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PASCAL 
 
 AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
PASCAL 
 
 AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 R. W. CHURCH, M.A., D.C.L. 
 
 DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S, 
 AND HONORARY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 Hontion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1895 
 
 A II rig h is reserved 
 
NOTICE 
 
 Only two of these sermons were preached in St. 
 Paul's : and only two before the period of the Dean's 
 residence in London. The rest have been selected 
 from his occasional sermons preached elsewhere than 
 in the Cathedral during his tenure of the Deanery. 
 Mr. Murray has given leave for the reprinting of the 
 sermon on "The Pensees of Blaise Pascal," originally 
 published in a volume entitled Companions for the 
 D event Life^ and of the lecture on Bishop Andrewes, 
 originally published in a volume entitled Masters in 
 English Theology. By a like permission from Messrs. 
 Parker, the sermon entitled " Adam- the Type of 
 Christ " is reprinted from a volume of Lent Sermons. 
 The sermon on " Foreign Travel " first appeared in 
 a volume entitled The Use and Abuse of the World, 
 and is here reprinted by the permission of the Society 
 for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. ♦ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SERMON I 
 
 THE "PENSEES" OF BLAISE PASCAL 
 
 PAGE 
 
 *' Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord : Lord, hear 
 
 my voice." — Psalm cxxx. i ...... i 
 
 SERMON II 
 
 BISHOP BUTLER ......... 25 
 
 SERMON III 
 
 BISHOP ANDREWES - 52 
 
 SERMON IV 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 
 
 "And wrho is sufificient for these things?" — 2 Corinthians 
 ii. 16 . 
 
 97 
 
 SERMON V 
 
 THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 And as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost 
 said. Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work where- 
 unto I have called them." — Acts xiii. 2 . . . .116 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 SERMON VI 
 
 ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Who is the figure of Him that was to come." — Romans v. 14 12S 
 SERMON VII 
 
 THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM 
 
 •And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." — 
 
 Genesis xii. 3 . . . . . . . -144 
 
 SERMON VIII 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 ' Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion 
 
 endureth throughout all ages." — Psalm cxlv. 13 . -159 
 
 SERMON IX 
 
 THE INCARNATION OF GOD 
 
 ' Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, 
 separated unto the gospel of God, (which He had promised 
 afore by His prophets in the holy scriptures,) concerning His 
 Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of 
 David according to the flesh ; and declared to be the Son 
 of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by 
 the resurrection from the dead." — Romans i. 1-4 . .175 
 
 SERMON X 
 
 THE LIVING HOPE 
 
 "Who hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resur- 
 rection of Jesus Christ from the dead." — I Peter i. 3 . 1S9 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SERMON XI 
 
 ASCENSION-TIDE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My 
 Father, and your Father ; and to My God, and your God." 
 — St. John xx. 17 . . . . . . . 205 
 
 SERAION XII 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 " When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a 
 child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a man, I 
 put away childish things." — i Corinthians xiii. 11 . 214 
 
 SERMON XIII 
 
 PAIN AND REMEDY 
 
 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, 
 and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all 
 manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the 
 people." — St. Matthew iv. 23 . . . . . 225 
 
 SERMON XIV ♦ 
 
 the life of intellectual self-sufficiency 
 
 Thy hands have made me and fashioned me : O give me 
 understanding, that I may learn Thy commandments." — 
 Psalm cxix. 73 . . • • ... . 237 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 SERMON XV 
 
 STRONG WORDS 
 
 'AGE 
 
 "By thy words thou shall be justified, and by thy words thou 
 
 shalt be condemned." — St. Matthew xii. 37 . -255 
 
 SERMON XVI 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN 
 
 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is 
 given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according 
 to the proportion of faith ; or ministry, let us wait on our 
 ministering : or he that teacheth, on teaching." — Romans 
 xii. 6, 7 264 
 
 SERMON XVII 
 
 foreign travel 
 
 The earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is : the compass 
 
 of the world, and they that dwell therein." — Psalm xxiv. i 27S 
 
 SERMON XVIII 
 
 religious disappointments 
 
 Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another ? " 
 
 — St. Matthew xi. 3 . . . . . . . 29S 
 
 SERMON XIX 
 a particular providence 
 
 ■ Lord, what is man, that Thou hast such respect unto him : or 
 the son of man, that Thou so regardest him ? Man is like 
 a thing of nought : his time passeth away like a shadow." 
 — Psalm cxliv. 3, 4 . . . . . . .310 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 SERMON XX 
 
 THE GREAT RESTORATION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth : and the 
 former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." — 
 Isaiah Ixv. 17 . . . . . . . . 326 
 
 SERMON XXI 
 
 THE TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 
 
 And He said unto them, It is not for you to know the times 
 or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own 
 power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy 
 Ghost has come upon you : and ye shall be witnesses unto 
 Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, 
 and unto the uttermost part of the earth." — Acts i. 7, 8 . 336 
 
THE 'PENSEES' OF BLAISE PASCAL 
 
 Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord : Lord, hear my 
 voice." — Psalm cxxx. i. 
 
 The Psalms, which are the records of the purest 
 and loftiest joy of which the human soul is capable, 
 its joy in God, are also the records of its dreariest 
 and bitterest anguish, of the days when all seems 
 dark between itself and God, of its doubts, of its 
 despair. Their music ranges from the richest notes 
 of triumphant rapture to the saddest minor key. 
 The Psalms are the patterns and precursors of that 
 mass of literature embodying the experience of the 
 spiritual life which has grown up during the Chris- 
 tian centuries, and some examples of which are at 
 this time proposed for our special notice. The 
 Psalms contain the germs of it, and, like the Psalms, 
 it varies widely in its scale and tone. It reflects 
 the many sides, the countless moods, of the soul, in 
 its passage through time, confronted with eternity 
 and its overpowering, possibilities. It tells of quiet- 
 ness and confidence, of strength and victory and 
 
 ^ Preached at St. James's, Piccadilly, 1875, as one in a course of 
 Sermons on ■" Companions for the Devout Life." 
 C.S.,P. B , 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 peace. It tells, too, of the storm, of the struggle, 
 of the dividing asunder of soul and spirit ; of per- 
 plexities which can be relieved only by the cer- 
 tainties of death ; of hope wrestling, indeed, undis- 
 mayed, unwavering, but wrestling in the dark, and, 
 when beheld for the last time on this side the grave, 
 still obstinate, but still unsolaced. Christian life 
 may be upon the heights and in the sunlight ; the 
 lines fall to it in pleasant places, and " the voices of 
 joy and gladness are in its dwellings." But its lot 
 may be also " in the deeps," where " all God's waves 
 and storms have gone over it " ; where the voices 
 are those of " deep calling unto deep amid the roar 
 of the waterspouts," voices of anxiety and distress, 
 of " majestic pains," of mysterious sorrow. 
 
 Such in the main is the voice of that book on 
 which I am to speak to you, the Thoughts^ as it 
 is called, of Blaise Pascal. It is, as we know, a book 
 of fragments found among Pascal's papers after his 
 death, mainly relating to a projected apology for 
 religion, and variously pieced together, according to 
 the judgment of different editors. This is not the 
 place to speak of its singular literary history, of the 
 strange fortunes which have attended on it, of the 
 fate which has given it so much interest for the 
 soberest and deepest belief, and for the most mock- 
 ing and most critical unbelief, of France — for 
 Arnauld and Vinet, for Voltaire and Condorcet, for 
 Sainte-Beuve. I shall say nothing of its apologetic 
 value, as an argument in defence of Christianity, nor 
 of its place in French literature ; nor of what it did, 
 with other writings of Pascal, in bringing religious 
 questions from the technical treatment of the schools 
 
I THE 'PENSEES' OF BLAISE PASCAL 3 
 
 into contact with the ideas and language of common 
 life, to be subjects of keen and serious interest to 
 the educated and intelligent in all grades of society. 
 Nor must I dwell on that exquisite purity of 
 language which in itself makes it one of the most 
 instructive of moral lessons. In no writer since the 
 great Greek masterpieces has the " beauty born " of 
 simplicity and truthfulness " passed " so profusely 
 into style ; a perpetual witness to all who hold a 
 pen against the dishonesty of conventional and 
 affected words, warning them of the first duty of 
 that exact agreement of word and meaning, of that 
 sincerity of the writer with himself as well as with 
 his readers, " ce consentement de vous avec voiis-niemel' 
 out of which, as a principle of composition, Pascal's 
 excellence grew. My business with it is simply as 
 a " Companion for the Devout Life " ; an office 
 which it is not the less qualified to discharge that 
 it makes no formal or direct pretension to do so ; 
 though it is not a book of devotion, nor a guide to 
 the details of -Christian life, nor a body of medita- 
 tions or counsels, nor intentionally a record of the 
 history of a religious mind. Nothing was farther 
 from Pascal's thought than to venture on any such 
 task ; nothing would have shocked him more than 
 the notion of painting himself But in spite of 
 himself he has done , so. And if character is 
 elevated and refined, and our loyalty to the unseen 
 strengthened, by seeing how one of the keenest of 
 human minds pierced into the truth of things, and 
 one of the noblest' of human souls thirsted after 
 holiness, these Remains may profitably go with us 
 into our chamber, when we are alone with ourselves 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 and God. They belong to the last years of Pascal's 
 short life, into which so much was crowded — years of 
 sickness and untimely decay. They are the broken 
 words of a suffering and dying man, to whom truth 
 and reality, always precious, have become imperiously 
 supreme ; whose eye has become preternaturally 
 clear in discerning the greatness of man's destiny 
 and hope, the shows and shadows of his present 
 state ; and who has ceased to live for anything but 
 God, for the endurance of God's will, and the 
 imitation of His love, while here. 
 
 Pascal's " Apology," if it had been written, would 
 ;'have been, not a treatise of pure argument, or an 
 (' analysis of the grounds of religious belief, bjit thei 
 I passionate expostulation of profound conviction on 
 • the madness and unreason of indifference or loose 
 1 thinking on a matter of such importance, and such 
 I high claims, as Christianity. | The religion of Pascal 
 is the religion of a converted man — of a man, I 
 mean, who at a definite time of his life had felt 
 himself touched and overcome by the greatness and 
 the reasonableness of things unseen, and had con- 
 sciously turned to God, not from vice, but from 
 bondage to the interests of time, from the fascina- 
 tion of a merely intellectual life, from the frivolity 
 which forgets the other world in this. His eyes had 
 been opened, and he had been brought " into the 
 deeps " — " the deeps " far below the mere surface of 
 custom and transient opinion ; the deeps of truth 
 about man's condition and God's greatness ; the 
 deeps of reality about moral good and moral evil, 
 the relation of eternity to time. And he writes 
 *' out of the deeps," as one absorbed and awe-struck, 
 
I THE 'PENS^ES' OF BLAISE PASCAL 5 
 
 and with every fibre strung, by his vivid conscious- 
 ness of the strange contrasts, the inevitable alterna- 
 tives, the naighty interests at stake, amid which 
 man's course is to be run. His view of relieion 
 rises out of these solemn and unfathomable depths, 
 the abyss of life and pain and death, the abyss of 
 sin and ignorance and error, the abyss of redemp- 
 tion and of God's love. Even the mind of Pascal 
 was not large enough for everything ; these themes 
 absorb and dominate his imagination and thoughts ; 
 and, steadied and consoled as he certainly was by 
 his religion, and capable of the highest transports 
 of Christian gladness, his book is not one of those 
 which reflect the joy, the quiet order, the peace and 
 exultation of Christian life. 
 
 The book is a stern one — stern with the severity 
 of the awful vision of truth which had filled the 
 writer's mind, and before which he had . trembled ; 
 and its effort is to be strongly, lucidly, plainly true 
 about the real state of the case — true before the 
 judgment of the common sense of men of the world. 
 Pascal showed to the full that passion for simple, 
 unaffected, solid reality which was the characteristic 
 of the early days of Port Royal, of that mighty 
 but short-lived school, the greatest religious birth of 
 the French Church, before whose heroic and sublime 
 singleness of mind, and thoroughness of purpose, and 
 hatred of pretence and display, even the majesty of 
 Bossuet, and the grace of Fenelon, and the sweet- 
 ness and tenderness of St. Francois de Sales, and 
 the grand erudition of the Benedictines, fall into a 
 second place. Pascal looks upon the world in which 
 he finds himself, and two things meet him. On the 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 one hand, the certainty of the moral law, the certainty 
 to conscience of its supremacy, the certainty of its 
 excellence beyond comparison over everything else 
 known to man ; and, on the other hand, the certain 
 facts of man's actual condition and nature, the 
 anomalies, the disorder, the contradictions, the 
 discords of his present state, the blinding and 
 oppressive mystery which hangs about all that we 
 are, and what we are meant for. The old age of 
 the world, after all its long experience, finds 
 strengthening in it still the invincible consciousness 
 that there is nothing greater, nothing surer, than 
 right and duty, nothing more sacred than justice, 
 nothing more beautiful than love. And yet this 
 divine idea of duty and right, man's distinctive 
 prerogative in nature, seems thrown for no purpose 
 into a world which is for ever contradicting it ; it is 
 reflected only in broken distortion on the troubled 
 surface of human society. Pascal had felt as keenly, 
 perhaps, as men ever felt them, the triumphs of pure 
 intellect, in its clearness, its versatility, and its 
 strength. He felt the immeasurable distance of 
 mind and genius above all the greatness of outward 
 and material things, above the pomp and glories of 
 riches and power, above all physical perfection. 
 Archimedes, he says, needed nothing of the grandeur 
 of " kings and captains and great men according to 
 the flesh " ; he won no victories, he wore no crown ; 
 but he was great in his own great order of intellect ; 
 the mathematician's enthusiasm kindles at his name — 
 " O how glorious was he to the intellectual eye" — 
 " O qu'il a delate aux esprits!' But there is an order 
 of greatness higher than that of intellect. " The 
 
I THE 'PENS&ES ' OF BLAISE PASCAL 7 
 
 interval, which is infinite," writes Pascal, " between 
 body and mind, represents the infinitely more in- 
 finite distance between intellect and charity. " ^ This 
 superiority in kind of moral goodness is Pascal's 
 fundamental axiom, and he, of all men, had a right 
 to lay it down. The strong and nimble mind which 
 played with difficulties, and to whose force all 
 resistance yielded, the soaring imagination, the am- 
 bition of the explorer on the traces of unthought-of 
 knowledge, all that made and marked the match- 
 less intellect of his time, the great geometer, the 
 great physicist, the great mechanist, master, too, of 
 the keenest satire and the most unapproachable 
 felicity of language — he and all that he is, bows 
 down before the unearthly greatness of charity, and 
 confesses the sovereign and paramount excellence of 
 moral perfections, the supreme claims of the moral 
 law of goodness. 
 
 And then, with this conviction as to the true law 
 of man's nature, what does he see round him ? He 
 sees a world "out of joint," presenting the most 
 contradictory appearances, distracted by the most 
 opposite tendencies, with no remedy for its disorder, 
 no key to its riddles. He pursues through all its 
 forms the contrast between man's greatness and his 
 littleness. Read man in one way, and he seems 
 made for God and truth. Read him in another, and 
 
 1 "La distance infinie des corps aux esprits figure la distance in- 
 finiment plus infinie des esprits ^ la charite, car elle est surnaturelle. 
 Tout I'eclat des grandeurs n'a point de lustre pour les gens qui sont 
 dans les recherches de I'esprit. La grandeur des gens d'esprit est 
 invisible aux Viches, aux rois, aux capitaines, a tous ces grands de chair. 
 La grandeur de la sagesse, qui est nulle part sinon en Dieu, est 
 invisible aux charnels et aux gens d'esprit. Ce sont trois ordres 
 differents en genres." 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 nothing can express the interval which separates 
 him from all that is holy, perfect, eternal ; his 
 blind stumbling through an existence which has 
 come from chance, the unmeaningness, the vanity of 
 his life. How is it that he knows so much and can 
 think so powerfully, and yet, after all, knows so little 
 and so imperfectly ; why should his knowledge, just 
 where it is most important, find an impassable 
 barrier, and truth elude and betray him just where 
 he most wants it ? To look at his great endow- 
 ments, his wonderful achievements, his never-ceas- 
 ing progress, he seems indeed the crown and glory 
 and perfection of God's creation. But look at him 
 again, in comparison with what his very powers 
 enable him to see, the immensity, the inscrutableness 
 of the universe, and he sinks into an insignificance 
 which he has not the imagination to measure or 
 the words to express. Lost in this little corner of 
 creation, in this little breathing-time called life ; 
 lost between the infinities of space, the infinities of 
 time before and after, the infinities of greatness, the 
 infinities of littleness ; lost " in the abyss of that 
 boundless immensity of which he knows nothing," 
 in those " terrible spaces of the universe which 
 encompass him," ^ — what can he think of himself, 
 
 1 "En voyant raveuglement et la misere de rhomme, en regardant 
 tout runivers muet, et Thomme sans lumiere, abandonne k lui-mcme, 
 et comme egare dans ce recoin de I'linivers, sans savoir qui I'y a mis, 
 ce qu'il y est venu faire, ce qu'il deviendra en mourant, incapable de 
 toute connaissance, j'entre en effroi comnie un honinie qu'on aurait 
 porte endormi dans une ile deserte et effroyable, et qui s'eveilleiait 
 sans connaitre ou il est, et sans moyen d'en sortir." 
 
 " Abime dans I'infinie immensite des espaces que j'ignore et que 
 tu ignores." . . . "Je suis dans une ignorance terrible de toutes 
 choses. . . . Je vois ces efiroyables espaces de I'univers qui 
 m'enferment ..." 
 
I THE 'PENS^ES ' OF BLAISE PASCAL 9 
 
 what can he think that he is worth ? — " What is man 
 that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man 
 that Thou visitest him ? " Look at the things which 
 he does not know, and his vaunts of knowledge seem 
 childish. Look at the things which enchant him, 
 the prejudices which enslave him, the basenesses to 
 which he. can descend, and is the contempt of the 
 cynic undeserved for so poor a creature ? Look at 
 the inevitable fact of death, of the decay which pre- 
 cedes it, or else the untimeliness of its blow, and is 
 it possible to exaggerate the idle fruitlessness of such 
 a lot, except as a link in an eternal and unfeeling 
 chain of fate ? So aspiring, so defeated, so undis- 
 couraged ; with the strongest impulses to hope, but 
 ever haunted by arguments of despair, he reveals, by 
 fits and starts, his greater and better nature, in the 
 originality of grand deeds and lofty characters ; but 
 practically, and in the long run, he leads a ,life which 
 he might lead without God and conscience, guided 
 by calculation of what is pleasant and prudent, 
 calculating rightly in the main, often miscalculating, 
 miserably and fatally. There he is, this marvellously 
 compounded creature, strong even unto death, and 
 yet unstable as water, crossing and contradicting 
 himself through life ; the slave of nature, which yet 
 bows to the spell of his power ; the slave of habits, 
 yet their creator ; the slave of imagination, of which 
 yet he knows the illusions ; the slave of opinions, 
 for which he is yet responsible, and which he has 
 contributed to accredit ; seeking and finding, and 
 seeking afresh ; so ingenious yet so stupid ; so wise 
 and yet so incredibly foolish ; able to do so right yet 
 constantly doing so wrong ; balancing between good 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 and evil, sin and repentance, till the wavering is cut 
 short by death. And that, multiplied by the numbers 
 of mankind, is the broad aspect of human life. 
 
 The mass of mankind look at all this under the 
 sway of custom and habit, as a matter of course, 
 familiar as the routine of every day ; and they 
 take it all as it comes, they feel no surprise ; they 
 acquiesce and are content. But when they try 
 to look below the surface, then come the perplexities 
 and the enigmas. Then come the baffling problems, 
 and the contradictions which defy explanation. Our 
 instruments of knowledge fail us or play us false. 
 We are born with the instinct and idea of certainty, 
 and imply it in every act and argument; yet certainty 
 flies from our analysis and our verifying tests. If 
 we venture to search deeply, then come difficulties 
 following difficulties, till reason is giddy. Truth is 
 impossible without freedom of thought ; yet no 
 sooner is thought free than it eats away all certainty, 
 historical, moral, religious, scientific, till at last it 
 turns upon itself, and surrenders its own consciousness 
 of existence and freedom a prey and sacrifice to a 
 theory. We are distracted between rival claims on 
 our allegiance ; ^ between nature and broad common 
 sense and irresistible convictions — irresistible in spite 
 of all objections, and " reasons of the heart superior 
 to those of the intellect " ; " and on the other hand, 
 
 ^ "Qui demelera cet emhrouillement ? La nature confond les 
 pynhonicns, et la raison confond les dogmatiques. . . . Ilumilicz- 
 vous, raison impuissante : taisez-vous, nature iml)(jcile : apprcnez que 
 riioinme passe infiniment I'homme, et entendcz de votre niaitre votre 
 condition veritable que vous ignorez. Kcoutez Dieu. 
 
 (iiiion veriiauie que vous ignorez. r.coutez uieu. - 
 
 •\" Le cfjeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas\ on lesait en 
 
 le choses. . . . Est-ce par raison ciue vous aiinez ?" ^ 
 
 niille choses. . . . Est-ce par raison que vous 
 
I THE 'FENSAES' OF BLAISE PASCAL ii 
 
 the keen, subtle, finished conclusions of the reasoning 
 faculty, apparently so faultless and impregnable in 
 form, often so formidable and ghastly in their con- 
 sequences. 
 
 What account is to be given of all this ? In a 
 well-known passage,^ Pascal puts side by side the 
 high and the low view of human life, apart from 
 Christianity, in the persons of two eminent repre- 
 sentatives respectively of those two views, Epictetus 
 and Montaigne. One set of thinkers, like Epictetus, 
 look only on the lofty side : they insist on man's 
 greatness, and freedom, and moral power ; they see 
 in his moral nature the proof of his kinship with 
 the Divine, the image and likeness of God. An- 
 other set, like Montaigne, can only smile and doubt, 
 and mock at man's efforts after truth, at his preten- 
 sions to rise above the level of mortality ; they 
 catalogue his uncertainties, his mistakes, his failures ; 
 they paint vividly his weakness, his ignorance, his 
 shame. Both are right and both are wrong; right 
 in the truth which they assert, wrong as to the truth 
 which they overlook ; but both want the key which 
 unlocks the puzzle, the central truth which recon- 
 ciles the contradiction. Pascal will explain away 
 nothing, will disguise and ignore nothing. He will 
 put his standard and idea of life as high as 
 Epictetus ; but he sees as clearly as Montaigne, 
 the tricks that custom and imagination play,* the 
 treacheries of self-interest, the inconsistencies of 
 goodness, the strange mixture in real life of the 
 ridiculous and the pathetic, the gaps in our logic, 
 the short-comings of our proofs ; he employs the 
 
 ^ The conversation with De Sacy. 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 exaggerations of Montaigne for the purpose of 
 startling men from the trance and spell of mere 
 habit, to realise the strangeness of what is most 
 familiar, the precariousness of much that they take 
 for granted. What is the explanation of these 
 anomalies of man's condition, of the perplexities of 
 his life — anomalies and perplexities which to those 
 who see them are certain and crushing ? Why is it 
 that, as has been said, ** Life is such a comedy to 
 those who think, such a tragedy to those who 
 feel ? " ^ Pascal can see but one explanation to it. 
 Man's greatness is greatness fallen ; it is royal great- 
 ness, but the greatness, as he expresses it, of a king 
 dethroned, dispossessed, disinherited, banished.^ A 
 writer of our own time, as subtle and deep as Pascal, 
 has, without thinking of Pascal, expressed Pascal's 
 thought : — 
 
 " To consider the world in its length and breadth, 
 its various history, the many races of men, their 
 starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their 
 conflicts ; and then their ways, habits, governments, 
 forms of worship ; their enterprises, their aimless 
 courses, their random achievements and acquirements, 
 the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the 
 tokens, so faint and broken, of a superintending 
 design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be 
 great powers and truths, the progress of things, 
 as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final 
 
 1 Quoted in Greg's Enigmas of Life, p. 192. 
 
 2 " La grandeur de I'homme est grande en ce qu'il se connait 
 miserable. Un arhre ne se connait pas miserable. . . . Toules ces 
 
 .miseres-la meme prouvent sa grandeur. Ce sont miscres de grand 
 seigneur, niiseres d'un roi depossede." " Car qui se trouve malheurelix 
 de n'ctre pas roi, sinon un roi depossede?" 
 
THE 'PENSEES' OE BLAISE PASCAL 
 
 13 
 
 causes, the greatness and littleness ot man, his far- 
 reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung 
 over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the 
 defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, 
 mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, 
 the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, 
 hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole 
 race, so fearfully yet so exactly described in the 
 Apostle's words, ' having no hope and without God 
 in the world,' — all this is a vision to dizzy and 
 appal, and inflicts on the mind a sense of a pro- 
 found mystery, which is absolutely beyond human 
 solution. 
 
 "What shall be said to this heart -piercing, 
 reason-bewildering fact ? I can only answer, that 
 either there is no Creator, or this living society of 
 men is in a true sense discarded from His presence. 
 Did I see a boy of good make and mind, with the 
 tokens upon him of a refined nature, cast upon the 
 world without provision, unable to say whence he 
 came, his birthplace or family connections, I should 
 conclude that there was some mystery connected 
 with his history, or that he was one of whom, from 
 one cause or another, his parents were ashamed. 
 Thus only should I be able to account for the con- 
 trast between the promise and the condition of his 
 being. And so I argue about the world ; if there 
 be a God — since there is a God — the human ♦race 
 is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. 
 It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. 
 This is a fact — a fact as true as the fact of its 
 existence ; and thus the doctrine of what is theo- 
 logically called original sin, becomes to me almost 
 
14 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS i 
 
 as certain as that the world exists, and as the exist- 
 ence of God." ^ 
 
 If there is a remedy for this tremendous disloca- 
 tion, impossible as it must be to anticipate its nature, 
 it must be one adequate to the greatness of the 
 disaster.^ And this disaster is the fundamental 
 supposition of that religion of which the Bible is 
 the record, and the Christian Church the creation 
 and witness. It rests on two great foundations : 
 a great verity of history, experience, and conscious- 
 ness, man's double nature, his heights and depths, 
 his worth and his worthlessness, the inexplicable 
 fact of sin and all its consequences ; — and a great 
 disclosure which none could make but God, that 
 man's delivery and restoration are dear to his 
 Maker, that for man's sake the Highest was joined 
 to the lowest. Divine Power and Love to earthly 
 degradation and pain ; the Cross of Christ was the 
 Passion and Sacrifice of the Son of God. Chris- 
 tianity satisfies the conditions which it ought to 
 satisfy, if it is a religion for the world, a religion 
 to demand the attention of a serious man. It is 
 not bound to tell us everything ; it need not clear 
 up all difficulties. It must not be a privilege for 
 an aristocracy of thinkers. But it must be a full 
 
 1 Newman, Apologia, p. 377. Compare Pascal: " Le nceud de 
 notre condition prend ses retours et ses replis dans cet abime. De 
 sorte que I'homme est plus inconcevable sans ce mystere, que ce 
 mystcre est inconcevable h. I'homme." ^ Faugere, ii. 155. See a 
 passage in Vinet's Nouvcllcs Chides Evangcliqiies^ p. 51: — "Le 
 nombre de nos miseres, leur gravite, leur perpetuel retour n'ont laisse 
 de choix aux esprits mcditatifs qu'entre deux suppositions tenibles : 
 ou le monde est dispute par un bon et un mauvais genie, ou il doit y 
 avoir au fond de notre histoire un cpouvantable mystere." 
 
 - " L'incarnation montre a I'homme la grandeur de sa niiscre, par 
 la grandeur du rcmcde qu'il a fallu." 
 
THE 'FENSEES' OF BLAISE FASCAL 
 
 15 
 
 counterpart to all those great and grave facts in 
 which all men have a share, which make up our 
 perplexity and our misery, and yet impel us to 
 hope. This to Pascal's mind was the decisive point. 
 He felt that the external appearances of a divine 
 sanction in the case of Christianity were so ample 
 and so strongly proved, relatively to the conditions 
 of all our knowledge, as to satisfy his reason ; and 
 his review of these converging and cumulative 
 proofs, incompletely developed as we have it, shows 
 with what originality and depth he had mastered 
 the argument. But he wanted, and he found, more 
 than this. For him, beyond the satisfaction of his 
 critical reason, the overwhelming certainty of re- 
 ligion arose out of its deep and manifold corre- 
 spondence with what he knew of himself and man; 
 with what conscience told him of the moral law, 
 and the world showed him of degradation and sin. 
 It was not only that its credentials could bear the 
 strain of inquiry ; what brought religion home to 
 his inward sense of reality was that it had the key 
 to the tormenting contradictions of nature, which 
 he knew so well. And so with the difficulties 
 attending it. The facts of experience, as well as 
 the suppositions of religion, make it part of the 
 disorder of the world that moral obstacles to truth 
 are as great as intellectual ones. If religion is 
 what it claims to be, it cannot but be a trial of 
 hearts, a test of character and affections ; it must 
 be the greatest choice that a man can make or 
 refuse, if the choice is offered him ; it must take 
 its place by right, first and foremost among the 
 great things that belong to our moral life. It is 
 
1 6 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS i 
 
 a gift to the unworthy, a gift from Him whose 
 disproportion to man is infinite, a gift of His m.ercy 
 and remedial loving- kindness to their misery and 
 despair; it is a thing which must be received on 
 its own terms, and with the knowledge that the 
 passions, the worldliness, the indolence of men, are 
 its natural rivals and antagonists. Men complain 
 that the tokens of God are indistinct and equivocal ; 
 what is this but an exaggeration of the warning 
 of the Bible itself that its God is a " God that 
 hidcth Himself" — ''Dcus absconditus'' — "hideth Him- 
 self" from idle curiosity and unwilling hearts ; a 
 warning to remember that the very starting-point 
 of the Gospel is, that man, who was made for God, 
 has lost God, and that the moral separation between 
 God and man accounts for his not finding a God 
 whom he does not care for, whom he does not love, 
 from whom he shrinks. The danger, the plain but 
 terrible certainty, that met Pascal's eye was, that 
 men, while examining the claims of religion and 
 its reasonableness, forgot the tremendous responsi- 
 bilities of its judges. He who knew so well what 
 intellect co^ild do, knew what it could not do ; and 
 he knew that the decision in such a matter as 
 religion lay not merely with the intellect alone, but 
 with the whole complex nature of man. He knew 
 the solemn truth that in the will, the affections, the 
 conscience of man lay that which determined his 
 creed, his character, his fate. To Pascal no religion 
 could mean anything, or be anything, but one such 
 as that described in the earliest hymns which 
 welcomed the Gospel ; one which " visited " men 
 like " the dayspring from on high, through the 
 
THE 'PENS Ms ' OF BLAISE PASCAL 17 
 
 tender mercy of our God, to give light to them 
 that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and 
 to guide our feet into the way of peace" — one 
 which can call forth from man the thanksgiving, 
 "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit 
 hath rejoiced in God my Saviour . . . For He that 
 is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy 
 is His name." Pascal too, looking at the longings, 
 the agony of creation, looking at the long roll of 
 God's " noble works," has his Magnificat : " There- 
 fore I stretch forth my arms to my Deliverer, who, 
 after having been foretold for four thousand years, 
 hath come at last to suffer and to die for me, at 
 the time and with all the circumstances predicted of 
 Him ; and by His grace I wait for death in peace, 
 in the hope of being united to Him for ever ; and 
 I live meanwhile rejoicing, whether in the good 
 things which it pleaseth Him to give me, ox in the 
 evils which He sends me for my good, and which 
 He has taught me to endure by His example." ^ 
 
 And now, how does such a book, a book of con- 
 flict, so suggestive of intellectual perplexities and 
 troubles, serve as a " Companion for the Devout 
 Life " ? How does it help devotion, the habits and 
 behaviour of the soul in what it has consciously to 
 do with its God ? 
 
 I. It does so by deepening the grounds of devo- 
 tion, by elevating the level of religious thought,* and 
 enlarging its horizon. Devotion, to be kept pure, 
 needs ideas as well as feelings. Its life and energy, 
 doubtless, are in the affections ; love, reverence, trust, 
 joy, hope, praise. But, as in a family, love is every- 
 
 ^ PenseeSy ed. Faugere, ii. 198. 
 
 c.s.,p. ■ C 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 thing, yet love may run in poor and ill-directed and 
 unworthy channels, and we ought to cultivate worthy 
 and fitting ways for the exercise and training of our 
 family affections, so it is in devotion. God will 
 accept the true devotion of the most slenderly- 
 furnished soul, of the narrowest mind, of the most 
 mistaken sincerity; but affection and thought, feel- 
 ing and truth, ought to have their just proportion to 
 one another. On our knees we need to remember 
 the deep abysses of judgment and mercy in which 
 the foundations of our prayers are laid. We need 
 to keep our mind in with the sense of what is real, 
 and therefore must be so serious, in the familiar 
 things which come before us in every prayer. There 
 are two dangers to which devotion is exposed : it is 
 in danger of becoming formal and uninterested, a 
 sleepy routine ; it is in danger, too, of becoming 
 artificial, fanciful, petty, of wasting itself in the un- 
 chastened flow of feelings and words, of sinking into 
 effeminacies and subtleties and delicate affectations 
 of sentiment and language. This is no fault of 
 Christian devotion ; it is the fault of the weaknesses 
 of our affections, of the impurities and alloys even of 
 our humility, our tenderness, our love. But there is 
 the danger ; and I can imagine nothing better cal- 
 culated to rebuke and correct all these " shadows of 
 religion " than Pascal's clear, downright seriousness, 
 and the startling boldness with which he faces the 
 real facts of life and religion. It is all the more 
 striking, that the book is not a finished work for the 
 public use, but a collection of fragments which he 
 never expected us to see, in which we surprise him, 
 as it were, in private, putting down his thoughts as 
 
THE ' PENS^ES' OF BLAISE PASCAL 
 
 19 
 
 they come, not for others but for himself, to test and 
 clear and ascertain his own ideas. The great themes 
 which we are accustomed to in the consecrated 
 language of the church or the oratory — man's fall 
 and redemption, his needs, his strength, his law, his 
 hope — are here the subject of an appeal to men's 
 common sense and judgment, by a layman speaking 
 to laymen. He wakens us up to see the real import 
 of our sacred oracles, by translating them into the 
 language of modern life, and that in one of its most 
 cultivated and perfect forms. And, again, the great 
 commonplaces of human life, which are the property 
 of the moralist as much as of the preacher, he teaches 
 us to interweave with our prayers. Others besides 
 him have dwelt on the strange contrarieties of human 
 nature. Montaigne has done so with all his subtle 
 observation and irony. Dryden did so with his 
 terrible strength of scorn. Pope, in memorable lines, 
 almost paraphrased Pascal.-^ But it is one thing to 
 make these tremendous antitheses the ornaments of 
 a brilliant work of art, and quite another to contem- 
 plate them before the Cross of Christ. Pascal writes 
 of them with the continuous sense of their practical 
 recoil upon himself ; he writes of them in the face of 
 God and death. A thread of the deepest devotion 
 runs through the book ; the . great reasoner, the 
 accomplished writer, was the humblest and most 
 fervent of worshippers, meditating on the agony of 
 Christ, praying for the right use of pain and sickness, 
 giving rapturous thanks for having found his peace 
 in God. Agree with Pascal or not, you cannot help 
 
 1 Cf. Essay on Man, ii. I-34, with the passage, ''Quelle chimere 
 est-ce done que rhomme," etc., ed. Faugere, ii. 103. 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 learning from him zuhat it is to think nobly and 
 adequately of the great questions of religion ; you 
 cannot help feeling with him that there are in them 
 depths hard to sound, disasters and hopes which 
 none can dare to make light of It is difficult not 
 to feel shame, in turning from these pages — so grand 
 in their largeness and precision of thought, their 
 burning and vivid convictions, their simplicity of 
 expression — to our trite and mean conceptions, our 
 contented apathy of prayer, our stilted and empty 
 pomp of phrase, our thin and childish excitement ; 
 to feel the strength with which he has seized the 
 amazing wonders both of our condition and of God's 
 remedy — " Say what you will," he writes, " there is 
 something in the Christian religion which is astonish- 
 ing " ^ — and then to come back to the superficial 
 apprehension of them, with which we are, so many of 
 us, satisfied, even in our attempts to lift soul and life 
 out of the common grooves of custom. 
 
 2. I think the book has another use. If ever 
 there were days which needed bracing and sobering 
 lessons, they are ours. They need it all the more, 
 because in that civilisation which affects us all, and 
 which in so many of its results is in such contrast 
 with the ultimate certainties of life as well as with 
 the spirit of religion, there is so much to call forth 
 admiration and gratitude, so much that is beneficent, 
 excellent, noble. But many of us it certainly 
 weakens, it certainly spoils, it certainly blinds. We 
 sweep along in constant smoothness and order ; wc 
 lose our bearings amid the intoxication of new 
 
 ^ "On a l)cau dire, il faut avoucr que la rclitjion chnjlicnnc a cjiicl- 
 quc chose d'clonnant." 
 
I 777^ 'PENSAES' OE BLAISE PASCAL 21 
 
 knowledge, and the consciousness of new powers. 
 We see but a portion of the field : out of the range 
 of our sight are the miserable and the hopeless, a 
 great army, who cannot understand the philosophy 
 of optimism or the blessings of progress. And we 
 who do, almost resent such eloquence as Pascal's ; it 
 seems to us overcharged and unnatural ; we accuse 
 him of the perverseness of painting life in colours 
 unjustly and falsely dark. His severity is not all 
 the truth. Many, happily, have found — I ought to 
 say, have been granted — a sweetness, a liberty, an 
 innocence, a tranquillity in living, or else a generous 
 and pure delight in toil, which Pascal could not 
 discover. But his severe view is a great side of the 
 truth. It is a side which has impressed some of the 
 greatest of mankind. It is an echo of his experience 
 who said, " If in this life only we have hope in 
 Christ, we are of all men most miserable." -It is the 
 tradition of the conflicts and temptations which have 
 befallen those who have thought most deeply and 
 felt most keenly, those who have wrestled most 
 stoutly with the evil of their day. If our devotional 
 life is to be the charm with which we may walk 
 safely through so much that is threatening, if our 
 prayers are not to be unmeaning ones, we need in 
 them the tonic of these stern truths. Pascal's austere 
 thoroughness and masculine plainness of speech is 
 very useful to remind us when on our knees *that 
 neither life nor religion are the easy and soft things 
 we sometimes take them to be ; that, be appearances 
 what they may, there are close at hand to us, every 
 day, contingencies too terrible to speak of; there 
 are, at any rate, in the end, dread certainties which 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 nothing can avert. With our cahn days of order and 
 peace, and our eager ones of triumph, amid the joys 
 of companionship and joint effort, the successive 
 achievements of power, the blessings of our homes, 
 it will one day be a happy thing for us to have 
 reminded ourselves of Pascal's solemn and pathetic 
 words, " The last act is always tragedy." ^ "I shall 
 die alone " — " On mourra seuH' 
 
 3. Lastly, no professed master of the spiritual life, 
 no book of practical piety, ever laid down more 
 distinctly the true method of seeking religious light. 
 It is implied in every line of Pascal that truth in 
 religion is absolutely, and from the very nature of 
 the case, dependent on moral purity and faithfulness. 
 " Revelation," as has been said, " was not given to 
 satisfy doubts, but to make us better men, and it is 
 as we become better men that it becomes light and 
 peace to our souls, even though to the end of life 
 wc shall find difficulties in it and in the world around 
 us." ^ It is the great warning of Pascal, that if men 
 would find and know God, they must begin by trying 
 to do His will ; they must act according to the 
 greatness of the occasion, and to the laws not of one 
 part only, but of their whole human nature ; they 
 must prepare their souls, habits and tempers and 
 will, as well as intellect. God, the only God worth 
 seeking by man, the God not of scientific demonstra- 
 tion or theory,^ but the living God of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, is revealed 
 only to the heart, the heart of the sincere, the 
 
 1 " Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la comcdie 
 en tout le restc." 
 
 2 Newman, Parochial Sermons, 1. Serm. 18. 
 
 3 Pensees, ed. Faugerc, ii. 11 3- 116. 
 
I THE ' PENSAES ' OF BLAISE PASCAL 23 
 
 modest, the patient, the self- governed, the loving. 
 And as children who cannot walk learn to walk by 
 walking, so we learn to feel the meaning and great- 
 ness of moral truth by acting under the sense of it, 
 by listening in detail to conscience, by being true to 
 what we hear in great things and small. No one 
 ever insisted more earnestly than Pascal that to 
 know we must obey. No one reminds us more 
 impressively of the silent power of habits as they 
 grow up, unwatched and unfelt ; how, when we are 
 trifling with self-discipline and prayer, we are laying 
 the foundations of religious perplexity and trouble, 
 clouding the inward eye, and enfeebling the moral 
 taste, our power of insight and judgment, our power 
 of keeping the sight of truth which once was 
 given us. 
 
 These are not unfitting lessons to carry with us 
 when we retire to recollect ourselves with God. 
 How great a book that is on which we have been 
 commenting, I need not say. The world is agreed 
 on the marvellous gifts which it discloses. But that 
 clearness and penetration of reason, that easy 
 strength, that height and nobleness of thought 
 which captivate our intelligence, that music of ex- 
 pression which charms our ear, are but foils to what 
 is most essential and characteristic in it. It is a 
 book which none can read, friend or enemy, without 
 having it impressed on him that that which dre^ up 
 this mighty soul to its full height was the ever- 
 present vision of a God of righteousness and love, 
 the reaching after the light of perfect goodness. 
 That is what is shown in these reflections from its 
 thoughts and feelings, broken and imperfect as they 
 
24 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS i 
 
 are. They show an enthusiasm, which even in its 
 excess is heroic, for all that had the reality of moral 
 excellence. They show one who was ready to count 
 all things but loss for the sake of that Love, that 
 Cross, which had revealed man's true perfection to 
 man — not riches only, and pleasures, and honour 
 and power, but greater things than these, the mag- 
 nificent triumphs of intelligence, the joys of the 
 discoverer, the glory and the delights of the pure 
 reason. They show one alive to all greatness and 
 all beauty, moulded for sympathy and for all delicate 
 and all tender affections, to whom all was forgotten 
 in the blaze of the glory of Christ's compassion ; to 
 whom, above all beauty, was the beauty of charity, 
 above all greatness the greatness of charity — that 
 charity which Jesus Christ first made known among 
 men. Such a book is no unsuitable " Companion 
 for the Devout Life." 
 
II 
 
 BISHOP BUTLER 1 
 
 One of the famous books of the EngHsh language is 
 Bishop Butler's Analogy ; according to the full title, 
 which is not always kept in mind — The Analogy of 
 Religion^ Natural and Revealed^ to the Constitution 
 and Course of Nature. This great book, with the 
 sermons which illustrate it, has had perhaps, directly 
 or indirectly, more to do with the shaping of the 
 strongest religious and moral thought in - England, 
 in the generation which is now passing away, than 
 the writings of any one who can be named. " Bishop 
 Butler," wrote a great living statesman, " taught me, 
 forty-five years ago, to suspend my judgment on 
 things I knew I did not understand. Even with 
 his aid I may often have been wrong ; without him 
 I think I should never have been right. And oh ! 
 that this age knew the treasure it possesses in him, 
 and neglects." 2 But the Analogy passes for a hard 
 book to ordinary readers. It passes for iDcing 
 difficult, not merely for the abstruse character of its 
 arguments, but also for its rugged and obscure style. 
 
 1 A Lecture delivered in Salisbury Cathedral during Advent i88o. 
 
 2 The Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone to Mr. James Knovvles, 9th Novem- 
 ber 1873, in a letter printed in the Spectator of 13th December 1873. 
 
26 PASCAL AND OTHER S£A'A/ONS ii 
 
 The obscurity of its style has, I think, been exagger- 
 ated : the writing may be said to be ungraceful, 
 careless, unattractive ; but it is not often that there 
 can be any doubt what the words mean, and what 
 the writer intends to say, though the thing that he 
 means to say may give some trouble to think about. 
 The difficulty of the argument generally is another 
 matter. He means it to be taken and considered as 
 a whole ; and as a whole it is a long, connected, and 
 carefully jointed piece of work, in which one part 
 depends upon and tells on another, and one part has 
 to be kept in mind while considering another ; and 
 all the parts, and their relations to one another, have 
 to be remembered when judging of the effect as a 
 whole. And this, of course, is difficult. It is the 
 difficulty of keeping together, as in a vice or frame, 
 and in their proper order, all the pieces of an 
 intricate pattern ; it is the difficulty of following out 
 the parts, and play, and working, of a complicated 
 machine like a steam-engine ; it is the difficulty of 
 mastering a mathematical demonstration, or a legal 
 argument ; it is the difficulty of thinking out, and 
 keeping before the mind's eye, the effects of moves 
 of chess, or of cards at whist. It requires close 
 attention, and clear head, and a good memory. 
 Without these, no doubt, the Analogy is a difficult 
 book, though the main difficulty, after all, resolves 
 itself into the necessity of reading with serious 
 purpose and care, which is always, to many persons, 
 a difficult thing. But even if a person cannot 
 thoroughly master the argument, its tone and spirit, 
 and manner of looking at things, is so remarkable, so 
 high, so original, so pure, and calmly earnest, that 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 27 
 
 great interest may be taken in it, and an infinite 
 amount of good may be learned from the book, even 
 by those who are baffled by difficult argument. 
 
 I do not intend to go into the argument of the 
 book, into the special reasonings by which Bishop 
 Butler shows how great and how solid a thing 
 religion is, and by which he meets the difficulties 
 and objections which are raised against it. I only 
 wish to try and illustrate the tone and spirit which 
 are characteristic of his writing. Christianity may 
 be written about or may be defended in many 
 different ways, and with very different tempers and 
 even objects. There is as much to be learned from 
 Bishop Butler's tone and manner as there is from 
 the substance of his reasonings. I will only remind 
 you of the main idea on which his whole argument 
 is founded. It is the idea of the unity of religion, 
 and all that we know of the system of the world, 
 and what we call nature ; the idea that in its great 
 features and appearances, in its apparent rules and 
 methods, in its wonderfulness and unexpectedness, 
 its perplexities, its difficulties, its seeming breaks 
 and imperfections, religion, before and after the 
 Gospel, in that side which it presents to us in this 
 world, is all of a piece with what we find in this 
 world — with the wonderful though familiar scene 
 and system of fact, which is the only thing of which 
 we yet have experience, or of which we can* form 
 reasonable conceptions ; that the religion given us 
 in the Bible, alike in what it has done and does, and 
 in what it does not'i^o, follows, often to our surprise, 
 the same lines, which are not matters of conjecture 
 or inference but of certain fact, known and felt of all 
 
28 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ii 
 
 men in the experience of life. Religion is not, per- 
 haps, what we might expect, if we were constructing 
 an Utopian system out of our own imagination. 
 Religion is what we might be quite prepared for, if 
 we seriously considered what we see and know of the 
 world into which we are come, and in which we have 
 our lot. We know how easy but how idle a thing it 
 is to imagine a world made without the anomalies, 
 the troubles, the insoluble mysteries, which nothing 
 can here get rid of in nature and human life. If re- 
 ligion comes to us with apparent contradictions, and 
 seeming to do only half its work, giving us light 
 but only to a certain point, relieving our pains and 
 remedying our sin, but not completely, showing us 
 something of the next world, but little in comparison 
 with what it conceals, answering some of our 
 questions and fulfilling some of our longings, but 
 leaving much unsatisfied — this is only what we have 
 been familiar with from our birth, in the world 
 which, for all that, we believe was given us to dwell 
 in by God who is just and wise, and who, in the 
 mercies of grace and redemption, carries on the 
 same system and acts on the same principles as 
 those to which we are accustomed in our daily 
 contact with the laws and realities of nature. This 
 is what Butler means by the Analogy of Religion, 
 Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and 
 Course of Nature. This is his great idea, the idea 
 which possesses him, and governs all his thoughts. 
 I will not pursue this further, but will go on to notice 
 some of the special features of his way of writing. 
 
 I. The first thing that I should say is how real 
 he is. Don't think this a matter of course, or an 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 29 
 
 easy matter for a writer, especially a writer on diffi- 
 cult subjects. A writer is not always able to master 
 his own thoughts, and say what he wants to say ; 
 and he is tempted to say something which comes 
 next to it or looks like it, but is not the thing itself. 
 "Think what you mean to say, and say it,"^ is a very 
 good rule, but an easier one to praise than to follow. 
 But at whatever cost of clumsiness or awkwardness, 
 Butler always says the thing that he means to say — 
 that thing, and not another. " Everything is what 
 it is, and not another thing,"^ is an odd, characteristic 
 axiom of his, which in various forms he is very fond 
 of " Things and actions are what they are, and 
 the consequences of them will be what they will be ; 
 why then should we desire to be deceived?"^ 
 " For after all, that which is true must be ad- 
 mitted, though it should show us the shortness of 
 our faculties." "^ " As we cannot remove from this 
 earth, or change our general business on it, so neither 
 can we alter our real nature. Therefore no exercise 
 of the mind can be recommended, but only the 
 exercise of those faculties you are conscious of"^ 
 And therefore he lays it down as the first law of a 
 writer that he is " not to form or accommodate, but 
 to state things as he finds them."*^ And this 
 honesty and reality of writing is the outward vesture 
 and form of the mind within, severely trained to the 
 strictest truth and honesty of thinking. Open-^eyed, 
 cautious, watchful against the tricks and idols of his 
 own thoughts, the things that come before him he 
 
 1 "Look in thine heart, and write": Sir P. Sidney, Lloyd's Life^ 
 p. 105. 2 Butler's Works, Ed. 1836, ii. Pref. xxiii. 
 
 3 ii. 100. ** i. 205. ^ ii. 205. " ii. Pref. v. 
 
30 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ii 
 
 tries to see as they are — to see them, not as they 
 are talked about, or appraised by temporary or acci- 
 dental opinion, but in their solid, plain simplicity ; 
 to see them, not as they are shaped by the action of 
 the imagination, but according to the exact measure 
 of our knowledge and evidence, whether more or less 
 limited ; to see the truth, not one-sided and ex- 
 aggerated, but balanced and completed by all that 
 bears on it ; not trusting itself to precarious and 
 arbitrary a priori reasonings, but resting on founda- 
 tions, however homely and unambitious, of facts 
 within our reach. We feel in every page and every 
 word the law that writer and thinker has imposed 
 on himself, not only to say nothing for show or 
 effect, but to say nothing that he has not done his 
 best to make clear to himself, nothing that goes a 
 shade beyond what he feels and thinks ; he is never 
 tempted to sacrifice exactness to a flourish or an 
 epigram. A qualm comes over the ordinary writer 
 as he reads Butler, when he thinks how often heat 
 and prejudice, or lazy fear of trouble, or the supposed 
 necessities of a cause, or conscious incapacity for 
 thinking out thoroughly a difficult subject, have led 
 him to say something different from what he felt 
 authorised to say by his own clear perceptions, and 
 to veil his deficiencies by fine words, by slurring 
 over or exaggerating. If only as a lesson in truth — 
 truth in thought and expression — Butler is worth 
 studying. He is a writer who, if there is any reason 
 for it, always understates his case ; and he is a writer, 
 too, from whom we learn the power and force, in an 
 .argument, of understatement, the suggestion which it 
 carries with it both of truthfulness and care, of 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 31 
 
 strength in reserve. He never wastes a word in fine 
 writing, but he never spares one when it would make 
 him more inteUigible. His writing bears the impress 
 of that severe economy and thriftiness of material 
 which comes from a man having taken great trouble 
 to arrange and prepare his work. With him, with 
 all his abounding wealth of ideas, of penetrating and 
 widely -travelled thought, the question about any 
 particular idea or phrase is, not, as it is with so 
 many of us, whether it is clever, or telling, or 
 brilliant, or a favourite one, but, first and foremost of 
 all, whether it is true, and then, whether it is in place. 
 And so you feel in reading him that he is not writing 
 an essay, or weaving an ingenious and original argu- 
 ment, or constructing a theory on paper, but that he 
 is " in touch," as soldiers call it, in actual contact with 
 the solid realities of our state, our life and our fate. 
 
 2. Hence that singular seriousness which is so 
 remarkable a characteristic of his books. ' He is as 
 serious, it has been said, " as a gamester " ; he is as 
 serious as a physician, with life and death hanging on 
 the clearness of his thoughts and the courage of his re- 
 solve; as serious as a general with a terrible and evenly- 
 balanced battle on his hands. Such people are im- 
 patient of talk, and ornament, and literary cleverness ; 
 and so is he. With him the questions which were 
 bandied about among ingenious and witty reasoners, 
 about the truth and evidences of religion, were no 
 questions of words or speculation, no mere interesting 
 philosophical or historical problems, but of far more 
 immediate and more tremendous earnest than any- 
 thing else in the world could be. Coming to him 
 from ordinary, even religious, writing on the argu- 
 
32 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ii 
 
 mcnts for Christianity, the objections to it, and the 
 answers to them, is something like the difference 
 when, after having read in books and newspapers of 
 trials in courts of justice, we actually find ourselves 
 present at a real trial, with living men before us in 
 deep earnest, and with great issues, perhaps life and 
 death, depending on the debate. There is a breadth, 
 a quiet business-like plainness about his way of 
 dealing with questions, a recognition of their diffi- 
 culty as well as a sense of their seriousness, which 
 produces an entirely different effect from mere 
 subtlety, eloquence, passion, or even strength of 
 thought. Calm and self-contained as he is, he 
 nevertheless is " the man whose eyes are open," 
 who walks among all these things habitually 
 all day long, as if he were looking at them from 
 " the certainties of death," with all their issues and 
 endless possibilities ; he loses patience, not because 
 men disbelieve, or doubt, or hesitate — he has a strange 
 forbearance for them if they are serious — but because 
 they will not open their eyes to see what is certainly 
 at their doors — because they trifle and play with 
 questions, on the face of them so eventful and so 
 awful, which cannot be put off, and on which men 
 must take their side. 
 
 Mr. Pitt is reported to have said of the Analogy, 
 that it was a book which opened as many questions 
 and raised as many doubts as it solved. Of course 
 it does. No one can expect to sound the " great 
 deeps" of God's judgments, the mysteries of His 
 Being and Government, without meeting difficulties 
 which defy human understanding. This would be 
 true of any discussion, going deeply and sincerely 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 33 
 
 into a subject in which our only possible knowledge 
 can be but " in part," seeing " through a glass darkly." 
 But Butler's object is not to remove all doubts and 
 difficulties, which in such a matter as religion, with 
 light and faculties like ours, is obviously impossible ; 
 but to put doubts and difficulties in their proper place 
 and proportion to what we do see and know, in a 
 practical scheme of life and truth, and in a practical 
 choice between God and the rejection of Him. 
 
 As men are haunted by a permanent sense of the 
 vice of the world, or its disease, or its pain, he was 
 haunted by a sense of the flippant irreligion of his 
 age. The absurdity of a shallowness which affected 
 to see nothing in the claims of Christianity, or to 
 give it up as exploded, was a torment to his love of 
 reasonableness. The insolence which dared to mock 
 at so solid and grave a thing irritated and perplexed 
 him. It weighed on him as if it was a kind of 
 public insanity such as is spoken of in Dean 'Tucker's 
 anecdote of a conversation with him, when he 
 speculated on the question whether whole com- 
 munities might not like individuals go mad.-^ 
 
 " Reflections of this kind," he says, after showing 
 how terribly, even if unequally, vice is sure to be 
 punished in the natural course of things, " are not with- 
 out their terrors to serious persons, the most free from 
 enthusiasm, and of the greatest strength of mind ; 
 but it is fit things be stated and considered as they 
 really are. And there is in the present age a certain 
 fearlessness with regard to what may be hereafter 
 
 1 Bartlett's Memoirs of Bishop Btcfler, p. 93. Cf. "There really 
 should be lunatic asylums for nations as well as for individuals." 
 Sydney Smith, Letters on Afiterican Debts, 1844. 
 
 C.S.,P. D 
 
34 
 
 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 under the government of God, which nothing but an 
 universally acknowledged demonstration on the side 
 of atheism can justify ; and which makes it quite 
 necessary that men be reminded, and, if possible, 
 made to feel, that there is no sort of ground for being 
 thus presumptuous, even upon the most sceptical 
 principles." ^ You notice the continual under-state- 
 ment, and the undercurrent of suppressed irony that 
 runs through the passage. But calm as he is in 
 appearance, you are made aware what a store of 
 keen feelings lies hid under this grave demeanour ; 
 and sometimes it is provoked and bursts forth. 
 " It is indeed a matter of great patience to reason- 
 able men, to find people arguing in this manner ; 
 objecting against the credibility of such particular 
 things revealed in Scripture, that they do not see the 
 necessity or expediency of them. . . . The presump- 
 tion of this kind of objections seems almost lost in the 
 folly of them. And the folly of them is yet greater 
 when they are urged, as usually they are, against 
 things in Christianity analogous or like to those 
 natural dispensations of Providence which are matter 
 of experience. Let reason be kept to ; and if any 
 part of the Scripture account of the redemption of the 
 world by Christ can be shown to be really contrary 
 to it, let the Scripture, in the name of God, be given 
 up ; but let not such poor creatures as wc go on 
 objecting against an infinite scheme, that we do not 
 see the necessity or usefulness of all its parts, and 
 call this reasoning ; and, which still farther heightens 
 the absurdity in the present case, parts which wc 
 are not actively concerned in." ^ 
 
 ' i. 53- '"^ "• 255. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 35 
 
 3. Corresponding to this grasp and feeling of 
 reality, is Butler's ever-present sense of the inexpress- 
 ible greatness of the universe where we are, of its 
 Maker, and Master, and Ruler, of the present reality 
 and awfulness of its government and laws, of the un- 
 explored, unapproachable, unimagined provinces and 
 distant spaces of that infinite empire, of the wonders 
 and mysteries which compass us about, which are in 
 every breath we draw and every word we speak. 
 It is, of course, obvious to any one, the moment he 
 thinks at all, that the most common things are full 
 of what is inexplicable, and far more marvellous 
 than are the marvellous things which modern science 
 has shown us. — " How or why came I here ? 
 What is life ? What is death ? How does life 
 begin ? Why does it end ? How am I made, soul 
 and body, waking and sleeping? What is it that I 
 am really looking at when I look at the stars above, 
 or the flowers below, or at the invisible things which 
 only the microscope reveals ? " — But everybody does 
 not think of these things, or thinks and forgets. 
 But Butler was always and habitually thinking of 
 them. That was the feature of his mind : that he 
 never lost hold on these thoughts, never let custom 
 or other things close his eyes or raise a mist between 
 him and them. It was his power ^ the greatest power 
 perhaps that he had, that what his reason told him 
 was certain and true, he was able continually t9 see, 
 and feel, and imagine, to be true and real. He had 
 the power of faith. And in a measure he makes 
 his readers feel it, \i. they have any serious attention 
 in them. The truth is that when those familiar 
 but most wonderful and most solemn things which 
 
36 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMOiYS u 
 
 belong to our everyday existence and conduct come 
 to be really seen and felt by an open-eyed observer, 
 who can write them down literally as they literally 
 are, the effect is one of novelty and surprise. There 
 are passages in Butler, when we read between the 
 lines of his words, that at first sight look so dry 
 and commonplace, which seem to open a glimpse of 
 the very foundations of the world and nature. 
 
 And with this sense of the greatness of God, and 
 the daily wonders of His government; this conscious- 
 ness kept up without effort, or affectation, or break, 
 of His presence and eye ; this vivid apprehension of 
 what must be the thoughts about right and wrong 
 " in a mind which sees things as they really are," ^ — 
 there is joined an equally characteristic and equally 
 permanent sense of how very little we can really 
 know of all the vast world about us, the plan on 
 which it is administered, the meaning of its appear- 
 ances ; how very narrow and confined our knowledge 
 is even of ourselves, and much more of what is outside 
 of us. We hear a great deal in these days of a 
 Philosophy of Ignorance, which says that we know 
 so little, we are so cut off from all knowledge of the 
 unseen world, we get into such puzzles about under- 
 standing even right and wrong, that it is no use to 
 try and know anything but what we can see and 
 handle, and submit to experiment, and therefore we 
 may live without God in the world. Butler, if he 
 had lived, would have flamed into wrath and sarcasm 
 against such affectation or perverseness of ignorance; 
 against men who turn away their eyes from what 
 the world is full of, and then complain that they 
 
 1 ii. 226. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 37 
 
 cannot see. Any pretence was his abhorrence, and 
 certainly he would not have spared the pretence of 
 blindness, the pretended impossibility of seeing any 
 marks of God. 
 
 But when we have carried our knowledge as far 
 as we can go, and we can carry it relatively very far, 
 then begins the vast immeasurable domain of what 
 we do not, of what we cminot know, while we are 
 here. Compared with this our knowledge is indeed 
 — not total ignorance, but the knowledge, as he 
 says, of children. Its very imperfection should make 
 it infinitely precious to us ; but it should make us 
 modest, cautious, slow to rash assertion and bold 
 denial. It should make us measure our words when 
 we talk of God and His ways, of what He ought to 
 do, and what He must do. If we only realise how 
 little we can see into His counsels, we shall always 
 feel that we are on very dangerous ground in such 
 talking. " There is, as I may speak, such an expense 
 of power, and wisdom, and goodness in the formation 
 and government of the world, as is too much for us 
 to take in or comprehend. Power, and wisdom, and 
 goodness are manifest to us in all those works of 
 God which come within our view ; but there are 
 likewise infinite stores of each poured forth through- 
 out the immensity of the creation ; no part of which 
 can be thoroughly understood without taking in its 
 reference and respect to the whole ; and this is Vhat 
 we have not faculties for." " This surely should 
 convince us that we are much less competent judges 
 of the very small part which comes under our notice 
 in this world than we are apt to imagine. ' No 
 heart can think on these things worthily: and who is 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 able to conceive His way? It is a tempest which no 
 man can see ; for the most part of His works are 
 hid. Who can declare the works of His justice? 
 for His covenant is afar off, and the trial of ail 
 things is in the end ' ; i.e. the dealings of God 
 with the children of men are not yet completed, 
 and cannot be judged of by that part which is 
 before us." ^ 
 
 4. In Butler we find one of the most remarkable 
 instances of what a modern writer "" has called " the 
 enthusiasm which lies under the language of reserve." 
 Reserved he is, as every one knows. But under the 
 mask of that calm, cold, dry reserve of language, 
 ever on guard against show or excess, ever warning 
 us against what he calls the " deluding and forward " 
 faculty of imagination, lies the deep, steadily burning 
 fire of enthusiastic interest in his great subject and 
 cause. His reserve is prosaic ; but his deepest con- 
 viction is that only in the affections, purified and 
 exalted, lies the happiness of man. He will not be 
 carried away by appearances. To the brilliant 
 declamations with which we are so familiar, on the 
 wondrous conquests of science, he coldly says, with 
 a touch of his peculiar irony, " knowledge is not our 
 proper happiness. Whoever will in the least attend 
 to the thing, will see that it is the gaining not the 
 having it which is the entertainment of the mind. 
 Indeed, if the proper happiness of man consisted in 
 knowledge considered as a possession or treasure, 
 men who are possessed of the largest share would 
 have a very ill time of it : as they would be in- 
 finitely more sensible than others of their poverty 
 
 1 ii. 226, 227. 2 yjr Henry Taylor. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 39 
 
 in this respect. . . . Men of deep research and 
 curious inquiry should just be put in mind not to 
 mistake what they are doing. If their discoveries 
 serve the cause of virtue and rehgion ... or if they 
 tend to render life less unhappy, and promote its 
 satisfactions, then they are most usefully employed : 
 but bringing things to light, alone and of itself, is of 
 no manner of use, any otherwise than as an entertain- 
 ment and diversion. Neither is this at all amiss if it 
 does not take up the time which should be employed 
 in better work." ^ 
 
 His strict habitual attention to justice and pro- 
 portion is curiously shown in the way in which he 
 urges people who will not be good, to be at least 
 as little bad, to do at least as little evil, as they can. 
 " Since the generality will not part with their vices, it 
 were greatly to be wished they would bethink them- 
 selves, and do what good they are able, so far only as 
 is consistent with them. A vicious rich man cannot 
 pass through life without doing an incredible deal of 
 mischief, were it only by his example and influence. 
 . . . Yet still, the fewer of his obligations he neglects, 
 and the less mischief he does, the less share of the 
 vices and miseries of his inferiors will lie at his door, 
 the less will be his guilt and punishment." ^ Without 
 forgetting the formidable aspect of the doctrine of 
 justice — " if there be at all any measures of pro- 
 portion, any sort of regularity and order in » the 
 administration of things, it is self-evident that ' unto 
 whomsoever much is given of him shall much be 
 required,'"^ — he calmly contemplates justice at the 
 low end of the scale as well as at the high one, and 
 
 1 ii. 233. 2 ii. 269. 3 ii_ 270. 
 
40 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ii 
 
 exhorts men who are rich to employ their wealth in 
 doing good, that so they " may expect the most 
 favourable judgment which their case will admit of 
 at the last day, upon the general, repeated maxim of 
 the Gospel, that we shall then be treated ourselves as 
 we now treat others." ^ He is deeply impressed with 
 the poorness of everything here : the poorness of 
 human life, the poorness of our knowledge, the poor- 
 ness of our acquaintance even with religion, the poor- 
 ness and unsatisfactoriness of all ways possible to us of 
 examining and proving it. All is " poor " which man 
 has or can do in any sphere. " Indeed, the epithet 
 poor may be applied, I fear, as properly to great part 
 or the whole of human life, as it is to the things 
 mentioned in the objection. Is it not a poor thing 
 for a physician to have so little knowledge in the 
 cure of diseases as even the most eminent have ? to 
 act upon conjecture and guess where the life of 
 man is concerned ? Undoubtedly it is ; but not in 
 comparison of having no skill at all in that useful 
 art, and being obliged to act wholly in the dark." ^ 
 
 This is the gist of his teaching. Human life is 
 indeed in itself a poor thing, but it is a practical 
 thing, because it is a part of something, the greatness 
 of which no thought can fathom and no words 
 express. In his narrow, limited condition — how 
 narrow, how strange, how limited, it is almost 
 impossible to overstate — he yet is under the govern- 
 ment of God. He is a real part of that infinite, 
 incomprehensible kingdom. Its mystery is reflected 
 on his life and fate. He has part in its hopes. He 
 really touches it at many points though he is utterly 
 1 ii. 360. '-^ i. 333- 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 41 
 
 unable to comprehend it. As these points in- 
 cidentally touch Butler's argument, they strike out 
 from its hard texture a flash of feeling. His 
 language takes unconsciously a colour of poetry. 
 Religion is a matter for " awful solicitude," for it is 
 that on which " man's whole interest and being, and 
 the fate of nature depends." ^ Physically, " the earth 
 our habitation has the appearances of being a ruin";^ 
 morally and politically he looks on the " infinite 
 disorders of the world ";^ he sees "a scene of dis- 
 traction." Revelation, when it touches its greatest 
 confines, " cannot be supposed to give any account of 
 this wild scene for its own sake." ^ What a picture, 
 with all its various suggestions, is presented in that 
 idea, to which he reverts more than once, of children, 
 and of the poor, being strangers in a world in the 
 possession of others ; " the poor who are settled 
 here, are in a manner strangers to the people among 
 whom they live " : ^ children find " grown people 
 settled here in a world where they themselves are 
 strangers."*^ These touches of imagination and 
 feeling come in the midst of austere argument or 
 statement ; they come naturally and unforced ; they 
 give us a momentary glimpse, the more interesting 
 because rare, into the depths of a great mind. 
 
 Butler, intellectually, compared with other dis- 
 tinguished philosophical divines, may be said to 
 have thrown himself systematically, throughout the 
 various parts of his argument, as contrasted with 
 more subtle or learned reasonings, on common 
 sense — on that practical and homely sense of truth 
 1 i. 268. 2 i. 244. 3 i. 57. 
 
 M. 311. 5 ii. 344. 6 ii. 304. 
 
42 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ii 
 
 and reality, gained by continued and varied dealing 
 with the affairs of Hfe. But then it is the common 
 sense of a man who not only knows, but feels, as he 
 says, " that what is to come will be present ; that 
 things are not less real for their not being the objects 
 of sense." ^ To such common sense the world is very 
 different from what it is to ordinary people. It is 
 only common sense, z/ Christianity is what it claims 
 to be, that a man should bow in awe and adoration, 
 and be thrilled with exulting hope. It is only com- 
 mon sense, if Christ be risen, that St, Paul should 
 count all things but loss for Him, and live and die 
 for Him. And no enthusiasm of love and joy could 
 be too great for the soberest common sense, if all 
 that we believe of God and our interest in Him is 
 indeed real : not words or ideas, but solid fact. 
 And to Butler it is so. If the love of God, he says, 
 " be indeed at all a subject, it is one of the utmost 
 importance.""-^ In that age of cold decorum in the 
 pulpit, himself the example and champion of calm 
 reason, he was deterred by no fashionable sneers at 
 fanatics and enthusiasts from anticipating, before 
 Wesley, all that was deepest and truest in the 
 Methodist appeal to the heart. He threw back a 
 sarcasm on the fashionable preaching of his age, 
 which had its sting in truth. " We are got," he 
 says, " into the contrary extreme to enthusiasm 
 under the notion of a reasonable religion ; so very 
 reasonable as to have nothing to do with the heart 
 and affections, if these words signify anything but 
 the faculty by which we discern speculative truth." ^ 
 When he comes to speak of this side of religion, in 
 ^ i. 274. 2 ii^ jq5^ 3 ii, ig4_ 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 43 
 
 his sermons on the Love of God, he is not afraid of 
 soaring as high as the loftiest flights of contemplative 
 devotion. Through his restrained and measured 
 diction, restrained and measured both from temper 
 and habit, and from the awfulness of the subject, 
 shines the intense faith of adoring contemplation ; 
 you see a soul to which is present that vision of 
 God's goodness and beauty, which transported St. 
 Theresa, St. Francis, and the poet of the Paradiso. 
 " Consider then : when we shall have put off this 
 mortal body, when we shall be divested of sensual 
 appetites, and those possessions which are now the 
 means of gratification shall be of no avail ; when 
 this restless scene of business and vain plea- 
 sures, which now diverts us from ourselves, shall 
 be all over, — we, our proper self, shall still remain ; 
 we shall still continue the same creatures we are, 
 with wants to be supplied, and capacities of happi- 
 ness. We must have faculties of perception, though 
 not sensitive ones, and pleasure or uneasiness from 
 our perceptions, as now we have. . . . 
 
 " Recall what was before observed concerning the 
 affection to moral characters : which, in how low a 
 degree soever, yet is plainly natural to man, and 
 the most excellent part of his nature : suppose this 
 improved, as it may be improved, to any degree 
 soever, in the spirits of just men made perfect ; and 
 then suppose that they had a real view of that right- 
 eousness which is an everlasting righteousness ; of the 
 conformity of the Divine Will to the law of truth, in 
 which the moral attributes of God consist ; of that 
 goodness in the Sovereign Mind, which gave birth to 
 the universe ; add, what will be true of all good men 
 
44 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ii 
 
 hereafter, a consciousness of having an interest in 
 what they are contemplating ; suppose them able to 
 say, 'this God is our God for ever and ever': would 
 they be any longer to seek for what was their chief 
 happiness, their final good ? Could the utmost 
 stretch of their capacities look further ? Would not 
 infinite, perfect goodness be their very end, the last 
 end and object of their affections, beyond which they 
 could neither have nor desire ; beyond which they 
 could not form a wish or thought ? 
 
 " Consider wherein that presence of a friend 
 consists, which has often so strong an effect as 
 wholly to possess the mind, and entirely suspend all 
 other affections and regards ; and which itself affords 
 the highest satisfaction and enjoyment. He is 
 within reach of the senses. Now, as our capacities 
 of perception improve, we shall have, perhaps by 
 some faculty entirely new, a perception of God's 
 presence with us in a nearer and stricter way ; since 
 it is certain He is more intimately present with us 
 than anything else can be. . . . What then will be 
 the joy of heart which His presence, and the light of 
 His countenance, who is the Life of the universe, 
 will inspire good men with, when they shall have a 
 sensation that He is the Sustainer of their being, 
 that they exist in Him ; when they shall feel His 
 influence to cheer and enliven and support their frame, 
 in a manner of which we have now no conception? 
 He will be in a literal sense their strength and their 
 portion for ever. 
 
 " When we speak of things so much above our 
 comprehension as the employment and happiness of 
 a future state, doubtless it behoves us to speak 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 45 
 
 with all modesty and distrust of ourselves. But 
 the Scripture represents the happiness of that state 
 under the notion of ' seeing God,' ' seeing Him as 
 He is/ * knowing as we are known,' and ' seeing 
 face to face.' These words are not general or un- 
 determined, but express a particular, determinate 
 happiness. And I will be bold to say that nothing 
 can account for, or come up to, these expressions, 
 but only this — that God Himself will be an object 
 to our faculties, that He Himself will be our happi- 
 ness ; as distinguished from the enjoyments of the 
 present state, which seem to arise, not immediately 
 from Him, but from the objects He has adapted 
 to give us delight. Let us then suppose a person 
 tired with care and sorrow, and the repetition of 
 vain delights which fill up the round of life. . . . 
 Suppose him to feel that deficiency of human nature 
 before taken notice of, and to be convinced that 
 God alone was the adequate supply to it. What 
 could be more applicable to a good man in this 
 state of mind, or better express his present wants 
 and distant hopes, his passage through this world 
 as a progress towards a state of perfection, than 
 the following passages in the devotions of the Royal 
 Prophet? They are plainly in a higher and more 
 proper sense applicable to this than they could be 
 to anything else. ' I have seen an end of all 
 perfection.' — ' Whom have I in heaven but Thee, ^nd 
 there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison 
 of Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God 
 is the strength of my heart, and my portion for 
 ever.' — ' Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, 
 so longeth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul 
 
46 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ii 
 
 is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God ; 
 when shall I come to appear before Him ? ' — * How 
 excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God ; and the 
 children of men shall put their trust under the 
 shadow of Thy wings. They shall be satisfied with 
 the plenteousness of Thy house ; and Thou shalt 
 give them drink of Thy pleasures, as out of the 
 river. For with Thee is the well of life, and in Thy 
 light shall we see light.' . . . ' Blessed is the people, 
 O Lord, that can rejoice in Thee : they shall walk 
 in the light of Thy countenance. . . . For Thou art 
 the glory of their strength, and in Thy loving-kind- 
 ness they shall be exalted.' — ' As for me, I will 
 behold Thy presence in righteousness ; and when I 
 awake up after Thy likeness I shall be satisfied with 
 it' — ' Thou shalt show me the path of life ; in Thy 
 presence is the fulness of joy ; and at Thy right 
 hand there is pleasure for evermore.' " ^ 
 
 What is there to tell of Bishop Butler's life? 
 Not much. A meagre biographical sketch, a few 
 fragments of letters, perhaps of sermons, a few 
 signatures in parish books in a Berkshire parish, and 
 at Stanhope in Northern Weardale, where he wrote 
 the Analogy, a few faded traditions, a few doubtful 
 anecdotes, a few portraits, a few articles of domestic 
 use, are all that remain, all that the interest of 
 admirers have been able to collect. Born at 
 Wantage, at school among dissenters at Tewkesbury, 
 suddenly leaving them to go into Orders, at college at 
 Oriel, preaching at the Roll's Chapel, buried in retire- 
 ment at Stanhope, discussing metaphysics in Queen 
 Caroline's closet — he at last emerges into public office. 
 
 ' ii. 216-222. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 47 
 
 Bristol, St Paul's, Hampstead, Auckland Castle, 
 Bristol Hot Wells, Bath, connect themselves with 
 his later years. But he left scarcely a trace any- 
 where. They tell at Stanhope that he was an 
 impetuous and fast rider ; they tell at Bristol that 
 he used to walk late into the night in his garden 
 discussing deep matters with his chaplain. At St. 
 Paul's, where he was Dean for ten years, no scrap 
 of his handwriting remains in the cathedral books. 
 They have a silver jug of his at Oriel, and a silver 
 coffee-pot at Auckland Castle. The house and 
 church at Stanhope have been rebuilt. The 
 favourite retreat at Hampstead, once the house of 
 Sir Harry Vane, has been modernised, and the 
 painted glass with which it was ornamented dis- 
 persed. The palace at Bristol where he lived 
 was burnt by the mob in the great riots in 183 1, 
 and remains in ruins. Perhaps a wall, or more 
 doubtfully, some windows and enclosures at 
 Auckland, were his work. When he was dying, 
 he ordered all . his sermons, letters, and papers 
 to be burnt. No one knows what became of 
 most of his books ; yet he must have had a 
 library, for he was a scholar and a reader, as 
 well as a thinker. 
 
 But he passes across the . scene of history a 
 spiritual, impersonal influence, and like the author 
 of the Imitation of Christ the man is lost in » his 
 mind and writings, and in those deep and solemn 
 thoughts, the clear, calm utterance of which it was 
 given him to unfold to us. 
 
 The fragments, such as they are, which show him 
 in private intercourse, show him such as we should 
 
48 PASCAL AND OTHER SERJl/OA'S ii 
 
 expect, very real and measured in his views of life, 
 temperate and serious in his views of duty. They 
 show him a man of " plain living and high thinking." 
 He was one who, as is shown in his remarkable 
 sermons on Self-Deceit and the Character of Balaam, 
 was accustomed to take his own measure. He was 
 a man of business, and clear-headed in affairs, who 
 had meditated with his usual carefulness and breadth 
 of thought on riches and power ; and he was of a 
 princely spirit in the use of them. His first act on 
 going to Durham was to subscribe ;^400 a year to 
 the Newcastle Infirmary. It is said that he refused 
 the Primacy. He certainly refused to take Durham 
 under conditions which would have reduced the 
 ancient splendour of the see. " Increase of fortune," 
 he writes to a friend who congratulated him on his 
 preferment to Durham, " is insignificant to one who 
 thought he had enough before ; and I foresee many 
 difficulties in the station I am coming into, and no 
 advantage worth thinking of, except some greater 
 power of being serviceable to others ; and whether 
 this be an advantage depends on the use one shall 
 make of it ; I pray God it may be a good one. It 
 would be a melancholy thing in the close of life, to 
 have no reflections to entertain oneself with, but 
 that one had spent the revenues of the bishoprick of 
 Durham in a sumptuous course of living, and enriched 
 one's friends with the promotions of it, instead of 
 having really set oneself to do good, and promote 
 worthy men ; yet this right use of fortune and 
 power is more difficult than the generality of even 
 good people think, and requires both a guard upon 
 oneself, and a strength of mind to withstand solicita- 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 49 
 
 tions greater — I wish I may not find it — than I am 
 master of." ^ 
 
 There is the same measuring of things as they 
 are, the same undazzled looking forward to the 
 future as it is to be, in a letter in which, after de- 
 scribing the interest and beauty of his new home at 
 Auckland, and his plans for improving it, he goes 
 on : — " I seem to have laid out a very long life for 
 myself; yet, in reality, everything I see puts me in 
 mind of the shortness and uncertainty of it : the 
 arms and inscriptions of my predecessors — what 
 they did and what they neglected, and (from acci- 
 dental circumstances) the very place itself,^ and the 
 rooms I walk through and sit in. And when I 
 consider, in one view, the many things of the kind I 
 have just mentioned, which I have upon my hands, I 
 feel the burlesque of being employed in this manner 
 at my time of life. But in another view, and taking 
 in all circumstances, these things, as trifling as they 
 may appear, no less than things of greater importance, 
 seem to be put upon me to do, or at least to begin ; 
 whether I am to live to complete any or all of them 
 is not my concern." ^ 
 
 One more glimpse we have of him ; it is in a 
 series of letters, preserved at Lambeth, describing 
 his last days, written by his chaplain to Archbishop 
 Seeker, his schoolfellow and friend. They are really 
 touching, for they tell simply, from day to day, a 
 story of great weakness and depression, in a strong 
 and patient soul, borne with resignation and devout 
 
 1 Bartlett's Memoirs of Bishop Butler, p. 116.^ 
 
 2 He had, no doubt, been there from Stanhope in Bishop Talbot's 
 time. 
 
 2 Fragment of a letter to the Duchess of Somerset (i75i)' 
 C.S.,P. E 
 
50 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ii 
 
 composure, and of the deep and anxious affection of 
 his friends. But they show him only silent, lying in 
 hopeless but unmurmuring feebleness of body. They 
 preserve no deathbed sayings, or deathbed traits, 
 except the " emotion and kindness " of his farewells. 
 It was his fate, after his death, to be persistently 
 slandered for gloomy superstition and unfaithfulness, 
 even for final apostasy to Rome, by anonymous 
 writers, who, as it turned out at last, were men who, 
 holding preferment in the English Church, claimed 
 to avow and teach Arianism. 
 
 Butler's epitaph in Bristol Cathedral has been 
 written by Southey, and it is one of those epitaphs 
 which are worthy of their subject. When applied 
 to, to write it, Southey hesitated. An epitaph, he 
 said, ought to be precise and faultless ; and his own 
 rule in writing had always been to think as much as 
 possible about what he had to say, and as little as 
 possible about the manner of saying it ; however, he 
 would try. He sent it, and it was submitted to the 
 Canon in residence, the great Hebrew scholar of the 
 day, Dr. Samuel Lee, who boldly ventured to criticise 
 and correct Southey's English. Happily there was 
 present on the spot a young Fellow of Butler's 
 College, Mr. C. P. Eden, afterwards a distinguished 
 tutor and preacher at Oxford. He earnestly remon- 
 strated against any attempt to mend what Southey 
 had written. It was a delicate matter for him to 
 interfere, but his interposition was successful ; and 
 we owe it to him that the epitaph was not spoilt. 
 I conclude with that portion of it which speaks 
 of Butler's distinguishing work as a Christian 
 teacher : — 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 51 
 
 Others had established the Historical and Prophetical grounds 
 
 of the Christian Religion, 
 
 And that sure Testimony of its Truth, 
 
 Which is found in its perfect adaptation to the heart of man. 
 
 It was reserved for him to develop 
 
 Its analogy to the constitution and course of nature ; 
 
 And laying his strong foundations 
 
 In the depth of that great argument, 
 
 There to construct another and irrefragable Proof ; 
 
 Thus rendering Philosophy subservient to Faith ; 
 
 And finding in outward and visible things 
 The type and evidence of those within the veil. 
 
Ill 
 
 BISHOP ANDREWES^ 
 
 Bishop Andrewes holds an important place in the 
 line of those English divines who have affected the 
 course of English theology. Only two years younger 
 than Hooker, his life and his influence were prolonged 
 for more than a quarter of a century after Hooker's 
 comparatively early death.^ He had been Hooker's 
 contemporary, a student and labourer in the same 
 field, perhaps his friend, certainly his admirer, in the 
 later years of Elizabeth; and when Elizabeth's world, 
 and Hooker's, closed with the sixteenth century, 
 Andrewes lived on, and won his fame in the new 
 world which opened with the seventeenth. His mind 
 and character were those of a man who had come to 
 middle age, and passed beyond it, under the last of 
 the Tudors.^ With this training and experience, the 
 main work of his life coincided nearly with the reign 
 of the first of the Stuarts.^ Thus, though belonging 
 
 1 Delivered at King's College in 1S77, being one in a course of 
 Lectures entitled " Masters in English Theology." 
 
 2 Hooker, b. 1553. Andrewes, b. 1555. 
 Hooker, d. 1600. Andrewes, d. 1626. 
 
 3 Eliz., d. 1603. 
 
 * James I., d. 1 625. Andrewes, d. 1626. 
 
Ill 
 
 BISHOP ANDRE WES 
 
 53 
 
 to Hooker's generation, he lived to see Charles I. on 
 the throne, and Laud in his first bishopric, and to 
 be looked up to and studied by the men of Laud's 
 generation as the greatest living theologian of the 
 English Church. He is the connecting link between 
 Hooker and Laud,^ and after Laud, Cosin and Jeremy 
 Taylor and Hammond, Ken and Bull, Beveridge and 
 Bishop Wilson.^ 
 
 Of Andrewes' long life there is not much to be 
 said. It was the life, during the first part of it, of a 
 severe and resolute student, unsparing of time and 
 labour. His morning hours of study were to the last 
 jealously guarded ; the rare exceptions to his usual 
 
 1 See Hallam, Const. Hist., ii. 62. Literature, ii. 308. 
 
 2 The following comparative dates may be convenient : — 
 
 Hooker. 
 
 Andrewes. 
 
 Bacon. 
 
 Field. 
 
 Donne. 
 
 Laud. 
 
 b. 1553; 
 
 b. 1555; 
 
 b. 1 560-1; 
 
 b. 1561; 
 
 
 
 M.A., 1577; 
 
 M.A., 1578; 
 
 Gray's Inn, 
 1577; 
 
 
 b. 1573; 
 
 b. 1573; 
 
 Temple, 
 
 
 In Parlmt., 
 
 
 
 
 1584 ; 
 
 St. Paul's, 
 
 1584; 
 
 
 At Line's 
 
 
 Boscombe, 
 
 15S9; 
 
 
 
 Inn, 1590; 
 
 
 15.91 ;. 
 
 E.P. i.— iv., 
 
 
 
 Line's Inn, 
 
 With Essex, 
 
 
 1594; 
 
 
 
 1594; 
 
 1596; 
 
 
 E.P v., 
 
 
 
 
 
 M.A., 
 
 1597 ■> 
 
 
 
 
 
 159S; , 
 
 d. 1600. 
 
 Dean of 
 
 Westmr., 
 
 1601 ; 
 
 Bp. Chiches., 
 
 1605; 
 
 Sol.-Gen., 
 1607; 
 
 
 M. 1603, 
 or 1604 ; 
 
 
 
 Bishop Ely, 
 
 .. 
 
 
 Ordained, 
 
 President 
 
 
 1609; 
 
 
 d. 1616. 
 
 1613? 
 
 St. John's, 
 1611 ; 
 
 
 Bp.Winton., 
 
 Chancellor^ 
 
 
 
 Dn. Glouc, 
 
 
 1619; 
 
 1618-19; 
 
 
 
 i6r§; 
 
 
 
 Sentenced, 
 
 
 Dn. St. 
 
 Bishop St. 
 
 
 
 1621 ; 
 
 
 Paul's, 1621 ; 
 
 David's, 
 
 1621; 
 
 Bp.B.&W., 
 
 
 d. Sept., 
 
 d. April, 
 
 .. 
 
 
 
 1626. 
 
 1626. 
 
 
 
 1626; 
 Bp. Lend., 
 
 1628; 
 
 
 
 
 
 d. 1631. 
 
 Ab]i. Cant., 
 1633- 
 
54 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS in 
 
 sweetness and gentleness of temper were provoked 
 by those who disturbed these hours. " They were 
 no true scholars," he used to say, "who came to 
 speak with him before noon." He became specially 
 distinguished as a " Catechetical " teacher, both at 
 College and in London, and he was " deeply seen in 
 cases of conscience." At St. Paul's, where he was 
 Canon, he read the Divinity Lecture three times a 
 week in term time ; and he is described as walking 
 about the aisle, ready to give advice and spiritual 
 counsel to any who sought it. At Westminster, 
 where he was Dean, he took the greatest interest in 
 the boys of the school. He would come into school 
 and teach them himself, during the absence of the 
 master. Bishop Hacket, a Westminster scholar under 
 him, records his care about their studies and the books 
 they read, and describes his walks to Chiswick " with 
 a brace of his young fry," and his "dexterity in that 
 wayfaring leisure, to fill these narrow vessels with a 
 funnel."^ When he was called into public employ- 
 ment, he lived, as great Church officers did in those 
 days, through a round of sermons. Court attendances, 
 and judicial or ecclesiastical business, varied by occa- 
 sional controversies and sharp encounters, on paper or 
 face to face, with the numberless foes and detractors 
 of the English Church and State ; — from great Car- 
 dinals, like Bellarmine and Duperron, to obscure 
 sectaries, like Barrow and Mr. Traske, the reviver 
 of a mongrel Judaism.^ It was the life of many men 
 of that period. What is specially to be noticed in 
 
 1 Henry Isaacson's Life, with Notes, in Mr. I'.liss's edition of 
 Andrewes, vol. vii. pp. vii., viii., xviii., xxxvi. 
 '^ Bliss's edition, vii. i^p. ix., 8i. 
 
Ill BISHOP ANDREWES 55 
 
 his case, is the high standard which was recognised 
 both in his learning and his Hfe. " Our oracle of 
 learning " ; " the renowned Bishop of Winchester " ; 
 " the matchless Bishop Andrewes " ; " that oracle of 
 our present times " — these phrases of Bishop Hall 
 express the admiration and reverence of his contem- 
 poraries. He was a man in whom scholars like 
 Grotius and Casaubon acknowledged an erudition 
 and an enthusiasm for wide and thorough knowledge 
 akin to their own. Bacon, remembering in his day 
 of trouble his " ancient and private acquaintance " 
 with Andrewes, who survived him by a few months, 
 submitted his writings to his friend's criticism, and 
 took pleasure in unfolding to him the great plan of 
 the Instauratio} Andrewes was himself an observer 
 and lover of Nature. " He would often profess that 
 to observe the grass, herbs, corn, trees, cattle, earth, 
 waters, heavens, any of the creatures ; and to con- 
 template their natures, orders, qualities, virtues, uses, 
 etc., were ever to him the greatest mirth, content, and 
 recreation that xould be, and this he held till his 
 dying day." ^ And he was not only an observer, but 
 in some departments an experimentalist. He was 
 one of the few to whose sympathetic interest, as an 
 observer of Nature, Bacon felt he could confidently 
 appeal in his physical investigations, and in his daring 
 attempt to put the knowledge of Nature on a new 
 and sound basis. Andrewes had also, in an eminent 
 degree, what was the characteristic virtue of his time. 
 He was always on the watch to seek out the promise 
 of ability and worth in the poor and friendless, and to 
 
 1 Letters and Life of Baco7i, Speckling, vii. 371-375. 
 2 Isaacson, p. vi. ; Speckling, Bacon, iv. 24, 63. 
 
56 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS in 
 
 encourage by a noble liberality the learning of others. 
 Loaded with preferment, after the custom of his day, 
 he turned his revenues to large and public uses. He 
 selected poor scholars and helped them. He was 
 attentive, in a degree which attracted notice, for it 
 was not common in the bishops of the time, to the 
 claims upon his purse of the churches, institutions, 
 or estates entrusted to his stewardship. He put his 
 houses in good repair. He discharged out of his own 
 income debts which he found hanging over a school 
 or a hospital. He largely increased their permanent 
 endowments, either by his gifts or his good husbandry. 
 Bacon's thoughts turned to him as one likely to help 
 towards the expense of costly researches and experi- 
 ments. " He was single," Bacon writes, " and he was 
 rich." And he was one of those large givers who 
 prefer in their lifetime to incur the suspicion of parsi- 
 mony rather than fall in with the mere conventional 
 fashion of munificence expected from the wealthy.^ 
 In an age of much self-seeking, and many un- 
 scrupulous ways of getting rich, he was acknowledged 
 and honoured as an example of genuine public spirit 
 in his strict and conscientious method of administra- 
 tion, in his patronage, and in an expenditure which, 
 when the occasion called, could be princely. 
 
 All evidence attests the loveableness of his nature. 
 The lives of scholars, especially of scholars in the 
 days of Andrewes, have not usually had much to 
 attract and interest those who do not share their 
 aims and employments. But in the pictures which 
 have been preserved to us of the relations between 
 ■friends, there are few things more charming than 
 
 * Isaacson, p. xiv., 7io(e. 
 
Ill BISHOP ANDRE WES 57 
 
 what is disclosed of the effect produced by Andrewes' 
 character and converse on the illustrious scholar 
 who had sought a refuge in England from the 
 intolerance and persecution, first of Geneva and then 
 of Paris, Casaubon. The graciousness, considcrate- 
 ness, sympathy, with which Andrewes first welcomed 
 Casaubon, growing, as the two men came to know 
 each other better, into an affectionate tenderness, a 
 delight in one another's company, not only among 
 their books but in recreation, in visiting sights, in 
 the enjoyment of the open air, are exhibited in 
 Casaubon's letters. Casaubon's able biographer, Mr. 
 Pattison, no favourable judge of Churchmen, or of 
 those who spend their lives in the pursuits to which 
 Andrewes devoted his, is not insensible to the noble 
 and beautiful friendship between the two men, or to 
 the attractions and sweetness of Andrewes' character. 
 "Of all those whose piety was remarkable in that 
 troubled age," says another discriminating, though 
 not more lenient or friendly, writer, Mr. Gardiner,^ 
 " there was none who could bear comparison for 
 spotlessness and purity of character with the good and 
 gentle Andrewes. Going in and out as he did 
 amongst the frivolous and grasping courtiers who 
 gathered round the King, he seemed to live in a 
 peculiar atmosphere of holiness, which prevented him 
 from seeing the true nature of the evil times in which 
 his lot had fallen." Perhaps in this he wa^ not 
 singular. It may be doubted whether any of us 
 fully understand the true nature of either the good 
 or the evil of the "times in which our lot is cast. 
 We, looking back to the past, can see much evil and 
 
 1 History of England, 1603- 161 6, ii. 33. 
 
58 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ill 
 
 much good that the men of the past could not 
 distinguish or recognise when it was near them and 
 round them. But it would be well for the men of 
 any age if they loved the good and hated the evil 
 which they do recognise, with the sincerity and 
 single-mindedness of Andrewes. 
 
 But the best . men are under the prejudices and 
 delusions of their time, and Andrewes was no ex- 
 ception. He was under the prejudices and delu- 
 sions which surrounded the thrones and the persons 
 of the Tudors and the Stuarts, as all were who 
 served them. He is said to have been one of the 
 bishops who sanctioned the burning of the Arian 
 Leggat.^ To us this is rightly and naturally 
 shocking. It was not shocking, but necessary and 
 right, to the whole religious w^orld of the day — to 
 Archbishop Abbot, who pressed it on and canvassed 
 the judges who ordered it ; to the great Puritan party. 
 It was not shocking to the Church historian, Fuller ; 
 it was not shocking to Neal, the historian of the 
 persecutions of the Puritans.^ It is almost a greater 
 surprise and disappointment to find Andrewes one of 
 the majority in pronouncing for a divorce in the 
 shameful Essex case, in which the harsh and narrow- 
 minded Abbot, to his lasting honour, took the side 
 of right and truth, though with the feeblest reasons, 
 against wickedness and folly in high places.^ What 
 blinded the eyes of Andrewes in a case which to us 
 seems so clear, we cannot tell, for his reasons for his 
 opinion are not preserved. Yet he was not one 
 
 1 Pattison, Life of Casaubon, 331 ; and (Inrdiner, ii. 43-45. 
 - Hook, Life of A l>l>ot, pp. 267-70. 
 ^ Gardiner, ii. 92-96 ; Hook, Lif: of Ablwt, p. 272. 
 
in BISHOP ANDRE WES 59 
 
 who feared the face of man, even of the King. But 
 in those troubled days, when men were reaping the 
 penalties of the sin of many generations, and when the 
 rebound from superstitious submission to the Pope 
 had created the superstitious faith in the Divine 
 Right of Kings as the only counterpoise to it, there 
 seemed to be a fate which, in the course of a Church- 
 man's life, exacted, at one time or other, the tribute of 
 some unworthy compliance with the caprice or the 
 passions of power ; and the superstition must have 
 been a strong one which could exact it from such a 
 man as Andrewes to such a man as James. 
 
 But Andrewes was an important person not so 
 much by what he did — by a policy and an adminis- 
 tration — and not so much even by what he wrote, 
 as by what he was known to be, and by what he was 
 known to think and hold on the questions of his day. 
 Unlike Hooker, who was a writer, and a man little 
 seen in the great world, Andrewes was by calling a 
 preacher, and one who moved much in society, and 
 left his mark on it by the qualities which tell on 
 society — quickness and brightness of parts, a ready 
 and perfect command over large stores of knowledge, 
 the strength of an original and well-furnished mind 
 acting through rapid comprehension, play, and nimble- 
 ness of wit, and with this a sharpness and force 
 of expression which made words remembered. It 
 was this power which gave him his influence* with 
 James ; and it is seen in his Sermons, of which the 
 outward form is in curious contrast with the substance. 
 In matter, no sermons like them had yet been 
 preached in the English Church. If the stupendous 
 facts of the Christian Creeds are true, no attention, 
 
6o PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iii 
 
 no thought is too great for them ; and their great- 
 ness, their connections, their harmony, their infinite 
 relations to the system of God's government and 
 discipHne of mankind, and to the hopes and certain- 
 ties of human hfe, are here set forth with a breadth, 
 a subtlety, a firmness of touch, a sense of their reality, 
 a fervour and reverence of conviction, which have 
 made the Sermons worthy and fruitful subjects of 
 study to English theologians. They bear the marks 
 of what we know they had, the most careful medi- 
 tation, the most unsparing pains in arrangement and 
 working out.-^ But to us of this day, it no doubt 
 does surprise us to be told that — as was certainly the 
 case — they were the most popular and admired 
 sermons of the time. We hardly know how far in 
 their present shape they are skeletons, which were 
 filled up and illustrated in actual delivery. But a 
 hearer of our day would be at once overwhelmed 
 by the profusion and rush of ideas, and disconcerted 
 by the sparseness of expansion and development. 
 The majestic and connected eloquence which made 
 Hooker's style so remarkable is absolutely wanting. 
 There is depth of thought and depth of feeling, 
 fertility, energy ; there are passages which disclose 
 the imaginative and poetic side of a rich and 
 beautiful mind ; but the style is like the notes of 
 the unceremonious discourse of a very animated and 
 varied talker rather than the composition of a preacher. 
 In its quaintness, its perpetual and unexpected 
 allusions, its oddly-treated quotations, its abrupt and 
 rapid transitions, its fashion of tossing about single 
 •words, it is of the same kind as the style of much of 
 
 ^ Isaacson, pp. xxv,, xxxvi. 
 
Ill BISHOP AND RE WES 6i 
 
 Bacon's writings, especially his speeches. It belongs, 
 in point of literary character, to the age before 
 Hooker. It abounds in those quips and puns which 
 are the almost invariable resource of early humour, 
 playful or grave ; in passages, too, of powerful irony, 
 though the form of it sometimes raises a smile. 
 Bacon, indeed, used to send his writings to Andrewes, 
 " to mark whatsoever should seem to him either not 
 current in the style, or harsh to credit and opinion, or 
 inconvenient for the person of the writer." ^ Such a 
 style satisfied and pleased the day, though it does not 
 satisfy or please us ; and we wonder, perhaps, that, 
 after a different standard had been set by Hooker, it 
 could be endured. But students of English thought 
 and literature are not deterred by the harsh fashions 
 of Bacon's writings, and students of English theology 
 will find, under the quaint form of Andrewes' Sermons, 
 enough to justify his reputation as a divine, both in 
 his own day and since. 
 
 I am glad to recall some comments on Bishop 
 Andrewes' style, made long ago by a writer who has 
 since become famous, and whose remarkable gifts 
 the world learned in their full extent only at the 
 moment when illness has disabled for the time one 
 of the deepest and most original minds of our time. 
 "Andrewes," wrote Dr. Mozley in 1842,- "has 
 peculiarities of style, partly belonging to his age 
 and partly his own, which considerably prejudiee us 
 against him at first, and to which, accustomed as we 
 are to so much more flowing and regular a way of 
 writing, we can never quite reconcile ourselves ; but 
 
 1 Spedding, Bacon, iv. 141. 
 2 British Critic, Jan. 1842, pp. 173-175. 
 
62 PASCAL AND OTHER SERJl/ONS iii 
 
 with these pecuHarities of his own, he has also 
 fehcities of his own, which are displaying themselves 
 at every step. His theological explanations show 
 the connection of one great doctrine with another, 
 the bearing of one great fact of Christianity upon 
 another, with admirable decision and completeness. 
 He is so quick and varied, so dexterous and rich in 
 his combinations ; he brings facts, types, prophecies, 
 and doctrines together with such rapidity ; groups, 
 arranges, systematises, sets and resets them with 
 such readiness of movement, that he seems to have 
 a kind of ubiquity, and to be everywhere and in 
 every part of the system at the same time. . . . He 
 has everything in his head at once ; not in the sense 
 in which a puzzle-headed person may be said to 
 have, who has every idea confused in his mind be- 
 cause he has no one idea clear, but like a man who 
 is at once clear-headed and manifold — if we may be 
 allowed the word — in his ideas, who can do more 
 than apprehend one point clearly or many dimly — 
 can apprehend, that is to say, many keenly. And 
 this peculiarity has a good deal to do with the 
 peculiarity of his style : it is obviously a natural 
 one, and expresses the working of his own mind. 
 He is never longer in stating a thing than he can 
 possibly help, because his mind being always, as 
 it were, two or three steps ahead of his pen, he 
 lays down the point in passing on his way to some- 
 thing else, and therefore does not apply himself 
 more to it than is necessary in the way of business ; 
 what he is going to say, occupies him ; what he 
 is saying, he only says, and no more. . . . His 
 sermons, in fact, have both the advantages and 
 
Ill BISHOP AND REIVES 63 
 
 disadvantages, whatever these may be, of being 
 more Hke very copious and connected notes for dis- 
 courses than discourses themselves. They have 
 the terseness, freshness, and condensation of ideas 
 first put together, together with their want of form 
 and poHsh ; though we gather from Andrewes' con- 
 temporaries, that the deHvery made up consider- 
 ably for this deficiency." And the critic notices 
 especially two points: i. Andrewes' method of 
 hammering the same idea into his hearers again 
 and again. " He is never tired of using the 
 same word. The idea, ever thus renewed, and 
 recreated, as it were, gains strength and power by 
 the mere act of repetition, and each successive blow 
 comes down with increased effect." And 2. The 
 animation of his discourse. " Whatever faults he 
 may have, he never sleeps : he is always on the 
 move in one direction or another. Incessant aim 
 and activity is the pervading characteristic of his 
 sermons ; his shortnesses, quaintnesses, his multiplied 
 divisions ; his texts wielded with such dexterity, and 
 ever at hand — ever, as it were, on service — all keep 
 up the stirring and business-like character of the 
 scene ; all are at work fulfilling their various tasks 
 and parts in the construction of the discourse, and 
 occupying themselves like bees in their hive : — 
 
 Et munire favos et dcedala fingere tecta." 1 
 
 Merely, however, as a preacher, as a master, in 
 those early days, of the language and rhetoric of the 
 pulpit, Andrewes would claim less interest than 
 Donne ; for in Donne there is not only the matter, 
 
 1 British Critic, ]3.n. 1842, pp. 193, 202. 
 
64 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS in 
 
 but the not unsuccessful effort after form and art 
 which Andrewes entirely neglected. But Andrevves 
 was primarily a theologian ; and his theology has 
 permanently influenced the range and character of 
 theological thought in the English Church. 
 
 Andrewes' theological opinions were formed about 
 the same time, and under the same circumstances, as 
 Hooker's. The two men had much in common, both 
 in their strong recoil from the popular traditions 
 and systems which, under Elizabeth, had more and 
 more loudly claimed to interpret and represent 
 exclusively the English Reformation ; and also in 
 the positive ground which each was disposed to take, 
 as the true and authentic basis of the teaching of 
 the English Church. Both, too, had in common 
 that devotional temper, those keen and deep emo- 
 tions of awe, reverence, and delight, which arise 
 when the objects of theological thought and interest 
 are adequately realised, according to their great- 
 ness, by the imagination and the heart. Hooker 
 made the first, at any rate the most conspicuous, 
 venture to cut across the grain of public prejudice. 
 But Hooker, great as he was — and the Englishmen 
 of Shakespeare and Bacon's age could not fail to 
 recognise his greatness — was yet but an obscure 
 country parson, who may be said to have failed in 
 London, and who certainly was not much seen in 
 the houses of the great. Andrewes not only followed 
 for a quarter of a century after Hooker's death in 
 the path which Hooker had opened, but Andrewes 
 was the companion and trusted counsellor of the 
 holders of power. He was one of the greatest and 
 most considered men in England, rising to the high 
 
Ill BISHOP ANDRE IVES 65 
 
 places, one after another, of the Church ; in the 
 opinion of some of the wisest observers, the only fit 
 man for the highest. 
 
 In Andrewes, as in Hooker, we come on a wide 
 divergence from the language of the early theolo- 
 gians of Elizabeth, and from the way in which they 
 presented the relative importance and proportion of 
 different parts of the doctrinal system of the Church. 
 Before it is said that this was a departure from the 
 spirit of the Reformation, it ought to be brought 
 to mind what the Reformation was. It was not a 
 thing in all its parts done, finished, completed for 
 good. Part of it was final — the independence of the 
 National Church, the repudiation of superstition and 
 corruption ; part could not be accomplished at once. 
 It started as a progressive and tentative effort to 
 mend things which had been long and deeply 
 injured, to put straight things which the custom of 
 centuries and the ignorance of the day had turned 
 awry ; but it looked on this as a gradual process, 
 which it was too much to hope to see done at a 
 stroke, and which was to exercise the wisdom and 
 patience of years to come. It cannot be sufficiently 
 remembered that in James I.'s time, and in Charles 
 II. 's time in 1662, the Reformation was still going 
 on as truly as it was in the days of Edward VI. 
 and Elizabeth. The English Reformation was, theo- 
 logically speaking, one of the most adventurous, and 
 audacious — bravely audacious— of enterprises. Its 
 object was to revolutionise the practical system of 
 the English Church, without breaking with history 
 and the past ; to give the Crown and the State vast 
 and new powers of correction and control, without 
 
 C.S.,P. F 
 
66 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iii 
 
 trenching on the inherited prerogatives of the spirit- 
 ualty ; and to do this without the advantage of a 
 clear, solid, well-tested, consistent theory, or else, as 
 in Luther's case, of a strong exaggerated cry and 
 watchword. Smarting under the sting of monstrous 
 practical abuses, and quite conscious of the im- 
 possibility of making sudden changes to be deep 
 ones, the English reformers adopted what their 
 enemies might well call a hand-to-mouth policy of 
 experiment in finding what they still hoped might 
 be a growing, improving, yet permanent settlement. 
 The Roman theory of the Church, and of Church 
 reform as pursued at Trent, was compact and 
 complete ; the Calvinist theory of Church reform 
 and Church reconstruction was equally logical and 
 complete ; in each case all was linked together, 
 consistent, impregnable, till you came to the final 
 question of the authority on which all rested, and 
 till you came to square the theory with certain and 
 important facts. With a kind of gallant contempt 
 for the protection of a theory, we in England shaped 
 our measures as well as we could, to suit the 
 emergencies which at the moment most compelled 
 the attention of the steersman at the helm. The 
 English Reformation ventured on its tremendous 
 undertaking — the attempt to make the Church theo- 
 logically, politically, socially different, while keeping 
 it historically and essentially the same — with what 
 seems the most slender outfit of appliances. Prin- 
 ciples it had ; but they were very partially explored, 
 applied, followed out to consequences, harmonised, 
 • limited. It sprung from an idea, a great and solid 
 one, even though dimly comprehended, but not from 
 
Ill BISHOP AND RE WES 67 
 
 a theory or a system, such as that unfolded in 
 Calvin's InstitiLtes. Its public and avowed purpose 
 — I do not say that of all its promoters — but its 
 public purpose was, taking the actual historical 
 Church of Augustine and Ethelbert, of Becket and 
 Wolsey, of Warham and Pole, the existing historical 
 representative and descendant of that supernatural 
 Society which is traceable through all the ages to 
 Apostolic days, to assert its rights, to release it from 
 usurpation, to purge away the evils which this 
 usurpation had created and fostered ; and accepting 
 the Bible as the Primitive Church had accepted it, 
 and trying to test everything by Scripture and 
 history, to meet the immediate necessities of a crisis 
 which called not only for abolition, but for recon- 
 struction and replacement. What was done bore 
 the marks of a clear and definite purpose ; but it 
 also bore the unmistakable marks of haste and 
 pressure, as well as violence. Laws, — all but the 
 most indispensable ones, — canons, synods, tribunals, 
 the adjustment, of the differing elements of its con- 
 stitution, were adjourned to a more convenient 
 season, which, in fact, has never arrived. It began 
 with arrangements avowedly provisional. On the 
 great dogmatic controversies of the moment it 
 defined cautiously, its critics .said, imperfectly: it 
 hardly had made up its own mind. For the 
 systematic confessions of the Continent, it provided 
 a makeshift in the Thirty-nine Articles, put to a use 
 for which they were not originally designed. But it 
 did four things : — I; It maintained the Episcopate 
 and the Ordinal ; 2. It put the English Bible into 
 the hands of the people ; 3. It gave them the 
 
68 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 English Book of Common Prayer ; and 4. To bind 
 all together with the necessary bond of authority, it 
 substituted boldly and confidently, in place of the 
 rejected authority of the Pope, the authority, equally 
 undefined, of the Crown, presumed to be loyally 
 Christian and profoundly religious, and always acting 
 in concert with the Church and its representatives^ 
 It has been called a via media, a compromise. It 
 is more true to fact to say that what was in the 
 thought of those who guided it under Henry VIII. 
 and Elizabeth was an attempt, genuine though rude 
 and rough and not always successful, to look all 
 round the subject ; to embrace in one compass as 
 many advantages as they could — perhaps incom- 
 patible and inconsistent ones — without much regard 
 to producible and harmonising theories : antiquity and 
 novelty, control and freedom, ecclesiastical and civil 
 authority, the staid order of a Church as old as the 
 nation and the vigour of a modern revolution of the 
 age of the Renaissance, a very strong public govern- 
 ment with an equally strong private fervour and 
 enthusiasm ; to stimulate conscience and the sense of 
 individual responsibility, and yet to keep them from 
 bursting all bounds ; to overthrow a vast ancient 
 power, strong in its very abuses and intrenched 
 behind the prejudices as well as the great deeds of 
 centuries, and yet to save the sensitive, delicate 
 instincts of loyalty, reverence, and obedience ; to 
 make room in the same system of teaching for the 
 venerable language of ancient P\ithcrs, and also for 
 the new learning of famous modern authorities. 
 
 The task was a difficult one, as it was unique 
 among the various projects opposed to it, or likened 
 
Ill BISHOP AND REIVES 69 
 
 to it, going on at the same time in Western Cliristen- 
 dom. Abroad, the idea of the EngHsh Reformation 
 appeared, as it still appears abroad, an illogical 
 and incomprehensible attempt to unite incompatible 
 principles and elements. That government should 
 interfere with religion, should change it, should 
 impose it, was perfectly understood both by Protest- 
 ants and Catholics. But that reformers in England, 
 having broken with the Pope, should not make a 
 clear sweep of the whole of the inherited system and 
 begin afresh ; that they should embarrass themselves 
 by maintaining the continuity and identity of the 
 existing Church with the historical Church of the 
 past ; that they should be so bold, yet so guarded 
 and reticent, — this was unintelligible, both at Rome, 
 Paris and Madrid, and at Wittenberg, Jena, Basle 
 and Geneva. It must have seemed to many — not 
 merely to the worshippers of absolute hypotheses, 
 but to cool and practical judges of the probabilities of 
 human affairs — a very unpromising, if not forlorn 
 and desperate venture. So daring a disregard of 
 obvious inconsequence and anomaly ; so delicate a 
 balancing of conflicting tendencies ; so apparently 
 artificial and arbitrary restraints on their natural 
 development; all, too, depending on the chances of a 
 single life, and the personal influence of a character, 
 did not wear the look of permanence. It might have 
 been plausibly foretold that the English refoi*med 
 Church must soon choose its side ; must soon either 
 go backwards or forwards ; backwards to its old 
 allegiance ; forwards* to the clear, definite position of 
 the great Swiss and French reformers. But that it 
 should go on strengthening itself in spite of its 
 
70 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS m 
 
 double openness to attack, unfolding and developing 
 the energies of life in spite of its logical incomplete- 
 ness ; that it should long escape the dangers from 
 internal quarrels and outward hostility, might well 
 have seemed one of the most unlikely of supposi- 
 tions. The hopes and forecasts of the prophets of 
 evil may be seen in the controversial literature of 
 the Roman advocates, in the pamphlet literature of 
 the Puritan champions of the " Discipline." 
 
 The experience of three centuries has shown that 
 the apparently loose, ill-jointed, halting polity which 
 they so contemptuously criticised, had both a firmness 
 and an elasticity which more showy systems failed 
 in. It has borne the brunt of time and change. It 
 has never lost its original informing, animating idea. 
 It has shown a wonderful power of obstinate tenacity 
 against jars and shocks, a force of continuous growth, 
 and of vigorous recovery after disaster and stagna- 
 tion. It has certainly vindicated its claim to life and 
 reality. But at starting, the dangers were indeed for- 
 midable. In the first place, the principle of authority 
 had been most rudely shaken ; yet it was necessary 
 to invoke it at every turn. It is not easy for us to 
 realise the effect of the shattering, in an ignorant, 
 yet eager and excited age, of the religious authority 
 of the Pope. It seemed to leave a void in the 
 public control of belief and conscience which every 
 one might fill as he pleased. Yet the world had 
 been accustomed to authority, and the void could 
 not be left unoccupied. The Crown, its ministers 
 and its council ; the Bishops, its trusted advisers ; in 
 those days in a less prominent, but still important, 
 degree, the Parliament and the Synod, slipped into 
 
Ill BISHOP AND RE WES 71 
 
 the vacant place. But though authority maintained 
 itself, it did not maintain itself easily. The subtle, 
 intangible, yet deep and mighty force of moral 
 authority which had existed of old, and which the 
 Popes had strained till it broke, had not been, could 
 not be, replaced. As a substitute for it, came in an 
 exaggerated idea of the divine and personal rights 
 of the Crown. It was partly a very real and natural 
 idea at the time ; it was partly a factitious and 
 scholastic one ; it partly expressed, vaguely and 
 imperfectly, the claims of public law. But it served 
 to consecrate the force which was judged necessary 
 to maintain what had been settled as the order of 
 the Church ; and the temptation to appeal to it, 
 whenever its countenance could be hoped for, became 
 on all hands irresistible, where, as it seemed, time 
 and patience and argument, and the growth of 
 reasonable and sober opinion, could not ,be waited 
 for or relied upon. The result was the unquestion- 
 able harshness of the Tudor and Stuart ecclesiastical 
 government, and the ever-renewed exasperation and 
 bitterness of its unruly subjects, whom we see to 
 have been self-willed and unreasonable, but who then 
 thought, not unnaturally, that its authority had no 
 claim to their respect nor binding force on their 
 consciences. 
 
 And with this impaired sense of authority at 
 home the English Reformation had to confrorit the 
 mightiest, the most imperious and exacting authority 
 outside, which ever claimed and bore a universal 
 sway over human 'conscience. It had to confront 
 the Roman authority, now turned into the most im- 
 placable and aggressive of deadly enemies ; and this. 
 
72 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS in 
 
 not simply on the ground of argument and influence, 
 but in the field of political action. The struggle 
 between England and Rome under Elizabeth, and in 
 the first years of James, was a struggle of life and 
 death. It was a struggle, begun in its desperate 
 and murderous fierceness by the Popes, in which no 
 scruples were felt, no terms kept on either side. 
 Controversy, never silent, and always truculent and 
 unsparing, was but a light matter compared with 
 the terrible hostilities carried on, not by word, but 
 by deed ; war and conspiracy and massacre, the 
 fanaticism of assassination and treason, met by san- 
 guinary legislation, by cold and determined " exe- 
 cution of justice." We may well be aghast at the 
 horrors of that struggle. The deep hatreds and 
 deep injuries of the political conflict gave to the 
 theological controversy — the necessary theological 
 controversy — an unfairness and a virulence from 
 which it has never recovered, and which have been 
 a disgrace to Christendom, and fatal, not merely to 
 unity, but in many ways to truth. But there was 
 something more on the Roman side than the cruel 
 intrigues of Popes and Jesuits and the brutality 
 of pamphleteers. Since the age of Julius II. and 
 Leo X.. and the first sittings of the Council of Trent, 
 Roman controversy had become intellectually much 
 more formidable. The stress of the Reformation had 
 forced it to look narrowly into its own case and its 
 grounds. Against the learning of Erasmus and the 
 genius and thought of Calvin, it felt the necessity 
 of something more than the stock arguments and 
 quotations of its earlier defenders, Eck and Caietan. 
 And the result was remarkable. The order of the 
 
Ill BISHOP AND REIVES 73 
 
 Jesuits arose to place, not merely enthusiasm and 
 political unscrupulousness at the service of the Pope, 
 but learning, the spirit of research, intellectual activity 
 and literary skill. Vast scientific systems of theo- 
 logy, like the great work of Suarez, unfolded and 
 established with philosophic calmness and strength 
 the Roman doctrine. To match such works as these 
 there was nothing — I do not say in England, but even 
 in Germany and Switzerland. There was nothing 
 to match the subtlety and comprehensiveness of the 
 Cofitroversies of Bellarmine. There was nothing 
 to match the imposing historical picture presented 
 in the annals of Baronius. Rome had much more 
 to say for itself than had appeared to Cranmer or 
 even to Jewell. 
 
 There was a third danger. The foreign Refor- 
 mation, in its most vigorous and intellectual repre- 
 sentatives, undoubtedly the French and Swiss 
 reformers, started with an imposing breadth and 
 simplicity of principle, absolute and sweeping, to 
 which the English laid no claim. Calvin and 
 Zwingli, both in what they destroyed and what they 
 built up, had no occasion for the qualifications, the 
 hesitations, the revisions and amendments and 
 corrections, which abound in the course pursued 
 in England. But, as is according to the nature of 
 Englishmen, many Englishmen who were brought 
 into close contact with the keen and powerful minds 
 who swayed the Reformation abroad, were deeply 
 impressed and attracted by them. Through them 
 the opinions of the foreigners, recommended by 
 their extreme and uncompromising logic, found a 
 footing in England. Geneva and Zurich became 
 
74 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iii 
 
 rival centres of influence to Rome ; and a school 
 was founded, strong from the first, and always, 
 either in the government or in opposition to it, 
 energetic and determined, whose object was to carry 
 change in the English Church, both in doctrine, 
 usages, and discipline, to a point where all likeness 
 was lost, not only to the unreformed but to the 
 ancient Church. It became their steady, persevering 
 policy to impose the Calvinistic theology in its 
 severest form as regards the Divine decrees as well 
 as the doctrines of grace, both as an authoritative and 
 as a popular system of teaching, on the documents 
 and on the organs of the English Church ; and to 
 disparage and intimidate with the note of disloyalty 
 and treason any departure from the definitions and 
 phraseology of the great foreign divines, who in 
 those days were supposed to be in exclusive and 
 certain possession of the interpretation of revealed 
 truth. Calvinism, transplanted into the serious and 
 earnest nature of Englishmen and Scotchmen, 
 flourished with a vigour of life which it rapidly lost 
 in its native seats. How nearly it succeeded in 
 making itself master in the English Church is seen 
 in the history and language of Hooker's books, and 
 in Whitgift's "Lambeth Articles" of 1595. And 
 with the imperious and exclusive demand of the 
 Calvinistic theology had also come other claims. 
 That early fraternisation with the foreign reformers 
 in the first stage of our own Reformation, natural, 
 inevitable, excusable as under the difficulties of the 
 time it may have been — that wholesale acceptance 
 of their authority, and that deference to the judgment 
 of their disciples, which gave even to John Knox a 
 
Ill BISHOP AND RE WES 75 
 
 part in the theological language of Edward's second 
 Prayer-Book ^ — furnished a ground for claiming that 
 the English Reformed Church should go on to full 
 conformity with the ecclesiastical doctrines of the 
 great foreign masters. The only safeguard for their 
 theology was the full acceptance of their Church " plat- 
 form " : the one was as much of Divine authority 
 as the other. We have no right to wonder that 
 this party aimed high. They aimed at nothing less 
 than what they afterwards carried — not a mere 
 change in this or that point, but a substitution of an 
 entirely new polity and constitution for the existing 
 one — of an entirely new idea of the Church for that 
 on which the Reformation in England had been 
 based. Toleration was then on all sides not merely 
 unacknowledged but condemned. The demand of 
 the Puritan was that nothing should be allowed but 
 Puritanism. 
 
 Through these trials the English Reformation 
 had to make its way. In Bishop Andrewes, as in 
 Hooker, we see -the pass to which things had come : 
 — the pressure of the hostile forces ; the vulnerable 
 points on which they bore heavily ; the awakening 
 in the Church of wider knowledge, of freedom and 
 independence of thought, of calmer and steadier 
 judgment ; and , the effort of reviving intellectual 
 power, after the haste and hurried confusion of the 
 early practical struggles for reformation, not, indeed, 
 to construct a theory for it, but to put what it 
 had done, and what it aimed at doing, on a reason- 
 able and tenable "ground. The later years of 
 Elizabeth, which, in spite of their troubles, were 
 
 1 See Dr. 'Lonxncxs John Knox and the Church of England, chap. iii. 
 
76 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iii 
 
 settled and quiet compared with the beginning of 
 the century, cleared up much that had been confused 
 and uncertain. The larger and richer and more 
 powerful minds had time to think, to learn, to 
 balance, to weigh and analyse arguments, to follow 
 out consequences. The English Church, at its 
 Reformation, had taken up its ground on the 
 Scriptures and the Primitive Church. It had 
 avowed its object to be a return, as far as was 
 possible, to what the teaching of the Apostles and 
 their disciples had made the Primitive Church to be. 
 At the outset, all that was much insisted upon was 
 that the Primitive Church was certainly itot like the 
 modern unreformed Latin Church. By the end of 
 Elizabeth's reign, men had found leisure to inquire 
 carefully and honestly, with less prejudice and heat, 
 what that model was like, which the English Church 
 had declared its wish to copy in all things essential. 
 Arms were still needed, as much as ever, against the 
 never-ceasing hostility of Rome : but something 
 more was clearly necessary than the mere negations 
 of earlier controversy and invectives against Roman 
 corruption and pretensions ; some more positive 
 ground on which to rest the claim that England was 
 better and more primitive than Rome. Such a 
 ground it was not easy to find in that narrow 
 Calvinism which the Puritans were trying to force 
 on the Government, and to make the popular religion 
 of the country. Something was wanted broader, 
 more intelligible, and more refined than their mode 
 of presenting the ideas of justification and God's 
 predestinating and electing grace, and their fashion 
 of summing up loyalty to Christ and truth in petty 
 
Ill BISHOP AND RE WES 77 
 
 scruples about innocent and natural usages and 
 ceremonies. Something was wanted, as fervent, but 
 more true, more noble, more Catholic, than their 
 devotion and self-discipline. The higher spirits of 
 the time wanted to breathe more freely, and in a 
 purer air. They found what they wanted in the 
 language, the ideas, the tone and temper of the 
 best early Christian literature. That turned their 
 thoughts from words to a Person. It raised them 
 from the disputes of local cliques to the ideas which 
 have made the Universal Church. It recalled them 
 from arguments that revolved round a certain 
 number of traditional formulae about justification, 
 free-will, and faith, to a truer and worthier idea both 
 of man and God, to the overwhelming revelation of 
 the Word Incarnate, and the result of it on the 
 moral standard and behaviour of real and living 
 men. It led them from a theology which ^ended in 
 cross-grained and perverse conscientiousness, to a 
 theology which ended in adoration, self-surrender, 
 and blessing, and in the awe and joy of welcoming 
 the Presence of the Eternal Beauty, the Eternal 
 Sanctity, and the Eternal Love, the Sacrifice and 
 Reconciliation of the world. 
 
 Andrewes, by nature and choice an indefatigable 
 student, a ready and accomplished teacher, a devout 
 and self-disciplined seeker after a life with God, was 
 only by necessity a polemic. There was abundance in 
 the world of his time to disquiet and offend him — to 
 offend his large knowledge, his idea of religion, his 
 convictions of the sacredness of morality, his balanced 
 reason ; to disquiet him, as to the result of the mis- 
 chievous elements working round English religion. 
 
78 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS in 
 
 But only in one direction did he throw himself 
 avowedly into controversy. He threw himself into 
 it as an Englishman, as a servant of his country and 
 King, as well as a Churchman. The great Roman 
 rally, which dated from the institution of the Com- 
 pany of Jesus, and which had been growing in 
 strength and uncompromising aggression through 
 the sixteenth century, had given a pressing and 
 menacing importance to the Roman controversy in 
 England. For the Roman claims called in question 
 not simply the foundations of the English Church, 
 but the foundations of the English State and society. 
 The prominence given to the revived doctrine of 
 the deposing power had received meaning not only 
 from what had been attempted in England, but by 
 what had been accomplished, avowed, celebrated in 
 France. We sometimes speak as if the crimes of 
 the Roman party culminated in the massacre of 
 St. Bartholomew and the cruelties of Alva. But 
 besides that these, unhappily, had a terrible balance 
 on the other side, they were not the worst. It is in 
 the French wars of the League, in the principles 
 invented by their ecclesiastical leaders, proclaimed 
 in the pulpits of Paris, spread abroad by a thou- 
 sand emissaries, put in practice by the assassins of 
 Henry HI. and Henry IV., that we see the real 
 character of theories put forth by great and popular 
 champions of Rome, and their fatal bearing on the 
 primary conditions of human society. The murder 
 of Henry IV. drove the calm and impartial Casaubon 
 to say, " that he thought it now part of his religion 
 to make public profession of his belief in the Royal 
 Supremacy." The sense of these dangers, indignation 
 
Ill BISHOP AND REIVES 79 
 
 at the atrocious wickedness and profanations which 
 marked the policy now so highly in favour at Rome, 
 the wrath of a man of learning at the gross abuse of 
 learning for the support of sophistry, which in the 
 cause of reckless ambition ended in perjury and 
 murder, forced Andrewes reluctantly, but very reso- 
 lutely, into this barren and dreary field. James 
 claimed the aid of his learning and keen wit against 
 the foremost leaders of the Roman claims, Bellarmine 
 and Duperron. The gossips of the Court record that 
 controversy was neither to his liking nor according 
 to his supposed aptitudes ; but they also record with 
 what power he accomplished his task.^ He met his 
 opponents on ground new to them. He met them as 
 a man at least as deeply learned in ecclesiastical 
 history and literature as themselves. One of the 
 triumphant devices of the later Roman argument 
 had been to take the English Church at her word, 
 as a Church which avowedly aimed at making the 
 ancient Church her standard, and to contrast this 
 with the dogmas and the "platform" too hastily 
 adopted from Geneva by some of her divines in the 
 reaction against the intolerable abuses of the days 
 of Leo X. Andrewes gave a new turn to the con- 
 troversy. He was not afraid of what was genuine 
 early language and early usage. When Cardinal 
 Duperron drew a detailed comparison between the 
 Church of St. Augustine and of the four ifirst 
 Councils, and the Churches of his day, Roman and 
 Reformed, and asked which of the latter bore the 
 greater resemblance -to the earlier type, Andrewes 
 fearlessly met the challenge, on behalf of the Church 
 
 1 Vide Note in Bliss's ed. of Andrewes, vii. pp. ix., x. 
 
So PASCAL AND OTHER SERMOXS iii 
 
 of England. The challenge was, indeed, a fallacious 
 one, from the vast changes which had passed over 
 the world, and from the enormous differences be- 
 tween the fifth and the seventeenth centuries, which 
 one side as much as the other had to take account 
 of Yet there were times, doubtless, in the history of 
 the Reformation when it would have been hazardous 
 to have met such a challenge before those acquainted 
 with history. But Andrewes wrote with the advan- 
 tage which enlarged knowledge and experience had 
 thrown on the aims and language of both sides in 
 the struggle ; and he did not shrink from claiming 
 for his Church as large and essential a conformity 
 with antiquity, even in outward things, as could be 
 pretended by Rome, and a far deeper agreement 
 in spirit. 
 
 With the Puritans he did not enter so much into 
 direct controversy as Hooker had done. With the 
 exception of some partial and incidental disputes 
 with individuals — such as his correspondence with 
 Du Moulin — or a passing touch of rebuke, protest, 
 or humorous satire in his preaching, his resistance 
 to Puritanism was an indirect one. He looked for 
 producing his effect on the tone and course of reli- 
 gious thought in England, not by arguing, but by 
 presenting uncontroversially the reasonableness and 
 the attractions of a larger, freer, nobler, more gener- 
 ous, may I say, more imaginative, system of teach- 
 ing. His administrative weight as a Bishop was, 
 of course, thrown on the side which resisted the 
 tyrannous narrowness of Puritanism, and aimed at 
 greater cxpansivencss and proportion in doctrine, 
 and dignity and solemnity in worship. But he did 
 
Ill BISHOP ANDRE WES 8r 
 
 not trust to administration and power as Laud did. 
 The weapon by which he attacked Puritanism, the 
 instrument by which he endeavoured to enlarge the 
 sympathies and refine the rehgious ideas of his day, 
 was his Sermons. In those sermons — belonging as 
 they do in style and manner to their time — 
 there is a clear and strong contrast with the way 
 in which Christianity had usually been presented 
 in the preaching of the previous generation. This 
 preaching professed to represent the original creed 
 of Calvinism — stern, hard, positive, but thoroughly 
 earnest and very mighty — and with a gloomy and 
 savage grandeur and nobility, in its passionate loyal 
 assertions of the irresistible Sovereignty of God, 
 against the claims, the w^orthlessness, and the insigni- 
 ficance of man. But this stern creed, for a short 
 moment a living one, had, as was sure to be the case, 
 degenerated into a dry, unreal, stereotyped, scholas- 
 ticism, to which the mediaeval scholasticism was 
 fruitful and interesting. In Andrewes you feel as 
 if he had broken bounds. You see at once a 
 wider horizon, objects of faith and contemplation 
 at once more real, more personal, more august ; 
 you become aware of your relation to a vaster and 
 more diversified world, a world full of mystery, yet 
 touching you on every side. . Doctrine you have, 
 dogmatic teaching as precise and emphatic as any- 
 where : but it is doctrine as wide as the Scripture in 
 its comprehensiveness and variety, reflecting at every 
 turn the unutterable and overwhelming wonders 
 which rise before us when we think of what we 
 mean by the Creeds ; corresponding in its dignity, 
 in its versatile application, to the real history of man, 
 C.S.,P. • G 
 
82 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iii 
 
 to the deep and manifold wants of the soul, its 
 aspirations, its terrible sins, its cruel fears, its capaci- 
 ties for hope and delight, the strange fortunes of the 
 race, and of the story of each individual life. He is 
 not a mere moralist, not simply a preacher of high 
 duties and elevated views of human nature and pros- 
 pects.^ He is, first and foremost, a theologian, whose 
 deepest belief is the importance of his theology, 
 and who profoundly reverences its truth. But his 
 theology is very different from that so long in vogue. 
 It approached man on his many sides. It was in- 
 stinct with the awful consciousness of our immense 
 and hopeless ignorance of the ways and counsels of 
 God — with that shrinking from speculation on the 
 secret things of the Most High which he shared with 
 Hooker, and which as a professed law of divinity 
 was something new in the theological world of the 
 day. " For these sixteen years, since I was ordained 
 priest," he says, in his judgment on the " Lambeth 
 Articles," " I have never publicly or privately dis- 
 puted or preached on these mysteries of predestina- 
 
 1 " Since the Revolution of 1688 our Church has been cliilled and 
 starved too generally by preachers and reasoners, Stoic or Epicurean : 
 first, a sort of pagan morality was substituted for righteousness by 
 faith ; and latterly prudence, or Paleyanism, has been substituted even 
 for morality. A Christian preacher ought to preach Christ alone, and 
 all things in Him and by Him. If he find a dearth in this, if it seem 
 to him a circumscription, he does not know Christ as the pleroma, the 
 fulness. It is not possible that there should be aught true, or seemly, 
 or beautiful, in thought, will, or deed, speculative or practical, which 
 may not, and which ought not, to be evolved out of Christ and the 
 faith in Christ ; no folly, no error, no evil to be exposed, or warned 
 against, which may not, and should not, be convicted and denounced for 
 its contrariancy and enmity to Christ. To the Christian preacher, Christ 
 should be in all things, and all things in Christ : he should abjure every 
 argument wliich is not a link in the chain, of which Clirist is the staple 
 and staple-ring. " (Coleridge, N^otes on English Divines : Donne ^ i. 86. ) 
 
Ill BISHOP AND RE WES 83 
 
 tion " — on which every one else was disputing ; 
 " and now I would much rather hear than speak of 
 them." ^ His aim was to give accuracy and breadth 
 to dogma, and to put life in its expression, as St. 
 Augustine, St. Chrysostom, and the great Greek 
 Fathers had done : not to plunge into the abysses 
 of the unknown, and of that which it is impossible 
 to know, but to fix thought on the certainties and 
 realities, passing all w^onder, that we believe are 
 known, and to accompany their contemplation with 
 that encompassing train of Christian affections and 
 graces, without which they have been revealed in 
 vain — faith, and reverence, and high hope, and the 
 desire after holiness, and humble patience, and the 
 joy of God's love. The power of Puritanism was 
 now no longer in its scheme of doctrine, but in its 
 fierce Judaical hatreds, which, natural at one time 
 against intolerable superstitions, had passed into a 
 superstition as intolerable and mischievous. How 
 best to fight against the blind powers of ignorance 
 and prejudice, when they have been unloosened, and 
 aspire to govern churches and direct religion, is 
 always an anxious question. Andrewes conceived 
 that the most hopeful way was to spend his life and 
 gifts in presenting continually in the pulpit the 
 counter-attraction of a purer and nobler pattern of 
 faith : a religion with vaster prospects and wider 
 sympathies ; which claimed kindred with aH that 
 was ancient, and all that was universal in Chris- 
 tianity ; which looked above the controversies and 
 misunderstandings of the hour, to the larger thought, 
 and livelier faith, and sanctified genius of those in 
 
 1 Andrewes, Minor Works, 294. 
 
84 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iii 
 
 whom the Church of Christ has recognised her most 
 venerated teachers. 
 
 His efforts failed at the time. Probably they 
 would have failed equally, in spite of Clarendon's 
 opinion the other way, if he had been called to 
 succeed Abbot at Canterbury.^ That unqualified 
 idea of Royal power, the ruin of Spain and France, 
 in which Churchmen of that day put their trust, and 
 to which their opponents would equally have trusted 
 if they could have got it on their side, was a doomed 
 one in England, and must have brought defeat for 
 the time on all who had identified themselves with 
 it. Puritanism failing, first under Elizabeth and 
 then under James, to get hold of the government, as 
 it once hoped to do, had thrown itself into the 
 struggle for English liberty, and for the moment it 
 was to reap the reward of its courage. And it 
 must, I fear, be added that Andrewes or any one 
 else would have been greatly hampered by the bad- 
 ness of his own party. There were sycophants 
 and corrupt trucklers to power among the bishops : 
 there was ignorance and there was sordid greed 
 among the clergy. " Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? " 
 he asks, in his stern and menacing Latin Sermon at 
 St. Paul's, before the Convocation of 1593. The 
 rulers of the Church did not come with clean hands 
 to repress the extravagances of Puritan prophecy- 
 ings and consistories, and the insolence of Puritan 
 pamphleteers. What Andrewes did was less for his 
 own generation than for those that came after. In 
 the course of a long and active life, he broke the 
 •yoke of prejudice, and unloosed the tongue of 
 
 1 Clarendon, Hist, of the Rebellion, i. 157. 
 
Ill BISHOP ANDRE IVES 85 
 
 English theologians. Without departing from the 
 position or the lines of the original Reformation, he 
 greatly enlarged its field of teaching. In the out- 
 skirts and fringes of its system, where it had been 
 characteristically reticent, he was not afraid to supply 
 from the authorities, to which it had all along ap- 
 pealed, what was wanting to complete the harmony 
 and fulness of its doctrine. Thus with respect to 
 the idea of the Christian Sacrifice in the Eucharist, 
 on which the language of the ancient Church was so 
 clear and strong, and on which, from the superstitions 
 and errors of the Mediaeval Church, the English 
 Prayer Book was so reserved, Andrewes, without 
 hesitation and as of full right, recurred, both in 
 controversy and in teaching, to the language of the 
 Liturgies, familiar to the early writers from Irenaeus 
 to Augustine. So again, in respect of those forms 
 and offices for special occasions not provided for in 
 the general office -book of the Church, he threw 
 himself, as an ancient Bishop would have done, on 
 his inherent episcopal authority to supply the want. 
 It is mainly according to the model used by him 
 that our churches are even to this day consecrated 
 Full of discrimination for what really had the 
 authority of the ancient Church, he was the most 
 fearless of English divines,, when he had that 
 authority. English theology would be in danger of 
 being much less Catholic, much more disconnected 
 with that of the earlier ages, much more arbitrarily 
 limited in all directions, except towards Geneva or 
 else towards simple latitude, but that a man of 
 Andrewes' character and weight had dared to break 
 through the prescription which the Puritans were 
 
86 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iii 
 
 trying to establish against the doctrinal language, at 
 once more accurate and more free, of the ancient 
 Church. Without him and his school, we might 
 perhaps have had Hales of Eton, and Chillingworth 
 and Tillotson, great and weighty names ; and on the 
 other hand, John Newton and Toplady and Thomas 
 Scott ; but we could not have had Jeremy Taylor 
 and Bull, and hardly Waterland. 
 
 But Bishop Andrewes has left behind him some- 
 thing which, even more than his preaching, explains 
 his influence, it is the evidence of that power of 
 character which has so strong, though so indirect 
 and subtle, a hold on men. He is one of those who 
 like St. Augustine have left us, besides their writings, 
 their very secret selves, as they placed themselves in 
 the presence of their God and Saviour. In Bishop 
 Andrewes' case this was certainly without intending 
 it. After his death was found the book in which he 
 had consigned the words selected by him to express 
 the usual attitude of his soul in private, his usual 
 feelings and emotions, his usual desires, when upon 
 his knees. The book has been long familiar as 
 Bishop Andrewes' Gj'eek and Latin Devotions. It 
 has received in our own times one of those rare 
 translations which make an old book new.^ It 
 seems to me that the key to the influence which 
 Andrewes had in his own day, and which recom- 
 mended his theology, is to be found in his Devo- 
 tions. For they show what was the true meaning 
 and reach of his theology, how unspeakably real and 
 deep he felt its language to be, and how naturally it 
 allied itself and was interwoven with the highest 
 
 ' IJy Dr. Nevvinnii, in i S40. 
 
in BISHOP AND RE WES 87 
 
 frames of thought and feehng in a mind of wide 
 range, and a soul of the keenest self-knowledge and 
 the strongest sympathies. There are books which 
 go deeper into the struggles, the questionings, the 
 temptations, the discipline, the strange spiritual 
 mysteries of the devout spirit. There are books 
 which perhaps rise higher in the elevations of 
 devotion. But nowhere do we see more, so original 
 and spontaneous a result of a man's habits of 
 devotion ; nowhere, that I know of, does the whole 
 mind of the student, the divine, and the preacher, 
 reflect itself in his prayers so simply and easily and 
 harmoniously as in this book. His knowledge, his 
 tastes, his systematic and methodical theology, the 
 order and articles of his creed, translate themselves 
 into the realities of worship. All his interests, all 
 his customary views of God, of man, of nature, of 
 his relations to his place and time — all that he has 
 been reading about or employed upon, suggest 
 themselves when he places himself in God's pres- 
 ence, and find their natural and fit expression in 
 the beautifully applied words of Psalm or ancient 
 Liturgy. Nothing can be more comprehensive and 
 more complete in their proportions than his devotions 
 for each day ; nothing more tender and solemn ; 
 nothing more compressed and nervous than their 
 language. The full order of prayer and all its parts 
 is always there : the introductory contemplation, to 
 sober, to elevate, to kindle; the confession, the 
 profession of faith, the intercession, the praise and 
 thanksgiving. There is equally there the conscious- 
 ness of individual singleness, and the sense of great 
 and wide corporate relations. His confessions show 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 m severely restrained and precise language the 
 infinite acknowledgment of unworthiness and want, 
 and the infinite hope in God's mercy and love, in 
 one who searched and judged himself with keen and 
 unflinching truth. But he did not stop at himself, his 
 sins and hopes. He also felt himself, even in private 
 prayer, one of the great body of God's creation 
 and God's Church. He reminded himself of it, as 
 he did of the Object of his worship, in the profes- 
 sion of his faith. He acted on it in his detailed and 
 minute intercessions. And then he surrendered him- 
 self to the impulses of exulting wonder and rejoicing 
 at the greatness of his Christian lot. The poetical and 
 imaginative side of his nature shows itself in the vivid 
 pictures which he calls up, with a {^w condensed and 
 powerful touches, of the glories of Nature, and the 
 wonders of God's kingdom, its history, its manifold 
 organisation. Thus, " the connection of every day," 
 says a writer before quoted, Dr. Mozley,^ " with the 
 great works which each day saw in the work of crea- 
 tion, converts the several days of the week into beau- 
 tiful mementos of the fact that we and all that we see 
 are God's creatures, as well as of the sanctity of the 
 week itself as a division of time ; and it evidences that 
 character of mind in the writer which realises the 
 facts of Scripture, sees mysteries in common things, 
 and feels itself still living amid visible traces of 
 a Divine dispensation. It is obvious how such a 
 method gives the beauty of natural objects a place 
 in his religion." The Apostles' Creed is no dry 
 recital, but expands day after day into petitions and 
 desires founded on its awful facts. And so again, 
 
 ^ British Critic, Jan. 1S45, IT- i5>9-i92. 
 
Ill BISHOP AND RE WES 89 
 
 " man, human society, his country, as an object of 
 prayer, is not the mere human mass — a number of 
 individuals, but man and man in certain relations to 
 each other, high and low, rich and poor, king and 
 subject, noble and dependant, all living together in 
 the system of God's ordinance " . . . " actual trades 
 and states of life," definitely enumerated, as Homer 
 enumerates names of men and places ; not only " king 
 and queen, parliament and judicature, army and 
 police, commons and their leaders," but " farmers, 
 graziers, fishers, merchants, traders, and mechanics, 
 down to mean workmen and the poor." There is 
 no class of men, no condition, no relation of life, 
 no necessity or emergency of it, which does not at 
 one time or another rise up before his memory, and 
 claim his intercession : none for which he does not 
 see a place in the order of God's world, and find a 
 refuge under the shadow of His wing. 
 
 Into such devotions I think it would be impossible 
 to translate the Puritan theology of the time. It is too 
 narrow, too suspicious, too much enslaved to technical 
 forms and language. The piercing and rapid energy 
 of Andrewes' devotions, their ordinary severe concise- 
 ness, their nobleness and manliness, their felicitous 
 adaptations, their free and varied range, the way in 
 which they call up before the mind the whole of the 
 living realities of God's creation and God's revelations, 
 and, in the portion devoted to praise, their rhythmical 
 flow and music, incorporating bursts of adoration and 
 Eucharistic triumph from the Liturgies of St. James or 
 St. Chrysostom, recalling the most ancient Greek 
 hymns of the Church, the Gloria in Exrclsis, and 
 the Evening Hymn preserved at the end of the 
 
90 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS in 
 
 Alexandrian manuscript of the New Testament,^ — 
 all this is in the strongest contrast to anything that 
 I know of in the private devotions of the time. It 
 was the reflection, in private prayer, of the tone and 
 language of the public Book of Common Prayer, its 
 Psalms, and its Offices : it supplemented the public 
 book, and carried on its spirit from the Church to the 
 closet. And this was the counterpart of what Andrewes 
 taught in the pulpit. To us it shows how real and 
 deeply held his theology was ; and it also explains 
 that persuasiveness of conviction, which has as much 
 to do as intellectual force and breadth, in making 
 men listen to their teachers and accept their words. 
 The reformed English Church had had its martyrs, 
 statesmen, doctors, champions ; in Andrewes it had a 
 saint — not called so, not canonised, but one in whom 
 men felt the irresistible charm of real holiness. It 
 had some one in high place not only to admire, but 
 to love. And churches need saints, as much as 
 theologians and statesmen, and even martyrs. 
 
 In these ways, Andrewes marks a period and a 
 step in the unfolding of the theology of the Reformed 
 Church of England and in the practical course of the 
 Reformation. Hooker had vindicated on its behalf 
 the rights of Christian and religious reason, that 
 reason which is a reflection of the mind of God. 
 Andrewes vindicated on its behalf the rights of Chris- 
 tian history. Hooker had maintained the claims of 
 reason, against a slavish bondage to narrow and 
 arbitrary interpretations of the letter of Scripture. 
 Andrewes claimed for the English Church its full 
 
 ' 'l>a)s Wapliv ; translated in the Lyra Aposlolica., No. 62. See 
 liint^ham, vol. 'w. p. 411. 
 
Ill BISHOP ANDRE WES 9^ 
 
 interest and membership in the Church universal, 
 from which Puritan and Romanist ahke would cut off 
 the island Church by a gulf as deep as the sea. The 
 spirit of historical investigation had awoke in Eng- 
 land as in the rest of Europe, against the passion 
 for abstract and metaphysical argument which had 
 marked and governed the earlier stages of the 
 Reformation. It had converted Casaubon from Cal- 
 vinism, and at the same time made him the most 
 formidable critic of the magnificent but unhistorical 
 picture presented in the annals of Baronius. Widened 
 knowledge had done as much for Andrewes and the 
 men of his school, Field and Donne and Overall, may 
 I not add, in this matter, Andrewes' close friend, 
 Lord Bacon? History had enlarged their ideas of 
 the Church universal. Its facts and concrete lessons 
 and actual words had overborne the traditions and 
 general assumptions in which the necessities of an 
 age of rehgious war had educated them. They 
 opened their eyes and saw that the prerogatives 
 which the Puritans confined to an invisible Church, 
 and which Rome confined to the obedience of the 
 Pope, belonged to the universal historical Church, 
 lasting on with varied fortunes through all the 
 centuries from the days of Pentecost ; on earth " the 
 habitation of God. through the Spirit." Maintaining 
 jealously and stoutly the inherent and indefeasible 
 rights of the national Church of England, ♦and 
 resisting with uncompromising determination the 
 tyranny which absorbed in a single hand the powers 
 of the Catholic Church, they refused to forget, even 
 in England, what God's Spirit had done in other 
 portions of Christendom, perhaps far removed, per- 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 haps for the time bitterly hostile. They learned to 
 pray, as Andrewes did, " for the Catholic Church, its 
 establishment and increase ; for the Eastern, its 
 deliverance and union ; for the Western, its adjust- 
 ment and peace ; for the British, the supply of what 
 is wanting in it, the strengthening of that which re- 
 mains in it." They recognised the authority of its 
 great and unquestionable decisions. They were will- 
 ing to appeal to its authority, if it could be expressed 
 legitimately. They introduced, even into contro- 
 versy, at least to some extent, the habits of discrim- 
 ination and respect. Their teaching shows how, 
 after the first fever and excitement of the revolt 
 against Roman usurpation had passed, the leaders of 
 the English Church felt that much natural misstate- 
 ment and exaggeration had to be qualified and 
 corrected ; it shows how anxious they were, in accord- 
 ance with the declared policy of the Reformation, to 
 keep hold on the undivided and less corrupted Church 
 of the early centuries as their standard and guide ; it 
 shows how much they found, in their increased ac- 
 quaintance with it, to enrich, to enlarge, to invigorate, 
 to give beauty, proportion, and force to their theology. 
 Still, as I said before, in this unique example of 
 Church polity — unique in its constitution, unique in its 
 strong permanence and its fruitfulness — they hardly 
 attempted a complete, consistent, systematic theory. 
 There was none agreed upon. There was none put 
 forward, as in the vast elaborate systems in fashion 
 on the Continent, where, in folio after folio, every- 
 thing is rigorously deduced from its principles, and 
 "everything is in order and in its place. To the 
 views and positions of Andrewes and his school, 
 
Ill BISHOP AND REIVES 93 
 
 broadly stated, there were obvious objections which 
 they did not care to probe, and to which an answer 
 might not have been easy. And their appeal to the 
 idea of Church authority grew into shape, and the 
 ecclesiastical administration based on it was carried on 
 and enforced, under the shield of James I.'s inter- 
 pretation of the Royal Supremacy, which meant a 
 right to meddle with everything, and settle every- 
 thing by his personal wisdom. But I suppose the 
 truth was, though they felt it only in a partial way 
 and without putting it into words, that they saw that 
 though the English Church, according to the current 
 theories, was an anomaly, it was only an anomaly 
 among anomalies — amid universal anomaly. The 
 sins, the crimes, the misrule of centuries had brought 
 their inevitable, their irremediable consequences, and 
 made claims and rules inapplicable and impossible 
 which belonged to times when these evils were yet 
 in the future. It was a saying of a wise observer,^ 
 that " whoever enters on the study of Church his- 
 tory must be prepared for many surprises." And 
 certainly the course of Church history has not run, 
 either for good or for evil, in the course which 
 theories would have prescribed to it. Stern and 
 terrible facts stand up in it, not to be disguised by 
 the most pretentious of theories. And, happily, on 
 the other hand, mischiefs which seemed inevitable 
 have found unthought-of compensations or remedies. 
 I doubt whether Andrewes cared much for that 
 intellectual completeness of theory which we make 
 much of He knew that Rome in his day was 
 unprimitive, tyrannical, aggressive, unscrupulous : 
 
 1 Charles Marriott of Oriel. 
 
94 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS in 
 
 he knew that Puritanism was narrow, uncathoHc, 
 cruelly intolerant ; and he would not be cheated out 
 of the facts which he saw, for want of a convenient 
 theory. He fought both Romanist and Puritan 
 with such weapons as he found in his hand. But 
 his governing rule was a noble one — that expressed 
 in the ancient saying, ^irdprav eXa^j^e?, ravrav 
 Koo-fxet, " Sparta is your portion, do your best for 
 Sparta " : — noble, I say, because so honest, and so 
 unpretending ; for in religion, which means man's 
 blindness and weakness as well as his hope, it does 
 not do to be ambitious, or to claim great things for 
 men or for systems. England might have faults, 
 mistakes, shortcomings, inconsistencies ; let him do 
 his best to bear their discredit, or to mend their 
 evils. But England and its Church had lived on 
 before he was born, and would live on after he had 
 done his part and passed away. The feeling with 
 which he laboured in his work of life is, I conceive, 
 expressed in the following passage from Archbishop 
 Bramhall : ^— 
 
 " No man can justly blame me for honouring my 
 spiritual mother, the Church of England, in whose 
 womb I was conceived, at whose breasts I was 
 nourished, and in whose bosom I hope to die. Bees 
 by the instinct of nature do love their hives, and 
 birds their nests. But God is my witness that I, 
 according to my uttermost talent and poor under- 
 standing, have endeavoured to set down the naked 
 truth impartially, without either favour or prejudice, 
 the two capital enemies of right judgment. . . My 
 desire hath been to have Truth for my chiefest 
 
 1 Quoted in Newman's Prophetical Office of the Churchy p. vi. 
 
Ill BISHOP ANDRE WES 95 
 
 friend, and no enemy but error. If I have had any 
 bias, it hath been desire of peace, which our common 
 Saviour hath left as a legacy to His Church, that I 
 might live to see the reunion of Christendom, for 
 which I shall always bow the knees of my heart to 
 the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . 
 
 " Howsoever it be, I submit myself and my poor 
 endeavours, first to the judgment of the Catholic 
 CEcumenical essential Church, which, if some of late 
 days have endeavoured to hiss out of the school, I 
 cannot help it. From the beginning it was not so. 
 And if I should mistake the right Catholic Church 
 out of human frailty, or ignorance (which, for my 
 part, I have no reason in the world to suspect ; yet 
 it is not impossible, when the Romanists themselves 
 are divided into five or six several opinions, what 
 this Catholic Church, or what their Infallible Judge 
 is), I do implicitly, and in the preparation of my 
 mind, submit myself to the True Catholic Church, 
 the Spouse of Christ, the Mother of the Saints, the 
 Pillar of Truth. And seeing my adherence is firmer 
 to the Infallible Rule of Faith, i.e. the Holy Scrip- 
 tures interpreted by the Catholic Church, than to 
 mine own private judgment and opinions, although 
 I should unwittingly fall into an error, yet this 
 cordial submission is an implicit retractation thereof, 
 and I am confident will be so accepted by the 
 Father of Mercies, both from me and from all others 
 who seriously and sincerely do seek after peace and 
 truth. 
 
 '' Likewise I submit myself to the Representative 
 Church, that is, to a free General Council, or so 
 General as can be procured ; and until then to the 
 
96 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iii 
 
 Church of England, wherein I was baptized, or to a 
 National English Synod. To the determination of 
 all which, and of each of them respectively, accord- 
 ing to the distinct degree of their authority, I yield a 
 conformity and compliance^ or at the least, and to 
 the lowest of them, an acquiescence^ 
 
 For principles and convictions such as these, 
 Andrewes, pre-eminently among our Divines, made 
 a home in the Reformed Church of England. It 
 was these principles and convictions which taught 
 English Churchmen of the next generation, amid 
 the direst ruin that ever fell on an institution, in 
 exile abroad among mocking or pitying strangers, 
 in utter overthrow at home, not to despair of the 
 Church of England. 
 
IV 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE EPISCOPATE IN 
 CHRISTIAN HISTORY^ 
 
 "And who is sufficient for these things?" — 2 Cor. ii. 16. 
 Kat Trpos ravra ris iKavos. 
 
 The disproportion between the professed ends of 
 religion, and what we see of its means — between the 
 hopes which it avows, and their HkeHhood, as it 
 appears on the face of things here — is a thought 
 which is famihar to us in the Bible, as it is too 
 obvious for any one to have overlooked who has 
 reflected at all. The disproportion, I mean, not 
 between those ends and hopes, and what we believe 
 to have been provided by Almighty God for their 
 fulfilment, for no one can think that means fall short 
 of ends in a redemption of which the Incarnation 
 and the Cross were the conditions and price, and 
 the gift of the Spirit is the continuing stay ; but the 
 disproportion now, between all that goes on before 
 our eyes, or is done by us directly for the ends of 
 religion, and what those ends are when we really 
 
 1 Preached in Westminster Abbey at the Consecration of Dr. 
 Moberly as Bishop of Salisbuiy, St. Simon and St. Jude's Day, 1869. 
 
 c.s.,p. n ' 
 
98 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iv 
 
 think of them. The sense of disproportion arises, 
 when that divine work of saving and restoring — 
 begun so awfully in " the might of signs and wonders, 
 in the might of the Spirit of God " — is continued 
 in the world of every day, as it has fallen back into 
 its old customary paths. The early days felt it as 
 much as we do. They saw a cause, which claimed 
 everything and promised itself boundless victory, 
 start on its career in the utmost obscurity and help- 
 lessness. " The foolishness of preaching " ; " the 
 weakness of God " ; "a treasure in earthen vessels " ; 
 " we walk by faith and not by sight " ; — these are 
 some of the frequent and often startling expressions 
 met with in St. Paul, all telling the same thing, the 
 hourly contrast between what an Apostle had to do 
 and meant to do, and what appeared to be his 
 equipment here for doing it. And it is this thought 
 which, in the text, seems to strike St. Paul with 
 sudden and almost oppressive force, coming home 
 to hinl with that shock of surprise with which 
 familiar truths sometimes startle us, when in an hour 
 of unexpected insight they open upon us with a cer- 
 tainty and vividness which make them seem like 
 new ones. " To the one, the savour of death unto 
 death ; and to the other, the savour of life unto life. 
 And who is sufficient for these things ? " 
 
 This sense of disproportion, which must be pre- 
 sent to every thinking man in all steps affecting the 
 interests of the kingdom of God, cannot but be one 
 among the crowd of thoughts and feelings which 
 accompany an occasion like the present. A great 
 commission is to be given. The burden of a great 
 trust is to be imposed. A famous chair of Christian 
 
IV THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 99 
 
 teaching and government is again to be occupied. 
 A seat is to be filled which, we may almost say, has 
 never been unfilled while there has been English 
 history. A place is to be supplied in that ancient 
 company of teachers which stretches back without 
 a break through such wonderful changes of time to 
 the first days of the Gospel. It is one of those 
 occasions which bring before us in strange and touch- 
 ing harmony the hopes of the living and the memory 
 of the dead. Who can be insensible to the solemnity 
 of what we are about.? And yet what is all that 
 we are doing, compared with the ends, in order to 
 which it is all done ? What is this high and special 
 ministry, to the mass of evils which it is appointed 
 to keep down and heal ? What is it to those pur- 
 poses of another world, which are the reason why it 
 exists ? What is this great machinery, this great 
 office, great as indeed the ideal of it is, \yhen we 
 think of what it aspires to, and put side by side 
 what we aim at and what is our sufficiency? If such 
 thoughts did not come to us of themselves, there 
 are those who are quite ready to remind us, from 
 their point of view, of that disproportion which so 
 struck St. Paul. Here, all is to us overwhelmingly 
 real and sacred : a man can look forward to no more 
 serious account than for such .a charge as is con- 
 ferred to-day. But outside, we should be met by 
 those who regard it as the transaction of a decent or 
 impressive conventional form, or as the filling up, by 
 the customary process, varied according to the asso- 
 ciations of the office,- of a gap in one of the great 
 establishments of an ancient State ; while to others 
 it is simply an idle nothing, a vain fashion remaining 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 from what once was a social power and meant some- 
 thing ; for men thought so then, and that gives 
 meaning and power ; but their thoughts are changed, 
 and it means nothing now. Why should we be sur- 
 prised ? They do but impress upon us, in their own 
 way, the force of the great contrast — what all that 
 we do must look like, in the eyes of those w^ho 
 judge but from what they see here. What does 
 it mean, but that St. Paul is right : that nothing that 
 we can show, no ministry that man can bear, no 
 function that man discharges, can possibly appear 
 adequate to ends and issues which belong to the 
 next world. And what, after all, can any one now 
 say more than Jewish Rabbis, and Greek thinkers, 
 and Roman statesmen might have said of the chances 
 of a preacher like St. Paul changing the course of 
 belief and life in the Empire, and when the Empire 
 had perished, in a new world after it? 
 
 Disproportionate every religious service of man 
 must seem to any one who has imagination enough 
 to put it side by side with those things behind the 
 veil, to which it professes to minister ; but dispro- 
 portionate does not mean either unreal or ineffectual. 
 St. Paul's " who is sufficient ? " finds its answer a {^\n 
 verses on, in an experience which left him not in 
 doubt of the power which was at work behind his 
 own insufficiency : " Our sufficiency is of God, who 
 hath made us able ministers of the New Testament." 
 The Apostle's instruments were feeble, but " mighty 
 to God," to the "casting down of strongholds." 
 They were foolish, yet they did what wisdom could 
 • not do ; they were obscure, yet they were felt even 
 then to be moving the w^orld, and beginning the 
 
IV THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY loi 
 
 greatest of its changes. He looks on and beholds 
 the weak things of the world, which God had chosen, 
 confounding the mighty ; the base and despised 
 things, yea, and things that are not, bringing to 
 nought things that are. We, who hope that we 
 are continuing his work, who in this great function 
 and ministry believe that we hold his Master's pro- 
 mise and gift, have we any corresponding experience 
 to appeal to ? We, like him, are men in the flesh, 
 with an enterprise beyond the grave, and a work 
 which passes on into heaven for its consummation. 
 Earth is very far from heaven, and human life incom- 
 mensurable with what is to come. We cannot know 
 yet, nor imagine what the end shall be ; but have 
 we anything in the working of this great institution, 
 in its known results and proved utilities, to set 
 against the consciousness not only of personal in- 
 sufficiency, but of disproportion, inherent in all 
 things entrusted to human hands, in the office it- 
 self? In what we believe and hold about it, we do 
 not depend on- results, but on the word of Christ ; 
 but His word is not in vain, and cannot be fruitless. 
 We have a promise ; have we an answering history ? 
 We believe that we have. The ideal of our Ordinal 
 has not failed. History is, indeed, but too full of 
 many a grim irony about it. It tells of great errors 
 and great crimes, as well as of great achievements. 
 But there has been ample to justify the obstinate 
 hold which the institution of Episcopacy has kept on 
 the Church. It has been very long in the world, and 
 has worked on a great scale, and under the most 
 varying conditions. It offers itself for a wide and 
 comprehensive estimate, in which we can afford to 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 put aside local or temporary appearances — partial 
 mischiefs, incidental benefits, personal successes — 
 and watch its natural action in its broad results. 
 And we need not be afraid of the review. We do 
 not need the scene to close, in order to know what 
 the Church owes to it. When we are oppressed 
 with what we see too near and too partially, vexed 
 by the comparison of what has to be done with what 
 we can do, we may find, in a severe and honest 
 survey of the past, a countercharm to the disappoint- 
 ments, the continually exaggerated disappointments, 
 of the present, an encouragement to work and hope 
 for what is to come. 
 
 I will venture to dwell on this for a few moments : 
 the place which the Episcopate has, as a matter of 
 fact, filled in Christian history. I am not speaking 
 of questions which our Services take as settled, as to 
 its origin, authority, and grace ; but only of some 
 more obvious aspects of its influence, as we seem to 
 trace them in the long run. Everywhere we see 
 these lines of consecrated persons descending with 
 the lapse of the centuries, radiating as conversion 
 extends the Church to people after people. They 
 start from times where our keenest inquiries cannot 
 pierce the unknown. They come down, in great 
 Churches of Christendom, in some of the foremost of 
 modern nations, practically without a break, to this 
 day. What is before us is a succession of single 
 persons, singly in themselves the recognised deposi- 
 taries of public authority in things spiritual, the visible 
 representatives in their day of the original commission, 
 keeping up the idea of personal charge and responsi- 
 bility and appointed leadership ; not merged in a 
 
IV THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 103 
 
 body of equal teachers, but standing out singly, chief 
 after chief, to take the consequences, each man of his 
 own administration, for praise or blame, to carry on, 
 or else to debase and turn aside the great office of 
 feeding the flock of God. We see further that these 
 lines are continued, on a definite basis and according 
 to fixed rules, by the transmission of authority and 
 place from hand to hand ; nowhere is the function a 
 new thing, at least it does not allow itself to be such ; 
 nowhere, since the first days, do we see it starting as 
 from a fresh and independent origin. It is always 
 something given, not self-assumed ; passed on, not 
 made for the occasion ; an ancient inheritance taken 
 with all chances of advantage and inconvenience, not 
 a recent change and reform, the growth of experience 
 and necessity, consequent on altered conditions and 
 increasing wants, and greater knowledge of both. 
 
 In looking back on what on the whole has come 
 of all this in the history of religion, the first thing 
 that strikes us is the part which the Episcopate has 
 had in keeping up the continuity and identity of the 
 Christian society ; the idea in it, and not only the 
 idea, of its perpetuity — that from first to last it is 
 one. I do not think we always sufficiently appre- 
 ciate what to me seems the astonishing fact, merely 
 as a fact, of this, continuous lasting on, through so 
 many ages, and such trying ones, of the Christian 
 body. A shrewd man in the first centuries n^ight 
 well have doubted, according to all experience, 
 whether such a body would be able to keep together 
 for any length of time ; whether the first feeling of 
 unity could continue amid the vicissitudes of time 
 and the activity of the human mind ; he might have 
 
104 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iv 
 
 further doubted whether, if it could, an institution 
 Hke Episcopacy was the way to secure it ; he might 
 have thought this but a slender and precarious pro- 
 vision to trust to, for the government of a society 
 like the Church. We have, indeed, nothing to boast 
 of in the matter of unity ; yet what we have, measur- 
 ing by the great and constant forces against it, seems 
 to me remarkable enough ; the article of the Holy 
 Catholic Church has not dropped out of our creeds ; 
 the thrill is a real one which is called forth by the 
 great name of Christendom ; the inextinguishable 
 conviction that after all this unity is greater than it 
 seems — the longing, if it were but possible, to see it 
 come nearer in visible fact to its idea — are what the 
 best men feel, and have always felt, in their best 
 times. And that which has kept on from age to age 
 this sense of the oneness of the continuous Christian 
 body is, I cannot doubt, as far as anything outward 
 has done it, the unfailing presence of the Episcopate. 
 There were other influences, doubtless, out of sight 
 and deeper ; but this one was immediate and direct. 
 If, in spite of all our differences, we all of us feel 
 ourselves one with the first ages, one with the Church 
 Universal of all times, instead of an entirely different 
 body growing out of it and coming into its place, it 
 is along these threads and networks of the Episcopate 
 that the secret agencies have travelled, which have 
 kept alive the sentiment of identity, amid so much 
 that seemed to contradict and defy it. Along these 
 lines the main history of the Church has run ; about 
 them its main organisation has gathered age after 
 age. A chain of men, transmitting the place which 
 they fill — with the memory of many predecessors, 
 
IV THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 105 
 
 and not doubting that they will have successors — 
 definitely connected with places which their presence 
 has made illustrious and filled with great recollections, 
 and which show, in works of grandeur and beauty, 
 the marks of their hands in many different epochs — 
 appeals, as the immemorial and hereditary always 
 do, to the imagination of society ; but here associa- 
 tions, rich in all that makes things venerable and 
 august in this world, are joined A'ith others, full of 
 the majesty of interests beyond this world. The 
 Episcopate has these two things : it has a history 
 inextricably associated with that of Christianity ; 
 and next, it is a public sign of community of origin 
 and purpose, and an assertion, never faltering, of 
 confidence in a continuing future. Other organisa- 
 tions have with more or less success kept up 
 Christianity ; but they date from particular times, 
 and belong to particular places, and are thp growth 
 of special circumstances. Only this has been every- 
 where, where Christianity has been ; only this be- 
 longs peculiarly to Christianity, as a whole. A Bishop 
 is a representative person, and he represents much 
 more than the authority and claims of anything 
 present or local ; his functions and commission are 
 of the most ancient derivation, and of the widest 
 recognition ; he ig an organ of a great movement, 
 the officer of a great kingdom, which has been going 
 on since the beginning of Christianity, and alfcws 
 itself no bounds but the world ; of that power which, 
 as a matter of fact, presented Christian truth to man- 
 kind, and has rooted' it among them. The witness 
 and memorial of a great past, of widely-extended 
 relations, of a great company of others like him, 
 
io6 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iv 
 
 most remote in time and space, he recalls, even now, 
 the almost obliterated image of a once embodied 
 and visible communion of Christians, still able to be 
 one. His office is a thing of public and common 
 interest, a trust for Christianity as such, which no 
 party or school can venture to claim for its own, in 
 creation or in use. Even to those who do not 
 accept it, his ministration, conspicuous in all Christian 
 history, is a memorial of that in which all Christians 
 are concerned ; it is the sign not only of the appeal, 
 but of the force, the spread, the duration, the rooted 
 hold of their common faith ; he is one who could not 
 be where he is, but for the long preceding efforts and 
 victory of Christianity. The institution has borne 
 the changes and the rough usage of time ; often 
 abused, often disbelieved in, sometimes sunk in 
 desperate scandals, it has the power of recovery, of 
 preserving and returning to its type ; and it is im- 
 possible to imagine it stopping, come what may, as 
 it is impossible to think of Christianity coming to an 
 end. These ancient lines of bishops — representing 
 an authority whose first steps are lost, not springing 
 from the State, though, it may be, in every possible 
 degree affected and controlled by it, not springing 
 from the congregation, not springing from private 
 theories, or reforms, or needs — carry home to the 
 public mind, as a matter of manifest fact, even to 
 those who hang loose to all religious forms, that we 
 are living, and have been for ages, with a great public 
 religious society round us, distinct from all mere 
 associations of men ; as impersonal as the only thing 
 like it on earth, the State ; which may at times 
 reflect an individual mind or the tendencies of a 
 
IV THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 107 
 
 period, but which is on the whole, and in the long- 
 run, too vast, too open, too manifold, to be the 
 reflection, any more than the work, of any man, or 
 any party, or any age. 
 
 The Episcopate represents the Christianity of 
 history ; it represents, further, the Christianity of the 
 general Church, as distinguished from the special 
 opinions and views of doctrine which assert their 
 claims in it. Its long lines tie together the Christian 
 body in time ; they are scarcely less a bond, con- 
 necting the infinite moral and religious differences 
 which must always be in the body of the Church. 
 The Bishop's office embodies and protects the large 
 public idea of religion, the common belief and under- 
 standing ; that which all more or less respond to, and 
 recognise as neither of this party nor of that, and 
 allow a place to, even if not personally satisfied with 
 it. For here, as in morality, as in politics, there is 
 always, around what is personal and individual, and 
 wider than all special schools and doctrines, a larger 
 atmosphere in which all alike live — a communis 
 sensus of simpler, more elementary, accepted truths, 
 vague, perhaps, homely, apparently commonplace— 
 " those mean despised truths that every one thinks 
 he is sufficiently seen in " ; ^ of inferior interest com- 
 pared to each man'3 favourite views, yet the condition 
 and basis of them all. Within this there is sure to 
 be much divergence ; how can there fail to be, when 
 the soul has free play, and opens into real life, on 
 the tremendous and absorbing objects of religion ? 
 Who, too, can doubt the vast part which belongs to 
 this independent action of individuals ? — the vast 
 
 1 Abp. Leighton, in Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, p. 103. 
 
io8 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iv 
 
 part, in all great things, of personal influence — the 
 incalculable service rendered by individual desire of 
 excellence, and hatred of evil, by the devotion, the 
 charity, the spirit of reform, the love of truth, in 
 private men ; often, no doubt, disturbing and em- 
 barrassing, fruitful of fresh difficulties while remedy- 
 ing old ones, threatening unwelcome change; but, well 
 or ill, with mistakes or with good success, not letting 
 the talent lie buried ; forcing us to remember, if but 
 partially fulfilling, the great but often dreaded law of 
 continually attempted improvement, without which 
 all good would perish. Every one who is himself in 
 earnest, must of course see much to condemn, in 
 what many others are in earnest about. But I don't 
 know why that should keep us from seeing, in great 
 movements of the individual and private spirit, in 
 efforts after reform and perfection, which perhaps we 
 most thoroughly dislike from our several points of 
 view — say, in Monasticism, in the theology of the 
 Schoolmen, in the mendicant orders, in Puritanism, 
 in the many phases of nonconformity, in the Com- 
 pany of Jesus, in the noble but vain revolt of 
 Jansenism — much which the world could ill afford 
 to be without. Certainly, as I read history, it is 
 difficult to say how much we all owe to every one 
 of these many opposite movements, in which men, 
 obstinately and devotedly, counting no cost and 
 reserving no retreat, have given themselves to fulfil 
 some high purpose which their own hearts and 
 thoughts had shown them, and about which no one at 
 first thought and felt like them. 
 
 But there is one thing these great movements 
 cannot do : they cannot fill the great compass of 
 
IV THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 109 
 
 man's nature, and aims, and needs. They arc one- 
 sided ; they must leave much untouched ; and, 
 further, they would, if they were strong enough, 
 destroy all that they cannot assimilate or subdue. 
 The two greatest uprisings of the private religious 
 spirit and temper against what was common and 
 customary were, I suppose, Monasticism and Puri- 
 tanism ; but Monasticism and Puritanism, outwardly 
 so different, yet with so many deep affinities both in 
 their good and their evil, if they could have had 
 their way unchecked, would have broken up the 
 Church in the attempt to cleanse it. And there was 
 something greater than both of them : there was an 
 ideal of Christian life, a tone of Christian sentiment, 
 a reach of Christian thought, a Christian harmony of 
 gifts and powers, a free and living Christian morality, 
 a great simple Christian faith, which, with all their 
 high efforts and intensity of purpose, they failed to 
 comprehend, they knew not how to reproduce. And 
 of this wider, more generous, and yet humbler and 
 more self-distrusting religion — often, doubtless, im- 
 perfect and inconsistent, yet perhaps not oftener so 
 than these narrower and sterner rules of religion fell 
 short of their standard — the Episcopate was the 
 natural head, and bond, and visible symbol. The 
 Bishop was the mouthpiece of a theology which was 
 not peculiar to an order or a school. The religion of 
 which he was the natural exponent was one which 
 individuals might in various ways think not enough 
 for them, but in which, so far as it went, they could 
 meet on a common ground. Its language was the 
 possession and inheritance of all Christian people, 
 not a dialect moulded by the history of particular 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 opinions. The great Creed, so simple in words, so 
 overwhelming in meaning, of which he was the 
 guardian, was one which belonged at once to cate- 
 chumens and divines, to the child's bedside prayer 
 and to the most solemn worship. Whatever he 
 might be personally, in his office he was not his 
 own ; he belonged to the public : that office was an 
 expression of public thought, public belief, public 
 sentiment, within which private opinions might have 
 their field of debate ; and private opinion, when it 
 became ambitious and aggressive, whether in earlier 
 Monasticism or in later Puritanism, met in his place 
 and authority its natural check. The worship over 
 which he presided was marked by two special 
 features : it was old, and it was for all men. It was 
 venerable with the majesty of long and wide use : it 
 had the power which belongs to that which is a 
 common and public thing, open to all, of no private 
 devising, and of which no one thinks of the origin 
 and beginning. Its piety was expressed in collects 
 and offices and liturgical and sacramental forms, 
 which have been in the Church for ages, and of 
 which, for the most part, no man knows the author. 
 And it had that depth and force which belongs to 
 what all of us can respond to and join in, as men : 
 it could express the devotion of the aspiring and the 
 homely, the reserved and the eager alike ; it could 
 be the comfort and shelter of those who love what is 
 old, and quiet, and unpretending, and it could render 
 thoughts and feelings for those stirring and deep 
 minds in their most solemn moods, under whose 
 activity old things become new. A certain tone and 
 temper of religious feeling has sprung from all this ; 
 
IV THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY in 
 
 in its seriousness and balance, all, whether with 
 approval or not, see a contrast to the fervour and 
 vehemence of particular phases of the devotional 
 spirit ; and yet it alone has a key of sympathy, to 
 understand even what goes beyond it, and to respond 
 to what is not its own. Again, the Bishop's special 
 functions were ministrations of wide reach and 
 concern, belonging to all, affecting all. To this one 
 man, in his laying on of hands, young and old looked 
 in that solemn time when he committed each 
 generation of children to God's keeping in the world ; 
 from this one man, and from his laying on of hands, 
 a whole body of clergy drew their authority, and 
 learned and unlearned gained or suffered by the 
 pastors whom he commissioned and governed. In 
 all that he was and did, in his administration and 
 official speaking, the idea was ever present of what 
 was of common import to all, of what bound all 
 together, of what belonged not to to-day or yesterday, 
 but was born with man, or was coeval with the 
 Gospel. Others might have newer, perhaps deeper, 
 perhaps more eventful things to say. He was there 
 to remind Christians of that vast, wide, spiritual 
 society which was meant to embrace us all ; of the 
 force and value of what is common, and public, and 
 continuous, and customary. He was there to bind 
 together in each age the old and the new, the weak 
 and the strong ; to witness, amid the vicissitudes, of 
 individual thought and energy, for something which, 
 with less show, wears better and lasts longer ; for a 
 common inheritance -of faith and religion, which 
 needs indeed to be filled up in its outlines by private 
 conviction and activity, but without which everything 
 
112 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iv 
 
 private risks becoming one-sided in ideas, and 
 cramped in s}'mpathy, and, at last, poor in heart. 
 
 Such an institution can bear the test of history. 
 Its broad results are before the world ; the world 
 can see and judge whether it has been in vain, and 
 whether it is not doing still what it was doing cen- 
 turies ago. If only it had done what it has done, 
 in keeping the Church together, and in guarding at 
 once Catholic faith and Christian freedom, it would 
 have justified its place. And yet this alone does 
 not satisfy what the Church conceives of the office. 
 If this were all, we might speak of a successful and 
 salutary organisation ; but there would be no need 
 for an Apostle to cry out, and for those after him to 
 echo his cry, " Who is sufficient for these things ? " 
 The great men of this world do not so shrink under 
 their burden. But men may well say so, if they think 
 as St. Paul thought of what they are charged with, 
 of the risk of going wrong. If it is an institution 
 and organ of Christ's Gospel and Kingdom, it must 
 have aspects which are beyond the domain of history. 
 It is on pain of degrading our conception of it that 
 we lose sight, in the stress we lay on its practical 
 bearings now, of functions which are in order to the 
 unseen and the future. It is a great ministry of 
 religion ; and when we name religion, we name some- 
 thing beside which all experience here is soon at 
 fault, all faculties of thought at last find their term, 
 all creations of imagination are pale and tame. We 
 believe that this office serves the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ; and the Gospel of Ilim who came to seek 
 the lost, to save sinners, to abolish death, to judge 
 mankind, runs up, by the very force of the terms we 
 
IV THE E PISCO PA TE IN CHRIS TIAN HIS TOR V 113 
 
 use, into that which utterly leaves behind all that 
 " eye hath seen or ear heard." We cannot grasp it, 
 no, not in its most reduced and attenuated form, 
 without coming upon what is in the sharpest con- 
 trast to all that we have to do with now. Call this 
 mystical, intangible, transcendental : so it is, but 
 Christianity starts with the assumption of the in- 
 comprehensible greatness of what is out of sight, 
 and presupposes a world of mystery ; and so, in 
 reality, view it as we will, does human nature. If 
 St. Paul's ministry had its most matter-of-fact 
 prosaic side, of business and drudgery, of daily 
 trouble and stiff opposition and frequent disappoint- 
 ment, it also took into view another side, which in 
 the incredible vastness of its claims, its responsi- 
 bilities, its stakes, its prospects, must seem to the 
 judgment of mere experience, as it did to Festus, 
 the extravagance of a dream. And if there is a 
 ministry on earth which in any sense inherits from 
 the Apostles of the New Testament, it, too, must 
 not shrink from the thought, that in some of its 
 chief parts it has to work, and trust, and wait, but 
 not to see ; that it belongs to that world above our 
 reach, of which the Psalms are the echo, and which 
 is the unchanging background of St. Paul ; and that 
 while now it binds the Church with society, linking 
 on earth past with present, and preparing the present 
 for what is to come, its highest functions look to 
 things " not seen," its issues reach to that time when 
 all will be over here, the judgment on it has to pass 
 before " no assize of- man," ^ its success and its reward 
 
 ^ Andrewes' Sermons, v. 117 (translation of i Cor. iv. 3, virb dv- 
 6p(x}7rip7}S ij/Jiepas). 
 
 C.S.,P. I 
 
J 14 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS iv 
 
 arc for that unknown hour when the Master and His 
 servants shall meet for their last account, and when 
 the last test shall decide on the secrets and on the 
 ventures of us all. 
 
 The day that is passing, and that " kingdom where 
 space and time are not,"^ are both our Master's, and 
 to both His servants owe their debt. Here, they 
 have to meet the realities of the moment, to face 
 actual difficulties, to choose their course, to keep 
 their balance, undazzled and undismayed ; here, they 
 need courage, patience, forbearance, soberness. There, 
 they need to live with the thought that they are 
 ministers of something much greater than anything 
 that men can be themselves ; that they are charged 
 wdth words which are not their own ; that powers 
 and blessings of the other world come with them, to 
 help and comfort souls — ^judgments inscrutable, and 
 ways past finding out, and a love which is beyond 
 understanding, the love of Christ. There, they have 
 to believe, and to hope, to pray, to adore, to bless. 
 Their great trust calls, indeed, for the best of that 
 without which no man can do nobly here — public 
 spirit, large-hearted sympathy, manliness, straight- 
 forward wisdom, steady judgment, humbleness of 
 soul ; " plain living, and high thinking," and true 
 work. Man, in his strength and honesty, is sufficient 
 for these things. But there is something further, for 
 which, by himself, he is not sufficient : to take up 
 for his own day the burden borne in theirs by 
 Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles ; to be the chosen and 
 special servant of a dispensation not of this world, 
 most awful, eternal, infinite ; to have, as the end and 
 
 ^ Wordsworth, Excursion, p. 1 1 8. 
 
IV THE EPISCOPATE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY 115 
 
 business of life, to be a foremost witness of the will 
 of God and the hopes of man, and to bear on high, 
 in a world of sense and time, always passing away, 
 the Everlasting and Most Holy Name ; to be charged, 
 above all other men, with understanding the purposes, 
 guarding the truth, distributing the graces, of the 
 Unseen and the Most High ; to fulfil functions such 
 as are described in the words of Scripture — " over- 
 seers of the Church of God," " stewards of God's 
 mysteries," " ambassadors for Christ," " workers to- 
 gether with God," " to whom He hath committed the 
 ministry of the reconciliation of the world." " For 
 these things, who is sufficient ? " Who, indeed — 
 without that Spirit of counsel and might, that Spirit 
 of power and love and soberness, with which the 
 great Master once strengthened His messengers. 
 May He grant it indeed to all who are in any way 
 responsible for the interests of the kingdom of God. 
 To Him, having done their best, may they be able, 
 with prayer and faith, and deepest humbleness of 
 trust and will, to commit their way. And then they 
 must leave their work in those Strong Hands which 
 uphold the world, which have so wonderfully pre- 
 served His Church, and in whose keeping are the 
 hopes and the life of all things that He has made. 
 
V 
 
 THE GIFT OF THE SPH^rri 
 
 "And as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost 
 said. Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I 
 have called them." — Acts xiii. 2. 
 
 This is the account of the first Ordination in the 
 Church, since the full purpose of God as to the char- 
 acter of the Christian Church had been declared by the 
 conversion of Cornelius. That great surprise — " then 
 hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance 
 unto life " — had brought home to the minds even of 
 Apostles how imperfectly they had as yet under- 
 stood their high commission. It had reversed their 
 undoubting suppositions as to their field of action, 
 and what they were meant to do. In place of a 
 completed and renewed Judaism, completed by the 
 coming of its King and renewed to fresh life by His 
 Spirit, and drawing by a new attraction throngs of 
 heathen proselytes into the fold of Israel — in place 
 of this great change, magnificent as it might seem 
 in God's own land and city, among the multitude 
 of Jewish communities dispersed throughout the 
 world — in place of this there was substituted as the 
 
 ^ An Ordination Sermon, preached in Wells Cathedral, iQlh 
 December iSSo. 
 
V THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT 117 
 
 destined scene of their labours, with all its diffi- 
 culties, with all its openings, with all its hopes, tlie 
 world itself. All the multitudes of mankind, unre- 
 claimed, astray, godless, " aliens from the common- 
 wealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of 
 promise," Gentile society, east and west, mighty, 
 organised, deeply corrupted, with all its fringes of 
 surrounding barbarism, " the publicans and sinners " 
 of humanity, despised by Jews, shunned, hated, 
 because so steeped in vice, and so utterly unintelligible 
 and uncongenial — these and not Jews prepared by a 
 Divine discipline of a thousand years, these were the 
 materials out of which the Apostles were, after all, 
 to build up the Church of God. As this great and 
 novel conception of the work before them gradually 
 grew into distinctness, and they became accustomed 
 to it, it naturally took possession of all their thoughts. 
 It pointed to new efforts, a new departure, new 
 functions. The result we read in the text. Apostles 
 of the Gentiles were called to extend and perfect 
 what had been begun and was not given up by the 
 Apostles of the circumcision. As they waited at 
 Antioch, and pondered and prayed, and wondered at 
 what was to be, the call came. " Separate me 
 Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have 
 called them";, and the building up of the Church 
 Universal began. It was the first Ordination of the 
 Catholic Church, in which there was no Monger 
 " Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, but all were one in 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 It was no hum"an agency which pronounced this 
 call, which sent forth Barnabas and Saul on their 
 eventful mission. If there is anything on which 
 
ii8 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS v 
 
 stress is laid in the New Testament, it is that He 
 who sends forth the ministers of the Gospel of 
 Christ, who calls them, who equips them for their 
 task, who is the promised source to them of light and 
 strength and influence, is God the Holy Ghost. He 
 who sanctified the Baptist from his mother's womb, 
 He from whom the Son Himself received the seal 
 and anointing of His earthly ministry on the banks 
 of Jordan, He who was the special gift from their 
 departing Master to the Twelve, He whose presence 
 with them was the special qualification of the Seven, 
 the first Deacons, " men full of the Holy Ghost and 
 of wisdom " — He, too, again gives the word when 
 Barnabas and Saul are sent forth from Antioch to 
 head " the great company of the preachers " to the 
 end of time. And never from that day to this has 
 the Church forgotten that it is from His co-operation, 
 and sanction, and gracious blessing that all that is 
 real in her Ordinations comes. Forms vary and 
 customs alter, and one language dies and gives 
 place to another, and sacred words are spoken in 
 differing tongues as far from one another as the east 
 is from the west. But the central belief is never 
 lost, is never changed — that from God the Holy 
 Ghost the Church in England receives power and 
 authority to commission the ministers of each genera- 
 tion, that He is with her and her representatives and 
 chief pastors in the exercise of this office ; that from 
 Him comes to each one in Ordination, comes individu- 
 ally and personally, the awful gift of His consecrating 
 presence, to be prized, and cherished, and faithfully 
 served, or to be despised and rejected — but, in any . 
 case, never to be recalled. On whom the Holy 
 
V THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT 119 
 
 Ghost has set His seal, the seal must remain either 
 for blessing or for judgment. 
 
 It will not, I hope, be thought disrespectful to 
 the congregation here assembled, if on an occasion 
 like this, I take leave to address the few words I 
 have to say, exclusively to one part of it. For to 
 some of you a time is come which, to any one 
 seriously believing in the reality of things unseen, is 
 in simple truth inexpressibly solemn. Even in this 
 world's point of view it is a solemn thing to feel 
 ourselves standing on the verge of a new career — 
 to have left and put off the old, to have begun for 
 the future what is new and strange. How much 
 more when that new career is the Christian ministry 
 — the ministry of the Crucified, the ministry of the 
 Holy Ghost. On this occasion, then, the first step 
 in a new, lifelong course, I will venture to ask your 
 leave to try, in the {^\n minutes allotted to me, to 
 refresh in you thoughts which no doubt have 
 been present to all of you. 
 
 What is the foundation of this new condition of 
 your life which is impending over you ? In what does 
 this change begin ? You are about to pass solemnly 
 from the layman to the clergyman. I am not 
 speaking of all that is implied in this ; but I will 
 ask you to think, What does, this new life before you 
 rest upon ? What niust be at the bottom of it ? 
 What above everything is its root and ♦spring, 
 feeding it, moulding it, giving it its true character 
 and colour? It must be — if it is to be what your 
 Master wants for -you, if it is to be in truth what it 
 claims to be, if it is to answer its purpose and not 
 wander into alien paths and employment for which 
 
I20 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS v 
 
 it was not meant — it must be the work of the Holy 
 Ghost in and with your spirit. From Him it must 
 spring ; by Him it must be sustained. It is with 
 Him you have to do. It is He who sends you on 
 your road. It is with Him that you will have to do 
 your work. It is to Him that you will have to give 
 account. 
 
 This must be at the bottom of everything ; this 
 must be foremost and paramount, if we are to think 
 and feel truly and fittingly of what we are called to, 
 in being clergymen. There are countless things 
 which press into notice and hide it from our thoughts ; 
 countless things which seem incongruous with it ; 
 countless things which in the name of their immediate 
 importance claim to come first in the interest of 
 practical men. It is easy to forget in this our 
 energetic and exacting society that a clergyman has 
 to do with the silent powers of the world to come, 
 with the secret but real gifts and purposes of God 
 the Holy Ghost. You have forgotten it, perhaps, 
 sometimes, in the labour and effort of your prepara- 
 tion, in the anxiety and trial of your examination. 
 You will forget it, perhaps, in time to come, in the 
 inevitable routine and vicissitudes of necessary 
 business, in the worries, and weariness, and excite- 
 ment, and disappointment of clerical work. You 
 will forget it, perhaps, when you are hard driven by 
 calls, which you find it hard to meet, on your 
 strength, on your resources, on your powers of 
 thought and teaching ; when you are perplexed by 
 questions which you cannot answer, and difficulties 
 out of which you do not see your way. But, behind 
 all Ihc dust and luirry and turmoil of )'our business, 
 
THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 the great truth remains. The clergyman is the 
 minister of Christ, the unseen, the real Christ ; and 
 the clergyman's teacher and appointed guide and 
 strengthener, the giver of His gifts, to whom he 
 must turn for help and light, who alone can enable 
 him to do his duty, is, very really, very specially, 
 that invisible but mighty Comforter of us all, God 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 I. You will have first to do with yourself. You 
 have to know yourself, to learn more about yourself 
 than perhaps you have yet learnt ; to be master over 
 yourself, to govern and direct your purposes so as to 
 suit yourself to your new calling and way of life. 
 And what is the first thing to be ever remembered ? 
 Is it not that, in this your life and profession, it is 
 God the Holy Ghost who in His providence and good 
 pleasure has chosen and called and picked you out 
 from among your brethren for what you have to do? 
 In the immediate forefront of all our lives, the front 
 place of what we see, there are all the human 
 purposes and influences and reasons which have 
 determined a man's line of life ; but, behind all that, 
 the apparent accident, the motives of duty or con- 
 venience or inclination, the secular ties and constraints 
 which have had much — perhaps too much — to do vv^ith 
 his choice, there is the sovereign election of God who 
 finally places us where we are. 
 
 And He has finally willed to place yow here. 
 He who chose Saul and David for their respective 
 trials, He who destined Prophet and Apostle for 
 their tasks. He who " ordained " Jeremiah to be " a 
 prophet to the nations," and separated Paul from 
 his mother's womb, and called him by His grace, 
 
122 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS v 
 
 He has led each one of us, each one of you, through 
 all the changes, and what we call the chances of 
 life, to the front where we stand now. In the un- 
 fathomable purposes of His eternal election He 
 knew each one of you, and appointed this to be your 
 business in the world, and ordered your circumstances 
 to meet and suit your own plans and wishes and 
 choice, accepting your offered service — if offered of 
 good will ; if otherwise, taking you at your word. 
 And now the Holy Ghost, who chose you and sealed 
 you at your Baptism, who came to you with His 
 proffered benefits at your Confirmation, who, if you 
 have ever had a good thought or desire, has been 
 speaking in your heart, comes to you the third time, 
 the third solemn time, in Ordination. Can we help 
 recalling the sacred words, the thrice repeated 
 question — the sacred words rise of themselves to 
 our thoughts — " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou 
 Me — lovest thou Me — lovest thou Me, more than 
 these ? " He singles you out for a charge which 
 all your brethren have not. He promises you gifts 
 and a commission specially meant for you. He 
 chooses you, not for higher honours, not for higher 
 prerogatives over your brethren, but for more defined 
 and more exacting service, for the alternatives of a 
 severer trial of your whole-heartedness and self- 
 devotion, in which your distant crown of victory 
 may be brighter, but also your failure more disas- 
 trous. Indeed there is nothing to puff you up or 
 exalt you, in the highest estimate we can form f){ 
 the Holy Spirit's calling and gifts in Ordination. 
 They arc the measure of our never-ceasing responsi- 
 bilities. I'hcy are the ground of ho[)e and strength 
 
THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 when human hope fails and human strength sinks. 
 But God save us from our miserable downfall if we 
 build on these the fabric of self-conceit and self- 
 consequence, or ever allow the thought to rest in 
 our minds that we are better men and more faithful 
 than laymen — God's favourites, for being clergymen. 
 
 2. And next, you have to do with others ; and 
 it is for others that you are chosen for your place 
 and work. Remember, then, that in what you have 
 to do zvitJi them and for them, your true, your only 
 adequate relation to them is as the steward and 
 minister of the Holy Ghost ; His servant and 
 minister in the work which He carries on in the 
 Church, and in the souls and characters and con- 
 sciences of men. 
 
 The calls upon a clergyman arc many. The 
 ways in which he may be useful are manifold, even 
 opposite. The work and necessities of ,the Church 
 and society increase in mass and in diversity as time 
 goes on, and in them all the clergyman has his part. 
 But he forgets himself, forgets what he was called 
 to, forgets the reason and purpose of his Ordination, 
 if he ever lets himself forget that he is, first and 
 foremost, the servant of that Divine Person who 
 rules the Church, and commissioned him for his 
 work in it. The fountain and regulating principle 
 of your influence must be a constant recollection of 
 His high service, and true-hearted loyalty to* it. It 
 is not enough for a clergyman to do good and useful 
 work, to be a profound and accomplished scholar. 
 It is not enough' to be a successful parish priest, 
 a great and instructive preacher, a statesmanlike 
 organiser, an active manager of some religious in- 
 
124 PASCAL AND OTHER SEKMONS V 
 
 stitution, a conscientious teacher, a powerful advocate 
 of truth against gainsayers. He must be more than 
 all these. He must live in the consciousness — a 
 consciousness which rules his heart, and shapes his 
 aims, and inspires his devotion — that he belongs 
 essentially to God's divine and heavenly ministry 
 of grace and reconciliation and restoration ; that his 
 office is, in the last resort, in its truest meaning, a 
 spiritual one ; that be his employment what it may, 
 he is in his heart of hearts the servant of a Power 
 whose mystery none can fathom, and whom no 
 conquest can satisfy but the wills and characters 
 of men won back to His obedience and peace. 
 
 Think of your calling and work in this way, as 
 having to do nothing merely temporal or earthly, 
 but the work of the Holy Ghost, the Divine hope 
 of light and goodness for men, and you will never 
 be tempted to rest content and self-complacent with 
 some cheap appearance of success, some short cut to 
 popular influence, some temporary and superficial 
 stirring up of interest, or feeling, or zeal. Think of 
 your work in this way, as doing what the Hoi}' 
 Spirit in your Ordination has laid upon you to do, 
 and doing it with Him as the witness of your soul ; 
 and then, come what may, you will have a spring 
 of strength and comfort within you which success 
 alone cannot give. You may seem to fail, as many 
 of God's truest servants have seemed to fail, while 
 men of shallower and more alloyed religion have 
 seemed so useful. You may be baffled by your 
 own disqualifications, by obstacles which are too 
 strong for you. You may spend your labour, and, 
 what is more, your prayers, your tears, j^our heart, 
 
V THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT 125 
 
 and not see any good for it. Such things are no 
 uncommon incidents of a clergyman's career. But 
 if you are not working for your own glory and ends, 
 but for that invisible Spirit who gave you your 
 charge, and is with you while you fulfil it ; if you 
 nourish and cherish in your soul the recollection 
 that to work under Him and with Him is now the 
 real end of your life ; if you try to keep before your 
 mind that in His dealings with you your life as a 
 clergyman began, and only by continued communion 
 with Him, and by His help and guidance it can 
 safely end, you will learn to bear discouragement as 
 nothing but faith and sincerity can bear it. You 
 will come to see that there are worse and emptier 
 things in the world than disappointment, where it 
 is disappointment in honest service. A true man, 
 a man who believes in the presence, and wisdom, 
 and guidance of the Holy Ghost, would rather have 
 it than the deceptions and unrealities of a hollow 
 and selfish success. The work is not yours but 
 your Master's. There may be ends to be answered 
 in your failure greater than there could have been 
 gained by your success. So that you have not 
 forgotten in whose hands you are, a chequered, un- 
 popular, or a rejected ministry need not mean to 
 to you the failure of your life. 
 
 Yes, my brethren, the ministry you seek, if it is a 
 real thing, is a thing of heaven, with all tha>t there 
 must be of mystery and strangeness, when the things 
 of heaven come down to the life of time. It has 
 been said, with some justice I think, that often we 
 do not appreciate in our popular teaching the place 
 which the office of the Holy Ghost fills in the teaching 
 
126 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS v 
 
 of the New Testament. It is difficult, no doubt, to 
 speak of it wisely and well : of so Divine a thing we 
 can but speak with dim ideas and imperfect words. 
 But it certainly does come before us, interwoven with 
 the very texture of the New Testament, not merely 
 in the mysterious sublimities of the Epistles to the 
 Romans and the Ephesians, but in every dogmatic 
 and every practical lesson. And neither our life nor 
 our teaching can be in harmony with the New Testa- 
 ment if we let it drop out of our minds. 
 
 I doubt not that you are men who will take 
 trouble with yourselves to keep up your thoughts 
 and convictions to the point from which you start at 
 Ordination. Set it then as a definite object in your 
 self-discipline, to keep before you, deep and strong 
 and keen, the remembrance of that awful and gracious 
 Person with whom you will have to work, and who 
 sends you forth. In your continued devotions, 
 without which your service will be worse than vain, 
 make it a definite subject of prayer that you may 
 know Him, as far as man can know Him, more and 
 more ; that you may receive the Divine Blessing in 
 the way and order which Scripture reveals to us, that 
 as you turn to the Father for mercy, and to the 
 Incarnate Son for sympathy, so you may turn to the 
 Spirit for light and strength ; that in the special 
 functions of your ministry, in teaching and counsel 
 and warning and consolation, in the administration 
 of Christ's Sacraments, you may look for help to the 
 special source where Scripture bids you seek it, in 
 the manifold and promised gifts of the Holy Ghost. 
 Pray definitely that you may never forget Him, never 
 lose sight of Him, ever have Him with you. Pray 
 
V THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT 127 
 
 definitely that He will ever kindle and purify your 
 affections, as well as guide your thoughts. Pray that 
 He will give you warmth of soul, without which 
 religion withers ; and soberness and seriousness of 
 judgment, without which truth is wrecked and reason 
 lost. Pray to Him, and for His gifts, in the spirit 
 of the Collects of this season : let them become your 
 constant companions. Pray to Him in the spirit of 
 the first preparatory Collect in the Communion 
 Service. Pray to Him in the Ve7ii Creator Hymn ; 
 and may He hear all our prayers for the light and 
 strength and purity we so much need. 
 
 O God the Holy Ghost, who hast called us to this 
 place in Thy service, as Thou hast begun Thy work, so 
 also continue and finish it in us. Save us from our 
 besetting sins, from pride, and bitterness, and faintness 
 of heart, from sloth and self-deceit, and the curse of 
 an unsubdued will ; and grant us to know and to 
 follow, to do and to suffer Thy will, Who with the 
 Father and the Son livest and reignest one God, for 
 ever. 
 
VI 
 ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST ^ 
 
 " Who is the figure of Him that was to come." — Romans v. 14. 
 
 6s i<XTL TVTTOS TOV fJLeWoVTOS. 
 
 "Qui est forma futuri." 
 
 I ASSUME that there can be no doubt as to the 
 meaning of the words which we render, " Plim that 
 was to come " ; and that the ambiguity to which the 
 Latin version, Qid est forma fiituri^ might have 
 possibly lent itself, can have no place in the original. 
 In Adam, the Apostle's phrase leads us to see, not 
 the likeness of ivJiat was to be, but the Figure of 
 Hint that was to come. Doubtless, we may read in 
 Adam the foreshadowing of what was to happen in 
 the world, of the future of his race ; but here, the 
 Apostle speaks of the First Man as the Type of a 
 Person, the First Type of Jesus Christ the Lord. 
 
 We are accustomed to this way of speaking, and 
 often it hardly arrests our thought. And yet it 
 might ; for between Type and Antitype, in this 
 case, the relation appears at first sight that of the 
 extremest opposition of condition and character, and 
 
 1 Preached in St. Mary's, Oxford, during Lent, 1S70. 
 2 Vide i\\x<^. Epist. clvii. 20; De Fecc. Met'., i. 13, iii. 9. 
 
VI ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST 129 
 
 resulting work and consequences. " As in Adam all 
 die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." " The 
 first man is of the earth, earthy ; the second man is 
 the Lord from Heaven." What opposition can be 
 greater ? Yet Adam is the Type of Christ. He, in 
 whom we see the whole history of our sin and the 
 true image of our falling short, is the figure of Him in 
 whom is summed up all our hope of righteousness 
 and the whole promise of our completeness. He who 
 stands at the head of the history of this world — a 
 history so strange, so dark, so short — is the figure 
 of the Father of the everlasting Age to come. He 
 of whom, in the utter dimness of the beginning 
 of time, we in vain attempt to form a conception, 
 stands as the type of that Brother and Friend whose 
 words and ways and mind are ever open to us, and 
 whom we can know and love as we can none other, 
 who has been among us and has gone from us. He 
 who had a great trust and betrayed it sO lightly is 
 the type of Him who came to do His Father's will, 
 and was obedient, even unto death. By what 
 common likeness can we join together him in whom 
 we behold the Fall, with Him in whom we receive 
 the great and eternal Restoration ? How can the 
 great failure be the type of the great victory ? the 
 great transgression, of the great forgiveness ? the 
 great disaster, of the great recovery ? fatal defeat and 
 fault, of fulfilment and perfection ? Every ^ figure 
 must in some respects be a contrast ; and con- 
 versely, every contrast implies a parallel and corre- 
 spondence ;. but here, the contrast seems to ex- 
 tinguish the likeness. How is darkness to be the 
 figure of light ? sin, of righteousness ? death, of life ? 
 C.S.,P.. K 
 
I30 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vi 
 
 How should the beginning of the downward road of 
 evil reflect the beginning of the new creation of 
 righteousness ? how should the Creature, in his first 
 misery and weakness, suggest and represent the 
 Creator, Holy and Strong — " the Lord from Heaven," 
 dwelling among us in His awful Power and Love, to 
 reverse our doom ? 
 
 But high and low lie very near to one another, in 
 that order in which the First Man and the Second 
 are made by St. Paul to be answering counterparts. 
 It is in a world where things are less real, where our 
 thoughts are swayed by opinion and half knowledge 
 and custom, that we shrink from putting them 
 together, except as opposites. But the wisdom of 
 God, which sees all things from end to end in the 
 infinite vastness of the dispensation of grace, has no 
 such restraint. In the first man, in the depth of his 
 fall, it traces the lineaments of that Holy One who 
 was in the fulness of time to bear his flesh and 
 blood. He who made man was not ashamed of 
 him. He who made man did not disdain to share 
 the necessities of his humiliation, He accepted the 
 community of his loss and shame. He bore man's 
 likeness ; He grudged not that man should bear 
 His own ; that man, in the very moment of his 
 overthrow, should be the prophecy of his Deliverer. 
 He was not ashamed that we should see, in him in 
 whom the world was lost, reflections of His own 
 peculiar glory, the image and the promise of what 
 He was Himself to make perfect. In the very 
 beginning of human history and destiny, we find the 
 figure of its fulfilment, which yet was to be so 
 different. 
 
ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST 13; 
 
 ^ We see in the great type of the Apostle two 
 things. He to whom, step by step, our blood goes 
 back, he in whom were the germs of all that we are, 
 is set before us as the eternal memorial, at once of 
 what man was meant for, and of what man has 
 become. In him are seen together, the intention 
 and the swerving, the purpose and the disappoint- 
 ment. He stands not alone in this melancholy 
 significance. The Bible has many such types of 
 good made frustrate, and the actual world is full of 
 them. But in Adam it is the fortunes of mankind 
 that we see summed up. He stands for us all ; for 
 all living souls, who from generation to generation 
 receive and hand on the breath of human life. In 
 him is the image of all his seed. His is no mere 
 personal calling, no mere personal fall, like those of 
 Saul and Judas. Meant for what he was, even 
 man's perfection, yet in his mortality and pain, 
 though brought upon him by himself, he makes his 
 mute but undoubting appeal for restoration ; he 
 witnesses that all has not been in vain, that he was 
 not made for nought. Where the glimpse that is 
 given us is of the destinies of mankind, there, where 
 the purpose and the failure come together, they seem 
 to demand the remedy, and to announce it. So 
 those, whose thoughts are moulded by the Spirit of 
 the God of Hope, instinctively gather ; so the Bible, 
 from first to last the comforter and uphcflder of 
 human hope, bids them believe that their thoughts 
 are true. He in whom we fell is the Figure of Him 
 that was to come,- because he faintly shadows forth 
 the unimaginable perfection reserved for human 
 nature in its true Head ; and because, in the depths 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 of his own ruin and failure, he cries out and stretches 
 forth his hands for the fulfilment of what he has 
 missed ; and by those cries and yearnings to the 
 Father who made him, is the warrant and promise 
 of it. The type of our lost estate, to all experience 
 irrecoverable, the type of our common disaster which 
 once seemed as if it might have alleviations, but no 
 reversal, is transfigured, while we gaze upon an 
 image, faint yet surrounded with titles of awful 
 honour, of One in whom the obstinate longings of 
 man were to be more than made good ; One by 
 whom the "creature," long "subject to vanity, 
 should be delivered from the bondage of corruption 
 into the glorious liberty of the children of God." 
 For the First man stands at the head of the 
 genealogy of the Second, as " Adam, which was the 
 Son of God." The First man has that awful thing 
 said of him which is said of the Second, in however 
 more ineffable a meaning — " In the image of God, 
 created He man ; " — the Son, " Who is the image of 
 the invisible God," "the express image of His 
 person." 
 
 In Adam we have announced to us the archetype 
 of man ; what was the design of his being, what was 
 the end and original law of his nature : — " Let us 
 make man in our image, after our likeness " ; " So 
 God created man in His own image : in the image 
 of God created He him." In Adam, we are told 
 at the very opening of the Bible of the unity and 
 brotherhood of mankind, that last discovery, long 
 fought against and hardly recognised, of the widen- 
 ing thought of ages, of the conspiring feelings and 
 reason of civilised man. In Adam, we have that 
 
VI ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST 133 
 
 position of man as the crown of all that we know, 
 which is so absolutely unique and overwhelmingly 
 mysterious — as the bondsman and victim of nature, 
 yet its lord ; in all its infinite spaces, the one thing 
 free ; ^ free to choose, free to obey, free to rise ; 
 endowed, he alone of things here, with the wonderful 
 power of self-conquest, self-correction, self-improve- 
 ment ; with capacities infinite of drawing nearer and 
 nearer for ever to the Father, in whose Image he was 
 made; the one thing able to know God, and to know 
 what to God is good, — the one among creatures here 
 whose perfection lay in the perfection of his will, in 
 owning the sway of those strange, awful words, ought 
 and ought not. 
 
 And that was the prerogative and calling which 
 was cast away. That was the purpose which w^as 
 made void. That was the place in the order of God's 
 creation, which from that time to this the race has 
 
 ^ " The first appearance of man in nature was the appearance of a 
 new being in nature. . . . The sun had risen, and the sun descended, 
 the stars looked down upon the earth, the mountains climbed to heaven, 
 the cliffs stood upon the shore, the same as now, countless ages before 
 a single being existed who saw it. The counterpart of this whole 
 scene was wanting, — the understanding mind : that mirror in which 
 the whole was to be reflected ; and when this arose, it was a new 
 birth for creation itself, that it became known — an image in the mind 
 of a conscious being. But even consciousness and knowledge were a 
 less strange and miraculous introduction into the world than cotiscietice.. 
 . . . Mysterious' in his entrance into this scene, man is now an 
 insulation in it. . . . What can be more incomprehensible, more 
 heterogeneous, a more ghostly resident in nature, than tke sense of 
 right and wrong ? What is it ? Whence is it ? The obligation of man 
 to sacrifice himself for right is a truth which springs out of an abyss, 
 the mere attempt to look down into which confuses the reason. Man 
 is alone, then, in nature ; he alone of all the creatures communes with 
 a Being out of nature ; and he divides himself from all other physical 
 life by prophesying, in the face of universal visible decay, his own 
 immortality." — Mozley, Banipton Lectures, iii. pp. 88, 89. 
 
134 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vi 
 
 not fulfilled. In this image of what man was made 
 for begins the terrible record of what man has been ; 
 the unfolding of that terrible and almost infinite 
 variety of failure and sin which crowds the pages 
 of human history, and is its first and deepest impres- 
 sion. " In Adam all die": nothing remains unspoilt ; 
 no promise reaches its true fulfilment, no good abides 
 without decay and degeneracy : all wears out — evil, 
 happily, too, or the world would perish — but also 
 good. " In Adam all die " : we see it in man's 
 greatest types as in his lowest ; we see it in his 
 refinement and in his degradation ; we see it in his 
 polities and in his Churches, as well as in those 
 monstrous aggregations of unorganised men, without 
 law, without country, without home, which crowd the 
 outskirts of our great cities. Even in all those great 
 doings of his, so elevating, so hopeful, of which the 
 world is full, yet there lurks the taint of the heart 
 not whole and the will infirm ; and on them all waits 
 death, breaking off the great labour of good, beating 
 down the great triumphs over evil and folly. And 
 what are these great labourers, great conquerors, 
 whose work, too, has to begin afresh when they go, 
 — what are these few among the so many, who " as 
 soon as they are born, begin to draw to their end, 
 and have no sign of virtue to show " ? Take the 
 men and women, as we meet them in the streets ; 
 take the huge multitudes of the average ; leave out 
 the extremes on both sides — extremes are rare in all 
 orders of things, though they are less rare on the low 
 side than on the high — and what a spectacle rises 
 before our mind, of falling short of standards, of things 
 marred, of misuse, of emptiness, of decay. Think 
 
VI ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST 135 
 
 only, in all generations of time, in all countries of 
 mankind, of the waste of life; of what to us, at least, 
 can only seem the waste of life ; the waste of life 
 wantonly cut short, the waste of life, itself wasted in 
 the having; the wastes of savage idleness; the wastes 
 of barbarian wars and destructions : — life wasted in 
 the artificial vices and wants of the highest social 
 state ; the waste of life, in men^ for war, and, it must 
 be said, for much that we call industry ; the waste 
 of life, in womefiy who live for man's sin, and by it. 
 These, we know, are things on a great scale ; they 
 are things accepted, as what cannot be helped, as 
 what in the nature of things must be. Do they not 
 reveal to us a world in which — who can tell how much 
 — life is wasted ; wasted by men for themselves, wasted 
 by what others do with them. " One day telleth 
 another, and one night certifieth another " ; and the 
 tale they repeat is the same dreary story, of to-day 
 fruitless as yesterday, of to-morrow sure to be thrown 
 away as to-day ; of irremediable, continuing waste. 
 In such things as these we see, in its true measure, 
 what is meant by the Fall. 
 
 Is not so manifest a purpose, and so manifest a 
 falling short, the very ground and prophecy of hope ? 
 I do not suppose that we can always argue from 
 tendency to effect ; that every unfulfilled promise, 
 and capacity, and aspiration, implies at last its fulfil- 
 ment But there are failures which are final, and 
 there are failures which, in the very moment of their 
 ill-success — by what they might do, by what they 
 do — carry with th^em the promise of being at last 
 repaired. The fall of Sodom was not like the fall 
 of Israel, or the croincf astray of Greece and Rome. 
 
136 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vi 
 
 And here, in Adam and the race he stands for — 
 amid ruin, amid incredible debasement, amid the 
 very mysteries of iniquity and apostasy around him, 
 amid horrors not to be exaggerated, not to be told, 
 of his history — still are to be discerned the outlines 
 of the image of God. Can that image stay with 
 men, and not be to them the pledge of remedy ? 
 Can that image strike its print so deep — can the 
 dream of nature, contradicted everywhere, yet be 
 always and obstinately of goodness, of what is 
 noblest, and purest, and most divine — and not lift 
 mankind to the looking-for of deliverance, of that 
 day when the old shall pass, and all things be made 
 new? Can man feel, as he must feel, that sin is not 
 his fate, that evil is not his natural law — and not 
 find in the power within him, of correcting what is 
 amiss, of repentance, of improvement, the irresistible 
 argument of hope? Surely, from Adam's Creation 
 and Adam's Fall, from such a purpose and such an 
 overthrow, did not the cry go up, prophetic of the 
 grace that listened to it, for retrieval, for a new 
 beginning ? " In Adam all die," — Adam, who was 
 made in the image and likeness of God. Is it 
 not reason, indeed, that from that time till now, 
 " the whole creation," in him made subject to vanity, 
 " groaneth and travaileth in pain together," crying 
 out to be redeemed ; not accepting as its fate " the 
 " bondage of corruption " ; earnestly expecting the 
 accomplishment of a destiny too great to fail at 
 last ? Is not this the expostulation and plea of our 
 nature — in its deep humiliation, in its unconquerable 
 consciousness of what it was meant for and in whose 
 hand it lives, — • 
 
VI ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST i37 
 
 remember what my substance is ; 
 
 The work of Thine hands ; 
 The hkeness of Thy countenance. 
 Despise not Thou the work of Thine own hands : 
 Hast Thou made for nought Thine own image and hkeness ? 
 For nought, if Thou destroy it.^ 
 
 Human nature — in what it is and in what it is 
 not ; in what it would be and cannot be ; in its aims 
 and its incompleteness ; in its stateliness and its de- 
 formity ; in its charm and its repulsiveness ; in its 
 power and its failure — sends up the cry for restora- 
 tion. Man, but a link in the chain of nature, may 
 stretch forth hands in vain to laws which cannot hear 
 and cannot change. But can man, the Spirit, cry to 
 the God who made him, the Father of Spirits, the 
 Living, the All-compassionate, the True, without the 
 prayer for help and redemption being itself the 
 pledge of its fulfilment ? 
 
 And thus, in his double character of greatness and 
 of misery — of the greatness of his end and the misery 
 of his state ; in his longings and their disappoint 
 ment, in his wish for good and inability to resist the 
 present, in the eternal conflict of conscience and 
 passion, in the strange humiliation of a real will, ever 
 defeated and defeating itself ; in all the astonishing 
 and deep contradictions of his condition, his desires, 
 his history, he foreshadows and foretells the deliver- 
 ance which corresponds at once to the awful, height 
 of what he was meant for, and the depth, beyond 
 our measuring, to which he had sunk. For his 
 Deliverer was one like himself; yet with all the 
 difference that there is between the Creature and the 
 
 1 Bishop Andre wes' Devotions, Day I. 
 
138 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vi 
 
 Creator. He who " took hold " of him was He who 
 made him, — after whose Image he was made, whose 
 Likeness he was meant to attain to : greater none 
 could be, to stamp and make certain the greatness 
 of his nature. But who can tell the depth of the 
 humiliation of the Second Adam ? " The Lord 
 from heaven," the "quickening Spirit" by whom 
 the dead are made alive, the " Word made flesh " ; 
 what was He but the likeness of His creature, in the 
 wretchedness in which he had gone forth from 
 Paradise ; in the " form of a servant," in " the likeness 
 of sinful flesh " ; seeking the lost in the company of 
 the lowest of the lost ; the friend of publicans and 
 sinners, accepting the reproach of their companion- 
 ship ; tempted and scorned, a man of sorrows and 
 acquainted with grief; bearing in the eyes of the 
 world all the marks of ignominious and unsuccessful 
 sin ; judged, in the name of the Highest, as a deceiver 
 and a blasphemer ; made sin for us, made a curse 
 for us ; forsaken of God, a worm and no man, the 
 very scorn of men, and outcast of the people ? What 
 has man done of worst evil, of which the apparent 
 shadow did not rest on his Deliverer? What 
 unrest, what pain, what privation, troubles his lot, 
 which his Deliverer did not share? what is there 
 in the sinner's doom at the Fall — shame, sorrow, 
 death — which the Sinless does not accept, in order, 
 in accepting it, to reverse it ? Face to face with 
 the amazing contrarieties of the Fall are the amazing 
 contrarieties of the Incarnation. Face to face with 
 the greatness and the misery of the First man are 
 the greatness and the misery of the Second. 
 
 And so, at the point where the Fall leaves man, 
 
VI ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST 139 
 
 Redemption meets him : and the meeting-point is at 
 the lowest depths. The Fall left him a being of 
 mysterious and surmised greatness, but at most real 
 and visible distance from all that he seemed made 
 for ; struggling with corruption and sin, or sinking 
 under them ; struggling with disaster, struggling with 
 pain, struggling vainly with death ; ever haunted by 
 dreams of perfection, by dreams of bliss, and by the 
 waking certainty of wretchedness and vanity. What- 
 ever else may be true about him, what is palpable 
 is his humiliation. And then, at the very point of 
 deepest ignominy and disorder, starting from all its 
 disadvantages, traversing its paths, surrounded by 
 all its badges, reflecting its dreary colours, not re- 
 fusing the semblances of its more real evil ; amid 
 that mortal confusion and degradation of conscience, 
 in which good is taken for evil, and evil for good, 
 and in which the Holiest was thought the vilest of 
 sinners — the Restorer of man begins His new and 
 strange work. His new creation. In Adam we see 
 what Christ was to meet with, and to begin with ; 
 where Adam had descended to, Christ descended 
 to meet him : in sorrow, in infirmity, in defeat, in the 
 humiliations of mortality, in all but the evil of our 
 treacherous will^ man's partner : his partner in such 
 anguish as is described in the Psalms ; in daily 
 company with his distresses and all that train of un- 
 known and nameless suffering which surrounde the 
 Son of Man in the Gospels. The work of heaven, 
 it begins on earth, amid the too well known con- 
 ditions of our state,- the too well known and familiar 
 realities of what we are and what we have to go 
 through. From that which seems to be but the 
 
I40 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vi 
 
 continuation of the doom of the Fall, from that which 
 seems to be its aggravation in the person of the 
 innocent, from the darkness and dreary gloom with 
 which Adam's history closes, issues forth the power 
 which is to repair the wTeck, the light which is to 
 make it no longer hopeless, the Life which is to 
 quicken the dead. The figure is fulfilled; its con- 
 flicting aspects are reconciled in the transcendent 
 Antitype. " In Adam all die ... in Christ shall all 
 be made alive " ; but not before the death of the First 
 man is repeated in the Second ; not before God 
 had " made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, 
 that we might be made the righteousness of God in 
 Him " ; not before the Captain of man's salvation 
 should by the grace of God taste death for every 
 man ; should be made perfect through sufferings. 
 
 Adam is " the Figure of Him that was to come," 
 the figure of our perfection, and of our ruin and 
 mortality ; the figure of God's intention, of what man 
 has spoiled and God repaired. We may measure 
 the reality of the deliverance by the reality, which 
 we know, of the wreck ; we may measure the vastness 
 of what was wrecked by the greatness of the remedy.^ 
 And so the world is changed, and what might but be 
 guessed at before is made certain now. We are of a 
 race that had lost its way ; and now we know it. We 
 are of a race whose prospects and destiny it is vain to 
 circumscribe by what we see ; it belongs to a world 
 to which this world cannot reach, and where we are 
 linked with God. So even the First man dared to 
 imagine before the Second came ; but he knew not, 
 and all the practical energy of his nature was directed 
 
 ' Pascal, Pcnsks^ ii. 85, 145 (cd. Faugcrc). 
 
VI ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST 141 
 
 here. He went forth and did great things. As it is 
 said in those great Choruses which are the Psalms of 
 Heathenism, — he subdued the earth, he founded 
 states, he sought out arts, he mastered powers Hving 
 and powers elemental, he found the secret of beauty, 
 and the spell of words, and the power of numbers, 
 and the fine threads that waken and order thought ; 
 he made the world his workshop, his arsenal, his 
 palace ; generation after generation he learned to 
 know more of its inexhaustible magnificence, to use 
 more of its inexhaustible gifts ; his eye was more 
 opened, his sense more delicate, his hand more crafty ; 
 he created, he measured, he gathered together, he 
 enjoyed. He is before us now, in his greatness, his 
 hopes, his pride, with even nobler aims and vaster 
 tasks, alleviating misery, curing injustice, bridling or 
 extinguishing disease. But still he is the First Man : 
 of the riddle of his nature he has not the key, and 
 despairs of reaching it; he passes in his 'greatness, 
 and never continueth in one stay ; sorrow and decay 
 baffle him, sin entangles him, and at the end is death. 
 " Of the earth, earthy " ; of the earth, bounded by its 
 barriers, invisible, impassable. And now, side by 
 side with him, is the Second Man, from the Manger, 
 the Cross, the Grave, — dead, yet alive, and alive for 
 ever : attended by His train of sanctities, by un- 
 thought-of revelations of heart, by the " things of the 
 Spirit," by hopes and peace which for this ^world 
 were an idle dream, by the new Beatitudes. He 
 comes in the greatness of His strength. He comes in 
 weakness : but strength and weakness to Him are 
 both alike ; for love, which is of God, in strong and 
 weak, is the life of the new creation, its " one thing 
 
142 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vi 
 
 needful," the essential mark of its presence. So He 
 comes, on the bed of sickness, in the lifelong burden^ 
 in the broken heart ; with the children in spirit, the 
 poor, the feeble, the helpless, the unknown ; with the 
 sorrows of penitence, the hunger after righteousness, 
 the longings to be true, the longings to be pure, the 
 joy of forgiveness, the hope that is for the other side 
 of the grave. Strange attendants for the company 
 of the Deliverer ; but they bring with them the 
 victory which nothing else has gained. " The First 
 Man is of the earth, earthy ; the Second Man is the 
 Lord from heaven." O Soul of man, — called to this 
 wonderful existence, so gifted, yet so rigidly bounded : 
 made for such great things, yet turned aside by such 
 poor ones: so promising, yet so transient: the breath of 
 a day between the two eternities, yet rich with power, 
 and thought, and beauty, rich in capacities of grace 
 and goodness, ever unfolding, evergrowing; conscious 
 of such needs and such evils, longing for such firm 
 reality and truth, responding to such calls, and then 
 going hence, as if never having been :- — where is to 
 be thy part ? what wilt thou do with what is given 
 thee, with that great and fearful thing which we call 
 life? Wilt thou rest in the portion of the First 
 Adam : — great, lovely, as it often is, merely to live, to 
 see, to be glad in the sky above and God's blessing 
 on the earth, in our home, in our work ? It is 
 enough, if we had no more ; it is enough to be 
 thankful for, if our view closed here. But " the First 
 Man is of the earth, earthy" : and there is "the Second 
 Man, the Lord from heaven." And none but He 
 dares claim the two great victories : the victory over 
 sin, the victory over death. With Him only is it 
 
VI ADAM, THE TYPE OF CHRIST 143 
 
 said, " Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver 
 me from the body of this death ? I thank God, 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord." With Him only it is 
 said, '' that this corruptible must put on incorruption, 
 and this mortal must put on immortality." Only 
 He speaks to us here, of " mortality . . . swallowed 
 up of life." With Him only it is said, " The sting 
 of death is sin ; and the strength of sin is the law. 
 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory 
 through our Lord Jesus Christ." He only 
 
 Holds for us the Keys of either home, 
 Earth and the world to come.^ 
 
 O Soul of man, inheritor of the First Adam, new- 
 born to the Second, which wilt thou choose ? 
 
 1 Lyra Apostolica, No. Ixx. 
 
VII 
 THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM ^ 
 
 " And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." 
 Gen. xii. 3. 
 
 Tins promise is the foundation-stone of the history 
 of the Church — at once of Hebrew and of Christian 
 history. A man is chosen out of all his contem- 
 poraries : he is called from his home to be while he 
 lives a sojourner in a strange land ; and he has 
 given him this stupendous blessing, this stupendous 
 promise. " Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get 
 thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show 
 thee : and I will make of thee a great nation, and I 
 will bless thee, and make thy name great ; and thou 
 shalt be a blessing : and I will bless them that bless 
 thee, and curse him that curseth thee : and in thee 
 shall all families of the earth be blessed." To 
 be the minister and channel of God's blessing to 
 mankind was he chosen and called : this was the 
 inheritance of his children, the Patriarchs ; for this 
 was the nation into which they swelled chosen, and 
 
 ■^ Preached in Norwich Cathedral at the Festival of the Society for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel, 1876. 
 
VII THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM 145 
 
 taught, and guided, and preserved, through the ages 
 of their marvellous history — not for their own sakes, 
 not because God has favourites, but because He puts 
 upon nations as upon men, a charge, a mission, a 
 work — which was in this case to be the witnesses 
 and guardians of the promise — " In thee shall all 
 families of the earth be blessed." And the Christian 
 Church was hardly born on the day of Pentecost, 
 when it claimed and appropriated the fulfilment of 
 the promise. " Ye are the children of the prophets," 
 says its first preacher, " and of the covenant which 
 God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, 
 And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the 
 earth be blessed." " The scripture," writes the 
 great Apostle of the Gentiles, " foreseeing that 
 God would justify the heathen through faith, 
 preached before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying. 
 In thee shall all nations be blessed." Thus from 
 the first the eye of God's elect — man, or family, or 
 people — was directed to look forward beyond their 
 own fortunes to the hopes of the world ; beyond their 
 own blessings to the universal blessing, which was 
 travelling onward in their hands and drawing towards 
 its full accomplishment. What had been given to 
 them, was in due time to be the possession of m.an- 
 kind ; what made the greatness and the crown of 
 their own blessing, was that in it all the families of 
 the earth were to be blessed as well. God had made 
 Himself known to them. God, the Lord of heaven 
 and earth, the Maker and Ruler of all things, had 
 vouchsafed to be their God, their King, their special 
 Treasure and Reward. All around was darkness, 
 with them there was this little speck of light. 
 C.S.,P . L 
 
146 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vii 
 
 All round were " gods many and lords many " — 
 gods of the mountains and the valleys, of the 
 heavens and of the earth, of the living and of the 
 dead, worshipped and trusted in by each nation, or 
 tribe, or household. Out of them all, they had been 
 selected to know the name of the One Almighty and 
 Eternal. They, they alone, knew the truth about 
 the world, its origin, its government. To them. He 
 who was before all things, and beyond the stars, was 
 the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But from 
 the first they were taught, that they knew this in 
 order that the world might know it : that He had 
 revealed Himself as their God, that He whom they 
 worshipped might be worshipped by all the families 
 of the earth. This was God's secret : the mystery 
 hid for ages and generations till " the fulness of 
 time." How it was to be — how the knowledge and 
 the blessing with which they were charged was to be 
 passed over from them to the multitudes of the 
 heathen — how the Gentiles were to be fellow-heirs 
 with them — this was not told them. But, as the 
 end and purpose of their own calling, as the fulfilment 
 of their own wondrous blessing, they knew this — 
 that He whom they worshipped as their King and 
 God should become the King and Hope of all the 
 ends of the world : that in them should all the 
 families of the earth be blessed. It seems to me that 
 this is one of the things which make the religious 
 history of the Bible unique in all that we know in 
 this world. Israel looked forward from the first 
 to its religion becoming the religion of the world. 
 Confident of its own blessing, in knowing and 
 worshipping the one only God, it made no doubt 
 
VII THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM 147 
 
 that at last He would be owned and honoured over ail 
 the earth. This great and wonderful faith, rooted in 
 the first promise to Abraham, ran through the history 
 of Israel, persistent and indestructible in all their 
 fortunes. And consider what this was. Here was 
 a nation jealously separated from all its sister nations 
 round, and deeply affected in character and temper 
 by this necessary separation. To the Israelite the 
 heathen around him were the unclean, the godless, the 
 profane, his own natural enemies, the blasphemers of 
 Him who was the worship of Israel. He must keep 
 aloof from them ; he must not marry with them ; 
 in time it came to be that he must not eat with 
 them. They had been the victims of his ex- 
 terminating sword. When spared they had been the 
 fatal tempters to apostasy. They had been used as 
 the scourge in the hand of God, to chastise, to 
 oppress, to overthrow. Nowhere in all the world, 
 not between Greek and barbarian, between conqueror 
 and conquered, between slave and free, was the wall 
 of partition so impassable, and the gulf so profound, 
 as between the Jew and the heathen. From the 
 earliest to the latest times the objects of unceasing 
 attack ; when best known and most active in the 
 world, a byword of scorn and jealousy for fanatical 
 arrogance ; they gave back with interest the hatred 
 and contempt of the Gentile world. Yet with all its 
 narrow exclusiveness, with all its insignificar^ce, with 
 all its isolation, amid an uncongenial world, station- 
 ary when others were advancing, lost in its little corner 
 while others were dazzling mankind with their glory 
 and their might, insensible to beauty, to the arts, to 
 ambition, while the Western world was opening its 
 
148 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vii 
 
 mind to the thought of Greece, and the statesman- 
 ship of Carthage and Rome — Israel obstinately 
 maintained the same conviction that its faith and 
 worship were to be the faith and worship of 
 mankind : that in due time these aliens and 
 strangers, hating and hated now, would join in 
 owning the God of Israel : that all the kindreds 
 of the nations should at last bow down before His 
 greatness and His truth. In the fierce bitterness 
 of oppression, in the fiercer pride of Pharisaic self- 
 righteousness, doubtless this belief was obscured or 
 distorted. But it was fixed where it could not be 
 lost : it was written deep and indelible in the 
 sacred Scriptures ; it broke out for ever, assured and 
 triumphant, in those Psalms and Prophecies which 
 enshrined the true hopes and faith of Israel. Is 
 there not something perfectly overwhelming to mere 
 human judgment in the audacity with which Psalmist 
 and Prophet — the Psalmists and Prophets of an ob- 
 scure race, cut off by barriers physical and moral 
 from the great scenes of human history — dare to 
 claim for their faith, for their God, what no one else 
 dared to do — the inheritance of all the nations, the 
 spiritual future of all mankind ? " All nations whom 
 Thou hast made shall come and worship Thee, O 
 Lord, and shall glorify Thy name." " All the ends 
 of the world shall remember themselves, and be 
 turned unto the Lord ; and all the kindreds of the 
 nations shall worship before Him." " In that day 
 there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for 
 an ensign of the people ; to it shall the Gentiles 
 seek : and His rest shall be glorious." " The earth 
 shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the 
 
THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM 
 
 149 
 
 waters cover the sea." Where, in the days when 
 these words were so boldly spoken, was there the 
 faintest indication of their accompHshment ? Where 
 was the human hkeHhood of a universal religion ? 
 where was the likelihood that it would be the 
 worship of the God of Abraham ? If we want two 
 things in the Bible, absolutely without parallel and 
 unexampled elsewhere, we may find them, first and 
 foremost, of course, in the character of Jesus Christ, 
 and next, in the undoubting assurance with which 
 the Prophets and teachers of Israel claimed for their 
 religion, against every human likelihood, the future 
 allegiance of mankind. 
 
 They, dimly seeing all it meant, held fast to that 
 astonishing prospect, the conversion of the whole 
 world to God — the ultimate communication, to all the 
 families of the earth, of the blessing of Abraham. 
 They held fast to it in all the " sad vicissitudes of 
 things " that came on them ; in the darkest hours of 
 their history, beaten down and crushed by their own 
 sin and shame, they yet believed that somehow it 
 would be. They misunderstood it ; they abused it ; 
 in their pride and folly they allowed it to become to 
 them a snare and a daydream ; their ambition saw 
 in it the pledge of a reign like Solomon's, of a 
 Messiah more widely conquering than Alexander, 
 who should put under Jewish feet the empire of the 
 Caesars ; they compassed sea and land to make one 
 proselyte — to make him — who would dare to use the 
 words if their Judge Himself had not spoken them ? — 
 " twofold more the child of hell than themselves." 
 But, anyhow, they would not surrender this wonder- 
 ful, this most improbable hope. Their day has 
 
I50 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vii 
 
 passed away, with its failures, its delusions, its dis- 
 appointments. But the promise still remains, 
 handed on by the elder to the younger Church. 
 They built their hopes upon it, and now we build 
 ours. But it comes to us with the illumination of 
 something yet more wonderful than even itself. To us 
 it comes interpreted by events which have for ever 
 changed the whole aspect of the world, and history, 
 and human life. To us it comes charged and 
 pregnant with God's nearest and most immediate 
 contact with humanity and its innermost realities — 
 the condescension of the everlasting Son to be made 
 Very Man. What the promise meant is told us now 
 in the songs of Christmas, and the Lenten memories 
 of temptation, and the dumb awestruck contempla- 
 tions on Good Friday of the Agony and the 
 Passion, and the triumphs of Easter and Ascension 
 Day, and the new world and the new creation of 
 Pentecost. There we came to know what the 
 blessing was, intended for all the families of the 
 earth. There we learned how all, far and near, the 
 first and the last, were to be brought near in peace 
 and hope to Him who had chosen and called their 
 father Abraham, the "father of us all." There we 
 learned how the religion of Moses, the worship of 
 the Tabernacle and Mount Zion, the local Church 
 of Judaism, was the first stage and the training 
 school of the universal and only religion, was to 
 break down all barriers and expand into the one 
 Catholic and eternal Church of all the nations, Jew 
 and Roman, Greek and barbarian, the nations of all 
 ages, those that have played their part and passed 
 away, and the unknown multitudes and yet unspoken 
 
VII THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM 151 
 
 tongues, which are in due time to come upon the 
 stage of this world's history. Upon the Gentiles has 
 come the promise of Abraham in Christ Jesus : — 
 " If ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, 
 and heirs according to the promise." To the eyes 
 of Apostles and Prophets has been revealed the 
 mystery, in other ages not made known to the sons 
 of men, that the Gentiles " should be fellow-heirs, 
 and of the same body, and partakers of God's 
 promise in Christ by the Gospel." " Aliens from 
 the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the 
 covenants of promise, having no hope, and without 
 God in the world," the nations once afar off are now 
 brought nigh by the blood of Christ, their peace, 
 their atonement, their reconciler ; and henceforth 
 they are " no more strangers and foreigners, but 
 fellow - citizens with the saints, and of the house- 
 hold of God." — " In thee shall all families of 
 the earth be blessed." Son of David, Seed of 
 Abraham, Saviour of the world. Very God and Very 
 Man, now we know : ' in Thee shall all families of 
 the earth be blessed.' 
 
 And now, we in our turn are entrusted with the 
 safe keeping and remembrance of that great promise. 
 We are chosen and called to remember and to look 
 forward ; to remember what God has promised to 
 the world, to look forward to its accomplishment. 
 In this, at least, the ancient Church of Israel was 
 faithful to its calling. It believed, it insisted on 
 believing, that the world was to be its own at last, 
 that the world was to become the kingdom of its 
 Lord and God. It was set to keep this belief 
 alive ; and, with whatever mistakes and distortions, 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 it kept it alive. Christians must indeed have 
 become dead to the truths to which their eyes have 
 been opened, whenever they have been indifferent 
 to the prospect which the Jew never forgot. And 
 to remember it is to come under the obligation to 
 do our part in the purpose and design of our Lord. 
 Abraham was not called for his own sake alone, 
 and certainly those whom God's providence has 
 called by His sovereign predestination and choice 
 into the fellowship and family of His Church have 
 not only to take care of themselves, but to serve 
 as the ministers of His great dispensation to recover 
 and reclaim the whole human race. 
 
 We are met to-day to remind ourselves of this 
 great part of our religion. We remind ourselves of 
 the declared purpose with which our Lord sent His 
 first Apostles to their work — of the mission which 
 He has laid on that Church which He called forth 
 to bear onward the light of His truth and promise ; 
 we set before us, in all its vastness and mystery, 
 that yet unaccomplished intention of God, which 
 first spoke in the Call of Abraham, which spoke 
 again in the Baptismal Commission, in the utterances 
 of St. Paul to the Romans and Ephesians. And 
 yet, who can set this before him steadily, thinking 
 seriously what it really means, what has to be 
 done, how, as far as we see, it must be done, 
 and what are the chances of doing it, and not 
 feel that, as far as we see this great work going 
 on under the conditions of our own times, the dis- 
 proportion between the object and the machinery, 
 between the end sought and all that is done to 
 attain it, is enormous and disheartening. It is use- 
 
VII THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM 153 
 
 less to dissemble or disguise this. If our efforts 
 were tenfold what they are — and they are now 
 doubtless tenfold or twenty-fold what they iverc — 
 the disproportion would still be the same. Men 
 of the world would still sneer at what they call 
 our feeble spirit of proselytism. They would still 
 accuse us of not understanding the very first elements 
 of the problem, the mind and thoughts of those 
 whom we wish to convert. And far beyond their 
 sneers at our incapacity and our failures, rise up 
 before us the huge impregnable bulwarks in a 
 hundred lands, of custom, of tradition, of pride, of 
 conviction, of interest, of habitual thought and 
 motive, behind which the multitudes of the non- 
 Christian world, separated from us in sympathies 
 and ideas by gulfs which cannot be bridged and can 
 hardly be measured, bid defiance to our attempts to 
 make an impression on them. 
 
 Certainly when we think of ourselves and our 
 own generation, as the heralds and instruments of 
 this great promise to the world, the heart must be 
 a strong one which does not fail sometimes. No 
 wonder that all the words which denote w^hat is ex- 
 travagantly incredible and hopeless crowd into men's 
 minds. What can we really expect to accomplish ? 
 We are attempting what is absurdly beyond our 
 powers. Here are more than eighteen centuries 
 past, and here is all that has been yet ♦ done ; 
 and what is the rate of progress of to-day? How 
 much nearer are we to the goal ? Other human 
 things advance, expand, and prosper : what, in com- 
 parison with trade, or colonisation, or science, or civil 
 order, is the outlook of our missionary enterprises ? 
 
154 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vii 
 
 Are we spending our strength in vain ? Are we de- 
 siring and aiming at the impossible ? Is missionary 
 enthusiasm a dream ? 
 
 Faith and love and duty will have many answers 
 to give to these doubts and misgivings. They will 
 not shrink from ventures that seem desperate ones 
 when the Master's voice clearly commands, when 
 His love has awakened its new sympathies in the 
 regenerate heart, when faith has risen above the 
 phenomena of time into contact with the powers of 
 the world to come. They will take refuge from the 
 discouragement of the present in the remembrances 
 of the past. " I call to remembrance my song . . . 
 hath God forgotten to be gracious . . . and I said, 
 It is mine own infirmity : but I will remember the 
 years of the right hand of the most Highest. I will 
 remember the works of the Lord, and call to mind 
 Thy wonders of old time." They who have the 
 Cross and Resurrection to remember may well bear 
 to be called romantic, even in this busy and sceptical 
 age, for still claiming the nations for the Crucified. 
 They will recollect that they are workers together 
 with God, and that He is the God of patience, who rests 
 not but who hastes not ; who in all His works, as well 
 of nature as of grace, reads the divine and wonderful 
 lesson of enduring delay, of biding the time, of waiting, 
 silently perhaps, through what we call ages, till the seed 
 has sprung up, till the fruit is ripe, till the hour is come. 
 
 And when, in spite of all, our imagination is 
 oppressed by the greatness of the contrast between 
 the immensity of the task before us and the poverty 
 ofwhat we are doing, and of all that it seems possible 
 for us to do ; when we sec round us nothing but 
 
VII THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM 155 
 
 machinery inadequate, ludicrously inadequate, to the 
 mighty revolution which we avow as our object ; 
 when the struggle and the labour seem in vain, and 
 " as things have been, they remain " — let us meet 
 the suggestions of despondency by widening the 
 horizon of our imagination and putting ourselves in 
 the place of other times and other men. What is 
 the history, in detail and in its separate steps, by 
 which the promise has reached to us, by which the 
 knowledge of God has become our inheritance ? How 
 many times, over and over again, in Jewish history, 
 did it not seem as if the hopes of the world were 
 wrecked ; as if it were impossible that the onward 
 march of God's great promise could continue ; as if 
 it must perish in the disasters of the Jewish nation, 
 in the perversions and narrowness of Jewish character? 
 Or again, put yourself in the position of a Christian 
 of the first or second century : with the words of the 
 Lord and His apostles ringing in his ears, what signs 
 did he see of their accomplishment ? All round him 
 was the immensity, the unexampled strength, the 
 magnificence of the ever-present Empire, in its peace 
 so splendid and so calm, in its storms so terrible and 
 so remorseless ; and for him there was but an obscure 
 sect, apparently distracted by opposing voices, not 
 always exempt from folly and. scandals, but anyhow 
 lost and helpless in the vast interests and powers 
 of Roman society. Could there be a wilder dream than 
 that that sect, that those leaders should yet, within a 
 few generations, change the world ? Or, once more, 
 suppose yourself in one of those troubled and confused 
 ages when truth and falsehood seemed entangled 
 together in the Church, — I do not say in some of 
 
156 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vii 
 
 the dark days of blasphemy and rebuke, which 
 threatened the very existence of faith and rehgion : 
 the tenth century, when, amid profanations without a 
 name, the world seemed ending ; the fifteenth, when 
 the crimes of the old heathen Empire were outdone 
 in the high places of the Church, — I do not say these ; 
 but in some of those times when there was real zeal, 
 when Christianity was advancing, when the conversion 
 of the nations was really going on — the ages, say, 
 of St. Augustine the apostle of England, or St. 
 Boniface the apostle of Germany. You would have 
 seen unselfish devotion, single-minded purpose, large- 
 hearted charity*, unstinted toil ; but you would have 
 seen, too, the other side of the picture. You would 
 have seen all the poor mean prosaic shortcomings of 
 common life, its littlenesses, its weaknesses. You would 
 have seen something worse. You would have seen the 
 skin-deep conversion, the unstable profession, the ready 
 apostasy, the revolting inconsistency. You would have 
 seen mixed motives, you would have seen force em- 
 ployed in the cause of Christ's Gospel. You might 
 have seen that cause supported by all kinds of un- 
 lawful means — superstition, exaggeration, credulity 
 — nay, imposture, false miracles. And you might 
 have despaired. But you would have despaired 
 unwisely. You would have missed the slow hidden 
 current of God's working under the accidents of 
 human folly and misdoing. God was preparing, 
 amid all that ignorance and error, the streams of 
 blessing which were to visit you and me. In that 
 imperfect, disappointing, sometimes repulsive process 
 the foundation was being laid of that great Christen- 
 dom which has been the mother of saints, the nurse 
 
VII THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM 157 
 
 of all the virtues, the utilities, the graces of modern 
 ages, under whose shelter those whom we loved 
 rejoiced in God's goodness and died in His peace, and 
 in whose shadow we ourselves hope to lie down to rest. 
 It is owing to the enterprise, the courage, the 
 faith, the toil of men who knew us not, and died 
 ages before we were born, that the circle of God's king- 
 dom has embraced ourselves. The conversion of the 
 barbarians, of Goths and Franks, of the English and 
 German and Northern races is, to us who look back 
 on it, one of the most splendid and eventful achieve- 
 ments in the records of the Church. But we may be 
 sure that, in the doing of it, it was, as our mission 
 work is to us, very formidable, very doubtful, in its 
 routine very dull and tiresome, in its results very 
 uncertain and very chequered, and very long in 
 coming. Grand and wonderful as the conquest was, 
 the fighters saw only the dust and confusion of the 
 fray. We shall indeed be without excuse, if with 
 such experience behind us, with such daily and price- 
 less blessings won for us by those who devoted them- 
 selves in faith for generations they would never see — 
 if with all this, we fail and are disheartened in our 
 appointed hour of work. And if there is much to 
 daunt and chill us, yet, on the other hand, never since 
 the old days has the ambition of extending the 
 kingdom of God, of winning the fulfilment of the 
 promise to Abraham, been awakened so strongly in 
 the Church. And the tide has not yet mounted to 
 its height : the men who have left all for this great 
 war, the men who have died in it — the Henry Martyns, 
 the Mackenzies, the Pattesons, the Livingstones, the 
 Milmans — are, we may be sure, the pledges that more 
 
iSS PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS vii 
 
 will follow. The race is not extinct of those high 
 souls whom their Master's spell has called from 
 their peaceful homes, whose hearts respond to His 
 " desire," and who cannot rest till they go forth to 
 win for Him " the heathen for His inheritance, and the 
 utmost parts of the earth for His possession." 
 
 Let us, then, the heirs of His blessing, the witnesses 
 of His noble acts of old, be patient, be enduring, 
 be diligent, be hopeful. Let us not think of our- 
 selves, or too much of what comes of our endeavours, 
 of what we should like to see of the results. The 
 present is a bad judge of everything but its own duty 
 — a bad judge of determining forces, of the tendencies 
 which are to prevail, of the changes which are im- 
 pending. It is not for us, as was said to them of 
 old, " to know the times or the seasons " — the times 
 of success, the seasons of power. These the Father 
 keeps in His own hand. It is for us to do what He 
 has charged us with : to be faithful to our consciences, 
 faithful to our opportunities. It is enough, if in the 
 place appointed us we do not fail in our duty : if 
 we do what we might do. It is enough for us to 
 be links in the chain of that great process by which 
 God for ages has been drawing mankind to Himself 
 — links that can bear the strain put upon them, and 
 may contribute to the strength and completeness of 
 the whole. It will be enough if in our little hour of 
 life, with our little measure of service, we may dare 
 to look forward to sharing the triumph at last of 
 Him who must conquer, who is the secret, unconscious, 
 " Desire of all nations," in whom they will one day find 
 their peace, in whom at last " shall all families of the 
 earth be blessed." 
 
VIII 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD i 
 
 " Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion 
 endureth throughout all ages. " — Psalm cxlv, 13. 
 
 The Psalms are full of assertions — triumphant and 
 exulting assertions — of the Kingdom of God. " O 
 clap your hands together, all ye people ; O sing unto 
 God with the voice of melody. For the Lord is high, 
 and to be feared : He is the great King upon all the 
 earth." " The Lord is King, and hath put'on glorious 
 apparel; the Lord hath put on His apparel and girded 
 Himself with strength." "The Lord is King, the earth 
 may be glad thereof; yea, the multitude of the isles 
 may be glad thereof." " The Lord is King, be the 
 people never so impatient ; He sitteth between the 
 cherubims, be the earth never so unquiet." " Tell it 
 out among the heathen that the Lord is King, and 
 that it is He who hath made the round world so fast 
 that it cannot be moved ; and how that Hp shall 
 judge the people righteously." " All Thy works 
 praise Thee, O Lord ; and Thy saints give thanks 
 unto Thee. They show the glory of Thy kingdom 
 and talk of Thy power ; that Thy power, Thy glory, 
 
 1 Preached in Hereford Cathedral during Advent 1875. 
 
i6o PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS viii 
 
 and mightiness of Thy kingdom might be known 
 unto men." 
 
 I need not say how many Hnes of thought are 
 opened out by the mention of the Kingdom of 
 God, of which this solemn time of Advent reminds 
 us. If the idea of an earthly state, of an empire and 
 kingdom like our own, is infinitely manifold and 
 complex, presenting many sides, offering innumerable 
 subjects, all connected but all distinct, for contempla- 
 tion, for inquiry and thought — if when you have 
 considered it in its relations to private life, to indi- 
 vidual character, to social progress or decay, to public 
 interests and powers, to its neighbours, to its past 
 history, to its future fortunes, you still find that you 
 are as far as ever from having exhausted it — if this is 
 so with great ideas of things belonging to time and 
 our earthly state, it is natural that the name of the 
 Kingdom of God should waken the most diversified 
 trains of reflection. For it means that government 
 of which the history of our world and of our race, so 
 absorbing and so wonderful to our minds, is an in- 
 considerable epoch and fragment. It means the 
 calls and the issues of the Old Dispensation ; it 
 means the mystery of Redemption and Recovery in 
 the New. It means the dealings and sway of the 
 Ever-blessed and All-holy Father of Spirits in the 
 soul of each of His children. It means the continual 
 presence in His Church of the Incarnate Son. It 
 means the final unveiling of the Judge and Judgment- 
 seat of the world, and the bringing in of that new 
 creation to which all things here tend, and for which 
 all things yearn. We might be led into almost any 
 part of the field of religious meditation by the men- 
 
VIII THE KINGDOM OF GOD i6i 
 
 tion of the Kingdom of God, of its Author, and Ruler, 
 of its subjects, its citizens, its laws, its institutions, 
 its hopes. 
 
 Among these various topics it may be profitable 
 to consider — it can only be in the most general way 
 — how we mortal men, with our limited faculties and 
 limited experience, are in relation to that perfect and 
 wondrous reign of power and righteousness ; how, as 
 far as our knowledge goes, the Kingdom of God 
 touches the confines of this present, visible state of 
 things which we know and act in ; how it is made 
 known to us, and what are the prospects which it 
 opens to us : — what is at the bottom of our thoughts 
 when we speak of the Kingdom of God ; what is our 
 part in it ; what does it mean for our future. 
 
 What were the thoughts and feelings of Psalmists 
 and Prophets about that Kingdom of God of which 
 they said so much ? They were men who felt 
 strongly the reality of this present life, and of this 
 visible scene which we call the world. They were 
 alive to all the facts which it exhibited — its joys, its 
 pains, its vicissitudes, its aims, its incessant restless 
 activity ; in all that men do and suffer and desire 
 and build up here, they had their part. And with 
 this keen sense of its reality, asserting itself at every 
 moment, they have an equally keen sense of its short- 
 ness, its strange unintelligible vanity. " Yea, even as 
 a dream when one awaketh." '" We bring our years 
 to an end, as it were a tale that is told." " A thou- 
 sand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday . . . 
 past as a watch in the night. As soon as Thou 
 scatterest them they are even as a sleep." That was 
 the feeling of the ancient Psalmist. " When the 
 C.S.,P. M 
 
1 62 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS viii 
 
 breath of man gocth forth he shall turn again to his 
 earth, and then all his thoughts perish." This is the 
 state, the world, the life, they see and know ; this is 
 the system of things of which they are part — so real, 
 yet so transitory ; which is familiar to them as 
 nothing else can be familiar ; which is with them 
 all day long, and every day ; which is fixed by un- 
 changing laws ; which fills their eye and their ear ; 
 which they cannot alter, which they cannot resist, 
 which they cannot escape from ; of which, every 
 moment between birth and death, they test the 
 permanence. And, as I said, to all its facts they are 
 keenly alive ; they are actors in it, sufferers, ob- 
 servers, directors. But, in their minds, side by side 
 with this most important, most deeply eventful 
 system of things, there is another continually pre- 
 senting itself to their thoughts, paramount, infinitely 
 paramount to the whole sum of all things here. 
 It is ever out of sight, it is ever near. They believe 
 in another and a vaster order of things, as real, as 
 absolutely existing, as if we could see it and touch it 
 and feel it ; as real, as actually working and going 
 oh, as what is within our present experience ; which 
 encompasses, like the invisible atmosphere, or the 
 invisible ether of space, all that we now see and do, 
 affecting, controlling, judging all things that happen. 
 It is the Kingdom of God. Eye cannot see it, nor 
 ear hear it, neither hath it entered into the heart of 
 man to understand or imagine it. It is as much 
 beyond the possibility of our comprehension as — 
 to compare great things to small — music, or the 
 height of mathematical science, arc to savages, or to 
 men without the necessary faculty. But there it is 
 
VIII THE KINGDOM OF GOD 163 
 
 — real, eternal, supreme ; and all that is, is within its 
 arms. It is the Kingdom and Sovereignty of One. 
 Powers there may be many and diverse in earth and 
 heaven, but there is one only King of this world. It 
 is the Kingdom of perfect righteousness, of perfect 
 goodness, of perfect holiness. Besides and beyond 
 this mixed scene of good and evil which we behold, 
 this perpetual conflict, with its great efforts and 
 great defeats, its ceaseless jar, its ceaseless alter- 
 nations of advance and recoil, there is really a King- 
 dom, existing even now, where sin and evil cannot 
 enter, where the law is justice, and love, and wisdom, 
 and peace ; and the law is fulfilled. The earth, this 
 little earth that we men tenant for our little lives, 
 is full of the glory and beauty of the Lord ; we know 
 much of it, but even here there is more to know ; 
 the thought and eye of man have not yet mastered 
 it, the tongue and art of man never will, exhaust it. 
 But who has beheld or who can imagine the magni- 
 ficence of His glory, who spake the word, and all 
 things were made, who commanded, and they were 
 created : the beauty which surrounds the throne of 
 Him from whom all that we know of greatness and 
 of beauty flows, in form, in sound, in expression ? 
 " O Lord, how manifold are Thy works : in wisdom 
 hast Thou made them all ; the earth is full of Thy 
 riches." The earth alone calls forth such a burst ; 
 but the Psalmist's thought rises to where the ^arth is 
 lost. " Praise the Lord, O my soul : O Lord my 
 God, Thou art become exceeding glorious ; Thou art 
 clothed with majesty and honour." The voices of 
 the prophets and messengers of the Kingdom of God 
 answer one another in distant ages : the New Testa- 
 
i64 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS viii 
 
 ment echoes back the Old — " Holy, Holy, Holy, is 
 the Lord of Hosts : the whole earth is full of His 
 glory . . . the Kini^, the Lord of Hosts." " Holy, 
 Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, 
 and is to come." And the Church on earth still 
 answers what they heard in heaven, " Holy, Holy, 
 Holy, Lord God of Hosts : heaven and earth are full 
 of Thy glory ; glory be to Thee, O Lord most high." 
 This is that ever-present belief which possesses the 
 minds of the sacred writers, and is distinctive of them ; 
 which expresses itself in every imaginable variety of 
 form, and is equally evident in every change and shade 
 of feeling, in despair and misery as well as in triumph 
 and hope. They believe in two worlds, and that they 
 are standing on the confines of both. They belong 
 to both ; they are subjects of both ; what they do 
 has its consequences in both. As surely as nature is 
 real and substantial and true, so there is something 
 as real beyond nature. As surely as what we see 
 concerns us, so surely there is something that we 
 cannot see which concerns us more. As surely as 
 we cannot withdraw ourselves from the dominion of 
 tangible facts, from the inevitable conditions of our 
 life, from the ideas and judgments of those with whom 
 we have to live, so surely there are laws out of sight 
 from which we cannot release ourselves ; there are 
 judgments passed on what we think, and wish, and 
 do, which, though we hear nothing of them now, sub- 
 sist among the realities of a government from which 
 nothing is hidden, and in which everything is mea- 
 sured according to what it really is. Man and nature 
 strive, as it were, for mastery here ; and within limits, 
 yet very truly, man is master now ; but both have 
 
VIII THE KINGDOM OF GOD 165 
 
 a Master beyond. And this earthly system, this king- 
 dom of men, has not only a counterpart out of sight, 
 the two kingdoms are contrasts. There is a Kingdom 
 where what we never experience here is realised ; 
 where what is weak here is strong ; where what fails 
 here is victorious ; where what is imperfect here is com- 
 plete ; where what is the exception here is the rule. 
 Our justice is partial and maimed, and consciously 
 blind ; in God's Kingdom His justice has no flaw. 
 The world, the present constitution of society, bears 
 hard on the friendless, who cannot take care of them- 
 selves, rides rough-shod over the poor, the obscure, 
 the feeble ; but there is a great King, outside this 
 world — it is the recurring burden of the Psalms — 
 whose " eyes consider the poor," who forgets not 
 their complaint, who hearkens to their desire, whose 
 awful voice may be heard amid the silence of nature 
 and the boasting of the proud. " Now for the com- 
 fortless troubles' sake of the needy, and because of 
 the deep sighing of the poor, I will up, saith the 
 Lord, and will help every one from him that swelleth 
 against him, and will set him at rest." 
 
 We, in our poor and feeble measure, try to pro- 
 vide against the evils which embitter life, to remedy 
 what we cannot prevent, to soothe what must be 
 endured, to set mercy, loving- kindness, sympathy,, 
 patience, in array against the sternness of law, whether 
 of nature or of society ; but among the ,deepest 
 anxieties of good men is the little, the very little, 
 that human mercy and human forethought can do to 
 abate the ever-swelling sum of human wretchedness. 
 But there is a Kingdom, though we cannot scan its 
 ways, of which the faith of the Psalmist sings — " Praise 
 
i66 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMOA^S viii 
 
 the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits ; 
 who forgiveth all thy sin, and healeth all thine in- 
 firmities. Who savcth thy life from destruction, and 
 crowneth thee with mercy and loving-kindness. . . . 
 The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: long-suffer 
 ing, and of great goodness." " The Lord is loving 
 unto every man, and His mercy is over all His works." 
 
 Our common rules of judgment are suited to 
 present appearances, and are framed on the feeling 
 that this short time is our only life. It is pleasant 
 to be rich, to be honoured, to be powerful, to have 
 the desire of our hearts ; it is dreadful to be poor, to 
 be spoken against, to be sick and weak and in pain. 
 But there is a different estimate of these things, which 
 values them by the measure of interests far larger, 
 far more permanent than those which affect our 
 opinions now. 
 
 If there is one certainty in the present order under 
 which we live, it is the certainty of death, of a final 
 break in work and hope, of the utter incompleteness 
 of human life. None ever felt it more strongly than 
 the Psalmists. But over against it was the permanent 
 everlasting Kingdom of the God who was the Maker 
 and Friend and Lover of mankind. " Hast Thou 
 made all men for naught ? " " Yes," was the answer 
 of the visible course of nature. " It cannot be," was 
 the certain conviction of those who, though they could 
 not solve the riddle, remembered "the years of the right 
 hand of the most Highest " ; who felt, brooding over 
 the fate and the hopes of man, the loving wisdom 
 of God, reaching from end to end of the ages, which 
 would not despise the work of His own hands ; who 
 felt that around our incompleteness and vanity was 
 
VIII THE KINGDOM OF GOD 167 
 
 God's unknown and immeasurable greatness ; that 
 around and above the fall and extinction of the hopes 
 of man were the everlasting mercies of the Father 
 who gave him life. In their conviction of the reality 
 of the Kingdom of God lay their sure hope, not 
 knowing the wJten or the Jww^ of deliverance from 
 the darkness and ruin of death. 
 
 The belief, absorbing and pervading, of the 
 Kingdom of God, was the heart and strength of the 
 Psalmists' religion. With this belief they interpreted 
 their own marvellous history ; with this belief they 
 looked abroad on nature, they trained and quickened 
 their own souls. Translated into our modern ways 
 of speaking, it was a profound, ever-present conviction 
 of the reality of the supernatural and unseen. I say 
 " supernatural " for want of a better word. I mean 
 that, beyond and around this great familiar order of 
 things under which we live, and our fathers have 
 lived before us, whose general conditions and laws we 
 have faculties to discern, there is another and greater 
 order implied in the very mention of the name of 
 God ; an order whose laws and ways, except that 
 they must be moral ones, we know not and cannot 
 know. To the Psalmists the Kingdom of God is not 
 merely an ideal, but, though they cannot explain or 
 grasp it, an actual present reality. The things unseen, 
 are ever accompanying, bordering on, influencing, the 
 things that are seen. That real existence, which we, 
 with our habits of thought and imagination, confine 
 to things which we can handle and test here, belongs 
 as certainly to the works and doings of the unseen 
 Lord of the world in that vaster universe which even 
 our thoughts cannot reach to. And it was not only 
 
1 68 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS viii 
 
 the reality of this unseen system and order which 
 had such hold on the Psalmists' minds : it was its 
 supremacy over that order to which we are here 
 accustomed, its continual presence, its uninterrupted 
 permanence. The things which are seen — it was 
 their faith as w^ell as St. Paul's — are for the time ; 
 the thing's which are not seen are eternal. 
 
 And we, with St. Paul, know so much more than 
 they did. They had been taught by the long chain of 
 wonders which made their history unique in the world. 
 It had awakened, and it had justified the growth in 
 their minds and consciences of those clear and strong 
 and bold ideas about the Kingdom and Government 
 of God, of its certainty, of its action, of its righteous- 
 ness, w^hich were theirs alone, among all the aspira- 
 tions and all the wisdom of the ancient world. But 
 that long history has ended in events which have 
 brought the Kingdom of God in a manner from the 
 region of the invisible into the very companionship 
 with flesh and blood. That history, which in flashes 
 or dim shadows revealed the eternal Kingdom of 
 God, led up to and closed in the sign of signs, the 
 wonder of wonders, which attested its presence. 
 " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and 
 we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only- 
 begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." In 
 darkness and afar off the Prophets felt, rather than 
 discerned, the Kingdom in which they believed. It 
 descended and disclosed itself in the very realm of 
 nature, when human eyes beheld and human hands 
 touched Him, who was "declared to be the Son of 
 God with power, Jesus Christ our Lord . . . according 
 to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the 
 
VIII THE KINGDOM OF GOD 169 
 
 dead." God hath shown us the very King Himself, 
 one in essence and eternity with Himself, the Head 
 and Lord of all things, the Man by whom " He will 
 judge the world in righteousness . . . whereof He hath 
 given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised 
 Him from the dead." There is one veil the less 
 on the unfathomable mystery of that still unseen 
 Kingdom. He, in ways we cannot conceive of, is 
 ever with us. " Lo, I am with you alway — all the 
 days — even unto the end of the world." One veil the 
 less — for there are many veils, many veils still, 
 between us and the knowledge of God's Kingdom. 
 We know, indeed, much : who that steadily thinks 
 about it but must be amazed at all we know, so in- 
 finitely beyond all we could have once been expected 
 to know ; so overpowering to our intellect, so sub- 
 duing, so absorbing to our affections, so transporting 
 to our hope ? But no one who thinks steadily and 
 soberly about this knowledge can ever allow himself 
 to think of it except as fragmentary, imperfect know- 
 ledge — as the knowledge, as it has been called, of a 
 " scheme imperfectly understood." We know much ; 
 but what we know is out of all proportion to the im- 
 mensity of what we do not know, of what we cannot 
 know. Our knowledge of God's Kingdom, of its 
 works and ways, is like all our knowledge of the 
 highest kind, a combination of light and certainty 
 on some great points, with ignorance and darkness 
 on others equally great. There are those who, 
 because we cannot know all, or all that we should 
 like to know, th-ink that we can know nothing. 
 There are those who think that no question can be 
 asked about the ways of God which cannot be 
 
I70 PASCAL AND OILIER SERMONS viii 
 
 answered. Neither remember the most famiUar 
 conditions of our knowledge. The most awful, the 
 most certain, the most inexplicable thing zvithin us, 
 is our own soul, our own consciousness, our own 
 existence ; the most awful, the most certain, the 
 most inexplicable thing without us, is that unsearch- 
 able, but not therefore " unknowable," or, as it is 
 said, "unthinkable" Being, whose name is so familiar 
 to us, whom we name God. We know, if we have 
 ever tried, how difficult it is to escape contradiction 
 and inconsistency in describing the common experi- 
 ences of our mental and bodily constitution. But 
 boldly and without doubt, as if all lay clear before 
 us, we take on us to pronounce on what Diust be in 
 God's unseen Kingdom and working ; what must be 
 if we are to believe in God, if we are to accept the 
 hypothesis of His Being ; what must be because we 
 believe in God and are sure of Him. We assume 
 our experience here as the measure of what is beyond, 
 far beyond, the bounds we know of space and time. 
 We draw consequences from our narrow range of 
 knowledge, and call them necessary. From God's 
 certain promise, we advance, absolutely to affirm or 
 absolutely to deny, this or that way of fulfilling it ; 
 from God's certain attributes, we proceed without 
 a suspicion that we may not understand all His 
 counsels, or all His possibilities, to lay down the 
 course that He must follow. And yet, we both know 
 and know not. We know in part, in part only ; 
 we see but through a glass darkly. If there were 
 no depths in man's nature which have never been 
 sounded and fathomed, it would still be unreason- 
 able to assume that our knowledge of God must be, 
 
VIII THE KINGDOM OF GOD 171 
 
 if worth anything, complete. But if man is himself 
 a compound of the clearest certainties and the most 
 hopeless of mysteries — if he, too, with so much 
 experience and so much search into himself, is yet 
 so profoundly in the dark about what is yet most 
 inward, most familiar to him, we need not wonder 
 that we should know at once so much and so little 
 about the Kingdom of God : so much about its 
 greatness, its purposes, its laws, its blessings, its 
 hopes ; so little about the vastness of its range ; so 
 little about the conditions of its contact with this 
 visible scene of life ; so little about the limitations 
 He has imposed on His own working, about possi- 
 bilities in it beyond our power even to guess ; so 
 little about the links that bind in harmony the 
 opposite, and apparently inconsistent truths that 
 we have equal reason to believe. Our fuller know- 
 ledge, our larger experience, our vaster science, have 
 not made void those solemn ancient words, " Canst 
 thou by searching find out God ? canst thou find 
 out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as 
 heaven; what canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; what 
 canst thou know ? " " No heart can think upon these 
 things worthily, and who is able to conceive His 
 ways ? It is a tempest which no man can see : for 
 the most part of His works are hid." "Hardly do. 
 we guess aright at things that are upon earth, and 
 with labour do we find the things that are before us 
 — in our very hands ; — but the things that are in 
 heaven who hath searched out ? " " God is in 
 heaven, and thou upon earth : therefore let thy words 
 be few." 
 
 There is a better way for serious men to think of 
 
172 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS viii 
 
 the Kingdom of God, than either affecting an in- 
 capacity to recognise it, or than seeking to know in 
 it what they cannot know, and dogmatising on what 
 God keeps secret from us on this side the grave. 
 There it is, ever about us, ever perfect ; and in it, 
 unknown as is its greatness, we men have even here 
 our wonderful communion and fellowship with Him 
 its King, " Who loved us, and gave Himself for us." 
 So, in far inferior measure, it was to the Psalmists. 
 But to them it was the subject of unceasing rejoicing. 
 Just as men feel themselves on a bright day in spring, 
 when the earth smiles, and the sky surrounds them 
 with light, and their whole nature opens out and 
 answers to the glory and gladness of the hour, so did 
 those ancient saints rejoice in the light of God's 
 countenance, in the consciousness that His Kingdom 
 encompassed them, and shone upon them, and blessed 
 them. And their hearts burst forth in those ever 
 marvellous songs in which, in all its aspects, its 
 magnificence was sung, and the children of Sion 
 were joyful in their King. It was to them no dead 
 phrase, no subject for criticism, no theory of the 
 mind ; it was the reality in which they lived and 
 trusted. 
 
 And can it be less to us than it was to them? 
 Do we ever think of what it means ? And if we do, 
 is it not true that the prospect opened to reason and 
 imagination and hope is simply and soberly over- 
 whelming. Think of what, in outlines w^hich we are 
 utterly unable to fill up, it promises to men ; and 
 measure this by what we know too well here. It 
 promises a life without sin, without suffering ; a life 
 where there shall be no death. It promises a life of 
 
VIII THE KINGDOM OF GOD 173 
 
 happiness. It promises a life of which love shall be 
 the unfailing spring. It promises to bring us near, 
 to make us like, to God. That, in its soberest, most 
 certain expression, is the hope of the Kingdom ot 
 God. That is the inconceivable change reserved for 
 man. And on that we have leave, we are invited, 
 to meditate, to hope. 
 
 One of the lessons of Advent is that of increased 
 attention to the Holy Scriptures, in order that 
 through patience, and the comfort of the Scriptures, 
 " we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope 
 of everlasting life," given us in Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 We cannot open a book of the New Testament with- 
 out coming upon this " hope " expressed in words, 
 which, if they were not so familiar to us, would startle 
 and thrill and haunt us with their astonishing import. 
 Those who wrote them, felt them ; felt themselves, 
 in all seriousness and earnest, the heirs of a prospect 
 passing infinitely anything known or possible here, 
 but as real, as sure to be, as anything that we can 
 prize and count on in our life. What we need, dulled 
 and bewildered as we are with our present experience 
 — what w^e need is to feel this too. What we need 
 is to fix our eyes and our thoughts on these records 
 of a higher experience than our own, till the words 
 which have become dim and dull and pale by use, 
 recover their true and original force, and kindle before 
 our minds into the fire and light of their writers' 
 meaning. Then, as we read such parts of the Bible 
 as the Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians, 
 and the first Epistle of St. Peter, it would come home 
 to us what is really awaiting, at the end, those who 
 believe, and try to live as St. Paul and St. Peter 
 
174 PASCAL AND OTHER SER3I0NS viii 
 
 lived.^ Then wc should understand better the solemn 
 adjuration, " Having therefore these promises, dearly 
 beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of 
 the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of 
 God." Then, feeling the reality and the greatness 
 of the Kingdom of God, in which we are, we should 
 find it less hard than we often do, to sympathise with 
 St. Paul's hold on the future ; " I reckon that the 
 sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be 
 compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." 
 Then we should understand better, and by God's 
 grace be led to share, that sober and certain, yet 
 piercing and rapturous exultation, which filled pro- 
 phets and apostles when their souls rose to things 
 unseen, and they thought of what was one day to be 
 — the revelation of the Kingdom of the Most High 
 — the "manifestation of the sons of God" — the 
 Advent again of the invisible, yet ever-present, Lord, 
 " Whom," says St. Peter, " having not seen, ye love ; 
 in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, 
 ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." 
 
 1 O princely lot ! O blissful art ! 
 E'en while by sense of change opprest, 
 
 Thus to forecast in heart 
 Heaven's Age of fearless rest. 
 
 Vanity of Vanities : Lyra Aposiolica, \\\\\. (First Ed.) 
 
IX 
 THE INCARNATION OF GOD ^ 
 
 ** Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated 
 unto the gospel of God, (which He had promised afore by His pro- 
 phets in the holy scriptures,) concerning His Son Jesus Christ our 
 Lord ; which was made of the seed of David according to the 
 flesh ; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according 
 to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." — 
 Rom. i. 1-4. 
 
 We are invited to-day to turn our thoughts with 
 special devotion to that great truth upon which the 
 Gospel, as St. Paul here says, is founded,' the awful 
 and overwhelming mystery of the Incarnation of the 
 Son of God — the truth expressed in the beginning 
 of St. John's Gospel — "the Word was made Flesh." It 
 must be, indeed, to Christians, their continual thought. 
 But, year by year, Christmas brings it back, as if it 
 were something fresh and new, and calls upon our 
 minds to make a fresh effort to master its significance, 
 and pay it the homage which is its due. It is no 
 new thing. It is that which has supported the life 
 and the growth of Christendom for more than 
 eighteen centuries, and yet, in a sense, it is new once 
 more every Christmas Day. There is a sight which 
 happens every day we live, which if it happened only 
 
 1 Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, Christmas Day, 1874. 
 
176 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ix 
 
 once in a long period of time, would excite a wonder 
 and admiration beyond anything that the strangest 
 phenomena, or the most glorious scenes we are ac- 
 quainted with could call forth. Darkness changes 
 into light, the sun arises on the earth every day ; but 
 because the sunrise happens every day, we are un- 
 conscious of the wonder and magnificence of the event, 
 till something or other makes us tJiink^ and opens our 
 eyes to what custom had blinded us to. Christmas 
 Day is given to awaken us afresh to the Rising of 
 our Eternal Sun over the darkness and despair of the 
 world. Once at least in the year, we are made to 
 remember what ought to call forth our adoring wonder 
 every day and all the day long. To-day let us 
 awake to it To-day let us prepare our hearts to 
 receive the impressions which Psalm and Hymn and 
 Lessons of Scripture are meant to make. To-day 
 " let us go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing 
 which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made 
 known unto us." 
 
 What is it that we shall find? What did the 
 shepherds see there ? They saw, we know, " a babe 
 wTapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." 
 And it is the Babe lying in the manger, the scene of 
 the Nativity, so like, yet so unlike what has happened 
 to each man born into the world, which is before our 
 minds and memories now. Even in its outward 
 aspect, it has its lessons, its deep and overpowering 
 appeals, to our thoughts and affections. But we shall 
 ill answer to the call of our great festival if we stop 
 here. We have been taught what was behind that 
 veil of helplessness and poverty. We know that it 
 was no mere entrance on a career in this world of 
 
IX THE INCARNATION OF GOD l^^ 
 
 time, amid circumstances of commonplace obscurity, 
 made striking to us by their contrast with a mighty 
 future, of one who was to be great and do great 
 things in the sphere of our mortal life. It was no 
 birth of one who was to be a great Lawgiver, or 
 Conqueror, or Prophet, or King. There is one and 
 one only thought which can adequately fill our minds 
 at a time like this — a thought beside which all other 
 marvels, all other instances and displays of God's 
 interest in the concerns of His creatures are thrown 
 into the background. It was the coming into this 
 world — as the child of a Virgin mother, but other- 
 wise under the conditions, the common conditions, of 
 our humanity — of the Everlasting and Almighty 
 Son of God. 
 
 I . Such an event as that can have nothing like it, 
 or parallel to it, while this world lasts. It is the 
 turning-point in the history of the world. The 
 Gospel of Christ, which, as announced by His Church 
 from the first, has made the Incarnation of the Eternal 
 Son what St. Paul made it, the centre and heart of 
 all teaching, worship, and obedience, the fulfilment 
 and end of all that was old, the starting-point of all 
 that was new — the Gospel of Christ refuses, and must 
 ever refuse, to compromise with any view of religion 
 which puts this tremendous truth in any less than its 
 paramount and sovereign place. It has been forgotten 
 at times ; it has been displaced, for a season, by ideas 
 and doctrines which the exigencies, or the accidental 
 disputes, or the fashions of the age brought to the 
 surface ; it has been fiercely assailed, or subtly 
 explained away, or shrunk from as something too 
 overwhelming to human imagination. But it 
 C.S.,P. • N 
 
178 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ix 
 
 reasserts itself in the latest century as in the first. 
 Let the Christian Church become serious after being 
 careless and frivolous ; let Christians become thought- 
 ful after having been superficial and shallow ; let them 
 become alive after having been dead, and the first thing 
 which meets them, the first thing that occupies and 
 stirs their minds from their depths, is this amazing 
 and transporting mystery, of the Eternal Son, born 
 man indeed, to live and die. You may as well 
 divide the soul from the body, and hope to leave the 
 living man, as attempt to separate from the Gospel 
 of the New Testament, from the religion which calls 
 itself Christianity, the belief in the Word made 
 Flesh. 
 
 This is the great thought, the great fact, that 
 faces us this morning. God has been made man. 
 God has indeed taken human form and flesh, this 
 form and flesh that we bear. God, our maker, our 
 upholder, the maker and upholder of all the worlds — 
 God has been with us ; has trodden our earth, has 
 spoken with human words, has worked with human 
 hands, has suffered human pains, has wept with 
 human tears. God has been with us, the Eternal, 
 the Ineffable, whom the heavens, and the heaven of 
 heavens cannot contain — here, in certain of the years 
 of time, on the hills of Galilee, in the streets of 
 Jerusalem. God has been with us, the most mighty, 
 the most merciful, in the form of a servant, as the 
 carpenter's son of Nazareth, as a little child. Men 
 have looked upon the face of God, and it was the 
 face of One who called them His friends. His brethren. 
 God has been with us, and seen our life, what we are, 
 and what we do, all our sin and all our need, our 
 
IX THE INCARNATION OF GOD 179 
 
 madness, our anguish, our helplessness — seen it with 
 the eyes of a man, with a heart as human in its 
 sympathy and brotherhood as it was divinely perfect 
 in its love and righteousness. God has unveiled 
 Himself to us here, to be as man the Healer and 
 Restorer of mankind, to regenerate them by His word 
 and truth, to shed the blood which was to redeem 
 the world. Is it possible that such a thing should 
 be, and that all things else should not be changed by 
 it ? Can such an event have had its real place in 
 what has passed in the ages during which mankind 
 has lived and acted here, and must it not have made 
 a change which nothing else could conceivably make, 
 in the world, and life, and all things belonging to 
 them ? Can we steadily fix our thoughts on what 
 it means — on the words which enshrine it in the 
 Creed and the Te Deiini — and not see that after such 
 a Day of God, such a Visitation and Presence as 
 nothing can be compared with except the First Day 
 of Creation, and the Last Day of the World — that 
 after the Incarnation in this our world of the Eternal 
 Son, nothing could be henceforth, in fact or in our 
 thoughts, as it was before : " neither death, nor life . . . 
 nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor 
 depth, nor any other creature." All things are made 
 different, are absolutely, irreversibly altered ; and from 
 that moment a new world begins, as truly as the old 
 one began, with new knowledge, new hopes,* new 
 powers, new laws. How could it be otherwise, when 
 it pleased the Eternal Father to work so wonderfully 
 and so strangely for- us men and for our salvation ? 
 How could it be otherwise, when " God so loved the 
 world that He gave His only begotten Son," to take 
 
i8o PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ix 
 
 our nature upon Him, to be as at this time born of 
 a pure Virgin? What a profound and complete 
 revolution in the conditions of our state, what 
 renovations, what unimagined prospects, must surely 
 follow on such an act of God ? Think of what 
 was promised, think of what was expected, even 
 by those who waited for the consolation of Israel, 
 before He came — the Seed of Abraham, in whom all 
 the families of the earth should be blessed ; the 
 Son of David, who should reign from sea to sea, 
 whose kingdom should be as long as the sun and 
 moon endure ; the Anointed One, with wondrous 
 and mystic names, the Child born to us, the Son 
 given to us, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, 
 the Prince of Peace, " Immanuel, God with us," — 
 think of it all, and at its highest, as it was thought 
 of in the darkness, or in the twilight before the 
 dawn, before He the Sun arose, before the Dayspring 
 from on high visited us in the manner in which He 
 really was to visit us ; think of the promise and 
 expectation, and then, of what was in fact the fulfil- 
 ment, and surely we are not able to measure the gap 
 between them — the infinite distance between the 
 loftiest mysteries and enigmas of prophecy, and 
 the clear certainty of the truth, most incomprehen- 
 sible, most sure, of the advent of the Word who was 
 God, the Word made Flesh, and dwelling among us. 
 2. The Incarnation was the turning-point in the 
 history of this world ; and as a matter of fact, we have 
 before our eyes the consequences which have followed 
 from it. In the good and in the evil, in what the 
 world seems and what it is, in its tendencies, its 
 motives, its efforts, in what is visibly on its surface 
 
IX THE INCARNATION OF GOD i8i 
 
 and in its secret forces, in the depths of men's hearts 
 and their strongest purposes, that awful Presence 
 which was once visibly in the world has made things 
 different in it from what they ever were before. They 
 are incommensurable in the nature of the case, the 
 ancient and the Christian ages : there is no common 
 measure between them, and vainly do we try to 
 invent one. But I turn to another aspect of the 
 subject. We have each of us, one by one, our 
 concern with this great truth. For each man, as 
 for the world, the Son of God was made man, to 
 help and enable man to reach the perfection for 
 which he was made ; for each of us, did He humble 
 Himself to this awful condescension of His love ; for 
 each one, He was born and died ; for each one's 
 restoration and strength and blessing. He has in 
 store all that has been done by His becoming man. 
 His Incarnation has been made known- to us not 
 only for the public creed and confession of the 
 Church, but for the private needs and private use, for 
 the personal hope and stay, of each of our souls. 
 And to know and master what it means, to realise, 
 as we say, what it is, and what it is to tis, is the 
 turning-point of each man's belief. Like the realis- 
 ation and bringing home to our own selves of the 
 idea of death ; like the becoming alive to the great 
 questions — ^ Whence am I ? What am I ? Why am I 
 here? Whither am I going P^like as it is wHen, in 
 the stillness of meditation, there opens on the mind 
 the overwhelming and absorbing thought of what God 
 is, of what God must be, — so is it with us, when first 
 we are able to catch hold of the meaning of those 
 amazing words, the Word was made Flesh — God was 
 
i82 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ix 
 
 made Man. Once let a man grasp the idea, not only 
 that some Great One came to save, and teach, and 
 forgive, and justify him ; not only that some one came 
 to die for him, and rose from the dead that his whole 
 moral nature might be raised and restored ; but that 
 He who came was in simple truth no other than the 
 Very and Eternal God ; that He who came, came by 
 being born of woman, came in the substantial truth ol 
 human nature ; and not only is the whole Gospel 
 lighted up with new glory, but its reference to him- 
 self receives a new force, breaks upon him with in- 
 expressible and tremendous meaning. " Who loved 
 me, and gave Himself for me " — to think that He 
 who did this for each one of us, that He who loved 
 with such self-sacrifice, is He, of whom all may be 
 said that the mind of man can conceive and the 
 tongue of man can utter of the Almighty and Ever- 
 living God, — this is a revelation to a man's spirit, which, 
 whether it come gradually, or come, as it may do, 
 suddenly in a moment, is one of those things which 
 lift him up out of the commonplaces of routine 
 religion, one of those things which bring him face to 
 face with the real questions of his being, with those 
 fateful alternatives, the choice of which decides the 
 course of his life and its issues. We may not know 
 it or take it in : the Creed, the Gospel of St. John, 
 the Epistles of St. Paul may be a matter of words, 
 into which we may not be able to put a living mean- 
 ing ; we may overlook and cloud the fact of the In- 
 carnation with subordinate doctrines, with the theories 
 and traditions of men, with a disproportionate mass of 
 guesses on what it is not given us to know, of subtle- 
 ties and reasonings in the sphere of liuman phik)- 
 
IX THE INCARNATION OF GOD 183 
 
 sophy ; we may recoil from it and put it from us, as 
 something which oppresses our imagination and con- 
 founds our reason ; but we may be sure that on the 
 place which we really give it in our mind and heart 
 depends the whole character of our Christianity, 
 depends what the Gospel of Christ means to us. 
 
 We see in the Incarnation and the Nativity how 
 God fulfils the promises He makes and the hopes 
 which He raises, in ways utterly unforeseen and un- 
 expected, utterly inconceivable beforehand, utterly 
 beyond the power of man to anticipate. And further, 
 we see exemplified in it that widely prevailing law 
 of His government, that in this stage of His dispen- 
 sations with which we are acquainted, which we call 
 this world and this life, that which is to be greatest 
 must stoop to begin from what is humblest — the 
 greatest glories must pass through their hour of ob- 
 scurity, the greatest strength must rise out of the 
 poorest weakness, the greatest triumphs must have 
 faced their outset of defeat and rebuke, the greatest 
 goodness start unrecognised and misunderstood. Is 
 it not something almost too great for the mind to 
 endure — the contrast between what the eye of man 
 saw and what really ivas, between what was to he 
 and its present visible beginnings — when we go back 
 to that first Christmas morning, and think of that 
 poor manger in that poor Jewish town, and of Him 
 who lay there? Must we not feel as if there*was a 
 spell in the world to blind our eyes to what is real, 
 and that we are passing through it in a dream, when 
 that was the first sight that human eyes ever had of 
 Him who had made all things, of Him men's only 
 Hope and Joy, of Him who was to be their Judge? 
 
1 84 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ix 
 
 Is even the Cross itself so overwhelmingly marvellous 
 as the Humiliation of the Little Child ? But so it is. 
 So He willed. So it should be, in the perfect har- 
 mony of the eternal purpose. So, then, in those 
 depths of lowliness and self-abasement, of feebleness 
 and neglect, began that path which was to lead the 
 Son of Man, through shame and death, to the right 
 hand of the Father. So began here, in time, that 
 reign of all the ages, which was to win back to Him 
 who had made them the world of souls, and fill 
 heaven with the multitudes of the redeemed. From 
 such a level did He start on His course of warfare 
 and sacrifice for man, the second Adam, at whose 
 name, at the end, every knee shall bow, of things 
 in heaven and things in earth, and things under 
 the earth. King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. St. 
 Paul himself, St. John himself, cannot find words to 
 tell the mystery of accomplished purpose, by which 
 God gathers together in one " all things in Christ, 
 both which are in heaven, and which are in earth ; 
 even in Him" ; "and hath put all things under His 
 feet, and given Him to be the Head over all things to 
 the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him 
 that filleth all in all"; and here, in Bethlehem, wrapped 
 in the swaddling clothes, He was one in whom the 
 shepherds could see no difference from any other 
 new-born babe. 
 
 Christian brethren — you who are as much interested 
 as they in this disclosure of God — you who know 
 more than they did of its awful meaning, don't let 
 this time pass without an effort to bring home to 
 your hearts the things you have to do with — the 
 Person who is the centre of it all, the lesson which, 
 
IX THE INCARNATION OF GOD 185 
 
 as far as men can follow it, He teaches you. When 
 wonder and adoration — and thanksgiving, if it were 
 possible, without bounds — have had their due, there 
 remains the practical impressions to be laid up for 
 the actual, serious, definite work of life. You are the 
 heirs — you cannot doubt it in presence of that 
 manger cradle — of a hope which passes measuring 
 here ; you are the object of a Divine solicitude and 
 love, of which human language is absolutely incapable 
 of revealing the fulness. But in the meanwhile, you 
 are men and women, with your appointed parts to play 
 on this earthly scene, with lives to waste and spoil, 
 or to improve and elevate ; with the risks of unfaith- 
 fulness and carelessness, with the sure rewards of self- 
 discipline and sincerity; with a heart and character to 
 fashion after the mind of Christ, with an allotted and 
 fast-shortening term to finish your work. What can 
 you learn for your own guidance from the mystery 
 of His Incarnation, His nativity and childhood — from 
 these stages of His work, from which He would not 
 excuse Himself? Is it not surely, that we must 
 begin our eternal work, as He was pleased to begin 
 His, according to that law which He has laid down 
 for the kingdom of God, by which those who are to 
 reach the highest must have known and welcomed 
 the humblest and the lowest ? " Except ye become as 
 little children," is His characteristic word, " ye shall 
 not enter into the kingdom of heaven." W^e must 
 learn the lesson of patient waiting, of lowliness of heart 
 and self-estimation, patiently and faithfully fulfilling 
 the tasks of the "present, patiently waiting as time 
 moves insensibly on and keeps us still from much that 
 we stretch our hands to ; of patient resolution, in try- 
 
1 86 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ix 
 
 ing again and again, for love of Christ, what we have 
 often failed in; of patient endurance of the facts which 
 make us conscious of the scantiness of our powers and 
 knowledge, of the poverty of our character, of the ill- 
 success of our endeavours; of patient determination to 
 learn and bear the truth about, and against, ourselves ; 
 of patient courage to feel that we are but beginners, 
 and that we arc without the gifts, the strength, the 
 excellence that others have ; of patient waiting, and 
 patient hope, till, of the seed which we sow in faith, 
 the years shall bring the fruit. Lowliness, in such as 
 we are, and in our condition, means simply truth — 
 truthfulness in our judgment of things and of ourselves; 
 truthfulness about ourselves before God. To become 
 as little children is to recognise the reality of our con- 
 dition in this life of time — its disproportion to the end- 
 less life before us — its weakness, its failures, its sin, its 
 vanity ; the humiliation of our knowledge, the poor- 
 ness of all we are doing now. And yet, through such 
 poorness of doing and dimness of knowing has all 
 that has been ever worthy here to be called great 
 worked its way. It is sown in weakness, it is un- 
 known in growing, it is despised in its first appearings ; 
 and it is, after all this, that it bears its blossoms and is 
 crowned with its fruit. So is it in the work of the 
 kingdom of God. What is there, according to this 
 world's standard of greatness or interest, in the dull, 
 dreary, disappointing struggle against our own faults 
 and selfishness, the long labour of self-conquest, the 
 detail and the trouble of watchfulness and self-correc- 
 tion, the often wasted, and yet still repeated prayers ? 
 IVut through such a discipline — who can say through 
 any other? — have human characters, hardly conscious 
 
IX THE INCARNATION OF GOD 187 
 
 of what was going on, waxed strong and holy and fit 
 for their Master's triumphs, and sprung up to the 
 heights of nobleness and saintliness. 
 
 We look on, some of us almost with a shudder, 
 at the drudgery of Christian labourers — plain, simple 
 people, dull in themselves, dull to the dignity of their 
 calling — in the squalid courts of our cities, in the 
 loathsome dens of vice, by the cold, dismal sick-beds 
 of the poor, in crowded school-rooms, amid misery 
 and darkness, and lives without joy and hope. We 
 are glad, perhaps, that there are some to do it ; and 
 glad, perhaps, that it is not ourselves. And yet, 
 will not one day declare, that in these uninteresting, 
 repulsive " poor and sick and ignorant and naked," 
 it was Christ Himself who was visited and ministered 
 to — that what was done for the neglected children 
 was done for Him who blessed the children, was 
 done for the Child of Bethlehem ? And can we 
 doubt that when that great multitude which stand in 
 white robes and golden crowns, with palms in their 
 hands, before- the Lamb, and from whose eyes God 
 has wiped away every tear, look back to the conflicts 
 through which they came to their great beatitude, 
 they will wonder at the littleness, the meanness, the 
 paltriness of the trials which were then their daily 
 experience, their daily cross, the commonplace diffi-' 
 culties of their lives^ — poor things, of " the earth, 
 earthy" — which yet were in their appointed hour 
 the trial-ground of martyrs, the steps by which here 
 the saints made their approach to the likeness of 
 their Lord ? 
 
 We cannot but be children, do or think what 
 we will, in the face of the powers and mysteries of 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS ix 
 
 this immense and awful universe of nature which sur- 
 rounds us. We cannot but feel ourselves children, 
 in the presence of the chances and uncertainties of a 
 dark and menacing future, impenetrable, beyond man's 
 control. But He who made us, He who guides all 
 things, descended, even to the lowliness and help- 
 lessness of childhood, that He might comfort us, — 
 descended, as the first step of His everlasting triumph. 
 Let us entreat Him to help us to descend from our 
 ignorant pride, from our vain and self-wise confidence, 
 to the level of what we are in His eyes. Let us 
 think of ourselves as children, in the presence of 
 that supreme mystery with which all our destiny is 
 bound up ; children, before the incalculable Humilia- 
 tion of the Son of God, before the infinity of His 
 greatness and His love ; children, on the brink and 
 threshold of that vast, unchanging life, to which this 
 one is but a playtime and a trial-ground, knowing 
 nothing except in part, yet with the fortunes of an 
 eternal existence in our hands. May He who loved 
 us, and in all things gave Himself for us, convert us 
 to become in heart and spirit like the little children 
 whom He blessed — convert us from our blindness, 
 our folly, and our sin, to the lowly trust, the purity, 
 the simpleness, the cheerful readiness, the joy, of 
 childhood ; so that we may grow up to Him in all 
 things, to the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ ; here^ even here, as we are able, amid the 
 errors and miseries of our mortality ; there, in tlie 
 completeness of tlint perfect and stainless world. 
 
X 
 
 THE LIVING HOPEi 
 
 *' Who hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ from the dead." — i Peter i. 3. 
 
 These words speak of a change which can only be 
 described in language to which nothing in human 
 experience can possibly answer. There is no such 
 thing in nature as being begotten again, as a new 
 and second birth. That word " regeneration," which 
 from Scripture and the Church has passed into the 
 common phraseology of historical and political 
 speculation, involves in its proper meaning an 
 impossible conception — the conception of life once 
 begun, beginning again ; and it is no wonder that 
 Nicodemus, with his thoughts moulded and limited 
 by experience and custom, stumbled at it. But no 
 less than this strange and violent word would suffice 
 to express the change which the Incarnation of the 
 Eternal Son was to work in the souls of men. And 
 no less a word will suffice for the Apostle, to^ express 
 the change made in the condition and prospects of 
 God's chosen by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Here, as in .so many other cases, we are not 
 startled, we are not struck, from the long effect of 
 1 Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, Easter Day, 1875. 
 
I90 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS x 
 
 use and habit. These amazing words of Scripture, 
 we have heard them all our life long ; — every Sunday 
 in church, and to many of us on week days or out of 
 church, the language in which Prophets and Apostles 
 set forth the wonderful works of God, has been 
 before our minds — minds often inattentive, often 
 wandering, and anyhow seldom adequately alive 
 to its full import. In God's great goodness, these 
 words have been made to us " current coin " ; but, 
 as in current coin, the sharpness and freshness of 
 their first impress has been worn away by long 
 familiarity, by the sin and the misuse of centuries, by 
 the irreverence and unfaithfulness of human custom. 
 If we could be carried back to the days when they 
 were written — if we could hear or read an Epistle of 
 St. Paul or St. Peter, as its words fell for the first 
 time or the second on the ears of those to whom it 
 was originally written, and who were living in the 
 midst of the things and events to which it referred— 
 language which we now listen to with so languid an 
 interest would take our minds captive with astonish- 
 ment ; what seems so trite, so tame, so vague, would 
 start in every syllable into life and definite meaning 
 and overpowering surprise ; we should feel that we 
 were hearing or reading of things never yet spoken 
 of by the tongues of men, or of thoughts too mighty 
 even for inspired minds. The language is indeed 
 astonishing, but not more astonishing than that 
 which it represents. That which had come to pass 
 in this world of ours when Jesus Christ died on 
 the Cross and rose from the dead on the third day — 
 th^t change of all beliefs, all suppositions, all hopes, 
 all motives — that great change required a new outfit 
 
THE LIVING HOPE 191 
 
 of words for its expression. To those who could not 
 break with what they had been accustomed to, who 
 could not imagine it possible that the Son of God 
 could die for men, that any breathing mortal breath 
 could come back from the grave, the new language 
 was simply unintelligible. " To the Jews a stumbling- 
 block — to the Greeks foolishness." But to those who 
 did believe it, even the loftiest and most startling 
 language must have seemed too weak : nothing but 
 that sustained tone of expression, raised to its 
 highest power and boldest strain, which prevails 
 without exception throughout the Epistles of the 
 New Testament, could in any degree correspond to 
 what had now become the supreme realities of 
 men's existence. To speak of a " new creation," to 
 speak of " death being swallowed up in victory," of 
 " life and immortality " being " brought to light," of 
 men being " born again " into the sonship, and house- 
 hold, and inheritance of God — all this to 'them was no 
 extravagance of Eastern rhetoric, but the plain " words 
 of truth and soberness." Such a change as had been 
 in the order of things here when Christ died and 
 rose again, more than authorised it. How could 
 such things happen, and all things not be made new ? 
 The anomaly would have been that men should have 
 seen and should believe such wonders, and yet should 
 only speak in the language to which the world had 
 been accustomed before such things had happened. 
 
 The first Easter Day divides two worlds, the old 
 and the new : this is not speculation or opinion, 
 but fact. From_ the faith in Jesus Christ raised 
 from the dead, has followed all that is characteristic 
 of modern ages, of the highest forms of human 
 
192 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS x 
 
 society, — their ideas of good, their essays after 
 improvement, their hopes of the future which sustain 
 and encourage mankind. This deep and permanent 
 change, so extensive, so antecedently incalculable, 
 has passed over the condition and prospects of man 
 even here, and it is evident and undeniable as a 
 matter of history. But this is the least of the great 
 change to us, to whom Jesus Christ, Crucified, Risen, 
 Ascended, is the Redeemer and Hope ; to us, to 
 whom life is what it is, because He was indeed 
 raised from the dead. The change to us means 
 something more than can be measured by any 
 bettering or elevation of our circumstances or our 
 ways of thinking in time. We are still bound to 
 time, but the significance of this change is that it 
 opens to us something beyond time. We are still 
 subjects of nature, and citizens of this visible world 
 which Christ's Redemption has done so much to 
 interpret and exalt. But that Redemption to us 
 means something which imparts to us what is above 
 nature, and makes us sharers in the realities and 
 powers of the invisible world. This it is which 
 makes to Christians the difference between what they 
 would have been zvithout Christ dying and rising, 
 what they would have been before that Passion and 
 Victory, and what they now are, after it — because of 
 it. This it is which explains and accounts for such 
 strong words as the Apostle's — " Who hath begotten 
 us again unto a living hope," — "being born again, 
 not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the 
 word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." 
 
 Let us dwell for a few moments on two points in 
 this " living hope," to which we have been "born again 
 
THE LIVING HOPE 
 
 193 
 
 by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." 
 (i) One is, the abiding presence of Jesus Christ with 
 us, in this mortal and passing state. (2) The other 
 is, the certainty and assurance it gives that what 
 man was made for shall be accomplished ; that his 
 nature is to be made perfect ; that his destiny as 
 God's creation is to be fulfilled. 
 
 I. Who among the most favoured of Prophets 
 could have raised their souls to the hope, that the 
 day would come when God should be made known 
 to men, as God was made known in the Person 
 of Jesus Christ — that what their prophetic words 
 signified was such a manifestation of God to man 
 as the Gospels record? Who among them could 
 have imagined, that He who came and disclosed to 
 men that mystery and nature of the Godhead which 
 had been veiled to Moses and Isaiah, was to abide 
 with those whom He had redeemed, till He returned 
 to judge the world ? And yet this is the " living 
 hope," to which tlie successive generations of Chris- 
 tian people are heirs, by virtue of that great change 
 in their condition made by the Resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ. He who made man and knew what was in 
 man, knew what was at the bottom of man's heart, 
 of his purest love, of his blind longings. What man 
 was made for,, what man consciously or uncon- 
 sciously yearned after, was, not merely God's gifts, 
 but God Himself; what he wanted in the Vorld, 
 what he needed to stay upon in its darkness and dis- 
 order, what he imagined to himself, as the highest 
 of conceivable blessings, was a Divine Presence. 
 " Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself," was 
 the awestruck reflection of the Prophet, even while 
 C.S.,P. O 
 
194 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS x 
 
 recounting the power and providence of the " God 
 of Israel, the Saviour " ; and nature and conscience, 
 His witnesses throughout all the earth, yet echoed 
 the confession — " A God that hideth Himself." 
 This hidden God made known, made certain, this 
 was what man sought after — this was the " Desire 
 of all nations." And this was given. God came 
 forth from the depths and uncertainties of nature, 
 from the clouds and terrors and enigmas of Provi- 
 dence, from the veil and mystery behind which 
 Israel worshipped Him, from the silence in which 
 yet He was the dim hope of all the ends of the 
 earth — He came forth and showed Himself, He 
 came forth and gave Himself to the love and hearts 
 of men. He taught with human words ; He healed, 
 He forgave. He blessed ; He drew souls to Himself 
 with new and Divine affections ; with men and for 
 men. He passed from this life through that dark 
 eate of fear and humiliation which we call Death. 
 And if this had been all — if He had passed at once 
 from the grave which could not hold Him to His 
 glory above — who among us knows enough to dare 
 to ask why He should have stopped at this, why He 
 should have vouchsafed no more, whether with only 
 so much His promise could have been fulfilled and 
 His work accomplished ? But this, as we know, was 
 not all. On earth itself He was again, alive from 
 the dead. On earth again, as He had been before, 
 and yet not as He had been before : passing across 
 the scene of life, yet no longer mortal — conversing, 
 walking, eating with men, but vanishing the next 
 moment from their sight ; in form, in love, in 
 power the same, but no longer bound by the body of 
 
THE LIVING HOPE 195 
 
 humiliation which He had worn with His brethren ; 
 Hfting their thoughts above all that is natural, carnal, 
 earthly in the body, fixing them on all in it that 
 is real and personal. And this was the beginning 
 of a Presence of God which was nevermore to be 
 withdrawn from the sons of men. It was a Presence 
 not limited to the thirty-three years during which men 
 saw and touched Jesus Christ. The Presence which 
 then began, such a Presence as never had been in 
 the world before, was to continue in His Church to 
 the end of all things. " Lo, I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world." The promise of 
 that ancient name of prophecy was to be fulfilled, 
 not merely for a short time, and to a small band 
 of disciples, but to His Church for ever — " Immanuel, 
 God with us." The thirst of the soul and mind 
 and heart of man for the Presence of God — a God 
 known, and adored, and loved — was to ,be satisfied 
 by a universal blessing : it was to be no privilege 
 even of Apostles. His Ascension out of our sight 
 was a change in the manner of His presence, not 
 in the reality of His presence itself. It ceased to 
 be verified by sense or sight, it was not less real to 
 that which is the real inward self of man, that in 
 him which feels, and thinks, and loves ; that in him 
 which alone lasts on for ever ; that deep, unsearch- 
 able, yet most certain personality of his existence, con- 
 scious only in part of the facts of its life, which *is only 
 less mysterious to us than the Personality of God Him- 
 self. There^ the Word who had become man was to 
 be present. There, in all His truth, in all the grace 
 and blessing of such a Presence, the Risen Saviour, 
 who was dead and is alive for evermore, was hence- 
 
196 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS x 
 
 forth to meet men, henceforth to give Himself to them, 
 henceforth to be one with them, and they one with 
 Him. " I will not leave you comfortless: I will come 
 to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me 
 no more ; but ye see Me : because I live, ye shall live 
 also. At that day ye shall know that I am in My 
 Father, and ye in Me, and I in you." Again, "he that 
 eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in 
 Me, and I in him." What explanations can reach 
 or exhaust these amazing words : the utterance of 
 the Son of God Himself, passing all created thought, 
 beyond all imaginable created power. And as such 
 in their plain meaning, as the most certain of realities, 
 the most unutterable of blessings, the Apostles re- 
 ceived them. " I am crucified with Christ : neverthe- 
 less I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." "Who 
 shall separate us from the love of Christ ? " Such 
 words sum up the feeling under which all the Epistles 
 are written : the feeling of that immediate nearness 
 of the unseen Christ, of that immediate dealing, 
 through the veils and mystery of our present state, 
 with the Risen Lord of Life, which implies the con- 
 tinuance and the perpetuity of His Presence with those 
 for whom He died : " Whom having not seen, ye love; 
 in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, 
 ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." 
 
 2. The Resurrection was the answer to the cry of 
 human nature after the Presence of God — the cry, as 
 we hear it in the Psalms, to have God near, to know 
 Him, to possess Him. The Incarnate Word, Risen 
 from the Dead, is ever with those whom He has made 
 members of His body — at the Father's right hand, 
 yet walking in the midst of the golden candlesticks — • 
 
THE LIVING HOPE 197 
 
 with US in our secret chamber and solemn worship, 
 with us in the breaking of bread at Holy Communion, 
 with us in those depths of conscience and feeling on 
 which no eye but His can look ; how near, how awfully 
 close and present no tongue can tell, but He has 
 said, " ye in Me, and I in you "- — the very words 
 which He had just used of His oneness with the 
 Father. But further, the Resurrection is the Divine 
 answer to the old, sad lament of human nature, over 
 the mystery of its contradictions, its vanity, its abor- 
 tive purpose. " Wherefore hast Thou made all men 
 for nought ? " Why was the creature made subject 
 to vanity ? Why is life so wonderful, so enjoyable, 
 and yet more idle than a dream ? Why does man 
 live only to go hence and perish ? Why is he so great, 
 so largely endowed, capable of such powers of reason, 
 capable of such high goodness and nobleness of soul, 
 capable of such affections, of such love, only to be 
 lost and thrown away in the waste and vastness of 
 the universe ? Why, just as he comes to the ripeness 
 of his wisdorn and power, is he cut off, as if at random, 
 like the meanest insect, like the summer leaf? Why 
 are those taken who could serve and bless their 
 fellows, and the useless, the worthless, left ? What is 
 the meaning of that destiny which starts with such 
 wonderful promise and such high hope, and in the 
 midst of its achievements suddenly and abruptly 
 drops into nothing ? What is the meaning ♦of that 
 force and energy of will, that penetrating and 
 victorious intelligence, that infinite play and charm 
 of character, that -loveliness and sweetness, which are 
 just shown to the world, and then pass, " like as a 
 dream when one awaketh ? " Where is it gone, what 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 has become of it, what was it made for, that great 
 heart, that richly-furnished mind, which was with us 
 yesterday and is with us no more for ever? What 
 does it all mean, this irony of human glory and human 
 fate? "Wherefore hast Thou made all men for nought?" 
 What a world is that in which " those who most enjoy 
 life, and those who best employ it, must close it amid 
 the same impenetrable shadows." ^ And that is not 
 the worst. What a destiny is that which, as long as we 
 can trace it, sin and evil cross and thwart and spoil ? 
 Why does man know and desire what is good, when 
 against his will, and yet by his own fault, he drifts off 
 so persistently into evil ? Why those continual aims 
 at what is excellent, realised in miserable and heart- 
 broken failure ? What is the meaning of that cruel 
 obstinacy of custom, which puts such difficulties in 
 the way of those who wish to do better ? Why is 
 evil so easy and good so hard ? What I would I do 
 not, but what I hate that I do. " I find then a law, 
 that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 
 . . . Oh wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver 
 me from the body of this death ? " What is man 
 meant for, that such should be his universal cry ? 
 There is no subject in the whole compass of ex- 
 perience on which the greatest writers, poets, moralists, 
 preachers have spoken their greatest words with such 
 pathetic sincerity as on this strange argument of the 
 appalling disproportion between the endowments of 
 man's natureand what comes of them; between promise 
 and fulfilment ; between achievement, and its worth 
 when done ; between what man seem$ to have been 
 made to live for, and what his career is seen to end in. 
 
 1 Greg, Enigmas of Life, p. 189. (Ed. 1891.) 
 
THE LIVING HOPE 199 
 
 " But now is Christ risen from the dead, and 
 become the firstfruits of them that slept." " For in 
 that He died, He died unto sin once : but in that He 
 Hveth, He liveth unto God." There is the answer. 
 Failure and disappointment are in the world ; and 
 to men He too failed : the hope He had raised ended 
 in despair. Love and goodness spend themselves 
 here, and seem to leave little mark on the misery 
 and selfishness of the world : He loved as no one 
 loved ; human hearts were in the presence of His 
 goodness — yet He was the " rejected of men." Pain, 
 mysterious, terrible, irremediable pain, is in the world: 
 He suffered it in its fiercest pangs. Sin is in the 
 world : He was counted as a sinner, and endured its 
 shame, its curse, its doom. Death is in the world : 
 He underwent it. But failure, and pain, and a 
 sinner's death, were but the short transitory passage 
 to the fulfilment of what He came for : /' made per- 
 fect through sufferings," He entered into His glory. 
 And in Him, the First-begotten of the Dead — of those 
 dead who seem to human eyes to have perished — 
 the riddle of human existence received its solution : 
 man was not made to come to nought, but to be 
 made perfect. That wonderful being, made in the 
 Image of God, fitted for his course with the choicest 
 gifts from God's treasury, capable of so much, aspiring- 
 to so much, with such capacities for delight and 
 happiness, was not born for Death but Immcfrtality ; 
 he was not sent here for defeat, and incompleteness, 
 and disappointment, but to grow " from grace to 
 grace," into the -likeness of the Son of God. We 
 talk of life cut short, of great hopes extinguished, of 
 vast usefulness arrested, of high powers given only 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 to be taken away ; but indeed there is nothing lost, 
 nothing has been in vain — the incompleteness and 
 the failure are only relative to us, and while we are 
 here in the darkness. Sin is no longer man's fatal 
 master, from whom no conscience can get free, over 
 whom no will can assert its supremacy. The Resurrec- 
 tion has brought assurance of forgiveness unknown 
 before : the spirit of Him who raised Jesus Christ 
 from the dead has brought into the moral world a 
 strength which can break the tyranny of sin. 
 Language, feeling, thought, may exhaust their 
 strength in dwelling on the darkness and doubts of 
 man's existence and fortunes ; there is but one 
 answer, but one there is. He was not made in vain, 
 for whom Christ died ; he was not made to perish, 
 with all his thoughts and perfections, in the dust of 
 death, for whom Christ rose again. " As we have 
 borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the 
 image of the heavenly." " He that spared not His own 
 Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not 
 with Him also freely give us all things ? . . . Who 
 is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea 
 rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right 
 hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." 
 
 My brethren, if these things are true, let us not 
 merely talk about them, but tJiink them and live 
 them — think of their reality and greatness, live ac- 
 cording to their unspeakable importance to us. If 
 there is one thing certain in the teaching of St. John 
 and St. Paul, it is that the Risen and Ascended 
 Christ is still in very truth present with His Church 
 for ever. They assert it in every varied form of thought 
 and expression ; and we accept their teaching. Well, 
 
THE LIVING HOPE 
 
 then, what is it to us, that we have Him so present, 
 that we know Him to be so near ? You know how, 
 in the days of His visible presence on earth, the 
 multitudes who stood before it were composed. 
 Then He was before them, and they sought Him ; 
 but all sorts were there. There were the earnest and 
 the idle, the heartless and the generous, the tempted, 
 the heart-broken, the prosperous, the critical, the 
 thoughtless. Those who believed, and those who 
 half-believed ; those who loved Him, and those whom 
 His sweetness could not move or touch ; those who 
 were ready to give up all for Him, and those who 
 would give up all but the one secret, darling idol ; 
 those who saw what He was, and those who seeing 
 saw not and hearing heard nothing ; those whom 
 misery and sin, the pangs of disease, or the hunger 
 of the soul, or the longing to be true and good, drew 
 to Him, perhaps drove to Him ; those who came 
 because others came, because it was fashionable, 
 who looked on, curious, or amused, or indifferent, or 
 scorning, or. hating. Is not every congregation 
 which assembles to worship Him — nay, every gather- 
 ing of those who seek His Presence in Holy Com- 
 munion — very like those multitudes, composed in 
 the same way, of elements equally various, equally 
 opposite ? What a thought that any should be in 
 that Presence, apathetic, thankless, stony-hearted ! 
 Have we not reason to ask ourselves, What "is it to 
 us, that He still continues to us His Presence ? 
 Let us ask ourselves once more on this great Day 
 of the Lord, what we are doing to break through 
 the dreams and doubts of earth, and to fulfil that 
 destiny and calling which the Lord's Resurrection 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 points out and assures to human nature, to each 
 Hving soul which hears that He is Risen. That 
 destiny which now we know, that promise of a run- 
 ning which may reach the goal, shall it be to us, 
 indeed, in vain ? Knowing that we are not made for 
 nought, shall we be content with a life that must 
 come to nought, with wishes that must at last be 
 baffled, with strength and energy that must at last 
 have been spent in vain ? What awaits all that is of 
 the earth, earthy, that is no matter of question. 
 The alternative only is, between the " living hope," 
 the destiny of man, revealed, assured in Christ, or 
 else that death of hope, that philosophy of plain- 
 spoken and obstinate despair, that open-eyed, frank, 
 resigned abandonment of all thought of the future, 
 that passionate reaction to heathenism, which seems 
 to be taking possession of some of the finest minds 
 and greatest intellects of our time. There is no 
 choice but these ; and yet we go on, saying to our- 
 selves — " The tone of the Bible, the ideal of the Bible, 
 is too high for us : we do not pretend to much, we 
 can do with something less ; leave us to get through 
 life as we may ; leave us our small sins and faults, 
 they are but little ones ; leave us our trifling interests, 
 we are not made for greater ; leave us our petty 
 selfishness and our commonplace, harmless worldli- 
 ness, our frivolous whims and tempers, our quiet lazi- 
 ness, our trivial shabbinesses, our mild dishonesties : 
 we were not made for troublesome improvement, for 
 high aims, for bold ventures. Leave us with our 
 life as we lead it, not trying to rise higher, keeping 
 out of serious wrong, keeping out of the sense of 
 responsibility. Leave us our easy conscience, our 
 
THE LIVING HOPE 203 
 
 content with what we are." Yes, it might be, per- 
 haps, if the emptiest worldling, nay, the most 
 abandoned of sinners, did not bear within him the 
 germ, the possibility, the intention on God's part 
 who made him, of a redeemed and saintly life. It 
 might be, if man held only of the earth and time, and 
 had no fellowship with what is divine and eternal. It 
 might be, if only, by forgetting, by not choosing to see, 
 we could make that not to be which is, and which 
 must be — all that there is in the world of misery, all 
 that must make us know one day something of that 
 misery ourselves. No, if this is so, the philosophy 
 of despair is right. If this is the way to live, there 
 is nothing to contradict the old dreary complaint, 
 that life is but a cheat, luring forward by hopes 
 that never can be realised, cutting off the best, 
 separating the dearest, mocking the greatest. There 
 is nothing to contradict the cynic's melancholy sneer 
 at the utmost stretch of life even if it is reached : — 
 
 Then old Age and Experience, hand in hand. 
 Lead him to Death, and make him understand, 
 After a search so painful and so long, 
 That all his Life, he has been in the wrong.^ 
 
 But there is another supposition on which men 
 may frame their lives. There is another conviction as. 
 deep, as founded on realities, as well tested by ex- 
 perience, as to what man's life, even the hu^nblest, 
 was made for and meant to end in. It is no sup- 
 position of dreamers. It has been the conviction of 
 the most serious men in their most serious hours. 
 It is the one belief which attempts to give a mean- 
 
 1 Rochester, quoted in Goethe, Aus Meinevi Lebcn, Book XI IL 
 
204 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS x 
 
 ine to human life ; which accounts at once for what 
 is great in it and what is poor, for its hopes and 
 their visible defeat Christians, hear once more on 
 Easter morning, how St. Paul has taught us w^hat 
 man was meant for, why Christ rose from the 
 dead : — 
 
 " The eyes of your understanding being enlight- 
 ened ; that ye may know what is the hope of His 
 calling, and what the riches of the glory of His in- 
 heritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding 
 greatness of His power to us -ward who believe, 
 according to the working of His mighty power, which 
 He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the 
 dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the 
 heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, 
 and might, and dominion, and every name that is 
 named, not only in this world, but also in that which 
 is to come : and hath put all things under His feet, 
 and gave Him to be the head over all things to the 
 church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that 
 fiUeth all in all." 
 
XI 
 
 ASCENSION-TIDE 1 
 
 "Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and 
 your Father ; and to My God, and your God." — St. John xx. 17. 
 
 As we enter on this week, the week of the Ascen- 
 sion, two great subjects take precedence of all 
 others in our religious thoughts, and strike the key- 
 note in the treatment of every topic of Christian 
 teaching or exhortation. One is the triumphal close 
 of that ministry on earth which the Eter'nal Son of 
 God undertook for the redemption of mankind ; the 
 other is the fellowship, so close, so certain, so incap- 
 able of change, which has been established by the 
 Ascension of our Lord between Him who sits at the 
 Father's right hand and the race to which we 
 belong. Our first thought is of our Master's glory, 
 of that final attestation of His mission and work of 
 which the voices from heaven at His Baptism and 
 His Transfiguration were the prelude ; of the opening 
 and beginning of that new kingdom in which the 
 Son of Man has all power given to Him in heaven 
 and on earth ; in which He has the Name given Him 
 which is above every name; in which He reigns 
 
 1 Preached in St. Andrew's Church, Wells Street, on Ascension 
 Day, 1874, for the Bishop of London's Fund. 
 
2o6 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xi 
 
 " far above all principality, and power, and might, and 
 dominion, and every name that is named, not only in 
 this world, but also in that which is to come," King of 
 Kings, and Lord of Lords. And our next thought is, 
 how deeply, how mysteriously we men are affected 
 by this mystery of Christ ; by what awful bonds we 
 are bound to that nature which once was mortal like 
 our own, and which is now in Divine Majesty on 
 the Eternal Throne ; by what near, and intimate, and 
 undecaying relations He has united and incorporated 
 with Himself our whole race, even its outcasts ; how, 
 amid the darkness and the overthrows of time, we 
 are able to believe in One who is beyond them and 
 unchanged through them all, who once shared, as we 
 share them, the conditions of life and time, and who 
 now has all things, all life and death, all time, all being, 
 beneath His feet ; how we are able to think of Him 
 as One who has not ceased to be man, and how we 
 can stretch forth our hands to Him, through the veil, 
 sure of His regard, sure that He knows us, sure of 
 His sympathy. The Eternal Conqueror and King 
 was not ashamed of His brotherhood with us, which 
 was to be His for ever. In the very hour of His 
 triumph, He salutes us as His brethren. He calls on 
 our souls to go along with His, and bids them con- 
 verge with His on the one centre of all existence and 
 of all love. " I ascend unto My Father, and your 
 Father ; and to My God, and your God." 
 
 There is yet a third thought, which the purpose 
 for which I am here to-day seems naturally to elicit 
 from the impressions which the memory of the Lord's 
 Ascension awakens in us, and which, at no time out 
 of place, is now emphatically in place. This amazing 
 
XI ASCENSION-TIDE 207 
 
 relation of our race to its Eternal Lord must, if we 
 believe in it, influence deeply our feelings of our rela- 
 tions to one another. Men who are our companions 
 and fellows in life, are recognised as His brethren, 
 joined to Him by the ties and claims of a common 
 nature — to Him whom we worship as our Lord and 
 our God. To all of them He has the same relation 
 that He has to us, who are called by His name, and 
 trust in Him as our Deliverer from sin and from the 
 ruin of the grave. The life and the death that they 
 know. He knew ; to make them what their Father 
 meant them to be, to redeem their souls from death, 
 He became man. He laid down His life. He associates 
 them too, like us, in His own supreme and transcend- 
 ent relation to the Father ; to them, as to us, belong 
 the words which gather and bind us all to Him — 
 " I ascend unto My Father, and your Father ; and to 
 My God, and your God." This is what .they are to 
 Him, the multitudes of our race, baffling the imagin- 
 ation in their swarming and thronging crowds, 
 infinitely various in all that makes men different 
 here ; this is what they are to Him, the numbers of 
 those living souls, which along with us are now 
 passing through their allotted time on earth. This 
 is what they are to Him, near to Him and far off; 
 those who know Him best and are most like Him, 
 and those who know not even His name; those who 
 in their various degrees, each in his own * order, 
 realise the greatness of His benefit, and those too 
 who are cut off and estranged from Him by deep 
 moral opposition, alienated and enemies by wicked 
 works. Yet they all bear the humanity which He 
 has taken, which He has redeemed, which He has 
 
2o8 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 glorified. As men, they are all His brethren, for 
 whom He refused not shame and death, for whom 
 He is at the Father's right hand. This they are to 
 Him. What are they to us ? 
 
 This subject of thought naturally at this time 
 forces itself on all who seriously believe in that 
 wonderful article of the Creed — " He ascended into 
 heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of God." Our 
 human nature, our human race, is linked with Him 
 by bonds which will never be broken. How does 
 this bind us, one to another, among ourselves ? We 
 are bound together by many and powerful ties of 
 fellowship, by our common origin, our common 
 necessities, our common experience of life, our 
 common exposure to the blows of fortune, our 
 common longing for good, our common capacity for 
 pain. We are bound together by that great law of 
 right and wrong, which more or less clearly is 
 written on all our hearts, and before which our 
 conscience bows even when we disobey. We are 
 bound together by having one and all to share the 
 changes and chances of this short-lived, mortal 
 state, by the quick sense which we have of its felicity 
 and its anguish, by having, one and all of us, to die. 
 With all our endless and sharply-contrasted differences 
 of condition, of education, of character, of opinion, 
 of our views and uses of life — in all these things 
 we know that we are as all men are, and that all 
 men, high and low, far and near, are as we are. 
 But beyond all these natural and universal bonds of 
 human fellowship, there are others, founded on even 
 more solemn and more wonderful realities, having 
 relation to things that are even more serious than 
 
ASCENSION-TIDE 209 
 
 life, more final and more unchangeable than death. 
 We are all one in that common disaster which we 
 call the fall and corruption of our nature. We are 
 all one in our need of redemption, healing, restor- 
 ation. And for us all the Eternal Son humbled 
 Himself and was made man, and lived. For all of 
 us, He has created a new bond of union, of the 
 deepest and most awful significance, in that Cross 
 and Passion which He endured for all men. For 
 all of us He rose from the dead, and removed the 
 darkness and doubts which hung on man's immor- 
 tality. And now, as if these bonds of union were 
 not enough. He shows us a new wonder in heaven. 
 For all of us, the Son of Man is gone up above the 
 heaven of heavens to the right hand of the Father. 
 For all our classes, for all our conditions, for all our 
 inequalities of state, for all our varieties of opposing 
 and clashing purposes, and mutually repellent tem- 
 pers ; for those to whom life is easy, and those to 
 whom it is so hard ; for those who are masters of 
 their course and position, and those who are help- 
 lessly overwhelmed and swept along by the merciless 
 currents of the world, — for all of us, make what dis- 
 tinctions we will among ourselves. He, who has taken 
 to the Throne of God that nature which is common 
 to us all, holds up before us that new and profound 
 bond of sympathy and of common hope, which He 
 has added to all those bonds by which we were united 
 before. That old and natural brotherhood of flesh 
 and blood which made us one. He has strengthened 
 and made closer, by revealing to us that we are one 
 in a brotherhood, not only of earth but now also of 
 heaven, in which He is not ashamed to be our 
 C.S.,P. P 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 brother. Our distinctions disappear, our inequalities 
 are lost, all that keeps us apart or uninterested in 
 one another sinks, and all that attracts and unites 
 us revives in fresh power, before the amazing 
 message, " Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I 
 ascend unto My Father, and your Father ; and to My 
 God, and your God." 
 
 At this season of overpowering prospects and 
 hopes, with this its message to you, I come to lay 
 before you what 1 am charged with. I have to ask 
 you to consider, as Christians ought, not now the 
 natural and bodily needs, but the spiritual wants of 
 the multitudes of this great city in which you live. 
 They want many things ; but their wants of which 
 I have to speak are their wants of teaching, their 
 wants of light, and truth, and comfort ; the wants, in 
 what touches their highest and permanent interests, 
 of those for whom we believe Christ died, whom He 
 in heaven knows of and sympathises with in their 
 temptations and distresses, who, with us, are running 
 the race we all of us are running, for life or death, 
 for the eternal gain or the eternal loss. On what 
 a scale these wants require to be faced and met 
 no one here needs to be told. No one can pass 
 through those wastes and wildernesses of population, 
 which spread thicker and thicker every year round 
 our homes, no one can pass in or out of London, 
 without feeling the oppression of those crowded but 
 dreary regions. What would He, our Master, have 
 said, He who was so moved with compassion for the 
 few thousands whom He saw before Him, because 
 "they were as sheep not having a shepherd," if He be- 
 held the unshcphcrded, wandering, untaught crowds, 
 
ASCENSION- TIDE 
 
 who toil, and endure sickness and pain, and die, 
 without consolation, without hope, in the alleys and 
 courts, and under the dreary lengths of melancholy, 
 monotonous, squalid roofs which fill our overgrown 
 suburbs. And He does behold them, from that Throne 
 of Judgment, where He still bears the nature of those 
 who are so miserable, and of those to whose care and 
 charity He commends them. To your care and 
 charity — yours, who, pardon me for saying so, have 
 no more original or special claim on His favour than 
 they have, yet whose condition He has, in His good 
 pleasure, made so vast and strange a contrast to theirs. 
 All that they want of light and opportunity, of re- 
 ligious atmosphere, of high Christian teaching, of 
 elevating and consoling worship, of the things which 
 protect the soul against the pressure and fascination 
 of the sensible and the temporary. He has bestowed 
 in full measure on you. While your hearts rejoice 
 and go up in the devotion which is to you as your 
 familiar breath of life, to them the thing itself, the 
 very possibility of it, is as absolutely an unknown 
 experience as any unimaginable condition of their 
 existence. They wander about, hearing that there 
 is such a thing as religion, about which men quarrel 
 and call names, knowing it mainly by the meannesses, 
 or extravagances, or follies by which men caricature • 
 the highest of human ideas and human affections, 
 thinking that they see nothing but a maze and hubbub 
 of bewildered sects. Of that which you believe that 
 you have, of teaching, steady, and certain, and re- 
 assuring in its great outlines and foundations ; of gifts 
 which have come down unimpaired through the vicis- 
 situdes of history, from the very hand of the Incarnate 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 Redeemer ; of all those ties which bind Christ's Body 
 together, clergy and people, the Church of one age with 
 the Church of another, the Church on its human side 
 with the Church in its Divine relations and eternal 
 perfection, — of all this they know nothing. It was in 
 the face of these stupendous wants that this great 
 Fund was created ; great, but not great in proportion 
 to these necessities ; great, but not great in proportion 
 to what might be done in this, the richest city in all 
 the earth. 
 
 It is with the appalling contrasts in the condition 
 and opportunities of men, forced on the notice of all 
 of us by the appeal made on this Sunday, through the 
 diocese, for the Bishop of London's Fund, that you 
 are asked to make your offerings to-day. And you 
 are asked especially to contribute to that part of the 
 Fund which is appropriated to increasing the number 
 of the clergy employed. For what is wanted is to 
 plant the Church in its fulness and solidity, in its com- 
 plete and long-proved ministries of teaching, and grace, 
 and discipline — of guiding, and building up, and re- 
 covering, and comforting, the souls which are wander- 
 ing aimless and uncared for through their pathless 
 wild of life. You know, in this place, all that the 
 Church in its Divine order, in its truths commensurate 
 with all human thought and human life, in its manifold 
 and continuous ministrations, has done for you. You 
 know how, in its system, the personal is combined with 
 the impersonal, the visible with the invisible, the 
 ministry of men with the unfathomable influences of 
 God's grace, and how each presupposes and acts with 
 the others. You know all this and the value of it. 
 Nothinf^ less than this would satisfy and sustain you, 
 
ASCENSION-TIDE 213 
 
 in your passage through this difficult and unsettled 
 world. Let us face the thought that the crowds which 
 fill the streets of extending London, need all this as 
 much as we do. These are the necessities of this day, 
 and to-day comes the call to you to consider what is 
 due from you, when you recognise and realise them. 
 These dreadful waste places of London — London 
 where, side by side with those who are the most 
 prosperous and the happiest of living men, are those 
 who seem doomed to the most hopeless wretchedness 
 and degradation — are filled with the forlorn and out- 
 cast brethren of the Redeemer. They, with you, 
 have His Father for their Father, and His God for 
 their God. For them, as for you, comes down 
 through the centuries His message of encouragement 
 and hope : " Say unto My brethren, I ascend unto 
 My Father, and your Father ; and to My God, and 
 your God." All that is dear to us in life and death 
 is wrapped up in that assurance, and all it implies of 
 promise. What can we do that they may know it 
 too? Surely" it is uncomfortable to enjoy so much, 
 to have so much, as many of us have, of the blessings 
 of either world — the blessings and gifts of this, and 
 the powers of the world to come — and to do what is 
 below our fair measure for those who have so little ? 
 
XII 
 EDUCATION 1 
 
 " When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
 thought as a child : but when I became a man, I put away 
 childish things." — i CoR. xiii. ii. 
 
 These famous words express one of the many forms 
 of that unceasing change which is the law of human 
 nature and human Hfe. But this law of change, 
 which is an irresistible necessity, is accompanied with 
 another condition, which is not a necessity, not a 
 thing of course, not inevitable, but depends on the 
 will and choice and foresight of man. It is, that 
 this change, which must be somehow, may be for the 
 better ; may be not only a change, but a progress. 
 And the law of change, transformed into the nobler 
 and higher law of progress, is what gives all its ex- 
 cellence and all its hope to our existence here. Be 
 we at what stage of it we may, we see in ourselves 
 something which, as time rolls on, umst be different, 
 but which, thanks to Him who has made us what 
 we are, and compassed us with His blessings and His 
 grace, may be, ought to be, something much better. 
 . And that great law of change which is going on 
 
 1 Preached in the Church of St. Botolph, Aldcrsgate, for the Ward 
 Schools of the Parish, 1873. 
 
XII EDUCATION 215 
 
 in us all, silently but certainly — going on in the 
 stoutest frames, the most unshaken health, the most 
 settled habits, the firmest and most resolute characters 
 — is shown to us in its most touching shape in that 
 contrast between childhood and age of which the 
 Apostle speaks in the text. 
 
 " I have been young, and now am old " — what a 
 world of history, of chances, of thoughts, of memories, 
 of regrets, do these words of the Psalm realised call 
 up in those of whom they are true. The change by 
 which a human being passes from infancy and child- 
 hood to the ripeness of his age and powers, is the 
 greatest and most eventful of our state here : greater, 
 really, than all subsequent changes of circumstance, 
 of employment, of fortune, of success or failure in 
 life. For it is the change from what he, as yet, only 
 may be, to what, in the deepest and most momentous 
 sense, he really is in his very self There is no 
 greater in the natural course of our lives, except that 
 change by which we pass at last from this visible 
 scene, by the mysterious incident in our existence 
 which we call death, into the further stage of being 
 which is now beyond the veil. 
 
 And this great change — this growth and ripening 
 of each single human being, from the very extremity 
 of insignificance and helplessness, to the complete ■ 
 and developed man — is committed to the care and 
 direction, and left to the responsibility, of the fenera- 
 tion which is already grown up, which has reached its 
 stage of maturity. This change zve, as children, have 
 all made under th^ guidance and influence of those 
 whom, at our coming into the world, we found in 
 possession of the world ; of those who, as a great writer 
 
2i6 PASCAL A AW OTHER SERMONS xii 
 
 says,^ "children find here settled in a world where they 
 themselves are strangers." This change, those who 
 are to succeed us are now making under the guidance 
 and influence of us^ who at the present have the 
 work of the world to carry on. It is part of the 
 duty of each generation, in all its infinitely varied 
 departments, to watch over and control this great 
 change in those who are now so tender, so feeble, so 
 unknown, but who a few years hence will have 
 inherited our strength and our possessions, and whose 
 names will have put out our names. It is our duty, 
 I say, to watch over this change ; it is the certain 
 and inevitable necessity of things that, whether we 
 are mindful of our duty or not, what we do or leave 
 undone must profoundly affect those who, under our 
 shadow, are going through this great change. Yes, 
 my brethren, it is part, and perhaps the most solemn 
 and affecting part, of that wonderful dispensation in 
 which we find ourselves, by which the happiness of 
 one set of people is placed in the power, and made 
 to depend on the conduct of another set of people — 
 that whether our children grow up as they ought to 
 grow up, whether the change from infancy to age in 
 them is not merely a change but a progress — a change 
 of the right sort, a change to knowledge, to power, 
 to goodness — that this, in a degree which we cannot 
 possibly measure, but can hardly over-estimate, is 
 dependent on what we do to help and guide them. 
 Unable to provide for themselves, unable to guard or 
 guide themselves, knowing little of the terms on 
 which they will have to pass through life, unable yet 
 
 1 Bishop I>utlcr, sermon for Charity schools, preached in Christ 
 Church, Newgale Street. 
 
EDUCATION 
 
 217 
 
 to distinguish between those tremendous and in- 
 exorable laws of life which nothing can bend, and 
 those forces which yield to human effort and will, our 
 children are hurried on by the tide of the years, and 
 are being changed into men and women ; but what 
 sort of men and women they shall be changed into, 
 this rests, to an extent which is incalculable, with 
 us : what their happiness shall be, what their useful- 
 ness, what their goodness, hangs on the thread of our 
 present decision to take up and fulfil our task — rests 
 on our sensitiveness of conscience, our faithfulness to 
 what we know, our readiness to perform the part which 
 God has given us to do in this world, not merely in 
 what concerns ourselves, but in what concerns others. 
 The conduct of this great change by which 
 children pass into men, and by which they ought 
 to pass into good and useful men, fulfilling their 
 part here, and preparing for a still greater life here- 
 after, is what we call Education. And education is, 
 as I have said, one of the greatest and hardest tasks 
 which it lies on each generation of human society to 
 fulfil. So great, so difficult, so full of unexplored 
 and unknown conditions, and opposite and apparently 
 contradictory requirements, that human thought and 
 wisdom are not wide enough to take in the whole 
 field it presents, to them : they still stand perplexed 
 and baffled before many of its most important 
 problems. But still the experience of ages, and the 
 sincerity of honest efforts, have not gone for nothing ; 
 and w^e see enough, amply enough, to encourage us 
 to fulfil our duty. " Our thoughts have risen, not of 
 its necessity — that was always obvious and always 
 felt — but of the possibilities of its extension. The 
 
21 8 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xii 
 
 feeling of our responsibilities about it has been 
 quickened and deepened, our knowledge of its 
 methods and processes has been raised and increased. 
 We come more and more to see how in all its parts 
 it must be a combination of authority and liberty ; 
 how essential it is that, with discipline and control, 
 there should also be frank confidence and trust ; how 
 teacher and scholar act and react on one another, 
 how much the scholar has to give and to teach, how 
 greatly he must be induced to contribute to his own 
 education, if it is to be a successful one. And our 
 ideas have widened, consciously and distinctly, of its 
 true aim and scope. In the eventful and hazardous 
 interval which all must cross between childhood and 
 manhood, two terrible powers of evil are to be met 
 with in each man's path — ignorance and sin. If 
 education is to have its perfect work, both must be 
 encountered, both must be defeated. It only fulfils 
 half its office, it works with a maimed and distorted 
 idea, unless it deals with character as well as with intel- 
 lect ; unless, again, it opens and enlightens the mind, 
 as well as directs, and purifies, and fortifies the will. 
 We may, we do, vary greatly as to the degree in 
 which instruction, which has to do with intellect, and 
 moral and religious discipline, which has to do with 
 character, help one another ; how far one may, by its 
 indirect influences, be a substitute for the other ; how 
 far excellence in one may make up for imperfections 
 in the other ; how far, when they seem to clash, one 
 must give way to the other. On such points, as we 
 know, opinions vary widely ; and it may be that, in 
 this or that condition of things, we may have to put 
 up with something that falls short of our standard of 
 
EDUCATION 219 
 
 education. But there is but one true and adequate 
 conception of education, worthy of its place in the 
 history of men, worthy of what it can do and ought 
 to do for human good. Education deals not with 
 any one part of man, but with the whole man ; it 
 really does so whether it will or no ; for a one-sided 
 education damages by its neglect what it refuses to 
 care for. It must embrace the child as a creature with 
 wonderful capacities for knowledge and thought, with 
 great risks from ignorance and mistakes ; it must 
 embrace him as a creature endowed with conscience, 
 capable of goodness, sure to be tempted, meant for 
 immortality. It must prepare him for opening his 
 eyes to the truths and necessities of his condition 
 here ; it must acquaint him with the laws of his moral 
 nature, with the dangers of his moral weakness, with 
 the hopes of his redemption. Education is true and 
 noble, and has the promise of success, in proportion as 
 it fulfils these two conditions ; in proportion as we are 
 able to make it not only a ministry of light, but a 
 discipline of duty ; in proportion as it not only ex- 
 pands the mind, and trains its powers, and furnishes 
 it with the skill and knowledge which are the imple- 
 ments by which we do our work on earth, but also 
 finds its way to the heart, and moulds and strengthens 
 character, and fits the soul for the fierce conflicts of 
 passion which await it in its course, — for that " fatal " 
 and terrible " war " which " our desires wage with our 
 destiny." Education is worthy of its name only when 
 it deliberately sets before itself as its purpose, however 
 it may be hampered in realising it, that its office is to 
 make the change between childhood and manhood, as 
 God meant it to be made ; not merely to sharpen wits, 
 
220 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xii 
 
 or impart information, or cultivate faculties, but to 
 ensure, as far as possible, that when children pass 
 into men they shall recognise their Eternal Father ; 
 they shall know who died to save them ; they shall 
 feel from whose hands they came, and what they 
 were made for ; their eyes shall be opened to their 
 high calling of duty now, to that unspeakable future 
 of holiness, and love, and rest, which is the goal of 
 all our running. 
 
 On the present occasion I have to ask you, 
 keeping these great principles both of social and 
 religious progress in mind, to give your aid to the 
 local institutions where these principles are carried 
 out and realised : the schools of this Ward and 
 parish. They rest on old foundations. The Ward 
 school was founded in 1702. We sometimes 
 assume rather hastily that interest in education is a 
 thing of modern times. Doubtless, it has been 
 largely developed of late, and its responsibilities more 
 widely felt. But no one can be but slightly ac- 
 quainted with the history of this great municipality, 
 without learning how early, how earnestly, and with 
 what liberality our predecessors here recognised the 
 great claims of true education. They did for their own 
 time what they could ; if their forethought sometimes 
 came short, and their provisions have not reached to 
 all the changing and enlarging necessities of the 
 times which were to follow them, they but exemplified 
 the universal condition of limitation, imposed on all 
 human wisdom and human efforts. As time went 
 on, it became advisable to alter the form in order to 
 improve the substance. Separate schools have been 
 merged together, and what was done piecemeal has 
 
XII EDUCATION 
 
 been more successfully done on a larger scale. The 
 material requisites so absolutely necessary for effi- 
 ciency — space, air, convenient arrangement — have 
 been carefully looked after. The schools, I am assured, 
 are in high working order, judged by the impartial 
 test of Government inspection. They are still, what 
 our fathers, with a true and deep conception of the 
 function of education, meant them to be, religious 
 schools ; and they still give that help which our 
 fathers were so ready to give, to the wants of the 
 poor : they clothe as well as teach. And their use- 
 fulness to the neighbourhood might, I am told, by 
 improved arrangements, and by the amalgamation of 
 smaller schools, be largely increased. These improve- 
 ments have not been done, cannot be done, except 
 at a large cost. As I said, our fathers did not spare 
 cost, when they were persuaded that a work of this 
 kind was worth doing. They did what we now often 
 have to alter ; but they did what was in proportion 
 to the needs of their time : they did what they 
 could ; they did things nobly and generously. 
 
 My brethren, shall we be behind them ? Shall 
 we be degenerate children of such a stock ? Shall we 
 hang back in doing what is wanted in our day to 
 meet the day's call, the day's obligations ? Here in 
 this centre of English wealth, and enterprise, here in 
 this great focus of EngHsh thought and purpose, sur- 
 rounded by the memorials of what English minds 
 and English characters have wrought in the most 
 splendid of histories, no good work, surely, can 
 possibly languish for want of means : much less, 
 I am convinced, a work of this kind ; a work 
 which connects itself with the special interest, the 
 
222 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xii 
 
 neighbourly sympathies, the local feeling and most 
 praiseworthy local pride of one of the great and 
 ancient divisions of our historic city ; a work of 
 which the object is, that, where so much wealth is 
 created and stored up, that which is far above 
 wealth, — English hearts, English intelligence, English 
 souls, — shall grow up to use and to honour. 
 
 Let us then, with thoughts not unworthy of the 
 object, try to do our part for those who are to come 
 after us. It is one of the great prerogatives of 
 Christianity that it has stimulated our care for pos- 
 terity. Amid the dark uncertainties of heathenism, 
 men knew not enough of their position in the world 
 to make it worth while to take much trouble to pro- 
 vide for the benefit of a future race. They lived 
 their time and knew no more ; why should they 
 think about the generations after them ? Deteriora- 
 tion seemed the unvarying lesson of history, the fatal 
 rule of life and character ; and it was lost pains to 
 strive against it. But Christianity opened a new 
 view of the destiny of the human race. Christianity, 
 among its many glories, is the parent of popular 
 education. It gave a new incentive to every care 
 and every effort to direct the great law of change 
 towards ultimate and permanent and widely-reaching 
 improvement. By disclosing what man was made 
 for and might become, and what God had done for 
 him, it furnished to each generation a new and over- 
 whelming motive for caring for their children, for 
 caring for posterity. They are indeed worth caring 
 for, they are worth all our forethought and our efforts 
 for their improvement, who have such an endless life 
 before them, for whom Christ died. We are now in 
 
XII EDUCATION 223 
 
 our measure entrusted with their fate. How they 
 shall grow up, with what furniture of thought, and 
 habit, and knowledge, and principle, they shall meet 
 their time of trial when it comes, depends very much 
 upon us their elders, us their fathers, us, by position, 
 and opportunity, and power, the natural guardians 
 of those who, in the great change they are going 
 through, cannot take care of themselves, but must 
 rely on the sympathy, the large intelligence, the 
 public spirit, the Christian charity of their grown-up 
 brethren. 
 
 Think then of this great matter of education 
 whenever it comes before you, not as it is involved 
 in the disputes and misconceptions and difficulties 
 of the moment, but in its true and deep significance. 
 It will help you to meet these difficulties to have 
 cherished in your minds true and fit ideas of it. 
 Look at it, therefore, with warm sympathy and with 
 wide thoughts. Lift up your views to what is the 
 true interest of those who will soon be in our places ; 
 — and, beyond them, of the great generations yet 
 unborn. You cannot doubt, in the " increasing pur- 
 pose " which manifestly runs through the ages, how 
 great your posterity will be. Show yourselves then 
 worthy to be their progenitors. Show yourselves 
 worthy to be associated with, their destiny, by your 
 wise, and generous, and timely providence for their 
 wants. Take care, as far as you are able, that,* when 
 they shall come upon the scene, they shall find it fit 
 to act their part in. Our fathers, knowing less than 
 we do, seeing less- clearly, yet seeing with a high 
 spirit of duty the great necessities of education, have 
 provided nobly for us. Let not our children after 
 
224 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xii 
 
 US have reason to say that we, with our greater light, 
 our deeper insight, our wider experiences, were less 
 large-hearted, less far-sighted, less unselfish than 
 those before us — less worthy to fill our place in the 
 chain and succession of the generations of Christian 
 England. 
 
 I will end in the words and with the prayer of 
 one of the greatest of Christian and English thinkers, 
 in the sermon which he preached on a kindred occa- 
 sion in a neighbouring church in this city — in the 
 concluding words of Bishop Butler. " And may the 
 blessing of Almighty God accompany this work of 
 charity, which He has put into the hearts of His 
 servants in behalf of these poor children ; that being 
 now ' trained up in the way they should go, when 
 they are old they may not depart from it.' May 
 He of His mercy keep them safe amid the innumer- 
 able dangers of this bad world through which they 
 are to pass, and preserve them unto His heavenly 
 kingdom." 
 
XIII 
 PAIN AND REMEDY 1 
 
 " And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and 
 preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of 
 sickness and all manner of disease among the people." — St. Matt. 
 iv. 23. 
 
 Pain is the first, the most familiar, the most endur- 
 ing experience of man. I suppose it is almost the 
 earliest of our childish recollections ; but with the 
 remembrance of pain we have also the remembrance 
 of the remedies of pain, of what soothed and removed 
 it. And what we remember, as far back as we 
 can carry our memory, we have found, throughout, 
 to be one of the fixed and prominent conditions of 
 our state here. Many great and striking and wonder- 
 ful things belong to this state. But that which is 
 the thing of course with us all, that which must be 
 assumed and taken into account as unavoidable in all 
 our views of life, that which is the groundwork on 
 which half of all our arrangements are made and half 
 of all our forethought expended, that which especially 
 accentuates human life as we know it, is the universal 
 
 ^ Preached in the Church of St. Anne and St. Agnes, with St. 
 John Zachary, Gresham Street, for the London Dispensary, 1873. 
 C.S.,P. Q 
 
226 J'ASCAL AND OTHER SEKMONS xiii 
 
 presence of these two great facts — pain, on the one 
 hand, and the possible remedies for pain, on the other. 
 " The whole creation groancth and travaileth in pain 
 together," is the expression of one side of the truth. 
 The Lord " healeth those that are broken in heart, and 
 giveth medicine to heal their sickness " — is the other. 
 This is the constitution of things under which we 
 find ourselves at this stage of our existence. Pain 
 is with us all our lives long, from the hour of our first 
 breathing this air of ours, to the moment when we 
 breathe it for the last time. In pain we begin life, 
 in pain we leave it ; and in the interval between these 
 points we each of us have our various experience of 
 its strange and manifold companionship. Its actual 
 presence is infinitely varied : some of us it never 
 leaves, some of us, as we grow into life, it seems 
 almost to spare ; but as the strongest and healthiest 
 man knows certainly that he has to die, so one of the 
 certainties of our lot, be it what it may, is our liability 
 to pain : we have the frame, we have the feeling, we 
 have the mind, which are ever open to it, ever capable 
 of admitting the dread visitor in ways and in intensity 
 beyond present conception : it lurks within us and 
 about us when we think least about it, ready to spring 
 forth from its ambush, unsuspected, undreamt of; 
 ready, perhaps, to take up its abode with us and to 
 make us learn a new lesson and widen our thoughts 
 of things, in a way we can little realise till it comes. 
 Among the many riddles of our existence it is, at 
 least as far as nature can inform us, one of the 
 strangest. Some of the common conditions and 
 trials of our existence here, we have only to be 
 humble to understand. A limited term of life ; a 
 
XIII PAIN AND REMEDY 227 
 
 certain time, and no more, allotted to each creature 
 to play its part in ; decay of strength when the func- 
 tions and work are done for which strength was 
 wanted ; the unequal distribution of gifts, of success, 
 of enjoyment ; final dissolution and passing away, as 
 the leaves fall when summer is over, — this, though 
 we lose ourselves in seeking to comprehend the 
 reasons of it, is not so very perplexing to the mind 
 which compares our state here to the vastness of the 
 universe. But pain is something beyond this. Pain 
 is not merely a negative thing, the absence of some- 
 thing we should like to have, a maiming of powers, a 
 failure of enjoyment. Pain is something over and 
 above, superadded to our mere weakness, and little- 
 ness, and fewness of days. Pain means that wonder- 
 ful power of feeling, which seems as much meant to 
 give us pleasure and happiness as the eye is meant 
 for seeing, turned back against its natural purpose 
 and use, turned back upon us, turned back against us ; 
 made the means of driving the iron into our very 
 soul ; fitting us for a new life which is filled with 
 new and amazing energy, but one that qualifies 
 us for tasting deeper and deeper the cup of suffer- 
 ing. Pain means that consciousness of life which 
 can give our soul delight, not merely defeated of 
 its hope, not merely baffled and balked of its natural 
 end, but raised to a new. power, the power of agony. 
 When we think, too, of those whom pain strikes 
 with indiscriminate severity — the poor, the helpless, 
 the children — when we think of what seems the 
 needlessness of pain, its mystery becomes great 
 and oppressive. And the strangeness is the 
 greater, because the higher we rise in the scale of 
 
228 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiii 
 
 being, the keener, the deeper, the more intense the 
 pain which may visit us. As Hfe is developed 
 and made perfect, so is the capacity, I might almost 
 say the faculty, of pain. In its more terrible forms, 
 in its variety, in its prevalence and extent, it is the 
 awful prerogative of the highest nature, man. On 
 the lower forms of life, its burden is not imposed ; 
 but as brain is developed and nerves become finer 
 and more multiplied, and more complex and delicate, 
 its presence announces itself, its sting becomes keener. 
 But no creature, I take it, can be supposed to suffer 
 on the same scale, much less in the same way, as 
 man : disease does not make the same diversified 
 ravages ; suffering, when it comes, is fitful, is com- 
 monly short, and is not complicated with all the 
 aggravations of imagination and forethought which 
 add so heavily to its pangs. And in the same 
 way in men themselves, with the finer organisation 
 and higher training, goes also a superior quickness 
 to pain, a more piercing and exquisite anguish. 
 And yet our experience tells us, also, that pain, 
 though so terrible, is one of the most salutary- — in 
 the end the most beneficent — of the conditions of our 
 nature and state here. It does not account for its 
 mysterious presence, but it reconciles the wise and 
 the thoughtful to what is in itself so hard to under- 
 stand, to consider, how pain has been the occasion 
 and groundwork of some of the greatest of human 
 virtues and the most glorious of human actions ; 
 how it has called forth in the human soul energies, 
 affections, sweetness, strength, goodness, which only 
 .its awful but mighty touch could have quickened 
 into life ; how, under it discipline, character — even 
 
XIII FAIN AND REMEDY 229 
 
 commonplace character — has been elevated and 
 made beautiful, heroes have been created, martyrs 
 have triumphed, saints have been made perfect. 
 The world and life require pain^ to make them as 
 noble as they may be, as noble as they have been. 
 We look in vain for anything to take the place which 
 in the dispensations of Providence it has held, in 
 schooling men to higher things. If fortitude, courage, 
 patience, endurance, resignation arc among the parts 
 of human perfection, it is pain under whose benignant 
 severity they have grown — it is pain which has been 
 the schoolmaster who has taught them. 
 
 And, on the other hand, side by side with the 
 familiar but mysterious fact of pain, is the familiar 
 but also mysterious fact of the existence of reme- 
 dies. God has appointed pain to be a portion of 
 our experience, but not pain unmixed and alone, 
 not pain unconquerable and overmastering, not pain 
 without alleviation and relief The natural world is 
 in this the counterpart to the moral and spiritual 
 world. God has indeed freely and bountifully given 
 us the pure and unmixed blessings of His goodness. 
 But much of His gracious dealings with us has taken 
 the shape, not merely of goodness, but of mercy — 
 mercy, in undoing mischief, in repairing ruin, in 
 retrieving life — of compassion, repair, restoration. 
 We have gone astray, and He has called us back. 
 We have fallen, and He has raised us. We have 
 been lost, and He has come to seek and to save. 
 We have sinned, and He has forgiven us. We have 
 been in misery, and He has pitifully comforted us. 
 We have been in sorrow, and He has dried our tears. 
 We have been sick, and He has healed us. We have 
 
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 thrown away what He gave us, and lie has made it 
 up. We have to die, and He has given us the pledge 
 of our resurrection. This is the general character of 
 His dealings with us. He has not seen fit to take 
 out of life its evils, its pains : they remain, as all 
 whom we know of have found them; but He does 
 give us their remedies and their antidotes ; and, further, 
 He puts these to a great extent in our own power. 
 Pain cannot be banished ; but it can be greatly kept 
 within bounds, it can be greatly soothed. Disease 
 cannot be extirpated ; but it can be cured, it can 
 be greatly prevented. There are mischiefs which 
 nothing can make up for ; but there are countless 
 more which can be entirely repaired, still more 
 which can be alleviated. And it is a point to be 
 observed, how more and more it appears that pain, 
 disease, all but the last end of life, is within the 
 control of remedies. Think of the interval between 
 the simple surgery and medicine of the savage, and 
 the enlarging discoveries and daily increasing skill 
 of our great hospitals ; and we see how we are 
 called upon to work ourselves for our own relief; 
 how we were to win for ourselves, but to win by 
 care, and effort, and honest pains, the remedies which 
 were to be within our reach. Century after century, 
 new knowledge, new contrivances have added to our 
 store ; and, for the most part, God has made these 
 the reward of sincere and diligent searching. We 
 know now, we might perhaps have known much 
 earlier, how much may be saved of misery and 
 suffering, how much of disease may be staved off, 
 by the commonest attention, by the commonest 
 forethought : it is our own fault, if we know this in 
 
xiir PAIN AND REI\rEDY 231 
 
 vain. If pain is one part of our mortal condition, 
 we know also that there are great and merciful forces 
 which can keep it within bounds ; and we know, too, 
 that their efficacy has been made to depend on 
 our own faithful and manly discharge of the duties 
 which increased knowledge has brought with it : on 
 our conquering the selfishness, the indplence, the 
 prejudices, the indifference which have done so much 
 to prolong and aggravate the dominion of pain and 
 disease. 
 
 The matter comes before us in a practical shape 
 in the appeal which I have to recommend to you. 
 You have an opportunity given you to help in the 
 great struggle to restrict the range of suffering, and 
 to soften those cruel visitations of disease which 
 cannot be wholly cured. Here in your midst is one 
 of those centres, where the remedial energies of our 
 condition are brought to bear skilfully and method- 
 ically on the pain which is inseparable from it ; you 
 may be fellow-workers with the great Healer, who has 
 appointed the remedies which are the counterpoise of 
 pain, and who has put them into our hands, to use 
 them if we will. The pain, the suffering, which 
 come for relief to a hospital, a dispensary like this, 
 are sufferings which it is now too late, for you or for 
 any one, to turn aside or prevent by knowledge and 
 prudence. We know not how they came : we know 
 not whose fault they may be traced to ; only we 
 know that there they are : terrible facts, which it is 
 no use speculating about or complaining of, which 
 cannot be undone, but which perhaps may be 
 ministered to and relieved. They are the very class 
 of sufferings which appealed to the mercy of our 
 
232 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiii 
 
 Blessed Lord in the days of His earthly life, and 
 which met at His hands with so much tender com- 
 passion and help. In His great strife with evil, it 
 was bodily pain and disease which He made the 
 special object of His personal work on earth. It 
 was in them that He recognised the sharpest, if 
 not the deepest and most fatal, wounds of human 
 nature ; and He won men's hearts for His higher 
 message by showing how He felt the wretched- 
 ness and bitterness of bodily infirmity and anguish. 
 When w^e consider what the ultimate end and 
 purpose of His coming was, His deep, varied, in- 
 exhaustible sympathy for bodily suffering and 
 disease is very remarkable. He came, as we read in 
 the text, " preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom," 
 and He came also " healing all manner of sickness." 
 He did not care to make men rich, to make men 
 great ; He showed no interest in their philosophy, in 
 their public affairs, in the business of the kingdoms of 
 this world ; He did care, He was never tired of caring, 
 to relieve their pain, to cure their diseases. You 
 follow closely in His divine footsteps, when you take 
 to heart seriously, and with the sympathy which it 
 deserves, that sad eminence which our nature has, in 
 the intensity and the variety of the pain which it 
 may have to go through. 
 
 We have two duties, with respect to pain and 
 disease and physical suffering. As regards ourselves, 
 we have to learn to bear them as they come, with 
 patience, with courage, with self-command. We 
 have to extract from them the discipline they are 
 rheant to minister to us. We have to accept their 
 often hard lesson and turn it to account. There is 
 
PAIN AND REM ED V 233 
 
 no saying to what extent this chastisement may 
 profit men, if they will meet it nobly and bravely, 
 in refining, softening, fortifying character. That is 
 its office to ourselves. But it has another call on us, 
 as regards others. Pain is for men to dear, in 
 themselves ; it is for them to relieve, in others. It 
 is in this latter view that it appeals to us to-day. 
 There stands before us this strange, appalling fact of 
 our nature and condition — almost more appalling to 
 men in health than to men themselves in suffer- 
 ing — that multitudes of our fellow-creatures round 
 about us are, intermittently or continuously, lan- 
 guishing or agonizing in disease or pain. We see 
 them not. We do not hear their groans and cries. 
 Their pale faces, their hopeless eyes, their writh- 
 ing forms, are hidden from us — hidden in dark 
 alleys, and squalid courts, and mean and wretched 
 lodgings. Yet there they are. Behind this screen 
 of opulence and busy life, there they are. It does not 
 require an effort of faith or imagination to realise 
 all the misery which is going on not so far off 
 while we are here : it only requires us to open our 
 minds to what we know to be certain ; it only needs 
 to make leisure in our souls, to attend and to think 
 of what there is no doubt about. This great mass 
 of suffering and pain cries to us for help : all the 
 more solemnly that the appeal is a silent one, and 
 we are not allowed to see the suffering which yet 
 we know exists. It makes its mute entreaty for 
 relief And it is not as if the entreaty were an idle 
 one. It is as certain that there are remedies to be 
 had, as it is certain that pain exists. And the power 
 of opening these remedies to this suffering, God has 
 
234 PASCAF. AND OTHER SERMONS xiii 
 
 placed, my brethren, just as \vc are willing to use it, 
 in our hands. 
 
 I ask you, then, on behalf of all the pain and 
 suffering which must be in a great city, to use this 
 power. I ask you to do what you can to co-operate 
 with an institution which exists to minister relief and 
 healing to the numbers who could not otherwise 
 obtain it. There is in this matter, between different 
 classes of men, a tremendous equality and a tre- 
 mendous inequality. The equality is that in the pangs 
 and horrors of disease all of us are on a level. In 
 the dreadful scale of human suffering — from its most 
 homely to its severest forms, from a cold or a tooth- 
 ache or a headache to those extreme forms of tor- 
 ment which it makes us shudder even to think of; 
 in those strange visitations of it which have a kind 
 of tragic interest about them and are thought 
 worthy of special record and special pity, and in its 
 commonplace vulgar shapes, which, when we are not 
 suffering ourselves, we are apt to smile at — in this 
 liability to every kind of pain, in feeling its bitter- 
 ness when it comes, all of us, the highest and the 
 lowest, the richest and the meanest of us, are all 
 equal. The man on whom an empire depends, the 
 man whose name written on a bit of paper can dis- 
 pose of millions, can decide on the peace of the 
 world and the happiness of nations and the 
 course, of history, is as much open to pain in its 
 direst form, is its subject and perhaps its victim, is 
 as absolutely at its mercy, as the weakest and most 
 miserable of his fellow- men. Here all are equal. 
 But when wc thinly of what may be done to case 
 pain, to arrest disease, to hclj) the sufferers to bear 
 
XIII PAIN AND REMEDY 235 
 
 it, oh, brethren and fellow -men, is it not almost 
 terrible to think of the inequalities and contrasts in 
 men's lot ? Two men are racked with pain : the one 
 with everything round him which can give the chance 
 of even a moment's relief; with everything that money 
 can buy, or skill devise, or tender affection minister ; 
 with everything to amuse him, to soothe him, to con- 
 sole him : the other, starved, and cold, and destitute, 
 with all his power of earning stopped, with all his 
 small possessions, all his small comforts gradually 
 slipping away and disappearing ; a prisoner — perhaps 
 a solitary prisoner — through dreary days and sleep- 
 less nights, in a close and unwholesome garret. Two 
 young girls are touched by the hand of consumption : 
 for one of them there is a respite, perhaps a cure : 
 she has the chance of a change of scene and climate, 
 of softer air, of the reviving influences of Southern 
 warmth and brightness : the other — she- cannot be 
 moved — no one can afford to move her, though that 
 alone can save her — not even to an English hospital ; 
 she must stay where she is, and in the cold and 
 damp, the raw mornings and chilly nights she cannot 
 escape from, gasp out her life. These are the in- 
 equalities under which men have to meet pain. 
 
 Shall we not, we whom God has prospered and 
 perhaps enriched, do what we can to make these 
 inequalities at least a little less ? Shall we not, in the 
 name of our great Master, who has made *us all 
 fellows in suffering, but put into the hands of some 
 of us the remedies which make suffering tolerable, 
 do what we can to co-operate with His purpose? 
 One was once on earth who came from God, and 
 whom we now recognise as the Example and Hope 
 
236 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiii 
 
 of humankind. To Him no form of human suffering 
 appealed in vain. Miracle after miracle in His won- 
 drous history tells of His compassion and pity for 
 sickness and pain. To express that never- failing 
 sympathy it is said of Him, " Himself took our in- 
 firmities, and bare our sicknesses." The Lord and 
 Master of pain, quelling it in a moment with His 
 touch, yet for our sakes He made Himself subject to 
 it. His fellowship with us would not be complete 
 unless He shared the sufferings He came to cure. 
 He calmed the fever, and cleansed the leprosy, and 
 gave power to the palsied, and sight to the blind, 
 and speech and hearing to the dumb ; and then, for 
 us men and for our salvation, He was in agony in the 
 garden. He suffered, and was crucified, and died. 
 
 He who has voluntarily tasted what you suffer for 
 the sake of your endless good, may He not commend 
 to your tender and generous sympathy those suffer- 
 ings of the poor which He was always so ready to 
 relieve ? Has He not earned the right to bid you 
 console and soothe those pains and hours of anguish 
 which neither poverty nor riches exempt us from, 
 but to which poverty adds an additional and frightful 
 aggravation, of which those who have not known 
 poverty can hardly take the measure ? 
 
XIV 
 
 THE LIFE OF INTELLECTUAL SELF- 
 SUFFICIENCY ^ 
 
 "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me : O give me understanding, 
 that I may learn Thy commandments." — Psalm cxix, 73. 
 
 When I was asked to take this subject, against which 
 Psalm cxix. is by anticipation so remarkable a lesson 
 and so comprehensive a counter theory, I hesitated. 
 I hesitated for this reason. " Rationalism," the " Life 
 of Rationalism," expresses undoubtedly a very real 
 and grave thing ; and if there was nothing to do but 
 to speak of it with a clear and definite meaning, there 
 would be no special difficulty about it. But Rational- 
 ism, it is to be remembered, which expresses a habit 
 of mind or method of thinking rather than any definite 
 set of opinions, is also one of those vague words, which 
 mean very different things in different mouths. It 
 is one of those words to which men often do not 
 take the trouble to attach clear ideas, but whigh they 
 charge with evil associations and strong condemna- 
 tions. It is often used as a mere nickname ; and 
 nicknames, though very convenient and often very 
 powerful, are not safe weapons. The Puritans would 
 
 ^ Preached in the Church of St. John the Baptist, Frome, 1876. 
 
238 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiv 
 
 have called Hooker a rationalist, if the word, as a 
 term of reproach, had yet been invented. And there 
 are those who would apply the term to such writers 
 as St. Augustine and St. Anselm, the great Schoolmen, 
 Pascal, Leibnitz, Bishop Butler. It is dangerous to 
 be loose in using such terms in reference to difficult 
 questions ; and I need not say that the use and place 
 of reason in religious matters is one of the most diffi- 
 cult of questions, and one which has exercised the 
 most powerful and most devout minds ever since men 
 began to think at all, down to our own day. The 
 difficulty is no reason why we should be blind to the 
 obvious and certain dangers attending the relation of 
 reason to religion. But there is clearly good ground, 
 when we are handling a hard and difficult matter, 
 that we should speak carefully, modestly, and with 
 self-distrust. 
 
 I wish, then, at starting, to guard myself. I am 
 not going into the great question of the relation of 
 reason to faith, or to authority. I am not going to 
 discuss systems. But, considering what the subject 
 of this course of Sermons is — the object, the employ- 
 ment, the direction and use of life — I shall venture to 
 speak of the dangers, of the sins, accompanying the 
 exercise of one of the great powers of man's condition 
 here, his intelligence, his reason. I mean, by the life 
 of Rationalism, the life of intellectual self-sufficiency ; 
 a life which fails in the essentials of selQ-discipline 
 over the intellect and its temptations, which fails in 
 humiHty, self-distrust, reverence, modesty, in the use 
 of our faculties, in the pursuit of knowledge. And it 
 must be remembered that such habits of mind, though 
 naturally tending to i^roduce error and unbelief, and 
 
XIV LIFE OF INTELLECTUAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY 239 
 
 the formidable phenomena characteristic of our time, 
 are yet compatible with a right belief, which they are 
 capable of so deeply injuring. 
 
 Each man has his life to live and to order, not 
 only with reference to the necessities and the business 
 of this present system and framework of existence — 
 to the natural constitution of his mind and body, the 
 number of his years, his decay, his mortality — but 
 also with reference to feelings, thoughts, affections, 
 duties, which pass beyond this world of time and 
 sense into a world unseen. He comes into life and 
 consciousness, and he meets the facts and phenomena 
 of his state. Some of them are outward and open to 
 the testing and verifying of his senses. Others are 
 moral, inward, spiritual, yet they are phenomena and 
 facts just as real and inevitable as those of the external 
 system of which he finds himself a part. As he finds 
 himself in an atmosphere of air and light, and meets 
 the phenomena of nature and the powers and inven- 
 tions of man, so he finds himself in an atmosphere 
 of conscience, of duty, of home, of society, of rules of 
 right and wrong, of happiness and sorrow ; and, do 
 what he will, he can no more get rid of these primary 
 and fundamental conditions of his life, even by rebel- 
 ling against them, than he can get rid of the natural 
 conditions to which his life is subject. They are 
 parts of a moral order ; but he is, and cannot help 
 being, a creature of the moral order as well as the 
 physical. He may wish, but it is an idle wish, that 
 his life was longer, his faculties more perfect, his know- 
 ledge more certain and greater, that he had not to grow 
 old and to die. So he may wish, but that it is an idle 
 wish, that there were no moral law over man, that men 
 
240 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiv 
 
 about liiin, his brethren and his fellows, were not moral 
 beings. He may imagine a different state of things 
 morally, as he may physically, but what he imagines 
 does not exist. He is what he is, by a different law to 
 what he imagines ; and even if things were different 
 in other times and in other places, yet to /mn here, to 
 ///;;/ at the stage of human history at which he lives, 
 life comes with these great living laws of duty and the 
 affections, with this encompassing moral atmosphere, 
 in which he cannot draw a breath without being 
 dependent on it. And further, he finds round him 
 another atmosphere — the atmosphere of religion, con- 
 necting the right and wrong of daily life, its affections, 
 its efforts, its hopes, with something above nature and 
 above time, invisible and eternal. He finds round 
 him the fact of diffused, inherited, long-existing belief; 
 not a dead set of opinions, but an array of living and 
 fruitful convictions, which, as a matter of fact and 
 history, have for ages affected, and are still affecting 
 in the profoundest way, what men are, what men do, 
 what men feel, and without which they would be 
 absolutely different from anything we know them to 
 be. He finds round him a great Institution and 
 Society, with a life of more than eighteen centuries, 
 and having its roots in the earliest beginnings of 
 human history. He sees the earliest and most vener- 
 able records of all this in every one's hands about 
 him, the guide of conduct, the comforter of sorrow, the 
 source of the noblest thought, the expression of the 
 deepest feelings. And above all, he sees One like 
 unto the sons of men and yet absolutely different ; 
 a.character, a life, a Person, such as experience never 
 shows him now, yet responding with the widest and 
 
XIV LTFE OF INTELLECTUAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY 241 
 
 fullest sympathy to all that experience makes him 
 long for ; One who presents Himself as answering 
 to the " Desire of all nations " and all ages, the link 
 between man and God, in whom alone human nature 
 comes into contact with God, in all His holiness, in 
 all His power — that " Light of the world " who, if 
 He were supposed absent for one moment from the 
 firmament of our thought and belief, the whole moral 
 world, the very ground under our feet, would sink 
 beneath us into darkness and the abyss. 
 
 How shall a man, when these things open upon 
 him, use his life ? How shall he do what is right in 
 regard to them ? Shall he ask no questions about 
 them ? Shall he be blind to their awfulness, their 
 wonder, to the interval that separates them from what 
 we are most familiar with now ? Shall he go about 
 his work here, taking them for granted, not caring to 
 understand, not caring to deny ? All round him, he 
 hears, he cannot but hear, high and self-confident, 
 the questioning voices ; how, amid the tumult and 
 contention of jarring opinions, with the dangers of 
 mistake, and the certainty that men do mistake, how 
 shall he order his life ? Blessed and happy indeed 
 is he, if his training has been such, and he has 
 so answered to his training, that his religion has been 
 harmoniously and deeply interwoven with his out- 
 ward and inward experience so as to be raised, like 
 the certainties of his very being, above the strife of 
 tongues ; if, on the same sort of evidence on which 
 he trusts and honours his parents and gives his 
 home the first place- in his affections, on the same 
 evidence on which he accepts his duty to his 
 country even unto death, even to the length of 
 C.S.,P. • R 
 
242 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiv 
 
 laying down his life in its service, so he accepts his 
 Gospel heritage, so he feels that he has tasted that 
 " the Lord is gracious." Christianity has been long 
 enoug-h in the world and shown itself for what it 
 is, to protect him from the charge of mere blind 
 following of custom. Say what men will to con- 
 found it with other religions, the mature and 
 unperverted judgment of mankind pronounces that 
 it stands by itself, unique and unapproachable. The 
 very evils, the abundant evils, which men have done 
 in its name, are only a greater proof of its inherent 
 divinity ; for it would have perished long ago under 
 their w^eight and enormity, if it had not been 
 altogether different from everything else in the 
 world. " The Christian thought," as a great states- 
 man ^ has recently said, " the Christian tradition, the 
 Christian society, are the imperial thought and 
 tradition and society of this earth " ; and its inward 
 power over the heart and will of men, the lowest 
 and the highest, corresponds to its august majesty 
 without. The authority of the Christian Church, 
 the witness of Christendom, however disturbed and 
 impaired by divisions and sins, is yet the master fact 
 of our history and our society, the master fact of all 
 our own lives. There is enough to warrant any 
 reasonable man, brought up to know what Chris- 
 tianity is, on the strength of his Christian education,, 
 to make his venture on it for this world and the next. 
 But Christianity addresses inquirers as well as 
 believers. It challenges the world to inquire. " lie 
 that scckcth findeth." " Prove all things ; hold fast 
 that w^hich is good." God calls many souls through 
 
 1 Tlic Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. 
 
XIV LIFE OF INTELLECTUAL SELF-SUFFLCIENCY 243 
 
 the trial, the distress, perhaps the agony, of in- 
 tellectual difficulty ; and the circumstances and results 
 of intellectual trial are often as mysterious as moral 
 trials. I don't know anything more pathetic, more 
 awe-inspiring than what moved Pascal's deep sym- 
 pathy — the case of a man, to human eyes honestly 
 seeking the light and not finding it. But without 
 trying to fathom what we know but imperfectly, 
 our business is with ourselves. Our business is to 
 recognise the dangers of intellectual trial — of the 
 trial of our moral nature, of our will, our motives, 
 our characters, through our intellect, as others are 
 tried through their passions. Christianity does 
 address itself to inquirers. But it assumes in all 
 religious inquiry three great axioms. i. It assumes 
 the existence and the supremacy of goodness, of 
 justice, of love, and with this, the converse, the 
 terrible reality and mystery of shi. 2. It assumes 
 that the object of life here is to do, and not merely to 
 knoiu : to meet a trial, to form a character, to fulfil 
 a charge, of which knowledge, such knowledge as is 
 possible in this short life, is but a part. And lastly, 
 3. It assumes that all good gifts, of light and truth, 
 as well as of power and holiness, come from God, 
 to be sought by faithfulness and prayer, to be given 
 to those who seek rightly. It recognises no other 
 safe conditions of inquiry. If a man chooses to 
 inquire on any other principles, he must take his 
 chance — he must go his way : that any other should 
 be possible, as a way of reaching truth, is not its 
 presupposition. " If any man will (OeXrj) do His will 
 — is willing and desires to do His will, 7i'i//s to do 
 His will — he shall know of the doctrine." 
 
244 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiv 
 
 And surely these conditions have the full sanction 
 of the natural conscience of man. Perhaps the 
 experience of mankind presents no more alarming 
 spectacle than the plausibility with which they can be 
 set aside. The plain, gross, open sins of the world 
 and the flesh bear on them their own mark : they 
 are " open beforehand, going before to judgment." 
 We know also that there are the veiled and dis- 
 guised sins of the self-deceiver and the double-minded ; 
 but besides, deeper and more impenetrable still, 
 passing, it may be, through the world under the 
 semblance and with the confidence of virtues, there 
 are the subtle, refined sins of the intellect — sins of 
 the hard, unbending, ungodly will, under the mask of 
 passionless reason. 
 
 And no one can cast ever so superficial a glance 
 on the wild turmoil of opinions all round without 
 seeing the fatal marks which point to sins of the 
 intellect as surely as others point to sins of the 
 passions. First and foremost, perhaps, there is the 
 sin of not caring : the sin of indifference and 
 negligence amid the most awful issues that can be 
 raised to man. It is the sin which raised the in- 
 dignation of Bishop Butler ; it is the sin which 
 it taxed the powers of Pascal to express his scorn 
 of And of all the amazing things in the world it 
 is indeed the most wonderful, not that men should 
 reject the Gospel, not that they should hate religion, 
 not that they should disbelieve in God, but that they 
 should write and speak continually, in the character 
 of serious men and public teachers, as if they were 
 insensible to the infinite and inexpressible import and 
 gravity of these things ; as if it really did not matter 
 
XIV LIFE OF INTELLECTUAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY 245 
 
 whether or not a man made up his mind and took 
 his side about God, about immortality, about the 
 Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. They hold 
 religion in their hands and look at it, as if it were 
 a curious product of nature, to be examined, and 
 turned round, and coldly taken to pieces ; and they 
 are holding, they must be holding, in their hands 
 their own life or death. They play with doubts. 
 They amuse themselves with views. They who 
 know so well what agitation and anxiety and alarm 
 mean in their households, in their business, look on, 
 as they call it, dispassionately, at questions on the 
 decision of which must depend all that interests man 
 — whether life is a shadow and delusion or the most 
 inconceivable of treasures : whether a key can be 
 found to its enigmas, so fatal if they cannot be 
 answered, or whether all explanation of them is hope- 
 less. Men sin against their reason itself, who trifle 
 with interests which reason itself shows them must 
 be so tremendous. 
 
 This off-hand, lazy -going fashion of disposing 
 of the most solemn of claims by smart and shallow 
 audacities is the sin of the negligent and the un- 
 thinking. But then there are the sins of those who 
 do think. There is the sin of self-confidence and 
 pride, of trusting' to ourselves to find our way. No 
 man who knows anything of himself can be ignorant 
 of these two things : i. How the look of theories and 
 the force of arguments alter, with persons, with 
 times, with varying knowledge, with force and ability 
 of handling, with situations, with frames of mind, 
 with moral habits ; and 2. How a man's own reason- 
 ino^s and conclusions need the check of somcthincf 
 
246 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS XI v 
 
 out of himself, to test, to qualify, to correct them. 
 He who has not learnt this, knows nothing of the 
 real conditions on which sound reason acts and by 
 which truth is gained. But in religion men make 
 the specious novelty, which has caught their imagin- 
 ation as much as their reason to-day — though in 
 contradiction to the gravest, the holiest, the most 
 ancient voices round them — the last word, the final 
 verdict of modern wisdom. The experience of a 
 long history, which has made them what they are, 
 is against them ; but they are not the less confident 
 that they see clearly where all others have bewildered 
 themselves. There is, as we all know, the sin of 
 resisting the light, of refusing to see the truth before 
 us. But there is also the sin of lightly or impatiently 
 yielding to a plausible objection to our whole belief, 
 without waiting to see what it is worth ; of hastily 
 letting ourselves be shaken by a clever imposing 
 argument, feeling our own cleverness and superiority 
 in acknowledging its force. Men must bow, they say, 
 to facts : they must follow where logic leads them. 
 Yes, but the facts which they bow to are those, out 
 of all the multitude, to the right hand and the left, 
 which they choose to see ; and the facts which they 
 exclude bar and traverse that logic which seems so 
 straightforward and so plain. A man may see what 
 he pleases, and not see what he pleases, if he will but 
 choose his point of view and take no account of what 
 is on cither side of him : — if the disciple of criticism 
 will argue as if there were no broad vast lines of 
 general history and of human nature, to which he 
 must subordinate and proportion his results ; if the 
 student of material nature chooses to ignore that he 
 
XIV LIFE OF FYTELLECTUAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY 247 
 
 is a moral agent amid the facts and certainties of a 
 moral world ; and allows himself to forget, amid the 
 immensities, great or infinitely small, of the physical 
 world, the incommensurable superiority of moral and 
 spiritual interests. 
 
 We all know how one engrossing pursuit is apt 
 to dwarf and starve all other ideas. We know the 
 narrowing and blinding effect of an unresisted fascina- 
 tion by one special line of thought, one order of ideas. 
 It is the besetting sin of all absorbing studies, (such is 
 the admission of one of the most distinguished students 
 of physical science,) that they lift a man so entirely 
 above the ordinary sphere of daily duty, that they 
 betray him into selfishness and neglect of duty — and 
 not only of duty, but of thoughts and interests as great 
 as his own. Dr. Johnson's solemn irony expresses one 
 of the deepest truths of our one-sided nature. " He 
 who is growing great in electrifying a bottle wonders 
 to see the world engaged in the prattle about peace 
 and war," — he whose soul is in the stars or the depths 
 feels small interest in such commonplaces as sin 
 and repentance, pain and despair, death and God. 
 Theologians have at times forgotten that the God 
 of the Gospel is the God of the universe, the Law- 
 giver whose are those wonderful laws of nature 
 which science has discovered ; and the depth and 
 fulness of their teaching have suffered accordingly. 
 But no pedantry or narrowness of theologians* ever 
 equalled theirs who, being what they are, feeling, 
 willing, choosing, thinking, contriving — the champions 
 of all freedom, the" advocates of all progress, the 
 discoverers of the most refined analysis — teach us as 
 the latest certainty of philosophy, that the mind 
 
248 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMOAS xiv 
 
 which feels and thinks and wills is not mind at all ; 
 that mind is a phrase or an assumption, that man's 
 freedom of choice and action, his goodness, his 
 sin, is the freedom of an automaton ; that our con- 
 sciousness, as we think, of a responsible self and 
 immaterial soul, is, in theory at least, a delusion. 
 Slaves of an imagination moulded and coloured by a 
 single uniform set of familiar phenomena, slaves of 
 customs and modes of thought which they have lost 
 the power to review and control, by rising above them 
 and beyond them, they are, with the latest and 
 richest eloquence of the English language, as 
 formal and rigid, as childishly unreal, as much in 
 antagonism with plain things which are certain if 
 anything is certain, as the most fantastic of the 
 Schoolmen. It seems as if in such a fatal labyrinth, 
 without ending or escape, life would be unendurable. 
 No ; the pleasure of reckless and arrogant theorising, 
 of thoughts for which they owe no account to 
 any one, of pushing things to startling extremes, 
 of contradicting and flouting what is received as 
 most venerable and sacred, have their charm ; and • 
 not even the absurdity of the results is enough to 
 check them. 
 
 And yet there is something worse. It is when 
 intellect and reasoning persuade us that this world 
 after all is our best and satisfying portion ; .that 
 we are wisest when we most follow our pleasure ; 
 that the lusts of the flesh and the pomps of the 
 world have a good deal to say for themselves ; that 
 we were made for this world — made for things seen ; 
 and that of another, as w^e can know nothing, we were 
 best believe nothincr. Intellect will do this for us if 
 
XIV LIFE OF IN7FLLECTUAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY 249 
 
 we will let it ; it will do it in hard-headed and power- 
 ful systems of abstract thought ; it will do it in rich 
 and passionate poetry, pathetic or tender or raptur- 
 ous ; it will do it in the beauty and magnificence 
 of art. And descending to a yet lower deep, the 
 questioning spirit which has called evil good finds 
 it no hard task to prove that good is evil. Then 
 intellect has indeed sinned its deadliest sin, when 
 it has not only beguiled the will to break down 
 the eternal barriers between goodness and sin, but 
 has argued the soul out of its instinctive recogni- 
 tion and admiration of goodness ; when by specious 
 reasonings, the most easy of all things, it has taught 
 the soul to revolt from its natural estimate of purity 
 and unselfishness, and undermined its veneration of 
 holiness — taught it to be disloyal to its own ideas 
 of the highest and the best. This terrible insensi- 
 bility, this terrible sophistry, reaches its climax when 
 it assails, as we have seen it do, the moral character 
 of our Lord, and deliberately vindicates the Pharisees' 
 judgment about Him and the policy of the Pharisees. 
 It is a saying of an unbeliever of this day, a serious 
 and able man, that it v/ill be impossible to get rid 
 of Christianity among civilised nations, till their 
 reverence shall have been destroyed for the moral 
 character and life of Christ. In this spake he truly : 
 but when that reverence is destroyed, there will have 
 been first destroyed the conscience, the affections, 
 and the love of good in human nature. 
 
 These, of course, considering what Christianity is, 
 and has done, are outrages, unnatural and monstrous, 
 shocking to all serious men, and condemned by 
 public feeling. They belong to the same order as 
 
250 PASCAL AND 07 HER SERMONS xiv 
 
 the morality which would disturb the relations of 
 parents and children, or merge citizenship in some 
 league of humanity. But there is yet another sin, 
 not so hateful as the sin of despising and explain- 
 ing away goodness, yet very subtle and very fatal, 
 which hangs about the excitement of religious in- 
 quiry. It is the sin of requiring undue and im- 
 possible conditions of proof. I call it a sin, because 
 it is a rebellion against the natural conditions of 
 the world and of our own constitution — a rebellion 
 against those limitations and imperfections of our 
 knowledge amid which we find ourselves — a demand 
 that God should give us what it has not pleased 
 Him to give us. He has given us conscience, and 
 the knowledge of right and wrong : He has 7iot 
 given us demonstrative proof — the proof which we 
 get by sight, and touch, and number, or by mathe- 
 matical reasoning, of the truths of our moral 
 condition. The most elementary of these are open 
 to the " all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism " of 
 the intellect which chooses to make difficulties and 
 start objections, perhaps insoluble. But there can 
 be no question about the madness and the wicked- 
 ness of refusing to be true and just, because there are 
 half-a-dozen contradictory theories of morality, and 
 we are not satisfied which is the right one, which 
 meets all the objections against it. The fault is the 
 same, when, on evidence on which we arc daily 
 acting without scruple or misgiving — evidence not 
 without difficulties, and open not merely to cavils 
 but to serious objections, yet on the whole full and 
 decisive — evidence surrounding us and perpetual 
 and converging — evidence on which we stake the fate 
 
XIV LIFE OF INl^ELLECTUAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY 251 
 
 of a nation and take in courts of justice a fellow- 
 creature's life — on evidence of this kind we refuse 
 to admit the claims of the Gospel. Such evidence 
 as that of the Gospel, and the Church which is its 
 preacher, is that common to the whole world of 
 action — of responsible, eventful action — bringing 
 about its results, its achievements, its judgments. 
 And in religion, the most practical of all things, that 
 in which a man can least afford to indulge his 
 fastidiousness and his hesitations, men demand 
 more : they demand the evidence which belongs 
 to the world of speculation, which implies either 
 a problem which can never be exhausted, or else 
 one which can be brought definitely to the verifica- 
 tion of experiment. " Except I shall see in His 
 hands the print of the nails, and put my finger 
 into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into 
 His side, I will not believe." No ; to you that test 
 will not be given. It is not part of the law of your 
 condition. You know it is no part of it. Yet here 
 you uinst make your venture. If you resolve not 
 to believe, you must equally make your venture — 
 as much, as practically, as eventfully, as if you do. 
 If you refuse to believe, still you cannot have the 
 certainty you want. Anyhow, you cannot have 
 everything that . you would like to have. Will you 
 throw away so much, as if it were worthless, because 
 you cannot have all ? 
 
 What is the object of life ? Why is it pos- 
 sessed ? What is its worth ? There is the 
 heathen, the non-Christian estimate of it : in its 
 noblest form, to kiiow, to search, to inquire with the 
 widest imagination and the most delicate methods. 
 
252 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiv 
 
 to balance and hesitate, to make and unmake hypo- 
 theses, to detect mistakes, to accumulate the splen- 
 dours of discovery and the riches of intellectual 
 satisfaction, — a life to which our partial knowledge 
 gives its highest value, the aspirations of our poetry 
 and art its highest charms, but which knows no- 
 thing, and thinks little, of anything beyond. And 
 there is the Christian estimate : life, great for the 
 present, but immeasurably greater for the future, for 
 what it is to be ; and it is great now, if, by know- 
 ledge and power indeed, yet doubly by faith, and 
 love, and hope, the will is strengthened and directed 
 to all that is most like Him whom we worship and 
 trust in, and expect one day to see. Here are the 
 two rival estimates of life, which divide the allegiance 
 of all who aim high in their use of life. But man 
 has but a poor heritage, if knowledge is his all, 
 and his best : — knowledge, with all the meannesses, 
 jealousies, hatreds, with which its votaries reproach 
 theologians ; knowledge which lights up so tragic- 
 ally the abysses of man's condition and can show no 
 escape; knowledge, which with all its glories is con- 
 sistent with what is poorest in character, and most 
 selfish in aim, and gloomy and unloving in temper. 
 Intellect is no moral safeguard. We may sec the 
 clearest, strongest, soundest intellect joined with a 
 hard, ungenerous, malignant heart, with petty vanity, 
 with gross self-conceit, with hateful pride. God for- 
 bid that we should disparage knowledge — that we 
 should, as Bishop Butler says,^ " vilify the faculty of 
 reason, which is ' the candle of the Lord within us.' " 
 But, as he adds, "it can afford no light, where it docs 
 
 1 Analogy, p. 351. 
 
XIV LIFE OF INTELLECTUAL SEIF-SUFFICIENCY 253 
 
 not shine ; nor jiid^c, where it has no principles to 
 judge upon." Knowledge is God's precious and 
 wondrous gift. It is the glorious crown on the 
 head of goodness and love and purity. But know- 
 ledge, like beauty, is of time ; and goodness only is 
 eternal. Knowledge is the queen of our merely 
 earthly life ; but her realm is bounded by the grave : 
 In the next life, she whom we know here is nothing. 
 Shall we then be content to take her for our all ; to 
 resign all that is given us, all hope, beyond her. 
 With whom shall we in life — life which is so short 
 and so practical — cast in our lot ? With Christ and 
 His servants, those who have served their brethren 
 even to death, who have hoped most, and loved 
 most, and attempted most, for man ? or with 
 those w^hose one thought — a noble one, if it had 
 not stood alone — has been to knozv : who have had 
 the season and the bloom of a brilliant career — 
 brilliant researches, brilliant discoveries, brilliant 
 lectures, brilliant criticism — and who, when energy 
 decays, and they are succeeded by others as brilliant, 
 have nothing more to tell us, except that men are 
 astray, wrapt in delusions, powerless to dispel 
 them ? This may seem the more attractive, the 
 more reasonable view of life, in the summer days 
 of brightness, and health, and excitement. Will it 
 seem so, when death and the end are near ? " Alas 
 for those," says the Divine Speaker, in the IiiMtation 
 of Christ, — "alas for those, who busy themselves 
 with men about many curious inquiries, but care 
 little about the way of serving Me. 
 
 "The time will come when the Master of masters 
 
 1 Book III. chap, xliii. 
 
254 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xiv 
 
 will appear, Christ, the Lord of angels, to hear the 
 lessons of all ; that is, to examine each man's 
 conscience. And then shall He ' search Jerusalem 
 with candles,' and ' the hidden things of darkness 
 shall be made manifest,' and the strife of tongues 
 shall be still. 
 
 " There will come one hour," He proceeds, " when 
 all tumult and all toil will cease. 
 
 " Do, therefore, that thou doest. Labour faithfully 
 in My vineyard. I will be thy reward. 
 
 " Write, read, sing, mourn, keep silence, pray : 
 bear like a man all that is against thee. 
 
 " There is that which is worth all these and 
 greater conflicts — everlasting life." 
 
XV 
 
 STRONG WORDS 1 
 
 " Ry thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shall 
 be condemned." — St. Mati'. xii. 37. 
 
 One of the subjects which must come, I suppose, 
 before a serious man at a time of self-trial and self- 
 discipline like this, if he makes any use of it at all 
 for his own correction and improvement, is his 
 employment of the great gift of language, his habits 
 of speech. The Bible, I need not remind you, lays 
 great stress on men's duties in regard to it, on the 
 mischief and the sin of a careless and uncontrolled 
 exercise of a faculty which is such a mighty in- 
 strument for good or harm. Given for the highest 
 purposes of man's nature and end, it may be 
 degraded to the meanest and vilest uses, it may 
 be wasted in the most miserable and emptiest folly. 
 We are tempted in days like ours, of freedom, and 
 boldness, and activity, to forget our responsibilities. 
 "We are they that ought to speak, who i^ lord 
 over us ? " is the expression of no unusual or over- 
 weening arrogance. Yet for this, we know a real 
 account is finally to be given. " For every idle 
 word that men shall speak " (whatever be the 
 
 1 Preached in King's College Chapel during Lent, 1874. 
 
256 PASCAL AND OTFTER SERMONS 
 
 meaning of the expression, none can doubt that it 
 is most emphatic and most solemn), "they shall give 
 account thereof in the day of judgment." Men's 
 words, and their use of them, are to furnish at last a 
 test of character, and of the true state and general 
 bent of will and life. " By thy words thou shalt be 
 justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." 
 I will venture then, to-day, to ask your attention 
 for a few minutes to one, and only one, portion of 
 this great matter, which ought, as much as anything, 
 to give us something to think about if we will make 
 proper use of Lent. 
 
 I am going, then, to say a ^q\w words on a very 
 old-fashioned and homely subject, a branch of that 
 great department of self- ruling and self- watching 
 which we speak of as the government of the tongue. 
 I am going to say something on the duty of self- 
 restraint in the strength of our words and general 
 tone of speech, on the obligation of conscientious 
 and real care when we are induced, or tempted, to 
 use strong words. The solemn language of our 
 Lord in the text shows that it is a matter which 
 we cannot afford to put on one side. 
 
 We most of us know how easy it is to get into 
 the way of using strong words in our statements, 
 in our opinions, in our expressions of feeling, in 
 our praise or our condemnation. It is convenient. 
 It is pleasant. It is, with many people, what we 
 call natural. It saves much trouble. A strong and 
 summary phrase dispenses with the effort of finding 
 and stating reasons. A loose but tempting ex- 
 aggeration seems to bear witness to our earnestness, 
 and to make us sure that we ha\'e manfull)- taken 
 
STRONG WORDS 257 
 
 our side. A bold sweeping sentence of approval or 
 censure seems to put us in a position of superiority 
 as judges, and to show the breadth and largeness 
 of our view. It is easier, often, to see and feel 
 what is right and true than it is to prove it : and 
 to put our conviction into the most energetic words 
 which occur to us, while it favours our indolence, 
 seems at the same time to give us the gratification 
 of an intellectual victory. And, at any rate, there 
 is a kind of natural satisfaction in using our strength 
 of language, just as there is in using our strength 
 of body, or limbs, or mental gifts. We can be at 
 our ease while we talk strongly, and yet seem to be 
 doing something strong. 
 
 Strong words are one of two things, supposing, 
 as I am supposing, that they are not the words of 
 conscious hollowness and intended hypocrisy, and 
 leaving out of account, of course, the question of 
 professed fiction, and all that comes fairly under 
 playfulness in our intercourse. They are the natural 
 and fit expression of deep and strong feeling, or 
 passion, or judgment, right or wrong ; or they are 
 the cheap expedients and favourite resources and 
 instruments of weakness ; and, so far as they are 
 resorted to, they betray it. There are occasions in 
 all our lives which call for them, oftener, perhaps, 
 than we always recollect. But this very thing makes 
 it all the more necessary that we should not get! into 
 the way of using strong words at random, and wasting 
 force which ought to be husbanded to do the work, and 
 to produce the effect which deep and genuine feeling 
 often has to do and to produce in our intercourse. 
 
 When I ask you to be on your guard against 
 
 C.S.,P. S 
 
258 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xv 
 
 a careless and loose strength of language, I do so 
 first in the interests of truth. There is no more 
 insidious enemy to that value and respect for truth, 
 which must be the foundation of all that is good, 
 and noble, and manly in character, than this un- 
 intentional but habitual slighting of its claim. A 
 man has to make a statement, or he tells a story. 
 In nine cases out of ten it does not seem to him 
 to matter whether he gives it a turn which his 
 imagination suggests, or adds a touch natural, prob- 
 able, it may be, but for which he has no warrant. 
 The statement is made more intelligible ; the story 
 gains in point. And in nine cases out of ten, 
 perhaps, it does not matter, except in the unseen, 
 impalpable interests of the great law that word and 
 fact ought to correspond. But the tenth case may 
 be one in which all the difference is made by 
 the simple truth, or by additions to it ; and the 
 nine, apparently harmless and innocent exaggera- 
 tions or colourings, have helped to strengthen a 
 custom of exaggerating and colouring. A man gets 
 to confuse, and to not mind confusing, what he is 
 sure of with what he guesses. He imagines where 
 he thought he saw or heard. He thinks that he 
 believes what he does not really believe. 
 
 And it is so easy to lose the limits and distinctions 
 between what is true and what might have been true. 
 " Conversation," says a shrewd novelist,^ " consists a 
 good deal in the denial of what is true." At any 
 rate, conversation is often impatient of the limits of 
 what is true, and I don't know a man more to be 
 .honoured than he who prefers being awkward, 
 
 1 George Eliot in Felix Holt. 
 
STRONG WORDS 259 
 
 and seeming to be clumsy and blundering, to 
 saying more than he knows or means. The tempta- 
 tion to a clear mind to round off and order its facts, 
 to an imaginative one to give them the significance 
 which it creates, is often enormous. The interests 
 of accuracy seem petty beside the call for a vigorous, 
 forcible, telling account of a thing, beside the charm 
 of quaint or suggestive anecdote. These claims seem 
 petty ; they would seem overwhelming if we could 
 only see what comes of the difference between exag- 
 geration and truthful self-restraint in the long run. 
 This habit of accuracy will doubtless often impair 
 the effect of a sentence, or spoil a good story ; but 
 even at that risk, we shall be well paid at last, if we 
 keep before our minds the saying of a distinguished 
 writer about some case of, perhaps, prosaic exact- 
 ness : " It is rather a minute accuracy. But I have 
 a respect for all accuracy ; for all accuracy is of the 
 noble family of truth, and is to be respected accord- 
 ingly, even to her most menial servant." ^ 
 
 And next I plead in the interests of soundness 
 and reality of feeling and character. Words, as we 
 are told, which we think our slaves and instruments, 
 may become our masters and tyrants. In times 
 when thought is keen, when great principles are in 
 conflict, and great interests are at stake, when aims 
 and prospects are unexpectedly opening and en- 
 larging, and all minds feel quickened and strung by 
 the atmosphere they breathe, our common language 
 reflects the highly wrought condition ; reflects it, ex- 
 aggerates it, and contributes to make it more intense. 
 
 1 John Davison, Newman's Essays, Critical and Historical, vol. ii. 
 p. 385- 
 
26o PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xv 
 
 Then is the time when it seems to become men to take, 
 in thought and word, advanced positions, the more 
 advanced, the more creditable to their thorough-going 
 manHness. Then is the time when it seems the brave 
 and honest thing to commit ourselves to strong and 
 uncompromising professions. I need not tell you 
 that excitement, though it may be most sincere at 
 the moment, does not always cover real purpose. It 
 does not always know the ventures which it under- 
 takes, and the responsibilities to which it binds itself. 
 But time, all -trying, all -revealing time, goes on. 
 We have spoken strongly, our strong words have 
 been deep pledges of what we believed and meant ; 
 and, by and by, the course of things, the development 
 of events, bring out their significance and bearing. 
 We make to ourselves, perhaps, the excuse, the sorry 
 excuse, of the great advocate for our old over-state- 
 ments, our old rashnesses : they belonged to the 
 occasion, they were " temporis, potius quam veritatis." 
 But it will not prevent their recoil. The future 
 takes us at our word and mercilessly exacts its 
 redemption. And then, if we did not really know 
 all that our words meant, if we did not really mean 
 all that their strength and decisiveness implied, one 
 of two things happens : we have to back out of 
 them, or else they drive and sting us on into more 
 than we really meant at first. I cannot tell which 
 is a sorer trial of the soul, which is more dangerous 
 to our integrity and wholeness of mind. To have 
 to retreat where we were so confident of our position, 
 to have to unsay what we said perhaps so loudly, 
 .is indeed a humiliation to which a brave honesty, 
 which feels in discomfiture and shame its sharp but 
 
XV STRONG WORDS 261 
 
 wholesome medicine, may submit with profit. But 
 all cannot bear it. To find themselves caught and 
 entrapped in their own strong words brings with it 
 the painful sense of hollowness which leads men to 
 disbelieve that any one can be in earnest ; or else, 
 to escape this, they let a one-sided consistency which 
 they call logical drag them into extremes, they lash 
 themselves into violence and excess. In any case 
 they are not what they meant to be, when the> 
 could judge more freely ; often, not what in the 
 depths of their conscience they know they ought to 
 be, and zvould be. Character has received a shock 
 and a wound. They have talked too fast for what 
 was really in their mind ; and either in scepticism or 
 feebleness, or in forced exaggeration and intemper- 
 ateness, they suffer the penalties of their unreality. 
 
 You will not suspect me of recommending the 
 safe reserve of the cowardly and selfish. - But our 
 words must be, as our Lord says, the standard of 
 our deeds, and of the judgment on them ; and it is 
 of the deepest -moment that our words and deeds 
 should make " according music." And no man can 
 have lived long without having seen, over and over 
 again, and, I suppose, without having himself deeply 
 suffered from, their fatal discord. Our words have 
 outstripped our convictions and our knowledge, 
 whereas they ought, if we are wise, I do not say to 
 lag, but to be curbed and kept back behind tliem. 
 And indeed, if we could but believe it, there is 
 nothing lost in force and power by understatement, 
 by words deliberately subdued. Contrast the weight 
 of a statement of the same set of facts, in the hands 
 of undisciplined and exaggerating ability, and as 
 
262 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xv 
 
 represented in the calm clearness and light of a 
 passionless judicial summing up, and we shall feel 
 that measured and temperate words need not want 
 strength. But I urge on you the care of this self- 
 discipline on higher grounds than that of the power 
 it bestows. I urge it for the sake of the depth, the 
 truthfulness, the Christian manliness and reality of 
 your characters ; for the sake of the seriousness of 
 your purposes, the genuineness of your plan and 
 course of life, in the sight of Him who will make 
 our profession the standard to judge our deeds. 
 
 Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control 
 
 That o'er thee swell and throng ; 
 They will condense within thy soul, 
 
 And change to purpose strong, i 
 
 " So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be 
 judged by the law of liberty." Remember that you 
 have always a listener, One who abhors all ostentation 
 and pretence, all insolent carelessness — One who 
 takes men at their word in ways they think not of 
 We instinctively lower our voice, and limit our 
 words, when we are in the presence of one whose 
 wisdom or whose greatness awes us ; and we are 
 never out of the presence of Him who judges us 
 with equity, and with all the loving- kindness and 
 largeness of His perfect knowledge, but so also with 
 wisdom measuring our folly, with truth measuring 
 our insincerity and show. Learn to speak as owing 
 an account to Him, and to your conscience, not only 
 of what you do but of what you say. Don't be 
 afraid of being dull because you measure your words 
 and check them. Better be dull than learn to be 
 
 1 Lyra Apostolica^ Ixvii. 
 
STRONG WORDS 263 
 
 extravagant and exaggerated ; than to get into 
 habits of saying what you don't mean, and of not 
 caring whether you mean what you say or not. 
 Better anything than, in any shape, habitual, un- 
 regarded, unconscious untruthfulness of language. 
 But, indeed, believe that in fact no interest matches 
 the interest of truth. There is no limit to the 
 unexplored treasures of living and varied interest 
 assured to those who have faith in truth and truth- 
 fulness. Don't confound honesty of speech with 
 strength of words, with extreme unbalanced phrases: 
 strength is indeed one attribute of truth and honesty, 
 but measure, controlled and ordered, is another. 
 Your care, your self-restraint, may deprive you of a 
 momentary sparkle, of a momentary triumph ; but 
 you will be glad of it by and by, when you see the 
 issues of things, when you come to die. Don't 
 waste the force of your soul. Depend upon it, the 
 day will come, if we have anything to do with the 
 real affairs of life, when we shall want, with the best 
 reason, to feel strongly, to speak strongly. Don't 
 let us come to those occasions with our power 
 impaired and dulled, because we have accustomed 
 ourselves to use it at random, in idle, disproportioned 
 vehemence, in excess of what we really meant, in 
 excess of what .the subject called for, and of what 
 we had a right to say. Trouble of this kind and 
 self-control are not always pleasant, but they are 
 well worth the effort. Alas ! how many strong 
 words shall we, all of us, wish unspoken, when that 
 day comes, in which, in the presence of the Lord 
 of Truth, "by our words we shall be justified, and 
 by our words we shall be condemned." 
 
XVI 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN ^ 
 
 " Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, 
 whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of 
 faith ; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering : or he that 
 teacheth, on teaching." — Rom. xii. 6, 7. 
 
 In the Church, as in the world, every man has two 
 great departments of duty to think of, one relating 
 to himself, the other relating to that body of which 
 he is a member. In one point of view, every one is 
 as if there were no one else in existence but himself 
 — none but himself face to face with God, none but 
 himself face to face with nature. He lives within a 
 circle which no one outside can penetrate ; he owns 
 allegiance to a law of conscience which speaks to 
 him alone ; he knows what none can possibly know 
 but himself; he feels what none can feel for him 
 or instead of him ; he has interests which are his 
 absolutely alone ; there is a solitude in which, in the 
 midst of the most crowded and active companionship, 
 he is isolated : as he lives alone, so he dies alone. 
 But in another point of view, it is not as the individual 
 but as the member of a complex organisation that 
 
 1 Preached at the Festival of the Community of St. Mary the Virgin, 
 Wantage, 1S75. 
 
XVI THE MINISTR V OF WOMEN 265 
 
 we view him — an organisation in which he and his 
 place, even if the highest, are subordinate to the 
 claims and interests of the whole. The soldier may 
 be brave, generous, accomplished as a man and a 
 soldier, and we may think of him as such and admire 
 him as such ; but there is also another standard of 
 judgment, by which we decide what sort of soldier 
 he is in the army of which he is a member, or in 
 the particular work on which he along with others 
 is employed. No lesson was earlier or more em- 
 phatically impressed on Christians than this : that 
 none of them lives merely for himself or stands alone 
 in what he has to do to fulfil God's will. Christians 
 are the children or the servants of a great family or 
 household. Christians are the subjects and citizens 
 of a great kingdom ; and a great kingdom means 
 ranks and classes in ordered gradation, and offices 
 and duties dependent one on another. The Church 
 as portrayed in the New Testament is a body as 
 " fearfully and wonderfully made " as the natural 
 body, in which -each living portion has its life on the 
 condition, the absolute condition, of contributing 
 according to its due function and ministry to the 
 combined working of the whole. The organ or the 
 limb which will take no part in the general move- 
 ment loses its own proper powers ; the muscle 
 which will not play becomes wasted and obliterated ; 
 the sense or the faculty which is not exercised 
 becomes dulled, paralysed, extinguished. All are 
 wanted : none can be spared. For the service 
 demanded of them' is most complicated and most 
 varied, and each single fibre of our nerves, each 
 single cell in our tissues, has its part to do or has its 
 
266 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvi 
 
 part to spoil and thwart in the tasks which the 
 greater and worthier members of the body are called 
 on to discharge. And to these calls it is impossible 
 to fix the limit. The circumstances change in 
 which the body is required to act or to endure : no 
 one can tell what novel conditions it or each several 
 member may have to encounter and suit itself to ; no 
 one can enumerate the infinite employments to which 
 its primitive and original faculties and endowments 
 may be applied. Its forces may be strained in rude 
 battle with nature or with men ; or the subtle har- 
 monies of eye, and ear, and touch may be summoned 
 into co-operating exercise in the execution of some 
 delicate and elaborate work of art or music. And 
 the circumstances to which the body may have to 
 accommodate itself, the services for which each of its 
 parts may be needed, cannot be more different, more 
 changing, more uncertain, than the altering conditions 
 of human society and human necessities under which 
 the Church has to carry on the work imposed on it 
 by its Master, or the varying character of the services 
 which, as things change around it, are wanted from the 
 members who are united in its Divine organisation. 
 
 In that great " City of God," to which we belong 
 even here, though all that is greatest in it is 
 still unknown to us, God its Master has, in the 
 words of our prayer, " ordained and constituted the 
 services of Angels and men in a wonderful order." 
 And in the same kind of " wonderful order " 
 has He constituted here on earth the services of 
 His mortal creatures in their several places and 
 degrees. Thus has He constituted the several 
 ministries and services of men and women. No one 
 
XVI THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN 267 
 
 has ever doubted the law, the obligation, the variety 
 of service in the case of men. Nothing has been 
 more often overlooked, in those tacit assumptions by 
 which life is so much governed, than the force of this 
 claim of service — distinct, definite, personal service 
 — in the case of women. It is not that the Bible over- 
 looks it. There, the idea from first to last is that 
 God's call to His creatures and servants for co-operation 
 with Him in His work comes to women as much as 
 to men. To women, in their homes primarily, as 
 primarily to men in the open field and battle-ground 
 of life ; to women, primarily, as charged with the 
 care and training of the family, the original and 
 fundamental unit of God's kingdom, out of which it 
 grows, and which must be kept pure and sound in 
 affections and order, unless everything else in human 
 society is to be ruined. But though primarily to 
 women in their homes and families, not exclusively 
 so. They, too, have borne their full share in the 
 movements and events recorded in the Bible, by 
 which the course of God's dispensation has moved 
 on. They, too, have been charged with its re- 
 sponsibilities. They too, like men, have been called 
 to a great trust, and have betrayed it. They have 
 lost the world, wounded its dearest and most sacred 
 interest. And they have been partners in its 
 redemption and deliverance. Their Master has 
 claimed their service, their self-sacrifice, and they 
 have given it. The voices of ready obedience to the 
 great demands of God respond, in the history of the 
 Bible, like the voices of two sides of a choir. "Speak, 
 Lord ; for Thy servant heareth," and " Here am I ; 
 send me," are answered by the self-dedication. 
 
268 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvi 
 
 " Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me 
 according to Thy word." 
 
 But that nothing is strange in a world in which, 
 after truths have been keenly and strongly grasped, 
 they arc so soon and so easily forgotten, it would 
 seem strange that so obvious a principle of God's 
 kingdom as this, the use which our Master has for 
 the ministry of women, should ever have passed out 
 of sight. The Early Church seized it and turned it 
 to full account. The Early Church found a place for 
 women in all the Gospel offices spoken of in the text 
 — in prophesying, in ministering, in teaching. Women 
 were among her missionaries : women were among 
 her most willing martyrs. The Church of the Middle 
 Ages, amid all the confusion and ignorance following 
 the extinction of a corrupted civilisation, and the slow 
 regeneration by a barbarian triumph, never forgot 
 what women might be as the special servants of 
 Christ. New and fruitful ideas of usefulness were 
 struck out. Women aspired boldly, and not only 
 aspired but reached, to brave and noble deeds of 
 self-sacrifice and love. The Church was enriched by 
 fresh applications of its eternal rules ; by new types 
 of charity, of sanctity, of sympathy with things 
 unseen ; by methods which presented a new front 
 to the undying evils of society. Women took their 
 part in the Divine work : they taught the ignorant, 
 they reclaimed the lost, they rescued the perishing, 
 they comforted the miserable, they helped the poor 
 to bear the load of poverty. In time these systematic 
 attempts felt the fate of weakness and degeneracy 
 which attends all human things, and all human plans 
 even to reform, to improve, to elevate. They 
 
THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN 269 
 
 languished, they were turned out of their course, 
 they went astray. The form remained, the functions 
 slackened, the spirit failed. Institutions, organisa- 
 tions, which once had been sacred to the highest 
 purposes, let in the subtle corrupting air of worldli- 
 ness, and fell as they deserved. In their fall they 
 take their place among the accumulating lessons of 
 the world. But the truths which they embodied 
 remain the same ; the great things which they 
 sought to do, still remain to be done. And I am 
 afraid that the lesson which was for a long time 
 drawn from their failures, was that what they had 
 failed in needed not be tried again ; at any rate, that 
 it was safer and better not to try at all, than to try 
 with the risk of mistake and ill-success. For a long 
 time, among ourselves at least, it seemed as if there 
 were no room for any special application to the 
 service of the Gospel of the gifts and fa,culties of 
 women. Partly the dulness of custom, partly fear of 
 the prejudices and sneers of the world, partly distrust 
 of enthusiasm, discouragement at the breakdown of 
 ancient attempts, and recoil from the corruption in 
 which they often ended, kept us from fairly considering 
 what the sufferings and sins of mankind wanted, and 
 what women could do to make them less. I do not 
 like to hear the niodest religion, the unobtrusive piety 
 and benevolence of the last century depreciated. It 
 undoubtedly did exist. I believe that there was a great 
 deal of unheeded, unremembered religion in it which 
 may put us to deep shame. But the idea of an 
 English Sister of Charity was one which, I suppose, 
 never rose in even good people's minds. No, in 
 this, as in many other things, that which properly 
 
270 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvi 
 
 belonged to the Church, that which long ago the 
 Church had used and ordered to great purposes, was 
 now revived by those without the Church, and was 
 left to them by the Church, afraid of her own powers, 
 distrustful of her own strength, shrinking from the 
 fulness of her own calling. The person who in our 
 later times first grasped the conviction of a special 
 mission for women — beyond those offices of kindness 
 and mercy which lie in every one's power, and which 
 doubtless are so amply and so modestly fulfilled by 
 numbers whose only profession is to make home 
 happy — the first person who recognised a call for 
 special self-devotion to a definite work, was not a 
 Churchwoman, but a Quaker, Elizabeth Fry. And 
 when in our own days the Church woke up to a 
 more true and more generous conception of her 
 duties, it broke upon us almost like a discovery — so 
 fast had custom sealed our eyes — that among human 
 occupations and employments, among the special 
 activities which the Church enlists in its service, there 
 was a large space for the employment of women : 
 there was work which they could do, and none could 
 do but they. 
 
 I cannot help remembering that I am speaking 
 here, in one of the places where that great but 
 obvious thought first took practical shape. We are, 
 I suppose, in some sense commemorating the birth 
 of that ancient, but to our times in England new 
 idea — the idea of a life devoted by women to the 
 service of religion, in the same sense as a soldier 
 devotes his life to whatever the country calls him to 
 .undertake — a life of definite, orderly, regulated duty. 
 This is one of the places where an experiment which 
 
XVI THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN 
 
 27] 
 
 once seemed a bold one was earliest made. It is a 
 place which has helped to reconcile our jealous 
 English nature — jealous of all mere imitations and 
 revivals, jealous of what has once been insidiously 
 harmful, jealous of extravagance and pretence, 
 supremely jealous of all that might disparage family 
 affections and household duties — to a view of life, 
 and a use of it, which are so manifestly Christian. 
 Here the plan of a life of labour for women — intelli- 
 gent, beneficent, fervent labour for Christ — labour 
 serious, habitual, sustained, like the labour of men, 
 broke through the spell which condemned it as un- 
 natural and unprecedented, and became a reality. 
 The idea has by this time had a history. It has 
 learned from experience. It has made mistakes and 
 disclosed its weak places. It has gained, too, in 
 firmness, in sobriety, in knowledge of the conditions 
 under which it is to be carried on. And on this 
 anniversary, we have a right, we have cause, to bless 
 God that the ministry of women has again become 
 one of the recognised institutions of the English 
 Church ; one of the proofs of its power to stir up 
 the gift that is in it, and to meet the calls of the 
 day as well as the permanent needs of the wonder- 
 fully manifold society round us. 
 
 I. What should be our thoughts on a day like this ? 
 Who can refuse to us, — even to us who are outside of 
 your work here, and are bound to it only by the tie of 
 sympathy, — that the first feeling of us all should be 
 one of exultation — exultation that what was once de- 
 cried as visionary and impossible should be before us 
 as a living and vigorous work ; exultation that a great 
 venture for the love of Christ has not put to shame 
 
272 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvi 
 
 the faith and boldness of those who made it ; exulta- 
 tion that, in this ancient Church of England, after all 
 the conflicts and exhaustion of centuries, the spring 
 of youth is yet so strong ; exultation that, in spite 
 of great hopes cast down, in spite of the misgivings 
 of those who most believed in her, and the prophecies 
 of helplessness and decay from those who despaired of 
 her and those who hated her, she has met the strain 
 of one of the most critical trials of her history, and 
 disclosed unknown and unsuspected sources of force 
 and power, to answer to new emergencies. Many of 
 us can remember the days when the question was 
 anxiously asked. Can the Church of England bear 
 the test of a loftier standard, a higher aim than those 
 of the traditions of her later history ? Can she bear 
 to look with unflinching eye on the words, on the 
 deeds, of her Master, on the necessities of those for 
 whom He died ? Can she bear originality of thought ? 
 Can she bear the spirit of enterprise, in carrying on 
 the redeeming and consoling work of the Crucified ? 
 Without disguising from ourselves that there was 
 reason to ask the question, we have lived to see, I 
 think, the unwisdom of despondency. We have lived 
 to see the undeserved grace of God wakening in many 
 hearts and in distant points at once a life which seemed 
 extinct. We have learned from facts, assuming every 
 day larger proportions and more distinct significance, 
 a reassurance which some only can find in the most 
 self-consistent theories. After languor and sickness, 
 the old lineaments are reviving, the well-known 
 lineaments of the Bride of Christ. We recognise the 
 tokens of an unearthly presence, in the sympathy 
 which cannot rest before the infinite wants of men, 
 
XVI THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN 273 
 
 in the lowly boldness to attempt and to endure hard 
 things to accomplish the Master's purposes. God 
 does not desert those whom He calls from sleep and 
 death to life and work. 
 
 2. " Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable 
 gift." But the gift is to us men, and men may 
 fail. He has given it to others, this precious gift 
 of the ministry of women, which He has restored to 
 us ; and others have failed. There are not wanting 
 those who say that we shall fail. What is certain is 
 that it depends on those against whom the evil pro- 
 phecy is spoken, whether they shall shame it or shall 
 fulfil it. But it is a warning to us all to fear, to 
 watch, to pray, to be sober. This great service is 
 not a light one. It is one which, in spite of all pre- 
 judices, is essentially so reasonable, so noble, so full 
 of blessing, so adapted to uses to which nothing else 
 is equally adapted, that it cannot in the end ^be gain- 
 said : it recommends itself, even if it be often against 
 the grain, to the daring and serious mind of England. 
 But it must fulfil its promise. It cannot afford to 
 be weak ; it cannot afford to play with its arduous 
 and exacting tasks ; it cannot afford to disguise, 
 under the forms of its austere unselfishness, the temper 
 of self-pleasing, of vanity, of petty and fanciful and 
 fantastic waywardness. It must be kept pure by. 
 deep and sincere devotion, and by the strong spirit 
 of self-government and honest self-mastery. So ruled, 
 so balanced, so fortified, the religious ministry of 
 women opens a prospect of good things to England, 
 which we may look for* in vain in any other direction, 
 and to which it seems hard to put a limit. 
 
 3. For the wants of English society are great and 
 C.S.,P. T 
 
274 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvr 
 
 are increasing — increasing in their pressure and in 
 their variety. Take but one great and tremendous 
 department of them. What war is to men, merciless, 
 devouring, hopeless in its natural destructiveness, vice 
 is to women. It is idle to make ourselves giddy 
 with thinking of this mystery. But there it is : the 
 fatal mischief, without natural remedy, after which 
 hope seems to go. It overthrows, it wrecks, it con- 
 sumes. And none but women can dare to deal with 
 it hand to hand. In former days, society almost 
 accepted its horrible tyranny and ruin as something 
 as inevitable as death. Its scale was so immense, 
 its range so wide, its power so uncontrollable, that 
 it seemed idle to grapple with it. As generation 
 followed generation, the tribute of victims which it 
 levied seemed fated, and beyond human power to 
 arrest or diminish ; and it claimed them in all ranks 
 of society. At least, zve have learned to think, that 
 huge and monstrous as it is, we must try to encounter, 
 it. We must not sit still, as if we could do nothing, 
 and were excused for being passive. We umst try 
 to open paths of escape to its miserable captives. 
 We, who have coped with slavery and bridled disease, 
 must try 7iot to look upon it as something which it 
 is useless to resist or to remedy. The Penitentiary, 
 the Reformatory are not, indeed, the invention of 
 our times ; but the imperious sense of their over- 
 whelming necessity is a thing the growth of which 
 many of us can remember. We see that there are no 
 limits to their need as long as there are souls to be 
 rescued. Such places of refuge require to be multi- 
 plied indefinitely. They must be local and dispersed 
 through the country. They must be as varied in 
 
XVI THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN 275 
 
 their management and system as there are classes of 
 society whom the mischief invades, as there are ages 
 and characters blasted by its poison. And who is 
 to supply all this amount and all this versatility of 
 service ? If there were nothing else to call for and 
 occupy the ministry — the deliberate, systematic min- 
 istry — of women, — if there were no schools to teach, 
 nor poor to be visited, nor hospitals to be tended, — 
 think of the field on which none but they can dare to 
 venture, in which none but they can hope on a large 
 scale for influence and fruit, in reclaiming, restoring, 
 comforting those whom sin has ruined — among rich 
 and poor, the ignorant and the refined. If any one 
 wanted to see a proof of the varied adaptation of the 
 same ministry and the same self-devotion in the 
 various times of history, he might find it here. That 
 ministry which once was thought to have found its 
 chief place in the sanctuary, and its function in wit- 
 nessing to penitence and self-devotion by seclusion 
 from the world, has, without altering its spirit or its 
 ends, reversed its methods. Without leaving the 
 sanctuary, it has found a wider field outside : it no 
 longer shrinks from the world and abandons it to its 
 fate ; it associates itself in loving sympathy and help 
 with the penitence of others. 
 
 May the God of power and love guide and rule 
 His own good gifts. May He point out and direct 
 their manifold applications, and correct our ignorance 
 in using them. We trust that He has been mindful 
 of us, and hopes much from us, by the flame which 
 He has lit up in so many hearts — the desire to serve 
 Him, the will which seeks to reflect His Perfect Will. 
 May He who has kindled zeal give with it sobriety 
 
276 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvi 
 
 and strength. May He who has taught us new ways 
 of glorifying Him and of serving His creatures save 
 us from wasting His blessings by self-will and folly. 
 There are great and untold things before those who 
 have been led to make His definite service the work 
 and object of life. There are great hopes and great 
 dangers ; there is sure to be difficulty, opposition, 
 distrust, annoyance. May He help all who have 
 entered on this road, to put to shame the accuser's 
 sneers by the simplicity and perseverance of a noble 
 life — noble with the noblest of all noble things, 
 the nobleness of unconscious humility. May He 
 strengthen, refine, steady us all in our several paths 
 — many of them dizzy and hard ones ; in our 
 several tasks — many of them as perilous as they are 
 great. May He help us, by using the openings His 
 good Providence has made for faith and for true life, 
 to attract more and more of those unexhausted and 
 unimagined gifts, to enrich and adorn His Church, 
 which are in His keeping, who led our captivity cap- 
 tive, and ascended up on high. We are still within 
 the memory of the day of that great Apostle who 
 derived his name from the power bestowed on him, 
 of strengthening, animating, comforting others, by 
 the spell of his words, by the force and charm of his 
 character — Barnabas, " the Son of Consolation," the 
 earthly reflection of the Paraclete. The closing 
 words of the Gospel of that day may well serve as 
 the mingled warning and encouragement of this : — ■ 
 "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, 
 and ordained you, that yc should go and bring forth 
 fruit, and that your fruit should remain : that what- 
 soever ye shall ask of the Father in My name. He 
 
XVI THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN 277 
 
 may give it you." The prayer of that day may well 
 be the prayer of this — " O Lord God Almighty, who 
 didst endue Thy holy Apostle Barnabas with singular 
 gifts of the Holy Ghost : Leave us not, we beseech 
 Thee, destitute of Thy manifold gifts, nor yet of 
 grace to use them alway to Thy honour and glory ; 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
XVII 
 FOREIGN TRAVEL! 
 
 "The earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is : the compass of the 
 world, and they that dwell therein," — Psalm xxiv. i. 
 
 The object of the present course of sermons has 
 been, I suppose, to bring home to the thoughts and 
 consciences of the hearers the special conditions 
 surrounding that particular form of high civilisation 
 under which they are passing their lives, and going 
 through that trial of character and behaviour which 
 under the most varied and contrasted shapes all men. 
 have to meet. The great and familiar facts of our 
 actual life have been disengaged from the generalities 
 under which they are usually spoken of in the pulpit : 
 they have been named as we name them in our 
 ordinary conversation and in less sacred places, and 
 have been boldly subjected to the severe testing ot 
 being confronted with the moral and religious 
 principles which we acknowledge as Christians. The 
 time in which we live is rife, for many of us, with 
 new gifts, abounds with new fields of enterprise 
 and enjoyment, opens the most varied directions for 
 intellectual and imaginative activity ; no graver 
 
 1 Preached in St. James's Church, Piccadilly, 1S73, being one in a 
 course of Sermons entitled " The Use and Abuse of the World." 
 
XVII FOREIGN TRA VEL 279 
 
 question can be asked than how all this shall be 
 harmonised with the Divine ideal of life left us in the 
 New Testament : not only how all these things can be 
 made safe for a Christian, but how they can be made 
 to strengthen, adorn, elevate his spiritual nature. 
 They are condemned at once if they cannot do this : 
 they are condemned at once if, in that discipline of 
 which they are part, they cannot do much to fit the 
 children of time for the tasks and the ministries of 
 eternity. But to show the office which they dis- 
 charge in this continual and manifold discipline, to 
 show that with all their mischiefs and risks, which 
 are obvious, undeniable, and great, they can yet be 
 wisely and nobly used, and that without them men 
 would turn out weaker and more poorly furnished, 
 when the shadows pass away and all that man was 
 really made for is revealed, — this has been the 
 purpose of these lectures in various separate depart- 
 ments of our modern social condition. 
 
 I have in my turn to speak to you of what is one 
 of the most marked features of our modern life, the 
 habits which have grown up in consequence of the 
 vastly increased facilities in our times of movement 
 and communication between different countries. I 
 have to speak of " Foreign Travel." The series of 
 subjects in which . it has a place limits the way of 
 considering it. I speak of foreign travel as it has 
 become part of the customary manner of life A^ith 
 great classes of people, not as it is with the explorer, 
 or the man of business, or the missionary, or the 
 student in some particular department of inquiry, 
 physical, political, moral — an enterprise having its 
 definite and separate object — nor even as it used to be 
 
28o PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvii 
 
 regarded, the complement and finish of a man's educa- 
 tion ; but foreign travel as one of the advantages which 
 the changes of time have made common and familiar 
 to leisure and competence, one of the new openings 
 of our day to knowledge, enjoyment, and recreation. 
 Thousands travel now for one who travelled in our 
 fathers' days ; regions and places are easily visited 
 which were out of reach except to the adventurous 
 and the patient ; we travel as a matter of course, as 
 we take our holiday as a matter of course. Such a 
 vast and signal addition to the resources and oppor- 
 tunities of life deserves more consideration than we 
 always give to it. 
 
 The subject seems naturally to break itself into 
 two parts : (i) What ought foreign travel to do for 
 us, as part of our ordinary and customary manner of 
 life ; and (2) What ought we to do, what ought we to 
 watch against, that it may have its " perfect work," 
 and that we may gain from it what it ought to 
 yield. 
 
 I . What ought foreign travel to do for us ? The 
 life of this great city, the life of English society which 
 it reflects in its most energetic and concentrated form, 
 presents the two salient aspects of toil and pleasure — 
 toil, the most severe and unremitting ; pleasure, the 
 most varied and absorbing. I speak not of the 
 special character of either, how they are controlled 
 by other influences and affected by aims and rules 
 beyond themselves. But they are the two great facts 
 which meet us all day long here. And what travel 
 docs is this — it interrupts both. 
 
 Of all breaks in the course and tenour of our lives, 
 except the breaks of disaster and death, it is the 
 
XVII FOREIGN TEA VEL 281 
 
 most abrupt and emphatic. We pass across our 
 own border, and all is new and different Nothing 
 has such an unconscious yet powerful influence in 
 making us feel that we are living continually under 
 the same set of conditions, as hearing in every 
 one's mouth all day long the same familiar words 
 and speech. We start and look round us, if by 
 chance the spell is broken by hearing as we pass by 
 in the street a foreign language. And the sensation 
 of strangeness is of course much greater when, instead 
 of that we are accustomed to, we find every one round 
 us, in the smallest matters as well as the greatest, 
 taking for granted an entirely novel and perhaps 
 perplexing instrument of speech ; when we find our- 
 selves, it may be, absolutely cut off from our fellow- 
 men in the commonest intercourse, by the snapping of 
 a link of which we were hardly conscious till it was 
 broken ; when, even if we are acquainted with the 
 language, it costs us distinct thought and effort to 
 frame our own words, to catch the unaccustomed 
 sound and phrase in reply ; when we hear a language 
 which we consider it an achievement of skill and 
 industry to have mastered, and which we pride 
 ourselves on as a peculiar possession and accomplish- 
 ment of our scholarship, sounding all about us from 
 the mouths of , the ignorant, the poor, the little 
 children. But this is. not the chief break and 
 change. Our condition is changed. Here at *home 
 we have our well-known place, our recognised re- 
 lations to the persons and the system and the society 
 about us, our business, our subordination, our varied 
 ties and bonds with all we see, those whom we know, 
 and those who know us. All at once, we are 
 
282 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvii 
 
 whirling about like unconnected atoms, in a system 
 as vast and organised as our own, but in which we 
 have nothing to bind us to it or assign our position, 
 neither part nor lot, nor function nor interest, 
 touching it and in it, but nowhere of it ; without 
 home of our own in it, without name or recognition, 
 without citizenship, aliens to the laws, the habits, 
 probably the traditional religion, of the com- 
 munity — kingdom, or republic, or empire — in which 
 we are wayfarers or sojourners. Again, it is a 
 change in our social station ; some of course carry 
 this with them wherever they go, but for the most 
 part the distinctions which were sharp and marked at 
 home become confused abroad ; a new set of under- 
 standings arise ; whoever we are, great or small, we 
 are lost in the crowd, and, except occasionally or 
 accidentally, find ourselves all on a level. And our 
 manner of life changes, perhaps is absolutely reversed : 
 we have, it may be, to rough it and put up with 
 rude invasions of our ordinary ways, with abandon- 
 ment of habitual appliances of life ; our own artificial 
 habits have to give way to other artificial ones, fashions 
 are altered, and the rules of intercourse ; very often 
 a simpler manner of living, coarseness and personal 
 hardship, are the price and only condition of our travel. 
 And meanwhile, the whole external scene round us 
 changes. All that outward look of things which had 
 become the accustomed frame of our life, and met 
 our eyes every day, has disappeared, the face of the 
 earth, the cities and homes of men, the outlines of 
 the landscape, the light and aspect of the sky ; and 
 the change is all the more marked and impressive, 
 because wc have not, as at home, the current affairs 
 
XVII FOREIGN TRAVEL 283 
 
 and interests of life to fill the chief place in our 
 thoughts, and we are at leisure to notice and attend 
 to all that is strange and different about us, as 
 it passes, perhaps, in rapid succession, day after 
 day, and with every kind of variation, before our 
 eyes. 
 
 Now it seems to me that in this marked and 
 complete break in our way of life, marked and com- 
 plete for the time, but not violent and painful, there 
 is a great opportunity. In our life of work and 
 business, more so in the life of amusement and 
 pleasure-seeking, we get into grooves. We get en- 
 tangled and engrossed, and lose our power of 
 reviewing our position, and finding our true bearings, 
 and choosing freely our course. Day after day 
 brings the same cares, the same motives, the same 
 rivalries and antipathies, the same habits, the same 
 aims. We are unable to rise above them, to look at 
 them as it were from a distance : our perspective is 
 confused or lost. In this unceasing toil, in this un- 
 ceasing excitement, we know, \yq feel, that there are 
 enormous and formidable temptations — temptations 
 all the more grave, that the uniformity and constant 
 strong current of custom keeps them out of sight, 
 while they are acting upon us. We do need, if we 
 are to maintain our moral health and power, a pause, 
 a rest, for collecting ourselves, for disengaging our- 
 selves from the blind round of custom. And siich a 
 pause, so salutary, so full of profit, may be, if we will 
 use it, the entire reversal of occupation and custom 
 involved in foreign travel. Change of objects and 
 of scenes is a potent remedy to the sick mind and 
 body : it may be as precious in bracing, elevating. 
 
284 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvil 
 
 quickening our moral nature ; in restoring the 
 balance and harmony between its elements ; in easing 
 and restoring the springs which have been strained 
 by some exclusive and over-constant pressure. 
 
 And the refreshment may be so great. Far 
 indeed be it from me to suppose, that without 
 passing outside our own borders, there may not be 
 found enough and to spare, in our English homes, 
 our English landscape, our English hills, to charm 
 and satisfy, not only with the sense of novelty, but 
 of beauty. Our own land, our own cities, our own 
 rivers, will well bear searching through, and will not 
 be exhausted when we have done. But the world is 
 wide and wonderful. "The earth is the Lord's, and 
 all that therein is : the compass of the world, and 
 they that dwell therein." It reflects the infinite mani- 
 foldness of His powers. His purposes. His thoughts ; 
 it is the spectacle, in each age of time, of the amazing 
 and overpowering variety of faculty, and gift, and 
 power, ever showing themselves in fresh and unex- 
 pected ways, in the race which He has made to 
 dwell here. It is a spectacle worth becoming 
 acquainted with. Noble and beautiful as is that 
 which we have at home, there is greatness which is 
 not ours, there is beauty which is denied to us, there 
 are endowments, there are achievements which we 
 must not pretend to. We may make them in a 
 measure our own, but we must go out of ourselves 
 to do so. Foreign travel is like the opening to 
 us of a new literature, in its unknown ideas, its 
 unimagined powers and aims. The poet has re- 
 versed the analogy ; he has used the explorer's 
 joy : — 
 
XVII FOREIGN TRAVEL 285 
 
 . . . like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
 He stared at the Pacific . . . 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien,i — 
 
 to express the image of his own awestruck glad- 
 ness, when the great domains of poetry which Homer 
 ruled were first made known to him. But it is 
 as true to say that the varied trains of surprise 
 and interest excited by a first acquaintance with a 
 great work of genius, or a first introduction into the 
 truths of a new science, represent the effect of a 
 living and personal contact with scenes and manners 
 and men which are unlike ours. We become in a 
 fresh measure alive to the narrowness of our past 
 horizon, we find it widening and widening onwards, 
 with new disclosures, with hitherto unconceived 
 possibilities, with enlarged experience and quickened 
 curiosity and altered points of view. A man turns 
 a new page in his life, when he finds himself actually 
 face to face with that he has heard of and imagined, 
 and knows perhaps familiarly in books, but now for 
 the first time beholds in its completeness, with its real 
 surroundings, its real atmosphere, as one connected 
 whole. It may be things, it may be men ; but he 
 understands that he has that which, whether for 
 knowledge or for delight, nothing but presence could 
 have given him. He has gained a new possession ; 
 he has gained that which enables him to put in new 
 and authentic touches in his picture of the world ; 
 to strengthen, to correct, to amplify his thought of 
 its realities. He has gained new bonds of interest, 
 it may be of sympathy, with his kind, with this 
 earth, his dwelling-place ; he has formed new relations 
 
 1 Keats' sonnet, On first looking into Chapman's Homer. 
 
286 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xmi 
 
 with human minds and characters ; he has formed 
 new ties with new places, and has come perhaps 
 to feel for them an affection akin to that of 
 home. He has gained that which he could 
 gain no other way, of a first-hand knowledge of the 
 magnificence, the scale, the lavish variety, the charm, 
 the strangeness of nature ; of the manifold ways in 
 which men who are alive with us now live their life, 
 and direct their course, and fashion their social order 
 and the portion of the world allotted to them, and 
 use their gifts, and mark their passage through time. 
 To have seen with our eyes the river of Egypt and 
 the remains of its mysterious civilisation ; to have 
 seen with our eyes the hills of Galilee, and the golden- 
 hued columns of the broken Parthenon, and the 
 splendour in decay of imperial cities, the Old and 
 the New Rome ; to have become acquainted with what 
 makes up the daily life of a strange community, its 
 peculiar customs, its common sights, the faces of its 
 people, the forms of nature, the inventions of art, 
 the governing passions, the fixed pursuits, the char- 
 acteristic ideas, social, political, religious, which sway 
 the minds of millions ; or again, to have known what 
 nature can be, in her greatness and strength, in her 
 stability and vast calm, in her terrors which never 
 visit us here, in her luxuriance and glory which here 
 she austerely withholds from us, her floods and end- 
 less plains and her mountain peaks, her Atlantic 
 waves, her tropical storms, her perpetual ice-fields — 
 to have had our eyes rest on all these things in their 
 own homes, as part, natural and harmonious, of that 
 stage to which wc for the moment were transferred 
 from our familiar places — this is to have passed into 
 
XVII FOREIGN TRAVEL 287 
 
 a new level of life, to have the veil so far removed 
 which hangs between our limited sight and feeble 
 imagination, and the vast and wonderful facts of 
 the existing world. Nor is it necessary, in order 
 to gain this sense of things beyond ourselves, that 
 we should be ever searching for unvisited fields of 
 travel. The world is always new, to those who have 
 eyes to see and minds to think ; and the most 
 beaten track will never be vulgarised by the crowd, 
 will never lose whatever it has of intrinsic charm and 
 value, will furnish fresh and increasing interest at 
 each repeated visit, if only we bring with us the 
 sympathy and the alertness of observation without 
 which all travel is vain. And there is this about 
 those days when we are allowed, perhaps, some new 
 and striking insight into the great things the world is 
 full of — that the charm and delight are not confined 
 to the moment. They form for us a treasure of re- 
 membrance. Nay, they come back to us, it may be, 
 in their force and meaning, when the present vision 
 has passed away. Perhaps at the time we were not 
 able to compass and reduce to order the impres- 
 sions pouring in upon us. It is after-reflection which 
 drives them home, which makes them our own for 
 good, which makes us understand what we were 
 feeling, when we thought we were only gazing. We 
 knew it not, perhaps, when we were going through 
 some new experience, or hearing some unaccustomed 
 voice, when some wonder of nature or genius was 
 shown to us — we were dull or weary or confused ; 
 but afterwards, it turns out to have been a turning- 
 point in our mental or spiritual history. In these 
 things, as it has been said of higher things, " we feel 
 
288 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvii 
 
 at the time " — feel without knowing all we do feel — 
 " we reason and recognise afterwards." 
 
 This, travel may do for us — for us, to whom it is 
 something secondary and incidental, not as to the 
 discoverer, the scope and work of his life. It is a 
 break and interruption and temporary change ; an 
 interruption for us in that world, of which here it is 
 eminently true that 
 
 Late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. ^ 
 
 It is a healthy interruption, it is a fruitful interruption, 
 which refreshes, and, if we will, purifies, by giving for 
 the time a fresh direction to interest and a fresh aim 
 to effort It opens to us the opportunity of turning to 
 simpler enjoyments, "to nobler loves and nobler cares." 
 Into the prosaic round of life, it brings in something 
 of the romantic, the adventurous, the impressive ; into 
 our monotony of comfort, it brings the discipline of 
 slight trials of patience and endurance, of slight sur- 
 renders of ease, of slight loss of importance. And it 
 may furnish us not only with many pleasant hours as 
 they come, but with a store of delightful and precious 
 remembrances, which shall come back upon us in the 
 dust and heat of business to enlighten and cheer, in the 
 confusion and whirl of excitement to calm and warn. 
 2. I pass to the other part of my subject. This is 
 what travel may do for us. What ought we to do, that 
 its opportunities may not be thrown away? Three 
 things seem to me to impair and spoil the effect of 
 travel, both as a recreation and a discipline, (i) 
 Frivolity and careless, aimless ignorance ; (2) The 
 opposite faults of unjust dislikes and unreal sympathies; 
 
 1 Wordsworth, Miscellaneous Sonnets, xxxiii. 
 
XVII FOREIGN TRA VEL 289 
 
 and (3) The loosening of the bands of self-control, 
 and the evil of forgetting, in the bustle and novelty- 
 round us, our recognised standard of duty and right 
 
 I. There is the danger of frivolity ; and many 
 who are not frivolous at home, think that they have 
 nothing to do but to be frivolous abroad. And it is 
 melancholy to see how, in the presence of the grandest 
 and noblest spectacles, people may stand and gaze 
 with eyes which cannot see, and minds unconscious 
 of the interest before them. There may be good in 
 the mere change of scene. But where there is so 
 much more to be had of present and of permanent 
 gain, it is a shame when for mere idleness and want 
 of thought this gain is thrown away. Lazy, unin- 
 telligent travelling is like lazy reading : in reading, 
 what we learn and what delights us is in proportion 
 to what we bring of our own : " we receive but what 
 we give " ; the page, which is flat and without mean- 
 ing to the unprepared mind, or to the uncongenial 
 or unawakened mood, comes out in light and power 
 to the quickened thought which meets it half-way. 
 And so among these new and unaccustomed scenes, 
 in which we often feel ourselves so stupid and out of 
 tune that we can notice nothing but the most contemp- 
 tible trivialities, it is we, not they, that are in fault. 
 We have come to them with listless and vacant minds, 
 without having taken any trouble to fit ourselves for 
 our new experience, without knowing what to l©ok 
 for, or what wealth of interest underlies the bare sights 
 which meet our eye, or what other minds have seen and 
 felt and thought in the presence of them. And we 
 have no excuse. Books cannot take the place of travel, 
 but they may help indefinitely the value and the oppor- 
 
 C.S.,P. U 
 
290 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvii 
 
 tunities of travel. Where formerly people saw nothing, 
 or saw but vaguely and imperfectly, our generation 
 may see, if it will. The great features of nature, the 
 rocks and the mountains, the waters and the clouds, 
 have been in a manner newly disclosed to us. The 
 keen and discerning eyes of genius have studied them, 
 and by painting and eloquent commentary our teachers 
 have opened our eyes also. The masters of natural 
 science, the historians, the poets, are all there to help 
 us ; and they will tell us, too, that the man who goes 
 abroad with his own special questions to pursue, and 
 points of interest to watch, who under the outward 
 pomp and grand irregularity of nature traces its 
 hidden and constant laws or its mysterious affinities 
 with human feeling, who passes beyond that he sees 
 and admires to what men have done there — to the 
 course of an eventful history, or the growth of a 
 polity, or the characteristics of a social state — is as far 
 above the crowd of his fellow-travellers in the noble- 
 ness and keenness of his enjoyment as the understand- 
 ing or discerning eye is above the eye which knows no 
 meaning in what it sees. Unless we come with some- 
 thing serious even in our play, unless we come with 
 minds capable of being stirred, easily to be enlightened 
 and widened, able to investigate and interpret and 
 assimilate what is presented to our experience, the 
 question must often be asked of us, when we find 
 ourselves in famous cities or among the marvels of 
 nature — " What are you doing here, idling, trifling, 
 wasting time, where all is so out of proportion with 
 your trifling, and rebukes it ? Here you are come to 
 see where men have been in earnest, have done or 
 have suffered, where God has so displayed His glory 
 
XV 1 1 FOREIGN TRA VEL 29 1 
 
 and His awfulness, — why not have stayed at home, 
 if you came only for vanity and aimless lounging ; if 
 not to meet what you knew would meet you here, and 
 honestly to do your best to recognise it ? " 
 
 2. We miss what we might gain, or we spoil it, by 
 our want of equity or our ill-informed and hasty 
 sympathy ; by our want of care and consideration in 
 our comparisons and our judgments. We start with 
 the natural illusion, but yet it is an illusion, that our 
 standard is the standard for all the world. We find 
 ourselves thrown among people whose whole experi- 
 ence of life, whose memories, whose associations, whose 
 habitual thought on the deepest and gravest matters 
 of human life, are widely different from our own. 
 And we make one of two mistakes. The most 
 common, naturally, is one of dislike and contempt. 
 I know few things more painful than the way in 
 which Englishmen sometimes forget in a foreign land 
 the right to their own ways, their own customs — it 
 may be their own fashions — of its inhabitants. We 
 forget the great saying of the large-hearted Apostle — 
 that God " hath made of one blood all nations of men 
 for to dwell on all the face of the earth." We forget 
 that they are at home in the land which God gave 
 them as He gave us ours ; and that we are there 
 simply for our own pleasure, and not because they 
 want us. And so we misg what it might do us much 
 good to learn, the special gifts, the special perfecti(5ns, 
 of power, of intellect, of moral quality, of character 
 and temper, which God has bestowed on them in 
 contrast to our own ^ some in which they leave us 
 far behind and show a nobler ideal and more refined 
 standard. And we forget further, very often, that 
 
292 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvil 
 
 these foreigners, who are so unlike ourselves, belong, 
 as much as we do, to the brotherhood of Christian 
 people. They are divided from us by ancient, 
 perhaps incurable, quarrels ; they have grown up 
 under a different tradition and discipline ; they wor- 
 ship in a way which we disapprove and shrink from ; 
 but if they are blind to the fact, yet zve ought not to 
 be, that in that Creed, that Prayer, those Sacra- 
 ments which make Christendom one, they with us 
 and we with them are together ; that they and we 
 go back to the same sacred and awful beginnings — to 
 Pentecost, to Calvary, to Bethlehem ; that they belong 
 to Christ our Lord as we do, that they die as we do 
 in the hope of His Resurrection. But we are so 
 alive to our differences, broad and glaring doubtless 
 as many of them are, that we give scarcely a thought 
 to our agreement. We pass through their churches 
 as if they were little better than idol fanes. We 
 stand and look on with cold and almost insolent 
 unconcern on worship which embodies the devotion 
 of sincere and fervent hearts, and which they, how- 
 ever mistaken, mean and hope to be pleasing to 
 Christ. We criticise with easy indifference, and 
 without troubling ourselves to understand them, 
 venerable rites which, with whatever accompanying 
 error or hurtful usage, have kept before the thoughts 
 and the hearts of men the memory of Christ's 
 Passion, through the lands of Europe and the 
 changeful centuries of its history. Or we make 
 the opposite mistake, — more respectable, I think, in 
 its origin but as unreasonable and as injurious. 
 When we begin to understand their ways, their 
 meaning, their feelings, we think that we cannot do 
 
XVII FOREIGN TRAVEL 
 
 293 
 
 better than at once to copy them. With the same 
 thoughtlessness, the same want of justice, with which 
 others impatiently condemn, we assert our superiority 
 to prejudice by indiscriminate admiration and un- 
 balanced sympathy. We become partizans against 
 ourselves, against the assumptions, the ideas, the 
 feelings, the fashions, with which we were brought 
 up — partizans, with necessarily partial experience, a 
 shallow knowledge, and an essentially artificial and 
 false attitude of mind. It is not so, that contact 
 with foreign things and men must widen and enrich 
 our thoughts, whether on literature or manners or 
 religion : it is not by hasty fancies and self-willed 
 imitations that we are to correct the enormous fault 
 of self-complacency. To be true to ourselves, and 
 to what we have of good and noble, is not to be 
 confounded with prejudice. What we owe to those 
 among whom we are strangers is respect ancj justice : 
 respect, from a sense of the smallness of our know- 
 ledge and power of judging ; justice, because where 
 there is good, where there is superiority, we are bound 
 to recognise it. If deeper sympathies are to come, 
 let them come with larger and more cautious ac- 
 quaintance, naturally, gradually, reasonably, not as 
 an unreasoning revolt against unreasoning dislikes. 
 But certainly it is not they who depreciate what is 
 their own — the familiar blessings and excellences 
 which they know and which have made them what 
 they are — who can justly set a value on the good 
 things of others. 
 
 3. And lastly, there is the danger accompanying 
 all intermission in the ordinary habits of life. We 
 are tempted to give ourselves the privilege of a 
 
294 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvii 
 
 larger and unwonted liberty, and in the hurry and 
 bustle of novel ways we lose our bearings ; we let 
 ourselves be distracted and confused by the crowding 
 and changefulness of our impressions ; we allow our 
 vigilance over ourselves to be put to sleep ; we 
 accept as inevitable a dissipation and indolence of 
 mind of which we should be ashamed at home. 
 It is a perilous thing to most of us to feel our- 
 selves out of the control of our accustomed restraints, 
 with all removed that insensibly reminded us of 
 law and duty and personal obligation ; to feel our- 
 selves suddenly cast loose from the orderly system 
 of which we were part, having only ourselves to 
 please, with no ties to anything about us, with 
 nothing to shame us if we misuse our freedom. And 
 further, in the break-up of habits, and the haste 
 of movement, and the rush of new objects, it is 
 difficult to keep that power over ourselves which 
 we need in relaxation as well as in work. " Heaven 
 is as near us by sea as by land," was the intrepid 
 sailor's word in danger : heaven is as near us, amid 
 all that dazzles, or amazes, or repels us in a foreign 
 land, as in an English village ; as near us in its 
 claims, its citizenship, its holiness, its hopes. And 
 woe to us if we forget it ; woe to any good or 
 delight of our travel if we allow anything new, 
 anything troublesome, to blot out, even for a time, 
 what we remember of it at home. In whatever 
 way we find it most profitable to keep up that 
 remembrance, unless we make a law to ourselves, 
 in one manner or another to keep it up, to recall 
 the truths and the prayers by which we live in 
 England, we shall come back the worse for our 
 
XVII FOREIGN TRAVEL 295 
 
 travelling, with our reverence for duty blunted and 
 enfeebled, with our standards of right deranged, with 
 our ideas of truth disturbed and shaken. And 
 surely, if we would only collect ourselves, if we 
 would only withdraw our minds for a time from 
 the importunate claims of visible novelty, there is 
 no place where we ought more keenly and deeply 
 to feel the presence of the Lord whom we worship 
 than in some famous spot where His hand has 
 passed in judgment, or is still open in magnifi- 
 cence and beauty ; no place more befitting the 
 seriousness of self- judgment and penitence than 
 when we are alone in the solitudes of the sea or 
 the desert ; no place where the mingled greatness 
 and littleness of man, and the love and righteousness 
 of God, prompt more naturally the great strains of 
 the Te Deiun than in concert with the roar of 
 mighty torrents, or when morning breaks over the 
 silence of the everlasting hills. 
 
 And now the question may be asked. What has 
 all this to do with Christian preaching ? It has 
 this : that every real part of our life ought to be 
 part of our Christian life, and that Christian teaching 
 is within its sphere in dealing with anything that 
 is an important part of the discipline, the trial, the 
 opportunity of those with whom it has to do. 
 Here is a great department of the lives of thousands. 
 It may be an utter waste of time, or it may* be 
 time spent to the greatest advantage. It has its 
 obvious openings and chances for good ; it has its 
 characteristic dangers and temptations. They are 
 things which exist in fact ; they do actually make 
 men better or worse, raise them in character or 
 
296 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xvii 
 
 corrupt them. It is not unsuitable to this place 
 to urge on Christians that what they do they should 
 do well, should do wisely and not unwisely. No 
 matter that the same thing is said by others in 
 other ways, and perhaps much better. If the sacred- 
 ness of a place, or the solemnity of a holy hour, 
 could impress more strongly on men that for all 
 that makes life enjoyable and full of blessings, for 
 all that relieves its weariness and makes up here 
 for its disappointments and pain, for all leisure, and 
 ease, and light, and greatness, and beauty, all the 
 gifts of God, which the world seizes upon and turns 
 to evil — for all this they must give account ; that 
 in all this there is a real trial of character, and will, 
 and purpose ; a real training, not in phrase or fancy, 
 but by the very facts of life ; a real means, if they 
 will use it, of becoming more fit for service and use- 
 fulness, each in his vocation and ministry, — if lessons 
 which a moralist might give, may be driven more 
 home by being spoken under the shadow of the Cross 
 and amid the associations of the Lord's Resurrection 
 and triumph in heaven, the attempt may have been 
 worth making. 
 
 God has been very bountiful to us. " The earth 
 is the Lord's, and all that therein is : the compass 
 of the world, and they that dwell therein." Go 
 where we will, we find the tokens and reflections 
 of His perfection, the traces of His manifold gifts 
 and loving-kindness to man. It is but for a short 
 time, the time that we are as children here ; but 
 He grudges not the varied wonders which delight 
 us, and which ought to enlarge and refine our 
 souls. Can we not be wise enough, strong enough, 
 
XVII FOREIGN TRAVEL 297 
 
 self-commanding enough, pure enough in intent and 
 heart to use His great bounty without abusing it ; 
 to use His gifts for the high ends for which they 
 were placed within our reach ? — May they help us 
 in our path to those good things past man's under- 
 standing which He has prepared for them who here 
 have learned to love Him. May they, like all His 
 other benefits, prepare us for what we were meant 
 for at last ; for what flesh and blood can never 
 see — that end of all the changes and chances of 
 this mortal life, of which it is written : " Thine eyes 
 shall see the King in His beauty : they shall behold 
 the land that is very far off." 
 
XVIII 
 RELIGIOUS DISAPPOINTMENTS 
 
 Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another ? 
 St. Matt. xi. t,. 
 
 Was this message of the Baptist from his prison to 
 our Lord for his own sake, or for the sake of his 
 disciples ? Was his own faith shaken, or did he 
 only want to strengthen theirs ? The question has 
 been differently answered. The words at first sight 
 seem to be those of disappointment and perplexity in 
 him from whom they came. But on the other hand, 
 it has seemed inconceivable that he whose life had 
 been so ^wonderful, whose ministry so august and so 
 powerful, who had seen signs and heard voices from 
 heaven, and whose confession of Him who was to 
 come had been so emphatic and so unwavering, 
 could under any circumstances of adversity and trial 
 become a doubter or a complainer, — could ever have 
 been " offended " at Him to whom he had borne such 
 witness. It has seemed incredible, according to 
 the laws of human character ; it has seemed irre- 
 verent to the memory of so great a saint, one whose 
 greatness has been so signally attested by the Master 
 
 I'reached in Kcntisli Town Parish Church, 1S74. 
 
XVIII RELIGIOUS DISAPPOINTMENTS 299 
 
 of Saints and Prophets. How can we suppose such 
 a man's faith to have failed, or even to have been 
 disturbed ? 
 
 Yet the Bible is a record of the faith, even of 
 saints, failing in the hour of trial — failing, but yet 
 not lost for the failure, John's great predecessor, he 
 whose word had shut up the heavens, and brought 
 down fire on the altar of Carmel, lost hope and 
 heart when, after all the tokens of God's presence, 
 he had to fly for his life to the wilderness of Mount 
 Sinai. One greater than John in the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, the witness of his Master's power on the Lake 
 of Galilee and at the grave of Lazarus, the witness 
 of his Master's glory on the Holy Mount, he whom 
 not flesh and blood but the Father in Heaven had 
 taught to make that great confession which is the 
 rock on which the Church is built — Peter, fore- 
 warned, prayed for, strong in purpose, equalled 
 before the force of the meanest of his Master's foes, 
 and denied Him. Ldo not see anything strange or 
 improbable in the supposition that John the Baptist 
 in his prison might have been for the time overcome 
 by disheartening thoughts, as Elijah was, as Peter 
 was. To him the contrast was so immense between 
 the vastness of the prospects which he had announced 
 and the present realities of his condition ; between 
 the greatness of his beginnings, and what they had 
 seemed to end in. At his birth were renewed the 
 miracles of the early days, the wonderful story of the 
 Forefather of his people, and his child of promise — 
 of Abraham and Sarah- and Isaac. At his birth, the 
 long dormant gift of prophecy revived : inspired lips 
 welcomed the child of miracle, as one who was to be the 
 
300 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xviii 
 
 Prophet of the Highest, "to go before the face of the 
 Lord to prepare His ways; to give knowledge of salva- 
 tion unto His people, by the remission of their sins " ; 
 it was the first effect of that " tender mercy of our 
 God ; whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited 
 us ; to give light to them that sit in darkness and 
 in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the 
 way of peace." Here was his call and mission ; and 
 his life had answered to it. He had spent his youth 
 in solemn preparation and austere training for his 
 work. He had come, and his awful voice in the 
 desert had shaken all Judcea and Jerusalem and 
 drawn them to listen. Men of all classes, the 
 educated and the crowds, priests and teachers, 
 publicans and soldiers, had felt the edge of his stern 
 words, and had come to his baptism confessing their 
 sins. He had proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven ; and he pointed out, standing among the 
 multitudes, the present King himself. Here were the 
 great beginnings and promise of his ministry. No 
 one for ages had seemed to take such hold on the 
 hearts of his people. The great restoration, of which 
 he was the herald and forerunner, seemed at the very 
 doors. He had seen, he had anointed, the mighty 
 promised Deliverer, whose fan is in His hand, who 
 should throughly purge His floor ; he had been 
 allowed to bear record to the Son of God, whose shoe's 
 latchet he was not worthy to stoop down and unloose; 
 to announce tlic presence of the Lamb of God which 
 taketh away the sin of the world. Here was the 
 promise : what had been the fulfilment ? What 
 fruit had those opening days of enthusiastic hope 
 produced ? Where was that Kingdom of Heaven 
 
xviii RELIGIOUS DISAPPOINTMENTS 301 
 
 which he had ventured to proclaim as at hand ? 
 Where was that Chosen One, w4iom he had so 
 confidently pointed out to his disciples, in whom he 
 recognised the Lamb of God, the Saviour of His 
 people and of the world ? Those early days were 
 passed away. He himself, after stirring the hearts of 
 all men, after winning the confidence of the people, 
 after touching the conscience and gaining the ear of 
 Herod, had been stopped in his career, silenced by 
 the intrigues of a vindictive adulteress. And where 
 was the Kingdom of Heaven which he had announced? 
 To all human judgment, the Kingdom of Heaven had 
 not come. He whom his own faith had acknow- 
 ledged so loyally, was wandering about, an obscure, 
 itinerant teacher, among the villages and wilds of 
 GaHlee, scorned and hated as an ignorant pretender 
 by the wise and the pious of Jerusalem. What had 
 become of all these hopes ? Wliat had been 
 fulfilled of all these high and sublime assurances ? 
 Had it all been but the dream of a heated and 
 hasty faith, wildly shattered by the hard certainties 
 of the real world ? If Peter's faith failed him, with 
 his Lord at his side, does it seem strange that 
 John the Baptist in his prison, apparently forgotten, 
 unprotected, forsaken, should send to ask, in per- 
 plexity and distress — ^'' Art Thou He that should 
 come, or do we look for another?" 
 
 I own that to me his doubt and perplexity eeem 
 very real and very natural ; and not only so, but 
 very instructive, and that in his doubt we have a 
 most valuable lesson. For in his discouragement at 
 the outward prospect of things which met his e}'e, 
 and which he could not fathom, he did what he ought 
 
302 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xviii 
 
 to have done. If he was perplexed, if his faith was 
 shaken by it, yet he did not despair. He did not 
 sink as low as Peter did, or the rest of the Apostles. 
 In his distress, he appealed to Him whom he had 
 such good reason to trust. He appealed to Him 
 whose greatness he had once known, though now it 
 was no longer present to his eyes — the Master whom 
 he had recognised with such unselfish loyalty. And 
 his Master sent him back words of strength and com- 
 fort, which might well encourage him to wait patiently, 
 and throughall darkness and suffering to abide the end. 
 It is, I say, a lesson — a lesson very parallel in 
 what it shows and teaches to what happens in all 
 times. We have in it an example of religious dis- 
 appointment and discouragement, and how it was 
 dealt with. And as long as the world lasts, as long 
 as it is the time of faith and not of sight, the time 
 of beginnings of which we may not see the end, as 
 long as difficulty, failure, perplexity are part of our 
 discipline and probation, we shall have to lay our 
 account for meeting with disappointment about re- 
 ligion, and to deal wisely with its causes and impres- 
 sions. John, I think we may say, was disappointed. 
 He had hoped, and reasonably hoped, great things, 
 great results from the ministry he was charged with, 
 and the cause in which he was engaged ; and his hopes 
 appeared to have come to nothing. Instead, he had 
 seemed to reap more than an ordinary measure of 
 ill-success. I suppose that such a feeling is the feel- 
 ing of many — the feeling, at times, perhaps, of every 
 one who thinks at all — about the general result of re- 
 ligion in the world. Religion is so great in its ideas : 
 it is so partial and imperfect in fulfilling them. Its 
 
xviii RELIGIOUS DISAPPOINTMENTS 303 
 
 words of promise are so magnificent and unstinted, — 
 promises of forgiveness, of cleansing, of victory, of 
 restoration, of improvement, of elevation, of joy, of 
 peace ; yet in the plain matter-of-fact realities of life 
 and character, they seem on a large scale to come on 
 the whole to so little. Its pledges of grace and 
 strength are so boundless ; yet why are men still so 
 weak — why is goodness, not to say saintliness,so rare ? 
 Its rules of living, its standard of motive and action, are 
 pitched as high as they can be, and are exemplified 
 in the Holiest and most adorable of Lives ; but to 
 how few is the Sermon on the Mount and St. Paul's 
 description of charity the real law of conduct ? And 
 then, again, consider the descriptions of religion in 
 the Bible, the prospects which prophecy holds up be- 
 fore us, the anticipations to which the language of 
 prophecy has always given rise, the loftier and more 
 spiritual interpretation put on them in the New 
 Testament : what might it not have seemed reason- 
 able, in the days of the Apostles, to look forward to, 
 of the victories of religion ; what might they not have 
 hoped for, from the gifts of Pentecost, the labours of 
 preachers, the sufferings of saints and martyrs. 
 
 And yet, what has been achieved, how short of the 
 great ideal; how chequered and unlike its beginnings, 
 has been the history of the Church. The Kingdom of 
 God was promised, it was said to have actually come 
 — come, in the hearts and souls of men — come, jn its 
 empire in the world ; but we look about us, and in- 
 stead of the Kingdom of God as portrayed by 
 Prophets and Apostles, we see the old famih'ar im- 
 perfect condition of mankind, swaying still between 
 good and evil, between improvement and corruption ; 
 
304 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xviii 
 
 still full of passions unsubdued, and suffering unabated 
 and uncomforted ; still inconsistent, unregenerate, un- 
 reformed ; still, " through fear of death, subject to 
 bondage " ; as if no such things had happened as the 
 Incarnation and Passion of the Son of God, or the 
 presence in the world of the Eternal Spirit of holiness 
 and power. The wise still turn foolish, and the 
 brave show cowardice, and the trusted betray their 
 trust, and the good turn out weak and poor, and 
 character deteriorates, and each man seems to meet 
 his fatal temptation at last ; and we see old age, in- 
 stead of being refined and purified by experience, 
 showing greater fretfulness and selfish attachment to 
 the world ; and parties and causes which once were 
 noble and lofty dwindle away into factions, and 
 pettiness, and ignoble failure. We expect to be dis- 
 appointed in the world ; but to be disappointed in 
 what has come to heal and save the world, this is 
 bitterness indeed. Were we mistaken in our hopes ? 
 Is there any Divine Power really among men, such 
 as the Gospel assures us of? Is the Kingdom of God 
 really come into the world ? Or must we look for 
 something better ? 
 
 To these misgivings and anxieties there is more 
 than one answer. But the words which our Lord 
 sent back to John the Baptist suggest one which 
 appeals to those very impressions, made by the facts 
 of life, from which our disappointment springs. 
 " Go and show John again those things which ye do 
 hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and the 
 lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf 
 .hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the 
 Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, 
 
XVIII RELIGIOUS DISAPPOINTMENTS 305 
 
 whosoever shall not be offended in Me." As if He 
 had said — There is doubtless, in what men see in 
 Me and in My ways, much at which they may be 
 surprised, shocked, perplexed. I am not here, now, 
 to explain all this. But if they will look, they will 
 see something else too : they will see all round Me, 
 in the train of the Son of Man, power, and love, 
 and compassion, and grace, and consolation, for the 
 very meanest and most hopeless, for men's suffering 
 and their sins, such as never were seen in the world 
 before. That is a sight to appeal to men's serious 
 reason, to their affections, to their higher nature and 
 nobler thoughts, infinitely more than My present 
 humiliation, and what seems to them weakness and 
 failure, ought to arouse their fears. You look at 
 the one, look also at the other. When you are 
 astonished and offended at not seeing in Me more 
 which is great according to the world's measure, ask 
 yourselves whether this world ever before saw any- 
 thing so wonderful and so new on the side of 
 goodness and blessing as what I have brought into 
 it, or anything so worthy of One coming with a 
 message from God of reconciliation and hope ? 
 
 And such is the answer to religious disappoint- 
 ment and discouragement still. Religion is still 
 enveloped in those humiliations and contradictions 
 of our mortal condition, which in the days of His 
 flesh clouded the glory of the Son of God. ♦ As 
 He was, so are we in the world. Flesh and blood 
 could not discern through His veil of abasement 
 and obscurity those Divine and unearthly features 
 of unique and amazing perfection which the good 
 and honest heart of patient faith caught at last 
 C.S.,P. . X 
 
3o6 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xviii 
 
 — caught, and welcomed, and adored. It is not 
 wonderful that we, too, are perplexed and distressed 
 at much that meets us at first sight — much that 
 meets us even after deeper looking. But if sight, 
 and experience, and history have anything at all to 
 tell us, they have something more to show us than 
 unachieved hopes and unfulfilled promises. When 
 we are discouraged by not seeing all we should wish 
 to see, let us consider all that we should not see — 
 of blessing, of goodness, of hope, familiar to us as 
 our daily bread — if the Kingdom of God were not 
 with us. We have now behind us a history of more 
 than eighteen centuries. Take the world — the moral 
 world of man and human character — at the begin- 
 ning, and then in the progress and end, of those 
 centuries, and see whether, with every allowance for 
 immense and oppressive failure, the grace of the 
 Redeemer of mankind has not left its ineffaceable 
 marks, and wrought profound and permanent 
 changes, on all that concerns the motives and 
 actions of men, on all the purposes and laws and 
 aims of human life. Turn away from the near and 
 immediate details, which look so large because they 
 are close to us, and affect us so keenly because they 
 are personal, and look at the course of things on a 
 large scale. What would a man of the old world, 
 standing on the threshold of Christian history, have 
 said, if he could have foreseen the changes, the re- 
 formations of every kind of which Jesus Christ has 
 been the source ? Translate those words of our 
 Lord about His acts of mercy and recovery to men's 
 bodies, into a moral meaning, as pointing to what He 
 has done for the souls, the minds, the moral energies of 
 
XVIII RELIGIOUS DISAPPOINTMENTS 307 
 
 men. Apply them to the moral changes in societies, 
 the conversion of nations, the reclaiming to order 
 of hopeless barbarism, the amelioration of degraded 
 conditions and classes, the care of the poor, the 
 extinction of slavery. Apply them to Christian 
 influences or individuals — the elevation of the ideal 
 of character, the purification of the affections, the 
 introduction into life of nobler aims, the reclaiming 
 of sinners, the power of moral change, that most 
 amazing of new things of the Gospel — the zeal for 
 seeking and saving the lost, the deep and increasing 
 and widening sympathy for every form of human 
 suffering — the new devotion, new first in Christianity, 
 to the service of the poor — the characteristic en- 
 thusiasm, born and cherished in Christianity, for the 
 spread of truth and light, for education, for building 
 up the souls and characters of the young. Apply 
 them to the inner history of the spiritual life— to 
 what the grace of Christ has done in awakening 
 conscience, in breaking through the blinding self- 
 deceit of sin, in cleansing from the growths of moral 
 defilement, in strengthening moral feebleness, in re- 
 storing to life souls dead, as St. Paul calls it, in 
 trespasses and sins. Apply them to facts of ex- 
 perience, which, whatever else has changed since He 
 was here, have not changed. Still from Him comes 
 the purity and trust and joy of holy homes and holy 
 lives. Still from Him comes the softening* and 
 subduing grace, which can break and then heal the 
 disobedient heart, which can restore it to sincerity 
 and peace. Where, but to the loving sternness of 
 the Cross, where but to the outstretched arms of the 
 Crucified and His Ineffable Sacrifice, where but to 
 
3o8 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xviii 
 
 His awful fellowship with us in pain and death, does 
 the parting soul, whose day is over — do the eyes that 
 are closing on the world— turn with imploring hope, 
 in the wrench of separation and amid the horrors 
 of dying,^ in presence of the undisclosed and im- 
 penetrable mysteries that lie behind the grave ? 
 And may not our Lord still send the dispirited and 
 the despondent, as He sent His disheartened servant 
 of old, to the realities which He, and He alone, has 
 introduced into this provisional state of time and 
 incompleteness? Since He has been here, blind men 
 see again, and lame men walk, lepers are cleansed, 
 and deaf hear, dead men are raised, and poor men 
 have the message of glad tidings told them. 
 
 Our days, we say, are unsettled and anxious, and 
 full of perplexity and alarm. They are so ; but let 
 us remember this — there never was a time in the 
 history of Christendom and religion when the days 
 were not so. Each generation has its trials, and if 
 we have ours, our fathers, we may be quite sure, had 
 theirs, which looked as formidable. Meanwhile each 
 century as it passes brings new and accumulating 
 testimony to the power and the vitality of those 
 seeds of light and goodness which the Great Sower 
 has planted in His field, this world. Again and 
 again they spring up afresh, in new blessing and 
 beauty ; again and again new and varied forms of 
 excellence and self-devotion appear ; again and 
 again, after languor and corruption, Christianity 
 asserts its inexhaustible energy of recovery, of im- 
 provement, and advance. There have been days 
 when it seemed as if men might despair, as if it were 
 
 1 " Malheurcuscmcnt, pourctre mort, il fi\ut mourir." — Henri Pencyve. 
 
XVIII RELIGIOUS DISAPPOINTMENTS 309 
 
 all over with the hopes of man and the cause of 
 truth and God. But the time has never yet been, 
 when the cure came not at last to rebuke despair. 
 It is natural, amid the confusions and troubles of 
 life — it is natural to be disquieted, it is natural to 
 fear. The saints of old felt the same perplexities as 
 we do, and were oppressed by the same misgivings. 
 The discipline of their Master had for its end, to teach 
 them patience, to teach them to wait, to teach them 
 that here they must not expect to see the end. But 
 it taught them, too, that though all things seemed 
 against them, God was surely with them. John 
 the Baptist seemed to have wasted his strength in 
 vain, to end his days in ignoble ruin. He knew 
 not that he was the first soldier in the mightiest 
 of conquering armies, and that what to men 
 seemed a miserable death was to God a glorious 
 martyrdom. In his story, in his perplexity, in the 
 message sent to him, we have the lesson, as old as 
 the world, of faith against sight — faith in what is 
 worth believing and worth waiting for, against the 
 importunity of present defeat and failure. " Art 
 Thou He that should come ? " is a question many a 
 time asked since John asked it — asked, as he prob- 
 ably asked it, in despondency and distress. — Judge 
 for yourselves, is the answer, where such power on 
 the side of good and. blessing, where such un- 
 exampled love, where sources of mercy and 4ielp- 
 fulness so energetic, so efficacious, so persistent, 
 could come from. Is not St. Peter's the true, the 
 only conclusion — '*-Lord, to whom shall we go? 
 Thou hast the words of Eternal Life." 
 
XIX 
 A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE^ 
 
 " Lord, what is man, tliat Thou hast such respect unto him : or the son 
 of man, that Thou so regardest him ? Man is like a thing of nought : 
 his time passeth away like a shadow." — Psalm cxliv. 3, 4. 
 
 Pascal describes, with his usual force and directness, 
 the feehngs which sometimes come on a man, when, 
 releasing himself from his acquiescence in the com- 
 monplaces of life, he contemplates his place and 
 existence on the earth, and asks himself — Where am 
 I ? Who put me here ? Is there any one over me, 
 whom I cannot see, but yet with whom I have to 
 do ? "I know not," he says, representing this feeling, 
 " who brought me into the world, nor what the world 
 is, nor what I am myself I am in a terrible igno- 
 rance about everything. I know not what my body 
 is, nor my senses, nor what my soul is, nor even this 
 very part of me which thinks that which I am saying, 
 which reflects on everything and on myself, and 
 yet which knows not itself any more than all the rest. 
 I behold these frightful spaces of the universe which 
 encompass me, and I find myself tied down to a 
 corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I 
 
 1 Preached in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, 1884. 
 
XIX ^ PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE 311 
 
 am set in this place rather than in another, nor why 
 this little time, which is given me to live, is fixed to 
 this point rather than another, of all the eternity 
 which has been before me and which comes after 
 me. I see nothing but what is boundless on all 
 sides — infinities which shut me in like an atom, and 
 like a shadow which lasts but a moment and never 
 comes back. All that I know is that I must soon 
 die ; but what I know least about is that very death 
 which I cannot avoid." ^ 
 
 Something like this must, I think, come occasion- 
 ally with a kind of surprise and shock over the mind 
 of any one who thinks — who holds it worth while to 
 think — about his place here, and lets himself do so. 
 The world is all about us early and late, and its 
 films of custom meet our eyes day after day un- 
 changed ; but sometimes they break, and we seem 
 to see ourselves, standing all alone in existence, 
 beset with questions to which custom and experience 
 have no answer to give. We absolutely lose our- 
 selves in our beginnings and our end ; now in the 
 
 1 Pascal, ii. p. 9 (Faugere). Cf. : "There is no doubt that of all 
 earthly creatures Man is the most important to us, yet we know less 
 of him than any other. His history is more interesting than natural 
 histoiy ; but natural history, though obscure, is much more intel- 
 ligible than man's history, which is a tale half told, and which, 
 even when this world's course is run, .and when, as some think, 
 man may compare notes with other rational beings, will still be 
 a great mystery, of which the beginning and the end are all that 
 can be known to us while the intermediate parts are perpAually 
 filled up. So now pray excuse me if I think that the more grovel- 
 ling and materialistic sciences of matter are not to be despised in 
 comparison with the lofty studies of Minds and Spirits. Our own 
 and our neighbours' minds- are known but very imperfectly, and no 
 new facts will be found till we come in contact with some minds other 
 than human to elicit them by counter-position." — J. Clerk Maxwell 
 (1851), Life, pp. 159, 160. 
 
312 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xix 
 
 present, indeed, we see and feel and think and act ; 
 but even now, where is the spring of all this, and 
 whence comes it ? How came we to be what we 
 are ? What shall we be in the time to come ? 
 What a great part, growing vaster the more we think 
 of it, has what we call accident had in all that has 
 brought us hither — this point of now, which seems to 
 be the convergence and result of countless lines of 
 forces known and unknown ? And the tremendous 
 thought emerges, with even sickening keenness, in 
 its challenge — Which is it ? Am I taken care of by 
 One who knows me, and whose care of me is like my 
 care for my children ? Or am I indeed alone and 
 left all to myself in the world ? 
 
 To these dreary questionings religion is the 
 answer ; except as the answer, religion has no 
 meaning. A creed, a theory of the origin and order 
 of the world is not necessarily religion ; but what- 
 ever the case with other men, no religious man ever 
 doubted that he had a direct and immediate relation 
 to God, that he was God's choice and handiwork 
 and care. Religion, in its earliest and in its most 
 perfect form, rests on this faith, as the first axiom 
 and foundation for all that it feels and hopes and 
 speaks and does and endures. From the earliest 
 Patriarchs to the latest Apostle, from the words 
 spoken to or spoken by Abraham and Jacob, to the 
 dauntless and amazing confidence of St. Paul, standing 
 alone against the world, the same certainty is taken 
 for granted, the same profound conviction breathes ; — 
 from the words of promise to Abraham, " Fear not, 
 Abram : I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great re- 
 ward " — and " in thee shall all families of the earth 
 
A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE 
 
 be blessed," to St. Paul, contemplating the purpose 
 of his life : — " Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called 
 to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God" ; or 
 looking back on it, through the tumults of its course 
 and the uncertainties of its apparent results — " I know 
 whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is 
 able to keep that which I have committed unto Him 
 against that day." It is the same, we know, through 
 that varied history of religion which the Bible has 
 saved from the wrecks of the ages, never to let the 
 world again forget its witness, whether believed or 
 not, that He who called man into being cares for 
 him. And there is one marvellous and unique book, 
 in which religious faith has bloomed and flowered 
 into the most manifold and unlooked-for forms of 
 emotion and affection, which with strange com- 
 pleteness represents all that is truest and deepest in 
 the soul, every shade of its gloom and fear, every 
 flash of its joy and love, which gives back every 
 note through the whole scale of feeling, in its 
 stormiest and -wildest and most dangerous moods, 
 as well as in its most serene and glad and happiest 
 — a book in which every man, at one time or another, 
 has found the words which he wanted as he could 
 find them nowhere else. In the Psalter, men do 
 not take for granted only or believe, they " live and 
 move and have their being," in the faith that God 
 is over them and with them, about their path and 
 about their bed, understanding their thoughts long 
 before. " Whom have I in heaven but Thee : and 
 there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of 
 Thee." " Nevertheless I am alway by Thee : for Thou 
 hast holden me by my right hand." " O my soul. 
 
314 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS Xix 
 
 thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my God, my 
 goods are nothing unto Thee. ... I have set God 
 alway before me : for He is on my right hand, 
 therefore I shall not fall." Such words represent 
 the feeling of religion, in its natural expression in 
 the Psalms. No greater contrast can be imagined 
 between this assured confidence of being watched over 
 and cared for, and that sense of desolate solitariness, 
 like a child lost in the wilderness, described by Pascal. 
 And I need not say that this assumption, which 
 pervades every line of the Book of Psalms, is also 
 the assumption of the Sermon on the Mount, is also 
 the basis of the whole ministry among us of the 
 Son of God, of the action of the Holy Spirit on 
 human character, and of the whole faith of all 
 religious men in every prayer they utter, — the 
 assumption that God has not only done and 
 purposed great things for the race, for the Church, 
 for His chosen and elect ones, but that for every 
 individual soul His eye is ever on it. His hand is over 
 it. His care and sympathy are certain. The very 
 hairs of our head are numbered by Him without 
 whom a sparrow falls not to the ground. Great and 
 least make no difference with Him ; of " these little 
 ones " their angels always behold the face of the 
 Father in heaven ; the one wandering sheep is of as 
 much account as the ninety-nine ; the cup of cold 
 water given to the least is marked and remembered. 
 It is not the will of the Father that one of these 
 little ones, the unknown and neglected ones, should 
 perish : first and last here, may in His judgrnent 
 mean something very different. And in this confi- 
 dence in His care, we pray our familiar daily prayer, 
 
XIX A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE 315 
 
 that He would defend us by His mighty power, anrl 
 grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run 
 into any kind of danger ; but that all our doings may 
 be ordered by His governance to do always that is 
 righteous in His sight, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 We know, confessedly, so little and so partially, 
 that it is not astonishing that difficulties as to this 
 view of God's relations to men present themselves. 
 They arise from different considerations. They arise 
 from our ideas of justice and fairness compared with 
 experience. They arise from our ideas of fixed and un- 
 changing law, as the only real and intelligible order of 
 the world, which cannot bend or deviate to individual 
 needs. But they arise also from a defective power in 
 the human mind of conceiving such an ever-active 
 presence — continual, vigilant, beneficent, judicial. I 
 shall not say anything of the first two sources of 
 objection, because the difficulties raised ^in them 
 reach much farther than to God's care for individuals : 
 they reach to, and claim to bar, the whole religious 
 conception of God. I assume that God is, whatever 
 appearances may threaten my belief, and however 
 the logic of our reasonings entangle themselves in 
 the counter - currents of will and necessity, of 
 personality and law. I assume that God is, in the 
 most real sense, the God of righteousness and mercy 
 and loving-kindness to the world which He has made. 
 But the question for me is. Is He this to me ? Unless 
 He is, what is it to me that great things are done for 
 the world and the race, if I am left, a forgotten 
 waif, to take my chance, unnoticed and unthought 
 of, on the vast "sea of being"? But if this is 
 not so — if I am not forgotten — then I am, as 
 
3i6 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xix 
 
 much as anything else in the world, remembered 
 by Him, taken care of. This is the doctrine, 
 as it is called, of a particular providence. And 
 what an overwhelming — to many, what an incon- 
 ceivable — thought ! To minds formed and trained 
 like ours, accustomed to make distinctions and 
 comparisons between great and small, important 
 and insignificant, that God should care for our earth 
 in any way is difficult to our sense and idea of 
 proportion. In the Book of Psalms we find the 
 earliest expression of this sense of the tremendous 
 contrast ; — man and the immensity of the heavens 
 — "I will consider Thy heavens — the work of 
 Thy fingers : the moon and the stars, which Thou 
 hast ordained. What is man, that Thou art 
 mindful of him ? " — God and the nothingness of 
 man's life — " Lord, what is man, that Thou hast 
 such respect unto him . . . man is like a thing 
 of nought : his time passeth away like a shadow." 
 It seems impossible that God should occupy Himself 
 seriously and deeply — so seriously and deeply as our 
 needs require and as our Creed represents — with one 
 so infinitely small portion of His creation, a portion 
 which our senses, our severest science, our most precise 
 calculations assure us is but like a grain of sand to 
 the wilderness, or a drop of water to the sea. It 
 was a difficulty in the olden days, when this earth 
 was the centre of the universe, and was thought to 
 be in reality, as it seems to human experience, the 
 one scene and object of the care of heaven. But the 
 difficulty is now much enhanced, as our knowledge 
 has expanded the idea of the universe, and expanded 
 also to thought and imagination the idea of God. 
 
XIX A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE 317 
 
 From even the conception, magnificent as it is, of the 
 Psalm — " In His hand are all the corners of the earth: 
 and the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is 
 His, and He made it : and His hands prepared the 
 dry land " — what an interval to the new worlds and 
 new suns of modern astronomy ! God's Infinity, the 
 mind pursues it in vain beyond space which has no 
 end, the flannnantia vicenia of the universe. 
 
 Worlds, 
 To which the heaven of heavens is but a vcil.i 
 
 God's Eternity must have seen, and must be yet to see, 
 countless cwiis vaster and more wonderful than ours. 
 God's Omniscience knows all and always, both Himself 
 and all that is not Himself, ranging to what we call 
 the utmost extent of His kingdom, and down to its 
 lowest depths and most infinitesimal divisions. God's 
 Almighty Power and Absolute Wisdom must find far 
 greater and more amazing scope than things connected 
 with our little transient world, to which we in our 
 thoughts so exclusively confine them. That He in 
 any way should have busied Himself about " us men 
 and our salvation," is a faith to which our measure- 
 ments here, and familiarity with what is real and 
 actual, find it not easy to accommodate themselves. 
 But that He who is beyond the sun, beyond the first 
 morning, is hefe^ to-day, witJi inc, this very moment 
 watching me, guarding me, guiding me, judging me, 
 loving me — the mind reels under the tremendous 
 juxtaposition of the necessity of His immensity and 
 my nothingness. 
 
 This is a difficulty which often impresses 
 
 1 Wordsworth, Preface to The Excursion. 
 
3i8 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xix 
 
 men, when their minds disengage themselves from 
 the traditional and the verbal, affecting them in 
 various ways — harassing, tempting, or paralysing 
 them. But it seems to me to resolve itself, as many 
 difficulties do, into a difficulty not of the reason but 
 of the imagination. It is none the less serious for 
 that, in beings like ourselves, who are swayed so much 
 by that strange power of the mind — so keen, so fickle, 
 often so uncontrollable, so unaccountable. But it is 
 a difficulty of the same kind as that which made it 
 so hard to think that the earth moved, that the 
 heavens stood still. It is a difficulty not of the 
 reason, but of the imagination, which gives to so 
 many mathematical certainties the air of paradox. 
 
 Imagination stands for very different things. It 
 is common to think of it as only something wild, 
 lawless, extravagant. Of course it may be this ; but 
 it is also really a most prosaic and business-like 
 faculty. " That forward, delusive faculty," says Bishop 
 Butler, " ever obtruding beyond its sphere " ; yet 
 nowhere has it been more called upon to widen 
 men's thoughts than in the reasonings of his great 
 argument.^ Nothing is more common than to say 
 that men are cruel, or unjust, or stupid, because they 
 have not enough imagination to see things as they 
 are — to see what the abuses which they tolerate 
 involve, or to open their eyes to the absurd, or to 
 anticipate the inevitable. " What he had previously 
 
 1 Cf. Pascal, ii. pp. 47, 48 (Faugcre) — " C'est cette partie decevante 
 dans rhomme, cette maitresse d'erreur et de faussete, et d'autant plus 
 fourbc qu'elle ne Test pas toujours. . . . 
 
 "Cette superbe puissance ennemie de la raison, qui se plait k la 
 •controler et a la dominer pour montrer combien elle peut en toutes 
 choses, a ctabli dans I'homme une seconde nature." 
 
XIX A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE 319 
 
 only knozvnl' says the historian, speaking of a great 
 disaster fully breaking on a man's mind,^ " he now 
 both knew and imagined." Imagination is at once 
 the most misleading and the most truth-bringing of 
 mental powers. It amuses us with dreams ; and it 
 brings before us the realities for which words are 
 imperfect or feeble equivalents. It is that which 
 gives the power of holding together in thought a vast 
 and intricate system, or the composition of forces and 
 their reciprocal play, or the balancings and counter- 
 poises and compensations of a subtle argument. It 
 deludes, no doubt, the enthusiast and the theoriser; 
 it inveigles the story-teller ; it plays tricks with the 
 average careless thinkers among men ; but it serves, 
 as nothing else can, the mathematician, the discoverer, 
 the man of science, the statesman, as much as it serves 
 the poet and the artist. It translates formulas into 
 that which the mind sees and holds fast. It raises a 
 name or a symbol or an abstraction to a new and 
 higher power, to a real and substantial thing, to a 
 living whole. Give it a substantial basis, and the 
 idea of it almost coincides with the Apostolic definition 
 of faith, as the faculty by which we behold the future 
 and the invisible, " the substance of things hoped for, 
 the evidence of things not seen." 
 
 It is a failure of imagination which in this case 
 makes the difficulty. We do not bring to the 
 mastery of the great question the completed »equip- 
 ment of our complex mental organisation : we leave 
 out that strange and powerful inward faculty, which 
 sees when the eye- sees not, and hears when the ear 
 hears not, and feels and touches when nothing material 
 
 ^ Kinglake's Invasion of the Crwiea, vol. vi. p. 291. 
 
320 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xix 
 
 sends its signals to the brain ; which fills our ab- 
 stractions with reality and life. It is a dull and short- 
 sighted imagination, carrying our familiar comparisons 
 of great and small into the Infinite and the Eternal, 
 which makes us think it disproportionate to God's 
 majesty that He, being so high, should have " respect 
 unto the lowly." It is our power of imagination 
 which is at fault, when it shocks us to bring Him 
 from the Throne of the universe, from the farthest 
 bounds of His Empire, to be the Father of the father- 
 less and Guide of the wanderer, to the pauper's sick- 
 bed and the petty troubles of the school-boy. It is 
 not reason. Why should He, who made and sees 
 and upholds all things, not care for the least thing 
 that His love and wisdom thought good to make ? 
 Would not dry reason say that if He made, He was 
 not only capable of caring. He imcst care ? How 
 could it be otherwise if God is what is meant by 
 the name of God, and not a formula or a blind force 
 or mechanism ? What is it to reason, in a matter 
 like this — the difference between small and great, 
 between the multitude and the few? What is the 
 difference, before the mysterious Creator of both, be- 
 tween the smallest atom and the vastest system ? The 
 absurdity, in the eye of reason, is that He who was 
 able to call the countless multitudes of beings out 
 of nothing, should ever lose sight of one of them. 
 You say that you cannot take it in. Your imagina- 
 tion, confined to the experience of this present state, 
 fails in the effort. But have you called on your 
 imagination to exert its powers in the presence of 
 so tremendous and stimulating an idea as this idea 
 of the Living God ? Because neither we, nor ahy 
 
A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE 
 
 intelligence that you can conceive of, could attend 
 at once to the myriad purposes of His universe at 
 infinitely distant points, cannot you imagine the 
 possibility of His doing so, who is above all created 
 and all conceivable intelligence ? Because it is not 
 wholesome for you to care for trifles, and lose your- 
 self in attempting to follow what is beyond your 
 ken, is He so limited of whom we say in words, that 
 " His wisdom is infinite " ? Let us put meaning and 
 reality into our words, and, though many problems 
 remain unsolved, many questions remain unanswered 
 and unanswerable, this, at least, disappears, that our 
 insignificance is any reason why God should not 
 care for us. Yes, let us open our eyes and see. 
 Does God not care for things because they are small 
 and perish ? Does He, in fact, show His hand less 
 in the flower and insect than in the vast law of life 
 which binds together all living things, than in those 
 laws of force and order and measure upon which the 
 visible world depends ? Is He really more wonderful 
 in the sun, in the light, in the stars, than in the 
 infinities of littleness, which escape our eye ; in the 
 microscopic shell, so perfect and beautiful in its 
 countless patterns ; or in the primitive animal or 
 vegetable cell, pregnant with all the future powers 
 and qualities of life; in the intangible but scientifically 
 necessary molecule ; in the imponderable agents of 
 nature ; in the unreached springs of human thought, 
 — by which He builds up all we are, and lays the 
 ground for all we do ? If present everywhere, why 
 not present to each soul on its course ; — present in 
 His moral attributes, in His mercy, in His love, in 
 His righteousness, in His patience ; — present in His 
 C.S.,1\ • Y 
 
322 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xix 
 
 care and discipline, nurturing the heathen, teaching 
 man knowledge, we know not how, according to 
 each man's case ? He who is Lord of all these worlds, 
 of all these souls, why should it be thought a thing in- 
 credible that He should know them all by name ; that 
 He should, since He is able, guard, direct, help them ? 
 What is their mwiber to Him to whom magnitude 
 is nothing, and who dwells in His own immensity ? 
 To reason, to believe that He cares for the least is 
 as easy as to believe that He cares for the greatest. 
 It is not reason, it is poverty and feebleness of 
 imagination, which is afraid to give Him the govern- 
 ment of the creatures He has cared to make, which 
 shrinks from the instinct which leads us in hours of 
 trouble to put ourselves in His hands, and raises the 
 misgiving that it cannot be that He regards and 
 sympathises with us. 
 
 It is not reason but imagination — imagination 
 narrowed and dulled by the unresisted influences 
 of what we daily see and hear. But imagination 
 may remedy what imagination has maimed and 
 injured. Imagination may, if we will, put us on a 
 fair level with reason ; it may help us, if we will give it 
 fair play, to raise and widen our thoughts to spheres 
 worthy of the subject — help us to realise possibilities 
 and likelihoods against which sight and sense and 
 the experience growing out of them pronounce. 
 We are not talking of common things, of things as 
 they are on the ordinary level of this world, when 
 we talk of the ways of God. We are talking of 
 One who surely must be as infinitely wonderful in 
 His dealings with souls as He is visibly seen to be 
 in the universe of nature. Nothing in nature that 
 
XIX A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE 323 
 
 our knowledge has discovered, putting aside the 
 mere element of magnitude, is more wonderful 
 than the soul and spirit of man ; ^ and not according 
 to the limitations of our material life, not by the 
 laws of time and place and magnitude, can we 
 suppose God, who is the Father of Spirits, to visit 
 and order the souls that He has made. We cannot 
 see Him. We cannot follow Him. We cannot say 
 for certain, that Jiere or tJiere His hand has shown 
 itself. Our age has rightly learned to be more 
 reserved and cautious than ever, in definitely inter- 
 preting God's judgments ; we are more sensible than 
 our fathers always were of the mystery that en- 
 velops them, of the difference between God's know- 
 ledge and ours, of the danger and the mischief of 
 mistakes. In one case only, in our own, we may 
 venture to think that we can sometimes almost 
 discern the nearness of His hand: — in strange dim 
 ways, indeed, which to no one could mean anything 
 but to ourselves — to ourselves only, in that mysterious 
 assurance that tells us that a presence is near us, 
 even in the dark. We cannot tell to others, we 
 cannot prove it to them, or expect them to accept 
 it ; but we may feel ourselves, how God's eye has 
 been upon our life and history, ruling it in mercy 
 and in judgment ; how He has been there, in saving 
 us from ourselves and doing us good that we did not 
 
 » 
 
 1 Not Chaos, not 
 The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, 
 Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out 
 By help of dreams — can breed such fear and awe 
 As fall upon us often when we look 
 Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man. 
 
 Preface to The Excursion. 
 
324 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xix 
 
 want, in adjusting, with strange and awful equity, 
 just the deserved retribution to our mistakes and 
 sins. We do not know enough to trace His pro- 
 vidence in the lives of others ; but in our own, many 
 do know enough to recognise His wisdom, His 
 kindness, His justice, in the prayer refused to be 
 more than compensated, in the stern blow turned into 
 blessings, in the unexpected help at critical times of 
 need — it may be in the fulfilment of the weird saying 
 of the Psalmist, " He gave them their desire, and sent 
 leanness withal into their souls." What is it that 
 has, perhaps, so obstinately accompanied us in our 
 temptations to do wrong ? What is it that has so 
 inexplicably baffled and resisted and balked us, 
 time after time, on the very edge of sin ? Whence 
 have come those persistent warnings, more im- 
 pressive than conscience, at the most unexpected 
 times, from the most unlikely quarters, startling us 
 as if they came from some one who knew our 
 thoughts, unveiling ourselves to ourselves, showing 
 us the precise self-deception which was beguiling us ? 
 Is the Psalmist unreasonable when he cries out, 
 " My times are in Thy hand " ? Is the promise an 
 unmeaning one, " I will guide thee with Mine eye " ? 
 Is the augury groundless, " It is He that teacheth 
 man knowledge, shall not He punish " ? Is his 
 hope idle and vain when he says, " Into Thy hands 
 I commend my spirit : for Thou hast redeemed me, 
 O Lord, Thou God of truth" ? 
 
 The vicissitudes of life, its anxiety, its depression, 
 
 its pains, await us all. And when they come, then, to 
 
 • thinking men, there are but the two great alternatives. 
 
 Is all a blank, incomprehensible, horrible, far mOre 
 
A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE 
 
 strange to reason than even the greatest perplexities 
 which surround the moral government of God ; or is 
 it, as the Book of Psalms represents the world and 
 life — God in the midst of us, God with us, taking part 
 though we see Him not, in all that concerns and 
 interests men, in the strife and fate of kingdoms, in 
 the joys and praises of the saints, in the fears and 
 troubles of the poor and the sinner? It will be well 
 for us, before our trial comes, that we have made up 
 our minds by which to stand ; whether, in this world, 
 at once so bright and so dark — bright with beauty 
 and genius and affection, dark with ignorance and 
 sin and death — we can find no guidance but our own, 
 or whether we can take refuge in the care and 
 providence of God, and rest under the shadow of 
 His wings ; whether we are " strangers in a strange 
 land," or whether we are here for our appointed 
 time, in our appointed and guarded home, among the 
 many homes of God. May our lot be that of the 
 Psalmist, to rest, in our trouble or success, in joy and 
 pain, in life and in death, on that great conviction, 
 than which there is no other stay and foundation for 
 the soul — " Whom have I in heaven but Thee : and 
 there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison 
 of Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth : but God 
 is the strength of my heart, and my portion for 
 ever." 
 
XX 
 
 THE GREAT RESTORATION i 
 
 " For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth : and the former 
 shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." — Isaiah Ixv. 17. 
 
 The Bible and human experience agree in this : 
 that they regard the condition of the world as one 
 of great disorder, with constant tendencies to de- 
 generation and decay, but also as a condition in 
 which disorder and decay are kept in continual 
 check, by remedies, improvement, renewal. " The 
 earth our habitation," says Bishop Butler, '' has the 
 appearance of being a ruin." But it is not a ruin 
 consigned to despair and hopeless wreck. It is a 
 ruin where the work of the rebuilder more than 
 overtakes the work of the destroyer. There are no 
 doubt ruins which no effort can now repair, fixed 
 and irretrievable. But we look at them with awe, 
 and are thankfully conscious that we are not con- 
 cerned in those terrible played-out scenes of human 
 history. However much we may have to correct 
 and amend, the way of amendment is still one of 
 our unforfcitcd possessions. This among the many 
 
 1 Preached at the reopening of St. George's Church, Botolph Lane, 
 1884. 
 
XX THE GREA T KESTORA TION 327 
 
 contradictions of our mortal state is one of the 
 lessons of experience ; and it is a lesson which 
 suggests and justifies hope. It opens before us the 
 reasonable prospect of real and solid progress : of 
 an indefinite strengthening of the healing and re- 
 storing processes, of a restraining and weakening of 
 the tendencies which injure society, perhaps of the 
 extinction of some. But the Bible goes beyond this. 
 It holds up before us indeed, as history does, these 
 two great points of our state here — the actual fact, 
 the sustaining hope. It sets before us decay on one 
 side, repair and new life on the other. It sets before 
 us ruin, no doubt, vast and terrible and recurring ; 
 but also remedies for it, unexpected and amazing, 
 influences of healing which evil cannot tire out and 
 which can cope with its mischief Experience and 
 Scripture unite in putting before us this picture ; 
 but the Bible holds up to us, what history and 
 experience cannot — what nothing in the appearances 
 of this world can warrant even to the most 
 sanguine — the promise of something final and com- 
 plete. Imperfection is now at the best the law of 
 all that is done on this earth ; and, at last, a final 
 passing away, through dreary steps of pain and 
 weakness, is the appointed course of all existence on 
 it, the highest and the lowest. But the Bible, in 
 addition to the support which it gives to our belief 
 in the mighty powers of recovery in the worl(^ that 
 now is, tells us, in the name of God, of something 
 beyond all we can know or even see here, which 
 shall " repair the wastes of time," and accomplish the 
 destiny of God's creation. The great forces of 
 restoration which we see at work under all the dis- 
 
-J 
 
 328 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xx 
 
 advantages of our confused and crippled condition, 
 are to have their victory at last. " The creature itself 
 also, shall be delivered from the bondage of corrup- 
 tion into the glorious liberty of the children of God." 
 
 In this great restoration which the Bible ex- 
 presses in so many ways, there are two distinct 
 things involved: the process itself by which God is 
 preparing for it ; and the end and result of it. The 
 one belongs to this world ; the other to the world to 
 come. 
 
 I . The steps to what St. Peter calls " the restitu- 
 tion of all things," are made here. We are still in 
 the midst of those ruins of God's work, that anarchy, 
 that contradictory and confused world, which has 
 grown out of the revolt of free and responsible wills 
 against the Divine law of right. Darkness and 
 ignorance and self-will and passion have made 
 havoc of man's moral nature. The gulf of separation 
 between man and the Unseen and Most Holy 
 appears at every turn. But all the while, amid all 
 that is strange and dreadful in the aspect of the 
 world, a counter movement is at work. There is 
 life among us, purpose, effort. Physical life may be 
 said to be the continual struggle every moment 
 against surrounding and imminent death : the resist- 
 ance of that undiscoverable principle within us which 
 makes us what we are — against unceasing forces, 
 attacking, exhausting, consuming it ; and it holds its 
 own and lasts, by replacing waste, by repairing 
 injuries, by counteracting and repelling poisons. 
 Just so, in the dispensation by which God, with a 
 patience which has lasted throughout all the ages, 
 seeks to bring back our race to Himself; so is that 
 
THE GREAT RESTORATION 329 
 
 spiritual life maintained among mankind, which 
 seems to hang on such slender threads, and to be 
 threatened by such formidable dangers, and yet 
 survives, and is the only road to the perfection for 
 which we were made. We see the ceaseless 
 tendency downwards, but we see too the unceasing 
 recoil from it. The disheartening spectacle is 
 before our eyes of good wearing out — of good men 
 tiring of what made them good — of noblest things 
 becoming base in the using — of power wasted on self- 
 destruction — of truth and height of character swerving 
 from its road and dwindling into unreality and mean- 
 ness. But this is not the whole of our experience. 
 It is a balance of forces, between the powers of mis- 
 chief and decay and the antagonist powers of repair. 
 Side by side with miserable failure rise up new enter- 
 prises of improvement. The good which foolish or 
 bad men brought to nought to-day is replaced to- 
 morrow by another form of it, from the inexhaustible 
 store of Him fronl whom all good things do come. 
 All seems at one moment drifting to confusion — wc 
 say it is vain to fight against the current ; we think- 
 that all has been lost — when, the next, the tide 
 comes back in its strength to save us, and behold, 
 more than we had lost is recovered. Decay eats 
 into what is strong, saps the sources of life, consumes 
 and lays waste what is beautiful and glorious ; then 
 comes the bold eager hope, and the zeal of» the 
 restorer, calling things back to what they should be. 
 
 Say not the struggle nought availeth, 
 The labour and the wounds are vain, 
 
 The enemy faints not, nor faileth, 
 
 And as things have been they remain. 
 
330 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xx 
 
 If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars ; 
 
 It may be, in yon smoke concealed, 
 Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, 
 
 And, but for you, possess the field. 
 
 For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain. 
 Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main ; 
 
 And not by eastern windows only. 
 
 When daylight comes, comes in the light, 
 
 In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, 
 But westward, look, the land is bright, i 
 
 And thus, silently, slowly, painfully, almost insensibly, 
 is built up out of human souls and lives the spiritual 
 house of God amid the conflicts and fluctuations of 
 time ; its fortunes vary, it bears many a blow and 
 mark from disaster and change and human folly ; yet 
 it rises. The threatening forces of destruction seem 
 to justify the fears or the presages, which confound it 
 with those mortal things that are doomed sooner 
 or later to perish. But the gracious powers which 
 heal and renew and replace and rebuild are as subtle 
 and quick and manifold and untiring as those of 
 ruin. They do their work often out of human sight, 
 often not as human thought would look for ; but 
 through the alternations of wasting and restoration, 
 through the uncertainties and vicissitudes, the ap- 
 parent progress and apparent reverses of what passes 
 in the world, they prepare for the fulfilment of God's 
 purposes ; they are the sure pledge that those pur- 
 poses will be fulfilled. 
 
 So it is: — so are things kept wholesome and hopc- 
 1 Clough's Poems (ed. 1888), p. 452. 
 
A 
 
 XX THE GREAT RESTORATION 331 
 
 ful ; so is evil kept at bay, in ways which tell us at 
 once of our own weakness, and of a strength which 
 will never be allowed to fail us. Like most things 
 here, they bring with them both pain and joy. The 
 forms in which here we mostly know good, are those 
 of healing, remedy, repair, restoration ; the compassion 
 and mercy and pitying love of God, and what man 
 can do to copy it in charity and sacrifice. They 
 run through all our language about the history of 
 souls — the new birth, repentance, a renewed life, 
 the image of God regained. We live, as I said 
 before, in the midst of ruins — ruins of nature, ruins 
 of fashion and opinions gone by, ruins of human 
 works, and pride, and success, ruins of human 
 generations and all their passions and interests, the 
 ruins of our former lives and former selves ; but 
 ruins, out of which fresh life is ever springing, which 
 are ever becoming new, and the materials of better 
 things, and more beautiful and perfect. Yes, it is 
 " truth " 
 
 That men may rise on stepping stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things. ^ 
 
 But still it is, to eyes here, a chequered prospect. 
 If we live long enough, we may see things change 
 for the better, in ways which, when we were young, 
 we never dared to dream of or hope for. But if 
 we live long enough, we shall, also, certainly see ideas, 
 prospects, achievements, memories, which we» set 
 most store by, passing out of date and a new world 
 coming in, of blended good and evil, but which is 
 not ours — which is leaving us fast behind in its 
 sympathies and aims^which it is one of the pains 
 
 * In iMemoriam, i. 
 
332 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xx 
 
 of advancing years not to be able to keep up with 
 or understand. No doubt, what we are improving 
 and renewing will one day be judged, perhaps be 
 found fault with, be undone, just as we have tried to 
 better what was left to us imperfect. But when a 
 pang shoots through us at such thoughts, let us 
 remember that this unceasing destiny of change, this 
 memorial of our " bondage to decay," also carries 
 with it all the hopes and possibilities of improvement 
 to the world, and points onward to their accomplish- 
 ment at last. The perfect work which needs no 
 mercy, which asks no forgiveness, which requires no 
 correction, which calls for and admits of no repair — 
 that is for the state which is to come. 
 
 2. For — to come to the second point, the end of 
 all these wonderful processes — as there is one decay 
 and one overthrow, for which there is no restoration 
 here, the overthrow of death, so there is a restoration 
 beyond it, on which no further change can pass. 
 Here, we rebuild, we renew, we remould and refashion 
 our institutions, our lives, our dwelling-houses, our 
 household thoughts : we try, if we are wise, to bring 
 them nearer and nearer to that excellence, unattain- 
 able as it is, which God has made us long for ; we 
 hold in our hands wonderful powers of self-correction, 
 remedy, compensation. But at last we meet with 
 that for which here there is no repair, no renewing. 
 There is a break and pause in that familiar order of 
 continual change. Hopes, and fears, and ignorance, 
 and success, and failure give place to the fixity, the 
 certainties of death. But then begins the other 
 order — the order of the unchangeable, the order of 
 the perfect and the final. In that order, the in- 
 
XX THE GREAT RESTORATION 333 
 
 corruptible takes the place of the decaying and the 
 perishing, and life triumphs without the companion- 
 ship of death. The goal is reached : the preparation, 
 the slow discipline of improvement, the painful and 
 dangerous trial, are left behind. That is what is 
 reserved for us after all our changes — for us, if at 
 last, by God's all-pitying, all-forgiving grace, we are 
 counted worthy ; for us, if at last we find mercy — 
 we, to whom it is so hard to correct what is amiss 
 in us, and who with all our trying do so little. The 
 shattered tabernacle is to pass into a house not made 
 with hands, eternal in the heavens ; the bones which 
 God had broken, the humbled and dishonoured 
 form of the dead, shall once more be restored — once 
 and for all. Once more, and then for ever, " the 
 eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of 
 the deaf be unstopped . . . and the tongue of the 
 dumb sing"; for One is coming, "who shall change 
 our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto 
 His glorious body." In place of what we have 
 Jiere of best, will be the inheritance of the saints 
 in light, the victory over sin and pain and death, 
 the Vision of God. And in place of what we 
 have here of worst, there will be that which will 
 make up for all losses, and recompense all toil, and 
 obliterate all sufferings, and efface the memory of 
 even shame — the voice of acceptance from our Master, 
 the Holy One and the True — " Well done, ^thou 
 good and faithful servant " ; the rest that never 
 shall be broken; the benediction which shall wipe 
 away for ever all tears from all eyes. 
 
 Thoughts like these come naturally into our minds 
 amid the satisfactions — the rightful satisfactions — of 
 
334 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xx 
 
 a day like this. You do well to keep festival over the 
 completion of your work. You have been distressed 
 at the waste made by time and neglect, and your 
 hearts have kindled in you to repair it. You have 
 understood something of the mingled shame and in- 
 dignation and joy and hope which filled the children 
 of the returning captivity of Judah, and burst forth 
 in those Psalms of Degrees which add such deep and 
 pathetic interest to the histories of Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah. You have stirred yourselves up to do your 
 part in your time against the ceaseless encroachments 
 of indifference and careless selfishness, and now you 
 have good reason to rejoice to see what has come of 
 your efforts. You will not think that I want to 
 throw a shade on your rejoicing, if I remind you 
 that there is no building, no renewing here for 
 eternity ; that what you make new must again grow 
 old, what you build, those after you may pull down. 
 What is all restoring here, but making fresh and 
 vigorous for our time and according to our duty, that 
 which must grow obsolete when we are gone ? Tastes 
 change and work wears out, and what one age 
 admires another throws aside. " For the fashion of 
 this world passeth away." But there is that beyond 
 it, which does not pass away. There is that which, 
 when once it is made new, never grows old. There 
 is a restoration of what is decayed, a recovery of 
 lost beauty and majesty, which, when once it has 
 been revealed, shall never more be out of date. See, 
 in what you are doing and celebrating to-day, the 
 presage and figure of that eternal consummation. 
 See, in the share which you take in the ever-continu- 
 ing necessities of repair and improvement, the pledge 
 
XX THE GREAT RESTORATION 335 
 
 and sign, that the crooked shall at last be made 
 straight, and the ruins built again ; that that magnifi- 
 cent promise which echoes once and again through- 
 out Isaiah's prophecy shall be in truth fulfilled — 
 " They shall build the old wastes, they shall raise 
 up the former desolations"; "Thou shalt raise up 
 the foundations of many generations ; and thou shalt 
 be called, The repairer of the breach. The restorer of 
 paths to dwell in." Look on your work to-day, not 
 in its earthly perishableness, but as your offering in 
 the sight of the Lord of all the ages, to attest your 
 confidence in His Eternal Word. Go forward in your 
 thoughts to that great time, when God, " who has so 
 wonderfully created man and more wonderfully re- 
 deemed him,"^ shall at length own for ever the work 
 of His own hands : " when the world shall know and 
 see the restoring of the things that have been cast 
 down, the renewing of the things that have grown old, 
 the return of all things once more to their perfection, 
 through Him in whom they took their beginning — 
 Jesus Christ the Lord." ^ 
 
 1 Cf. Collects in Roman Missal (mixture of the chalice), and Office 
 for Easter Eve, 
 
XXI 
 
 THE TIMES AND SEASONS OF 
 GOD'S WORKING 1 
 
 " And He said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the 
 seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. But ye 
 shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you : 
 and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all 
 Judrea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.'' 
 — Acts i. 7, 8. 
 
 The Apostles felt themselves standing on the 
 threshold of a new world when they asked the 
 question to which these words were the answer. 
 Dimly, indeed, and vaguely, for they knew as yet 
 but little of the realities amid which they stood, and 
 of the momentous changes which had passed over 
 the prospects of mankind. They were as men 
 suddenly transported to a new sphere where all 
 proportions and perspectives were strange and differ- 
 ent, and defied their measurements. Still, they felt 
 that a new age had come ; and the form in which 
 Jewish imagination and Jewish hopes had shaped it 
 out of the visions and promises of prophecy at once 
 presented itself to their minds — " Wilt Thou at this 
 
 1 Preached at the opening of the Chapel of St. Oswald's School, 
 Ellesmere, 1884. 
 
XXI TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 337 
 
 time restore — art Thou at this time restoring — the 
 kingdom to Israel ? " Any reversal of present things 
 might be thought of ; for one thing was certain : the 
 old fundamental conditions of life and death were 
 altered before them ; their Teacher and Master, 
 whom they had seen die, was alive again from the 
 dead, was with them once more as of old, and though, 
 as was inevitable after such a change, in new and 
 unaccustomed relations to them, could still be seen 
 with their eyes and handled with their hands. What 
 was this overwhelming, unexampled fact the begin- 
 ning of? What unthought-of, unhoped-for, incon- 
 ceivable changes did it announce and bring in ? 
 Plainly they were on the eve of a revolution such as 
 the world had not yet seen. What more natural 
 than that they should wish to look down the ages 
 that were coming — to descry something of what was 
 to follow, of what must be close at hand, for them- 
 selves and for all that they loved and cared about ? 
 
 It was a natural question, but in itself a hopeless 
 one. To understand the answer to a question, there 
 must be not only the truth and fulness of the 
 information given, but the prepared and experienced 
 and illuminated mind. And at that period of their 
 training, the answer to their question, if it had been 
 put before them, would have come with all the 
 perplexities of an enigma, would have found them 
 incapable of the faintest approach to comprehending 
 it. For it would have been the history of the 
 Christian Church. Imagine the vision of the actual 
 history of the Christian Church, as it has been in fact, 
 as it was known in God's foresight, unrolled before 
 them at that moment. What could they have made 
 C.S.,P. Z 
 
338 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xxi 
 
 of it ? How could they have taken it in ? What a 
 scene of confusion, what an inconceivable series of 
 contradictions and surprises, of perplexing mixtures 
 of good and evil, of unheard-of triumphs and shocks 
 of failure, would it have looked to men with only 
 their experience. Even that early part of it which 
 was to fall within the limit of their lives, even that 
 part of it told in the Book of the Acts, would have 
 been to them then as the interests of statesmen, or 
 the debates of a Parliament, or the controversies of 
 science in the schools, are to the minds of children : 
 different from all their assumptions, not to be 
 adjusted to their common ways of thinking. Their 
 question was not only a premature one : it was one 
 which till they were changed, in spirit and level of 
 thought, it would have been useless to answer, for 
 the answer could not have been understood. 
 
 And so it was answered, as untimely and unpro- 
 fitable questions were so often answered by Jesus 
 Christ. He brought back the questioners to a sense 
 of their true position, and its true proportions, in that 
 immense scene of God's purposes and action of which 
 the greater part is veiled from mortal knowledge. 
 And on the other hand, in place of an idle longing 
 to know what man cannot know. He set before them 
 the definite duty and business which they coiihi do, 
 and which He had called them to do, and the gifts 
 with which they were to be equipped for their special 
 service at that special time. " Times and seasons 
 are for Him whose wisdom and whose will, from the 
 beginning to the end, orders all things ; leave them 
 alone ; they are not for you ; you could make no 
 use of the knowledge, if it was possible for you to 
 
XXI TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 339 
 
 have it. But in the fulfilment of God's order, you 
 have, indeed, your own — a unique and indispensable 
 — place. God wants you. God has called you. God 
 has not forgotten you, nor the helps and powers 
 necessary for that work on which the whole history 
 of the future turns. The Holy Ghost shall come on 
 you, and with Him power for that w^ork in which 
 you succeed to Me. You have seen Me. You 
 have heard Me. You have handled Me. You knew 
 Me before the cross. You knew Me after. On you 
 are the generations to come to depend for that 
 witness of the reality of My Presence, of the meaning 
 of My victory. That is your calling ; is it not 
 enough for you ? Leave * times and seasons ' to 
 Him in whose hands they are." Yes, that company 
 were to shape the new world that was coming ; but 
 they were not to know it, nor the wonders of what 
 they themselves were doing. 
 
 Does not this scene represent and shadow forth 
 what has often happened in the history of the Church ? 
 How often have men, more or less consciously, asked 
 the question analogous to that of the Apostles — Is 
 not the time now come at length for the restoration 
 and settlement of the Kingdom of God, for the full 
 accomplishment of the prophecies ? Have they not 
 been led, as the Apostles were, by some signal 
 evidence of God's delivering and quickening power, 
 to surmise, whether this is not at last the glork)us 
 close, the end of the long waiting, the dawn of the 
 new day ? The Edict of Milan stops the persecution ; 
 the judgment of Nicrea clears and declares for good 
 the faith of Christendom : — What is there for the 
 Church now but to enter on her inheritance and do 
 
340 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xxi 
 
 her work in peace ? Augustine is raised up to meet 
 the questions and difficulties of theology, a match for 
 every debate, profoundly sympathetic with the whole 
 range of human thought and human affection : — Was 
 not here the very master and teacher the Church 
 needed to make the path of Christian wisdom and 
 knowledge safe and certain ? Might it not be hoped 
 that the appearance of such a teacher meant that the 
 times of controversy and dissension should now be 
 over ? And so, when some superhuman efforts had 
 wrought their results, when some decisive victory had 
 been gained over abuses or error, when some great 
 outburst of zeal and charity had moved society and 
 won men's hearts — it seemed as if all now was going 
 to be settled in final obedience to Christ — this or 
 that one great obstacle overcome, and the Church 
 will be in harbour. The barbarians were converted 
 to the purity and earnestness of saints ; power was 
 concentrated in the hands of great kings and pontiffs ; 
 great armies of Christian champions rose as it were 
 out of the ground, out of the masses of the poor and 
 lowly, to witness practically to the Sermon on the 
 Mount, to faith in an unseen but ever-present Christ ; 
 the great Christian schools reigned over the intellect 
 of the world. Is not this at length the restoration 
 of the Kingdom ? Is not the Church now going to 
 blossom and be at rest ? When great abuses became 
 intolerable they were attacked and partly swept away 
 by a great reform ; now then, so was the hope and 
 assurance, we shall see an end to what corrupted and 
 disgraced Christendom. Or a great religious move- 
 ment stirs the Church. The Spirit of God moves on 
 the waters — renews the face of the earth. Where 
 
XXI TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 341 
 
 there was coldness there is zeal ; where there was 
 luxury and selfishness there is sacrifice ; where there 
 was the dulness of a routine religion there is the joy 
 and light of the converted, the peace of the faithful 
 and true. Is not the meaning of this that at last a 
 great change is indeed at hand in men's ideas of 
 religion ; that at last the day is come for its purity, 
 its simplicity, its honesty, its manliness, its depth, its 
 perseverance ? — 
 
 Dies venit, dies tiia, 
 In qua reflorent omnia. 
 
 We wistfully ask — Are we standing where that day 
 is breaking? 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, it is not for men on earth " to 
 know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath 
 put in His own power " — to forecast the ways of His 
 Providence, to venture into the secret of His counsels, 
 to assume to know enough to say how He will shape 
 His work, what He will create and what destroy, 
 what He will bring to pass, what He will permit and 
 tolerate in the time to come. Former generations 
 thought that they knew, and were mistaken. Beyond 
 Nicaea, and beyond St. Augustine, and beyond the 
 reforms of the eleventh century, or the thirteenth, or 
 the sixteenth, the fortunes of the Church were to go 
 through vicissitudes that no one then counted on ; 
 her trials and her activity and her influence ♦were 
 still to take ever unthought-of shapes. Beyond the 
 hopes of the most sanguine and beyond the alarms 
 of the most anxious, new achievements were to 
 follow, new mischiefs to threaten. Things have gone, 
 in fact, better and worse than men beforehand could 
 
342 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xxi 
 
 possibly imagine. Even the fourth century could not 
 have imagined the varied, the amazing history of the 
 saints who were to come ; it could not have imagined 
 the inconceivable perversity and folly and depths of 
 corruption which the world was to see in Christians 
 and in the government of the Church ; it could not 
 have conceived possible the coexistence of great 
 evil with unsuspected forces of recovery, with the 
 power to retrieve and to compensate. What would 
 the fourth century have said if it could have looked 
 forward to the relaxation of that stern penitential 
 discipline on which it relied, of which it was so 
 jealous ? What would it have said if it could have 
 foreseen the great shattering of the unity of Christen- 
 dom, the break up of East and West, and then the 
 break up of the West ? Could they have conceived 
 the faith surviving the shock ? Could men have con- 
 ceived, with whatever losses and drawbacks, the main- 
 tenance of serious and vigorous morality, the love, still 
 strong and loyal, of righteousness and purity and truth? 
 In each generation a state of things which they could 
 not foresee or understand was to follow them. But 
 to each was assigned what was the necessary duty of 
 their time ; and to each were given gifts of light and 
 power from their Master. It was not for them to 
 know ; but to each generation was given all that was 
 needful to fulfil the responsibilities imposed upon it, 
 to prepare the way for that triumph which was to 
 be seen at last ; but not nozv. 
 
 An occasion like this, which brings us together to 
 mark another step in one of the greatest religious 
 enterprises of our time, naturally prompts thoughts 
 which measure the present and go out to the future. 
 
XXI TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 343 
 
 It seems to me just now to be a remarkable moment. 
 I do not know that I recollect any one precisely 
 like it in the fifty years which have made the religious 
 history of this century so eventful. It is a pause — 
 not of defeat, nor of weariness, nor of fear, nor of 
 exhaustion ; but after long conflicts, of quiet ; after 
 long controversies, of rest from the strife of tongues ; 
 after long striving, of recognition of a higher level 
 and worthier standard in important things ; after 
 violent explosions of exasperation and suspicion, a 
 welcoming of the wisdom and the beauty of a larger 
 patience and a nobler tolerance ; after extravagant 
 acts and unmeasured words, of soberness and 
 recollection. I say, a pause, for none of us know 
 enough to say how long it may last, and how far it 
 is the sign and precursor of a permanent state of 
 things. But I think it is true to say that there has 
 been for some time lately a remarkable interval — 
 a " peace of the Church " — a time when sympathy 
 and the realising of the truths of Christian fellowship, 
 and a sense of the awful needs and dangers of society, 
 and a generous acknowledgment of self- devoted 
 efforts to meet them, have overborne the old forces 
 of repulsion and estrangement, strong as they were, 
 and for a while have commanded and forced the 
 fighters to stay their fighting. A pause, a breathing 
 time, a stillness and calm, taking its rise in the 
 solemnities and peace of death-beds, and consecrated 
 by their memories. And when in this moment — 
 it may be a mere passing one — of pause and calm, 
 our minds go back over the past, what a wonderful, 
 overpowering sense of change comes over them — 
 change which, with all drawbacks — and they are 
 
344 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xxi 
 
 many and very serious — has been for the advantage 
 of the cause of Christ and His Church. It has 
 robbed us of much that was ours : we think of what 
 the Church had then, and has now, at the great seats 
 and centres of EngHsh education ; but if it has 
 impaired our machinery, it has quickened and 
 stimulated men. Fifty years ago, I can remember it, 
 a young man was ashamed to kneel down in church : 
 he would have thought it unfashionable ; he would 
 have thought it affectation. Fifty years ago, for 
 a young man to stay for Holy Communion would 
 have seemed even to good people eccentric and 
 unreal, a profession beyond his years. Fifty years 
 ago there were churches which hardly saw the 
 Eucharist from year's end to year's end. Fifty years 
 ago, except in the Prayer Book, except in the ideas 
 and perhaps the shy practice of a few obscure students 
 or devout observers of ancient usage, that which is 
 the foremost and indispensable part of Christian 
 worship was looked upon as something meant 
 exclusively for the stricter and more devout few, or 
 as the rare and occasional incentive to a flagging 
 faith. Fifty years ago, there was scarcely the 
 pretence of any special training, at least in the 
 Church, for the Christian ministry, and except in 
 special instances, the poorest preparation either for 
 confirmation or orders. Fifty years ago, who 
 dreamed of attempting to rally the masses, or even 
 the middle class, despaired of and despised as they 
 were, to an intelligent loyalty to the Church ? Who 
 recognised adequately the tremendous obligation of 
 providing for those masses an education which they 
 could not give themselves, or realised the terrible 
 
XXI TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 345 
 
 penalty of not doing so in time ? Who thought then 
 that by the end of fifty years a vast and energetic 
 Episcopate, a new ecclesiastical world in America and 
 the Colonies, would have come into existence, " to 
 redress," as it was said on another occasion, "the 
 balance of the old Latin world " ? Who thought of 
 anything beyond the kind of beneficence, genuine 
 and gracious as it was, of women like Elizabeth 
 Fry ? Who thought of men and women, gently 
 nurtured and refined, with the choice of an easy life 
 before them, choosing in numbers and with cheerful 
 hearts to give up everything in order to nurse the 
 sick, to live with the poor and as the poor, to be the 
 daily companions of the sinners and the miserable? 
 Who thought then of crowded churches, except to 
 hear the eloquence of the favourite preacher of the 
 hour ? Who would have thought of seeing working 
 men, in their guilds and societies, gathering in 
 numbers to early Communion at a cathedral altar? 
 God forbid that we should forget how much serious 
 and active goodness there was in those days, how much 
 earnest and persevering devotion, how much purity 
 and faith, and manly force and unostentatious self- 
 control, how much humble simplicity of life, — the 
 days of Joshua Watson, and William Stevens, and 
 Norris of Hackney, the days of Henry Martyn, and 
 Wilberforce, and Simeon. Things would have gone 
 very differently if there had not been the realty of 
 religion deep in the heart of the Church. But men 
 living can remember how its outward and public 
 aspect, as it looked to spectators in a stirring and 
 almost revolutionary time, was at best one of apathy, 
 and respectable routine, and timid caution ; and how 
 
346 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMOA'S xxi 
 
 an incapacity for originality, a dread of enthusi- 
 asm and enterprise, marked an institution which 
 represented that Divine Society, which had dared to 
 undertake the conquest of the world. Whatever these 
 changes mean, whatever they are worth, there they 
 are ; and surely they are not for nought. It is not 
 of evil, that there has come the deeper and more 
 energetic love of the brethren, the keener conscience 
 of duty and sin, the more awful sense of God's 
 greatness and goodness, the more eager desire to 
 exalt and proclaim His Name. There were those 
 who in those days asked in despair — in unwise, 
 unwarrantable, but not unnatural, despair — but they 
 asked, " Can these bones live ? " Our eyes, the 
 world, have seen what is the answer. 
 
 What is this, then — a lull, a gleam of sunshine in 
 the progress of the storm ? or the first step in a new 
 and more blessed order, long prayed for, now granted? 
 Ah ! my brethren, our thoughts go back to the lessons 
 of the eve of the Ascension. Times and seasons 
 are out of our hands, out of our forecasting. Antici- 
 pation is seldom more than idle work. No stranger 
 collection of mistakes and surprises could be made 
 than a list of the falsified predictions of the wisest 
 men. History is full of them. We know not what 
 awaits us ; and with all that makes us glad, no one 
 can be blind to changes, to presages, of a very 
 different kind. We see in our day energy, daring, 
 confidence, force of character, even self-devotion, 
 given, as I don't think they were ever given before, 
 to the overthrow, the suppression, the extinction ot 
 what we believe to be the hopes of mankind. I am 
 not speaking of our own case alone ; Christendom, 
 
XXI TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 347 
 
 after all, is one, and all are interested in the fortunes 
 of every part ; and all over Christendom there is the 
 same awful shadow. Apparent dira^ fades. Not 
 doubtfully visible in the darkness of 
 
 The appalling future as it nearer dra\vs,i 
 
 there are the new enemies with which Christian faith, 
 and all that it involves and protects, will have to 
 reckon. To the old spirit of mockery, coarse or 
 refined, to the old wrangle of argument, also coarse 
 or refined, has succeeded the spirit of grave, measured, 
 determined negation — no longer raising questions 
 and urging objections, but starting from the assump- 
 tion that everything is decisively and finally ruled 
 against us, that all intelligence and all honesty, it 
 may be reluctantly, views our claims as hopeless. 
 It is in the air, this implacable foe. It fears not to 
 speak out ; it imposes its axioms and its principles 
 on society and legislation ; but, in still more subtle 
 and impalpable ways, it meets us at every turn, in 
 literature, in the press, in what furnishes nine-tenths 
 of the reading and thinking of the thousands who 
 read. I do not forget how very bad, how very un- 
 believing the old days often were, when religion 
 seemed to rule unquestioned. I do not forget that 
 in the very heart of the Middle Ages — the ages, as 
 they are called, of faith — there lurked a spirit of 
 audacious revolt, of a fierce, bitter, aggressive unJDclief 
 But never, I think, has unbelief appealed so widely, 
 so boldly, and with so much fatal effect, to the 
 masses. And never were the sources of public 
 thought so charged with deliberate unbelief; never 
 
 ^ The Christian Year, Advent Sunday. 
 
348 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xxi 
 
 had SO many of the minds which led their generation 
 in speculation, in culture, in judgment on the past, 
 in laying down the political and social lines of the 
 future, accepted, though perhaps with courteous and 
 even sympathetic respect for religion, yet with settled 
 and calm decision, some one or other of those deadly 
 philosophies which make serious religion impossible. 
 Thus there is before us a future of great hope, 
 and with it, also, a future of ghastliest menace. 
 Which is most likely ? We cannot tell. 
 
 If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars ; ^ 
 
 and the Divine Word comes back — " It is not for you 
 to know the times or the seasons." But what we do 
 know is that the promise is to us as much as to the 
 Twelve — " Lo, I am with you alway — all the days — 
 even unto the end of the world." What we do know 
 is our office and charge and duty, to be witnesses, as 
 they were, to Christ crucified and risen — to be 
 witnesses, as they could not be, to all that has been 
 done for that City of God which carries in its bosom 
 the hopes of men. Ask not how the world is to go 
 on. Be content with knowing that you are called to 
 act upon it — to act upon it, if you have the heart, if 
 you have the wisdom, with power of which you know 
 not the limit. In that faith began, with such sure 
 foresight, in that faith has been carried on, with such 
 undecaying conviction, that great Institution ^ which 
 
 ^ Clough's Poems y p. 452. 
 
 - The Institution to which alhision is made is St. Nicolas College, 
 founded at Shoreliam by Canon Woodard, whose aim was to bring 
 Public School Education on definite Church principles within the reach 
 of all classes above those for which elementary education is provided. 
 Ellesmere College is intended for the lower middle class, and is one of 
 schools belonging to the Midland Branch of Canon Woodard's Society. 
 
XXI TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 349 
 
 has brought us here to-day, and which has sought 
 on so noble a scale to retrieve the unfaithfulness and 
 to overtake the shortcomings of past times ; which 
 has sought, in such varied and skilful ways, to recover 
 and establish for the Church and for Church religion 
 its due influence on the education of the middle 
 classes. It was one of the strange oversights of 
 former times that the absence or weakness of this 
 influence on the middle classes was hardly noticed 
 and heeded by Churchmen. They thought of the 
 poor ; not of the tradesmen and farmers. Forty 
 years ago an individual clergyman, deeply impressed 
 with the w^ant and the danger, devoted his life to a 
 great and systematic effort to regain what was lost. 
 What the success has been there is no need to tell ; 
 look at the banners which led your procession. But 
 what is worth observing is this, that education is one 
 of those forces by which the course of things cannot 
 but be affected, and the future controlled arid shaped ; 
 and education is eminently one of those things which it 
 is in our power, in the power of each generation to 
 set in action or to neglect It depends on us, as 
 many other things do not depend, what we will do 
 with our children — whether and how we teach and 
 train them. Will we take the trouble ? will we be at 
 the expense ? will we choose fit instruments ? will we 
 inspire those instruments with our ow^n convictions 
 and purpose? Practically there is no limit ^ to its 
 working, but the interest and the means of those 
 who promote it. If there is anything certain, it is 
 that where there is a good education, men w^ill seek 
 it for their children. And a good education is a 
 thing which we can supply, if we will go about it. 
 
350 PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS xxi 
 
 We need not, it is a most important point to re- 
 member — we need not let education on a great scale 
 slip out of our hands. If we do, I do not say that 
 God will not find other means to recruit, perhaps to 
 reinvigorate, His Church ; but we shall have a heavy- 
 account to give, if from negligence, or want of 
 courage, or want of public spirit, or fear of spending, 
 we throw away that natural and immense power 
 over the future which God has placed in our 
 hands. 
 
 We have lost much. Let us be honest, and say 
 that we deserved to lose it. We certainly did not 
 turn to due account the immense privileges which 
 had come down to us. There was a time when 
 boldness, and earnestness, and faithfulness on the 
 part of the Church and its leaders might have so 
 far got hold of the education of the country, that it 
 would have been almost impossible without violence 
 to have deprived us of it.^ That time is gone by ; 
 we find ourselves with formidable rivals, and the 
 spirit of the day against us. Part of the offered 
 chance is withdrawn and will not be repeated ; but 
 part of it still remains, and is still offered to us, on 
 its strict conditions. Here in England at least we 
 may still count in the long run on fair play. If we 
 choose to accept all that is involved in a serious 
 effort — trouble, expense, opposition, worry, occasional 
 mistakes and disappointment — there is a vast 
 province still open to us to occupy. God grant us 
 the will. To have recovered for Christ and His 
 Church so important a part of the education of the 
 
 . 1 Cf. a letter from Dean Hook to Mr. Gladstone, 1843 : Life of 
 Dean Hook (abridged edition), p. 346. 
 
XXI TIMES AND SEASONS OF GOD'S WORKING 351 
 
 country, by patience and sacrifice and the enthusiasm 
 of honest work, may console us for much that is 
 dark and threatening in the future. It is a token 
 that the power of Christ is still with us. My 
 brethren, let us take courage from all that He has 
 done for us and shown us, from our wonderful 
 history. Let us arise and go forward, in the words 
 of your motto, and like your hero- saint, King 
 Oswald — " Pro patria diviicantes "^ — fighting against 
 sin and sloth and ignorance ; fighting for our true 
 home and country, the Church of God ; fighting like 
 men for this dear and beautiful England. 
 
 1 " Pro patria dimicans,''' the motto of King Oswald (Bede, iii. 9), 
 taken as the motto of the school. 
 
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