PRINCETON, N. J. BV 4915 .K4 1857 y/ Kennedy, John, 1813-1900. The divine life Shelf.... (^ THE A BOOK OF FACTS AND HISTORIES, SHOWINa THE glauifcllr Morlungs of tk |al]r ^^irit. KEY. JOHN" KENNEDY, "The words of Christ assure us that the communication of the life of God to men was the greatest of all miracles, the essence and aim of all ; and further, that it was to be the standing miracle of all after-ages." — Neander. PHILADELPHIA: PARRY & M^M I L L AN, SUCCESSORS TO A. HART, la« CARET A HABT. 1857. STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON & CO. PHILADELralA. PRINTED Br T. K. & F. G. COLLINS. PREFACE. It has been well said that "a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him." "The thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest." It follows that "the thing a man does practically lay to heart," the formative principle of spiritual character, if it be error, will poison the soul, — if truth, it will bring health and life. Instead of its being a matter of indifference whether we worship "Jehovah, Jove, or Baal," false religion is, to use the words of Vinet, "a disordered spirit, which, in the ardour of its thirst, plunges, all panting, into fetid and troubled waters : it is an exile, who, in seeking the road to his native land, buries himself in frightful deserts." What, then, is Truth ? The question is a very old one. It was asked and discussed among the pastoral chiefs of Arabia three-and-thirty centuries ago. "Where shall wis- dom be found? and where is the place of understanding? The depth saith, It is not me : and the sea saith. It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. .... Whence then Cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding?" This volume is designed to be a small contribution to- wards an answer to this momentous inquiry. And it is hoped that the facts and histories which it contains will, through the blessing of God, guide not a few to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The facts and his- tories are left for the most part to teach their own lesson, and when the principles which are involved in them are formally deduced and illustrated, it is more frequently in the words of others, than in those of the Author, that thus testimony may be borne to the existence of a wide and scriptural harmony among different communions as to what the Divine Life is, and how it is produced. " From his bright pavilion, Like Eastern bridegroom clad, Hailed by earth's thousand million, The Sun sets forth, right glad. So pure, so soul-restoring. Is Truth's diviner ray ; A brighter radiance pouring Than all the pomp of day : The wanderer surely guiding. It makes the simple wise j And, evermore abiding, Unfailing joy supplies." CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGE Modern Science — Spiritual Facts — These fit subjects of inves- tigation — Their importance and interest — The Divine Life ; ■what is it? — Language of the Apostle Peter 7-12 PART I. ITS NATURE. The Religious Faculty — Bechuanas — Heathenism — Moham- medanism — Asceticism — Saul of Tarsus — Luther, Loyola, Latimer, Col. Gardiner, Urquhart, Birrell, Caroline Fry — Conclusions — Quotations from Howe, Bullar, and Butler. ..13-106 PART II. ITS ORIGINATION. Diversity and Unitj' — Remarks of "Wilberforce, Chalmers, and Fletchei* — Miracles of Christ — Changes in Natiire — First Class of Instances : John Foster, R. Morrison, Knibb — Second Class : Bengel, Blackader, J. J. Gurney, J. Fletcher, Mrs. Graham — Third Class: Paul, Philippian Jailer, C. Anderson — Fourth Class: John Bunyan, Major-General Andrew Burn — Fifth Class: Bilney, Archer Butler, M. Boos — Sixth Class : Lyttleton, "West, Jenyns, Dykern, Rochester, Wilson, H. K. White — Seventh Class : Inspiration and Con- stitutional Peculiai-ities, Jonathan Edv^-ards, Mrs. Phelps — Remarks 107-^1.2 PART III. PROVIDENTIAL OCCASIONS. PAUS Events divided into Two Classes — The Casual, a Storehouse of Divine Weapons — Gilford — Bunyan — Alderman Kiffin — Lady Huntingdon and Captain Scott — Robinson — Simeon — Wilberforce — Legh Richmond — Chalmers — Doddridge — R. Haldane — Students in Geneva — John AVilliams — Dr. Judson — Budgett — Hewitson — Dr. Hope — Narrative by Dr. Malan — The Influence of Affliction — Howels — Cecil — Waldo — John Newton— Remarks by Tholuck— The Finger of God 213-288 PART IV. TRUE MEANS. Pilgrim and the Cross — Allegory by Dr. James Hamilton — Moi-avian Missions — Testimony of John Williams — Cannibal Priest — Rammohun Roy — Banerji — Experience of Dr. DuiF — John Wesley — C. Wesley — Whitefield — Kingswood Colliers — David Hume — Hervey — Walker — Toplady — Berridge — Bax- ter — A. Fuller — Dr. MacAU — Quotations from Isaac Taylor, Chalmers, and Professor Butler 289-359 CONCLUSION. Standing Miracle — Argument for Divinity of the Gospel — What Conversion does not do — What it is not — Am I a Par- taker of the Divine Life ? — Dying Young Lady — " The Sand and the Rock." 360-375 INTEODUCTIOK It is the boast of modern science that its decisions are based on facts. Three centuries ago, Lord Bacon taught men to abandon their mere conjectures and fancies about the properties of matter and the laws of the universe, and to go into the school of nature as little children. Would we understand the mate- rial world, he said, we should not consult our imagina- tion, but should rather bring together facts and instances, examine them in all possible lights and aspects, and then draw from them such general truths as are involved in them. Before this rule a host of wild theories vanished at once. It was by a rigid ad- herence to it that Sir Isaac Newton concluded that the descent of a tile from a house, or an apple from a tree, is produced by the same cause which keeps the planets in their paths round the sun. And now science accepts of no theory, even the most captivating and brilliant, that is not a proper induction from as- certained and acknowledged facts. The inner world of man's spiritual nature has its facts as well as the outer and material; and to the examination of one class of them this book is devoted, in the hope of finding in them some help towards un- derstanding wherein the divine life consists, and how it is produced. The name by which the facts in view 7 8 INTRODUCTION. are ordinarily designated, conversion, is offensive to many; but the wise man who would make good his title to be a follower of Lord Bacon will examine them without prejudice ; he will not conclude at once that all who use this term are fools or hypocrites, but will seek to ascertain dispassionately the true charac- ter of the phenomenon (if we must use scientific language) which occupies so prominent a place in re- ligious histoiy. The facts to which we appeal are of both ancient and modern date. The history of Christianity is full of them. They have been faithfully recorded by those who had personal knowledge of them, or who received their information from credible witnesses. They occur, in larger or smaller numbers, in every congre- gation of human beings to which the gospel of Jesus Christ is continually preached. And, although they belong to the invisible region of the soul, they are made palpable by various means which bring them within the reach of our knowledge. We can look at them in all the phases which they assume, we can trace their progress in the very act of occurrence, we can examine the means which produce them, and we can observe the results in which they issue. If real, these facts must be important. Transformations of human character transcend in interest any transforma- tions of which material substances are capable. The laws which affect the progress of a spirit out of a state of sin into one of holiness are incomparably more momentous than those which affect the growth of the body or the cure of natural disease. " All the varia- tions of fortune in her wildest caprices, lifting peasants to a throne, and depressing kings to a dungeon, are idle as the changeful shadowings of an evening cloud, SPIRITUAL FACTS. 9 ■when compared with that solitaiy hour, -when He who < stands at the door and knocks' is first consciously admitted by the loving heart of a repentant believer." " The moral history of a beggar, which faithfully re- vealed the interior movements of his mind, and laid open the secret causes which contributed to form and determine his character, might enlarge and enlighten the views of a philosopher." The reader is not asked, however, to accept without question our averment that there are spiritual facts of this order as real as any which occui' in the material world, n6r do we ask him to accept without question our interpretation of them. The more rigidly men apply Lord Bacon's principle of induction to our histories the better. They will thus dis|;inguish be- tween appearances and realities, between accidental resemblances and essential oneness ; they will pene- trate through the diversities of form which these facts assume, and ascertain for themselves the common principle which pervades them. Only, in doing this, let them remember that they are in a better position than the student of Material nature. Their inquiries have been anticipated by a Book which reveals the philosophy they are in search of This Book describes the spiritual occurrences which take place in the history of man's soul, and is itself the means of their production; and it furnishes criteria, though not formally, by which to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit. To reject its aid in our investigation were to grope our way through a naturally dark labyrinth, under the guidance of our own senses of sight and touch, when we might traverse its most remote and intricate recesses with the illumination of a bright sun and the direction of an unerring guide. 10 INTRODUCTION. The divine life — what is it? All things, we know, are, in a sense, divine, because all things are of God. This obvious truth, however, has, by the help of am- biguous language, been worked into a form which, under the guise of beautiful sentiment, strikes at the foundation of religion. Every thing that is beautiful or great is freely spoken of as " divine." Genius, espe- cially, is " divine," if not divinity itself, and its pos- sessors are gods. So that there are both divine moun- tains and divine men. A Divine Being, distinct from all other beings ; possessing a nature peculiarly and exclusively his own ; Himself, by his personal will and power, the creator and supporter of other beings — this is a God that many dreamers will not know or confess. Their divinity is some mystic essence which, unseen and subtle, spreads itself universally, pervades and penetrates the whole creation. It is not exactly light, nor air, nor electricity, nor magnetism; but it is some- thing of the like kind. It is not peculiar to the intel- lectual and intelligent universe; it belongs to the material as well. So that we may say there is more of divinity in the sunbeam than in the dull clod of the valley, and more in the majestic eagle, which soars in mid-heaven, and gazes in the face of the sun's bright- est blaze, than in the earthworm which dwells in the darkness of its native soil. With some persons the ascription of " divinity" to every thing good and great may be nothing more than poetic sentiment, but with others it is the very spirit of atheism; in this polite form, they bow the Creator out of his own universe. To make every thing divine is to make nothing divine; to find essential divinity in every thing, a part of every thing, or an attribute of every thing, is to deprive it of that personal, intelligent, DiVINITY. 11 self-conscious, and almighty existence which consti- tutes Godhead. The Bible, happily, never exhibits one truth as the antagonist of another, and never so cherishes and exaggerates one truth as to make it destructive of another. According to the Apostle Peter, men may be made '' partakers of the divine nature;"* but there is no truth more fundamental to Christianity, none of which it takes a firmer grasp, or presents a bolder view, than the existence of a divine nature which is peculiar to one great and glorious Being, to which there is no approximation, and of which there can be no participation. " I am God, and beside me there is none else," are the words in which this great One isolates himself from all other beings. He thus draws around himself a circle within which no one else dwells. Beyond this circle there is a universe, im- mense and various, but it is no part of him — it is only his workmanship. And of his ineffable nature, with its omniscience and omnipotence, neither angels nor men are partakers. The language of the Apostle Peter is at no variance with this first truth. He expounds himself To be a "partaker of the divine nature" is to have "escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." And this, too, his " beloved brother Paul also, accord- ing to the wisdom given unto him, indicates, when he says that the Pather of our spirits chastens us that we may be " partakers of his holiness." On the same authority we are taught that the "new man" which is "after God," or "after the image of God," is " created in righteousness and true holiness." And 12 INTRODUCTION. ' this ''true holiness" is "the glory of the Lord" into which Christians are transformed.* To be morally Godlike, is to be a "partaker of the divine nature" and of the divine life. The life of sense which animates the body is a divine life, in that it is the gift of God. The life of intelligence which animates the intellect is, for the same reason, a divine life. And both of them, common as they are, are mysteries which have been hid from past ages, and are not likely to be unveiled to those that are to come. But the divine life of which we speak is something higher and better still. It is the life of godly principle and godly affection in the soul. It is that from which springs "true holiness," and which, when it animates a man, makes him godlike in purity and love. A divine life, then, is not ja figure of speech, but a truth and reality, the highest form of moral existence, whether in beings that tread this earth, or in spirits that people heaven. Without attempting, at present, any further definition of it, we will endeavour to feel our way towards a better knowledge both of what it is and of how it is produced. * Ileb. xii. 10; Eph. iy. 22-2i; Col. jii. 9, 10; 2 Cor. iii. 18. PART THE FIRST. THE DIVINE LIFE: ITS NATURE. FACTS. Contents. — The Religious Faculty — Bechuanas — Heathenism — Mohammedanism — Asceticism — Saul of Tarsus — Luther, Loyola, Latimer, Col. Gardiner, Urquhart, Birrell, Caroline Fry — Con- clusions — Quotations from Howe, Bullar, and Butler. "Every religion is false, which has not for its leading tenet, to adore one God as the first principle of all things ; and its moral system, to love one God only and supremely in all things." — Pascal. *' Any one understanding the real nature of man must perceive that a true religion ought to be based in our nature ; ought to know its great- ness and its degradation, and the causes of both the one and the other. "What religion but Cliristianity exhibits such a knowledge as this ?" — Pascal. 13 "There is a phenomenon in the moral world for which no adequate natural cause has ever yet been assigned, — I mean a great and sudden change of temper and character, brought about under a strong impres- sion of scriptural truths — a change in many cases from habitual vice and malignity to the sweetness and purity of the Christian spirit, and con- tinuing to manifest itself in a new character through life, accompanied, if you will believe the subjects, with new views of God and Christ, and divine things in general, and with new feelings towards them. . . . Thousands who are not mad, but cool, dispassionate, and wise, the orna- ments of society and learning, whose word would be taken in any other case, and who certainly ought to be regarded as competent judges, teU you that they have had opportunity to see both sides, as the revilers of this doctrine have not; that they once looked upon the subject with the eyes of their opponents, but have since seen for themselves, and do as- suredly know that there is such a thing as a spiritual change of heart. And what witnesses can you oppose to these ? Men who offer mere nega- tive testimony — who can only say, they know of no such thing." — Dr. Edward D. Griffin. 14 THE DIVINE LIFE. ITS NATURE. ""We may travel the world/' said Plutarch, "and find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools and theatres ; but a city without a temple, without wor- ship, without prayers, no one ever saw." These words of the ancient Greek are as true now as they were eighteen centuries ago. The discovery of a new world beyond the Atlantic, and of innumerable islands in the Pacific, has only supplied fresh evidence of the fact that religion, in some form, is the common at- tribute and possession of mankind. The progress of geography has revealed new modes of civilization and of barbarism, but has not informed us of nations that practise no worship, or at least that have proved in- capable of being taught to worship. The missionary, Eobert Mofiat, sought in vain, he tells us, to find among the Bechuanas and Bushmen a temple, an altar, or a single emblem of heathen worship. No fragments remained of former days, as mementos to the present generation, that their ancestors ever loved, served, or reverenced a being greater than man. Their religious system, like those streams in the desert which lose themselves in the sand, had entirely disappeared. And the missionary could make no appeals to legends, or to altars, or to an 15 16 THE DIVINE LIFE. unknown God. They had faith in a rain-maker, but the missionary does not regard this faith as involving in it any idea of the supernatural. In these degraded tribes, apparently exceptional to the common rule, and just because they are excep- tional, we have what may be regarded as the very best means of an experiment to determine whether the rehgious faculty is as universal as the rational. They were in a state of ignorance from which was excluded every ray of divine truth, every notion of Godhead and immortality; were they likewise incapable of ap- prehending and receiving religious ideas ? They were without the knowledge of God — of any god; were they likewise without a capacity to know God? The means were used which should determine this question. The fitting test was applied when the missionary de- clared to them the being and character of God, and preached to them the facts of the Christian revelation, especially the love of God to man as manifested in the gospel. When thus tested, the Bechuanas awoke from the slumber of generations. Their hearts re- sponded to the appeal. And it was proved that even in their souls there lay unextinguished, though un- exercised, the most distinctive character of humanity, the faculty of knowing, loving, and serving God. Many of them are now enlightened and spiritual wor- shippers of the Most High. Admitting the universal existence of the religious faculty, it becomes a question of great interest how it is to be exercised in order to the divine life in a man's soul. The Chinese worship their ancestors. The Hindoos reckon their gods by hundreds of millions. One-half of the human race are pantheists, who con- found nature with its God and Maker. These have EARNESTNESS. IT not attained to the knowledge -vvhich even the Sunday- school child receives from the first verse of the Bible — "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The " beginning" of the heavens and the earth is, in their imagination, as ancient as the beginning of God himself A personal God, distinct from the creation, and not its soul or animating prin- ciple — eternal, intelligent, and self-conscious — has no place in their faith. And pantheism either descends into atheism, as in the case of cold-hearted speculators, or grows into polytheism, and, ascribing divinity to every part and attribute of nature, worships all out- ward things, from the reptile that crawls on the earth, to the sun that shines in the heavens. From this spirit, so rife in both ancient and modern heathendom, Mohammedanism strongly recoils, and builds itself on the doctrine of one living invisible God who doeth all things after the counsel of his eternal will. Chris- tianity associates the doctrine of one living personal God with his incarnation in Jesus Christ, and the atoning death which Christ endured on the cross- Now, we would inquire. May the divine life be pro- duced indifferently by all these systems ? If the life of God in the soul consisted in the mere fervent exercise of the religious faculty, we should answer this question in the affirmative. There is no object of worship that has ever been named, which has not had power to excite the fervour of its votaries. The ancient Egyptians, twenty centuries ago, croAvding along the sacred Nile, seven hundred thousand in number, according to Herodotus, to the festival of the cat-headed Bubastis; the modern Hindoos, hasting from all parts of India to their holy city, Benares, to worship its sacred Bulls, and wash in its sacred river; 18 THE DIVINE LIFE. the followers of Mohammed going on pilgrimage from all lands to Mecca; the so-called followers of Jesus Christ, of the Greek and Eoman rites, rushing down the banks of the Jordan on Easter-day, and plunging themselves into its waters — have this in common, that their religious practices are honoured with the utmost fervour of their nature. But it is a fervour which is compatible with the profoundest ignorance, and with a moral condition so low and debased, that those who have the means of knowing it frequently dechne to inform the world what they have seen and heard. Sincerity in religion is often indolently regarded as having power to cover both a multitude of errors, and a multitude of sins. And if sincerity be fanned into earnestness, it is a popular theory that it may dispense with the element of religion altogether, and that, even if it does, the earnest man is the great man to whom all others of mortal form are to render homage. This principle will not only place superstition, enthusiasm, and fanaticism, side by side with enlightened piety, as equally forms of the divine life, but will exalt Satan himself to a throne from which he may lawfully claim our worship. There is, perhaps, not a more earnest created being in the universe than he. He knows and believes much of the most important truth, but hates it all with an intensity of which man is not capable. What the absolute amount of his power is we do not know, but we know that his energies are in constant and restless action. Let it be indifferent whether earnestness be associated with purity or im- purity, benevolence or malevolence, and it will not diminish the devil's claims to honour, that he is earnestly engaged in works of dishonour to God and ruin to man ; it would be our duty to admire him as truly great, IDOL-WORSHIP. 19 and to protest against the bad opinion which is com- monly entertained of his character. But our moral sense revolts against a theory which leads to such conclusions. In feehng our way to a true notion of the divine life, we may dismiss from our thoughts all the systems which are condemned in the law — "Thou shalt not make imto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth : thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them."* " Graven images" may have been originally the symbols of divine attributes, and, even when the popular mind had become so debased and ignorant as to regard them as in themselves divinities, there may have been in most countries a select few who main- tained in secret the knowledge and belief that they were only symbols. But whether regarded as sym- bolical or as properly divine, their worship is incom- patible with just conceptions of the Godhead. Historically, indeed, we know nothing of idolatry as a pure symbolical system. It has existed, and still exists, only as a gross materialism, the worship of out- ward things, which were held to be, not representative of divine attributes, but possessed of them. " That men should have worshipped their poor fellow-man as a god, and not him only, but stocks and stones, and all manner of animate and inanimate objects; and fashioned for themselves such a distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of theory of the universe — all this looks like an incredible fable. ^Nevertheless, it is a clear fact that they did it." The refined and learned Greeks were "fools" in 20 THE DIVINE LIFE. this matter equally with the most ignorant and bar- barous people ; at least, so thought the Apostle Paul. He regarded the heathen, not as children giving ex- pression to infantine and immature conceptions of God in visible forms, but as the inheritors of a deep dege- neracy which had originated in the aversion of men to the true character and rule of the Eternal and Holy One. He could not but remark the contrast between theirintellectual and religious condition. Their oratory, and poetry, and architecture, showed genius and ad- vancement. But their religion ! Within temples, whose glory, as works of art, is not yet forgotten, he found altars, on which burned incense to the meanest reptiles, or to the mere image of wood or stone. And, bending in prostrate homage before those altars, ho saw men the fame of whose genius is still fresh in the world. They were no children, but men of mighty and cultivated intellect. And Paul found in their wor- ship, not the strivings of great and uninstructed souls to realize all that is godlike in man and nature, but the blindness and fatuity which our moral apostasy from our Maker has inflicted on mankind. History has preserved one specimen of the way in which this great apostle of truth argued with educated idolaters the great question of the spirituality of the Godhead. Standing on Mars' Hill among the assembled philosophers and areopagites of Athens, he quoted the saying of one of their own poets — '' We are the off- spring of God" — a saying which involves the scriptural idea that man is made in the image of God, and, con- sequently, that there is a God other and higher than man's hands can fashion. " Forasmuch then,^' argued Paul, "as Ave are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, PAUL AT ATHENS. 21 or stone, graven by art and man's device."* It can be only in our spiritual nature that we are the offspring of God. The Godhead, man's Father, the Father of man's spirit, must therefore be spiritual, and can only be dishonoured and misrepresented by an image of gold or silver, or wood or stone. The apostle took hold of the highest and purest religious sentiment Avhich was to be found in the literature of Greece to strike at the root of the popular worship. The senti- ment was rare even among the poets. Paul could have drawn from their writings descriptions of gods and goddesses, the verj^ recital of which might have covered his learned audience with shame. But he wisely availed himself of the saying of Aratus, to lift their thoughts to subUmer and truer conceptions of the Godhead, and addressed himself, not to the masses who practically regarded the graven image as itself a god, but to the learned assembly then before him, who might be sup- posed to regard the image as only the likeness or symbol of a divinity that was unseen. But even this higher and more refined theory Paul did not regard as capable of producing or sustaining a true divine life. " I perceive that in all things ye are very much given to religion," he said — for such is the meaning of his words. Their religiousness was excessive. It was in active and fervent and constant exercise. "When any public calamity was not removed by the invocation of the gods known to the laws, it was customary to let the victims loose into the fields, or along the public ways, and wherever they stopped there to sacrifice them to the ' propitious unknown god.' " But Paul was not content. The religiousness of Athens had not the iilJ THE DIVINE LIFE. enlightenment and guidance of truth in its exercise, and possessed no power to purify those whose breasts it filled. It was not the divine life. And the apostle preached to them not new and better gods than their own, but THE ONLY ONE GoD, who givcth to all life, and breath, and all things. There is one species of idolatry which stands forth as of a somewhat higher order than all others. The Persians erected neither statues, temples, nor altars, but regarded them with contempt : for, as we are told by Herodotus, they did not believe, like the Greeks, that the gods had human forms. The name of Zeus (or Jupiter) they applied to the entire vault of heaven. They sacrificed to the sun and moon, to the earth, fire, water, and the winds. And who can wonder that these men of the East, having once ceased to retain God in their knowledge, should fall down and worship as the Supreme, that Sun whose face was hidden from them by the excess and splendour of his light. Not the work of their own hands, not their weak fellow, they saw in him the very type of majesty, sublimity, and glory, the nearest ajjproximation to ubiquity, and u power to both curse and bless, before which it was natural to stand in awe. And if their thoughts were still earthly, and if they, as well as other idolaters, sought the living among the dead, and the infinite among the finite, we cannot charge them with the grossness and absurdity of worshipping gold, and wood, and stone. Still it was the creature, and not the Creator, these Persians worshipj)ed, and in such wor- ship their souls found no divine life. "When we cut off the vast domains of idol-worship, we greatly circumscribe the limits within which we MOHAMMEDANISM. 23 arc to look for the divine life. We have to do now only with those systems whose central doctrine is the unity, and spiritualit}^, and invisibility of God. But Ave cannot assume that even all these systems are capable of producing or fostering the true life of God in the human soul. It may be, for aught we can deter- mine beforehand, that most or all of them are mixed with elements that not only do not produce it, but are fatal to its existence. For instance, it is possible to conceive of a god — one, spiritual and invisible — that is malignant, and that delights in wrong and suifering. The state of mind which the worship of such a god w^ill produce must be essentially different from that which is produced by the worship of the God of love. In each case the maxim will be found true, "Like God, like worshipper." And the mental opposites thus produced cannot be alike the divine life. But even where there is no distinct apprehension of God as malignant, the truth may be associated with errors either in the way of excess or of defect, that shall effectually prevent its proper action on the soul. "A knowledge of God is found," says Mr. Isaac Taylor, "to avail little apart from the knowledge of ourselves; and unless some genuine emotions of contrition have broken down the pride of the heart, the abstract truth of the divine unity seems only to inflame our arrogance, and to prepare us to be inexorable and cruel. So it was in the system of Mohammed; it had no true philan- thropy, because it had no humiliation, no penitence, and no method of propitiation. The Koran does indeed teach and inspire a profound reverence toward God; and it has actually produced among its adherents, and in an eminent degree, that prostration of the soul in the presence of the Supreme Being which becomes 24 THE DIVINE LIFE. rational creatures. But at this point it stops : Moslem humiliation has no tears, and as it does not reach the depths of a heartfelt repentance, so neither is it cheered by that gratitude which springs from the con- sciousness of pardon. No sluices of sorrow are opened by its devotions; the affections are not softened; there is a feverish heat among the passions ; but no moisture. Faith and confidence toward God are bold rather than submissive, and the soul of the believer, basking in the presumption of the divine favour, might be compared to the scorched Arabian desert, arid as it is, and unproductive, and liable to be heaved into billows by the hurricane." "All religious history," says the same author, "may be appealed to in attestation of this averment, that the Christian doctrine of the forgiveness of sins is the only one which has ever generated an efficacious and tender-spirited philanthropy. It is this doctrine, and no other, that brings into combination the sensitive- ness and the zeal necessary to the vigour of practical good-will toward our fellow-men. Exclude this truth, as it is excluded by skeptical philosophy, and then philanthropy becomes vapid matter of theory and meditation. Distort it with the church of Eome, and the zeal of charity is exchanged for the rancour of pro- selytism. Quash it, as the Koran does, and there springs up in the bosoms of men a hot and active in- tolerance. The Christian, and he alone, is expan- sively and assiduously compassionate; and this not merely because he has been formally enjoined to per- form the seven works of mercy, but because his own heart has been softened throughout its very substance; because tears have become a usage of his moral life ; and because he has obtained a vivid consciousness of MOHAMMEDANISM. 25 that divine compassion, rich and free, which sheds beams of hope upon all mankind." There may have been a period in the mental history of Mohammed, a period of meditation and fermentation, when the presentation of a New Testament, or the ex- hibition of a pure Christianity in a practical form, might have saved him from those delusions by which he deceived first himself and then others, and have made him an apostle of Christ with no sword but that of the Spirit. And it is certain that, however much of imposture was mingled with his pretensions, Mohammed "kindled, from side to side of the Eastern World, an extraordinary abhorrence of idol-worship, and actually cleansed the plains of Asia from the long- settled impurities of polytheism." But it is equally certain that he failed to awaken in himself, or in his followers, a divine life, if that life involves in it the elements of humility and love, and does not consist in a tyrannous, burning, and malignant fanaticism. ISTor can we regard all the religiousness that is found within Christendom, and which possesses some Christian element, as necessarily constituting a divine life. The mere formalist who says his prayers at cer- tain times, and at all other times forgets that there is a God, and the devout man who gives to God his heart, and does it in the market-place as well as in the closet ; the Italian bandit who goes forth to rapine and murder, and returns to his unhallowed cave to give thanks to the Virgin Mary for his successes, and the humble, honest, hard-working man who acknow- ledges the kindness of Providence in the driest crust upon his table, and confides in the love of that Saviour to whom he has intrusted the most precious 26 THE DIVINE LIFE. interests of his soul; tlie self-righteous Pharisee who proudly thanks God that he is better than other men, and the jienitent publican who dares not to lift his eyes to heaven, but cries, " God be merciful to me a sinner;" the bitter, relentless persecutor, whose eyes glare with the lustre of hatred while he applies his torch to the fagots that are to consume his victim, and the martj-r, fastened to the stake, with love to his enemies in his heart and prayer for their forgiveness on his lips; these cannot be spiritually one. They may bear the Christian name in common, but in real character they are separated from each other as far as the east is distant from the west. There is one species of religiousness which has pre- vailed much under a Christian form, as well as under others, and which has made large pretensions to be the divinest life of all: we mean the ascetic. The description which Cowper gives of the life of a monk, and his argument on its true character, are suflScient for our present purpose : — " His dwelling a recess in some rude rock ; Books, beads, and maple-dish, his meagre stock; In shirt of hair and weeds of canvas dress'd, Girt with a bell-rope that the pope has bless'd; Adust with stripes told out for every crime, And sore tormented long before his time : . . . . " His works, his abstinence, his zeal allow'd. You think him humble — God accounts him proud. High in demand, though lowly in pretence, Of all his conduct this the genuine sense — My penitential stripes, my streaming blood, Have purchased heaven, and prove my title good." The inspired records of Christianity make no refer- ence to asceticism except to condemn it. The Apostle Paul speaks of the "neglecting of the body" as ''having a show of wisdom."* It was one of "the command- * Col. ii. 18, 23. ASCETICISM. 27 nients and doctrines of men" against which he solemnly- warned the church of Christ. It had originated in one of the vain philosophies of the East, which taught that the present world had derived its existence from two causes or princijiles, the one good and the other evil. The former was identified with light, or was regarded as its parent and the parent of spirit. The latter was identified with darkness, or was regarded as its parent and the parent of all matter. Matter was, therefore, essentially evil, and the inference was direct that the salvation of man involved in it the mortification of his material frame, if not its ultimate destruction. This theor}^ insinuated itself, even in the days of the apos- tles, into the modes of thinking and feeling among Christians, and at a later period acquired an almost universal ascendency. ''The voluntary (or artificial) humiliations — the worshipping of angels — the sancti- monious abstinences — the human traditions — the spe- cious piety, and the idle tormenting of the body; in a word, all the elements of the great apostasy, are desig- nated by Paul in the most distinct manner; or as if the many-coloured corruptions of the tenth century had vividly passed before the eye of the writer. How healthy is that piety and that morality which he recom- mends in opposition to all such absurdities I" The practices which the spirit of asceticism has generated in the Christian church have not been more salutary, morally, than those to which it has given rise in heathendom. "Turn eastward now" — we resume the quotation from Cowper : — " Turn eastward now, and fancy shaU apply To your weak sight her telescopic eye. The Brahmia kindles on his own bare head The sacred fire, self-torturing his trade. 28 THE DIVINE LIFE. His voluntary pains, severe and long, Would give a barbarous air to British song; No grand inquisitor could worse invent, Than he contrives to suffer well content. " Which is the saintlier worthy of the two ? Past all dispute, yon anchorite, say you. Your sentence and mine differ. What's a name ? I say the Brahmin has the fairer claim. If suffering Scripture nowhere recommends, ■ Devised by self to answer selfish ends. Give saintship, then all Europe must agree, Ten starveling hermits suffer less than he.' » But let us now see whether we may not find a his- torical example of the true divine life. Saul of Tarsus; r> n m born about B. c. 'iho name of Saul of Tarsus, Paul 2; diedA.D. 66. . „ .,. the Apostle, is lamiliar to us as a house- hold word, and presents itself at once, as one w^hich exhibits a most instructive instance, first, of a spurious religiousness, and then of a true divine life. It furnishes a test of the fictitious and the genuine. And we have only to study the very comjDlete portrait which he has drawn of himself to have a good understanding of both. * The following statement is from the pen of an East Indian missionary in 1854. " On approaching a ghfit leading down to the river, a miserable object arrested our attention. It was a devotee seated by the embers of a slow fire. His right arm presented a sickening spectacle. It was erect over his head, and was shockingly emaciated. The hand was closed, but the nails of the fingers stretched beyond it five or six inches. In this erect position the limb had remained rigidly fixed for eleven years, and by this act of self-mortification the wretched man vainly hoped to be saved. "On descending the steps we passed another devotee, who was standing with one foot on the ground and the other on a swing raised from two to three feet high. Here he stands night and day. He shifts his feet occasionally, and thus prevents the two limbs from becoming immovable. lie never lies down, nor obtains rest or sleep except such as he can obtain here. Both these victims of idolatry imagined that by such practices of asceticism they would acquire boundless merit, so that their sins would he forgiven and themselves admitted into heaven." SAUL OF TARSUS. 29 Though born in Tarsus, and familiar from childhood with heathen spectacles, Saul, the son of a Jew who was a "Pharisee of the Pharisees,'' was brought up from his twelfth or thirteenth year amid the associations of the holy city, and under the tuition of one who could appreciate his ingenuous, bold, and inquiring disposi- tion. He read the history of his fathers, the most wonderful that has ever been lived or written, in the very streets of Jerusalem, in the hills whereon it stood, and in the valleys by which it was intersected and surrounded. And his susceptible heart was subjected, probably for twenty years, to the influence of these scenes; while his active mind gave all its energy to the study of the Scriptures, and of the traditional interpretation of them, of which Gamaliel was the expounder. AYe have his own testimony that he outsti'ipped his cotemporaries in the school of Gamaliel in zeal for the traditions of the elders, and in the knowledge of that Judaism which was more traditional than Biblical. Saul comes before us historically first, in connection with the stoning of Stephen, the protomartyr of the Christian church. He gave his "vote" against this early confessor of the Christian faith; being, not im- probably, already a member of the Sanhedrim. And we are at once struck by the contrast which he now presents to his preceptor. "Eefrain from these men," Gamaliel had said a few weeks or months before, " and let them alone : for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught : but if it be of God, yc cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." But Saul was "exceeding mad" against the followers of Jesus, and "made havoe of the church." Whether the contrast is simply that 30 THE DIVINE LIFE. between prudent age and impetuous youth, or that between a timid worldly policy and a fearless godly zeal, or that between the large and liberal views of a far-reaching mind and the bitter intolerance of an honest but unenlightened spirit; or whether it is simply a matter of constitutional temperament, it is only such as often appears between master and disciple. If in nothing else, yet in practical zeal for the Judaism which Saul had learned from Gamaliel, the disciple in this instance excelled the master as he did his fellow- disciples. Having done his utmost in Jerusalem, Saul hastened to Damascus to execute a mission of destruction there. But he entered the Syrian capital a very different man from what he was when he left the capital of Judea. He was now a new man; no longer a Pharisee, but a Christian. The most obvious difference between the old man and the new is, that the old man disbelieved the claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be honoured as the Messiah; the new believed in them implicitly. And so far it may bo called a change of opinion, his old opinions having been held as honestly as his new. But we shall find that with this change of opinion there was an entire revolution in the moral habit of his soul — a revolu- tion which is best expressed in his own words: — "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Before his conversion to Christianity he was a fanatic of the highest order. The fervid passion which filled his breast was one of malignant and murderous hatred. The passion which filled his breast after his conversion, and which impelled him from shore to shore to preach ChTist, was equally fervid; but it Saul's virtue and zeal. 31 vras one of pure, intense, and unwearied love. And herein consists the difference between fanaticism and piety. Before his conversion he was proud, stood erect before God, as one that was blameless touching the righteousness which the law, as he then understood i*:, required of him; after his conversion, and in all his s ibsequent life, there is no trait of his character more marked than the deep humility with which he prostrated his soul before God; and that not merely as a creature conscious of his littleness, but as a transgressor of the divine law, conscious of his sins. To some this change in the hidden man of the heart may seem a small thing; but they who have any insight into the .springs of action, and can appreciate the leavening power of hatred and pride on the one hand, and of love and humility on the other, will require no justification of Paxil's words — "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." But yet there are several characteristics of the earlier religion of Saul of Tarsus which may seem to raise it to the honour of a divine life. His morals were blameless. His "manner of life from his youth" was such as to bear the scrutiny of the most keen-eyed malice. There were no youthful follies or indiscretions whose memories could be raked from the dust to dishonour him. His time and thoughts had been engrossed by his studies and his religious duties. More than this, he was not only virtuous, but, in a sense, godly. His religion was no heartless formalism; he was "zealous toward God." And the God toward whom he was moved with zeal was not such a deity as the fanatical populace of Ephesus were zealous for when they shouted, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians:" it was 32 THE DIVINE LIFE. the One, True, Everlasting; the Jehovah of the Old Testament, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Shall we then deny the credit of a divine life to one whose virtue is blameless, and whose heart is the seat of a burning zeal for God ? Let us hear his own judgment on this question : "I was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injuri- ous." True, his apologist may reply, you blasphemed, you spoke evil of a name which you conscientiously regarded as identified with false pretensions. True, you persecuted those who believed in that name, but you did it with a good conscience; you verily thought with yourself that you ought to do it, and in doing it you sincerely imagined that you were doing God service. True, you were injurious; but if the sect of the Nazarenes were what you judged it to be, that Avould be no reproach; the more injury you inflicted on it the better. The worst that can be said of you, Paul, is that you were too hasty in your judg- ment, and yielded too readily to the impetuosity of your nature; even if your opinion of the Nazarenes were correct, it would have been wiser to have fol- lowed the counsel of Gamaliel, and to have "let them alone," for a season at least, that it might be seen w^hether their doctrine were of men or of God; but as it is, even your failings leaned to virtue's side; it was the fire of a true godliness that burned on the altar of your heart, and all that you have to reproach yourself for is an error of judgment. To this apology Paul's own reply is severely brief and conclusive: "I was the chief of sinners." Many others have described themselves in the same words, and in his case as well as in theirs, the words may not imply an absolute supremacy in guilt, but a deep con- Saul's ignorance. 33 sciousncss of such guilt as one can scarcely imagine to exist, where he cannot see it as he sees the evil that is in his own bosom. We accept this interpretation, and do not account that Paul meant to say, that of all the sinners that have ever trodden this earth he was absolutely the greatest. But at the least he meant to say that, religious as he was in some sense, earnestly religious as he was, his early life was exceed- ing sinful; his opposition to the name and followers of Christ was deeply criminal. But how could that be? It is true that he cursed the name of Jesus, that he pronounced on it all the anathemas of the law and of Jewish tradition ; and the rude insolence of those who spat on the face of the Son of God and buffeted him was in reality nothing to the malignity with which he pursued it. But then he acted in iin- belief, and his unbelief sprang from ignorance ; had he known the Lord of glory, he would have worshipped and served him. At this point the question arises, whether his igno- rance was innocent or criminal. So far as a man does not possess the means of knowledge, he cannot be ac- countable for the want of it. But if a man's ignorance result from his neglect of means or from an indisposi- tion to receive the truth, he must be held responsible before God. Now, where was Saul of Tarsus all those years that Jesus taught and wrought mighty works in the synagogues and cities of Judea and Galilee ? Was he still in the school of Gamaliel, so intent on the study of the traditions of the fathers that he knew nothing of the great and wonderful things that were taking place at his very door, and that were moving the heart of his nation to its inmost depths ? Or had he gone to Tarsus to live with his kindred, and to 3 34 THE DIVINE LIFE. exercise the' functions of a rabbi in a foreign syna- gogue ? We cannot tell. He may or he may not have seen the face of Jesus, radiant as it ever was with love, or heard from his lips the w^ords of a higher wisdom than Gamaliel ever uttered, or witnessed some of those miracles which declared him to be the Son of God. But the works of Jesus were not done in a corner; and it might be said to Saul, "Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days ?" He could not fail to know enough to impose on him the obligation of inquiry. Public report might be very imperfect ; but even its tales, distorted as they were, contained pre- sumptive evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a teacher sent from God. And the heart in which there was no secret or sinful disinclination to the truth of God would long to know whether God was not about to redeem his people. And Christ has told us the issue of a single-minded and unbiassed inquiry : — " If any man will do his (the Father's) will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." But what evil bias, or other moral cause of error, could there have been in the heart of one so con- scientious and so zealous towards God as was Saul of Tarsus ? We need not imagine any other than that which was common to his countrymen, intensified, perhaps, by his constitutional earnestness. " I bear them record," he wrote, many years after his conver- sion, "that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the Saul's Pharisaism. 35 law for righteousness to every one that believeth."* Saul, and his countrymen in general, felt a proud con- fidence in the divine call by which they were separated from the nations, and in their descent from Abraham, and were ignorant of their own deep sinfulness before God. Their self-love and earthliness veiled from them the purity and spirituality of the moral law under which they were placed. And no wonder that, thus blinded and ignorant, they laboured to establish a ground of their own whereon they might stand just before God, and resented and repelled a teaching whose faintest whispers were sufficient to forewarn them that, when fully known, it would humble them in the dust. But those states of mind to which we thus ascribe the ignorance of the Jews — pride, self-love, and earth- liness — are in themselves criminal. The "lusts" which unconverted men " fulfil" include " the desires of the flesh and of the mind," — an expression on which some light may be thrown by certain words that are used by the Apostle James. He speaks of a wisdom which Cometh not down from above, but is "earthly, sensual, devilish."f The devil's sins are very difierent in kind from those that are committed by the felons and for- nicators of this world ; and yet he may be denomi- nated, without reserve, " the chief of sinners." His sins are pride and hatred, and those courses hostile to God and man to which these evil passions drive him. Pharisaism was commonly earthly and sensual; but above all it was — (and, if the expression seems too strong, we plead the authoi-ity of the Apostle James) it was devilish ; its prevailing characters were pride and hatred. * Kom. X. 2-4. t Jiuiies iii. 15. 36 THE DIVINE LIFE. One almost trembles to cany tliis thought to its legitimate conclusion; but we must. "Who then, of all mankind, is likest to the devil ? Not the man who wallows in the mire of sensuality, — for that the devil cannot do, — but he who is most proud and most full of hatred to God and man, whose intellect rebels most fiercely against God's truth, and whose heart is most opposed to God's will. The "chief of sinners" among mankind are not the tenants of jails and j)enitentiaries, but those who most resemble the first sinner in "fulfilling the desires of the mind." When Paul knew himself and understood the law of God, he did not plead, in arrest of judgment on his character, that his morals were blameless in all the social relations of life, that he was sincere in all his religious duties, yea, that in his most violent proceed- ings against the name of Jesus he was moved by zeal for God. His charge against himself was not that he was all the time unenlightened ; — the mere absence of knowledge would not have made him the chief of sinners ; — nor was it that his best doings were imper- fect and mixed with sin ; it was virtually that in him there had dwelt no good thing, that the root and spring of his then spiritual life was unmixed evil. He had no outward criminalities to palliate and no hy- pocrisy to be ashamed of But, now that the light of God's law and love had shone upon his soul, he saw that he was filled with spiritual pride and self- righteousness, and consequent hatred to the true will of God. And now he was not less disposed than the publican, in our Lord's parable, to smite upon his breast and exclaim, " God be merciful to me, a sinner." On either side of the great crisis by which the Saul's conversion. 37 history of the Pharisee is separated from the history of the Christian in Saul of Tarsus, we find several things that are common to both, — outward virtue, entire sincerity, a certain zeal for God, and constitu- tional ardour. But these, springing from the soil of Pharisaism, inspired and impelled by its pride and selfishness, produced only a bitter fanaticism ; spring- ing from the soil of Christianity, inspired and impelled by its humility and love, they were the manifestations and instruments of a pure divine life. The nature of the crisis itself in which the Phari- saism of Saul perished and his Christianity was bom will instruct us further in the difference between a spurious religiousness and a true piety. The outward prodigies which accompanied it are well known. The young rabbi, fresh from the school of Gamaliel, with less worldly wisdom than his master, or less breadth and comprehensiveness of view, or whatever else it was, was hasting to Damascus, in an agony of soul, to destroy the followers of that Jesus whom they affirmed to be alive and in glory. "When the towers and gar- dens of the great city burst upon his view, he was without misgiving or mental conflict in reference to the purposes of his journey. His victims seemed already in his hand, when suddenly there shone round about him a light of unearthly brightness, transcending the glare of the noontide .sun. " To his fellow-travellers nothing more was vouchsafed than the perception of a supernatural splendour and sound coming from the heavens; yet for himself there stood forth in the midst of the brightness a personal form, and the sound shaped itself into distinct words in the Hebrew tongue." And the words were, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" The central point of the whole inner 38 THE DIVINE LIFE. being of Saul up to this moment was the conviction that he ought to persecute unto the death what he regarded as an impious sect. And " precisely on this centre do the words of Jesus strike like a thunder- bolt." " Saul might, he had thought, well hope to receive the blessing and approbation of God on his holy work ; and now, behold, it is accursed ! He is apprized that his supposed zeal for Jehovah the Lord of heaven was in fact a zeal against the Lord of heaven, for with his own ears, and in his inmost soul, he hears that the Lord of heaven is Jesus of Nazareth. In the disciples of Jesus he had hitherto seen the enemies of Jehovah, the schismatics who blasphemed and sought to overthrow the law and the sanctuary; and now he is constrained to hear, and could not withdraw from the sound of the words that penetrated his very inmost soul, declaring that these supposed enemies of Jehovah were so wonderfully and intimately associated with the Lord of heaven that he speaks of them not merely as his people, or his, but so identifies himself with them, although gleaming in the light of heaven and casting to the earth all that opposes itself, he yet designates as his own the sufteriugs inflicted on those who acknowledged him." All that the history informs lis of the immediate result of the vision and words of Jesus on the mind of Saul is the fact of the nnreseiwed surrender of himself to that Lord who had thus marvellously arrested him : — "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" The humbled man rose from the earth, and, finding himself actually '' blinded by excess of light," he was led by the hand, gentle as a lamb, into the city which he expected to have entered as a very lion. And there <' he was three days without sight, and neither SAUL IN SOLITUDE. 6\} did eat nor drink." Whether his abstinence was entire or partial, whether it was the voluntary expression of his soul's humiliation, or resulted from a physical in- disposition to food, produced by mental agitation, we know not. But these three sightless days, spent in solitude and silence, were spiritually the most event- ful and important of his life. "While outward vision was denied him, his prayer was doubtless like that of the blind poet of a later age : — " So much the rather Thou, celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things iuTisible to mortal sight." And God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shone in his heart, to give him the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. This is not our conjecture, but his own statement. Writing to the churches of Galatia many years after, he said, "I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. . . . When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me b}^ his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I con- ferred not with flesh and blood."* The period of this "calling" by the grace of God, and of that "revelation" which was made to him by Jesus Christ without the intervention of any human teacher, is identified in the passage from which we quote with his first stay, at Damascus. It was then, and especially during those three days which preceded * Gal. i. 11, 12, 15, 16. 40 THE DIVINE LIFE. the visit of Ananias, that Saul was "called," by the grace of God, and infalliblj^ taught by Christ himself that gospel which he ever afterwards preached among the Gentiles. We cannot describe the fermentation of his thoughts when Old Testament Scriptures crowded into his mind in their new and true light. We cannot follow his inner man step by step in its progress out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son. The veil has not been withdrawn from those dark mys- terious struggles through which Saul passed in his new birth; but enough has been intimated to enable us to discern the secret which it shrouds. The law of Moses had been the end and aim of all his thoughts and efforts, and now that which, measured by that standard as he understood it, he had held to be the best and holiest course, had been branded as an impious crime.* Had he then really not under- stood that which had been the subject of so much study and the object of so fervent a devotion? His startled soul must have cast an anxious glance at the law, and then it must have been clear to him that hitherto he had only looked upon the curtains, but had never penetrated the sanctuary itself. It had happened unto him, as unto the sect of the Pharisees generally, who with their prejudices and additions had made void its holy meaning, who had taken the out- ward things of the law to be its most essential require- ments, while they lightly regarded its great commands which were directed to the heart. But now at length he becomes aware that the law is not satisfied with works of outward righteousness, but demands a temper * Several thoughts and sentences in this paragraph are taken in substance from Baumgarten on the Acts of the Apostles, vol. i. 2:iS. LAW AND LOVE. 41 pure and free from evil desires. The brief command- ment, "Thou shalt not covet," now became to him so highly significant, that by occasion of it he discerned the true nature of the law as spiritual, and of sin as having its seat in the heart.* While his soul confronted these discoveries of the true import and requirements of the divine law, he became conscious of the intense opposition of his self-will to the will of God; and at the same time ho felt himself a dead man, for "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." The conclusion was inevitable that by the deeds of the law no flesh could be justified before God. And now for the first time Saul's eyes were opened to the chasm that yawned between him and God; for himself, he feels that he is lying at the bottom of the abyss, but Jehovah he beholds at the immeasurable height of his heavenly holiness. How shall man be just with God? The answer to this question was given to Paul, "not by man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him : Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us : We are justified freely by the grace of God, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, %vhom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins : that he might be just, and the justi- fier of him who believeth in Jesus. These sayings are .aken from three of the Epistles of Paul,f and the doctrine which they embody is the very life-blood of the gospel which he preached among all nations. And * Rom. Tii. 7. \2 Cor. t. 21 ; Gal. iii. 13 ; Rom. iii. 24-26. 42 THE DIVINE LIFE. such was the importance -which he attached to it, that when certain teachers led the Galatians, not indeed to deny it, but to add to it what he regarded in essence inconsistent with it, (namely, the doctrine of the necessity of certain rites in order to acceptance with God,) he denounced the compound as "another gospel, which is not another."* It was in those sad sightless days which Saul spent at Damascus that the doctrine of an atonement by the death of the Son of God, and of the free pardon of sin through that atonement, shone into his mind by the "revelation of Jesus Christ," and immediately he counted as loss those things which heretofore he had deemed his gain, — his pure Hebi'ewism, his earnest Pharisaism, his moral and ritual blamelessness, — and cast away all his confidence in them, that he might be found in Christ, not having on his own righteousness, but that which is by the faith of Christ.f This gospel was the means of a twofold deliverance to his soul: it removed the burden of guilt which oppressed his conscience, and at the same time slew the pride and self-will of his heart. Being justified by faith, he had peace with God through his Lord Jesus Christ. He was a new man. Henceforward the love of Christ constrained. him to live not unto himself, but unto him who had died for him. And we know how zealous for God, how tender towards man, that love made him. The divine life, as he now experienced it, cannot be better described than in his own words: — "We are the circumcision — the true Israel and church of God — which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no con- * Gal. i. 6, 7. t Pliil- "»■ 4, 9. MARTIN LUTHER. 43 fidencc in the flesh." "God hath not given ns the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."* At the distance of more than fourteen centuries from the time of Paul, there was born in Germany one whose name is only less bor^atEisilben; widely known than his, and in whose i483!dfc^dat°tife inner history we find a remarkable re- rurrymhaMa acting of the experiences through which the apostle passed into the enjoyment of the divine life. The plains of Mansfeldt and the banks of the Vipper were the scenes of the earliest sports and acti- vities of Martin Luther. During the earliest years of his life his parents were very poor. They were worthy and virtuous people, but their domestic disci- pline was severe. On one occasion Martin's mother whipped him for a mere trifle till the blood came. And at school the poor child was treated with equal severity. His master flogged him fifteen times in one day. "It is right," said Luther, relating this fact, "it is right to punish children, but, at the same time, we must love them." With such an education Luthei early learned to despise the attractions of a self-indul- gent life.")" Martin was taught, in the school of Mansfeldt, the heads of the Catechism, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, with some other forms of prayer and some hymns. But the only religious feeling which he manifested at this time was fear. Every time he heard Christ spoken of he turned * Phil. Hi. 3; 2 Tim. i. 7. t In this sketch we follow mainli' the nanative of D'Aubi^ne. 44 THE DIVINE LIFE. pale with terror, for he had been represented to him only as an angry Judge. This servile fear is far removed from true religion. John Luther, in conformity with his predilections, resolved to make his son a scholar, and sent him, when fourteen years old, to the school of the Franciscans at Magdeburg. Martin's life at Magdeburg was a severe apprenticeship. Without friends or protectors, he trembled in the presence of his masters, and in his play-hours he and some children, as poor as himself, with difficulty begged their bread. It was the same afterwards at Eisenach, where he was obliged to go with his schoolfellows and sing in the streets to earn a morsel of bread, — a custom which still exists in many towns in Germany. Often the poor, modest boy, instead of bread, received nothing but harsh words. More than once, overwhelmed with sorrow, he shed many tears in secret, and he could not look to the future without trembling. One day in particular, after having been repulsed from three houses, he was about to return fasting to his lodgings, when, having reached the Place St. George, he stood before the house of an honest burgher, motion- less, and lost in painful reflections. Must he, for want of bread, give up his studies and go and work with his father in the mines of Mansfeldt? Providence had something else for him to do. The wife of Con- rad Cotta had more than once remarked young Martin at church, and had been affected by the sweetness of his voice and his apparent devotion. She heard the harsh words with which the poor scholar had been repulsed. She saw him overwhelmed with sorrow before her door, came to his assistance, beckoned him to enter, and supplied his wants. LUTHER AT THE UNIVERSITY. 45 Under the roof of this good Shunamite Luther found a home. And here he enjoyed a tranquil exist- ence, exemj)t from care and want ; his mind became more calm, his disposition more cheerful, and his heart more enlarged. His whole nature was awakened by the sweet beams of charity, and began to expand into life, joy, and happiness. His prayers were more fer- vent; his thirst for learning became more ardent; and, under the tuition of John Trebonius especially, he made rapid progress in his studies. On attaining his eighteenth year, Luther was sent to the University of Erfurth, in 1501. His father, who was now in better circumstances, required him to study the law. Full of confidence in his son's talents, he desired to see him cultivate them and make them known in the world. At Erfurth, Luther outstripped his schoolfellows. Gifted with a retentive memory and a vivid imagination, all that he had heard or read remained fixed on his mind; it was as if he had seen it himself. But even at this early period the young man of eighteen did not study merely with a view of cultivating his understanding. There was within him a spirit of serious thoughtfulness. He felt that he de- pended entirely on God, and fervently invoked the divine blessing on his labours. Every morning he began the day with prayer; then he went to church; and afterwards commenced his studies, which he pro- secuted all day without intermission. One would almost say of him that he lacked nothing. When Luther had been two years at Erfurth, he saw a Bible for the first time. It was in the university library. On opening it he was filled with astonishment to find in it more than those fragments of the Gospels and Epistles which the church had selected to be read 46 THE DIVINE LIFE. to the people in their places of worship. Till then he had thought that these were the whole word of God. With eagerness, and indescribable feelings, he turned over the leaves of this Latin Bible. He read and re- read, and then, in his surprise and jo}^, he went back to read again. In this same year Luther was laid on a sick-bed. Death seemed at hand, and serious reflections filled his mind. All were interested in the young man. ''It was a pity," they thought, " to see so many hopes so early extinguished." Nor were they extinguished. Luther recovered, and seemed to himself to have been called to a new vocation. But yet there was no set- tled purpose in his mind. lie resumed his studies, and, in 1505, was made doctor in philosophy. En- couraged by the honours which were heaped upon him on this occasion, he prepared to apply himself entirely to the study of the law, agreeably to the wishes of his father. But God willed otherwise. Whilst Luther was engaged in various studies and beginning to teach in the university, his conscience incessantly reminded him that religion was the one thing needful, and that his first care should be the salvation of his soul. He had learned God's hatred of sin; he remem- bered the penalties that his word denounces against the sinner; and he asked himself, tremblingly, if he were sure that he possessed the favour of God. His conscience answered, "JSTo." His character was promj>t and decided : he resolved to do all that depended on himself to insure a well- grounded hope of immortality. Two events occurred, one after another, to rouse his soul and confirm his resolution. Among his college friends there was one * LUTHER AWAKENED. 47 named Alexis, with whom he was very intimate. One morning a report was spread that Alexis had been assassinated. Luther hurried to the spot, and ascer- tained the truth of the report. This sudden loss of his friend affected him, and the question which he asked himself, " What would become of me if I were thus suddenly called away V filled his mind with the liveliest apprehension. * During the summer of 1505, Luther visited the home of his childhood at Mansfeldt, and on his return to the university he was within a short distance of Erfurth, when he was overtaken by a violent storm. The thunder roared; a thunderbolt sank into the ground at his side. Luther threw himself on his knees : his hour is perhaps come : death, judgment, eternity, are before him in all their terrors, and speak with a voice which he can no longer resist ; encom- passed with the anguish and terror of death, as he himself says, he makes a vow, if God will deliver him from this danger, to forsake the world and devote himself entirely to his service. Eisen from the earth, having still before his eyes that death which must one day overtake him, he examines himself seriously, and inquires what he must do. The thoughts that for- merly troubled him return with redoubled power. He has endeavoured, it is true, to fulfil all his duties; but what is the state of his soul? Can he with a polluted soul appear before the tribunal of so terrible a God ? He must become holy. He now thirsts after holiness as he had thirsted after knowledge; but where shall he find it? How is it to be attained? The university has furnished him with the means of satisfying his thirst for knowledge. Who will assuage this anguish, this vehement desire that consumes him 48 THE DIVINE LIFE. now? To what school of holiness can he direct his steps? He will go into a cloister; the monastic life will insure his salvation. How often has he been told of its power to change the heart, to cleanse the sinner, to make men perfect ! He will enter into a monastic order. He will there become holy. He will thus insure his eternal salvation. Such were the resolutions and hopes which filled the breast of Luther as he re-entei-ed Erfurth. His resolution was unalterable. Still, it is with reluctance that he prepares to break ties that are so dear to him. One evening he*invites his college friends to a cheer- ful and simple repast. Music once more enlivens their social meeting. It is Luther's farewell to the world. At the moment when the gayety of his friends is at its height, the young man can no longer repress the serious thoughts that occupy his mind. He speaks. He declares his intention to his astonished friends. They endeavour to oppose it; but in vain. And that very night Luther, perhaps dreading their importunity, quits his lodgings. Leaving behind his books and furniture, and taking with him only Virgil and Plautus, (he had not yet a Bible,) he goes alone, in the darkness of the night, to the convent of the Hermits of St. Augustine. He asks admittance. The door opens and closes. And, not yet two-and-tAventy years old, he is separated from his parents, his com- panions, and the world. Luther imagines himself now with God and safe. His decision and renunciation of the world are commended by the monks and reprobated by his father and friends. As for himself, he is quite in earnest. The ring he received when made doctor of philosophy, he returns to the university, that nothing LUTHER IN THE CONVENT. 49 may remind him of the world he has renounced. Within his new home he performs the meanest offices. And then, when the young monk, who was at once porter, sexton, and servant of the cloister, had finished his work, "With your bag through the town !" cried the brothers ; and, loaded with his bread-bag, he was obliged to go through the streets of Erfurth, begging from house to house, and perhaps at the doors of those very persons who had been either his friends or his inferiors. But he bore it all. Inclined, from his natural disposition, to devote himself heartily to what- ever he imdertook, it was with his whole soul that he had become a monk. Besides, could he wish to spare the body ? to regard the satisfying of the flesh ? JS'ot thus, he thought, could he acquire the humility, the hohness that he had come to seek within the walls of a cloister. The prior of the convent, upon the intercession of the university, freed Luther, ere long, from the mean offices which the monks had imposed upon him ; and the young monk resumed his studies with fresh zeal. The works of the fathers, especially St. Augustine, attracted his attention. ISTothing struck him so much as the opinions of this father upon the corruption of man's will, and upon the grace of God. He felt, in his own experience, the reality of that corruption, and the necessity for that grace. The words of Augustine found an echo in his heart. He loved above all to draw wisdom from the pure spring of the word of God. He found in the convent a Bible, fastened by a chain, and to this chained Bible he had constant recourse. He understood but little of the word ; but still it was his most absorbing study. Burning with a desire after that holiness which he 50 THE DIVINE LIFE. had sought in the cloister, Luther gave himself uj^ to all the rigour of an ascetic life. He endeavoured to crucify the flesh by fastings, macerations, and watch- ings. Shut up in his cell as in a prison, he was continually struggling against the evil thoughts and inclinations of his heart. A little bread, a single herring, Avere often his only food; and for days together he would go without eating or drinking. Nothing was too great a sacrifice, at this period, for the sake of becoming holy to gain heaven. Never did a cloister witness efforts more sincere and un- wearied to purchase eternal happiness. Had they lasted much longer, he would have become a martj^r literally, he declared afterwards, through watchings, prayer, reading, and other labours. At this point we may pause to inquire where Luther is spiritually, and what he has attained. Is he a partaker of the divine life? Comparing him with Saul of Tarsus, Martin Luther is now what Saul was when he sat at the feet of Gamaliel and there outstripped his fellows in zeal for the traditions of his fathers. He is a very Pharisee. Like Saul, he is blameless in his morals, intensely earnest in the performance of ritual observances, heartily zealous to serve God with such service as he then imagined to be pleasing to his Maker. But, like Saul, too, he was only "going about to establish his own righteous- ness." This is an endeavour which is often as j)lainly and prominently exemplified among professing Chris- tians as it ever was by the most zealous adherents of the Mosaic ritual. " There are other materials," Bays Dr. Chalmers, "besides those of Judaism, which men may employ for raising a fabric of self-righteous- ness. Some of them, even among Protestants, as Luther's conflicts. 51 formal in their character as the sabbaths and sacra- ments of Christianity; others of them, with the claim of being more substantial in their character, as the relative duties and proprieties of life; but all of them proceeding on the same presumption, that man can, by his own powers, work out a meritorious title to acceptance with God, and that he can so equalize his doings with the demands of the law as to make it incumbent on the Lawgiver to confer on him the rewards and the favour which are due to obe- dience. . . . The question of our interest with God is no sooner entertained by the human mind, than it appears to be one of the readiest and most natural of its movements to do something for the object of working out such a righteousness. The question of. How shall I, from being personally a condemned sinner, become personally an approved and acceptable servant of God ? no sooner enters the mind, than it is followed up by the suggestion of such a personal change in habit or in character as it is competent for man, by his own turning and his own striving, to accomplish." Never did human soul obey this natural impulse to essay its own redemption, both from guilt and from sin, with more promptness and earnestness than did Luther's. In his agony of mind, he had recourse to all the practices of monkish holiness. "When temptations assailed him, "I am a lost man," he said, and then resorted to a thousand methods to appease the reproaches of his heart. " I confessed every day. But all that was of no use. Then, overwhelmed with dejection, I distressed myself by the multitude of my thoughts. See, said I to mj-self, thou art envious, impatient, passionate; therefore, wretch that thou art; 62 THE DIVINE LIFE. it is of no use to thee to have entered into this holy- order." One day, overcome with sadness, he shut himself in his cell, and for several days and nights suffered no one to approach him. At last the door was broken open, and Luther was found stretched on the floor in unconsciousness and without any sign of life. And there, through mental suffering and bodily self-mortification, he would have perished, but for those who rescued him by a gentle violence. What, we repeat the question, was Luther's religion at this time ? Was it superstition or fanaticism ? It was certainly not the divine life, for it was the very " spirit of bondage and fear," and not " of power, of love, and of a sound mind." How he became a par- taker of the divine life our narrative will tell. The Superior of the Augustinian order was a man of enlightened mind. The study of the Bible and of St. Augustine, the knowledge of himself, the war which he, like Luther, had to wage with the deceitfulness and lusts of his own heart, had led him to the Saviour. And he found, in faith in Christ, peace to his soul. This good man, John Staupitz, found Luther reduced by study, fasting, and watching, so that you might count his bones. He saw, in his countenance, the expression of a soul agitated with severe conflicts, but yet strong and capable of endurance. He approached him affectionately, and endeavoured to overcome the timidity of the novice. The heart of Luther, which had remained closed imder harsh treat- ment, at last opened and expanded to the sweet beams of love. He felt that the vicar-general understood him, and did not refuse to open to him the cause of his sadness. "It is in vain/' said the dejected Luther, "that I LUTHER AND STAUPITZ. 53 make promises to God; sin is always too strong for me." ''Oh, my friend," answered the vicar-general, "I have vowed to the holy God more than a thousand times that I would live a holy life, and never have I kept my vow. I now make no more vows; for I know well I shall not keep them. If God will not be merciful to me for Christ's sake, and grant me a happy death when I leave this world, I cannot, with all my vows and good works, stand before him. I must perish." The young monk was terrified at the thought of divine justice. He confessed all his fears. The unspeakable holiness of God, his sove- reign majesty, filled him with awe. "But why," said Staupitz, "do you distress yourself with these speculations and high thoughts? Look to the wounds of Jesus Christ, to the blood which he has shed for you; it is there you will see the mercy of God. Instead of torturing yourself for your faults, cast yourself into the arms of your Eedeemer. Trust in him, in the righteousness of his life, in the expiatory sacrifice of his death. Do not shrink from him; God is not against you; it is you who are estranged and averse from God." But Luther could not find in himself the repentance which he thought necessary to his salvation; he answered, "How can I dare to believe in the favour of God, so long as there is in me no real conversion? I must be changed before he can receive me." His venerable guide endeavoured to show him that there can be no real conversion so long as man fears God as a severe Judge. "What will you say, then," cried Luther, "to so many consciences, to whom are pre- scribed a thousand insupportable penances in order to gain heaven?" The answer to this question seemed to 54 THE DIVINE LIFE. liini .1 voicefrom heaven. " There is/' said Staiipitz, " no true repentance but that which begins in the love of God and of righteousness. That which some fancy to be the end of repentance is only its beginning. In order to be filled with the love of that which is good, you must first be filled with the love of God. If you wish to be really converted, do not follow these mortifica- tions and penances. Love Him who has first loved you." These words penetrated the heart of Luther. Guided by this new light, he consulted the Scriptures. He looked to all the passages which speak of repent- ance and conversion, — words which were no longer dreaded but became the sweetest refreshment. Those passages of Scripture which once alarmed him seemed now, he says, to run to him from all sides, to smile, to spring up, and play around him. "Before," he exclaims, "though I carefully dis- sembled with God as to the state of my heart, and though I tried to express a love for him, which was only a constraint and a mere fiction, there was no word in the Scripture more bitter to me than repent- ance. But now there is not one more sweet and pleasant to me. Oh, how blessed are all God's precepts, when we read them, not in books alone, but in the precious wounds of the Saviour!" Luther was at this time probably unacquainted with the words of the Psalmist, — "I will run the way of thy com- mandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart." But he was beginning to realize their meaning. The spirit of bondage and fear was giving way before the blessed truth of God's free grace to man through the death and mediation of his beloved Son, and in its stead there was springing up a spirit of filial confi- dence and obedience. LUTHER'S PROGRESS. 55 This change, however, was not instantaneous, but gradual. "Oh! my sin! my sin! my sin!" he cried, one day, in the presence of the vicar-general, and in a tone of the bitterest grief. "Well, would you be only the semblance of a sinner," replied the latter, "and have only the semblance of a Saviour? Know that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of those even who are real and great sinners, and deserving of utter con- demnation." To the doubts of his conscience were added those of his reason. He wished to penetrate into the secret counsels of God, — to unveil his myste- ries, to see the invisible, and comprehend the incom- prehensible. Staupitz checked him. He persuaded him not to attempt to fathom God, but to confine him- self to what he has revealed of his character in Christ. "Look at the wounds of Christ," said he, "and you will there see shining clearly the purpose of God towards man. We cannot understand God out of Christ. 'In Christ you will see what I am and what I require,' hath the Lord said; 'you will not see it elsewhere, either in heaven or on earth.' " The conscience of the young Augustinian did not, however, find solid repose without further conflict. His health at last sunk under the exertions and stretch of his mind. He was attacked with a malady which brought him to the gates of the grave. And all his anguish and termors returned in the prospect of death. His own impurity and God's holiness again disturbed his mind. One day, (it was now the second year of Luther's abode at the convent,) when he was over- whelmed with despair, an old monk entered his cell and sj)oke kindly to him. Luther opened his heart to him, and acquainted him with the fears which dis- quieted him. The old man uttered in simplicity this 66 THE DIVINE LIFE. article of tho Ajiostles' Creed: — "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." These simple words, ingenuously recited at a critical moment, shed sweet consolation in the mind of Luther, ''/believe/' repeated he, to himself, on his bed of suffering, "I believe the re- mission of sins." "Ah," said the monk, "you must not only believe that David's or Peter's sins are for- given : the devils believe that. The commandment of God is, that all men believe that sins are remitted to them." "From that moment," says D'Aubign^, "the light shone into the heart of the young monk of Erfurth. The word of grace was pronounced, and he believed it. lie renounced the thought of meriting salvation, and trusted himself with confidence to God's grace in Christ Jesus. He did not perceive the consequence of the principle he admitted; he was still sincerely attached to the church of Rome, and yet he was thenceforward independent of it; for he had received salvation from God himself, and Eomish Catholicism was virtually extinct to him. From that hour Luther went forward; he sought in the writings of the apostles and prophets for all that might strengthen the hope which filled his heart. Every day he im- plored help from above, and every day new light was imparted to his soul." The history of the Eeformation lies beyond our present theme. But it is important to remark that Luther did not assail the errors of Eomanism in detail until after he was grown to a mature stature in the knowledge and enjoyment of the truth. When he did assail them, it was because he had already felt their incompatibility Avith the truth. "He reasoned LUTHER A CHRISTIAN. 57 always," to use the words of Mr. Isaac Taylor, "from the centre outward; not as from without toward the centre. He threw off the errors of the church, article by article, from the interior force of a spiritual vitality; or as a husk which the ripened fruit rejects. The false principles and corrupt usages in which he had been bred, and to which he had been most firmly attached, slialed away one by one from his mind, from his conduct, from his creed, as exuvice which the energy of a genuine piety could no longer endure." In the history of Luther, as we have traced it, we have found a twofold conversion ; first, from the mere secularity of earthly ambition to an earnest and self- crucifying Pharisaism, and then from this Pharisaism to a pure and spiritual Christianity. The turning- point of the former was the death of his friend Alexis, and the thunderbolt which burst at his feet as he was entering Erfurth. He ceased to be a Pharisee and became a Christian through the instructions of John Staupitz and the humbler agency of the old monk who reminded him, in an hour of mental disquietude, of the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. And, now a Christian, the divine life shines forth, not in the spirit of bondage and fear, but in the spirit of power and of love, and of a sound mind. As in the case of his prototype, Saul of Tarsus, the gospel of God's love to men through the Mediator Jesus Christ not only freed him from the burden of guilt which op- pressed his conscience, but inspired his heart with new and stronger motives to holiness. He was no longer a slave impelled by the fear of punishment to serve a hard master, but a son constrained by love and grati- tude to do the will of his heavenly Father. 58 THE DIVINE LIFE. In bold contrast with the name of Luther stands Ignatius Loy- ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ Ignatius Loyolaj and yet died nel^Kome! "^ ^^^^ history, too, we likcwise learn July 31, 1556. much that will help xis in studying the true character of the divine life. "A Spanish gentleman, of hold bearing, and who courts every chivalrous distinction, and breathes at once a nice honour and a gallantry less nice, is grievously wounded and thrown upon his bed, where he endures weeks of anguish and months of languor. Spoiled for war and pleasure by the hurt he has received, and fired in a moment by a new ambition, he breaks from his home, and sets forward as a Christian fakir, to amaze the world by feats of wild humility. Ho undergoes mental paroxysms, he sees visions, and exists thenceforward in a condition of intense emotion, resembling, in turns, the ecstasies of the upper and the agonies of the nether world. He dedicates him- self, body and soul, to the service of the blessed virgin, — the queen of angels; he sets out on a preaching pilgrimage to convert the Mohammedan world, and he contemns all prudence and common sense in apjilying himself to an enterprise so immensely disproportioned to his abilities. In the course of a year or two he has merited canonization, — if fervent pietism can ever merit it."* What approaches Loyola made to the divine life, as we have seen it in Paul and in Luther, and in what respects he came short of it, will soon appear. Ignatius Loyola was the son of a Sjianish noble, and at an early age was sent as a page to the court of * Loyola and Jesuitism in its Rudiments. By Isaac Taylor. — We are indebted to this interesting and able work for the materials of our sketch of Ignatius Loyola. IGNATIUS LOYOLA. 59 Ferdinand find Isabella. Though he put little restraint upon the passions of youth, he was distinguished among his companions by his abstinence from profane language, by his reverence towards the ministers of religion, and by his dislike of gambling. Still, he pur- sued a career of pleasure and worldly ambition till he had completed his twenty-ninth year, when circum- stances occurred which turned the current of his thoughts into other channels. France and Spain were, at this time, contending for the possession of the bordcr-pi'ovinces. Pampeluna was invested by a French force, and the garrison medi- tated surrender. The gallant Loyola retired into the citadel, where he incited those who held it to maintain their position to the last. A breach in the walls was, however, soon effected; and while Loyola was stop- ping the way, along with a few brave companions, he was struck by a ball on the right leg and by a splinter from the wall on the left, and fell in the breach. The French, with considerate kindness, sent their heroic prisoner, with all care, to be nursed in his paternal castle not far distant. Loyola thus found himself at home, with every aid at hand which love and skill could furnish. But the cure of his wounds was tardy. Violence, frightful to think of, but which the patient endured with the calm fortitude of a soul strong in will, was oftener than once applied to the fractured limb. He sustained too much injury to allow him to indulge the hope of ever again shining, as heretofore, in chivalrous array, or in the shows and revelries of a court. His return to the world being thus cut off, his after-formed resolution to turn his eye forever from its glare was, no doubt, rendered so much the less difficult to adopt and to adhere to. 60 THE DIVINE LIFE. To beguile the tedious hours of languishing, Ignatius called for some of those tales of chivalry which he had been accustomed to peruse. But none were at hand, or he soon exhausted the entertainment of such as the castle could furnish. Two books of devotion now fell in his way, — a Life of Christ, probably some meagre and decorated compilation from the evangelists, and some ascetic memoirs or legends of the desert. ''These books," to use the words of Mr. Isaac Taylor, " looked into at first with listless vexation, soon set on fire the very soul of Ignatius. As every fresh page was turned, sj)arks fell thick, and thicker still, upon materials so combustible as were those of this soldier's nature. That greatness which the soul draws upon itself by the habitual contemplation of infinitude, — ^the steady purpose, too, and the uncon- querable will, and the unearthly abstraction, and tho lofty contempt of whatever the world most admires and covets, — all these rudiments of sijiritual heroism won the admiration of a spirit like Loyola's, sensitive and generous, and now broken ofi" by a sudden violence from the incitements of worldly passions, although in no degree sickened of them." From the reading of monastic legends Loyola arose a changed, if not a new, man. "Why should not I," he exclaimed, "with the help of God, emulate the holy Dominic or the holy Francis ?" " These breath- ings of a new ambition were, however, still mingled with sighs and groans, produced by the struggle of earthly passions in his bosom. The bright enticements which hitherto had engaged all his thoughts and desires continued to exert their unabated influence over him, and his inmost soul was racked by tho alternate sway of those opposite forces. It seemed as LOYOLA A MONK. 61 if his very spirit must have been riven bj^ the grasp, on either hand, of mighty powers, ^contrary the one to the other.' " This great battle between the spirit of the world, and the spirit of the monastery was decided in favour of the latter, and forthwith he addicted himself to the most self-denying practices. Soon after he left home, and on his journey to the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat, be chastised his flesh nightly with the lash. At this fomous monastery, in order to obtain more effective aids in the preservation of an inviolate purity, he placed himself in a formal and solemn man- ner under the immediate guardianship of the Virgin Mary. His next business was to make confession of the sins of his past life, a recital of which from his written memoranda occupied the hours of three entire days. He next surrendered the remaining contents of his purse to the use of the poor; bestowed upon a ragged mendicant, under favour of the night, the costly garb he had lately worn; and with eager haste took to himself the pilgrim gear which he had just pro- vided, — a long hempen cloak of the most rugged texture, a tunic, a rope for a girdle, shoes of matted Spanish broom, a pilgrim's staff turned at the end, and a drinking-bowl. His right foot, being still in a swollen state, he indulged with a shoe; the left was bare, and his head also. ''Moreover, as it was the usage with those who were about to enter any order of knighthood to pass one entire night, armed, in a church, he resolved, in his own case, to adopt this practice on the occasion of his formally dedicating himself to the Christian warfare. Thus minded, and having suspended his sword and dagger in the church, he spent the whole night in front of the altar of the 62 THE DIVINE LIFE. Virgin, — now standing, — now on his knees, with all humility, imploring pardon for his past offences; de- voting himself to the divine service, and not ceasing especially, with earnest supplication, to propitiate the ' blessed mother of God.' " In all this Loyola was thoroughly in earnest. We see him, the Spanish gentleman in sumptuous attire no more, but painfully limping along the roads, one foot naked, the other swollen and clouted, his head bare, his hair matted and foul, his beard rough, his nails grown like eagles' claws, his visage sunken and squalid. At Manresa, a small town about nine miles from Montserrat, he spent some time, and each day begged a morsel of bread from door to door. Three times every day he smai-tly chastised his bare shoulders with the lash; thrice every day he attended prayers at church, besides seven hours of private devotion; and every week confessed and received the sacrament. At the same time he gave all diligence to the care of his spirit, so that the habiliments of poverty and self-denial might truly symbolize the condition of the inner man. The reader will at once be reminded of Luther in the convent of Erfurth. How like the picture ! and how similar the result of these endeavours to obtain peace and purity! Loyola's toils were as vain as had been those of Luther a few years before. "Li his perplexity he began to doubt if the elaborate three- days' confession of the sins of his life, which he had lately effected, had indeed been complete. The black catalogue of crime was perhaps wanting in some one particular, on behalf of which the wrath of Heaven continued to follow him. Day and night ho wept; he went over, again and again, the ground of his late confession; and, as one who has dropped an invalu- LOYOLA IN DESPAIR. 63 able jewel on his vi-ay turns back and with trembling diligence scrutinizes every inch of the ground he has trodden and renews the desperate search day by day, so did Ignatius retrace the path of his past life, even lip to the commencement of his moral consciousness, anxiously searching among the almost effaced impres- sions of memory for the lost crime. To think too much of his sins was not Loyola's mistake; but it was his misfortune to know so httle as he knew of the only mode of release from the anguish of an awakened conscience." In the midst of his wretchedness he was seized with despair, and meditated self-destruction. With- held from this j)urpose, he resolved, with the hope of vanquishing or appeasing the divine justice, to abstain absolutely from all food until he should win back the peace and joy which he had lost. Would that, in this crisis of his soul's agony, he had met with a Staupitz to direct him to the Saviour; or with that book which taught Luther that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin ! But it was not so. Intermitting no services and no penances, he fasted a day — and two days — and three — and four, — nay, an entire week; and he would have persisted in his resolution had not his confessor commanded him to abandon so presumptu- ous an endeavour as that of contending with the Almighty. For a time he regained some tranquillity, but soon relapsed into the same condition of inward distress, and was tempted at once to renounce his ascetic purposes and to return to the world and to its enjoyments. His deliverance from this state of mind is ascribed to a resolute act of will. He suddenly came to the conclusion that " the mystery of con- fession," attended to in the manner and for the pur- 64 THE DIVINE LIFE. poses for which he used it, was not good, but evil. At once, therefore, and without any farther hesitation, he resolved to consign the entire delinquencies of his past life to perpetual oblivion. And thus, by a con- vulsive effort, he disengaged himself from the load of his past sins. Though from the time when, by this strong act of will, he emancipated himself from his despair, he could be a mere ascetic no longer, he still maintained ascetic practices, and attached to them a virtue and ef&cacy which belong only to the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. When he approached the throne of offended justice, "he undertook there the desperate task of expiating the guilt of past years by bodily tor- ments, such as the most renowned saints had them- selves practised and had ajiplauded." Occasionally ho seemed to rise above the absurdity of such practices ; but he persevered in them, sometimes perhaps from motives of policy, but mainly from an idea of their virtue. Whatever opinion we form of the order of Jesuits, no one will deny that its founder was in earnest. His soul had a capacity for government which it is difficult to understand or to fathom. And all his religious undertakings were prosecuted with a fer- vour the most intense and consuming. If zeal has virtue of its own, irrespective of the object it aims to accomplish and of the means which it uses, the divine life has seldom appeared in more vigorous action than in the person of Ignatius Loyola. But if we consent to be taught by the Apostle Paul, we must believe that there was only a "show of wisdom" in that " voluntaiy humility" which made him a beggar for his daily bread when plenty was within his reach in PAUL, LUTHER, AND LOYOLA. 65 other and more honourable ways; and only " a show of wisdom," likewise, in that ''neglecting of the body," and in those self-inflicted penances which emaciated his frame and covered it with disease. If we accept Paul as a model, we shall not forget that he worked with his own hands to provide for his necessities, but never begged to exhibit his humilitj-; and that, while the love of Christ constrained him to endure the stripes which the enemies of Christ inflicted on him, he never lifted his own hand to do himself harm. Such practices Paul traced distinctly to a heathen soiirce; and hea- then they must ever be, whether they are followed by a Hindoo fakir, or a Mohammedan dervish, or a so- called Christian devotee. They are no signs of the divine life ; this best and heavenliest principle develops itself in far other fruits and ways. We are now in a position to compare Paul, Luther, and Loyola. All of them constitutionally ardent and active, they were all, likewise, religiously sincere, ear- nest, and self-denying. But up to a certain period these attributes were Pharisaic, not Christian. And more thorough disciples than these men Pharisaism cannot boast. Paul is introduced to us at the very beginning of his history as a Pharisee. Luther and Loyola begin as men of mere worldly pursuit and ambition; the former a student, and the latter a soldier. But both pass from pure worldliness to an earnest religiousness : the one frightened by the death of his friend Alexis, and the thunder-storm, to flee into the Augustinian convent to save his soul; the other incapacitated to pursue a soldier's life, and enjoy the soldier's pleasures, by the wounds of which ho DO THE DIVINE LIFE. slowly recovered in the home of the lords of Pam- peluna. Up to this point the three stand on the same religious platform. And, had they all found rest there, their future life might have varied in form, hut would have been identical in spirit and princi- ple ; they would have been earnest-minded Pharisees, and nothing more. Paul, however, became a Chris- tian, not by the mere intellectual conviction that Jesus is the Christ, far less by the mere practice of Christian rites, but by the grace which taught him to find peace with God, and a fountain of inward purity and strength in the mediation of Him who died, the just for the unjust. The Pharisee Martin Luther became a Christian when he was withdrawn from confidence in his own inward conflicts and out- ward mortifications, and beheld and confided in the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. In the Christian Paul and Luther the divine life m.anifest8 itself not in mere earnestness and zeal, but in the spirit of trustful, rejoicing, filial love to their God and Father. But what shall we say of Ignatius Loyola ? In the hour of his distress there was no Staupitz at hand to say to him, " Look to the wounds of Jesus Christ, to the blood which he has shed for you; it is there you will see the mercy of God. In- stead of torturing yourself for your faults, cast your- self into the arms of your Eedeemer. Trust in himj in the righteousness of his life, in the expiatory sacri- fice of his death." There was no Bible at hand to tell him, ''Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision ; but faith which worketh by love. And when the Holy Scriptures fell into his hands, we do not find that he recognised in THE FILIAL SPIRIT. 67 them those first truths which imparted peace and life to Paul and Luther, delivered them from the spirit of bondage and fear, and created -within them a spirit, not of power merely, but of love and of a sound mind likewise. So far as the conversion of Loyola can be traced, it left him at a distance from the home of evangelical peace, and ignorant of the true principles of evangelical obedience. The effect of the doctrine of Christ's atonement, as our peace with God, is to produce a spirit of obedience to God at once earnest and filial. "There is nothing that so chains the inactivity of a human being as hope- lessness," says Dr. Chalmers. "There is nothing that 80 paralyzes him as the undefined but haunting inse- curity and terror whicli he cannot shake away The truth that Christ died for our sins, so far from a soporific, is a stimulus to our obedience; and it is when this truth enters with power into the heart, that the believer can take up the language of the Psalmist and say, 'Thou hast enlarged my heart, and I will run the way of thy commandments.'" The spirit in which they obey who have obtained pardon and peace through the blood of the cross, and in which they obey who are looking for pardon and peace through the virtue of their obedience, is essentially difi'erent, even when they perform the same acts. The one is the spirit of the child, the other of the slave. "As sons, we do them from the feeling of love; as servants, we do them by the force of law. It is the spontaneous taste of the one; it is the servile task of the other. The meat and drink of the servant lie in the hire which is given for the doing of his master's will The meat and drink of the son lie in the very doing of that will. He docs not feel it to be a service, but the 68 THE DIVINE LIFE. very solace and satisfaction of his own renovated spirit." Of the principles which have been elicited from the expez'ience of Paul and Luther, and, by contrast, from that of Ignatius Loyola, we shall furnish another illus- tration in the history of the English bishop Latimer. The first character in which we know Hugh Latimer is that of a genial, merry lad. He had Latimer; born ° ^ •' in Leicestershire followcd the pursuits of a veoman's in 1491 ; suffered -^ . . "; martyrdom at hic without stain 01 vice Or dishonour. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the University of Cambridge, and took as much inte- rest in the amusements as in the studies of the place. He was fond of pleasure and of cheerful conversation, and mingled frequently in the festivities of the youth- ful crowd around him. At what age the transition took place from light-heartedness to asceticism, we are not aware; but he was still young, and the cir- cumstances have been recorded. When Latimer and a company of his fellow-students were dining together, one of the party exclaimed, in the Latin of the Vulgate translation of Eccl. iii. 12, "There is nothing better than to be merry and to do well." "A vengeance on that do well!" replied a monk of impudent mien; "I wish it were beyond the sea; it mars all the rest." Young Latimer was startled. "I understand it now," he said; "that will be a heavy do well to these monks when they have to render God an account of their lives." Forsaking pleasure, the yeoman's son threw himself, heart and soul, into the practices of supersti- tion, and became distinguished for his asceticism and enthusiasm. He learned to attach the greatest import- ■ LATIMER A FANATIC. 69 ance to the merest trifles. As the missal directs that water should be mingled with the sacramental M'ine, often while sajnng mass he would be troubled in his conscience for fear he had not put sufficient water. And this fear never left him a moment's tranquillity during the service. He became notorious for his ardent fanaticism, and his zeal was rewarded by the appointment of cross-bearer to the university. And in this capacity he was conspicuous for seven years, amidst the chanting priests and splendid shows of every religious procession. A more religious man than he was, in his own way, there could not be; — not Saul of Tarsus, not Luther in the Augustinian monas- tery, not Ignatius Loyola. Was he now a true con- vert to Christ? Was his religion the divine life? At this time the University of Cambridge was greatly agitated by the publication of the Greek New Testament, with a Latin translation by Erasmus. And there was no one to whom the hopes of the enemies of this book looked so confidently as to the cross-bearer of the university. This young priest combined a biting humour with an impetuous disposition and indefatigable zeal. He followed the friends of the word of God into the colleges and houses where they used to meet, debated with them, and pressed them to abandon their faith. On occasion of receiving the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, he had to deliver a Latin discourse in the presence of the university, and chose for his subject ''Philip Melancthon and his doctrines." Latimer's discourse produced a great impression. "At last," said his hearers, ''Cambridge will furnish a champion for the chui'ch that will eon- front the Wittenberg doctors and save the vessel of our Lord." 70 THE DIVINE LIFE. Among the cross-bearer's hearers on this occasion was Thomas Bilney, ahnost hidden through his small stature. Bilney easily detected Latimer's sophisms, but at the same time loved his j)erson, and conceived the design of winning him to what he believed to be the truth. He reflected, prayed, and at last planned a strange plot.* He went to the college where Latimer resided. "For the love of God," he said, ''be pleased to hear my confession." The confessor expected to hear a recantation of Bilney's new doctrines. My discourse against Melancthon has converted him, he thought. The pale face and wasted frame and hvim- ble look of his visitor seemed to indicate that he would still be one of the ascetics of Eome. And Latimer at once yielded to his request. Bilney, kneeling before his confessor, told him, with touching simplicity, the anguish he had once felt in his soul, the efforts he had made to remove it, their unprofitableness, and the peace he had felt when he believed that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. He described to Latimer the Spirit of adop- tion he had received, and the happiness he experienced in being able to call God his Father. Latimer listened without mistrust. His heart was opened, and the voice of the pious Bilney penetrated it without ob- stacle. From time to time the confessor would have chased away the new thoughts which came crowding into his bosom; but the penitent continued. His language, at once so simjole and so lively, entered like a two-edged sword. At length the penitent rose up, but Latimer remained seated, absorbed in thought. Like Saul on the way to Damascus, he was conquered, and his conversion, like the apostle's, was instanta- * D'Aubigue's " Keformation in England." Latimer's conversion. 71 neous. He saw Jesus as the only Saviour given to man : he contemplated and adored him. His zeal for the superstitions of his fathers he now regarded as a war against God, and he wept bitterly. Bilney eon- soled him : — "Brother, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." Latimer received the truth, and was henceforward a changed man. His energy was tempered by a divine unction, and he ceased to be superstitious. His conversion, as of old the miracles of the apostles, struck men's minds with astonishment. To the hour of his martyrdom he pro- claimed Jesus Christ as him who, having tasted death for every man, has delivered his people from the j)enalty of sin. With this blessed doctrine Bilney and Latimer explored even the gloomy cells of the mad- house to bear the sweet voice of the gospel to the in- furiate maniacs. They visited the miserable lazar- house without the town, in which several poor lepers were dwelling ; they carefully tended them, wrapped them in clean sheets, and wooed them to be converted to Christ. The gates of the jail at Cambridge were opened to them, and they announced to the poor prisoners that word which giveth liberty. Before princes and people they testified the gospel of the grace of God. And many years after they sealed their testimony with their blood. These instances of the divine life — experimental facts by which its reality is ascertained, and from which its nature may be inferred — have, it will be observed, much in common. But it may be supposed that they have peculiarities which remove them to a certain extent from the experience of men in ordinary society, 72 THE DIVINE LIFE. and in our country and times. It will be seen, how- ever, on the examination of the instances to which we now proceed, that these peculiarities do not affect the substance of Christian truth, or its practical results in the heart and life of those who receive it. The first example which we select of a more com- mon class of conversions than that of monks and ascetics possesses a bold and definite outline. And we place it first because the change which its subject underwent was so obvious and visible, that the blind- est eye must see it. James Gardiner was born in the year of the Eng- coionei oardi- lish Ecvolutiou, — 1688. Sucli was his ary'wthyiTss"; recMcss daring that he had fought panVse^tembei thrcc ducls bcforc hc attained to the 2iBt.i745. stature of a man. In the first of his country's battles in which he was engaged, he was left among the wounded on the field of action, and his conduct in this melancholy position shows how god- less and hardened his heart was. He was now in the nineteenth year of his age. His life had already been steeped in licentiousness, but he had no thoughts of repentance ; his one concern w^as how to secure the gold which he had about him. Expecting to be stripped by the enemy, he took a handful of clotted gore, placed his gold in the midst of it, shut his hand, and kept it in that position till the blood so dried and hardened that his hand would not easily fall open if any sudden surprise overtook him. The next morning he lay fiiint and exhausted, through loss of blood, and overheard one Frenchman say to another, "Do not kill that poor child." And when he was able to open his fevered lips, the first thing he did was to tell a deliberate fiilse- hood, namely, that he was nephew to the governor of COLONEL GARDINER. 73 Hu}', a neutral town in the neighbourhood. Ilis suf- ferings the following night were such that he begged those who were carrying him to Huy to kill him out- right; but still he had no thoughts of God. And when his recovery was perfected, and he was restored to his country, it was only to plunge into all manner of excesses. The most criminal intrigues formed the staple of his existence from this period till the thirtieth 3'ear of his age. By his military companions he was called *' the happy rake." But he was not happy. On one occasion, while his profligate associates were congratulating him on his criminal successes, a dog happened to enter the room, and the young soldier (as he well remembered afterwards) could not forbear groaning inwardly, "Oh that I were that dog!" "His continual neglect of the great Author of his being, of whose perfections he could not doubt, and to whom he knew himself to be under daily and per- petual obligations, gave him, in some moments of in- voluntary reflection, inexpressible remorse, and this, at times, w^rought upon him to such a degree that he resolved he would attempt to pay him some acknoM- ledgments." Accordingly, for a few mornings he re- peated some passages of Scripture, and bent his knees before the throne of God. But the remonstrances of reason and conscience soon yielded to the power of temptation; and hairbreadth escapes by sea and land only confirmed his alienation from God. In the thirty-first year of his age, how^ever, Gardiner became the subject of a moral change as thorough and striking as any which human history can present, while the singularity of the circumstances in which it occurred has seldom been equalled. Towards the middle of July, 1719, he spent an 74 THE DIVINE LIFE. evening of folly with some of his gay associates. The company broke up about eleven, and at twelve he had made a criminal appointment. The intervening- hour must be bridged over by some employment. A pious mother had, without his knowledge, shp- ped into his portmanteau Watson's "Christian Soldier, or Heaven taken by Storm." The title at- tracted him, and he expected some amusement from its jnilitary phraseology. He took it and read, but it produced no seriousness nor reflection. While the book was yet in his hand, however, impressions were made on his mind, the fruit of which must be regarded as the best index to whence they came. Whether he was asleep or awake at the time, he felt it afterwards difficult to determine. But if asleep, so vividly was what he saw and heard impressed on his mind, that it seemed to be a waking realit}^ "He thought he saw an unusual blaze of light fall on the book while he was reading, which he at first imagined might happen by some accident in the candle. But, lifting up his eyes, he apprehended, to his extreme amazement, that there was before him, as it were sus- pended in the air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, surrounded on all sides with a glory; and was impressed, as if a voice, or Bomething equivalent to a voice, had come to him to this effect, 'O sinner! did I suffer this for thee? and are these the returns ?' '' Affected as were Daniel and John by the supernatural visions they saw, "there remained hardly any hfc" in Colonel Gardiner, and he continued, he knew not how long, insensible ; but when he opened his eyes he saw nothing more than usual. It were easy to dismiss this tale as the dream of an Gardiner's dream. 75 enthusiast, but such a proceeding would be far too summary to be "worthy of inquirers after truth. If Gardiner had returned to his evil courses, we should have treated his vision as the mere offspring of an ex- cited imagination and a disturbed conscience. And, as it is, it need not be doubted that imagination and conscience were both at work; but then they were called to their work, and guided, in the part which they performed, by some power foreign to the man's own soul. This we infer from the results. And what that power was, they will not doubt who are willing to be guided by the Book in their interpretation of spiritual changes. " It cannot in the course of nature be imagined," says his biographer, '* how such a dream should arise in a mind full of the most impure ideas and atfections, and, as he himself often pleaded, more alienated from the thoughts of a crucified Saviour than from any other object that can be conceived; nor can we surely suppose it should, without a mighty energy of the divine power, be effectual to produce not only some transient flow of passion, but so entire and so permanent a change in character and con- duct." The dreamer arose from his seat, after a period of unconsciousness, and walked to and fro in his chamber under a tumult of emotions, till he was ready to drop down in unutterable astonishment and agony of heart, appearing to himself the vilest monster in the creation of God, who had all his lifetime been crucify- ing Christ afresh by his sins. With this was con- nected such a view both of the majesty and goodness of God as caused him to loathe and abhor himself, and to repent as in dust and ashes. He immediately gave judgment against himself, that he was most justly 7G THE DIVINE LIFE. worthy of eternal damnation, and was astonished that he had not been immediately struck dead in the midst of his wickedness." For several months after, it was a settled point with him that the wisdom and justice of God almost necessarily required that such an enormous sinner should be made an example of everlasting vengeance, and he dared hardly ask for pardon. His mental sufferings were now extreme, but he often testified afterwards that they arose not so much from the fear of hell "as from a sense of that horrible ingratitude he had shown to the God of his life, and to that blessed Redeemer who had been in so affecting a manner set forth as crucified before him." Those licentious pleasures which had before been his heaven became now absolutely his aversion. "And indeed," says his biographer, "when I consider how habitual all those criminal indulgences were grown to him, and that he was now in the prime of life, and all this while in high health too, I cannot but be astonished to reflect upon it, that he should be so wonderfully sanctified in body as well as in soul and spirit, as that, for all the future years of his life, he, from that hour, should find so constant a disinclination to and abhorrence of those criminal sensualities to which he fancied he was before so invariably impelled by his very constitution, that he was used strangely to think and to say that Omnipotence itself could not reform him without destroying that body and giving him another." At length the heavy burden fell from off this weary pilgrim, as from others, when he saw the cross. His peace came by means of that memorable Scripture, — • "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the GARDINER A NEW MAN. 77 remission of sins; that he might be just, and the justi- fier of him which believeth in Jesus."* He had used to imagine that the justice of God required his eternal death. But now he saw that the divine justice miglit be vindicated, and even glorified, in saving him by the blood of Jesus Christ. "Then did he see and feel the riches of redeeming love and grace in such a manner as not only engaged him, with the utmost pleasure and confidence, to venture his soul upon it, but even swal- lowed up, as it were, his whole heart in the returns of love, which from that blessed time became the genuine and delightful principle of his obedience, and animated him with an enlarged heai't to run in the way of God's commandments." The future life of Colonel Gardiner, from the "hour of his conversion till he fell at Preston-Pans in defence of the House of Hanover, — a period of twenty-six years, — was one of distinguished excellence. The *'new man" was virtuous and pure and godly as the "old" had been licentious and profane. The change is a spiritual fact of deep interest; and if it be in any sense m^'sterious when viewed in the light of Chris- tian truth, it w^ould be not only mysterious, but unac- countable, if that truth be denied. We select for our second example a spiritual change, which presents a contrast to that of Colonel Gardiner in all respects but in that essential oneness which will be found to unite all true conversions. "When Dr. Chalmers was professor of moral philo- sophy in the University of St. Andrew, the fame of his eloquence attracted to his classes young men of a 78 THE DIVINE LIFE. superior order from all parts of the kingdom. Of one of these, who died young, the professor wrote, in 1827, "He had the amplitude of genius, hut none of its ir- regularities. He was neither a mere geometer, nor a mere linguist, nor a mere metaphysician; he was all put together; alike distinguished b}'" the fulness and the harmony of his powers. . . . He far outpeered all his fellows, and, in a class of uncommon force and brilliancy of talent, shone forth as a star of the first magnitude." From the class thus described have arisen some of the most eminent men who now adorn both the puljiit and the bar. And the youth who out- peered these men, and elicited this encomium from so illustrious a teacher, must have been a person of no common order. This was John Urquhart, the son of a goldsmith johnTJrquhart; in the ancicnt city of Perth. From jun° 7th '^i¥os' I'is childhood he enjoyed the inesti- jitirf 'Toi mable privilege of enlightened parental •'^^'- care, and of pastoral instruction of a high order. He was constitutional]}' aftectionate and amiable. Among his schoolfellows he was a jDat- tern of all outward goodness at least. One of them — now Dr. Duff, missionary in Calcutta — testifies that his superior intellectual attainments commanded their admiration, and his simplicity and guileless innocence their love. ''You never heard him utter a harsh or unbecoming expression; you never saw him break forth into a violent j:»assion; you never had to reprove him for associating with bad com- panions, nor for engaging in improper amusements. In every innocent pastime for promoting the health, in every playful expedient for whetting the mental powers, none more active than he; but in all the JOHN URQUHART. 79 little bra-wls and turmoils that usuallY agitato 3-outh- ful associations, there was one whom you might safely reckon upon not having any share. The love of •what was good, and abhorrence of what was evil, had been so habitually inculcated from childhood, that the (herishing of these feelings might seem to have ac- (juired the strength of a constitutional tendency, and the abandonment of them would have been like the breaking up of an established habit." Can such a youth need conversion? See him at school, and he stands foremost morally as well as in- tellectually; see him at home, and he is the idol of parental aifeetion; see him in the playground, and with all the zest with which he enjoys it there are in- termingled none of its evil passions; see him in the sanctuary, and none, so far as eye can judge, more devout than he; see him in the morning, and you will find him with the rising sun, pacing the beautiful banks of the Tay, "like a shadow wholly unbound to the surface, sometimes in the attitude of deepest me- ditation, and sometimes perusing the strains of the Mantuan bard;" see him in the evening, and not the haunt of "udckedness, but the family hearth and the quiet study, are his resort. We follow him to the Uni- versity of St. Andrew, while he is yet a boy, having only completed his fourteenth year, and he is un- changed. Steady and persevering in all his habits, he is ardently set on rising to eminence in some honour- able department of life. Possessed of a generous and self-denying spirit, he nobly sacrifices every thing which it is possible for him to give up, that the ex- penses of his education may aftect as little as possible the other members of his father's family. Exposed to new and formidable dangers, his conduct is uni- 80 THE DIVINE LIFE, formly correct; his attendance on divine worship is regular; the private reading of the Holy Scriptures is not neglected; and morning and evening are sanctified by prayer. Can such a youth need conversion? "In a case like his/' his biographer justly remarks, "no very marked or visible transition could take place." But John Urquhart was led to judge that he needed a change as deep and real as any poor prodigal who has wasted his substance with riotous living. And during the second year of his university course he gave the following account of what he hoped was such a change, to his pastor and friend, and afterwards his biographer, the Eev. William Orne : — "My first impressions of danger as a sinner were caused by a sermon you preached about a year and a half ago. At the time I was very much affected; it was then, I think, that I first really prayed. I retired to my apartment, and with many tears confessed my guilt before God. These impressions were followed by some remarkable events in the providence of God, which struck me very forcibly. About that time I had a proof of the inability of earthly wisdom and learn- ing to confer true happiness, by the melancholy death of my grammar-school teacher. On leaving my father's house to come here, shortly after, I felt myself in a peculiar manner dependent on Jehovah. I was re- moved from the care of my earthly father, and from the intercourse of my earthly friends; and I felt great pleasure in committing myself to Him who is the father of the filth erless and a friend to those that have none. My companion used to join me morning and evening in the reading of the Scriptures and prayer. In these, and in attending on the more public exercises of God's worship, I had some enjoyment, and UKUUHART's CUNVKRSION. 81 from them, I think, I derived some advantage. On my return home, however, last summer, 1 began to feel less pleasure in these employments; they began to be a weariness to me, and were at last almost totally neglected. My soul reverted to its original bent, and the follies of this world wholly engrossed my atten- tion. Had I been left in that state, I must have inevitably perished. But God is rich in mercy; he delighteth not in the death of the wicked. In his infinite mercy he has again been pleased to call my attention to the things of eternity. For some months back I have been led to see the utter worthlessness of earthly things; to see that happiness is not to be found in any earthly object; that '•Learning, pleasure, wealth, and fame, All cry, 'It 13 not here.' " And I think I have been led to seek it where alone it is to be found, — in 'Jesus crucified for me.' I have felt great pleasure in communion with God; and I have felt some love, though faint, to the Saviour and to his cause. I have had a long struggle with the world. I have counted the cost, and I have at last resolved that I will serve the Lord." In pursuance of this holy purpose, formed not in his own strength, John Urquhart took his place pub- licly among the followers of Christ in the sixteenth year of his age. And well did his life sustain the character which he thus assumed. "His crowning excellence," said Dr. Chalmers, "was lijs piety. This religious spirit gave a certain ethereal hue to all his college exhibitions." Young Urquhart looked forward solemnly to "life" as the "test" of the genuineness of the professions which he now made. "May God 82 THE DIVINE LIFE. perfect his strength in my weakness," he said, "and may he enable me to live henceforth not to myself, but to Him "who died for me, and who rose again; to offer my body a living sacrifice, and to devote all the facul- ties of my mind to his service." "Talents which," to use the words of Dr. Chalmers, "would have raised him to the highest summits of learning and philo- sophy" were thus unreservedly consecrated to the honour of his Divine Lord and Saviour. "Length of days" was not given to him to test his fidelity; but he lived long enough, although he died in the nine- teenth year of his age, to have it said of hin^, as it was of Henry Martyn, "that his symmetry in the Chris- tian stature was as surprising as its height/' Our THIRD EXAMPLE differs in many respects both from Colonel Gardiner and from John Urquhart. Ebenezer Birrell was trained in the fear of God. Ebenezer Bir- During his boyhood there was much kaidy?juiyinh" ^^ ^^^ moral deportment to awaken the L^ndonfoe^em- intcrcst and hopcs of his kindred. In bcr 30th, 1841. ^i^Q sixteenth year of his age he was the subject of deep religious impressions. Uniting with his brother and a sister's family in the morning reading of the Holy Scriptures, when some observa- tions were made on the danger of stifling serious impressions, his countenance assumed an appearance altogether unusual. "It became pale and full of dread," says his brother, "and we quickly finished the engagement by earnest prayer, under the per- suasion that that was the most suitable course. An unusual tenderness appeared in his conduct, during the few minutes that I saw him, before retiring to EBENEZEE BIRRELL. 83 rest at night. Not long, however, after having done 80, 1 heard a voice in his chamber. On rising, I found him kneehng on his bed, weeping and trembUng with the greatest violence; and, on asking the cause of his emotion, he answered that he dreaded the conse- quences of being left to final hardness of heart. After acquiring some composure, we knelt together, and cried, in that solemn night-season, for the mercy and grace of God." But the result was transient. Years afterwards, he said of it, ''At this time I remember to have experienced, for the first time, the impression that religion was a matter with which I had to do. I became alarmed and impressed ; but, after continuing rather serious for a few days, I again sank back into my former indifi'erence."* Soon after this period, he entered a house of busi- ness in the metropolis. Most of the young men in the same house were, like himself, related to pious fami- lies, and had received a religious education. But "to nearly all of them London was full of novelty, and life apparently intended only for enjoyment." BirrelFs disposition was in the highest degree sociable; his manners were frank and affable, and his powers of communicating amusement Avere singularly great. "First," he writes, "one part of the Sunday, and then the whole, was given to pleasure." Those sentiments which form the shield of the sanctity of the day of rest were gi^adually obliterated, and it became as secular as any other. "It would but unnecessarily recall unpleasant feelings," he writes in his diary, "were I to recount the steps by which I was led so far over the threshold of morality and right principle as that theatres and Sunday excursions should at last become * Memoir by his brother, the Rev. Charles Birrell. 84 THE DIVINE LIFE. fjimiliar to me. But for nearly three years, avoiding the path of wisdom, I wandered far into the ways of sin." But early habits are not easily abandoned. Fresh from places of exciting and sinful amusement, Ebenezer Birrell would kneel down before God and pray that he would change his heart. On another fact which is told of him, the Eev. Thomas Binney has beautifully remarked, ''What a mysterious, magical, divine thing is a mother's love ! How it nestles about the heart, and goes with the man, and sj)eaks to him pure words, and is like a guardian angel ! This young man could never take any money that came to him from his mother, and spend that upon a Sunday excursion or a treat to a theatre. It was a sacred thing with him ; it had the impression and inscription of his mother's image, and his mother's purity, and his mother's piety, and his mother's love. It was a sacred thing to him; and these pleasures, which he felt to be ques- tionable or felt to be sinful, wei-e always to be pro- vided for by other resources, and by money that came to him by other hands." In his attendance on public worship at the Weigh-house Chapel, this young man often heard his character described and his sentence pronounced; but his heart would not j'^ield. "Such convictions were usually stifled by resorting to the idea of predestination. He attempted to believe that his conversion would be produced, or prevented, by the efficacy of a direct purpose on the part of his Creator, without respect, in any sense, to his own con- duct. ' This principle I applied, also,' he remarks, 'to death; so that I went calmly to bathe or row in dangerous parts of the Thames, believing that the day of my death was settled, and die then I should, what- BIRRELL AWAKENED. 85 ever I was doing, or wherever I was.' It was thus that he struggled to master and to extinguish the very- instinct of responsibility, and to provoke the God of truth to give him over to permanent hardness of heart. But the termination of the contest drew near." In February, 1839, he heard a sermon on the claims of the Bible to the faith and obedience of mankind, which left on his mind a deep impression of his own neglect of the blessed book, but effected no reformation. Exactly at the same time, one of his sisters, not at all aware of the state of his heart, put down his name in the list of Sunday-school teachers at a new chapel in Lambeth. The displeasure which this awakened in his breast was "as the observation of a planet to the navigator : it indicated the position of his soul in rela- tion to God." On the evening of the day on which he heard what his sister had done, he went to York Eoad Chapel, to hear the Eev. Samuel Martin preach. And the result will be best described in his own words : — " Mortified to think that I should soon have to give up a considerable portion of my leisure time on the Sunday, and miserable in the reflection that I should have to keep up a show of religion in my heart, and to teach the children to observe what I was living in open violation of myself, I entered that chapel with a heart burning with greater enmity to God than I had ever experienced. The preacher's text was, ' They all with one consent began to make excuse.' As he proceeded, my bitter feelings were gradually softened down, and I left that sanctuary very different from what I had entered it, — serious and thoughtful. There was no particular part of the discourse with which I was impressed j but the whole set me on a train of 86 THE DIVINE LIFE. thought respecting my present condition and my future prospects. On the one hand I loved my sins and the ways of the world ; and when I reflected upon them it appeared impossible that I could give them up. On the other hand I felt, deeply felt, that I was unhappy. I knew, I saw, that God's people were happy, and that I might be converted if I jDi'oceeded in the right way. These, and such as these, were my thoughts, until I was brought in some measure to see what a sinner I was in the sight of God. I remem- bered how I had resisted his Holy Spirit, when he had formerly spoken to me; that he was speaking to me again, and that now it might be for the last time; so I asked mj^self, 'Why should I wish to be excused?' All along Blackfriars Eoad a conflict between opposite j^rinciples went on in my mind; and, as I stepped on the bridge, I was led, by the grace of God, to deter- mine to cease from sin ; to open that volume which had never been opened with a sincere desire for know- ledge; and, imploring God's blessing, to seek the way of salvation with full purpose of heart. From that moment I perceived that God was strengthening me; for from that time I had no difficulty in doing what before appeared to me so difficult, — giving up my out- ward sins. In this state of mind I got home, and im- mediately retired to my room, and, God directing me, the book I took up was one which you [his brother] had given me, but which I had laid aside, not expecting to have any use for it, — 'James's Anxious Inquirer,' which I began to read in the manner he recommends, with earnest prayer to God that it might be blessed to my soul. I read the first three chapters that night, together with some of the first chapters of Matthew, and rose up in the morning still determined THE "ANXIOUS INQUIRER." 87 to be the Lord's, and feeling happy in my determina- tion : at the same time I was sorry and downcast that I did not feel enough the enormity of ray sins, nor had shed tears, (as formerly I had done while under im- pressions,) nor been much agitated; but, on the con- trary, calm and composed. AVhen night came I again retired to my room, still very unhappy for these reasons. The next chapter in the 'Anxious Inquirer' was on Repentance; and how can I describe the feelings with which 1 read 'You are not to suppose that you do not repent, because you have never been the subject of overwhelming horror and excessive grief. Persons in the first stages of religious impres- sion are sometimes cast down and discouraged, because they do not feel those agonizing and terrify- ing convictions that some whom they have heard or read of have experienced. Others, again, are greatly troubled, because they do not and cannot shed tears and utter groans under a sense of sin, as some do. If they could either be wrought up to horror or melted into weeping, they should then take some comfort, and have some hope that their convictions were genuine.' I returned thanks to God that that chapter had ever been written. Feeling much easier, I went on to read the next chapter, on Faith. I read there, ' You are never safe, reader, until you have faith.' Anxiously I inquired, "What is faith ? I read again : — 'Faith, in general, means a belief in whatever God has testified in his word; but faith in Christ means the belief of what the Scriptures say of him, — of his person, offices, and work. Y'ou are to believe that he is the Son of God, — God manifest in the flesh, God- man, Mediator; for how can a mere creature be your saviour ? In faith j-ou commit youi- soul to the Lord 88 THE DIVINE LIFE. Jesus. What ! into the hands of a mere creature ? The divinity of Christ is thus not merely an article of faith, but enters also into the foundation of ho^je. You are required to believe in the doctrine of the atonement, that Christ satisfied divine justice for human guilt, having been made a propitiation for our sins, and that now his sacrifice and righteousness are the only ground or foundation on which a sinner can be accepted or acquitted befoi'e God. Tou are to believe that all, however previously guilty and unworthy, are welcome to God for salvation, without any exception or any difficulty whatever.' 'Well,' I said to myself, 'I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, that he came down from heaven to this earth, and that he died on the cross that sinners might be saved;' but, notwithstanding this, I seemed waiting in expectation of something, — some visible and perceptible change, — something indicative of the Spirit of God coming upon me; but I felt nothing; I was the same as before. I turned to Matthew, and read there, in the ninth chapter, of the woman who had the issue of blood, and whose faith had made her whole; and I read other in- stances of the efficacy of faith; but they did not seem to me to apply to my case. They had exer- cised faith, certainly, but then they saw Christ with their eyes, and felt that they had been healed. Now, I felt nothing of this sort; I could see nothing by which I might know I was cured. With these per- plexing thoughts, I returned again to the 'Anxious Inquirer,' and read, 'Faith is not a belief in your own personal religion; this is the assurance of hope; but it is a belief that God loves sinnei's, and that Christ died for sinners, and for you among the rest. FAITH AND PEACE. 89 It is not a belief that you are a real Christian, but that Christ is wiUing to give you all the blessings included in that term. It is the belief of something out of yourself. The object of faith is the work of Christ for you, not the work of the Spirit in you. It is to rest upon the word and work of Christ for salvation; to depend on his atonement and righteous- ness, and upon nothing else, for acceptance with God; and, really, to expect salvation because he has promised it.' I then perceived that I had doubted the power of Christ and the willingness of God. I fell down on my knees before him, and rose a believer that my sins were pardoned through the blood of the Lamb." This is not a narrative of fancies, but of deep con- victions and solemn realities. To the end of life Ebenezer Birrell never saw reason to doubt that divine love on that occasion obtained its blessed vic- tory over the ungodliness of his heart. His character, thenceforward, was adorned with the evidences of genuine piety. His conduct in the warehouse, and especially among his associates, exhibited with de- cision, but without ostentation, the change which he had undergone. On his natural gentleness there was engrafted the boldness which religious convictions pro- duce. Within three years from the time of his con- version he was removed from the world. Throughout a protracted illness his Christian character shone with a mild and engaging loveliness. The principles Avhich gave him peace when he was awakened to a sense of personal sinfulness supported him in death, and his confidence never forsook him that he was in the hands of a ''most lovino; Father." 90 THE DIVINE LIFE. For our fourth example we select a lady whose name is well known in the world of letters, — Caroline Fry, the author of "The Listener," and of "Christ our Example."* As a child, Caroline Fry was intensely sensitive. Caroline Fry; " Backto scvcn or eight ycai's, shc could rc- briTge^' we"ns' member an intense, unreasonable, almost fTerT^dLcf ^a\' maddening anguish, which was produced scptembe/iTth. ^J ^ scnsc of unkiudncss, or injustice, or ■^^^' discouragement, often imaginary, always exaggerated." And the discijjline of a too indulgent father was not much fitted to correct these morbid sensibilities. She enjoj'ed a home-education of a high order, so far as education is comprehended in mere instruction; and literary tastes were cultivated from childhood. " The exact morality of her father's house was such, that she did not remember to have ever heard a free expression, or an indelicate allusion, or a profane or immoral word in jest or earnest. The very name of vices and follies was strange to her ear; and all her knowledge of the living world, its passions and pursuits, was no more than she learned from those parts of the newsj^apers which her father desired to hear, and which were gene- rally read aloud." Her earliest remembered plea- sure was the first-blown flower of the spring, or the new-born lamb in her father's meadow; she knows distinctly — and never returns to her native place without a vivid recurrence of the impression — where she used to go with her nurse to see if the wild snowdrojD was budding, to gather the first primroses, to hunt the sweet violets from * Our information respecting Caroline Fry is derived from her "Autobiography." CAROLINE FRi'. 91 among the nettles, where the}^ were yearly to be found." Of such a one, trained amid the finest influences of nature, it will be said by some that she needed no conversion, and that a divine life must have been natural to her. We shall see how far she formed this judgment of herself Her religious position in early life she describes thus: — "Caroline never learned to fear sin, as sin, — least of all as measured against the law of God. Her first notions of right and wrong were such as she gathered from her reading; a purely heathen code, in which heroism and high-mindedness stood as the first of virtues, weakness and pusillanimity as the worst of vices. To be faultless, to be perfect, were her early and long-continued desire and determi- nation; and much of the suffering of the first part of her life arose from her conscious ill success in the go- vernment of herself No one ever told her where she might have help, or why she could not be perfect. The only thing of which she never thought, for which she never asked, neVer felt, never cared, was religion. True, it was never brought under her observation; but that was true of many other things about which her curiosity and consideration were insatiable. The religion of her father's house will seem almost a cari- cature in these bestirring days; but it was common enough then. Caroline does not remember an indi- vidual in the family ever omitting to go to church twice on the Sunday, except from illness: it would have been thought absolutely wicked; neither does she remember any instance of the Sabbath being pro- faned by weekday occupations and pleasures; cer- tainly she never heard in jest or earnest the holy Name profaned, or his word and power disputed or y':: THE DIVINE LIFE. irreverently treated. But, except on Sunday, the Bible never left its shelf, and religion was not anybody's business in the week. During the Sunday, religious books, if they may be so called, came forth out of their hiding-places, and all others disappeared. The chil- dren leainied and repeated the Collects and the Church catechism, — the only lesson which to Caroline appeared a hardship, and with good reason, for no one ever told her what it meant and how she was interested in it." "No nurse nor mother ever talked to her of Jesus' love, nor told her stories of his sufferings, nor ever warned her of God's displeasure. Her infant mind was never stored with sacred words, nor her memory exercised with Holj^Writ. When she listens now to the exercises of the infant or the Sunday-school, deeply can she estimate, while they cannot, the value of the instructions thus received in preparation for the day of grace. Her reading of the Scriptures was confined to a chapter read every Sunday evening by each of the four younger children to their parents and the flimily assembled; but, as they always chose what they would read, it seldom vai-ied beyond the stories of the Old Testament, — David and Goliath, Joseph and his brethren, Daniel in the lions' den, etc. Never ap- plied, never remarked upon by any one, this was fol- lowed by one of Blair's or other similar lectures, read aloud by some one of the elders; and then religion was dismissed till the next Sabbath. The only unseen world that occupied little Caroline's attention was that of the classic poets." These statements are her own. Young's "Night Thoughts" fell into her hands at a time when she was prepared to take the poetry of life, of time, and of eternity, in the stead of its reali- CAROLINE FRY IN THE WORLD. 93 ties. She was enraptured with Young's poetry, and acquired from it, at the least, a quickened sensibility to the follies of life: viewed, however, only as follies, not as sin; weighed by reason and philosophy, not by the word of God. Of the period between fourteen and seventeen years of age she remembered nothing afterwards "but happiness, freedom, mirth, hilarity, good-humour with every one and delight in every thing." By consent of her family, she was "its wit, its life, its plaything, its spoiled child, from first to last." And more than twenty years from this period were given to her to try that world of fashion and gayety after which she now began to long, before she found her rest in God. We now find her in London, under the roof of a relative of polished manners and brilliant wit. In her father's house she had never heard a profane or licentious expression; nothing came amiss here to point a jest, provided it was not coarse or low. "Caro- line does not remember to have been shocked." The drive in the park was more frequent than the visit to church. On occasion of her relative's absence from home, his wife and Caroline Fry, wanting some- thing to do, would go to church on the Sunday morn- ing to pass the time. In one of these freaks "she heard, for the only time, that eminent man of God, Mr. Cecil; but it was with absolute offence and dis- gust." She had heard the same doctrines before in Lady Huntingdon's chapel at Tunbridge Wells, whither she went occasionally after her father's death; and she understood them, but her heart rejected them. In the midst of the gayety of London she "ceased to pei-form the ceremony of prayer in her chamber night and morning, (she has no reason to believe that she had 94 THE DIVINE LIFE. ever really prayed,) from that time never more to bend the knee in private, or her heart anywhere, before the God of heaven, until of his sovereign mercy she was born anew." Before this great event took place, Caroline Fry descended into a still lower depth of irreligion than we have indicated. At her relative's table there was a frequent guest, of literary reputation, of venerable age, courtly and high-bred, whose "wit spared nothing human or divine; friends, life, mortality, religion, no- thing barred the jest." "As was most natural, Caro- line attached herself entirely to this fascinating old man." Her own account of his influence over her is most instructive. If his insidious flatteiy "failed to make any impression on her delicacy, artlessness, and purity of thought and feeling, there was that in which, the influence of his corrupt companionship did not fail : she was too innocent for his immorality, she was just ready for his irreligion. Never, perhaps, at the early age of nineteen and twenty, in a heart of such simplicity and uncorruptness and real ignorance of evil, was the enmity of the fallen nature so developed. We wish to call attention to it, (she wrote many years after;) and if we have been writing what seems use- less to detail, we have done so on purpose to give the full value to this particular point. It is written that the natural heart is 'enmity' against God. Who believes this as a universal truth? When vice has indurated the heart, when habit has vitiated and the world corrupted it, it may be so; but what virtuous, happy, young, and unspoiled nature ever thought of hatred towards the God that made us? Fearlessness, indifference, forgetfulness, are natural; but not, surely not, 'enmity.' Perhaps there are very few believers THE heart's atheism. 95 looking back upon their days of gay and joyous god- lessness that can at all verify the Scripture statement in themselves : how should they have hated the Being they never thought about and cared for, who never crossed their path with present ills, nor marred their pleasures with fear of retribution ? But here, in the bosom of a simple girl, brought up in all the virtuous regularity and real religious observance of a secluded country-life, — a stranger to all that is morally evil, to a degree that would not be credited if it were fully exjDlained, — with a mind solidly instructed, and unused to any manner of evil influence by books or company, hitherto a stranger to sorrows, wrongs, and fears, that tend to harden the ungracious heart, — in this un- vitiated, unworldly bosom was manifested at that early age, clear and strong to her memory as if it was of yesterday, a living, active hatred to the very name of God. She persuaded herself there was no God, and thought she believed her own heart's lie; but if she did, why did she hate him? "Why did she feel such renovated delight when his name was the subject of the profane old poet's wit ? ' Is"o God' was probably with her, as it probably is with every other infidel, the determination of the heart, and not of the judg- ment. Thus, while she thought herself above all reli- gious doubts, she seized delightedly on every manifes- tation of infidelity in those around her, and laughed with the very utmost zest of gratified aversion at every profanation of the holy Name." After three years of London life, Caroline Fry found another home in the country. But now she was "an atheist in heart, and only not quite one in understanding." She was no longer, however, un- informed upon religion. "She had read books, heard 96 THE DIVINE LIFE. preachers^ known saints; several of her own family were already under the influence of divine grace; she knew and hated all, and most intensely Him of whom is all To the few who would speak to her upon religion she listened with silent amenity or studied philosophical indiff'erence. They had a right to their opinions; she would not have disturbed them on any account; since they liked to think so, there was no harm in doing it." .... ''She had no dislike to hear the truth preached, or to the conversation of those who believed it, or to their persons. She would as soon have thought of disliking the CoiDernican sys- tem or its advocates, or any other scientific contro- versy. Her eldest brother was at this time a dis- tinguished minister and writer in the church of Christ, — a man of acknowledged talent and learning. Caroline had heard him preach, and read his works, and held him in very high esteem and much aflPection ; but his religious oj)inions had not the smallest in- fluence. He considered Caroline as the most hopeless of his family, several of whom were beginning to be spiritually affected." " She did not dislike to hear the truth, but there was that which she did dislike, which she hated, — the word that taught it. Neither the poetic beauties nor the historic interest of the Bible could give it any charm. She could not endure it, she would not read it; and, when read before her, she deliberately deter- mined not to listen." How was a mind to be reached that was thus trenched and fortified ? At this momentous period Caroline Fry was re- siding in a family where every thing was against the probability of her receiving religious impressions, ''ex- cept the restless, unsatisfied, unhappy state of her own THE PRAYER OF MISERY. 97 mind, displeased with every thing around her and within her; weary and disgusted with the present, and gloomy and hopeless of the future, without a single sorrow but the absence of all joy." Living in the utter neglect of prayer, there were times when, not upon her knees but on her bed, she would give mental expression to her feelings thus:— "God, if thou art a God, I do not love thee, I do not want thee, I do not believe in any happiness in thee; but I am miserable as I am ; give me what I do not seek, do not like, do not want, if thou canst make me happy; I am tired of this world : if there is any thing better, give it me." "In the destitution of her affections at this mo- ment, Caroline fixed them with vehement partiality on the daughter of a clergyman in an adjoining parish." This young lady was beautiful and fascinating, but disappointments of a painful character had made her moody and melancholy. She denounced the world, she wished to leave it, she talked much of its vanity; she was, or thought she was, of a consumptive habit, and not likely to live many years ; she talked much of death, and much of eternity, and much of God. " I do not remember," says Miss Fry, " that she ever spoke of Christ, of atoning merit, or redeeming love; I beHeve she knew them not. She talked of the w^orld's emptiness, levity, and injustice. I do not remember that she ever spoke of her own sin. I believe her religion was purely sentimental." To this friend Caroline never spoke of her unbelief, nor confessed the total absence of religious feeling in her bosom. But she continually bewailed her impetuosity and want of self-control, compared with the composure and philosophy manifested by her friend on all occasions. Friendship, however, looked 7 98 THE DIVINE LIFE. through the cover of silence that slightly concealed Caroline's infidelity. And her friend addressed a letter to her, to tell her that religion was the source of all the advantage over her which Caroline had so often noticed and so often envied, — all that she called philosophy. The truth, the bare, bald truth, — that religion was the one thing needful that she had not, — struck conviction to Miss Fry's soul : it pierced to the very depths of her moral being. Her first emotion on perusal of the letter was a paroxysm of grief and indignation, — grief that the idol of her affections should condemn her, and indignation that she should presume to teach her; the next was a determined resolution that her friend should not influence or persuade her. On three successive days she attempted to answer the letter, but could not. '' Before the third night arrived, the struggle was over; the battle had been fought and won; the strong man armed was vanquished; the banner of Jesus waved peacefully over the subdued and pros- trate spirit of the infidel despiser of his word, the conscious hater of his most jjrecious name." " ' Lord, save me, or I perish,' has been, and is, from first to last, the sum of her religion, dated from that most wondrous night, the first in which she knelt before the cross; in which she prayed; in which she slept in Jesus." " The most immediate result of this change of heart was, the happiness to which it had at once restored her : at peace with God, she made up her quarrel with all things. The zest of life returned; she no longer quarrelled with her destiny, or felt distaste of all her pursuits, or grew weary of her existence without any reason. The void was filled; CHANGED AND HAPPY. 99 she never after wanted something to do, or something to love, or something to look forward to; the less there was of earth, the more there was of heaven in her vision ; whenever man failed her, Christ took her up. She had no more stagnant waters, long as her voyage was through troubled ones ; she was, with all the leaven of the older nature that remained, essen- tially a new creature to herself." This great revolution was as entire as it was sudden. It was no mere paroxysm or convulsion of soul. It was a change which brought with it new principles of life. And, what may seem most strange, these principles were very different from those of the friend who was the unconscious instrument of Miss Fry's conversion. It was not to a mere religiousness, earnest and pharasaic, that she emerged out of her heart-chosen infidelity ; it was to a faith in our Lord Jesus Christ as the one Mediator and High-Priest, and to a simple-hearted trust in him as all her salvation. The bare truth that religion is the one thing needful stung her to the quick ; but the seeds of other truths were in her mind, though hated and disbelieved. And these sprang up, now that the fallow ground was broken, and produced those fruits of humble trust in the Saviour of sinners, devout love to his holy name, and an earnest zeal to consecrate to his praise a life that had been redeemed by his mercy. The believer in Holy Scripture will not hesitate to see in all this the operation of a power that is more than human; and it would not be difficult to maintain that no other rational solution can be given of the change. Colonel Gardiner, John Urquhart, Ebenezer Birrell, and Caroline Fry may be regarded as representative 100 THE DIVINE LIFE. cases; and we may infer from them the moral condi- tion of mankind in relation to God. If we had no other means of judgment, it would not, indeed, be safe to stake a general conclusion on so small a number of instances. But it is sustained by Bible testi- mony, and by our knowledge of human society in general. What, then, is man, morally, in relation to God? Is there one moral attribute characteristic in common of all the individuals we have named ? We have maintained that man is a religious being in this sense, that the most distinctive character of his nature is his faculty of knowing, loving, and sei-ving God. But it is equally true that, wherever this faculty is in actual exercise apart from the teachings of revelation, its exercise is fearfully defective or perverse. We shall find the religious susceptibility of our nature exercised nowhere in- telligently and rightly without the guidance of God's own book. Most nations still derive some advantage from the surviving fragments of a primeval knowledge which was carried by their ancestors from the plains of Shinar, the second birthplace of the human family; and all nations have the benefit of daily and ceaseless instruction from the works of God; for " The heavens declare his glory, and the firmament showeth his liandi- Avork: day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge." "The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." But such is man's moral inaptitude to receive lessons of God, that he does not hear the voice which nature utters so loudly, or see the truths which are engraven in THE TEMPLE DESERTED. 101 light over the entire surface of the universe. The apostoHc explanation is the only sufficient one of the universal blindness which has fallen upon the nations, whether refined or barbarous, in reference to the character and worship of the true God:— "When they knew God, they glorified him not as God They did not like to retain God in their knowledge." This estrangement of the heart from God, which displays itself on so large a scale in the varied idola- tries and sensualities of the world, is the characteristic of our moral nature,— that which unites into an evil oneness such opposites as James Gardiner and John TJrquhart. The practised rake and the youth of un- sullied virtue had this in common before their con- version, that they were "without God" as an object of filial reverence and love. And in this they were only in fellowship with the whole race of mankind. The sublime and affecting words of John Howe are not the less true that they are based on a figure,— the very natural figure which represents man as a temple of God:— "The stately ruins are visible to every eye, that bear in their front (yet extant) this doleful in- scription:— 'Here God once dwelt.' Enough ap- pears of the admirable frame and structure of the soul of man to show the divine presence did some time re- side in it; more than enough of vicious deformity to proclaim he is now retired and gone. The lamps are extinct, the altar overturned; the light and love are now vanished, which did the one shine with so hea- venly brightness, the other burn with so pious fervour; the golden candlestick is defaced, and thrown away as a useless thing, to make room for the throne of the prince of darkness; the sacred incense, which sent rolling up in clouds its rich perfumes, is exchanged 102 THE DIVINE LIFE. for a poisonous, hellish vapour. The comely order of this house is turned all into confusion; the beauties of holiness into noisome impurities; the house of prayer into a den of thieves. The noble powers which were designed and dedicated to divine contemplation and delight are alienated to the service of the most despicable idols, and employed unto vilest intentions and embraces; to behold and admire lying vanities, to indulge and cherish lust and wickedness. What ! have not 'the enemies done wickedly in the sanc- tuary'? How have 'they broken down the carved work thereof ! Look upon the fragments of that curious sculpture which once adorned the palace of the great King; the relics of common notions; the lively points of some undefaced truth; the fair ideas of things; the yet legible precepts that relate to j^rac- tice. Behold with what accuracy the broken pieces show these to have been engraven by the finger of God, and how they now lie torn and scattered, one in this dark corner, another in that. . . . You come amidst all this confusion as into the ruined j)alace of some great prince, in which you see here the frag- ments of a noble pillar, there the shattered pieces of some curious imagery, and all lying neglected and useless among heaps of dirt. He that invites you to take a view of the soul of man gives you but such another prospect, and doth but say to you, ' Behold the desolation;' all things rude and waste. So that, should there be any pretence to the divine presence, it might be said, 'If God be here, why is it thus?' The faded glory, the darkness, the disorder, the im- purity, the decayed state in all respects of this temple, too plainly show the great Inhabitant is gone.'' Hence, the repentance on which the Bible insists as MAN WITHOUT GOD. 103 universally necessary is "repentance toioards God." *'The most flagrant wickedness of our unconverted condition is the ungodliness of that condition. Most expressive, in its proper and full sense, is our term 'godliness/ as denoting what ought ever to be deemed the natural bent of the soul towards God; its crea- turely, its filial temper of dependence, veneration, love, and duty. The loss of this most precious dis- position is 'human nature's broadest, foulest blot.' But the 'carnal mind' is pronounced to be, and by the most deeply thoughtful is ever painfully felt to be, 'enmity against God,' and the bitter source of all evil. Nor is this unnatural, uncreaturely, un- filial temper ever removed, except by a true change of heart. So that true repentance is emj)hatically repentance 'towards God, leading to conduct not only 'sober and righteous,' but 'godly' also; and bringing those on whom it operates, not only to 'do justly and to love mercy,' but 'to walk humbly with God.' The heart thus wrought upon may still be a very imperfect heart; but it is no longer, in the sense in which it had previously been so, an ungodly heart." Another opportunity will occur of showing the inseparable connection there is between "repentance towards God" and "faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ." At present we wish to mark with emphasis that no degree of human virtuousness renders unne- cessary that great change which introduces into the soul the principles and aff'ections of the divine life, — filial love and reverence to our God and Father in heaven. Actions uninspired by these motives "may vary in beauty or in value, from the most repulsive forms of human depravity to the fairest imj)ul8e8 of social aflection; but they are all equally remote from 104 TUE DIVINE LIFE. the preparatory life of heaven, in so far as they are apart from God, and would equally exist were God conceived to exist no more." The ground and substance of the charge which religion brings against the world is not that it does not abound in manifestations of moral as well as of physical beauty. "AVhat it does assert is this: — that all which is excellent in the natural man is excellent irrespectively of his God; that he loves, hates, pre- fers, rejects, — and often rightly too, — but without any thought of God's laws of preference and rejec- tion; that thus all — and there is much — that is beautiful in his best impulses is beautiful only as the flower or the landscape is beau.tiful; his heart as little moving through its circle of social kindness from a desire to approve itself to the God who has commanded them, as the flower expands its petals and sheds its fragrance in voluntary obedience to Him who created it, — the one beauty being as much and as little religious as the other." "I deal not," says Professor Butler, from whom we quote these just and striking observations, — "I deal not now with open and avowed vice. My object is to prevent mis- conception, obscurity, self-deceit; and no subtlety of self-hypocrisy can reconcile, with the law and love of God, vices which the world itself professes to dis- countenance. I come among the amiabilities, the noblenesses, the stern and lofty virtues, of our social life. It is there that the warfare against man's fancied perfection must be prosecuted, and the true nature of that one principle of Chi-istian excellence which is yet to be the light and blessedness of heaven vin- dicated against all its counterfeits. It is these virtues which the man of the world and the philosopher THE BEST WITHOUT GOD. 105 equally declare themselves unable to conciliate with the uncompromising denunciations of the gospel. It is these in which I find them the most amply justi- fied. The depravity of the world is just its for- getfulness, imjiatience, contempt of its God; the godless excellences, the unsanctified noblenesses, of man, are the truest, the most awful proofs of the fact. That the murderer, the adulterer, the thief, should disclaim subjectien to his God is sad, but scarcely surprising; the depth, the universality of the rebellion is seen in the independence of our very virtues upon God; in the vast sphere of human excellence into which God never once enters; in the amiability that loves all but God; in the self-devotion that never surrendered one gratification for the sake of God; in the indomitable energy that never wrought one persevering work for God; in the enduring pa- tience that faints under no weight of toil except the labour of adoring and praising God. This it is which really demonstrates the alienation of the w^orld from its Maker, that its best affections should thus be affections to all but him; that not the worst alone, or the most degraded, but the best and loftiest natures among us should be banded in this conspiracy to exile him from the world he has made; that, when he thus 'comes to his own,' 'his own' should 'receive him not;' that he should have to behold the fairest things he has formed — kindness, gratitude, and love — em- bracing every object but himself; the loveliest feelings he has implanted taking root and growing and blossom- ing through the world, to bear fruit for all but him." By this evil characteristic of our nature, — its ungod- liness, — the rake and the man of virtue, the most savage 106 THE DIVINE LIFE. and the most refined, are joined, as we have said, in an evil oneness. Hence may be inferred, by contrast, the primary and most obvious feature of the divine life, the recognition of God in all things; not, how- ever, the mere earnest recognition of him, as we have seen sufficiently in the example of Saul of Tarsus, but that loving recognition which is characteristic of the humbled, penitent, and pardoned child. But a few years ago an Indian Brahmin became a Christian. By the operation of an unjust law, he was deprived of his property, separated from his wife and children, and cast on the tender mercies of a cruel world. Loathed as a leper by those who were dearest to his heart, the question was put to him. What have you gained by becoming a Christian? "Much," he replied, "much: I have learned to say, 'Our Father which art in heaven.'" He had acquired a know- ledge of the one true God as his Father in Christ. By this the troubled sea of his heart was quieted, the earnest longings of his soul were satisfied, and he could endure to be an outcast for Christ's sake. In this same filial recognition of God as our Father, the foremost characteristic of the Divine Life, we have the mightiest and happiest stimulus to our conscience. The divine authority does not become less binding because it is the authority of our Father, but a new class of feelings comes into play, powerfully and yet sweetly persuasive. They who are thus "alive unto God" do their work not as under the eye of a great taskmaster, but as under the eye of their loved and loving Father. PART THE SECOND. THE DIVINE LIFE: ITS ORIGINATION. FACTS. Contents. — Diversity and Unity — Remarks of Wilberforce, Chal- mers, and Fletcher — Miracles of Christ — Changes in Nature — First Class of Instances : John Foster, R. Morrison, Knibb — Second Class : Bengel, Blackader, J. J. Gurney, J. Fletcher, Mrs. Graham — Thii-d Class: Paul, Philippian Jailer, C. Anderson — Fourth Class: John Bunyan, Major-General Andrew Burn — Fifth Class : Bilney, Archer Butler, M. Boos — Sixth Class : Ly t- tleton. West, Jenyns, Dykern, Rochester, Wilson, H. K. White — Seventh Class : Inspiration and Constitutional Peculiarities, Jona- than Edwards, Mrs. Phelps — Remarks. "There are diversities of operation, but it is the same God which worketh all in all."— The Apostle Paul, (1 Cor. xii. 6.) " The appearance of a new personality sanctified by the divine princi- ple of life necessarily forms a great era in life, but the commencement of this era is not (always) marked with perfect precision and distinctness : the new creation manifests itself more or less gradually by its effects : — < The wind bloweth where it listeth.' "— Neander. 107 "These things happened unto them for ensamples." — The Apostle Paol, (1 Cor. X. 11.) " Scott's Force of Truth is an example : Doddridge's Rise and Pro- gress of Religion in the Soul, another : and last, though not least, The Pilgrim's Progress. I pronounce them all to be excellent, and that there are many exemplifications as they describe. But the process (described in these books) is not authoritative, nor is it universal. The Spirit taketh its own way with each individual, and you know it only by its fruits." — Dr. Chalmers. "This change is discovered in people of all temperaments, in the phlegmatic as well as the ardent, in the slow and cautious as well as the impetuous and sanguine, in minds wholly subject to the understanding as well as those that submit more to the dominion of the imagination. It takes place in people of all ranks and conditions, in the wise and learned as well as the simple and ignorant; in persons insulated by society of a different cast, and strongly prejudiced against the belief of such a change." — Dr. Edward D. Griffin. 108 THE DIVINE LIFE: ITS ORIGINATION. The grand characteristics of the process of conver- sion are diversity and unity. Dr. Chalmers could not say of himself " that he ever felt a state of mind corresponding to John Bunyan's Slough of Despond." Wilberforce, on the other hand, speaking of the '^ strong convictions of guilt" "which accompanied his conver- sion, said that "nothing which he had ever read of in the accounts of others exceeded what he then felt." And yet no two men could exhibit a stronger spiritual likeness than these. In their convictions of personal demerit before God, in their views of the mediation through which sin is pardoned and the sinner recon- ciled to his Maker, in their fihal love and confidence towai-ds their Father in heaven, and in their practical love to all mankind, they were one. This diversity and unity become the more striking when on the one hand the spiritual relationship of Chalmers and Wilberforce is remembered, and on the other their constitutional differences are remarked. Wilberforce's "Practical View" was put into Chal- mers's hand at a time when his soul was struggling earnestly but pharisaically to attain conformity to the divine law, and was the means of " a great revolution in all his opinions about Christianity." But not in his opinions merely. " The deep views which Mr. Wilberforce gives of the depravity of our nature, of our 109 110 THE DIVINE LIFE. need of an atonement, of the great doctrine of accept- ance through that atonement, of the sanctifying in- fluences of the Spirit, — these all (said Dr. Chalmers) give a new aspect to a man's religion; and I am sure (he continues) that in as far as they arc really and honestly proceeded upon, they will give a new direc- tion to his habits and his history." It was so in his own case. The "revolution" which he underwent left him a "new man." And yet between these illustrious men, spiritual father and son, there were the widest constitutional differences. Describing them as he saw them in 1830, Joseph John Gurney says : — " I have seldom observed a more amusing and pleasing contrast between two great men than between Wilberforce and Chalmers. Chalmers is stout and erect, with a broad countenance; Wilberforce minute and singularly twisted. Chalmers, both in body and in mind, moves with a deliberate step ; "Wilberforce, infirm as he is in his advanced years, flies about with astonishing activity; and while, with nimble finger, he seizes on every thing that adorns or diversifies his path, his mind flits from object to object with unceasing- versatility. Chalmers can say a jDleasant thing now and then, and laugh when he has said it; and he has a strong touch of humour in his countenance; but in general he is grave, — his thoughts grow to a great size before they are uttered : Wilberforce sparkles with life and wit, and the characteristic of his mind is 'rapid pro- ductiveness.' A man might be in Chalmers's company for an hour, especially in a party, without knowing who or what he was, though in the end he would be sure to be detected b}^ some unexpected disj^lay of powerful originality : Wilberforce, except when fairly asleep, is never latent. Chalmers knows how to veil himself in DIVERSITY AND UNITY. Ill a decent cloud: "VVilberforce is always in sunshine; seldom, I believe, has any mind been more strung to a perpetual tune of love and praise. Yet these per- sons, distinguished as they are from the world at large, and from each other, present some admirable points of resemblance. Both of them are broad thinkers and liberal feelers ; both of them are arrayed in humility, meekness, and charity; both appear to hold self in little reputation ; above all, both love the Lord Jesus Christ, and reverently acknowledge him to be their only Saviour." The absence of uniformity in the process of conver- sion, and the essential sameness of the divine hfe which follows, have been remarked by many. " It has often been a cause of much distress to me," said Dr. Joseph Fletcher, of Stepney, when a young man, and in re- ference to his early experience, " that I could not particularize the place, the time, the means of my conversion." But in maturer years he remarked, with wise discrimination, "In some cases, the means by which this renovation is effected may be so distinctly traced as to enable the subject of it to develop all the process by which he is < turned from darkness to light;' and, in such circumstances, to use the words of Dr. Paley, *a man may as easily forget his escape from shipwreck,' as forget the manner, time, and means of his conversion. In other cases the operation of various causes may be so complicated, so gradual, so inter- woven with a series of events and influences, that a distinct remembrance and disclosure may be difficult, if not impossible. Still, in both the origin of the change is divine, the medium of effecting it is the same holy truth, however diversified the manner and cir- cumstances of its communication; and the results in 112 THE DIVINE LIFE. the excitement of holy affection, and the working of practical consequences, will prove that it is 'the same Spirit' whose power is the source of this new creation." The diversities which are observed in the process of spiritual conversion may be illustrated by the miracles of our Lord. The records of these miracles are usually of this cha- racter : — "There came a lejDcr to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will ; be thou clean. And as Boon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy de- parted from him, and he was cleansed."* To a para- lytic Jesus said, "Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all."f To the daughter of Jairus, lying in her shroud, he said, "Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And sti-aightway the damsel arose and walked." J And to Lazarus, who had been dead four days, Jesus " cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth."§ Shall we be surprised, then, if a spiritual resurrection, and the work of spiritual healing which Jesus performs, be accomplished in the same manner, and become apparent both to the consciousness of those that are cured and to the observation of others with the rapidity of lightning ? In a few instances the miracles of Christ were per- formed by degrees, or at least the result of them was developed gradually, although even in these cases it * Mark i. 40-42. + Mark ii. 11, 12. X Mark v 41, 42. ? John xi. 43, 44. MIRACLES or CHRIST. 113 was in a manner to show the divinity of the power which wrought them. At Bethsaida, Jesus took a blind man that was brought to him, ' t • i -i Butler; born who had Bot heard oi his name while near Clonmel in -,. . tt- r> • >> n n • • n 1814; died July living. His '^Kemains luUy justiiy the esteem in which he was held by his friends, as a brilliant ornament of Irish litera- ture, and still more as a "vessel unto honour, sanc- tified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work." "His master-mind could charm by the playfulness of its fancy, while it astonished by the vastness of its intellectual resources." "His multifarious knowledge was communicated on the most trivial suggestion, yet without effort or dis- play. The profound reflection, the subtle analysis, the most pungent wit, droj)ped from him in brilliant suc- cession, while he appeared entirely unconscious that he was sjjeaking more than household words." The spiritual history of such a man must be full of interest. But it has been given to the world only in a brief and general statement, — a statement, however, which, though lacking in minute detail, is suggestive and instructive. Professor Butler's father was a member of the Established Church of Ireland; his mother was a zealous Roman Catholic, and by her solicitude he was baptized and educated in the Eomish faith. His early childhood was spent amidst scenery which made an ineffaceable impression upon a susceptible tempera- ment. He was never a proficient in the noisy games of his coevals, but his playful wit and amiable manners made him universally popular. His leisure hours were devoted to poetry and music, in which he became greatly skilled. And while yet a schoolboy, we are ARCHER BUTLER. 171 told that he had penetrated deep into the profound depths of metaphysics. "It was about two years before his entrance into college that the important change took place in But- ler's religious views by which he passed from the straitest sect of Eoman Catholicism into a faithful son and champion of the Church of Ireland. He had from the cradle been deeply impressed with a sense of religion, and conscientious in the observance of the rites and ceremonies of his creed. His moral feelings were extraordinarily sensitive. For long hours of night he would lie prostrate on the ground, filled with remorse for otfences which would not for one moment have disturbed the self-complacency of even well-con- ducted youths. Upon one occasion, when his heart was oppressed with a sense of sinfulness, he attended confession, and hoped to find relief for his burdened sjiirit. The unsympathizing confessor received these secrets of his soul as if they were but morbid and distemjDcred imaginations, and threw all his poignant emotions back upon himself A shock was given to the moi-al nature of the ardent, earnest youth: he that day began to doubt; he examined the contro- versy for himself, and his powerful mind was not long before it found and rested in the truth." Could we fill up the outline which his biographer has thus given us, we should doubtless have a record of mental conflict as thrilling and instructive as that of Luther and Bilney and Latimer. Butler was bur- dened with the same sense of sin, tried the same means of deliverance, and discovered their inefficacy, and at last, like them, found at once peace to his conscience and holiness to his heart by faith in the all-sufficient atonement of the Son of God. His brief life was, as 172 THE DIVINE LIFE. man would say, terminated too soon, but not before he had ample time to prove in his own experience the divinity of the truths in which his soul found both rest and purity. The last sermon he preached was founded on Matthew xxviii. 18-20, and one who heard it informs us, that in reference to the Godhead of our Lord he maintained that it might be proved by internal evidence to any mind which could be brought to feel what sin was, for such a mind could never feel sure of an adequate atonement without an infinite sacrifice. Christ's servants, he said, had to preach the cross of Christ: on the one hand its efficacy to save; on the other, its sharpness and its sternness, its con- tradictoriness to luxury and ease, and its daily self- denials. Within a few daj^s from the delivery of this sermon he was prostrated by sudden fever, and, during the few days which preceded his departure to a sin- less world, one ejaculation was constantly upon his tongue: — '^ Christ my righteousness." Martin Boos entered on the duties of the priest's office in the Eoman Catholic church bo'^non"the^c°on- ^i^h an uuspottcd charactcr. From Bavar°a! vc^^H ^^^^ carlicst ycars his conduct had been 29^1825'^'* ^"^' irreproachable; his application to his literary and theological studies had been close and successful, and he was habituall}^ conscien- tious and devout. Yet his heart was not at rest; nor could he say, with the Apostle Paul, " The life which I now live in the flesh I live b}^ the fiiith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." He was trying to be his own saviour, and to find for him- self a path to heaven. His good works, mortifications, and fasts, were the sacrifices he offered to God for MARTIN BOOS. 173 expiating his Bins and obtaining evei'lasting life. Twenty j'^ears afterwards (1811) he wrote of the "im- mense pains" w^hich he took to be a very pious man, in these terms: — ''For years together, even in winter, 1 lay on the cold floor. I scourged myself till I bled again. I fasted and gave my bread to the poor. I spent every hour I could spare in the church or the cemetery. I confessed and took the sacrament almost every week. In short, I gained such a character for piety that I was appointed i^refect of the congregation by the ex-Jesuits. But what a life I led ! The pre- fect, with all his sanctity, became more and more absorbed in self, melancholy, anxious, and formal. The saint was evermore exclaiming in his heart, 'Oh, wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me !' And no one replied, ' The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' No one gave the sick man that spiritual specific, ' The just shall live by faith ;' and when I had obtained it, and found the benefit of it, the whole world, with all its learning and spiritual author- ity, would have persuaded me that I had swallowed 2)oi80n, and was poisoning all around me ; that I de- served to be hung, drowned, immured, banished, or burned I tried as long as other people the notion that a man can be saved and justified by his own doings; but I have found in an ancient document that we are to be justified and saved for Christ's sake, without our merits, and in this faith I shall die. If others will not make use of this bridge, they must wade through the stream ; but let them see to it that they are not drowned." The history of the change which the young priest * See the Life of Martin Boos ; Monthly Volume of the Religious Tract Society. 174 THE DIVINE LIFE. Boos underwent is deeply interesting. His own ac- count of it is very simple : — " In 1788 or 1789 I visited a sick person, who was respected for her deep humility and exemplary piety. I said to her, 'You will die very peacefully and happily.' 'Why so ?' she asked. 'Be- cause you have led,' I replied, 'such a j)ious and holy life.' The good woman smiled at my words, and said, 'If I leave the world relying on my own piety, I am sure I shall be lost. But relying on Jesus my Saviour, I can die in comfort. What a clergyman you are ! What an admirable comforter ! If I listened to you, what would become of me ? How could I stand before the divine tribunal, where every one must give an account even of her idle words ? Which of our actions and virtues would not be found wanting if laid in the divine balances? No; if Christ had not died for m.e, if he had not made satisfaction for me, I should have been lost forever, notwithstanding all my good works and pious conduct. He is my hope, my salvation, and my eternal happiness.' " Martin Boos found instruction where he sought it not. He entered the house of affliction to console, without knowing the true consolation. At first he was astounded and ashamed, that what he, after all his studies, was ignorant of, should be taught him by a simple-hearted woman on her death-bed. Happily for him, he was humble enough not to reject the truth when conveyed to him by so mean an instrument. It made an indelible impression on his mind, and formed the foundation of his future faith and life. The spiritual results of the doctrines which Boos now taught, both in public and in private, may be understood from one example. Among the Eoman Catholics in Wiggensbach, of which he was curate for A SOUL IN SEARCH OF PEACE. 175 a time, were many persons, who, failing to find comfort, either by attending the confessional or by receiving absolution from the priests, retired into convents, where they hoped to obtain relief for their spiritual wants. Of this class was a female, who, having been disgusted with the world, formed the design of enter- ing a nunnery, imagining that in such a retreat she would lead a holy and happy life. Accordingly, she withdrew to a nunnery, with a feeling of ecstasy, as if entering heaven itself. But she found there no spiritual life, — no Saint Theresa, — and told her associates that they were no nuns, but mere hood-wearers. She soon left them, and then tried what pilgrimages could do for her. She travelled twice to Maria Einsiedel, in Switzerland, but the second time came back more uneasy and dissatisfied than before. She entreated her parish priest to tell her some other method of ap- peasing the inexpressible longings of her heart; but to no purpose. He onl}- taxed her with pride and folly, and asked her whether she was not learned enoi:gh, or whether she wanted to be wiser than himself At last she consulted Boos, and found what her soul had been seeking: he led her to Christ, and in him she found the rest and comfort which he offers to the weary and heavy laden. From that time she felt no delight in her rosary, and other formal devotions. This dis- turbed her, and she almost suspected herself of heresy. She laid the matter before Boos. He asked her what so occupied her time and thoughts, that she could no longer use her rosary. "I do nothing and think of nothing," she replied, "but to love Jesus because he is in me and with me." "You can do nothing better than that," said Boos: "it is no heresy to love Jesus and think of him. To do every thing out of love to 176 THE DlVliNE LIFE. liim is of more worth than many rosaries." This satisfied her for a while ; but soon after the thought struck her, *' This clergyman makes so little account of rosaries, perhaps he is not of much worth himself" She went and told him, with fear and trembling, what had passed through her mind. Boos laughed heartily, and said, ''Yes, you are in the right; in myself I am of no worth, but what I have taught you is of worth, for it was taught by Jesus Christ and his apostles ; that remains true: continue then in the fiiith; do good and shun evil." Not long after, a feast of indulgences was held in her neighbourhood; but instead of attending it she went to Boos, fifteen miles oif. On his asking her the reason, she said, "Jesus is my absolution, since he died for me. His blood, simj)ly and alone, is the absolution for all my sins." " But who teaches you this?" said Boos. "No one," she replied; "the thought comes of itself into my mind: Jesus takes away my sins, and those things, too, on which I have dejDended so much, but have found them to afford neither rest nor peace. I am now convinced that all is of no avail, unless Jesus takes away our sin and dwells in our hearts." The gospel which Boos now loved and preached produced fruits which those who saw them witnessed with astonishment. Men were at a loss to account for that "faith which worketh by love," that meekness and humilit}'^, which were so conspicuous in his con- verts. Their surprise was soon exchanged for hatred, and they actually accused these pious people of having intercourse with the devil, — an accusation Avhich will not surprise us when we remember that virtually the same charge was brought against their Lord and LYTTLETOX AND WKST. Ill Master, although in him there was no sin. Many ■were dragged before the magistrates, and their houses ransacked. But when the magistrates found that no charge could be substantiated against them except the ardour of their devotion, they dismissed them as silly pietists, but without promising them an}- protec- tion. This lenity of their judges only stimulated the fury of the persecutors, who raised an outcry against them everywhere, in the pulpits, streets, and taverns. Some were obliged to jemain in obscure retreats for five or six months. Others were tracked like wild beasts to their hiding-places, and forced to leave their kindred and native country forever. And the only crime of these victims of fanaticism was that they re- ceived Jesus Christ as their only Saviour, and lived according to the holy commandments of God. It was the divine life which the gospel produced in them that made them hateful to the world. The future ministry of Martin Boos was a perpetual martyi-dom. Bonds and imprisonment and exile were his lot. But he was faithful unto death. Many histories of conversion from infidelity do not furnish us with sufiicient information to enable us to judge how far the intel- lectual conviction of the divinity of Christianity has been accompanied Avith heart-faith in Christ as the sinner's Saviour. But even of these many are deeply interesting and instructive. It is told of Lord Lyttleton and his friend Gilbert West that they agreed together to write Lord Lyttieton something in support of their unbelief. ^^