;^RY OF PBliv^^ ,^^^ 06ICAL SEViV BV 4639 .M6 1854 Moberly, George The lawof the Love of God /uJu^ //.X.W. THE LAW OF THE LOYE OF GOD: ON THE COMMANDMENTS OF THE FIRST TABLE OF THE DECALOGUE. GEORGE 'MOBERLY, D.C.L., HEAD MASTER OF WINCHESTEE COLLEGE. DAVID NUTT, WmCHESTEK; AND 270, STRAND, LONDON. M.DCCC.LIV. LONDON : T. RICHARDS, 37, GREAT QUEEN STREET. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION ..... 1 THE LAW OF PIETY . . . .12 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH IN THE UNSEEN . 36 THE LAW OF REVERENCE OF THE NAME OF GOD . 98 THE LAW OF OBEDIENCE IN ORDINANCES . . 161 INTRODUCTION. ON THE FIRST TABLE OF THE DECALOGUE. When the lawyer or scribe, according to the narrative of St. Matthew and St. Mark, asked our Lord, " Master, which is the great Com- mandment of the Law ?" — " "V\niich is the first Commandment of aU ?" it is probable that he meant to entrap Him into expressing a prefer- ence of some one Commandment of the Law over the others. The Pharisees themselves made such distinctions among the various Com- mandments, dividing them into the " weighty" and the " light," and it may, probably, have been with an intention of exposing the Lord to odium, or, possibly, of gaining His testimony in favour of some view of his own, or, any how, with a view to the design of " catching Him in His talk," set on foot by the Sanhedrim, and B 2 THE FIRST TABLE. pursued by tlie Pharisees, Scribes, and Saddu- cees, one after the other, that the lawyer, '^ tempting Him," put this question to Him. There can also be no doubt, that when the Lord answered the tempting Scribe by saying " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind : this is the first and great Command- ment : and the second is like unto it : — Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: on these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets :" He designed to frustrate his evil purpose, by summing up all the precepts of the Law into two ; and, speaking with equal force of the necessity of obeying both, to cut off all idea of such preference or distinction, in respect of the gravity or sanction of the various Laws, as the Scribe had in mind. It is also reasonable to conclude, that when the Lord shaped His answer to the Scribe in the particular form recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark, He meant to make especial reference to the Decalogue, or Ten Command- ments, written upon two Tables, offering herein a short summary of the Decalogue, as the Decalogue itself is a simimary of the precepts of the Law. " For to these two Command- THE LAW OF THE LOVE OF GOD. 3 ments," says an ancient writer, " belongs the whole Decalogue : the Commandments of the first table to the love of God — those of the second to the love of our neighbour."* This may be argued, partly from the manner of the Lord's answer, the two-fold form of which readily suggests the probable reference to the two tables of the Law, and much more strongly, from the striking commentary sup- plied to the 39th verse, by three remarkable passages of the Epistles,t of which the following verses from the Epistle to the E-omans may serve as a specimen : — ^^ He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this : thou shalt not commit adultery ; thou shalt not kill ; thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not bear false wit- ness ; thou shalt not covet ; and if there be any other Commandment, it is briefly compre- hended in this saying, namely — thou shalt love * Eabaniis ap. Gatenam Auream ; — v. also on the whole subject, S. Augustin ad Inquis. Januarii, lib. ii. ep. 55 (2, 135, D, etc). Dicendum, quod ilia duo prsecepta sunt iDrima et com- muuia prsecepta legis naturae, quae sunt per se nota rationi humante vel per naturam, vel per fidem : et ideo omnia prse- cepta decalogi ad ilia duo referuntm% sicut conclusiones ad piincipia communia. — Thorn. Aquin. Qucest. c. art.iii. prima3 secundffi. + Eom. xiii. 8 ; Gal. v. 14 ; St. James ii. 8. 4 THE FIRST TABLE. thy neighbour as thyself." Add to which, that the ceremonial Ordinances of the Law being fulfilled, and so done away by the great events of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of the Lord, and the moral portions of the Law alone remaining under the Church of Christ, the two-fold summary of that moral Law already divinely gathered, and inscribed on the Tables of the Testimony, cannot but coincide with the like two-fold summary of the Law and the Prophets, equally divinely enunciated by the Son of God Himself. The Scribe then who tempting asked, un- der the Law, this question of our Lord, may probably have meant to ask, which of all the precepts of the Law, moral or ceremonial, in- ward or outward, was to be obeyed in prefer- ence to the others ; so that, according to the Pharisaic notions, the obedience paid to it might atone for the disobedience or neglect shewn to others. To this the Lord answers under the Gospel. He drops all allusion to the outward or ceremonial ordinances henceforth to be abo- lished, and summing up all the moral precepts of the Law (already summed up into ten, and those ten into two, in the tables of the Deca- logue) into two great principles, answers, that THE LAW OF THE LOVE OF GOD. O the first of all the Commandments is the Love of God, and the second, like or equal unto it, is the Love of our N eighbour, and that these two Commandments comprise or contain all that ever was taught of a moral and enduring kind in the Law or the Prophets. The Love of God, then, is the sum and sub- stance of the first table of the Decalogue. It would not seem too bold to adapt the words of St. Paul, in which he sums up the second table, to the Commandments of the first table. It might reasonably be said, " He that loveth God hath fulfilled the Law of the first table ; for this, — ^ Thou shalt have none other Gods but Me ; thou shalt not make a graven image ; thou shalt not take My name in vain ; remem- ber thou keep holy the Sabbath-day ;' and if there be any other Commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, ^ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with aU thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.' " It is precisely, then, from this point of view that I purpose to examine the first four Com- mandments in the following Essay. If the Love of God be the sum of the four Laws, then the four Laws are the detail of that Love ; then the 6 THE FIRST TABLE. four Laws, not being identical with each, other, nor any one of them trenching on the precise subject of another, together make up the entire Law of Love. Again, the love of God is plainly a high and sacred feeling of the heart of man. The sub- divisions of this love must, therefore, be ex- pected to be, in like manner, sacred feelings of the heart of man. The separate Command- ments, although (for various reasons, more or less capable of being explained) they may be worded in a negative form to forbid certain specific acts, or appear to be stated as particular precepts enjoining single duties, yet cannot but be, in their full intent and meaning, Com- mandments of the parts of love, and the parts of love are necessarily of the nature and kind of love itself. Hence we may conclude, first, — that the four Laws are all, in their own proper essence and being, afiirmative laws : laws, that is, intended to enjoin and command certain things upon us ; and that their negative shape (as in the case of the second and third laws) is accidental, if I may so express myself, to their real essential character. And secondly, that they are moral and eter- THE LAW OF THE LOVE OF GOD. 7 nal ; moral, as addressed to the culture of the moral affections of the heart of man, and the directing of those moral affections to the moral perfections of the Most High God ; and as moral, so eternal, leading to that perfect har- mony of the creature with the Creator, wherein the sanctified souls of men shall have, for ever and ever, the boundless and endless consumma- tion of their moral bliss. It is true that the fourth of these Laws looks, at the first sight, like little more than a mere practical rule of observance, binding, no doubt, upon the con- sciences of those to whom God has given it, but in itself narrow and external. And accord- ingly this Commandment, like the second, has been thought by some, whom I cannot but con- sider as not less shallow than presumptuous reasoners in this matter, to be superseded, or have become obsolete under the Gospel. But as the Law of one quarter of the Love of God, how can this law, or the second, be otherwise than everlasting ? Is it not mere shallowness to interpret these commandments thus narrowly, according to the negative form of one, and the practical letter of the other, instead of making use of the key which the Lord himself has given us of their meaning, and trying to trace. 8 THE FIRST TABLE. beneatli the narrow literalness of the words, that deep essential heart of each of these great Laws, which makes them to be what they are — the mighty, moral, everlasting, quadruple enactment of the quadruple Love of God ? If it be asked, how we can account for the peculiar way in which those laws have been written ; why, that is, laws which we thus represent as affirmative, eternal, laws of the heart and its feelings, should in some cases have been promulgated in this merely negative or practical shape ? it might serve as a partial answer, that, in the first place, they were deli- vered to the Jews, a people who, partly from their own particular character, and partly from the general absence of mental cultivation in those early days among them, were more capa- ble of apprehending, and more ready to obey precepts so given, than if they had been deli- vered in the more abstract form in which we suppose their essential meaning to be more fully conveyed. The circumstances, too, of the nation, may well account for the negative form of the second Commandment, and the practical shape of the fourth ; for the former law was designed to cut the people oiF from the dangerous seductions of idolatrous neigh- THE LAW OF THE LOVE OF GOD. 9 hours, and the latter one to furnish them with a practical, positive, life - pervading, charac- teristical, and distinguishing rule of national obedience. Add to which, that not to the Jews only, but to all people in all ages, prac- tical and negative precepts are the easiest to begin with. It is, no doubt, the soundest of all principles, that men should love God with all their hearts ; but it is a very difficult one to obey. The heights of sacred feeling are not to be reached with a bound. We cannot love because we will and when we will. It is a very gracious and merciful thing to begin by telling us what particular things we had better do, and what particular things we had better not do, of the things which immediately sur- round us. It is, for the ignorant and carnally minded, hardly necessary that they should even be told towards what states of mind and feeling the practical and negative precepts which they are called upon to obey are in- tended to lead them. Perhaps they might be so perverse as not to wish to reach them. They might not understand nor appreciate them. Perhaps they might think that they could reach them by some other shorter road. And for those also who do appreciate these states of 10 THE riRST TABLE. mind and feeling, and very ardently desire to reach tliem, it is a very blessed and encourag- ing thing to be told, upon the most infallible authority, that by turning to the right, or turn- ing their steps away from the left, — by doing this apparently little thing to-day, and taking particular care to abstain from that apparently little thing to-day, to-morrow, and the next day, they will be putting themselves into the right road for reaching that which their souls long for, — the tranquil, inner, deep, peaceful love of God, which passeth all understanding. Any person who has attended to his own heart, or who has had the opportunity of ob- serving the hearts of others, must be well aware how delicate and how difEcult is the express culture of feeling. It is seen to sicken and decay at once when the attempt is made to stimulate it directly. What seems to grow under direct efforts of cultivation is almost cer- tain to be counterfeit. It is as if you should try to educate a rose to smell sweet, by a cul- tivation directly addressed to its scent, as by watering it with rose water, or filling the air in which it grew with odours, instead of encou- raging its own natural processes of growth, giving it its own proper soil, and using the THE LAW OF THE LOVE OF GOD. 11 knife freely and wisely. And just so is the case with high and holy feeling. Though it be the very thing we most crave and prize, the very perfection of character, the very object of life and action, yet will it not bear to be culti- vated, except by the seemingly indirect modes of practical holiness and self-denial, except by keeping the Commandments of God in the strength which the Holy Spirit giveth. 1^ THE LAW OF PIETY THE LAW OF PIETY THE FIRST LAW. The first Commandment is stated negatively ; yet so as not in any wise to conceal the affir- mative heart of law which is contained in it. When we are taught, ^^ I am the Lord thy God : there shall not be to thee other gods, except Me" (or " before My face"), we are taught that no other things or beings of any sort whatever are to stand to us before the face, or in any way to intercept the true God, who is to be our sole God, from the love of our hearts. I have little to add upon the subject of the first law, to what is usually said by expositors respecting it. Its meaning is perfectly clear and not liable to mistake. I will therefore content myself with a sketch of the topics into THE FIRST LAW. 13 which the full discussion of this law would run out. The law readily divides itself into three parts, the complete examination of which would fully explain the law. 1. Whatis it to hate God ? %. Who is He whom we are to have ? 3. ^Vhat is it to have none else ? And first of the second. God, the maker and governor of the world and all things in it, is kno'svn to us partly naturally by reason, and partly supernaturally by revelation. The proof that reason can naturally find Him, is seen in the fact that all mankind, except a very few of the most debased and brutalized of the species, have in all ages main- tained some idea of a God. The mode whereby they have reached this idea, has been partly instinctive (or perhaps traditional, deriving its origin from the remem- brance of the time when man, unfallen, lived in the presence of his Maker), and partly ra- tional or argumentative. In its simplest form, man's natural argument for the being of a God, appears to arise out of the observation of the works wrouo-ht in the o world, combined with the consciousness of a certain quantity of causative power in himself. 14 THE LAW OF PiETY The latter of these forces him to know liow effects are caused, the former points to some invisible agent, of sufficient power and wisdom to be the cause of all the effects he sees. This natural argument may be more or less fully evolved. It may be expanded into a complete system of natural theology. Imper- fectly developed, it may lead to all kinds of mistaken and superstitious notions. If the argument of causation be not pressed far enough, men may acquiesce in the idea of a plurality of gods. If the presence of evil in the world be allowed to interfere with the full logical consequences of the argument, men may end in the belief of two principles. If they be not cautious to distinguish modes or ways of causation from causes, properly so called, they may come to confuse imaginary things, such as " Chance," " Fate," '' Necessity," with God, the sole proper cause of things and beings. Fully, however, and exactly pursued, the natural argument is capable of discovering a single God, the sole, self-existent, and therefore eternal Creator and Governor of the world. It can exhibit Him Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. It can show a preponder- ance of reasonable ground for believing Him THE FIRST LAW. 15 to be all-merciful, good, and just. Though the prevalence of physical and moral evil em- barrasses the clearness of the proof in these respects, it can surmise a mode of retribution after life, which may vindicate these attributes to the fullest extent. To the same degree that natural reason can thus discover the being and attributes of God, can it also recognize the duties of man which arise out of the relations in which he is thus found to stand to Him. The obligation to perform these duties so discovered, and the instinctive or traditional worship immemorially existing among mankind, together constitute what may be called natural religion ; and is such as ivas, in various degrees of complete- ness, and might conceivably have been exactly, the religion of the Heathen world. The traditional knowledge of God, then, which was to the heathen world blended with the more or less imperfect conclusions of rea- soning, and the graceful or dreary fictions of imagination, was, in a single race, maintained, in greater purity, and with less admixture. Whether, from Noah to Abraham, the direct ancestors of the latter patriarch were at all in advance of the rest of mankind in religious 16 THE LAW OF PIETY knowledge and worship is uncertain ; but it can hardly be esteemed probable that it was so. To Abraham himself the communications made by God were not so properly revelations of truth before unknown, or incapable of being known otherwise, as they were promises, as- surances of favour — methods of maintaining the existing knowledge of the God Almighty, and faith in Him, in one family on the earth. Nor can the communication vouchsafed by God to Moses be properly called a revelation, in the exact sense in which that word signifies a Divine communication of truth, incapable of being discovered by the natural powers of man. The name of Jehovah, though a new name, re- minded the people of the self-existence and eternity of their God ; but it cannot be thought to have informed them, for the first time, of these attributes. For it can hardly be con- ceived that man should have any reasonable or just thought or idea of the Divine Being at all, unless these attributes formed a part of it. Protection, nearness, love, redemption to come — all this was, of course, fully assured to the Jewish people, under the communications made to them by Moses ; but of actual revelation of the nature of God, the Object of the piety of THE FIRST LAW. 17 the first Commandment, there seems to have been none. Under the dispensation of the "Kingdom of Heaven," that is, the Church of God, the very matter and substance of the revelation commu- nicated to men regards the nature of God. He, Avhom natural religion might discover as the single First Cause, and whom Jewish reli- gion was taught to approve and trust as the Jealous, Self-Existent, Eternal Protector of their forefathers and the descendants of those forefathers, is made known to the Church and by the Church as God the Father, God the Son, who being the Word of the Father be- gotten from everlasting of the Father the Very and Eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin of her substance, and God the Holy Ghost, who proceeding from the Father and the Son is of one sub- stance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son. This, then, is He, whom, under the first law of divine morality, we are to have for our God ; the great object, or scope, to which all the love of the first table, and all the details of that love are to be directed. c 18 THE LAW OF PIETY 2. What, then, in the second place, is it to have this God ? (a.) First, it is obvious that we must believe in Him. Let it, then, be observed, as the basis of all divine morality whatever, that man must be- lieve in God, and that believing in God is a moral thing. As morality means the goodness of the heart and affections of man, and as man's heart and affections cannot become good unless they are exalted and purified by communica- tion with Heaven, so a heathen is necessarily immoral if he do not believe in God as He is known to heathens. A Jew is necessarily im- moral if he do not believe in God as He is more known to the Jews. A Christian is ne- cessarily immoral if he do not believe in God as he is fully revealed in Trinity to the Church. Individuals may, no doubt, be less guilty in unbelief or mistaken belief, when, by igno- rance, by falling among perverse teachers, by being bred in the midst of error, or by other such causes, they, not by their own fault, fail of reaching the truth which is accessible under their dispensation. But Divine belief is essen- tially moral. Neither to the heathen nor to the Jew ; neither to the Jew nor to the Chris- THE FIRST LAW 19 tian, is tlie evidence which God offers of Him- self such as to be irresistible to a disobedient and wilful heart. The heart that believes in God, under any of these three dispensations, must be, morally, so far conscious of weakness and insufficiency in itself, as to be capable of thinking at all of powers superhuman; morally, so far above the sensualities of the world around it, as to be willing to rise out of them to such higher thoughts, and be in any sort guided by them ; morally, disposed to use its intellectual powers in discovering, and its faith in main- taining when discovered, such a knowledge of God as it can attain. And let it be observed again, that it is essen- tially immoral for Heathen, Jew, or Christian not to inquire and seek after God. Invincible ignorance may go far to excuse, but it cannot justify. In proportion, however, to the means and opportunities of knowing, is the divine moral obligation of knowing right, and this on purely moral grounds. If the mere " mores^\ or moral character of a man, as distinguished from his Divine faith, require to be based upon the elevating knowledge and belief of God discovered according to his oj^portunities, it follows that the due and full use of those oppor- 20 THE LAW OF PIETY tunities is absolutely essential to his attainment of that height of morality Avhich Nature, that is, the God of Nature, has demanded of him by placing it within his reach. (/3.) Again, they who would have God, in obedience to the first law of Divine morality, must not only have a well-grounded belief in Him, but must maintain continually an awful sense of His Universal Presence and Divine Knowledge. They must at no time and under no circumstances be without it. It must aro with them into the company of others, and it must keep them company when they are alone. They must feel it as close and near to their most inward thoughts and the most secret movements of their will as to their external gestures or overt acts. Now this continual sense of the presence of the Almighty God, as it is truly moral as it tells directly and necessarily upon the formation of habit and character, so is moral also as it arises from distinct, voluntary, and habitual effort : for the visible things of this world sur- round us so closely, and seize upon our senses and thoughts with such a forcible and constant power, that it needs continual effort and recol- lection of mind to keep the Invisible God and THE FIRST LAW. 21 His Invisible Presence, and all the other thoughts that belong to that Presence uniformly and steadily before our minds. Uniformly, I say, and steadily ; for it often happens that men are suddenly wakened up to thoughts of the Invisible God and His Presence by casual alarms, which, going off as suddenly as they have arisen, are altogether without effect upon the character. By wise habit of mind, the natural pheno- mena of the world may be made to minister with great force towards the maintenance of this precious sense of the Presence of God. Even the '^ untutored mind" of the heathen may — " See God in clouds, or hear Him in the wind."* Much more may a Christian learn to keep up the continual consciousness of God, by watching ever the natural marks and tokens of His Pre- sence which reason or Holy Scripture suggests : as the wind betokens the Holy Spirit in His viewless ways ; the water, the Holy Spirit in the heart of man, and the grace of Baptism ; the fire, the same Holy Spirit, in His searching and purifying, or destroying and consuming * Essay on Man, Ep. i. 100. %J^ THE LAW OF PIETY power. The same is the case with great social events. To those who are early familiarised to bring the thought of God's Presence into their common lives (and it is a lesson that may be taught very early, and with very great benefit), the ungodly are readily regarded as a sword of God's wrath : wars, and rumours of wars, earthquakes and pestilences, nation rising up against nation, and men's hearts failing them for fear, all serve as tokens of the present near- ness of the Almighty, and assurances of His bringing to pass the things that He has fore- told. This maybe esteemed the "natural Presence" of the Omnipresent God in all the world, to be morally noted and remembered by all who know Him. The " supernatural" Presence of Christ in the Church is yet another and greater thing. Under the Gospel we are taught, that when the Lord ascended with His Body into the heaven, so as for awhile to be absent in the flesh from the Church, He became more truly and more present with it in the Spirit according to His own most true promise : " I will not leave you comfortless ; I will come unto you." " A little while, and ye shall not see me, and again a little while and ye shall THE FIRST LAW. 23 see me, because I go to the Father." " Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father."* From the day on which the Holy Ghost descended on the Church at Pentecost, whereby the Lord God dwelt with it, the tvhole body of the haptized is Christ. The poor, naked, hungry, prisoners are Christ ; the help- less, persecuted Christians are Christ : He is with the Church to the end of the world. Where two or three are duly gathered into His name, He is there. It has become expedient for the Church that He has gone away in the flesh, for now is He with her in the Spirit. Now she may touch Him in all the sacred ways of nearness and communion which He offereth, for He is ascended into heaven. Thus, in Christian morality, the maintaining of the sense of God's Presence has become a very high and sacred, as well as peculiar duty ; for it requires that Christian men should real- ize to their minds, and ever keep up the sense of this mysterious and spiritual Presence of Christ with His Church, filling their thoughts with it, and by it directing their lives and affections during this " waiting-time," while He * St. John xiv. 10 ; xvi. 20 ; xx. 17. 24 THE LAW OF PIETY is gone into a far country, intending to return and take account with His servants. (7.) Again, as the belief in God and things heavenly is requisite, as the basis of Divine morality, so it is also essential to such Divine morality that a man maintain a perpetual con- sciousness of the complete vanity and worth- lessness of all the visible things and temporal interests which surround us upon the earth, in comparison of the love and favour of God, and the great things which He designs for His obe- dient people. This, too, is a thing to be done by express and continual moral effort. It is necessary, by distinct and constant acts (be- coming, no doubt, easier, and apparently more spontaneous the oftener they are repeated; but still acts of effort and intention not natural) , to reverse, as it were, the natural perspective of things, by which the nearer things look the greatest, and the distant things the smallest to our sight. We .have to teach our faith to con- tradict our eyes, and while the latter insist on magnifying the near and present, and making- it shut out the view of the distant, to force the former to see that, on the contrary, the near things are trifling and insignificant, while the distant ones alone are of real importance to us THE FIRST LAW. 25 in respect of our real goodness and essential being. (^.) Hamiig God signifies, further, the main- taining, under all circumstances, not only of worldly prosperity, but also of trial, change, and difficulty, a constant and supporting sense of His fatherly power, goodness, and love \ and, by consequence, the reverent filial devotion and submission of heart and afi'ection which belong to sons. This duty, which is naturally required of all such as have learned to believe in the fatherly love, goodness, and power of God towards His creatures, testified even in the midst of much physical and moral evil by the beauty and sweetness which He has infused into life and nature, the enjoyment which He bestows upon His creatures, by the wondrous organization which He has given them, and the not less wondrous adaptation of that organization to the position and circumstances in which He has placed them ; by the plain preference which He has shown for truth and virtue, by making, in spite of occasional irregularities, essential power and essential happiness to belong to them instead of to their opposites, — this duty, I say, is to Christians deepened and strength- 26 THE LA.W OF TIETY ened out of all calculation by the knowledge that they, by being planted into the Body of Christ, have obtained a new and divine sort of sonship, far beyond, in grace and glory, ^^J- thing which they could have hoped for as being naturally the sons of God. It has pleased the Lord to say that Christians are one in Him, even as He is one with the Father. To them the Father imparts of the eternal love with which He loveth His Only Begotten Son. In the Beloved, they too are beloved. As then He, in suffering, in agony, and in death was still beloved, and in all these terri- ble trials still faithful to that love, — the prime leader and perfect accomplisher of the example of faith to His peoj)le, — so in Divine morality under the first law, must His obedient fol- lowers learn to look to Him as to their model, and through Him to the unfailing fatherly love of God in Him assured to them, running with sacred patience, even in the utmost trou- ble, pain, or distress, the holy race which God in His Providence may be pleased to set be- fore them. (e.) Again ; a man cannot have God in the sense of the first law, unless he does all things, and devotedly lays out his whole life to the THE FIRST LAW. 27 obedience and glory of God. This, which might well seem a duty of natural religion to such as had attained to any just conceptions of the majesty and goodness of God, and the rela- tion in which His rational creatures stand to Him, is by Christian doctrine made more clearly due, and more expressly binding upon the consciences of Christian people. They know that from a helpless state of con- demnation and ruin, they had been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, shed most freely for them. They could have done nothing to rescue themselves, or even to begin to set on foot a scheme for rescuing themselves from the ruin into which, by their forefathers' sin and their OAvn, their race had fallen. They were utterly paralyzed in guilt and sin. Ke- deemed, then, by the most holy sacrifice of Christ, and planted into His body, it is now their plain duty, as it is their high privilege, to render themselves up in their souls and bodies to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit into entire devotion to God. Objects of their own, inconsistent with the great object for which they were redeemed and are sanctified, are absolutely to be given up. They have been purchased ; and by the payment of that price 28 THE LAW OF PIETY have been transferred from death to life, from sin to holiness, from Satan to God. The will of God is set before them, in order that it may by degrees become their will. Every- thing that He commands is to be their choice ; everything which interferes with His com- mands is to be wholly relinquished. The very rule and principle of their lives is to be this, — that in things great and things small, in things sacred and things secular, from the highest services of rational and redeemed creatures down to the ordinary matters of meat and drink, they should do all to the glory of God. This may suffice for an outline of the moral duty of affection and heart binding on Chris- tian men under the first great Law of Divine Morality. But besides due affections of mind and heart, it has pleased God to demand of His people in all generations the more express service of worship in praise and prayer. (^.) The offices of praise and thanksgiving in which the redeemed of Christ take part, along with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, are, nevertheless, in the mouth of the redeemed of Christ, special THE FIRST LAW. 29 in kind, as they are also from tliem peculiarly- due. Praise and thanksgiving seem to be the na- tural utterance of beings good in their kind, and having reason, in the presence of their wise and good Creator. Unfallen from his first estate, and still retaining the pure good nature which the Creator gave, a loyal crea- ture having discourse of reason, must needs, as it would seem, render to God the thankful and glad tribute of a willing praise. It is the very music which all good creatures make, audibly or inaudibly according to their kinds, to their great Lord, whose will their motions sways in perfect diapason. It is the very har- mony which results, to them in enjoyment, to Him in thanksgiving, from their respective perfection. So it would have been to man if he had never fallen. Whatever other duties of grateful obedience it might have pleased his Creator to require of him, in loyal constancy of perpetual praise he must needs have exhibited and enjoyed that '^ very good" nature in which he was created. Differing perhaps somev/hat in kind, but even yet, it may be said, more due is the praise and thanksgiving of a being fallen in Adam, 30 THE LAW OF PIETY redeemed in Christ, and living under the sanc- tification of the Holy Spirit. In his heart if the natural exulting thankfulness of an inno- cent creature sunning itself like the ripple of the sea in endless liftings of praise be wanting, yet is its place filled full by a graver, deeper thankfulness, by the sense of the loss and ruin which have been once incurred and by the most inexpressible and undeserved mercy escaped, by the consciousness of remaining weakness and sinfulness of nature ever tempting him to relapse, and the awful remembrance of the " well of water springing up into everlasting life," which has been by the same unspeakable mercy opened in his soul. What are to be the modes, or words of praise, what the peculiar hours, or places, or circumstances in which it should be offered, is no part of the present inquiry. These are ruled by adequate authority within the Church of Christ ; but it is of Divine morality under the first Law, that under such authority true and holy praise be duly, constantly, thankfully paid by the rational creatures of the hand of God, ruined and lost in Adam, and restored to grace and son ship by the blood of the Most Holy Redeemer shed upon the Cross of Calvary. THE FIRST LAW. 31 (7;.) The other office of worship, prayer, has a twofold aspect. For while it forms a very- considerable part of the worship due from re- deemed man to God, it is also by His ordi- nance made to be the only method whereby man can strengthen himself, and enable him- self to discharge all other offices of inward affection and outward worship which he owes to God. Helpless and hopeless in himself, man redeemed in Christ not only may, but must henceforward approach his Father which is in heaven in continual supplication, if he would retain the favour to which he has been so freely and fully restored, or reach the bliss which is set before him. Prayer, therefore, one main duty owed to God, is also its own exceeding great reward, inasmuch as by and through it only the Divine influences of the Holy Ghost are to be continually and increas- ingly obtained. There is no need for a man to embarrass his thought with the metaphysical difficulties of prayer, nor perplex himself by trying to reconcile the powers assigned to Christian prayer with the wise providence of the Most High. If by any such thoughts he is chilled, or checked, or led to be neglectful of prayer, he becomes directly immoral under the 32 THE LAW OF PIETY srreat first Law of Love. There is his undoubted o command and warrant ; there is his unlimited promise : '^ For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." And more cer- tainly than men who are fathers know how to give good gifts unto their children, will our Heavenly Father in Christ give His Holy Spirit unto them that ask Him. 3. This first great Law, which we may call the Law of Piety, the main topics of which have been thus sketched out, is capable of being transgressed by men in two ways. (a.) First, the Divine worship of affection and outward service thus due to the one God in Trinity, and to Llim only, may be trans- ferred altogether to some other being, real or imaginary, or it may be so transferred partly, — that is to say some portion of it may be with- drawn from Him to whom all is due, and given to another in conjunction with Him. Because the Jews were surrounded by nations worship- ping other gods, the form of the Command- ment as given to them forbad this particular corruption of the Law in its grosser shape, — that is, the total transfer of Divine worship to other gods, such as were Baal and Ashtaroth, THE FIRST LAW. SS the gods of the Ziclonians ; Milcom or IMolecli, the abommation of the Ammonites ; and Che- mosh, the abomination of Moab. Of this corruption of the first Law, in this its grosser form, there is no need to speak at all, as not among the moral dangers of modern times ; but it cannot be dissembled that the Koman Catholic Church incurs in practice, even if she evades in theory, the guilt of with- drawing part of the Divine worship due to God only, and rendering it to the Mother of Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is possible that the distinctions taken by Roman Catholic theo- logians between ^' Latria", the sort of worship due only to God Himself, and '^ Hyperdulia", the high amount of reverence paid to the first of created beings, may save the Church of Rome from the guilt of having, in authorised decree and canon, sanctioned the transferring of Di- vine worship from God to a creature ; but the many forms of service addressed, without ca- nonical authority indeed, but also with full per- mission and participation of the rulers of that Communion, to the Blessed Virgin, wherein expressions and manners of address appropriate to Divine Worship are offered to her, and every attribute of Omnipotency and Divineness 34 THE LAW OF PIETY proper only to God, is assigned to her, and that not in particular times of the later history of that Communion only, or in particular districts, but everywhere and always ; and, as a conse- quence hereupon, the notorious practice of Roman Catholics, particularly the ignorant and uninstructed among them, with whom the wor- ship of the Blessed Virgin occupies a very large portion indeed of the entire worship which they pay, are amply sufficient to shew that the divine morality of the first great Law is heavily and deeply infringed in the Koman Catholic Communion. (J3.) Secondly, the first great Law may be, and in this time in this country is, no doubt, more often infringed on the other side, by those who live, as St. Paul expresses it, without God in the world ; whose minds and affections are so wholly occupied by other things as to shut out from their minds all thought of spiritual and Divine things, or who have, by process of their own reason, brought themselves to the same unhappy conviction which David attri- butes to the fool, whom he represents as saying (not openly, however, but in his heart), that there is no God. Whether, however, this me- lancholy result be produced by grossness of THE FIRST LAW. 35 mind and thought, or by that presumption of subtle intellect which is usually not uncon- nected with grossness of mind and thought, the first great Law of God is alike deeply infringed by it. Divine morality requires, as its very basis and groundwork, the sacred obe- dience of the first Law. Though it be gene- rally true that no one Law can be obeyed fully, unless the others be obeyed also, yet is this maxim more emphatically true of the first Law than of the others. To have the only true God in Trinity for our God, and to render to Him all the afiection and worship which are of right His, is obviously at the very foundation, if, indeed, it ought not more properly to be called the sum and substance of Divine morality. None can obey, as unto God, the injunctions of any other Commandment, nor can obey them at all in any such religious way as He will approve or accept, unless he begin by obeying in full sincerity and devotion of heart the first great Law, and cultivate this first and funda- mental portion of the Love of God. 36 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH: THE SECOND LAW. The affirmative heart of the second Command- ment, the second great principle of Divine love and morality, one of four, which is conveyed in it, is not given upon the surface, or in the letter of the Commandment as written upon the tables of stone. As far as the letter of that Law goes, it simply forbids idolatry, (meaning by idolatry, not the worshipping of false gods or idols instead of the true God, as Ahab did when he worshipped Baal, for this is the sin forbidden in the first Law; but worshipping the true God under the form or shape of any idol, or visible llcuAov^ as Jeroboam did when he set up the golden calves at Dan and Bethel), and adds an assurance of God's descending wrath or favour upon the posterity of those who break or obey the Law. THE SECOND LAW. - 37 In order to find out then what affirmative Law or principle is latent under this negative precept, it is necessary to ask why it was that the Israelitish people were so liable to idolatry ? What was that weakness of mind and liability to sin in them, the external manifestations of which would be cut off by obeying this nega- tive rule? What was that thing wanting to them, the absence of which exhibited itself in that continual craving after idols or visible ob- jects of worship, which as remarkably charac- terises the history of the nation in its early days, as the absence of it in later ones ? For whatever be that absent quality, that deficient principle of strong affection, that portion of an entire and blameless cube of love, must needs be the precise quality or virtue of love affirmatively taught under the negative wording of the se- cond Commandment. It is plain that the cause of this craving was a feebleness of faith in the Unseen. The invi- sible and spiritual God (for the very reason that He is invisible and spiritual) seemed diffi- cult and distant of approach. The signs of His presence and protection were often indis- tinct and intangible — often, apparently, entirely withheld. Minds of feeble texture in spiritual SS THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH things, desirous to obey the first Law by having, that is, believing and worshipping in piety the true God, sank down in the attempt to maintain a constant sense of His power, and a continual reliance on His protection. Their feeling is completely expressed in their murmuring at the delay of Moses in the Mount, when they gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, ^^ "Up ; make us gods which shall go before us ; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him." Their sense of being protected gave way at once when God's token, in the presence of His wonder-working servant, was withdrawn longer than they had expected from their sight. Other nations, again, surrounding the Jews on every side, had their visible objects of worship, making their task of Divine duty and faith ap- pear more easy. But to acquiesce in their un- seen God, I AM ; to obey without immediate continual consciousness of His nearness; to trust in His protection at times when they had no sensible aid to help them to realise to their ima- gination His power ; to let loose, as it were, their prayers into the air, without having some representative figure, or emblem, at the least, THE SECOND LAW. 39 at which to point them, all this was too difficult a task for a feeble faith in things invisible and spiritual. Yet we must not speak as if God had left the people without tokens and signs of His pre- sence. The record of His dealings with their forefathers,* with Abraham, His friend, with Isaac and Jacob ; His unmistaken protection of Joseph ; the mighty wonders which had accom- panied the mission of Moses, were all most signal instances of condescension to that very weakness of spiritual faith. Ample, no doubt, they were to such as had a strong, simple, brave faith. Ample they ought to have been to all. But the heart of the majority of the people sank down in the intervals, and they felt that they should be happier, better, more pious, and safer, if they might but represent to themselves their invisible and undoubted God under some visible and local symbol, in presence of which their faith should not faint, nor themselves look with envy on the nations around them. The feeble craving of visible objects of wor- ship, and other continual tokens of Divine presence and protection, having been the weak- * 2 Chron. xx. 7; Is. xli. 8 : St. James ii. 23; and Gen. xviii. 17. 40 THE L4W OF SPIRITUAL FAITH ness, a deep and grievous deficiency of strong love, the opposite to this, that is to say, a brave contentment with an invisible God shewing itself in faithful and strong-hearted maintenance of piety in the absence (if it should so please God), or the apparent scantiness of signs, to- kens, miracles, and other visible indications of the presence and protection of the Omnipresent and Omnipotent, and a like courageous and faithful abstinence from ^' making to them- selves" unauthorised images, symbols, and em- blems of Him who communicated with the people without similitude, must be the particular qua- lity or part of Divine love enjoined under the second Law. As piety therefore is the heart of the first Law, so is SPIKITUAL FAITH IN THE UNSEEN the heart of the second. If the first Law may be understood as setting forth the great prin- ciple of the matter of religious love, so as, in some sort, to include all the Commandments which follow it, the second may be said to teach the great rule of the manner of it. The first Law says, have the true God ; the second adds — spiritually. The first Law says, substitute no other object of worship in the place of Him ; the second says, interpose no other means of THE SECOND LAW. 41 worship, mediator, image, symbol, between yourself and Him. If, as is most true, inter- posed means of worship, self-chosen and unau- thorised, are apt to become substituted objects of worship, the province of the second Com- mandment will seem to trench upon that of the first ; but in themselves, and in thought, they are distinct. God, who as the Almighty and all-merciful Creator and Governor of the world, demandeth man's grateful and continual wor- ship by His first Law, desireth, by his second Law, that as He is a Spirit, man should worship Him in spirit and in truth. This high quality or principle of love, like the others, has two opposites. While on the one side lies the feebleness, such as character- ized the Jews in their early history, on the other side lies the audacity, that is to say, the insensibility to things spiritual, which, either grossly or intellectually disbelieves or at least disregards them ; considering the whole subject as either fabulous, or, if not fabulous, so sha- dowy, distant, and unpractical as to be alto- gether unworthy of a sensible man's regard. Of these two opposites, the former or feeble one more generally belongs to early times, when the sentiment of piety is not yet extensively 42 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH worn out among men, and runs into various forms of superstition and will-worship. The latter is the terrible evil of later days, when the very heart of religion seems to be eaten out of multitudes of men by the widely- prevailing sin, the rebel-spirit, the knowledge falsely so called and the real ignorance which seize upon the dense populations, and the minds debased by intercourse with evil in more civilized ages. But although this be true in the main, yet it is not to be supposed that the feeble and audacious corruptions of this Law belong directly and properly, or always, to different ages and pe- riods of history, but to different casts and cha- racters of men, more common indeed at some times than others, but to be found, more or less numerously, in all ages of the world. Scoffers, and mockers, few indeed in comparison, but yet not absolutely few, were found in the early times ; the temptations of feebleness, though more universally dangerous in early days, still assail with very baneful effect multitudes of men and women of the present generation. The feeble corruption of the second Law may shew itself in various ways. First, in desiring visible objects of worship. This was the express and continual temptation THE SECOND LAW. 43 of the early Jews, and, as such, is expressly- addressed in the wording of the Law. This was the sin committed by Aaron and the people in the absence of Moses on the mount, and this was that which became a sin to Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and to his house, even to cut it off, and destroy it from off the face of the earth.* To Christian people, this precise temptation, at least in the precise aspect in which it pre- sented itself to the Jews, does not occur. For the Jews were ever liable to the gross sin of representing the Invisible God, — who, even in His communications with His people, showed *' no manner of similitude when He spake unto them in Horeb out of the midst of the fire" — under the likeness of a " calf that eateth hay,"t and that, in spite of the most emphatic and repeated warnings of the law against this very sin. To the Christian Church, the Incarnate Son of God has actually been manifested in the flesh, and men's eyes saw, and their ears heard, and their hands handled the Word of Life, during the time that in the flesh He sojourned with them upon the earth. If, there- fore, the Roman Catholics set up images of the * 1 Kings xii. 30 ; siii. U. + Deut. iv. 15. 44 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH Incarnate Lord, and fall down before them, if they stimulate their devotion by picture or crucifix, it cannot be said that they do precisely what the Jews did in worshipping the calf in Horeb. Before the Incarnation, it was unlawful in a man to conceive in his mind any form, shape,, or outline for the Most High God. " To whom", asks the Prophet Isaiah, " will ye liken God ? or what likeness will ye compare unto Him ?"* That which it was thus sinful to conceive, it was necessarily as sinful, or more sinful to de23ict or pourtray ; for the pencil or the graver fixed, made permanent, and commu- nicated to other minds the sinful conception which otherwise might have been transitory, or at least confined to a single individual. But when the Son of God became man, and walked upon the earth among men, the case was neces- sarily dififerent. It was, obviously, no longer sinful for men to conceive an image or outline of that which they saw, for they could not help it. Nor again, could it possibly be ipso facto sinful, for those who had never seen Him with their own eyes in the flesh, to conceive of Him as of one who was truly man. Hearing of Him, * Isaiah xl. 18. THE SECOND LAW. 45 or reading of Him ; hearing of Him by word of mouth of His companions, or reading of Him in the written record of the Evangelists, men cannot help conceiving of Him as He bore the true form and face of a man and companied among His brethren. They conceive of Him as naturally and as necessarily as they conceive of the men and women of whom they read in poetry and history ; nor can there be any more sin in forming a mental idea of the form and figure, or face of the Lord Himself, than of Martha, Mary, or Lazarus; of Andrew, Peter, or John ; of Herod, or Pontius Pilate. But men, again, have different imaginations. In some the power is vivid, in others dull. In some, again, it is directed by taste, refinement, and reverence ; in others it is coarse, gross, and irreverent. Can it be imagined to be unholy that the refined, reverent, vivid conception of that which may be innocently conceived, should, by the aid of the pencil or the graver, be pre- sented to the coarser or the duller minds ? Is it possible that the use of the pencil, craved by the gifted imagination for its own relief by the expression of its ideas, should of itself import an unholy element into that which was innocent before ? Can it be sinful to express, or commu- 46 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH nicate that which it is holy to conceive ? It is difficult to understand how any person can sup- pose it to be so. The point seems too clear to need further argument. If then, since the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, it be an innocent thing to depict, so it be done in reverence and carefulness. His , form and face as He was truly man, how far are we to suppose that the express prohibition of the second Law is abrogated, along with the argument for that prohibition as urged in the Book of Deuteronomy, and the Prophet Isaiah?* that is, how far (it being granted lawful to conceive of that form and face, and to depict it), are we at liberty to use that form and face so depicted in worship ? It is a delicate and a difficult investigation, and one which might perhaps, in this Essay, be prudently avoided : for the object here pro- posed being a moral, rather than a theological one, it might be sufficient to accept the decrees or usages of the Anglican Church as the theo- logical limits within which the love of God in the first four Commandments is to be ex- pounded. But it will not do, particularly in times of anxiety and hazard, to shirk difficul- * Deut. iv. 15 ; Is. xl. 18. THE SECOND LAW. 47 ties. I will therefore venture to sketch out the remainder of the argument. (a.) First then, it is beyond a question, that the writers of the New Testament, writing by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and the fathers of the earliest ages, nowhere give the slightest indication of any change having been made in respect of the prohibition of the second Law. On the contrary, St. Paul and St. John speak in quite the same strain, and with quite the same force, of the danger and guilt of idola- try after the Incarnation, as the prophets did before it. The same is the case with the early fathers of the first ages. It is about the year 600 that one of the first mentions of images allowed in Christian worship occurs, in a letter of Pope Gregory the Great to Serenus Bishop of Marseilles.f Thenceforward the use of them * 1 St. John V. 21 ; 1 Cor. x. 14 ; 2 Cor. vi. 16. + Prasterea indico dudum ad uos pervenisse quod Frater- nitus vestra quadam imaginum adoratores aspiciens, easdem in ecclesiis imagines confregit atque projecit. Et quidem zelum Yos, ne quid manu factum adorari posset, habuisse laudavimus, sed frangere easdem imagines non debuisse indicamus. Idcirco enim pictura in ecclesiis adhibetur, ut hi qui literas nesciunt, saltem in parietibus videndo legant, quae legere in codicibus non valent. — S. Gregorii Ep. cv. ad Sere- rum Massil. Episcopum. (Vol. viii. p. 134.) 48 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH grew rife in the Western Church, nntil it be- came one of the most considerable occasions of the great schism of the East and West. (^.) Again, the image or picture can only pourtray, and that feebly and fancifully (inas- much as no authentic record remains of the Lord's appearance and form while on the earth), the exterior bodily shape of Him whom we worship. But it is in the eternal union of God and man in one Christ that He becomes the due object of the worship of Christians, and neither the Divine nature itself, nor such indications of the Divine nature as may have been visible in the Messiah while He walked on the earth, are capable, in any degree, of being delineated by human art. (7.) Thirdly, and most importantly, it is to be remembered that the human body of the Lord (which alone can possibly be the subject of the pencil, or the graver), after His birth of the Blessed Virgin Mother, His growth. His death, and resurrection from the dead, and tarrying upon the earth for forty days, ascended from the earth into heaven, there to sit at the right hand of the Father, until the day when in the flesh He shall return to judge the quick and dead. Meanwhile, He, the Incar- THE SECOND LAW. 49 nate Saviour, is present, and not without His human nature, in the Church to the end of the world. His very body, not naturally but supernaturally, not corporeally but spiritually, is amongst us, and will remain with us always. Thus there have been two Presences of the Incarnate Lord upon the earth : the first His Presence in the flesh, in which He was born, grew, suffered, died, rose, ascended : the other His Presence in the Spirit, which began ten days after the Ascension, and shall continue till the Judgment. Now we are repeatedly told in Holy Scrip- ture, not only that these two Presences are very different from one another, but also that it is in the second of them, the Spiritual Presence, that the Church has her peculiar blessings, as well as her peculiar trials and dangers, during the time of her militant condition on the earth. At that day (that is to say, when Jesus should be glorified) should the Holy Spirit be given ; then might Mary touch her Lord ; then should the Church know that Christ is in the Father, and the Father in Him ; then should every prayer asked of the Father in His name be granted ; then should He drink with His dis- ciples of the fruit of the vine, in a new manner, E 50 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH in the Kingdom of God; then should Chris- tians have their justification and their righteous- ness. Nor is this all; for the Scripture expressly attaches these blessings not only to the coming of the Spiritual, but to the departure of the fleshly Presence. " Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended to my Father." " Never- theless I tell you the truth ; it is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." We have, no doubt, the greatest interest in both these Presences ; but our interest is diflerent in the two. Our interest in the first is, so to speak, historical. In it were trans- acted the great events on which the whole scheme of salvation and religion is founded. We must needs believe them, but not on the authority of our own eyes. The events of that Presence took place long before we were born. We were not there to adore the Lord with the Magi when He was yet at Bethlehem, nor with His Mother and the beloved Apostle when He hung upon the Cross. These events we be- lieve, we dwell upon, we represent continually to our mind's eye, and loving imagination. Of this historical Presence of the Lord in the flesh. THE SECOND LAW. 51 and of these the events of it, wherein He walked a man among men, forming part of companies, societies and scenes which men did see, and may innocently conceive, — of this historical Presence, I say, the pencil may, as innocently, elevate our conceptions, enliven onr memories, refine and purify our ideas, communicate to the duller and coarser minds among us the juster, brighter, and more reverent thoughts of those whom God has blessed with higher faculties of imagining and expressing their imaginations. In like manner, if, since the Ascension, special manifestations of the natural Body of Christ have been made to any, as to St. Stephen and St. Paul, or possibly, as is asserted in legends, to other saints, such manifestations are to be regarded, not as confusing the two Presences, nor as disproving nor as undoing the expe- diency of Christ's departure in the flesh, but merely as special personal exceptions, in which God has seen fit to give to certain individuals, for purposes of His own Providence, late and, so to speak, posthumous exhibitions of that Presence in the flesh which He has withdrawn from the Church at larsre. It follows that there o can be nothing essentially unholy in the picto- rial representation of such manifestations, so 52 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH they be executed with the sacred reverence which the form of the Son of God necessa- rily and always demands ; for that which God shewed men saw ; that which men saw men may imagine, and that which men may imagine they may depict. The same argument, though not precisely in the same form, is applicable to the dread scene of future judgment. That same Jesus which was taken up from amid the men of Galilee into Heaven, shall so come with clouds in like manner as they with their eyes saw Him go into heaven. He shall sit on the throne of His glory, amid the twelve thrones of His Apostles. Ten thousands of His saints shall be with Him, and mighty and holy angels, and before Him shall be gathered all nations, and they also that pierced Him. In all these holy and awful circumstances, thus offered by express description to the reverent anticipating imagination of the Church, there is nothing which, in itself, may not be sacredly conceived by man's imagining, or, consequently, repre- sented by his depicting faculties. But it is in the latter, or Spiritual Presence that Christ is with us now. He expressly de- parted in the flesh, because it was necessary for our Christian condition and blessing in the mi- THE SECOND LAW. 53 litant Churcli that He should come again in the Spirit; and accordingly, on the first great Chris- tian Pentecost He came to abide, the Lord God in the Church, till the judgment. The Church is now the temple of His Presence in the Spirit wherein He walketh. Therein He baptizeth whenever Baptism is duly celebrated with the Holy Ghost, and ofFereth His own Body and Blood to be the spiritual food of the spiritual life of His faithful people. He is in His priests, so that their sentences of binding and loosing are not their own, but His ; and whosoever despiseth them, despiseth not them, but Him. He is in His poor, so that whosoever helpeth or neglecteth them, doeth it not unto them but Him. He is present wheresoever two or three are duly gathered in His name. His departure in the flesh, as it has brought His Presence in the Spirit, so has given scope to faith, enabling her to see what is unseen, and so, room for justification by faith. He is now, to our sense an absent God, to our faith a present one. The world seeth Him no more — the world cannot receive Him, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him ; but it is the very trial and proof of the Christian to realize Him by holy faith as spiritually present 54 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH in the Church, in her members, her ministers, her Sacraments, her assemblies of prayer, her preachings, though our eyes cannot see Him. Our faith, even as we are Christian people worshipping the Lord Incarnate, is put upon a trial not wholly dissimilar to that of the Jews. For while they were called upon to worship the invisible God, and to address to Him without image or symbol the strong, brave prayers of spiritual faith in the Unseen, we are called upon to recognise and worship Christ, whose natural body is absent from us in heaven, but who is invisibly, but most truly and sacredly present in the Spirit in the Church. Sight, the bodily sense of sight, may not assist us to point or direct our worship any more than it might assist them. We must launch our prayers, in the same strength of faith in the Unseen, at Him who is surely and always near us, and willing to hear. Let it then be granted, that to the Jews the conceiving or representing any form or figure of God was essentially unholy, while to Christians it is not unlawful to depict reverently the circumstances and lineaments of the Incarnate Saviour as historically He walked upon the earth ; yet this concession does not touch the point upon which I am now arguing. THE SECOND LAW. 55 To the worshipping Christian Christ is as invi- sible, as omnipresent, as much to be recognized and addressed by spiritual faith, as Jehovah was to the worshipping Jew. To localize Him into picture or image for purposes of worship, is to forget His omnipresence in the Church ; to depict his human body for purposes of wor- ship, is to forget that His presence upon the earth is now Spiritual. To make a picture or image as a help of imagination, or an object of addi-ess in worship, is to attempt to overrule the counsel of God in withdrawing the visible body of the Lord from the earth, and to bring forcibly back, in obedience to the feeble cra- vings of unfaithfulness, that, the removal of which we have been expressly taught is expe- dient for us. Such, then, seems to be the case in respect of pictorial representations of the Incarnate Sa- viour. For purposes of memory they are, if reverent and elevating, innocent, comely and useful : for purposes of worship they are un- holy, and full of danger. If it be further asked, how far can purposes of memory be always distinguished from purposes of worship, par- ticularly in the case of a religion so full of com- memorations of acts done in distant ages ? — as. 56 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH for example, on Good Friday, or Easter-Day ? it must be still replied that the one use is legi- timate — the other not legitimate ; and that if there be danger of confusion between them, it were much better that the legitimate use, being a thing indifferent, were omitted, than the ille- gitimate use, being a thing sinful, were adopted. However, the distinction is, in itself, a real and a clear one ; a distinction as clear as that of grateful memory, and actual worship ; of the past and of the present ; of a presence that was in the flesh, and a presence that is in the Spirit. 2. The same sort of feebleness, or deficiency of spiritual faith in the Unseen, whereby men are discontented and uneasy in mind at having to maintain their brave and strong piety with less of light and visible clearness than they de- sire, is exhibited in the anxious and distressed craving after absolute authority of sacred doc- trine, and by consequence, a living, infallible judge to pronounce upon it. It does not fall within the scope of this Essay to examine in any degree the nature of the gift of infallibility, whether it is given to man at all, whether it is perpetual, or where it resides. Nor do I pro- pose to argue at all directly against the claim set up by the Eoman Catholic Church of infal- THE SECOND LAW. 57 libility in the Pope, as the centre, representa- tive, apex, and divinely-guarded judge of the Church on earth. These claims, and indeed the whole subject of infallibility, belong to another controversy. My present object is moral, not theological. I desire, adopting, as always, the Anglican decisions as my theologi- cal limits, to point out that the moral disposi- tion of being distressed with the degree of light and certainty which we have, because they are imperfect; the craving after more and more authoritative decisions ; the restless- ness and impatience of mind in such " twilight" of immediate guidance and direction as God may, for His own wise purposes, have left us in, either for a long or short time, is one of the exhibitions of that feebleness of spiritual faith in the Unseen which is immoral under the second Law of Divine Love. The strongest and most signal instance of this particular branch of immoral feebleness which has been seen for a long time among us, is to be found in Dr. Newman's Essmj on the Developement of Christian Doctrine. After having been for many years continually oc- cupied with theology, and specially in those parts of it in which the Church of England, 58 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH most nearly approaching to the doctrines of the Church of Rome, most exactly discriminates her differences from them, and having identi- fied, distinguished, and defended those dif- ferences on the Anglican side, historically, doc- trinally, morally, with a degree of accuracy and force unequalled by other writers. Dr. Newman suddenly changed sides, and was found to support and maintain all that he had previously rejected and with no inconsiderable strength of language denounced. It was, of course, ^rima facie, a heavy blow to the Church of England, that a man so learned, so deeply versed in the particular controversy, should have so gone across to the adversary. But why had he done so ? Had he discovered any- thing new? Had the cogency of his former arguments given way to the better-appreciated force of the Roman views, in any such way as could be made clear to other minds ? Had any assignable change come over the argument, since the days when he maintained the Anglican side of it ? No ; nothing of the kind. The change was simply and solely in the arguer. He could no longer, in moral strength, main- tain what rationally and intellectually was unchanged. Distressed at the pressure of in- THE SECOND LAW. 59 fidel arguments ; fretted at the dimness of the position which he had maintained so long ; craving, in moral feebleness, a present bright unquestionable light of God, he grasped at a light which his own reason and learning had long exhibited as a deceit and a sham. He left his argument where it stood, to take care of itself, and devised an hypothesis to accomit for its having so anti-Roman a look. He still acknowledged, for he could not help acknow- ledgingj that history was apparently against Rome ; but he had found out for his own com- fort an ingenious scheme by which that part of history might be read backwards, and the beginning be found at the end. He felt that for his part he could not believe at all unless he had the help of a present infallibility, and so he grasped at a claim of present infallibility as it were with his hands, and tried to believe it by holding it as fast as he could. The following passage may be taken to illus- trate the truth of what has been stated : ^' And if the claim to infallible arbitration in religious disputes is of so weighty importance and interest in all ages of the world, much more is it welcome at a time like the present, when the human intellect is so busy, and 60 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH tliouglit SO fertile^ and opinion so infinitely- divided. The absolute need of a spiritual supremacy is at present the strongest of argu- ments in favour of its supply. Surely, either an objective revelation has not been given, or it has been provided with means for impressing its objectiveness upon the world. If Chris- tianity be a social religion, as it certainly is, and if it be based on certain ideas acknowledged as Divine, or a creed, which shall here be assumed, and if these ideas have various aspects, and make distinct impressions on different minds, and [issue in consequence in a multipli- city of developements, true, or false, or mixed, as has been shewn, what influence will suffice to meet, and do justice to these conflicting con- ditions, but a supreme authority, ruling and reconciling individual judgements by a Divine right, and a recognised wisdom ?" " If Chris- tianity is both social and dogmatic, and intended for all ages, it must, humanly speaking, have an infallible expounder. Else you will secure unity of form at the loss of unity of doctrine, or unity of doctrine at the loss of unity of form. You will have to choose between a comprehen- sion of opinions, and a resolution into parties : between latitudinarian and sectarian error. THE SECOND LAW. 61 You may be tolerant or intolerant of contrai'ie- ties of thought, but contrarieties you will have. By the Church of England a hollow uniformity is preferred to an infallible chair, and by the sects of England, an interminable division. Germany and Geneva began with persecution, and have ended in scepticism. The doctrine of infallibility is a less violent hypothesis than this sacrifice either of faith, or of charity. It secures the objects, without, to say the least, violating the letter of the revelation." * This passage, which fairly represents the writer's sense of the importance and necessity of finding out a theory to enable him, in spite of learning and history, to accept the Roman hypothesis, illustrates perfectly the immoral feebleness of faith of which I speak. The writer craves, as a matter of moral necessity, an infallible guide. He does not now argue, as he used to do, whether as a matter of fact and truth, such a guide is given. He shrinks, personally and morally, fi'om occupying what seems to him the dim, and, as it were, twi- light ground on which the Providence of God has placed him. The light is not bright enough for his comfort. He is meanwhile utterly ter- * Newman, Developement, pp. 127-8. 62 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH rifled at the thouglit of total darkness. So, if guides, claiming to be absolutely distinct, and even infallible, cannot prove tlieir authority on independent grounds of reason ; nay even, if he have himself in unanswered argument de- stroyed their alleged grounds of reason, he finds in his own weakness and discomfort an adequate substitute for their authority. " The absolute need of a spiritual supremacy" in- volving infallible arbitrations in religious dis- putes, is, to his mind " at present the strongest of arguments in favour of its supply." Now it is to be much observed, that this moral incapacity of strong faith does not of necessity exhibit itself in this direction. It is very possible that it may shew itself in the very opposite. When a man feels his providential position of faith thus dim and distressing, he has an alternative before him. He may, as the writer whom I have just quoted, adopt the Roman Catholic theory, and submit to an unproved claim of spiritual infallibility: but he may also discard the whole subject of human guidance in spiritual things from his thoughts, and become absolutely his own pilot in the search of truth. He may put aside all idea of looking for human help, in his despair of find- THE SECOND LAW. 63 ing any possessed of the amount of irresistible authority whicli he craves, and so, elevating his own reason into the required authority, become Priest and Pope, Church and Scripture to himself. Precisely this possibility is acknowledged, in a very remarkable way, by the writer whom I have already quoted. " The same philosophical elements," he says, " received into a certain sensibility or insensi- bility to sin, and its consequences, lead, one mind to the Church of Pome ; another, to what, for want of a better name, may be called Germanism."* It is necessary, perhaps, in order to take in the full force of this remarkable and most true statement, to understand clearly what the writer means by ' philosophical elements ' ; — to under- stand, that is, what that thing is which in two different men is capable of such opposite practical developements, — what that community of mind is, which may exist alike in one who leaves the Church of England for the Roman Communion, and another who leaves it for that ' which for want of a better name may be called Germanism.' " Principles," he says, " are abstract and * Developement, p. 71. 64 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH general, doctrines relate to facts doc- trines are intellectual, and principles are more immediately ethical and practical Doc- trines are developed by the operation of prin- ciples, and develope differently according to these principles. Thus a belief in the transi- tiveness of worldly goods leads the epicurean to enjoyment, and the ascetic to mortification, and from their common doctrine of the sin- fulness of matter, the Alexandrian Gnostics became sensualists, and the Syrian, devotees. The same philosophical elements, etc." Now, if I understand this rightly, it signifies this : — according as two men differ from one another in their ethical, practical, abstract principles, so, although they adopt the very same doctrines, opinions, or " philosophical elements", they will develope these doctrines in such opposite ways, that, practically, they will find themselves in religious positions appa- rently exactly contradictory to one another. " Sensibility," then, and " insensibility to sin and its consequences", being ethical, practical, abstract principles in the hearts of two men bred in the Church of England, if they both adopt as a doctrine, or *' philosophical element", the unsatisfactoriness and insufficiency of the THE SECOND LAW. 65 human evidence and authority of truth as held and taught in the Church of England, the one will become a Eoman Catholic, the other a Germanizer. But whereas this doctrine, or " philosophical element" is itself, otherwise regarded, a " prin- ciple", or, at least, the exhibition of a " prin- ciple" ; (that is to say, the dissatisfaction of mind at a condition of light and guidance less complete than may be craved or expected by a man, yet still practically sufficient for the happy and contented faith of thousands and thousands, earnestly bent on seeking the truth of God, and worshipping Him as He would be wor- shipped, is itself as truly an ethical, practical principle, as any of those which Dr. Newman instances), it will follow that such moral dissatis- faction with guidance and authority on the ground of supposed imperfection (that is to say, the feebleness of faith in things dim and partially unseen), added to sensibility to sin and its conse- quences, is the moral analysis of the mind which leaves the Church of England for that of Rome, while the like dissatisfaction, plus an insensibi- lity to sin and its consequences, is the moral condition of one who leaves it for the teaching of the German philosophers. F 66 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH Is it not a strange, and most instructive phe- nomenon, that both these changes, — that is, this moral feebleness of faith in both its practical developments, — should have been exhibited to us in one family ? For while the one brother, theorizing as above quoted, acknowledges so truly the double tendency of the same philo- sophical elements admitted into different minds, the other, from the other or German side, writes thus: — "My brother was surely struggling after truth, fighting for freedom to his own heart and mind, against Church- Articles and stagnancy of thought. For this he deserved both sympathy and love. Nevertheless, to this day it is to me a painfully unsolved mystery, how a mind can claim its freedom in order to establish bond- age."* " Fraternis animis, quicquid negat alter, et alter ! " Moreover, as if to justify and confirm the moral theory which finds in the clifierent sensibility or insensibility to sin and its consequences the secret of the different result of the same philo- sophical elements in different minds, the second of the two writers thus acknowledges a " moral change" as " the result of his change of creed" : — * F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 119. THE SECOND LAW. 67 '^ Its theory was one of selfishness ; that is, it inculcated that my first business must be to save my soul from future punishment, and it bade me chide myself, when I thought of nothing but about doing present duty, and blessing God for present enjoyment. In point of fact, I never did look much to futurity, nor even, in prospect of death, could attain to any vivid anticipations or desires, much less was troubled with fears. The evil which I suffered from my theory" (that is, when he was a Chris- tian) " was . . . that ... it taught me to blame myself for unbelief, because I was not sufficiently absorbed in the contemplation of my vast personal expectations. I certainly here feel myself delivered from the danger of factitious sin."* 3. Very nearly akin to the feebleness of faith which craves a living, infallible authority, to which questions of doubt or difficulty may be immediately referred and finally settled, is that which is impatient (to such degree as to do things otherwise not right) for a more sj^eedy solution of such questions by the ordinary au- thority of the Church, than the Providence of God in the present condition of Christendom * F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 203. 68 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH sees fit to give. If, for instance, differences of doctrine are brought prominently forward, as they have been of late in the Church of England, and temporal and temporizing courts give such a judgment, as was recently given, which, while it does not touch or change one docu- ment, canon, or Article of Faith held by the Church of England, offers an irrelevant inter- pretation of what was not the teaching of the party accused, in the hope of establishing peace in the Church on another foundation than that of the truth, — the temper of feeble " faith in the Unseen" is apt to exhibit itself forthwith in impatience with respect to time. It says, " This must be set to rights. We can, per- haps, bear it for a year — for two years — for three years ; but we must put a limit to our for- bearance. If the Church of England does not overrule this judgment within three years, we will leave her : though her historical position is unaltered ; though she has unquestioned suc- cession from the Apostles ; though we have ever believed in the efficacy of her Sacraments, yet shall she do that which we think she ought to do, and that within a time which we will arbitrarily settle ; or we, though verily believing that the means of grace and salvation are offered THE SECOND LAW. 69 to US in her Communion ; thougli having ex- perimental proof, in the spread of her dioceses abroad, in the efficacy of her ministrations perhaps in our own parishes, that the grace of her Lord is with her, will bear with her no longer. Our distress shall, to us, disprove her catholicity. The long- suffering of the Lord we will transform into a proof of His departure." This kind of temper, of which there can be no doubt that much has been seen among us of late years, is plainly immoral under the second great Law. The invisible Lord of the Church bindeth not his workings to the hasty require- ments of man's impatience. While men do all that appertains to their own position in the Church to do for the vindication of truth, and the purification of the Church, faithfully be- seeching God in their prayers to strengthen what remains, and fill up whatever may be wanting to the full perfection of the Church in which He has placed them, they may be well content to live on, and die, with many ques- tions unsolved, and many difficulties unre- dressed. He who laid in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation, and thereupon, on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, 70 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH maketh His Church to grow -anto an holy tem- ple in the Lord^ warns us that he that helieveth shall not make haste, or be impatient ;* or, as the words are thrice quoted in the New Testa- ment, shall not he ashamed : ashamed, that is, of the haste and impatience, shewing want of faith, which would try to hurry the movements of Him with whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years. If in- deed men would once take deeply into their minds the thought that God is trying, by these difficulties and anomalies which He suffers (the means of Divine grace and holy living being meanwhile fully and freely offered to them), whether those whom He has providentially placed in a position to know, and do, and spread among others the knowing and doing of His will, have spiritual faith in Him who hideth Himself away from carnal sight, on whom they are builded : — whether, that is, they will work on in what is surely His work, meekly, bravely, and faithfully, in prayer sanc- tifying themselves, and feeling how unworthy they are to demand more or speedier light or satisfaction than it may please God to give them, it would seem hardly possible that they * Is. xxviii. 10. THE SECOND LAW. 71 should speak and act as, alas ! there can be no doubt that many have spoken and acted amongst us within the last years. ' 4. It is characteristic of the same kind of im- moral feebleness to become insecure in faith, because of the imperfection of other men's lives ; to fret one's self into doubts of the pre- sence of God in the Church in general, or par- ticular portions of it, because the standard of visible goodness is less high than it ought to be ; or, which is an exhibition of the same feeling, to totter in personal fulness of faith, because discipline is less perfect than it should be, and thereby the standard of holiness allowed, as it were by authority, to sink lower than by more stringent rules it might be raised. I know not whether it may not also be truly said, that the temper which prefers to denounce sin rather than faithfully and meekly endeavour to increase holiness in one's self and others ; which rather likes railing at the want of discip- line than sets itself in gentleness and prayer to bringing about the restoration of it, is nearly connected with the feebleness of which I speak. Certainly a great deal of personal self-indul- gence is apt to hide itself (even from its own eyes) under the cloak of a burning and railing 72 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH zeal for discipline, and personal weakness to find a kind of factitious strength in complaints of the unholiness of others. It is not, of course, to be denied that pre- vailing unholiness might become, if it were to reach to a certain height, a reasonable and true ground for doubting (when the Church of God is divided up into portions, as now) whether that portion in which such unholiness prevailed continued to be a living branch of the sacred vine. That which is not, and cannot be, an ar- gument against the whole Church as opposed to the world (for then the promises of God would have come to no effect — a conclusion impossible to a Christian), may conceivably be an argument in favour of one portion of the Church as against another. It may also be difficult to settle in the abstract what that height or degree of unholiness is. Thus much, how- ever, is clear. It cannot be less than a long-con- tinued, universal, and authoritative unholiness ; for unless it were long-continued, a speedy re-action might be hoped for, whereby the grace of God would be shewn to have been temporarily overlaid rather than extinguished; unless it were universal, those who formed ex- ceptions to it ought plainly to be regarded as THE SECOND LAW. 73 living witnesses of the still present grace of God in the Communion ; and if it were not au- thoritative, it would be of the nature of rebel- lion and resistance to a surviving authority still witnessing on the side of truth and holiness. I do not allege immorality under the second Law against such as calmly, earnestly, and with pain of mind, argue and believe they prove that any portion of the Church has actually reached this awful state of unholiness ; such persons, if they be wrong, have their con- demnation elsewhere. But against those who in feeling and temper, not in calm and deli- berate reasoning, morally rather than intel- lectually, dwell fretfully upon such things till they give them an imaginary weight which really does not belong to them, and are thus tempted to betray, instead of amending, them- selves, their love, their faith, and their Church, according to the Lord's melancholy prophecy, because of the abundance of iniquity. Let it be here observed, that the sight of holiness in our own Communion is a sound and valid reason for adhering to it. For, simply recognising what we see, we claim no insight into hearts, but honestly appreciate the not-extinct grace of God among us, and glorify 74 THE LAAV or SPIRITUAL FAITH our Father which is in heaven^ seeing the good works of those whose light thus shines before men. But the sight of holiness in another Communion is not a valid reason for deserting our own, and attaching ourselves to that other. For such an act founds itself upon the claim that we can measure the goodness of the two Communions, that we can compare them, strike a just balance between them, and pronounce a decision on that balance in favour of the one which we necessarily know the least; — a claim obviously presumptuous, groundless, and dangerous in the last degree. 5. The same kind of feebleness is also shewn generally in the craving after signs and tokens of all kinds, for the settlement of doubt, or the removal of uneasiness, and insecurity of personal faith. This is, there can be no doubt, a very common form of immorality. It is more subtle too than men are apt to think. The grosser and more outward forms of it are plain and clear enough. Such was the craving of the Jews in our Lord's life-time for a sign in the heavens ; — something, that is, visible and unquestionable, on which they might rely with full assurance of Divine help, instead of having to pick (so to speak) their THE SECOND LAW. 16 way to comfort along the moral and difficult road of patient faith and holiness, finding the will of God in cases of doubt by following it steadily in cases of certainty. Such is the whole system of casting lots, looking for tokens, providential signs, and the like, whereby men try to relieve themselves from the conscientious task of finding their own way in difficult and important passages of life, and ask God to do for them by express interposition what He has not only given them adequate means of doing for themselves, but has particularly set before them to do as one of the most important parts of their probation. When this is broadly and clearly done, most men easily perceive the immorality of it ; and that is, in fact, whatever disguises it may put on, a craving for a visible and interposing God instead of a faithful and obedient follow- ing of Him who is invisible. But it is very often done much more secretly, and without, it is probable, any sense on the part of him who feebly gives way to it, that he is offending, in any sort or degree, against any law of God in so doing. For instance, a man resolves that he will follow a certain person whom he respects — ^^ if he does such and such things, I will do them 76 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH too : if he be content not to do them, I will be content too." It is plain that in such a case he is substituting for the guidance of the invisible and spiritual God, and the rules which He has given, a visible, self-chosen guide, who may be ever so mistaken and deceiving. Another says, " I will be directed by such and such events. If they take place I will act in one way : if they do not, I will act in another": and this, in the way of signs, not because the supposed events do necessarily or of their own proper force involve the duty of so acting. Still more subtly the temptation works in respect of prayers and inward comfort and assurance arising from prayers. A man is often tempted to sink in faith, because he has not perceived that degree of warmth and confidence of feeling within him, the in- ward answer of perceptible grace given to his prayers, which without adequate ground of promise he has expected. In such a case, he is certainly (however little he is himself aware of it) making his faithfulness of continued cheerful belief and obedience depend upon his receiving a sign of acceptance which God has never covenanted to give, and which may be, and no doubt often is, withheld. What if it be THE SECOND LAW. 77 withlield in trial of this very courage of spi- ritual faith in the unseen ? What if God be hiding for a little while the light of His coun- tenance, in order to test the strength and endurance of that heroic faith which He will reward hereafter with the real vision of bliss ? There is, perhaps, no temptation more gene- ral among people desiring and endeavouring to please God, — perhaps particularly among women, — than this one. They are distressed at the coldness of their religious feelings. They wish to be devoted to God and His service with the fullest certainty of belief, and the most unreserved intensity of devotion ; but feeling refuses to follow at the bidding of will, and prayers do not seem to do their work upon the soul, or to be blessed with their expected answer. In this distressing state of mind and feeling — a state of mind and feeling described and expressed, perhaps, more fully and fre- quently in the Book of Psalms than any other, — what is to be done ? If faith in the unseen can in God's grace be strong and brave in this day of trial, then no doubt, greater strength and greater peace shall be the blessed reward of so gracious victory. But if the heart be cowardly, and the faith feeble, there is an 7o THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH alternative in defeat. While one, blaming himself for his coldness, and stoniness of heart, leans towards personal hopelessness and despair, another condemns his Church. He comforts himself by assuring himself that his distress is rather his misfortune than his fault, and hoping to find more experimental peace elsewhere. Should this latter person whom I have sup- posed have already entertained doubts of the vitality of his Communion, so as to have mingled with his prayers for grace petitions for the guidance of God also, the temptation of his feebleness is doubled. His very cold- ness is understood to be his answer, and his wilfulness is mistaken for the guidance he has asked. The one condemns the Church of England, the other warrants the Church of Rome ; and thus a man deserts the providential position in which God has been pleased to place him, because his faith is too weak to see in the twilight, and because he insists on having perceptible signs and answers of the grace of God, never promised, often delayed, and im- morally craved. 6. One more, and that a signal instance of the same kind of feebleness of spiritual faith, remains to be mentioned ; that, I mean, which is THE SECOND LAW. 79 shewn by the desire of unauthorized mediators between the worshipping soul, and God the single object of spiritual worship. It has pleased our gracious God, in compassion of our fallen, feeble, lost condition, to give one Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus ; able to be an effectual Me- diator, inasmuch as, while in His true Deity, He is one with the Father, God begotten of God, Light begotten of Light, Very God begotten of Very God; in His true humanity he partakes of all the reality of man's nature, so as to be truly and deeply touched with the feeling of our infir- mities ; able to be an effectual Mediator, because as the single, sinless Man, He has rendered the offering of His spotless sacrifice to the Father, which He ever pleadeth where He sitteth at His Father's right hand making intercession for His people. Other mediators than Him may no Christian man make unto himself. It is the will of God that our faith should be strong enough to fly direct, in the Holy Spirit, to Christ, and through Christ to the Father. There are no interme- diate steps or halting-places. Admitted into the body of Christ, our access to Him, and through Him to our Father, is direct and imme- diate. He is round us, close to tis, with us. 80 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH and in us. He loves us with the truest and tenderest love. We undervalue His Presence and His love when we feebly try to make in- terest, as it were, with other persons or beings, instead of throwing ourselves ever and always upon His all-sufficient and well-assured love and care. It has been in very wonderful con- descension to man's weakness that this one great Mediator has been given to us ; but this one must suffice. There neither is, nor can be another, and he who makes to himself another, though he may seem to do it in a voluntary humility and self-distrust, does in that act despise the love and disown the presence of his Lord, and grievously exhibit that weakness of spiritual faith in the Unseen which is the spe- cial offisnce against the second Law of Divine morality. But, it may be asked, are we not taught to pray for one another ? and are we not encou- raged by St. Paul's example to ask each other's prayers? and is not the asking of another's prayers the same thing as making that other person a mediator between our souls and God ? Do we not thereby make another step, or stage, in our address to God, and so constitute him, strictly speaking, another subordinate mediator? THE SECOND LAW. 81 No, by no means ; and it is important to ob- serve tbe distinction. It is perfectly allowable, both by the Apostle's example and from the nature of the case, to ask for other Christians' prayers to help our own. It is not allowable to ask for them as a substitute for our own. When we ask each other's prayers, to help our own, we ask them on the ground of the general doc- trine of the Church or Body of Christ, wherein no member can suffer or rejoice without the corresponding suffering or rejoicing of the whole body. The healthful action of all the other members and organs of the natural body is helpful to maintain the health and usefulness of any single one of them, but only if that one do its own proper work too. They have their own ofEce ; they cannot do its oiEce. They are helpful, doubtless, but not as substitutes -, and so it is with the Spiritual Body, the Church. The prayers of all bring a blessing on all. The prayers of each bring a blessing specially upon each for whom they are offered ; but not if the object of those prayers do not pray for himself; not unless he be quickened to use the grace given to him, and learn to address himself directly to the Present God, who loves him, and requires his strong, spiritual worship. The 82 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH case may be well illustrated by the instance of a family. A father, full of love and kindness to his children, which he has testified by a thousand affectionate acts, desires them, when- ever they want anything, to come to him and ask for it. He promises to be always near, always ready, and always willing to grant whatever they desire that is good for them, and he bids them help one another in asking. While each asks, cheerfully, faithfully, and lovingly for himself, he delights to hear them remember one another in their petitions. Eut how would he feel if any one of them, in mock- humility and real disobedience, should go to one of his brothers, whom he supposes to be higher in their father's favour, and instead of addressing continual prayers of his own, should beg him to speak for him ; to intercede — to mediate ? Surely the father would tell him that his apparent humility was itself a great offence ; that his faith in his father's love and power was dangerously feeble ; that he was making what was intended to be a help into a snare, and shrinking, in self-delusion, from his highest duty and best privilege. Thus much may suffice to explain the gene- ral nature and chief exhibitions of the feeble- THE SECOND LAW. b3 ness of spiritual faith in the Unseen, which is one of the two immoralities between which lies that fourth part of the love of God which is en- joined by the second Commandment. The other is the audacity (not without much close kindred with the feebleness) which throws aside spiritual belief altogether, looking upon it either as wholly mistaken, or hypocritical in those who entertain it ; or at any rate, as too shadowy and unpractical to deserve the regard of a sensible man. This audacity is generally of two kinds. 1st. Gross and sensual. Men, entirely taken up with the things that their eyes can see and their hands handle, come sometimes to lose all sense of spiritual things whatever : they nei- ther know nor care about them. Religion is to them a tedious fiction — the soul an abstraction unprofitable to be talked or thought about — ■ Spiritual Beings, as good or evil angels, a hy- pocritical delusion — the whole subject of judg- ment to come, and the invisible world, a cunning scheme to enrich priests, and enable them to domineer over the consciences of fools. It may not, perhaps, very often happen that this condition is fully arrived at. Probably a large proportion of those who are in the way 84 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH towards it never completely reach it. They are still capable of occasional fits, as it were, of spiritual tenderness, or feebleness; as for in- stance, in sorrow ; or if anything having the appearance of being supernatural breaks, as it were, through their thick defences, and makes its way to the unprotected and undirected spi- ritual credulity of their inner hearts. Yet it is also probable that a very large number of Christian people do practically reach it. Secu- lar business, money-making, and hunting after pleasure, it cannot be doubted, fill the whole heart and thoughts of a great many people, to the total exclusion of spiritual things. It needs no argument to show that such people really incur, to a grievous extent, the guilt of that immoral audacity which offends against the second Law. 2ndly. Such audacity is sometimes of an, intellectual kind. With more or less of sensual appetite leading them to wish that the whole Spiritual system were false and deceitful, and with acuteness enough to pick holes in much of what is currently thought and said on the sub- ject of religion ; but at the same time without the serious candour which would give the whole subject that careful, balanced investigation THE SECOND LAW. 85 wliich. its importance requires, or the conscience of personal sin and %yeakness, wliicli would be distressed to lose tlie belief of an invisible world, and all tlie comfort which Revelation offers, such persons not unfrequently persuade themselves that it is a triumph of philosophy to believe nothing of an invisible or spiritual kind at all. They are the intellectual Sadclucees, as those before spoken of were the sensual. These, however, are rarer than those. These are in- dividuals — those are classes. It is character- istic of such people to intrench themselves behind some favourite cavil, with the defences of which they become familiar, and gaining an easy victory over such as know little about the difficulties of the subject, to pass among others, and to regard themselves, as persons of singular independency and force of mind. If there be a God, however, and if it be the second Commandment of His great Law of Love that His people should worship Him in the way of spirit and spiritual truth, none can doubt that such persons are in most open and fatal rebellion against Him and His holy Law. Between these two kinds of immorality lies the sacred affection of love ; the Spiritual faith in the Unseen, affirmatively required by the 86 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH second Law of God. While on the one hand it utterly rejects the Sadducean temper, which disbelieves and disowns all spiritual ideas what- ever, it maintains, in contradistinction to the Pharisaic or Romanizing temper, a strong, con- tented, and courageous reliance on God and His truth, although in various ways the light which God vouchsafes may be not so strong or clear as it might conceivably have been, or have been by men expected to be. Founded upon the inborn sense of the existence of Spiri- tual beings, and powers invisible to the organs of man (that inborn sense so strikingly testified, and no doubt so providentially maintained in the continual tales of supernatural occur- rences, as visits from the ghosts of the dead, apparitions, dreams and the like, each having its own scanty or stronger evidence, as the case may be,) and bravely throwing itself upon the track which it believes to be pointed out, though less distinctly than was possible, by the Divine will, it holds the narrow ridge of gallant and heroic '' love in faith", in the firmest assurance that He who has offered that providential path will not fail to uphold and guide those who manfully and perseveringly pursue it. It is, however, necessary in this place to go THE SECOND LAW. 87 a little deeper into the moral history of this faith, in order at once to elucidate the reason- ableness of it, as a matter of reason, and to guard against an objection which may not un- naturally be brought (as it sometimes* really is brought) against its necessity. When divines (acknowledging that the evidences of Christian truth are so far short of demonstration, that though it is unreasonable and sinful to disbe- lieve, it is not simply absurd and unmeaning to do so) explain this obvious fact, by saying that it was graciously and benevolently so ordered with this very view, that there might be scope and opportunity for a willing and courageous faith, designed by God to become the substra- tum of all moral virtues, they are liable to be asked, " In what, then, is the remainder of such faith to be put ? What is that to which a man reasonably yields, beyond and above the evi- dence and its necessary compulsion of belief, when he determines to accept with all his heart, and give up his life to the practical obedience of the doctrines in question? To whom, and to what is he giving that other part or portion of his reasonable mind, when he thus resolves to transform probabilities into certainties ; evi- * F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 154, etc. 88 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH dence confessedly imperfect into the grounds of life-long devotion ; intellectual doubt into moral, acceptable faith ?" I desire to give to this question as clear, rea- sonable, and true an answer as I can. The other part or portion of faith (to adopt the exact expression in which the objection is supposed to be worded), is moral ; made up of various moral elements which may be, to a great extent, discriminated and explained. These moral elements are probably blended in different degrees and proportions in different minds, and in different classes of men. For instance, in the case of a person converted as an adult to Christian truth, it is probable that the sense of personal demerit and weakness is the principal, it may be the sole, moral element which mingles (in different proportions in dif- ferent instances) with his intellectual con- victions. It is this which first makes the offer of a Saviour musical to his ears, and sweet to his heart, and so wins him to listen at all ; while those who feel no such want are satisfied to remain in the hereditary persuasion of their fathers, or to neglect the subject altogether ; or perceiving, after short examination, the evidence offered to be less than demonstrative, to think THE SECOND LAW. 89 it not wortli examining and weighing further. It is the same, which when specific evidence is oiFered him, say of miracle, prophecy, or the like, leads him to care enough about the matter to give it due and candid attention, and not to scorn it, or put it aside with some off-hand solution or cavil, which might encourage him in neglect and unbelief. It is the same, which when the subject is thus commended to his reason, as worthy of consideration, and desi- rable of belief, makes him willing to turn it to the practical direction of his life and conduct. It is the same, which when doubts recur, or various other things endanger the stability of his once accepted belief, forces him back to it in the feeling of the Apostle, exclaiming, " Lord to whom shall I go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." It is the same, which thus commending the subject, the evi- dence, and the practice of Christian religion to his mind, enables him to win that further experimental certainty which we believe to be the gift of God to those who obediently keep His commandments, and pray for His help. They hnow of the doctrines that tlieij he of God. If then an adult convert thus per- severing, gains the entire unhesitating accept- 90 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH able faith, in God whicli we have spoken of, what is that, besides the evidence (to ask the objector's question before supposed) to which he is yielding his reasonable belief? It is plain, that it is not altogether a correct mode of speech, nor a correct representation of the fact, to say that he is yielding his reasonable belief to anything beside the evidence. At least, the expression requires explanation and distinction in order to be rightly understood. The truth simply is, that certain moral elements, as above described, lead him to listen to the subject, to examine candidly and appreciate the evidence, to accept, to apply, to cling to the truths so made known to him. Thus he learns to do the evidence full justice ; to see it in its true real reasonable strength ; and having done so, he will usually gain (though this is a blessing not so invariable, or so certainly pro- mised in every case as that a man may surely reckon upon it in his own, or be distressed or weakened in faith if he does not feel it) that strongest of all proof, an inward, personal, ex- perimental light of God's holy truth which gives the highest certainty of which man is capable. The other case in which it is necessary to analyze the moral elements entering into the THE SECOND LAW. 91 composition of acceptable belief is that of those who receive the faith as children, and grow up in it. To such as these the principles of true reli- gion were not offered in the first instance as matters about which there was or could be any doubt at all. They were not tendered in the way of things to be proved, or requiring proof. On the contrary, they were laid down as the first principles of all knowledge and learning whatever. The little child, Christianly bred, learned to apply his Christian lore to his own life and actions as soon as ever he had acquired it, almost, if I may be forgiven the apparent contradiction, before he had acquired it. He was taught to pray, before he could speak plain, to His Father in heaven, and to repeat the Creed of the Church into which he had been baptized before he could at all consider- ably understand the deep words which he uttered, or explain the awe Avhich he felt in uttering them. Supposing him then in these early years, and up to the time when by age he becomes capable of considering evidence pro- perly so called, to live according to this early rule, that is to say, to be constant and steady in prayers, and in all the various sorts of dili- 92 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH gence, self-control and duty which belong to that time of life, because of the obedience to the will of God, whom he has thus learned to know, there will mingle with his traditionary faith more and more of that personal strength which I have spoken of, the result of obedience tried, the heavenly gift tasted, the graciousness of the Lord felt and acknowledged. In this condition of faith, thus wholly tra- ditional and moral, there can be no doubt that many good Christians live in holy devotion, and die in well assured peace. Particularly is this the case with the religious among the poor. It is plainly out of their power to become pos- sessed of a full and correct intellectual appre- ciation of the exterior evidences of the Gospel. It follows of necessity that it cannot be neces- sary for them to possess it. The gracious miracle of the healing of the poor woman who came behind the Lord in the press, and hoped being undiscovered to steal a cure by touching the hem of His garment, and the equally gracious words wherein He distinctly attributed acceptable faith to her state of mind, settle for ever, against all dispute, this great and precious truth, that intellectual knowledge is not of necessity (the opportunities of it being sup- THE SECOND LAW. \)3 posed to be wanting) indispensable to the con- stitution of true, acceptable faith. That miracle is, as it were, the inheritance of the poor. When, however, as in the case which I am principally supposing, a young person growing old enough to hear objections, to read books of argument, and to hear and judge of evidence, fairly begins to take account of all these things, he continually introduces into the grounds of his belief more and more of a purely intellec- tual element. It is not that he transforms what was moral before into what is now intellectual, but he comes to strengthen, solidify and sup- port the moral structure of his belief by con- tinually increasing additions of intellectual groundwork. It might be — no doubt it would be, — difficult or impossible at any given mo- ment of this progress to attempt to analyze his belief into its constituent elements ; but when it is complete, when the time comes (which if not practically, is at least hypothetically pos- sible) that he is master of all the intellectual Christian evidences, and has rendered to them all their full and just weight, then his belief is at once wholly intellectual, and wholly moral too : wholly intellectual, for he feels at every point the sound reasonable grounds on which 94 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH every part and portion of it rests ; — wholly moral, for every part of that belief is worked deeply and habitually into his character, blend- ing itself with all his early traditional memories, and sanctioned and strengthened by all his present experiences. If then the question should be asked (in the terms before supposed) in what, besides the evi- dence, is a person, whose mind is in the state described, putting his faith ? it is plain that the question is in itself incorrectly worded and fallacious. He is not putting his reasonable faith in anything beside the evidence. Tradi- tionally and morally his faith has grown up to be able to appreciate the evidence. Obedience, duty, self-control, religious services, the whole moral and religious dedication of the body and soul to God during childhood, youth, and man- hood, have prepared, trained, enabled, and induced the intellect to be concerned enough to examine, patient and candid enough to judge, courageous and faithful enough to ad- here to what it has thus well and wisely ex- amined and judged. Faithfulness may well be predicated of the intellectual Faith : for it is because of the disciplined and trained affec- tions, the consciousness of personal sin and THE SECOND LAW. 95 weakness, and all the other moral portions of its culture, that it bravely holds by what it has humbly sought, and honestly and thoroughly investigated. The peculiar affection, then, which I conceive to be affirmatively enjoined under the negative wordinc^ of the second Law of God, is this brave, trusting, spiritual Faith in God invi- sible, spiritual, absent to our sense, dim in His tokens, obscure sometimes in His providences, not demonstrable in His evidences, not inva- riable in His comforts. Based, as I have already said, upon the natural awe of spiritual existences as upon a natural faculty, trained and disciplined by the early moral turning of the heart to God in prayers and all kinds of religious duty, such spiritual Faith in God the dimly-seen grows up into a principle of conduct the strongest, bravest, and most trustworthy that the heart of man can gain. It needs little thought to see that it owes its peculiar strength, bravery, and trustworthiness to the very difficulties under which it has grown. The faith which should have had demonstrable evidence, visible objects, tokens which could be reckoned upon, as on the one 96 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL FAITH hand it would have had no moral elements in its composition, so on the other would have been unable to sustain itself, if by the inter- ruption or cessation of these external helps it had been at any time left to the support of its own inward strength. As a basis of character therefore, a faith cultivated as I have described is plainly most precious. Having combined itself with the moral qualities and habits of the mind in all its growth, it supports them the more firmly when grown. As in our bodies the bones are permeated by innumerable fibres of nerve and sinew, by means of which they grow, and are bound together in closest alliance with the softer substances of the limbs which they are intended to sustain, so in our souls such Faith is the morally permeated frame- work, if I may so express myself, of our Christian acceptableness, which gives strength, union, and stability to those habits of virtue and goodness which resemble more closely the other portions of our frame. Possessed of this Spiritual Faith in the Un- seen, a man walks along his narrow path of life — the ridge, as I have already called it — with a confidence, security, and cheerfulness which establish at once his comfort and his safety. THE SECOND LAW. 99 Witli such light as God hath vouchsafed to give he is not only contented, but abundantly- blest. The light wanting, as it might seem, to his eyes, is worked into his heart : he carries the assurance of God's truth, goodness, and power in his soul as a principle. The truth of God not having been presented in so visible a form as to take the senses captive, has been more deeply taken in by the reason ; not having been offered so demonstratively as to overpower the intellect, it has penetrated the affections. The whole man has, under the Holy Spirit, seen, known, lived, loved, felt in every part and portion of his nature the truth of God. And this is Faith, Spiritual Faith in the Unseen, the strength and substance of all Christian virtue, being itself the very truth of Christian virtue. This I believe to be the peculiar affection of Divine love required affirmatively under the negative and narrow wording of the Second C omman dm ent . B 98 REVERENCE OF THE NAME, THE LAW OF REVERENCE OF THE NAME, THE THIRD LAW. When we pass from the two first Command- ments, which have much in common with one another, to the consideration of the third, we pass at once into new ground. Hitherto we have been speaking of God as He is in Himself. By the first Commandment we are bidden to be pious and full of prayers to Him ; by the se- cond we are taught to maintain that piety and these prayers, even though He has chosen to veil Himself from our sight, and to give us comparatively few of those intellectual and sensible helps which our weakness might tempt us to crave. The third Commandment no longer speaks of God as He is in Himself, but of the Name of God ; of God, that is, as He can be named or spoken of in human words ; of God, not as THE THIRD LAW. \J\) the intellect of man contemplates Him, or the Faith of man holds fast the belief in Him, or the piety of man worships Him ; but as He is pleased to allow Himself and His being to be l^rojected, if I may so express myself, upon the imperfect media of human and earthly things : His Name named in words, His Nature con- fessed in creeds, His Truth made known by inspiration to the hearts of men, and by them spoken in speech, and written down in books. His Presence attached in some manner to per- sons, things, and places. " Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God", wheresoever it occurs to meet thee in thy walk or passage through life, " in vain ; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless, that taketh His Name in vain." Ou ^y'^y to ovofia ILvplov too Qeov aov bttl /narai'iv. Not lightly. Vainly, or irreverently shalt thou utter, or handle, or regard, or otherwise deal with the Name of God wheresoever it meeteth thee in thy life.* * Ta iJ.€V ovv TTtS Ta|eftjs yvdopiua to7s SLcivoiau o^v^epKOvffiv. ovofxa yap aet Seurepo.v vtroKdjXivov irpayyiaTos^ cr/cia TrapairXria lov ^ •7rape7r€Tai acofxaTi, Trpoeiircbv ovv irspt ttjs inrdp^ecos Kal TifjLTjs tov ael vTrdpxoi'ros, eirofxevos tw ttjs aiio\ov9ias eipficp to. Trpe-rrouTa Koi TTipl TTJS K\7}