and enshrines the honour of God. They are 
 but as leaves, which come, and flourish, and die, 
 while the tree endures, and grows, and spreads its 
 branches far and wide. They are but the tools 
 
CORPORATE FA I TIL 
 
 I03 
 
 and material which the kingdom of God, come on 
 earth, puts to its own high uses. The interest, the 
 heart, the thought, all are bent on passing beyond 
 the mere detail of personal conversion, fascinating 
 as its study may be in its proper proportion and 
 place ; and on realizing, and interpreting, and for- 
 mulating, and embracing the great issues of the 
 world's redemption — the unchanging and unresting 
 work which the Father and the Son and the Spirit 
 push forward through all time. 
 
 And against all this the other side is strenuously 
 pleading : " This Church, after all, is but an instru- 
 ment for the saving of individual souls. Out of 
 these alone can it be formed ; for the sake of 
 these alone it lives and works ; these are its 
 prizes, its jewels, its resources, its fruit. In the 
 inward soul of man lies all spiritual worth. No 
 system, however splendid, can be so precious as 
 this, for from this it draws its own value. The 
 inward soul, in its struggle, its faith, its conver- 
 sion, its sanctity — with this alone, in the final 
 resort, is God concerned. In this alone does the 
 
104 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 Son see of the travail of the Spirit, and is satisfied. 
 All else is machinery — some devised by man, some 
 allowed by God for purposes of human expediency ; 
 much of it useful, good — yes, even necessary. But, 
 for all that, it is quite secondary, temporary, sub- 
 servient. It no doubt serves to extend the oppor- 
 tunities for faith, to secure the results of faith, to 
 satisfy the natural sympathies of the faithful. 
 Men who believe naturally desire to come together, 
 to combine, to co-operate. But the reality, the 
 essence, of religion is not to be found in this. It 
 must all yield before the dominant, the incompar- 
 able interest of the personal soul, in its solitary and 
 secret hold upon the life that is given it in Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 Now, there is the outline of an argument that, so 
 stated, can never reach a solution ; for it must always 
 depend on our own private character and aptitudes 
 to which side we will give the preference, to which 
 interest we shall ascribe the predominance. But 
 what if the whole question were, in that form, a 
 mistake ? What if the entire discussion ought to 
 
CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 105 
 
 be taken a stage further back, and, instead of con- 
 trasting the inward and the outward, the personal 
 faith and the Church system, pitting them one 
 against the other, as if they were two rival elements, 
 different in kind, antithetical, contradictory, which 
 were brought into artificial combination with one 
 another, we were to ask, " What is this personal 
 faith ? What is its character, its constitution, its 
 nature ? " It is true (we allow it frankly) that 
 everything lies in personal faith. The living soul of 
 the believer — this is no doubt the one thing need- 
 ful, the one thing of worth ; here is the root, the 
 base, the focus, the scene, the aim of all these 
 marvellous workings of the Spirit. The system is 
 nothing, is worthless, except so far as it has living, 
 believing souls, in whom, and through whom, and 
 for whom it exists. Yes, inner personal faith ; 
 that is the root-secret. But let us examine this 
 faith as it is in the individual believer. Is it 
 private because it is personal ? Is it solitary 
 because it is individual ? What is faith ? If we 
 recall its character, as it is portrayed in the 
 
io6 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 language of the Gospels, or analyzed by the 
 spiritual insight of S. Paul, is it an act which can 
 be conceived of as isolated, separate, alone ? Can 
 you describe or name it in' any words which can 
 succeed in confining its action to the secrecy of 
 the separate and solitary soul ? For is it not in its 
 very essence, according to the language of Christ 
 and His Apostles, an act of admittance into a 
 body — the Body of Christ? Is it not an act 
 through which the soul is newly begotten — begotten 
 into a race ; born of God into a holy fellowship, 
 into the very heart of a kingdom, into the very 
 thick of a holy people, into a blessed company of 
 the elect, into membership, into companionship, 
 into citizenship, into a corporate and compact 
 society, into the new, the spiritual Jerusalem ? The 
 soul that believes, that lays hold of Christ, is by 
 that very act introduced into the relationships of 
 the new body. 
 
 But if this be the full conception of faith, then 
 personal faith and the society, the Church, do 
 not stand contrasted, in antithesis to one another. 
 
COR FOR ATE FAITH. 
 
 But rather the act of faith, which takes place 
 within the inner recesses of the individual soul, 
 has already within it the character of the citizen of 
 heaven, the germ, the construction, the instinct, 
 the fashion, the features, the sympathies, the powers, 
 the capacities of the body into which it has been 
 called. It is already intended for a place in that 
 body ; it is created with a view to that companion- 
 ship ; it is already alive with possible attachments, 
 relationships, intimacies, correlations, by which it 
 is prepared for insertion within that close and 
 compacted whole. That which makes it faith must 
 make it also capable of intercourse, of society, of 
 brotherhood. It cannot be the one without being 
 the other. The act which begets it endows it also 
 with the conditions by which it can pass into the 
 assembly of the firstborn, into the great company 
 of the saints. To be saved is to be made one of 
 many. By the act of belonging to God, the soul 
 belongs to its fellows ; for it is incorporated with 
 Christ, Who is one and the same in all. The soul 
 that believes must, therefore, have all this social 
 
io8 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 and public character hidden within it ; so that, if 
 we could conceive it, for instance, placed alone 
 under a spiritual microscope and examined by 
 some scientific eye that was able to read its secret, 
 it would be said, " This is a creature that belongs, 
 evidently, to some larger whole. Its construction 
 proves that it is adapted for social intercourse ; it 
 has in it the ligatures, and joints, and sinews by 
 which it could be knit up into an articulated body. 
 It would be possible to suggest the probable con- 
 struction of that larger body by close examination 
 of this fragment." Faith — personal, private faith, 
 as it exists in the individual soul — is surely some- 
 thing of this kind. Every word used to describe 
 it implies the coexistence, the correlation, the adher- 
 ence of the several believers. How can we read 
 the Epistle to the Colossians without acknowledging 
 that, to the Apostolic mind and imagination, faith 
 always implies and involves a body, an order of 
 relationships, a regulated system of combination, 
 a holy society, a spiritual Church ? 
 
 And if this is its inherent nature, then it must 
 
CORFORATE FAITH. 
 
 I09 
 
 surely be provided with some actual means of 
 realizing on earth this its original and mystical 
 character. Unless it can obtain this, it is maimed ; 
 it is curtailed ; it is robbed of its natural, instinctive, 
 spontaneous development. It cannot increase with 
 the increase of God. There must be some concrete 
 body in which it can put out those inner capacities 
 with which it has been endowed for the kingdom 
 hereafter in heaven. 
 
 And certainly that heavenly condition which 
 belongs to its essence has evidently, according to 
 S. Paul, already begun. Faith finds itself in pos- 
 session already, in some degree, of the society, 
 the household, the assembly, the body into which 
 it has been translated. There has been a body, 
 a society prepared for it, into which it has found 
 itself inserted, introduced, from the first moment 
 of its belief—" the Church, which is Christ's Body." 
 Here, in this ordained system, in its ministries, 
 sacraments, discipline, the soul is enabled to 
 realize, to train, to foster, to practise those social 
 characteristics which belong to its inherent and 
 
I IO 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 essential construction. Here, in this sacramental 
 representation on earth of that holy society, of that 
 heavenly Jerusalem, of that Divine Body of Christ 
 now at the right hand of God, the soul could begin 
 its exercise of those intricacies and relationships 
 which are vital to its growth, and in which will, 
 finally, consist its everlasting joy. 
 
 And in passing under these regulated ministries, 
 in submitting to these forms of combination, it is 
 not entering into novel, or additional, or artificial, 
 or arbitrary, or temporary expediencies. Rather, 
 it is arriving at itself ; it is discovering its own 
 character ; it is realizing its own natural possibili- 
 ties ; it is fulfilling its own inherent necessities ; it 
 is feeling its limbs ; it is evoking its gifts ; it is 
 testing its powers ; it is facilitating its growth. By 
 joints and bands, ministered, nourished, and knit, it 
 is " making increase with the increase of God." 
 
 Faith and a Church, then, are correlative, not 
 antithetical, terms. They imply and involve one 
 another. To believe in Christ is to believe in a 
 Church. 
 
CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 1 1 r 
 
 What, then, are we to say of those who differ 
 and say, " We believe, but we see no necessity 
 for incorporating our belief in any Church " ? 
 Are we to say, " This is not faith ; there is no 
 genuine faith in Jesus which does not include a 
 Church " ? Obviously, in the face of facts, this would 
 be a ludicrous assertion. Faith there certainly is, 
 deep, fervent, energetic ; faith which puts to shame 
 our lagging zeal, our worldly sloth, and which yet 
 deems any Church system to be a mere accidental 
 expedient and nothing more. No ! But this we 
 must say, this we cannot but say — that all genuine 
 faith in Jesus Christ holds within it the secret, the 
 germ of the Church ; its inner construction anti- 
 cipates a Church ; its type, its form, its character, 
 prepare it for insertion into a society, a body, a 
 system, an order. Deprived of this, it must miss 
 something of its perfect development ; it cannot be 
 attaining to all its proper fruit. Something is lost ; 
 something lies dormant and unused. There are 
 gifts in it which are not exercised, and possibilities 
 which remain unfulfilled. Strong and robust as 
 
112 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 this faith is, which we watch on all sides of us, we 
 must think that it could not fail to become riper, 
 richer, fairer, if it had behind it and around it the 
 pressure and the might, so steady and so sure, of a 
 continuous and unbroken body of disciplined forces 
 and gathered resources, stored and garnered out of 
 the accumulated experiences of a hundred Chris- 
 tian generations, exercised and put to profit under 
 the weighty tradition and by the delicate discretion 
 of an articulated and organized system, directed 
 and filled by the ministerial Spirit of God, Who 
 takes of Christ and distributes to each the gift, 
 severally as He will, so framing and fashioning, by 
 manifold offices under a single Lordship, the mani- 
 fold Body of Christ. Here, surely, is what all 
 personal faith needs and exacts. For this it cries 
 aloud. Without this, it cannot but be crippled, nar- 
 rowed, hampered. Such a system as this is no acci- 
 dental expedient. It is the loss of it which is the 
 accident — a mournful and heart-breaking accident, 
 over which we must bow our heads in shame, and 
 weep our penitential tears for the sins which have 
 so hidden the blessed vision from our eyes. 
 
CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 113 
 
 And, surely, if we are right, if the inner character 
 of faith makes for a Church, we have our comfort 
 too ; for the day must come when this will show 
 itself. This ardent, this tender faith, so living and 
 so loving, which we watch with rueful eyes from 
 our widowed obscurity, will be conscious of some 
 want. It will have a sense of something incomplete ; 
 it will miss its home ; it will yearn to fulfil itself 
 in some larger whole ; it will be conscious of its 
 hidden relationships, its inner sympathies, astir 
 and at work ; it will feel abroad after some body 
 to which, by construction, in secret it already 
 belongs, and for whose uses it is already adapted. 
 Where is it, it will ask, this something for which 
 we are made — this home of faith, this corporate 
 society, this organic kingdom ? Where can we 
 discover it — an organization which can profess to 
 reach from beginning to end, from Pentecost to 
 the final Advent, and which can offer faith a means 
 by which it can be knit up into that undivided 
 work of God, which builds up, age after age, a 
 single temple, and weaves, generation after gene- 
 
 I 
 
il 4 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 ration, a single garment, the seamless robe, woven 
 from the top throughout ? Some day this solitary 
 faith will look (we cannot but believe) for some such 
 consummation. Where will it discover what it seeks ? 
 
 Ah ! beloved, what would be our joy if, when 
 the good day comes, when the disclosure is made, 
 when the secret is out — that secret which now 
 lies at the root of all true faith, the secret of the 
 Church — what joy, beyond all dreaming, if we 
 might be able to run out from our retreats, hold- 
 ing in our hands our priceless treasure, and crying 
 to them, " Here it is, the thing you need, that 
 which you look for ! Not for our own merits, 
 but by God's great mercies, it is ours ! In spite 
 of our shame, in spite of our sin, behind all the 
 clouds and obscurities of our doubtful career, 
 this we still held fast ; this we never wholly lost ; 
 to this, through long years of dark dismay, and 
 just judgment, and deserved defeat, we yet despe- 
 rately clung. We still possess it — this Apostolic 
 order, this unbroken ministry, this continuous gift. 
 The type, the form, the mechanism, the frame- 
 
CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 work of the Body of Christ — this, at least, is ours 
 to offer you. You bring us much that is strong 
 and abundant ; let this be our plea for pardon — 
 that, faithless and faint-hearted, base and unkind, 
 as we have often shown ourselves, we did not 
 wholly fail our peculiar post ; we did not throw 
 away the one pearl that God had lodged in our 
 hands ; we held fast to it, at all hazards, and 
 through days of bitter contempt ; and here it is, at 
 the hour when you need it, dimmed, perhaps, but 
 not destroyed. Enough reward for all our pain, 
 and more than enough, that now, when you feel 
 the want of it, we are not wholly empty-handed ; 
 we have that to offer which, without us, you could 
 not have in an English fashion, with a national 
 tradition. Yes ; the chance of forming a great 
 English Church, united and whole, Catholic and 
 Apostolic — this is still open to us all, is still 
 possible. In the hope of this we held on to our 
 heritage in hours when it looked useless and per- 
 verse. Now we can thank God that it was not 
 for ourselves we held it, but for you." 
 
Ii6 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 This shall be our hope and prayer for them and 
 for ourselves. And, in the mean time, what rich- 
 ness of spiritual life does this character of faith 
 promise those who already understand its corporate 
 nature, and enjoy its privileges ! Such a faith is 
 ever in growth ; it " increaseth with the increase of 
 God." For if we are " called in one body ; " if our 
 faith is an act of adherence, by which we receive 
 admission within the system and kingdom of the 
 redeemed, then it will in itself, in its very structure 
 and composition, hold infinite suggestions of that 
 kingdom to which it belongs, of that Body to which 
 it adheres. In it, beneath it, above it, about it, 
 that vast realm spreads and works, which reaches 
 down from the very feet of the Father, until, at its 
 outermost edge and fringe, it runs its lines round 
 us, it embraces us — even us, so far, so tiny, so 
 infinitely blessed ! What inexhaustible delight 
 there is in store for us, as day by day we learn, 
 under ever new experiences, all the mystery that 
 lay hidden in that first child-act of belief, which 
 knit us into this immense and delicate fabric, which 
 
CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 117 
 
 ministers to us and nourishes us, down all its 
 rhythmic articulations, by that which every joint 
 supplieth ! Every year, every hour, there might 
 be, if we were but alert, a fresh disclosure, a surprise, 
 a discovery, of all that was involved within that 
 original and wonderful entrance within the Body of 
 Christ. 
 
 Yes, such a faith as this grows ; and as it grows 
 we shall see how and why a faith of this kind is 
 bound to be intellectual, theological, dogmatic. For 
 it is no spasm of emotion — vague, isolated, inter- 
 mittent, abrupt ; it is a definite and positive act, 
 which plants us down in the thick of manifold con- 
 ditions, relations, principles. Until we wilfully 
 forfeit our place, there we abide — located, ingrafted, 
 imbedded. A fixed body of laws plays through us 
 and over us ; an orderly system encompasses and 
 feeds us. And now it is our part to apprehend, 
 to unravel, all the wonder of the change. Slowly it 
 all becomes clear ; slowly, point by point, the great 
 disclosure proceeds ; slowly we can collect ourselves, 
 and note, and examine. We begin to understand ; 
 
n8 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 we grow into comprehension ; we measure, we weigh, 
 we ponder ; we can distinguish some of the main 
 laws and rules which govern the kingdom of the 
 redeemed ; we look up, by degrees, and down ; we 
 can faintly guess what it would be, with the saints, 
 to comprehend the breadth, and length, and depth, 
 and height, and to know the love that passeth all 
 knowledge. 
 
 And all this intellectual work of apprehension 
 springs still out of that original act of faith. It 
 never leaves it ; it issues from it ; it is but spelling 
 out the mystery which is already our life. Theology 
 is but the slow unravelling of faith, the gradual 
 and more accurate comprehension of the great 
 system within which the soul is playing its new 
 and strange part. 
 
 And such a theology must be dogmatic ; it must 
 make assertions which we cannot test ; it must — for 
 it reveals a system which spreads far, far away 
 beyond our little ken. We can see and learn the 
 laws that work within our own souls ; and we can 
 become perfectly sure that those same laws hold 
 
CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 1*9 
 
 good throughout this immense kingdom— they are 
 its one secret, its only key. Summarized in the 
 Creed, they lie at the heart of the kingdom, and 
 yet work even down to us at its uttermost fringe. 
 That we can be sure of; but how they work else- 
 where, and with what results — ah, how can we say ! 
 Suggestions, hints, glimpses, drawn from our own 
 wonderful experiences — yes, these we have ; but 
 we know but a tiny corner, we see but a fragment. 
 We can but guess the rest ; we can but wait to 
 know. We cannot cover it, cannot apprehend. 
 No ; but we can accept and believe the dogma, 
 where it passes beyond our range, just because we 
 have become certain, by our own native experience, 
 of the verity and the power of that redemptive 
 love of God in Christ, which has brought us into 
 this kingdom of grace. Certain of that? We could 
 die for that ; and we know that it is that same 
 love which holds this whole kingdom together, and 
 which is supreme even there where we cannot follow 
 its work, and are staggered, perhaps, by its results. 
 Why, then, should we be so restless, so anxious, 
 
120 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 so disturbed ? Be sure that what the life is at 
 any one point in the Body, that same thing it 
 must be at all. We know it, at one point ; know 
 its blessed gentleness, its unfailing goodness, its 
 fathomless love. Why can we not trust it, there 
 where it passes out of our sight ? Surely we will 
 rely upon it ; we will accept ; we will wait to know 
 all in that great day, when all shall be made 
 manifest ! 
 
 Only one thing is necessary now : to know it, to 
 understand it, to be sure of it, there where we can 
 cover it, there where it is at hand, in our own souls. 
 Ah, have we done that ? Uncertain there, we shall 
 be uncertain of all ; but once certain there, we shall 
 be quiet and at peace about the rest, waiting for 
 the hour, the happy hour, when we shall know even 
 as we are known. 
 
 And one word more. Such a faith is not only 
 inherently dogmatic, but also inherently moral. 
 And this, again, just because it is no lonely act. It 
 plants us down amid that network of relationships 
 by which the body is bonded and built ; and these 
 
CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 121 
 
 relationships constitute our moral obligations. 
 Their appropriate actions and motions, made in- 
 evitable by the new situation — these are the virtues, 
 the excellences of the kingdom of God. To cor- 
 respond with our place and portion in the body, in 
 harmonious contact with our fellows, this is the 
 secret of the new character of Christ's citizens. 
 That character roots itself therefore in faith ; it 
 issues out of our faith ; it is the native and spon- 
 taneous activity of faith. For it is faith which 
 holds the head ; and, so holding, it must act and 
 move so as to fulfil its part in the body, which is 
 filled from end to end with Christ, and in which 
 Christ is all in all. 
 
 " Hold to the Head," then ; believe in Christ, and 
 the issue is inevitable Faith uncloses itself ; it 
 opens out into acts of virtue, into the fruits of the 
 Spirit. This is the law of holiness ; and it is in 
 the recognition of this law that we escape all 
 possible conception of any divorce between faith 
 and moral conduct. If faith be, by its origin, " of 
 the Body," corporate, social, then it is also, by its 
 
122 
 
 CORPORATE FAITH. 
 
 origin, ethical. As it opens out into corporate 
 relationships, it opens out also into reciprocities, 
 obligations, duties, correspondences, with their 
 proper tempers, motives, excellences, — all of which 
 constitute the holy character. Faith, by its very 
 disclosure of its own inner essence, reveals itself 
 as love. By exhibiting itself as the principle of 
 adherence into a Body, it, by its very nature, takes 
 upon itself a life prescribed and ordained. Faith, 
 if it " holds to the Head," cannot but move, work, 
 grow ; cannot but be fruitful : cannot but " make 
 increase with the increase of God." Is it because 
 our faith is so private, so individual, that it is also 
 so idle and so impotent ? 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 " After that He through the Holy Ghost had given commandments 
 unto the Apostles whom He had chosen." — Acts i. 2. 
 
 It is impossible not to turn back, again and again, 
 from the midst of our perplexities, to those great 
 Forty Days, during which the mind of the Apostles 
 passed from out of the confusion and littleness of 
 its Gospel-period into the firmness and the width 
 of the Epistles. 
 
 What were the impressions then implanted ? 
 What conception did they then receive from the 
 Master, as He came and went, of the work before 
 them ; of the kingdom they were to establish, of 
 the Church of which they should be the founda- 
 tion ? When they emerged out of that strange 
 hidden time — emerged new men transformed, men 
 on whom some wonderful experience had passed, 
 
124 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 which had broken up their old nature, and had 
 lifted them on to a new level, from which they saw 
 with other eyes than of old and spoke with other 
 lips ; — when they emerged, what were the ruling 
 ideas which the power of the Risen Lord had 
 stamped upon their imagination ? What had they 
 mainly gathered from Him as to the form and the 
 features to which He desired that His Church on 
 earth should, under their handling, correspond ? 
 
 So we ask ; and the answer is given in three or 
 four metaphors, invariably occurring throughout 
 the Apostolic writings, which most certainly convey 
 the mind of the Lord about His Church, as His 
 Apostles understood it. Three or four pictures 
 He left stamped ineradicably home. By these 
 they were to work ; here were their examples, their 
 cue, " the pattern shown them in the mount." Let 
 us recall these figures that were to them so familiar 
 and so predominant ; let us recall them, even 
 though their very recollection clouds us with the 
 sorrow of a passionate regret, which the Spirit of 
 God alone can lighten. Let us recall them, at the 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT 1 2 5 
 
 risk of some repetition of what is already familiar 
 to us, in order that we may, by bringing them 
 together in one brief review, appreciate their weight 
 and significance as a whole. They are the figures 
 of the household, the family, the body, the temple. 
 
 First, the household. As He pictured to His heart 
 that after-work, He certainly hoped and planned 
 that all Christendom should take the form of a 
 household whose master was gone for a time, but 
 whose returning presence was to be the goal of all 
 efforts and the sanction of all toil. This Christen- 
 dom of His should be, pre-eminently, from one 
 end to the other, an organized kingdom of work — 
 work, busy, earnest, urgent, unflagging, as of a man 
 entrusted with his goods by a master who looks 
 eagerly for his profit, for his fruits ; who delights 
 in the man who can turn five talents into ten, 
 and two into five. It was to be, in every corner 
 of it, a busy home of progressive work, reaping 
 interest, ever laying hold of fresh earthly matter 
 and turning it into Divine uses. And as such a 
 kingdom of business, nothing would be accidental, 
 
126 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 or fortuitous, or irregular. The household would 
 bear the marks of plan, of deliberation ; everywhere 
 activity, nowhere disorder ; everybody with an 
 office, a function to fulfil ; all united under a single 
 system, prosecuting a single aim, moving under 
 fixed rules and an orderly commission. That is 
 what He would leave behind Him, this Master 
 Who goes into a far country ; and so He prayed 
 that it should remain during the whole long time 
 until He come again. All were to be found there, 
 each at his post — the clerk at his desk, the servant 
 in the kitchen, the porter at the door, watching and 
 working on and on, with lamps trimmed, with loins 
 girt, to the very moment when the Lord should be 
 suddenly heard knocking at the gate. 
 
 So the Lord pictured His Church, in its busy 
 work of incessant advance. And then, looking at 
 it in its continuity, as conveying down the tradi- 
 tions and experiences of the past, He saw it all as 
 " one family." " A family." An organized life of 
 fixed and intelligible relationships ; a life in which 
 obligations lie deep within the very nature of those 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 1 2J 
 
 who are to fulfil them — obligations stringent and 
 binding, outside all discussion. In the family, 
 every separate life has worth ; it must be considered ; 
 its interests, its wants, its character, all justify 
 themselves by the mere act of existing. It is no 
 matter of choice or consent, of likes or dislikes ; 
 for beyond all dispute the imperative claim holds 
 good, " He is my brother, she is my sister — bone 
 of my bone, flesh of my flesh." And this inherent 
 necessity of kinship it is which gives such peace to 
 family life — that peace which is so dear to us all 
 in our home — the peace of feeling that nothing can 
 override, or weaken, or destroy the moral bonds 
 which knit its members together. It is in the very 
 depth of the obligation that the secret of its joy 
 lies. Born into us, it buries itself beyond the 
 reckoning of reason ; it penetrates our feelings ; it 
 fuses itself with our emotions ; it imbeds itself 
 within our instincts ; it rounds our waking life with 
 larger horizons. The family, the home — these lay 
 nursing arms about us ; they convey into our blood 
 the strength and the fragrance of the past ; they 
 
128 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 encompass us with warm and comfortable asso- 
 ciations ; and within this comfortable warmth the 
 affections wake and stir, and sympathies come and 
 go, and tenderness and gentleness put out their 
 sweet powers, and under their kindling fosterage 
 there spring up out of the heart the noise and 
 bubble of happy laughter. 
 
 This is the home as we know it, and Christ 
 would have His Christendom to be a home with 
 the boons of home about it — the unquestioned 
 security, the numberless and unbargained duties, 
 fulfilled by the very instinct, undiscussed and un- 
 discounted, as the natural doings of the day. No 
 consent would have to be asked, no compact would 
 intervene. To be a Christian — that shall be the 
 only claim, which should be to us as imperative, as 
 far beyond all argument, as, " That is my mother." 
 Within this wide home of God, every soul would 
 know itself at home ; would go in and out freely, 
 without question, without permission, in the full 
 freedom of the Son. The habits, the associations, 
 the language, the ways, all would be its very own 
 
THE PATTERH IN THE MOUNT. 120, 
 
 — its own, beyond all beginning, beyond all memory. 
 Every separate soul would be given worth ; his 
 interest, his character, allowed for, recognized, 
 justified. No lives would go wounded and unfel- 
 lowed ; no affection should be crushed and nipped ; 
 no blind collision, no bitter friction, no secret 
 venom, no cruel ignorance, no unbrotherly con- 
 tempt, would work their mischief in this home of 
 peace ; no blood would drip from secret gashes ; 
 but round every one would be the brightness of 
 recognition, the warmth of companionship, the ex- 
 pansion, the gladness, the exultation, the laughter 
 of home. So the Great Master, our Brother, 
 thought, desired, schemed, figured ; so they under- 
 stood Him, those Twelve who broke bread with 
 Him. 
 
 And how else did He picture His Christendom ? 
 
 As a body — the familiar figure, which carries 
 with it so much significance. Christendom, as the 
 Master saw it, ought to be visibly and undeniably 
 one thing from end to end, bounded by positive 
 outlines, compact, concentrated, solid. It would not 
 
 K 
 
130 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 lie loose, weltering, vague, inorganic ; but would be 
 upgathered into a single whole, that would move 
 altogether when it moved at all. One heart would 
 beat within it, one food nourish it, one brain direct 
 it, one interest absorb it. Throughout it all, com- 
 munication would be open, penetrative, quick, un- 
 hindered ; one joy would radiate, one sorrow becloud 
 it ; one soul would fill it, one speech break from 
 its lips. Nor would there be any part within it 
 that lacked its sustenance, for all would be in 
 common. 
 
 And, so harmoniously formed, through it would 
 pass unchecked the Glory of Him Who made it 
 for Himself. God's mind, God's meaning, God's 
 presence — these would be assured to all ; for His 
 Church would be to Him a body, an organ of visible 
 expression, a medium of perfect communication. 
 Christ would have a mouth to speak through, and 
 hands to touch us, and feet wherewith to move 
 abroad, and a voice by which to call. There would 
 be no mistake where the risen Jesus was to be 
 found. All who had eyes to see could tell where 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. I 3 I 
 
 He was, for He would possess a body upon earth, 
 which would evidence and pledge His presence. 
 
 And in this thought we can pass to His last 
 picture. 
 
 Christendom would be a temple — a place, visible, 
 known, ordered, fixed, secure, where God could 
 most certainly be found, met with, spoken to. The 
 whole body of Christians would be as a sacred 
 spot, hallowed and solemn — a building, lighted, 
 fair, seemly, into which building faith would weld 
 us, stone upon stone, each quarried, squared, 
 selected, numbered ; each laid close to each, dove- 
 tailed and bonded, with quiet purpose, with distinct 
 deliberation. No restless anxieties would shake 
 and fret us, where we should go, what we are for ; 
 but the one steady hand of the Master Spirit would 
 shape, carry, deposit each of us there and nowhere 
 else, just where it were fitting. Ah ! how happy to 
 feel the blessed joinings closing in about us with- 
 out jolt or hitch, and the mortar sealing us, and 
 the wall growing up all round, and we laid there, 
 each still and sure, knowing only that all is well 
 
132 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 with us ! So it would rise, as some vast cathedral 
 rose and grew in old days, with every century 
 adding some new feature, some varied force, yet 
 always one house, ever old and ever new. 
 
 The temple of God ! That is what we were to 
 be. No rough, unshapen mass ; no unworthy and 
 contemptible shelter ; no stable full of unclean 
 things ; but a temple of God, strong and beautiful, 
 sweet and pure, delicate in skill and rich with art, 
 so that men might feel the power and awe of God's 
 own splendour, might wake up and be sure " God 
 is in this place. God is here, in these deep 
 foundations, in these shining walls. Surely He is 
 in this place, and we know it ! " And then, within 
 it, if any entered, the great worship would be ever 
 proceeding, full of serious, honourable dignity, 
 a worship, as of that temple in heaven, uniform, 
 massive, continuous, complete ; ever the moving 
 priest, the uplifted hands, the eternal song, the 
 rhythmic praise, the breath of Heaven, the powers 
 of benediction, the motions and outgoings of grace. 
 
 So Christ our Master pictured it, desired it ; 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 133 
 
 these were the visions that He showed His friends 
 in the Mount. How can we bear even to remember 
 them ? How is it that our hearts can keep from 
 breaking as we turn from the patterns shown us 
 and look round on the Christendom which should 
 have been all this, and which is what we know it, 
 what we see it, — no beautiful temple, no fair body, 
 no kindly home, no busy vineyard ; but broken 
 and shivered, loose and disarrayed. " The Lord 
 hath broken down the hedge of His vineyard, so 
 that all they that go by pluck off her grapes." 
 " We are become an open strife to our neighbours, 
 and our enemies laugh us to scorn." " The beast 
 of the field devours it ; the wild boar of the wood 
 doth root it up." And we stand forlorn, impotent, 
 hungry for fellowship, athirst for peace, and yet 
 must gaze out in weary weakness, over dividing 
 gulfs of " salt estranging sea," over sundering 
 fissures cloven between brothers by the judgment 
 of God, reaching out powerless hands to those with 
 whom we shall never take sweet counsel, with 
 whom we shall never walk together in the house 
 
134 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 of God as friends. Nay ; for " Ephraim is evil to 
 Judah, and Judah to Ephraim." Ah ! so fatigued 
 we are of our warrings ; and yet, when our hearts 
 burn, and we long to run across to those far off 
 and throw our arms about their necks, then the 
 strong hands hold us back ; hard wrongs and 
 ancient sins all intervene ; the way is barred. Sick 
 at soul, we turn back to our darkened house ! What 
 may be done ? What is possible ? Wherein lies 
 our faithfulness to the vision that the Master 
 showed us ? 
 
 First, and above all, we have to be loyal to the 
 facts. Nothing comes out more wonderfully to 
 those who ponder on the ways of God than His 
 patient conformity to the actual situation into 
 which men have brought themselves. Even when 
 the conduct of men drags the Divine work itself 
 into difficulty, when it thwarts and curtails God's 
 own schemes, still God follows men along the way 
 they have chosen ; still He finds means not to 
 desert them ; still He keeps close at their side. 
 The only thing He can never bring Himself to do 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 1 35 
 
 is to forsake them. If they will not allow Him 
 their best, He will do what He can with their 
 worst. He will adapt Himself to the conditions 
 they force upon Him ; He will, at any cost to 
 Himself, work through human materials. Never 
 will He commit violence to nature ; never, until 
 all is lost, will He sweep obstacles aside by some 
 avenging flood. Close to facts He ever clings, 
 building through them, fashioning them, so that 
 He may win them over to His cause. If not in 
 this way, then in that. He has a thousand methods ; 
 He has infinite resources ; His arm never wavers, 
 but His mercy waits upon all the shifts and shocks 
 of human circumstance. 
 
 This is the story, the secret, of His revelation in 
 the Bible. It is historical ; it uses all the motions 
 and changes of our history — that strange, mixed, 
 uncertain history, crossed by blind currents of sin, 
 and swayed hither and thither by buffeting winds 
 of error. He uses that disturbed and fluctuating 
 movement as the scene of His display, as the 
 instrument of His Divine disclosure. Point by 
 
136 THE PATTERN JN THE MOUNT. 
 
 point He follows it, as it swings hither and thither. 
 No conditions are too surprising for Him to mani- 
 pulate ; no obstinacy of men so obstructive that 
 He will lose heart with it. All down that Jewish 
 story we watch Him, adopting as His own all the 
 melancholy fate to which their wilful guilt reduces 
 them. They fall, they lapse, they blunder into wrong 
 paths, they shatter His hope, they despise His lead- 
 ing ; and still, as their ruin scatters them beyond 
 Damascus and beyond Babylon, He is there, travel- 
 ing with them into sad exile, far from the haggard 
 and wasted halls of Zion. God is there with them, 
 still discovering new means, under the shadows of 
 the Captivity, by which to recover His own, by 
 which to rebuild their broken fortunes, by which 
 to win new omens of His Christ. Still He is there, 
 weaving out of the very loneliness of Babylon's 
 waters new and tenderer songs wherewith to greet 
 the coming Lord. Still ever He is there at their 
 side ; still, under the cloud, pursuing the one in- 
 domitable hope. 
 
 That is our God ! In that long story we can 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 1 37 
 
 read His heart. Far, far from Him the dead im- 
 mobility which we so lightly ascribe to omnipo- 
 tence, the rigid adherence to an unelastic and 
 unyielding ideal. Far, far from Him the petulance 
 of the artist, of the enthusiast, of the idealist, who 
 cannot tolerate the rough defeats, the heart-break- 
 ing delays of actual life, nor can afford to bend to 
 the stiff and coarse exigencies of material facts. Far 
 from Him the human insistence on abstract per- 
 fection or nothing. His omnipotence shows itself 
 in the inexhaustible pliability with which it will 
 burrow under the facts, just as they stand, and lift 
 them out of their degradation ; it is measured by the 
 very depth to which it sinks its forces down within 
 and below them. How strange to Him the temper 
 we know so well, which violently thrusts some high 
 ideal, neck and crop, into the thick of facts, and 
 insists on absolute and immediate conformity to rule 
 and line ; that temper which turns out, helter-skelter, 
 all that fails to correspond to what the first prin- 
 ciples demand ! How strange to Him the rapid 
 logic which deduces, by syllogism, the exact course 
 
138 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 which God's perfection and omnipotence are bound 
 to follow, the shape which His revelation or His 
 Church are of necessity forced to take by the laws 
 of His being ! To hear men talk and argue, with 
 swift, easy precision, from the premiss of God's 
 omnipotence, one would suppose that the Bible 
 had never been written — written as it is to tell us 
 such a different story ; to tell us that God's revela- 
 tion will, at all costs, be historical ; that is, it will 
 never plunge an ideal scheme down, regardless of 
 conditions, and then drag facts by violence into 
 conformity with it ; but will accompany man's 
 movements, and defects, and collapses, and needs, 
 and by means of them, with ever-living omni- 
 potence, will work out the redemption that was 
 born into us in Christ. 
 
 That redemption, indeed, is ever His sole instru- 
 ment — " Christ the same, yesterday, and to-day, 
 and for ever ; " and, more than that, the methods 
 or modes by which that redemption was and is 
 intended to reach and touch us — these we know, 
 these we have been considering under the guidance 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 1 39 
 
 of Christ's own selected metaphors. In these we 
 can see His intention ; we can be quite sure of 
 the type on which He framed His Church, and of 
 the desire with which He shaped its order and its 
 ministry. 
 
 And we who so see, we who can be certain 
 that He endowed His believers with a fixed type 
 of structure by which they could be welded into 
 a single constitution— a house, a family, a body, 
 a temple — we shall passionately value all that in 
 His merey still enables us to fulfil His own desire. 
 Woe to us if we lightly abandon anything that 
 belongs to that Divine intention. No ! To all 
 that retains the native elements of unity, to all 
 that can make the recovery of lost unity possible, 
 we shall cling with unfaltering grasp. To secure 
 this, our priests may well endure imprisonment. 
 
 But while so doing we will not shut our eyes 
 to all that has happened ; we will not talk as if 
 the whole situation were perfectly clear, precise, 
 and intelligible ; we will not attempt to tie up the 
 resources of God in short, sharp, scrappy dcfini- 
 
140 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 tions ; nor expect, amid the confusions which 
 human sins have worked within Christ's Church, that 
 all the outlines of the temple can stand out fine- 
 edged, four-square, and all the paths of grace be 
 summed up in some glib phrase or easy formula. 
 We will not attempt to define with accuracy the 
 qualifications and modifications by which the Lord, 
 Who by all means would save some, may be reliev- 
 ing the present distress. No ; nor will we go on 
 asserting that the ideal must exist in its complete 
 perfection, in spite of all that man can do to dis- 
 figure it, and so asserting cut off all that interrupts 
 or disturbs it, until we have saved the ideal at the 
 cost of losing all the material that it was intended 
 to cover and to redeem, — at the cost of ignoring all 
 the facts of history and of life which clamour for 
 consideration. Nor will we, again, because God's 
 Church is intended to be united and complete, 
 rush over and hide ourselves within its largest 
 fragment, trusting that its very size may help us 
 to forget that it is but a fragment after all. 
 
 We will be true to the mind of Christ, and we 
 will be true to the teaching of undeniable fact ; 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 141 
 
 and where the two seem to collide, we have the 
 word of prophecy. 
 
 Prophecy ! Is it not just the help that we need ? 
 Prophecy, which beholds the vision, which looks 
 for its definite realization, and yet sees it deferred, 
 hampered, thwarted again and again by the cruelty 
 of facts ; and yet is sure of its hope, and yet asserts 
 that (be the facts what they may) nevertheless the 
 vision is not lost or falsified. Its powers are still 
 with us ; its possibilities are all preserved ; the 
 remnant, the holy seed, is guarded and saved, as 
 the life within the withered trunk. The organic 
 life may shrink, may lie almost hidden ; but it 
 is there. The germ is transmitted, the tradition 
 preserved, the deposit retained ; it can open out 
 again when the good day comes. God guards 
 the holy seed within His Church ; and while that 
 is guarded, all may be restored. We may all come 
 again to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon 
 our heads ; we may yet feed our flocks in beautiful 
 security upon the slopes of Carmel and of Bashan, 
 as in the blessed days of old. 
 
142 THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 Let us have comfort. God's resources are infi- 
 nite. He has many methods. If the house, the 
 temple, the body be hindered and held back from 
 their completeness, then He has other metaphors 
 by which He foretold the nature of His kingdom. 
 It would not only come in lovely and visible beauty, 
 as a bride adorned for the marriage, but also it 
 would work as leaven buried in the lump — a shape- 
 less, seething ferment amid blind, obstructive 
 matter. It would come as a mustard seed, hidden 
 where no eye saw, a small and disregarded atom, 
 growing as a seed in the night while men slept. 
 It would be as a field full of tares. It would be 
 as a treasure buried in a field, which, for long 
 years, a man might walk over and know nothing 
 of, until the day at last comes when he discovers 
 what had been there all along, and he lets every- 
 thing else go that he may secure that field. 
 
 Here are indications and suggestions for our 
 comfort. The kingdom of God has many modes 
 of entry among us. If we choke the finer and 
 cleaner passages, God is patient enough to work 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 1 43 
 
 by the rougher and less shapely methods. For He 
 has taken upon Him our infirmities. His perfection 
 does not shrink from co-operating with our imper- 
 fection. He waits upon our weakness. He " has 
 undertaken to deliver man," and at all risks He will 
 achieve it. He will " not abhor the Virgin's womb ; " 
 He will refuse nothing that is necessary to that 
 original resolution. Our humble part is plain 
 enough. It is for us to hold fast to principles 
 wherever we see them, and to leave to God the 
 problem of their realization, of their fulfilment, 
 neither asking nor attempting to answer questions 
 beyond our measure, but content to guard what is 
 given, and confident in prophetic hope that what 
 He has promised He will in His own good time 
 perform. 
 
 Two pledges, two securities, are always ours. 
 First, there is the present existence of grace, to be 
 received and taken into our individual lives, suf- 
 cient for the day, felt in its undoubted power upon 
 our souls, coming, feeding, carrying, strengthening, 
 with its unfailing message of peace, " It is I ; be 
 
144 TH E PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 
 
 not afraid." Christ comes to us ; Christ is with us 
 in the boat ; His touch assures us ; His hand con- 
 trols. Trust this, use this, and wait and hope ! 
 
 And, secondly, so using, so trusting, and with 
 access assured, pray for the recovery of that com- 
 pleteness which you know that He desires. Pray 
 for the full order and unity for which He prayed 
 His own last prayer. Pray, in the knowledge of 
 His mind, for the blessing of the family, the 
 solidity of the body, the beauty of the temple, 
 in the light of the vision, according to the pattern 
 shown you. " Pray for the peace of Jerusalem." 
 Pray for the vine in its fulness, as He planted 
 it, when " He prepared room for it, and it took 
 root and filled the land ; when the hills were 
 covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs 
 thereof were like the goodly cedar trees ; when 
 she sent out her boughs unto the sea and her 
 branches unto the river." Pray and plead with 
 Him, " O Lord, how long wilt Thou be angry with 
 Thy people that prayeth ? Why hast Thou, then, 
 broken down their hope ? " Pray, believing in 
 
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 145 
 
 your heart that all may yet be restored. " Return, 
 we beseech Thee, 0 Lord of hosts. Look down 
 from heaven ; behold and visit this vine, and the 
 place of the vineyard which Thy right hand hath 
 planted, and the branch that Thou madest so strong 
 for Thy own self." Pray that He Who still sitteth 
 between the Cherubim may, " before Ephraim, 
 Benjamin, and Manasses, stir up His strength and 
 come and help us." Yea, " Turn us again, O Lord 
 God of Hosts ; shew us the light of Thy counte- 
 nance, and we shall be whole." 
 
 L 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 " For the edifying of the Body of Christ." — Ephes. iv. 12. 
 
 As soon as spirit touches spirit there springs up 
 between them a relationship, which we call moral. 
 Whatever rightly follows from such spiritual con- 
 tact is morally good ; what we mean by goodness 
 is the issue, the outcome, the inevitable activity, 
 which is bound to follow from the nature of spirits, 
 whenever the contact between them is free, true, 
 and pure. Moral goodness, therefore, shows itself 
 under the conditions of companionship ; contact is 
 essential to its manifestation. 
 
 So it is in the intercourse of human society (as 
 we know) that man proves himself to be a moral 
 being ; as soon as he associates himself with others, 
 moral obligations, of necessity, discover themselves. 
 
OUR CITIZEXSHIP. 
 
 1 47 
 
 His efforts to correspond to the conditions of the 
 family and of the city reveal the lines of the 
 natural virtues as their spontaneous outcome. 
 
 And therefore it is that faith, by admitting us 
 into fresh contact with God and with our fellows ; 
 by endowing us with new relationships that have 
 become ours through our inclusion within the new 
 humanity within the Body of Christ, has neces- 
 sarily laid upon us new moral obligations, responsi- 
 bilities, functions, all which spring out of the very 
 nature of our corporate faith. We are brought 
 into a new family, a new city, of higher origin and 
 of purer ties ; we stand amid a web of supernatural 
 communications, to which we are forced to respond 
 in some way or other. We walk in the New Jeru- 
 salem ; there lies our citizenship ; and therefore 
 new habits and a new behaviour are of necessity 
 demanded of us — demanded by the commandment 
 of love, which is new, since it has knit us one with 
 another by utterly new joints and bands ; and yet 
 is old, for it is the same love, under higher condi- 
 tions, which bound us into families and cities by 
 
1 48 
 
 OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 the sweet ties of the natural virtues in the homes 
 of earth. 
 
 If, then, we would seek to determine the features 
 and lines of the Christian temper and character, 
 we must look to the nature of this great fellowship 
 into which we have been called. The Christian 
 character asked of us is that habit, that activity, 
 which must follow on our acceptance within the 
 assembly of the firstborn, within the city of God. 
 Whatever that acceptance makes desirable, makes 
 natural, that is good, that is holy. So acting, we 
 walk in the light ; we exercise our citizenship ; we 
 are built into the Body ; we edify the Church. 
 
 The Church, then, is no formal mechanism ; it is 
 a moral conception, a moral condition, by which we 
 are to determine character. And, in fact, it is only 
 within the borders of a Church that any serious 
 attempt has been made at a full and complete 
 treatment of the Christian character. I would ask 
 you, therefore, to take those four great symbols 
 which, as we said, embodied, to our Lord and 
 His Apostles, the type of the united Church, and 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 149 
 
 consider what is the moral character which they 
 would need and foster. 
 
 It will be something, surely, if, amid the clouds 
 that obscure and baffle those deep unities of our 
 spiritual society, we can nourish within our own 
 lives the seeds and germs of that peculiar character 
 which nothing but a Church can breed, because 
 nothing but the conception of a Church makes it 
 desirable. So labouring, we shall, at least, be re- 
 moving that within ourselves which obstructs the 
 union of believers into a single fellowship. 
 
 Each symbol, if we consider, suggests its own 
 peculiar and appropriate excellence of character. 
 Let us take the Church as a household. What are 
 the virtues essential to a household such as our 
 Lord pictured, to an organized kingdom of work ? 
 First, fertile activity. The moment we recall that 
 house of business, we see that the character fit for 
 it will certainly not be immersed in self, in brood- 
 ings, in morbid and melancholy musings, in idle 
 dreams. All these must disappear from the soul 
 set to work there. Its chief occupation is not in 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 its own part, in its own trials and sorrows ; its eyes 
 are not imprisoned within the story of its own 
 salvation. It must be up and doing ; it must 
 look ahead. " Thou hast saved us, O my Father ; 
 blessed be Thy Name ! Now, what dost Thou 
 need of me ? Though I have been, indeed, a man 
 of unclean lips, yet Thou hast touched me with 
 the live coal from off Thine altar ; and now I have 
 but one desire, one passion — Here am I ; send 
 me ! " Such a character, so inspired, will be forth- 
 coming, energetic, stirring ; it will be strong for 
 action ; it will have nerve and fibre, bone and 
 substance ; it will show mastery ; it will contribute 
 force. 
 
 Is, then, the Christian character, as we know it, 
 a thing of this kind ? Is energy, is force always 
 its characteristic ? Alas ! we are weak, it may be, 
 through old sins and wrongs ; we cannot be active, 
 masterful, and keen. No ; and if so, Christ has all 
 His compassions open ; but, nevertheless, He will 
 have much to forgive in us. We will recognize and 
 confess it. So far as we are weak, poor, moody, 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 stupid, dull, we are below what He wants. We 
 will not, then, flatter ourselves over our own melan- 
 cholies, our sensitive depressions, our nerveless 
 poverty of spirit. We will not interest ourselves 
 in these inactive and impotent miseries. We will 
 remember that the cardinal sin charged against the 
 members of His Church by Christ is the sin of 
 which we take so little account and so lightly 
 excuse — sloth, spiritual sloth ; the Church's sin ; 
 the sin of the house, which is, above all things, to 
 keep watch and ward for the returning Master ; 
 the sin of that wicked servant who hides his gift in 
 a napkin ; the sin of the steward who says, " My 
 lord delayeth his coming ; " the sin of the unlit 
 lamp and the ungirt loin ; the sin of spiritual 
 thoughtlessness, against which the awful judgment 
 delivers its relentless message, " Too late, too late ; 
 ye cannot enter now." 
 
 The household demands activity of character, 
 and it asks also for a skilled and trained activity. 
 An organized kingdom of work must have perfected, 
 disciplined instruments, allotted to particular func- 
 
152 
 
 OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 tions and trained into intelligent skilfulness. Life — 
 the Christian life — is not to be a mere rough-and- 
 tumble affair, justified by the raw and boisterous 
 heartiness of its belief. It is to be a fine and delicate 
 adaptation to a definite work ; it is to be a real 
 business, requiring apprenticeship, and watchful- 
 ness, and gradual attainment ; a thing of audits, 
 and reckonings, and careful notes ; of forethought, 
 prudence, patience, as of clerks handling an ordered 
 and intricate commerce, with rules, and seasons, 
 and enterprises, and slow profits, and calculated 
 returns. The Christian character will have about 
 it the marks of a wise and growing experience, 
 trained in view of practical purposes of its own — 
 trained to handle spiritual matters with ready and 
 beautiful ease. Ah, how the words rebuke us ! 
 When the spiritual kingdom draws near, calls upon 
 us to speak, act for it, give evidence, carry its 
 message, are we not surprised and distressed at our 
 own awkwardness, our unreadiness, our uncouth 
 efforts, our ungainly speech, so hesitating, so un- 
 practised, so inadequate ? How rare — ah, how 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 153 
 
 wofully rare ! — to see on the earth one of whom 
 we can say, " Look ! There is something as per- 
 fect in its own exquisite way as the skill of an 
 expert or an artist, among the children of this 
 world. There is the flawless work of grace ; there 
 is a finished and chastened Christian character. 
 Look ! in the things of God, how quick his insight, 
 how delicious his free motion, how true his touch ; 
 how responsive and keen and alive is all his life- 
 force ; how rich and entire its dedication to Divine 
 uses, its familiarity with Divine things ! " 
 
 Trained and masterful skill ; that is the fruit of 
 the household. And the family — what type, what 
 rule of character will it suggest ? The family, on 
 earth, is the very home of virtues ; and Christ, in 
 declaring this new society to have about it the ties 
 and familiarities of a family, constitutes it a nursery 
 and school of character. There, in the family of 
 God, the character of each believer is given a back- 
 ground. That character is to be no upstart growth 
 of a day ; it is no flash or fling of wilful self-asser- 
 tion ; it is no piece of individual vigour, audacious 
 
154 
 
 OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 and personal ; not shot out of a pistol, full of acci- 
 dental whims and vagaries. These all drop away 
 from a character that is bred within the close com- 
 panionship of a family — a family with continuous 
 traditions, with memories of honour, with an in- 
 herited wealth of rich and fine experiences, with 
 accumulated responsibilities, with a tone and a 
 temper into which has passed the mellow fragrance' 
 of ancient dignities. A family breeds a character 
 of courtesy ; a delicate sense of others' rights, 
 interests, worth ; a sensitive recognition of vary- 
 ing characteristics, gifts, degrees, types, functions, 
 feelings. It instils self-repression, self-control, 
 the honour for one another, the esteem of one 
 another, the stooping of the strong to the weak, 
 the absence of all loud and clamorous glorying, 
 the reverence which cannot trample on others, 
 nor ride roughshod over their scruples or their 
 sentiments. 
 
 And in the family, again, this negative self-re- 
 pression will learn to give itself positive and active 
 outflow, in sympathy, tenderness, affection ; it will 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 155 
 
 be ready at another's call, quick to share another's 
 sorrow, or, what is harder, perhaps, to kindle at 
 another's joy. It will watch how to help in secret, 
 giving little lifts to burdens, unknown and un- 
 thanked, foregoing its own wants, forgetting its 
 own cares, with that instinctive helpfulness which 
 only affection can prompt and only unselfishness 
 can discover. Alas ! is this the sure type of cha- 
 racter in every Christian ? Do we always find this, 
 where we find belief in Christ's Church ? Is it 
 not too possible for strong belief itself to harden 
 our sensibilities ; to give us a crushing self-con- 
 fidence, a self-assertive intolerance, from which 
 tender souls shrink as if wounded ? Cannot our 
 very faith sometimes induce us to take an acute 
 interest in ourselves ; to be greatly occupied with 
 its story, its interests, its peculiarities, until we 
 pride ourselves on just that in it which is most 
 personal to us and therefore least valuable — until 
 we cannot credit or endure other roads by which 
 belief has been reached, nor appreciate the infinite 
 and exquisite diversity of characters which are all, 
 
1 5 6 
 
 OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 by manifold graces, drawn together into the family 
 of God, wherein there should be " neither Jew nor 
 Greek, neither barbarian nor Scythian, neither 
 male nor female " ? 
 
 Let us ask ourselves whether we have ever begun 
 the education of the Christian family ; whether our 
 faith in Christ has yet taught us, at all, to give 
 increased worth to the lives about us ; whether it 
 has taken our attention off ourselves, and turned 
 it upon the needs and hopes of others ; whether it 
 has made other people's lives more interesting 
 to us ; whether we have won a new patience and 
 courtesy, a new respect for the weak, the unin- 
 teresting, the stupid, the wearisome, the depressed ; 
 whether it has bred in us the desire to honour all, 
 to love the brotherhood — not those whom we select 
 and like, but the whole Christian brotherhood as 
 such — to esteem others better than ourselves ; to 
 give place to others ; to wait upon others' cares ? 
 Has faith enlarged our stock of sympathy, quick- 
 ened our affectionateness, softened our hardness, 
 purged our wilfulness, rounded our angularities ? 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 157 
 
 Has it? If not, we have forgotten that Christ 
 founded a family of faith. 
 
 And the body — what stamp does this great con- 
 ception set upon character ? It, of course, carries 
 yet further than the family the rule of limitation, 
 of subordination, and all the moral excellences that 
 result from this ; but it adds a peculiar note — the 
 note of witness. A body is, in essence, the evidence 
 the proof, the pledge of that which acts through it. 
 Its sole function, throughout all its parts, is to make 
 manifest the secret presence which animates and 
 directs it. It brings that presence out into act, 
 into evidence ; it makes it known. The Christian, 
 who is "of the Body," has his mission, his vocation. 
 He is sent ; he is there to declare the Name, to 
 manifest the glory, of God ; to give evidence abroad 
 of the God within. 
 
 The Christian believer must, then, be stamped 
 with the seal of mission ; it will move about its 
 work, not only busy and keen, but as conscious of 
 a message to be delivered throughout that work. 
 Always he will be murmuring to himself, " Now 
 
153 
 
 OUR C1TJZEXSHIP. 
 
 we are ambassadors in the name of God." Pie 
 is prophetic ; he is, by the very life he lives, to 
 make intelligible God's secrets, to unclose his 
 mind towards men. He is a preacher in his acts ; 
 they are his sermon. By the great rule of our 
 Lord, he will let his light so shine that men, as 
 they see his good deeds, will glorify — not him ; no, 
 he will not suffer them to make that mistake. It 
 will be too obvious that it is not his own doing ; he 
 will give his evidence too clearly for that. No ; the 
 spectators will instinctively and of necessity detect 
 the source of his light, and will " glorify the Father, 
 Who is in heaven." We are so to do our good 
 works that men will not glorify us, but God. That 
 is the task set us as members of Christ's Body ; 
 that is to be the note of our character. The hardest, 
 highest law ; for what a passion of self-repression 
 will it not require, if ever it is to come to pass 
 that, as we advance in holiness, we shall advance 
 in humility, and that the more our light shines, 
 blessing and gladdening those about us, the more 
 directly and immediately men may turn their eyes 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 159 
 
 off us, and may recognize that we are nothing 
 and that God is all in all. 
 
 Dearly beloved, if this is the excellence peculiar 
 to the body, what is the sin peculiar to the body? 
 Hypocrisy ; the acting of a part, the pretence to 
 do, of ourselves, that which is done in and through 
 us by God. " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, 
 hypocrites ! " Hypocrisy ; the sin of the body, of 
 the flesh ; the sin of resting the eyes, the attention, 
 on self; on the tool, forgetting the workman ; on 
 the creature, forgetting the Creator. And this in 
 the case of one's self ; to suppose one's self the 
 author of what one does, to thrust one's self into 
 the place of God. Hypocrisy : to do this, not in 
 pretence, to deceive others, entrap others' admira- 
 tion — but to do it so that one beguiles one's self, 
 flatters one's self, caresses one's self, admires one's 
 self; and to do this, again, not in mere human 
 affairs, but in the things of God, in the affairs of 
 the kingdom, in the deeds of that Body of Christ 
 into which God's mercy has placed us that we 
 might do exactly the opposite — might glorify Christ, 
 
i6o 
 
 OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 might declare the Name of God, might impel men 
 to remember and recognize their Father Which is 
 in heaven. Hypocrisy ; the sin of the devout, their 
 own peculiar sin ; the sin built up out of the con- 
 ditions of the religious life, as a cancer sucks its 
 venomous sustenance out of our health ; the sin 
 that develops its range and depth according to the 
 measure and subtlety of the devotion on which it 
 feeds, ever climbing higher as the religious aspira- 
 tion moves upward ; the sin of Churchmen, of the 
 painstaking, and continuous, and growing, and 
 definite, and complete life of piety ; the sin which 
 blots out the way of cure, and kills out the germs 
 of salvation, and blinds, and hardens, and deadens, 
 and freezes, and withers, and slays ; the sin loaded 
 with such terrible judgment by the mouth of Him 
 Who to sinners was so kind and merciful and 
 tender. 
 
 Ah ! what of this sin in ourselves ? The 
 world detects it so easily and condemns it so un- 
 sparingly. Why? Because it is a sin of which 
 it is not capable, to which it cannot be tempted. 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 I6l 
 
 The godly alone are tempted. Men must be in 
 earnest, men must be devout, to be capable of it at 
 all. Churchmen are open to it, capable of it, with 
 special ease ; for the more complete and careful the 
 rules of piety professed, the more liable we become 
 to its miserable perversion ; the higher the aim, the 
 greater the risk. If you and I are seriously attempt- 
 ing to live as in the Body of Christ, then we have 
 an ever-new peril to face ; we have to keep a yet 
 more delicate and rigid watch over our inward 
 character, if men who see our good works are to 
 glorify, at the sight, our Father Which is in heaven. 
 
 The character of the household — vigorous, skil- 
 ful, fertile ; the character of the family — restrained, 
 courteous, tender ; the character of the body — a 
 character of vocation, void of all self-aim and self- 
 pleasing, whose most instinctive actions make God 
 visible, intelligible, evident, to men. There are 
 some notes of our Church-character, our citizenship ; 
 and to these there is to be added the crown, the 
 flower, the glory — the character of the temple. 
 
 The temple. There is to be positive beauty in 
 
 M 
 
1 62 OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 the Christian character ; it is to be full of delicate 
 and lovely refinement ; there is to be a touch upon 
 it of grace, charm, majesty, consecration. It pic- 
 tures a life in which we shall be past the turmoil 
 and the struggle ; not always battling ; not always 
 scarred ; not always faint, weary, broken ; not always 
 weeping, stumbling, falling. This must, indeed, 
 come first — this wrestle, this night of toil, this bitter 
 purging ; it must be endured. But, after all, there 
 is in us the power to come out into the light, and the 
 sun, and the joy. Already, even on earth, the power 
 of Christ's victorious cry, "It is finished !" will touch 
 us with some breath of benediction. The struggle 
 will begin to ebb, to fall back ; the promise will be 
 upon us of that day, when the morning will indeed 
 break, and for us, too, all the Passion and the Cross 
 will be finished and done. Yes, now and again, if 
 we be faithful, the fierceness will slacken, the black 
 sin will relax its grip, and there will spring up in 
 us the sweet desires which make purity a joy and 
 holiness a peace. Out of the heart will proceed 
 no more the ancient horrors ; but there will bud 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 163 
 
 upward, like flowers, the spontaneous gifts of the 
 Spirit, " love, gentleness, goodness, loving-kindness, 
 faith, meekness, charity " — the graces of the high 
 home in heaven. And then we shall know at last, 
 or dimly feel, what it is to be of the temple of 
 God, a stone in the chosen place where God abides, 
 because He hath a delight therein — to be as a 
 green olive-tree planted in the house of the Lord. 
 
 In the temple ; fit for the temple ! In such a life 
 there would, above all, be perfect cleanness. The 
 vessels of the Lord are all pure. He that ascends 
 unto the hill must have clean hands, pure heart, 
 an incorrupt life. The first necessity of a temple 
 is, as Nehemiah knew, to be purged of all defiling 
 traffic, of " them that sell fish." And more. Not 
 only the coarse, gross things, but the very suspicion 
 of the unclean thing, the very scent and taint of the 
 world, must be wholly gone. Not enough just to 
 be decent ; just not to be unworthy ; just to avoid 
 blame ; just to escape past sin. Nay ; something 
 excellent, something beautiful, something free and 
 pure, is wanted for the temple — a life of love, which 
 
164 
 
 067? CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 is jealous for God's honour, and is devoured with 
 heat when that temple of God suffers dishonour ; 
 the love which is not afraid of the small cords and 
 the discipline, if they be needed to purify God's 
 house ; the love which goes beyond the bare com- 
 mand, the naked necessities ; the love which pours 
 out its undemanded treasure, and bathes the Lord's 
 feet with tears, though He be uninsistent, and ceases 
 not to cover them with kisses, even though He 
 has never asked for them. This is the love which 
 alone can build up the character of the temple. 
 
 And such a character, so built up out of purity 
 and love, will have about it also the sense of mystery 
 — the mystery of the temple ; the awe that hangs 
 about those spots where the heights and the 
 depths of God meet and mingle ; the mystery of 
 the vision, of the consecration ; the mystery of the 
 oil that ran down over Aaron ; the mystery of the 
 Mount of Transfiguration — that Mount where faces 
 shine with strange exaltation, and the very gar- 
 ments are flooded with unearthly whiteness, and 
 there are voices, and visitants, and unutterable 
 
OUR CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 I6 5 
 
 things, whether in the body or out of the body, 
 God knows ! we cannot tell. 
 
 This purity, this mystery, the temple gifts — where 
 are they to be found ? Where are they, in our 
 lives, so mixed, so unpurged, so worldly ? How 
 flat and shallow we all seem ! How little wonder, 
 mysteriousness, depth, there is felt about us ! Does 
 any one, sleeping in sin, wake ever, at our touch 
 and presence, to a sense of Angels that are moving 
 up and down the golden ladder, between heaven 
 and earth ? Does any one suspect us of secrets 
 beyond his ken ? Is any one ever awed into shame 
 by our neighbourhood ? Is there anything solemn, 
 strange, holy, about us ? Alas ! all this is very far 
 from most of us, we know too well. And we may 
 well expect men to be unwilling to believe in a 
 Church if we so rarely show them its moral and 
 spiritual fruits. Not until we are more evidently 
 of the body and of the temple will men be enabled 
 to recognize and confess, " This is the generation 
 of them that seek Thee, even of them that seek 
 Thy face, O Jacob." 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 " The Lord sitteth above the water-flood : and the Lord remaineth 
 a King for ever." — Ps. xxix. 10. 
 
 As we watch in spring-time the returning swallows, 
 and delight at the ever-new wonder of their flight, 
 flashing, darting, wheeling, skimming along the 
 startled waters, which they seem to laugh at as 
 they touch and fan ; or, again, when we are shown 
 the delicate and airy bone-work by which all this 
 miracle of motion is made possible — which of us 
 remembers all the toil, and pain, and pressure which 
 lie around and behind that exquisite mechanism, 
 that rapid ease ? Who can guess what rough war- 
 fare, what haunting fears, have gone to the perfect- 
 ing of that fairy fabric ; what fierce foes it has used 
 that victorious flight to escape ; what arduous effort 
 after food is still at work preserving its swift 
 symmetry ? 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 1 67 
 
 It is the same (as we now know) with all this 
 bright and beautiful nature on which we feast 
 our eyes as the sweet summer slowly steals over 
 field and wood. We are watching a late result, of 
 which the long history is hidden. The very beauty 
 screens the secret from us. But as we push our 
 way behind that screen, as we spell out its inner 
 story, we learn what strange and troubled forces, 
 what stormy scenes, have all gone to the making 
 of that earth which now, in its completed triumph, 
 smiles up at us, as a face at ease that is glad to 
 feel itself alive and very fair. 
 
 Or we look out from some bridge over London 
 at some hour — 
 
 " When the city doth like a garment wear 
 The beauty of the morning." 
 
 There it is, still as a dream, glorious as a vision, so 
 secure, so steady, so quiet, at such peace ! 
 
 "The river glideth at its own sweet will ; 
 Dear God, the very houses are asleep, 
 And all this mighty heart is lying still." 
 
 Yes ; there is embodied a victory, there is enshrined 
 
1 68 THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 and sealed a hope, a glory. " Towers, domes, 
 pinnacles," all speak of a wonder that has come 
 about — the wonder of human intercourse, human 
 co-operation, human sympathy, by which new pos- 
 sibilities have opened, new hopes dawned, new 
 splendours been achieved, far beyond the limits 
 within which man first found his narrow lot cast 
 when he wandered hither and thither, loose, savage, 
 suspicious, and alone. There it lies, under our 
 eyes. So far the riddle has been read, the vision 
 has come true. Each tower, each spire, is a record 
 and a pledge of a stage won, of a gain stored and 
 secured. 
 
 But ah, at what a cost of blood and pain does 
 that wide city sleep and dream in the clear 
 morning air ! What ages of suffering have passed 
 in tumult and tempest before men could win their 
 way up, out of distrust and alarm, into the con- 
 fidence and peace of which these towers are the 
 visible evidence ! What noise and heat ; what fever 
 and fret ; what anxieties, and perils, and wars ; 
 what dismal failures, and lapses, and stumblings, 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 1 69 
 
 and falls ; what painful recoveries ; what bitter 
 experiences ; what miserable castigations ; what 
 wearisome delays ; what stress and strain ; what 
 tyrannies, what crimes, what anarchies, have all 
 gone to the shaping of this social order, which now 
 assumes the comfortable air of a natural law, which 
 no sane man can ever question or discuss ! All 
 this is thrown out of sight as we gaze, just as the 
 quiet and untroubled face of a flower makes us 
 forget the fears that beset its sowing amid the 
 disgraces of winter skies. 
 
 And we who believe in Christ to-day are in 
 danger of a like forgetfulness. We hold, for 
 instance, in our hands the three great Catholic 
 Creeds, the wonderful work of that Spirit Who 
 fell upon the Church at Pentecost. To those of us 
 who have been allowed to know their significance 
 and their power, how strong and fair they seem, 
 how steady their outlines, how unfailing their peace ! 
 We feed on their secure phrases, on their pregnant 
 thoughts. Our hearts tingle to their mighty music, 
 to their measured roll. With what freedom can 
 
170 THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 we surrender ourselves to the onward movement of 
 their high chanting : " I believe in Jesus Christ, the 
 only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of His Father 
 before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very 
 God of Very God, Begotten, not made, Being of 
 one substance with the Father ; By Whom all 
 things were made. . . . And I believe in the Holy 
 Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth 
 from the Father and the Son, Who with the 
 Father and the Son together is worshipped and 
 glorified, Who spake by the Prophets." There 
 is security ; there is vigour ; there is assurance ; 
 there is clear insight ; there is the power of the 
 Word, the infallibility of the Holy Spirit. So 
 calm, so steady ; such peace, such majesty. Far 
 away, it seems, from all the dust of quarrel, from 
 all the turmoil of dispute, from all the agony of 
 indecision ; far above the fretting and the fever. 
 We are lifted into some great height of vantage ; 
 we, too, see with clear eyes ; we, too, wear, like a 
 garment, " the beauty of the morning." 
 
 Yet, how was that peace won ? What lies behind 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 171 
 
 those strong words of faith ? Were they enacted 
 with that quiet ease with which they speak to us 
 to-day ? Were they struck out at one creative 
 blow by the Spirit of God ? Ah ! we know well 
 how strange, and long, and anxious, and be- 
 wildering was the process of which those Creeds 
 are the fruit. Four centuries of almost unbroken 
 trouble, perplexity, confusion, fear, dismay, have 
 gone to their shaping ; from the hour, the awful 
 hour, when S. Paul wandered, distracted with 
 evil rumours, up and down the borders of Mace- 
 donia, waiting for Titus to bring him news from 
 rebellious and defiled Corinth, with fightings 
 without, with fears within, with the sentence of 
 death smiting him, not knowing whether his entire 
 work were not about to be broken into ruins under 
 his very eyes ; on through all the fierce agonies 
 which shook to its foundations the Apostolic 
 Church, agonies which have left record after record 
 throughout the latter books of the Bible, in pas- 
 sionate appeals to believers to hold fast the faith, 
 to avoid " profane babblings and old wives' fables," 
 
172 THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered, 
 because there are men crept in unawares, " ungodly 
 men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, 
 denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus 
 Christ." There, and in many such another passage, 
 we touch it — the blinding storm that swept down. 
 There you can listen to the roar of the driving 
 winds ; you can feel the weight of the flood that 
 beat against the walls of the house of faith until it 
 shuddered. Those that came through that storm, 
 those who still held true, must again and again, in 
 moments of desperate need, have looked in each 
 other's faces to ask, " Will this fury ever cease ? 
 Will the rock indeed hold out ? Have we any 
 footing ? Who can endure to the end ? " 
 
 Or, again, in the passionate cries of Ignatius, as 
 he passes to his doom in Rome, we have something 
 by which to measure the maze of bewilderment 
 and peril that drew from him those words of flame 
 —words that sting and bite, as, with beseechings 
 that are wrung out of his heart's blood, he struggles 
 to assert and secure the full reality of Christ's 
 human nature. 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 1?$ 
 
 And how can we describe the critical years 
 that surround the four Great Councils, the years 
 of which our actual Creeds are the direct fruit ? 
 As we run lightly over the story in our brief 
 summaries of ecclesiastical history, the long inter- 
 vals all drop out, the accidents and inequalities 
 of the time disappear, and it all reads to us as 
 if, the moment a heretic appeared, he was recog- 
 nized at once, and his heresy noted, confuted, 
 unmasked : whenever there was a perplexity the 
 Church assembled in General Council and relieved 
 all doubt by an authoritative declaration of what it 
 was essential to believe. Could any description 
 be less like what really occurred ? No such simple 
 clockwork machinery turned out a dogma when- 
 ever it was wanted. No such easy process saved 
 or spared those Christians of the fourth century 
 the pain and the distress which we sometimes fancy 
 to be our own peculiar trial. For them there were 
 long, long years between Nicsa, 325, and Chalce- 
 don, in 451, in which no one knew which way to 
 look for guidance and decision. The authorities 
 
174 
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 themselves again and again spoke with contradic- 
 tory voices. Good men were trapped into acqui- 
 escence ; holy men, without sufficient speculative 
 acumen to know where they were being led, lent 
 their weight to false statements. And then the 
 real question was encumbered by blunders, mis- 
 chances, accidents. It got mixed up with side 
 issues ; it took years before it could be disentangled 
 from compromises, and circumlocutions, and mis- 
 directions, and could be brought into that exact 
 shape in which a real decision could become pos- 
 sible. And then there were complications from 
 external influences : the intrigues of courtiers, the 
 wilfulness of princes, the violence of mobs, — all 
 these played their part, agitated the surface of 
 affairs, disturbed and distorted the spiritual in- 
 terests. The issue again and again seemed to hang 
 on precarious accidents, on the lives of favourites, on 
 the incalculable whims of ministers and empresses. 
 And the normal ecclesiastical authorities were 
 swept this way and that by the strong forces at 
 work, and failed to give stable judgments. Bishops 
 
THE BUILDIXG OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 175 
 
 temporized, overcome, says S. Gregory, "by fear, 
 or interest, or flattery, or, what is most excusable, 
 by ignorance." Councils met and parted in bitter 
 strife, or gave doubtful and suspicious verdicts, or 
 passed ambiguous formulas that avoided the ques- 
 tion at stake. Bishops stood over against Bishops 
 and Churches against Churches. At times " the 
 whole world groaned and wondered to find itself 
 Arian," until at last the true faith, as we now so 
 easily see it to have been, was housed in the clear 
 head and the dauntless heart of a single champion, 
 alone against the world ; and he was flying in 
 perilous exile from threats which daily menaced 
 his life, condemned and expelled by large Councils 
 of the Church at Antioch, Tyre, Aries, Milan, 
 supported, in his heroic hour, by a laity more 
 faithful than its pastors or its Popes. 
 
 For Popes failed. One yielded to the depres- 
 sion of a prison, and signed a compromising Creed. 
 Papal delegates subscribed to the condemnation 
 of Athanasius. Now, and again, some Pope was 
 beguiled into favouring a doctrine which the 
 
176 THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 sharper eyes of theological experts detected and 
 denounced. 
 
 So the weary war rose and fell, with clamour 
 and confusion, year after year. "We determine 
 Creeds by the year," says S. Hilary, "or by the 
 month ; and then we change our determination ; 
 and then we prohibit our changes ; and then we 
 anathematize our prohibitions." And laymen 
 were discussing seriously among themselves how 
 to steer a straight path of belief through rival 
 claimants, all of whom claimed to be orthodox 
 and scriptural ; and were conceiving the possibility 
 of all living authorities being caught in temporary 
 error ; and were devising tests and standards, care- 
 ful and laborious, by which the individual be- 
 liever could still hope to hold fast the ancient 
 form of sound words. And in the mean time 
 the trouble darkens in ways so familiar to us. 
 Devout and holy men, belonging to Arian or Nesto- 
 rian Churches, were consecrating themselves to 
 missionary enterprise, and were converting entire 
 nations of incoming barbarians, innocent and un- 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 177 
 
 suspecting, to a form of faith which the Church 
 was forced to repudiate. And, again, passionate 
 supporters of orthodoxy were falling over, in the 
 blindness of zeal, into statements as unsteady and 
 as deadly as those which they were so loyally 
 opposing ; and Athanasius has to repudiate his 
 friends, and the Church to set itself against the 
 foremost monks of Egypt, who yet appealed to the 
 great name of Cyril. And there were saints again, 
 Basil and others, appearing in suspected quarters, 
 only slowly, and with searching of heart, to be 
 recognized and admitted into loyal confidence. 
 And all this anxiety, this confusion, this distress, 
 let us remember, was not about some partial and 
 limited detail of the faith. Nay ; the storm was 
 raging round the question of questions, round the 
 cardinal and vital heart of the Creed, round the 
 Person of the Lord Himself. It was a matter 
 of life and death that was at stake. 
 
 That is the scene ; those are the conditions out 
 of which we won, to our everlasting peace, those 
 calm, clear phrases of the Catholic Creeds. There 
 
 N 
 
178 THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 they stand at last, perfect, strong, entire ; so quiet 
 and sure that we forget that the smell of fire has 
 been upon them. We remember no more the 
 anguish and trial out of which they were born. 
 Those Creeds are the work of the Holy Ghost in the 
 Church. So we rightly believe ; but, so believing, 
 we are apt to fancy that that must mean that they 
 were done in a flash, in easy strength. God spoke, 
 we suppose, and it was done. We have our fancy- 
 picture of a Church that came together, with regular 
 and calm despatch, at each difficulty that arose, 
 and at once relieved all dispute and indecision by 
 formally announcing the true Creed ; and then we 
 are staggered to find ourselves to-day deprived of 
 this rapid and convenient mechanism, left to the 
 strain and the pain of prolonged uncertainty, often 
 stripped of authoritative guidance just when we 
 seem most to need it, encompassed by obscurities, 
 watching timorously the local interests, the tempo- 
 rary accidents, the worldly intrigues, which seem 
 ever on the very point of doing some irretrievable 
 hurt to the truth and the Church. But if we know 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 179 
 
 facts, we escape this disturbing contrast ; for then 
 we have learnt that the Creeds can indeed be the 
 work of the Holy Spirit, and yet not be shown to 
 be such by force of rapid ease, but rather by the 
 victorious lordship perilously but perfectly exercised 
 over the tumult and the chaos of earthly passion. 
 The evidence for His presence is to be found in 
 the contrast between the apparent disorder and 
 terror of the outward scene and the steady and 
 beautiful harmony of the result. To us it seems 
 but a wild and confused babel of discordant noises, 
 yet in its very midst, as we find, the Holy Spirit 
 still worked. Still He held the threads and clues ; 
 still He warded off the threatening disasters ; still 
 He toiled and strove; still He saved the remnant 
 He shielded the Holy Seed ; still He fashioned, in 
 His holy fires, like a smith beats out and toughens 
 iron, the strong words which should stand for ever ; 
 still over the chaos of those loud waters He passed, 
 and under Him the truth grew, came together, 
 shaped itself, solid, firm, eternal ; and then the 
 storm ceased, the wind died away, and there it 
 
l8o THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 stood — the fair and beautiful fabric, within which 
 belief could find itself at peace ; there stood the 
 Creeds, His own undoubted work, testifying to 
 Him, the evidence of His care, of His teaching, of 
 His tenacity, of His unfailing inspiration. 
 
 Now that we see the result, we do not doubt the 
 Spirit's handling, any more than we doubt the 
 evidence of the Creator's Mind and Will which is 
 given us in the completed structure of the living 
 bird. The subtlety and toil of the long process 
 through the pressure of which it was formed cannot 
 be allowed to obscure the positive and decisive 
 clearness of the outcome. The proof of God's 
 handling, of God's supremacy, is as undeniable in 
 every line and point of that delicate mechanism of 
 the swallow, as if He had struck it out with one 
 blow of His hand, with one word of His Will. And 
 as He works in nature, so, after the same methods 
 and analogies, it has been in the framing of His 
 supernatural kingdom. Through the very thick of 
 human disorder He held on His predestined and 
 unbroken way. The process to human eyes was 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT l8l 
 
 dark, confused, slow, perilous ; but lo ! the fruit is 
 peace. The Spirit, Whose track our eyes could 
 not follow, has never failed His task. In spite of 
 human wranglings, the truth has been secured ; 
 the Creed has been built, word by word, line after 
 line ; the victory is complete. Now we know the 
 meaning, the issues, the gain of all those long, 
 painful, patient hours, when men cried for the night 
 to pass, and it seemed as if no dawn would ever 
 break. Now we know. All is justified ; all is 
 safe. Verily " the Lord sitteth above the water- 
 flood : and the Lord remaineth a King for ever." 
 
 Those others have laboured ; we have entered into 
 their labours. Others went forth to sow, weeping as 
 they went ; it is we who come with joy, bringing 
 their sheaves with us. We feed on the strength of 
 these calm Creeds, which they in labour, in agony, 
 wrestled and fought and toiled to frame and to 
 secure us. In the sweat of their brows we eat 
 our bread, with glad hearts, to-day. But, then, we 
 cannot suppose that we, who feast at ease on their 
 winnings, will be spared our own portion of that 
 
182 
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 chastening through which they passed to their 
 victory. We enjoy the firm record of Christ's 
 Person and dignity to which they, through much 
 tribulation, found their way. That is made easy 
 for us which to them was so hard. We can avoid 
 the perils which pressed through them so sorely ; 
 we can see with clear eyes, we can speak with sure 
 voice, where to them light was broken and utterance 
 dangerous. But the discipline which they endured 
 is as necessary as ever. If it was good for the 
 Church to be shaken and tossed then, it is good for 
 it still. If it was right then that men should have 
 to wrestle and strive in order to attain the know- 
 ledge of the truth, in order to apprehend firmly 
 what it is they believe, it must be right now for us. 
 Nay; the more loyally we prize the Catholic Creeds, 
 which were wrought out through such obscurity, 
 and anxiety, and danger, the more we shall expect 
 and be ready to find ourselves summoned to face 
 new forms of danger, to endure fresh anxieties, to 
 travel through the like obscurities. The right 
 apprehension of Christ is an age-long discipline, a 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 I8 3 
 
 life-trial : it needs stings to prick us ; it will be 
 often an affair of buffets, and blows, and bruises. 
 It can never be won without effort or without cost. 
 And why, then, should we be so staggered at the 
 perplexities which encompass the Church and im- 
 peril the faith ? Those very Creeds which seem to 
 stand in peace above our clamorous uncertainties 
 and noisy disputes, are there to sanction and ex- 
 plain, by their own story, the confusions through 
 which we are travelling, and the fears by which we 
 are made miserable. 
 
 Let us remember their story and take courage 
 to meet our own discipline. And two good com- 
 forts those Creeds supply to us, which were lacking 
 to those who built them. For by possessing in our 
 hands their firm phrases, we can never, even in our 
 worst plight, fall into such desperate trouble as 
 they endured who, in the fourth century, knew not 
 where to turn for some voice which could assure 
 them that they held the very faith of their fathers. 
 For then it was the Person of our Lord Himself, 
 His vital essence, which was the point in peril. 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 The Creeds then framed have secured to the Church 
 for evermore the certain assurance of Who and What 
 that Christ is Whom we worship. The questions 
 that bewilder us now, e.g. about the nature of 
 Christ's Church on earth, can never be quite so 
 urgent or so awful as those which affect the 
 nature of Christ Himself. We have those Creeds 
 to hold by when all else looks troubled. 
 
 And then, secondly, those Creeds are a pledge 
 to us that God does win results, win victories, 
 throughout all our disorders and perplexities. Of 
 old there was to the eye of man the like confusion 
 as now ; and yet we can now see clearly that God 
 was still Master, at work then, sitting above the 
 water-flood, shielding the holy seed, preserving the 
 faith, watching over the Church, reaping good out 
 of all the evil, building up the Catholic Creed in 
 patience and in faithfulness ; though His voice were 
 not heard in the street, yet in mercy sparing to 
 quench the smoking flax or to break the bruised 
 reed, until He could at last bring out judgment unto 
 victory. What He did then for them He will do 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 1 85 
 
 now for us. As He won for Himself, out of that 
 turmoil, the fruit of the Creeds, so some wonderful 
 thing He is even now preparing and fashioning ; 
 some great issue, some fruit. Our confusions are 
 serving His need ; He is pruning, purging, purify- 
 ing, chastening, educating, sanctifying His Church. 
 And He will attain His end. He will bring out 
 some judgment unto victory ; He will reap a 
 harvest ; He will store His sheaves at last. We 
 shall see and know, if we be but faithful now, what 
 it was for which He bruised us, and we shall bless 
 His Holy Name. 
 
 Let it suffice us that we have in us that same 
 Holy Spirit, Who was sufficient for all their needs 
 of old. He will guide us day by day along the 
 road, though we know but little of what is hap- 
 pening, and see but little of what is being gained. 
 Still in Him we can walk on and on, ever facing 
 an obscurity, menacing and terrible, which will 
 only yield, step by step, as we advance into its 
 shadow. Yet yield it will, if only we advance in 
 faith — yield it will ; and ever again, as we face it 
 
1 86 THE BUILDING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 anew, it will yet again yield and open. On will go 
 the path, winding and shining ; and ever there 
 will be speaking the Voice behind us which says, 
 day by day, according to our necessity, " This is 
 the way ; walk ye in it." Ever there will be the 
 unspent Bread of Life, enough for the day ; ever 
 on the morrow we shall find that sacred Food again 
 in the basket. 
 
 This is the walk of faith. Ah, how blessed ! for 
 it is the path by which the Father leads us. So 
 they walked in its light, those of old whose words 
 stand sure ; so they walked in unflinching joy 
 " troubled, but not distressed ; perplexed, but not 
 in despair ; cast down, but not destroyed." So we, 
 by God's grace, will walk, not asking to be spared 
 what they endured. 
 
 " They climbed the steep ascent of Heaven 
 Through peril, toil, and pain ; 
 O God, to us may strength be given 
 To follow in their train." 
 
"MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 " When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His 
 Son, made of a woman, made under the law." — Gal. iv. 4. 
 
 We all know how largely the miraculous character 
 of the Incarnation occupies our attention. The 
 scientific advance in knowledge has brought a fierce 
 pressure of criticism to bear upon this problem of 
 the supernatural ; the necessities of Christian 
 apologetics have concentrated our interest upon 
 that which is most under dispute. We cannot help 
 this. We are bound, at all costs, to make good 
 the full claims of our Lord Jesus Christ to His 
 unique and absolute sovereignty ; and such abso- 
 lute sovereignty cannot be stated except in terms 
 which will involve, of sheer inward necessity, 
 miraculous results on the outward surface of that 
 human life which He has filled with His own 
 supremacy. 
 
i88 
 
 'MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 No, we cannot help it ; we are bound to 
 carry through the hot contention. But yet, if we 
 were but at peace, if we were but left to follow 
 out the natural course of reflection which the 
 actual Incarnation suggests, unthwarted by side 
 issues, it would be its naturalness rather than 
 its supernaturalness which would most arrest and 
 surprise us. That which is really startling in the 
 Birth and Life of our Lord is, surely, not the extent 
 of its miraculous display, but its strange and 
 severe limitation ; not the degree to which He 
 exercised His Godhead, but the degree to which 
 He emptied Himself of it. That is what bewilders 
 and astounds us far more than any miracle. Men 
 talk as if we Christians were brimming with a 
 childish and reckless exuberance of supernatural- 
 ism. How distorted a misconception ! Is not 
 the wonder all the other way ? Is it not amazing 
 that a creed, which starts with such tremendous 
 assertions about the Person of its Founder, should 
 keep itself so well in hand, so rigidly under 
 control, that its main force is spent in exhibit- 
 
" MADE UNDER THE LAW." 1 89 
 
 ing the loyalty with which this only-begotten 
 Son of God submitted to every ordinance of 
 man and of nature, how He bent Himself down 
 to the hard and narrow frontiers of His natural 
 lot ? For one man who is disturbed by the 
 miracles we preach, there are twenty who are 
 upset by the rigorous absence of miracle from our 
 account of salvation. " Why this slow and painful 
 dealing with sin and with sorrow ? " they ask 
 impatiently. " Why does not God act with greater 
 freedom ? Why does He not lay bare His holy 
 arm ? Why this roundabout method of redemption ? 
 Why this cruel insistance on His Son's suffering and 
 death ? Why give Him over to the hour of dark- 
 ness ? Why not take away the bitter cup ? Why 
 allow Him to be forsaken on the Cross? Why 
 does He not uproot with a tempest the tyrannies 
 of the oppressor ? Why not break ye the strong- 
 holds ? Why not rend the heavens and come 
 down ? " Ah, we know but too well the appeal, the 
 passion, the misery of those questions ! Those are 
 the difficulties that bewilder and perplex hundreds 
 
190 
 
 "MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 of poor fretting, desolate hearts. And all these 
 difficulties, what are they but a fierce protest against 
 what we may call the unnatural naturalness of the 
 Christian revelation — its strange, its startling re- 
 pression of the miraculous, its abhorrence of all 
 violent disturbance of the natural order ? It is the 
 cry for the twelve legions of angels ; and the hotter 
 our faith the more passionately we protest against 
 the Lord's surrender of Himself to the Cross. 
 " Nay ! this be far from Thee, Lord ! Why submit ? 
 Why pass under the yoke that all men wear ? 
 Why let things take their natural course ? Why 
 push nothing aside — thrust no cup from Thee — 
 suffer what comes without resistance ? Oh, im- 
 possible ! This be far from Thee, Lord ! " So 
 spoke Peter of old, fervent and loving ; but our 
 Lord heard within his voice the whisper of the 
 tempter, the adversary. For He, the Lord, had 
 known already the terrible stress of that very 
 temptation when, in His weary fast, full of the 
 consciousness of the Spirit that had fallen upon 
 Him, with all Power made His to exercise and to 
 
''MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 191 
 
 use, the whisper stole up into His ear : " If Thou 
 be the Son of God, make these stones bread. If 
 Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself off the 
 Temple-corner ; His angels will bear Thee up." 
 Yes, and now again the devil's whisper — " This be 
 far from Thee," appealing to a truth — " If Thou 
 be the Son of God ; " it is the devil once more 
 letting loose the old lie through the disguise of a 
 friend : " Get thee behind me, Satan ; thou savourest 
 not the things that be of God, but those that be 
 of man." 
 
 The Incarnation is the revelation of the binding 
 force of natural law, to the necessities of which 
 God Himself yields up His Son. It is the loud 
 proclamation of the deference God pays to that 
 Nature which is His own creation. Where, indeed, 
 can we learn more emphatically than from the 
 Cross of Christ, the validity, the sanctity of those 
 natural conditions which God, of His own Will, 
 obeyed, even to the Death of His Son, rather than 
 break ? 
 
 And to-day we keep the peculiar feast that 
 
192 "MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 celebrates this Divine obedience. To-day our 
 Blessed Lord is formally admitted within the 
 normal and ordinary limitations of that human 
 nature which He had assumed in the Virgin's 
 womb. For He Who is come into the world to 
 enlighten every man who is born, did not enter it 
 in some miraculous freedom, to find the whole 
 wide earth laid open, without bar or bolt, to His 
 unhindered access. He bowed Himself to surrender 
 His claim to direct and immediate possession of 
 the entire humanity. He emptied Himself of all 
 such privileged and easy liberty. He was spared 
 nothing that was involved in taking the form of a 
 slave. He had been " made of a woman," He had 
 been " made under the law," born subject to all 
 the accidents of place and time, born at a cer- 
 tain date and hour, drawn to the appointed and 
 prophetic city, not by some supernatural inter- 
 vention, but by the ordinary conditions of the 
 imperial taxing, which had brought his Mother 
 to the home of David, yet had so brought her 
 that He had, in that city, no house in which 
 
"MADE UNDER THE LAW. 
 
 193 
 
 to lay His head. And so born, He passes under 
 the dread shadow of human history. He is en- 
 compassed round about with the thick intricacies 
 of our black story. He takes His place in the 
 long line of generations. He adds His Name to 
 those who went before. He is inwoven into the 
 meshes of a human pedigree. He becomes wholly 
 ours, that we may become wholly His. 
 
 As we glance down that long list of our 
 Lord's forefathers in S. Matthew or in S. Luke — 
 which looks so stiff, and legal, and monotonous 
 — how pathetic, how profound the significance 
 becomes, as we remember what that list embodies ! 
 There, in those dry names, lies the record of the 
 burden which the centuries had slowly built 
 together for the Lord to carry. Through that 
 line of names the story of man's life reached 
 Him. It arrived to Him charged with all that 
 those men had made it — their struggles, their 
 hopes, their joys, their woes, their sins, their pains. 
 Out of the nameless years which had come and 
 gone, a certain sequence had preserved itself 
 
 O 
 
194 
 
 "MADE UNDER THE LAW. 
 
 through those remembered men, links in the long 
 chain from Abraham and David. A tradition had 
 handed itself down, a story had been prolonged, 
 a memory had survived and grown, and accumu- 
 lated details, and gathered in continuous expe- 
 riences. Passions, aspirations, miseries, losses — 
 all had stored their results within this unbroken 
 and enduring movement. Such strange exalta- 
 tions, such untoward reverses, such patient per- 
 sistence, such stubborn obscurity, had all gone 
 to the fashioning of that family of David ! Into 
 it had passed much that was worthiest and much 
 that was worst of human character and incident. 
 Ruth, and David, and Zerubbabel, pastoral loyalty, 
 royal glories, heroic deliverances — yes, but also, 
 as S. Matthew seems to suggest with frequent 
 emphasis, Tamar, with her terrible scandal ; 
 Rahab, harlot of Jericho ; and Bathsheba, the 
 wife of David's sin. And all this inheritance, 
 just as it stood, at the particular moment when 
 Caesar first prepared to lay the bitterest mark of 
 servitude upon the race which once had tasted 
 
" MADE UNDER THE LA IV." 
 
 195 
 
 the free royalty of David, just when one of the 
 last and humblest sons of that great king had 
 Himself to acknowledge the servitude by enrolling 
 Himself for a foreign tax, enrolling Himself for 
 the tax of the conqueror, at the very city which 
 enshrined His last ancestral glories — all this, 
 without turning one jot or tittle of it aside, 
 without shrinking, without refusal, our Lord 
 assumed for His own on the day when He was 
 carried to the Temple as the Child of Mary. 
 
 He undertook also all the accumulated responsi- 
 bilities which belonged to Him as the heir of 
 Joseph, and which were made His by His Circum- 
 cision under the Name of Jesus — "circumcised the 
 eighth day," to become formally, and for all time, 
 Jesus of Nazareth, known as the carpenter's Son. 
 What did it not involve ? That Circumcision 
 brought down upon Him the whole weight of 
 the Law, the entire and immense burden of Scrip- 
 ture, the long and painful discipline of Prophet 
 and Redeemer. 
 
 He passed under the Law. He became a Son 
 
196 
 
 "MADE UNDER THE LAW. 
 
 of the covenant, a Jew of Jews, being already a 
 child of Abraham. Two thousand years of con- 
 tinuous and recorded history laid hands upon 
 Him by that act — two thousand years since first 
 God had sealed His promise to man under the 
 pledge of Circumcision. All that history stands 
 good still. Christ accepts it ; God respects it. 
 None of it shall be destroyed or set aside. The 
 Law is bound to be fulfilled, to be worked out ; 
 yea, to the very end. Only by complete and fear- 
 less submission to its claims can its dire necessities 
 ever be loosed. 
 
 And not only under the Law ; but He passed 
 also under the Scripture. Here was the power of 
 prophecy that went before Him. It accomplished 
 its completed mission by lodging itself on Him, 
 Who now, first at the hands of aged Simeon in 
 the Temple, and yet again under the penitential 
 ministry of the Baptist by Jordan, bent His neck, 
 of His own will, to the yoke, and set Himself to 
 the hard task of fulfilling all our righteousness. 
 The Jewish Scriptures, the spiritual record of 
 
'MADE UNDER THE LAW. 
 
 197 
 
 God's own prophetic handling of those chosen 
 souls, who before the light shone should bear 
 witness to its shining — those Scriptures now closed 
 round that little Child with authoritative embrace, 
 as Simeon lifted the Messiah long desired in his 
 arms before God on the holy hill of Zion. What 
 those books recorded He must now fulfil. The 
 experiences there noted and stored had authority 
 over Him. They gave Him His direction ; they 
 marked down the path He must tread. He is 
 made responsible for all that faithful souls, in 
 the weary years behind Him, had, under the 
 discipline of the Spirit, been led to suffer, feel, 
 utter, hope, declare. He accepts the limitations 
 set upon Him by their intuitions. He consents 
 to travel by the road that they have cast up, 
 passing from stone to stone there where they of 
 old, in days of darkness and agony, laid them 
 in the wilderness. All their voices, all their cries, 
 their beseechings, their protests, He will re-utter, 
 He will reiterate. As they had been, so would 
 He be. If they had been pierced in the house 
 
198 
 
 "MADE UNDER THE LAW: 
 
 of their friends, even so would He be pierced. If 
 they had gall and vinegar given them when their 
 lips were parched with burning pain, so, too, 
 shall He be not ashamed to taste of their cup. ■ 
 If but one of them had been sold for the con- 
 temptible price of a slave, that, too, should be 
 His portion. If they had deemed themselves 
 forsaken of God in the hour of their worst dis- 
 tress, He, too, would know what that horror of 
 great darkness might mean. Whatever they had 
 known — shame, spitting, scorn, infamy, cruelty, 
 death — all should be passed on from them to 
 Him ; on His shoulders those stripes of theirs 
 should fall, until all should have in Him an end, 
 until all should in Him be fulfilled. So He was 
 to walk in strict and careful submission to the 
 lines set down for Him by this prepared past. 
 Enough for Him that a sorrow should be recorded 
 in those ancient books ; He will Himself endure 
 its repetition out of loyalty to those of old who 
 felt the bitterness of its bruising. No legions of 
 angels shall rush in to ward off from Him disaster, 
 
"MADE UNDER THE LAW.' 
 
 199 
 
 for that would be to fail His God-given task. 
 " How, then, would the Scriptures be fulfilled ? " 
 So He walks, step by step, in the track of 
 prophecy. Betrayal by Judas, desertion by those 
 dearest, death by the hands of His own chosen 
 people — all of this is accepted and justified out 
 of faithful obedience to bygone experiences, to 
 the limits set Him under His constant phrases : 
 " It must needs be that the Scripture be fulfilled ; " 
 " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things ? " 
 "The Son of Man goeth as it was determined ;" 
 " I say unto you that that which is written must 
 yet be accomplished ; " " These things were done 
 that the Scripture might be fulfilled ; " " This all 
 was done that it might be fulfilled which was 
 spoken by the Prophet." And all this became 
 His, to achieve by formal ratification, on the day 
 when He was brought into the Jewish covenant, 
 and was sealed to its conditions and necessities — 
 the day when He was taken up by His parents 
 on the eighth day to be circumcised, and received 
 the Name of Jesus. 
 
200 "MADE UNDER THE LAW.' 
 
 So " God sent His Son, made of a woman, made 
 under the law." In how sharp a contrast this 
 Divine method of reform, of revolution, stands to 
 the declaration of the greatest of the idealists in 
 the days before the Christ. Plato, as he sorrow- 
 fully reviewed the actual Athens with which he 
 found himself encircled, pronounced, in his pro- 
 phetic work on human society, that its true 
 reformer and saviour would be known by this 
 mark — that he would demand for himself a clean 
 canvas before he consented to begin. He could 
 do nothing unless he were allowed to remove 
 from out of the influence and tradition of their 
 home a whole generation of children ; so alone 
 could he obtain the clean canvas he needed. Ah, 
 yes ; if only the weary burden of our inherited 
 complication could be thus freely cast off! If only 
 we could lay hands, in the violence of love, on 
 the little children, and sweep them off into some 
 new Garden of Eden ! If only we could run a 
 sharp dividing knife between us and the rueful 
 past ! Surely there is a deep and touching pathos 
 
"MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 20I 
 
 in that demand, which stirs us into tender admira- 
 tion of the noble-hearted genius who made it. 
 But its pathos must not disguise from us that 
 it is a confession of failure, of impotence, of 
 despair. The reformer who asks first for a clean 
 canvas to begin upon, is a reformer who refuses 
 to grapple with his task, refuses to face his facts. 
 He condemns himself by making the demand ; 
 for what is asked of him is that he should help 
 us to better the life that now is, the situation 
 in which he and we find ourselves. We do not 
 need him to tell us how well he could construct 
 another form of life under changed conditions. 
 No ; it is the very note of all the old failure to 
 redeem the world by philosophy which is struck 
 in the sad Platonic phrase, " Give me but the 
 children — give me a clean canvas ! " 
 
 " The clean canvas ! " Ah, how well we ourselves 
 know the temptation of that demand— we who are 
 so pitifully overloaded with the weight of ancient 
 wrongs j we who are pursued and harried by the 
 avenging Furies for our past social misdeeds. We 
 
202 
 
 "MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 are netted in such thick meshes. This poverty 
 that appals us, how far back does its original 
 spring lie ; how deep dug its roots, its causes ! 
 Alas ! back and back we track them, and our 
 hearts die within us, and we grow faint, and weary, 
 and puzzled, and bewildered. Can we ever secure 
 firm ground ? Can we ever undo the cruel knots 
 and hateful tangles ? The closer we study the 
 economical conditions of wealth, the darker and 
 vaster grows the desperate problem. And if 
 there be those among us who cannot tolerate 
 a depression, a degradation, that seems bound 
 to increase in spite of our best efforts ; if there 
 be those who, under the pressure of the sights 
 they see and the cries they hear, become im- 
 patient and lose control, and seek impatiently some 
 outlet of escape, and repudiate the inheritance 
 that has come down to them, and demand that 
 some decisive act should sever us from the weary 
 past ; if there be those who demand the clean 
 canvas and the new social start ; — surely we shall 
 enter into the pathos of their cry ; surely we shall 
 
"MADE UNDER THE LAW. 
 
 203 
 
 understand the sway of their temptation, we 
 shall be very gentle with their righteous im- 
 patience, even though we know that their demand 
 is a confession of their failure, or a proof of their 
 helplessness, or an echo from their despair ; even 
 though we remember how different was the 
 courage of our own Master, Who asked for no 
 violent or miraculous interference with those 
 limitations by which the past conditioned the 
 advance, asked for no legions of angels to force 
 for Him an open highway. No ; the past shall 
 indeed be put away, and the limitations shall 
 indeed be mastered and overpowered ; but this 
 can only be done by One Who has faith enough 
 in the power of God to take first upon His own 
 shoulders all the sorrow and the sin which that 
 past has transmitted — faith enough in the victorious 
 Spirit to bend His head in submission to all the 
 limitations which the long ages had built and 
 bonded — faith enough to bury Himself within the 
 very heart of the actual situation as it stood, 
 and from thence, from within, as the leaven hidden 
 
204 
 
 'MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 within the lump, to work in patience, in peni- 
 tence, in invincible loyalty, in unwearied hope, until 
 the corrupted mass itself becomes transformed, 
 renewed, transfigured. 
 
 " Give me a clean canvas." We hear the same 
 beseeching voice go up again and again from 
 those who are wearied with the battle of the 
 creeds, and sick to death of the quarrels of Chris- 
 tians. Here again history has passed down to 
 us a long, wearisome, woeful tale. In England, 
 above all, where the story of the Church is so 
 strangely and deeply interwoven with the story 
 of the people and the throne, the Catholic faith 
 of Christ arrives at our late generation, bearing 
 along with it the complications, the incumbrances, 
 the debris, the ruins, of all that has gone to the 
 confused making of a nation's existence. It comes 
 to us marred, and maimed, and scarred, and bruised. 
 And, oh, how we sigh for the simplicity of some 
 early day, when to believe was at least to know 
 what one believed ; when to belong to the Church 
 was to enter a brotherhood of purity, a home 
 
"MADE UNDER THE LAW." 205 
 
 of peace ! And no wonder that men get impatient, 
 and would sweep out of sight all this huge obstacle 
 which time and the sad years have built between 
 them and the Master Whom they would love. 
 They would ignore all that has happened, all 
 that has come between. They would go back 
 behind it all, and recover the lost cue — go back 
 behind this confused, distracted, Anglican story to 
 seek some clear papal authority, some universal 
 Roman voice ; or, if that be not enough, go back 
 yet again behind the Roman historical entangle- 
 ments to find some unbewildered Church of the 
 Fathers into whose happy garden no serpent of 
 schism had ever crept ; or, if that search prove 
 vain, go back behind the stormy story of the 
 dogmatic creeds to look for some clear and open 
 Bible, which all can lightly read and understand, 
 without confusion and without risk ; or, if still 
 the questions thicken, imagine that they yet may 
 go back behind the terrible metaphysics of the 
 Pauline Epistles, to the secure simplicity of the 
 four Gospels ; or, if trouble still haunt them, then 
 
206 
 
 "MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 go back behind the miracles of the Gospels, and 
 the agitating discussion of their authorship, and 
 the critical analysis of their perplexing formation, 
 to dig for some Christianity which was Christ's 
 own before ever it passed away from Him to 
 become distorted in the minds of His first fol- 
 lowers — back to explore some far, happy, simple, 
 unencumbered Christianity which was in our 
 Lord's Mind, but yet never succeeded in making 
 itself known to any one until it was sifted out at 
 last, eighteen hundred years after, by some ardent 
 and earnest seeker, from the records which had 
 themselves misunderstood and corrupted it. So 
 pathetic, so hopeless, that familiar search after a 
 flying phantom ! We will not be angry at a task 
 which condemns itself to inevitable failure — con- 
 demns itself by seeking to escape from the actual 
 conditions of the problem which it sets itself to 
 unravel ; not angry, rather patient and com- 
 passionate. While yet we brace ourselves to recall 
 how we stand pledged by our Lord's Circumcision, 
 pledged by His voluntary submission to the con- 
 
"MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 207 
 
 ditions of His Birth and Parentage, pledged by 
 this, to be ourselves loyal to the actual historical 
 literature, loyal to the facts, loyal to the known 
 and recorded story through which the faith of 
 Christ has historically passed, loyal to the con- 
 tinuous tradition in the form in which it has 
 reached us. We will bide loyal to the ship of 
 Christ's Church, though storms have battered it, 
 and the waves have shaken it, and the winds have 
 roared against it, and the salt seas, many and 
 bitter, have washed through it and over it. We will 
 be loyal — loyal to the date at which we have been 
 born into Christ's Body ; loyal to the long years 
 through which our fathers, amid distress and 
 disaster, have yet striven to hand down to us the 
 truth that they received ; loyal to our high Chris- 
 tian pedigree, that knits us up to king, and saint, 
 and martyr of old heroic days ; yes, loyal to it, 
 even though there be woven into its tale scandals 
 as terrible as Tamar's, memories as unhappy as 
 those of Bathsheba and Rahab. 
 
 "The clean canvas!" How many of us in our 
 
208 
 
 "MADE UNDER THE LAW.' 
 
 hearts are uttering that vain desire for themselves : 
 " Give me, 0 God, a clean canvas ; then I could 
 reform. I cannot go on in this weary battle, so 
 mixed and so broken, against my sins ! But if 
 only I could be as if nothing had been ; if only 
 I were given ' a clean canvas ; ' if only the old 
 horrid memories did not haunt me still, long after 
 I have repudiated the deeds that bred them ; if 
 only I were not tangled in the issue of rejected 
 lusts and repented lies ; if only the dreary weight 
 of past blunders were lifted off; if only I could 
 go straight on along the better path, which I do 
 indeed desire, and not lapse, and stumble, and 
 fall again and yet again ; if only other people 
 would help me more, and my home were not such 
 as it is, and my life were not so oppressed by 
 things for which I am not responsible ; if only the 
 canvas were clean ! " Yes, if only facts were not 
 facts ; if only the past were not the past ! Poor, 
 pitiful cry of the wounded soul, so pathetic and 
 so vain ! God indeed offers a new beginning ; 
 Christ indeed makes all things new ; but it is you, 
 
"MADE UNDER THE LAW. 
 
 209 
 
 yourself, as you are, which He asks for. It is this 
 that He would redeem and recover — you, the very 
 self in you, which is now sick, and wounded, and 
 loaded, and broken. This is what He wants ; not 
 some imaginary self dropped out of the skies, 
 without a past, without a story. You are to 
 bring yourself, with all your actual load of 
 evil memories, with all your sins, confessed, ac- 
 knowledged, unexcused — yourself, damaged, faint- 
 hearted, worn, diseased. He accepts you, He 
 rejects nothing, if only you be cast at His feet. 
 Come, bring Him all ; confess all ; resign yourself 
 to all that the bad years have now made inevi- 
 table. God cannot spare you the slow and painful 
 work of remedy, but He can and will give you 
 His own force to endure it. Here is the one 
 miracle, the only miracle you need. Deep within 
 all He will lodge His Spirit ; back behind all He 
 will implant Himself. There is your security ; 
 there is your new start. In Christ, Who is made 
 yours, old things are become dead ; you are made 
 new. Sure of that, you will not be afraid, what- 
 
 P 
 
2IO 
 
 "MADE UNDER THE LAW." 
 
 ever the year brings you. Sore and heavy, the 
 slow hours will often creep along ; burdensome 
 and dreary the load you may have yet to carry 
 far ; but be of good heart, step out with courage, 
 for, within, He will not fail you, Who, circumcised 
 the eighth day, asked for Himself no legion of 
 angels, nor ever to relieve Himself, would turn 
 stones into bread. 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL 
 LA W. 
 
 "Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel ; 
 Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon 
 us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live? Say 
 unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in 
 the death of the wicked ; but that the wicked turn from his way 
 and live : turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways ; for why will ye 
 die, O house of Israel?" — Ezek. xxxiii. 10, n. 
 
 The more we reflect, the more wonderful it seems 
 that we should ever have supposed that the Chris- 
 tian creed had failed to take sufficient account of 
 the authority of law and nature ; so laborious, so 
 painstaking, so elaborate, so profound, is its recog- 
 nition of the obligations imposed upon it by natural 
 conditions, to which it is bound, at all hazards, to 
 conform. 
 
 Yet what a Divine restraint did not conformity 
 imply ! 
 
212 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 The world before Christ was surely clamouring 
 aloud for some heroic and miraculous intervention. 
 Everything in it cried out for some violent hand- 
 ling, for some breach in its natural continuity, so 
 dismal was the outlook, so tangled the web, so deep- 
 rooted the wrong, so irredeemable the blunders, so 
 hateful the disorder, so base the fall, so foul the cor- 
 ruption, so hideous the sin, so cruel the hurt. Who 
 with a heart to feel, with a spirit to love, could tole- 
 rate any longer that accumulating agony ? Even 
 we, with our full knowledge, our secure possession, of 
 the secret revealed through the tender compassion 
 of the Divine Sufferer crucified for us, can hardly 
 keep our souls patient under the stress of wicked- 
 ness and misery, as they lay hands at large upon 
 the weltering masses of our fellows, or, perhaps 
 worse, as they creep, with sure and stealthy step, 
 to fasten their fierce claws into life after life of 
 those whom we know, and watch, and love, at our 
 side, in our home, amid our circle. One after 
 another we see them pass under the shadow ; the 
 horrid thing has them, holds them — a sin, a loss, 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 21 3 
 
 something disastrous closes in upon them ; their 
 bright hopefulness is smitten ; the dank, wet fog 
 settles down upon them. One by one they suddenly 
 look at us with scared eyes of alarm. " The curse 
 is on us," they cry ; " it is come even unto us. We 
 heard of it before by the hearing of the ear ; now 
 we see it. Lo ! we are stricken by the old grievous 
 wound ; our joy is wrecked ; here on earth is no 
 peace — only sorrow, only sighing, only tears. Woe 
 is it ! for we were so young, so full of hope, so 
 innocent once, so merry-hearted. We thought that 
 all was well. And now we too join the great 
 army of the mourners ; we take our places amid 
 the multitudes of those who have loved and lost — 
 have loved, and have ruined and sinned away their 
 love." So the bitter story drags on its weary, weary 
 length, ever renewing its melancholy repetitions ; 
 and even we become impatient, we who have the 
 consolation. What, then, of those who had, before 
 Christ, become sensitive as we, whose culture was 
 wide as ours, whose hopes were as large, whose 
 nerves were as high-strung, whose disappointment 
 
214 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 was as intense — of those in that vast Roman world 
 who sickened with our sickness, and felt the weight 
 of a world-wide disaster, and yet were without any 
 care, interpretation, promise ? No wonder if their 
 faith died away in a wail of desperate confession : 
 " There is no God — no God at all ! How, if there 
 be, can He endure that such sorrow and suffering 
 should exist, and He make no sign ? There is 
 no God, then, since the curse bides on, unbroken, 
 undispelled. There is no Hand that guides, con- 
 trols, governs ; there is no Heart beholds, pities, 
 delivers. Nay ; it is no longer the mere petulance 
 of the fool that says, 'There is no God.' It is 
 the deliberate and calm judgment of the wise, the 
 thoughtful, the cultivated, the sober. It is this 
 which pronounces, through quiet lips, the despair- 
 ing decision, 'There can be no God or, ' If there 
 be a God, He cares not at all for us miserable men. 
 He sits on some far throne in idle security, in care- 
 less ease, and up into His ears our pitiful cry only 
 enters "as a tale of little meaning," as some ancient 
 burden of a woeful song which we hear in a faint 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 21 5 
 
 dream. So far is God, so careless, so unhelping — 
 if there be a God at all in that silent, awful heaven.' " 
 So the great pagan world gave voice to man's 
 despair ; and over against that bitter confession 
 there rose but one strong and historic cry of pro- 
 test — the voice of the one people who never lost 
 their ancient trust, never dropped the thread, never 
 fainted altogether, nor grew quite weary. Battered 
 and bruised though they were by a fate as dark 
 and violent as any to which the faiths of others 
 succumbed ; invaded, shattered, vanquished by 
 trampling armies — Assyrian, and Grecian, and 
 Roman — still they held on with heroic tenacity ; 
 still they faced all with their invincible profession, 
 "There is a God. Though He hide Himself, 
 though He seem to forsake and forget, yet doubt- 
 less He is still our Father ; He is still strong, 
 almighty, true. He inhabiteth eternity, high and 
 holy. There is a God ; at all costs we believe that. 
 Nothing can shake us out of that faith ; nothing 
 can tear it out of our souls. We remember the 
 days of old ; we go back and rehearse the old 
 
2l6 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 proofs and pledges. There is a God, one God, 
 Who made, Who rules, Who must prevail. And' 
 because there certainly is a God, therefore we 
 know that He will one day lay bare His holy arm ; 
 He will sweep out of sight all our misery and 
 oppression ; He will come, and with a recompense. 
 There will be a day ; though it tarry long we are 
 sure of it. After two days He will return and 
 restore ; on the third day He will revive us. 
 We look for that Messianic day. We wait on 
 and on for Him. How long, how long ! Yet we 
 will be found waiting. Then all shall vanish like 
 an evil dream in the clear morning ; our Redeemer 
 shall stand upon Mount Zion. From Bozrah, 
 from Edom, we shall see Him, vengeance in His 
 hand. ' They shall not hurt or destroy in all My 
 holy mountain.' " 
 
 So either argued — the Roman, and the Jew : 
 " The curse remains unabolished, the misery bides 
 unhealed, therefore there is no God." " There is 
 a God ; therefore the curse, the misery, will all be 
 swept away when He comes." 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 21/ 
 
 And what happened ? To the Greek, foolish- 
 ness ; to the Jew, a stumbling-block. God came ; 
 God entered. The Jew was right ; his stubborn 
 confidence was justified, his prophecy was verified. 
 God is ; God rules ; God cares ; God loves ; God 
 is sure to come and save. The Jew alone of all 
 nations stood approved. Yes, God enters the 
 earth to deliver ; but, nevertheless, what a shock, 
 what a blow, awaits the poor, hoping, clinging, 
 invincible heart of the Jew! God enters, yet 
 not to sweep the curse out of sight, but to pass 
 under it Himself, "to become the curse." He 
 comes, not to abolish suffering, but to endure it ; 
 not to remove the pain, but to share it ; not to 
 break the yoke of the oppressor, but to put His 
 own neck under the yoke. 
 
 Look over the wide face of earth now that 
 Christ has been born in Bethlehem, look over 
 that Roman Empire as the eye of man would see 
 it ; hardly a quiver could be traced of change on 
 the outer surface — no disturbance, no disruption, 
 no suspension. Those that suffer, suffer still ; those 
 
2l8 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 that die, die still ; the tyrannies, the miseries, all 
 keep their clutch. God, in the Person of the Son, 
 has slid Himself within them, beneath them, almost 
 without a sign, or sound, or motion, except to the 
 very few who have faith to discover, to follow Him. 
 
 What does it mean ? It means that God, even in 
 the miraculous act by which He repels and arrests 
 our curse, still respects nature, respects law. This 
 weary weight of woe that loads and crushes our 
 souls down into the dust of death is no accident, 
 no external blot, that can be lightly or violently 
 removed. It is the due and certified effect of a 
 wrong past. As a result — a lawful, and necessary, 
 and natural result of certain causes — it is perfectly 
 justifiable. God Himself authorizes its necessity ; 
 God Himself acknowledges its right to be what it 
 is ; God Himself puts His seal upon it, by His 
 own submission to its terrible authority. As a 
 sorrow consequent on broken covenant, and neg- 
 lected law, and defiled purity, it is to be recognized 
 and justified. God enters the earth to call our 
 attention to this, to justify us in submitting to and 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW, 2IQ 
 
 enduring it. " The soul that sinneth, it must die." 
 God may indeed go beyond that law, but suspend 
 it, ignore it, He cannot ; for it is Himself Who 
 creates the law. We speak often as if the fact that 
 God made a law is a reason why He should be 
 able to change or reverse it at will. But that is 
 only true of an external and legal enactment ; it is 
 not true, in the deepest sense of law, as the prin- 
 ciple of existence. In this sense, the fact that God 
 is the Author of the law is the reason, not why He 
 is able to change or reverse it, but why He cannot 
 do so. He must respect, He must honour, His 
 own Will in so creating things in the way He did. 
 That Will was no arbitrary act which created the 
 world, as a child does a toy, or even as an artisan 
 puts together a machine, or an artist designs a 
 building or a picture. The child may abandon its 
 toy, the artisan may vary his machine, the artist 
 may re-create his handiwork; but God is no artificer, 
 no artist, in His character as a Creator. These 
 are but thin and inadequate symbols of what we 
 mean by creation. Creation is a far more intimate 
 
220 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 act, in which the author does not merely manufac- 
 ture into definite shape and order some given 
 material, as the potter his clay, to be broken up 
 again and varied as he will. That metaphor only 
 expresses certain partial and limited aspects of 
 God's power. Creation is the act of will by which 
 the material itself, together with all its possibilities 
 and conditions, comes into existence ; and creation, 
 whatever else it may involve, however hard, how- 
 ever impossible, for us to picture or to explain, 
 must at least be an exertion of energy which in- 
 volves and implicates the reason, the will, the love 
 of God Himself. It implicates His reason, which 
 expresses itself in the processes by which the 
 created life acquires and assumes its organic struc- 
 ture ; it involves His will, which comes out from 
 Him to appear under the forms of motion and 
 force, to make and build the fabric of life ; it im- 
 plicates His love, which goes out from Him to fill 
 the life with growth, and aspiration, and desire, 
 and to set it all in upward movement towards an 
 ideal and sufficient end. 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 221 
 
 Divine love, Divine will, Divine reason — all 
 these have gone to the effort of creation ; all have 
 passed out into the living thing, to construct, 
 sustain, develop it. No analogy, therefore, drawn 
 from the workshop of the artisan or the artist will 
 give more than a mere shadow, a faint symbol, of 
 the closeness of the intimacy which holds between 
 God and His creation. And above all, in the case 
 of man. Here there is but one metaphor God 
 sanctions as interpreting His full, inward relation- 
 ship. It is that of father and child. Man is 
 made " in His image " — is as His child. Man, the 
 whole man, mankind, the race of man as an in- 
 tegral mass — this is His child. Not merely some 
 selected holy spirits drawn out of it into closer 
 communications with Himself. No ! Man, as a 
 single created thing, is stamped with the image of 
 the Divine Sonship of the Word, is summed up in 
 the incarnate Sonship of Jesus Christ. Who can 
 measure or track the inwoven intricacies of this 
 intimate relationship ? Here, indeed, is no toy 
 that can be broken up ; no mere machine that can 
 
222 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 be taken to pieces and remade ; no picture, to be 
 wiped out and painted again. Here is no stranger, 
 who can be rejected if unworthy and hopeless ; no 
 foe, who can be trodden underfoot for his guilty 
 aggression. No ; all these images fail us. Here 
 is a child, the issue of a Divine desire, the embodi- 
 ment of an inward hope, of a passionate act of 
 love. What can break this tie ? How will God 
 ever fail to be loyal to His fatherhood ? True, 
 the child is faithless, defiled, wicked, miserable ; 
 and true, terribly true, that, being wicked, it is 
 necessarily doomed, by sheer consequence of the 
 Divine reason in which it was created, to sickness, 
 wretchedness, pain, death. " The soul that sinneth, 
 it must die." It dies by sinning. God has so 
 made it that the wages of its sin are its death. 
 That terrible law permits of no breach. It may be 
 met, counteracted, forestalled, arrested ; its accu- 
 mulated force, gathered through the increasing 
 guilt of the crowded past, may be diverted, trans- 
 muted, absorbed, translated ; but the thing that 
 can never be is that it should be denied, abolished, 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 223 
 
 suspended, prohibited. The child of God has 
 deeply sinned, and, as deeply sinning, it must be 
 subject to the inevitable law, which God cannot 
 repudiate without repudiating the reason, the will, 
 the love, with which He created His child. " It 
 must die." 
 
 And yet it is His child ; He is still its Father. 
 Surely He has no pleasure in the death of the 
 wicked ; His Fatherhood still pleads against the 
 fateful doom. Any violent, rigorous, sweeping act 
 of judgment, such as men prayed for, such as the 
 holier and purer men looked for under the agony 
 of their darkness, such as those who were most 
 anxious for God's honour, so long obscured, most 
 eagerly and loudly desired — an act that would 
 scatter the wicked as a whirlwind, or would chase 
 them as the stubble before the wind — any such act 
 would seal the destiny of those, God's children, who 
 would necessarily perish in the death of sin. And 
 God, the great Father, cannot be content with res- 
 cuing out of trouble and suffering the few who 
 were holy, the few whose faith could be counted to 
 
224 'THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 them for righteousness, if it was at the cost of 
 losing any of those wicked ones who might yet 
 be won, who, wicked though they were, were yet 
 so intimately His own. 
 
 Ah ! are we not in this still discovering our- 
 selves to be caught in the snare which trapped 
 the Gnostics of the first centuries ? The Gnostic, 
 full of his Platonic dualism, thought always of a 
 holy seed imprisoned within a mass of carnal 
 wickedness, from out of which God was concerned 
 in delivering it. The redemption is only a scheme 
 by which God reaches down out of heaven a hand 
 to touch, and raise, and release those special souls 
 that were His. By it they passed up out of their 
 lower and fleshly degradation into the high purity 
 of spiritual existence ; the rest, who were carnal in 
 themselves, were left to their appropriate sphere. 
 How tempting the pleasant creed ! Yet the early 
 Church knew the pressure of holy repulsion to such 
 a belief ; she saw that it was but a caricature of 
 her own belief. Christ came down, she knew well, 
 not to liberate the elect from an unworthy and 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 225 
 
 hateful imprisonment among the wicked, but to 
 redeem the wicked, the sinners, whom He still 
 loved. " While we were yet sinners, Christ died 
 for the ungodly." That was her starting-point. 
 The whole human race was on a level, so far as 
 wickedness went. There was no distinction of 
 merit, no distinction of status, which could permit 
 of a line being drawn between the spiritual and the 
 carnal seed. Not one, no, not one could say, " I 
 am not as those others, I am not as those pub- 
 licans. Rescue me, my God, from a position so 
 degrading to me, so far below my worth, from my 
 imprisonment within a vile companionship." Here 
 was the very prayer which S. Paul so triumph- 
 antly convicted, which our Lord so profoundly 
 loathed. Perish the terrible Pharisaic pride! If 
 S. Peter himself be trapped into anything ap- 
 proaching a recognition of such a distinction, let 
 S. Paul, at all risk, withstand him to the face. It 
 is as sinners, as one with the wicked, that we are 
 all saved in Christ's blood, elect and all, or we 
 are not saved at all ; and therefore we and those 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 others who lie yet in their wickedness are one 
 thing, one mass, one humanity, one issue of God's 
 Fatherhood, one object of His love. Christ died 
 for all, for the entire sum of the human race, if He 
 died for any. This is the very root of our faith. 
 
 Yes, but let us face all the consequences. We 
 cannot, if this be the heart of our faith, clamour 
 because God tarries long, because the day of the 
 Lord lingers yet ; cannot complain because the 
 godly are left to suffer, undelivered, unavenged ; 
 cannot complain because sorrow, and sighing, and 
 tears are not all swept away from those blessed 
 and dear ones who believe in Christ. To rescue 
 the faithful, to bring in the day of the redeemed, 
 to wipe off the tears from their eyes, is to hasten 
 the judgment, is to hurry up the final severance of 
 good and evil. It must mean this ; and though 
 the spirit of the faithful must long for this deliver- 
 ance, must pray its prayer, " Come, Lord Jesus," 
 yet always this most right desire will be crossed 
 by the thought of Epiphany, of the dark thousands 
 who still repel the light, of those who perversely 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 22 J 
 
 lie still in the darkness of evil. For that day 
 cannot come without fixing the fate of those who 
 yet choose sin. It must necessarily slay the wicked ; 
 and they are God's children ; they have been 
 bought for Him again by Christ's blood. Christ 
 died for them ; out over them goes the mighty 
 intercession of our great High Priest ; out over 
 them His arms are spread wide ; up before God 
 for them ascend His pleadings. Can nothing be 
 done ? Is there not yet a hope that they may 
 turn from their ways and live ? " O turn ye, turn 
 ye, ye house of Israel ! Have I any pleasure in 
 the death of the wicked ? " saith the Lord. 
 
 Do we understand, then, why God should enter 
 the world, and yet leave it to follow on its course, 
 leave it to work out its career, without some sum- 
 mary and violent precipitation of the crisis ? The 
 Gnostic, looking only to the interests of the elect, 
 has no regard for, no interest in, the natural man, 
 with his unhappy and blundering and blotted 
 history ; he only desires to escape his evil company. 
 But God, in Christ, honours His own natural crea- 
 
228 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 tion ; honours human nature ; honours, respects, 
 mourns over, loves His wandering, disgraced, con- 
 temptible prodigal out there, naked and hungry, 
 among the swine. He does not forget, even where 
 a father might forget, nor forsake, even where a 
 mother might forsake. No, He will defer judg- 
 ment ; He will delay the crisis ; He will set Him- 
 self to forestall the doom that must work itself out 
 as the issue of sin. He will endure our sins, rather 
 than lose a soul that can be saved. He sets Him- 
 self to win the entire body back again, vile and 
 miserable as it is. 
 
 For God willed that none should perish ; He 
 willed that all should be summed up in Christ. 
 He put out in Christ enough force to rescue, heal, 
 cleanse, renew, glorify the entire body of mankind. 
 Even if, at the last, there will be found a residue 
 of stubborn defiance in the human will, which can 
 hold out against the fullest effort of Divine pardon, 
 yet that will be only through wilful refusal to suffer 
 the whole will of God to make itself good ; still it 
 will remain true that the intention, purpose, hope 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 229 
 
 of God is that in Christ every soul should be 
 brought to repentance. And, if so, we must not 
 sink the scale because the hope seems to us so 
 distant and so broken. We must measure the 
 Father's actions according to the width and breadth 
 of His perfect scheme. 
 
 Let us ask ourselves, Are we faithful to this 
 measure, when we get impatient with God's delays, 
 when we fret at His long-suffering? Have we well 
 in view His splendid and wonderful aim ? Do 
 we remember that His Father's heart is turned 
 towards all those who are our trial and affliction ; 
 towards all those with whom we are so angry ; to- 
 wards the whole dead weight of blind indifference, 
 so aggravating, so base ; towards those who triumph 
 in their wickedness and override His judgments ? 
 He is still seeking for them, He is still desiring their 
 salvation ; still the memory of that awful and irre- 
 vocable law haunts Him : " The soul that sinneth, 
 it must die." These souls that sin, they must die if 
 they cannot yet be won to repentance ; they must 
 die if God hurry on the last catastrophe. The 
 
230 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LA IV. 
 
 judgment of God is the ultimate and victorious 
 assertion of law ; and by law, by necessity, these 
 souls are doomed. Only His Christ intervenes 
 between them and the end. If only they might yet 
 find their way to Him ! He yearns in pity : " Why, 
 why will ye die ? " Oh, surely we too would lift 
 up our hearts and join our prayers to those of the 
 Great Intercessor. Not some rash prayer, " How 
 long, how long ? " but rather, " Yet a little longer 
 withhold Thy hand, O God ! It matters not that 
 the world treads down Thy Church ; that the wild 
 boars out of the wood devour Thy vineyard ; that 
 we are sad, and sick, and miserable, and cowed, 
 and beaten, and hurt. We can suffer ; we can 
 wait. But those others ! ' O Father, forgive 
 them ; they know not what they do.' " 
 
 If we were only free from the wretched narrow- 
 ness of Gnosticism, from thinking that everything 
 is for the sake of the elect, of the believers, we 
 should not be so distressed that the faithful are 
 allowed to abide in the thick of such trouble and 
 pain. The elect exist for the sake of the wicked 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 23 1 
 
 world ; they are God's instruments for reaching, 
 touching, converting the world. As their Master 
 lived and died on behalf of a godless world, even 
 so are they in the world. Is their task complete ? 
 Is their use over ? To call upon God to finish with 
 the world, to bring in the end, to free His saints, is 
 to confess that no more of the world can ever be 
 won to God ; that the frontier of Christ's redemp- 
 tive efficacy has been touched ; that the mastery 
 of the Cross has no more disclosures to make of its 
 prevailing power ; that we have come to the limit 
 of Christ's Epiphany ; that our task of lighting the 
 world is of no more avail. What a pitiful con- 
 fession ! What a coward cry ! What a faithless 
 faith ! 
 
 Let us be brave enough to believe that the world 
 may yet be won, that Christ has many a victory 
 before Him. This hope will buoy us up ; for it will 
 explain to us why God keeps in the far background, 
 why He hideth Himself, why He suffers such long 
 years to go wearily past with their hideous story. 
 We shall recognize the dauntless and invincible 
 
232 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 mercy of God that spares, and lingers, and hopes 
 on ; and so we shall not despair of God, even though 
 we have to see what now we see, the terrible 
 strength of the world's power — even though we 
 have to listen on to the lies by which a corrupt 
 society justifies its corruption, to the hollow con- 
 ventionalisms by which public opinion caresses 
 itself into indolence, to the cries of innocent chil- 
 dren, on whom the lusts of their fathers break out 
 in plagues. We shall not despair of Christ, even 
 though we have to watch whole herds of people, 
 comfortable and flourishing, who have never done 
 anything but harm to the social order which sustains 
 them, who have never for one moment paused 
 from their wicked race after pleasure to take the 
 measure of their responsibilities, and to ask what 
 their idleness or their luxury are doing to the poor 
 brothers and sisters who starve at their doors ! 
 No ; when the passion of anger rises in our blood 
 we will beat it back. Austere as we must be against 
 the cruelty of the sins, we will yet remember always 
 — Christ died for these souls ; Christ still pleads with 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 233 
 
 these sinning souls. Unless they will at last hear 
 Him, they will die ! 
 
 And if at some darker hours our hearts sink, 
 and we wonder whether anything is being achieved, 
 whether our hope can be real, whether it can be 
 worth while to wait on and trust, then, beloved, let 
 us remind ourselves that we have no gauge by 
 which to measure the gains and the losses. We 
 are not in a position to estimate God's winnings, for 
 we know not yet what we all shall be hereafter ; we 
 know not what God has in view, in store. His ulti- 
 mate aim is hidden far, far beyond the veil of death. 
 And in view of that hereafter He may well be 
 gaining more than we think out of this dark and 
 chaotic probation on earth. For God gains if only 
 He can save a soul from that deliberate and defiant 
 recoil from holiness which makes the case desperate ; 
 He gains if only He can secure in a soul that its 
 deepest wish, its core of will below all its wretched, 
 woe-begone falls and defilements, have something 
 in it of belief in goodness, of appeal to God — retain 
 some inner motion at its root, which issues out of 
 
234 THE D I VIAE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 life's trials with an upward and not a downward 
 tendency. If only He can win this, then there are 
 at least some possibilities hereafter ; there is some- 
 thing secured which the discipline and the purging 
 of spiritual penitence can develop, cherish, and 
 quicken. That soul will not have fallen outside the 
 working of Christ's atonement. It may be saved, 
 though as by fire, though after many stripes. 
 
 And who can say what possibilities of this kind 
 are not being kept open by the presence, amid the 
 throngs of a wicked world, of some rare saints of 
 God — some rare and holy souls, who all their 
 days may have felt themselves lost, broken, de- 
 pressed, forlorn, girdled in by seething sins of men, 
 which they could not restrain, or rebuke, or put to 
 shame ? So it had seemed to them. All their life 
 had been a desperate defeat, and they passed out 
 in neglected deaths, and the world rolled on its 
 triumphant way more audaciously than ever. So 
 it seemed to their sad eyes as they sighed for the 
 far hidden Jerusalem. And yet, ever as they moved 
 about, the hearts even of those who laughed them 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 235 
 
 down and went on in their old, bad sins — even the 
 hearts of these had all the time felt a strange touch 
 of inner attraction, a strange quiver of spiritual 
 recognition. Even as they rejected their message 
 and scorned and drove them under, yet this one 
 and that had said quietly, far down in their buried 
 selves, " Those are good men ; they are better than 
 L I would I were as they ' " So they whispered, 
 and that dim recognition may have saved them for 
 Christ. The Sonship of God, choked and baffled 
 within them, woke and stirred ; though it may not 
 have had strength to reach the surface of life, to 
 change habits, to reverse currents, it was there ; it 
 abode ; it did not pass ; it preserved itself as the 
 salt of their secret character ; and on their dying 
 beds, with nothing but a life of selfish, indolent, 
 heedless, useless, insolent sin to look back upon, 
 they still will have never lost the conviction that 
 then came home to them. Still they will say, " I 
 never knew any one half so good as that saint 
 whom I once mocked at. He made me feel how 
 bad I am ; his memory has made confession 
 
236 THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 
 
 and repentance possible to me. I should like to 
 have lived as he ; would that my last end could 
 have been as his ! " So he dies, and, so dying, there 
 is one more soul just snatched out of the jaws of 
 the lion, just saved for Christ to purge — a con- 
 temptible, disgraced, cowardly, ugly, foul soul, if you 
 like, but yet not hating holiness, not preferring sin, 
 and therefore rescued from the pit, from the un- 
 utterable doom ; and over it, therefore, some faint 
 song may go out of the angels that watch in heaven, 
 and God may be glad to pronounce that at least it 
 was good for that soul that it had been born. Ah ! 
 who can say what is going on about us ? How 
 startling now and again to us the sudden revelation 
 of some deep-lying heart of grace, within those 
 whom we deemed the worst and most hopeless ! 
 Behind walls of deformity that drunkenness and 
 lust and cruelty have built and soldered, some 
 wonderful movement, secret, miraculous, discovers 
 itself, of profound, pathetic penitence, of passionate 
 chivalry, that puts us all to shame. Yes, though 
 the sinners be very many and the saints very few, 
 
THE DIVINE SANCTION TO NATURAL LAW. 2$7 
 
 it may be that their scattered presence saves the 
 bad man from sinking — keeps possibilities open. 
 The salt of the faithful may be doing far more 
 than we can ever guess in keeping open channels, 
 narrow and pinched it may be, but at least clean, 
 by which the mercy of God can enter in and retain 
 its hold upon a fallen world, which may yet be 
 rescued. 
 
 So we will plod on to the end ; we will not 
 ask to count God's gains. Hereafter, oh, how 
 blessed the joy, if, indeed, by God's grace, it be 
 given to any of us, to learn all the futility of our 
 childish impatience, as we are shown by the Spirit 
 the real harvest that Christ was ever reaping, off 
 fields that once looked to us so desolate and barren. 
 This may be ours hereafter, if we be not all un- 
 faithful to the blood of sprinkling ; and for the 
 present we will desire not to be taken out of the 
 world, but to be kept from its evil. For the present 
 let it be enough that the Lord direct our hearts 
 unto the patient waiting for Christ. 
 
THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH! 
 
 "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we 
 beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father." 
 — S. John i. 14. 
 
 We may often find ourselves bewildered by the 
 double language with which the Christian faith 
 treats this earthly human life. On the one hand, 
 at Christmastide, and all through Epiphany, we 
 are full of happy speech, that tells of peace and 
 goodwill to all mankind ; tells of wise men from 
 afar, who bring to the new-born King the gifts and 
 treasures of earth, to find in Him their true benedic- 
 tion ; tells of waiting water that receives into 
 itself, at a glad marriage feast, the red, rich flush 
 of approving grace. Christ is come " to be the 
 Light of the world, the Light of every man." He 
 comes as the illumination which solves all riddles, 
 and interprets all parables, and fulfils all anticipa- 
 
" THE WORD WAS MADE FLESIir 239 
 
 tions, and opens all secrets, and closes all stories, 
 and realizes all efforts, and consummates all pre- 
 paratory types. He holds the royal key of David, 
 and at His entry all doors unlock, and all things 
 fall into their place and order. Christ is the Light 
 and Crown and Sum of human life, and, as such, we 
 are not surprised to find that, through faith in 
 Him, society receives a new sanction, a fuller 
 development. The typical human institution of 
 marriage, round which all social existence turns, is 
 transfigured by Christ's appearance. He finds in 
 it the symbol and law of His own relation to man, 
 and so raises it to a higher power, and endows it 
 it with a finer force, and a more valid stability, and 
 a deeper significance. And out of this exaltation 
 of marriage there rises a new fabric, a new wonder 
 — the Christian home, with its exquisite ideal of 
 firm and beautiful order, in which all the several 
 parts are given their full value, and the, man is at 
 once master yet servant, and the wife is endowed 
 with grace out of her very weakness, as the curse 
 of pain that lay on child-bearing is transmuted by 
 
240 " THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 
 
 the sweet honour that belongs to it, since she who 
 was highly favoured became a maiden mother. 
 And the children are made holy, even as the type 
 from which we kneel to learn how to enter the 
 kingdom of heaven by becoming what they are, 
 whose angels behold the face of their true Father 
 Who is in heaven. So the home is rebuilt in 
 Christ ; and out of the home come all the virtues 
 that are the secret of good citizenship, as the 
 little casket of gifts that are treasured in the home 
 opens out to fill with its sweet odour the larger 
 home in which all men are made brethren, eating 
 of one loaf, drinking of one cup, members of one 
 body, sealed and bonded together by the one 
 Spirit Who witnesses to the Catholic brotherhood 
 in Christ by His one cry from within each several 
 heart to Abba, the one Father. In all this Christ 
 renovates the body, the family, the society. He 
 enters to become the spring of regenerative forces 
 by which this earthly life is beautifully blessed, and 
 enhanced, and uplifted ; and we appeal to all this 
 to justify us in saying that society can only be 
 
" THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 24 1 
 
 fully stable, intelligible, and true when it is 
 Christian. 
 
 And yet there is another picture ahead haunting 
 us, another figure than this gracious Babe-King 
 on Mary's breast, another scene, with such a 
 different message, it would seem. A lone, for- 
 lorn servant of God wanders up and down an 
 earth that rejects and despises Him. Here He can 
 find no home, no abiding-place ; more homeless 
 than the bird or the fox, He has not even where 
 to lay His head. The world hates Him, and must 
 hate Him to the end, because He is "not of the 
 world." Round Him rises no fair and melodious 
 human life, with its encompassing tenderness and 
 inwoven lovingkindness. Even from His Mother 
 and His brethren He is roughly parted ; a stranger 
 and a pilgrim, He flies from foe to foe, at war with 
 all the powers that go to the building of social 
 life. His kingdom is not of this world ; He has 
 no interest that ties Him to earth ; He bids his 
 followers have no part or lot with it. He lays 
 down rules which seem, at first sight, to make 
 
 R 
 
242 " THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH: 
 
 society impossible ; He forswears all thought by 
 which treasure on earth can be laid up, or even 
 food be secured — no purse, no scrip, no sword, no 
 spare garment. He bids the rich sell all and 
 follow Him. He suffers Himself to be kept and 
 fed by the sheer charity of a few women. At last, 
 scourged, stripped, unresisting, He hangs, naked 
 and wounded, between earth and heaven, an 
 eternal protest against a world in which such as 
 He have no place, the world which it is His glory 
 and His joy to leave behind, as He passes to the 
 far home at His Father's side, there where His 
 heart is, there where His hopes are laid up, there 
 whither He ensures an entrance to all sufferers of 
 whom this world is not worthy, who have faith to 
 take up His cross and to die His death. 
 
 Here is a very familiar dilemma. It is, indeed, 
 identical with the contrast which puzzled the Jew 
 of old, between the royal and the suffering Messiah, 
 so mysteriously interlaced in the prophetic writings. 
 The antithesis appeared to them far too violent to 
 find its complete solution within the compass of 
 
" THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 243 
 
 a single personality. They imagined that two 
 separate conceptions of the Christ were thrown 
 into competition. Yet the prophets transferred 
 themselves with absolute freedom and elasticity 
 from the one to the other, without suggesting any 
 variance or any breach of unity. How was it that 
 the two lines of treatment could fuse themselves 
 into a single and consistent realization ? That was 
 the question ; and it is this same question which 
 recurs when men meet our anxious pleadings 
 for the significance of Christ to all the social, and 
 economical, and political problems which afflict us 
 so sorely, with the rebuffing taunt that we ought — 
 if we were faithful to our crucified Master, if we 
 honestly faced the Sermon on the Mount — to have 
 thrown to the winds the social condition in which 
 we find ourselves living, to have come out of it as 
 out of an unclean thing ; that we ought to be 
 without house or home, without purse or scrip, 
 without wife or treasure ; we ought to be com- 
 mitted, as He, to poverty, to loneliness, to an open 
 warfare with all the public authorities in Church 
 
244 " THE WORD WAS MADE FLESlir 
 
 and State, and probably to a tragic and terrible 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Now, I am not asking how far these taunts sting 
 by their truth. Which of us can say frankly and 
 confidently against such criticism, " Let the galled 
 jade wince ; our withers are unwrung " ? Alas ! we 
 do wince ; these taunts gall us bitterly. Most cer- 
 tainly very, very few of us are in a position to cast 
 them off without a pang of doubt whether we be 
 not far, far below the standard which He set up 
 for us Who said, " If a man would be My disciple, 
 let him take up his cross and follow Me." 
 
 But yet we cannot but observe that the taunt 
 goes far back behind the mere personal and moral 
 question whether you and I are loyal to our home- 
 less Lord. It raises the crucial, intellectual question 
 whether our Lord had anything to say to human 
 and civil society or not. Was His whole teaching 
 unearthly, supernatural, spiritual ? Was the Cross 
 nothing but a defiance of all this temporal and 
 transitory existence of ours in the flesh ? Did it pro- 
 claim aloud the worthlessness of human interests ? 
 
" THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 245 
 
 And if so, are we all totally and ridiculously mis- 
 taken in imagining that Christianity is the very 
 nurse of those excellences and virtues which form 
 the finest and surest material for civic and social 
 uses ; or that it has any message at all to give, as 
 to the family, to the State, or to the use of wealth 
 and the meaning of politics ? 
 
 Evidently, as soon as we put the question in 
 that shape, we see that something is wrong, that 
 our critics have overshot their mark, if this is what 
 their criticism of us implies. They are forcing the 
 suffering Christ into antagonism with the royal 
 Christ, Who claims the kingdoms of the earth ; the 
 one conception of Him is being used to undermine 
 and deny the other. If what these people say is 
 true, then the lesson of the Cross is inconsistent 
 with what we learn in the home at Bethlehem ; 
 Good Friday is at variance with Epiphany. 
 
 Obviously there is some confusion that so divides 
 the Christ. How has it arisen ? Surely from this, 
 that the Cross is viewed by our critics as the 
 culmination of a human life, while to us it is the 
 
246 " THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 
 
 condescension of a Divine Life. They view the 
 Cross from below ; we, from above. If we follow 
 this out, we shall see, I think, that the asceticism 
 preached by Christ from His Cross is radically and 
 vitally different from all other possible forms in 
 which asceticism meets us, and that it is this 
 reading of the Cross which alone brings into 
 harmonious unity the double conception of Christ 
 on which we have touched, as at once the Con- 
 summation of humanity and the Eternal Sufferer. 
 
 Let us see this radical difference by contrasting 
 with the mind of Christ the temper to which 
 belong the highest forms of human asceticism. 
 
 One of the most beautiful stories in which the 
 pathos of this fleeting life has ever embodied itself 
 is that of the first conversion of Sakya Mouni, the 
 Buddha. We all know the well-known tale — how 
 the brilliant and noble young prince stopped in 
 his drive as he passed the loathsome sight of a 
 sick man, shaken with ague, parched with fever, 
 and asked, "Shall I ever be like that?" and how, 
 when his attendants assured him that all must 
 
" THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 247 
 
 suffer sickness, he rode out no more that day. 
 And again he drove, and stopped in his driving 
 at the sight of an old man, toothless, hairless, 
 crippled, silly, tottering, woe-begone, and asked, 
 "Shall I be like that?" and again they told him, 
 " You, too, must grow old ; " and he turned, and 
 went home, and drove no more that day. And, 
 yet again, he drove out and passed a dead body, 
 bare, ugly, rigid, corrupt, and asked, " Shall I be 
 like that ? " and they told him again, " You and all 
 must die ; " and he turned, went home, and never 
 drove again. For from that hour his heart was 
 set on abandoning all that was glorious and all 
 that was dear — palace and princedom, wife and 
 children ; he set out alone to attain wisdom, to 
 become Buddha, to discover and preach the secret 
 of Nirvana. 
 
 Here is an ascetic ideal which very superficial 
 people, who are caught by the mere accidental 
 resemblance, are apt to liken to the Christian 
 teaching ; but on what is this Eastern ideal 
 founded? Whence does it spring? It springs 
 
248 " THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH? 
 
 out of a sense of the worthlessness of all that 
 is human, temporal, fleshly. Here on earth is 
 nothing but illusion ; all is fleeting, vanishing, 
 hollow ; all passes into decay ; all miserably dies. 
 Every form of individual existence is delusive ; its 
 feelings, desires, passions, appetites, movements — 
 all are vain, empty, deceitful, aimless. The spirit 
 of wisdom cuts itself off from these. It slits all 
 ties that fasten it down within the network of life ; 
 it forsakes all, it spurns all, it makes good its 
 escape, it crosses to the other shore ; it passes into 
 eternal stillness untouched by desire. 
 
 Here is the spring of Eastern asceticism. Let 
 us turn to the highest Western ideal. What has 
 it to say ? 
 
 There is no scene in all ancient literature 
 that, for pathos, and beauty, and depth, surpasses 
 the immortal dialogue in which Plato portrays 
 the last hours of his heroic and martyred master. 
 Who can read it without tears ? Who that has 
 read it can ever forget it ? Here, indeed, we 
 come far nearer to the spirit and tone of Christ, 
 
' THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 249 
 
 than in the desperate and ghastly pessimism of 
 the Buddha. " I remember," says Phaedo, as he 
 telis how Socrates looked and spoke at that final 
 farewell — " I remember the strange feeling that 
 came over me at being with him, for I could hardly 
 believe that I was present at the death of a friend ; 
 and I could not pity him ; his mien and his language 
 were so noble and fearless in the hour of death 
 that to me he appeared blessed. I thought that 
 in going to the other world he could not be with- 
 out a Divine call, and that he would be happy, if 
 any man ever was, when he arrived there." How 
 exquisite the Hellenic sanity, the sweet reasonable- 
 ness of tone, by the side of the passionate Indian 
 nihilism ! And of what did Socrates speak ? 
 "The wise man," he is saying, "is ever pursuing 
 death, and longing to die, for he is entirely con- 
 cerned with the soul, and he would like to be 
 altogether quit of the body. The philosopher dis- 
 honours his body ; his soul runs away from the 
 body and desires to be alone and by herself. For 
 that body is a source of endless trouble ; it fills us 
 
250 " THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH" 
 
 full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies, and 
 every sort of folly. Whence come wars and fac- 
 tions ? Whence, but from the body ? The body 
 introduces turmoil and confusion, and hinders us 
 from seeing the truth. Therefore there is no real 
 knowledge possible for us until after death, when 
 God is pleased to release us ; and then the foolish- 
 ness of the body will be cleared away, and we shall 
 be pure, and shall know of ourselves the clear light 
 everywhere, and this is surely the light of truth." 
 Ah ! do not the noble words in their exalted 
 simplicity rebuke our laggard, carnal, coward 
 lives ? And yet, we must ask again, whence does 
 their force spring ? From what root does their 
 sap run ? It springs out of the abasement of the 
 human elements, out of the contempt of the higher 
 and willing spirit for the weak and lower flesh. 
 This fair Platonic flower is rooted in bitterness — 
 the bitterness of a disruption, of a life-long quarrel. 
 The mind, assured of its own lofty ambitions, spurns 
 its humbler companion, the body. It frets at the 
 confusions, the turmoils, the appetites, the desires, 
 
1 THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 25 1 
 
 the motives of the lower self, which cramp its aims 
 and interrupt its studies ; it kicks against the pricks 
 of earthly life. This poor humanity of ours, mixed, 
 wayward, wilful, impulsive, passionate, sorrowing 
 and emotional, weeping and laughing, wounded, 
 hurt, dying — all this the wise man cannot make 
 anything of, cannot use, cannot interpret. He 
 asks only to be quit of it. He is at his best when 
 he is farthest off it. He prays for his ultimate and 
 happy release from the tiresome and unintelligible 
 burden. This must be the temper of all high 
 human asceticism that has for its martyrs the 
 heroes of intellect and reason. The magnificence of 
 their martyrdom lies in the revealed supremacy of 
 spirit, as it spurns the ground and flies upward, as 
 it breaks itself against the bars of its carnal cage. 
 The bodily, the human, the emotional, the imperfect 
 — these are flung away, that the spirit may mount. 
 Death is the secret. In death the true manhood 
 makes good its escape. 
 
 Now, the Christian asceticism contradicts all this 
 flatly. Its movement is exactly in the opposite 
 
252 "THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH" 
 
 direction. It starts from above. The life of the 
 Lord is not a movement of the human spirit 
 upward, attaining its release at death, but a 
 descent of the Divine Spirit downwards, to in- 
 habit, and possess, and secure for its own our 
 frail and fleshly nature. " The Word became flesh, 
 and dwelt among us." The root of our revelation 
 lies in the dignity, the work, the honour, that is 
 brought in upon the flesh of man. It becomes the 
 assured temple of the Word ; it receives into itself 
 the glory of God. And all that we have been 
 saying in the last two Sermons fills this out. The 
 Incarnation of Christ is the measure of God's 
 respect for human nature. He places His Son 
 under its limitations, and so recognizes, justifies, 
 eternalizes them. He devotes Himself to saving, 
 illuminating, redeeming it ; and this, out of His 
 supreme love for it, which forbids Him to leave it 
 to its sins, or to slay it for its guilt, or to desert it 
 in its shame. God so loves it — loves the human, 
 loves the body, loves the earth — that He sent His 
 only Son to win it again into glory ; and so loving 
 
" THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH? 
 
 253 
 
 it as His child, He takes it as it stands, in its 
 natural earthly condition, just as history had made 
 it, with all its poverties, bruises, diseases, infirmities, 
 with all its blindness, hardness, frailty. All of this 
 He takes into Himself. He will share it all ; none 
 of it shall be despised or spurned. Here is the 
 motive, the spirit of Christ's suffering, Christ's 
 asceticism, Christ's Cross. It exhibits, not the 
 pride of the human spirit over against the infirm 
 flesh, but the pity of Divine Spirit for the broken 
 and bruised flesh. It is a display, not of the 
 worthlessness of human life, but of its high and 
 immeasurable worth. The Agony and the Passion 
 of Christ embody the price at which God considers 
 it worth while to redeem the flesh of man. There 
 is His estimate of the value of humanity. God, 
 the Blessed Father, will send His Son to endure 
 even that, if only by so enduring He may recover 
 the body out of sin into salvation. It is all a 
 tribute to the Divine attachment to man, its own 
 creation ; it is all a witness to the dignity of that 
 for which the Son of God is content to die. As we 
 
254 "THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 
 
 stand under that awful Cross and look up at the 
 blood-stained brow, at the pierced side, at the torn 
 limbs, at the closed eyes, at the parched lips ; as 
 we listen to the last dread cry ; it is no martyr we 
 behold, proclaiming the deathless dominance of the 
 Spirit over the weak and wretched human nature, 
 upon which He so bravely triumphs, and from 
 which He so gloriously escapes. The message is 
 just the reverse. It meets us with the challenge : 
 " Look ! What is this human nature which you so 
 lightly despise, but to which God, Who created it, 
 clings with such desperate love ? How is it that 
 the Divine Spirit puts out such terrible earnestness, 
 spends such tremendous pains, to rescue that 
 earthly, human, fleshly life of yours, which you 
 so proudly condemn as the lower and the baser 
 element ? Ask yourselves, what can be the wonder 
 of its dignity, of its possibilities, of its precious- 
 ness, of its promise ? " " O Lord God," we answer, 
 " what, indeed, is man, that Thou art thus mind- 
 ful of him? and the Son of man, that Thou so 
 visitest him ? " 
 
"THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH" 255 
 
 Two points we may notice as following from 
 this. First, we see how radical is the loss of those 
 who stop short with the conception of Jesus Christ 
 as one among the noble martyrs for the victory of 
 spiritual over fleshly truth. No doubt we may 
 make our approach to the Cross from that side. 
 Jesus Christ did indeed fulfil the martyr ideal ; 
 He died on behalf of His sheep ; He draws men to 
 His uplifted Cross by the fascination of an heroic 
 sacrifice for truth. His martyrdom forms one of 
 the doorways through which men can pass in, and 
 draw near ; and God forbid that we should bar any 
 way by which souls can gain access to grace. 
 Only for men to stop short there, to be caught and 
 imprisoned within that conception of Him, is to 
 miss all that gives to the Cross its peculiar signifi- 
 cance, to miss all that gives its special and unique 
 colour to the Christian ascetic temper. That 
 temper takes all its colour, and tone, and character 
 from its belief that the Cross is not the apotheosis 
 of an heroic human spirit, but the pledge of the 
 compassion and love of an Incarnate Son for the 
 
256 "THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 
 
 human flesh which He has, at such a cost, set 
 Himself to redeem. Its message is, not " through 
 suffering and death lies the escape of the spirit 
 from the burden of the body ; " but " through 
 suffering and death lies the road by which the 
 body can become again the purged and purified 
 vessel of Divine glory." 
 
 Every one can understand the immense practical 
 difference which that reversal of motive and 
 purpose will effect. Yet all that practical result 
 turns on the dogmatic conception that we have 
 formed of Christ's Person. So inherently dogmatic 
 is Christian practice, so intensely practical is 
 Christian dogma ! 
 
 And then, again, under this conception of the 
 Christ the problem with which we started solves 
 itself ; the royal and the suffering Christ fall 
 together, and become one consistent whole. The 
 suffering of the crucified Christ is the uttermost 
 tribute which the royal Christ pays to the value 
 He sets on the flesh which He has assumed. By 
 assuming it He proclaimed Himself its Lord. 
 
"THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH" 2$7 
 
 He made evident His estimate of it ; and then, by- 
 clinging to it, even at the cost of all that it involved, 
 even at the price of blood, He carried the proof 
 yet further of how dearly and deeply He valued 
 and loved it. The condescension which began in 
 His descending from heaven into the flesh of man 
 completes itself, culminates, in the humiliation to 
 which He submits when He not only emptied 
 Himself of His Godhead, but suffered and died 
 in the fashion of a slave. It is to rescue human 
 nature that He comes to inhabit it ; it is to rescue 
 human nature that He dies in it. All is consistent, 
 all hangs together. There is no divergence between 
 the two aspects, and therefore, to S. John, the 
 Cross on Calvary is the highest display of that 
 glory which shone out in Epiphany. " Now," at 
 that supreme hour of agony on the night of the 
 betrayal — " now is the Son of man glorified, and 
 God is glorified in Him. Now, O Father, glorify 
 Thy Son." The Cross is the final act of that same 
 revelation which began when " the Word took 
 flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, 
 
 S 
 
258 "THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 
 
 the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." 
 The dignity, the honour, the beauty, the precious- 
 ness, the sanctity of the flesh, of human nature, of 
 our bodies — that is the surprising Gospel that 
 comes to us from the bodily Passion of the Son of 
 God. 
 
 There is indeed a call to the ascetic life, that 
 goes out to every single one among us, from 
 Him Who wandered through our earth, a house- 
 less, homeless pilgrim ; from Him Who laid His 
 blessing on those that hunger and mourn and 
 weep ; from Him Who was " despised and rejected, 
 the Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief ; " from 
 Him Who gave His back to the smiters, and 
 His face to them that plucked off the hair. Yes, 
 there is a call, sharp, clear, decisive. And we, 
 we all, are woefully, miserably far below that 
 call. We hardly dare recall it, or speak of it, in 
 our shame — we who have not once, of our own 
 will, felt the sting of one stripe from the scourge of 
 Christ ; we who have never, except under the sheer 
 compulsion of nature, surrendered any pleasure or 
 
" THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 2$9 
 
 endured any privation. God grant that nothing 
 said here may relieve our consciences, or put us 
 at our ease, or confirm us in our indolent comfort. 
 No, rather let what is said help to remove out of our 
 way any hindering suspicion which holds us back 
 from taking up the severer discipline of the Cross, 
 any suspicion that we should be dishonouring or 
 despising our human nature by a course of volun- 
 tary self-denial, by free sacrifice of pleasure and of 
 ease. " Surely you ought not to go against what 
 is natural and human ? " people plead, when we 
 propose anything with a slight flavour of austerity 
 about it ; and we feel bothered, perhaps, and 
 puzzled, and do not quite know whether they are 
 not right. Yet surely we might laugh outright 
 at there being anything dishonouring to human 
 nature, to our bodily self, that could ever be 
 sanctioned by the creed which proclaims as its 
 gospel the Divine sanctity of human nature, the 
 glory with which the Word of God has filled the 
 flesh. The discipline, the suffering, the sorrow, 
 which the Cross of Christ calls upon us to lay 
 
260 " THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 
 
 upon ourselves, and to endure upon earth — what 
 are they ? They are the pledges of God's union 
 with our suffering humanity, the witnesses and 
 seals of Christ's perfect sympathy with our flesh 
 and blood, the sacraments of His fellowship with 
 us. And as we thus pass under them, as their 
 shadow darkens over us (which it is bound to do here 
 in the heart of a suffering world), we need not be 
 depressed, morose, inhuman ; nothing grim, or 
 black, or fierce need darken our kindliness of 
 nature ; for in these trials, and through them, we 
 receive in our souls the kiss of the Man of sorrows, 
 of the Prince of peace. Very near He comes as 
 pain and grief increase ; very tender, very gracious, 
 He shows Himself as the blows fall. " See, how 
 I must have loved you," He keeps on whispering, 
 "for even what you now feel so sorely, even that 
 I endured for love of you." What dignity, what 
 glory, lies in this discovery, through experience, of 
 the reality of our brotherhood with Christ ! Oh, 
 blessed indeed if we learn to mourn, to hunger, 
 
" THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 26 1 
 
 to be persecuted, if so also we learn the unfathom- 
 able depths of the compassion of Him Who 
 abhorred nothing which could identify Him with 
 our mortality, and make Him wholly our own ! 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 " Hereby know ye the Spirit of God : Every spirit that con- 
 fesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." — I John 
 iv. 2. 
 
 " The Word became flesh." No one who pro- 
 nounces his faith in these words can ever suppose 
 for a moment that there is anything radically and 
 inherently base in the flesh, in human nature. For 
 evidently there is no hint of any alteration in the 
 human character of the flesh to make it fit for 
 God to inhabit. It is our flesh that He became, 
 our nature that He assumed. " Because we, the 
 children, were flesh and blood," therefore He, too, 
 " took of the same," that He might become in 
 everything our very brother, our very own. He 
 took it as He found it, as our own history had made 
 it ; with all the burden that sin had laid upon it, 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 263 
 
 with all the woe that sin had worked within it, 
 yet without the sin that caused it. " Without sin," 
 and yet it remained " our flesh." This in itself 
 is a proclamation that sin has no necessary part 
 or lot in the flesh. The Word, indeed, Who 
 assumed it, restored to it its fulness, its reality of 
 being ; He brought it back into its true image, its 
 perfect type, its substantial verity. Far from 
 limiting or destroying the nature of flesh by 
 taking it, rather He then re-created it into its 
 rightful character. Flesh became flesh indeed, 
 through the Word Who entered it. It became 
 all that it was meant to be. Its powers were 
 enhanced, its capacities were carried further. It 
 was never so human as when God took it, and 
 therefore never so human, never so fully itself, as 
 when it was made sinless. Far from evil being 
 its true law, its natural inclination, its normal 
 proclivity, its richest freedom, the flesh is spoilt, 
 is poisoned by sin ; it corrupts, it falls to pieces, 
 it dies by sinning. It recovers itself in escaping 
 from out of the baneful breath of lust into the 
 
264 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH 
 
 pure light and sweet air of holiness. It proves 
 itself to be inherently good, by its natural, and 
 spontaneous return to health under the influence 
 of a Divine Indweller. This radical goodness of 
 human nature, in its essential construction, lies at 
 the very root of all the belief in the Incarnation. 
 The suspicion that so often haunts men's minds, 
 lest our flesh should be less itself, should lose 
 something of its humanity by becoming sinless, 
 is a survival in our midst of some antiquated 
 dualism, which the Christian faith exploded and 
 over-mastered fifteen hundred years ago, in the 
 great theology of the fourth century, in the long 
 struggle to cast out and repel all the varied trans- 
 formations of Platonism and Gnosticism. Once 
 for all, the Church declared then that it was our 
 very flesh which the Word became, very man that 
 Christ was made ; and this was obviously impos- 
 sible, if there was any taint of evil in the verity 
 of our full manhood after the flesh. 
 
 But how, then, no doubt many are asking them- 
 selves — how, then, of the strong language so 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 265 
 
 proverbial in the Epistles of S. Paul, in which the 
 flesh is set violently and antithetically over against 
 the spirit, language which certainly appears to 
 echo all the worst abuse which the asceticism of 
 ancient philosophy heaped upon the flesh — the 
 flesh which seemed to them the very seat of sin, 
 the very nest of swarming passions, ugly, foul, 
 contemptible? Surely S. Paul justifies all this 
 abuse and scorn when he tells us that " the flesh 
 lusteth against the spirit ; " that " the carnal mind 
 is at enmity with God ; " that " they that are in 
 the flesh cannot please God." 
 
 Now, in estimating this language, we can start 
 with the previous certainty that it is quite im- 
 possible that S. Paul should be meaning the 
 same thing as those ascetics who held that the 
 flesh contained in its very nature an evil prin- 
 ciple radically antagonistic to the good. For 
 most undoubtedly he had believed from his very 
 childhood, and accepted to the very last hour 
 of his life, the first chapter of Genesis, which 
 declares with unwavering consistency the absolute 
 
266 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 goodness of the entire creation in its original 
 construction, animal as well as human, bodily as 
 much as spiritual. Upon all that was created 
 went out the approving benediction of God : " God 
 saw all that He had made, and, behold, it was 
 very good." This was S. Paul's creed, and this 
 denied explicitly and emphatically the natural 
 wickedness of the flesh and the dualism of the 
 philosophers. And on to the top of his first 
 faith, S. Paul, as we know with certainty, added 
 belief in the Incarnation, in the descent of God 
 into the flesh of man to justify, approve, sanctify 
 it, out of love for it, to manifest the Godhead in 
 it, to make it the wonder of angels, the consum- 
 mation of humanity, knitting all human fragments 
 up into the unity of Christ's flesh. This he held 
 with his whole soul ; and, so holding, it is abso- 
 lutely inconceivable that he could have believed 
 the flesh to be inherently and essentially corrupt. 
 
 What, then, did he mean ? For certainly, through 
 some reason or another, out of some accident, or 
 event, or process, the flesh had, according to him, 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 267 
 
 become the focus, the seat, the scene, the fortress, 
 the theatre, the symbol, the expression, the evi- 
 dence of all that was bad, base, and godless. How- 
 had this come about ? 
 
 S. Paul himself tells us. He sketches the 
 story, the process, by which this character had 
 accrued to the flesh ; and in sketching it he shows 
 with positive clearness that he traced the spring 
 and origin of sin, not to the flesh, but to the spirit, 
 to the will of man. Let us follow S. Paul's sum- 
 mary of this process in the first chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Romans. 
 
 How did man's unrighteousness begin ? 
 
 " When they knew God, they glorified Him not as 
 God." The starting-point of sin is not to be found 
 below, beneath, in some dark swarm of animal pas- 
 sions, climbing up in hideous invasion to the pure 
 heights where the spirit looks out with eyes that 
 search for God. Wholly the contrary ; the start- 
 ing-point is above, in those very heights, at the 
 topmost crown of the moral and intelligent self. 
 Man's highest spiritual office, in which he is at his 
 
268 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 farthest remove from the animal, is to recognize 
 and glorify God, as He eternally displays Him- 
 self to man's contemplation through the beauty 
 and order of visible nature. Here is his special 
 gift, his loftiest prerogative ; and it is here, 
 at this point, that he first fails. The vision was 
 clear enough; "the invisible things" of God, His 
 eternal power and Divinity, were clearly to be seen, 
 " being understood by the things that are made." 
 " That which may be known of God was manifest ; 
 God showed it to them." Faculties to know God, 
 the evidence for the knowledge, the power to 
 exercise the faculties — all were theirs. And such 
 a vision of God was morally bound to kindle the 
 highest spiritual joy ; and such joy would break 
 out in praise, thanks, adoration. But men held 
 off, checked the free outcome. The glow chilled, 
 the outflowing current was blocked. They saw, 
 but they would not rejoice in what they saw. 
 They saw, and to see was to love ; but they 
 obstructed the love. The spirit in them that 
 should go out in glorious greetings of a Father 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 269 
 
 Who made all things good, and did all things 
 well, this spirit perverted itself, shut itself up in 
 hard and cold silence. " When they knew God, 
 they glorified Him not as God, neither were 
 thankful." So came the rift in the lute. Alas 
 for the splendour of that early music of God's 
 dawn, when the morning stars sang together, and 
 all the sons of God shouted for joy ! It was with 
 those glad angels that man was called to lift up 
 his voice, under the feet of those who for ever 
 were crying, " Blessing, and honour, and glory, 
 and power, to Him that sitteth upon the throne ; 
 for He hath created all things, and for His honour 
 they are and were made." But men held aloof from 
 that sweet singing. This was their sin, " They 
 glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful." 
 
 And it could not stop there. The seed is 
 sown. First, the negative — they refuse God the 
 praise ; then the positive — the organs that were 
 not exercised in thanksgiving fell into the mis- 
 chief of idleness. They " became vain in their 
 imaginations." The " imagination," with its reason- 
 
270 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 ings, with its intellectual keenness, with all the 
 brilliant dialectic of the brain, which could, under 
 the Divine Spirit, have searched the deep things 
 of God — this goes off at a tangent ; it takes wrong 
 roads ; it blunders into specious mistakes ; it pur- 
 sues aimless arguments ; it is tangled in clever 
 sophistries ; it loses its logical veracity ; it reaches 
 no solid and real conclusions ; it spends its efforts 
 on vacancy ; it is become hollow, empty, vain. 
 They " become vain in their imaginations." 
 
 And then " their foolish heart was darkened." 
 The very faculty of reasoning, the heart, lost its 
 capacity, became spoilt, damaged, corrupt, because 
 they had failed to love, to rejoice in what they 
 saw. Therefore now they fail to see ; a cloud 
 spreads itself, a dulness of intuition, a stupidity. 
 No alertness, no clear-sightedness ; the foolish 
 heart is darkened. Instead of being "wise, they 
 become fools." The sin in the will, which with- 
 held love, stupefies the intellect, lands it in 
 absurdities. We cannot reason aright without 
 loving. A man without love is a stupid man ; 
 
T/IE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 271 
 
 he is like an owl in the daylight. So man, 
 through lack of love for God, is losing his power 
 to know God — he " becomes a fool." 
 
 And now the folly of the heart spreads down- 
 ward, the evil descends to a lower stage. First, the 
 folly of the heart shows itself positively in the form 
 of idolatry. The lack of true knowledge about God 
 issues in positive wrong knowledge. Lack of true 
 praise, true adoration, issues in false praise, false 
 adoration. The stupidity of the mind makes man 
 mistake the creature for the Creator. The cloud 
 obscures the lines which divide ; the darkened 
 heart cannot hold fast distinctions. All is blurred, 
 blotted, confused. Man fumbles with his subject ; 
 he cannot discern between God and Nature. 
 Nature, the visible, the created, looms up before 
 his blinded eyes in immense and gathering 
 grandeur ; it occupies his vision ; he loses sense 
 of its limits and horizons. The glory that should 
 be God's own prerogative implicates itself with 
 the things on which it is shed ; it seems to his 
 duller eyes to be theirs — their own. He gives to 
 
272 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 them the awe, the fear, the power, which God, 
 through them, rouses in him. Here is the mistake. 
 God's voice speaks to him through the thunder ; 
 and man deems that it is the thunder which speaks, 
 and, lo ! he crouches and trembles under the mere 
 vapours of a storm-cloud. God's splendour glows 
 through the sunlight ; and man bows low before the 
 sun, and offers the child of his body to a blind, hot 
 stone rolling through heaven. God's versatility, 
 God's glory of beauty, pours itself over bird and 
 beast and creeping thing ; and man makes the 
 beast his god and worships the creeping thing. 
 The dismal, dreadful blunder, the horrible stupidity 
 of the dark heart, and the vain imagination ! Man 
 " changed the truth of God into a lie, and wor- 
 shipped and served the creature more than the 
 Creator," Who yet, indeed, cannot be dragged 
 down — blessed be His Name ! — by such infamous 
 confusion, but sits on high, grave, and pure, and 
 true, whatever man does to degrade and defile 
 Him. Yea, says S. Paul, God, " Who is blessed 
 for ever. Amen." 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 And now comes the last sad stage. It is at 
 the end, not at the beginning, that we find that 
 sin sinks to the lowest layers, down to that, in 
 man, which we associate so intimately with evil 
 — to the flesh, the appetites, the passions. It 
 comes about as the issue of stupid idolatry, which 
 was due to the darkening of the intellect, which, 
 again, followed on the perversion of spiritual love. 
 All this confusion, this intellectual chaos, this 
 distorted imagination, this misguided will, this 
 erring, wayward, silly sophistry, all this spiritual 
 rebellion against God, drops down, to reappear in 
 the flesh as a tumult, a mob, a disorder, of the 
 desires. The disturbance above creates, as its 
 natural result, the disturbance below. All the 
 sweet seemliness of harmonious order in the emo- 
 tions breaks up, disappears. There is revolt, 
 violence, extravagance, excess, blindness, igno- 
 rance, distraction. Nothing knows its place or 
 office any more. Anarchy shatters the fabric of 
 social affections ; they no longer make for unity, 
 no longer knit men together in enduring bonds. 
 
 T 
 
274 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 They wander loose and distraught, working mis- 
 chief, shame, division, hate. The flesh seethes in 
 a wild ferment of disordered and corrupted appe- 
 tites ; and all this disorder is but a symbol, an 
 image, a copy of the sin committed in the secret 
 home of the will. It is its normal and inevitable 
 effect, and that effect God sanctions ; it fulfils 
 God's own laws in which man was created. " God 
 gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts 
 of their own hearts." It could not but happen, 
 and God approved the necessity. Because "they 
 changed the truth of God into a lie," therefore 
 " God gave them up unto vile affections." He 
 suffered the natural result to follow, unhindered 
 by Him. " Even as they did not like to retain 
 God in their knowledge, God gave them over to 
 a reprobate mind, to do th6se things which are 
 not convenient." And so the works of the flesh 
 revealed themselves in their full force, in their 
 fatal savagery. They became " filled with all un- 
 righteousness, fornication, wickedness, . . . ma- 
 liciousness ; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 275 
 
 malignity ; . . . haters of God, . . . without under- 
 standing, . . . without natural affection, impla- 
 cable, unmerciful." 
 
 Now, there is S. Paul's account of the origin 
 of the sins of the flesh ; and Christian doctrine 
 has never for a moment wavered in its loyalty 
 to this description. Always it has protested with 
 vigour against the Manichaeism which made evil 
 to be a quality, a natural attribute, of a lower 
 and fleshly element in man. Always it has 
 declared with emphasis that there is no such 
 thing known to it as an evil nature ; there is 
 nothing existent whose true property it is to be 
 evil. All that is in the highest sense natural 
 must be good, for God created nature. Chris- 
 tianity has only one account to give of sin — that 
 it is a perversion of good, a distortion of nature, 
 an unnatural corruption. 
 
 Ah ! but " the natural man," you will say, " the 
 natural man is at enmity with God." Do not let 
 that expression confuse us for an instant. The 
 " natural man " is sinful because man's nature is 
 
276 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 supernatural. It is unnatural, it is against the 
 real laws of his nature, for him to be merely 
 natural. If man drops to the level of his lower 
 self, to the level of that which he has in common 
 with creatures lower than he ; if he confines him- 
 self to the limited horizons of the animal ; if he 
 in that sense hugs the natural and refuses to look 
 beyond and rise above it, then he sins not only 
 against his higher self — his mind, imagination, 
 spirit — but he sins against his very lower self, 
 within whose bounds he shuts himself in. He 
 sins against his nature, against his flesh ; for that 
 flesh counted on the lift it was to receive through 
 the soaring spirit. That body was made so as 
 to receive its transfiguration through the light that 
 should stream down into it out of the illuminated 
 world with which its intellect, and its will, and its 
 love were to bring it in contact. Its nature was 
 ready to respond to that replenishing, to that 
 upward draw. And now it has missed its aim, it 
 has lost its development. It is the flesh which so 
 desperately feels the damage and realizes the loss ; 
 and all its consequent trouble and turmoil is but 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 277 
 
 the accusing cry which it utters against the false 
 and disloyal spirit which, by professing to be 
 natural, has wrecked its nature — by sinking to the 
 lower level of the flesh, has irretrievably thwarted 
 the tendencies and capacities of the flesh. Man, 
 in becoming natural, sins against his nature ; and 
 it is the higher and not the lower elements in 
 man which are guilty of this sinful lapse, for it 
 is they who are responsible for the failure of the 
 natural to rise, as it was bound to do, up into 
 the supernatural. No ; our position is not con- 
 fused — it is emphasized — by the phrase which 
 makes " the natural man " the expression of dis- 
 grace and degradation. Christian theology knows 
 but of one source from whence sin can spring — 
 " an evil will." Evil has a spiritual source ; and 
 such evil can never be a natural quality, but always 
 a distorted good ; for that will which makes sin 
 exist, was certainly so created as to adore God. 
 S. Augustine himself, the great exponent of the 
 evil in the natural man, is also the master expo- 
 nent of this conception of sin. 
 
278 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 But now we can see easily enough why, when 
 once the sin has taken place, " the flesh," " the 
 natural man," became the normal expression by 
 which the sinful condition so produced can be 
 described. Man's sin is, as we have said, that 
 he through disloyalty of spiritual desire has be- 
 come merely fleshly, merely natural ; he has 
 become carnal. The flesh, in its disorganization, 
 in its demoralization, in its corruption, makes 
 evident and makes permanent the horrid lapse of 
 faith. Not only are its functions all thrown into 
 tumult and faction, but worse. It has now ad- 
 mitted within its confined circle those finer powers 
 which were intended for higher and vaster occu- 
 pations. They have deserted their post, their 
 watch-tower, where they were to be ever behold- 
 ing and worshipping the face of Him Who created 
 the body as well as the spirit. Down they have 
 dropped, and now they are discharging their 
 magnificent forces into the narrow channels laid 
 open to them in the flesh. The imagination, which 
 ought to be reviewing the beauty of God's har- 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 279 
 
 monious work, is now lending horrible power to 
 the passions, as it expands their range and kindles 
 their hot blood by its swift fancies, and eager 
 curiosities, and far-reaching suggestions. It feeds 
 them with conceits ; it prompts them with pictures ; 
 it maddens them with poisonous art. And the 
 intellect, which ought to be unravelling and reveal- 
 ing the whole counsel of God, is giving eyes to the 
 appetites, and is creating new and growing hungers 
 before unknown to the quiet and innocent flesh. 
 Ever it goes wider afield, catering with its rapid 
 and audacious skill for the desires which it has filled 
 with clamorous greeds. It schemes ever for more ; 
 its ambition is insatiable ; it is never fatigued in 
 contriving new sensual delights. And hither and 
 thither, making use both of imagination and of 
 intellect, pushes and presses the rebel will. It has 
 forgotten its great office of gathering up the entire 
 man into a single and whole offering, a willing 
 Eucharist, held high by it before the altar of 
 God, blameless and unspotted. It is now buried 
 within the natural man, bent on self-gratification, 
 
28o 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 through the pleasures, through the senses, through 
 the feelings. Those feelings, those senses, that 
 were meant to move in sweet obedience to man's 
 upward spiritual growth, are now impregnated 
 with all the heat and fever of the will. It inserts 
 itself within them, and works like leaven, and 
 seeks in them its own fulfilment, and pushes them 
 forward into more extravagant claims, and uses 
 every faculty that man possesses to enlarge and 
 intensify the pride with which it asserts man's 
 right to enjoy. Whatever of possible satisfaction 
 the imagination can picture, or the intellect can 
 descry, over the broad earth, that the will in the 
 man spreads itself to reach and have. 
 
 Here is, indeed, the carnal mind which is at 
 enmity with God, the mind which has for its field, 
 for its object, for its matter, the needs of the flesh. 
 We men dare to call those passions " animal," as if 
 any animal possessed those extravagant desires, 
 or exhibited this tumult of excess. Nay ; it is 
 because these passions are ours, are human, that 
 they become endowed with such fearful exuberance. 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 And it is the reason and the will of man which 
 dower them with this fatal wealth ; and " out of 
 the flesh " which they have thus demoralized pro- 
 ceed all the works of the flesh — adultery, forni- 
 cation, lasciviousness, uncleanness, idolatry. And, 
 just because an unnatural strength has been lent 
 to the passions, therefore they never can attain 
 the satisfaction which they seek, and fall back in 
 sickly lassitude from an ever-failing hope, and 
 loathe their own life, and hate the world which so 
 deceives them, and become ever more full of 
 cruelty, and malice, and malignity, and so give 
 birth to those other works of the flesh — hatred, 
 variance, emulations, strife, sedition, heresies, 
 envyings, murders, drunkenness, and such like. 
 
 How terribly we ourselves may know this 
 history of sin, this horror of the flesh ! We hate, 
 we accuse the flesh, because it is in the flesh that 
 sin displays its final and inevitable and enduring 
 results. The flesh is the scene on which it makes 
 itself evident, and asserts the dominion it has won. 
 But the sin itself is always in the will, in the 
 
282 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 secret inward man. There it is that we commit 
 rebellion, that we turn perverse. And no doubt 
 this inner sin seems to us but a slight, passing, 
 transitory lapse, a momentary indulgence in a 
 loose desire, an idle and indolent slip in falsehood, 
 a flash of nasty and cruel spite, that came and 
 went. And we were very sorry for it ; and we 
 hastily resolved to avoid so falling again ; and 
 then we forgot it. It was but a little thing, and 
 it is done and over now, and we have regretted it. 
 All is right ; nothing remains. It was hidden 
 away in the secret man, and surely it is gone 
 as soon as it has been passed by and forgotten. 
 Very lightly we treat it ; very easily we fancy 
 it can all be put away. Alas ! it may have gone, 
 but it has left disorder behind it ; and the flesh, 
 the lower man, bears the traces of that disorder. 
 Into it the deposit of sin has been made ; down 
 through it the germ works like poison. That 
 flying curiosity has set moving the swarm of 
 appetites ; that passing malice has tickled the 
 passions that make for hate. A strange and 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 283 
 
 dreadful disturbance wakes up ; at some hour 
 when we are not expectant or aware, it breaks 
 out over us like a disease. We are startled ; we 
 shrink back ; we protest ; we did not believe we 
 were capable of such wicked wishes. It is 
 horrible, and we call it bad names. We say, " It 
 is not us ; we are purer, better, holier than this ; 
 it is our animal passions that insult and defile 
 us." No, no ! Let us at least be honest ; let 
 us know ourselves. This horror of ourselves, 
 which is our ruin if we pride ourselves on it, or 
 content ourselves with it, may be our salvation 
 if we recognize in it our own inner guilt, which 
 in its invisible stealth escapes our judgment, but 
 which, in and through the visible evidence of the 
 flesh, discloses, even to our eyes, its deformity, its 
 vileness, its permanence, its seriousness, its peril. 
 So, as we learn how real and definite a matter sin 
 is, we may learn also how equally real and de- 
 finite must be the pains we take to undo and 
 remove its effects. 
 
 Lastly, one short word of warning. We see 
 
284 THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 the dangers of an evil we may think lightly of — 
 spiritual sloth, spiritual indolence. The terrible 
 power which is given to the passions comes to 
 them through our failure to keep in exercise the 
 higher faculties, imagination, intellect, will, on 
 their true object, the vision and glory of God. 
 Through that failure these powers descend, sink, 
 grow confused, obscured ; they seek fulfilment in 
 false ways ; they turn their attention upon the 
 flesh ; they pour into its channels their abundance 
 and heat ; they influence it ; they lend it mon- 
 strous and unnatural strength. The desires ac- 
 quire a horrid violence as they feel pushing and 
 alive within them the full force of a deteriorated 
 intellect, a perverted imagination, a prostituted 
 will. These, that should be the priests of the pure 
 manhood in us, lifting on high holy hands to 
 sanctify and offer, are now reckless and demora- 
 lized even as priests who have been unfrocked and 
 degraded. They cast loose their shame ; they 
 lose all the sense of scruple. And all this may 
 come about through leaving these highest gifts 
 
THE NATURE OF THE FLESH. 
 
 285 
 
 unused, leaving them to vacant, wayward, un- 
 disciplined idleness. Believe me, it is not with 
 impunity that we so idle. Intellect, imagination, 
 will — these must find food, occupation, exercise, 
 somewhere or somehow. If we do nothing for 
 their right employment, they will find it for them- 
 selves elsewhere ; they will animate the flesh until 
 it has power, like a wild beast, to turn and tear 
 us, who have allowed it to develop into such un- 
 looked-for size and strength. Then, when we feel 
 its claws in us, it will be too late for us to cry out. 
 
 God grant us grace now betimes to prevent the 
 evil growth, to cut off its supplies, to drag up our 
 mind and heart to their true office, to discipline 
 and train them in the exercise of their true joy 
 in God. This is our one office ; and this, if we 
 choose, we are enabled to do in the Name of Him 
 the Word, Who for our sakes was made flesh, and 
 of His great pity, dwelt among us. 
 
A SELECTION 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 Recent Publications 
 
 OF 
 
 Messrs. RIVINGTON 
 
 WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL 
 LONDON 
 
2 
 
 RIVfNGTO^S SELECT LIST 
 
 Woodford's Sermons. 
 
 Two Vols. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 5$. each. Sold separately. 
 
 Sermons. 
 
 By James Russell Woodford, D.D., 
 
 Sometime Lord Bishop oj Ely. 
 
 Vol I.— OLD TESTAMENT SUBJECTS. 
 
 The Feast of Tabernacles— Man's Impatience of Things Supernatural — The 
 Death of Moses — The Power of Christ's Presence in Restraining Evil — 
 The Co-operation of Divine and Human Forces — The Sovereignty of God 
 — The Noiseless Building of the House of God — The Power of Music — The 
 Gentleness of God — The Silence of God — Man's Yearning for Safety, 
 Satisfied in a Personal God — God's Use of Evil in Working out His Pur- 
 poses — The Probation of Man Limited to this Life — The Arm of the Lord 
 — Noah, Daniel, and Job and the Communion of Saints — The Church De- 
 signed to Embrace every Age and Character — Light at Eventide. 
 
 Vol. II.— NEW TESTAMENT SUBJECTS. 
 
 A City that is Set on a Hill— The Closed Door— The Peril of Playing with 
 Spiritual Convictions— Misinterpretation of the Voice of God — The Resur- 
 rection Change— The Birthday of the Church — St. Peter's Shadow — The 
 First Martyr — The Reign of the Son of Man — The Condition of the Dis- 
 embodied Soul Imperfect — The Deposit of the Faith in Christ's Safe 
 Keeping — Entrance through the Veil of Christ's Humanity — The Cloud 
 of Witnesses — The Names of Individual Souls on the Breastplate of Christ 
 — Absolute Obedience to the Guidance of Christ — The Many Crowns — The 
 Rightful Entrance into the City of God. 
 
 Paget on Belief. 
 
 Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Faculties and Difficulties for Belief and Disbelief. 
 By Francis Paget, D.D., 
 
 Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 Introductory Essay. Part I. — The Virtue of Self-assertion, in the Life of the 
 Intellect — The Virtue of Self-assertion, in the Life of the Will — The Social 
 Instinct — The Reasonableness of Life — The Love of Beauty in Nature — 
 The Love of Beauty in Art— The Love of Beauty in Character — The Place 
 of the Intellect — The Dignity of Man — Readiness. Part II. — The Need 
 of Healing — The Miracle of Repair — The Reality of Grace — The Trans- 
 formation of Pity — The Transformation of Hope— The Records of the Past 
 — The Force of Faith — Discord and Harmony — The Inner Life. 
 
 CHatcrloo Place, HoitDon. 
 
OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 3 
 
 Armitage — Early Church History. 
 
 Crown &vo. $s. 
 
 Sketches of Church and State in the First Eight 
 Centuries. 
 
 By the Rev. William Armitage, B.A., 
 
 Vicar of Scotford, Lancaster ; late Scholar of Emmanuel College, 
 Cambridge. 
 
 Extension of the Roman Empire into Britain — Early Struggles of the Church 
 with Jews and Gnostics — Heresies and Persecutions — Christian Apolo- 
 gists — Christianity established by the State — The Arian Heresy — Growing 
 Power of Roman Bishops — Gothic Invasions — Growing Corruptions in 
 the Church — The Miracles of Saints — Northumbrian Kings — The Easter 
 Controversy — General Councils — Atilla, King of the Huns — Monastic 
 Institutions — Mahomet — Mahometan Conquests — Image Worship — Irish 
 Missionaries — Charlemagne. 
 
 Ottley on Revealed Truths. 
 
 Crown Zvo. $s. 
 
 Rational Aspects of some Revealed Truths. 
 
 By Edward B. Ottley, M.A., 
 
 Minister of Quebec Chapel ; lately the Principal of Salisbury Diocesan 
 Theological College. 
 
 Introductory — Modern Doubt and Unbelief: its Extent, Origin, and 
 Causes — The Authority of the Holy Scriptures — The Divinity of Christ 
 (I.) : Witness of the Church, etc.— The Divinity of Christ (II.) : Witness 
 of Hebrew Scriptures — The Divinity of Christ (III.) : Witness of the New 
 Testament — Christianity and Culture. 
 
 Mason — Christian Doctrine. 
 
 Crown Zvo. js. 6d. 
 
 The Faith of the Gospel. A Manual of Christian Doctrine. 
 By Arthur James Mason, B.D. 
 
 Formerly Feltovi of Trinity College. Cambridge. 
 
 dlaterloo Place, JLonuon. 
 
4 
 
 RIVINGTOWS SELECT LIST 
 
 Liddon — Easter Sermons. 
 
 Second Edition. Two Vols. Crown Svo. 5s. each. Sold separately. 
 
 Easter in St. Paul's. Sermons bearing chiefly on the Resurrection 
 of our Lord. 
 
 By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Chancellor and Canon 0/ St. Paurs. 
 
 Liddon — Bampton Lectures. 
 
 Twelfth Edition. Crown Svo. $s. 
 
 The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; being 
 the Bampton Lectures for 1866. 
 
 By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Chancellor and Canon of St. Paul's. 
 
 Liddon — Elements of Religion. 
 
 Fifth and Cheaper Edition. Small Svo. 2j. 6d. Or in Paper Cover, is. 6d. 
 
 Some Elements of Religion. Lent Lectures. 
 By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Chancellor and Canon of St. Paul's. 
 The Crown Svo [Fourth) Edition, $s. , may still be had. 
 
 Liddon — University Sermons. 
 
 Two Vols. Crown Svo. 5$. each. Sold separately. 
 
 Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford. 
 By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Chancellor and Canon 0/ St. Paul's. 
 
 First Series.— 1859-1868. 
 Second Series. — 1868-1882. 
 
 JBaterloo Place, JLonDon. 
 
OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 5 
 
 Goulburn — Gospels for Sundays. 
 
 Second Edition. Two Vols. Crown Svo. z6s. 
 
 Thoughts upon the Liturgical Gospels for the Sundays, 
 ONE FOR each Day IN THE Year. With an Introduction on 
 their origin, history, the modifications made in them by the 
 Reformers and by the Revisers of the Prayer Book, the honour 
 always paid to them in the Church, and the proportions in which 
 they are drawn from the Writings of the four Evangelists. 
 By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean of Norwich. 
 
 Goulburn — Gospels for Holy Days. 
 
 Crown Svo. 8s. 6d. 
 
 Meditations upon the Liturgical Gospels. For the minor 
 Festivals of Christ, the two first week-days of the Easter and 
 Whitsun Festivals, and the Red Letter Saints' Days. To which 
 is prefixed some account of the origin of Saints' Days, and their 
 Evens or Vigils ; of the pruning of the Calendar of the English 
 Church by the Reformers ; and of the re-introduction of the 
 Black-Letter Festivals, with separate notices of the Four which 
 were re-introduced in the Prayer-Book of 1552. 
 
 By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean of Norwich. 
 
 Goulburn — Lectures in Holy Week. 
 
 Crown Zvo. $s. 
 
 Holy Week in Norwich Cathedral ; being Seven Lectures on 
 the several Members of the Most Sacred Body of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. Delivered at Evensong on each Day of the Holy Week 
 in the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of 
 Norwich. 
 
 By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean of Norwich. 
 
 SUaterloo place, JLontion. 
 
6 
 
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 Welldon's Harrow Sermons. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown Zvo. -js. 6d. 
 
 The Future and the Past : Sermons Preached to Harrow Boys, 
 ist Series, 1885 and 1886. 
 
 By the Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, M.A., 
 
 Head Master of Harrow School. 
 
 The Future and the Past— Individuality— All Saints' Day— The Religious 
 Value of Small Duties— The Promise of the Advent— The Bible— The 
 Meetings with the Angels — The Sins of the Tongue — The Bearing of 
 the Cross — Worldliness — The Keeping of Sunday— The Natural Body 
 and the Spiritual Body — Balaam — The Animal World — The Blessing of 
 Failure — Friendships — Spiritual Insight— The Lord's Prayer — The Uses 
 of the Holidays. 
 
 The Altar Book. 
 
 With Rubrics in Red. Large Type. Royal %vo. 10s. 6d. 
 
 The Order of the Administration of the Holy Communion, 
 and the Form of Solemnization of Matrimony, according 
 to the Use of the Church of England. 
 
 May also be had bound in Morocco. 
 
 Knox Little — Hopes of the Passion. 
 
 Crown 8vo. $s. 6d. 
 
 The Hopes and Decisions of the Passion of our Most 
 Holy Redeemer. 
 
 By the Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., 
 
 Ca?ton Residtntiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross, Burtort-oti-Trent. 
 
 ffllntetloo Place, JLonDon. 
 
OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 7 
 
 Woodford — The Great Commission. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown Svo. 5s. 
 The Great Commission. Twelve Addresses on the Ordinal. 
 ' By James Russell Woodford, D.D., 
 
 Sometime Lord Bishop 0/ Ely. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction on the Ordinations of his Episcopate, 
 By Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., 
 
 One 0/ his Examining Chaplains. 
 
 Luckock — The Bishops in the Tower. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown Zvo. 6s. 
 
 The Bishops in the Tower. A Record of Stirring Events affecting 
 the Church and Nonconformists from the Restoration to the 
 Revolution. 
 
 By Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., 
 
 Canon of Ely. etc. 
 
 The Book of Church Law. 
 
 Fifth Edition, revised. Crown %vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 The Book of Church Law : being an Exposition of the Legal 
 Rights and Duties of the Parochial Clergy and the Laity of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 By the late Rev. John Henry Blunt, D.D., 
 Revised by Sir Walter G. P. Phillimore, Bart., D.C.L., 
 
 Barrister- at-La-w, and Chancellor 0/ the Diocese 0/ Lincoln. 
 
 JjETatertoo place, Eonuon. 
 
3 
 
 RIVINGTON'S SELECT LIST 
 
 Holland — Creed and Character. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Creed and Character. A Volume of Sermons. 
 By the Rev. H. S. Holland, M.A., 
 
 Canon and Precentor of St. Paul's. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 The Story of an Apostle's Faith — The Rock ; The Secret ; The Fellowship : 
 The Witness; The Resources; The Mind; The Ministry of the Church— 
 The Solidarity of Salvation — The Freedom of Salvation — The Gift of Grace 
 — The Law of Forgiveness — The Coming of the Spirit — The Beauty of Holi- 
 ness—The Energy of Unselfishness — The Fruit of the Spirit — Thanksgiving — 
 The Activity of Service — Character and Circumstance. 
 
 Holland — Logic and Life. 
 
 Third Edition. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Logic and Life, with other Sermons. 
 By the Rev. H. S. Holland, M.A., 
 
 Canon and Precentor 0/ St. Paul's. 
 
 •Some of these sermons are as powerful spiritual feeling and judgment, speaking- in 
 
 as any preached in this generation, and, in- language brilliant, forcible, copious, rising 
 
 deed, full of genius, original thought, and often to splendour and magnificence.* — 
 
 spiritual veracity. Of the three first, it Church Quarterly Review. 
 
 would be hard to speak in terms too high.'— ' The sermons are thoughtful, earnest, and 
 
 Spectator. often eloquent and powerful. They fully 
 
 'These [two last-named] sermons exhibit bear out the high reputation Mr. Holland 
 
 at the full the real greatness of Mr. Holland's has obtained as a preacher of considerable 
 
 power — his originality, his insight, his range acceptableness and influence with hearers 
 
 of experience, observation, and sympathies ; of education and culture.' — Guardian. 
 and, above all, his never-failing elevation of 
 
 Holland — Good Friday Addresses. 
 
 Small Zvo. 2s. 
 
 Good Friday : being Addresses on the Seven Last Words, delivered 
 at St. Paul's Cathedral, on Good Friday 1884. 
 
 By the Rev. H. S. Holland, M.A.. 
 
 Canon and Precentor of St. Paul's. 
 
 Waterloo Place, JLortBon. 
 
OF RECENT PUBLIC A TIONS 
 
 9 
 
 Holland — Christ or Ecclesiastes. 
 
 Crown &vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Christ or Ecclesiastes. Sermons preached at St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. 
 
 By Henry Scott Holland, M.A., 
 
 Canon and Precentor 0/ St. PauVs. 
 
 Crake — Chronicles of yEscendune, etc. 
 
 Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. each. Sold separately. 
 By the Rev. A. D. Crake, B.A., 
 
 Author of the ' History 0/ the Church under the Roman Empire' etc., etc. 
 
 Edwy the Fair ; or, The First Chronicle of ^Escendune. 
 A Tale of the Days of St. Dunstan. 
 
 Alfgar the Dane ; or, The Second Chronicle of ^Escendune. 
 A Tale of the Days of Edmund Ironside. 
 
 The Rival Heirs ; being the Third and Last Chronicle 
 of ^escendune. 
 
 The House of Walderne : A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest 
 in the Days of the Barons' Wars. 
 
 Brian Fitz-Count : A Story of Wallingford Castle and Dorchester 
 Abbey. 
 
 Klaterfoo place, JLonoon 
 
RIVINGTON'S SELECT LIST 
 
 Mozley on the Old Testament. 
 
 Third Edition. Svo. 10s. 6d. 
 
 Ruling Ideas in Early Ages and their Relation to Old 
 Testament Faith. Lectures delivered to Graduates of the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 By J. B. Mozley, D.D., 
 
 Late Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Abraham — Sacrifice of Isaac — Human Sacrifices — Exterminating Wars — Visita- 
 tion of the Sins of Fathers upon Children — Jael — Connection of Jael's Act with 
 the Morality of her Age — Law of Retaliation — Retaliation : Law of Goel — The 
 End the Test of a Progressive Revelation — The Manichaeans and the Jewish 
 Fathers. 
 
 Mozley's University Sermons. 
 
 Fifth Edition. Crown Zvo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford and on 
 Various Occasions. 
 
 By J. B. Mozley, D.D., 
 
 Late Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 The Roman Council — The Pharisees — Eternal Life — The Reversal of Human 
 Judgment — War — Nature — The Work of the Spirit on the Natural Man — The 
 Atonement— Our Duty to Equals — The Peaceful Temper — The Strength of 
 Wishes — The Unspoken Judgment of Mankind— The True Test of Spiritual 
 Birth — Ascension Day — Gratitude — The Principle of Emulation — Religion the 
 First Choice — The Influence of Dogmatic Teaching on Education. 
 
 CUaterioo place, JLonDon. 
 
OF RECENT PUBLIC A TIONS. 
 
 ii 
 
 Mozley's Essays. 
 
 Second Edition. Two Vols. %vo. 24s. 
 
 Essays, Historical and Theological. 
 By J. B. Mozley, D.D,, 
 
 Late Cation of Christ Church, and Regius Professor 0/ Divinity in the 
 University 0/ Oxford. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Volume I. — Introduction and Memoir of the Author — Lord Strafford — Arch- 
 bishop Laud— Carlyle's Cromwell — Luther. 
 Volume II. — Dr. Arnold — Elanco White — Dr. Pusey's Sermon — The Book of 
 Job — Maurice's Theological Essays — Indian Conversion — The Argument of 
 Design — The Principle of Causation considered in opposition to Atheistic 
 Theories — In Memoriam — The Author's Articles and Works. 
 
 Mozley on Miracles. 
 
 Seventh Edition. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 
 Eight Lectures on Miracles: being the Bampton Lectures 
 for 1865. 
 
 By J. B. Mozley, D.D., 
 
 Late Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 Mozley's Parochial Sermons, 
 
 Third Edition. Crown Svo. ys. 6d. 
 
 Sermons, Parochial and Occasional. 
 By J. B. Mozley, D.D., 
 
 Late Canon of Christ Church, atid Regius Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 The Right Eye and the Right Hand — Temptation treated as Opportunity — The 
 Influences of Habit on Devotion — Thought for the Morrow — The Relief of 
 Utterance — Seeking a Sign — David Numbering the People — The Heroism of 
 Faith — Proverbs — The Teaching of Events — Growing Worse — Our Lord the 
 Sacrifice for Sin — The Parable of the Sower — The Religious Enjoyment of 
 Nature — The Threefold Office of the Holy Spirit — Wisdom and Folly Tested by 
 Experience — Moses, a Leader — The Unjust Steward — Sowing to the Spirit — 
 True Religion, a Manifestation — St. Paul's Exaltation of Labour — Jeremiah's 
 Witness against Idolatry — Isaiah's Estimate of Worldly Greatness — The Short- 
 ness of Life — The Endless State of Being — The Witness of the Apostles — Life 
 a Probation — Christian Mysteries, the Common Heritage — Our Lord's Hour — 
 Fear — The Educating Power of Strong Impressions — The Secret Justice of 
 Temporal Providence — Jacob as a Prince Prevailing with God. 
 
 dlatetloo place, iLonDott. 
 
12 
 
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 Mozley's Lectures. 
 
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 Lectures and other Theological Papers. 
 By J. B. Mozley, D.D., 
 
 Late Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 The Prayer Book in Latin. 
 
 With Rubrics in Red. Small Zvo. ys. 6d. 
 
 Liber Precum Publicarum Ecclesi^e Anglicans. 
 A Gulielmo Bright, S.T.P., 
 
 A^dis Christi apud Oxon. Canonico, Histories Ecclesiastics, Professore Regio, 
 et 
 
 Petro Goldsmith Medd, A.M., 
 
 Collegii Universitatis apud Oxon. \Socio Seniore. 
 
 Latine redditus. Editio Tenia, cum Appendice. 
 
 [In hac Editione continentur Versiones Latinae — i. Libri Precum Publicarum 
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 Blunt — Household Theology. 
 
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 Editor of the 'Annotated Book of Common Prayer,' etc., etc. 
 Also a Cheap Edition. i6mo. is. 
 
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 Life of Bishop Bickersteth. 
 
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 Williams on the Catechism. 
 
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 Bickersteth — Yesterday, To-day, and 
 For Ever. 
 
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 Yesterday, To-day, and For Ever : a Poem in Twelve Books. 
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OF RECENT PUBLIC A TIONS. 
 
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 The Annotated Prayer Book. 
 
 In One Volume. Quarto. £1, is. 
 Or Half-bound in Morocco. £1, 11s. 6d. 
 
 The Annotated Book of Common Prayer : being an Historical, 
 Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional System 
 of the Church of England. 
 
 Edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, D.D., F.S.A. 
 
 The reception which the Annotated Book of Common Prayer has met with 
 during an issue of eight editions in sixteen years has led the publishers to 
 believe that a new edition, carefully revised and enlarged, in accordance with 
 our advanced knowledge, would be acceptable. The present edition has 
 therefore been prepared with, among others, the following improvements : — 
 
 1. A thoroughly trustworthy text of the whole Prayer Book, such as has 
 
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 2. A much enlarged Introduction, embracing in a compact form all that is 
 
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 3. The Epistles and Gospels, with all other portions of Holy Scripture, are 
 
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 Thomas-a-Kempis' Of the Imitation 
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 The Mystery of the Passion of our Most Holy Redeemer. 
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 [vi. 88. 
 
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 Female Characters of Holy Scripture. A Series of Sermons. 
 By trie Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D., 
 
 Formerly Fellow 0/ Trinity College, Oxford. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Eve — Sarah— Lot's Wife — Rebekah — Leah and Rachel — Miriam— Rahab — 
 Deborah — Ruth — Hannah — The Witch of Endor — Bathsheba — Rizpah — The 
 Queen of Sheba— The Widow of Zarephath — Jezebel — The Shunammite — 
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 with the Issue of Blood — The Woman of Canaan — Martha — Mary — Salome 
 —The Wife of Pilate— Dorcas— The Blessed Virgin. 
 
 Mercier — The Story of Salvation. 
 
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 The Story of Salvation ; or, Thoughts on the Historic Study 
 of the Bible. 
 
 By Mrs. Jerome Mercier, 
 
 Author of Our Mother Church,' etc. 
 
 Body — The Life of Temptation. 
 
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 The Life of Temptation. A Course of Lectures delivered in sub- 
 stance at St. Peter's, Eaton Square ; also at All Saints', Margaret 
 Street. 
 
 By the Rev. George Body, D.D., 
 
 Canon oj Durham. 
 
 (Contents. 
 
 The Leading into Temptation— The Rationale of Temptation— Why we are 
 Tempted— Safety in Temptation— With Jesus in Temptation — The End of 
 Temptation. 
 
 Waterloo place, Honbon. 
 
 B 
 
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 Knox Little's Manchester Sermons. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown %vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Sermons Preached for the most part in Manchester. 
 By the Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., 
 
 Canon Residentiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross. 
 
 CTontmts. 
 
 The Soul instructed by God — The Claim of God upon the Soul -The Super- 
 natural Powers of the Soul — The Soul in its Inner Life — The Soul in the World 
 and at the Judgment — The Law of Preparation — The Principle of Preparation 
 — The Temper of Preparation — The Energy of Preparation — The Soul's Need 
 and God's Nature — The Martyr of Jesus — The Secret of Prophetic Power — The 
 Law of Sacrifice — The Comfort of God — The Symbolism of the Cross — The 
 Beatitude of Mary, the Mother of the Lord. 
 
 Knox Little — The Christian Life. 
 
 Third Edition. Crown Zvo. 31. 6d. 
 
 Characteristics and Motives of the Christian Life. Ten 
 Sermons preached in Manchester Cathedral in Lent and Advent 
 1877. 
 
 By the Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., 
 
 Canon Residentiary 0/ Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross. 
 
 (Eontente. 
 
 Christian Work — Christian Advance — Christian Watching— Christian Battle- 
 Christian Suffering — Christian Joy — For the Love of Man — For the sake ol 
 Jesus— For the Glory of God — The Claims of Christ. 
 
 Knox Little — The Witness of the Passion. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 The Witness of the Passion of our Most Holy Redeemer. 
 By the Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., 
 
 Cation Residentiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross. 
 
 Waterloo place, JLormon. 
 
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 Williams's Devotional Commentary. 
 
 New Edition. Eight Vols. Crown &vo. $s. each. Sold separately. 
 
 A Devotional Commentary on the Gospel Narrative. 
 By the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D., 
 
 Formerly Fellow of Trinity Cotlege, Oxford. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON THE STUDY OF THE HOLY GOSPELS. 
 
 A HARMONY OF THE FOUR EVANGELISTS. 
 
 OUR LORD'S NATIVITY. 
 
 OUR LORD'S MINISTRY (Second Year). 
 
 OUR LORD'S MINISTRY (Third Year). 
 
 THE HOLY WEEK. 
 
 OUR LORD'S PASSION. 
 
 OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION. 
 
 Voices of Comfort. 
 
 New Edition. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Voices of Comfort. 
 Edited by the Rev. Thomas Vincent Posbery, M.A., 
 
 Sometime Vicar of St. Giles's. Oxford. 
 
 This Volume of prose and poetry, original and selected, aims at revealing 
 the fountains of hope and joy which underlie the griefs and sorrows of life. 
 It is so divided as to afford readings for a month. The keynote of each day is 
 given to the title prefixed to it, such as : ' The Power of the Cross of Christ, 
 Day 6. Conflicts of the Soul, Day 17. The Communion of Saints, Day 20. 
 The Comforter, Day 22. The Light of Hope, Day 25. The Coming of Christ, 
 Day 28.' Each day begins with passages of Holy Scripture. These are fol- 
 lowed by articles in prose, which are succeeded by one or more short prayers. 
 After these are poems or passages of poetry, and then very brief extracts in 
 prose or verse close the section. The book is meant to meet, not merely cases 
 of bereavement or physical suffering, but 'to minister specially to the hidden 
 troubles of the heart, as they are silently weaving their dark threads into the 
 web of the seemingly brightest life.' 
 
 Also a Cheap Edition. Small ivo. 31. 6d. 
 
 CKaterloo place, ILottBon. 
 
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 The Star of Childhood. 
 
 Fourth Edition. Royal idmo. 2S. 6d. 
 The Star of Childhood : a First Book of Prayers and Instruction 
 for Children. 
 
 Compiled by a Priest. 
 Edited by the Rev. T. T. Carter, M.A. 
 
 With Illustrations after Era A ngelico. 
 
 The Guide to Heaven. 
 
 New Edition. iSmo. is. 6d. ; Cloth limp, is. 
 
 The Guide to Heaven : a Book of Prayers for every Want. For 
 the Working Classes. 
 
 Compiled by a Priest. 
 Edited by the Eev. T. T. Carter, M.A. 
 
 An Edition in Large Type. Crown Zvo. is. 6d.; Cloth limp, is. 
 
 For Days and Years. 
 
 New Edition. i6mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 For Days and Years. A Book containing a Text, Short Reading, 
 and Hymn for Every Day in the Church's Year. 
 Selected by H. L. Sidney Lear. 
 
 Also a Cheap Edition, yimo, is. ; or Cloth gilt, is. 6d. 
 
 Williams on the Epistles and Gospels. 
 
 New Edition. Two Vols. Crown Zvo. $s. each. 
 Sold separately. 
 
 Sermons on the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays 
 and Holy Days throughout the Year. 
 
 By the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D., 
 
 Author of a ' Devotional Commentary on the Gospel Narrative.' 
 
 JUamloo place, HonDott. 
 
OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 21 
 
 Moberly's Parochial Sermons. 
 
 Crown Zvo. is. 6d. 
 Parochial Sermons, chiefly preached at Brighstone, Isle of Wight. 
 By George Moberly, D.C.L., 
 
 Late Bishop 0/ Salisbury. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 The Night is far spent, the Day is at hand — Elijah, the Warner of the 
 Second Advent of the Lord — Christmas — Epiphany — The Rich Man and 
 Lazarus — The Seventh Day Rest — I will arise and go to my Father — Con- 
 firmation, a Revival — Korah — The Law of Liberty — Buried with Him in 
 Baptism — The Waiting Church of the Hundred and Twenty — Whitsun Day. 
 I will not leave you comfortless — Whitsun Day. Walking after the Spirit 
 — The Barren Fig Tree — Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, O Lord — 
 Feeding the Four Thousand — We are debtors — He that thinketh he standeth 
 — The Strength of Working Prayer — Elijah's Sacrifice — If thou hadst known, 
 even thou — Harvest Thanksgiving — Jonadab, the Son of Rechab — The Trans- 
 figuration ; Death and Glory — Welcome to Everlasting Habitations — The 
 Question of the Sadducees. 
 
 Moberly's Plain Sermons. 
 
 New Edition. Crown Svo. 5s. 
 
 Plain Sermons, Preached at Brighstone. 
 By George Moberly, D.C.L., 
 
 Late Bishop of Salisbury. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Except a man be born again — The Lord with the Doctors — The Draw-Net— I 
 will lay me down in peace — Ye have not so learned Christ — Trinity Sunday — 
 My Flesh is Meat indeed — The Corn of Wheat dying and multiplied — The Seed 
 Corn springing to new life — I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life — The Ruler 
 of the Sea — Stewards of the Mysteries of God— Ephphatha — The Widow of 
 Nain— Josiah's discovery of the Law— The Invisible World : Angels — Prayers, 
 especially Daily Prayers — They all with one consent began to make excuse — 
 Ascension Day—The Comforter— The Tokens of the Spirit— Elijah's Warning, 
 Fathers and Children — Thou shalt see them no more for ever — Baskets full of 
 fragments — Harvest — The Marriage Supper of the Lamb — The Last Judgment. 
 
 JHaterloo place, JLontion. 
 
22 
 
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 Luckock — Footprints of the Son of Man. 
 
 Third Edition. Two Vols. Crown %vo. 12s. 
 
 Footprints of the Son of Man as traced by Saint Mark : 
 being Eighty Portions for Private Study, Family Reading, and 
 Instructions in Church. 
 
 By Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., 
 
 Cation of Ely, etc. 
 
 With an Introduction by the late Bishop of Ely. 
 
 Goulburn — Thoughts on Personal Religion. 
 
 New Edition. Small Zvo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Thoughts on Personal Religion : being a Treatise on the 
 Christian Life in its two Chief Elements — Devotion and Practice. 
 
 By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean 0/ Norwich. 
 
 Also a Cheap Edition. 3^.6^. 
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 Two Vols. Small Zvo. 10s. 6d. 
 
 Goulburn — The Pursuit of Holiness. 
 
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 The Pursuit of Holiness: a Sequel to 'Thoughts on Personal 
 Religion,' intended to carry the Reader somewhat farther onward 
 in the Spiritual Life. 
 
 By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean of Norwich. 
 Also a Cheap Edition. 3s. 6d. 
 
 fljftatcvloo place, JUntJon. 
 
OF RECENT PUBLIC A TIOXS. 
 
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 Goulburn on the Lord's Supper. 
 
 Sixth Edition. Small Svo. 6s. 
 
 A COMMENTARY, Expository and Devotional, on the Order of the 
 Administration of the Lord's Supper, according to the Use of the 
 Church of England ; to which is added an Appendix on Fasting 
 Communion, Non-communicating Attendance, Auricular Confes- 
 sion, the Doctrine of Sacrifice, and the Eucharistic Sacrifice. 
 
 By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean of Norwich. 
 
 Also a Cheap Edition, uniform with ' Thoughts on Personal Religion' 
 and 'The Purjstiit of Holiness.' 3$. 6d. 
 
 S. Augustine's Confessions. 
 
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 The Confessions of S. Augustine. In Ten Books. 
 Translated and Edited. 
 
 By the Rev. W. H. Hutchings, M.A., 
 
 Rector of Kirkby Misperton, Yorkshire. 
 
 Swayne — The Blessed Dead. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 The Blessed Dead in Paradise : Four All Saints' Day Sermons, 
 preached in Salisbury Cathedral. 
 By Robert G. Swayne, M.A., 
 
 Chancellor and Canon Residentiary. 
 
 S&aterloo Place, JLontion. 
 
24 
 
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 Goulburn — The Collects of the Day. 
 
 Third Edition. Two Vols. Crown %vo. Us. each. Sold separately. 
 
 The Collects of the Day : an Exposition, Critical and Devotional, 
 of the Collects appointed at the Communion. With Preliminary 
 Essays on their Structure, Sources, and General Character, and 
 Appendices containing Expositions of the Discarded Collects of 
 the First Prayer Book of 1549, and of the Collects of Morning 
 and Evening Prayer. 
 
 By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean of Norwich. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Volume I. Book I. Introductory. — On the Excellences of the Collects— On 
 the Origin of the word Collect — On the Structure of a Collect, as illustrated by 
 the Collect in the Burial Service — Of the Sources of the Collects : Of the Sacra- 
 mentary of Leo, of the Sacramentary of Gelasius, of Gregory the Great and his 
 Sacramentary, of the Use of Sarum, and of 3. Osmund its Compiler — On the 
 Collects of Archbishop Cranmer — Of the Restoration Collects, and of John 
 Cosin, Prince-Bishop of Durham — Of the Collects, as representing the Genius of 
 the English Church. Book II. Parti.— The Constant Coiled. Part II.— Col- 
 lects varying with tlie Ecclesiastical Season — Advent to Whitsunday. 
 
 Volume II. Book II. contd. — Trinity Sunday to All Saints' Day. Book III. 
 — On the Collects after tlie OJfertory. Appendix A. — Collects in the First 
 Reformed Prayer Book 0/ 1549 which were suppressed in 1552 — The Collect 
 for the First Communion on Christmas Day — The Collect for S. Mary Mag- 
 dalene's Day (July 22). Appendix B. — Exposition 0/ the Collects of Morning 
 and Evening Prayer — The Second at Morning Prayer, for Peace — The Third 
 at Morning Prayer, for Grace — The Second at Evening Prayer, for Peace — 
 The Third at Evening Prayer, for Aid against all Perils. 
 
 Knox Little — Good Friday Addresses. 
 
 New Edition. Small Svo. zs. ; or in Paper Cover, is. 
 
 The Three Hours' Agony of Our Blessed Redeemer : being 
 Addresses in the form of Meditations delivered in S. Alban's 
 Church, Manchester, on Good Friday 1877. 
 
 By the Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., 
 
 Canon Residentiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross. 
 
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 = 5 
 
 Luckock — After Death. 
 
 Sixth Edition. Crown Zvo. 6s. 
 
 After Death. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive 
 Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead, and their rela- 
 tionship to the Living. 
 
 By Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., 
 
 Canon of Ely, etc. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Part I.— The Test of Catholicity— The Value of the Testimony of the Primi- 
 tive Fathers — The Intermediate State — Change in the Intermediate State — 
 Prayers for the Dead : Reasons for Our Lord's Silence on the Subject — The 
 Testimony of Holy Scripture — The Testimony of the Catacombs— The Testi- 
 mony of the Early Fathers — The Testimony of the Primitive Liturgies — 
 Prayers for the Pardon of Sins of Infirmity, and the Effacement of Sinful 
 Stains — The Inefficacy of Prayer for those who died in wilful unrepented Sin. 
 
 Part II. — Primitive Testimony to the Intercession of the Saints — Primitive 
 Testimony to the Invocation of the Saints — The Trustworthiness of the Patristic 
 Evidence for Invocation tested — The Primitive Liturgies and the Roman Cata- 
 combs — Patristic Opinions on the Extent of the Knowledge possessed by the 
 Saints — The Testimony of Holy Scripture upon the same Subject — The Beatific 
 Vision not yet attained by any of the Saints — Conclusions drawn from the fore- 
 going Testimony. 
 
 Supplementary Chapters. — (a.) Is a fuller Recognition of the Practice of 
 Praying for the Dead desirable or not? — (b.) Is it lawful or desirable to practise 
 Invocation of Saints in any form or not? — Table of Fathers, Councils, etc. — 
 Passages of Scripture explained or quoted — General Index. 
 
 S. Bonaventure's Life of Christ. 
 
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 The Life of Christ. 
 
 By S. Bonaventure. 
 Translated and Edited by the Rev. W. H. Hutchings, 
 
 Rector of Kirkby Misperton, Yorkshire. 
 
 'The whole volume is full of gems and seek food for their daily meditations, we can 
 rich veins of thought, and whether as a com- scarcely imagine a more acceptable book.' 
 panion to the preacher or to those who —Literary Churchman. 
 
 Klaterloo Place, JLonOon. 
 
2 6 
 
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 Selection from Newman's Sermons. 
 
 Third Edition. Crown Svo. 55. 
 
 Selection, adapted to the Seasons of the Ecclesiastical Year, from 
 the ' Parochial and Plain Sermons ' of John Henry Newman, 
 B.D., sometime Vicar of S. Mary's, Oxford. 
 
 Edited by the Rev. W. J. Copeland, B.D., 
 
 Late Rector of Farnham, Essex. 
 
 (Eontenta. 
 
 Advent: — Self-denial the Test of Religious Earnestness — Divine Calls— The 
 Ventures of Faith — Watching. Christmas Day : — Religious Joy. New Year's 
 Sunday: — The Lapse ofTime. Epiphany : — Remembrance of Past Mercies— • 
 Equanimity — The Immortality of the Soul — Christian Manhood — Sincerity and 
 Hypocrisy — Christian Sympathy. Septuagesitna: — Present Blessings. Sexa- 
 gesima: — Endurance, the Christian's Portion. Quinqnagesima: — Love, the One 
 Thing Needful. Lent: — The Individuality of the Soul — Life the Season of 
 Repentance — Bodily Suffering — Tears of Christ at the Grave of Lazarus — 
 Christ's Privations a Meditation for Christmas — The Cross of Christ the Measure 
 of the World. Good Friday : — The Crucifixion. Easter Day : — Keeping Fast 
 and Festival. Easter-Tide: — Witnesses of the Resurrection — A Particular 
 Providence as Revealed in the Gospel — Christ Manifested in Remembrance — 
 The Invisible World — Waiting for Christ. A scension : — Warfare the Condition 
 of Victory. Sunday after Ascension: — Rising with Christ. Whitsunday: — 
 The Weapons of Saints. Trinity Sunday: — The Mysteriousness of our Pre- 
 sent Being. Sundays after Trinity:— Holiness Necessary for Future Blessed- 
 ness — The Religious Use of Excited Feelings — The Self-wise Inquirer — Scrip- 
 ture a Record of Human Sorrow — The Danger of Riches — Obedience without 
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 the Will — The Gospel Palaces — Religion a Weariness to the Natural Man— The 
 World our Enemy — The Praise of Men — Religion Pleasant to the Religious — 
 Mental Prayer — Curiosity a Temptation to Sin — Miracles no Remedy for Un- 
 belief—Jeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed — The Shepherd of our Souls 
 — Doing Glory to God in Pursuits of the World. 
 
 Waterloo place, JLontion. 
 
OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 27 
 
 Jennings — Ecclesia Anglicana. 
 
 Crown %vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Ecclesia Anglicana. A History of the Church of Christ in 
 England, from the Earliest to the Present Times. 
 
 By the Rev. Arthur Charles Jennings, M.A., 
 
 Jesus College, Cambridge, sometime Tyrwhitt Scholar, Crosse Scholar, Hebrew 
 University Prizeman, Fry Scholar 0/ S. John's College, Cants and 
 Schole/ield Prizeman, and Rector 0/ King's Stanley, 
 
 Bickersteth — The Lord's Table. 
 
 Second Edition. i6»io. is. ; or Cloth extra, 2s. 
 
 The Lord's Table ; or, Meditations on the Holy Communion Office 
 in the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 By E. H. Bickersteth, D.D., 
 
 Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 • We must draw our review to an end, and sincere thanks to Mr. Bickersteth for 
 without using any more of our own words, this goodly and profitable "Companion to 
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