PBESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICHL SEMINKRY 
 
 Ppofcssof J^cnry von Dyke, D.D., IiLit.O. 
 
 BX 5937 ,J3 M3 
 
 Jaggar, Thomas Augustus, 
 
 1839-1912. 
 The man of the ages, and 
 other recent sermons 
 
THE 
 
 MAN OF THE AGES 
 
 AND OTHER 
 
 RECENT SERMONS 
 
 BY THE / 
 
 RT. REV. THOMAS A. JAGGAR, D. D. 
 
 BISHOP OF SOUTHERN OHIO 
 
 NEW YORK 
 JAMES POTT & CO. Publishers 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE AND 22D STREET 
 1898 
 
Copyright, 1898, by 
 James Pott & CoMrANY. 
 
TO 
 
 MR. AND MRS. FRANK HOUSTON WYETH 
 
 PHILADELPHIANS 
 
 FAITHFUL PARISHIONERS, LONG-LOVED FRIENDS 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
 IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
 
Published by Request 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Man of the Ages i 
 
 II. The Reconciling Truth 21 
 
 III. God Imaged in Human Relation- 
 
 ships 41 
 
 IV. Control from Within 61 
 
 V. The Love of God in Christ ... 77 
 
 VI. Life in the Light of the Resur- 
 rection 97 
 
 VII. Staying by the Stuff 117 
 
 VIII. Does God Care? 139 
 
 IX. The Temple of God in us . . . . 163 
 
 X. The Temple and the Street . . . iSi 
 
 XI. The Worth of Manhood .... 197 
 
 XII. The Everlasting Possession . . . 219 
 
 XIII. "My Lord and my God" .... 239 
 
 XIV. Other Men's Labours 259 
 
 XV. Reality in the Christian Life . . 277 
 
 XVI. Mortality Swallowed up of Life: 
 
 An Easter Sermon 297 
 
 XVII. Seeking First the Kingdom of 
 
 God 3'5 
 
 XVIII. Cleansed in Going 335 
 
 XIX. The Military Idea 353 
 
 XX. Religion and Social Science ... 379 
 
I. 
 
 €]^e 0ian of tl^e ageis. 
 
I. 
 
 THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 Jesus said unio them, Verify, verify, I say unto you, 
 Before AbraJiam was, I am. — St. John viii. 58. 
 
 THERE is a confusion of tenses in this saying 
 of Jesus Ciirist which strikes strangely upon 
 the ear. It is language evidently from some 
 sphere foreign to our earth. It seemed to the 
 Jews awful blasphemy, for it was so that God 
 had named Himself to Moses out of the burning, 
 fiery bush on Horeb. Jesus Christ dared to 
 rise, in His conflict with the baffled Pharisees, 
 to this sublimity of presumption. There He 
 stood, a care-worn peasant of Galilee, with 
 nothing in the outward conditions of His life to 
 separate Him from the humblest of His fellows. 
 It was the claim of a lunatic, which could not 
 have survived beyond the moment of its utter- 
 ance, had there not been something in Him to 
 give it dignity and conceivability. It has sur- 
 3 
 
THIS M/tN OF THE AGLS. 
 
 vived. It has stood the test of ages. " They 
 crucified Him," but somehow it seems quite 
 natural and not at all strange, as we read the 
 words now, that He should have had to speak 
 from outside of time — from the " eternal Now " : 
 " Before Abraham was, I am." 
 
 The words can mean nothing less than that 
 He is " I AM " in and over all the ages of time. 
 He claims to be unchangeably present — a liv- 
 ing, undying force at every point of human his- 
 tory. It was a splendid claim. What, indeed, 
 could realise more fully all that human need and 
 philosophy and science are striving after than 
 such a Man of the Ages, set like a fixed star in 
 our firmament, and shining more and more, 
 while other stars rise and set, or flash meteor- 
 like across our view and vanish into darkness? 
 
 I ask you to think with me of some features 
 of the Christ-life which seem to place Him 
 above all other religious leaders and to confirm 
 His claim to be the Man of the Ages. 
 
 I. And first note that the ages which pre- 
 ceded Him ivere fuljillcd i?i Hint. He came, 
 not to destroy, but to fulfil. The word " fulfil " 
 in the Greek of the New Testament means 
 
THB MAN 01' THE AGES. 
 
 much more than our English word in its popu- 
 lar acceptation. It means to " fill up to the full," 
 or, using the more philosophical form of expres- 
 sion, to " realise the full and complete ideal." 
 
 The teaching of Christ was not original, — it 
 would have been a foreign tongue to the world 
 of humanity if it had been, — but the truth of 
 His person and life and work was original. It 
 was the emerging into form and power and a 
 new, visible creation, of that which had been 
 struggling towards the light in the minds of men 
 from the beginning. He was the " realised ideal " 
 of that which they had been darkly groping 
 after, "if haply they might find Him." He 
 dimmed the lesser lights of Jewish, Egyptian, 
 Persian, Buddhistic, and Greek thought. 
 
 It is not necessary to prove that all the ages 
 of Jewish history were leading up to Him. This 
 is a fact which is bound up in our Bible. He 
 realised in Himself temple and prophecy. 
 Christianity is the culmination and completion 
 of that Judaism which reached back over twenty 
 centuries. With the clear vision of one to 
 whom and in whom all ages were living. He 
 said to the Jews, in language from above, which 
 
THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 they could not understand : " Your father Abra- 
 ham rejoiced to see My day : and he saw it, and 
 was glad." 
 
 Outside of the Jewish world were the nations 
 of whom Christ said : " Many shall come from 
 the east and the west, and sit down with Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God." 
 Confucius, Sakya-Muni the Buddha, and the 
 Greek philosophers were prophets too, who saw 
 as through a glass, darkly, the truth which 
 Christ realised in fact. The Greek philosophy 
 was the purest expression of spiritual thought, 
 the loftiest reach of human reason, which the 
 thinkers of the world had attained. But the 
 beautiful abstractions of Plato, too remote for 
 the common life of men, were transmuted by 
 Christianity into the current gold of the very 
 humanity that his mind regarded as hopelessly 
 barbarian. Plato himself taught that " we must 
 wait for one, be it a God or a God-inspired 
 man, who will teach us our religious duties and 
 take away the darkness from our eyes." The 
 Christ in His person and life and word realised 
 this long-looked-for ideal, and in the brightness 
 of His rising made a new day for the world. 
 
THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 Renan has said : " Eliminate from the teach- 
 ing cf Jesus Christ all the moralities which 
 were known to the world before Him, and what 
 have you left?" It is a very shallow saying. 
 No thoughtful Christian denies that there were 
 moral instincts seeking and finding expression 
 in the wisdom of philosophers before Christ. It 
 is the v\'orn-out taunt of sceptics that the golden 
 rule is to be found in the teaching of Confucius. 
 It is true that a negative form of it is to be 
 found there: "Whatsoever ye would not that 
 men should do to you, do ye not to them." 
 The positive saying of Christ, " Whatsoever ye 
 would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
 to them," is a flowering out of it as superior as the 
 law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," 
 is superior to the Jewish negations, " Thou shalt 
 not kill, steal, or commit adultery." There are 
 doubtless many resemblances to be traced be- 
 tween the positive teaching of Christ and the 
 fragmentary suggestions which preceded Him ; 
 but the fact remains that on these two command- 
 ments, in the broadest possible sense, hang all 
 the law and the prophets : " Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God v^ath all thy heart, and . . . soul, 
 
THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 and . . . mind, and . . . strength ; and thy neigli- 
 bour as thyself." Eliminate from the natural 
 creation all the seething forces which were at 
 work when " the earth was without form, and 
 void; and darkness was upon the face of the 
 deep," and what have you left? It is true that 
 there would be no beautiful creation at all. But 
 God said, " Let light be: and light was " ; and 
 man was evolved, made in God's image, after 
 God's likeness. 
 
 The same is true in our spiritual world. The 
 new creation in Christ Jesus, and its infinite 
 possibilities, could have no existence apart from 
 humanity and its strivings after God and truth ; 
 but " God," says Paul, " who commanded the 
 light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in 
 our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge 
 of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 
 The light and the life were potent in Him for 
 a new creation, as they were not in all the cha- 
 otic ages which preceded Him. There was 
 nothing in all the thought of the ages before 
 Him worthy to survive which was not absorbed 
 in the brightness of His shining as the sun ab- 
 
 sorbs the dawn. 
 
THE MAN OP THE AGES. 
 
 II. But I ask you to observe again that, while 
 the ages which preceded Christ were fulfilled, 
 or filled full, by Him, He overfloived the age 
 into which He was historically born. He was 
 a Jew, but Judaism could not contain Him. 
 His thought burst from the Mosaic seed-shell 
 into words which were spirit and life. He had 
 to speak down to the capacity of His own na- 
 tion, as a teacher speaks to children by object- 
 lessons. No one can read with an unbiassed 
 mind the New Testament, and fail to be im- 
 pressed by the immense reserve force of His 
 character and words. He taught them " many 
 things in parables" because they were in the 
 childhood of the infinite life of that " whole 
 family in heaven and earth " which was present 
 to His mind. Even to His chosen few, unto 
 whom it was " given to know the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of God," He could not make Him- 
 self fully known. They began to realise the 
 depth and universality of His purpose only after 
 He had left the earth. 
 
 He was strangely outside of His own time ; 
 and yet He was no recluse, neither did He ex- 
 haust Himself in vague or wild speculations. 
 
THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 He \v8.s simply the carpenter's son, until He 
 showed Himself in the broad daylight of those 
 three brief years of public ministry. He was 
 known then as the " Friend of publicans and 
 sinners." His followers were poor, obscure, 
 unlearned fishermen. He seems to have drawn 
 them by the force of His personahty rather than 
 by His teaching. He touched the groaning 
 humanity of His time with an infinite pity, which 
 found expression in healing, helping acts, and 
 which, reinforcing His words, marked the be- 
 ginnings of a great uplifting. But His life was 
 not understood. They said: "He casteth out 
 de\'ils through Beelzebub the prince of the 
 devils." He preached the gospel to the poor, 
 and proclaimed a kingdom not of this world. 
 They looked for a temporal lord and kingdom. 
 He knew that His life and words, while He 
 lived, could not be understood. This conscious- 
 ness appears through all His living in time. It 
 was the shadow of that cross which awaited 
 Him at the end. He attempted no local or na- 
 tional reforms ; He would not entangle Himself 
 with any of the political, religious, or social 
 questions of His time. They brought Him the 
 
THE MAN OP THE AGES. 
 
 tribute-money, asking if it was lawful to give 
 tribute unto Caesar or not, and He answered: 
 " Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's ; 
 and unto God the things that are God's." They 
 brought Him their marriage problems, and He 
 replied to the question of divorce in words of 
 profound meaning : " What God hath joined 
 together, let not man put asunder " ; and to the 
 question, " Whose wife shall she be hereafter 
 who has been seven times married?" "In the 
 resurrection they neither marry, nor are given 
 in marriage ; but are as angels in heaven." One 
 came to Him with a property grievance, saying : 
 " Speak to my brother, that he divide the in- 
 heritance with mc." He answered: "Man, 
 who made me a judge and a divider over 
 you ? Take heed, and beware of covetousness." 
 There is a sublime consciousness of something 
 far greater than earthly empire — yes, higher 
 than even we can yet understand — in His reply 
 to Pilate when, haggard, bleeding, the crown of 
 thorns upon His head, He stood before that 
 wavering governor in the judgment-hall : "Thou 
 sayest that I am a king. To this end was I 
 born, and for this cause came I into the world. 
 
12 THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 that I should bear witness unto the truth. 
 Every one that is of the truth heareth ]\Iy 
 voice." 
 
 Because He could not possibly be understood 
 by His own people, He had to die. It was 
 strange, but true, that He could give His life 
 and truth to the world only by dying. Had He 
 yielded to the blind literalism of His own peo- 
 ple. He might have been, like Mohammed, the 
 maker of kingdoms, but He would not have 
 been the world's Christ. He could not be the 
 spiritual King of men, and take the sword. He 
 could prove Himself superior only by yielding 
 to the sword. He lived His life out to the bit- 
 ter end with a calm, unfaltering purpose which 
 no threatening could shake nor temptings of 
 ambition cause to swerve. He gave Himself to 
 the cross, and " He is alive for evermore." 
 
 HI. I have said that the Christ fulfilled the 
 past and overflowed the age in which He 
 historically lived. There is another fact which 
 adds to His years nineteen centuries. The 
 present has not exhausted Him ; He is still the 
 "I AM." 
 
 That He once lived on the earth, and was 
 
THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 13 
 
 " crucified, dead, buried," the severest criticism 
 will allow. That something happened after His 
 death which gave a wonderful impulse to the 
 faith and zeal of His disciples must also be ad- 
 mitted. That through and in them He has lived 
 and been a powerful, wide-spreading influence 
 down to the present (creating, indeed, a new 
 civilization), are obvious, commonplace facts of 
 history. Account as you may for the facts, 
 there was such force in the leaven which Christ 
 put into the minds of a few obscure men that it 
 spread in spite of persecution, and permeated 
 the known world. It is beyond all criticism 
 true that His influence in the world has worked 
 exactly as He said it would — "like leaven," 
 silently, slowly, continuousl)^ powerfully. It 
 is a working, living force to-day, as perplexing 
 to foes, and as inexhaustible in its m.eaning for 
 mankind, as when He taught in Jerusalem. It 
 is too late, in this age of long perspective down 
 through the ages of history, to hold Jesus Christ 
 responsible for the evil that has been done in 
 His name. The very spirit of this later age 
 which denounces it, is the evolution of His spirit 
 through and over it. I am quite aware that in 
 
H 
 
 THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 the fervent heat of our modern thought Chris- 
 tianity is being tested as never before. But 
 through all the glow of the burning, fiery fur- 
 nace, I see the glorified form of Jesus Christ 
 shining with undimmed lustre. John Stuart 
 Mill expressed the mind of pure, merciless, 
 logical reason in the one concession which he 
 was forced to make to revealed religion, in the 
 words : " Whatever else may be taken away by 
 rational criticism, Christ is still left, a unique 
 figure, not more unlike all His precursors than 
 all His followers; nor even now would it be 
 easy even for an unbeliever to find a better 
 translation of the rule of virtue from the ab- 
 stract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to 
 live that Christ would approve our life." The 
 science of to-day recognises the infinities as it 
 did not thirty years ago. The reconciliation of 
 science with all honest progressive Christian 
 thought is indeed a fact accomplished. There 
 are boundless possibilities in this and other 
 movements towards unity. I am quite sure that 
 no unbiassed naturalist of thirty years ago would 
 have recognised " the doctrine of Jesus Christ 
 as the summit and crown of the orcranic se- 
 
THE MAhl OF THE AGES. is 
 
 ries, . . . expressing the final result of that 
 directed striving which began hundreds of mil- 
 lions of years ago, and through infinite toil and 
 pain has led to this supreme accomplishment." 
 It is the language of a mature naturalist of to- 
 day who cannot be suspected of a religious bias. 
 It is the clear, cold crystallisation of a mind 
 working through the processes of long observa- 
 tion and experience, and as such is the type of 
 a whole class of thinkers, 
 
 I well remember, in my own early ministry, 
 the stir caused by Draper's somewhat virulent 
 history of the " Conflict between Science and 
 Religion." That history has been rewritten 
 by a scholar of to-day, who discriminates, as 
 Draper did not, between religion and dogmatic 
 theology ; and after an exhaustive, valuable, 
 and severely impartial review of the latest bibli- 
 cal research, he uses these words : " It has dis- 
 engaged more and more as the only valuable 
 residuum, — like the mass of gold at the bottom 
 of the crucible, — the personality, spirit, teach- 
 ing, and ideals of the blessed Founder of Chris- 
 tianity." 
 
 Philosophy is imbued with the spirit of 
 
l6 THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 Christ's teaching. The broadest thought along 
 the lines of the theory of evolution finds the 
 ultimate destiny of man in the time when the 
 physical shall be dominated by the psychical, 
 and in the truest sense " the kingdoms of this 
 world shall become the kingdom of . . . Christ ; 
 and He shall reign for ever and ever," " King 
 of kings, and Lord of lords." Literature is 
 putting into popular form the story of the 
 Christ, and both literature and art are full of 
 Him in a renaissance of Christian thought pecu- 
 liar to our time. A very modern French realis- 
 tic painting suggests as the scene of the cruci- 
 fixion a hill overlooking Paris, with the dead 
 form and the weeping Vv'omen, and a working- 
 man shaking his fist over the gay, indifferent city. 
 Now do not suppose that I am blind to the 
 fact that there is a wide-spread scepticism, or 
 at least indifference to the forms of religion, in 
 our time. I am not arguing that the world is 
 Christian, but that Christ is working profoundly 
 in the^world's highest thought, and that He is 
 surviving through the most intense criticism 
 that can be focussed upon Him. It was through 
 His own "preaching the gospel to the poor" 
 
THE MAN OF THE AGES. i-j 
 
 that the new principle of free and universal 
 education entered into our modern life. The 
 world's best thought circulates through the 
 whole body, and when that thought is reacting 
 towards God and Christ and the infinities we 
 need not dread the issue. 
 
 It means much, I think, for the average hu- 
 man nature of this year of grace that it is ca- 
 pable of responding to such fiction as Charles 
 Dickens's " Christmas Carol." It is only in the 
 warmth of that new spirit of humanity which 
 Christ breathed into the world that we have 
 become capable either of creating or of being 
 touched by such a conception as that of the old 
 miser weeping bitter, penitent tears over the 
 vision of his ovv'n neglected grave, and crying 
 out: " I will honour Christmas in my heart, and 
 try to keep it all the year! " 
 
 I have said that Jesus Christ was the realised 
 ideal of the ages which preceded Him ; that He 
 overflowed the age in which historically He lived ; 
 and that, afternineteen centuries. He is before the 
 world as fresh and inexhaustible as when He stood 
 before the scornful Pilate. The doubt of the day 
 finds itself more than ever perplexed by the ques- 
 
1 8 THE MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 tion, What shall we do, then, \Yith Jesus? As 
 the past has not been able to exhaust Hun, no 
 prophet's vision is needed to perceive that the 
 future cannot outgroiv Him. " You may de- 
 stroy our churches," said a French peasant 
 to an atheist in the time of the French Revo- 
 lution, " but you cannot destroy the stars 
 which shine in the eternal heavens. The more 
 you demolish our steeples, the more clearly 
 shall we see these worlds above." The Star of 
 Bethlehem abides, and must abide, because He 
 contains within Himself principles which are 
 eternal in the heavens. Humanity can never 
 outgrow such truths as these : " God is a Spirit : 
 and they that worship Him must worship Him 
 in spirit and in truth." " Love God, and your 
 neighbour as yourself." " Walk in the Spirit, 
 and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." 
 " This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, 
 the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
 Thou hast sent." It matters little, so far as my 
 present argument is concerned, whether He is re- 
 garded as the most consummate genius that the 
 world ever knev/, or as God manifest in the flesh ; 
 because the genius was so pure, far-seeing, and 
 
THE MAM OF THE AGES. ig 
 
 universal that there seems to be no rational es- 
 cape from the conclusion that He was all that 
 He claimed to be — Immanuel, God with us. I 
 believe that the future will find in the fact 
 of the Incarnation truth which shall reconcile 
 the natural and the supernatural, and " gather 
 together in one all things in Christ, both which 
 are in heaven, and which are on earth." 
 
 Standing as we do upon the threshold of a new 
 century, what thought could be more inspiring 
 and helpful than this? As across the stormy sea, 
 when the disciples were toiling in rowing, they 
 saw Him walking upon the v.-aters, and heard 
 Him saying, " It is I ; be not afraid," so may 
 we be confident that He is above time and 
 space, the master of wind and waves. There is 
 no more certain good in this present scheme of 
 things for you and me than to live as He would 
 have us live — keeping under our bodies, and 
 bringing them into subjection; subduing the 
 flesh to the spirit; walking in love, as He also 
 loved us, and gave Himself for us; seeking in 
 every relation, as mothers, fathers, brothers, 
 sisters, citizens, students, business men, and 
 working-men, to make the world of our time the 
 
20 7-/y£ MAN OF THE AGES. 
 
 better, purer, wiser, and happier for our being. 
 The great poet who has " crossed the bar " sang : 
 
 " Ring out the old, ring in the new. 
 
 Ring, happy bells, across the snow: 
 The year is going, let him go; 
 Ring out the false, ring in the true." 
 
 He also sang: 
 
 *' Ring in the valiant man and free, 
 
 The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
 Ring out the darkness of the land, 
 Rinij in the Christ that is to be." 
 
II. 
 €]^e iSeconciling Crut^* 
 
II. 
 
 THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 Jesus saith 7inio her, IVoiiian, believe Me, the hour 
 Cometh^ when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor 
 yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye 
 know not what: we know what we worship; for sal- 
 vation is of the Je7vs. But the hour cometh, and notu 
 is, when the true worshippers shall worship the 
 Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seckefh 
 such to worship JJim. — ?)i\ John iv. 21-23. 
 
 THERE are few incidents of our Lord's life 
 in which the human and the divine appear 
 more beautifully blended than in this conversa- 
 tion with the Samaritan woman by Jacob's well. 
 He was human in His weariness. Travel-worn, 
 at the close of the day, He sat by the well. 
 The woman came to draw water. He surprised 
 her by asking her to give Him drink. She was 
 surprised, because the Samaritans and Jews were 
 political and religious foes. It was true at all 
 times, and reaching to the smallest details of the 
 23 
 
24 
 
 THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 ordinary daily life, that " the Jews have no 
 dealings with the Samaritans." The divine life 
 in Him escapes and overflows the prejudices 
 natural to Him as a Jew. She exclaims, scorn- 
 fully perhaps, " How is it that Thou, being a 
 Jew, askest drink of me, who am a woman of 
 Samaria? " He tells her, in language too spirit- 
 ual for her comprehension, of the living water 
 which He could give. She flippantly replies : 
 " Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, nei- 
 ther come hither to draw." She sees only a 
 dusty, travel- worn Jew; but He speedily and 
 sternly reads to her a page out of her own pri- 
 vate life w-hich startles her into reverence. " Go 
 call thy husband, and come hither." " I have 
 no husband," she replied. Jesus said: "Thou 
 hast well said, I have no husband : for thou hast 
 had five husbands ; and he whom thou now hast 
 is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly." 
 Convicted in her conscience, she seems confus- 
 edly to try to excuse herself by pleading the 
 perplexities of the religious question of her 
 time: " Our fathers worshipped in this moun- 
 tain ; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place 
 where men ought to worship." It was human 
 
THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 25 
 
 nature striving, as it has done in all ages, — 
 not, perhaps, without reason, — to justify its im- 
 nioraUties by the disagreements and antagonisms 
 of the religious. 
 
 Now observe how our Lord meets the problem 
 in which her mind seemed to be entangled. He 
 does not compromise vvith the Samaritan heresy, 
 for He distinctly says : " Ye worship ye know 
 not what: we know what wc worship; for sal- 
 vation is of the JevvS." His people were in the 
 truth so far as the historic question was con- 
 cerned. They looked for the Messiah ; they wor- 
 shipped towards Him ; and He was to come of 
 the " seed of David according to the flesh." But 
 He lifts the whole question out of the local and 
 material into the light and air of a new spiritual 
 day. He tells her that the worship of God is 
 no longer to be limited to places, but that " the 
 true worshippers shall worship the Father in 
 spirit and in truth : for the Father seeketh such 
 to worship Him." He brings in a larger, higher 
 truth, which dissolves away the antagonisms 
 which had their origin in partial knowledge, or 
 ignorance of the whole truth. Neither Jew nor 
 Samaritan had realised the true idea of worship. 
 
26 THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 They had locaHsed God. They had thought 
 of Him as outside of themselves. They had 
 said, " Lo, here!" or " Lo, there!" and quar- 
 relled. He said: "God is a Spirit: and they 
 that worship Him must worship Him in spirit 
 and in truth." 
 
 There are many timely suggestions for us in 
 Christ's method with the Samaritan question. 
 Here was the standing feud of ages, separating" 
 peoples whose religions had much in common, 
 who lived in close neighbourhood, and yet nei- 
 ther had understood the real question involved. 
 Tlieir differences sprang from their ignorance of 
 the entire truth. Had they understood that 
 which Christ revealed, there v/ould have been 
 no ground for the long, bitter, angry war. The 
 Jews were in the truth so far as it had pro- 
 gressed, and the Samaritans were essentially 
 proselytes, deriving their doctrines and practices 
 from Jewish sources, and regarded by the older 
 tradition as on the level of ignorant Jews. The 
 antagonism continued, and doubtless had its 
 uses, until the hour came for the reconciling 
 truth to disclose itself. There was a process of 
 development going on, a secret, unseen growth, 
 
THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 27 
 
 until the time was ripe for the dead branches to 
 drop off or be pruned away, that the new hfe 
 might have free course. 
 
 That which was true in the development of 
 Judaism is true in the development of Chris- 
 tianity. There is " first the blade, then the ear, 
 after that the full corn in the ear." The apos- 
 tolic age, with its baptism of the Holy Ghost, 
 did not exhaust or finally express the whole 
 truth of Christ's teaching. As the words of 
 patriarch and prophet contain deeper meanings 
 than they knew, which a later age interpreted, 
 so, too, the apostles, in their witness of the 
 resurrection and its kindred doctrines, witnessed 
 of mysteries which even they had not fully com- 
 prehended. St. Paul, with all his searching 
 wisdom, exclaims, " Great is the mystery of 
 godliness ! " and it is the " mystery of the faith " 
 which is to be " held in a pure conscience," that 
 which he calls the " hidden wisdom." The 
 same Holy Spirit which illumined the apostles 
 is with the Church now, to realise through the 
 faithful Christ's promise, " Lo, I am with you 
 alway, even unto the end of the world." The 
 word of Christ has deeper meanings than the 
 
28 THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 honest seekers after truth have yet dreamed of. 
 There is ahvays some new treasure for the hon- 
 est mind to find, some larger truth to appear 
 when the time is ripe for it, some higher prin- 
 ciple or definition to evolve itself and harmonise 
 the lower and material antagonisms. It has a 
 vitality which unfolds, as each age demands, 
 new lights, new helps, new applications. I can- 
 not help thinking that in the tendency now of 
 all earnest thinkers to return to the simple 
 creeds of the first age, the creeds which en- 
 shrine the simple divine facts of Christ's life, we 
 have the most cheering sign of growth, of giv- 
 ing way to the richer life, the fresher meanings 
 which are coming — the springtime of a better, 
 broader, sunnier day. Was not St. Paul think- 
 ing forward to such times of riper, broader 
 knowledge when, magnifying the riches of 
 God's grace, he declares this to be the divine 
 purpose, " that in the dispensation of the fulness 
 of times He might gather together in one all 
 things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and 
 which are on earth; even in Him"? H^ere is 
 the very suggestion of that unity towards which 
 the scientific, the social, and the religious 
 thought of the age is tending. 
 
THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 29 
 
 The Christian Church has been slow to real- 
 ise that there must be unsettlings and changes 
 and new definitions in the progress of a living 
 truth. The Church has walked with Christ like 
 the disciples on the way to Emmaus, whose 
 " eyes were holden that they should not know 
 Him." They were sad and hopeless because 
 the tomb had been found empty, and they 
 could not solve the mystery of the missing body 
 of their Lord. They had not understood the 
 full meaning of that divine life and the power 
 of His resurrection. " O foolish men," He ex- 
 claims, " and slow of heart to beheve all that 
 the prophets have spoken ! " The larger, spirit- 
 ual meaning of His life dawned upon them as 
 He interpreted to them the Scriptures, and in 
 the breaking of bread they knew Him. The 
 story of the Church in its movement down 
 through the ages has been Hke that. Minds 
 have been holden so that the full meaning of 
 His life from the dead has been only partially 
 perceived. He has been looked for in the tomb 
 rather than in the open day ; and yet many 
 hearts have burned within them, not knowing 
 Him as He spake with them by the v/ay. God 
 had His own v/ise purpose in keeping back the 
 
30 
 
 THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 liberation of the mind until the hour came. The 
 hour came when the art of printing made it 
 possible for the spirit and truth to loose minds 
 from the wintry bondage of ecclesiastical des- 
 potism. That wintry time conserved princi- 
 ples and warmed into life a learning which burst 
 the icy fetters when the time was ripe. The prog- 
 ress of Christianity, as it strove with the igno- 
 rance and earthliness of men, necessarily created 
 antagonisms. They were like the mists which 
 writhed and tossed upon the earth when God said, 
 "Let there be light: and there was light." There 
 were spectres of heresy and error which in the 
 dim light seemed to be monstrous shapes, but 
 which were dissolved away under the advanc- 
 ing day. It is the glory of this age of free and 
 daring thought that Christianity is open to in- 
 vestigation, its pure springs uncovered, barriers 
 of prejudice broken down, and truth searched 
 for with a clearer vision than ever before. 
 
 The definite thought towards which I have 
 been travelling through these very general sug- 
 gestions is that the attitude of the Christian, 
 in our day of free and much earnest thought, 
 should be that of looking always for the higher, 
 
THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 broader truth which may reconcile antagonisms. 
 In this elder age, with nineteen centuries of 
 history behind us, it should not be possible for 
 the hating antagonism which marked the differ- 
 ence between the Jew and the Samaritan to re- 
 peat itself. I am not thinking only of the 
 differences which separate the various religious 
 bodies within the Church of Christ. They are 
 practically inconvenient ; they seem to create 
 much friction and waste ; but they are not seri- 
 ous. In the moral as in the physical world 
 diversity of form is the natural and necessary 
 expression of exuberance of life. The incoming 
 of a larger sense and realisation of that spirit- 
 ual brotherhood which is the fundamental order 
 of Christ's appointment is already beginning to 
 submerge our minor differences and lift us up 
 to a better understanding. I am thinking of 
 the differences between the Christian and all 
 honest thinkers who are moving towards God 
 through nature, through other religious systems, 
 or through the unseen mysteries of the spirit 
 itself. 
 
 As Christians we hold to the truth, as the 
 irut/i is in Jesus. This is our faith in which we 
 
32 
 
 THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 stand, our " anchor of the soul, both sure and 
 steadfast, and which entereth into that within 
 the veil." There can be no weak compromising, 
 if we are really rooted and grounded in Christ, 
 with that which actually contradicts this truth. 
 But the truth in Him, in His divine person and 
 word, must necessarily be in harmony with all 
 other truth everywhere ; otherwise it is not 
 God's truth. No sound has yet reached us out 
 of the realms of absolute truth v^^hich proves the 
 hidden wasdom of Christ to be a false note 
 among the eternal harmonies, — an errant dis- 
 cord. Science itself in some of its best thinkers 
 sees in the doctrine of Christ the " summit and 
 crown of a series of organic developments." 
 The habit of looking always for the harmonis- 
 ing element among all the discords of opposing 
 sects, systems, and philosophies lifts us above 
 the entanglements of mere prejudice, and makes 
 us receptive towards the larger truth when it 
 comes. We are helping, not obstructing, if our 
 minds are in the great movement towards God. 
 The differences which exist among all seekers 
 after God, whether within or without the Church 
 of Christ, have their origin in this fact: "We 
 
THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 33 
 
 know in part : but when that which is perfect is 
 come, then that which is in part shall be done 
 away." No one can study the New Testament 
 and fail to perceive that there are meanings 
 within meanings. Our Lord certainly looked 
 far on through a long vista of hazy distances 
 when He said to His disciples : " I have yet many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, 
 is come, He shall guide you into all the truth," 
 If this be so, why should we not be living and 
 thinking always with our faces towards the 
 dawn, always listening for the voice which shall 
 say : " Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jeru- 
 salem, shall men worship the Father, . . . But 
 . . . the true worshippers shall worship Him 
 in spirit and in truth"? 
 
 When the disciples returned from the village 
 where they had been to buy food, they mar- 
 velled that He was speaking with a woman. 
 It was not only unusual for a Jewish rabbi to 
 talk to a woman, but in this case there was an 
 added shock to their prejudices in the fact that 
 she was a Samaritan woman. It was a shock 
 kindred to that which a mind intrenched in its 
 
34 
 
 THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 own beliefs experiences, when the more daring 
 Christian thinker, escaping from his prejudices, 
 looks fairly at other systems than his own, 
 and considers what of truth or good there may 
 be in them, or how they may be brought into 
 unity with the larger truth which he holds. Christ 
 had nothing to learn from the woman, but He 
 did not antagonise. He found soil ready and 
 less encumbered with pharisaic and traditional 
 prejudices than among His own people. He was 
 conscious of a harmony in the true spiritual idea 
 of worship, and led her mind up to it. Paul 
 followed his Lord's example. When preaching 
 to the Athenians he did not denounce their 
 idolatry, though his spirit was provoked within 
 him as he beheld the city full of idols. He took 
 for his text the inscription upon one of their 
 altars, " To an unknown God," and declared : 
 " What, therefore, ye worship in ignorance, this 
 set I forth unto you." 
 
 If any one supposes that such an attitude as 
 this is only a convenient way of accommodating 
 ourselves to views which undermine our own 
 belief, let him look at Christ's words to the 
 Samaritan woman, and let him find their ulti- 
 
THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 35 
 
 mate limitation if he can: "God is a Spirit: 
 and they that worship Him must worship Him 
 in spirit and in truth " ; " for the Father seeketh 
 such to worship Him." I only point to the 
 words as the cUmax of the whole subject, not 
 attempting an exposition of them. Think what 
 infinite possibilities of spiritual experience lie 
 between these two ideas — the worshipper seek- 
 ing Him in spirit, and the Father seeking the 
 worshipping spirit. Think what truth inclusive 
 of all conceivable spiritual development is here. 
 Let the restless minds of men search the old 
 Bibles and the new as they may, — let them 
 come from the East and the West, and the 
 North and the South, eager voyagers upon an 
 unknown sea, looking for the " land which is 
 very far off," — I trust the Christ still. He opens 
 boundless horizons before me. My fellow- voy- 
 agers can show me no diviner possibilities than 
 are enclosed within His promise. When I was 
 a young man fresh from the seminary I thought 
 that I had almost exhausted the meaning of these 
 words of Christ when I showed their application 
 to the worship of our lips In public and In pri- 
 vate. I gathered a few drops in the palm 
 
36 THH RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 of my hand, and fancied I had emptied the 
 ocean. Now I see that there are infinite depths 
 of meaning in them, reaching to the remotest 
 possibilities of the everlasting life beyond time. 
 " God is Spirit," and in spirit — that is, in our 
 spirits — we must worship Him. Truth is the way 
 that leads to Him. In spirit by way of truth we 
 look for Him wherever He may reveal Himself. 
 Nature leads us far on into the truth of God. 
 We follow gladly, and rejoice with the reverent 
 student in the ever-widening vistas which are 
 opening into the unknown. Where the natu- 
 ralist can no longer find his way, we take the 
 hand of Christ, and looking into His face, see 
 the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
 there. While we are in the fiesh we cannot 
 understand God otherwise than through the 
 conditions and limitations of the flesh ; but we 
 are not to rest in the flesh, or in nature, or mere 
 form, or anything outside of us. The Samari- 
 tan woman did not appreciate His lofty words ; 
 she only answered humbly : " I know that Mes- 
 sias Cometh : when He is come, He will tell 
 us all things." Jesus replied: "I that speak 
 unto thee am He." He was the guide by whom 
 
THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 37 
 
 might be reached those distant heights which 
 seemed to her so far up in the clouds. We know 
 Him no more after the flesh, but He gives us 
 in spirit a new and definite conception of God. 
 He is the Word, expressing or interpreting God 
 to us. The idea of personaHty in God whicli 
 Christ gives does not hmit; it only saves us 
 from indefiniteness. That personality is Father- 
 hood. This is a figure of speech drawn from 
 our human relations. We could not understand 
 love in God, or feel it near to our spirits, other- 
 wise than through the human forms in which it 
 is feebly shadowed forth. The limitation of 
 love is in these, but through them we may 
 rise to the largest possible conception of love 
 as a spiritual reality in the relation of God to 
 our spirits. The Jews were taught the unity 
 and holiness of God by forms suited to the 
 childhood of the race. He was veiled within 
 the holy of holies, and approached only through 
 sacrifice and priest and high priest. In Christ 
 He comes near as the Father, seeking the spirit 
 to draw it out iii a spiritual and universal wor- 
 ship. Our spirits must needs think of God and 
 realise Him in word-forms, which are the best 
 
38 THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 
 
 possible until word-forms yield to the develop- 
 ments of a higher state of being, and we no 
 longer see " through a glass, darkly," but " face 
 to face." 
 
 Why, then, should we not trust Christ for all 
 that He reveals to us of God, and let the Father 
 of our spirits, seeking the true worshippers, find 
 us — find us in our spirits ? Why should we not 
 look for Him, where only He can be known in 
 His fulness, within the temple of our body, in 
 the sanctuary of our being, the place where the 
 real self hides away and weeps, perhaps, over 
 the good that it would and does not, and the 
 evil that it would not and yet does? Keeping 
 ourselves under the guidance of the divine Spirit, 
 who is made known to us through Christ, we 
 may live superior to the changes and unsettlings 
 of the present. Deep shadows may rest upon 
 the valleys, and mists veil the distant mountain- 
 tops ; but we shall be conscious of the larger 
 light which is over all, and shall be able to rec- 
 oncile the mists and the shadows with the coming 
 day. In our first feeble vision of Christ we are 
 like the blind men to whom He restored sight. 
 They saw men as trees walking. There are 
 
THE RECONCILING TRUTH. 39 
 
 minds which never grow out of such feebleness 
 of vision. They are fixed in tlieir first impres- 
 sions. They v;ill not see be3^ond that which in 
 education or otherwise they have received. If 
 others insist and the opinion spreads widely 
 that men are not trees vv'alk-ing, their world is 
 out of order; all seems lost. The growing vi- 
 sion, always keeping itself in the light of Christ, 
 sees that the confused forms of moving thought 
 are men advancing into the light, working to- 
 wards a unity which shall be revealed in the ful- 
 ness of time. St. Paul saw the unfolding cycles 
 of our destiny widening ever towards a spiritual 
 consummation, in that chapter of the resurrec- 
 tion which v/e read over our dead, where his 
 thought travels on from Christ the first-fruits to 
 those who are Christ's at His coming ; and " then 
 cometh the end, when He shall have delivered 
 up the kingdom to God, even the Father " ; and 
 then "shall the Son also Himself be subject 
 unto Him that put all things under Him, that 
 God may be all in all." 
 
III. 
 ©oti SimageD in i^uman 
 
III. 
 
 GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN 
 RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 If ye the?i, lacing evil, know /low to give good gifts 
 unto your children, how much more shall your Father 
 %uhich is in heaven give good things to them that ask 
 Him? — St. Matthew vii. ii. 
 
 I THINK life would be very different to us 
 if we could give vivid reality in our minds 
 to the term " Father " as applied to God. Do 
 we not commonly think of it as a figure of 
 speech, pleasant in its suggestions, but a mere 
 accommodation, after all, to our human weak- 
 ness? It is a generic term including mother- 
 hood and the mother heart, and indeed all the 
 pure affections which enter into the parental 
 relations. These affections are, as we all know, 
 the purest elements in our present life. They 
 make the bitter waters sweet. They constitute 
 the family and the home. No words are needed 
 
 43 
 
44 GOD IMAGED IN HUM/IN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 to tell what they are, or what the world would 
 be without them. That distinguished senator 
 who for long years, it is said, carried close to his 
 heart a little shoe, the memento of a dead child, 
 knew what a father's love is. His heart beat 
 with a broader sympathy, a nobler impulse, and 
 a diviner purpose because he knew it and kept 
 it ever living within him. That mother who 
 was found frozen to death in the deep snow of 
 a Scotch glen, with her living child clasped 
 to her breast and wrapped in the shawl which 
 she had stripped from her own perishing body, 
 knew what a mother's love is, and so did the 
 child when it was old enough to think, and feel 
 the desolation of its loss. There is nothing in 
 all the Old Testament literature more touching 
 than those words from God in the prophecy of 
 Isaiah : " As one whom his mother comforteth, 
 so will I comfort you " ; and that was a touch 
 of nature which keeps ever fresh the parable of 
 the prodigal son, when, feeding with the swine, 
 " he began to be in want," and said, " I will arise 
 and go to my father." 
 
 Yes, the prodigal turned back from his folly 
 to the father and the father's house. How slow 
 
GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 45 
 
 we are to realise the splendour of the truth con- 
 tained in the old familiar story! When we 
 " begin to be in want," when there is no more a 
 father or mother to rest upon, when we stand, 
 as we must sooner or later, alone in the universe, 
 children gone from us, bereaved in our affections 
 and sympathies, realising the inconstancy of the 
 present and shrinking from the chill mystery of 
 death, then we say within ourselves : " God 
 cannot feel towards us as we have felt towards 
 our children, nor may we dare to feel towards 
 Him as our children have felt towards us. 
 No; He is Spirit — far above us, infinitely for- 
 eign to our sphere. How can we presume to 
 think that He is anything like father or mother 
 as we may have known them in this world!" 
 
 Why not? I ask. The father and mother 
 love is imperfect, being limited by sin and ig- 
 norance ; therefore our Lord says : " If ye, 
 being evil, know how to give good gifts unto 
 your children, how much more your Father 
 which is in heaven! " He reasons up from the 
 discriminating love of the earthly parent to God. 
 This is the strong underlying thought which 
 seems to me so wonderfully suggestive. He 
 
46 GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 does not use the human fatherhood as a mere 
 figure to illustrate something which may possi- 
 bly exist in God towards us, but which may be 
 something very different and far removed from 
 the reality which is so precious to us here. He 
 is not using figures of speech; He is arguing. 
 His argument is that if the earthly father knows 
 how to give good gifts unto his children, how 
 much more the heavenly Father! The earthly 
 is to Him the feeble, im.perfect type of which 
 the great original is in God. If ye know the 
 father and the mother love, how much more 
 God, whose image ye but feebly reflect, and 
 from whom, as your Creator, that very love is 
 derived! The human fatherhood is not, there- 
 fore, something more than we may ever really 
 dare to think of as in God, but something 
 infinitely less than the reality which is in 
 Him. 
 
 I suppose that even the most superficial 
 readers know what distant flights our science has 
 made within a few years by the aid of spectrum 
 analysis. Reasoning up and out across millions 
 of miles of space from that rainbow-hued image 
 of light which the prism forms, and which is 
 
GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 47 
 
 known as the spectrum, men have learned 
 that the sun and remoter worlds are akin to our 
 earth. Not many years ago all that could be 
 known of the nature of the bodies that shine in 
 our firmament was conjecture. Now we know 
 by the spectrum that the elements we are famil- 
 iar with here, exist in them. There is a direct 
 relation between the prismatic colours which the 
 earth elements give and the sun shining in his 
 strength ninety-three millions of miles distant 
 from us. That sun is no longer to be thought 
 of as something different from our earth and 
 inconceivably foreign to it in its substance. 
 The same matter which we know in its grosser 
 forms here, glows in a state of fiery, vaporous 
 energy there. 
 
 It may be said, using this comparison, that 
 the human fatherhood is the spectrum of God. 
 He is Father, not in the material sense, but in 
 the far broader and intenser spiritual sense of 
 which the material form is only the " outward 
 and visible sign." " How little," say we, in our 
 blind ignorance, " can He who is so remote from 
 us understand our feeUngs!" " Hozv much 
 more,'' said our Lord Jesus Christ, reasoning up 
 
48 GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 from the broken lights of our human state to 
 the infinite Father. 
 
 If there could be any doubt that this was our 
 Lord's thought, His own life would dispel it ; 
 for was it not in the consciousness of Sonship to- 
 wards God that He hved, taught, suffered, and 
 died? Was it not the peculiar beauty of His 
 perfect manhood that the Father was alvva3^s 
 real to Him? The reality was dawning upon 
 Him when, standing in the midst of the doctors, 
 He said to His mother, who sought Him sor- 
 rowing: " Wist ye not that I must be about my 
 Father's business? " It came upon Him in all 
 the fulness of its power when that voice broke 
 from the clouds at His baptism, saying: "This 
 is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
 It appears in the strong, brave words with 
 which He met His hating opposers : " He that 
 sent me is with me : the Father hath not left 
 me alone ; for I do always those things that 
 please Him." " I and the Father are one." 
 It was comfort and strength to Him in every 
 hour of trial, and when the disciples forsook 
 Him and fled this was His consolation : " I am 
 not alone, because the Father is with me." The 
 
GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 49 
 
 reality was so strong and controlling in Him 
 that all other relations were subordinate to it. 
 When they told Him that His mother and His 
 brethren stood without, He stretched forth His 
 hand towards His disciples, and said : " Behold, 
 my mother and my brethren ! For whosoever 
 shall do the will of my Father which is in 
 heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and 
 mother." What a lesson this for us who live 
 our pitiful, contracted, selfish lives within the 
 circle of mere natural affections, when we should 
 be living out through them into the larger and 
 eternal sympathies of the whole family of God ! 
 We follow Him down into the valley of the 
 shadov/ of death, and through all the gloom and 
 agony we hear the same note sounding: 
 " Father, . . . not as I will, but as Thou wilt." 
 " Father, forgive them." And then the last 
 sigh, breathing the words, " Father, into Thy 
 hands I commend my spirit." 
 
 It may, however, be said that Christ realised 
 a Sonship towards God which we may not claim, 
 because He was essentially divine. It is true 
 that words are used to express His relation to 
 the Father in the mysterious triunity of the 
 
5° 
 
 GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 Godhead, which mean something infinitely be- 
 yond our understanding. He was " the only 
 begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." 
 " No man hath seen God at any time ; the only 
 begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
 Father, He hath declared Him." "No man 
 hath ascended up to heaven, but He that 
 came down from heaven, even the Son of man 
 which is in heaven." Here we have language 
 which evidently labours to manifest in time, and 
 in terms of the human relation of father and 
 son, sublime my.steries of a supernatural sphere. 
 He has come down from heaven, and is in 
 heaven. He is the Son of God moving in 
 time, and yet is in the bosom of the Father. 
 He speaks out of that eternal "Now" which 
 cannot be expressed in time except by a con- 
 fusion of tenses which is strange to us. 
 
 But the fact remains that He does choose the 
 relation of Father and Son to express His own 
 relation to the unseen God. There is some- 
 thing in that relation, therefore, which is the 
 type of the mystery veiled in the Godhead. 
 He draws our minds up from it to the glory 
 which He had with the Father (always the 
 
GOD IMAGUD IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 51 
 
 Father) before the world was. When, there- 
 fore, He tells us to take this same human rela- 
 tion, and think up from it to the " how much 
 more " of Fatherhood in God towards us, He 
 certainly means that the sense of God as our 
 heavenly Father should be as intensely real to 
 us as it was to Him. 
 
 It was, indeed, for the very purpose of warm- 
 ing into life this dormant sensibility, and bring- 
 ing us back into the reality of a lost sonship, 
 that He took upon Him our nature and was 
 made in the likeness of men. Paul defines the 
 gospel in one brief but exhaustive sentence : 
 " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
 Himself." In Christ God reconciles Himself 
 unto the world through the perfect obedience 
 of His Son even unto death ; and the world is 
 reconciled unto God because in Christ He may 
 be known as really the " Father of our spirits," 
 the Lord God, " full of compassion, and gra- 
 cious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy 
 and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiv- 
 ing iniquity and transgression and sin, and that 
 will by no means clear the guilty." 
 
 The world needed reconciling ; for the world. 
 
52 GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 through a sense of sin and the ills that sin had 
 brought v/ith it, nursed hard thoughts of God. 
 We all of us, in our world of to-day, need rec- 
 onciling; for the face of things as we see it is 
 stem and even cruel. Conditions and circum- 
 stances environ us which often seem to contra- 
 dict the thought of any love outside of the 
 perishing relations in which we stand. God in 
 Christ reconciles, because one long look of faith 
 at Him shows that a man may be a son of God 
 in all the attributes which we may justly look 
 for in one claiming to be that, and yet suffer 
 even to the shame of the cross and the cry in 
 the darkness," My God, my God, why hast Thou 
 forsaken me ? " That He should have consented 
 to suffer, permitting evil to spend itself upon 
 Him in order that we might be brought back 
 to the realisation of God as our Father, is the 
 truth which must touch our hearts and con- 
 sciences as no other manifestation possibly 
 could. This is the real meaning of His hfe for 
 us. It could not have touched us had He been 
 exempt from the pains which oppress us. He 
 was made our perfect Saviour through suffering. 
 He was "declared," said Paul, " to be the Son 
 
GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 53 
 
 of God with i^ower, ... by the resurrection 
 from the dead." The supreme credential of 
 His claim to be our Redeemer, and the supreme 
 fact which makes Him potent to win human 
 hearts, is the triumph through and over sin, the 
 cross, and the grave. 
 
 Now if it is possible for us, through faith in 
 Jesus Christ, to be born anew into a realisation 
 of sonship with God, our human relations ap- 
 pear in quite new lights ; our point of view is 
 changed. Love and life are as essentially 
 wedded in our human experience as light and 
 warmth. Deride as we may the sentimentali- 
 ties of poet and romancer, love moves the world 
 as truly as the sun is the source of every form 
 of energy on the earth. We have striking evi- 
 dence in the novels which flood society, and for 
 which there seems to be a more unquenchable 
 thirst than for any other kind of literature. But 
 the forms of love which youth idealises, which 
 marriage sanctifies, which are beautiful in 
 motherhood, and the springs of purest joy in 
 the relation of brother and sister, and friend 
 with friend, are fading forms at best. Our 
 habit is to rest in them as the only fountains 
 
54 
 
 COD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 which can satisfy our thirst. The springs dry 
 up. The ideals shrivel into very weak, homely 
 flesh and blood. The inevitable death breaks 
 up the forms, and we are not satisfied. We 
 are like children who. see only the pretty colours 
 of the spectrum, and nothing of the worlds be- 
 yond which they interpret. The man who 
 thinks, translates the prismatic hues and proves 
 the kinship of his earth with other worlds and 
 with the blazing sun which his eyes unshielded 
 cannot look upon. 
 
 It is from this earthly habit of seeing only 
 the form, that Christ by His manifestation of 
 God the Father would redeem us. This is the 
 meaning of words which may have seemed harsh 
 to you : " If any man come to me, and hate not 
 his father, and mother, and wife, and children, 
 and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own hfe 
 also, he cannot be my disciple." He does not, 
 of course, mean hate in the personal, malignant 
 sense which we associate with the word. His 
 own example and the whole spirit of His Hfe 
 and teaching forbid the thought. He uses an 
 intense word to make strong by contrast the 
 ardour of the love which we owe to Him, the 
 
GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 55 
 
 manifested God, He deepens the shadow, as 
 the artist does, to bring out and make vivid the 
 high hghts. He simply means that which He 
 expressly states in another place : " He that 
 loveth father or mother more than me is not 
 worthy of me." But I prefer the intenser form 
 of the saying, because it makes so vivid the 
 claims of the higher love. There is always an 
 element of hate in fervent love. Jealousy is the 
 form it takes. " The Lord our God is a jealous 
 God," and therefore commands, " Thou shalt 
 have none other gods beside me." Jealousy is 
 the shadow of love. The fervency of the love is 
 measured by the depth of the shadow. Christ 
 taught that a man shall leave his father and 
 mother and cleave unto his wife. Here is the 
 same thought on the earthly plane. Carry it 
 up to the Father of our spirits who is seeking 
 us through all the earth-forms, and the meaning 
 is that there shall be in us such an ardour of love 
 towards Him kindled by the sense of His love 
 for us that we shall be jealous of every human 
 relation which would keep us back from the 
 obedience which His love in us compels. I 
 have been reading the wonderful story of Nan- 
 
56 GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 sen's three years in the arctic ice. He left the 
 wife and child to whom he was devoted, and 
 risked his life in that daring journey. He did 
 not love his wife less because the ambition to 
 know drove him out into that perilous polar 
 waste. He brought back to her a fame in 
 which she too is hfted up and immortalised. 
 We do not love in our human relations less 
 because we rise through them into the faith of 
 God's love in Jesus Christ. We only bring 
 back to them immortality. 
 
 Men are constantly sacrificing their affections 
 to gratify a passion for adventure or the desire 
 for fame. Shall it be counted strange that a 
 man, in seeking to know God, should have to 
 renounce every earthly tie which might restrain 
 him? Our human relations are glorified in the 
 light of that knowledge. We see them no 
 longer as ends of being, but as buds cradling 
 within themselves the promise of a larger life to 
 come. We love wisely, because we see that the 
 breaking of the bud must precede the blooming 
 of the flower. We love purely, because no 
 gross love can survive in the upper atmosphere 
 of a spiritual mind. All our affections are in- 
 tensified and purified because lifted up into 
 
COD IMAGED IN HUM/IN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 57 
 
 God, where every pure love shares in the 
 " how much more " of His love as compared 
 with the evil and the littleness of our earthly 
 relations. 
 
 I cannot conclude without calling your atten- 
 tion to the idea of discrimination which we find 
 in our Lord's words : " If ye, being evil, know 
 how to give good gifts unto your children" 
 (that is, know how to discriminate), " how 
 much more your Father in heaven?" Do we 
 not have to train our children, by the very 
 compulsion of our love, in the way of the cross? 
 Do we not have to deny them much that they 
 would like because our mature experience 
 knows what is best for them? Children's trials 
 in small matters are very real and cost them 
 many tears. We children of a larger growth, 
 if w^e would be the children of our Father which 
 is in heaven, must on every rational ground 
 expect a like discipline. We are all prodigal 
 sons, wandering in a far country, until we turn 
 from the riotous living and the husks and the 
 swine, and seek pardon in the Father's house. 
 Do not, however, suppose for a moment that 
 the Father's love will or can do you any good 
 while you continue wilfully in riotous living or 
 
58 GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 in that lower degree of vice, feeding with the 
 husks and the swine. You must give up your 
 own way and come into His way of repentance, 
 and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the right- 
 eousness of a spiritual mind which comes by 
 faith, or you can have no part in the endless joy 
 of the Father's house. " As many as are led 
 by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." 
 His love is not an indulgent smile of compla- 
 cency towards everything and everybody. It 
 is a righteous love, and will " by no means clear 
 the guilty." To be led by the Spirit while we 
 are in the flesh, and in a world which constantly 
 appeals to the flesh, means taking up the cross 
 daily. 
 
 A certain French reformer invented a new 
 religion which he wished to impose upon his 
 country. He called it theophilanthropy. In 
 spite of his passionate endeavours he made but 
 little progress, and sought the advice of Talley- 
 rand. " I am not surprised," said the shrewd 
 statesman, " at the difficulty you experience. 
 It is no easy matter to introduce a new religion. 
 But I will tell you what I recommend you to 
 do. I recommend you to be crucified, and to 
 
GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 59 
 
 rise again on the third day." There was deeper 
 meaning, perhaps, than he thought in his flip- 
 pant words. No religion can hft us to God our 
 Father out of this present sensual, selfish world 
 which does not involve a being crucified and 
 rising again. Paul expressed the same thought 
 when he wrote : " Therefore we are buried with 
 Him by baptism into death : that like as Christ 
 was raised up from the dead by the glory of the 
 Father, even so we also should walk in newness 
 of life." If we fuse away all the accretions of 
 a dogmatic theology from these words we find 
 that they contain simply the experience and 
 faith of the child. He is denied something 
 which seems very good to him. He wipes away 
 his tears, and, submitting to the father's or the 
 mother's will, rises to the better life which their 
 love ordains for him, 
 
 I have only suggested truths which hours and 
 volumes could not exhaust. I hope you have 
 caught something which may help you. I have 
 tried to show that, as the scientist dares to rea- 
 son out from his spectrum to worlds in space 
 and to the sun itself, so we may dare to reason 
 up from our dearest human relations to the 
 
6o GOD IMAGED IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 " how much more " of " our Father which is 
 in heaven." 
 
 Have you been living in sin, and do you feel 
 the deep, unsatisfied need of a soul that has 
 been feeding on husks? Give effect to the 
 prodigal's resolve, and arise and go to your 
 Father. Are you sorrowful, alone, friends gone 
 or seemingly faithless, old age closing round 
 you, and death near? Oh, if your heart is only 
 in its purpose true to God, with what comfort 
 may you rest in Him and feel, with Christ, " I 
 am not alone, for the Father is with me " ! And 
 when death comes, as come it must to every one 
 of us, what shall be our refuge if it be not in the 
 Father of our spirits? If there is any cloud 
 between Him and your spirit, it is an earth-born 
 cloud, which may, in the faith of His forgiving 
 love through a reconciling Saviour, condense 
 into showers of fertilising repentance, and leave 
 a clear sunset sky for the perfect repose of a last 
 hour. " Father, into Thy hands I commend my 
 spirit." 
 
IV. 
 
 Control front mit\)\n. 
 
IV. 
 CONTROL FROM WITHIN. 
 
 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that 
 is exalted against the hwwledge of God, and bring, 
 ing every thought into captivity to the obedience of 
 Christ. — 2 Cor. x. 5. 
 
 I CAN imagine a condition of being in which 
 spirits might know one another at once, 
 without the interposition of bodies or the 
 imperfect medium of language. We are 
 really, even the closest friends, very far apart 
 in this world. There is something sad in the 
 eager way we look into one another's faces and 
 listen to one another's words in the efTort to 
 become acquainted. The real life of every one 
 of us is lived in the silence of his thoughts — 
 thoughts which control him, it may be, but which 
 never find expression in words ; thoughts which 
 he hides because they might not be understood, 
 or masks under fair words and a correct deport- 
 63 
 
64 CONTROL FROM IVITHIN. 
 
 ment because he would blush to have them 
 known. 
 
 Now it seems to me that Christianity is very- 
 true at least in this, that it aims to take hold of 
 the hidden life in which we really live, the life 
 of our thoughts, and so to control us from within, 
 " bringing every thought into captivity to the 
 obedience of Christ." 
 
 I ask you to consider with me the relation of 
 this principle of control from within to the three 
 necessary elements of a true manhood or woman- 
 hood : overcoming — being — knoiving. 
 
 Overeotning is the first and constant necessity 
 which is forced upon us when we try to lead a 
 noble Hfe. Temptation must be overcome and 
 sin cleared away. It is almost impossible, say 
 some, to live up to the Christian standard of 
 right under the pressure of competition in busi- 
 ness, or to exercise self-control in view of the 
 scenes and sounds which appeal to appetite, 
 ambition, and self-interest. I grant that it 
 means a fight to keep pure in the midst of an 
 ungodly world ; but do you know that it is 
 scarcely less difficult to live a pure life apart 
 from an ungodly world? The seclusion of a 
 
CONTROL FROM IVITHIN. 
 
 65 
 
 hermit's cell is no protection against temptation 
 if a man be temptable, because his real world of 
 temptation is that which he conjures up out of 
 the thoughts and imaginations of his own heart. 
 The power of the pleasures, profits, and prizes 
 of life to seduce into sin does not reside so much 
 in them as in that which they find in us. The 
 man who yields to licentiousness, to dishonest 
 practices for the sake of getting rich, or to 
 maxims, opinions, or parties which are opposed 
 to his honest convictions for the sake of place or 
 popularity, has prepared himself to yield. The 
 debasing habit, act, pursuit, or whatever it may 
 be, was entertained in thought before it took 
 form in outward fact. Such is the invariable 
 course of the yielding and sinking of a man's 
 moral nature until he is completely under the 
 dominion of the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
 He familiarises himself with the thought of sin. 
 The thought becomes an imagination in which 
 he revels long before he would deem himself 
 capable of a corresponding act. Opportunity 
 comes, and there is no power of resistance. The 
 forces without gain an easy victory because the 
 fortress is full of traitors within. If you consider 
 
66 CONTROL FROM IVITHIN. 
 
 carefully the workings of your own heart, you 
 will see that the temptations which appeal to 
 your senses begin to get power over you when 
 you give thought to them. Here, then, the 
 battle with sin must begin. It is comparatively 
 easy to overcome if you meet and exterminate 
 temptation in its first suggestions. It will not 
 get into you. It will have no chance to gain a 
 hearing. The conscience, like a polished mirror, 
 will be kept so sensitive that the least breathingof 
 that which is bad will betray itself. The men who 
 talk, as some do nowadays, about the impossi- 
 bility of self-control, the necessity of a certain 
 amount of license, and allowance for varieties of 
 temperament and circumstance, assume that the 
 strength of temptation is altogether in that 
 which appeals to us from the outside. They 
 overlook entirely the fact that they would not 
 be liable to be set on fire by it if they did not 
 habitually store up inflammable material within 
 themselves. In fact, wc often create our own 
 temptations by putting ourselves in the way of 
 scenes and persons and books which will gratify 
 cherished desires. We live so powerfully in the 
 imagination of certain events which might be 
 
CONTROL FROM WITHIN. 67 
 
 that we try in ways that we will not admit to 
 ourselves to bring them around to us. We slyly 
 encourage opportunities, and then, when we 
 have fallen into temptation, make ourselves be- 
 lieve that we have been the victims of circum- 
 stance. Once tamper with the thought, and 
 begin to parley with it and then to justify that 
 which it proposes to you, and you are lost. The 
 door is open, and the whole dark train of ima- 
 ginings and self-deceits and passions and evil- 
 doings is pressing in behind. 
 
 " Keep thy heart," therefore, " with all dili- 
 gence; for out of it are the issues of life." It 
 is a garden in which may be made to grow, 
 under the sunny influence of Christ's love and 
 grace, plants which would make your whole life 
 fragrant and beautiful and fruitful in blessing to 
 the world ; but if we suffer thoughts which de- 
 file to take root, there is no hope for our garden. 
 They are weeds which are certain to overrun 
 and destroy. It is not enough to keep them 
 down out of sight. They must not be allowed 
 to germinate. The soil must be kept clear of 
 them. To cut off their flowering on the 
 surface simply strengthens and makes them 
 
68 CONTROL FROM (VITHIN. 
 
 more deadly underneath. They will certainly 
 take possession and grow rank and uncontrol- 
 lable if we do not keep them rooted out. 
 
 But there is something more than overcoming 
 sin or not doing wrong. That is only the nega- 
 tive side of a true life. See how the principle 
 of bringing every thought into captivity is re- 
 lated to our second point — being. Being is 
 character. Character is that which a man really 
 is in the complexion and fibre of his being, and 
 not merely that which he seems to be. How 
 are we to attain or form soundness of being, so 
 that men may trust us and our personality be 
 solid oak in the social structure? It is com- 
 monly supposed that if a man aims to conform 
 himself strictly to the received standards of 
 right, and makes it his habit to be just and true 
 in all his dealings and faithful to his promises, 
 he will be such a character. I should say that 
 he might seem to be, but the reality of that 
 seeming would depend upon something more 
 than his words and actions. How often has it 
 happened that men trusted in a community, 
 and rooted firmly in the respect and confidence 
 of all who knew them, have suddenly fallen 
 
CONTROL FROM IVITHIN. 69 
 
 with a crash, as we have heard great forest-trees 
 fall in the calm night ! The world thought that 
 they were men of sound character; they seemed 
 to be secure in their pride of place ; but they 
 fell as the old tree of the forest falls — because 
 it is corrupt at the core. While they were 
 forming around themselves a reputation for 
 integrity, they were not taking care of their 
 thoughts. They had rules for their words and 
 actions, but they had no law for their minds. 
 The language of St. Paul is very suggestive. 
 It implies that the thoughts are habitually law- 
 less and impatient of control. They must be 
 taken prisoners by force of will and compelled 
 (as the original has it) into a " hstening submis- 
 sion to Christ." Every man who has any re- 
 gard for his interest and reputation takes care 
 of his words and actions, but few think of at- 
 tempting to control the wild rioting within them. 
 Yet here alone can the conquest be made for 
 character, and a foundation be laid which shall 
 make the whole building secure and able to 
 survive even the shock of the judgment-day. 
 I cannot imagine how any rule could be more 
 thorough, and potent to control, than that which 
 
70 
 
 CONTROL FROM ^VITHIN. 
 
 made St. Paul the brave, pure man he was, and 
 which he calls " the obedience of Christ." 
 Whatever you may think intellectually about 
 Jesus Christ, you know that in the presence of 
 the very thought of Him impurity, deceit, hate, 
 and selfishness shrink like creatures of the night 
 before the dawn. A mind surrendered to His 
 obedience is a mind surrendered to purity, truth, 
 and love. The character which in loyalty to 
 such a Master repels every thought which is at 
 war with these, necessarily purifies itself. Sup- 
 pose you made it your practice never to do or 
 say anything which you would blush to have 
 your mother or sister or dearest friend see or 
 hear. Your life would be tolerably correct 
 outwardly. But suppose you went further, and 
 made it the rule of your life never to entertain 
 a thought which you would be ashamed to have 
 them know. Do you not see how such a rule 
 would work to keep your life pure at its foun- 
 tain? Ah, we know that under the pleasing 
 manners which many a young man assumes in 
 the presence of pure women there is a brood of 
 vile thoughts and imaginations. The man is a 
 sham — a whited sepulchre. If the restraints 
 
CONTROL FROM IVITHIM. 
 
 71 
 
 which he puts upon his behaviour were carried 
 into his thoughts, if he felt that the pure eyes 
 were upon him there, he would begin to know 
 what purity is. Now put the Lord Jesus Christ 
 in the place of mother or sister or friend, and 
 you have the Christian rule. He asks you to 
 put aside your reasonings and pride and preju- 
 dices, and every high thing which exalts itself 
 against the knowledge of God, and let Him rule 
 in your heart. He asks you to make it your 
 habit to bring every thought to the test of His 
 purity, truth, and love. He asks you to let the 
 lightning of His indignation be felt against every 
 evil suggestion and foul imagination. He asks 
 you to honour your bodies as temples of the 
 Holy Spirit, and not merely to act, but to think, 
 always as in His pure and searching presence. 
 Will you say that under such a rule a man's 
 range of thought would be restricted and his 
 mind become narrow ? Let the words of St, Paul 
 to the Philippians be your answer : " Finally, 
 brethren, whatsoev^er things are true, whatsoever 
 things are honourable, whatsoever things are 
 just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
 things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
 
72 
 
 CONTROL FROM IVITHIN. 
 
 report; if there be any virtue, and if there be 
 any praise, think on these things : . . . and the 
 God of peace shall be with you." 
 
 In speaking of the relation of this principle 
 to being, we are naturally brought to think of 
 its important relation to knoiving. It is only 
 through this very same path of clearing away 
 sin, or overcoming, and then seeking to be 
 sound or pure inwardly, that we can find truth. 
 The " bringing every thought into captivity to 
 the obedience of Christ," which necessarily 
 purifies, is the very condition precedent of know- 
 ing God. Indeed, it is by character, or, in 
 other words, by seeking to be right before God, 
 that we come to know God. Christianity, which 
 is the truth about God, cannot be proved, and 
 its truth known, by any other means. You are 
 disposed, some of you, perhaps, to resent this 
 statement. You demand that your reason should 
 be convinced, that the objections and prejudices 
 which block the way should be removed, before 
 you can in any sense accept Christ. You are 
 like one shut up in a dark room, who demands 
 to have his reason convinced that there is such 
 a thing as sunlight, and how it is and what it is, 
 
CONTROL FROM IVITHIN. 
 
 13 
 
 before he will throw open the windows and let 
 it come in. He is withering in the darkness, 
 when by simply pushing back the bolts and 
 throwing open the shutters he might feel all the 
 invigoration and know in himself all the glory 
 of the noonday. There must be, as St. Paul 
 affirms, the " casting down of reasonings and 
 every high thing" in your mind, " which exalts 
 itself against the knowledge of God." You can 
 only begin to know, when you begin to obey. 
 As the blessed sunlight is beating upon the 
 closed shutters, so God is ready to shine into 
 your heart. You cannot prove Him by argu- 
 ment. You can only know Him and walk in 
 the light by yielding to Him — by letting Him 
 come in. " If any man willeth to do God's will, 
 he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of 
 God, or whether I speak of myself." 
 
 God's will is not to be looked for in some law 
 outside of you. It speaks in your consciences. 
 If you will but silence the tumult of your noisy 
 prejudices, and bring your thoughts into an 
 attitude of listening submission, you may know 
 from moment to moment what God would have 
 you do. All the faith required of you is to 
 
74 CONTROL FROM IVJTHIN. 
 
 accept Jesus Christ for what He manifestly is, 
 incarnate love, purity, and truth, and let Him 
 be the Sovereign of your thoughts. However 
 the world may rave about the Bible, whatever 
 may be the defects of our theologies, doubt as 
 we may much that is said and written and 
 claimed for Christianity, that man cannot be 
 wrong who takes Jesus Christ to be a law unto 
 himself. If there be nothing else certainly true 
 in all this wide universe, the spirit of that Man 
 as it was in Him, and in all that it would make 
 us, is truth to be trusted. Begin here, and in 
 bringing every thought to the touchstone of His 
 pure presence you will purify yourself, your 
 nature will be spiritualised, your perceptions 
 will be cleared, " the light of the knowledge of 
 the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ " will 
 begin to dawn upon you. I will not attempt 
 to describe the experience further; I feel too 
 unworthy; I should seem to know more of it 
 than I do. But I stand upon the shore; I see 
 how it is possible for a man to realise the calm, 
 deep heaven of the wondrous beatitude, "Blessed 
 are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." 
 It is like a mountain lake which I have gazed at 
 
CONTROL FROM IVITHIN. 75 
 
 with charmed eyes in the Tyrol. Majestic cUffs 
 enclose it on every side and are reflected in its 
 emerald depths. One seems to stand in mid- 
 air, a world of majesty above, and another world 
 of softened majesty and infinite depths of azure 
 below. But when the surface of that lake is 
 ruffled and its depths stirred by the tempest its 
 peculiar charm vanishes ; it no longer reflects 
 the everlasting hills. When our hearts are 
 swept by gusts of earthly passion, and turbid 
 with pride and lust and selfishness, God cannot 
 be known. When we cease our striving, and 
 yield our thoughts to the " obedience of Christ," 
 " the peace of God, which passeth all under- 
 standing, keeps the heart and mind." God is 
 reflected in us ; " the pure in heart . . . see 
 God." 
 
 I have tried to show you hov/, by " bringing 
 every thought into captivity to the obedience of 
 Christ," we may overcome sin, be pure, and 
 know God. I am afraid that we who preach, 
 too often leave our hearers in doubt as to where 
 and how they are to begin to believe in and 
 obey Jesus Christ. They suppose that it con- 
 sists in believing in a book, or obeying a set of 
 
76 CONTROL FROM IVITHIN. 
 
 precepts contained in a book; or they have a 
 vague idea that it means not to do wrong, or to 
 try very hard to be good. They think of some- 
 thing to be trusted or obeyed outside of them- 
 selves or up there. The simple truth is that the 
 Christ we preach is to be looked for in our 
 hearts. He is there, pressing upon us in im- 
 pulses towards purity and right and love. The 
 faith we preach is a simple giving up pride and 
 opposition, and letting Him be the one ruling 
 principle and passion of our inner Hfe. The 
 moment we let the sense of His love come in, 
 we are compelled by the strong compulsion of 
 a responsive love to " bring every thought into 
 captivity " to His will. Yes ; and the moment 
 we begin in the silence of our souls to yield to 
 Him, under the sunny consciousness of His 
 great love, that moment God begins to live 
 in us. 
 
V. 
 
 Cl^e note of d^oD in €lfwt 
 
V. 
 
 THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 The love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
 
 Rom. viii. 39. 
 
 I MET in my life as a pastor, many years ago, 
 •^ a man who objected to the language of the 
 General Thanksgiving : " We bless Thee for our 
 creation, preservation, and all the blessings of 
 this life." He said that he was not thankful for 
 his creation — that it would have been better for 
 him if he had never been born ; that his preser- 
 vation had been only the prolonging of misery ; 
 while the blessings of this life consisted in pain, 
 poverty, and loss, I told him that if the Gen- 
 eral Thanksgiving had ended there I should 
 agree with him. But it does not. That which 
 makes life tolerable, which enlarges our horizon, 
 which clears up the mystery, is contained in the 
 words following : " Above all, for Thine inesti- 
 mable love in the redemption of the world by our 
 79 
 
8o THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ ; for the means of grace, and 
 for the hope of glory." Now it is of this ines- 
 timable blessing I would speak — " the love of 
 God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The 
 apostle means not our love towards God, but 
 God's love towards us, manifested for our salva- 
 tion in Jesus Christ. 
 
 The question of God's disposition towards us 
 can never cease to be one of importance to the 
 average man and woman in this world. Not- 
 withstanding the efforts of eccentric persons to 
 get the idea out of the minds of men, the idea 
 will remain, because we are subject. There is 
 a power working in and through and over and 
 outside of us. We are dependent upon it. We 
 cannot escape from its control. We live and 
 move and have our being in it. There are so 
 many evidences of an intelligent will manifested 
 in the working of this power, that we naturally 
 give personality to it. The spirit in us which 
 wills and thinks and reasons, reaches out instinc- 
 tively towards some great Father of our spirits. 
 It finds a voice in the words of the creed : " I 
 believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
 heaven and earth." 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 8i 
 
 Assuming, then, that there is an almighty- 
 Maker of heaven and earth, what do we know 
 of His mind and purpose concerning us ? Does 
 He care anything at all about us, or are we, 
 with our sensitive, conscious spirits, only atoms 
 which He is whirling, crushing, grinding in the 
 great mill of some vast purpose, regardless of 
 our pain or pleasure? Are we to go whirling 
 on through endless cycles, born into responsi- 
 bility without our consent, and carried on 
 whether we will or not? The beautiful creation 
 outside of us does not satisfy. You cannot 
 comfort suffering, struggling men and women 
 by pointing them to a beautiful sunset. When 
 I stand by the bedside of my dying child, 
 agonised by his suffering, which I cannot relieve, 
 and Heaven sends no help, will the flowers 
 which some friend sends comfort me? They 
 are but an aggravation of my misery. It is as 
 if God smiled at me in my sorrow and mocked 
 my helplessness. He does not touch me. The 
 earth has indeed been made beautiful to my 
 eyes, and is marvellously adapted to my physi- 
 cal needs, and even ministers to my pleasure ; 
 but I am worse off than the beasts, for they 
 
82 THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 chew the cud of a present animal contentment, 
 while I see in the fair creation something which 
 mocks me — something which I cannot reach. 
 We feel with Jean Paul Richter when he said of 
 music: "Away! away! Thou speakest to me of 
 tilings which in all my endless life I have not 
 found, and shall not find." I have no evidence 
 in nature that God cares any more for me and 
 my kind than He does for the grasshopper or 
 the worm. Fire, flood, tempest, lightning, 
 earthquake, and avalanche are as reckless, ap- 
 parently, of human life as they are of insects 
 and beasts. 
 
 There is but one revelation of the mind of 
 God which can reach the heart of man and 
 glorify his life. It comes to us in the person of 
 Jesus Christ. The truth which shines out from 
 Him has its fullest expression in St. John's 
 familiar words : " God so loved the world, that 
 He gave His only begotten Son, to the end that 
 whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
 but have everlasting hfe." 
 
 Now I do not want to argue anything. My 
 purpose is simply to set forth the mind of God 
 as it is expressed in Jesus Christ, and to show 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 83 
 
 how different it is from any other manifestation 
 of the invisible ; how closely it touches us, and 
 how powerfully it may affect us, if we will but 
 yield to it. 
 
 And first, note that the love of God in Christ 
 has personality. It enters into our humanity; 
 it takes shape in history. " The Word was 
 made flesh, and dwelt among us." "No man 
 hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten 
 Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, 
 He hath declared [or " interpreted "] Him." 
 If God was ever to reveal Himself to man, 
 who in all ages has groped after Him, what 
 more likely than that He should come directly 
 into our humanity? How should He be under- 
 stood otherwise ? Men in all ages have looked 
 for Him in nature and clothed Him in terri- 
 ble forms. Why should it be thought a thing 
 incredible that He should manifest Himself 
 in the highest part of His creation — human 
 nature itself? Ah, say the sceptics, but it is 
 incredible that the infinite power Avhich pervades 
 the universe should distinguish man, a mere 
 worm of the dust, above all other creatures — 
 that He should particularise him and stoop to 
 
84 THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 enter into our flesh. Now just here is the fact 
 in which man's shame and degradation consist. 
 He has made darkness his element. He was 
 worth caring for. There is a spirit in him 
 which is related to the Infinite. But man had 
 lost all sense of the divine possibilities which 
 were his. This is the terrible fact of our con- 
 dition. This is what constitutes our lost estate. 
 Men scorn as a senseless theological dogma the 
 teaching that they are conceived and born in 
 sin, and yet find in a gross materialism, which 
 credits nothing beyond the sensual and visible, 
 their natural element. The fact that they will 
 not see that there is a divine side to them, that 
 they choose darkness and hug themselves in it 
 and love it, is the fact that brought Christ into 
 the world. The aspirations, the genius, the 
 daring ambitions, the blind beatings against the 
 cage which holds him, which appear through 
 all man's unbelief, are evidences of the nobility 
 of his origin. The old story of the prodigal 
 brings out the truth of his condition in one 
 strong touch : " He would fain have filled his 
 belly with the husks that the swine did eat. . . . 
 But when he came to himself, he said, How 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 85 
 
 many hired servants of my father have bread 
 enough and to spare! " He had been " beside 
 himself" until that awakening moment. He 
 had been satisfied with the husks and the swine. 
 Now Christ came to seek and to save that 
 which was lost. He came to bring God back to 
 man. His person, shining out a bright star 
 amid the gloom of human history, means that 
 man is distinguished above all other creatures. 
 It is set in our midnight sky to guide our feet 
 into the way of peace, because it tells us that 
 when He touched our sicknesses with heaUng, 
 and our sorrows with sympathy, and our sinful 
 and remorseful conditions with pardon, and our 
 fear of death with a promise that transfigures 
 death, God was in Him. His life was God's 
 way of speaking to us — speaking to us in 
 human tones, in a human form that toiled and 
 suflfered with us, and saying to every needy 
 condition of our life, " there is help, there is 
 hope, there is love, there is life, there is immor- 
 tahty." We may always think of God, there- 
 fore, as being like Christ. We may understand 
 what His love towards us means by studying 
 Christ's words and works and character. We 
 
86 THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 may know that it is a love which, while it makes 
 no compromises with sin, yet yields its own 
 Christ to the cross in order that the sinner may 
 be pardoned. We may know that it is a patient, 
 tender, pursuing, and unselfish love, entering 
 into and touching every need and woe of our 
 common life. We see it moving in One who 
 was " a man of sorrows, and acquainted with 
 grief," blessing the poor, feeding the hungry, 
 healing the sick, weeping beside a grave, drying 
 the tears of widows, gathering helpless child- 
 hood into its arms, carrying hope down among 
 the very outcasts of society, and entering into 
 a Gethsemane of agony in order that we might 
 know, in the darkest struggles of life, that love 
 is with us even there — there where it is so hard 
 to say, " Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." 
 Oh, is it not something that you may go to the 
 New Testament, and know, as you study Christ 
 in His relation to all sorts and conditions of men, 
 that this is what God is towards you and all 
 sorts of men now? It seems to me that one 
 can bring his heart up to such a study, and rest 
 it there, and find great comfort. It was not a 
 weak, indulgent, effeminate love. How intoler- 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. g-j 
 
 ant it was of hypocrisy — how it hated unreality, 
 deceit, pretence! How it rebuked and put to 
 shame by its own example selfishness ! and yet 
 how tender it was towards sinners, how slow to 
 judge, how ready to forgive, how superior to the 
 worid's mean, carping, backbitingmisjudgments! 
 I have said that because the love of God in 
 Christ has personality we can understand it. 
 But we could not take the love which Christ 
 exhibited to be God's love if He had not proved 
 Himself to be something more than human, — 
 in other words, that which He claimed to be, 
 — the Son of God. He was crucified, dead, 
 buried. If the story had ended there we should 
 have no evidence that God was in Him. He 
 was, as Paul says, " declared to be the Son of God 
 with power by the resurrection from the dead," 
 This event carries Him out of time into eternity, 
 out of the seen into the unseen, out of the past 
 into the ever-present; and yet not out of his- 
 tory, for He is living in the hearts of all who 
 have received Him, and in His Church, which 
 is His body. He has passed in glorified human 
 form into the presence of the Invisible, the rep- 
 resentative of our race, and embodying in Him- 
 
THE LOVE OF COD IN CHRIST. 
 
 self that which He has made possible for every- 
 one of us. 
 
 We reach here a point of thrilling importance, 
 which marks the love of God in Christ. It 
 makes possible for us, through the same Christ, 
 an entering into His own sublime relation of 
 sonship with the everlasting God. This state- 
 ment is no cunningly devised fable. May God 
 help us to keep it disentangled in our minds 
 from the dogmas of theology. It is one of the 
 realities of the gospel, and the ray of sunshine 
 which strikes most directly down into our com- 
 mon life. 
 
 He died, but His death was God's mysterious 
 way of satisfying the avenging forces, and rec- 
 onciling the guilty consciences of men to the 
 thought of forgiveness in the Just and Holy One. 
 He appeared on the other side of the grave in 
 glorified human form — humanity clothed upon 
 with the life of a higher sphere. In that form 
 He appeared to Mary, and this was the message 
 which He sent to His disciples — words which 
 ring out as clear and sweet as village church 
 bells on a summer day : " Go to my brethren, 
 and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 89 
 
 and your Father; and to my God, and your 
 God." He had made it possible by His death 
 for us to think of the Infinite as our Father as 
 He was His Father, and as our God as He was 
 His God. He makes it possible by His resur- 
 rection power — the power of His " life for 
 evermore," the power of a divine Spirit — for 
 us to become, as He was and is in very thought 
 and feeling and character, sons of God. " As 
 many as received Him," writes St. John, " to 
 them gave He power to become sons of God, 
 even to them that believe on His name." He 
 is writing of that which took place after Christ 
 had left the earth. Love's greatest work in 
 Christ did not begin to be done until after He 
 had vanished from the bodily view. It was the 
 work of entering into men's souls and working 
 Hfe and resurrection there. This is what God's 
 love in Christ would do for us now. It is mov- 
 ing for our help more powerfully and more uni- 
 versally even than when He walked on earth. 
 " Touch me not," said He to Mary, " for I have 
 not yet ascended unto the Father." It is clearly 
 to be inferred that, having ascended. He can 
 be touched as He could not be on earth. We 
 
90 
 
 THE LOyE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 may bring our spirits to Him, and realise heal- 
 ing and comfort and life, just as truly as they 
 did who brought their blindness or their lepro- 
 sies or their withered limbs when He walked 
 through Judea and Galilee. But we must bring 
 our spirits to Him. God's love will not do its 
 gracious work for us if we choose to sit in the 
 dungeon darkness of our selfishness and lust. 
 There is Fatherhood in God brooding over all 
 men, but the adoption of sons can only be for 
 those who will open their hearts to God, mani- 
 fested in Jesus Christ, and let Him take posses- 
 sion. It is a spiritual work now. We know- 
 Christ no more after the flesh. Our conception 
 of God must always wear the character of that 
 unique personality which has once for all in the 
 historic record been projected out of eternity 
 upon the screen of time. But to realise God 
 spiritually now, we must let the full meaning of 
 that personality take possession of our hearts. 
 This is what St. John meant by receiving Him. 
 This is faith in its simplest definition. Thomas, 
 the doubter, illustrated it when, standing in the 
 presence of the risen Jesus, the full meaning of 
 His personality suddenly dawned upon him. 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 91 
 
 and he exclaimed, " My Lord and my God." 
 He had long been His disciple. He only re- 
 ceived Him at that moment. *' Blessed are 
 they," said our Lord, " who have not seen, and 
 yet have believed." To let the sense of God's 
 love, disclosed in Jesus Christ, come into your 
 hearts and rule there, that is faith. To live in 
 the consciousness of a divine Fatherhood, and 
 keep yourselves in it by acting as sons of God, 
 arc the simple conditions of realising the resur- 
 rection power of Christ. 
 
 But you turn away wearily, and say to your- 
 selves: "This is not practical. How can we 
 busy, toiling men and women, absorbed in every- 
 day worries and awearing struggle for existence, 
 how can we be like Christ? How can we act 
 as sons of God in a world like ours?" "His 
 life was exceptional," you say. " He was a 
 preacher and teacher, and went about doing good. 
 We have domestic ties. We have to work for a 
 living." Christ, I answer, was without sin ; but 
 He was human, and tried in all points like as 
 we are. I sometimes think that He was so truly 
 human that the full consciousness of His deity 
 did not dawn upon Him until He rose from the 
 
92 THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 dead. His life was not so unlike ours as we 
 imagine. Remember that only three years of 
 His life were lived in pubHc ministry. He was 
 first the ordinary infant of Jewish parents, born 
 in a manger. He appears once, after twelve 
 years, an eager, thoughtful boy, sitting in the 
 midst of the doctors, both hearing them and 
 asking them questions. A sense of some wait- 
 ing, divine mission seems to have flashed out in 
 the gentle answer to His mother's remonstrance : 
 " Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's 
 business?" But He went down, and was sub- 
 ject unto them. Eighteen years longer — thirty 
 in all — He lived in obscurity, working probably 
 at Joseph's trade ; and yet all that time He was 
 growing in that divine Sonship which bloomed 
 finally upon the world's view — " the glory as 
 of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
 and truth." He did not grow away from God 
 in the midst of the routine of daily toil and the 
 struggle of a humble workman's life. When we 
 see Him in His perfected manhood He is not 
 dependent upon anything external to Himself 
 for peace or comfort. He is calm amid the 
 strifes of men, because the Father is with Him. 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 93 
 
 He is superior to fear and pain, and never mur- 
 murs at the hard conditions of His earthly life, 
 because His real life is in the unseen and eternal. 
 Worn to death upon a cruel cross. His last sigh 
 is breathed in the words, " Father, into Thy 
 hands I commend my spirit." Looking back 
 now, we see that through the grave and gate of 
 death He passed to a joyful resurrection. And 
 now I say that He is the ideal man. I say that 
 He has made it practicable for every one of us 
 to live in just that same divine relationship of 
 sonship with God as that in which He Hved, and 
 which made Him superior to time and sense and 
 death. I say that we may carry into our work- 
 day life, as He did, the inspiration of our higher 
 destiny, that we may live in His peace, and 
 commend our souls at death to the same Father. 
 It simply depends upon yourselves, your own 
 wills, whether you will live in the sunshine of 
 Christ's Father and your Father, of His God 
 and your God ; or whether you will shrink away 
 into the earth, like creatures whose nature it is 
 to burrow under stones and into dark, damp 
 holes, because they love darkness rather than 
 light. Oh, what would not the love of God, 
 
94 
 
 THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, do for us, if 
 we would but let it come in ! It would change 
 the whole atmosphere of our inner, secret life. 
 It would make us realise that our true life is in 
 the spiritual and eternal. It would breathe into 
 us a vivid consciousness that God is our Father 
 really, and not merely in metaphor. The human 
 fatherhood is the imperfect, reflected image of 
 the reality in God. It would have us know 
 that we may hide our failings and infirmities in 
 the bosom of His great love, confident that if 
 our purpose is honest He will understand and 
 make allowances, even when short-sighted 
 earthly friends censure and misjudge. It would 
 make us both ashamed and afraid to sin, because 
 sin is against love, and every cherished sin puts 
 the obscuring of our own sense of guilt between 
 us and life. It would fuse all duty and obedi- 
 ence into one glowing principle of love to God, 
 working out in love to man. It would make us 
 fearless of the threatenings of time, man, and 
 death, in the certain confidence that we are 
 " bound in the bundle of life with the Lord 
 our God," It would clothe all nature with new 
 and satisfying charms, because in all its forms. 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 95 
 
 from the fragrant lily-of-the-valley to the 
 lightning's red gleam, we should see love work- 
 ing — working life even through seeming death 
 and destruction. 
 
 Time forbids me to go further. It would be 
 easy to show how God's love in Christ, received 
 into men's hearts, would solve every dark prob- 
 lem of their condition, lift them out of sin into 
 new and divine relations, harmonise all the harsh 
 discords of their social life by bringing it into 
 unison with the spirit of Christ's command 
 " that ye love one another, as I have loved 
 you," disclose in sorrov/ and pain only such a 
 discipline as He passed through who, " though 
 He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by 
 the things which He suffered," and rob death 
 of all its terrors in the light of His rising, who 
 shall change our vile bodies and make them like 
 unto His own glorious body. 
 
 My friends, you know that the health of your 
 bodies is affected by the atmosphere in which 
 you breathe and live. You know, too, that in 
 a moral sense your minds and manners are 
 affected by the social atmosphere with which 
 you may choose to surround yourselves. It is 
 
96 THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST. 
 
 a matter of infinitely greater importance that 
 3^ou should consider what sort of atmosphere 
 you habitually think in. I fear that many of 
 us may find, if we go dov/n into the secrecy of 
 our souls, that we are breathing the stifled, 
 poisoned air of selfishness, lust, or mere earthi- 
 ness. There can be no Hfe, light, nor salvation 
 for us until we throw open the windows and let 
 the great love of God, which is in Christ Jesus 
 our Lord, come in and take possession of us. 
 
VI. 
 
 Hife in t^e Higl^t of tl^e 
 Mzmntttion. 
 
VI. 
 
 LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE 
 RESURRECTION. 
 
 Wherefore 2ve faint not; hut though our outward man 
 is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by 
 day. For our light affliction, which is for the mo- 
 ment, workeih for us more and more exceedingly an 
 eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the 
 things which are seen, but at the things which are 
 not seen: for the things wJiich ai'e see7i are temporal; 
 but the things which are not seen are eternal.— 
 2 Cor. iv. 16-18. 
 
 LIFE looked very dark to St. Paul when he 
 •^ wrote these words. The world was against 
 him. He was perplexed, persecuted, v/eary, 
 and death stared him in the face. But he sees a 
 bright side to all this. He counts the afifliction 
 light and for the moment, compared with the 
 eternal weight of glory which it is working for 
 him. 
 
 Where does he get this confidence? Where 
 99 
 
loo LIFE IN THE LiGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 is he standing, tiiat he should be able to see 
 glory gilding such conditions? He gets the 
 confidence from a habit of mind which looks 
 not at things seen, but rather through and be- 
 yond them to things unseen and eternal. He 
 stands in the faith of a Christian, who endures 
 as " seeing Him who is invisible." 
 
 Now I have no intention of arguing with 
 anybody. This is neither the time nor the place 
 for argument. The materialist and the infidel 
 would " not be persuaded, though one rose from 
 the dead." I only propose to set forth the habit 
 of mind which Christianity would create in us, 
 and to show that it puts us on the bright side 
 of the darkest dispensations, and affords us a 
 largeness of view and a largeness of living which 
 make all other living seem small and pitiable. 
 
 There are things seen, and there are things 
 not seen. This much, I think, every one must 
 admit. That nothing exists but that which our 
 eyes can behold is a manifest absurdity ; for the 
 very thought that thinks it, is invisible, and yet 
 thought is. The life that is in every one of us 
 cannot be seen, and yet life is. 
 
 The majority of people Hve under the domin- 
 
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURliECTlON. loi 
 
 ion of things seen, and count it the only rational 
 way of living. There is certainly much that is 
 bright and beautiful for our eyes to enjoy. We 
 have nature, with its myriad forms of softness 
 and serenity, gentleness and power, beauty and 
 sublimity. We have man's works, everywhere 
 displaying skill, genius, enterprise — painting 
 and sculpture, architecture, daring inventions, 
 and innumerable lovely creations of his hand, 
 rivalling nature itself. We have the world of 
 humanity, with its lovely forms of childhood and 
 youth and womanhood, to charm our eyes ; 
 with relations and associations of family and 
 friendship which are precious to us; with its 
 capacities for social excitement and pleasure, 
 the song, the dance, the feast, the play of 
 thought and wit, the converse of congenial 
 spirits. Oh, yes, says youth ; there is every- 
 thing to live for in the things which we see. 
 We are in this present visible scheme of things ; 
 why should we not enjoy it? 
 
 Shall I tell you that if you love the present 
 world you will lose a heaven of bliss hereafter? 
 A great mistake is often made, I think, by Chris- 
 tian ministers, and great harm done to their 
 
102 LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 cause, by vague denunciation of something which 
 they call the world and do not define. The 
 impression is conveyed that Christianity com- 
 pels a choice between the present world, in 
 which we must eat, drink, toil, love, enjoy, and 
 suffer, and a possible heaven of bliss in some 
 far-off hereafter. I do not much wonder that 
 some sceptics echo the sentiments of the old 
 Persian poet towards Mohammedanism : 
 
 " Some for the glories of this world, and some 
 Sigh for the Prophet's paradise to come. 
 Ah, take the cash and let the credit go, 
 Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum." 
 
 Christianity does not set a possible future 
 against a certain present. It is an entire mis- 
 conception to suppose so. The heaven which it 
 opens to the believer begins here and now. Its 
 light comes in through the faith which opens 
 to a perception of things unseen and eternal. 
 Worldliness is living exclusively in and for 
 things seen. Unworldliness is not ignoring the 
 seen, separating yourself from it, hating it; but 
 looking through it to the unseen, and living for 
 that, and under the dominion of that, and with 
 a view to that. Here is the real distinction. 
 
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 103 
 
 " What shall it profit a man," said Jesus Christ, 
 " if he shall gain the whole world, and lose " — 
 heaven hereafter? no; but — "lose himself ?" 
 If you live only for the material, — the grati- 
 fication of the senses, the enjoyment of that 
 which you can see and taste and handle, — 
 you necessarily starve all the higher faculties of 
 your being. There is a side of your nature 
 which would blossom towards the Infinite. It 
 is capable of spiritually seeing God and living 
 eternally in His light. But if you never open 
 it towards things unseen and eternal, all these 
 divine possibilities wither; unused, they die, like 
 the eyes of fish in dark caverns, which through 
 disuse have lost the capacity for seeing. 
 
 When you ask me, then, why you may not 
 enjoy all that you see in this beautiful world, I 
 answer that you may, and should, enjoy every- 
 thing that is pure and lovely; but if you live 
 only by the sight of the eyes, you miss the 
 highest life — you lose your true spiritual self. 
 And then what an uneasy, restless, unsatisfying 
 dream life is, if there is nothing but the things 
 seen! There is one fact about them which 
 must be admitted, and v/hich shuts us up under 
 
104 LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 a sad, oppressive, ever-brooding mystery : " The 
 things which are seen are temporal." The very 
 earth beneath our feet, which we call firm, some- 
 times trembles, and makes shipwreck of our 
 confidence. Youth soon finds that its bright 
 hopes are graveyard lights, delusive will-o'-the- 
 wisps, or the phosphorescence of decay shining 
 in the night. Temporal ! Yes ; youth grows 
 grave and care-worn and gray. The eyes of 
 the wife or the child or the friend, that beam on 
 us with love, fade. Their light goes out; we 
 close them. They are gone, and we are alone! 
 When we attain, we have lost the capacity for 
 enjoyment. Change is everywhere. We may 
 be thankful, when we think of the wrongs, crime, 
 pain, and poverty which are in the world, that 
 the things seen are temporal. We must die. 
 If death ends all, the Epicurean maxim is wis- 
 dom : " Let us eat, drink, and be merry to-day ; 
 for to-morrow we die." 
 
 Let who will think this is rational and all that 
 is possible for man. I say that the man who 
 thinks and feels, who has a spark of anything 
 which is not merely animal left in him, knows 
 better. 
 
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 105 
 
 But turn now to the more cheerful side of the 
 subject. 
 
 There are things unseen and eternal. The 
 trouble is that we are in such a material habit, 
 so incrusted with material needs, thoughts, and 
 desires, that we have come to believe that noth- 
 ing can be real which cannot be seen. We do 
 not dare to open ourselves to the invisible forces 
 which are pressing upon us on all sides and 
 sometimes break through in manifestations 
 which startle us. 
 
 We feel them in nature. Back of the laws 
 and forces v/hich science discovers, every un- 
 biassed thinker feels that there is Infinite Mind. 
 What is it that makes almost a pain the ecstasy 
 of enjoyment which we feel when we look into 
 some lovely sunset sky, or breathe the crisp air 
 of some mountain height, with the deep blue 
 of space over us? What is it that makes 
 us long to melt and lose ourselves in their 
 brooding atmosphere of spiritual beauty and 
 perpetual peace? Why do we turn back to the 
 prosaic world sad, like some galley-slave who 
 has caught the sound of far-off bells, and voices 
 of the long-lost and almost forgotten home? 
 
io6 LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 Is it not that, back of or within the visible, 
 there is a spiritual something which is our birth- 
 right, and which we have somehow lost? The 
 very rose that is sent to us in our sick-room has 
 its grea.test charm, it seems to me, in something 
 that we do not see. We enjoy its perfume and 
 lovely hues and delicate petals, but there is 
 something more than its fading beauty. I al- 
 ways feel that it would tell me something — that 
 it has a cheering message from somewhere. I 
 think, if it could speak, it would tell me how 
 lovely and full of love He is who thought a rose, 
 and thought it for me! Is it my God? 
 
 Thoughtful men of all ages have been con- 
 scious of these unseen powers. They have built 
 their altars to the unknown God. Not until God 
 manifested Himself in Jesus Christ was heaven 
 opened. This is the truth of Easter day — a 
 truth in which all Christians must rejoice : " Life 
 and immortality brought to light." 
 
 " Now is Christ risen from the dead, and be- 
 come the first-fruits of them that slept." The 
 historic Christ who was " born of the Virgin 
 Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was cruci- 
 fied, dead, and buried," burst the bands of death, 
 
LIFB IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 107 
 
 left the tomb empty, folded up the grave-clothes, 
 appeared to His disciples, then vanished out of 
 their sight. The resurrection is just as much an 
 authenticated fact of history as any other fact 
 of His life. It is precisely that which might be 
 expected from His character and works. He 
 proved Himself, by this act, to be what He had 
 claimed to be: " Immanuel — God with us." 
 He is not merely a reminiscence, a historic char- 
 acter of the past, like Socrates or Plato, or Caesar 
 or Napoleon. He is a living Christ. He has 
 passed out of time into the glory which He had 
 with the Father before the world was. Divine, 
 yet human — the God-man! The voice that 
 comes back to us from Him to-day out of the 
 unseen declares: "I am He that liveth, and 
 was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, 
 and have the keys of Hades and of death." 
 " This is our God. We have waited for Him, 
 and He is become our salvation." He is alive 
 for us — alive that, through His brotherhood 
 with us, He might make us know and feel that 
 we are sons of the one Father. " Go," said He 
 to Mary, " and tell my brethren that I ascend 
 unto my Father, and your Father; and to my 
 
io8 LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 God, and your God." Alive, that we may know 
 that there is a world beyond time and sense. 
 " In my Father's house," said He to His disci- 
 ples, " are many mansions ; I go to prepare a 
 place for you." 
 
 Here, then, is the light that is ready to shine 
 into our hearts out of the unseen and eternal — 
 " the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
 God in the face of Jesus Christ." To look not 
 merely at the doctrine about Christ, nor at the 
 Bible which reveals Him, but to look in the face 
 — that is, into His divine personality as the New 
 Testament reveals Him — is the first step to- 
 wards the light. To throw down our prejudices, 
 and let that personality, in all its perfect beauty, 
 take possession of us, to trust it as a living per- 
 sonality, living for us and in us, to stand, in a 
 word, where Thomas did,. and say with a sense 
 of personal appropriation, " My Lord and my 
 God " — that is faith. 
 
 Standing here, we begin to see and feel the 
 power of things unseen and eternal. Nature 
 and the present world remain, but they are 
 transfigured. The sun is on them now. " The 
 things which are seen are temporal." Yes; 
 
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 109 
 
 death is here. Nature has lovely phases, but it 
 will blast with its lightnings and overwhelm with 
 its avalanches, earthquakes, and torrents thou- 
 sands of human beings, reckless of youth, beauty, 
 innocence, or virtue, sweeping them away as if 
 they were ants! In vain do we think of the 
 God behind nature and life as a tender Father 
 when He seems so reckless of human life and 
 suffering. 
 
 But when we see all this in the light of the 
 resurrection, we can understand that death is 
 not the worst thing that can happen to us. Christ 
 entered into the agony of the garden and the 
 cross; He was permitted to die a cruel death, 
 though He was " the only begotten of the 
 Father, full of grace and truth." But death 
 was only an incident of the divine life which 
 was to triumph over it. He entered into our 
 human conditions of suffering and death in 
 order that we might, through Him, triumph 
 over them. We make too much of death. It 
 is but an incident of the life in us that lives on 
 when the body falls away. It is the dissolution 
 of the material which sets the spirit free. It is 
 the breaking of the cage that lets the imprisoned 
 
no LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 bird fly. It is the dropping of the withered 
 autumn leaf, that the new budding life beneath 
 may spring. What shall I fear, then? Let 
 come what may of desolation, pain, death, "our 
 light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh 
 for us more and more exceedingly an eternal 
 weight of glory." " I am the resurrection, and 
 the life," saith the Lord: "he that believeth 
 on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : 
 and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall 
 never die." 
 
 Realise the meaning of these sublime words, 
 and think what a terror vanishes, what perplex- 
 ities which seem to contradict God's love are 
 removed, and what infinite possibilities are 
 opened to us. But beyond all this, think of the 
 new meaning which the dearest relations of life 
 take on, when we look through them to the un- 
 seen Christ and the eternal possibilities in Him. 
 The hardest experiences in life, perhaps, are 
 those in which we have to see vanish into an 
 awful silence loved ones who are parts of our 
 very being. Father, mother, brother, sister, 
 child, are ties which bind us to all that is pur- 
 est and happiest on earth ; but looked at in 
 
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 1 1 1 
 
 their visible forms they are temporal. They 
 must die, and we must die. When the sorrow 
 comes we are apt to think, if we do not say, 
 " What does God know about it? He is a far- 
 off abstraction. He cannot understand a poor, 
 bereaved mother's or father's love!" 
 
 Ah, just here we make a mistake. What 
 right have we to separate ourselves from the 
 great Father in whose image we were made? 
 Christ entered into our human conditions for 
 the express purpose of making us know and 
 feel that the Father does know and understand 
 our sorrows. "If," said He, "ye, being evil, 
 know how to give good gifts unto your children, 
 how much more shall your Father which is in 
 heaven give good things to them that ask Him ? " 
 See ! He authorises us to do something which 
 we are always afraid to do — reason up from 
 our pure human affections to God. If you can 
 love so, how much more the infinite Father 
 who is the spring of this love ! If He has cre- 
 ated a mother's love to be the soft, protecting 
 cradle of infancy, surely we may be confident 
 that the everlasting arms are underneath when 
 our children pass away, and that they are folded 
 
112 LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 into infinite tenderness. We are comforted by 
 the tears and kind ministries of our friends. 
 We are always thinking that our friends are 
 kinder than God. We never think that He can 
 be like that. But are not they parts of God, as 
 the rose is an expression of God ? To bring us 
 back to a consciousness of this fact, from which 
 sin had divorced us, He expressed Himself to 
 the world in the human form of Christ. He 
 was our brother in the flesh, entering into all 
 the conditions of our life, from childhood to the 
 bitter cry in the garden, " Father, if it be pos- 
 sible, let this cup pass." He is the same now 
 in His risen glory. Uniting in Himself the 
 human and divine. He is ever for us the expres- 
 sion of God, and we know from His ministry on 
 earth how He could pity and weep and love and 
 suffer. He is nearer to us all than when He 
 was on earth, by His Spirit pervading the hearts 
 and lives of His people. He is present with us 
 in all those precious, unselfish, loving ministries 
 which touch us in our sorrows and needs. We 
 are too prone to forget that the spirit of love 
 which is present in the world, providing homes 
 for the orphan, the widow, the sick, the needy. 
 
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 113 
 
 going about doing good, working quietly 
 through thousands of faithful women, making 
 itself felt in little rather than great acts, and in 
 unconscious influence as much as by direct efTort 
 — we forget, I say, that Christ is in all this. It 
 gets its impulse from the beating of His great 
 heart against the hearts of those that trust Him. 
 Well, then, if there really is a Father who 
 lives so near us in the known person of the 
 risen Jesus, why should we not be confident 
 that the forms which are so dear to us are only 
 fading into the reaUties of a larger Hfe for them 
 and for us? Why should we not be patient 
 
 "Till 
 The night is gone; 
 And with the morn those angel faces smile. 
 Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile." 
 
 Do you not also see, that which I have not 
 time to dwell upon, that the mixed circum- 
 stances and events of the world and of our in- 
 dividual Hves, which seem utterly confused and 
 dark and hopeless when we, like one lost in a 
 fog, are entangled in and under them, appear 
 simply as the writhing of the morning mist in 
 the valley before the coming glory of the day, 
 
114 
 
 LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 when we look at them in the light of His eter- 
 nal purposes, to whom one day is as a thousand 
 years, and a thousand years as one day? I 
 have often stood on mountain-tops, and, seeing 
 the mist roUing below, have thought how gloomy 
 it must be to dwellers in the valley. They were 
 under the clouds. They could not realise how 
 transient they were, but I knew how the sun 
 was working through them; I knew that they 
 were but for a moment. 
 
 I have read somewhere of an Athenian so 
 wise that the most difficult questions which 
 could be devised failed to perplex him. A cer- 
 tain young philosopher boasted that he could 
 outwit him. He proposed to hold a little bird 
 concealed in his hand, and then to ask him if it 
 was alive or dead. If he should answer, " Alive," 
 he would crush it and say, "No; it is dead." 
 If he should say, " It is dead," he would open 
 his hand and let it fly. He held the bird in his 
 hand, and put the question, " Sage, is it alive or 
 dead?" The sage answered, "It is as you 
 will!" 
 
 My friends, you have it in your power to let 
 your spirits fly or to crush them in an earthly 
 
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION. 115 
 
 grasp. Whether they shall live eternally in the 
 sunshine of God's smile, or die, does not depend 
 upon argument ; it is not a question for the in- 
 tellect to determine. If you are in sympathy 
 with that which is pure and noble and unselfish 
 and true, you will open your hearts to Jesus 
 Christ and say, " My Lord and my God." The 
 question of Hfe or death for your soul is a moral, 
 not an intellectual, one. " It is as you will! " 
 
VII. 
 
 ^tmm "bv tl)e ^tnS* 
 
VII. 
 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 As his part is thai goeth down to the battle, so shall 
 his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part 
 alike. — I Sam. xxx. 24. 
 
 ZIKLAG was the dwelling-place of David and 
 his followers during their temporary sojourn 
 in the country of the Philistines. It was at that 
 desperate period in his life when the madness 
 of Saul made him an outlaw and forced him into 
 entangling alliances with Israel's foes. He had 
 left the town with his little army and joined the 
 forces of the Philistine king, Achish. But the 
 presence of the Hebrews created distrust in the 
 Philistine camp, and they were obliged to march 
 back to Ziklag. They reached the city only to 
 find it a smoking ruin. The Amalekites, a 
 neighbouring people, had seized the opportunity 
 which the absence of the warriors afforded to 
 revenge previous depredations upon their own 
 119 
 
120 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 borders. Wives and children had been carried 
 into captivity. Desolation reigned where they 
 had looked for rest and love and plenty. Their 
 grief knew no control. They wept until they 
 had no more power to weep, and then turned in 
 wrath upon their leader, and muttered fierce 
 threats against him. It was a moment of bitter 
 agony for poor David. His soul might well cry 
 out, " All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone 
 over me." Outcast, bereaved, plundered, and 
 now menaced by his own followers, it was no 
 weak faith which enabled him to look away 
 from flesh and earth and " encourage himself in 
 the Lord." Divinely taught, he found in im- 
 mediate action an outlet for the angry feeling 
 which threatened to burst upon his own head. 
 The storm was turned against the spoilers, and, 
 forgetting hunger and fatigue, moved by the 
 thought of their dear ones' wrongs and the 
 hope of rescue, the little band of six hundred 
 started in quick pursuit. Now two hundred of 
 their number fainted by the way. Their hearts 
 and wills were strong to go on, but their weary 
 feet refused to carry them. The brave rem- 
 nant, disencumbering themselves of every un- 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 necessary article, left "the stuff" in charge of 
 their exhausted comrades at the brook Besor, 
 while they pressed forward. They surprised 
 the Philistines as they were feasting in their 
 camp, scattered them with great slaughter, res- 
 cued unharmed their wives and children, re- 
 covered their lost possessions, and gained a 
 great spoil besides. Triumphant and rejoicing, 
 they turned back to their waiting comrades at 
 the brook. Here, in mutual congratulations and 
 the reunion of parted families and friends, joy 
 reached its height. But the happiness of that 
 hour was marred (as the same cause has marred 
 domestic joy in many an age since then) by a 
 question of property. Certain grasping sons of 
 Belial claimed that those who had not gone 
 down to the battle should have no share in the 
 spoils. It had been pain to the fainting ones to 
 linger. It was their misfortune, and not their 
 fault. They were not to be held accountable 
 for that which God had allowed for His own 
 glory and they had not willed. They had hon- 
 estly " done what they could." David, recog- 
 nising the cruelty and injustice of the claim, 
 interposed his authority. His decision became 
 
122 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 a statute and ordinance in Israel from that hour, 
 " Ye shall not do so, my brethren. . . . But as 
 his part is that goeth down to the battle, so 
 shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they 
 shall part alike." 
 
 It was the principle which David's greater 
 Son unfolded when He said : " He that is faith- 
 ful in that which is least is faithful also in much." 
 It suggests some truths which are commonly 
 overlooked, and which are full of meaning for 
 that large class of persons whose lives move in 
 a routine of quiet, ordinary, every-day duty. 
 We need do little more than state the general 
 principle that service is a universal duty. David 
 and his men had a work binding upon every 
 one of them to do, and all were called to it; 
 but a difference in ability made a diversity of 
 work. So all men are called to serve God. 
 Whether we will serve Him, or not serve at 
 all, is really not an open question. We must, 
 by the very necessity of our constitution, serve 
 some master. Idleness in the sense of pure 
 quiescence is, for a rational creature, impossible. 
 The indolent m.an is one of Satan's busiest in- 
 struments. The machine works steadily on 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 ^23 
 
 through its appointed time. If we do not oc- 
 cupy the soul with useful thoughts and purposes, 
 it wears upon itself and works out its own de- 
 struction. The man who lives to pamper his 
 own desires is a creature of the flesh. He who 
 chooses wilfully to commit sin is the slave of 
 sin. The world and the flesh and sin are chief 
 captains of the prince of darkness. Idleness, 
 therefore, is merely a voluntary assignment of 
 ourselves to evil. Self-indulgence is a farming 
 for the same master — " sowing to the flesh, and 
 of the flesh reaping corruption." Wilful sinning 
 is direct service with hire ; its wages " is death." 
 Man is not left free to choose between the yoke 
 of Christ or no yoke at all. The question is, 
 Whom shall he serve? Shall I be the slave 
 of the evil one, or the free and loving child of 
 God? The service of children — children of 
 God by faith in Jesus Christ — is that to which 
 we are called. For this service we were made. 
 By it the highest end of our being is reached, 
 and its fullest development attained. To bring 
 us back to the knowledge of it, and make us 
 again capable of it, Christ lived and died. It is 
 true that "by faith we are saved," but faith 
 
124 
 
 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 creates the noblest kind of action, because it 
 inspires love. Love cannot be otherwise than 
 fruitful in good works. Faith without works is 
 certainly dead, and the Christian who has felt 
 the glow of a living faith must keep it alive by- 
 yielding to its unselfish impulses, or the life will 
 certainly die out of him. Exercise is quite as 
 essential to the health of the soul as it is to the 
 health of the body. The spiritual feebleness, 
 melancholy, and indifference of not a few who 
 call themselves Christians is wholly due to stag- 
 nation. We have marked with delight the effect 
 of zeal for some good work stirred up in such 
 sluggish souls. Shaken out of their selfishness, 
 they forget their morbid grievances, and become 
 bright with hope and glowing with life. The 
 movement is like the flow of a river. When the 
 tide is at its height, and just idling before it 
 turns, there is scum upon its surface. The de- 
 bris which the inflowing waters have brought 
 up clings to its banks and makes deformity. 
 But the current turns, and then all this un- 
 healthiness is borne out and away. The river 
 sparkles and is pure and glad again. Let a 
 fervent love tide through your heart and go out 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 125 
 
 in corresponding deeds, and the mass of doubts 
 and fears and morbid feelings which obstruct 
 and breed disease will be swept away, and the 
 spiritual life roll on, ever increasing in peace 
 and purity, until it meets the sea. 
 
 But we come closer to the immediate princi- 
 ple of our text, and remind you again that 
 varieties of capacity and condition occasion 
 manifoldness of service. Some are compelled 
 to stay " by the stuff " while others go down to 
 the battle. Those fainting ones whose grief it 
 w'as to linger and be passive by the brook, rep- 
 resent a large class of earnest Christian souls. 
 They are troubled because they cannot do 
 some great thing. They associate acceptable 
 work with high philanthropic effort or the self- 
 denying missionary life. Thus, straining after 
 lofty deeds, they are in danger of overlooking 
 the duty which lies at their door. The Church 
 of Christ may be compared to the complicated 
 wheel-work of a v/atch. There are tiny levers 
 whose action is scarcely perceptible ; there are 
 passive screws and rivets whose virtue it is to 
 be fixed and firm ; there are wheels which move 
 fast, and wheels v/hich move with a measured, 
 
126 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 monotonous, retarded movement; but each 
 smallest piece is necessary to the proper adjust- 
 ment and operation of the whole. The beauty 
 and utility of the thing depend upon the exact- 
 ness with which every part, however trifling ap- 
 parently, fulfils its appointed office. There are 
 some among Christ's people who have wealth 
 and all the attendant opportunities for exerting 
 influence and dispensing charity, while others 
 are surrendered to poverty and its hard condi- 
 tions. Some are blessed with health and vigour, 
 while the life of others is an hourly struggle 
 with pain and feebleness. Some have, by edu- 
 cational advantages or natural gifts, large intel- 
 lectual abilities, while others move in a more 
 restricted sphere of thought and have but one 
 talent. If we judged as men judge, by the bare 
 outside, we might conclude that only a favoured 
 few have opportunities for service ; but when 
 we look over the field as it is in God's sight, and 
 consider that He gathers into His remembrance 
 the ordinary and the extraordinary, the unno- 
 ticed and the conspicuous, the active and the 
 passive alike, ah, then we know that there are 
 possibilities of service in every sphere. 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 127 
 
 The opportunities for extraordinary deeds are 
 few. They are not often found by those who 
 seek them. Men rise to them out of and over 
 ordinary things. If we wait for them we may 
 waste a Hfetime and go empty-handed into the 
 presence of our Judge at last. But ordinary 
 duties press upon us always and everywhere. 
 Not an hour passes in which we may not har- 
 vest something for our Lord. The little child 
 may glean side by side with the strong man 
 in this field : opportunities to make some one 
 happy eagerly improved; faithfulness in busi- 
 ness or home duties; words of counsel or of 
 comfort spoken in season ; considerateness for 
 others as it may be shown in a thousand ways ; 
 little attentions and kindnesses; the sweet al- 
 lowances of charity; and the word of peace 
 which quiets strife. There is no honest place 
 or station in which we may not glorify Christ in 
 a service of love ; and a life in which every day 
 is luminous will be more beautiful than the 
 meteor-flash of some showy deed which goes 
 out in blackness. 
 
 We have thrown into contrast also the unno- 
 ticed and the conspicuous. The world has been 
 
128 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 blessed, especially in these latter days, with 
 munificent givers, whose lavish benevolence has 
 blessed whole cities and won the admiration of 
 two continents. Shining philanthropists, too, 
 have adorned history in the persons of brave 
 men and gentle women, who, while not courting 
 applause, have gone down into plague-houses 
 and prisons, and upon bloody battle-fields, to 
 carry light, love, and healing. The names of 
 devoted missionaries, daring persecution, hard- 
 ship, and death for Christ's sake, are also fresh 
 in our memories. But for every one of these 
 whom God has fitted to " go down to the battle " 
 there have been a thousand, with hearts as 
 warm and consecrated and loving, whom cir- 
 cumstances have compelled to tarry in the 
 household and the shop : mothers grown gray 
 in toiling, watching, enduring, worn with the 
 daily dripping of home cares, untiring in min- 
 istries of love ; mechanics bound to the anvil or 
 the bench, their life a plodding, wearisome 
 routine, and yet strong in character, influential 
 for God and the right, and serving as truly by 
 skill and faithfulness in the daily work as the 
 preacher by his preaching; children left to 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 129 
 
 struggle with the desolation and poverty of 
 orphanhood, but strong in the promise, " When 
 my father and my mother forsake me, then the 
 Lord will take me up"; merchants thrown 
 among the dangerous eddies of the money cir- 
 cle, involved in manifold anxieties, but " fervent 
 in spirit, serving the Lord," manfully standing 
 for the truth against sceptical opinions, and 
 steering an honest course through subtle temp- 
 tations ; helpers in irreligious households, faith- 
 ful and consistent through manifold humiliations, 
 patient under the bitterest of all persecutions, 
 sharper than the knife, — the tyranny of the 
 tongue, — that which an apostle calls "trials of 
 cruel mockings." These are not forgotten be- 
 fore God. The family, the school, the counting- 
 house, the shop, the farm, are fields which may 
 yield as rich a harvest of good v/orks and precious 
 influences as heathen lands to the missionary. 
 They demand a work as costly, and heroism as 
 great, as that which goes into the prison and 
 onto the battle-field. They are less conspicu- 
 ous ; but the numberless rills which flow in un- 
 seen shady places are quite as essential as rivers 
 which float navies on their bosoms. 
 
130 
 
 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 We enter the most obscure and yet the most 
 affecting sphere of service when we consider the 
 passive contrasted with the active. It is easier 
 to do than to suffer. We are thankful for tlie 
 little bands among us who are fellow-workers 
 unto the kingdom of God. Their activity is a 
 pastor's comfort, and health to their own souls. 
 But activity is not the only measure of service. 
 It would be better for some, perhaps, if they 
 withdrew more often into the sanctuary of the 
 still hour, and bathed their strong energies in 
 prayer and meditation. There are passive 
 graces blooming in the solitude of many a sick- 
 room, hidden from the world's notice like fiow- 
 ers which spread their beauty and fragrance for 
 God only, in regions where no human eye ever 
 intrudes, — which are seen and noted by the 
 Father. God is sublime in His patience. 
 Christ was never more divine than when, under 
 the most cruel provocation and before the most 
 insulting accusations ever heaped on man, " He 
 answered never a word." The most heroic 
 service of His life was in that moment when He 
 cried, " Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." 
 
 To be enfeebled or deformed, and see others 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 131 
 
 straight and vigorous and useful ; tofeelone's self 
 an object of pity, or a burden and unsightly in 
 the eyes of our fellows, and be patient; to be 
 laid a helpless invalid upon a bed whose rest 
 becomes torture, and hear the roar of the busy 
 world outside, the merry laugh of children, the 
 tread of many feet along the pavement ; to see 
 the free sunlight and catch glimpses of the blue 
 sky, and know that we are barred out from them 
 hopelessl}% and yet be cheerful, trustful, even 
 happy, — oh, who will say that this is not ser- 
 vice — service acceptable to God, wonderful in 
 the sight of angels? 
 
 I think of one, a worn and wasted figure, who 
 for more than twenty years was stretched upon 
 a couch of pain. Says Dr. Arnold, speaking of 
 his sister (for it is to her we refer) : " I never 
 saw a more perfect instance of the spirit of 
 power and of love and of a sound mind, intense 
 love almost to the annihilation of selfishness, 
 sufTering a daily martyrdom, yet of herself 
 wholly thoughtless (save only as regarded her 
 ripening in all goodness) ; enjoying everything 
 lovely, graceful, beautiful, high-minded, whether 
 in God's works or man's, with the keenest rel- 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 ish ; inheriting the earth to the very fuhiess of 
 the promise, though never leaving her bed nor 
 changing her posture; and preserved through 
 the very valley of the shadow of death from all 
 fear or impatience and from every cloud of im- 
 paired reason which might mar the beauty of 
 Christ's glorious work. May God grant," he 
 adds, " that I may come but within one hundred 
 degrees of her place in glory." I think of an- 
 other, well known to me. For more than half 
 a lifetime she was a helpless cripple ; the move- 
 ment of a finger was pain, and she had to be 
 carried about her house and to her carriage like 
 a child, in the arms of an attendant ; but never 
 once did a murmur escape her lips. She was 
 cheerful almost to mirthfulness. Her soul was 
 luminous with the life and peace of the gospel, 
 and her tongue and pen eloquent, and never 
 weary, in telling the good news to others. None 
 came within her influence, even for an hour, 
 who did not take knowledge of her, that she 
 had " been with Jesus." Though so helpless, 
 the poor were reached by her, an institution 
 reared for the most depraved among them by 
 her zeal, and many a strong man was put to 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 133 
 
 shame by the fervency with which that one 
 bent, disfigured, tortured yet happy woman 
 served the Master. Similar instances, doubt- 
 less, suggest themselves to my hearers. The 
 cheerful submission of such sufferers is a silent 
 gospel. Who can fairly estimate their patience, 
 faith, and love, and fail to perceive that 
 
 " They also serve who only stand and wait " ? 
 
 Now, to this wide field of service, compre- 
 hending those who " tarry by the stuff " as well 
 as those who " go down to the battle," the prin- 
 ciple of David's ordinance applies : " They shall 
 part alike," 
 
 We estimate deeds by their magnitude and 
 quantity. God estimates them not by quantity, 
 but by qualit}''. He is not won by noise or 
 show. He looks at the spirit of our deeds. 
 Their merit is determined by the faith of which 
 they are the expression and the love which 
 moves them. They called it a waste when 
 Mary, out of the fulness of her loving heart, 
 poured the precious ointment upon Jesus' head ; 
 but He said : " She hath done what she could " ; 
 and, " Verily I say unto you. Wheresoever this 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 gospel shall be preached throughout the world, 
 this also shall be spoken of for a memorial of 
 her." 
 
 The outer court of the temple, in which stood 
 a brazen chest inviting the offerings of the 
 people, was once thronged with those who had 
 come up to the feast. In a retired place, where 
 He could rest Himself and watch the passing 
 throng, sat a quiet observer. The rich and the 
 great swept over the marble pavements and 
 cast in largely of their abundance. As their 
 gifts fell, they rang out the givers' praise, and 
 a look of proud satisfaction gleamed over their 
 faces, and the bystanders said, " What liberal- 
 ity ! " But there came a meanly attired woman. 
 She crept shrinking up to the box, — she would 
 have hid herself if she could, — and dropped in 
 noiselessly two mites — the merest trifle, but it 
 was all that day's living. She passed out un- 
 noticed, or noticed only to be despised, save by 
 that one quiet observer. He called His com- 
 panions to Him, and pointing to her said: 
 " Verily I say unto you, This poor widow hath 
 cast in more than they all." 
 
 That observer was God in Christ, measuring 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 135 
 
 a deed by its interior principle. He teaches us 
 how vast a trifling act may be. The world has 
 crowns for those who make a noise and a show ; 
 but before God " there are first who shall be 
 last, and there are last who shall be first." It 
 is the world of thought and motive which lies 
 open to His eye, and His benediction rests upon 
 faithfulness in every condition. We may make 
 the commonest tasks illustrious by doing them 
 in His fear and to His glory. It is one of the 
 divinest features of the gospel that it strikes 
 through those flimsy eff"ects which dazzle and 
 deceive men, and, waking up the buried man- 
 hood which is in us, bids us be great by what 
 we are, and not by what we wear and have and 
 seem. It sets before us the praise of God as 
 the grand goal to be attained, and that is won 
 by no rank, purchased by no wealth, but open 
 to every condition, the reward of the faithful. 
 
 If, then, we are hemmed in by circumstances 
 which leave us only quiet, ordinary work to do, 
 let us carry the spirit of the Master into it and 
 by intense faithfulness make it Christian work. 
 If our station does not adorn us, we may adorn 
 our station. It is by going on in just that line 
 
136 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 of things wherein we stand that the Lord would 
 have every department of Hfe reached and 
 leavened, and so, too, we prove ourselves 
 worthy of grander things and pass into wider 
 spheres ; as David, faithful as the shepherd boy, 
 and Joseph, true to God as Pharaoh's slave, 
 mounted at last to thrones. 
 
 And this is the sort of demonstration which 
 the world needs now. The battle for the his- 
 toric truth of the gospel has been fought. The 
 times demand a vivid exhibition of the power 
 of the living Christ in the hearts and lives of 
 men. Preachers and scholars alone cannot give 
 to the age the argument which shall be most 
 potent to establish the kingdom of our Lord. 
 It must come from the store and the counting- 
 house, the workshop, the factory, and the 
 family. It must be the product of faithfulness 
 in those that stay " by the stuff " as well as in 
 those that " go down to the battle." 
 
 " They shall part alike." Yes ; when the bat- 
 tle is over, the victory won, and all the ransomed 
 marshalled upon the plains of heaven, the ear- 
 nest Paul will scarce outshine in glory the lov- 
 ing Mary ; I do not think that the holy Samuel 
 
STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 137 
 
 will wear a richer diadem than the faithful 
 Hannah; the saints of Caesar's household will 
 receive as hearty a " Well done!" as the noble 
 army of martyrs. The one test will be, " Have 
 you improved the talents, be they little or much, 
 which I committed to you ? Have you done 
 what you could? " Only be sure and live for 
 God. Any other life is unworthy of you. He 
 calls you first of all to believe on His Son Jesus 
 Christ ; believing, you have life ; and living, you 
 love ; and loving, you do Him grateful service. 
 Do not be satisfied with the world's praise. 
 There are short roads to popularity and fame. 
 You may live to win them and have your re- 
 ward. But your life will have been a mere 
 stage effect : a brief hour before a fickle audi- 
 ence, the transient applause, and the curtain 
 falls ; the scenes are folded up. You have 
 performed your part and had your rev/ard. But 
 you have done nothing real. The light of eter- 
 nity reveals the bare beams, the tawdry decora- 
 tions, the pulleys, and the paint. You stand 
 before your God as you are, not as you seemed 
 to be. He reckons with your thoughts, your 
 motives — in a word, your character. Disguises 
 
138 STAYING BY THE STUFF. 
 
 are stripped off. Your real self is laid bare. 
 You gained a corruptible crown which turned to 
 dust upon your brow, but you have lost the 
 incorruptible crown of God's favour, which is life 
 everlasting. 
 
 Whatever, then, your condition, be it wealth 
 or poverty, weakness or strength, youth or old 
 age, enlightenment or ignorance, begin just 
 where you are (so that it be an honest place) to 
 live for God. Have no fears for the issue. 
 " The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to 
 the strong"; "but as his part is that goeth 
 down to the battle, so shall his part be that tar- 
 rieth by the stuff: they shall part alike." 
 
VIII. 
 
 jBtt^ d^oD Care? 
 
VIII. 
 DOES GOD CARE? 
 
 And they awake Him, and say wito Him, Master, 
 carest TJiou not that we perish? — '&x. Mark iv. 38. 
 
 THE Lord Jesus Christ had been preaching 
 to the multitude on the western shore of 
 the Lake of GaHlee. This lake, or sea, as it 
 was called, though only thirteen miles long, and 
 six miles wide in its broadest part, was a busy- 
 place in His time. Its waters abounded in fish 
 of all kinds. Two of the many villages which 
 thronged its borders derived their names from 
 the fisheries. Bethsaida (signifying " the house 
 of fisheries") was the home of Philip and An- 
 drew and Simon. All of these villages sent 
 forth their hardy fishermen by hundreds over 
 the lake. When, in addition to these, we 
 imagine the busy ship-builders, and the many 
 boats of traffic, pleasure, and passage which 
 were moving upon it, and then the beach at the 
 141 
 
142 DOES GOD CARE? 
 
 base of green mountain slopes, sparkling with 
 the houses and palaces, the synagogues and 
 temples, of the Jewish or Roman inhabitants, it 
 is easy to realise that the whole scene was full 
 of life, enterprise, and energy. It was along 
 this sandy beach, which completely encircles 
 the Lake of Galilee, that the people thronged 
 to hear Christ, and often followed Him when 
 He sought to retire in a fisherman's boat to the 
 other side. The other or eastern side of the 
 lake was an unfrequented region, broken by 
 deep ravines, and inviting to rest upon its green, 
 grassy uplands. He had, it would seem from 
 St. Mark's story, been speaking to the crowd 
 from one of the boats moored just off the 
 beach. All day He had taught them " many 
 things by parables." The same day, when even 
 was come, He said to His fisher friends: " Let 
 us pass over unto the other side." They took 
 Him, " even as He was in the ship," and made 
 sail for the wilder region on the eastern coast. 
 Worn out, He sank down upon the helmsman's 
 cushions at the stern of the boat, and fell asleep. 
 The sky darkened, and through one of those 
 deep ravines which break through the hills to 
 
DOES GOD C/.RB> 143 
 
 the shore a thunder-gust swept upon the frail 
 craft. Every one who is famiUar with such 
 waters knows how suddenly these squalls come, 
 and how quickly a threatening sea rolls up. 
 The Lord Jesus Christ slept calmly on through 
 the plunging of the boat and the wild, drench- 
 ing sweep of the waves which began to fill it. 
 " Master," cried the disciples, " carest Thou not 
 that we perish? " We might suppose that this 
 cry v/as only an instinctive effort to arouse One 
 whom they loved to a sense of their common 
 danger, were it not for the appeal which seems, 
 according to the other evangelists, to have been 
 mingled with it: "Lord, save us," They evi- 
 dently expected help from Him, and wondered 
 that He could sleep through such a storm. He 
 awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the 
 sea, " Peace, be still " ; and the wind ceased, and 
 there was a great calm. Then He turned to 
 the disciples, and the remarkable fact is, that 
 instead of commending them for " caUing upon 
 Him in the time of trouble," He reproved them, 
 saying, " Why are ye so fearful ? how is it 
 that ye have no faith?" He turned from the 
 stilling of wind and wave to the tempest of fear 
 
144 
 
 DOES COD CARE> 
 
 in their souls, and rebuked it as something more 
 perilous and more difficult to subdue than the 
 raging of the sea. 
 
 The prayer to Him in their moment of peril, 
 " Lord, save us," was certainly an expression 
 of faith. Why, then, did He reprove them for 
 lack of faith? The point is that He would have 
 had them trust Him without a miracle to attest 
 His power. They were fearful when it should 
 have been enough that He was with them in the 
 ship. It was a very weak faith, from His stand- 
 point, that could be terrified by mere physical 
 dangers. He would have had them serenely 
 confident through storm or calm, sinking or 
 surviving, living or dying. It was too much to 
 expect of poor human nature then. The disci- 
 ples learned the lesson later when a new Spirit 
 had entered into them. The purpose of His 
 reproof was to teach them and us that God 
 cares, even though He may not work miracles 
 to save us from the present storm. 
 
 Does God care? That is the question which 
 the incident brings vividly before us. There is 
 no greater need, I venture to say, for every one 
 of us, in this changeable, storm-swept world, 
 
DOES GOD CAREY 
 
 J45 
 
 than to know that God cares. It may be a 
 matter of indifference, even, whether there be a 
 God or not, to the young and strong and pros- 
 perous, whose skies are cloudless, and under 
 whose keel the waters babble gaily, while hope 
 with soft, fragrant breezes fills the sails. But 
 the world is not like that all the day. Changes 
 come before the eventide. For the multitude, 
 the story of the voyage is a tale of angry clouds 
 and toiling in rowing, and the psalmist's cry, 
 " All Thy waves and Thy billows have gone 
 over me." To the struggling, sorrow-tossed 
 multitude the question of an invisible Father 
 caring and working for our good through all the 
 seeming evil is vital and related to our deepest 
 needs. We need no stronger evidence than the 
 records of despair and then suicide which daily 
 meet our view. It is not difficult to perceive in 
 the progress of the world or society in general 
 that there is, as in nature, an ordering purpose, 
 evolving some ultimate good out of the seeming 
 chaos. But it is not of the general development 
 that you and I care to hear. Does God, if there 
 be a God, care for me? That is the question 
 which voices itself in the deep silence of my 
 
146 DOES GOD CARE? 
 
 soul, and it is fraught with tremendous impor- 
 tance in its bearing on my character and happi- 
 ness and destiny. 
 
 We were made for sympathy, just as we were 
 made dependent upon this atmosphere in which 
 we breathe and hve. The hmits of our physi- 
 cal being are very narrow indeed. A few miles 
 above the earth, as you know, we should cease 
 to be ; and there is only a grave for us beneath 
 its surface. As our bodies exist only in this 
 special atmosphere, with its certain range of 
 temperature and balance of elements, so our 
 intellectual, moral, and spiritual being exists and 
 is tolerable only in the social or sympathetic 
 condition. Men may scorn the expression of 
 a craving for sympathy as weak, and be too 
 proud to admit their need of it; but the fact 
 remains that we live and move and have our 
 being in it. No punishment can be inflicted 
 upon a man more terrible than solitary confine- 
 ment. Shut out from the society of his fellows, 
 his starved mind gnaws upon itself, and he 
 becomes a maniac or an imbecile. Suddenly 
 eliminate from human life all that comes to us 
 from association with our kind in business and 
 
DOES GOD CARE? 147 
 
 in pleasure, in our home relations, in the warm 
 glow of friendship, in the touch of mind with 
 mind, and what have you left? Frozen clods, 
 just as if the radiant energy of the sun's heat 
 died out of our atmosphere. 
 
 But human sympathy does not reach and 
 satisfy the deepest needs of our being. There 
 are experiences, known to every thoughtful man 
 and woman, in which we must either get breath 
 from God or stifle in our loneliness ; experiences 
 into which our best friends cannot enter, which 
 may not be described, which could not be un- 
 derstood. Every one of us, far back in the 
 secrecy of his own self-consciousness, is alone 
 with griefs that cannot be told ; with disappointed 
 loves or ambitions ; with a bitter sense of mis- 
 judgment or an agony of regrets for a past 
 which cannot be recalled ; with secret sins that 
 tear at the conscience, though we smile among 
 our fellows ; with the throbbing pain of bereave- 
 ments which no balsam of earth can heal ; with 
 the gathering gloom and isolation of the thought 
 that old age is fast settling into the chill night 
 of death around us ; with doubts and fears to- 
 wards God and eternity, and hate and distrust, 
 
148 DOES GOD CARE? 
 
 perhaps, towards our fellow-men. Worse than 
 soUtary confinement in the dungeon of a prison 
 is the state of that man who, without hope to- 
 wards God, is shut up to the brooding, spectre- 
 haunted loneliness of his own soul. Jesus 
 Christ sounded the lowest deep of human woe 
 when for a moment, hanging upon the cross, 
 He lost that which had sustained Him through 
 all His lonely ministry on earth, and cried out 
 in His agony, " My God, my God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken me?" What is there for us in 
 the loneliness of guilt, if we have no faith to 
 pray, "God be merciful to mea sinner" ? — in the 
 loneliness of sorrow, if we have no confiding 
 sense of One who can be touched, and who is 
 working as a Father for our good ? — in the lone- 
 liness of pain, if we cannot get breath to cry, 
 "God helpme" ? — in the loneliness of the world's 
 misjudgments, if we cannot turn to One who 
 knows the heart and judges righteously? — in the 
 loneliness of age, and then of death, if we have 
 not the faith which looks onward with hope to 
 the new day, and sings, " I shall be satisfied 
 when I awake with Thy likeness"? 
 
 I have tried to illustrate the very great im- 
 
DOES GOD CIRH? 
 
 149 
 
 portance of the question, Does God care? I 
 must pass to the point which is the essence of 
 the whole matter, and which is so strikingly 
 shown in the story of the stilling of the tem- 
 pest. It IS 110 evidence that God does not care 
 because He sleeps ivJiile ive scent to be perisJiing. 
 This was the truth which the disciples had not 
 faith enough to perceive, and which He reproved 
 them for not perceiving. We think, as the dis- 
 ciples did, that it would be a supreme evidence 
 of the being of a God, and the reality of His 
 care, if He would always show Himself awake 
 by some direct answer to our cry for deliverance 
 from pain, loss, danger, or death. Assuming 
 that the purpose of the Creator, in our being, 
 were to care for our bodies and their develop- 
 ment in all material good, we might expect mate- 
 rial deliverances. We might naturally say in our 
 hearts, "There is no God," if no answer came 
 to our call for help. But the purpose of the 
 Creator in us is not our mere physical well- 
 being. We are body, mind, and spirit. The 
 body is only the base of a temple whose special 
 beauty is in the parts which rise above the earth. 
 It is evident to the feeblest intelligence that a 
 
ISO 
 
 DOES GOD CARE? 
 
 wise and good Creator could not grant every 
 wish of a creature limited in knowledge and 
 capacity. The relation is the familiar one of 
 parent and child. The child must often cry for 
 that which the parent, in his wisdom- and love, 
 cannot grant. 
 
 But there is more to be said than this. If 
 the gift of God is eternal life, and if we are ca- 
 pable of almost infinite development towards 
 that life in mind and spirit, then the supreme 
 evidence of God's care must be, not the mere 
 stilling of tempests and healing of diseases, but 
 the presence of His power in our souls to calm 
 the raging of our passions and our fears, and to 
 breathe upon us the peace which passeth all 
 understanding. Now, to bring us this supreme 
 evidence of God's care, Christ came into the 
 world, — " God manifest in the flesh," — lived, 
 taught, suflfered, died, and rose again. " In 
 this," says St. John, " was manifested the love 
 of God towards us, because that God sent His 
 only begotten Son into the world, that we might 
 live through Him." He did not come into the 
 world to be merely the physician of our bodies, 
 and to multiply our loaves and fishes, and to 
 
DOES GOD C/tRE? 
 
 I5X 
 
 save us from physical death. The " Peace, be 
 still " to that tempest on the Lake of Galilee 
 v/as only an outward and visible sign of the in- 
 ward and spiritual purpose which He would 
 work out in our souls. It is a striking fact that 
 our Lord never wrought a miracle to help Him- 
 self or to satisfy His own physical needs. The 
 tempter found Him hungry after the long fast- 
 ing, and said : " If Thou be the Son of God, 
 command that these stones be made bread." 
 He answered : " It is written, Man shall not live 
 by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
 ceedeth cut of the mouth of God." He would 
 not allow the transient suffering of hunger to 
 force from Him an exercise of divine power 
 which would have been, on His human side, as 
 the tempter knew, distrust of God's care. He 
 might, as He said, have called down twelve 
 legions of angels to help Him in the garden of 
 His agony ; but the faith of a perfect manhood 
 showed itself in this patient cry : " Father, if it 
 be possible, let this cup pass : nevertheless, not 
 as I will, but as Thou wilt." How entirely 
 human He was in His shrinking from the cruel 
 pain which was before Him ! But the cup did 
 
152 
 
 DOES GOD CARE? 
 
 not pass. He had to drain it to the very dregs. 
 He did not, however, question the wisdom or 
 the love which was silent when He seemed to 
 be perishing. The disciples thought all would 
 be lost if their ship went down. His ship went 
 down in the storm of Gethsemane, but all was 
 not lost. He triumphed through that which we 
 call perishing. It was no evidence to Him, you 
 see, that God did not care because He slept 
 while Christ seemed to be perishing. He did 
 not judge of His Father's love by the material 
 help which He gave, but by that conscious, 
 abiding, spiritual power which enabled Him to 
 say, "Thy will be done." 
 
 Now it is precisely so that we, in the light 
 of the resurrection, and of God's purpose to lift 
 us out of an earthly habit into an undying life 
 of the Spirit, are to judge of God's care. It is 
 no evidence that He does not care because He 
 permits us to suffer. There is love in the suf- 
 fering. Trials must be. They begin with the 
 tottering steps of the child, who through many 
 a fall learns to walk, and through many a pain- 
 ful experience with cuts and burns and bruises 
 learns to live. They are necessary incidents 
 
DOES GOD CARE? 153 
 
 of an imperfect human condition. Time and 
 space and the restrictions of the flesh harness 
 upon us the hard necessities of toil, struggle, 
 study, pain, weariness, sickness, and then death. 
 Many of them we bring upon us by our own 
 fault. But through these incidents of our 
 environment we learn to subdue the lower and 
 reach to the higher. Mind overcomes matter, 
 manhood in its distinctive nobleness is devel- 
 oped, and so it is all along the line up to the 
 spiritual. We " learn obedience," as Christ 
 did, " by the things which we suflfer." Experi- 
 ence which comes through suffering teaches us 
 that to obey God, as He reveals Himself in 
 nature, in our consciences, and in Christ, is the 
 way to life. Faith is a necessity (not intellec- 
 tual belief, but personal trust in the invisible 
 Father), because we cannot see the end nor 
 pierce to the eternal blue through the earth- 
 born clouds which overshadow us. The worst 
 trial of all — death — which seems to us to be 
 perishing, is, in the light of God's truth, not 
 perishing, but a passing into life. He has 
 mercifully sent Christ to teach us this. There 
 may be infinite love, therefore, in the bereave- 
 
154 
 
 DOES COD CARE? 
 
 ments which break up our earthly ties, and the 
 final event in which we seem to be perishing may 
 be only a happy flight from the cage. I think- 
 nearly all of those fishermen disciples who were 
 so terrified by the storm on the Lake of Galilee 
 passed through the cruel suffering of a martyr's 
 death. No help came to them, but they did not 
 cry, " Lord, save, or we perish." They knew 
 better then. They knew that God's care is not 
 to stay the course of suffering or death, but 
 through it to make us know that there is a life 
 beyond, and through faith, hope, patience, ex- 
 perience, purity, truth, and love to educate us 
 for it. 
 
 The man who quarrels with his environment 
 and will not heed its lessons, nor reach on to 
 the life towards which they point, is lost. He 
 yields himself to the present and the sensual. 
 He comes under the fierce power of his passions. 
 All the splendid possibilities of his intellectual 
 and spiritual being, like some richly freighted 
 vessel driving uncontrolled upon a rocky shore, 
 are in danger of perishing. Yes! there are 
 storms and a shipwreck possible within you, 
 infinitely more to be dreaded and more difficult 
 
DOES GOD CARES' 155 
 
 to subdue than any blast which might wreck 
 the body. If the trial of your life is a body 
 wronged by excesses, by dissipation, by drink, 
 by sensuality, broken down, feeble, racked with 
 pain, do not doubt God's love because, when 
 you cry, " God, help me! " in your misery. He 
 does not by a miracle restore your diseased 
 body. He would be a party to your sin if He 
 did. You must look for His care in the peace 
 and pardon which He would speak to your soul. 
 The suflfering of the body is the sharp discipline 
 which would drive you back to Him, and happy 
 is the man who bears it patiently and learns the 
 lesson. It is in this case, as in every other, no 
 evidence that God does not care because He 
 sleeps while we seem to be perishing ; rather is 
 it an evidence of His love. 
 
 I ask you, in conclusion, to look at Christ 
 asleep on the pillozu while the storm darkened 
 and the waves came surging into the plunging 
 vessel. The timid sleep lightly and wake at 
 the least alarm. The guilty dream and start. 
 Christ was neither timid nor guilty. His Father 
 was with Him waking, and like a child He 
 slept, with no shadow of fear on His soul. He 
 
156 DOES GOD CARE? 
 
 was human in His weariness, and He is our 
 human example in the perfect calm of His 
 repose. When they awoke Him, He arose, not 
 with terror in His look, but only surprise that 
 they should be fearful. An ordinary man would 
 have sprung to his feet startled, and rebuked 
 his crew for not waking him before. This ex- 
 traordinary man arose in the majestic conscious- 
 ness of superiority to the raging elements, and, 
 commanding them to be still, they obeyed Him. 
 I think that this whole scene of the reposing 
 and the storm-stilling Christ is a parable of the 
 repose and the control which He has made 
 possible for us in our relation to the stormy 
 elements of the present evil world. The dif- 
 ference between our Lord and His disciples in 
 that hour of trial on Galilee was this: the dis- 
 ciples were in mind and spirit under the dom.in- 
 ion of the wild elements, and cried, " Save, or 
 we perish"; the Christ was in mind and spirit 
 superior to these elements, and knew that if 
 they did their worst they could not wreck the 
 life which was in Him. To them death seemed 
 the end of all. To Him death was only the 
 breaking from a chrysalis state into the winged 
 
DOBS GOD CARE? 
 
 157 
 
 life of an endless summer day. This is the sal- 
 vation which Christ brings, and the supreme 
 evidence of God's love, that it is made possi- 
 ble for every one of us through faith in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, to live in calm superiority to 
 every threatening element of time. The man 
 who has no trust in any word or will of God 
 from beyond time is like the disciples under the 
 earth-born clouds. He sees in death, and in all 
 the various incidents, accidents, and ailments 
 which lead to it, only perishing. He loses all 
 when the body fails. There is no hope nor 
 comfort in the suffering which surges round 
 him when the property, friends, amusements, 
 or other objects which minister to the body fail. 
 Save him from loss, grief, pain, death, or he 
 perishes. These to him are absolute evils. 
 There is no merciful purpose in them ; neither 
 is there anything beyond them. 
 
 The man who believes is, like Christ, superior 
 to the storm. "This is the victory," says St. 
 John, " that overcometh the world, even our 
 faith." Why faith, faith, always faith, do you 
 say? The simple answer is, that it is faith 
 which trusts where we cannot see, and reahses 
 
158 DOES COD CARE} 
 
 the power and presence of the Invisible. We 
 may not expect God to still the winds and the 
 waves which threaten us as we cross the turbu- 
 lent ocean ; but we may be fearless and calm 
 in the confidence that the very worst that they 
 can do cannot destroy us. These and other 
 physical dangers we may not be able to subdue ; 
 but we may, in the faith of Christ, forbid that 
 they should subdue us. To kill the body is 
 nothing, if there is an indestructible life of the 
 spirit within it. We come under the power 
 of physical ills only when we allow our spirits 
 to be made afraid by them, and our hold of 
 God and of His truth to be shaken loose, and 
 the darkness of despair to settle down upon us. 
 We may not expect that God will uniformly 
 work miracles of healing for us in answer to 
 our prayers, though the prayer of faith may 
 save the sick ; but far more important, a greater 
 blessing which He will surely grant to those 
 who seek, and which He seeks to give, is the 
 saving of our souls from that clinging to the 
 flesh which makes sickness and old age and 
 death-beds terrible. The real victory over pain, 
 sickness, and old age is to be seen in that man 
 
DOES GOD CARE? 159 
 
 or woman of whom, in the words of an apostle, 
 it may be said, "though the outward man is de- 
 caying, the inward man is renewed day by day." 
 But why do I talk any more of the body 
 and its pains and trials and inevitable decay? 
 Christ's miracles were simply the bringing back 
 of the perfect and natural order into the unnatu- 
 ral disorder of a sin-cursed world. They said : 
 " What manner of man is this, that even the 
 wind and the sea obey Him?" He has put it 
 in our power to do a greater work than this. 
 What matter a few years of sufTering in the 
 flesh, and then death, if our souls are saved 
 from the eternal death which comes by sin? 
 The storm we have to fear is that which springs 
 from our selfish and sensual passions. The 
 victory which He would give is the power to 
 keep under our bodies and bring them into 
 subjection. The manhood which is possible 
 for us is a manhood like His, which, though it 
 may feel the strain of temptation, is so strong 
 in the consciousness of a higher life and its 
 thoughts, hopes, loves, studies, pursuits, that it 
 bids the winds of passion and the raging of 
 bodily appetites and fears be still, and they obey. 
 
i6o DOES GOD CARE? 
 
 If your manhood is only secular, present, animal, 
 — only in the body and its conditions, — then all 
 goes down when the body sinks. Whatever 
 survives the wreck must be a pitiful lost thing, 
 a vagrant in the spiritual world of purity, love, 
 and God. 
 
 Does God care ? Yes ; He cares so much 
 that He will not make the present transient 
 period of existence easy for us. He cares so 
 much that He forces us to realise that this is 
 not our rest. How blind we are not to see 
 that this is the meaning of our trials ! He cares 
 so much that He would not still our mere out- 
 ward tempests, but would enable every one 
 of us to be the stiller of the tempest of sin 
 in our souls; so that, in the strength of His 
 presence and power, we may defy death, and 
 through all life's discipline develop the char- 
 acter which belongs to heaven and shall survive 
 the wreck of worlds. There will be no need 
 of mere physical miracles when the earth has 
 dissolved and the perfect order reigns, for we 
 read in the Revelation that there shall be " no 
 more sea, . . . neither sorrow, nor crying." 
 ** They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 
DOES COD CARE? i6i 
 
 more ; the sun shall not light on them, nor any 
 heat." " The inhabitant shall no more say, I 
 am sick." "All tears shall be wiped away; 
 and there shall be no more death." One mir- 
 acle shall remain, the miracle of the redeemed 
 soul, the miracle of the man or woman who has 
 overcome sin, the flesh, and the world. These 
 shall form the white-robed company before 
 whom the angels stand wondering, " who came 
 out of great tribulation, and washed their robes, 
 and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 
 
IX. 
 
 €]fte Cemple of (lI5oD in W. 
 
IX. 
 THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 Knoiv ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that 
 the Spirit of God divelkth i?i you? If any tnan 
 defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; 
 for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. 
 — I Cor. iii. i6, 17. 
 
 THESE strong words were addressed to the 
 church at Corinth. This church was 
 simply the body or congregation of behevers in 
 that busy commercial city. 
 
 Human nature is the same in all ages, and 
 the church at Corinth eighteen hundred years 
 ago was remarkably like the church at Washing- 
 ton or any other locality to-day. It was far 
 from being a temple of God in fact. The very 
 purpose of St. Paul's epistle was to quiet party 
 strifes, reprove gross immoralities, correct errors 
 of faith and practice, and bring back members 
 of the church from a secularism, sensuality, and 
 165 
 
i66 THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 formalism which were polluting the sanctuary 
 of God. He does not attempt to judge between 
 the parties which divided the church. High, 
 low, broad, ritualistic, and rationahstic were all 
 there, under other names. He is not jealous 
 for his own name, nor envious of the eloquent 
 Apollos, whom some had set up as his rival. 
 "Is Christ divided?" he exclaims, "was Paul 
 crucified for you?" He drives through their 
 contentions and the envyings and luxury and 
 drunkenness which defiled even the sacrament 
 of the Lord's death, and indignantly arraigns 
 them for their blind carnality in having lost 
 the sense of God's high purpose in them as a 
 church. " What, know ye not that ye are the 
 temple of God, and that the Spirit of God 
 dwelleth in you ? " 
 
 These words were addressed to the Christians 
 collectively. He calls upon them to remember 
 that they are a temple builded together to real- 
 ise a divine idea among men, a unity in right- 
 eousness, a sanctuary in which a holy God might 
 manifest His love. He appeals to them as a 
 general might appeal to the patriotism of his 
 soldiers in some crisis of a nation's history. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 167 
 
 We forget, as they did, that we are members 
 of a body. By every obligation of our bap- 
 tismal, confirmation, and sacramental vows we 
 are not to consider our individual selves alone, 
 but ourselves in relation to the whole Church. 
 No man liveth unto himself, and it is impossible 
 that any member of the Church should live 
 unto himself. The Church, which is Christ's 
 body, is honoured or dishonoured in us. If a 
 man is a mere narrow, pharisaic formalist, an 
 ecclesiastical partisan without the Spirit of Christ 
 (which is the spirit of love) in him, he is a dis- 
 integrating influence ; he tends to mar the 
 unity of the temple. If he is an indifferent, 
 worldly member, satisfied to attend church 
 and partake occasionally of the sacrament, 
 but with no thought or interest for the king- 
 dom of God among men, he dishonours the 
 Church ; he is a selfish, disloyal citizen, with- 
 out the patriotic fervour which is a nation's 
 strength. The question, therefore, my friends, 
 of the Tightness of our individual lives as 
 members of the Church is not to be deter- 
 mined by the evil which we actually do, but by 
 the eood which we leave undone. Of course 
 
1 68 THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 we are not to do wrong, but the Christian idea 
 is something far higher than this. It is positive 
 loyalty to Christ and His kingdom in lives 
 which shall not merely be blameless, but heroic 
 for goodness, truth, and right. 
 
 I need not, however, dwell upon the applica- 
 tion of these words to Christians collectively. 
 It is the aggregate of personal lives that makes 
 the one strong nation and the one strong 
 Church. To realise the positive idea of a 
 kingdom or temple of God among men, each 
 individual Christian must think of himself SiS a 
 temple made for God's indwelling. St. Paul 
 passes, in this same epistle, to this close personal 
 application of the thought of our text: "What, 
 know ye not that your body is the temple of 
 the Holy Ghost, which is in you ? " 
 
 The structure of the whole Church, and of 
 each particular church, is like the cell structure 
 in plant life. The plant is a complex organism 
 made up of many cells. The life of the plant 
 is in these, and depends for its growth upon 
 the functions which they perform in accumulat- 
 ing and distributing nutriment, and imparting 
 health and beauty to the whole. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 169 
 
 So the Church is one temple, " the blessed 
 company," as our Communion Office defines it, 
 " of all faithful people " ; but it is made up of 
 countless little temples or sanctuaries — the 
 personal lives of its members. The character 
 of the whole is determined by the spiritual 
 richness and fulness of these separate lives. 
 
 God comes into the Church, then, through 
 us — through the sanctuary of our spirits. He 
 no longer dwells in a temple made with hands. 
 St. Paul uses the word in the Greek which 
 signifies, not the whole Temple building in 
 Jerusalem, but the most holy place or sanctuary. 
 The most holy place or sanctuary now wherein 
 God waits to reveal Himself is the spirit of man. 
 "The kingdom of God," said Christ, "cometh 
 not with observation : . . . lo, it is within you." 
 
 What, then, are we doing with ourselves 
 personally? Are we keeping ourselves open 
 towards God, or are the windows of the dome 
 of our being all crusted with dust and cobwebs 
 through long disuse, so that the light of the 
 blue heavens overarching it cannot shine 
 through? Where do we, in the deep silences 
 of our personal consciousness, habitually live? 
 
I70 THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 Do we have our being in this beautiful upper 
 room, and order all our living by its heavenly 
 light? Do we keep the windov/s of the soul 
 clear of the least thought of sin which might 
 defile them, and do we estimate the world be- 
 neath us by the infinities above? 
 
 I am afraid that not a few of us who profess 
 to be Christians treat the sanctuary of their 
 being as some people treat their best room. 
 They live in the kitchen, and the parlour is the 
 coldest and most desolate room in the house. 
 It is opened only occasionally, when there is a 
 funeral, or formal company. There is a large, 
 handsome Bible on the table, which is kept 
 reverently dusted, but seldom opened. I as- 
 sociate, to this hour, with a certain stately room 
 known to me in childhood, the cofifin and the 
 corpse. 
 
 Is it so that we treat the best room in this 
 tabernacle of our flesh? Is it a place where 
 darkness and death abide, while we really live 
 in the lower rooms of our being, where every- 
 thing savours of meat and drink, and the petty 
 interests of the flesh, and the gratification of 
 self? With what indignant reproach do the 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. lyi 
 
 wordsof St. Paul come resounding down through 
 the ages to us — " Know ye not that ye are a 
 sanctuary of God, and that the Spirit of God 
 dwelleth in you? " 
 
 Do you call yourselves Christians, and do 
 you not know that if you have ever sincerely 
 begun to believe, the Spirit of God is in you? 
 Do you not know that the secret of power for 
 you, and through you for the whole Church, is 
 not in what you do outwardly, but in what you 
 are inwardly? Ignorance of the sublime pos- 
 sibilities of our awakened nature, the capacity 
 for receiving God, and being inspired with holy 
 thoughts by Him, is to St. Paul a shocking igno- 
 rance. We may expect the sceptic to discredit 
 as foolishness the suggestion of such spiritual 
 capacities; but what shall be thought of the 
 church-member who, magnifying the impor- 
 tance of receiving the bread and wine of the 
 Lord's Supper, is blind to the hidden meaning 
 and purpose of the sacrament expressed so fully 
 in the sacramental office itself: "That we, and 
 all others who shall be partakers of this Holy 
 Communion, may worthily receive the most 
 precious Body and Blood of Thy Son Jesus 
 
172 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 Christ, be filled with Thy grace and heavenly- 
 benediction, and made one body with Him, that 
 He may dwell in us, and we in Him." How 
 often does the sublime sense of these words 
 pass over our minds like living waters over the 
 insensate rock! 
 
 The defect in our Christianity is that we look 
 for God too much outside of ourselves, instead 
 of realising that He is Spirit and that He makes 
 Himself known in the far-back sanctuary of our 
 spirits. Prayer, acquaintance with the word 
 of Christ in the reading of the Bible, atten- 
 dance upon church services, and partaking of the 
 sacrament, are all means to the one end, and 
 that is the indwelling of God. But merely to 
 say prayers, to read as a formal duty the Bible, 
 to attend church, to partake with the lips of the 
 bread and wine, will not realise for us this in- 
 dwelling. These are necessary means of grace, 
 but it is the preparation of the heart in us 
 which alone can make them effective. Prayer 
 is more than asking; it is communion with the 
 divine Spirit in our spirit. Paul does more 
 than charge us to read the Bible; he says: 
 " Let the word of Christ dzi'ell in you richly in 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 173 
 
 all wisdom " — assimilate it, digest it, meditate 
 upon it to do it, and then it will be ever flower- 
 ing in suggestions from within you for every 
 time of sorrow and of need. And so, too, in 
 our church-going and in our holy communion, 
 the mind must be ready and receptive, or no 
 divine influence will bless us. 
 
 In the use of all these means, the mind or 
 heart is like the sensitive plate of the photog- 
 rapher behind the lens in the dark camera. 
 The plate must be prepared and ready. No 
 plain glass or soiled film will receive the 
 impression. It is a remarkable and recent dis- 
 covery that the sensitive plate, carefully pre- 
 pared, will reveal to the astronomer through 
 the telescope, stars which the human eye alone, 
 though aided by the greatest magnifying power, 
 could not detect. Invisible stars have thus 
 impressed themselves upon the photographic 
 plate, and have been brought to view in the 
 enlarged print. Our souls, sensitised by a real, 
 honest sorrow for sin, and faith in the love 
 which pardons, — opened towards God by being 
 cleared of every guilty purpose and wilful en- 
 tertaining of sinful thoughts, and kept habitually 
 
174 THE TEMPLE OF COD IN US. 
 
 sincere before Him, — are prepared to receive im- 
 pressions from the invisible. " Eye hath not 
 seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into 
 the heart of man, the things which God hath 
 prepared for them that love Him. But God 
 hath revealed them unto us " (if our hearts 
 have been prepared and ready) " by His Spirit." 
 
 I have been addressing members of the 
 Church. It may be supposed by those of my 
 hearers who make no profession of religion that 
 the words of the apostle have no application to 
 them. 
 
 It is true that St. Paul writes to avowed 
 members of the Church. There is, however, 
 truth in his words which applies with equal 
 force to you who make no profession. 
 
 Each one of you is a sanctuary for the habi- 
 tation of God. The Spirit of God is striving to 
 break through the earth-born clouds which veil 
 it. Sometimes you catch a gleam of the clear 
 heavens and the Light which, St. John declares, 
 " Hghteth every man that cometh into the 
 world." 
 
 Emerson, in his famous essay on the " Over- 
 
THE TEMPLE OE GOD IN US. 175 
 
 soul," is very suggestive, the more so because 
 he was a free-thinker, standing outside of the 
 Christianity of the churches. That man is to 
 be pitied as something which has sunk beneath 
 itself who has nothing in him which responds to 
 these crisp sentences. He is like Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, the proud king, — born to majesty, 
 made to stand erect in the full glory of crowned 
 manhood, — grazing in the fields with dumb cat- 
 tle. " Our faith," says Emerson, " comes in 
 moments ; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a 
 depth in those brief moments which constrains 
 us to ascribe more reality to them than to all 
 other experiences. We grant that human life 
 is mean, but how did we find out that it was 
 mean ? What is the ground of this uneasiness 
 of ours, of this old discontent?" 
 
 Yes; it is true, you v/ho do not call your- 
 selves Christians often feel that your lives are 
 mean. In your moments of remorse, self- 
 loathing, sorrow, or sickness, — in your lonely 
 moments when you would not for worlds let 
 your boon companions know what you are think- 
 ing, — you despise yourself. What despises? 
 You — the something within — your other self, 
 
176 THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 which looks at yourself with contempt. A 
 quaint old poet well expresses this duality of our 
 nature, though he sacrifices grammar to rhyme : 
 
 " Within my earthly temple dwells a crowd : 
 There's one of us that's humble, one that's proud; 
 There's one that's broken-hearted for his sins. 
 And one who unrepentant sits and grins ; 
 
 "There's one who loves his neighbour as himself, 
 And one whose every thought is fame and pelf. 
 From much corroding care would I be free 
 If once I could determine which is me." 
 
 This higher consciousness is the divine Spirit 
 in us, making itself known in the darkened 
 sanctuary of our being. 
 
 What are you doing to yourself in all your 
 persistent disregard of this divine Spirit, and 
 persistent stifling of its suggestions? There is 
 terrible meaning for all of us in Paul's warning 
 words : " If any man destroyeth the sanctuary 
 of God, him shall God destroy." By a neces- 
 sary and natural process, the man who habit- 
 ually sins against his body, or against his 
 conscience or the impulses of his spiritual 
 being, is destroying himself. It is not neces- 
 sary to point to a judgment to come. The 
 
THB TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 177 
 
 judgment begins here and now. The victim of 
 avarice, hungry for gain, the miserable drunk- 
 ard, the low sensualist, may enjoy a wild frenzy 
 of passion ; but who that knows anything of 
 life, does not know that the debased body is 
 burned out even to the mercy-seat in the 
 Most Holy Place. The " Light which lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the v/orld " vanishes 
 amid unholy flames, and at last the man sits in 
 darkness and ashes, " having no hope, and with- 
 out God in the world." 
 
 Despise not then, my friends, the words 
 which would make real to you your capacity 
 for an endless life in the spirit, having its cen- 
 tre in God. 
 
 Working through all the evil which is seeth- 
 ing in the great caldron of the world to-day, 
 there is the cleansing influence of such a move- 
 ment towards the knowledge of God as the world 
 has never seen before. Thirty years ago, in 
 my own early ministry, scientific thought was 
 thoroughly materialistic. To-day the men of 
 science have become conscious of the fact, and 
 admit, that they too must explore the darkness 
 if they would seek the answer to all their 
 
178 THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 larger questions; they too must assume the 
 intangible if they would take any firm steps 
 in explaining the series of facts with which they 
 have to deal. When representative men in 
 science and philosophy stand reverently before 
 Christ, — when one of them, writing of "the des- 
 tiny of man," and voicing the thoughts of many 
 others not avowed Christians, admits that " the 
 dream of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, 
 the inspiration of the great musician, is con- 
 firmed in the light of modern knowledge," — 
 when he tells us that, " as we gird ourselves up 
 for the work of life, we may look forward to 
 the time when in the truest sense the kingdoms 
 of this world shall become the kingdoms of 
 Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever, 
 King of kings and Lord of lords," — I thank 
 God and take courage. The reverent scientist, 
 philosopher, or theosophist may not move in 
 my lines, but they are moving towards the 
 knowledge of God ; they are moving towards 
 the one centre of unity, — " seeking after God, 
 if haply they might find Him." Some of them 
 stand, like Philip before the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and begin to perceive the truth of His divine 
 
THE TEMPUi 01' COD IN US. 179 
 
 personality in His answer to Philip's demand, 
 " Show us the Father " : " Have I been so long 
 time with you, and yet hast thou not known 
 me, Philip? " 
 
 We reach to-day the last Lord's day of the 
 year. Another wave of time is sinking into the 
 past, and a few more hours will find us riding 
 upon the swelling crest of a new year. Time — 
 what is it? It is the brief moment in which we 
 touch soundings as we pass from eternity to 
 eternity. I fear that many of you think of 
 time and the world as your all. All your 
 thoughts and hopes and desires and interests 
 are bound up with them. The fatal spell of 
 the present has been cast upon you, and noth- 
 ing is real to you but your eating and your 
 drinking, your ambitions, your money-making, 
 and your pleasures. When old age creeps on, 
 and the chill shadows fall, you are wretched ; 
 death is a terror ; the end seems to you only a 
 fearful leap into the dark. I take up the words 
 of St. Paul, and ring them as a New Year's peal 
 in your ears : " What, know ye not that ye are 
 the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God 
 dwelleth in you ? " Will you let the Spirit die 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD IN US. 
 
 out within the earthly tabernacle as you make 
 the brief passage from eternity to eternity ? The 
 old Norseman kings, when they were about to 
 die, had their bodies placed in a slowly burning 
 ship, with all sails set, that, so passing out to 
 sea, their death might be a vanishing into the 
 elements, and not a rotting into earth. How 
 much more should we, in the light of Chris- 
 tianity, be true to ourselves, and so estimate the 
 present that, when we put out to sea, death shall 
 be to us that which it waits to be for every 
 faithful soul — " mortality swallowed up of life." 
 
X. 
 
 %l)t Ccmple aitD ti)t ^ttztt 
 
X. 
 
 THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 
 
 In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, 
 
 HOLY UNTO THE LORD.— ZeCH. xiv. 20. 
 
 CONSPICUOUS in the beautiful dress of 
 the high priest of Israel was a crown of 
 
 pure gold, upon which was inscribed, " Holy 
 unto the Lord." The skirts of the splendid 
 robe of blue which he wore were hung with 
 golden bells. When he passed within the awful 
 mystery of the holy place the sound of the 
 bells was music from another sphere than that 
 of the common life of the people outside. Re- 
 ligion was localised. The sacred and the secular 
 were far apart in the mind and life of the Jew. 
 The man who wrote the prophecy of our text, 
 five hundred years before Christ, was certainly 
 gifted with perceptions wonderfully far-reach- 
 ing. He was a chief mover in the restoration 
 of the Temple after the return from the Baby- 
 1S3 
 
1 84 THE TEMPLE /Ih'D THE STREET. 
 
 lonish captivity. There was not much enthu- 
 siasm. The people were disheartened. They 
 had grown faithless towards their Temple and 
 their God. Zechariah, though he worked to 
 restore the Temple, perceived that a time was 
 coming when the music of God's own sphere 
 should not sound remotely from the tinkling 
 bells of the high priest within the veil, but out 
 in the busy street, amid the stir and traffic of 
 society, there should be upon the bells of the 
 horses, " Holy unto the Lord." 
 
 The prophecy began to be realised when, at 
 Christ's death, the veil of the Temple was " rent 
 in twain." The awful sanctuary in which 
 thunderings and lightnings and earthquake had 
 seemed to be smouldering was opened to the 
 day, and out of them emerged a life — a perfect 
 life — the life of the man Christ Jesus. The 
 old Temple, with its distinctions between clean 
 and unclean, its cumbrous ceremonial, priestly 
 caste, and separateness from the common daily 
 life, vanished. " Destroy this temple," said the 
 Christ, " and in three days I will raise it up." 
 "But He spake," we are told, "of the temple 
 of His body." That was raised up, and, as we 
 
THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 185 
 
 know Him now in the light of the resurrection, 
 we see the unveiled glory of God in the face of 
 One who was in all points tempted like as we 
 are — "the man Christ Jesus." 
 
 God in the ordinary human life is the new 
 temple. This is the meaning of the Incarnation. 
 The world has been very slow to perceive it. 
 The prologue to St. John's Gospel declares it in 
 the familiar words : " He came unto His own, 
 and His own received Him not. But as many 
 as received Him, to them gave He power to 
 become the sons of God, even to them that 
 believe on His name." Power or the right to 
 become sons of God is the new impulse which 
 the gospel has brought into the world. 
 
 Have you ever thought, in your average 
 struggling workday lives, what this means? 
 Have you ever thought that it is your revealed 
 right, and made quite possible for you, to live 
 up to the sense of an infinite Fatherhood as 
 Christ lived up to and in it? This is Christi- 
 anity ; this is the salvation which, through the 
 gospel, is preached unto you ; this is the faith 
 which can alone overcome the present evil 
 world and the flesh and sin. 
 
1 86 THE TEMPLE /tND THE STREET. 
 
 The truth I want to urge upon you is that 
 the temple in this sense of God manifested and 
 sovereign in every beHeving soul is necessarily 
 related to the street. It has been over and 
 over again argued that Christianity is incom- 
 patible with the ordinary business of life, that 
 society could not exist if its principles generally 
 prevailed, and that the wheels of human prog- 
 ress would be clogged. Honest thinkers are 
 beginning now to perceive the deeper meaning 
 of Christ's teaching, and to admit that the ob- 
 jection has sprung from prejudiced, ignorant, 
 and superficial views of that teaching. It has 
 been commonly supposed that the supreme pur- 
 pose of Christianity is to save our souls from 
 the impending torment of eternal fires after 
 death, and that we can only be saved by a 
 certain kind of faith which involves self-denial, 
 the renunciation of this present world, a literal 
 following of Christ in His poverty and suffering 
 and ministry, and living solemnly in the pres- 
 ence of that awful doom of eternal burning into 
 which thousands of our fellow-beings are drop- 
 ping off every moment. I do not wonder that, 
 in view of such a distortion of the gospel of 
 
THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 187 
 
 Jesus Christ, sceptics have argued that it is not 
 compatible with the present business of life. 
 But it is a distortion ; and though it contains 
 elements of truth, it is as far from truth as the 
 grotesque image of a beautiful face which a 
 concave mirror gives, is far from the truth of 
 that face. 
 
 The supreme purpose of the Christ was not 
 to save our souls from some eternity of torment 
 hereafter, but from sin now. The eternal con- 
 sequences of sin wilfully persisted in must be 
 bad enough, but it is a present disorder; and to 
 restore the lost order by bringing us to a sense 
 of the infinite Father's light and love w-as His 
 purpose. Self-denial is a necessary part of it, 
 because we can live up to the higher only by 
 denying or overriding the lov/er. The world to 
 be renounced is the w^orld of wrong, impure, 
 and selfish principles, which have made the 
 visible world of mankind itself a hell, and which 
 He would make right and bring into harmony 
 wdth the music of God's sphere, even the eter- 
 nal law of love. The Christ we are to follow is 
 the spiritual Christ, walking in love, " as He 
 also loved us, and gave Himself for us." It 
 
1 88 THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 
 
 was to save us from the flame of our own con- 
 suming lusts that He died. It was to win for 
 us the heaven of a present peace, hope, and Hfe 
 that shall know no death, that He took our na- 
 ture upon Him. The man who believes in order 
 that he may save his soul from everlasting tor- 
 ment and gain a heaven of bliss hereafter has 
 no true conception of the faith of Christ. 
 " Honesty is the best policy " ; but Archbishop 
 Whately well said that " the man is a rogue 
 who acts upon it." He would steal if he dared. 
 Christianity is more than a policy ; it is a life. 
 " I am come," said the Christ, " that ye might 
 have life, and that ye might have it more abun- 
 dantly." For one word in which He points to 
 the eternal judgment for sin I can point you to 
 a hundred in which He preaches the coming of 
 a kingdom of God among men. We are not 
 taught to be always thinking of saving our souls 
 from death, but to " seek first the kingdom of 
 God, and His righteousness." We are not 
 taught to pray, " O Lord, save our souls from 
 eternal fires," but this is the prayer which the 
 Christ has given us : " Our Father which art in 
 heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom 
 
THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 1S9 
 
 come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on 
 earth." It is a creed as well as a prayer for 
 the every-day life. He came " preaching the 
 kingdom of God," and sent forth His chosen 
 disciples to preach the " gospel of the kingdom." 
 His aim was to create in tJic zvorld a society of 
 spiritual men and women, open to God, inspired 
 by high, unselfish motives, realising their infi- 
 nite relations, and touching humanity, as He 
 touched it in the every-day life, with healing, 
 helping, sympathetic, and uphfting influences. 
 
 The faith of the gospel, therefore, does not 
 require you or me to be anything else but faith- 
 ful and full of loyalty to God in just those rela- 
 tions and just that life (so that they be honest) 
 in which we stand. We are not called to live 
 Christ's life literally, as some satirists, to the 
 detriment of Christianity, would have us sup- 
 pose. We are called, hovv-'ever, to live His life 
 spiritually in the sense which the Apostle Paul, 
 writing to the Ephesians, has with a luminous 
 pen defined. "Be ye followers of God," he 
 writes, "as dear children"; and then immedi- 
 ately he shows them how the}^ are to be fol- 
 lowers of God — by being pure as men in their 
 
1 90 THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 
 
 relations to a corrupt age, faithful as wives, 
 husbands, children, slaves, and masters. You 
 will find the same great apostle in all his epis- 
 tles resolving the most seemingly abstract 
 philosophy of the Christian faith into the prac- 
 tical duties of every-day life, and not seeking 
 to revolutionise society, but summing up all in 
 this charge : " Brethren, let every man, wherein 
 he is called, therein abide with God." 
 
 Such is the spirit of the gospel of Christ. If 
 it is not compatible v/ith the average life of 
 humanity, it is because the average life is shut 
 up under conditions which the gospel seeks to 
 break through, as the sun through clouds, to 
 bring in a new day of light, life, hope, and 
 love. 
 
 Christianity has already, in spite of the mis- 
 conceptions and ignorance even of its friends, 
 taken hold of the world powerfully. The 
 humanities of our modern life — caring even to 
 prevent cruelty to dumb beasts, honoring 
 womanhood, abolishing slavery, tending to put 
 an end to war, making human life sacred, blos- 
 soming into countless institutions of charity, 
 responding with a world-wide sympathy to 
 
THE THMPLE AND THE STREET. 191 
 
 every appeal of human suffering, agitated by 
 every problem that concerns the rights and 
 well-being of men — are directly in line with the 
 evolution that Zechariah dimly foresaw when 
 he wrote that there should be upon the bells of 
 the horses, " Holy unto the Lord." 
 
 I think it must be admitted, however, by 
 every thoughtful man who looks out over the 
 world of mankind, that it is capable of being 
 improved. If some men love darkness rather 
 than light, it does not follow that light is not 
 good nor capable of dispersing darkness. 
 " This is the condemnation," wrote St. John, or 
 probably the Christ Him.self, " that light is 
 come into the world, and men loved darkness 
 rather than light, because their deeds were evil." 
 We see in the world to-day minds evidently 
 in darkness, groping, stumbling, unhappy, and 
 often desperate. We see sensuality holding its 
 wild orgies in the light of lurid camp-fires, which 
 passion has kindled, and v/hich the pure dawn 
 of God's day would put to shame. We see 
 selfishness lurking everywhere — in capital, in 
 labor too, in every form of business, in politics, 
 in the church, and in domestic life. There is 
 
192 THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 
 
 much light, hope, purity, and unselfishness, but 
 I am arguing that society is capable of being 
 improved. What will help, if not the faith that 
 the destiny of man is to be something more than 
 an animal, something more even than the genius 
 of the brightest intellect that illumines the 
 world — something, in fact, which the Christ, 
 by His incarnation, death, and resurrection, has 
 made possible for us, " heirs of God, and joint 
 heirs with Christ "? What can help, if not the 
 hope that in and through this present scheme 
 of things there is a kingdom coming which shall 
 be for all who enter into it an eternal uplifting, 
 carrying them over death into the immortality 
 of that " new heavens and new earth in which 
 dwelleth righteousness"? What can help, if 
 not that which is born of faith and hope — love, 
 the universal love, the pure love of generous, 
 kindly, honest sympathy and helpfulness? 
 There was wondrous wisdom in Paul's words, 
 " But now abideth faith, hope, and love, these 
 three; and the greatest of these is love." 
 
 Yes ; these three are capable of making sweet 
 the bitter waters of our social life. There is 
 many a good man who says within himself, " I 
 
THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 
 
 193 
 
 must try to get all the help I can from my 
 church and the Sunday rest to keep me through 
 the week." That is not the best idea of the 
 Christian life. He is like the diver, who takes 
 in a supply of air to go down under water, and 
 soon comes up exhausted. The Christian who 
 has fully entered into the life of faith walks 
 upon the sea of every-day life. Faith, hope, 
 and love are vital elements in him. He has his 
 being in them. He is buoyed up by them in 
 his business every day of the week. He rests 
 upon the pleasant isle of Sunday, but does not 
 go plunging down on Monday into the depths 
 of secularism, to breathe artificially and come 
 up again at the end of the week nearl}- if not 
 altogether smothered, and with really no supe- 
 rior spiritual life in him at all. 
 
 My brethren, it is for you and me to seek 
 with all our might the realisation of Zechariah's 
 prophecy, and bring about the time when there 
 shall be upon the bells of the horses, " Holy 
 unto the Lord." What nobler work — what aim 
 more worthy of your manhood — can I set be- 
 fore you? God, I have said, in t//e ordinary 
 Jmman life is the new temple. To let God be 
 
194 
 
 THE TEMPLE AND THE STREET. 
 
 in you by receiving Jesus Christ as the mani- 
 fested God, and by living up to the ideal which 
 He has set before you of a real sonship with 
 the eternal Father, yielding yourself to the 
 splendid consciousness that you are not mere 
 animals or earthworms, made to grub and die, 
 but children of God and of the resurrection, 
 destined for an immortal society of which the 
 present is only the germ — this is your faith. 
 It is not necessary that you should be preach- 
 ers or hermits in order to bring the street into 
 harmony with the temple. It is only necessary 
 that you should be true men and women, living 
 in the sense of something above the mere toiling 
 and moiling and bargaining and fretting and 
 money-making which absorb you every day. 
 The something above will regulate and calm 
 and make holy all the common things. 
 
 '* There are, in this loud, stunning tide 
 
 Of human care and crime. 
 With whom the melodies abide 
 
 Of the everlasting chime ; 
 Who carry music in their heart 
 Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, 
 Plying their daily task with busier feet 
 Because their secret souls a holy strain repeal." 
 
THE TEMP in AND THE STREET. 
 
 ^95 
 
 Ye men and women who call yourselves 
 Christians, and ye other men and women who 
 do not call j'ourselves so, are temples in and by 
 whom holiness may be carried into the street. 
 If there is no sound of life in your temple, — no 
 bells echoing from the great High Priest who 
 has passed into eternity, — God help you! 
 There is no sadder vision in all the universe 
 than a man without God — defiled, hopeless, 
 doomed. If you have life in you, the life of 
 faith, hope, and love, live it every day and in 
 every relation. It v.'ill lift you above care. It 
 will make the world the happier for your being. 
 You will be one wave — a very little one, per- 
 haps, but still an impulse — in that sea of life 
 which is setting in towards the blessed time when 
 " there shall be upon the bells of the horses, 
 HOLY UNTO THE LORD." 
 
XL 
 
 Cl^e moxti) of iHanl^ooD^ 
 
XI. 
 THE WORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 What man shall there be of you, that shall have one 
 sheep, and if this fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, 
 will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How 
 much then is a man of more value than a sheep ! 
 
 St, Matt. xii. ii, 12. 
 
 THE Christ was in a synagogue of His peo- 
 ple on the Sabbath day. The Pharisees 
 were seeking to involve Him in some violation 
 of their Sabbath law, which would be a capital 
 offence. A man was there who had a withered 
 hand. They knew how quickly His heart could 
 be touched by the sight of sickness or infirmity. 
 It was a strange and suggestive fact that disease 
 could not continue in His presence. They 
 asked Him if it was lawful to heal on the Sab- 
 bath day. He turned to them, doubtless with 
 indignation burning in His look, and said, 
 " What man shall there be of you, that shall 
 199 
 
200 THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 have one sheep, and if this fall into a pit on the 
 Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift 
 it out? " It was lawful to save a sheep on the 
 Sabbath day. They knew very well that for 
 their own selfish interests they would do it. 
 " How much then is a man of more value than 
 a sheep!" The shaft struck home. It was 
 like the thrust which He gave them when they 
 brought to Him a woman taken in adultery : 
 " He that is without sin among you, let him 
 first cast a stone at her." 
 
 His argument was unanswerable. The whole 
 Sabbath question was lifted into the positive 
 atmosphere of love. " If you would rescue a 
 sheep because it is your personal property, how 
 much miore is it lawful for me to lift a man out 
 of infirmity on the Sabbath, and restore him to 
 self-help and usefulness among his fellows!" 
 There is a deeper thought than that which ap- 
 pears upon the surface : " You would rescue a 
 sheep because it is your property. I am come 
 to seek and to save that which was lost. Man- 
 hood is my property, and therefore I have a 
 right to save men whenever and wherever and 
 however I will." 
 
THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 The worth of vianJiood'\% the deep underlying 
 thought of this whole scene which I want to 
 urge upon your attention. 
 
 It is a strange fact that through all the course 
 of this world's history a sheep has been reck- 
 oned of more value than a man. The sheep 
 stands for property, or that which we may get 
 for our own profit. The thought of getting 
 rather than of being has certainly been domi- 
 nant in human life, both individual and social. 
 
 Look at the individual life of our kind, and 
 what in the average living is counted of greatest 
 worth? Is the development of the very best 
 that is possible in us the ruling thought? Is 
 it not rather true that we live to feed, accumu- 
 late, and get all the pleasure and profit vire can 
 from the world outside of us? The property 
 that we have in ourselves is a nature which is 
 both physical and spiritual. We tend to care 
 more for the animal inheritance than the spirit- 
 ual. It is tangible, and capable of paying in 
 present pleasure a high rate of interest. I know 
 that in the struggle for existence human life 
 naturally tends to become sordid. This is the 
 evil from which God, in the gospel of our Lord 
 
202 THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 Jesus Christ, would deliver us. The humblest 
 toiler may, and often does, find a divine purpose 
 in his being, and lives nobly and hopefully 
 through all his toils. We are compelled for our 
 own personal safety to conform to certain moral 
 standards and observe certain outward decen- 
 cies. Reputation must be preserved and actual 
 crime avoided. We may even stand, like the 
 Pharisee, and thank God that we are not " as 
 other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, 
 or even as this publican." But it is the worth 
 of our reputation that we are thinking of, not 
 the worth of manhood. This is the personal 
 Pharisaism to which we are all liable. When 
 there is an issue made in some moment of se- 
 cret temptation between the animal and the 
 spiritual, we count the sheep of more value than 
 the man. It is easy to see that men and women 
 may be very respectable outwardly, and scru- 
 pulous in the observance of social proprieties, 
 and yet be selfish, sensual, and, in all that con- 
 stitutes true manhood or womanhood, dead. 
 They may have no sense of the eternal worth 
 and divine capacities of their withered souls, but 
 to justify the indulgence of their lower nature 
 
THE IVORTH OF M/.NHOOD. 203 
 
 — to save a sheep — they will strain the elastic 
 standards of society to the point of breaking. 
 
 That which is true of the individual pervades, 
 of course, the social world of which he is the 
 unit. That in all our social life a sheep is reck- 
 oned of more value than a man — property put 
 before manhood — is a fact so conspicuous that 
 it requires no proof. Society is based upon the 
 security, the distribution, and the accumulation 
 of property. This is a necessity of our material 
 existence. We must get bread and clothing and 
 shelter, but in the universal scramble the desire 
 to accumulate becomes a passion. Differences 
 in ability, education, circumstance, inheritance, 
 create inequalities which clothe some with power 
 over others. That there is something higher to 
 be thought of in our relations to other men than 
 power, place, wealth, or service is an idea which 
 has found but little toleration in the world's 
 history. The worth of manhood at one period 
 has been measured by the conquests which 
 could be achieved by it ; at another by the rank, 
 royalty, or other prestige that could be main- 
 tained by it ; at another by the wealth which it 
 could be made to yield. The world of a later 
 
204 T^^ IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 age is beginning to see that there is something 
 better to be considered in our relations to one 
 another than all these — that there is a worth in 
 manhood, gold in the rough ore, which is prop- 
 erty of infinitely more value to nations than a 
 sheep. Distrust disintegrates the foundations 
 of society, and the social world is full of strife 
 and envy, because this thought is only dimly 
 perceived and feebly acted upon. There is a 
 Pharisaism in politics which, under a show of 
 patriotism, seeks place and power or party in- 
 terest; in commercial life which, under those 
 forms of honesty which security demands, often 
 VvTongs and corrupts in the haste to be rich; in 
 our social conventions which "pays tithe of mint, 
 anise, and cumin," and forgets, in the daily touch 
 with humanity, purity, justice, mercy, and truth ; 
 in rehgion even, which, having the form of godli- 
 ness, will sacrifice truth to a system, neglect 
 small charities for big philanthropies, and lose 
 the spirit of Christ in zeal for a prerogative or ec- 
 clesiastical tradition or ritual observances. The 
 Pharisee was not wrong in his observances. He 
 stood for the worship of the one God, and was 
 a strict moralist. " These things ought ye to 
 
THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 have done," said Christ, "and not to leave the 
 other undone." He was condemned because he 
 was thoroughly egotistical in his observances, 
 and cared more for his pride, prejudice, and prop- 
 erty than he did for the chief end of the law — 
 the welfare of men, the worth of manhood. 
 
 Now turn from this painful glance at a state 
 of society in which a sheep is counted of more 
 value than a man, and think of the new princi- 
 ple which to the Pharisaism of His own time the 
 Christ opposed when He said, " How much then 
 is a man of more value than a sheep! " The 
 worth of manhood was the supreme thought of 
 His mind and ministry. It was a purely original 
 thought. That mankind in general should 
 be otherwise than hopelessly barbarian never 
 entered into the imagination of the Greek 
 philosopher. Religion before Christ was a cult 
 or a mystery into which only a learned few 
 could enter. I do not forget that Confucius 
 inculcated the social virtues, and that the Bud- 
 dha taught men to be kind to one another. But 
 there was neither God nor hope in their system. 
 They realised the social value of a sympathetic 
 habit, but of the worth of manhood before God, 
 
2o6 THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 and its divine capacities, they had no concep- 
 tion. Their teaching" lacked force, because it 
 met no sense of a higher destiny than earth, in 
 man. That through and underneath the dark, 
 dreary Alaskan wilderness of a downtrodden 
 humanity there should be wealth of spiritual 
 being more precious than gold, never entered 
 the mind of the old civilisation. Christ came 
 to seek and bring to light the buried manhood, 
 — to purge away its dross, and to build up out 
 of it "Jerusalem the golden." 
 
 See how He defied all the prejudices of those 
 haughty Pharisees when He said to the man 
 with the withered hand, " Stretch it forth," and 
 immediately it was restored. Tradition says 
 that the man had been a stone-cutter, whom 
 some form of paralysis had rendered helpless. 
 He may have become a sort of tramp who made 
 capital out of his infirmity. A sheep might 
 have seemed to be of more worth to society 
 than he was ; but he was a man, — that was his 
 claim upon our Lord's sympathy. The worth 
 of manhood is opposed to the worth of an ani- 
 mal. It was something to restore him to self- 
 help and usefulness, but that was not all. The 
 
THE IP'ORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 207 
 
 Christ had a deeper purpose in all His healing, 
 helping touch with humanity. That man, so 
 nobly lifted out of the pit of his infirmity and 
 extricated from the net which Pharisaism would 
 have thrown round him, could not quite forget 
 the Healer, It is true that there were ten lepers 
 cleansed, but only one returned to give glory to 
 God. One, however, did return, and he was a 
 Samaritan ; but there was an eternal uplifting 
 for him in the gracious words, " Arise, and go thy 
 way: thy faith hath m.ade thee whole." The 
 nine missed the wealth of spiritual blessing 
 which he realised, because they did not act up 
 to the best that was in them and give glory to 
 the power that cleansed them. We do not know 
 what effect Christ's goodness had upon the man 
 with the withered hand, but he never could have 
 forgotten the sympathy which touched and 
 healed him. I do not believe he could have 
 been among the mob which cried out, " Let 
 Him be crucified!" His life must have been 
 different and nobler from the hour that he met 
 Jesus Christ. But whatever may have been his 
 subsequent history, we know that our Lord by 
 His sympathy lifted the Samaritan leper up to 
 
2o8 THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 a higher hfe ; that He opened the bhnd eyes of 
 Bartimeus, whom the Pharisees cast out, to the 
 vision of a new and immortal life through faith ; 
 that He brought down Zaccheus, the despised 
 publican, from his leafy hiding-place, and by 
 recognising the better spirit that was latent in 
 him made a new man of him ; and that He drew 
 the Magdalene to His feet in loving devotion, 
 for ever purified by His pardoning word. It 
 was not men's bodies that He was seeking to 
 save, but their souls, through their bodies. 
 How pathetically this was shown in the sad re- 
 frain to the cleansing of the lepers :" Were there 
 not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?" 
 It was to lead out men's spiritual nature that 
 He was working. This was education in its 
 highest sense. He saw in the rough fishermiCn 
 and many a despised publican and miserable 
 outcast such value before God that when one 
 of them repented He declared that there was 
 joy in heaven. 
 
 But what was it that gave such worth to man- 
 hood? The Christ was the merchant of His 
 own parable, who, having found one pearl of 
 great price, went and sold all that he had and 
 
THE IVOR'IH or MANHOOD. 209 
 
 bought it. But what is the pearl that was 
 worthy of the price whicli Christ paid for it, 
 even the giving of HimseU" to hve, suffer, and 
 die in the flesh? He has Himself defined it in 
 the familiar words as they are rendered by St. 
 Luke : " What is a man profited, if he gain the 
 whole world, and lose or forfeit his own self?" 
 The self in us which lies back of the animal self, 
 and which is capable of receiving and knowing 
 the Father of our spirits and partaking of His 
 own eternal life, is the " pearl of great price " — 
 the " treasure hid in a field " — the lost son who, 
 " when he came to himself," said, " I will arise 
 and go to my father." Through all Christ's 
 work and teaching we find Him seeking this 
 spiritual self in mankind, which was lost under 
 the darkness of an earthly, sensual habit. It 
 could be satisfied only with God, and therefore 
 every soul which had not made darkness its 
 element was responsive to Him. He could not 
 reach the Pharisees, because they had buried 
 their true spiritual selves beneath the form of 
 religion itself, and, while they seemed to be 
 religious, v/ere only gorgeous sepulchres, full of 
 pride and selfishness. The habit of self-seeking, 
 
210 
 
 THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 of reckoning even in their religion the sheep of 
 more value than man, had so incrusted them that 
 they had no life left in them. There were others 
 in whom the rank overgrowth of fleshly thoughts 
 and habits had completely choked the growth 
 of a higher self. It has been so in every age. 
 There are respectable men and women now who 
 are so incased in the pride of their own opinions 
 and moral and intellectual sufficiency that only 
 a resurrection from the dead could restore them 
 to life and light. There seems to be also a large 
 class so completely brutalised that we can only 
 think of the Master's own words when we try to 
 reach them : " Give not that which is holy unto 
 the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before 
 swine, lest they trample them under their feet, 
 and turn again and rend you." But by every 
 means He sought to waken men to the con- 
 sciousness of the divine possibilities that were 
 in them. When He drev/ the fisher disciples to 
 Himself, and made them His apostles, this was 
 the charge : " Come ye after me, and I will make 
 you fishers of men." This was to be the mis- 
 sion of their lives and of the whole church. 
 The love of Christ, seeking goodly pearls, found 
 
THE P/ORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 in Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, and the son of 
 Pharisees, that pearl of great price, the splendid 
 manhood of Paul the Apostle. This was the 
 experience through which the Pharisaism of 
 Saul was transmuted into the glowing Christian 
 character of Paul: "When it pleased God to 
 reveal His Son in me, immediately I conferred 
 not with flesh and blood." He was a new man — 
 old things had passed away — the moment that 
 he realised in deepest penitence " how much a 
 man is of more value than a sheep." 
 
 I have spoken of the general tendency of the 
 world's thought to reckon a sheep of more value 
 than a man, and then of the supreme purpose 
 of the Christ to reverse this false estimate and 
 make us know that a man is of more value than 
 a sheep. I ask you to think, in conclusion, of 
 the immense practical importance in its bearing 
 upon our individual and social welfare of Christ's 
 estimate of manhood. 
 
 We are not animals. We are men. The 
 effort to prove that we are only animal has 
 failed. Science itself is groping among the in- 
 finities, and has to recognise a " supreme mo- 
 ment in man's history when the psychical began 
 
THB nORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 to dominate the physical." The life of many 
 men is, indeed, so completely subject to the 
 physical that the sheep puts them to shame. 
 The sheep lives out its own quiet nature ; but 
 they are not living true to themselves. The 
 sheep is content to graze ; but they are not con- 
 tent. They often loathe themselves. The dis- 
 gust, the shame, the remorse, prove that they 
 are capable of something higher. The very 
 fierceness of men's passions is evidence that they 
 are more than animxals. The natural brute 
 beast, in obeying its instincts, does not prey 
 upon itself ; but a man does. He makes a ruin 
 of his body, because he violates the laws of his 
 being. The voluptuary, the drunkard, the 
 glutton, all sin against themselves. The laws 
 of our being must, therefore, demand a higher 
 service than that of the bodily appetites. We 
 are capable not only of that mental development 
 which we call education, and which enables man 
 to dominate the earth, but of a spiritual de- 
 velopment which makes for godlikeness in char- 
 acter. This is the worth of manhood, that, 
 knowing God in Jesus Christ, we may open our 
 true spiritual selves in faith to His love, and 
 
THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 213 
 
 realise that He is our Father in the same high 
 sense that He was the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. It is through the knowledge of God, 
 you perceive, and the realisation by faith of 
 our undying sonship with Him, that we find 
 the worth of manhood. Christianity offers the 
 individual man a better hope than wheeling 
 through endless cycles of change, and then, if 
 he has kept the "right rules," the blessedness 
 of " ceasing to be," as 
 
 " The dewdrop slips into the shining sea." 
 
 It does not find his ultimate destiny in that 
 Nirvana where, as a certain poet describes it, 
 
 " Seeking nothing, he gains all ; 
 Foregoing self, the universe grows *I."' 
 
 God, the eternal Father, stands for " I " in the 
 Christian faith. He is a present God, shining 
 in the face of the incarnate Jesus, imaged in 
 our pure human loves and relationships, dwelling 
 in our hearts, if we will, by faith. To " walk in 
 the light, as He is in the light," not by an as- 
 cetic denial or denouncing of the flesh, nor 
 despising the common life of men, nor separat- 
 
214 
 
 THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 
 
 ing ourselves from the every-day business of 
 the world, but by living up to the best that is 
 in us, keeping ourselves open to God, and our 
 bodies in subjection, and carrying brightness, 
 hope, patience, and goodness into all our touch 
 with the present world — this is the manhood 
 and womanhood of which we are capable. 
 
 "The sweet persuasion of His voice 
 Respects thy sanctity of will : 
 He giveth day ; thou hast thy choice 
 To walk in darkness still." 
 
 The social worth of men and women who 
 walk in the God-given day cannot be over- 
 estimated. There is certainly no property of 
 more real value to the world than virtuous man- 
 hood and womanhood. There are no principles 
 which more surely tend to evolve the highest 
 virtue than the principles of love to God and 
 man. Christianity is the only religion which 
 has been able to realise them in human lives and 
 make them living forces in our civilisation. 
 What nobler use, then, can we make of ourselves 
 in this brief life of ours than so to live that the 
 world shall be the richer for our being? We 
 may acquire material wealth and bless the world 
 
THE IVORTH OF MANHOOD. 215 
 
 with it, but there is a wealth of Christian char- 
 acter which is capital of infinitely more value to 
 the world than gold. It is a splendid thing 
 when character and gold are united in one man ; 
 but, comparatively speaking, sterling character 
 is worth vastly more than sterling gold. No 
 large philanthropies or generous bequests will 
 condone for unworthy living. The world needs 
 the best coinage of your manhood and your 
 womanhood, and you are responsible for its 
 awful poverty of being if you do not give it 
 gold bearing the image and superscription, not 
 of Caesar, but of God. 
 
 And what beautiful new lights are thrown 
 upon the missionary idea when we look at it 
 from the Christ's point of view ! St. Paul wrote 
 to the Corinthian Christians : " I seek not yours, 
 but you." This is the true missionary idea. 
 It has in view the worth of manhood to God, to 
 society, and to itself, and not exclusively that 
 which has complicated the whole question of 
 missions — salvation from some impending doom 
 hereafter. Men are property of more value than 
 sheep, and therefore, to lead them up to the 
 highest and best that is possible is certainly a 
 
2i6 THE WORTH Of MANHOOD. 
 
 splendid work, both in its present and its eternal 
 results. If He who gave Himself for us rejoiced 
 and the angels in heaven echoed His joy, over 
 one sinner that repenteth, surely we who call 
 ourselves Christians ought wherever we touch 
 men in our families and business and by every 
 other opportunity, to seek to lift them up to the 
 life which God their Father would have them 
 live. The world needs this nobler estimate of 
 the worth of manhood. When there is a great 
 enthusiasm for it we shall have not only the 
 solving of many of our problems, but the in- 
 coming of the promised kingdom of God among 
 men. 
 
 I have been able only to suggest thoughts 
 which are worthy of your more careful consid- 
 eration. There is hope for a soul that has not 
 died down beneath the experience which is de- 
 scribed in St. Paul's words : " The good that I 
 would, I do not: but the evil which I would 
 not, that I do. . . . O wretched man that I 
 am! who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death?" Turning to God in the faith of His 
 love, sealed by the precious blood of Christ, 
 abiding in the communion of His Church, and 
 
THE lyORTH OF M.^NHOOD. 
 
 217 
 
 walking in love, as Christ also loved us, that 
 soul may reckon itself dead indeed unto sin, but 
 alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 There are men and women, not only in the 
 slums but in the best circles of society, who, 
 like Cleopatra, in the very wantonness of lux- 
 ury dissolve pearls in their wine-cup and drink 
 them; not the perishable pearls of earth, but 
 their own spiritual selves which Christ came to 
 redeem, and which He would set in the crov/n 
 of His glory to shine like the stars for ever and 
 ever. They hold the golden chalice of life in 
 their hands, but not content to drink and be 
 thankful for that which God gives, they put the 
 pearl of great price into it and dissolve it away 
 in mere frivolity. 
 
 While you have life, and quickly, before death 
 strikes the golden cup from your grasp, give 
 yourselves to God, in the faith of Christ, in the 
 communion of His Church, in nobleness of liv- 
 ing; and so shall you be numbered with those 
 blessed ones of whom it is written, "They shall 
 be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when I 
 make up my jewels." 
 
XII. 
 
XII. 
 THE EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 
 
 Afid I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, 
 the laud wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of 
 Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be 
 their God.— Ge-^^. xvii. 8. 
 
 THIS was God's promise to Abraham. 
 Notice the terms of the promise: "Unto 
 thee" — not "to thy seed" only, but "unto 
 thee" — will I give "all the land of Canaan," 
 and that for an "everlasting possession." 
 
 Now the peculiar fact is that the terms were 
 not realised, either for him or for his seed. He 
 wandered as a stranger in the land of Canaan. 
 He never inherited it. The only possession he 
 really had in it was the possession of a burial- 
 place, which he purchased. His posterity, after 
 the bondage in Egypt and the weary wander- 
 ing in the wilderness, ultimately subdued the 
 Canaanites ; but they found no everlasting pos- 
 
 221 
 
2 22 THE EyERLASTlNG POSSESSION. 
 
 session. They were temporarily established 
 under David and Solomon ; but the glory of the 
 Jewish kingdom soon faded, and they were car- 
 ried into captivity and the land overrun with 
 strangers. They never thoroughly ralhed again. 
 The Promised Land is profaned by strangers 
 again to-day, and those to whom it was given 
 as an everlasting possession are scattered abroad. 
 Was Abraham the victim of a cruel deception ? 
 Did he go out from his own land, not knowing 
 whither he went, and dwell in tents, and endure 
 hardships, led by no brighter hope than the 
 possible glory of his posterity in the far-off 
 future — a glory which he was not to witness? 
 Was there no hope for the patriarch beyond the 
 tomb which was his only possession and his 
 only resting-place in time? " I will give unto 
 thee the land wherein thou art a stranger ;" — but 
 he died a stranger in it. Where, then, was the 
 fulfilment? 
 
 The New Testament throws light upon the 
 question. Stephen recognised the strange fact 
 in his address before the council, when he said, 
 speaking of Abraham, " God removed him into 
 this land, wherein yc now dwell. And He gave 
 
THE EVERLA STING POSSESSION. 
 
 223 
 
 him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as 
 to set his foot on : yet He promised that He 
 would give it to him for a possession, and to his 
 seed after him, when as yet he had no child." 
 Our Lord relieves the difificulty which the patri- 
 arch's death seemed to interpose, by teaching 
 us that the God who is called the God of Abra- 
 ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
 Jacob, is not a God of the dead, but " of the 
 living"; for "all live unto Him." The resur- 
 rection may accomplish for Abraham that which 
 his death seemed to forbid. He has not passed 
 out of the sphere of God's covenant mercy. He 
 has not ceased to be. He may still inherit. 
 
 The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 shows us that this future realisation of the prom- 
 ise is not only possible, but that to it Abraham 
 looked. Through the fading of his earthly hope 
 he saw rising into view a better, even a heav- 
 enly, country. " By faith " he went out " into 
 a place which he should after receive for an in- 
 heritance, . . . not knowing whither he went. 
 By faith he became a sojourner in the land of 
 promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in 
 tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him 
 
2 24 THE EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 
 
 of the same promise." By faith he was able to 
 see the earthly promise fail, because he " looked 
 for the city which hath the foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God." The same strong 
 faith, you perceive, which at God's command 
 would have offered up Isaac, accounting that 
 God was able to raise him up even from the 
 dead, enabled him to look through the temporal 
 Canaan to the eternal inheritance of which it was 
 only the shadow and the preparation. 
 
 It is clear, then, that the promise is yet to be 
 fulfilled. Abraham waits for it; his posterity 
 wait for it. " These all," says the apostle, " died 
 in faith, not having received the promises, but 
 having seen them and greeted them from afar, 
 and having confessed that they were strangers 
 and pilgrims on the earth." But who are 
 Abraham's children? Are they the circumci- 
 sion only ? Not the circumcision only, but the 
 uncircumcision also. " For," says St. Paul, " If 
 ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs 
 according to promise." Believers stand there- 
 fore where Abraham stood, not having received 
 the promises but "greeting them from afar." 
 There is wealth of suggestion in these facts. 
 
THE EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 225 
 
 They help us to understand Hfe's failure — to 
 realise our hopes — the relation of the temporal 
 to the eternal, and the office of faith in a chang- 
 ing world. 
 
 We need not labour to prove that the present 
 life does not realise the promises of God to ns and 
 in us. I say "in us" as well as "to us," be- 
 cause every man has intuitions of enjoyment, 
 honour, and immortality which he expects life to 
 realise. They are born with him, and as clearly 
 prophesy of the things they crave as hunger and 
 thirst prophesy of food and drink. But the 
 earthly Canaan does not satisfy these prophetic 
 cravings. The most prosperous find at last only 
 a burial-place. Their possessions pass to others. 
 The world is no everlasting possession. We 
 long for immortality, but we do not find it here. 
 " The things which are seen are temporal." The 
 promises which are written on our hearts are 
 reaffirmed by the Word of God. The present 
 does not satisfy, and yet we are told that the 
 meek-spirited shall possess the earth and shall 
 be refreshed in the multitude of peace. " The 
 kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the 
 kingdom under the whole heaven," says Daniel, 
 
2 26 THE EyERL/lSriNG POSSESSION. 
 
 " shall be given to the people of the saints of the 
 Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting 
 kingdom." Christ reiterates the promise, de- 
 claring: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall 
 inherit the earth," " All things are yours," cries 
 the apostle ; " whether . . . the world, or life, or 
 death, or things present, or things to come." Is 
 the world ours ? Do the saints possess it ? Gen- 
 eration after generation has passed away, realis- 
 ing little more in the visible present than conflict, 
 temptation, and martyrs* graves. God's people 
 do not, certainly, rule the earth. It is largely 
 in the hands of those who are foreign to God. 
 They are strangers in it. They dwell in tents, 
 like Abraham and his children. They see the 
 "wicked in great power, and flourishing like a 
 green bay-tree," while they more often inherit 
 poverty and pain than prosperity. They die 
 and turn again to their dust, like other men, and 
 then all their thoughts seem to perish. The 
 earth which they are to inherit yields them, in 
 brief, no rest for their souls, no permanent joy, 
 no sure, unchanging foundation for their hopes, 
 no immortality of life and love. Their chief 
 experience in the present is the experience of 
 
THE EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 
 
 227 
 
 life's fickleness, uncertainty, and weariness. 
 They confess, with the patriarchs, that they are 
 "pilgrims and strangers on the earth." Well 
 said Paul : " If in this life only we have hope in 
 Christ, we are of all men most miserable." If 
 His promise means nothing more than the in- 
 heritance which we have in this present life, then 
 we are cruelly deceived; — for His will brings 
 us into conflict with the flesh, makes the world 
 unfriendly to us, and yields us no brighter hope 
 than the possible supremacy of the Christian 
 Church in the far-off future — no richer compen- 
 sation than the sense of having sacrificed our- 
 selves and crucified our earthly desires for the 
 possession of a burial-place in which life and its 
 unfulfilled promises must be buried together. 
 
 It is clear that for us, as for Abraham, the 
 present does not exhaust the promises of God. 
 We must look for their fulfilment to that regen- 
 erated earth into which the resurrection shall 
 usher all who have died in the faith, from Adam 
 and Abel and Enoch to the latest saint over 
 whom mourners weep. But are we to ignore 
 and despise the present? Has it no relation to 
 the eternal ? Is it only illusory and obstructive ? 
 
228 THE EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 
 
 These questions bring us to our second point: 
 the relation of the temporal to the eternal. Life's 
 failure to realise our hopes may be variously 
 interpreted. Some adopt the Epicurean inter- 
 pretation of the mystery : " Let us eat, drink, 
 and be merry to-day: for to-morrow we die." 
 Get all the good you can out of the present; 
 save what you can from the wreck. The ship 
 is sinking ; the ocean of oblivion will soon swal- 
 low you up. All the possibilities of pleasure 
 perish in the grave ; revel and riot while you 
 may. 
 
 Others run to the opposite extreme and adopt 
 the ascetic viev/ of life. Ignore, they say, the 
 present, with its relations, associations, and pur- 
 suits, altogether; they are essentially hostile 
 to God and the Christian life. Withdraw into 
 the cloister; put on sackcloth, crucify every 
 affection which looks earthward, and spend your 
 time in meditation and prayer. The one view 
 proceeds upon the assumption that there is no 
 promise beyond the temporal ; the other assumes 
 that the promise is altogether beyond and inde- 
 pendent of the temporal. 
 
 The truth, as usual, lies between the two ex- 
 
THIS EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 229 
 
 tremes. We are to realise the promise, not in 
 the temporal, nor apart from it, hwi through it. 
 The earthly Canaan was the image of the heav- 
 enly inheritance, Abraham was led out through 
 it into the knowledge of God and dependence 
 upon Him. His pilgrim experience strengthened 
 his faith, and through the fading of the earthly 
 promise he gained a clearer vision of the eternal 
 things beyond. So his posterity found a wilder- 
 ness on the other side of the Red Sea ; but they 
 entered into a closer acquaintance with God and 
 His will and providential care. When the land 
 flowing with milk and honey was reached, they 
 had to encounter many foes and painful vicissi- 
 tudes; but they found a Temple, with its pro- 
 phetic sacrifices and eloquent types pointing on 
 to a Redeemer and His better kingdom. When, 
 at a later period, their land sank away from 
 them and they were submerged in captivity to 
 a strange people, they heard the voices of the 
 prophets and saw through the gloom the golden 
 walls of " the city which hath the foundations." 
 And when, again, they were under the Roman 
 yoke, and literally .strangers in their own land, 
 Christ arose upon their view, a " bright and 
 
230 THE EyERLASTING POSSESSION. 
 
 morning star " to all who looked for the conso- 
 lation of Israel, heralding a new day of spiritual 
 life and light and glory. Their temporal ex- 
 periences were like a series of dissolving views, 
 each one fading into some brighter vision ; and 
 still the people of God are looking through all 
 the changes and chances of this mortal life for 
 brighter things to come. The earthly Canaan 
 was their school-room, in which they were 
 taught by object-lessons to know God, and 
 trained for that nobler citizenship which awaited 
 them. 
 
 Nov/, precisely that is the relation of the things 
 seen and temporal to " the things unseen and 
 eternal." They are neither to be idoHsed as if 
 they were ends of being, nor ignored as if they 
 were necessarily evil, but to be used as means 
 of knowing God, and as affording a discipline 
 or education for the higher, freer life to come. 
 If you consider the present world in this view, 
 as the school-room in which we may be taught 
 and disciplined for eternity, I think you will see 
 that the temporal things have their proper and 
 blessed uses. They are the picture-forms in 
 which eternal truths are made known to us as 
 
THE EyERMSTlNG POSSESSION. 231 
 
 they could not be known otherwise. Creation, 
 in its manifold hues and shapes, gives expression 
 to the invisible power within. We may read the 
 divine wisdom, might, and love in it, just as we 
 read the emotions of a human soul in the fea- 
 tures of the living face. We are drawn out of 
 ourselves to seek the invisible forces which play 
 through the material world in the light and 
 growth and beauty which our eyes witness 
 everywhere. Not in the realms of abstract 
 thought does the child or the man learn of God, 
 but through the creation which witnesses of the 
 Creator. If some will not heed the voices which 
 would lead them on to the sanctuary of God's 
 presence, the fault is not in His world, but in 
 their deaf ears, which will hear nothing but the 
 movement of a vast machine in the measured 
 roll of the universe. Christ's Incarnation is the 
 crowning evidence of God's purpose to teach us 
 " the invisible things . . . through the things 
 that are made." 
 
 The daily ministries also of the world out- 
 side of us are constantly bringing near to us the 
 Providence by which we are sustained. The 
 daily bread is a perpetual sign of the divine 
 
232 
 
 THE EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 
 
 presence. The farmer sows the seed, but he 
 cannot control the unseen power which crowns 
 the seed with the abundant harvest. The prod- 
 ucts of our industry arc all gathered out of in- 
 visible hands. Let a man look through them to 
 the power which gives the increase, and he will 
 find himself in communion with a God who 
 cares for his soul as w^ell as his body. He will 
 find in the lavv' of material growth the law of 
 spiritual life. He will be able to understand the 
 logic of our Lord's saying, when He drev/ (as 
 He so often did) lessons from nature : " If God 
 so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day 
 is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, how^ 
 much more shall He clothe you, O ye of little 
 faith!" and the deep significance of that other 
 saying : " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
 he also reap." 
 
 And so, too, the various relations of life are 
 the shadows of divine realities. Viewed, not as 
 permanent forms, but as the figures of something 
 higher, holier, truer, they are full of meaning. 
 The child learns in the family the authority of 
 law administered in love. The parent is taught 
 the sacredness of that childish trust which none 
 
THE EyERLASrihlG POSSESSION. 233 
 
 but a fiend would betray, and he may know from 
 what his child is to him what he may be to God. 
 Fatherhood and motherhood are but feeble types 
 of that which is possible in the great Father 
 towards those who trust Him. Marriage reflects 
 the mystical union of Christ and His Church, 
 and brotherhood is the image of the heavenly 
 society. If we merely look at the forms of our 
 temporal life, and see no happiness beyond them, 
 we must be sorely disappointed when they fade 
 away, as fade they must. But when we look 
 through them to the eternal life, in which they 
 are to be glorified and immortalised, we know 
 how to use them wisely, and secure for them, 
 by Christianising them, a permanence which they 
 could not hav^e on earth. 
 
 But not only do things temporal shadow forth 
 divine truths ; they form, in their grouping 
 around each life, a discipline which develops 
 character and educates us for the heavenly in- 
 heritance. They are for ever changing, and to 
 those who look for an earthly Canaan life's 
 racking disappointments, and shifting fortunes, 
 and desolating sorrows seem to make it a vast 
 wilderness. They dream of a paradise which 
 
234 
 
 THE EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 
 
 they never find. They try to make for them- 
 selves a resting-place, — as Lot did when he 
 pitched his tent towards Sodom, — but God 
 drives them out by some fiery providence which 
 consumes their hopes, and would in mercy teach 
 them that this is not their rest. But to those 
 who see in the earthly Canaan only a prepara- 
 tion for the heavenly, life's changes are ordered 
 in God's providence for a blessed purpose. 
 The kaleidoscope reveals only darkness and 
 confusion to one v/ho will not look through it 
 to the light ; but when the light streams in, each 
 turn of the glass reveals some new form of 
 beauty. When we look through the present to 
 eternity, and see that present in the hght of 
 heavenly promise, each turn of the glass, though 
 it may throw our plans into confusion, and break 
 up our earthly hopes, and desolate our home 
 circle, yet discloses some new and blessed ex- 
 perience. Through the w^asting of our material 
 wealth we realise in our souls a better and more 
 enduring substance. Through the cares and 
 conflicts and disappointments of each year we 
 see more of the Saviour's preciousness and 
 power. Through the bereavements v/hich spoil 
 
THE El^ERLASTING POSSESSION. 235 
 
 our earthly attachments we enter into brighter 
 experiences of heaven's reality and love. Faith 
 sees, when the tears are wiped away, that all 
 things are working together for good. 
 
 Faith, you perceive, is the realising and sus- 
 taining power in this changing world. This is 
 its high oflfice. It has well been called the 
 " substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
 things not seen." It is faith which sees the 
 heavenly Canaan reflected in the earthly. It is 
 faith which opens the door of the ark, and bids 
 hope spread its wings, like the dove, and bring 
 back some oliv^e-leaf plucked ofT, to cheer the 
 imprisoned soul and assure it of the rest be- 
 yond. It is faith which glorifies the present 
 with the spirit of the invisible, and makes us 
 content to be pilgrims and strangers on the earth. 
 It is faith which pierces the angriest storm-cloud 
 and sings like a bird in the upper heavens while 
 the lightnings play below. It is faith which, 
 like the man at the masthead looking over the 
 fog and guiding the ship by that which is unseen 
 to those below, steers a straight course into the 
 peaceful harbour. 
 
 If you would realise the joy of being, you 
 
236 THE EVERLASTING POSSESSION. 
 
 must walk by faith, not by sight. Those who 
 walk by sight only, believing nothing which 
 their senses cannot perceive, make the world 
 their dungeon. Their noblest faculties wither 
 in the gloom, and though they may revel for a 
 little, the walls close round them and the dun- 
 geon becomes their tomb. The eyes of the soul 
 are darkened, and they see only the bare, cold 
 walls of their dwelling. Faith is the soul's sec- 
 ond sight ; it sees, through the earthly and the 
 temporal, things unseen and eternal. It is not 
 a sickly sentiment, opposed to the practical and 
 exercised apart from the common life. It sees 
 a beauty in nature, and breathes in an exhilara- 
 tion from the everlasting hills which the unbe- 
 liever knows not. It finds a meaning in the 
 pure relations of life, and gleans lessons from 
 them, which make them ever sacred. It digni- 
 fies the commonest task, and enables the man 
 in his counting-house or at the bench to do 
 immortal work by doing all to the glory of God. 
 It reveals to the mourner a Saviour in every 
 sorrow, and down through the years of our pil- 
 grimage, and beyond the burial-place which 
 awaits every one of us, it discloses the better 
 
THE EyERLA STING POSSESSION. 237 
 
 country, the land which is to be our everlasting 
 possession — the pearly gates of the New Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 Learn, then, as you look into the shadowy 
 future stretching away before you, how to use 
 the present life. Don't rest your hopes upon 
 it; don't seek satisfaction from it; don't ex- 
 pect permanency in it. Some of us who cher- 
 ish high hopes now may before another dawn 
 have found only the possession of a burial-place. 
 But while we VvTould not have you rest in and 
 idolise the temporal, we would have you look 
 through it into the divine life which it shadows 
 forth, — recognising the royal Giver in His gifts, 
 and honouring Him in their use, — entering into 
 the eternal society of which the home circle is 
 the transient image, — heeding the duties which 
 press upon you in your business as duties which 
 He commands, — accepting the trials which meet 
 you as stern but merciful preceptors, — and de- 
 veloping through all life's changes faith, hope, 
 patience, charity, — in a word, the character 
 which shall qualify you for that higher life 
 when we shall have put off the masks of the 
 flesh and stand as we really are before our God. 
 
XIII. 
 
 (( 
 
 MV ^oru and MV ^^*'' 
 
XIII. 
 "MY LORD AND MY GOD." 
 
 Thomas answered and said tinto Him, My Lord and 
 ffiy God.^^ST. John xx. 28. 
 
 THOMAS stood in the presence of the risen 
 Christ. The other disciples had told him, 
 " We have seen the Lord." Doubting, he had 
 repHed : " Except I shall see in His hands the 
 print of the nails, and put my finger into the 
 print of the nails, and thrust my hand into 
 His side, I will not believe." The Christ now 
 offered to him sensible proof — the scarred hands 
 and side. But doubt vanished like a flash. 
 There was something in that presence that 
 wrought instantaneous conviction. He seems 
 not to have accepted the proffered test of real- 
 ity. He was convinced of the fact that Christ 
 had risen from the dead, and more, — much 
 more, — he realised in the profoundest depths 
 of his feeling, as by a sudden revelation, all that 
 241 
 
242 ''MY LORD AND MY GOD." 
 
 the fact meant for him personally. He gives us 
 the fullest confession of faith that had yet been 
 made by any of the disciples : " My Lord and 
 my God." This confession has peculiar interest 
 for us, because it stands midway between the 
 faith of the disciples before the resurrection and 
 that which afterwards united them in a closer 
 spiritual relation to their Lord. It is the very 
 full expression of that which must unite us to a 
 risen and Hving Lord, " He that liveth, and was 
 dead; and behold, He is alive for evermore." 
 But Thomas stood in the presence of his Lord. 
 He sazv and believed. How then can his faith 
 be taken as the standard of the faith to which 
 we are called? Our Lord, anticipating the 
 period of His absence in which we live, adds 
 the saying, " Because thou hast seen me, thou 
 hast believed : blessed are they that have not 
 seen, and yet have believed." It is possible, 
 then, for us to stand in his relation of absolute, 
 personal, glad conviction, " not having seen." 
 Let us seek to understand how this may be. 
 
 Thomas believed because he saw; but that 
 which he saw was not the wJiole of that zvhich 
 he believed. That which he saw was the ground 
 
"A/y LORD AND MY GOD." 243 
 
 of a faith in something which he did not see 
 with the bodily eyes. His confession was not 
 the cold assent of an intellect convinced of a 
 fact about Christ by sensible proof. He did 
 not look at the scars and say : " I am convinced 
 that the stories are true, and that you have actu- 
 ally risen from the dead." He looked through 
 this fact to the glory of the divine Person which 
 — as in a burst of light — it revealed to him. 
 It was not the reason only, but warm spiritual 
 affections and perceptions, which spoke in the 
 exclamation, " My Lord and my God." That 
 which he saw through the veil of a visible pres- 
 ence remains to us. It is true that the person 
 of Christ is only known to us through certain 
 authentic records, compiled by persons who 
 lived and w-alked with Him on earth more than 
 eighteen hundred years ago. Those ancient 
 records stand in the place of that bodily form 
 which Thomas saw. I am disposed, however, 
 to think that the proof of Christ's having lived, 
 died, and risen again is quite as strong for us in 
 them as the sensible proof was for Thomas. If 
 Christ had continued to manifest Himself visibly 
 on the earth as He did to Thomas, the critics, 
 
244 ^' ^Y LORD AND MY GOD." 
 
 who have no moral sympathy with nor capabihty 
 of perceiving the meaning of the fact, would 
 still find reason tp discredit the evidence of their 
 senses, as they do the historic testimony, — 
 " Neither would they be persuaded, though one 
 rose from the dead." We have the vi^ritten 
 records. We may look at them with the cold, 
 critical gaze of the intellect, and find abundant 
 evidence that such a man as Jesus Christ really 
 lived, suffered, died, and even rose again. We 
 may accept the evidence, but He will only be 
 to us as any other historic character of the past. 
 We shall have accepted certain facts about Christ, 
 but fall very far short of the faith of Thomas. 
 We shall be just where he would have been if, 
 accepting the sensible proofs of Christ's having 
 risen, he had believed the fact, and failed to 
 perceive and receive the divine personality which 
 it disclosed to him. There are many who feel 
 the wisdom of Christ's teaching and the power 
 of His example ; but they never get beyond this. 
 They are like persons who have no soul to feel 
 the power of the masterpiece of sculpture or of 
 painting. A Raphael's " Madonna " is only to 
 them a mass of coloring, or the " Apollo " a 
 
"MY LORD AND MY GOD." 245 
 
 skilfully carved stone. The genius, the feeling, 
 the thought, which li\-c in these works, they have 
 no capacity to appreciate. They miss entirely 
 the beauty, enjoyment, and living power of 
 works of genius. 
 
 There is within the external facts of the 
 gospel, or rather shining out through them, a 
 beauty of moral character which has made itself 
 felt and been a convincing power in every age. 
 Every man who is alive in his perceptions to the 
 attractions of goodness, purity, and truth is 
 compelled to reverence the character of Christ. 
 We have a most striking illustration of this fact 
 in the language of one of the leaders of that 
 movement towards religious reform which has 
 made memorable in India the last half-century. 
 " Our business," he writes, " is with the spiritual, 
 universal, and living Christ. Not the Son of 
 man, but the Son of God, in Christ, is needful 
 for our salvation. In the purely human Christ 
 we can hardly feel any interest ; but the divine 
 elements of His character come home to every 
 man's bosom and business, and are of the high- 
 est importance to our redemption as involving 
 the eternal and universal principles of ethics. 
 
246 "MY LORD AhID MY GOD." 
 
 He does not come to us as God, the Father, 
 Ruler, and Saviour, in human form ; nor is He 
 to us a mere good man who hved a pious life 
 and died a noble death. He stands before us 
 always as the incarnation of faith and loyalty to 
 God, an example of self-sacrificing devotion to 
 truth. He is to be accepted in spirit, and con- 
 verted into an internal fact of our life. He is to 
 live in us perpetually as the spirit of godliness. 
 We do not care to believe in an outward and 
 dead Nazarene; but we do care to assimilate 
 the Spirit of Christ to our souls. Thus the Spirit 
 of Christ shall constantly abide in us as the 
 living Christ!" Such was the power of Christ 
 over a mind struggling honestly through the 
 darkest prejudice towards moral truth ; interest- 
 ing because showing how powerful the person- 
 ality of Christ is, and how it emerges from the 
 historic facts, and how men who love righteous- 
 ness perceive and feel its influence. " Having 
 not seen, they have in some sort believed." 
 
 But this perception of moral beauty and power 
 in Him still falls short of that full perception 
 of the truth which Thomas reached. Keshub 
 Chunder Sen, and others like him, who reverence 
 
"MY LORD AND MY GOD." 247 
 
 Christ as the great Master in righteousness, stand 
 where the believing disciples did before His 
 resurrection. They called Him, with an ever- 
 deepening reverence, " Master and Lord." 
 They were awed by something in Him which 
 was more than human, and which made even 
 the emissaries of His foes turn back from Him 
 abashed, saying : " Never man spake like this 
 man." But they did not perceive the real truth 
 of His personality. It vaguely dawned upon 
 some of them, but not as a full realisation. 
 They caught glimpses of the truth through the 
 correspondence of His mighty works with His 
 more than human character. When He subdued 
 the storm, they cried out : " What manner of 
 man is this, that even the winds and the sea 
 obey Him? " — but that the Man was God they 
 did not then see. It was not until they stood 
 in the presence of the risen Lord that the full 
 meaning of His words, in answer to Philip's 
 demand, " Show us the Father," was realised. 
 " Have I been so long time with you, and yet 
 hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath 
 seen me hath seen the Father." Here Thomas 
 stood ; Christ had been a long time with him, 
 
248 "MY LORD AND MY GOD." 
 
 and yet he had not known Him : now he knew 
 Him. The fact of the resurrection was not so 
 much a proof of his Lord's divinity as it was a 
 disclosure of the divinity, which Thomas had 
 but dimly suspected in all his intercourse with 
 that sinless life on earth. 
 
 That which he perceived in the fulness of its 
 power, we too may see and feel and adore. 
 In the fact of the resurrection we have a con- 
 firmation and full revelation of the truth of 
 Christ's person. The moral beauty of His char- 
 acter is defective without it. If we leave out 
 this fact, and look at Him only through the or- 
 dinary human conditions of His life, He may be 
 to us an ideal character ; but the ideal is in our 
 imagination ; the imagination is not a faithful 
 reflection of the original. — He claimed to be 
 that which He was not ; He said that He would 
 rise from the dead, and He did not ; His word 
 cannot be trusted, for events falsified it; His 
 proposed work of redemption failed ; He is at 
 best only a memory, which has no power to 
 realise in us the life which He promised to 
 impart. It may be said that He " lives " as all 
 great men live — by the force of their example 
 
"MY LORD AND MY GOD." 
 
 H9 
 
 or influence ; but the expression is only a rhe- 
 torical trope : He does not live for us, personally 
 and potentially. Here is the defect in all those 
 partial views of Christ which see in Him only 
 the supremely good man, and not the risen, liv- 
 ing "Lord of all." There is no bridge across 
 the gulf which yawns between our incapacity 
 and the ideal. The Hindoo reformer to whom 
 we have referred saw in Christ an impersonation 
 of faith, love, righteousness, and sacrifice which 
 is to be accepted in spirit and " converted into 
 an internal fact of our life " ; but we are left to 
 do the converting part ourselves, which is just 
 that which we cannot do. It is just at this point 
 that we need a Saviour. Herein resides the 
 peculiar distinction of Christianity over every 
 other religious system. It contains within itself 
 the converting forces. " We all, with unveiled 
 face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the 
 Lord, are transformed into the same image from 
 glory to glory." 
 
 The resurrection explains and accounts for the 
 transformations of character Vv^hich have singu- 
 larly marked the progress of Christianity. It 
 discloses to us in the perfect Lord " the mighty 
 
250 "MY LORD AND MY GOD." 
 
 God, the everlasting Father." It is not so much 
 a proof of Christ's divinity as the necessary and 
 natural manifestation of it. If we look only at 
 the alleged fact we are staggered, perhaps, by 
 the phenomenal event of a man who had died, 
 rising again. But when we look through the 
 fact to the Person who rose, the difficulties van- 
 ish ; the mystery of the human hfe is solved; 
 the resurrection becomes a revelation ; it clears 
 up all that was strange in His character, words, 
 deeds, and promises. The whole truth flashes 
 upon us, and finds expression in Thomas's 
 words: " My Lord and my God." 
 
 This, then, is the faith to which v/c are called 
 and by which we may realise power. It is the 
 faith of personal trust in a living, though unseen, 
 Christ. He lives for us, as our representative 
 before high Heaven, and in us, if we will, by 
 the pov/er and presence of the Holy Spirit. 
 Not a dead hero, nor a reminiscence, nor an 
 inspiring example merely, but the divine Sa- 
 viour, living in all the tenderness of that un- 
 wearying love, the breadth and depth of that sym- 
 pathy, the sovereignty of that wisdom, the 
 patience of that saving purpose, the majesty of 
 
"MY LORD AND MY GOD." 251 
 
 that truth, righteousness, and redeeming power, 
 which appeared in all His lowly walk among the 
 poor, the sick, the sad, and the sin-burdened on 
 earth. We know about Him through the 
 written records. The critical evidence is im- 
 portant for our understandings, but He was 
 certainly never evolved from the Jewish con- 
 sciousness of the writers. He is manifestly 
 above them and earth and time. We see Him 
 alive from the dead, risen, glorified, evidently 
 alive for evermore. We are carried out of the 
 historic records. He vanishes out of our sight. 
 We know Him now no more in time, but we arc 
 for ever in communion with the unseen and eter- 
 nal, for God was in Christ. He has not left us 
 comfortless. He is with us, by His Holy Spirit, 
 ruling, teaching, helping, enlightening, purify- 
 ing — " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and for ever." 
 
 I have tried to show you that the glory which 
 Thomas saw in the risen Saviour may be quite 
 as' close and real and living for us as for him, 
 because it is the glory of God in the face of 
 Jesus Christ. The blessedness of the relation in 
 which Thomas stood may be ours, through faith, 
 
252 
 
 "MY LORD AND MY GOD." 
 
 though we see Him not But observe how in- 
 tensely personal his faith was. He did not Sdiy, 
 "Thou art indeed the Lord and God," but — like 
 a child lost in a dark, bewildering forest, who 
 suddenly recognises in the shadowy form ap- 
 proaching him his own seeking father — he ex- 
 claimed : "My 'Lord and my God." Christ was 
 never after that a character of the past to him, 
 nor an absent Saviour. He vanished out of his 
 sight, but He was still a living reality to him, in 
 the same experience of faith as that which St. 
 Peter describes as the experience of all believers, 
 One " whom having not seen yc love ; in whom, 
 though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye 
 rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory : 
 receiving the end of your faith, even the salva- 
 tion of 3^our souls." 
 
 Christ must be known in such an experience 
 of personal revelation and personal surrender, 
 or He remains outside of us and we remain un- 
 blessed. Do not suppose that He is a sort of 
 bartering Lord, who demands a certain quality 
 or degree of faith as a condition of His favour. 
 It is simply that no faith which is not personal 
 trust is really faith in Him at all. It may be an 
 
"MY LORD AND MY GOD.' 
 
 253 
 
 historic or prepositional faith about Him; but 
 that differs as widely from trust on Him as be- 
 lief in the system of medicine which your phy- 
 sician practises differs from confiding yourself to 
 him and taking his medicine when you are sick. 
 Personal trust realises power, because it is a 
 yielding to Christ in all that He is, and would 
 be, to us. He stands at the door and knocks. 
 If any of you are not blessed, it is because you 
 will not let Him come in. You will not yield 
 to Him as your sovereign Lord, and therefore 
 He is not in you the power of God unto salva- 
 tion. You oppose your will to Him at some 
 point. He cannot be Lord and God to you if 
 you have other gods than Him. The gods of 
 your ambition, your profit, your pleasure, \-our 
 pride, must be cast down. Doubt need not 
 stand in the way. Honest doubt \y\\\ perceive, 
 through the shadow, that to walk as Christ 
 walked is the true righteousness. Accepting 
 this truth, and doing it, the doubter will soon 
 emerge from his darkness, as Thomas did, and 
 confess Christ " Lord and God." But there 
 must be self-surrender. " He that will save his 
 life" — his present, earthly, selfish life — "shall 
 
2S4 
 
 "MY LORD AND MY COD." 
 
 lose life " ; and he that " will lose his life " — his 
 self-life — for Christ's sake shall find the true 
 life. That is the law of Christ's kingdom. The 
 trouble with many of us is that we do not trust 
 Him enough to risk the present loss and give up 
 our poor scheme of life. We are not willing, 
 for His sake, — for the sake of the righteousness, 
 the goodness, the eternal glory, which He rep- 
 resents, — to let the present indulgences, the 
 possible realisation of our delusive dreams, go. 
 The trust which dares to do it, in a full sur- 
 render, realises the abiding presence and power 
 of a living Christ. " I am crucified with Christ," 
 said St. Paul ; " nevertheless I live ; and yet not 
 I, but Christ liveth in me." That was a real 
 experience for him. It may be real in us. 
 Knowing Him as a living presence with our 
 spirit, we know the Father. 
 
 Do we not need above all things, in this dark 
 world, to find and know our God? He is not 
 far from every one of us. Let me tell you vrherc 
 you may meet Him. Back of that physical ex- 
 istence which you share with the brute creatures, 
 and back, too, of that which you call your out- 
 ward life, with its relations and obligations and 
 
"MY LORD AND MY GOD." 255 
 
 business, there is the hidden, secret Hfe of the 
 soul. Here the " you," the true self, Hvcs and 
 broods and knows itself as the world cannot 
 know it. Here every man is alone ; and it is an 
 awful, gloomy solitariness to many. They can 
 find nothing better to do in life than to seek 
 diversion — something which will make them 
 forget themselves. Here, in this silent, lonely 
 chamber of your self-consciousness, every one 
 of you has at some time felt the brooding, awful 
 mystery of life. Tlie sense of yourself, and the 
 awful loneliness of your being, as of one lost under 
 the midnight dreariness of an arctic sea, has 
 oppressed you. Here every one of you has felt 
 at times a longing to be something better than 
 he is. You have felt the shame of your mean, 
 low, selfish lives. The vision of something 
 higher and nobler has passed before you, and 
 you have aspired and resolved ; but the chains 
 of earthly habit have been too strong for you. 
 Here, when your lives have been made desolate 
 and your hearts tempest-tossed with grief, you 
 have longed for som.e rift in the overhanging 
 clouds, some light to shine through from the 
 unseen world, some glimpse of stars in the deep, 
 
25G "MY LORD AND MY GOD." 
 
 voiceless azure of immensity, to save you from 
 utter despair. It is here, upon the threshold of 
 this inner room of our being, a room which 
 opens towards the infinities, that God, in Christ, 
 waits to reveal Himself. You have felt Him 
 here, every one of you, though perhaps you 
 knew Him not, pleading with you to turn from 
 your sin and selfishness and yield yourselves to 
 Him and His service. You have gone out from 
 this presence, this pleading of your better nature, 
 and tried to forget it amid the excitements of the 
 world. Oh, to give up resistance and in the 
 silence and secrecy of your soul to confess your 
 need and sin and weakness, to see in His 
 wounded hands and side the pledges of the 
 Father's pardoning love, to " let the light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the face of 
 Jesus Christ " shine in your heart, to look into 
 that face with an absorbing devotion and a self- 
 surrendering trust, saying in all the testimony 
 of your life, as well as of your lips, " IMy Lord 
 and my God "! — this is life eternal, for it Is to 
 know God, and Jesus Christ, whom He hath 
 sent. Knowing Jesus, you know the Father. 
 Trusting Him, God is your Father. Yielding 
 
"MY LORD AND MY GOD." 257 
 
 to Him in the obedience of love, you make way 
 for God to take possession of you and to save 
 you. Living out of yourself in self-devotion to 
 Christ, you live in a new world of fellowships, 
 relations, and sympathies ; you live above the 
 present, in the communion of the unseen and 
 eternal. Drawn out of your own selfishness to 
 Christ, and to God in Christ, you have found 
 the true life for man. 
 
XIV. 
 
XIV. 
 OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and an- 
 other reapeth. I sent yoii to reap that luheiron ye 
 bestowed no labour : other men laboured, and ye are 
 entered into their labours. — St. John iv. 37, 38. 
 
 OUR Lord had been talking with the Samari- 
 tan woman. She was, }-ou remember, at 
 first flippant, then interested, then serious, and 
 then so thoroughly aroused that she left the 
 vessel which she had brought to the well, and 
 hurried back to the Samaritan town to bid her 
 fellow- citizens, " Come, see a man, which told 
 me all things that ever I did : is not this the 
 Christ?" Meantime the disciples, \\\\o had 
 gone into the town to bu}^ food, returned, and 
 urged Him to eat. But He answered : " My 
 meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and 
 to finish His work." The ardour of His soul 
 for God and truth consumed every lower feeling 
 261 
 
262 OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 and lifted Him out of the low range of bodily 
 necessities. The return of the disciples sug- 
 gested their part in the joy which filled His own 
 soul. He was reluctant to leave the pure heights 
 in which His mind was ranging, and descend 
 to ordinary things. The budding fields were 
 spread out, rich with promise, before Him. 
 Beyond them was the Samaritan town, tie 
 saw the people, stirred by the woman's words, 
 hastening towards Him. Still dreaming of 
 the spiritual, He gathers up a figure from the 
 fields and travels quickly on with it to the ap- 
 proaching multitude : " Say not ye. There are 
 yet four months, and then cometh harvest? 
 behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and 
 look on the fields, for they are white already to 
 the harvest." " See how quickly the seed ripens. 
 The soil is ready for it. The Spirit of God at- 
 tends it. Already these people come to see and 
 inquire." This, He goes on to show, is a field 
 worth toiling in. He was the sower who went 
 forth to sow. The disciples were to be the 
 reapers. Sure and happy. He would have them 
 know, would be the reapers* work. " He that 
 reapeth receiveth wages," or a reward. You 
 
OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 263 
 
 shall have, He means, a present joy, a real satis- 
 faction, a continual blessing, in doing the work, 
 but in the results of that ministry there shall be 
 a still richer compensation. The spiritual reaper 
 gathereth fruit unto life eternal. The results 
 are not temporary and fading. The souls 
 brought into the kingdom are gathered unto the 
 final and glorious harvest day of the whole crea- 
 tion. Sovv-er and reaper shall share a common 
 immortality. They shall rejoice together in the 
 immortal fruits. Hence there shall be the 
 reaper's reward in the present, and joy with the 
 Sower hereafter when He shall " see of the tra- 
 vail of His soul, and be satisfied." 
 
 But the Master remicmbers that the sower's 
 pain must precede the reaper's perfect joy. 
 " Herein," He says, with a touch of sadness in 
 His tone, " is the saying verified. One soweth, 
 and another reapeth." Though we shall rejoice 
 together, yet through the travail of my soul the 
 harvest shall be made ready for your reaping. 
 " I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no 
 labour : other men laboured, and ye are entered 
 into their labours." The other men were all 
 those agents, patriarch, lawgiver, prophet, which 
 
264 OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 He employed from the foundation of the world 
 to carry on His work. But He was the chief 
 workman. The sowing was not complete until 
 He had bathed the fields with His own blood, 
 and planted Himself, His own body, as a seed 
 in the furrows. The harvesting did not fairly 
 begin until He had " risen from the dead, and 
 become the first-fruits of them that slept." 
 
 Now the principle which runs through all 
 these words of our Lord is full of interest : 
 "One soweth, another reapeth." All lives are 
 related. No age stands apart from other ages. 
 No life can disentangle itself from obligations to 
 the past, nor help entering into responsible re- 
 lations v."ith the future. Wc take up the loose 
 ends of other men's labours, and throw them for- 
 ward, to be taken up again by succeeding gen- 
 erations. Your life and mine are single threads 
 in the fabric which stretches across the whole of 
 time, from everlasting to everlasting. We are 
 truly noble and useful only as we stand in rela- 
 tion to other lives. No man, or body of men, 
 accomplishes a finished, independent work. The 
 achievements of the present are interlaced with 
 the past, and the same busy, invisible hand 
 
OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 265 
 
 which is at work in all time will, when the 
 workmen of to-day have passed away, weave 
 their work into the life of the future. We live, 
 therefore, not in breaths and years, but in those 
 inspirations which we gather from the undying 
 mind of other ages, and those influences which 
 go kindling down through the coming genera- 
 tions and help to give each its peculiar character 
 before God. Our bodies perish, but ourselves 
 remain, Avrought into the substance of society, 
 and entering into active combinations whose 
 results only the analysis of the last day can fully 
 disclose. 
 
 But we must give more definite shape to the 
 thoughts which the principle suggests. It re- 
 minds us of: 
 
 I. Our indebtedness to the past. 
 II. Our accountability to the future. 
 
 I. " One soweth, and another reapeth." 
 This is true in every department of human at- 
 tainment. Where is the profession which does 
 not gather its treasures out of the writings and 
 dear-bought experiences of men long dead? 
 What, indeed, is the learning which qualifies for 
 any profession but the studious reaping in of 
 
266 OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 harvests which others have sown ? The mind is 
 enlarged, trained, quickened, and enriched by- 
 contact with the fertile genius of other ages. 
 The taste is cultivated and latent talent inspired 
 by acquaintance v/ith its architectural and artis- 
 tic achievements. Time would fail us to tell 
 how largely music, poetry, philosophy, and art 
 owe their present ripeness to impulses drawn 
 from the old Greek and Italian masters. The 
 peculiar culture which our scholars attain and 
 our colleges seek to impart is gathered from the 
 works of men who lived twenty centuries back. 
 We talk of the nineteenth century as if it stood 
 alone and its attainments were due exclusively 
 to the people who li\"c in it. It is true that 
 in those favoured lands where liberty presides the 
 free mind and ready skill of men have wrought 
 grand results. But what strifes, persecutions, 
 and blood that liberty has cost! Through the 
 toils and tears of other men has it ripened into 
 the peculiar heritage we glory in to-day. The 
 real distinction of the age consists in the fact 
 that through our increased facilities for acquir- 
 ing knowledge we have entered more largely 
 than any other into the labours of the past. 
 
OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 267 
 
 The thoughts of men who were wiser than their 
 time, who struggled against scorn and tyranny 
 and died unappreciated, are brought to hght, 
 honoured, and applied. The great minds of every 
 land and age lay their treasures at our feet. 
 Commerce, industry, politics, science, art, are 
 rich in the harvests of thought and experience 
 \vhich they reap from the toils of centuries. 
 Our boasted civilisation is the fruit of conflict, 
 pain, and sacrifice. Ay, its best elements have 
 sprung from the cross of the despised Nazarene, 
 the man Christ Jesus. 
 
 These hasty suggestions disclose to us what 
 may be called a law of " vicarious suffering," 
 wrought into the constitution of human society. 
 The world's best gifts have been enjoyed by 
 those who did not labour for them. Their 
 authors, discoverers, or inventors more often 
 died in poverty and exile than amid glory and 
 applause. We are taught by such examples 
 that goodness and truth are to be loved for 
 their own sake, and not for the praise we may 
 win by them. To advance and establish them 
 is the duty of the individual. He will not 
 labour in vain. There is an immortality in 
 
268 OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 which the sower shall meet the reaper, and they 
 shall rejoice together. 
 
 Now in Christ we have the brightest example 
 of this self-devotion to the most vital and sacred 
 interests of mankind. He seemed to have failed 
 when the stony sepulchre closed round Him. 
 But out of His grave sprang new light and life 
 for the world. Our best and truest blessings 
 have been born of the travail of His soul.' in 
 Gethsemane and on the cruel cross. The world 
 bears witness to this fact in reckoning a new 
 era from the date of His advent. The world's 
 guilt was taken away by His one great sacrifice, 
 the weary, burdensome sense of it from every 
 soul which chose to enter into His grace by 
 faith. The Church of God rose out of the chaos 
 of heathenism. It gave to the world a ministry 
 of reconciliation, sacraments of fellowship and 
 love, and rites of holy worship. It set in 
 motion forces which undermined and overturned 
 the strongholds of false philosophy and degrad- 
 ing superstition. By an inward, silent operation 
 through heart and mind and character, the gos- 
 pel, preached and taught, — though it struggled 
 through centuries of ignorance, — has wrought 
 
OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 269 
 
 revolutions of opinion; changed our modes of 
 thought; elevated our conceptions of virtue; 
 altered our standards of morality ; quickened 
 our sensibilities ; and opened our perceptions to 
 the bright hopes and prospects of a life beyond 
 the grave. It has entered into our social life ; 
 reconstructed the family relations; glorified 
 motherhood ; lifted woman out of degradation ; 
 made home a sanctuary ; thrown its protecting 
 arms around age and infirmity; and breathed 
 the healing influence of that " charity " which 
 " sufTereth long, and is kind," through all our 
 associations. Some one has said that " the debt 
 of literature and art to the Bible is like the debt 
 of vegetation to light." It has supplied the 
 seeds of thought, the suggestive hints, the little 
 germs, the dim conceptions, the outlines of 
 some of the sublimest poems, or passages of 
 poems, to be found in modern literature. It 
 was not the fault of Christianity that the Church 
 for long ages seemed to obstruct scientific 
 thought. It was the inherent vitality of Chris- 
 tianity which burst the bonds when the time 
 was ripe and set mind free. It has enlarged 
 the horizon of human inquiry and opened in- 
 
270 OTHER MEN'S L/iBOURS. 
 
 finite possibilities which are inclusive of all truth. 
 It has purified art by flooding the realm of taste 
 with new and holy conceptions of beauty. The 
 painter has found diviner studies and loftier 
 ideals in the story of the Christ than in the old 
 mythologies. The musician has gathered in- 
 spiration from that story for the sublimest har- 
 monies. Music alone could express that which 
 was first told to the v/orld in the song of angels. 
 It has worked like leaven among the nations, 
 and, fermenting in the minds of men, driven off 
 oppression, wrought mighty reformations, over- 
 turned corrupt institutions, and made way for 
 freedom. It was the direct inspiration of the 
 institutions under which we live and to which 
 we owe our greatness. If they fail, it will be 
 because we were not worthy of them. 
 
 Every department of our modern life has thus 
 been reached and influenced by the gospel. The 
 joys of your home, the protections of society, 
 the refinements which wealth brings, the sym- 
 pathy and tenderness of friends, the pleasures of 
 knowledge, the hopes and consolations which 
 sustain you in sorrow, the consciousness of God's 
 favour, the enjoyment of His grace, the ecstasy 
 
OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 271 
 
 of hope, the communion of kindred hearts in 
 one love — all, all have been secured to us by 
 the living and dying of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 " He laboured, and we have entered into His 
 labours." 
 
 n. Our indebtedness to the past involves an 
 accountability to the futiLve. " Other men shall 
 enter into our labours." If we apply this 
 thought to men collectively, our view of the age 
 is at once widened. The age does not " live 
 unto itself " any more than the individual. We 
 must not judge it by itself alone. It may seem 
 like a period of wild unsettlings, but the plough 
 and the harrow have their work to do. We 
 live, each one of us, in our little day. We can- 
 not see the v/hole development as it is in His 
 sight to whom " a thousand years is as one day, 
 and one day as a thousand years." The great 
 Husbandman is over all. The wheat and the 
 tares must continue to grow together. There 
 will be wheat, and there will be tares. The 
 harvest which some future age shall reap may 
 be better than we think. " Judge nothing be- 
 fore the time, until the Lord come, who will 
 both bring to light the hidden things of dark- 
 
OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 ness, and make manifest the counsels of the 
 heart." 
 
 But there is no uncertainty about our duty as 
 individuals. " To whomsoever much is given, 
 of him shall much be required." Our life in 
 the present, separated from all considerations of 
 duty and immortality, is a bare animal exis- 
 tence. It becomes sublime when, by fidelity to 
 the good and the true, we weave it into the 
 chain of God's holy purposes and so make our- 
 selves sharers in the glorious immortality which 
 is pledged to them. Oh, then " it is not all of 
 life to live, nor all of death to die." Our char- 
 acters and deeds will be working, vital forces 
 after we are gone. We shall have entered into 
 the corporate life of humanity. But that is not 
 all. At the great harvest day sower and reaper 
 shall rejoice together. We can trace through 
 the centuries of history the deathless influence 
 of human lives, and see how their good or bad 
 perpetuates itself. Indeed, history has no more 
 impressive lesson for us than the lesson of its 
 sowings and its reapings. Even we can look 
 back and see what work there will be for the 
 angel reapers by and by. So must the future 
 
OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 273 
 
 of each one of us be. Not only will those who 
 live after us feel our influence, but beyond them 
 still, surveying the whole field of human action, 
 is God, the Judge, and " He requireth that which 
 is past." 
 
 What, then, is our present duty? The day 
 of toil is short. The time for reaping may 
 come quickly to an end. The sunset may be 
 very near for more than one of us. The question, 
 therefore, is an urgent one. To live as if we 
 had no duty beyond the present, as if neither 
 society nor God had any claim upon us, as if 
 the pleasure of our own hearts were the only 
 law to be consulted, is an awful waste of divine 
 possibilities. It is to bury our talent in the 
 earth, and defraud the future and ourselves 
 of the inheritance which belongs to both. To 
 use God's gifts as if we were their sole proprie- 
 tors, to withhold good from those to whom it is 
 due, while we waste mind and time and strength 
 in hoarding up wealth, is to rob God and wrong 
 our own souls. To sift greedily from our mixed 
 inheritance of good and evil only the evil, — sen- 
 sual pleasures, infidel opinions, corrupt practices, 
 selfish maxims, — to propagate them in profane, 
 
274 
 
 OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 selfish, unprincipled lives, rejecting the pure, the 
 spiritual, and the true, is to rank ourselves with 
 the dark enemy of God, and lay up in store 
 against the judgment "fuel for burning." 
 
 Surely it is obvious that the part of a true 
 man is so to live that his life may tell — " tell on 
 ages, tell for God." The law of life is to live 
 up to the fulness of the divinity which is in us, 
 and not merely to be. Our first duty is to 
 make our own characters fruitful. We can only 
 do this by opening our hearts to the power of 
 the Christ and sufTering His sharp truth to plough 
 through our pride and break up our fallow 
 ground. We can only do this by entering into 
 the sonship which He has manifested and made 
 possible for us. We can only do this by listen- 
 ing to the voice of God dwelling in us, and 
 walking worthy of Him, in all purity and good- 
 ness and truth. 
 
 Living thus in trustful surrender to the love 
 and power of Jesus Christ, we shall have our 
 fruit unto holiness. Our personal, though un- 
 conscious, influence will be for good: and not 
 only so ; every impulse of our hearts will be to 
 make the world better and brighter and happier 
 
OTHER MliN'S LABOURS. 275 
 
 for our living. It is certainly a truth, and one 
 alike to encourage and warn, that the grave 
 will not end our influence in time. We hold 
 within ourselves forces and influences which 
 work upon our children and our friends, and 
 through them upon society, and will be repro- 
 ducing themselves, for good or for bad, long 
 after we are gone. Some of us may be think- 
 ing that our course in life, if it be selfish and 
 for evil, concerns only ourselves personally ; but 
 " no man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth 
 unto himself." When the great harvest day 
 shall come, sower and reaper shall meet in the 
 presence of the Lord of the harvest. Then, if 
 we have lived only for ourselves, we shall have 
 to meet the doom of unprofitable servants ; or, 
 worse than profitless, we may find ourselves re- 
 sponsible for whole harvests of tares which we 
 by our evil lives sowed in God's field. It is 
 said that there are whole pages in the Domes- 
 day-book of England upon which is written the 
 word, " Waste, waste, waste." They tell the 
 story of the vindictive invasion of William the 
 Conqueror. How many lives are like that in 
 the sight of God! Whole pages of days and 
 
276 OTHER MEN'S LABOURS. 
 
 years which tell one story of waste — waste of 
 talent, time, manhood, opportunity, influence, 
 and of the divine forbearance. 
 
 But if you choose the good, the right, the 
 true, the pure, you will be sowing ever-flower- 
 ing influences which shall bear their harvests of 
 blessing long after you have gone. The angel 
 reapers may bring ripe sheaves at the last and 
 call them yours, which you scarce dare to own. 
 Your life, which may seem at the close of its 
 brief day so profitless, showing little more in the 
 retrospect than the daily round, the common 
 task, may be found rich in fruits which ripened 
 long years after the sun had set for you. Then 
 sower and reaper shall rejoice together! You 
 may have gone forth " weeping, bearing precious 
 seed"; then you shall "come again with joy, 
 bringing your sheaves with you." 
 
XV. 
 
 malitu in t\)t €i)n^tian Uft. 
 
XV. 
 
 REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN 
 LIFE. 
 
 Not every one that saith unto 7ne, Lord, Lord, shall 
 enter info the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the 
 ivill of my Father wliich is in heaven. — St. Matt. 
 vii. 2 1. 
 
 WISH that Christian people reaHsed more 
 vividly than they do that the most unan- 
 swerable argument for Christianity is a Christian 
 life. This is the sort of demonstration v^hich 
 the world needs to-day. When the telegraphic 
 wires fail to transmit a message, men do not 
 pronounce the whole telegraphic system a fraud ; 
 they know that there is some break in the lines 
 or derangement of the batteries. When Chris- 
 tianity fails to appear in the lives of those who 
 are called Christians, the world is ready to say 
 the whole thing is false. This is unreasonable, 
 but it illustrates our responsibility as professors 
 2 79 
 
28o REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 of religion. If we expect Christianity to pre- 
 vail, we must show that it is a power. We are 
 the lines along which the power may and ought 
 to move. If the power seems to fail, it is not 
 because there is no power, but because there is 
 a break in the lines which should transmit the 
 power. Now, I propose to speak of reality in 
 the Christian life. Our Lord sets it forth in the 
 text, contrasting it with the mere form or ap- 
 pearance of religion. He says that no one shall 
 enter into the kingdom, of heaven who does not 
 do something more real than call Plim " Lord, 
 Lord!" The test of reality is doing the will of 
 His Father which is in heaven. No professions, 
 forms, words, feelings, are real without this. I 
 do not forget that Christianity must have its out- 
 ward forms and expressions. He does not con- 
 demn these. "With the heart man believeth 
 unto righteousness; and with the mouth con- 
 fession is made unto salvation." But the out- 
 ward forms are nothing if they are not the 
 expressions of a living, moving, controlling 
 principle. I like that word " real." It means 
 something which is sound through and through. 
 It means something which is not afraid to face 
 
REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 281 
 
 the light; something which is not afraid to be 
 sifted ; something which is what it seems to be. 
 Men in these days are rightly impatient of shams. 
 They look sharply into things, and they detect 
 shams in others, even though they may be coun- 
 terfeit themselves. They expect practice to be 
 plumb with professions. They generally respect 
 consistency, and know it when they see it. 
 What might not the Christian Church do, in 
 every community where it is planted, if all the 
 influence, wealth, talent, and energy which are 
 nominally on its side Vv^ere really Christian — 
 that is, really consecrated? It is startling to 
 think that, not being so, many must be of those 
 of whom the Saviour says, " They shall not 
 enter the kingdom of heaven." Outside of it 
 now, they are in danger of being left in the 
 outer darkness when the Bridegroom comes. 
 But we will pass directly to the point of our 
 Saviour's words. "To do God's will" is the 
 test or measure of reality in the Christian life. 
 I. And first let us bring to the test our pro- 
 fessions of fait Ji. Of course, professions are 
 false if the faith professed is not genuine. 
 Obedience is essential to the (^fcnuinencss of faith. 
 
282 REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 There is nothing contradictory to the doctrine, 
 " By grace are ye saved, through faith," in our 
 Lord's requirement of obedience. He tells us, 
 as you remember, in another place, " This is the 
 v/ill of God, that ye believe on Him whom He 
 hath sent." But faith is the purest form of 
 obedience. It is not the mere assent of the 
 intellect to the truth about Christ. It is the 
 surrender of the whole man to Him. It in- 
 volves the giving up of the will to His rule. 
 Nothing less than this can satisfy the demands 
 of the gospel, or avail to save our souls. We 
 come to Christ to be saved from sin. His aton- 
 ing blood is the pledge of pardon to those who 
 believe ; but we cannot honestly believe that we 
 are pardoned if in the determined purpose of 
 our soul we are not at war with the sin which 
 crucified Him. We realise the assurance of par- 
 don, in the dawning of a new life, by working 
 with Christ to overcome sin and be righteous. 
 This is our repentance. The man who really 
 submits to the power of the cross is ever repent- 
 ing — not merely feeling self-condemned and 
 sorry, but ever turning with a steady will from 
 darkness to light. So faith works ; and, work- 
 
REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 283 
 
 ing repentance, must there not be a very real 
 obedience in it? Is not the constant crucifix- 
 ion of self and the world a very real thing? Do 
 you profess to believe, and have there not been 
 times in your experience when Christ's Vv'ill 
 seemed to cross your dearest inclinations ; when 
 His promises seemed vague and distant com- 
 pared with the present delights which the world 
 offers ; when some easy, flowery course of sin 
 has opened before }'-ou, and made His way look 
 hard and uninviting, or the scruples and per- 
 plexities and self-denials of His service made 
 the yoke chafe so that you have almost been 
 tempted to throw it off ? To take the hard and 
 uninviting way when we reach these cross-roads 
 of temptation, to let the present delights go and 
 venture all upon the vague and distant promises, 
 to nail the inclinations and thoughts and pas- 
 sions to the cross when they oppose His will, to 
 bear the yoke manfully when it chafes, remem- 
 bering who fainted and died under the burden 
 of our guilt — this is the work of a real faith. 
 They do err who suppose that faith is a cold 
 assent to certain truths, or a mere emotion. 
 The further a true believer travels on in a 
 
284 REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Christian life, the more keenly does he realise 
 that to walk by faith involves duties and con- 
 flicts and self-denials. If the faith which you 
 profess does not bring your thoughts into cap- 
 tivity to the obedience of Christ, and overcome 
 your lusts, and repel your temptations, and 
 make you honest and true and useful in your 
 daily life, it is not Christ's fault. Your faith is 
 not real. You do not want to be saved. You 
 may want and hope to be saved from eternal 
 punishment hereafter, but you do not want to 
 be saved from sin now. If you did, you would 
 have but one controlling purpose in life, namely, 
 to do God's will, whenever it may speak in your 
 consciences, and wherever it may lead, or what- 
 ever it may cost. 
 
 But faith not only works out obedience by 
 repentance: it sets in motion that most active 
 and inclusive of all principles — love. In turn- 
 ing away from sin we bring ourselves under the 
 light and love of our Saviour. A real faith, 
 learning more and more of Christ's sufficiency, 
 works by love, and love is the fulfilling of the 
 law. If a man is moved by this principle, he 
 cannot be satisfied merely with avoiding evil 
 
REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 285 
 
 and doing mechanically his duty. He will be 
 ready to glorify Christ, to do more than he 
 must, to give more than his tenth, to overjioiv in 
 good words and works. The obedience which 
 love compels cannot be measured. It imposes 
 numberless duties, and makes them easy. It 
 requires that you shall suffer long, and be kind, 
 that you shall envy not, that you shall not be 
 puffed up, nor behave yourself unseemly, that 
 you shall not seek your own, nor be easily pro- 
 voked, nor even think evil. It bubbles up like 
 a pure spring of water breaking out in a stag- 
 nant pool, clearing away impurity, selfishness, 
 deceit, and every mean affection. Is this obe- 
 dience? Is this doing God's will? If so, there 
 is certainly no reality in faith without it; for 
 what says Paul himself? "If I have all faith, 
 so as to remove mountains, but have not love, 
 I am nothing." 
 
 II. We have applied the touchstone to our 
 professions of faith. Let us now apply it to our 
 worship. Obedience is necessary to make ivor- 
 sJiip real. 
 
 Worship is the soul's expression of reverence, 
 love, and faith towards God, in forms of praise 
 
286 REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and prayer. Our own service gives very full 
 and beautiful expression to the spirit of worship. 
 It calls us in the penitential sentences to ap- 
 proach Him humbly and penitently. It puts 
 upon our lips the language of thorough, heart- 
 searching confession. It declares to us, " being 
 penitent," the message of pardon. Assuming 
 that we are exercising a hearty repentance and 
 true faith, it teaches us to call God " our Father." 
 The burst of praise follows, and then the Psalms 
 of David, sweeping all human experience, and 
 the Word of life for hungry souls in the chap- 
 ters read. Having cleansed our souls by the 
 confession of sin, and being strengthened by the 
 promises of His Word, we unite our petitions 
 for the common blessings which we need. All 
 over the land, the congregations of our people 
 continually engage in this service. Doubtless 
 many earnest, honest souls engage in it de- 
 voutly, a.nd their prayers and their praises ascend 
 as sweet incense to God. But could we pass 
 from church to church in our cities and villages 
 on any Lord's day, should we not be impressed 
 by a general lack of heartiness, a dreamy list- 
 lessness, lifeless responses? Would not a 
 
RHALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 2S7 
 
 Stranger to it all gather the impression that it is 
 a wearisome formality to the many? Of course 
 I make allowance for human infirmities. He 
 who said to the slumbering disciples, in the gar- 
 den of His agony, " The spirit indeed is willing, 
 but the flesh is weak," knoweth whereof we are 
 made, and can have compassion on our infirmi- 
 ties. But the spirit of the disciples was willing. 
 They were sincere in their purpose to watch 
 with Him. God will, indeed, accept an honest, 
 willing spirit in worship, even though the flesh 
 may be weak. I fear, however, that much of 
 our worship has not the willing spirit in it. 
 God is not worshipped " in spirit and in truth " 
 — that is, 171 reality. Is there any reality in 
 confessing sins which we do not intend to for- 
 sake, in praying " Thy kingdom come. Thy will 
 be done. . . . And forgive us our trespasses, as 
 we forgive those who trespass against us," if we 
 are not seeking first His kingdom and righteous- 
 ness, nor submitting habitually to His will, nor 
 forgiving those who trespass against us? Is 
 there any reality in hearing psalms and hymns 
 sung, and having no heart in the sentiments of 
 prayer and praise which they express ? Is there 
 
288 REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 any reality in sitting where the Word of God is 
 read, and not taking in the meaning of it ? Is 
 there any reaHty in praying the " good Lord to 
 deliver us from inordinate and sinful affections, 
 and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, 
 and the devil," when we mean to go right back 
 to those deceits and continue indulging sinful 
 affections? Is there any reality, as we come 
 to the Lord's table, in seeming to consecrate 
 " ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reason- 
 able, holy, and living sacrifice," when perhaps 
 we really do nothing of the sort — when we in- 
 tend to please ourselves as much as ever, and 
 hold our money as closely as before, and to 
 serve the world no less, and the Church of 
 Christ in its appealing interests no more ? Such 
 worship is far from being real, and if He who 
 once purged the Temple of its profaners should 
 suddenly come to our assemblies, what would 
 He do? what would He say? I think some- 
 thing like this would burst from His lips : " Why 
 call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
 which I say? " 
 
 What, then, is needed to make our worship 
 real ? Is it that the clergy do not read the ser- 
 
REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LITE. 289 
 
 vice well, and therefore the people are not in- 
 terested? There is room for much improve- 
 ment, I admit ; but the true worshipper will not 
 be hindered by the poorest reading, nor v/ill the 
 finest reading make the heart devout. Will a 
 more elaborate and impressive ritual quicken 
 our devotions ? There is, no doubt, help for the 
 sincere soul in ritual — up to a certain point ; but 
 the feelings which are excited by music and 
 ceremonies, helpful though they may be, are no 
 substitute for sincerity of heart. They may 
 exist when there is no purpose to do God's will, 
 and react in coldness towards Him. The bold 
 words of the honest man whose blind eyes Christ 
 opened tell us Vv'hat is needed to make our wor- 
 ship real : " If any man be a worshipper of God, 
 and doeth His will, him He heareth." We need 
 the spirit to honour God in our lives as we 
 profess to honour Him with our lips, to forsake 
 the sins which we confess, to do the righteous- 
 ness which we pray for, to take the truth which 
 we hear into our hearts as a rule of life, to live 
 for the kingdom which we pray may come — the 
 spirit, in a word, of obedience. Nothing less than 
 this can make our worship real. Being real to- 
 
190 
 
 RE/iLITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LI IB. 
 
 wards God, it will be real towards men. It will 
 mean something when they see that it makes us 
 better and holier. They will take knowledge of 
 us, when we come out of our churches, that God 
 is with us of a truth. No wonder the world 
 cavils at it when it sees that men who, profess- 
 ing religion, are profane or sensual or unscru- 
 pulous or mean on Saturday, are just as profane, 
 sensual, unscrupulous, or mean on Monday. It 
 is not that we must be perfect men in order to 
 realise a blessing, but that in our hearts we 
 must "will to do His will." "If I regard 
 iniquity in my heart," said the psalmist, " the 
 Lord will not hear m.e." 
 
 III. Again, we may call Christ " Lord, 
 Lord " in a show of religious emotions and sen- 
 sibilities. Far be it from me to depreciate feel- 
 ing in religion, and the proper expression of it. 
 Christianity appeals to our deepest emotions and 
 sensibilities. Through them it reaches and sub- 
 dues the hidden man of the heart, as the harp 
 of the minstrel in the old story reached his 
 imprisoned master and made him know that he 
 was found and saved. When they do take hold 
 of a man and draw him out into a real obedi- 
 
RHAUTY IN I HE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ence, they find true and full expression in the 
 fervour and beauty of his life. But there are 
 people whose religion seems to begin and end in 
 feeling. They are moved upon from without, 
 and mistake the stir of their emotions for the 
 whole of religion. They may have a very poor 
 reputation for rectitude in the street, but they 
 are satisfied to feel devotional in church or in 
 the prayer-meeting. The effect produced upon 
 them by music or im.pressive ritual is supposed 
 by some of this class to be true devotion, though 
 it yields nothing of change or reformation in the 
 life. Balaam felt religious, doubtless, when the 
 spirit of prophecy came upon him, and he cried : 
 " Let me die the death of the righteous, and let 
 my last end be like his!" But Balaam was a 
 reprobate. Feelings which do not take hold of 
 the conscience, and through it rule the will, are 
 the merest flitting shadows of Christianity. A 
 man may have them, and Christ be outside of 
 him all the time. Not until the substance fol- 
 lows the shadow into the house, and feeling is 
 transmuted into principle, and doing God's will 
 marks the man in all his relations, is his religion 
 real. The vv^orth, therefore, of our feelings is 
 
2LJ2 
 
 REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 proved by the obedience which proceeds from 
 them. 
 
 In striking contrast with this emotional form 
 of religion, we are forewarned by our Lord Him- 
 self that there may be a formalism even of good 
 works. We may, that is, do works good and 
 beneficial in themselves, and think we are 
 Christians because we do them, and yet there 
 may be no real Christianity in them. They may 
 not be done to God at all. They may be done 
 in actual disobedience, done with the rewards 
 of iniquity, done to cover up or condone in- 
 iquitous practices, done to win reputation or 
 praise, done to promote some business interest, 
 done in self- righteousness as a substitute for that 
 real religion of the heart which " is first pure, 
 then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full 
 of mercy and of good fruits." This is the point 
 which our Lord, in the words following our text, 
 so solemnly emphasises: " Many will say to me 
 in that day. Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied 
 in Thy name, and in Thy name cast out devils, 
 and in Thy name done many wonderful works ? 
 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew 
 you." 
 
lUiALlTY IN THE CHRISTIAN l.ll-li. 293 
 
 My brethren, I beseech you to be Christians, 
 not in word only, but in deed and in truth. The 
 reality of Christianity is the obedience of faith ; 
 faith which, while it calls Christ " Lord " in the 
 public profession, really takes Him to be the 
 Lord of the whole man. We do not call you to 
 the hard drudgery of a slavish obedience to law, 
 but to the free service of sons of God, through 
 Jesus Christ. It is the Father's will that you 
 should submit yourselves wholly to the propi- 
 tiating, sympathising, sufficient, and grace-giv- 
 ing Saviour. Believe me, you cannot know the 
 joy of Christian living, or experience the growth 
 which comes by faith, or be strong in the per- 
 sonal experience of the power and love of Christ, 
 until you put the rudder of your being absolutely 
 in His hands, and submit to be ruled, in your 
 thoughts, your words, your family, your busi- 
 ness, and your pleasures, only by His will. You 
 may say that my standard is too high. I an- 
 swer that it is not my standard ; it is Christ's 
 standard, and the measure of reality in the 
 Christian life. You may say that the consecra- 
 tion which it requires is not compatible with the 
 business of life. I answer that you do not 
 
294 
 
 REALITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 understand the nature of Christianity as the 
 sanctifying spirit of a Hfe, if you think so. It 
 is compatible with everything in business or 
 amusement which is just, true, pure, lovely, and 
 of good report. If there is anything in your 
 heart or in your daily life — any secret indul- 
 gence, any habit or practice, any neglect of duty 
 or trifling with truth — which you know is not 
 consistent with it, you may be sure that it is 
 something evil. It calls for sacrifice. You 
 must be wilHng to deny yourself, and cut it off, 
 and cast it from you. 
 
 Oh, to make our Christianity real we need 
 this more sturdy faith. Not the mere sentimen- 
 talism which expends itself in sighs and songs 
 and raptures, nor the cold, dead orthodoxy 
 which can only be galvanised into formal action ; 
 but a faith which has will in it, which goes out 
 into the world with a loyal purpose, which dares 
 to do the right and live for God, and keep under 
 the body and bring it into subjection, and let 
 the " things which are seen and temporal " go, 
 for the sake of the " things unseen and eternal," 
 and to be manly and strong and brave in devo- 
 tion to the person and truth and righteousness 
 
RE.4UTY IN THE CflRISlUN LIFE. 
 
 ^95 
 
 of Jesus Christ — a faith which can say, in the 
 strong words of Faber : 
 
 " I worship thee, sweet will of God, 
 And all thy ways adore, 
 And every day I live, I seem 
 To love thee more and more. 
 
 " Thou wert the end, the blessed rule, 
 Of Jesu's toils and tears; 
 Thou wert the passion of His heart 
 Those three and thirty years. 
 
 "And He hath breathed into my soul 
 A special love of thee — 
 A love to lose my will in His, 
 And by that loss be free. 
 
 " 111 that He blesses is our good. 
 And unblest good is ill ; 
 And all is right that seems most wrong, 
 If it be His sweet will." 
 
XVI. 
 
 iHortalit^ ^tj^aUotoeD up of Hife 
 an cBajster pennon. 
 
XVI. 
 
 MORTALITY SWALLOWED UP 
 
 OF LIFE: AN EASTER 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 We that are in this tabernacle ^ groan ^ being burdened : 
 not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed up^Uy-- 
 that mortality might be swallowed up of life. — 
 2 Cor. v. 4. 
 
 ^T^HE word translated " tabernacle" here was 
 1 in St. Paul's understanding a " tent-dwell- 
 ing," and so it is better understood by us. He 
 uses it as a figure for these bodies in which wc 
 consciously and so mysteriously live. Whether 
 we ourselves, who are conscious of being in a 
 body, and yet are capable of thinking of our 
 bodies as if apart from them, are so bound up 
 with them that we can have no conscious exis- 
 tence apart from them, is one of the questions 
 which science in its best thinkers has never been 
 less disposed to determine dogmatically than 
 299 
 
300 
 
 MORTALITY SIVALLOIVED UP OF LIFE. 
 
 now. I am quite safe in saying that naturalists 
 are no longer prepared to assert that there is 
 no soul because they cannot " find it with the 
 knife and weigh it in the balance." Year by 
 year they have learned to distrust their right 
 to pass a final judgment in this matter. They 
 have come to perceive more clearly the truth 
 that " they really abide in a universe," and that 
 " the part which is really revealed to them is to 
 the sum of the facts only as one to infinity." 
 Gradually it has been forced upon them that 
 " they too have to assume the intangible, if 
 they would take any firm steps in explaining 
 the series of facts with which they have to deal." 
 The fact which St. Paul states is obvious 
 enough. We who are in this tabernacle, or 
 body, "do groan, being burdened." We are 
 conscious of limitations — limitations which be- 
 come the more burdensome as we rise to a sense 
 of our capabilities. Our spirits look out upon 
 the world, and upon one another, through the 
 purely physical medium of eyes, which we know 
 limit our vision. We call for the aid of tele- 
 scope and miscroscope to help our perceptions. 
 Our spirits strain their powers to see further and 
 
MORTALITY SlVyiLLOlVED UP OF LIFE. 301 
 
 perceive more than the bodily vision will per- 
 mit. I look into your faces here to-day, and 
 strive to convey my thoughts to your minds ; 
 but it is a clumsy process, at best. Your spirits 
 are shut up in those bodies which alone I see. 
 I telephone to you through the ear, and you 
 receive impressions by sounds which we call 
 speech. What, indeed, are all our modern in- 
 ventions but devices to overcome the restrictions, 
 the hindrances, the delays, which the body puts 
 upon our spirits ? We want to bring our bodies 
 up to the lightning pace of our thoughts and 
 the schemes which our thoughts originate, and 
 so harness steam and electricity, and make the 
 Hghtning- flash our messenger. Why is it, as 
 the apostle so suggestively expresses it, that the 
 " whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
 together until now, . . . waiting for the adop- 
 tion, to wit, the redemption of the body "? Is 
 it not because the groaning and travailing to- 
 gether have their origin in the limitations of the 
 flesh or body? Are they not due to the fact 
 that we are, in our present state of being, sub- 
 ject to hunger, thirst, fatigue, disease, pain, and 
 death ? All the problems which spring from the 
 
302 
 
 MORTALITY SIV ALLOWED UP OF LIFE. 
 
 inevitable struggle of populations for existence 
 are due to the fact that we are in the flesh, and 
 must toil to feed and drink and be clothed. We 
 " groan, being burdened," because we are in the 
 flesh and in time. We dream of heaven ; we 
 aspire to something higher and better and freer ; 
 and yet we are under the dominion of the body. 
 Multitudes are enslaved to the power of an 
 earthly habit. Fleshly appetites and passions 
 control them. The best of us have to confess 
 that " the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and 
 the Spirit against the flesh : ... so that wc 
 cannot do the things that wc would." 
 
 Now, what is the meaning of this fact? It 
 is variously interpreted. Some say our life is 
 within the limitations of our bodies. We know 
 nothing certainly outside of them. There is 
 nothing better for us than to get all the good 
 we may out of our physical being. " Let us 
 eat, drink, and be merry to-day: for to-morrow 
 we die." This reasoning is as if the embryo 
 within the seed-shell should say, " My life is 
 within these narrow walls ; I will sink into my- 
 self, and aspire to nothing beyond " ; and so the 
 plant in embryo would die and the possibilities 
 
MORTALITY Sll'ALLOlVED UP OF LIFE. 303 
 
 of a larger life outside of the seed-coating be 
 for ever lost. Others say our Hfe is in the spirit. 
 The flesh is at war with the spirit. To be rid of 
 our bodies is the ultimate good. Meanwhile the 
 denial and mortification of the flesh is the chief 
 duty of man. This is asceticism. We know to 
 what a terrible extreme it has been pushed in 
 the history of the Church, separating Christian- 
 ity from the ordinary practical life, and scarcely 
 stopping short of suicide in its self-abnegations 
 and tortures and courting of martyrdom. This 
 is as if the embryo should reject the nourishment 
 and protection Vv'hich the seed-shell provides, and 
 seek to escape prematurely into the light and air. 
 The truth, as usual, Hes between the two ex- 
 tremes. The seed-shell encloses and nourishes 
 the plant life in embryo until it is ripe to break 
 through into the upper world. " Not that we 
 would be unclothed," writes Paul, " but clothed 
 upon." Life in the body is but one stage of a 
 whole process of development. 
 
 " Let us not always say, 
 • Spite of this flesh to-day, 
 I strove, made head, gained ground, upon the 
 whole.' 
 
304 
 
 MORTALITY SiyALLOH'ED UP OF LIFE. 
 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 
 Let us cry, ' All good things 
 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now 
 
 Than flesh helps soul.'" 
 
 The real meaning of the fact that we who are 
 in this tent-dweUing " do groan, being bur- 
 dened," is simply this — incompleteness. There 
 is a larger life to come, for which we are, or may 
 be, educated through the discipline of the present 
 and the flesh. The consciousness which every 
 thoughtful man has of his limitations is itself a 
 prophecy of something higher in reserve for him. 
 Who that thinks is not conscious of aspirations 
 tov.-ards a state of being in which thought might 
 flash to thought without the imperfect medium 
 of speech, or bodies, spiritualised, move through 
 space free of the limitations, liabilities, and needs 
 of this mortal? The aspiration is the swelling 
 of the germ which in due time is to burst from 
 its environment and be that which it aspires to 
 be. When we see a man of genius, abounding 
 in the divinest sort of life, overflowing the limita- 
 tions of his physical environment, and influen- 
 cing humanity by the spirit which is in him, sud- 
 denly die, can we rationally suppose that death 
 
MORTALITY SlVALLOiyED UP OF UFH. 305 
 
 ends all? To believe that such a life is buried, 
 and all its spiritual force for ever annihilated, — 
 that it has gone out like a candle extinguished 
 by the passing breeze, — does violence to my 
 understanding, and is out of harmony with the 
 observed order of phenomena in nature. 
 
 The only satisfactory interpretation of such 
 facts is to be found in the fact of our Lord's 
 resurrection. " He is not here ; for He is risen, 
 as He said." T^at^perfect, divine lifefound its 
 completeness and brought life and immortality 
 to light for us through the grave and gate of 
 death. That He should appear on the other 
 side of the grave in a glorified form, was the 
 natural order, the necessary completion, of such 
 a life as He had lived among men. It was not 
 possible that He should be holden by death. 
 The solution of the oppressive problem of our 
 incompleteness is found in the words which we 
 read over our dead — words which never could 
 have been written if Christ had not risen from 
 the dead and become the first-fruits of them 
 that slept: "This mortal must put on immor- 
 tality, and this corruptible must put on incor- 
 ruption." 
 
3o6 MORTALITY ShVALLOlVED UP OF LIFE. 
 
 But let us keep close to the apostle's thought 
 in our text, which carries with it the whole idea 
 of immortaUty, about which there is so much 
 discussion. " Mortality is to be swallowed up 
 of life." Life is to be realised in and through 
 our present mortal state. The body is the 
 school-room of the child immortal. Here, 
 through picture-forms and the stern discipline 
 of such preceptors as toil and pain, he may, if 
 he will, attain " the measure of the stature of 
 the fulness of Christ." Our Lord, in all His 
 teaching, says little about immortality as a 
 future inheritance, but He does bring it close to 
 us as an endless life which may begin here and 
 now. " He that believeth on the Son hath 
 everlasting life : and he that believeth not the 
 Son shall not see life." It was quite natural, 
 quite as we habitually think, that Martha's mind 
 should travel forward to a possible far- oft future 
 when our Lord assured her that her dead brother 
 Lazarus should rise again. " I know that he 
 shall rise again in the resurrection at the last 
 day." Now, note our Lord's reply. He brings 
 her mind back to the present. " I am the res- 
 urrection, and the life : he that believeth in me. 
 
MORTALITY SiyAI.LOH'ED UP OF LIFT. ^o] 
 
 though he were dead, yet shall he live: and 
 whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never 
 die." It is not of an immortality to be gained 
 hereafter, as a reward for good works now, that 
 He speaks, but of resurrection and life as pres- 
 ent experiences, making whosoever believeth in 
 Him superior to death now and for ever. I beg 
 you, my fellow-mortals, to think of this. Surely 
 no interest can be more vital to every one of us 
 than that which would make the life of the pres- 
 ent larger, fuller, and superior to pain and sin 
 and death. It is an entire misconception of 
 Christianity to suppose that tiie blessed immor- 
 tality which it promises is something which we 
 may realise by and by, if we believe, and obey, 
 and deny ourselves now. This idea has been an 
 occasion of stumbling to many minds, and of 
 much selfishness and even wrong-doing among 
 members of the Church. " I am come that they 
 might have life," said our Lord, " and that they 
 might have it more abundantly." It is no^ 
 therefore, of a heaven to be won that we are to 
 be thinking, but of a life to be lived now. Our 
 future heaven will be the bloom and ripeness of 
 the crerm which is enclosed within this mortal 
 
3oS MORTALITY SiyAl.LOlVED UP OF LIFE. 
 
 here. Oh, herein is the power of a Christian 
 hfe, rightly understood — that which saves it 
 from selfishness, that which puts into it a nobler 
 motive than merely to secure salvation from 
 eternal torment, or to gain everlasting happi- 
 ness. It is life lived up to the fulness of the 
 sonship towards God, which Christ has revealed 
 and made possible for us. It, is life which 
 breathes and moves by the inspiration of all that 
 is best and purest in itself, and m God's world 
 outside of itself. It is life lived sympathetically 
 with all other lives, as Christ lived. It is life 
 lived, not to gain heaven, but to make heaven 
 for all, and so to realise the truest heaven, now 
 and hereafter, for itself. Think how far above 
 the low level of our average living such Hfe, in 
 the mere suggestion of it, is. That is a very 
 low kind of life, we are all r-eady to admit, 
 which is concerned only to eat, drink, and be 
 clothed. I know that these are necessities, 
 urgent necessities, with the multitude; but the 
 anxious thought for them, which grinds down 
 the souls of weary men and women, is just the 
 burden which Christ came to lift by putting 
 new hopes and motives and principles into us, 
 
MORTALITY SiyALLOlVED UP OF IJI-E. 
 
 309 
 
 inspiring us to live S3'mpathetically, and helping 
 us both to bear patiently and to act efficiently. 
 It is not among those who have to toil for daily 
 bread that we find the most unworthy living. 
 There are men and women among the rich and 
 educated who live habitually down under the 
 dominion of the body and its desires — mere 
 frivolous or so-called society people, whose 
 whole being seems to be absorbed in thought for 
 dress and pleasure and the happiness of the 
 moment. In the same plane is all life which is 
 selfish, seeking greedily and exclusively money, 
 power, place, or fame. The man who thinks, 
 who lives in the intellectual part of his being, 
 who keeps himself open to truth for truth's sake, 
 who cares more to know than to feed, who 
 dominates the body, begins to realise the larger 
 capabiHties of his being. But even life in the in- 
 tellect, exclusive of every influence which might 
 come from the unseen, imprisoned within the 
 hard walls of that which may be actually known, 
 is like a plant shut up in a dark, close dungeon. 
 Its roots may derive nourishment from the soil, 
 but it must have light and air, or wither to 
 death. 
 
310 MORTALITY SIVALLOU'ED UP OF LIFE. 
 
 Faith is the opening of our spirits to the light 
 of the knowledge of the glory of God, shining 
 in the face of Jesus Christ. To live the Chris- 
 tian life. is to walk in the light, as He is in the 
 light. I mean by that, thinking and being and 
 doing the best that is made possible for us, 
 under all the lights which shine round us from 
 the person and word of Jesus Christ. It is 
 made possible for us to think the thoughts of an 
 immortal being, alive unto God, and for whom 
 death is only an incident, a dropping of the 
 seed-shell that the new life may spring. It is 
 made possible for us to overcome the tyranny 
 of the flesh by walking in the Spirit, by keeping 
 ourselves preoccupied with high and pure 
 thoughts, studies, interests, and works. It is 
 made possible for us to be in character the 
 King's sons and the King's daughters, and to 
 do divine work by carrying the Spirit of Christ 
 into society, wherever we may touch it. I know 
 that the world through which we must move is 
 not friendly to a spiritual habit ; but if v/e con- 
 trol ourselves from within, by making it a prin- 
 ciple to " bring every thought into captivity to 
 the obedience of Christ," we shall be always 
 
MORTALITY SIVALLOH/HD UP OF LIFE. 311 
 
 clearing ourselves of the scum which gathers at 
 the circumference of our being, just as a pool of 
 living water bubbling from a springs clears itself. 
 We have the Church and its teachers and sac- 
 raments to help. We have Christ's own Word 
 to study and enjoy, and a whole world of liter- 
 ature, opening to us opportunities for commu- 
 nion with the best minds of all ages. We have 
 work to do for Christ in our every-day contact 
 with the world. There is no man or woman, 
 however obscure or hard-worked, who may not 
 put himself or herself under conditions which 
 shall develop the life of God in the soul — the 
 immortal life. But we must put ourselves under 
 the conditions which are essential to life. I do 
 not pretend to understand the process by which 
 life enters and new creates the soul which makes 
 way for it. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, 
 and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
 not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth : 
 so is every one that is born of the Spirit." I 
 _dp know, however, this : that as the man who 
 had the withered hand was told to stretch it 
 fortli, and with the eftort came the strength and 
 the healing, so by the putting forth of our feeble- 
 
312 MORTALITY SIVALLOIVED UP OF LIFE. 
 
 ness, in simple dependence on His power, we 
 may realise life. We are to begin by simply 
 putting ourselves, as He commands, into rela- 
 tion with His Church, confessing Him before 
 men, "continuing," as the early Christians did, 
 " steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellow- 
 ship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers." 
 If we continue steadfastly in these things, we 
 shall be more than mere formal members of the 
 Church. We shall absorb their deeper meaning. 
 We shall realise that the end of the teaching is 
 to live out of ourselves, to help and bless the 
 world wherever we may touch it; and we shall 
 realise that as we live for Him, and study to 
 know Him, and rejoice in Him, He will live in 
 us. Oh, I have seen in the sick-room patient 
 sufferers, wasting away, in whom mortality was 
 visibly being swallowed up of life. I have seen 
 the life of the Eternal shining through the walls 
 of the tent-dwelling. I have seen the aged, 
 bearing the infirmities of fourscore years, in 
 whom an eternal youth was springing, and for 
 whom death meant a mounting up with wings, 
 as eagles. As the outward man decayed the 
 inward man was renewed day by day. I have 
 
MORTALITY SIV ALLOWED UP OF LIFE. 313 
 
 seen hard-working people struggle through life, 
 bearing poverty, loss, and sorrow upon sorrow, 
 and yet gain character, through-all, which shone 
 out in their faces and put light in their eyes — 
 the character which is Christlikeness, which 
 makes us meet for the inheritance of the saints 
 in light. Death, when it comes, is for such 
 living members of the Church only the final 
 triumph — " Mortality swallowed up of life." 
 
XVII. 
 
 ^eefting fim tl)z IftingDmu of (0otJ. 
 
XVII. 
 
 SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM 
 OF GOD. 
 
 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His right- 
 eousness; and all these things shall be added unto 
 yon. — St. Matt. vi. t^t^ 
 
 IF the consideration of what \ve shall eat, and 
 what we shall drink, and \\herewithal we 
 shall be clothed could be taken out of our lives, 
 how very empty and barren many lives would 
 be! They would have no aims, interests, or 
 occupations left. What would some women do 
 if they had not dress to contrive and talk about? 
 Take that one topic out of conversation, and who 
 can number the tongues that would be mute, 
 or the minds which, through lack of material, 
 would have to stop working? What would a 
 large majority of our men do, if they had not 
 money to think and plan about, or the gratifica- 
 tion of appetite, the luxuries of the table, and 
 317 
 
3i8 SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 other pleasures to provide for? Multitudes 
 would be found mentally, morally, and spirit- 
 ually bankrupt, their occupation gone, no re- 
 sources in themselves, all the blessed possibili- 
 ties of their diviner nature squandered in the 
 service of the flesh and the world. 
 
 Now, it is this anxious, absorbing concern for 
 the things seen which our Lord condemns. The 
 central thought of the beautiful discourse from 
 which we have selected the Vv'ords just read is 
 that we should "take no anxious thought for 
 our life, what we shall eat, or what we shall 
 drink ; nor yet for the body, what we shall put 
 on." He condemns such anxiety because it 
 separates the heart from God, its lawful sov- 
 ereign. " No man," He says, " can serve two 
 masters." Their claims will clash, and either 
 he will " hate the one, and love the other," or 
 else he will " hold to the one, and despise the 
 other." He condemns it because it is unreason- 
 able. The life is more than meat, and the body 
 than raiment. He who gave the higher part 
 can certainly be trusted to care for the lower; 
 He knows that we have need of these things. 
 He condemns it because it is unworthy of our 
 
SEEKING EIRSI THE KINGDOM 01- GOD. ^uj 
 
 real dignity. " If God so clothe the grass of 
 the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast 
 into the oven, shall He not much more clothe 
 you? " — you who are capable of knowing Him, 
 you who have nobler ends set before you than 
 to bedeck and pamper the flesh, you who have 
 immortal spirits, made to ripen in all holiness 
 and wear the fadeless bloom of a life beyond the 
 grave ! He does not mean that we are to learn 
 from the lilies and the birds to do nothing for 
 ourselves. They fulfil the proper ends of their 
 being; they realise the divine fulness by work- 
 ing out to ripeness the forces which are in them. 
 We are to live up to the measure of the life 
 which is in us. " But I say unto you " (this is the 
 conclusion drawn from the preceding thoughts), 
 " Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His 
 righteousness ; and all these things shall be 
 added unto you." 
 
 We have presented to us here an object, a 
 duty, and a promise. 
 
 I. The object is described as God's kingdom and 
 righteousness. These are really one^. Right- 
 eousness is the wedding-garment which admits 
 to the marriage supper of the King's Son. It 
 
320 SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 is that which God provides, through faith in our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. It is the righteousness of 
 God by faith, and not self-righteousness or mere 
 outward morality. The key-note of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount is struck in the words, 
 " Except your righteousness shall exceed the 
 righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye 
 shall in no case enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven." The goodness which our Lord re- 
 quires is to be developed, Uke the lily's beauty, 
 from v/ithin. It is to be the natural fruit of a 
 good tree, because, as He says, " a good tree 
 cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a cor- 
 rupt tree bring forth good fruit." It is to 
 stand like a house which is built securely on a 
 rock, and not like that equally or perhaps more 
 showy building which fell, when the spring 
 floods came, because it was planted on the 
 unstable sand. 
 
 Our Lord, in this Sermon on the Mount, as in 
 all His teaching, aimed to break up the surface 
 morality which had congealed over bad hearts, 
 and make the people know their need of an 
 internal purity. The proud were maddened by 
 His doctrine, because the faces which they saw 
 
SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 321 
 
 reflected in it were the faces of hypocrites. 
 The honest hearers did not forget what manner 
 of men they were, but being convicted of sin 
 they came in penitence to His feet for mercy 
 and healing. He alone can create in us the 
 purity which He commands us to seek. We 
 must seek it in Him. He is made unto us, by 
 His dying in our stead, " wisdom, and right- 
 eousness, and sanctlfication, and redemption." 
 " This is the name," said the prophet, " by which 
 He shall be called. The Lord our Righteous- 
 ness." We can create for ourselves a certain 
 kind of goodness which will pass current among 
 men. But what of the secret deeds which we 
 would blush to have even the world know? 
 What of the low desires which v/e would 
 indulge, if we dared? What of the hateful 
 thoughts and feelings which only the restraints 
 of outward decency and reputation keep within 
 bounds ? The condemnation which was written 
 against men in the beginning specified no evil 
 deeds. The indictment reads, " Every imagi- 
 nation of the thoughts of his heart was only evil 
 continually." No man can honestly carry the 
 lamp of truth down into the secret chambers of 
 
32 2 SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 his soul and fail to perceive that his nature is 
 unholy. He needs to be renewed in the spirit 
 of his mind, I must not only avoid evil, I 
 must abhor it. I must have a spirit in me which 
 will recoil from the very thought or suggestion 
 of sin. I must be in hearty sympathy with 
 that which is good and pure and noble and true, 
 and at war in all my tastes and dispositions 
 with that v/hich is earthly, sensual, devilish. I 
 must have the mind to think, as well as to do 
 " always those things which are right." This 
 is the dress which admits to the kingdom of 
 God. Society has its superficial standards, but 
 this is God's righteousness. 
 
 It is born in us by the Ploly Ghost, in and 
 through whom Christ works upon the human 
 heart. We get a clear conscience before God 
 by confessing our sins and accepting the blood- 
 bought pardon which is sealed to us by the 
 perfect obedience, even unto death, of Jesus 
 Christ. We have in Him reconciliation, son- 
 ship, and the spirit of adoption, whereby we 
 cry, "Abba, Father." By living in constant 
 communion with Him, and moving in the line 
 of His appointments, we may ripen in char- 
 
SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 3^3 
 
 acter. and reflect more and more His right- 
 eousness. 
 
 Here, then, is the end set before us, and the 
 path which leads to it. It is the one thing 
 needful, because it alone can survive to be our 
 eternal treasure when the world has passed 
 away. It is the kingdom of God, reared up by- 
 silent, unseen powers within you. It is in one 
 word, character; and that, like some draped 
 and curtained statue which the skilful artist has 
 secretly chiselled into graceful, speaking pro- 
 portions, shall stand disclosed to view in all its 
 beauty, a monument of Christ's power for ever, 
 when the drapery of the flesh has fallen off and 
 the fashion of this world passed away. 
 
 II. Our Lord urges upon us a certain well- 
 defined dii/j' : " Seek ye first the kingdom of 
 God, and His righteousness." He does not 
 mean first in the order of time merely, as if, 
 when these matters have been attended to, we 
 may surrender ourselves to other interests. 
 Such a rendering of the passage would be very 
 convenient for persons who, having once made 
 a profession of religion, practically assume that 
 they have no further obligations. Religion is to 
 
324 
 
 SEEKING EIRST THE KINGDOM OE GOD. 
 
 them a sort of insurance policy, which, having 
 once been formally adopted, secures them, they 
 imagine, against eternal fires without further 
 care on their parti They look after it a little 
 on Sunday, and perhaps say a hasty prayer at 
 the beginning of each day ; but Christ does not 
 go with them into the common daily routine. 
 Righteousness is a vital, all-pervading principle. 
 It is only accomplished in us when we stand 
 complete amid the glories of the heavenly king- 
 dom. There is no time when it may be super- 
 seded by earthly interests. 
 
 We are not, however, to suppose, on the 
 other hand, that our Lord means " first " in the 
 sense of literally putting aside all inferior con- 
 cerns. He neither requires a separatist, ascetic 
 life, nor will He tolerate a divided service. 
 We are not obliged to become missionaries, 
 preachers, or hermits in order to obey his 
 charge. It does not justify any man or woman 
 in neglecting to provide for his or her house- 
 hold, nor excuse slothfulness in business, nor a 
 coarse disregard of the customs and proprieties 
 of social life. It is quite possible to couple 
 " not slothful in business " with " fervent in 
 
SI^I^KING FIRST THE KINGDOM Or GOD. 325 
 
 Spirit, serving the Lord." It is quite possible 
 to carry a supreme regard for His will into all 
 the affairs of the present; and they will be 
 the more faithfully done in proportion to the 
 intensity of this principle. 
 
 Precisely this our Lord meant. He meant 
 that " the kingdom of God, and His righteous- 
 ness," should be first in autho7'ity among the 
 various interests which crowd into our lives. 
 He meant that they should be the sovereign 
 principles of thought, desire, and action. Think 
 how many other considerations daily claim our 
 submission, and you will understand how this 
 rule works. We are constantly asking our- 
 selves, in matters pertaining to business, family, 
 and the social circle, "Will this or that scheme' 
 pay ? Will it give me pleasure ? Will it advance 
 the wealth and prosperity of my children ? Is it 
 expedient? Can I afford it? Shall I get hon- 
 our byit? What will people say ? " Our Saviour 
 commands us to put before all these, and deter- 
 mine, before we dare to take a step forward in 
 any course or scheme of action, the single ques- 
 tion, "Is it right ? " The duty we owe to God 
 is to be our first concern in the rearing of our 
 
326 SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 children, the arrangement of our homes, the 
 transaction of our business, and the determina- 
 tion of our friendships and our pleasures. The 
 other questions may come in afterwards, but 
 their relevancy must be tested by this supreme 
 rule. It must be first, and all other interests 
 subordinate. Happy is the man who has such 
 a principle set like a balance-wheel in the centre 
 of his being. There is beautiful harmony in his 
 life. He works out results which are noble and 
 enduring. Glorious is the religion which thus 
 incorporates itself with our common activities 
 and orders the whole movement of our human 
 nature in its complex relations. 
 
 Our lives are like instruments of music. 
 Their real powers can be interpreted only by 
 those who know how to use them. They 
 must be used according to certain fixed meth- 
 ods; othenvise they will give forth only harsh 
 sounds, and jar discordantly with other lives. 
 Society ought to be one mighty orchestra, each 
 performer a master in the art, and all combining 
 to render in rich harmonies glory to God. But 
 men come upon the stage with their lives in 
 their hands, and each one chooses to follow his 
 
SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 327 
 
 own wild, untutored will. They are wilfully 
 ignorant of the true art of living. They do 
 not know how to use themselves. They play 
 at random, without agreement, out of tune one 
 with the other, perverting the real purpose of 
 their lives, and consequently make a horrible 
 din. Christ is the one great master in the art 
 of living. When we have been taught of Him, 
 and have learned to seek first God's kingdom 
 and righteousness, then the rich capabilities of 
 our being are displayed ; then we know how to 
 live ; then all our powers, relations, and actions 
 are brought into harmony with the one central 
 idea of duty to God, and filled with one impulse 
 — the love of God. 
 
 III. These thoughts bring us to the promise 
 which our text contains : " All these things shall 
 be added unto you." He had been speaking, 
 you will remember, of the things which the 
 body needs, such as food and raiment. Is it 
 true that those who make the righteousness of 
 God which is by faith in Jesus Christ their 
 supreme concern in all the afifairs of life have 
 all other needful things added unto them? 
 Our Lord docs not say that they shall have a 
 
328 SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 superfluity of earthly good. He does not 
 promise that they shall roll in wealth, live in 
 palaces, be clothed in purple and fine linen, and 
 fare sumptuously every day. These are not 
 needful things. He has in mind the lily and 
 the birds, and His thought is that as they have 
 all things which are essential to their develop- 
 ment, so all things which are essential to the 
 development of a perfect manhood shall be 
 added unto us. 
 
 By setting righteousness before us as the 
 chief good, we bring ourselves into the line of 
 God's special providence concerning us. We 
 place ourselves, in other words, where the origi- 
 nal laws of our being may have free play and 
 work out their best results. The body and the 
 material world outside of us were made to serve 
 our spiritual growth. If a man subordinates his 
 moral nature to his physical desires, there is an 
 overgrowth of the physical which is abnormal 
 and which degrades him to a level with the 
 beasts. He has missed the true end of being, 
 and lost his soul, however much he may have 
 gained externally. When the spiritual instincts 
 are obeyed, all inferior things discover their 
 
SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 329 
 
 proper uses, serve our best interests, and fall 
 into tiieir true relations. The best wealth comes 
 by integrity and benevolence. The man who 
 gets riches by hoarding and trickery makes his 
 soul poor indeed ; and when the day of calam- 
 ity comes he has none to help. Happiness is 
 not found by those who seek it: it follows in 
 the path of virtue. Health is best preserved by 
 temperance, and the secret of peace is a quiet 
 conscience. Friendship cannot be purchased 
 with money : it is added unto him who shows 
 himself friendly. Honour and beauty are not 
 wrought out of crowns and houses and fine 
 clothes : they belong to character ; they are 
 inherited by those who seek to be and to do right. 
 We naturally gather to ourselves all that we_ 
 need for our present welfare by making right- 
 eousness supreme. We forfeit nothing which 
 is really needful. We are able, in whatsoever 
 state we are, to enjoy sweet contentment. We 
 know that God is working all things together 
 for our good. We have enough for each day's 
 needs. We use the powers which God has 
 given us to the best advantage. We gather, in 
 return for our toils, the best honours, the best 
 
330 SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF COD. 
 
 loves, and the best joys which the world can 
 give. 
 
 I have said that all things W'hich are needful 
 for our best growth are added unto us. The 
 best growth is that which develops the whole 
 man — body, mind, and spirit. The scheme of 
 Providence takes into account, therefore, the 
 different natures, temperaments, and tendencies 
 of men. It provides, through grace, for direct 
 influences upon our souls. It aims to bring 
 them under conditions which will make them 
 most susceptible of those influences. There is 
 a blessed purpose, therefore, in those appoint- 
 ments which surround some with affluence, 
 while others have only bread enough for to- 
 day. There is meaning in the sorrows which 
 roll over some, wave upon wave, and the toils 
 and conflicts through which others must strug- 
 gle. Some plants need one kind of earth, and 
 some another. Some require the shade, and 
 others must have the sun. There are bulbs 
 which have to be shut up in the dark until their 
 roots have struck down deep and they have 
 gathered strength to shoot out from the top. 
 Wlien they can bear the light we bring them 
 
SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 331 
 
 forth, and you know how fair and fragrant are 
 the flowers they bear. So God deals with us, 
 in His abounding love ; so would He develop 
 that which is best in us. Few can bear the 
 broad glare of worldly prosperity ; it is not 
 friendly to the development of the highest 
 virtues. The grandest Christian characters have 
 grown strong amid obscurity and gloom. Very 
 dry places have contributed to the growth of 
 very fruitful lives. It should content us to 
 know that the condition in which God has 
 placed us, whether dark or bright, congenial or 
 painful, wealthy or straitened, is the best for us. 
 Put forth all your energies to improve it.' Seek 
 to ripen in all goodness under it, and the issue 
 will prove the loving purpose in it. When the 
 many tried and sorrowful believers whose lives 
 have been a long struggle with adversity, who 
 have had none of this world's wealth and lux- 
 ury, though much of the inner strength which 
 roots itself in God, — when they stand forth in 
 the light of eternity, rich will be their bloom, 
 and rapturously will they praise God for the 
 beauty born amid ad^'orsity, and nevermore to 
 fade. 
 
332 SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 Oh, that we might learn that the best wealth 
 and health and happiness are to be attained by- 
 making the righteousness which comes by faith 
 in Jesus Christ our object in life, and entire sub- 
 mission to the impulses of His love our sover- 
 eign duty always! Never suppose that you 
 can live towards earthly things, and die into 
 heaven. Your soul is the arrow ; life is the 
 bow. The bow is bent, and the arrow is in your 
 hand. According to your aim, so will be its 
 destiny. A wavering, divided purpose shoots 
 at random, and loses both worlds. If you aim 
 at this world's good, you cannot possibly reach 
 the glory which is far above. The world, and 
 the world only, must be your portion. You 
 may hit the mark you aim at, but the chances 
 are that the fickle air will turn the arrow aside 
 into disappointment and vexation of spirit. 
 Where the shaft falls, there it must lie. The 
 bow may not be drawn again. Repentings will 
 be in vain when this critical life has spent itself. 
 Aim towards righteousness, and God will nerve 
 your arm with might before unknown, your life 
 will discover its true purpose, the Holy Spirit 
 will wing your soul straight home. But remem- 
 
SEEKING FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. ^^^ 
 
 ber that the righteousness to which God calls 
 you is not obedience to certain cold, moral pre- 
 cepts. It is embodied in our personal Saviour 
 Jesus Christ. To seek righteousness is to seek 
 Him — to let His love enter into you and inspire 
 you. Righteousness is Christlikeness, and Christ- 
 likeness comes by letting the " light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the face of 
 Jesus Christ shine into your hearts." 
 
XVIII. 
 
 Cleansfet) in (ia^oing* 
 
XVIII. 
 CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 And wJisn He saw tket/i, He said unto them, Go shotv 
 yourselves unto the priests, Ajid it catne to pass, 
 that, as they wetit, they ivere cleansed. — St. Luke 
 xvii. 14. 
 
 TEN lepers met our Lord on His way to 
 Jerusalem. Immediately the cry sprang 
 to their lips, " Jesus, Master, have mercy on 
 us! " They were the victims of a disease which 
 was, as you know, a living death. Corruption 
 seemed to anticipate the grave and make them 
 walking sepulchres. Leprosy was the recog- 
 nised symbol of sin, among the Jews, and its 
 miserable victims were counted accursed of 
 God, and were exiled from the society of their 
 fellows and all the privileges of citizenship and 
 religion. 
 
 These men were sorely in need of mercy 
 therefore, and they found it in Him who " de- 
 
33S CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 spiseth neither the sighing of a contrite heart, 
 nor the desire of such as arc sorrowful." But 
 His method of deahng with them was peculiar. 
 He did not heal by a touch ; He did not say, 
 " Be ye clean " ; He did not tell them to go 
 wash in some pool. He simply commanded 
 them, while the leprosy was still upon them, to 
 go and meet the requirements of the Levitical 
 law as if they were already cleansed. They 
 had only the assurance implied in His command 
 to rest upon, at first. There was no experience 
 of His power until they had begun to obey. 
 Now, " it came to pass, that, as they went [or 
 *' in going "], they were cleansed." 
 
 That which was a parable of the death which 
 comes by sin, to the Jews, is in our Lord's 
 healing hands a parable of the life wliich comes 
 by faith. I am quite sure that in all Christ's 
 miracles of heahng there was a spiritual mean- 
 ing, because the ultimate aim of all His words 
 and works was spirit and life. The leper rep- 
 resents man under sin. I will not pursue the 
 familiar commonplace parallel. There are just 
 two very practical points which the incident 
 illustrates : 
 
CLEANSED JN GOING. 339 
 
 I. The nature of the salvation which Christ 
 brings. 
 
 II, The method by which we may reaHse it. 
 I. " Thou shalt call His name Jesus," said 
 
 the herald angel ; " for He shall save His people 
 from their sins." The salvation which Christ 
 brings to man, therefore, is salvation from siu. 
 There are not a few people in the world who 
 seem to think that when we preach salvation 
 we mean salvation from some possible eternity 
 of torment to come hereafter. The general 
 scepticism towards the old conceptions of hell 
 and hell- fire seems, consequently, to leave no 
 force or meaning in the gospel, or good news, 
 of salvation ; there is nothing to be saved 
 from. But there t's something" to be saved from, 
 which is a very real and present fact. It 
 involves the life after death, in its possible and 
 everlasting consequences, but it is an existing 
 condition, — a condition as real as the leprosy 
 which preyed upon the ten who called out to 
 Christ for mercy. 
 
 I do not see how we can be blind to the fact 
 that men and women are not what they are 
 capable of being. It does seem to me that 
 
340 CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 every thoughtful person must perceive that, 
 unless some higher impulse or purpose comes 
 into human lives, they lose themselves before 
 our very eyes in vice and darkness and mere 
 animalism. It is not by summing up the open 
 acts of wrong or crime that we prove men the 
 victims of a spiritual leprosy. The average 
 man or woman is not criminal or even vicious. 
 It is easy to gather up the daily records of the 
 police-courts and argue that all men would be 
 bad if they dared. There are good and kind 
 deeds springing up every day, among the 
 thorns and briers and rankest overgrowth of 
 unbelief and ignorance, which contradict any 
 such sweeping conclusion. It is true, as we 
 know too well, that vice gets the mastery over 
 many, and causes deterioration and the death 
 of all high and noble capacities. The story of 
 childhood and youth becoming sensualised and 
 degenerating into a low, profane, beastly man- 
 hood, and perhaps old age, is too real to need 
 more than mention. It would not be fair, 
 however, to say that all persons who are not 
 avowed Christians necessarily degenerate in 
 this way. It would simply not be true, because 
 
CLEANSED IN GOING. 341 
 
 we know that there are thousands who ripen in 
 mind and develop into useful, intelligent men 
 and women, who make no profession of religion. 
 But the fact remains that these very respectable 
 men and women are yet under the dominion of 
 sin. In what, then, does the sin consist ? 
 
 Our Lord Jesus Christ does not specify par- 
 ticular sins or crimes when He charges the 
 world with sin. He tells His disciples, just 
 before His death, that the Comforter shall come, 
 and that He shall convince the world of sin, of 
 righteousness, and of judgment. " Of sin," He 
 says, " because they believe not on me." That 
 is the indictment. " In Him was life ; and the 
 life was the light of men." "This is the con- 
 demnation, that light is come into the world, 
 and men loved darkness rather than light, 
 because their deeds v/ere evil." The sin is that 
 men have had opened to them, in Christ, the 
 upper world and a higher destiny than a mere 
 temporal earthly being, and that they are so 
 much under the power of an earthly habit that 
 they will not rise and live up to the infinite 
 possibilities of their being. They live up to 
 honesty in business, perhaps, or faithfulness in 
 
342 CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 the family, but they do not live up to God. 
 Spiritually they may be in darkness or slow 
 decline. The leprosy which has seized upon 
 humanity, and become a living, encroaching 
 death, appears in the fact that men make dark- 
 ness their element, that they even deny their 
 capacity for a spiritual and immortal life, and 
 that they choose to live " without hope and 
 without God in the world." The earthly habit 
 persisted in, blinds the perceptions so that a 
 man's horizon is bounded by the present and 
 sense and self. He does not want to be saved 
 from his present sensual and selfish gratifica- 
 tions, and yet there is a lingering consciousness 
 that he has fallen beneath himself. The reck- 
 lessness, the discontent, the natural religious- 
 ness of our kind prove it. 
 
 Now, Christ came to save us from this lost, 
 this darkened, this unsatisfied condition. The 
 language of the gospel is : " Awake, thou that 
 sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ 
 shall give thee light." He comes to restore 
 the lost order, to bring our spirits back into the 
 relation of sonship to the Father of our spirits, 
 to make us know that death is but an incident 
 
CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 343 
 
 of our being and that there is a larger life 
 beyond, and to inspire a new and divine spirit 
 in our humanity, even the spirit of brotherhood, 
 by which He may realise a kingdom of God 
 among men, and in the fulness of time a " new 
 heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness." 
 
 II. The incident of the lepers illustrates the 
 method by which we may realise the salvation 
 which Christ makes possible for us. The salva- 
 tion is a cleansing, a making pure, an inbreath- 
 ing of a new and divine life. " It came to pass, 
 that, as they went [or "in going"], they were 
 cleansed." They could not be received back 
 into the fellowship of Israel until they had been 
 examined by the priests and proved clean of 
 their leprosy. " Go show yourselves unto the 
 priests," said our Lord. They might have 
 answered : " But we are lepers ; we must be 
 healed first." He bids them act as those who 
 are already cleansed — to go in that confidence, 
 and to leave the issue with Him. They had 
 faith enough to obey. Before they reached the 
 appointed place of examination they were new 
 creatures. Their flesh (as was written of 
 
344 
 
 CLE/ihISED IN GOING. 
 
 Naaman the Syrian) came again, " like unto 
 the flesh of a little child." 
 
 Christ's method with them is a perfect illus- 
 tration of His method with every earnest soul 
 that turns to Him for life and light and heal- 
 ing. You look at yourselves, and think how 
 ignorant you are, how weak, how stained with 
 the sins of your past, how certain to break your 
 good resolutions and come under the power of 
 bad tempers and habits. Christ says: "Go 
 show yourselves unto the priests." Take for 
 granted that in the mind and purpose of God 
 yau are redeemed from sin and accepted as the 
 children of His kingdom. Act as those who 
 stand already purified within the gates of Jeru- 
 salem the golden. Do not trouble yourselves 
 abou.t the leprosy which seems still to cripple 
 you. Leave that to the higher power which 
 bids you go forward into a higher, nobler life. 
 "Ye were once darkness," said Paul to the 
 Ephesian Christians, " but are now light in the 
 Lord : walk as children of light (for the fruit of 
 the light is in all goodness and righteousness 
 and truth)." Always St. Paul is urging the 
 new Christians to rise to their privileges, and to 
 
CLEANSED IN GOING. 345 
 
 grow by living up to and in them. They were 
 not actually dead to their sins, and yet he bids 
 them " reckon themselves dead indeed unto sin, 
 but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord." His constant thought is in the line of 
 the story of the lepers, the privilege and the 
 positivencss of the Christian life. 
 
 I think it is a great mistake to make too 
 much of the renunciations and responsibilities 
 which are involved in turning from the old life 
 to the new. It is true that our Lord said : " If 
 any man will come after me, let him deny him- 
 self, and take up his cross daily, and follow 
 me " ; but the self-denial is only the necessary 
 giving up of our own way, the going out of our 
 earthly, selfish habit, in order that He may have 
 His way and lead us up to better things. He 
 also said : " Take my yoke upon you. . . . For 
 my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." We 
 are like the old man in one of Dickens's stories, 
 who had been so long accustomed to the con- 
 tracted sphere of a debtors' prison that freedom 
 bewildered him. He could not appreciate the 
 better, broader life to which he was restored. 
 His thoughts turned back with longing to the 
 
346 CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 prison and its routine. We are like birds which 
 have been long caged and then set free. They 
 linger on the threshold of their cages; they do 
 not seem to see the open door; they flutter 
 their wings, and seem to have forgotten how to 
 use them. It is just here that the Christian 
 Church meets us, with its divine offices, to help 
 and teach and strengthen us. It is the king- 
 dom of God upon earth. The first step in the 
 obedience of faith is with an honest purpose to 
 identify ourselves with that kingdom in its visi- 
 bility by a public confession of our faith in 
 baptism and confirmation. The first Christians 
 (taught by the apostles of our Lord Himself), in 
 the freshness of their Heaven- inspired wisdom, 
 were baptised, and then, wc arc told, " they 
 continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching 
 and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread 
 and the prayers." These are our privileges. 
 We are brought at once into relation with an 
 order of Christ's appointment, a ministry of 
 teaching, a sacrament of love and grace, in the 
 breaking of bread, offices of prayer and praise, 
 fellowship with all who love our Lord Jesus in 
 sincerity, and, working through all, the abiding 
 
CLEANSED IN GOING. 347 
 
 presence of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the 
 Lord and Giver of life. 
 
 But we are not to suppose that a mere formal 
 membership with the visible Church is the end 
 of our journey. We are lepers still, if we rest 
 here. We are to go out through the sacra- 
 ments, the helps, and teachings of the Church 
 into a positive living for God. Nothing less 
 than this can be the meaning of the confirma- 
 tion prayer : " Defend, O Lord, this Thy Child 
 with Thy heavenly grace ; that he may con- 
 tinue Thine for ever ; and daily increase in Thy 
 Holy Spirit more and more, until he come unto 
 Thy everlasting kingdom." He has been ad- 
 mitted to the kingdom on earth. The end is 
 still before him — the "everlasting kingdom," 
 the movement forward, a daily increase in the 
 Holy Spirit more and more. I speak of the 
 positiveness of obedience because there is so 
 much mere negative Christian living, if it can 
 be called living. People who call themselves 
 Christians are satisfied with a mere trying not 
 to do anything very wrong. They know that 
 they must "avoid those things v/hich are con- 
 trary to their profession," but they lose sight 
 
348 CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 entirely of the other side of their duty, which 
 is to " do all those things which are agreeable 
 to the same." When we come to the final test 
 of which our Lord has forewarned us, it will 
 not be by the evil which we have done that our 
 meetness for the everlasting kingdom shall be 
 determined : it will be by the good which we 
 have done, or left undone. That is a very 
 striking picture which He draws of the sur- 
 prised multitude, who had not been conscious 
 of doing anything wrong, exclaiming: "When 
 saw we Thee an hungered, or athirst, or naked, 
 or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee?" 
 " Inasmuch as ye did it not," He answers, 
 " unto one of the least of these, ye did it not to 
 mc." They had left out of their lives that 
 which is the soul of a true faith, that which 
 makes it alive unto God — the positiveness of 
 love. Love is the supreme and all-inclusive 
 principle of Christian obedience. Not love in 
 the mere human sense, nor love in that soft, 
 effeminate sense in v/hich it is often made to 
 appear, and from v/hich men instinctively re- 
 coil, but love as Paul defines it, — " out of a 
 pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith 
 
CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 349 
 
 unfeigned," — love which seeks the highest good 
 of all, my own included, in and from the inspira- 
 tion caught in one great glow of light from God 
 manifested in Jesus Christ. Such a love is not 
 a broad smile of passive benevolence, nor a 
 gush of general sympathy, expressing itself in 
 sighs and epithets, but 2i force, moving for God 
 in lines of right and purity and active effort for 
 the welfare of mankind. It makes for light and 
 help and brotherhood. It is like the oxygen 
 latent in the atmosphere, whose tremendous 
 energy we do not realise until it combines with 
 matter at a certain temperature and bursts into 
 flame. Love born of a real knowledge of 
 Christ in the heart flames into zeal for right 
 and truth and purit)^ It is more than the 
 external acts, the almsgiving and good deeds, 
 which pity might prompt. It is the habit of 
 living the lives of our fellow-men, in our daily 
 contact with them, sympathetically, ^s inti- 
 mately and completely as we live our own — the 
 habit of identifying ourselves with their condi- 
 tions and interests and feelings before presum- 
 ing even to think a judgment concerning them. 
 Study the thirteenth chapter of Paul's First 
 
35° 
 
 CLEANSED IN GOING. 
 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, absorb it into your 
 minds and hearts and daily living, and you will 
 " walk in love, as Christ also loved us, and gave 
 Himself for us." 
 
 Living up to the privileges and walking in 
 the positiveness of a true faith, you will be 
 cleansed. You will not be overcome of evil, 
 but you will overcome evil with good. Going 
 out of yourselves constantly into that which is 
 pure and useful and unselfish, the old evil 
 habits will lose their power over you. You will 
 be so occupied in looking forward to ever new 
 truths and new activities and richer experiences 
 in Christian living, that there will be no time 
 nor place for brooding over the old life. You 
 will learn to listen for God's voice not only 
 outside of you, in His Church and Word, but 
 in yourselves. He will come unto you and 
 make His abode with you. You will keep 
 j'-ourselves honest and open and obedient to all 
 the best, purest, and most spiritual impulses of 
 your natures. These impulses press upon 
 every man in his hidden life ; but the multitude 
 stifle them, and so quench tlie Holy Spirit of 
 God. 
 
CLEANSED IN GOING. 351 
 
 They were cleansed. Their flesh came unto 
 them Hke unto the flesh of a httle child. So 
 the Saviour's words are realised : " Except ye 
 be converted, and become as little children, ye 
 shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
 May it be said of us, when those who come 
 after shall tell our story, that, " as they went, 
 they were cleansed " ! 
 
XIX. 
 
XIX. 
 THE MILITARY IDEA.* 
 
 The ce?iturion answered and said, Lord, I am not 
 worthy that Thou shouhist come imder my roof : 
 but speak the word only, and my servant shall bt 
 healed. For I am a man tinder authority, having 
 soldiers under me : and J say to this man, Go, and 
 he goeth ; afid to another, Come, and he cometh ; 
 and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. — 
 St. Matt. viii. 8, 9. 
 
 ''TpHIS centurion seems to have been an offi- 
 •* cer of the Roman garrison at Capernaum. 
 The Roman army was divided into legions; 
 each legion comprehended sixty centuries, 
 which, as the name implies, were companies of 
 one hundred men each. A centurion was the 
 captain of a hundred. This was the rank, 
 therefore, of the man whose words we ask you 
 to consider. Though bom a Gentile, he had 
 become a convert to the Jewish faith. Dis- 
 
 1 Sermon preached on Washington's Birthday, before First 
 Regiment Infantry, National Guard, Philadelphia. 
 
 333 
 
356 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 gusted with the miserable idolatries and low 
 superstitions of his own people, he had turned 
 with hope to the promises laid up with the 
 Jews. He beheved in their God, and hoped in 
 His mercy. When the rumour of Christ's 
 wonderful v/isdom and mighty works reached 
 him, he at once gave in the allegiance of his 
 heart. His faith is made singularly conspic- 
 uous by the commendation which our Lord 
 bestowed upon it : "I have not found so great 
 faith, no, not in Israel." The occasion which 
 called forth this strong remark was the danger- 
 ous illness of the centurion's servant. The 
 man had probably been the companion of his 
 toils and dangers through many years, and was 
 very dear unto him. But as one not born in 
 the household of Israel, he felt that he had no 
 claim upon the Messiah. He therefore pre- 
 vailed upon certain elders of Israel to intercede 
 for him with Christ in behalf of his sick servant. 
 When they came to Jesus they besought Him 
 instantly, or urgently, saying that " he was 
 worthy for whom He should do this : for he 
 loveth our nation, and hath built us a syna- 
 gogue," Our Lord went with them. But 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 357 
 
 when the soldier saw Him coming, his military 
 ideas of propriety began to assert themselves. 
 He realised the great disparity in rank between 
 that approaching Lord and himself. He felt 
 that the Commander-in-chief of all the forces in 
 heaven and earth was before him. He blamed 
 himself for having presumed to send for his 
 superior officer; and so anxious was he to 
 repair the error that he sent another detach- 
 ment of friends to detain Christ and say to 
 Him, on his behalf : " Lord, trouble not Thyself : 
 for I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter 
 under my roof : wherefore neither thought I 
 myself worthy to come unto Thee : but say in a 
 word, and my servant shall be healed." Then 
 follows the argument, drawn from his stern 
 profession, which so fully exhibits his faith : 
 " For I am a man under authority, having sol- 
 diers under me : and I say to this man. Go, and 
 he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he 
 Cometh ; and to my servant, Do this, and he 
 doeth it." You observe the grandeur of the 
 thought. " If I, holding a subordinate position, 
 myself under authority, have soldiers under me, 
 who go and come at my word, how much more 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 -slialt Thou, the great Caesar of the universe, 
 command the healing forces, and by a word 
 reach my poor servant's case! " His faith was 
 rewarded, and the immediate restoration of his 
 dying servant proved that he had rightly 
 judged Christ to be the great " Captain of our 
 salvation." 
 
 He reasoned up, you observe, from his pro- 
 fession as a soldier to Christ. He applied the 
 principles of authority, obedience, and power, 
 which he was accustomed to act upon in his 
 own life, to the higher matters of the spiritual 
 world. He argued that if authority was re- 
 spected and obeyed among men, how much 
 more was the authority of God entitled to 
 respect, and able to command that which it 
 willed. There is no legitimate trade, occupa- 
 tion, relation, or profession in life which will 
 not educate us up to something higher, if we 
 have faith to look beyond it. We were not 
 made, like the brute beasts, to serve mere mate- 
 rial ends, but the material forms under which 
 we live were made to serve us. As through 
 the visible things of the creation we reach a 
 conception of the invisible Creator, so through 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 359 
 
 the various forms and departments of human 
 life we rise to a knowledge of the principles 
 which are essential to our highest well-being. 
 Domestic life contains the divine idea of God's 
 Fatherhood, and the family is a school in which 
 the choicest spiritual truths may be learned. 
 Commercial life brings into play those essential 
 principles, faith and truth; and through an 
 experience of their fundamental worth between 
 man and man, we are able to appreciate, if we 
 will, their supreme importance between man 
 and God. So military life embodies certain 
 universal principles which are worthy of being 
 applied to a wider circle of interests than that 
 in which we find them illustrated. 
 
 Let us consider, then, the military idea ; and 
 I ask you, my hearers, to mark well the prin- 
 ciples to which, as soldiers, you are committed ; 
 for if you act upon them in the lower circle of 
 things, where the obligations are least strong 
 and the necessity least urgent, you are con- 
 victed of folly if you fail to act upon them in 
 the higher sphere of God and the soul, 
 
 T. You will at once admit that respect for 
 authority is essential to the military idea. We 
 
360 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 conceive an army to be a solid engine of war, 
 compacted of individual men, systematically 
 adjusted, and under the absolute control of one 
 master mind. Its whole efficiency depends 
 upon the facility with which a multitude of men 
 can be wheeled, moved forward, or halted, at 
 command. Order is, therefore, the first law of 
 an army ; but there can be no order without 
 obedience, and no obedience without law, and 
 no law can be effective without authority to 
 maintain it. When authority is not main- 
 tained, discipline is relaxed, confusion ensues, 
 and the army becomes a mere mob. Yet no 
 man feels that his liberty of action is restricted 
 in battle by being under orders. He knows, 
 on the contrary, that he can work out the 
 inspiration which he feels, with the utmost 
 efficiency, by acting strictly according to rule. 
 He submits to law because he cannot be a 
 good soldier otherwise. The more he loves his 
 profession, or the cause which he seeks to 
 honour by it, the more will he glory in being 
 " a man under authority." 
 
 But the army is not the only department of 
 life in which respect for authority is necessary. 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 361 
 
 There can be no order, harmony, or happiness 
 anywhere without it. Our best interests are 
 conserved, and the fullest manhood developed, 
 by submission to law. The discipline of the 
 army economises physical force — uses it to the 
 best advantage, and secures for the individual 
 the fullest exercise of his powers. The patriot 
 knows that he can accomplish more for his 
 country, if fighting must needs be, by entering 
 the ranks, and so putting himself under law, 
 than he could possibly achieve alone. But the 
 organisation of physical force is among the 
 lowest and last necessities of our social condi- 
 tion. Back of the army is the state. It re- 
 quires a militia, as it requires police ; but its 
 nobler purpose is to conserve the social forces, 
 to promote intelligence and industry, to drill 
 men into honest living, and to advance the 
 common good by demanding individual loyalty. 
 It is no restriction of our liberty that we should 
 be required to be good citizens. We only sur- 
 render so much of our liberty as would tend to 
 trample upon a neighbour's rights and break 
 down the general prosperity. In the mainte- 
 nance of the common good we have the freest 
 
362 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 scope for the exercise of our individual powers. 
 Liberty is not lawlessness, but the truest civil 
 liberty and the best happiness of each individ- 
 ual grow out of respect for authorit)^. When 
 this breaks down, anarchy, poverty, distress, 
 and general wretchedness ensue. 
 
 This principle has perhaps its best illustration 
 in the family. That is the nursery of the state. 
 If a man is not taught to respect authority 
 there, he is very apt to develop lawlessness in 
 all the other relations of life. But who will say 
 that a child's truest welfare is not promoted by 
 the discipline of the household ? Who will say 
 that it is not according to the dictates of the 
 truest love to control his waywardness, restrain 
 his evil tempers, enforce the laws of truth, love, 
 and right, and subject him to the discipline of 
 the school-room? 
 
 The principle of subjection to authority is 
 stamped into the vtry constitution of things. 
 The system of nature in which we stand holds 
 us under laws which we cannot violate with 
 impunity. We must respect the laws of gravi- 
 tation, or get hurt, if not killed. We must 
 respect the laws of health, or suffer and die. 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 363 
 
 The child is drilled by experience to fall into 
 the line of nature's ordinances, if he would not 
 fall, be burned, or make himself sick. 
 
 But all these forms of authority are simply 
 the visible embodiments of the supreme author- 
 ity which is lodged in the great God. Back 
 of physical, civil, and social laws is the moral 
 law which clothes them with authority and 
 asserts itself in the Bible and in your own con- 
 sciences. If we submit ourselves to military 
 rule for the sake of physical conquests, if we 
 conform ourselves to the civil authority for the 
 sake of present peace and prosperit}% if wc 
 obey the laws of nature to save ourselves from 
 bodily ruin, is there not stronger reason stili 
 why we should respect the divine authority by 
 which alone the moral foes which create all our 
 present evils can be conquered, the joys of a 
 life beyond the present fleeting world be se- 
 cured, and the immortal soul saved from ever- 
 lasting pains? 
 
 " Better," said the wise man, " is he that 
 ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a 
 city." Think how profoundly true this is. 
 The evils v/hich break out in noisy disturb- 
 
364 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 ances, and which often require to be subdued 
 by physical force, are really moral evils. 
 " Whence come wars and fightings among 
 you ? " said St. James ; " come they not even of 
 your lusts which war in your members? " The 
 foes which civil law seeks to restrain, and mili- 
 tary rule to subdue, are really within us. He 
 is, therefore, the best defender of the public 
 peace and maintainer of the laws who respects 
 God's authority in his own soul, who submits 
 in unquestioning faith to Christ as the Captain 
 of his salvation, who labours in the strength of 
 Christ, and according to the will of Christ, to 
 subdue his mutinous passions, control his tem- 
 pers, destroy the j^ower of sin, cast out foul 
 thoughts, and maintain a holy character. To 
 this, the chief business of life, we call you. 
 The discipline which you recognise in every 
 other department of life is absolutely essential 
 to the prosperity of your souls. Will you hon- 
 our men, and refuse to honour your Maker? 
 Do you suppose that the God whose physical 
 laws you dare not violate is less exact in His 
 moral government? Believe me, if your souls 
 are not brought into absolute subjection to 
 
THE MILITARY IDE J. 365 
 
 Him who has so graciously manifested Himself 
 in Christ, defeat is certain. The state of sin in 
 which you are is a state of mutiny, and must 
 end in chains and darkness. 
 
 H. But we hasten to point out another ele- 
 ment of the military idea. Self-subordination 
 is absolutely essential. The soldier must sink 
 his individuality in the common cause. He 
 must submit all his movements to the will of his 
 superior. He must go where he is sent, stand 
 where he is put, and do what he is told, no 
 matter how hard, dangerous, or painful, without 
 a v>-ord of remonstrance. He must consent to 
 be wheeled about as the cannon are. He must 
 not carry his hands or his feet as he would, but 
 by constant drill learn to step, run, carry, and 
 halt v.'ith the precision of a machine. In active 
 service he must bear exposure, endure hard- 
 ship, suffer hunger, toil through painful marches, 
 face the fiercest fire, and in countless forms 
 subordinate himself to the cause or commander 
 he serves. Men submit to all this from various 
 motives. Sometimes a mere love of excite- 
 ment prompts them. Sometimes the rewards 
 of ambition attract them. Sometimes a love of 
 
366 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 country or the exigencies of some great occa- 
 sion will move them. Sometimes they do it for 
 pay, and sometimes, when there is not much 
 risk of being called into active service, a mere 
 love of display is the motive. 
 
 But in whatever department of the service 
 a man may be enlisted, he cannot as a soldier 
 have his own way. We point to the fact 
 because it is one of many illustrations which 
 life affords of the possibility of self-control 
 under certain circumstances. Men will hold 
 themselves in subjection for an earthly good, 
 submit to all sorts of restrictions and incon- 
 veniences, and yet decline to make any sacri- 
 fices for the sake of God, righteousness, and 
 eternal life. This is one of the strange incon- 
 sistencies of human nature. Religion is not 
 the only thing in life which calls for self-denial 
 and cross-bearing. There is scarcely a trade, 
 profession, or pleasure which does not involve 
 self-subjection in some form. 
 
 Just see how the pugilist will train himself 
 for some brutal encounter. If a preacher 
 should exhort him for the sake of his soul's 
 welfare to live soberly, righteously, and godly 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 367 
 
 in this present world, he would scoff at him. 
 But for the sake of the miserable chance of 
 bruising and battering into helplessness a fel- 
 low-man, and the small renown which that will 
 bring, he will put himself under training, regu- 
 late his habits severely, abstain from intoxicat- 
 ing drinks, exercise himself according to rule, 
 deny himself all but the plainest and most 
 wholesome food, and measure ofT his hours of 
 sleeping and waking with the utmost exactness. 
 He will pursue this course of life for months 
 sometimes, and all to gratify a brutal ambition. 
 We witness the same thing under the much 
 higher forms of commercial life. Men must toil 
 to get wealth. There would be no harm if 
 they saw beyond it the kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness, and regulated the pursuit 
 and the use by those higher principles. But 
 we speak of those who seek wealth for its own 
 sake. They do it with "a feverishness, inten- 
 sity, and devotion worthy of a better cause. 
 Their rest is broken, their health disregarded, 
 their comfort sacrificed, in the mad pursuit. 
 They practise painful economies, deny them- 
 selves needful recreation, and allow themselves 
 
368 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 no time for personal improvement, on the 
 ground that they will settle down and enjoy life 
 by and by. They are willing to sacrifice pres- 
 ent pleasure for the sake of that future possi- 
 bility — that golden realisation which so many 
 dream of, but none ever reach. They will 
 endure all sorts of disagreeable people and 
 associations, if they see gold glittering through 
 them. They will smile upon men whom they 
 detest, be patient with men who abuse them, 
 curb their tempers before men whom profanity 
 would offend, and adapt themselves to all sorts 
 of characters with a marvellous degree of self- 
 command ; and yet the crown, when they reach 
 it, is a withered crown and full of thorns. The 
 experience of multitudes assures us that it is 
 not worth the toils and sacrifices and waste of 
 manhood which it costs. 
 
 We need hardly remind you how men, for 
 the sake of political place and power, will con- 
 sciously degrade themselves, sacrifice their self- 
 respect, allow themselves to be drilled into the 
 service of some party, lay down their very 
 manhood, and harness upon themselves a mul- 
 titude of cares and humiliations. Why, if one 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 369 
 
 half the thought, zeal, labour, and martyr-like 
 self-subordination which some men display in 
 their ambition for office were transferred to the 
 service of Christ, they would be called mad 
 fanatics. 
 
 Our Lord Jesus Christ does not, therefore, 
 ask a strange thing of us when He says : " If 
 any man will come after me, let him deny him- 
 self, take up his cross, and follow me." You 
 will subject yourselves to drill and hardship and 
 labour for some temporal good — some miser- 
 able, perishable thing which does not satisfy 
 when you gain it, and must be left behind when 
 you die. He says: "Do this for m.e : subor- 
 dinate yourselves to my great cause ; live to do 
 my will ; crucify your own desires ; let not the 
 world delude you ; drill yourselves by prayer 
 and faith and active duty into habits of obedi- 
 ence ; * Endure hardness, as good soldiers of 
 Jesus Christ ' ; set your thoughts and hearts 
 upon immortality ; keep step with the good and 
 true in all noble activities. The end is not 
 uncertain: death itself shall not obstruct your 
 march : when you stand in eternity, I, your 
 great Captain, will greet you ; I will say, * Well 
 
370 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 done, good and faithful servants ' ; I will place 
 the crown of life upon your heads; I will give 
 you the treasures of imperishable joy; I will 
 bring you in triumph to my Father's house, and 
 there shall you dwell with me for ever." 
 
 When we see a well-drilled regiment march- 
 ing in perfect order, each man in his place, 
 every company moving in exact lines, every 
 step measured, and the whole movement timed 
 to inspiring music, we think how subhme the 
 lives of these perfectly adjusted men would be 
 if they were as rigidly under the command of 
 God in their souls as they are in their bodies 
 under the command of men. How square and 
 solid their characters would be! How firmly 
 their steps would be measured by duty ! How, 
 in all the spirit of their lives, they would be 
 found keeping time to the music of Christ's 
 love! How strong and determined would be 
 their march against all unrighteousness and 
 wrong! How true would they be to their 
 marching orders, " Fighting the good fight of 
 faith, and laying hold on eternal life " ! How 
 much more they would be worth to the world 
 — how much stronger and nobler in them- 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 37« 
 
 selves, as men disciplined in character, than 
 they can be as men merely disciplined in body. 
 
 III. Enthusiasm is another and very essen- 
 tial element of the military idea. There must 
 be a soul in every military organisation, or it 
 will lack force and cohesion. The pervading 
 spirit may be pride in the body itself, devotion 
 to a commander, the inspiration of some great 
 cause, or all of these combined. When that 
 which the French call esprit de corps is lost, we 
 say that the army is demoralised. 
 
 History affords many illustrations of its 
 power. How it thrilled through Napoleon's 
 jaded troops when he fell over into the marsh 
 at Areola, and the cry went up: "Forward, 
 to save your general! " They were weary, 
 dispirited, worn ; but they forgot all, and pressed 
 onward with one strong purpose to rescue their 
 great chief. How beautifully it was illustrated 
 in that young Frenchman who was found 
 wounded upon the field, in the late German 
 war! The surgeons of the victorious force 
 which had struck him down came to care for 
 the suffering. He refused to be moved. They 
 pleaded with him, but he begged them to leave 
 
372 
 
 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 him and care for others. When they came 
 back to him he was dead — " off duty for ever." 
 They lifted him for burial, and then they 
 understood why he would not have his bleeding 
 wounds stanched. Beneath him lay the colours 
 of his rcgiuicnt. And I remember, too, that 
 scene at Waterloo. An orderly dashed up to 
 the Iron Duke, and told him that a certain 
 brigade would be cut to pieces by the furious 
 onsets of the French, if not immediately relieved. 
 "Tell them to stand firm," was the reply. 
 " But we shall perish," said the officer. " Stand 
 firm," was the inflexible answer. " You '11 find 
 us there," rejoined the officer; and they were 
 " found there," for every man of that gallant 
 brigade perished at the post of duty. 
 
 Shall there be such enthusiasm for an earthly 
 cause, and human leaders, and perishing organ- 
 isations, and shall we find fault with enthusiasm 
 when it is demanded for righteousness, Christ, 
 and the Church of the living God? Men are 
 not afraid of earnestness in earthly matters. 
 Lukewarmness will not accomplish anything. 
 A man must have a passion for literature, 
 music, painting, money-making, or political life, 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 373 
 
 if he expects to succeed. But if a man or 
 woman is set on fire by religious convictions, 
 and by the force of those convictions opposes 
 wrong courses in business, goes dov/n into dens 
 and alleys to save souls, or away off to Africa 
 to teach and preach, the world shrugs its 
 shoulders and says, " Fanaticism." Those 
 women in the West who are trying to pray 
 down the liquor traffic may be immoderate in 
 their zeal ; but better such immoderation in a 
 good cause than the immoderation of base 
 appetites which justifies such crusades. We 
 are in far more danger from too much modera- 
 tion in religion than from an overflow of 
 immoderate enthusiasm. Men can be immod- 
 erate in their tempers, their ambitions, their 
 words, their pleasures, their appetites; but the 
 noblest passion of all, the passion for righteous- 
 ness and truth, is suffered to lie cold and dead 
 in their bosoms. 
 
 And yet we challenge the universe to pro- 
 duce grander incentives to enthusiasm than the 
 Christian life presents. It is the cause of truth 
 against falsehood, of righteousness against sin, 
 of eternity against time, of God against devils, 
 
374 
 
 THE MILITARY IDEaI. 
 
 of joy against woe — of all that is spiritual and 
 distinctive of our true manhood, against that 
 which is mean, debasing, and worthy only of 
 brute beasts. 
 
 Its Leader — oh, who can paint His perfec- 
 tions! He stands before the world as tran- 
 scendently and spotlessly glorious as one clothed 
 with the sun. He was magnificent in His per- 
 sonal character, — even infidels admit that. He 
 was heroic in His lifelong endurance of sorrow, 
 loneliness, and shame. He was brilliant in all 
 His glowing words and mighty works. He was 
 divine in His calm submission to the cross for 
 our sake, and in His triumphant rising from the 
 grave, to be crowned conqueror over sin, Satan, 
 and death! He has gone before in all the 
 path of suffering over which His followers must 
 tread, and He is living now at God's right 
 hand, literally the soul and life of the company 
 of believers. It is no mere sentiment, but a 
 real, personal spirit, which animates His people, 
 and proves by the help and comfort which it 
 bestows that He is with them through all their 
 march from grace to glory. 
 
 Do not, then, I pray you, throw av/ay senti- 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 375 
 
 ment and waste enthusiasm upon objects which 
 arc mean, delusive, and unworthy of you, when 
 Christ is before you, worthy of your most fer- 
 vent love, and able to fill you with all the fulness 
 of God, 
 
 Respect for authority, self-subordination, and 
 enthusiasm we have conceived to be the ele- 
 ments of the military idea. He is the true 
 soldier who carries them into all the relations 
 of his life. We are called to remember, on this 
 sacred day, one who did this. Washington, 
 like the centurion, had faith to discern through 
 the discipline of life the supreme authority of 
 God. He was great in military, civil, and 
 social life, because he was great in personal 
 character. He was able to command, because 
 in his moral nature he was a man under author- 
 ity. He recognised God in all his private life 
 and all his public acts. He prays, in one of his 
 public documents, that " God would dispose us 
 all to demean ourselves with that charity, hu- 
 mility, and pacific temper of mind which were 
 the characteristics of the divine Author of our 
 blessed religion, without an humble imitation 
 of whose example we can never hope to be a 
 
376 THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 happy nation." In accordance with this faith 
 in revelation, he avowed himself publicly a 
 soldier of Christ, and subordinated himself 
 strictly to the discipline of the gospel. "He 
 lived," said one who knew him, " by rule. His 
 great attainments and actions resulted from 
 certain deliberate and virtuous principles which 
 his reason and conscience presented, and to 
 which he steadily and immovably adhered. 
 He was uniformly superior to the littleness of 
 vanity and pride, of selfish ambition and 
 avarice, of habitual vice, even in its most 
 fashionable and seducing forms." 
 
 As he was thus under authority and subor- 
 dinated to its will, his life was full of the spirit 
 of goodness. He was zealous, not for the army 
 or the nation merely, but for God, truth, and 
 right. 
 
 He was a nobleman in all his relations, 
 because he was not ashamed to be a man under 
 divine rule, and to argue that if it was essential 
 that he, as general or President, should com- 
 mand obedience, how much more essential was 
 it that he should be in subjection to the Father 
 of Spirits ; how much more worthy of obedi- 
 
THE MILITARY IDEA. 
 
 377 
 
 ence was Christ, the great Captain, than any 
 earthly leader! 
 
 We hold up then before you that which he 
 honoured, the old blood-red standard of the 
 cross. The Bible loves to represent the service 
 of Christ under military figures. Paul calls his 
 fellow-Christians "fellow-soldiers." He bids 
 them put on the " whole armour of God." He 
 points them to Christ going as a conqueror 
 before them. The day must soon come for 
 every one of us when the movements of our 
 earthly life shall cease, the arms of our earthly 
 warfare be laid down, the uniform of time and 
 the flesh crumble away. The rewards of the 
 present must perish with us. The sword of the 
 greatest rests idly on his coffin ; the flag he 
 fought for is folded round it; his steed has no 
 rider. But the soul goes marching on! It 
 joins the throng which is steadily, though 
 silently, marching into eternity. The trap- 
 pings of worldly pomp, political greatness, and 
 earthly wealth are left behind. The soul alone, in 
 its own essential character, reaches the presence 
 of God. If the drill and discipline of life have 
 not developed righteousness, it is a lost soul. 
 
XX. 
 
 meltgion auD Social ^cience< 
 
XX. 
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIAL 
 SCIENCE.^ 
 
 A?id, behold, a certain laivycr stood up, and tempted 
 Him, saying. Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal 
 life? He said unto him, What is ■written in the law? 
 how readest thou? And he anstvering said, Thou 
 shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with 
 all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And He 
 said unto hun. Thou hast answered right: this do, 
 and thou shalt live. — %x. Luke x. 25-28. 
 
 HAVE been relieved to find that others, 
 more competent to do it than myself, have 
 
 experienced difficulty in defining social science. 
 
 I shall content myself with a very practical 
 
 interpretation of it. 
 
 The subject, in the abstract, involves many 
 
 perplexing problems. It deals with such intri- 
 
 1 Preached before the American Social Science Association 
 in Cincinnati. 
 
 381 
 
382 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 cate relations, subtle changes, and varied phe- 
 nomena that the possibility of constructing an 
 exact science of society may be justly doubted. 
 But it is possible, undoubtedly, to develop a 
 deeper and wider knowledge of the principles 
 which are essential to the welfare of society. 
 This I understand to be the noble aim of the 
 American Social Science Association. Social 
 science, defined by the practical purposes of the 
 association, is that process of thought, research, 
 and action which seeks to discover and apply 
 the principles which make for the good of society. 
 Social science cannot, therefore, be a matter 
 of indifference to any man who knows what it is 
 and who realises his complex relations as a social 
 being. In the eft'ort to evolve the one harmo- 
 nious truth of society, it sweeps the whole 
 keyboard of human interests, and touches some- 
 where each individual in the great aggregate. 
 It comprehends all those conditions of vice, 
 disease, crime, poverty, strife, suffering, and 
 wrong which quiver through every nerve of the 
 social organism. It seeks to answer the ques- 
 tions which are extorted from a suffering 
 humanity by these conditions, to discover the 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 383 
 
 hidden causes, and to apply the remedy. It is 
 necessarily related to all those forces by which 
 good government may be established, just laws 
 made, crime repressed and prevented, criminals 
 reformed, public morality advanced, and sound 
 principles of economy, trade, and finance dif- 
 fused. Surely a science so wide in its scope, 
 and vital to the welfare of each member of the 
 body, can be foreign to the interests of none 
 but the Ishmaelites of mankind. 
 
 I am to speak of one of the forces which 
 social science recognises as a necessary factor 
 in the problem of society. The subject as- 
 signed me is social science in its relations to 
 religion. 
 
 That religion, in some form, has entered into 
 society and exerted a powerful influence, will 
 of course be admitted. It is a fact of history, 
 and needs no proof. 
 
 That it is a necessary social element we may 
 also safely assume. The least partial students 
 of social science adm.it this. Says Herbert 
 Spencer: " However dominant may become the 
 moral sentiment enlisted in behalf of humanity, 
 it can never exclude the sentiment, alone prop- 
 
384 RELIGION ^ND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 erly called religious, awakened by that which is 
 behind humanity and behind all other things. 
 A rehgious system is a normal and essential 
 factor in every evolving society. The special- 
 ties of it have certain fitnesses to the social 
 conditions. While its form is temporary, its 
 substance is permanent. Physical science also, 
 in crowding out the old faith, recognises the 
 need of some religion by offering its cosmic 
 emotions as a substitute." 
 
 But we may go a step further, and assume 
 also that the religion which has entered into 
 and baptised our civilisation with the name of 
 its founder, Christ, has claims upon social sci- 
 ence v/hich no other religion presents. You 
 will not expect me to enter upon a comparison 
 of religions to prove this. There can be no 
 question of precedence in authority between 
 it and the systems of Sakya-muni, Confucius, 
 Zoroaster, or Mohammed. We may recognise 
 in these many germs of the truth. We admit 
 that Judaism is the stock out of which it grew. 
 But there is no rivalry between these systems 
 and Christianity. It has an acknowledged 
 superiority, which can only be contested by 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 38$ 
 
 some of those products of modern thought 
 which propose to supersede it. None of them, 
 however, have attained sufficient ripeness to be 
 treated otherwise than incidentally in their 
 relations to the religion of Christ. 
 
 We shall take it for granted, therefore, that 
 by the term " religion," in the question before 
 us, the Christian religion is meant. 
 
 What has social science to do with it, or, in 
 other words, what has the eager, prying thought 
 of the age, which seeks to evolve order out of 
 social chaos, to do with the " true light, which 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world" ? 
 
 We claim that Christianity is related to social 
 science in the fact that it discloses principles 
 and sets in motion forces which are vital to the 
 interests of society in all its departments. 
 
 We do not claim that it supplies rules which 
 apply to every specific relation of our social life. 
 We should entirely miss its distinctive charac- 
 ter if we applied it in this way. Rules are the 
 outgrowth of principles, and may be modified 
 by circumstances. Christianity embodies the 
 unchanging principles. It contains the first 
 truths of society, which are as inseparable from 
 
386 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 its growth and perfection as an organic whole 
 as the silent influences outstreaming from the 
 sun are inseparable from the development of 
 the kingdom of nature. 
 
 Now, in order to demonstrate this, we must 
 show what the religion of the Bible essentially is. 
 
 The portion of Scripture just read discloses 
 the essence of it. The certain lawyer who 
 stood up and tempted Christ, saying, " What 
 shall I do to inherit eternal life ? " gave expres- 
 sion to the need which religion meets. He was 
 referred back to the law of which he was a 
 teacher. "What is written in the law?" said 
 Christ, " how readest thou ? " He answered : 
 " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart, and soul, and mind, and strength ; 
 and thy neighbour as thyself." Our Lord 
 declared that he had answered right. " Do 
 this," He added, " and thou shalt live." 
 
 Now, it is at just this point of doing that the 
 relations of Christianity to Judaism appear. It 
 is true that the lawyer stated that which was 
 the essence of religion under the law, but 
 Christ assented to it as the necessary condition 
 of eternal hfe under the gospel. He intro- 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 387 
 
 duced no new law. He expressly said that He 
 came not to destroy, but to fulfil. The grand 
 end of His mission was not to create a new 
 religion, but to realise the old in the new life 
 which He created. The love which a stern 
 " thou shalt " could not compel. He warmed 
 into being by the manifestation of God's con- 
 straining love. He transferred the sanctions of 
 law from Sinai to Calvary. The faith which 
 He requires is a faith which works by love — a 
 faith which Paul declares to be nothing v/ithout 
 charity, a faith which proves itself by loyalty to 
 Christ; and " This," He says, "is my command- 
 ment, that ye love one another, as I have loved 
 you." It was a new commandment in the 
 measure and motive of it — "as I have loved 
 you " ; but in principle it was, as John tells his 
 disciples, the " old commandment which ye 
 have heard from the beginning." Because 
 " love is the fulfilling of the law," Christianity 
 exalts charity, or love, above all other virtues. 
 
 The essence of religion, therefore, is the same 
 under the gospel as under the law. But Chris- 
 tianity, as distinguished from Judaism, is that 
 truth embodied in Jesus Christ which estab- 
 
388 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 lishes man in relations of love to God and his 
 fellow- men. 
 
 In reaching this definition of religion we gain 
 an important point, for we prove that it is su- 
 perior to those distortions of it which are so 
 commonly confounded with it; we separate it 
 from the miscomprehensions and perversions 
 which human ignorance or prejudice has fas- 
 tened upon it ; we refute the assertion that its 
 " ideal is negative rather than positive, passive 
 rather than active, innocence rather than noble- 
 ness, abstinence from evil rather than energetic 
 pursuit of good"; we see that it is more than 
 its institutions, its theologies, and its rituals. 
 These may be defective, and change their 
 forms from age to age ; but religion works 
 through them to ripeness, as the grain of mus- 
 tard-seed to which it is likened develops through 
 slow processes into a great tree, or a little 
 leaven leavens gradually the whole lump. 
 
 We are to show that religion in this sense is 
 vital to the interests of society. The law, 
 " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart, and soul, and mind, and strength; 
 and thy neighbour as thyself," regards man in 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 389 
 
 a threefold relation — to himself, to his neigh- 
 bour, and to his God. The principles of 
 Christianity are really contained in the one law 
 of love, which is to govern these relations. 
 
 The duties which belong to man in his rela- 
 tions to himself and to his neighbours constitute 
 morahty. No one presumes to doubt that 
 morality is vital to the welfare of society. All 
 science — physical, metaphysical, and social — 
 bears witness to its sacred and supreme impor- 
 tance. All serious scientific thinkers are quick 
 to repudiate an immoral tendency in their 
 teaching. Systems which conflict with Chris- 
 tianity, and ignore immortality and a personal 
 God, are foremost to claim a moral good as 
 their logical outcome. 
 
 It is clear that under the head of man's 
 relations to himself and to his neighbour all 
 possible social questions are included. It is the 
 work of social science to discover the obliga- 
 tions which belong to those relations. Social 
 science is, therefore, inseparably rooted in moral- 
 ity. Now, in the precept, "Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbour as thyself," we have a moral 
 principle of fundamental and unchanging im- 
 
390 
 
 RELIGION AND HOCML SCIENCE. 
 
 portance. This is so manifest that the best of 
 our sceptical philosophers agree to approve it. 
 John Stuart Mill classes it with those noble 
 moralities of which he says it is impossible 
 "that they should be forgotten or cease to be 
 operative on the human conscience while hu- 
 man beings remain cultivated or civilised." 
 Comte, the philosopher of the new religion of 
 humanity, makes it the centre of his system — 
 " the First Commandment, to which there is no 
 second." We are aware that they do not 
 credit it to Christianity, that they are very 
 careful to show that it originated in the ancient 
 philosophies, and to displace it from its reli- 
 gious sanctions. 
 
 It is sufficient, however, for our present pur- 
 pose that the worth of it is admitted, and that 
 Christ has made it the centre of His moral sys- 
 tem. It detracts nothing from the lustre of 
 Christianity that there should have been dim 
 prophecies of its fulness in the twilight of man's 
 moral development. We are not jealous of the 
 gray dawn, because it anticipates the sun. 
 
 It is something that we find in it a common 
 denominator, accepted by sceptics and believers 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 391 
 
 alike, around which they may rally, and from 
 which they may work out, theoretically at least, 
 the problems of society. 
 
 We claim that to love your neighbour as 
 yourself is not only an excellent principle, but 
 that it is in itself a perfect and inclusive 
 morality. 
 
 The love required is not a mere sentimental 
 fondness, but regard for the good of my neigh- 
 bour as for my ov/n, involving the will and 
 effort to secure it. 
 
 The limit of the obligation is humanity, 
 wherever it touches or may be influenced b}^ 
 me. Christ answered the question, " Who is 
 my neighbour?" in the parable of the Good 
 Samaritan. He showed that, as the Samaritan 
 was neighbour to the Jew, his traditional foe, 
 so the Jew was to " go and do likewise." In the 
 reciprocal sympathies of a common humanity, 
 which should be stronger than the antago- 
 nisms of a race, sect, or feeling, true neighbour- 
 hood was to be found. 
 
 The principle necessarily works out the most 
 perfect development of the individual life. I 
 am not to love myself more than my neighbour. 
 
392 
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 nor my neighbour more than myself. I am to 
 regard society as one great self, of which my- 
 self is a part. I am to seek my own good as a 
 necessary element in the good of the whole. 
 If I love myself merely for the sake of myself, 
 immediate self-gratification is the law of my life. 
 There is no bridle upon my passions — envy, 
 malice, lust, cruelty, injustice, treachery, ava- 
 rice, asserting themselves, at the cost of every 
 pure disposition of the soul. 
 
 But if I love myself for the sake of my rieigh- 
 bour, regard for his good is the limit of self- 
 indulgence. I must curb the thoughts which 
 would kindle evil passions. I must restrain the 
 passions which would defame, defile, defraud, 
 or destroy. I must keep my body in temper- 
 ance, soberness, and chastity, and my tongue 
 from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering. I 
 must be not only harmless, but a useful mem- 
 ber of society, developing all my powers. I 
 must be as careful to preserve health, in order 
 that I may neither be a burden nor transmit 
 disease, as I am to preserve character, in order 
 that my influence may be v/holesome. 
 
 The law of love, therefore, puts self where it 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 393 
 
 belongs. It does not involve entire self-abnega- 
 tion, as some have claimed. It perfectly recon- 
 ciles the principles of egoism and altruism, as 
 Spencer calls them, or, to use more familiar 
 terms, "self-love and love for others." These 
 are not contradictory principles. Self and 
 others find their essential unity in the one 
 inclusive law of love, as the planets, moving in 
 their separate orbits, are parts of a majestic 
 system, and roll on without jarring, in perfect 
 order, under the one harmonising law of gravi- 
 tation. Legitimate self-love is simply love 
 governing self or the individual in the interests 
 of society. I am a unit of the great aggregate. 
 Social science says the character of the aggre- 
 gate is determined by the character of the units. 
 The law of love is the true social principle, 
 which requires that the units shall live, not for 
 self and others, not for self in others, but for 
 self for the sake of others. The more un- 
 selfishly we aim at the good of others, the 
 stronger is the motive to acquire, that we may 
 impart; to take care of ourselves, that we may 
 be helpful to others ; to cultivate our best 
 powers, that society may reap a harvest ; and to 
 
394 
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 keep ourselves pure, down to the least thought 
 which may pollute, that our influence may be 
 good. Our own highest good comes as an 
 incident of seeking the good of others. We 
 miss it if we seek the good of others because it 
 is for our good, just as we cease to breathe 
 easily, and may even disorder the whole process 
 of breathing, if we think of breathing. " Hon- 
 esty is the best policy," but it has been said 
 that the man is a knav^e who acts upon that 
 motive. 
 
 Through each individual life the principle 
 works out into every relation of society. Love 
 v/orketh no ill to his neighbour. The man who 
 regards the good of his fellows cannot kill, 
 commit adultery, steal, or lie. If every man 
 could be brought to act upon this principle, the 
 problem of prevention and repression of crime 
 would be effectually solved ; there would be no 
 crime. 
 
 But regard for our neighbour's good does 
 more than merely restrain from evil-doing. It 
 impels to the most generous fulfilment of every 
 social duty. It necessarily enforces the obliga- 
 tions of husband and wife, parent and child, 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 395 
 
 governor and governed, buyer and seller, 
 employer and employed. By the operation of 
 this law there would be a high tide of faithful- 
 ness running through and perfectly fulfilling all 
 these relations. If faithfulness is secured in all 
 these relations, it is easy to see that there must 
 be purity in the relations of the sexes ; that the 
 sacredness of the marriage bond is preserved ; 
 that the family is protected ; that the truest 
 liberty and order would result from wise legis- 
 lation and pure patriotism ; that the channels 
 of trade would be purged from dishonesty ; and 
 that the problem of labour and capital would 
 be solved by a just and generous system of 
 cooperation. 
 
 We have not, hov/ever, yet reached the limit 
 of the operation of this law. It v/idens from 
 duty into the broadest benevolence. To love 
 my neighbour as myself is to have a living 
 sympathy for man as man, and to care for him 
 as I care for myself, or, in other v\^ords, to con- 
 sider his wants as well as his rights. It does 
 not require me to supply the wants of those 
 who are able to supply their own v;ants. This 
 would not be for their good. It would foster 
 
396 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 indolence and pauperism, and be a wrong to 
 society. The law of love requires me to act 
 upon the apostolic rule, " If any man will not 
 work, neither shall he eat." That indiscrim- 
 inate giving which gratifies an indolent com- 
 passion is no part of it. True charity seeks to 
 know and supply the real wants of men, and 
 not their merely superficial needs. The real 
 v/ant of the pauper class is help to earn their 
 own living by honest toil. True charity, there- 
 fore, moved by a real concern for human 
 welfare, will seek to do thorough work by 
 reforming the vicious and indolent, restoring 
 their self-respect, and lifting them up to the 
 level of usefulness again. 
 
 But for those who are not able to supply 
 their own wants — the weak, the sick, the dis- 
 abled in body or in mind, the oppressed and 
 the suffering — the law of love provides sym.- 
 pathy and care. 
 
 While it intensifies the claims of kinship and 
 of friendship, it makes of equal obligation that 
 which indeed includes them both, the claims of 
 humanity. A beautiful virtue has grown up 
 out of this broad obligation which we call 
 
RELIGION /ihlD SOCUL SCIENCE. 397 
 
 humanity. It is the affection which corre- 
 sponds to the idea of universal brotherhood. It 
 tends to organise mankind as one great family, 
 in which there should always be a mother's 
 love to embrace the orphan, strong arms for 
 the infirm to lean upon, healing ministries for 
 the sick, strength, health, knowledge, wealth, 
 wisdom, circulating through all the members, 
 according to their several needs, while sym- 
 pathy is everywhere the prevailing healing 
 influence. 
 
 Is it not evident that under this law of 
 benevolence the causes of the ills which afflict 
 society are reached and remedied as they could 
 not be by any external measure? Legislation 
 may do much to repress intemperance, regulate 
 sanitary conditions, prevent pauperism, and 
 improve prison discipline, but it cannot touch 
 the heart. It has in it the power of relief, but 
 not of reform. It may reach want, but not 
 character; and till that is reached nothing 
 effectual or permanent is done. It is imper- 
 sonal, and therefore none of the measures 
 which it enforces can supply the force which 
 personal charity in the warmth of its zeal exerts 
 
398 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 to help reform and elevate mankind. " There 
 is no achievement," says a master in moral 
 science, " like that of lifting a man sunk in vice 
 and enchained by evil habits on to the high 
 ground of Christian manhood, and fixing him 
 permanently there ; and the more there is of 
 sympathy and of effort for this, the more is the 
 character improved." 
 
 Now, I think it must be plain to all my 
 hearers that the self-sacrifice which this law 
 requires is not a fanatical self-annihilation, but 
 a pure disinterestedness, which, in a generous 
 care for the good of all, necessarily subordi- 
 nates the profit, the pleasure, the care, the 
 interests, of self. Will any one say that such 
 self-sacrifice does not tend to promote the wel- 
 fare of society? It has been argued that work, 
 enterprise, invention, improvement, arise out of 
 the principle that, among citizens severally 
 having unsatisfied wants, each cares more to 
 satisfy his own wants than the wants of others, 
 and, therefore, unqualified altruism, in causing 
 every man to care more to satisfy the wants of 
 others than his own, would dissolve all existing 
 social organisation. But to love your neigh- 
 
RELIGION /IND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 399 
 
 bour as yourself is not an unqualified altruisnn. 
 It does not require us to care more for the in- 
 terests of others than for our own, but, in caring 
 to supply our own wants, to care equally for 
 the wants of others. It is just because men 
 care more to supply their own wants than the 
 wants of others that their enterprises become 
 monopolies, their pleasures breed corruption, 
 their trade is disturbed by fraud, their politics 
 disorder the state. Self-denial is the corrective 
 of these evils. It is a necessary condition of 
 every social reform. The clashing interests of 
 the individual and society cannot be adjusted if 
 the individual does not restrain himself at the 
 point where indulgence becomes selfishness. 
 The law of love is irreconcilable with selfish- 
 ness. It neutralises it absolutely. 
 
 In neutralising selfishness it neutralises that 
 which we call sin, for sin is essentially selfish- 
 ness. If love is the fulfilling of the law, that 
 transgression of the law which is called sin must 
 be the opposite of love — selfishness. If sin is 
 the element which has poisoned the fountains 
 of society, love is the antidote which can make 
 the bitter waters sweet. To love your neigh- 
 
400 
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 hour as yourself, therefore, is a perfect and 
 inclusive morality. 
 
 But we claim that this morality cannot be 
 realised in action without religion. 
 
 To " love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and soul, and strength, and mind " is the 
 essence of religion. This is its first and great 
 commandment. But to " love thy neighbour as 
 thyself " is incorporate with it and a necessary 
 part of it — the second commandment, which is 
 Hke unto it. 
 
 Christianity creates the force ivhich realises 
 the obedience which these laivs deuiaiid. It 
 inspires the love which is the sum of our duty 
 to God and man. " We love Him, because He 
 first loved us." "The gospel is the revelation 
 of God manifest in the flesh." He is brought 
 near to us, in Jesus Christ, as our Father. By 
 entering into human relations with us through 
 His Son, the possibilities of a like sonship are 
 disclosed to our prodigal humanity. He pro- 
 vides in the one mysterious sacrifice of Christ, 
 completed on the cross, a reconciHation of 
 infinite righteousness with pardoning grace, 
 which satisfies our souls, affords a ground of 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 401 
 
 peace, and clears a way of access to the throne. 
 He opens upon those who beheve in His Son a 
 flood of h'ght and Hfe and lo\'e which trans- 
 forms them. The darkness, spectral with igno- 
 rance and fear and guilt, is scattered, and they 
 stand under the cloudless firmament of the 
 divine Fatherhood. Faith is simply the unclos- 
 ing of the closed eyes to God in Christ. But 
 with the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
 God in the face of Jesus Christ comes the spirit 
 of life. There is a new day for the man who 
 believes, making a new life — new in its knov;- 
 ledge, its relations, its obligations, and its 
 motives. He has learned to "love the Lord 
 his God with all his heart." 
 
 Loving God, he loves his fellow-men, because 
 this is His commandment, that " ye love one 
 another, as I have loved you," because the 
 sacrifice of Christ in our human nature, and to 
 redeem it, gives it new worth ; because, under 
 the consciousness of Fatherhood in God, a feel- 
 ing of brotherhood for man is warmed into 
 being ; because, as the sculptor, stooping over a 
 rough block of marble, said, " There is an angel 
 in this stone, and I must get it out," so he real- 
 
402 
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 ises that there are angeUc possibiHties in tlic 
 rudest of mankind. 
 
 Nov/, if, as Herbert Spencer insists, conduct 
 depends upon feehng, and therefore legisla- 
 tion, education, and the mere inculcation of 
 moral precepts are powerless to work moral 
 reforms, surely religion supplies in the feeling 
 which it excites a moral force of the first 
 importance to society. Can there be a higher 
 feeling than the love of God which it inspires ? 
 Must it not produce the highest kind of char- 
 acter and of action? There may be, of course, 
 a certain kind of moral action without religion. 
 Men may be kept in the grooves of moral duty 
 by the pressure of fear, self-interest, custom., or 
 public sentiment. But there is no " living spirit 
 in the wheels." The true morality which pro- 
 ceeds from a principle of love to our neighbour, 
 and is a governing, unifying, and regenerating 
 social force, derives its motive power from the 
 love of God, 
 
 It is a matter of fact that the uniform ten- 
 dency of Christianity has been to produce such 
 a morality. This appears in its singularly 
 aggressive character. It has kindled in its dis- 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 40^ 
 
 ciples a burning enthusiasm for humanity ; it 
 has made them eager to do good to their 
 fellow-men ; it has reached and leavened, 
 through their efforts, whole nations. 
 
 It appears also in the personal graces of 
 humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, truth, 
 and charity, which are peculiarly its own ; in 
 the sanctity which it has given to human life ; 
 in the honour which it has restored to woman ; 
 in the sacredness which it has attached to the 
 marriage bond ; in the place which it has given 
 to the family as the true unit of society ; in the 
 beautiful home life which has sprung up in its 
 path ; in the gradual abolition of slavery ; in 
 diminishing the atrocity of wars, and in develop- 
 ing the unity of nations. 
 
 We know that these efifects have been pro- 
 duced through strife, revolution, and blood. It 
 could not be otherwise, progressing, as Christian- 
 ity has done, through human infirmity, igno- 
 rance, and sin. But the fact remains that it is 
 everywhere associated with the best fruits of 
 social progress and the highest and purest civili- 
 sation. 
 
 The argument is strengthened bv another 
 
404 RELIGION AhID SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 fact, which is an undeniable fact of history, viz., 
 that the law of love was not a regenerating so- 
 cial force before the dawn of Christianity. 
 
 It is true that Cicero maintained the doctrine 
 of universal brotherhood as distinctly as it was 
 afterwards maintained by the Christian Church; 
 that Lucan expatiated with all the fervour of a 
 Christian poet upon " the time when the human 
 race will cast aside its weapons and all nations 
 learn to love " ; that Seneca anticipated the 
 highest Christian duty when he said : " The 
 duty of a citizen is in nothing to consider his 
 own interests distinct from that of others, as the 
 hand or foot, if they possessed reason and un- 
 derstood the lav/ of nature, would do, and wish 
 nothing that had not some relation to the rest 
 of the body " ; that Marcus Aurehus, in medi- 
 tations (not derived from Christianity), em- 
 bodied the purest moral sentiments. 
 
 It is true that Judaism contains the law of 
 love, and that the ethics of Christianity were 
 reflected in scattered fragments, as in a broken 
 mirror, through all the ethnic religions. 
 
 But it is also true that the moral ideas which 
 lay Hke the dry bones in Ezekiel's vision upon 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 405 
 
 the surface of the ancient world, some of them 
 jointed into systems of religion and philosophy, 
 did not become instinct with life and rise up, a 
 mighty living host, until Christ came and breathed 
 upon them the breath of God. He did not 
 merely utter pure sentiments : He reahsed them 
 in His own spotless character and holy life. 
 He gave to the world, in Himself, the inspira- 
 tion of a great moral ideal. " In Him was life, 
 and the life was the Hght of men." 
 
 The testimony of Lecky is valuable in this 
 connection, because he is no partial witness for 
 Christianity. He displays the broad chasm 
 that existed between the Roman moralists and 
 the Roman people. " On the one hand," he 
 says, " we find a system of ethics of which, 
 when we consider the range and beauty of its 
 prospects, the sublimity of the motives to which 
 it appealed, and its perfect freedom from super- 
 stitious elements, it is not too much to say that, 
 though it may have been equalled, it has never 
 been surpassed. On the other hand, we find a 
 society almost destitute of moralising institu- 
 tions, occupations, or beliefs, existing under an 
 economical and political system V4'hich inevitably 
 
4o6 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 led to general depravity, and passionately ad- 
 dicted to the most brutalising amusements. 
 The moral code, while it expanded in theoret- 
 ical catholicity, had contracted in practical ap- 
 plications." He shows that the regenerating 
 power of Christianity, contrasted with a beauti- 
 ful but lifeless philosophy, resided in the fact 
 that it united with its distinctive teaching a 
 pure and noble system of ethics, which it proved 
 itself capable of realising in action. 
 
 Nov.% John Stuart Mill finds fault wdth reli- 
 gion because it tends to stereotype morahty, and 
 may, therefore, seem to give divine sanctions to 
 false principles. But he admits that to love 
 your neighbour as yourself is a noble morality, 
 which society can never outgrow and remain 
 civilised. It is the distinctive glory of Chris- 
 tianity that it /las stereotyped this principle as 
 its own all-inclusive morality, and enforced it by 
 divine sanctions. Is there not a strong pre- 
 sumptive evidence that Christianity is really of 
 God in the fact that it has made of supreme 
 obligation and quickened into life a principle of 
 such universal and acknowledged fitness? 
 
 We have not time to enlarge upon the obvious 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 407 
 
 fact that in proportion as scepticism prevails 
 morality declines. 
 
 France tried the experiment of demolishing 
 the altars of religion, putting its profession 
 under legal ban, and inaugurating atheism as 
 the creed of the state. Was it a mere coinci- 
 dence that during the eclipse of faith there 
 should have been a reign of anarchy which 
 threatened to dissolve society ? " We are the 
 only people," writes a journalist of that time, 
 " in the world, who ever attempted to do with- 
 out religion. But what is already our sad ex- 
 perience? Every tenth day [the Sabbath of 
 the infidels] we are astounded by the recital of 
 more crimes and assassinations than were com- 
 mitted formerly in a whole year. At the risk 
 of speaking an obsolete language and receiving 
 insult for response, we declare that we must 
 cease striving to destroy the remnants of reli- 
 gion if we desire to prevent the entire dissolution 
 of society." 
 
 The honest student of social science cannot be 
 blind to the fact that where scepticism prevails 
 in our land morality declines. We have glaring 
 and alarming proofs of it in movements which. 
 
4o8 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 ignoring religion, organise class against class, 
 relax the sanctities of marriage, strike at the 
 foundations of our domestic life, and publicly 
 announce " free-love " conventions in terms, as 
 some one has well said, " which might have been 
 translated from recovered literary memorials of 
 Sodom." 
 
 Let Christianity, with its revelation of God, 
 its ennobling motives, its hopes and promises, its 
 immortahty of righteousness and peace, be 
 utterly annihilated, — let the Christ whose story 
 has " done more to regenerate and to soften 
 mankind than all the disquisitions of philoso- 
 phers and all the exhortations of moralists" be 
 proved a myth, — and what would remain? 
 Would the " religion of humanity," which the 
 noblest of our sceptical thinkers have dreamed 
 of, prevail? It is a beautiful idea, but it has 
 had but one living ideal, Christ, and He first 
 inspired the thought. It might linger among 
 the few for a time, but it could have no power 
 over the passions and conduct of the mass. It 
 would be as far from the people as the stoical 
 philosophy was from the people of its time. 
 There would be no sacredness in human life, 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 409 
 
 that it should be regarded ; no special worth to 
 human nature, that it should be honoured ; no 
 sufficient motive in a posthumous influence for 
 good to overcome the lusts of the present. 
 " Let us eat, drink, and be merry to-day : for 
 to-morrow we die," would be the maxim of the 
 multitude. 
 
 We admit that there are refined thinkers in 
 whom moral feelings and habits survive after 
 religion has been rejected. But they survive 
 as flowers retain fragrance and colour after they 
 are plucked, or the tree which has been killed 
 at the roots puts forth for a season a few green 
 leaves ; noble sentiments may remain, but 
 moral principle, drained of its vital juices, in- 
 evitably v/ithers into selfishness. 
 
 " Take my word for it," said Sir Robert Peel, 
 " it is not prudent, as a rule, to trust yourself to 
 any man who tells you that he does not believe 
 in a God or in a future after death." This may 
 be regarded as an extreme and unreasonable 
 theological prejudice. But place by the side of 
 it the sentiment of a zealous servant of science, 
 who told Agassiz that the " age of real civilisa- 
 tion would have begun when you could go out 
 
4IO RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 and shoot a man for scientific purposes." The 
 contrast proves that the statesman was not so 
 very unreasonable, after all. 
 
 We will as briefly as possible sum up our 
 argument. To love your neighbour as yourself 
 is a perfect and inclusive morality ; but this 
 morality cannot be realised in action apart from 
 the Christian religion, which gives it force and 
 vitality. Christianity, therefore, v/hich incor- 
 porates our duty to man with our duty to God, 
 and inspires the love which fulfils them, contains 
 the principles and forces which are fundamen- 
 tally essential to the welfare of society. 
 
 It follows that the question of social science, 
 in its relation to religion, is not a question of the 
 utility of religion, but of the first truths of so- 
 cial science itself. Christianity, as your hon- 
 oured secretary has well expressed it, is the 
 cherishing seed-bed and nursery of social science. 
 We call it a nev/ science, but it originated with 
 Jesus Christ. I once thought that I had com- 
 posed a tune ; but after several months I found 
 the identical melody, just as I had written it, in 
 an old music-book. My composition was only 
 a memory. Our social science has its original 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 411 
 
 in the principles wliich Christ affirmed nineteen 
 centuries ago — the principles of humanity, and 
 universal brotherhood, and eternal right. The 
 wave of harmony which He set in motion has 
 struck our thought, and formulates itself in new 
 methods of social reform. It was the central 
 idea of His mission to new create the human 
 race and restore it to God in the unity of a 
 spiritual kingdom. No such thought as this, or 
 nearly proximate to this, had ever before been 
 taken up by any living character in history. 
 It was a conception not limited to His own na- 
 tion, but including all races of men, and cover- 
 ing in its evolution the whole of time. Social 
 science, to work out the truth, must see in Him 
 its master. 
 
 It is a sign of no little cheer, when the air is 
 full of bad omens, that thoughtful men from all 
 departments of activity should come together to 
 consider disinterestedly how the best welfare of 
 society may be promoted. 
 
 The gospel of Jesus Christ is " a perfect law 
 of liberty." Social science, working out hon- 
 estly the problems of society, must, by the light 
 of history and experience, find their most thor- 
 
412 RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 ought solution in that law of love to God and 
 man. It must, as it searches into the principles 
 of phenomena, ultimately work back to Christ 
 as the essential factor in a perfect civilisation. 
 
 In its practical relations to religion it must be 
 tolerant of differences and allow for the various 
 forms and phases through which the essential 
 principles are progressing. It should enlist the 
 minds and energies of Christian men. It is the 
 special province of the churches. Your associa- 
 tion has a John Baptist's work to do in opening 
 up the needs and making straight in the desert 
 a highway for the healing ministries of the gos- 
 pel. It is for ministers and members of our 
 churches to consider the practical needs of the 
 age, and to take care that back of their creeds 
 and rituals and various methods there be the 
 spirit of love to the Master and love towards 
 those for whom He died, " Though I speak 
 with the tongues of men and of angels, and have 
 not love, I am become as sounding brass or a 
 tinkling cymbal." 
 
 I believe that just in proportion as we con- 
 sider the needs of our fellow-men, and let love 
 hold sway in our hearts, shall we come up out 
 
RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 413 
 
 of our sectarian differences and find the common 
 ground of essential truth. The reconciliation 
 of differences is in work — work for the Master. 
 It draws us to the central truth, which is love. 
 It fulfils the royal law. Can there be nobler 
 work for statesmen, scholars, lawyers, ministers, 
 citizens, than to discover, exhibit, and apply the 
 principles which work for the good of society ? 
 The principles of the gospel prove themselves 
 true by their fitness to our need. They are the 
 leaves of the tree of life, which are for the heal- 
 ing of the nations. Let us work out from them, 
 — from the idea of Fatherhood in God, of im- 
 mortality in Christ, of brotherhood under the 
 law of love, of repentance unto life, of salvation 
 through faith, — and we shall be co-workers in 
 the Lord, working towards the regeneration 
 which He has promised — a "new heavens and 
 new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
 

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