LIBRARY 
 
 (IF TIIK 
 
 Theological Seminary. 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Case 5i33 Division...: 
 
 She/f • f^^^ Section ' 
 
 Book fc>t^w. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES 
 
 HENRY 'ALFORD, d.d. 
 
 EDITED BY HIS WIDOW 
 
 LONDON 
 DALDY, ISBISTER, & CO. 
 
 56, LUDGATE HILL 
 X875 
 
 BY 
 
 LATE 
 
 DEAN OV CANTERBURY 
 
LONDON : 
 I'RINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO. 
 CITY ROAD. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 the request of the Editor, I have under- 
 taken to write a preface to the follo\v-ing 
 Homilies, explaining her motives for repub- 
 lishing them, and the circumstances under 
 which they were written. They appeared first 
 in the Sundaij Magazine during the years 
 1868 — 1871; the kst two in the number for 
 Januaiy, 1871, the very month in which, after 
 so short an illness, the busy life of their author 
 came to its peaceful close. 
 
 It had been his intention to repubKsh them 
 in a separate form, and with this view a 
 portion of them was already in the printer's 
 hands at the time of his death. His widow, 
 
vi 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 therefore, looks upon the carrying out of this 
 intention of his as a sacred trust. 
 
 Moreover, these Homilies are, as a friend 
 has remarked, " more like autobiography than 
 anything he has left in prose — a sort of auto- 
 type of what he was in family life at the fire- 
 side ; " and it is in this light also, as a fitting 
 supplement to his " Life," that the Editor has 
 been anxious for their republication. 
 
 It is needless here to enter at any length 
 into the character or acquirements of Dean 
 Alford, the former having been already set 
 forth in all its purity, single-mindedness, and 
 earnestness, and the latter in their versatility 
 and extent, in the " Life " already referred to. 
 But there is one' aspect in which it may be 
 well for a while to regard him before entering 
 upon the following Homilies, and that is, by 
 the light of his own fireside, in the atmosphere 
 of his home. 
 
 Few men, we should think, ever had the 
 feeling of family afiection more strongly de- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Vll 
 
 veloped in them than he had. So intense was 
 it, indeed, that at times it seemed almost to 
 border upon pain. Thus the natural breaking- 
 up of the family circle was a real trial to him, 
 and it is to the void felt at his fireside after the 
 marriage of his second daughter, that we owe 
 these touching Homilies. We who remember 
 the happy Canterbury Sundays of the past, 
 before the family party was broken up, can 
 easily picture those later ones on which the 
 following pages were written. The daughters, 
 who were so much to their father, and the 
 cousins and friends they gathered around them, 
 were no longer grouped about in the large 
 drawing-room, he, the centre of them all. The 
 many-sided chat that comes from the contact 
 of many minds was no longer possible. He 
 and his life's companion were alone once more 
 — as much alone as when she left her father's 
 home at Heale, and they went forth to face 
 the world together, in the spring- tide of their 
 youth. But there were no gaps in the family 
 
viii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 circle then, no missing ones to mourn. Is'ow, 
 after the lapse of years, the case was altered. 
 Two graves in Wymeswold churchyard had 
 long ago claimed two missing ones, two happy 
 hearths elsewhere had made two more inroads 
 on his own. And so he was fain to call around 
 his chair on these later Sunday evenings the 
 brain children" of his fancy, and pour out to 
 them some of the bright, fresh thoughts, that 
 floated through his ever- active mind in these 
 *' Fireside Homilies." 
 
 To those who knew him well they are elo- 
 quent of many lovable traits in his character. 
 Here we see his hungering after sympathy, in 
 this calling of his dear ones around him to be 
 partakers of his choicest thoughts. Here we 
 see his fearless truthfulness, in neither slur- 
 ring over anything that was, nor pretending 
 to anything that was not his own sincere 
 conviction. Here, too, we catch a glimpse of 
 that wonderful buoyancy of his nature, which 
 threw such a charm over his life. This per- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ix 
 
 haps was never more evident than a few weeks 
 before his death, when, suddenly debarred by 
 the doctor's decree from literary work — that 
 work which had seemed an essential part of 
 his existence — not even a shadow appeared to 
 fall on his spirit; but, as though braced-up by 
 the sudden trial to a still higher stand-point, 
 we find him full of thankfulness for the work- 
 time already allowed him, full of bright re- 
 sources for the future.* 
 
 But it was not only in this rebound after 
 a blow, which would have been crushing to 
 many men, that the buoyant youthfulness of 
 his nature showed itself. "With children he 
 was a child again, romping with them so much 
 on their own level, that reverence was apt to 
 be forgotten in the fun. To young people 
 he was especially kind, throwing himself so 
 heartily into their pleasures and pursuits, 
 whether it were a picnic, a charade, a game 
 of croquet, or a country walk, that they felt 
 * See the ''Life," 3rd edition, p. 469. 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 him to be one of themselves. And at the 
 same time he was ever ready to draw out 
 and encourage any taste or talent that might 
 be latent in them. Most justly does Dr. 
 Stoughton remark : " Dr. Alford's nature was 
 formed for kindly and loving companionship," * 
 and most cheerfully does this come home to 
 us in these " Fireside Homilies." 
 
 Here we see too, in dainty bits of word- 
 painting, traces of his great love of nature. 
 The same friend, Dr. Stoughton, touches on 
 this point also, in his description of a walk he 
 took with the Dean at Canterbury in January, 
 1869. t And even as we write we recall, 
 with something like a present enjoyment of 
 them, delightful rambles in that pretty neigh- 
 bourhood in bygone days. The time for these 
 long walks was usually between the close of 
 the afternoon service in the Cathedral, and the 
 seven o'clock dinner-hour at the Deanery. 
 
 * See " Life," p. 419. 
 
 t Ibid., 3rd edition, p. 512. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xi 
 
 Then, a large family party, we would go off to 
 the surrounding woods, the Dean entering so 
 heartily into the pleasure of it all ; ever ready 
 to point out any fine view or striking feature 
 in the landscape, sometimes sitting sketching 
 while we roamed about, always taking an 
 interest in the botany of the woods, and often 
 returning home laden with spoils. 
 
 But perhaps his enjoyment of art comes out 
 still more strongly in the following Homilies. 
 How lovingly he dwells on each detail in his 
 favourite pictures ! "We are told that it needs 
 a poet thoroughly to appreciate poetry, and 
 so surely it is with painting. In Dean Alford's 
 case this need was fully met. He was an artist 
 himself of no mean capacity, and traces with 
 an artist's eye the most striking merits in these 
 works of the old masters. 
 
 Something more, however, was necessary for 
 their full interpretation. The deeply religious 
 sentiments embodied in these works required 
 above all a deeply religious mind to enter into- 
 
xii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 them, and this was a qualification pre-emi- 
 nently possessed by the Dean, as his "Life," 
 from first to last, testifies. It is, indeed, for 
 the insight we gain, through his "Journals 
 and Letters," into the earnestness of his inner 
 Christian life, from his boyhood to his death, 
 that we especially prize them. Trusting that 
 the same earnest, loving spirit, may make itself 
 felt in these "Fireside Homilies," we commend 
 them to the public, reminding them, in his 
 own words, that these " evening talks " of his 
 are " rather exercises of the fancy about divine 
 things, than regular treatments of divine things 
 themselves." * 
 
 E. M. ALFORD. 
 
 Thb Mount, Taunton, 
 September, 1874. 
 
 * See " Fireside Homilies," No. X. p. 151. 
 
I. 
 
 JJERE we are, darlings, by our cozy fireside 
 this Sunday evening. If there be a heaven 
 on earth, it is this. Yery little makes it up. 
 We have here no scenery, no gaiety, no merry 
 game going on : yet how happy we all are ! 
 There is dear mamma's loving face, oae half 
 in the bright glow of the fire ; and Jessie's 
 curls glittering in the same ; and little frail 
 Margey, holding up her book to screen her 
 cheek, and her other hand resting with mine 
 on my knee ; and there are all the loved ones 
 far away but seeming very near to us to-night. 
 And why are we so happy ? 
 
 Well, it's because we hdieve. We, sitting 
 here on the day of rest, and at the end of its 
 services, are just enjoying the Iiixunj of faith. 
 
 B 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 What an odd word, Jessie, is not it ? But it's 
 a very true one. I said, and I say, the luximj 
 of faith. And how so ? 
 
 Why first, perhaps, because the day's labours 
 of faith are over. I have done my work, and 
 you have done yours.* My two services, and 
 afternoon school, and christenings, are over ; 
 and just as we feel, after a good walk, a glow 
 , that keeps the heat in us for hours, so I feel 
 my heart, and my body too, aglow with the 
 day's exercise. So much good talking, so 
 much honest ministering, have warmed up my 
 religion, which on week days is often so cold ; 
 and I'm like an old dog that has been hunting 
 all day, curled round before the master's fire. 
 And you too, darlings, you've done your work. 
 You've some of you, no more classes to teach ; 
 you've all of you, no more sermons to listen 
 to. I dare say you know the feeling of waking 
 on a Sunday morning with a kind of dread — 
 
 * His thouglits are here proljably returning to the days 
 of his parish work at Wymeswold, Leicestershire. — ^Ed. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 3 
 
 a feeling of sometliing unusual about to be 
 tbat day ; and then you suddenly remember 
 that it's Sunday, and that's some relief, but 
 still somehow you wish it were a week-day. 
 But then how much better it tiu'ns out than 
 you had apprehended ! Even in the taking 
 out of the clean things to put on, even in the 
 handling of the last new dress, there is a 
 trifling pleasm-e which reconciles us to the 
 day; and then as it goes on, the further in, 
 the pleasanter. You sometimes think you'd 
 like to sit at home instead of going to cliurch ; 
 those dull prayers — that long dreary sermon 
 — how I wish it would pour, and we couldn't 
 go ! But then when you get there, you 
 gradually get interested; some saying of our 
 dearest Lord gets down into the well of the 
 heart, and brings up the fresh spring water 
 to the eyes ; or the singing cheers you ; or the 
 sermon touches you ; and you come away with 
 a feeling which you don't express, that it was 
 good to be there. 
 
4 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 And yet, with, all this, who doesn't feel glad 
 that Sunday's services are over ? They were 
 very good for us ; they lifted our thoughts, 
 and inspired our nature ; but lifting and in- 
 spiring are tiring processes for the same poor 
 nature, and so at the end of them there is 
 a kind of cheery satisfaction that the day is 
 done. 
 
 But don't think that this satisfaction is an 
 unchristian or an unbelieving one. I think 
 it is just the contrary. We feel quiet and 
 satisfied after a good meal. I, for one, like to 
 lie back in this old chair and feel one thumb 
 against the other. But it isn't from any dis- 
 respect to beef and pudding — far from it ; it's 
 because I'm digesting them, and am thankful 
 for them, and satisfied with partaking of 
 them. 
 
 And so it is now. The holy faith, to us four 
 who sit round this fire, is in us, digesting. It 
 has calmed and fed us. All its mastication, so 
 to speak, is over for the time. Its questions, 
 
 I 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 5 
 
 and doctrines, and exhortations, and warnings, 
 whicli we have been working at ail day, are 
 at present out of our siglit. And we are just 
 sitting in the light of our Father's countenance, 
 enjoying his love to us, as we shall sit when 
 this great religious service of Life is over, and 
 we have taken our places round the fireside at 
 his Home. 
 
 Well, this is one reason. But the effect 
 which the day has had upon us may be looked 
 at in other lights. What we have done and 
 shared in to-day, has had an actual effect on 
 our religious being. It would hardly be 
 possible for so many hours to be talking about 
 and making real the objects of our faith, with- 
 out that faith having become more sure, and 
 more real, than it was before. Don't you, my 
 darlings, — I am sure I do, — find it inexpres- 
 sibly difficult on a week-day to think of the 
 great throne, and the sea of glass, and the 
 blessed elders, and the glorified Lamb, right 
 over our heads, and of ourselves as in their 
 
6 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 presence ? Suppose I am riding, or swimming, 
 or writing letters, or doing any common thing, 
 sucli a tlionglit pulls me uj) as it were with a 
 jerk ; and I'm obliged to stop a moment and 
 think ; and before I can really imagine them 
 above me, a page of Scripture seems to rise 
 before my eyes, and I see them through it. 
 JSfot so this evening. Here they all are — around 
 us — above us. We have been, like the Apostle, 
 on the house-top praying, till v^^e have fallen 
 into a trance. Faith has had its swing for 
 a whole day, and we are penetrated with it. 
 I have often thought I should like to die on 
 a Sunday evening, after the services of the 
 day ; the change w^ould be so small. The 
 world sounds so distant to-night. It isn't in 
 the streets ; it isn't on our tables ; it isn't on 
 our lips. There is no look of it on our faces. 
 Our rooms, and our furniture, and our fire- 
 place, and its bright living inhabitant, all 
 seem only as the cabin of the ship in which 
 we are taking our voyage. Now at other times 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 I find myself hammering away at this cabin, 
 painting it, and gilding it, as if I were to be 
 in it for ever ; but on these evenings, I am 
 lifted out of it altogether ; I can sit in it, and 
 think on the haven where I would be. 
 
 And what a thing it is thus to get into 
 tune — thus to have at last succeeded in fixino: 
 the focus of faith's telescope, and to see the 
 bright hills, and the glorious trees, and the 
 sweet streams, and the clustering pinnacles, 
 of the land far away ! O what a Father we 
 have ! What a price He paid for us, and how 
 He loves us ! Here are we four — nothing on 
 earth can ever harm us — dear little Margey 
 may have as much sickness to go through as 
 she has gone through already — dear Jessie 
 may be disappointed in what we know is so 
 near her heart — mamma and I may have many 
 a rough place in our sloping path before we 
 come to the river beneath ; but here we feel, 
 this Sunday evening, that all will be as 
 nothing : the mighty Love, the everlasting 
 
8 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 arms — these will keep us safe ; our great 
 Sunday evening will be as peaceful, and as 
 cozy, as this, one of our little Sunday evenings, 
 ay, and a thousand times happier too. 
 
 But then, darlings, we ought not to think 
 of ourselves only. Even little Margey knows, 
 that to look at a very beautiful thing is intense 
 delight. And what is so beautiful as that which 
 we have been looking at all day — which we 
 can look at quietly, and as if it were our own, 
 to-night ? I mean the whole great gift that 
 our Father has given us — ourselves ; and the 
 great world to live in and die in, and the sweet 
 life that is to come, and the blessed, loving, 
 and perfect One, in us and about us, and 
 waiting there for us ? What a city of beauty, 
 what a school of beauty, what a great cathedral 
 of beauty it all is ! Every turn, every corner, 
 every shifting light, have new objects full of 
 light and glory. What hundreds of poets 
 have sung of it — what hundreds of painters 
 have got their subjects from it — what hundreds 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 9 
 
 of musicians have timed their lyres to it ! 
 What art is like Christian art — has such noble 
 forms, such glorious scenes of suffering and of 
 acting, such divine faces — such blessed repose 
 in the scenes of earth — such flights of imagi- 
 nation in the anticipating heaven? AVhat 
 nature is like Christian nature — soft, without 
 effeminacy — pure, without prudery — free, and 
 yet obedient ? The very point of union of 
 reclaimed nature and glorified art is the body 
 of the Incarnate Eedeemer. In its purity of 
 sinless, unclothed childhood — in its majesty 
 of teaching and healing — in its mighty power 
 of suffering — in its victory of resurrection 
 glory — Jesus, the Son of God, the image of 
 the Father, the spotless, the divine, has brought 
 into our world the form of perfect beauty, for 
 all to look upon and be blessed. 
 
 Then again, to come down from the Highest 
 among ourselves again, there's another reason 
 yet why we are so happy this evening. I dare 
 say, little Margey, you would like often to 
 
10 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 come and nestle close to me as now ; but then 
 you look at papa, and ^^ou see a great book 
 full of figures before him ; or you see him with 
 his envelopes and his note paper, looking 
 puzzled, and you know he's husy (terrible word 
 for you, poor little lassie) ; and if you were to 
 come and lay your hand in his, you're afraid 
 he would look perhaps sterner than usual and 
 say, " Don't, my child, I'm husij.^^ But to- 
 night you've no such fear. You know the 
 little hand will be clasped, and put on the 
 knee ; there's no such word as " himj " to come 
 between papa and you. And if mamma, or if 
 Jessie ventures on other days to sit cozy by 
 the fire, the thought immediately comes, " Ah, 
 but I ought to be working this or writing 
 that ; this is very comfortable, but really I 
 must be up and doing, lazy soul that I 
 am ! " 
 
 I^ow on these evenings there are no such 
 thoughts to interfere with rest. Rest is our 
 right, and we take our fill of it. It is an 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 approach, my darlings, to the date of the 
 hiessed dead* when they have earned their 
 repose and sleep, " full of rest from head to 
 feet," as the poet has it. The pleasure of other 
 days becomes the duty of this one ; and so there 
 is no contrast between duty and pleasure, and 
 duty becomes sweetness itself. 
 
 Well, my children, see there's dear mamma 
 dropped to sleep, and carrying the rest a step 
 further than we are ; and / have been actually 
 preaching you another sermon, when I said 
 we were happy because there were no more 
 sermons to hear. But I know it's been from 
 the heart : and I think by -Jessie's bright 
 swimming eye, and by !Margey's pressing hand 
 every now and then, that it was spoken to the 
 heart. 
 
 And now, Jessie, my love, for that glorious 
 
 * The Dean at this time, Advent 1868, was preaching in 
 Canterhuiy Cathedral a series of sermons on *' The State of 
 the Blessed Dead," afterwards published in a smaU volume. 
 —Ed. 
 
12 
 
 FIRESIDE IIOAIILIES. 
 
 Comfort ye my people." I'm afraid my tenor 
 won't reacli that Gr, after all these sermons. 
 J^ever mind, there'll be the magnificent chorus. 
 
 All flesh shall see it together." 
 
 Oh, when, my darlings, when ? 
 
II. 
 
 ^0 I must do it again, Margey, must I ? 
 
 "Well, only mind one thing, my little one. 
 If a thing's worth doing, let us do it again 
 and again ; but don't let us fall into habits for 
 habit's sake. I've a horror of things becoming 
 institutions, merely because we love to do the 
 same thing at the same time. And if I hnd 
 myself getting into this (mind, it's a tempta- 
 tion we are all liable to), I make a point of 
 altering the time, or the manner, or some- 
 thing, so that the act may not be the same, 
 or may not be done at the same time. You 
 know, some things must be thus done ; for 
 instance, meals, and prayers, and recurring- 
 celebrations of any sort : but our tendency is, 
 to weave nets round ourselves which Provi- 
 
FIRESIDE IIOJIIIIES. 
 
 dence has not woven ; and then if anything 
 breaks these nets, we make ourselves miserable 
 about it. What do you think about it, Jessie ? 
 for I know mamma is with me. 
 
 " Well, papa, bondage is very pleasant ; far 
 pleasanter than freedom. You've got what to 
 do set you already, and haven't the trouble 
 of choosing ; and then it seems so important, 
 and such a daty when it comes. And when 
 you go to bed, you think yourself so good for 
 having been punctual all the day, when per- 
 haps there was nothing worth being punctual 
 about." 
 
 All right, Jessie ; that rings well. But we 
 mustn't lose our homily. And now what shall 
 it be about? I know, I think — and little 
 Margey is squeezing my fingers so hard, that 
 I think she knows too. 
 
 What a subject it is ! All Saints' Day ! 
 Well, suppose we don't care about commemo- 
 rations, as some good Christian men don't. 
 And suppose some one said to us, "Let us 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 talk now about tlie great multitude whom no 
 man can number — about tbose who are before 
 the throne of G-od, and have all tears wiped 
 from their eyes," — what eye of ours would 
 not sparkle, what spirit would not glow with 
 delight ? For surely, darlings, it is the sub- 
 ject of all subjects to talk of and to look into. 
 Here are we four, loving the dear Lord, and 
 trusting in Him — and we seem all alone in a 
 corner of the great world; we see very few 
 besides one another ; we live mostly in private, 
 and a happy life it is. But how strange it is 
 to think, that the happiest life of all — far 
 more blessed than anything we know of here 
 below — will be a life in public I TThat an 
 intolerable life it would be to us now ! Only 
 fancy dear mamma turned out of her snug 
 boudoir, with her books and her drawing, and 
 her working for the poor, into a great multi- 
 tude whom no man can number ! There was 
 a day when Jessie perhaps would have liked 
 it, but I don't think she would now that one 
 
i6 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 eye lias singled her out and loves to look 
 into hers. 
 
 And then think of this, too — that this 
 supreme happiness of being among the in- 
 numerable multitude will be enjoj^ed by every 
 one in it. How immensely men must be 
 altered, before that can be the case ! Surely 
 there must be some dark poison mixed 
 among the common blood of humanity, which 
 makes men hate one another. In the pre- 
 sent life, this hate is almost a necessity, at 
 least in its passive forms. It guards us and 
 our plans and our feelings from being tossed 
 about upon men's tongues and made sport of. 
 It prevents the knowing and interfering from 
 taking advantage of us to our hurt. But how 
 strange again will be the day when it shall 
 be altogether absent I Shakspeare somewhere 
 speaks of a man wearing his heart upon his 
 sleeve, for daws to peck at ; " * but then, I sup- 
 pose, we shall all wear our hearts outside, and 
 
 * OthcUo^ act i. scene i. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 17 
 
 not have a thought that we don't want every- 
 body to see. 
 
 And then another thing is passing strange 
 — the thinness of the veil between this world 
 and that, and yet the impossibility of ever 
 seeing through it. I was thinking to-day of 
 our dear good Archbishop.* Last week he was 
 with us. Now, he is there. One who was part 
 of our system — whose acts entered into my 
 calculations — to whom I wrote and from whom 
 I received letters, ay, and a very few days ago, 
 — in an instant past the border and in that 
 strange land. And we fancied as late as last 
 month, that we should have him here with 
 us, coming as if he were our father, and had 
 had the bringing of us up all his life, and 
 taking this little thin hand of yours, Margey, 
 and asking after your welfare in a voice whose 
 very tone made you better : so much was he 
 
 * Longley, who died October 28tli, 1868. For some 
 remarks on his enthronement and death see Life of Dean 
 Alford," 3rd edit. pp. 358, 419.— Ed. 
 
 C 
 
8 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 mixed up with our every- day anticipations ; 
 and now we liave to think of him as in that 
 (to us) solemn world. 
 
 And do you remember, Jessie, when we 
 stood, all four, round Edmund's dying bed,* 
 with the sunset from the western sea fillinc: 
 the room with rosy light : and we watched till 
 the dear features lost meaning and their lines 
 stiffened, and then I pressed down the eye- 
 lids, and we left mamma with him, and we 
 three went out bewildered, and sat down on 
 the beach, and I said. Where is he now ? I 
 have it all before me — indeed that lovely bit 
 of water-colour by Philip Mitchell which 
 hangs there would bring it before me, could 
 
 * The Dean here describes the death of our last surviving- 
 son, Ambrose Okc, Avho died at Babbicombe, South Devon, 
 August 31st, 1850, aged ten years. The water-coloured 
 drawing, referred to, was bought by the Dean some years 
 after: it is a sketch of the beach at Babbicombe, just 
 below the " Carey Arms," where our dear child died. It 
 hung on the left-hand side of the fire-place in the large 
 drawing-room at the Deanery, close to the chair where the 
 Dean always sat on Sunday evenings. — Ed. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 19 
 
 I ever forget it. The sun had gone down, 
 and had left in the lower sky a few lines of 
 dull red, and under them the sea looked a 
 pale ghastly blue (so it seemed to me) — and 
 the sky above was clear, but as yet without 
 a star. And there was not a sound, nor a 
 breath, nor a ripple. All seemed to speak of 
 a presence gone. He who had been about 
 those rocks, and on that beach, and cleaving 
 those waters — and now ? 
 
 Well, dear ones, it fairly beats us. And it's 
 good for us to sit and think, that all our 
 thoughts and hope about that unseen state, 
 and those who are there, is simply and only 
 faith, and nothing else. TTe l:nov: no more 
 now, with our Gospel and our Eibles, about it 
 and them, than the heathen know. I mean, 
 none has described it to us : none has gone 
 through the change, and come back to tell us 
 how it was. 
 
 Simply faith: but then what a treasure of 
 faith it is ! what a glorious thing is that resur- 
 
20 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 rection from tlie dead ! Whichever way I look 
 at it, it appears more wonderful and precious. 
 ]N^ow just think of it in this way. Lay your 
 thoughts into mine, little Mar gey, as you are 
 laying your hand into mine. I'm going to 
 take you through some dark and foul places, 
 but don't be afraid to go with me. 
 
 Think of the blessed Jesus, that last day of 
 his life. You know Him by pictures. But the 
 reality was hardly like the pictures. His form 
 that day must have been very mean and vile 
 to contemplate. Crushed, beaten, bruised, de- 
 filed : even his very look of heavenly meek- 
 ness (for we have seen such things) provoking 
 contempt, as of one broken in spirit and with- 
 out courage. Look on, my children : don't be 
 afraid of plain language, as long as it keeps 
 within the bounds of reverence ; and those I 
 am sure you love that Blessed One too well 
 ever to transgress. See Him cuffed, hustled, 
 knocked down by a brutal mob : hurried along 
 that street amidst the triumph of his enemies, 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 21 
 
 and at last — it is St. Peter's language, not 
 mine — nailed up to a log of wood — stripped 
 and shamed — an object wliicli those wlio saw 
 beat upon their breasts and turned away. 
 
 Now, why am I dwelling on the least wel- 
 come parts of this description ? J ust to pro- 
 duce the effect I feel I am producing by this 
 little arm clinging tighter round my knee as I 
 speak. We cannot bear to think of this utter 
 shame of our dear Lord. Yes, but it's good 
 for us to think of it. The very darkness of the 
 cloud makes the sunshine brighter : the very 
 wailings of this dirge bring out the grand out- 
 burst of the chorus which follows. 
 
 Carry all that has been said in your minds 
 — then go on. The poor body — all j)aleness 
 and wounds — is taken down, is rained on by 
 many tears, is swathed by pious hands, is 
 carried to the dark chink in the rock. How 
 little thought Joseph and Nicodemus, as they 
 stooped and deposited it, flat and stiff and life- 
 less, in the recess of the cave, of anything un- 
 
22 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 usual to follow ! How little thought the holy- 
 women, as they saw the stone rolled to the 
 door, what hands would roll it away ! 
 
 But let us look again. It is morning, and 
 the risen sun glitters on the walls and battle- 
 ments of the city, and the garden trees wave 
 in the fresh awakened breeze, and the birds 
 are raising their spring chorus of praise. It is 
 the same cave — but open. Before it stoops the 
 Magdalene, weeping. Two youths sit within, 
 fairer than the sons of men, in pure white 
 robes. They ask her of her trouble. She 
 answers them. But what does she see ? While 
 she is answering, she sees their countenances 
 alter, and she looks behind for the cause. He 
 himself stands by her. Incredulous at first 
 she knows the sound of the voice that pro- 
 nounces her name ; she worships Him : she 
 runs to tell the disciples. 
 
 And from this moment onward, glory bursts 
 upon glory in the eyes of the wondering fol- 
 lowers of Jesus. Where is the despised, abused 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 23 
 
 form now ? Where the face defiled with shame 
 and spitting ? " Reach hither thine hand, and 
 thrust it into my side what a glorious Body 
 must have been unveiled when these words 
 were uttered I "A spirit hath not flesh and 
 bones, as ye see me have then his resuiTec- 
 tion frame must have been compacted and 
 built, even as this of ours, but we may conceive 
 with what beauty and splendour. And in the 
 moment when He rose in the pure summer 
 noon from the top of Olivet, and the cloud re- 
 ceived him out of their sight, what a vision 
 must they have enjoyed of the glory of per- 
 fected humanity ! TVhat a streak of burning 
 light on their memory must have been those 
 forty days I 
 
 Thus much then we do know — thus much 
 there is for faith to fasten upon. He went 
 into that unknown world vile, despised, crushed, 
 an object of aversion and scorn : he returned 
 to show himself to our faith a perfect and 
 glorified Body : the very type and flower of 
 
24 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 our Humanity. And tlie marvellous history 
 as we read and rejoice, how full it is of human 
 interest I that walk to Emmaus, — that chal- 
 lenge to Thomas, — that meal on the shore of 
 Gennesaret ! Had the risen Saviour flashed 
 out a glorious apparition before their eyes, girt 
 with attendant angels, and then been with- 
 drawn — had they been rapt into a trance and 
 beheld Him at the Father's right hand, — 
 where would have been the assurance that now 
 clings round our firesides and broods over our 
 homesteads, that the Lord is risen ? 
 
 And so, darlings, that is all man's eye has 
 ever seen of the world on the other side — the 
 reflection of its brightness from the glorified 
 Body of Jesus. And we know, that as the 
 firstfruits, so the harvest : as He is, so shall 
 we be. 
 
 We have talked long enough, for I hear the 
 church clock striking ten, and the servants 
 will be ready for prayers. 
 
 Jessie, my love, look out " I know that my 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 25 
 
 Redeemer livetli :" you're in good voice to- 
 day, and we shall all enjoy it. And, !Margey, 
 just run and tell Sampson to bring his violon- 
 cello and his Messiah : and we'll end with 
 "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." 
 
III. 
 
 ''"'^^ELL, Margey, there's no fear of a 
 sacred institution now. Last Sunday, 
 preaching in London ; the Sunday before 
 helping poor Lacey in his terrible bereave- 
 ment ; and the Sunday before that, laid up 
 with neuralgia. I think weVe earned our 
 homily to-night. And so we are to talk 
 about Christmas, are we?" 
 
 " 8omethmg about Christmas, please, papa 
 " Oh, I sec. That sly emphasis means, I 
 suppose, not exactly tJie main subject, but some 
 of those side ones which come with it. How 
 is that, Margey ? " 
 
 jSTo answer, but a long look up at the 
 wall. 
 
 " What is it ? Oh, again I see ; that lovely 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 picture of Andrea del Sarto's. Then I con- 
 clude I am to speak of tlie Child J esus. The 
 tight-clinging squeeze tells me yes." 
 
 AYell : First, then, let us put the Holy Child 
 in his right place. I'm going to take Mar- 
 gey's hint, and talk to you of the ways of 
 representing Him, and the beautiful visions 
 which art has given to our race, with Him 
 as their subject ; but, before I do, let us see 
 how we ought to feel towards the Holy 
 Child. 
 
 Notice, then, dear ones, that the Hoh^ Child 
 lias no existence noii\ You can't pray to the 
 Child Jesus, because there is no such person. 
 It was simply a former state of Him, who now 
 reigns, perfect man, in his Father's glory. 
 He himself is for us what He is noic, not what 
 He was once. If you or I pray to Jesus, we 
 can only pra}^ to Him at the right hand of 
 God, exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour. To 
 pray to Him as a child, to ]3ray to Him as on 
 the cross, is to pray to a mere thought, a mere 
 
28 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 fiction. Such states of liis are, you see, not 
 objects of adoration for us ; but tbey are most 
 blessed objects of remembrance and of con- 
 templation. Jesus as a child : behold one of 
 the most beautiful objects on which the imagi- 
 nation of man can be fixed and employed. The 
 only human child who has ever been sinless 
 and spotless. All children are comparatively 
 sinless ; but this one was absolutely so. And 
 then there are several things which give the 
 contemplation even more of human interest. 
 On the one hand, this child was born of a 
 human mother. As a child is like its mother, 
 so on the other hand it may be said, when the 
 child is the principal thing to be thought of, 
 that the mother is like the child. Something 
 of the pure and holy and lovely countenance 
 which this fiower of children had, must his 
 mother also have had, and must have thereby 
 been the flower of maidens. And so, my 
 darlings, you have at once the materials for 
 the loveliest of all creations of human art. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 Foremost among all the pictures in the world 
 for beauty are those of Jesus, the flower of 
 children, and Mary, the flower of maidens and 
 mothers. Almost every one who has travelled 
 has o^ot toofether some favourite forms of this 
 lovely group. On the walls of this room arc 
 no less than twelve, by different painters, 
 collected during almost as many wanderings 
 of mine.* 
 
 Before we speak of them we will mention 
 another source of intense interest in the figure 
 of the Child J esus. In that infant form dwelt 
 the Godhead ; and the greatest and noblest 
 of painters have ever borne this in mind ; have 
 made the baby-face, while all human in its 
 
 * Our drawing-rooms at the Deanerj' were full of remem- 
 brances of our foreign tours, photographs and prints of 
 many well-known pictures by the great masters, a copy of 
 one of Francia's paintings in the gallery of Prince Borghese, 
 Eome ; a Virgin and Child, by Vivarini, bought at Venice 
 in 1846 ; a Magdalene, by Sassoferrato, found at a picture- 
 stall beneath the shadow of Milan Cathedral in 1841, and 
 others too numerous to mention here. — Ed. 
 
30 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 tender beauty, yet, as well, sometliing more 
 tlian human. Look at that first and grandest 
 of all such representations, the " Madonna del 
 Sisto" of Eafael. Yes, Margey, there it is, 
 that large splendid lithograph, which I shall 
 never repent having bought when I was at 
 Dresden, where the immortal picture is. Look 
 at the glorious infant. Does not the very 
 Godhead burst from those lips and those 
 wonderful large eyes ? I^o other painter ever 
 imagined a face like that. If you saw such 
 a child as that, you would almost say, as the 
 beloved disciple said to Peter, " It is the 
 Lord ! " And the mother, too. How remark- 
 able it is that Eafael, living among all the 
 error and nonsense which Eome has accumu- 
 lated round her, should have painted such an 
 exquisitely simple form, a form and face saying 
 nothing but, "Behold the handmaid of the 
 Lord ! " And yet there is no want of gran- 
 deur : she knows that she has been the mother 
 of the Divine Child — every feature speaks of it 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 31 
 
 — and before the mighty truth she is subdued 
 and humble. jS^o such woman has ever before 
 been painted, nor since. The hour which con- 
 ceived the ^Madonna del Sisto was the noontide 
 point of human genius. 
 
 ^ow let me point out, darlings, one thing in 
 the representations of the Holy Child. He is 
 all pure — without sin : in his blessed bodj- 
 there is no room for shame. And all the 
 greatest painters, in their greatest pictures,, 
 have taken account of this. As our first 
 parents in Eden, so the Infant Jesus is wholly 
 naked. There is no reason, when we represent 
 the ideal of Him, for veiling that human form 
 which in itself, and apart from sin, is very 
 good. Bear this in mind, for we shall have 
 to recur to it when we speak of the group 
 enlarged. 
 
 ^^ow next, for we are yet concerned only 
 with the mother and child, look up at that ex- 
 quisite but quaint idea of Francisco Francia's. 
 The mother stands in a field of flowers, looking 
 
32 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 down with admiration and reverence on Ler 
 Child, who is lying on the green sward, look- 
 ing up at her with a face beaming with love 
 and heavenly benignity. The picture will 
 show what variety there was in the conceptions 
 of the beautiful group ; and you will be glad 
 to hear that between this painter and the 
 young E-afael there was the closest and most 
 admiring friendship. 
 
 Another of his there is on the wall — a lovely 
 Madonna and Child, from the gallery of Prince 
 Borghese at Rome. It is almost singular 
 among those which we have here, for it is in 
 €olours. I saw a water-colour painter making 
 that copy in the gallery, and I bought it. It 
 is Francia's very best. Notice the exquisite 
 colours, the deep crimson of the Virgin's inner 
 vest, overlaid by the rich blue of the outer 
 robe which envelopes her head, and flows down 
 to her feet. Then remark the heavenly clear- 
 ness of her complexion shared by the blessed 
 Child who sits in bright nakedness on her lap, 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 33 
 
 resting his hand in hers, while her other clasps 
 Him round in closest affection. See also how 
 Francia falls beneath Rafael in the full expres- 
 sion of both human and divine. There were 
 thirty-four years difference between them : 
 representing" thirty-four years, as you will see 
 when you come to read the history of art, of 
 great and rapid progress. 
 
 But now look up, little women, and gaze for 
 awhile at that quaint picture, with gold ground 
 and heavy ornamented frame. There sits a 
 stiff Virgin, certainly without any claim to 
 beauty, with a queer indented glory round her 
 head, and her hands up, as if in adoration ; 
 and on her knees a perfectly lovely Child, 
 asleep, painted with the most elaborate care, 
 almost like enamel on porcelain. That little 
 picture I bought at Venice in 1846, and it 
 was certified to me as being by Bartolomeo 
 Vivarini, i.e. as painted about 1480. It may 
 serve to you as a specimen of the hard, early 
 style of that Venetian School, not without 
 
34 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 great dawning promise of tenderness, and the 
 good symptom of diligent arid religious care- 
 fulness. 
 
 If I were to take you back, Margey, to the 
 Madonnas of Rafael, we might spend all night 
 in descriptions ; but there you have several of 
 them, and in my box of photographs many 
 more. It is only wonderful how he devised so 
 many attitudes and circumstances under which 
 to place them — all beautiful, though not all 
 equally beautiful. One of the most lovely is 
 that known as the " Madonna di Gran Duca," 
 now in the Eoyal Palace at Florence. It 
 seems as if the painter had poured his whole 
 soul of tenderness into this group. The 
 Divine Child is sitting on his mother's hand, 
 the lines of his figure almost coinciding with 
 those of hers. Contrary to Rafael's usual 
 practice, He is wound about the breast with a 
 band of full drapery. She looks down on 
 Him with a countenance full of reverence and 
 love, while with her other hand she steadies 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 35 
 
 his body, holding it under the arm. His little 
 hand rests lovingly on her bosom. 
 
 And now, my darlings, I think we had 
 better reserve the larger groups of the Holy 
 Family, of which there are some very lovely 
 examples, for another of our evenings. 
 
 I see it is getting late, and the Laceys, poor 
 things, who have just now small comfort at 
 home, are coming in to prayers, to help us 
 sing, ''Unto us a Child is born." 
 
lY. 
 
 "Y^ES, Jessie, as you observe, that must have 
 been a very blessed home at IsTazareth. 
 How little we think of those thirty years ! 
 Thirty out of thirty-three — why, according 
 to what we were learning yesterday in frac- 
 tions, that is ten elevenths of our Lord's 
 whole life on earth, isn't it ? Certainly the 
 three that remained were much more im- 
 portant, because they contained his teaching 
 and his death : but it seems out of all 
 reason, to entirely neglect the thirty which 
 preceded. 
 
 The great Christian painters have not done 
 so. They have loved to represent the Holy 
 Family as they were at Nazareth when Jesus 
 was a child, and when John, who you know 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 37 
 
 was six montlis older, may have been his 
 playmate and companion. I am going to de- 
 scribe to you several of their representations 
 of this beautiful group. Yes, Margey, I feel 
 the squeeze. What ? Only a whisper ? Well, 
 never mind, provided I can hear. 
 
 Yes, no doubt you arc right, little one : 
 Margey asks, why the brothers and sisters 
 are not painted too? "Well, little lass, I am 
 afraid the old Catholic people did not think 
 much of them. They would have it, you 
 see, that the mother of our Lord had none 
 other but Him, and they managed to make 
 out that those whom He called his brothers 
 and sisters were in reality his cousins. But 
 if they were, then their own mother was 
 living, and it seems unaccountable if she 
 were, that they should always be mentioned 
 with their aunt, and not with their mother. 
 There are several other reasons too, against 
 this curious evasion of the plain sense of 
 Scripture : one of which is that, at a time 
 
38 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 after the Twelve Apostles had been chosen, 
 among whom according to these people are 
 two of our Lord's brethren (or cousins), it is 
 said "For neither did his brethren believe in 
 Him/' Your question, little woman, has just 
 anticipated a remark I was going to make 
 before the end of the evening ; that the pic- 
 ture of the family at Nazareth has yet to be 
 painted, and a very beautiful one it would be. 
 Those sisters of our Lord, what were they ? 
 How did they think of Him? Of this we 
 know nothing. 
 
 There doubtless was another reason why no 
 more than our Lord and St. John among the 
 children are represented : and that is, that 
 they two are the only persons full of deep 
 meaning to us Christians. The rest may have 
 been very holy and good : but they are 
 nothing to us in themselves. They have no 
 part in the history of Redemption. Whereas 
 John was the great Forerunner, the pointer 
 to our Lord as the Lamb of God. And thus 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 39 
 
 he finds his place alwa3^s in. the sj^mbolism 
 of the picture. 
 
 So we will now speak of those beautiful 
 groups which we have, and will leave off 
 complaining that we have not more. We 
 begin of course with Rafael. And the first 
 which I will mention, because one of the most 
 infantine, is that favourite of yours, little 
 Margey, hanging on the left side of the fire- 
 place. The Child Jesus is lying asleep on a 
 piece of drapery, and his mother is lifting a 
 veil from off Ilim and showing Him to the 
 little St. John, who kneels in childish ad- 
 miration, his lips apart and his hands joined. 
 Certainly there hardly can be anything more 
 peaceful and beautiful. The sleeping Infant 
 is the same Divine Child as we have opposite 
 in the Madonna del Sisto, with the wondrous 
 face subdued and softened by the human in- 
 firmity of sleep. His figure is the very es- 
 sence of repose — ''full of rest from head to 
 feet." Still there is one thing about this 
 
40 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 sweet picture wliicL interferes with its purity 
 and simplicity. Though the Child is the 
 same as in Hafael's greatest picture, the 
 Mother is not. She is crowned, and thereby 
 a concession is made to the superstition of 
 Rome which degrades her from her dignity 
 of humility, and crowns her as a heathen 
 goddess, calling her the Queen of Heaven. In 
 consequence of this peculiarity, the picture is 
 known as the "Diadem." It is in the gal- 
 lery of the Louvre at Paris. 
 
 Now next observe that other hanging on 
 the right of the fire. Here we have the 
 blessed Mother sitting in a lovely garden with 
 flowers springing around ; at her right knee 
 stands the Holy Child, in purest nakedness : 
 his left arm rests lovingly on her left hand, 
 which lies in her lap : His right hand touches 
 her knee, while her right hand embraces Him 
 under the right shoulder. He is looking up 
 at her with a look of unutterable love, while 
 she casts down her full eyes on Him in love 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 41 
 
 mingled with reverence. Next to the IMa- 
 donna del Sisto, this seems to me the most 
 beautiful figure of the Virgin ; it is so simple 
 in faith and adoration, yet so dignified, and 
 thoroughly worthy of her exalted relation 
 to God manifest in the flesh. The little St. 
 John kneels on the ground on one knee, hut 
 it always has appeared to me in rather a 
 constrained attitude. As we now have the 
 picture there is something not altogether in- 
 telligible about his face ; but the painting 
 has been done over and over again since 
 E-afael's time, and probably the face has been 
 damaged by some inferior hand. iS^otice in 
 this, as in most other groups of the kind, that 
 whereas the sinless Child is without covering, 
 the other, one of us, is girt with drapery. 
 This picture, commonly known as "La Belle 
 Jardiniere," is also in the Louvre at Paris. 
 
 The third of RafaeFs groups which I will 
 notice is given in this large photograph from 
 the picture at Florence. I will read you a 
 
42 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 description of it, whicli I wrote five years 
 ago ^= 
 
 " One picture, in the Tribune of the Uffizi 
 Gallery, especially struck me. The Madonna 
 del CardcUino (our Lady of the Goldfinch) 
 is one of the loveliest works of Rafael. The 
 Virgin is sitting on a rock, in a flowery 
 meadow. Behind are the usual light and 
 feathery trees, growing on the bank of a 
 stream, which passes off to the left in a 
 rocky bend, and is crossed by a bridge of a 
 single arch. To the right the opposite bank 
 slopes upward in a gentle glade, across which 
 is a village backed by two distant mountain- 
 peaks. 
 
 " In front of the sitting matronly figure 
 of the Virgin arc the holy children, our Lord 
 and the Eaptist, one on either side of her 
 right knee. She has been reading, and the 
 approach of St. John has caused her to look 
 
 * See the Dean's " Letters from Abroad," chap. vii. 
 p. 205, second edition. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 43 
 
 off her book (wliicli is open in lier left hand) 
 at the new comer, which «he does with a 
 look of holy love and gentleness, at the same 
 time caressingly drawing him to her with 
 her right hand, which touches his little body 
 under the right arm. In both hands, which 
 rest across the Yirgin^s knee, he holds a 
 captive goldfinch, which he has brought with 
 childish glee as an offering to the Holy 
 Child. The Infant Jesus, standing between 
 his mother's knees, with one foot placed on 
 her foot, and her hand with the open book 
 close above his shoulder, regards the Baptist 
 with an upward look of gentle solemnity, at 
 the same time that He holds His bent hand 
 over the head of the bird. 
 
 " So much for mere description. The inner 
 feeling of the picture, the motive which has 
 prompted it, has surel}'- hardly ever been sur- 
 passed. The blessed Virgin, in casting her 
 arm around the infant St. John, looks down on 
 him with a holy complacency for the testi- 
 
44 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMIIIES. 
 
 mony which he is to bear to her Son. Notice 
 the human boyish glee with which the Baptist 
 presents the captured goldfinch, and, on the 
 other hand, the divine look, even of majesty 
 and creative love, with which the Infant J esus, 
 laying his hand on the head of the bird, half 
 reproves St. John, as it were saying, *Love 
 them, and hurt them not.' Notice too the 
 unfrightened calm of the bird itself, passive 
 under the hand of its loving Creator. All 
 these are features of the very highest power of 
 human art. Again, in accompaniments, all is as 
 it should be. The Virgin, modestly and beau- 
 tifully draped : St. John, girt about the loins, 
 not only in accord with his well-known pro- 
 phetic costume, but also as partaking of sinful 
 humanity, and therefore needing such cincture : 
 the Child Redeemer, with a slight cincture, 
 just to suggest motherly care, but not over 
 the part usually concealed, as indeed it never 
 ought to be, seeing that in Him was no sin, 
 and that it is this spotless purity which is ever 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 45 
 
 the leading idea in representations of Him as 
 an infant. ^^otice too his foot, beautifully 
 resting on that of his mother : the unity 
 between them being thus wonderfully^ though 
 slightly, kept up. Her eye has just been 
 dwelling on the book of the Prophecies open in 
 her hand ; and thus the spectator's thought is 
 ruled in accordance with the high mission of 
 the Holy One of God, and thrown forward into 
 the grand and blessed future. It is a holy and 
 wonderful picture : I had not seen any in 
 Italy which had struck or refreshed me more.'* 
 
 Hafael painted many, many more such 
 groups, w^hich I should like to show my dar- 
 lings, where they shine in all their heavenly 
 colours, some day. But we must leave the 
 Prince of Painters now, and notice two or 
 three other groups of the Holy Family, which 
 are on our own walls. 
 
 And first among them comes one which I 
 have hung in the most conspicuous place in 
 the library, because it was intimately con- 
 
46 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 nected with mv own cliildliood. In my 
 father's study, over the fire, was that Holy 
 Family, by Andrea del Sarto.* Day by day, at 
 my lessons, I used to gaze on that lovely figure 
 of the Divine Child, standing in the front 
 of the i^icture ; his right knee bent on his 
 mother's lap, who is half sitting, half-kneeling^ 
 on the ground, his left hand passing across 
 his body, and laid lovingly on the drapery of 
 her bosom. To his left, and to the right of 
 the picture, St. Elizabeth, a venerable matron, 
 holds under the left arm with one hand, and 
 on the right shoulder with the other, St. John, 
 a lad of some seven or eight years, girt with 
 his leathern girdle ; his right hand, which 
 passes under his mother's arm, is lifted in a 
 pointing attitude, as bespeaking attention to 
 his proclamation of the Saviour. Behind the 
 group, on the left of the picture, is an angel, 
 with an instrument of music ; and behind him 
 
 * This pictui-e was hung over the mantel-piece in his 
 own library at the Deanery. See " Life," p. 479. — Ed. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 47 
 
 again, not very clearly expressed, the hand and 
 back of the head of another. The faces are 
 not of the high order of Rafael's, but still 
 very beautiful, and evidently aiming at the 
 same effect. 
 
 This pointing out of the Lord b}^ his infant 
 Forerunner is very commonly indicated in 
 groups of the Holy Famity. You will see it 
 very marked in that lovely picture by Scar- 
 sellino di Ferrara on the opposite wall. The 
 two children, both naked, are lying on a green 
 sward with trees in the background. Both 
 have been asleep, but St. John has awakened, 
 and half sits up, pointing at the Saviour. The 
 expression of his round boyish face is charm- 
 ing : his full eyes dilate with the great mes- 
 sage of which his newly awakened conscious- 
 ness is full: while the Divine Child lies- 
 peacefully slumbering by him, his left arm 
 hanging relaxed over the advanced knee of the 
 elder child. The original is at Munich. 
 
 One more picture, Margey, and those heavy 
 
48 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 eyelids shall seek their pillow. But that one 
 I cannot possibly pass over, if it were merely 
 that you may have something by which to 
 vindicate one of the greatest of painters when 
 you hear him abused as he sometimes deserves. 
 Ah, I see both the faces, and mamma's too, 
 looking at the opposite wall. Yes, it is that 
 group of four children by Rubens, that I 
 mean. Hardly a purer and lovelier picture of 
 the kind exists. It is allegory mingled with 
 matter of fact. The little naked figures on 
 the ground are four. First our Lord on the 
 right, sitting with his left side towards us. 
 The clearness and purity of flesh painting and 
 colour of his body have surely never been sur- 
 passed. Facing Him, but with his back to us, 
 St. John is turning to give heed to something 
 that the Lord is telling him. His face is rapt 
 in earnest attention, and his eyes look into the 
 Face opposite with wonder and deepest love : 
 the Lord is evidently laying forth to him that 
 which he must proclaim and suffer for his 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 49 
 
 sake. With his right hand He affectionately 
 caresses St. John's cheek, while He regards 
 him with a look of superior wisdom and love. 
 Between the two are seen the face and 
 shoulders of a little girl, known to be such by 
 the arrangement of the hair. On the left, an 
 infant angel is bringing a lamb, over which 
 St. John casts his left arm, his right resting on 
 the right thigh of our Lord. The meaning of 
 this is plain. The little girl is the spouse, the 
 Church. She holds in her hand a bunch of 
 grapes, the well-known emblem of the Holy 
 Communion. The lamb serves to indicate 
 the whole deep mystery of the atoning 
 Lamb of God, which, as the Baptist's special 
 message and proclamation, is being declared 
 by the Lord, and as signified by the arm 
 laid over the lamb, recognised by the Fore- 
 runner. 
 
 There seem to be two originals of this won- 
 derful picture. The German lithograph on the 
 wall I bought at Berlin in 1857, after seeing 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 tlie painting in the gallery there ; and another 
 was exhibited the other day at Leeds by Sir 
 John Ramsdcn. This latter was engraved in 
 the Illustrated London News of October 31, 
 last year.* The group is, to my mind, not 
 improved in it by an enormous canopy of fruit 
 and flowers by Seghen, which does not exist in 
 the Berlin original. 
 
 Well, darlings, I really have run on with 
 this interesting theme, till we are all well 
 tired. So we will not sing to-night, but re- 
 serve ourselves for a grand chorus, with a new 
 subject, next Sunday. 
 
 1868. 
 
y. 
 
 rj^HE next tiling about the Child Jesus ? 
 
 Well, I suppose you don't mean his being 
 taken into Egypt, or presented in the Temple, 
 or adored by the Magi, — because all these are 
 hardly things about Hiniy but, taking his 
 human course as that in which He is mani- 
 fested, these are rather circumstances happen- 
 ing to Him than events with which He was 
 Himself concerned. 
 
 The next thing about Him — well, Margey, 
 what shall we say ? I know what occurs to 
 me. I wonder whether we are agreed in 
 this. You mean that staying behind in the 
 Temple : is that it ? 
 
 Well, then, of that let us speak. It is an 
 incident full of interest in many ways. I 
 
52 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 need not go over all the particulars of it ; 
 but will only just bring out one or two points 
 which you, darlings, will feel, and are not 
 commonly dwelt on. 
 
 The first of these is the marvellous way 
 in which the Holy Child was trusted. When 
 the caravan was made up on leaving Jeru- 
 salem, his parents do not seem to have given 
 themselves one anxious thought about Him. 
 The question, where He was, never arose till 
 after the day's journe}^ " Then came still 
 evening on," of which " the ancient poetess 
 singeth," that it brings the child to the 
 mother.* We may imagine the tent set up, 
 and the evening meal prepared, as Eastern 
 travellers describe it to this day. How many 
 there were within it we cannot say. We be- 
 lieve that there were many brothers and sisters 
 of the Holy Child ; but as all were necessarily 
 younger than Himself, none of them would 
 
 * Sappho. See " Chapters on the Poets of Ancient 
 Greece," by Henry ^Alford, p. 75. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 53 
 
 accompany their parents on this journey : 
 unless indeed there were an infant which 
 could not be separated from its mother. Per- 
 haps there were others, too, who were nearly 
 related to the Holy Family : but from what 
 follows it would appear that none occupied 
 the same tent with them. So that perhaps 
 Joseph and Mary were alone. The sun dropped 
 burning below the western plain, or dipped 
 under the sea-line, if they were in the hill 
 country : but still He came not. So com- 
 pletely did they trust Him that they waited 
 till the great stars blazed out above : still He 
 ' came not. Then they went out into the neigh- 
 bouring tents and made inquiry. " He is 
 sure to be in one of them,'' they said one to 
 another : "for all love Him as their own, and 
 He is fond of talking to them in his strange 
 gentle way about great and holy things, so 
 that He and they both take no note of time 
 when so employed." 
 
 One tent after another was searched, but He 
 
54 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 appeared not. Even tlien we may well suppose 
 that distrust was not allowed to enter their 
 minds. JTot only had they both knowledge 
 of his Avonderful character, not only had his 
 mother laid up in her heart all the mys- 
 terious matters reo:ardin2: his birth, and the 
 prophecies which were uttered respecting Him, 
 but in all this experience of his childhood, 
 and his boyhood, He had never once deceived, 
 never once disobeyed them. He might have 
 said to them as He said to his enemies twenty 
 years after, Which of you convince th me of 
 sin ? 
 
 This being so, it was natural that sorrow 
 should "have filled their hearts. You, darlings, 
 hardly yet know how sharp a pang is the first 
 possibility of suspicion of one whom you have 
 deeply loved : w^hen the heart refuses to form 
 to itself the darkening thought that is waiting 
 to take shape, and we say *' it must be right," 
 when we nearly half feel that something is 
 grievously wrong. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 55 
 
 Some such pang may have rent the breasts 
 of Joseph and the blessed mother that lonely 
 night as they lay sleepless in the tent. Wo 
 may well conceive that again and again, sepa- 
 rate and together, they joined in prayer to 
 Him who had given the precious gift that it 
 might be theirs again. 
 
 Oh what a feeling this is, the sense that one 
 is /ost — not lost, as those that are gone from 
 us are lost — but lost, perhaps never to be 
 found ! 
 
 I remember, when I was at Quebec Chapel, 
 in London, a very dear friend preached one 
 of my Friday Lent sermons on the text, 
 " Whosoever will come after me, let hira deny 
 himself, and take up his cross and follow me." 
 He insisted on the fact, that every follower 
 of the Blessed Lord has a cross to bear — he 
 told us of the frequently sudden coming upon 
 this cross in our way — when we least were 
 
 * The late Eev. J. H. Gurney, Rector of St. Mary's, 
 Bryanston Square. — Ed. 
 
56 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 thinking of it, we turned a corner, and there it 
 lay, to be taken up and borne. 
 
 The service ended and we came into the 
 vestry. There stood his eldest girl, pale and 
 breathless — Oh, papa, baby is lost in the 
 Park ! She strayed away from nurse, and 
 can't be found.'' I little thought," said he, 
 turning to me, " that at the first corner I 
 should find the cross ! " 
 
 And now Joseph and Mary had found their 
 cross. " Sorrowing " — it is her own word — 
 sorrowing they sought Him — turning back 
 from the tents of their companions at the early 
 dawn. 
 
 A fanciful Eoman Catholic saint, Bonaven- 
 tura,* in whose meditations are some beautiful 
 thoughts amidst much that is nonsensical, 
 suggests that the blessed mother may have 
 
 * That good Bishop of Albano, at whose funeral, a.d. 
 1274, the Pope, and cardinals, and five hundred bishops 
 attended, and also the Patriarchs of Constantinople and 
 Antioch. — Ed. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 57 
 
 thought that the same Father who had given 
 Him to her may have again taken Him away. 
 rSul this, in the face of the prophecies to 
 Joseph and to herself, could hardl}'- be. Much 
 rather might she perhaps have suspected, that 
 that mysterious mission, of which those pro- 
 phecies had faintly hinted, may have begun : 
 that He may have betaken Himself to the 
 desert, there to await the time of his mani- 
 festation to Israel. 
 
 At all events, Jerusalem was the point at 
 which their search must begin. And now 
 from one wonder we come to another. We 
 have seen how implicitly they trusted the 
 Holy Child. But if we were to assume from 
 this that all his heart and purposes lay open 
 to them, we should be wrong. And this part 
 of the history reveals to us in a wonderful 
 manner the human character of our Lord. 
 We read on one occasion in St. John, that He 
 " did not commit himself unto " the Jews who 
 came up unto the feast at Jerusalem : and 
 
58 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 even so had been his practice through his 
 younger years. He was a pure, unsinning 
 child — an affectionate and obedient child — 
 but at the same time a reserved child. "Words 
 of comfort, words of peace, words of tender- 
 ness. He must always have had for those 
 about Him : but they were only such as 
 He pleased to utter : they came from a 
 depth within which no one knew : they were 
 parts of a store which human thought never 
 measured. 
 
 How do we know this on the present occa- 
 sion ? Simply by this circumstance : that 
 they, who had been with Him now twelve 
 years, never for three days thought of looking 
 for Him in the place to which all his boyish 
 enthusiasm tended. The house of his heavenly 
 Father had never been evident as an object 
 of his love or admiration. Long, long 3'ears 
 at I^azareth had the desire been growing 
 in Him, to dwell in the house of the Lord, 
 and behold the fair beauty of the Temple : 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 59 
 
 long had He yearned after tlie converse of 
 holy men whose time and toil were spent over 
 the Law of God : but of this not a word had 
 escaped Him. 
 
 And this interests us not only as being a 
 trait of Him, but as so completely identifying 
 Him with the boy of all times and countries. 
 Nothing is more common than for the ruling 
 passion of a boy's soul to be thus kept in re- 
 serve — father, and even mother, not having a 
 dream of it — till some day it leaps forth full- 
 grown, and amazes all who behold. 
 
 This is often so with a boy's plans about 
 his destination in life : but, it is true, not 
 so often with regard to favourite habits and 
 haimts. It conveys to us a stronger idea of 
 the reserve which must have been the charac- 
 teristic of the Holy Child : and serves to mark 
 that character as no common one, even in its 
 quiet and private manifestation. This mixture 
 of affectionate tenderness and habitual reserve 
 can only exist in the great and few spirits 
 
6o 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 of the very highest order : and that these 
 did coexist in the Child Jesus, at once points 
 Him out as unlike the common run of the sons 
 of men. 
 
 But, even allowing for all this reserve, it 
 does seem passing strange that Joseph and 
 Mary never during those three days seem to 
 have thought of the Temple. We might ask. 
 Where did they seek Him all that time ? and 
 what put into their thoughts at last to try 
 the place where He was ? They perhaps went 
 to the family in whose house they had cele- 
 brated the Passover. Was it the same as that 
 pointed out by the Lord twenty years after 
 when he said, " Go into the city to such a 
 man and say, The Master saith, I will cele- 
 brate the Passover at thine house with my 
 disciples " ? There they might seek in vain ; 
 and then perhaps they branched out among 
 those who had been their fellows in the sacred 
 feast, but equally in vain. One day passed, 
 and another, and another : and there was 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 6i 
 
 doubtless the hope deferred, that maketh the 
 heart sick : more and more anxiety, at last 
 fading off into the blankness of despair. 
 
 At last, we may well imagine, a rumour 
 reaches them — that it was so long in reaching 
 them may at once serve to refute the legends 
 about the early connection of his mother with 
 the temple of the High Priest — a rumour that 
 a wonderful boy was in the Temple, sitting in 
 the midst of the doctors, hearing them and 
 asking them questions : and that all were 
 astonished at his imderstanding and his an- 
 swers. "Who could this be but their lost one ? 
 That understanding — those answers — how 
 often had they astonished those parents at 
 home ! How often, we may well imagine, had 
 they said one to another, " What rabbi could 
 have answered more wisely ? " 
 
 We all know how many wise things are said 
 by children. You, Jessie and Mar gey, in your 
 time, have both of you been utterers of wise 
 sayings, such sayings as you will never, never 
 
62 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 utter again. Jeremy Taylor* says that children 
 suffer, when they are in pain or sorrow, by 
 direct pressure, as a pillar supports a weight. 
 The idea is very beautiful ; and we might 
 expand it further, and say that when children 
 think, they think by direct contact with truth, 
 without those side views and obscuring com- 
 pensations Avhich disturb their thoughts in 
 after years. So that we sometimes have more 
 living truth, direct from God's Spirit, in the 
 saying of a child, than in ten mature verdicts 
 of grown-up men. 
 
 And if this be so with you and others who 
 grow up in imperfection and under all the 
 beclouding influences of selfish temper and 
 departures from truth, how must it have been 
 with Him who never sinned ? 
 
 When He asked a question of the doctors of 
 the law, it was not for display, it was not from 
 
 * Who was said to have devotion for a cloister, learning 
 for a university, and wit for a virtuoso college. He died 
 in Ireland, 1667, bishop of Down and Connor. — Ed, 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 63. 
 
 idle curiosity, it was not for the love of yictory 
 in argument : it was the earnest reaching forth 
 
 ^ after truth of a soul which basked in truth : 
 the inquirer courted no flattery, deserved no- 
 rebuke, stirred no jealousy, overstepped no 
 modesty ; it was as if Truth herself, radiant as 
 the bow of God, had stepped unclothed from 
 her veil, and won all hearts by her smile. 
 
 Let us look somewhat more, darlings, at 
 that wondrous assembly. Yes, Margey, there 
 it hangs* before us, but without its glorious 
 colour, as Holman Hunt gave it forth from the 
 year's study of his earnest soul. I wish you 
 could have seen the picture, all aglow with 
 those wonderful hues — somewhat, perhaps, too 
 rainbow-like and shifty in gleams, but yet no 
 tint without meaning, and all conspiring to 
 
 ■ one of the most glorious of effects. 
 
 It was some such assembly as the painter 
 has there represented. The grand old rabbi, 
 
 * The Dean wrote this descriptiou with the engraving 
 placed by his side on a chair. — Ed. 
 
64 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 whose winters mounted to a century, their 
 snowy marks on his scanty beard, and their 
 film over his sightless eyes — how he clasps the 
 great scroll of the law, the study of his life, 
 and the fathomless well of his ripened wisdom ! 
 The aged compeer at his side laying his hand 
 on his arm, is setting forth to him the reason 
 why the wise and holy talk of the young 
 peasant from Galilee has of a sudden ceased. 
 And next to him is a young teacher, his face 
 full of intelligence, his brow contracted with 
 anxious thought as over some answer from 
 which the very soul of righteousness had 
 looked forth, or over some question which the 
 collective wisdom of rabbidom was all too poor 
 to furnish with a reply. And so we pass on, 
 to some faces which look secular, and even 
 some which seem, but probably are not, void of 
 meaning, till our eyes reach the right-hand, or 
 principal group of the picture. 
 
 And here what shall we say ? I know that 
 tastes differ among us on this group ; I know 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 65 
 
 also tliat my own feeling has not been always 
 the same about it : but I also feel that the 
 artist had immense difficulties to contend with, 
 and that he has surmounted them not by 
 pandering to conventionality, but by patiently 
 studying and then idealizing nature. 
 
 Let us take them in inverse order and im- 
 portance. 
 
 The figure and expression of Joseph are, to 
 me, faultless. There is no assumption of im- 
 portance in them, as neither ought there to 
 be : but the great joy of having found Him 
 who had been lost is mingled with a serene 
 satisfaction at the place and employ in which 
 He has been found : and thus this manly peace- 
 ful face sets, as it were, the tone of the group. 
 
 Of the Blessed Mother more must be said : 
 more which may call, and which may be called, 
 in question. 
 
 The expression is as of one earnestly and 
 passionately pleading ; as we might imagine 
 her to have done, had we not been told ex- 
 
66 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 pressly that slie did not. The account given 
 in St. Luke certainly does not lead us to think 
 that she thus earnestly and closely whispered 
 in the ear of her Son. There is in that narra- 
 tive a majest}^ of motherhood, which I fail to 
 discover here. Perhaps it may be said, that 
 the artist has altogether iramlated the narra- 
 tive into detail ; that the saying in St. Luke 
 is that to which all her dealins: with Him 
 amounted, rather than any one portion of it ; 
 that we can hardly imagine the joy of finding, 
 the intense interest in the situation, the desire 
 to win Him back again — all venting them- 
 selves in those few and balanced words ; and 
 that though the Evangelist is faithful to the 
 summary of fact, the artist has seized on one 
 of the expressions of nature of which that 
 summary was made up. It may be so. Paint- 
 ing, we know, is tied to a moment, and must 
 give an outward act done. History is tied 
 merely to truth, and truth may be the total of 
 a great many acts. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 67 
 
 But perhaps all this is too hard for my little 
 women ; and at any rate you will see in the 
 attitude and expression of the Blessed Mother 
 what, if it represent not the whole sacred 
 narrative, must have been gone through before 
 that whole was attained. 
 
 But now we come to speak of the figure of 
 the Holy Child Himself. And I hardly know 
 how to praise this too highly. It seems to me 
 to have just that mingled look of human boy- 
 hood, and divine yearning for higher things 
 than human, which we should expect, but look 
 for in vain, in any representation of the youth- 
 ful Jesus. It is found in the Infant of the 
 Madonna del Sisto, and as has been said, in one 
 or two other of EafaeFs ; and, as far as I 
 know, in those only. That the earnest desire 
 to be among his Father's matters" is here 
 somewhat prominent, is hardly to be blamed : 
 but none can say that the rising resolution to 
 check that desire, and to go down to !N"azareth 
 and be obedient to them, is not also abundantly 
 
68 
 
 FIRESIDE IIOMIIIES. 
 
 expressed. There is one little incident of tlie 
 Lord's posture which, has always struck me 
 as very beautiful ; the playing of the right 
 hand with the buckle of the band. It exactly 
 expresses the meeting of two currents of feel- 
 ing. One can see in this as in the face, 
 the truant interest in the disputation of the 
 doctors, wavering before the strong return of 
 self-denying duty ; while, at the same time, 
 there look out wonderfully from the eyes the 
 thoughts that come from otherwhere than this 
 our earth. 
 
 Of the accessories of the picture it is after 
 this hardly worth while to speak. According 
 to the artist it is evidently full day. Work- 
 men are shaping a stone outside. A beggar is 
 laid at the gate to ask alms of them that came 
 in. IN^ow I had in my own mind always 
 imagined it evening ; " After three days they 
 found Him in the Temple.'' Whether the 
 doctors had the custom of sitting on there 
 till the evening, I am not sufficiently ac- 
 
FIRESIDE OmiILIES. 
 
 69 
 
 quainted with Jewish practices to be able to 
 say ; but the " after three days " seems to 
 point this way. Perhaps the wonderful under- 
 standing and answers of the Divine Boy may 
 have kept the dignified conclave beyond its 
 ordinary time of sitting. 
 
 Leaving the picture, we may finish by say- 
 ing, that it is full of interest to think what 
 the Lord may have seen on that his youthful 
 visit which led to his words and acts years 
 further on. 
 
 Then He may have noted with boyish in- 
 dignation the unhallowed practice of buying 
 and selling in the house of prayer, which 
 twenty years after prompted one of his first, 
 and again one of his last acts of summary 
 vindication of the holy law of his Father. 
 There he may have noticed the Pharisee 
 standing and uttering his self-satisfied prayers, 
 and the poor publican standing afar off and 
 beating his breast in contrition. 
 
 The conclusion of the beautiful story is as 
 
70 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 teaching as all else is. " He went down to 
 I^azareth with them, and was subject unto 
 them." His holy burning zeal was curbed 
 and repressed. " Even Christ pleased not 
 Himself." The outbreak of enthusiasm had 
 been an infirmity, not a sin : and now the 
 well-balanced spirit again righted and streng- 
 thened itself: the course, which begun by 
 becoming obedient, returned into its proper 
 channel. 
 
 And to us the wonderful part of such obedi- 
 ence is, to think of its duration. JN^ot for a 
 month, not for a year, but for eighteen long 
 years was he subject unto them. He became 
 " the carpenter." Doubtless many a house in 
 Nazareth witnessed his humble subjection to 
 his reputed father's trade. One of the earliest 
 fathers, Justin Martyr, tells us that He made 
 ploughs and yokes. 
 
 There was some years ago a striking picture 
 of Herbert's, of our Lord, as a lad of fifteen 
 or sixteen, in Joseph's workshop. He is no 
 
FIRESIDE IIOMIIIES. 
 
 71 
 
 longer a beautiful Child, but a tbin workman 
 youtb. He is, as is tbe custom witb workmen 
 tbere, naked, except for a cincture round tbe 
 loins ; and tbe painter's effort bas been ratber 
 to pourtray tbe bodily fatigue incident to bis 
 life of unflincbing obedience, combined witb 
 tbe bigber purpose manifested in bis boly 
 looks. Perbaps tbe painful part of tbe picture 
 is carried too far, as is tbe practice witb tbe 
 scbool to wbicb Herbert attached himself : but 
 it was a picture which entered that night into 
 one^s waking thoughts ; and that is, at least 
 in my little court of criticism within, no small 
 praise. 
 
 There is another picture of Herbert's, be- 
 longing to this his period of boyish obedience : 
 I am not sure whether or not to a time before 
 the incident we have been dealing with to- 
 night. The Child Jesus is passing along 
 Joseph's shop, when suddenly his eye falls on 
 two chips of wood, accidentally fallen one over 
 the other in the form of a cross. He pauses, 
 
72 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 looking down on them with a solemn air. 
 His Blessed Mother stands in the doorway, 
 contemplating Him with an air of conscious 
 earnestness. 
 
 And even so ends our present narrative. 
 **But his mother kept all these things, and 
 pondered them in her heart." 
 
 Of that we shall have more to say another 
 time. 
 
 Kow for prayers ; and we will try " The 
 Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to 
 his temple : " and the grand chorus, " And He 
 shall purify," which follows. 
 
VI. 
 
 ^0 you want me to say something about that 
 first miracle in Cana of Galilee. Well, it 
 is a scene my mind often dwells upon. I love 
 to think of our Blessed Lord among the com- 
 mon incidents of life. You two darlings have 
 as yet young fresh hearts, and are easily moved : 
 but by the time ■ you have been fifty years 
 knocking about in this heartless world, you 
 will find the gristle got very hard and callous 
 about most of the places that are soft now, 
 and it will take something unusual to stir 
 that salt fountain inside. And it's strange 
 what kind of things do it, when nothing else 
 will. There's that sweetest bit in all old 
 heathen poetry, that I tried to read to you, 
 Margey, the other day, where the great grand 
 
74 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 warrior lifts liis little soft child, having taken 
 off the nodding plume which made it shrink 
 back into its nurse's arms, and kisses it, and 
 prays for it.* Well, I used at school to think 
 that very commonplace if not almost childish : 
 but I never can read it now without a hot tear 
 brimming over. And when anything at all 
 like it happens in real life : when incongrui- 
 ties from two opposite sides of humanity meet 
 on humanity's common ground, the same takes 
 place. Other incidents lose their freshness, 
 but these never. 
 
 And one of these is, our Blessed Lord at 
 a marriage. That bridegroom and bride, 
 those cousins and gossips, I suppose they were 
 just common ordinary people. I suppose the 
 bridegroom had arrayed himself in his best, 
 and the bride had been decked by her mother : 
 one of the pretty maidens of the neighbour- 
 hood of Nazareth, of some twelve or thirteen 
 
 * Hector's parting with bis child: Homer's Iliad," 
 book iv. — Ed. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 75 
 
 years — nay, Margey, don't start and look 
 so surprised, for it was so, and is now in those 
 parts — and there was all the talk that there 
 always is at such times — don't let us be afraid 
 of imagining it, for the more real are our 
 ideas of all about Him the nearer shall we 
 approach to Himself. The looks of the bride- 
 groom — this for the damsels — those of the 
 bride and her maids, this for the men ; and 
 perchance the last news from the petty war 
 the other side J ordan, or the damage done by 
 last week's hail, or the prospect of this year's 
 vintage : or perhaps some talk of lucky or un- 
 lucky omens that day, and argument, backed 
 by sayings quoted from learned Eabbis : and 
 appeal to the local scribe, or priest, or Pharisee, 
 ready in traditionary lore. All this would no 
 doubt issue in that clatter of tongues, which 
 of all things is the busiest and the most ab- 
 surd to listen to from without, one's heart 
 not in it, one's ear unclaimed by any sound 
 of them all. 
 
76 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 So far, miglit be an ordinary meeting of 
 guests at any wedding on earth : or at least 
 it miglit, changing changeables : but here at 
 once we come to something which brings the 
 heart into the mouth. HE, there ? And how 
 would He comport himself there ? We are 
 apt to think of Him as never unbending. 
 But it could hardly have been so. Thirty 
 years they all had known Him. Perhaps 
 none beyond the inmost circle of his family, 
 perhaps none but she whose bosom had pil- 
 lowed his infant head, knew of the wonders 
 of the birth at Bethlehem. What did they all 
 think of Him ? At the end of boyhood, we 
 left Him increasing in wisdom as in age, and 
 in favour with God and man : at his baptism, 
 his relative, not knowing his loftier cha- 
 racter, says, " I have need to be baptized of 
 thee.'' These are the two testimonies which 
 come down to us, only these, from those thirty 
 years. From which however we may gather 
 much. That first one and its attendant cir- 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 77 
 
 cumstances are full of interest, as we saw last 
 montli. Let us remember what we said there. 
 "We said that it must be a strange boyish 
 character which on the one hand was so 
 thoroughly trusted that his parents should go 
 a day's journey in ignorance where he was in 
 the company : and which on the other hand 
 had so thoroughly kept under its leading 
 enthusiasm, that they never thought of seeking 
 Him where He wondered that they had not at 
 once sought Him. And we said on the former 
 of these, thoroughly trusted is warmly loved : 
 trust comes through love. And thoroughly 
 trusted had another side, as we also saw then. 
 " Where is He ?" said Joseph. " Safe among 
 our kinsfolk or acquaintance," replied the 
 blessed mother : " they all love Him like their 
 own child." 
 
 Now, from what we then said let us go 
 on. He increased in wisdom — He increased 
 in favour, — as He increased in age. So that 
 He must have been known, in that privacy of 
 
78 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 neighbourhood life, as a very remarkable and 
 a very popular person. That unique charac- 
 ter among the sons of men, half masculine 
 majesty, half feminine tenderness, must have 
 appeared long before it was manifested to 
 Israel. Doubtless, many had come to Him 
 for comfort. Doubtless even as a child He 
 must have had his little tender-hearted fol- 
 lowers. He must have wiped away many a 
 tear, long before He put on his harness for 
 the victory which shall wipe away all tears. 
 
 " I have need to be baj)tized of thee.'* 
 Think who speaks the words : one who was 
 filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's 
 womb : one who was a pattern of holy purity 
 and self-denial. The words meant, ^' So fault- 
 less art thou, so gentle, so wholly unneeding 
 anything that my baptism represents or re- 
 quires, that Thou oughtest to be the baptizer, 
 and I, who day by day need penitence and 
 need purifying, ought to be the receiver of the 
 ordinance at Thine hand.'' 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 79 
 
 Such then was the wedding Guest : the 
 beloved of all, the trusted by all, the coun- 
 sellor the comforter. Yet, from what I said 
 we must needs suppose that there was in the 
 blessed Jesus great reserve : probably some- 
 thing like habitual silence : certainly consider- 
 able jealousy of the prying eye or the inter- 
 fering voice, as regarded any unfoldings of 
 his own most mysterious course, openingj. 
 opening, now year by year. 
 
 We read respecting the wedding, " And 
 the mother of Jesus was there." It would 
 seem as if she were hardly a guest, but one 
 who had a right to be present. The same 
 also appears from her ordering the servants 
 afterwards. 
 
 The mother. Xo one else ? It is com- 
 monly, and I suppose rightly thought that 
 Joseph was ere this gathered to his fathers. 
 It is a strange thing to think of the holy 
 youth having stood by a death-bed, before his 
 power over death was manifested. Could we 
 
So 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 but lift the veil, and see liow He mourned for 
 his just and noble parent — what wonderful 
 words of comfort He addressed to his mother 
 and brethren and sisters — how perhaps He 
 went up the hill to praj^, and continued all 
 night communing with that Father who could 
 not be taken from Him. 
 
 One of Margey's little secret questions. 
 Well, little one, it may be so : I cannot say, 
 but I have sometimes thought it. 
 
 Margey asks whether we shall ever be able 
 to inquire about those j^ears. "Why not ? Why 
 should we not sit round Him on the flowery 
 banks of the river of the water of life, and 
 hear Him tell of the thoughts and incidents 
 of that lovely childhood ? Why should not 
 He say to us of the Gospel as He once said 
 of the Law, " It was said to them of old 
 time," " He grew in wisdom as in age : *'but 
 I say unto you that on such a day . . . Ah, 
 we cannot fill up one such narrative now. 
 
 But to return to the wedding feast. Jesus 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 8i 
 
 was bidden, and his disciples. So that by 
 this time He had around Him a body of 
 recognised followers : those I suppose who 
 had been sjDoken of as called by Him in the 
 chapter before. 
 
 And so the meal went on : but what followed 
 was somewhat strange. The wine ran short. 
 On such occasions generally the supply is 
 abundant. AAHaat was the cause does not 
 appear. It may have been the poverty of the 
 famil}^ or an unexpected accession of guests, 
 but so it was. And apparently the defect was 
 not quite unexpected. There must surely have 
 been some previous conversation on the sub- 
 ject, or the mother of Jesus could hardly have 
 said what she did. We know how she watched 
 Him: how she laid up all things concerning 
 Him in her heart. It may well have been 
 that there had been in the house at ^"azareth 
 some foreboding of such failure, and fear of the 
 giver of the feast being put to shame : and 
 that some general remark of his, unnoticed 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 perhaps by others, may have set her motherly 
 heart beating high with expectation. For we 
 are utterly unable to comprehend the blessed 
 and intimate relation of a mother, and such a 
 mother, towards such a Child — the eagerness 
 for his manifestation, now so long delayed — 
 the impatience of his seeming reserve and 
 want of ambition, with all these j^ears slipping 
 away beneath her eye. So she comes forward 
 in the character of his prompter and patroness 
 — with somewhat of a woman's and a mother's 
 desire to show off the high dignity of her Son : 
 she said unto Ilim, They have no wine." 
 
 It has been asked. What did she expect 
 Him to do ? because Ave have it from St. John 
 that this was his first miracle, and therefore 
 she could not have looked forward to anything 
 so out of the common course from Him. But 
 I think those who ask this question know but 
 little of the very close relation of which we 
 have just been speaking. She had long and 
 narrowly watched his thoughts and words. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 83 
 
 The idea, of commanding tlie powers of nature 
 by a power above nature, bad been ripening 
 in bis mind perbaps for montbs. If He spoke 
 of sucb matters at all, especially if tbere bad 
 taken place anything like tbe conversation 
 we bave mentioned, tbe slightest hint dropped 
 by Him could not fail to speak meaning to tbe 
 watchful mother's heart. 
 
 So she thought and thought, and bided her 
 time. And it was with her, as it often is with 
 us : a bold idea, at first entertained with 
 reluctance, becomes by degrees familiar to the 
 fore-castings of action : we fancy ourselves 
 uttering it, we shape tbe words in which it 
 is to take form, we rehearse it again and again 
 in our minds : and when the anticipated 
 moment arrives we act, not the modest part 
 which was at first suggested, but all that tbe 
 imagination built over and round it — we say 
 too much for our own end and our own peace : 
 and the end is not making, but marring. 
 
 She said unto Him, " They bave no wine." 
 
84 
 
 FIRESIDE IIOMIIIES. 
 
 How reluctant even we are to have a rising 
 intention forestalled ! I remember the other 
 day, Jessie, when you had ripened in your 
 mind the scheme to take rooms in the Bank- 
 side cottage for poor Widow Burns, and I some- 
 what rashly suggested to you the very same 
 idea, how you flushed up, and chided down 
 some rising passion within, and one of life's 
 great lessons, " Let alone," came like a wave 
 over mv heart's heart. 
 
 And so doubtless did the blessed mother 
 repent of her words the moment after. For 
 let it not be disguised that the reply she had 
 from Him was in the tone of stern rebuke. It 
 is not the mere address, woman " — that He 
 used in the last sad words on the cross — but 
 it was the Tt' l^ol koI aoc : What have I to 
 do with thee ? words which surely never would 
 be used in other than rebuke. She had fore- 
 stalled his first rising purpose by an ill-timed 
 hint : and she was to be admonished that the 
 high mission of the Son was not to be in- 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 85 
 
 augurated at tlie bidding of the mother. But 
 the purpose was not to be abandoned, nor the 
 inauguration of the mission retarded. There 
 is exquisite womanly tact in her words that 
 follow. To the reproof, no answer : of the 
 earnest purpose, no abatement. " She saith 
 to the servants, Whatsoever He saith unto you, 
 do it." Her instinct told her that He would 
 do that, for the doing of which she was not to 
 be his patroness. 
 
 And now, dear ones, I believe we have 
 finished our Homily. It was not my intention 
 to dwell on the wonderful miracle itself. Be- 
 cause it is so plain ; especially to young and 
 simple minds. Let there be light, and there 
 was light : " " let the water be drawn out wine, 
 and it was so.'^ It is one and the same power : 
 that is all that is to be said : and in saying 
 it there are volumes of blessing and comfort. 
 
 But notice one thin"-. The Lord Jesus 
 acted here, with one of his beneficent be- 
 stowals, as He uniformly acts with the rest. 
 
86 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 He created in abundance — lavishly — profusely. 
 He created that whicli He has made for good, 
 but which man's evil may turn into mischief. 
 It is the dispensation of Eden over again : the 
 tree in the midst, open and accessible. Thus 
 God does, helping man with his grace. But 
 how do men act in the same matter? Had 
 Eden been man's garden, instead of God's, we 
 should have had a cast-iron fence with spikes 
 round the tree of knowledge : had some of our 
 present philanthropists been guests at that 
 wedding we should have had them beseeching 
 the Lord of bounty and grace not to create 
 Svine that might inebriate, as we have them 
 now trying to gain credence for a fiction that 
 what He did create was not wine at all. 
 
 Well, darlings, let us be thankful in our 
 bodies and our souls that God knows better, 
 and that we are in his hands. 
 
 And so to Ken's Evening Hymn, to the old 
 Tallis's Canon : . the most soothing of hymns 
 and of tunes. 
 
VII. 
 
 J CA^N" have no doubt who placed that little 
 modest note on my bureau this morning. 
 Guilt}^, little one ? xS o sign. Oh, I see, by looks 
 exchanged between mamma and Jessie, that I 
 was mistaken. Well, any how, the little note 
 has gained the day, and shaped the fashion of 
 our homily to-night. 
 
 But there is one thing in it with which 
 I cannot comply. It requests that I will treat 
 to-night the Lord's miracles of raising the 
 dead. But if I take them all in one evening, 
 I think we shall be not much the better for it. 
 You know, there are three. Xot that there 
 were not many others : but three only are 
 related for us in the Gospels. Of those three. 
 
88 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 the last, the raising of Lazarus, is immeasurably 
 the most important : both in itself, and in the 
 consequences to which it led. Besides, it 
 happened quite at the end of the dear Lord's- 
 ministry here below : and I have several 
 themes on which I should like to talk with 
 you (yes, Margey, I feel the pressure of the 
 little warm hand) before we come to the scenes 
 at the end. 
 
 And as to the two others, I cannot consent 
 to group them in one Homily. Thej^ present 
 features so distinct, and so full of interest in 
 their distinctness, that each must be considered 
 alone. 
 
 We will take them in order as they hap- 
 pened. And notice that this is not the order 
 in which they are found in our first Gospel, 
 that of St. Matthew. I told you the other 
 day, that there has been a great confusion of 
 arrangement of events in the former part of 
 St. Matthew. I shall have to say more on this 
 point when we come to the second of our 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 89 
 
 miracles, next time. At present, wc will speak 
 of the first. 
 
 The Lord had but lately finished that great 
 series of discourses to the people, of which the 
 Sermon on the Mount represents to us the 
 substance. Turn to Luke vii. 1, and you will 
 find the point in his ministry at which we are 
 standing. There you will see that after finish- 
 ing all those sayings, his first work was the 
 wonderful healing of the Centurion's servant 
 with a word : made more wonderful still, be- 
 cause the faith of the Centurion had antici- 
 pated this exercise of almighty power. Then, 
 in verse 11, we find ourselves with Him on the 
 following day. He has advanced onward on 
 his circuit from Capernaum, and is approach- 
 ing a place {city, in the Gospel ; but it was 
 probably not a city in our modern meaning of 
 the word) called Nain. 
 
 Now an idea of this approach may best be 
 gained by my describing to you that to any 
 hill village in the South of Europe : for tra- 
 
90 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 vellers tell us that this was such a place, set on 
 an hill. 
 
 Capernaum was on the shores of the blue 
 lake of Galilee. From thence the Lord and 
 his disciples had set out, possibly after the 
 morning meal. They had toiled through the 
 level and over uplands, along stony paths, 
 sometimes quite rugged and unmade, some- 
 times, in the steeper parts, carefully laid with 
 fitted stones, and curbs to carry off the water. 
 To us, these stony paths are ver}^ wearisome : 
 the continually varying surface twists the boot 
 or shoe, and the sole becomes polished with 
 the dry smooth stone, and slips back on the 
 steeper ascents. But the bare foot suffers 
 none of these annoyances. When once it has 
 acquired a sole of sufficient hardness to resist 
 the wear and tear of the journey, it accom- 
 modates itself to the hollows of the pavement, 
 and it is never liable to slip. So that what 
 would be to us a journey of some distraction 
 from carefully picking the way, was probably 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 91 
 
 made by them without a thought of its diffi- 
 culty, and with minds fully open to the 
 wondrous discourse of Him who talked with 
 them by the way, and made their hearts to 
 burn within them. 
 
 And so they passed on, — now in full blaze of 
 the sun on the side of the bare hill, now among 
 walled terraces shaded with olives and fig- 
 trees, now on the plains, full of verdure and 
 streams. On one of those terraces, there may 
 have been a mid-day rest and an hour of 
 slumber : or perhaps a discourse, or even a 
 miracle of healing, which has found no record 
 in our Gospels. 
 
 And now the sun was westering ; and the 
 rocks over the olive-trees, and the tops of the 
 lines of wall supporting the planted terraces, 
 were lighted up with tints of orange and rose, 
 as they were climbing towards the eastward 
 facing gate of Is'ain. As they look up, a crowd 
 surrounds the entrance. 
 
 It is the solemn hour of carrying out the 
 
92 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 dead : and there can be no doubt what that 
 concourse means. On all their minds — yes, 
 and on His among them, who was wrought 
 upon, as we are, by common sights and sounds, 
 falls a shadow of solemn thought, and a 
 softened mood, shedding the dew of pity over 
 heart and eye. The presence of sorrow — there 
 is not a mightier power known. Of a thousand 
 hidden places in the heart the secret doors 
 at once fly open, and long-buried memories stir 
 within. "What a volume is human grief! 
 Each of those apostles is in a moment busy 
 with his heart's own bitterness, mellowed by 
 the loving light of another's woe. Peter, the 
 married man — John, loving and beloved — 
 Thomas, the attached and desponding — nay, 
 even one in whom two voices were as yet striv- 
 ing, if the Fiend had not ere this prevailed, 
 even he may have felt the tear swelling up, as 
 some memory of child, brother, parent thus 
 carried forth, came rushing onward uncalled. 
 And He who walked in the midst — I believe 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 93 
 
 He did not on each of these occasions, any 
 more than ourselves, necessarily know, or 
 ■rather choose to know, recognise, and put 
 before Him, all that He was about to do. He 
 left Himself open to impressions, and let his 
 resolves spring, out of circumstances, on the 
 surface of his marvellous being ; though in 
 the depths beneath there was perfect know- 
 ledge of what He would do, and of all things 
 that were coming upon Him. 
 
 "\Yho can tell how short a time it was since 
 the head of the household at l^azareth, the 
 just and God-fearing parent, had been borne 
 forth on an evening like this ? Who shall say 
 what blessed thoughts then poured themselves 
 over the heart of the son of the widowed 
 mother, — thoughts of, and burning longings 
 for, the day, when He who then held up her 
 stricken form should proclaim Himself the 
 E-esurrection and the Life ? And all these 
 thoughts rose up anew on his soul at the 
 sight of this funeral company. 
 
94 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 And thus tlie two bands meet, and now the 
 cause of the unusual throng appears. It is an 
 occasion of no common mourning. The deso- 
 late is further desolated; a widowed mother 
 has lost her only son. It is for this reason 
 that much people of the city is there. They 
 are doing what they can ; poor service indeed, 
 but still that which gilds the robe of sable 
 with a hem of gold. 
 
 And now, dear ones, it is for us to fill up, if 
 we would imagine that scene however insuffi- 
 ciently, the gaps in the Gospel narrative, 
 by picturing to ourselves the action which 
 prompted the utterances there recorded. 
 
 First comes the perception of the poor 
 widow by the Lord. " When the Lord saw 
 her." !Now there is something worthy of 
 notice in this name, " the Lord." It is pro- 
 bably never used of Jesus in this simple way 
 by either St. Matthew or St. Mark. For 
 Matt, xxviii. 6 is doubtful ; and Mark xvi. 19 
 is part of an addition to the Gospel which 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 95 
 
 probably was not written by the Evangelist 
 himself. But St. Luke and St. J obn repeatedly 
 use it, tbe former thirteen times, the latter ten 
 times. It seems to have been a title which 
 gradually came into use as the disciples learned 
 more entirely to look up to and to pay obedience- 
 to Jesus. The practice of so calling Him had 
 become usual before He said to them in John 
 xiii. 13, " Ye call me ' Lord ' " (this is not in 
 the vocative, Jessie, but is really "Ye call me 
 *the Lord' And it forms a kind of title of 
 dignity mingled with sympathy, the occur-^ 
 rence of which is sometimes very touching. 
 So it is here. In this title " the Lord,'' here,, 
 there is a mixture of human sympathy and 
 divine power. TVho does not feel this when 
 St. Luke says, " The Lord turned, and looked 
 upon Peter " ? If " Jesus " onl}", the personal 
 name, had been here used, how different would 
 have been the effect — how shorn of its majesty 
 — for " Jesus " in this scene is mainly the 
 sufferer : if Christ, — how different — how shorn 
 
96 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 of its sympathy! But "the Lord" unites 
 both these. 
 
 Well, "the Lord" saw her. Amidst the 
 orowd, his eye, as the eyes of his disciples 
 and of the much people of his own time, 
 singled out this one central object, and the 
 sympathy which had before been general, 
 became special. The head of the one band 
 who came for teaching and witnessing and 
 beholding, approaches the head of the other 
 band, who came for mourning and comforting. 
 
 But what jarring words are these, " Weep 
 aiot ! " How often are they spoken helplessly 
 and in vain ! That can hardly have been so in 
 this case. We must suppose that there was 
 something in the Lord's look and gesture as 
 He spoke them, which carried strange feelings 
 into the poor mourner's heart. There must 
 have been a majestic drawing up of the form — 
 a, power kindled in the eye, of Him who spoke 
 these commonplace words of conventional com- 
 fort. They were less a consolation, than a 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 97 
 
 command ; whicli to obey, was consolation. 
 And that witness of tlie fact who was induced 
 to call Jesus " the Lord " in describing it, has 
 by this very name set before us this influx of 
 his divine power on the gushing of his human 
 sympathy. ^' The Lord is a living token 
 that he who first wrote the narrative, had seen 
 the transaction with his own eyes and was one 
 with the spirit of it. 
 
 And now, darlings, let us follow on. The 
 sad mother, we may well believe, stands still 
 in her astonishment, waiting for what is 
 to come of this word of power, which has 
 staunched her grief within her. isor does she 
 wait long. All eyes are upon Him who has 
 thus interfered with the sacred flow of sym- 
 pathy and woe. Some may have regarded 
 Him merely as a rude disturber : but I doubt 
 whether these were many. Some may have 
 had faith enough to anticipate what He was 
 going to do : but I am sure these were few. 
 That Centurion who is even now thanking 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 God in his joyful household — that blessed 
 Mother who went beyond herself in prompting 
 his first miracle — I know not whether there 
 were any others in whom there was such 
 faith : and neither of these was present. The 
 greater part of those who were, were probably 
 in a doubtful state of mind, not knowing how 
 far his power might extend, — expecting some- 
 thing, they could hardly shape what. 
 
 But doubt is soon clearing up and giving 
 place to eager expectation. His next approach, 
 his next address, is not to the mourner. 
 The reason why she is not to weep is not to be 
 given in words. " He came and touched the 
 bier.'' 
 
 The body was being borne out, as we may 
 even now see the dead carried forth in the 
 South of Europe, open, in a bier, the face and 
 the hands uncovered. As yet the procession 
 was moving on. But there was that in the 
 mien of Him who had his hand on the bier 
 which at once stopped the bearers. It spoke, 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 99 
 
 of Higli resolve, and power to accoraplisli it. 
 It was a look, in the presence of which no 
 ordinary matter could go on. How many 
 hearts are beating high in those two multi- 
 tudes, now mingled into one ! Upon how 
 many minds is breaking the truth that One 
 is present who can call the dead to life ! Of 
 all perhaps she who is most concerned realises 
 this the least. Immense issues like this 
 rather numb the spirit, than excite it. She 
 stands, awed, calmed, but scarce consciously 
 expectant. 
 
 But what words are these ? " Young man, 
 to thee I say it," .... Person addresses 
 person. It is no new creation, observe. The 
 Almighty One is not about to call a new life 
 into being. The poor body, already touched 
 with decay, is still, in the eye of God, the 
 tabernacle of the soul : — Young man," — or is 
 this an anticipation on the part of the Lord of 
 that re-union of body and soul which is so 
 soon to take place ? To thee I say it " — 
 
100 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 to thee, wherever tarr3dng in this disembodied 
 state, but by the word called back to the body, 
 " ,^RisE ! " Enter again, and take possession : 
 be fitted, each minutest root and fibre of 
 organized nervous life, into that junction of 
 which decay has already blunted the fine 
 points of union — let the muscle be knit into 
 its elastic spring, and the brain, collapsed and 
 dethroned, re- assume its central sway. All 
 this, and a thousand other hidden wonders, 
 must take place, before the dead man can sit 
 up as the Lord commands. 
 
 Yet all is done, in a moment. He who 
 made can remake. Yea, more — life returns, 
 not by instalments, but at once and complete. 
 In the beautiful story of Alcestis, which I 
 read to you, Jessie, the other day,* you remem- 
 ber, that when Admetus has recovered his lost 
 one from the grave, she remains silent until 
 the third day : — speech is the last sign of 
 
 * From "Chapters on the Poets of Ancient Greece;" a 
 took he published, 1841.— Ed. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 lOI 
 
 renewed life which returns. But here it is 
 not so. " The dead man sat up and began to 
 speak." "We are not told of what. Did he 
 question his recovered being ? Did he wonder 
 at the throng, the amazement in all around 
 him, the strange evening light ? Did he 
 stretch his arms to his mother with a cry of 
 raptured joy ? We cannot tell. " And He 
 delivered him to his mother." "See, thy son 
 liveth." Oh what joy ineffable ! TThat bright 
 spots must there have been in the course of the 
 Man of Sorrows, when He was able to cause, 
 and to witness, so much joy I 
 
 There came a fear on all." "What had 
 they seen ? in whose presence had they been ? 
 A great Prophet had indeed risen up among 
 them — greater than Elijah and Elisha, who 
 stretched themselves on the dead children and 
 prayed : greater than any of whom Scripture 
 had hitherto told. And this thej^ further 
 expressed when thej^ said that God had visited 
 his people : for by those words did Israel 
 
I02 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 commonly speak of the coming of the expected 
 Messiah. 
 
 One word more. It was this miracle among 
 others to which our Lord appealed, as we learn 
 from what follows in St. Luke, for proof that 
 He was He that should come, and men were 
 not to look for another. 
 
 Oh wonderful power and wonderful love ! 
 just one little sample of what the dear glorified 
 Lord can do, and will do ! Love Him, my 
 darlings, keep ever close to Him in thought 
 and afi'ection. And then no death shall ever 
 partus. He will come in the world's evening, 
 and stand on our earth, and lay his hand on 
 the grave, and say, I say unto thee. Arise ! 
 And then we shall sit up and begin to speak 
 his praise : and He will deliver friend to friend, 
 and child to parent, and dear lost ones to their 
 widowed mates — and all earth will shout, and 
 all heaven will echo, that God hath visited 
 
 HIS PEOPLE I 
 
VIIL 
 
 "^^E are to speak this evening of the raising 
 of Jaeirus's daughter. Of the three 
 miracles of raising the dead, ttat at the gate 
 of !N^ain is the most wonderfal — the bringing 
 Lazarus out of his tomb the most awful : but 
 this the most deeply interesting. 
 
 The Lord had just come from his visit to 
 the Land of the Gergesenes, where he had 
 cast out the devil from the man, or men, who 
 dwelt in the tombs. This is plain from the 
 very careful and precise notice in St. Mark 
 and St. Luke. In St. Matthew, all this part 
 of the history is in confusion. He makes the 
 message of Jaeirus to Christ take place while 
 He was speaking to the people, after the ques- 
 tion about fasting asked by John's disciples, 
 
104 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 which in reality happened a considerable time 
 before, as you will see by comparing the care- 
 fully arranged narratives of St. Mark and St. 
 Luke. 
 
 When Jesus returned the multitude gladly 
 received Him. They were waiting for Him. 
 The last they had heard of his teaching was 
 that magnificent series of parables concerning 
 the kingdom of Grod which we have most fully 
 detailed in Matt. xiii. For, however little we 
 might suspect it from St. Matthew's account, 
 it was on the evening of that very day, as 
 specified by St. Mark, that He crossed the lake 
 to the country of the Gergesenes. 
 
 The people were anxious to hear from Him 
 more of the same kind. For there is this in 
 the parable, which was now his way of teach- 
 ing, — that it speaks to every hearer as he or 
 she can receive it. The little child enjoys the 
 story, and learns something. The plain man 
 enters into the worldly wisdom of it, and learns 
 more : and the wiser and more thoughtful the 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 105 
 
 listener, the more would the wisdom of the 
 things said reveal themselves. No wonder 
 then, that the people flocked to Him, and 
 pressed upon Him, to hear the word of God. 
 So they anxiously expected Him, all on the 
 shore waiting his arrival. 
 
 But there was one who had been waiting 
 with more anxiety than the rest. Jaeirus, the 
 ruler of the synagogue at Capernaum, had an 
 only daughter, twelve years of age, lying at 
 the point of death. All human means had 
 failed, and there was but one who could save 
 him his child : and He was absent. But on 
 the Lord's arrival he at once hastens to Him. 
 
 And here notice again that St. Matthew 
 represents the ruler as coming in, and wor- 
 shipping our Lord, and saying that his daugh- 
 ter was dead : whereas we know from the 
 other accounts that she was not dead, but 
 dying. And this of course makes an immense 
 difierence in the nature of the man's faith : 
 for in St. Matthew's account he says, in spite 
 
 i 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 of her being dead, "But come and lay thy 
 hand on her and she shall live : " whereas, in. 
 the longer and more exact accounts, it was 
 our Lord Himself who suggested to the poor 
 father that even her death was no reason why 
 he should be afraid, but only believe and she 
 should be made whole. 
 
 Now some might ask, and I know mamma 
 herself sometimes inquires, why I bring for- 
 ward these differences between the Evangelists 
 — why I do not rather conceal them, or, if I 
 mention them at all, adopt some ingenious 
 way of making out that they mean the same, 
 though their words are different ? 
 
 Simply, my darlings, because I believe that 
 I should be dealing unfaithfully by God and 
 by Truth in doing so. If He has been pleased 
 that the Evangelists should give us differing 
 accounts of the same fact, it was for wise 
 reasons that He did so, and that we might 
 make wise use of the difference, not that we 
 might cover it up and hide it out of sight. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 107 
 
 To my mind these differences (discrepancies, 
 as they are called) are the strongest possible 
 marks of the truth of the facts themselves. 
 If the Evangelists were deceivers, intent upon 
 making men believe that things happened 
 which never did happen, they would have 
 taken good care that no such differences should 
 be found in their stories. But being, as they 
 were, independent and honest narrators of 
 facts which really happened, they were liable 
 to what occurs to all human witnesses — they 
 reported variously, and sometimes inconsis- 
 tently one with another. And there used to 
 be no diflSculty in getting people to acknow- 
 ledge this. I remember in the Greek Testa- 
 ment which we used to read when I was young, 
 with notes written by a very good sound man. 
 Dr. Burton, Professor of Divinity at Oxford, 
 we were told regarding some difficulty in the 
 Acts of the Apostles, that " probably St. Luke 
 was not well informed respecting this part of 
 St. Paul's life : " and no one thought any harm 
 
io8 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 of tliis then, because it was — not perhaps in 
 this particular case, but in many others — 
 what every intelligent man then thought. But 
 men are now become such slaves to the letter, 
 and so careless about the spirit, of Holy Scrip- 
 ture, that they will maintain every account to 
 be separately true in every detail, or else they 
 sa}?- we cannot believe our Bibles. 
 
 Well, darlings, we all do believe our Bibles : 
 and yet we do not believe that Jaeirus's daugh- 
 ter was dead, as St. Matthew says she was, 
 when her father came to Jesus. 
 
 Now Jaeirus was the ruler of the sjmagogue, 
 and as such was perhaps present when the 
 Lord healed the withered hand some time 
 before. His faith had been deeply rooted 
 before he could say of his dying child, " Come, 
 lay thy hand on her, and she shall live." You 
 know in some measure, dear children, and 
 mamma and I know in full bitterness, the 
 anguish of despair which takes possession of 
 us when one very dearly loved lies in extreme 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 109 
 
 danger. And icc have felt it all the more, 
 because it has so happened that not one of our 
 beloved ones has ever been seriously ill and 
 recovered. In their cases illness has meant 
 death : and so, as one after another has been 
 struck down, we have sunk at once, I fear, 
 into hopelessness frora the first — hopelessness 
 which it would take a very strong faith to 
 penetrate and illumine. 
 
 The blessed Lord was never slow at the call 
 of faith. He, followed by his disciples, went 
 at once with the anxious father. Eut on the 
 way an incident occurred which occasioned 
 delay. And the delay, humanly speaking, was 
 fatal. During it the poor child had died. 
 " It is of no farther use to trouble the ^Master 
 to come ; " thus ran the message from the 
 ruler's house. What efiect the words had on 
 him we are not told. Jesus overheard them 
 being spoken, and made answer to them by 
 an address to the father, ''Be not afraid: 
 believe only, and she shall be made whole." 
 
no 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 The inhabitants of Capernaum could not 
 have been ignorant of the raising of the 
 widow's son at ^^ain : so that we can hardly 
 attribute the tenor of the message to Jaeirus to 
 ignorance of the 'power of Jesus. We may 
 fairly set it down either to the slowness of 
 men to take in and appropriate (so to speak) 
 such astounding facts, or to some idea that 
 that former miracle had been wrought in 
 favour of a peculiarl}^ heartrending case of 
 bereavement, and that it formed no justifica- 
 tion for urging on " the Master " a request to 
 do the like in this more ordinary case. 
 
 But the company have reached the house : 
 and there they find the noisy accompaniments 
 of Eastern woe, the minstrels and the multi- 
 tude making a noise," as St. Matthew has it : 
 " a tumult, and the people weeping and wail- 
 ing greatly," as St. Mark. It does not quite 
 appear whether all the disciples, or only Peter, 
 James, and John, came with Him : probably 
 only the latter, as apparently asserted by St. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Mark. But however few tlie attendants might 
 be, the intrusion of strangers at such a time, 
 with a purpose manifestly alien from the 
 mournful employ of those assembled, set the 
 two comj^anies in strong contrast. Their be- 
 haviour provokes a rebuke from the Lord : 
 " Why make ye this ado, and weep ? the child 
 is not dead, but sleepeth." All the Evangelists 
 describe in the same words the reply of the 
 multitude : "they laughed Him to scorn;" and 
 St. Luke, the physician, adds, " knowing that 
 she was dead." 
 
 But He put them all aside. There was 
 something of the majesty with which He had 
 gone up to the bier at T^ain, when they who 
 bare it stood still : so that all yielded and made 
 way. 
 
 But what exactly do we suppose the Lord 
 meant by " She is not dead, but sleepeth ? 
 Because, you see, she was really dead : and 
 the knowledge that she was, provoked that 
 scorn of which we read in the minds of the 
 
112 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 people. The meaning seems clear, if we think 
 of what He had it in his mind to do. " This 
 death, which you weep and bewail, is in reality- 
 no more than a mid- day slumber, so soon shall 
 it come to an end." 
 
 And now they enter the chamber of death, 
 those six — the Lord, the three disciples, the 
 father and mother of the maiden. How like 
 are all chambers of death — and yet how unlike 
 others was this one ! You remember when 
 we four last entered such a chamber * — and on 
 that little press-bed in the corner by the 
 window lay all we cared for in that room. 
 The rosy beams of the setting sun, I remem- 
 ber, streamed in at the window and filled it 
 with glory ; the sea outside lay bright under 
 the great red orb : what recked we of these, or 
 of aught else there but of that one pale form ? 
 We scarce dared breathe — even grief was 
 lulled, and all was solemnised, without a feel- 
 
 * This description, like the one in the Second Homily, 
 refers to the scene of our dear hoy's death in 1850. — Ed. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 113 
 
 ing bej^ond. And, as I said, how different 
 was this chamber of which we now speak ! 
 There lay the pale form from which life had 
 but now fled, with, we may well imagine, that 
 first sweet look of death, which seems more 
 like the living person than was e^en life 
 itself : — 
 
 *' Before decay's eflfacing fingers 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers." * 
 
 But here is something more than that pale 
 form : here is One greater than death : here 
 is a restless hope, a leaping expectation, that 
 makes every heart throb, and fixes every eye, 
 not on the lifeless form, but on Him, the Lord 
 of Life. See — He approaches the bed — He 
 takes the waxen hand as it lies on the side — 
 He speaks, and they are the gentlest word 
 of afiection. " Come, my child," He says — 
 no more ; and the maiden arises as if out of a 
 sweet slumber at awaking time. She rises, 
 
 * From Byron's Giaour," line 72. — Ed. 
 I 
 
114 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 not to languor and disease, but to liealth and 
 appetite. She begins to walk; and He com- 
 manded tliat food should be given her. 
 
 And all this is to be kept secret. " He 
 ordered them many times that none should 
 know the matter," says St. Mark. Yery 
 strange sound these injunctions of the Lord. 
 For how was the truth to be kept from the 
 multitude without ? What account could the 
 parents give, but one ? The death might no 
 doubt have seemed to them to have been but a 
 suspension of life : but here was more. Here 
 was the girl who but now was in the last stage 
 of dangerous disease, in perfect health. She 
 who had not perhaps left her bed for many 
 days, was now walking among them, and 
 strong. It may seem strange to say it, but 
 one cannot help feeling that these injunctions 
 of the Lord must always have been from the 
 very nature of the case, broken — as we know 
 they were broken in some related instances : 
 "the more He commanded them, the more a 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 great deal they published it." And the real 
 practical result which they had may have been 
 this — that they lay as an obligation on the 
 consciences of the healed person and the 
 friends, not to make vain boast of the miracle, 
 or to use it as food for idle curiosity. 
 
IX. 
 
 rj^HIS is an evening I have long looked for- 
 ward to. For of all the narratives of our 
 Lord's acts none is so full of his majesty and 
 his sympathy as this of the raising of Lazarus. 
 We have been in some measure prepared for 
 it by those previous miracles of raising from 
 the dead ; but when we approach this, we at 
 once feel that we are in a different atmosphere, 
 so to speak, and with wholly different circum- 
 stances to consider. 
 
 Let me try to explain this. Those other 
 two were wrought, so to speak, in the course 
 of events. The Lord was sent for to the house 
 of Jaeirus : He met the funeral procession at 
 the gates of Nain. Doubtless both wonderful 
 acts did much to disperse his fame abroad. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 117 
 
 Of tlie latter of tlic two we are expressly told 
 this. 
 
 But witii this raising of Lazarus all was 
 different. It was not a mere incident in one 
 of our Lord's progresses. It was a matter 
 carefully prepared and brought about by his 
 own design. It was, again, not merely an 
 act which spread abroad his fame. It had 
 indeed an effect, but of a far other kind. It 
 was, humanly speaking, the great moving 
 cause of the Lord's death. And He deliber- 
 ately did it, knowing it would have this effect. 
 
 Now all this removes it away from his 
 other miracles in dignity and significance. 
 And in another particular also is it removed 
 from them. You will remember, that not a 
 word is said of it in the three first Gospels. 
 We have it from St. John alone. And this is 
 a circumstance full of strangeness : so much 
 so, that many have been thereby induced to 
 seek for some reason why it should thus have 
 been. But no reason has ever been found, 
 
ii8 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 worth my naming to you : none which, would 
 for a moment satisfy young minds accustomed 
 to require something like probability when 
 reasons are given. Whatever may be the 
 cause, so it is : that neither in St. Matthew, 
 nor in St. Mark, nor in St. Luke, is any hint 
 whatever given of this greatest miraculous act 
 of Jesus, of this which, above every other act, 
 brought about his death. St. Luke admits us 
 to a glimpse of the family, and gives us an 
 interesting trait of the characters of the two 
 sisters ; but he never mentions their residence 
 at Bethany, nor indeed that Jesus went out to 
 Bethany during the former nights of the week 
 of his passion : which is related by the two 
 other Evangelists. Nor does St. Luke mention 
 the anointing which took place in the house 
 of the sisters : an incident related by the other 
 three. These facts may serve to show us how 
 vain is the attempt to give any account of the 
 framing of the Evangelic narratives. Thus 
 much indeed we may say, that it was natural 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 for that Evangelist who gives the inner history 
 of onr Lord's life and acts, to relate in all 
 its detail a matter so full of the manifesta- 
 tion hoth of his humanit}- and his divinity ; 
 natural for one who traces onwards his glori- 
 fication through the conflict which ended in 
 his death, to dwell on the great act which 
 brought that conflict to its issue. 
 
 What, little one, has the head sunk on my 
 knee already ? The beginning is not promis- 
 ing, is it ? Too dull, and too many long 
 words. TVell, we'll try now to come to some- 
 thing simpler. 
 
 The Lord had withdrawn himself from the 
 enmity of the Jews, which had risen to a head 
 after the healing of the man blind from his 
 birth, and the discourse about good and bad 
 shepherds. He was on the other side of 
 Jordan, probably at the other Bethany or 
 Bethabara, at the distance of about a day's 
 journey. 
 
 And now let us look in on the family at 
 
120 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 this Bethany. Here are a brother and two 
 sisters, all beloved by Jesus. They are not 
 called his disciples ; but they evidently be- 
 lieved on Him. They seem to have been 
 people of some wealth. We find one of the 
 sisters anointing the Lord with very costly 
 ointment : we find chief men among the Jews 
 coming to visit and comfort them. All this 
 is strangely interesting to us. Were there 
 more such persons ? or were these the only 
 persons thus beloved by our Lord ? 
 
 There was another member of the household 
 of whom we hear nothing in this history : and 
 that member was its head. For it was " in the 
 house of Simon the leper/' as we know from 
 St. Matthew and St. Mark, that the Lord was 
 anointed by Mary. Was Simon identical with 
 Lazarus ? Or was he no longer living, and 
 was the house still called by his name ? Or 
 was his house, when the anointing took place, 
 not that of Martha and Mary and Lazarus ? 
 and were they found in it merely as neigh- 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 121 
 
 hours or friends ? Or, again, was he perhaps 
 the hushand of Martha ? This may well have 
 heen : for Lazarus evidently was not the master 
 of the house, heing only one of those who sat 
 at meat with our Lord on the occasion of the 
 anointing. 
 
 So there is, you see, some uncertainty about 
 the members of the little household : which 
 however does not affect our conception of the 
 three concerned in this history — Martha, 
 Mary, and Lazarus. Xow avc all know the 
 course of the sacred story. I am not going 
 to tell it over again, but merely to try to give 
 life and freshness to our conceptions of it, by 
 dwelling on some portions. 
 
 Remember what we read last night in pre- 
 paration for our present emploj'ment — that 
 beautiful and living description in Stanlej^,* 
 of the situation of Bethany, and the roads 
 leading from it in each direction. And, re- 
 membering this, let us stand with the two 
 
 * "Sinai and Palestine," pp. 189 — 19'). 
 
122 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 sisters at the sick-bed of liim whom Jesus 
 loved. In vain they look, — in vain they have 
 for one whole day looked, — along the path 
 which ascends from the deep valley of the 
 Jordan for the well-known form of Him whose 
 coming is to end their harassing anxiety. 
 Somewhere under that distant line of moun- 
 tains He is tarrying. How should He have 
 received their earnest call, and not have 
 obeyed it ? Of his power they have no doubt. 
 If He were here, their brother would be safe. 
 This heaving frame would be quiet, these 
 damp dews of death w^ould disperse, at the 
 entrance and the first word of Him whom 
 they had long believed to be the Christ, the 
 Son of God, who should come into the world. 
 But He comes not. If there is no distrust 
 of his power, there gradually arises something 
 like distrust of his loving care. The words 
 of the two sisters to Him when He does come 
 seem to show this — Lord, if thou hadst been 
 here, my brother had not died." But the 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 123 
 
 dreary liours of hope deferred pass away, 
 tlie dark moment of death itself is past, — 
 the burial in the cave outside the village — the 
 first day of bereavement, — the second, — the 
 third, — with their companies of sympathizing 
 and well-meaning comforters from Jerusalem 
 coming and going : and yet — no help ! 
 
 At a certain time on the fourth day, Martha, 
 busy about her household matters, or having 
 gone forth into the village, hears that the 
 figure of Jesus has been descried coming up 
 the path. In a moment, without waiting to 
 tell her sister, who was in the house with 
 the band of friends from Jerusalem, she runs 
 to meet Him. And now, I think, there is 
 something to be said about Martha's words 
 to Him. First comes the sad and somewhat 
 complaining sentence : His presence might 
 have prevented that which had happened. Of 
 this it may of course be said that it need not 
 convey a complaint — because, if the death took 
 place before our Lord could possibly have 
 
124 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 reached Bethany (which it is not unlikely it 
 did) the words may merely be an expression 
 of earnest faith in his power, whenever and 
 wherever present. 
 
 But what does Martha add ? " Even now, 
 whatsoever thou shalt ask of Grod, God will 
 give thee." What does this mean ? I won't 
 confuse my little listener with other meanings 
 than that which I must think is the only 
 right one. Martha, in her forwardness and 
 rashness, for an instant anticipates the great 
 work which the Lord was about to do — and 
 she means, God will enable thee to raise 
 him up again, even now that he has been 
 dead four days.'' It was truly a rash thought 
 — and one not soberly formed by herself. 
 Afterwards she loses sight of it, as hasty 
 spirits are apt to lose sight of their own shifty 
 moods : she is blind to it, nay, she even 
 recoils from it, when it was on the point to 
 be realised. 
 
 Have we no similar instance in the Gospel 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 125 
 
 record r TVas not the rashness of the Lord's 
 own mother at Cana in Galilee something 
 very like this ? And do not our own Hves 
 furnish, in their lower degree, something of the 
 same kind ? TThilst some hardly certain step 
 is hanging: in doubt in our own minds, and 
 we are balancing interests and probabilities, 
 is it not frequently found that a woman or 
 a child has anticipated, by a swift instinctive 
 leap, the final result of our deliberations, and 
 announced our intention long before we had 
 formed it ? Xot that the Lord was thus 
 wavering — He knew what He would do : but 
 the analoorv is good on one side at least, that 
 of her whose rapid anticipation in its very 
 weakness grasped the great conclusion, pre- 
 determined by the Life-giver in his strength. 
 
 Understand her words thus, and all follows 
 naturally. " Thy brother shall rise again." 
 
 Yes," replies Martha, somewhat baffled and 
 thrown out of her train of thought by the 
 words, I know that he will, when all shall 
 
126 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 rise at the last day.'' And how is this 
 natural ? "Why does the Lord thus put her 
 off? Simply for this reason. Her previous 
 words placed the matter on a wrong ground. 
 They pointed at the bringing to life again 
 of her brother. True : but merely as a favour 
 to be asked of God, and to be obtained, as 
 a very holy man might obtain it, by prayer. 
 Such was not the thought with which the 
 Lord's great act was to be approached. His 
 own power, granted Him by the Father, but 
 not as a mere answer to a human prayer 
 may be granted, to have life in Himself, — 
 to be the Resurrection and the Life, the an- 
 nihilator of Death in the body and in the 
 soul, — this must be put forward and acknow- 
 ledged, before the glory of God in this act 
 could be seen aright. Does she believe this ? 
 
 Well, she does not quite apprehend the 
 glorious words : she is asked one thing, she 
 answers another thing : she is ready to believe 
 all — for she has long believed that He who 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 127 
 
 speaks to lier is the Christ, tlie Son of God 
 who was to come into the world. Whatever 
 this impKes, she believes ; but neither in her 
 answer, nor in her thoughts, does she enter 
 into the full meaning of the Lord's question. 
 And now she goes at once and calls her 
 sister. Perhaps the Lord had at this moment 
 asked for Mary : perhaps He had done so 
 before, and Martha naturally, when He began 
 to treat of high and holy truths, thought of 
 fetching her of whom we know from St. Luke 
 that she was used to sit at his feet and hear 
 his word. 
 
 She called her secrethj. That is, I suppose 
 she sent in to the place where she sat with 
 the Jews, to tell her that she was wanted : and 
 then, on her coming out, imparted to her the 
 intelligence. That this was probably so, i& 
 shown by the Jews only remarking that she 
 rose up quickly and went out. 
 
 They found Jesus in the same place where 
 Martha had met Him : a plain proof that it 
 
128 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 was really He who had sent for Mary, as 
 He remained there awaiting her coming. We 
 can all understand why He would not enter 
 the village, — without supposing, as some have 
 done, that it was because He desired privacy. 
 This was in fact the only one of his miracles 
 for which He desired publicity, as we shall see 
 further on. 
 
 The place was in the way from the village 
 to the grave, as appears by the Jews, who 
 thought Mary was going there to weep, fol- 
 lowing in her track. As she went, she wept, 
 and those who followed her wept also. And 
 here we have the very deepest and holiest 
 proof of the Blessed One's full share of our 
 common nature. The sight of sorrow in 
 others, if that sorrow also be his own, is more 
 than even the strong man can bear. And 
 the Lord's act of self-command is described 
 by a remarkable term : the same word as is 
 employed when He rebuked those whom He 
 healed, and charged them not to make Him 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 129 
 
 known. If such an English combination were 
 allowable, vehemently checking himself 
 would seem to be nearest to the sense : at 
 all events, nearer than " groaning," as our 
 version has it, which is not at all what is 
 intended. This check seemed to be necessary 
 for the utterance of the question which fol- 
 lowed : " Where have ye laid him ? " But 
 no sooner is it uttered, than nature had her 
 way. By those tears, human sorrows are 
 hallowed, human bereavements are glorified. 
 The gods of the heathen might not look upon 
 death : the world's Saviour wept at the grave 
 of his friend. Which of these would draw all 
 men unto him ? 
 
 On the great scene of the miracle itself, I 
 say but these few words. Martha seems 
 utterly to have shrunk back from her mo- 
 mentary hope, when she deprecates the 
 opening of the tomb. Her words may even 
 have been intended as an express repudiation 
 of her former rashly uttered assumption. 
 
 K 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 Secondly, the Lord's words must be re- 
 garded as having a close connection with that 
 former utterance of Martha's. He knew that 
 the Father always loved Him ; and in this 
 case too his prayer had been answered. So 
 that his thanksgiving was not as for anything 
 unexpected or unusual ; but had for its object 
 to persuade those who stood around of his 
 divine mission. 
 
 Thirdly, that the Lord's call to Lazarus 
 was not merely " a loud voice," but a loud 
 shout — symbolizing and anticipating that 
 voice of the Son of God which shall echo 
 one day through the sepulchres of the 
 world. 
 
 As to the manner of the dead coming forth, 
 some think that the grave-clothes were only 
 swathed round each limb, leaving movement 
 free. But it seems far more probable from 
 our Lord's command, Loose him and let 
 him go," that there was, as an old writer 
 observed, a miracle within a miracle — that 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 the form, swathed and confined, glided forth 
 supernaturally from the tomb. And so the 
 most ancient pictures represent it. 
 
 I have observed before that the Lord, who 
 in the earlier days of his ministry shrunk 
 from publicity for his wonderful acts, now 
 courts it. He even utters his prayer " because 
 of them that stood by." And all the conse- 
 quences of the work, wrought under the eye 
 of unsympathizing enemies, wrought at the 
 approach of the great assemblage of the 
 Jewish race at Jerusalem, were before Him: 
 the raising thereby of the enmity of the Chief 
 Priests and the Pharisees to its highest : the 
 fatal decree of the council which followed on 
 the miracle : the bringing about of the tri- 
 umphal entry, which St. John attributes en- 
 tirely to this miracle : the week of conflict, 
 ending in the cross and the grave. 
 
 And we seem to see that all this had been 
 long present to the Lord^s thoughts. For in 
 the parable of the rich man and the beggar, we 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 have remarkable anticipations of it. We are 
 told there of hardened ones who had in their 
 hand Moses and the prophets, but believed 
 them not : who would not be persuaded, 
 though one went unto them from the dead. 
 And, strange to say, in this one alone of the 
 Lord's parables, is a name given to the dead 
 subject of the history, and that name is 
 Lazarus. 
 
 And now, darlings, this has been, after all, 
 a disappointing evening. Of all the Lord's 
 miracles, this one, I suppose as so far trans- 
 cending in its sympathy and its majesty all 
 our thoughts and powers, most completely 
 baffles the preacher and writer. I never 
 heard a sermon, I never read a comment, on 
 the raising of Lazarus, that did not send me 
 away empt}^ as compared with the 'fulness 
 and refreshment after the Evangelist's own 
 grand and simple narrative. And so let our 
 night's lesson be, how empty are our thoughts, 
 our words, our feelings, in proportion as his 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 133 
 
 Presence is manifested, ^Yllo alone has all ful- 
 ness in Himself. 
 
 Jessie will perhaps repeat the touching lines 
 of our Laureate,* which occur to us as we leave 
 the wonderful story. 
 
 When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, 
 
 And home to Mary's house return' d, 
 "Was this demanded — if he yearn'd 
 
 To hear her weeping by his grave ? 
 
 " Where wert thou, brother, those four days ?" 
 
 There lives no record of reply, 
 
 Which telling what it is to die 
 Had surely added praise to praise. 
 
 From every house the neighbours met, 
 
 The streets were filled with joyful sound, 
 A solemn gladness even crown' d 
 
 The purple brows of Olivet. 
 
 Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 
 
 The rest remaineth unreveal'd ; 
 
 He told it not ; or something aeal'd 
 The lips of that Evangelist.* 
 
 * Tennyson's "In Memoriam," No. 31. — Ed. 
 
X. 
 
 ■^HAT shall it be to-night ? Well, Margey, 
 there are man}" things tempting us — 
 which shall we choose? Our last talk was 
 about that wonderful raising of Lazarus. But 
 we advanced thus far in our Lord's life only in 
 order to put together those three raisings of the 
 dead which are recorded for us in the Gospels. 
 We have omitted much that might serve to 
 bring his blessed Words and works before us 
 on these our Sunday evenings. Shall it be 
 miracles, or parables, or incidents ? We have a 
 great work before we finish if we are to talk 
 of the Lord's sufferings and death and resur- 
 rection ; but we must necessarily reserve these 
 till last. Let us pause and think. 
 
 Well, it seems we ought to have thought 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 135 
 
 before. So suppose we give ourselves a week, 
 and by next Sunday get our plan arranged, 
 and meantime I will take a subject closely 
 connected witb our great tbeme, the Lord's 
 life and words, tbongli not in its direct course ; 
 I mean the course of him who was the Lord's 
 forerunner, John the Baptist. 
 
 We have already said something about the 
 beginning of that course when we spoke of the 
 childhood of Jesus. The two holj^ children were 
 relations : what relations, does not appear ; for 
 the word rendered cousin " in Luke i. 36, is 
 merely " kinswoman *' in the original. They 
 might doubtless thus have been frequently 
 thrown together. This has perhaps been as- 
 sumed in our thoughts more as a matter of 
 course than it should have been. In childhood, 
 and as long as Elizabeth his mother lived, it 
 may have been so ; but she was old at John's 
 birth, and so was his father, Zechariah, and the 
 words, " the child . . . was in the deserts till the 
 day of his showing unto Israel," would seem 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 best interpreted by supposing that when he be- 
 came an orphan he took to a wild solitary life. 
 At all events, at the time of the baptism there 
 does not seem to have been any very inti- 
 mate acquaintance between him and our Lord, 
 as we shall have occasion to remark by-and-by. 
 Still, there appears no reason why there should 
 not have been frequent intercourse in child- 
 hood. Let us think on this first. 
 
 Of course the representations of Christian 
 art are symbolic, rather than aiming at matter 
 of fact. As we before remarked, the Holy 
 Child is ever the unclothed and sinless One, 
 whereas John is partially clothed to represent 
 the fact that he had inherited sin, and there- 
 fore shame. Probably in matter of fact, both 
 children were naked alike without clothing ; 
 for such is the custom of those Eastern 
 countries, and their customs do not vary. 
 JN^or, of course, have we any right to assume 
 that there was any such constant pointing out 
 of the Child Jesus as our painters are fond 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 137 
 
 of representing ; nay, we may be certain there 
 was not : otherwise John could not in any 
 sense have said, " I knew Him not " at the 
 baptism. This again, in our paintings, is 
 purely symbolic. 
 
 I make these remarks to prevent our con- 
 founding truth in art with truth in fact. That 
 may be intensely true in art which never 
 happened, and could never have happened, in 
 fact. 
 
 "Well, the aged father and mother are 
 gathered to their rest, and the strange boy 
 is left alone. He had waxed strong in 
 spirit;" was bold, and solitary, and original; 
 unlike other children. We may conjecture by 
 the after-events of his course, what was the 
 character of this originality and strength of 
 spirit. The conventional sins of his time, the 
 pomps and vanities of society, the corrupt 
 degeneracy of the people of God — these were 
 to him matters of aversion and loathing. In- 
 stead of soft clothing worn in kings' houses. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 lie is content witli the scanty girdle of skin, 
 and the cloak of earners hair for cold ; instead 
 of delicate fare, he feeds on the edible locust, 
 and flavours it with the honey from the rock. 
 His dwelling is in the den, or cave, or tomb ; 
 on the mountain side he roams and meditates. 
 Eumours are abroad that he has been seen by 
 one and another ; we may imagine him, before 
 the day of his showing unto Israel,'' goiiig 
 far to warn the sinner hastening to his ruin, 
 testifying to right, telling the truth, and 
 boldly rebuking vice ; we can fancy his fame 
 spread far and wide as a strange and holy 
 youth and man (for near upon thirty years 
 thus passed), before the Spirit of the Lord 
 came upon him. Thirty years — or say, 
 twenty. Do we realise this ? Imagine that 
 a lad in strange dress and uttering strange 
 words, had taken up his abode in our forest 
 in 1849, and was living there as a man still. 
 We can hardly imagine the state of society in 
 which such a thing could be. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 139 
 
 Well, the years sped on — and at last the 
 young man's thoughts, so true, so noble, so 
 wild and solitary, were lit up by fire from 
 above. The word of the Lord — the " daughter 
 of the Voice," as the Jews called it, came to 
 him in the wilderness. And then he saw that 
 he was set not merely to rebuke the age and 
 to warn sinners, but to prepare the way of the 
 Lord ; that the old prophecies which he had 
 learned at his holy mother's knees were to be 
 fulfilled in himself and in One whose herald he 
 was to be. 
 
 And then the wild figure came forth from 
 its hiding-places, and began to cry, "Eepent, 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Up 
 and down, in the tracks of the passover pil- 
 grims, along the march of soldiers, beside the 
 caravans of merchants, the weird Elijah-like 
 form appeared — the loud piercing cry sounded. 
 We can see him, as old painters have given 
 him, rough and desert-grown, but beautiful in 
 the strength of his youth, bare to the loins, 
 
140 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 and with his sinewy arm pointing to heaven. 
 And some doubtless scoffed, and others went 
 their way quick for fear they should look and 
 have to listen ; but more stood and heeded 
 him. And then, what a scene was there ! 
 For not one did he spare. No compliments — 
 no soft words. The merchant, the soldier, the 
 publican, all heard the bold^ words that went 
 right home and rankled in the heart. And 
 when he saw some of rank and learning 
 coming, it was not, " Make way for those 
 gentlemen;" but it was, 0 brood of vipers, 
 who hath taught you to flee from the wrath 
 which is at hand ? " 
 
 But what do we see ? The holy man enters 
 the river Jordan, which flowed by the scene of 
 his crying in the wilderness ; and hundreds 
 enter with him. One after another they cast 
 off their garments, they bow the head, and 
 pass under the water at his bidding — the 
 water which represents to them their pro- 
 fession, repentance and the washing away of 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 141 
 
 sin. But as lie baptizes, lie protests — This 
 is not all — this is not the end — this baptism is 
 only a sign of repentance — there is another 
 and a greater — a pouring out of fire and the 
 Spirit of God — and One is coming to perform 
 it, One who is more above me, than the master 
 is above the meanest of his slaves.'' 
 
 Strange scene — to which no revival on this 
 or the other side of the Atlantic has ever seen 
 the like — Jordan's banks and Jordan itself 
 full of eager multitudes — all the Holy Land 
 there, and crowds from outside it. '^yhat an 
 era it must have been in the religious world" 
 of that land ! How old conservative Scribes 
 and Pharisees must have shaken their heads, 
 and called out upon the times ! How many 
 decorums must have been violated, when wise 
 old grey-beards submitted to be taught by 
 this wild rustic, and dainty daughters of 
 Israel passed through the waters under his 
 hands weeping tears of penitence ! 
 
 But such, dear ones, is God's way when He 
 
142 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 prepares it ; and doubtless many a score of 
 disciples was born for Christ wbo came after, 
 by this revolutionary infringer of decorums. 
 For his cry ever was, " Not I, but another — a 
 greater than I is coming ! My baptism is but 
 half — is not half, that which God has to do 
 with you.'* 
 
 One day, among the crowd, came a young 
 man to be baptized, known to John, and yet 
 unknown. Known — for he had long been 
 acquainted with Him personally — he had long 
 known his blameless life and holy character ; 
 but unknown, for he had never heard of his 
 high mission ; this was known probably, since 
 the death of Joseph and the parents of John, 
 to none but her who had laid up and pon- 
 dered all the events of his infancy in her 
 heart. 
 
 With noble humility, John declares, " I have 
 need to be baptized of thee : and comest thou 
 to me ? " And after the baptism, a sacred 
 sign, long ago announced to him, reveals to 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 143 
 
 him that his holy kinsman was the Gfreater 
 One, who should baptize with the Holy Ghost. 
 
 At once the self-renouncing Baptist pro- 
 ceeds to fulfil his direct mission, of sending 
 men to Christ. IN'o long time after, when a 
 commission was sent out from Jerusalem to- 
 demand of John who he was, and why he did 
 these things, he plainly told them that the 
 Great Baptizer with the Holy Ghost was 
 among them ; that he was nothing but a voice 
 in the wilderness, preparing the way before 
 Him. And the very day after this inquiry, 
 he directs two of his disciples avray from him- 
 self to Jesus, pointing Him out as the Lamb of 
 God. 
 
 There is nothing finer in history than this 
 self -renouncing : except perhaps the noble 
 testimony which the same holy man bears to 
 our Lord further on in the same fourth Gospel^ 
 calling Him the Bridegroom, and himself only 
 the Bridegroom's friend — announcing that 
 Jesus must increase; and he must decrease. 
 
144 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 And accordingly from this time onwards the 
 star of the Baptist wanes and pales before the 
 rising Sun. 
 
 The next we hear of him is in the court 
 of a licentious tyrant, Herod Antipas. This 
 bad man, as it so often happens, was not wholly 
 bad. He had times of good resolves, and at 
 such times he sent for John, and heard him 
 willingly, and even made changes in his con- 
 duct in consequence. But at last, as so often 
 in intercourse between bad men and good, 
 came a time when something had to be told 
 which would give mortal offence. Herod had 
 taken away Herodias, his brother's wife, and 
 lived with her as his own. ''It is not lawful 
 for thee to have her,'' said the intrepid man of 
 God : thereby making himself the object, and 
 at last the victim, of the abandoned woman's 
 vengeance. 
 
 But first comes a very remarkable passage 
 in John's course, respecting which some have 
 doubted as to how we are to explain it. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 145 
 
 He was lying in Herod's prison at Mactaerus, 
 a town in Peraea. Our Lord was teaching and 
 working miracles in the neighbouring district 
 of Galilee. Let us think for a moment of the 
 two. 
 
 We may well imagine what an earnest and 
 lively interest John must have taken in the 
 Person and career of our Lord. Think what 
 his own baptism had been — and then remem- 
 ber that it was to be as nothing in comparison 
 with that nobler baptism with the Holy Ghost 
 and with fire which the Lord was to confer. His 
 own, the lesser baptism, had been frequented 
 by immense multitudes from the whole of 
 Palestine. What then was this second and 
 greater baptism accomplishing ? In his prison 
 he heard of the works of the Christ. But what 
 were they ? A few miracles of healing in an 
 obscure district — and these accompanied with 
 strict injunctions to the healed not to publish 
 his fame abroad. Was this He who was to 
 come ? Not that the Baptist could really 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 doubt concerning the Person or the mission 
 of Jesus. But all this was so unlike anything 
 which he had foretold — the Lord's way of 
 comparative obscurity and delay was so incom- 
 prehensible to him — his soul too, very likely, 
 was so faint, and sick with hope deferred, — that 
 he sends by his disciples a message, meant, I 
 cannot doubt, as a stimulus to that glorious 
 course which seemed to him to be but half 
 undertaken, "Art thou He that should come, 
 or do we look for another ? " How the Lord 
 answered this inquiry we know : our present 
 concern is more with the testimony which it 
 drew from Him to the person and career of 
 John. This reed shaken with the wind, this 
 Fainter under persecution, — was John this, 
 when they vrent out into the wilderness to see 
 him ? Nay, he was a prophet, and more than 
 a prophet : the greatest of the sons of men, — 
 the messenger sent to prepare the way of 
 the Lord. But the grace of the Gospel, the 
 standing and glory of even the little ones of 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 147 
 
 Christ's kingdom, these he had not : the 
 brightest star of night is weaker than the 
 feeblest beam of the risen day. 
 
 And now we come to the closing scene — 
 that dark record of hasty vows, and watchful 
 vengeance, and holy blood shed as water on 
 the earth. 
 
 It was a great festal day. The lords and 
 high captains and chief men of Galilee sat 
 at a banquet with the king. The feasting was 
 over, and the wine was flowing freely. The 
 daughter of Herodias came in and danced 
 before them. Strange place and scene — and 
 strange consequences followed. The infatuated 
 king, robbed of his better senses by the plea- 
 sure of the licentious exhibition, mads her the 
 fatal promise, — confirmed it by the fatal oath. 
 The girl is puzzled what to ask — she goes and 
 consults her mother. Then vindictive hatred, 
 ever ready, makes its spring : " Ask for the 
 head of John the Baptist." And so, as a bit of 
 after-supper entertainment, at the asking of a 
 
148 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 worthless girl, in spite of tlie wretclied king's 
 undissembled grief and reluctance, the minister 
 of death is sent to the prison, the greatest of 
 the sons of men is foully slain, and the holy 
 lips which had uttered the message of God's 
 Spirit to Israel are given into the hand of 
 the wanton, are passed about for the gaze 
 of the revellers, and are finally delivered up 
 to the criminal wife herself to insult and 
 cast out. 
 
 Never was a more terrible tale — never one 
 with sadder, wilder contrasts. It has almost 
 the same character, in its higher realm of 
 interest, as that of some of the old Greek 
 histories of which I was telling Jessie the 
 other day — the character of irony — mockery 
 of human pomp, and mockery too of even 
 solemn human hope. The sport of the reveller, 
 the reward of wanton frolic, is the mangled 
 head of God's prophet : and on the other side, 
 the end of the glorious career of the forerunner 
 of the world's King is to fall as it were by a 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 149 
 
 chance blow, yictim to the spite of a worthless 
 woman. 
 
 But if the holy martyr had small respect 
 there, it was not so everywhere. The poor 
 mutilated body was cared for by the disciples 
 who had followed his teaching : and when 
 they had done this, they went and told Jesus. 
 
 And here is perhaps the most notable feature 
 of the whole. The Lord when He heard it, 
 went apart into a desert place to pray. Was 
 it, that the Forerunner had gone before Him, 
 as in ministry, so now in suffering? For 
 from this time seems to come gradualh\over 
 Him that deepening cloud into which He 
 entered further and further, till He fell into 
 the very power of darkness. 
 
 And now it has struck me, my darlings, 
 that we arc all, however unlike in the actual 
 facts of our position, yet in some remarkable 
 particulars like this Forerunner. 
 
 I need not tell you, how we are all put here 
 to point out and testify to the same Great One 
 
I50 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 wlio is to come — this, thank God, we know, 
 and I believe we are doing it, each in our 
 place, as God has given us power. 
 
 But the point in which I would make the 
 comparison is this. "We are living, as he 
 lived, each of us, at the end of the night, at 
 the break of a brighter day. " The night is 
 far spent, the day is at hand." Whatever we 
 may be now, the greatest, wisest, holiest of 
 us all in the Church on earth is less than the 
 least on that other side. 
 
 And we, in our imperfect estimate of our 
 Lord's ways, may like him be disposed some- 
 times to look out of our earthly prison, and in 
 displeasure at his delay, almost question his 
 mission. 
 
 So do temptations and so do duties repeat 
 themselves, and characters even the most un- 
 like cover common ground. 
 
 And another thing has struck me while we 
 have been concluding, with reference to our 
 future subjects. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 This martyrdom of Jolin seem?, as I said, 
 to have been the first great introduction to our 
 blessed Lord of the approaching period of his 
 sufierings. 
 
 How will it be, if we devote some of these 
 our evenings in tracing out his sufferings ? I 
 don't think that exactly this has been done 
 before — I mean following out, from the very 
 beginning, the tokens of the coming Passion. 
 It will be work of the deepest interest, and 
 will, I think, admirably suit these our evening 
 talks, which are rather exercises of the fancy 
 about divine things than regular treatments of 
 divine things themselves. 
 
 I see Jessie is looking at the clock and at 
 her music-stand. Well, there can be but one 
 thing to-night — that glorious opening of the 
 Messiah again. I wish we could do Wise's 
 grand anthem, " Prepare ye the way." But 
 we have not numbers for that : numbers, I 
 mean, who can take up points such as there 
 are in that anthem. 
 
XI. 
 
 JN these our Sunday evenings' talks we have 
 hitherto dealt exclusively with the history 
 of our Blessed Lord. And there is plenty yet 
 remaining for us in that inexhaustible store- 
 house to draw out and enjoy hereafter. 
 
 But it may be well for us all, and even for 
 our little one here, that we should sometimes 
 talk over other points of religious interest. 
 And Jessie has asked me a question, arising 
 out of what she has been reading in the 
 papers, which may I think profitably employ 
 us to-night. Besides touching a point of 
 Christian conduct on which we all want 
 putting right, it actually does connect itself 
 with a portion of our Lord's life on earth, and 
 with a memorable utterance of his sacred lips. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 153 
 
 She wonders how we are to reconcile our 
 Lord's own sayings about his disciples with 
 the conduct of his disciples now. And she 
 especially selects that one saying which He 
 uttered about the man who did not follow 
 after the Apostles, and yet worked miracles in 
 his name. 
 
 "Well, certainly if we wanted an extreme 
 case of nonconformity, we could not have 
 imagined a stronger one. For here were the 
 chosen company, and in the midst of them the 
 Blessed One Himself, going the way appointed 
 for Him, nay at that very time setting out on 
 the great final journey which was to lead to 
 his sufferings and death. And here was one, 
 following Him not as they followed Him, 
 having some peculiar belief and notions of his 
 own about Him as the Messiah, yet strong 
 enough in that faith, such as it was, to work 
 miracles in his name. And this man goes 
 his own way in his nonconformitj' and per- 
 versity, — lets the great and holy company 
 
154 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 round the Lord Himself, tlie future founders 
 and pillars of his Church, go their way, and 
 walks on in his separatist pride and irreve- 
 rence. Was there ever such a case for an 
 anathema ? What a noble and decisive ex- 
 ample might the Lord have set at that mo- 
 ment, which should have put down for ever 
 all such independence of thought and action 
 through the coming ages of the Church ! He 
 had lately rebuked an Apostle with " Get 
 thee behind me, Satan : has He no words 
 in reserve, even stronger than those, whose 
 terrible sound may echo down the spaces of 
 time, and wither back during the long here- 
 after the first springings of dissidence among 
 his followers ? 
 
 But as we look at the case, there appears 
 in it something more than we have as yet 
 touched. We have already remarked, that 
 this happened at the outset of that great last 
 journey to Jerusalem. !N^ow about that jour- 
 ney there was something very solemn, and of 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 155 
 
 its own kind. It was the especial dedication 
 of the Lamb of God to his sufferings for the 
 sin of the world. The resolve, uttered in the 
 words, " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem," 
 was uppermost in his soul, when the rash 
 Peter rebuked Him for what seemed a morbid 
 dwelling on the sufferings about to be sought 
 by Him. It was the abhorrent idea of any- 
 check in his own soul to that all-absorbing 
 and holy resolve, which led Him to turn so 
 sharply on his Apostle, and to designate him 
 as no other than a servant of the adversary 
 who would turn Him away from his chosen 
 work of love. And then in the power of that 
 great resolve. He went before his chosen band, 
 with his face stedfastly set towards Jerusalem, 
 divinely glorified for his divine errand. What 
 words are those of St. Mark, where he says, 
 " Jesus went before them, and they were 
 amazed ; and as they followed, they were 
 afraid" ! 
 
 It seems the chapter of the Gospel history 
 
156 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 fullest of the Divinity, fullest of the atoning 
 Love of the Blessed Jesus : the one time of all 
 others when those who followed behind Him 
 were the most closely knit into his personality 
 as the Holy One of God, most sprinkled by 
 anticipation with the blood of that sacrifice, 
 which He was to offer for them and for all. 
 
 And yet, at such a time, when God manifest 
 in the flesh was bursting the bands of his 
 humiliation, when the holy shadow of suffer* 
 ing was enwrapping the mystical body in 
 union with its consecrated Head — at such a 
 time, was one calling himself Christ's, who 
 looked askance upon the one company which 
 carried the world's salvation, and refused the 
 appointed path by which the Son of God was 
 ascending to his deed of love. 
 
 Again, what nobler opportunity could have 
 been offered to the Lord, of once for all putting 
 an end to the rejection of holy doctrine ? That 
 indignation with which He repelled the idea 
 of backwardness to suffer on his own part, 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 157 
 
 shall it not break fortli against one wlio has 
 no sympathy with, and cares not to travel on, 
 that journey of redeeming love ? 
 
 But all is not yet exhausted. Those Twelve, 
 and the others who accompanied Him — if they 
 imperfectly apprehended the great things of 
 which I have been speaking, at least were 
 ardent and blameless in their love for Himself 
 and reverence for his person. Once, He had 
 said something too hard for their understand- 
 ing. In consequence, many of the disciples 
 had left Him and walked no longer with Him. 
 And when He turned to the Twelve and asked 
 them, "Will ye also go away?" they had 
 replied, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou 
 hast the words of eternal life." Now it re- 
 quires no stretch of imagination to persuade 
 ourselves that this man of whom we are 
 speaking had split off at that very time. "We 
 are not told, mind, that those who did so 
 ceased to be disciples, but that they ceased to 
 walk with Jesus. If this were so, then there 
 
158 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 had been a distinct offence given, and an act 
 of alienation had taken place from the person 
 and company of the Divine Master. And 
 when we think of this, think at the same time 
 of all the loving invitations to come to Him 
 and follow after Him which the Lord was 
 ever giving, and then picture to yourselves 
 this man, who refused them all, and preferred 
 not to walk with Him. For such an one, can 
 any rebuke be too decided, any discourage- 
 ment too pointed ? But even one thing more 
 remains. If — and there can be no reason why 
 it should not have been so — this man were one 
 of those who ceased to walk with the Lord on 
 that occasion, why and on what account had 
 he so gone back ? I said, because Jesus had 
 littered something too hard for his compre- 
 hension. Now, of what kind had that hard 
 saying been, and on what subject ? Why, 
 precisely on the one most solemn subject on 
 which our Lord could discourse to his dis- 
 ciples — on that eating of his Flesh, and drink- 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 159 
 
 ing of his Blood, by whicli we have part in 
 Him, and live by Him : tbat partaking of 
 Him, wbicb is represented to us, and made 
 real by our faith, in the holy ordinance which 
 He afterwards instituted — the Sacrament of 
 the Lord's Supper. This it was, which those 
 who went back, and walked no longer with 
 Him, found too hard for them, and could not 
 bear. Those it would be, who, when the ordi- 
 nance pointed at by our Lord's discourse had 
 been founded, might indeed be willing and 
 glad to partake of it as a touching remem- 
 brance, but would still take offence at its 
 higher and holier aspects. All the great 
 foundation doctrines which centre in that holy 
 Sacrament were put aside by this disciple who 
 walked no longer with Jesus. He saw no 
 beauty, no life, in them : the sayings concern^ 
 ing them offended Him, and formed no part 
 of his religion. Once more, and for the last 
 ^ime, who so richly seemed to deserve strong 
 rebuke as this neglecter, this despiser, of the 
 
i6o FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 grandest doctrines which lie at the root of the* 
 Christian life ? , 
 
 Let us just sum up what we have been 
 gathering together. Here is a man calling 
 himself a disciple of Christ. But he follows 
 not with that band of chosen ones of which 
 He is the centre, and who are bound together 
 by the confession that He is the Holy One of 
 Ood : he has no sympathy with that road to 
 the Cross, along which the Lamb of God is 
 leading his own : he has been offended at our 
 Lord's words, and has broken away from his 
 ■company ; and the words at which he has 
 taken offence are the very character of the 
 central doctrine of the Christian life, the par- 
 taking of the Body and Blood of the Lord in 
 the Ordinance of his own appointing. 
 
 And now the indignant disciples, having 
 seen him in this his separation naming the 
 name of Christ, approach the Master with the 
 tidings, and in look and tone demand the 
 anathema so justly due. They themselves had 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. i6i 
 
 already forbidden the intruder : forbidden him 
 on the usual ground — " because he followeth 
 not with us." There could be but one way of 
 following Christ ; and if perchance they were 
 disposed to allow more than one, yet it would 
 be impossible that this one, w^ith all its defects 
 and all its offences, could be allowable. 
 
 But what is the Lord's answer ? " Forbid 
 him not." Oh wonderful reply ! And the 
 reason is not less wonderful : " For he that is 
 not against us is for us." To what do they 
 amount when united ? To what but this — 
 Put no check on efforts for Christ, however 
 ill-judged, however self-w411ed, however im- 
 perfect as to grasp of doctrine or entire alle- 
 giance to Him as others judge it : He who 
 knows the heart, let Him be judge of the 
 heart's intents. Aim not at, expect not, con- 
 formity : all think not alike, all feel not alike, 
 all act not alike. Christ came for all, is wide 
 enough for all, is deep enough for all : let all 
 come to Him — let all work for Him. Oh who 
 
62 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 can tell the depth and breadth of love which 
 is in that human heart of our Blessed Master ? 
 Very few, my darlings, make the slightest 
 effort to conceive it. Look at what Christ's 
 Church in general has done. She has laid 
 down a certain framework of outward govern- 
 ment and of doctrine, and then has faced about 
 to the world, and proclaimed. This or none ! 
 All who, calling themselves by Christ's name, 
 doing good in Christ's name, follow not with 
 her, she has severely and ruthlessly forbidden. 
 From the first days downwards, this has been 
 her habit, and is her habit still. How far she 
 has put it forth in practice, has depended 
 simply on how much power the human laws 
 of this or that country have given her power 
 to persecute. Death, torture, banishment, 
 spoiling of goods, deprivation of civil rights, 
 these have been her treatment of those re- 
 specting whom her Lord has commanded, 
 " Forbid him not." And where these were, 
 owing to good laws made by Christian states. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 163 
 
 not in her power, there she has done all she 
 could in the same direction. She has drawn 
 up canons, as they are called, full of curses 
 of such her fellow- Christians ; she has called 
 them by all sorts of hard names ; she has 
 turned the cold shoulder upon them, and 
 excluded them from common society. And if 
 any have made a real attempt to return to the 
 example of our Blessed Master in their treat- 
 ment of these their brethren, the persecutors 
 have turned upon them with a rage lamentable 
 to behold. 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the incident 
 out of which Jessie's question arose. A body 
 of men, associated for a high and holy work,* 
 purpose to begin that work by receiving to- 
 gether the blessed Supper of the Lord. Among 
 them are several who, living and working in 
 Christ's name, follow not with us. To their 
 lasting honour, they accept the proposal, and 
 without scruple come with us to the Lord's 
 * The revision of th.e New Testament. 
 
64 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 Table, conforming to our Service, adopting 
 our posture, receiving the bread and wine at 
 the hands of our minister. Was ever a scene 
 over which our Blessed Master's loving heart 
 would more entirely have rejoiced ? Was ever 
 a concourse which ought to have been viewed 
 with more unmixed and ardent thankfulness ? 
 And yet, what has happened ? I am not sur- 
 prised, Jessie, that on reading that disgraceful 
 page in our English Church history, you 
 should have asked me the question which I 
 am endeavouring to answer. Instead of thank- 
 fulness, we have had a shout of indignation 
 and rage from the persecuting party. First of 
 all, they were not ashamed to quote, as against 
 a great and noble act of Christian love, the 
 minute rules of detail which are laid down to 
 guide us in our regular action with our own 
 members. Then, when this would not do, 
 they betook themselves to the assumption that 
 some one among these our brethren denied 
 the Divinity of our Blessed Lord. The 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 lbs 
 
 assumption happened to be a false one : no 
 matter : whether it were true or false, they 
 had taken no pains to examine : it served 
 their purpose to rouse angry feeling and to 
 build anathemas upon. Had it been as true 
 as it was false, we have seen what line of duty 
 our Lord's example points out to us. From 
 that Table Christ's disciples are not to be 
 driven away. Do they call Him Master ? Do 
 they devote themselves to his work ? Then, 
 however little they may hold of what we 
 ourselves esteem essential doctrine respecting 
 Him, we have no right to exclude them. To 
 do so, would be to insult Him, who alone 
 knows their hearts. To do so, would be to 
 scandalize the great yearnings of Christian 
 humanity, which in all its thousand varieties 
 of character, is drawn after Him. Come unto 
 me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden," 
 He stands and cries. " You shall not come," 
 shout our zealous friends. To which will the 
 Church listen ? 
 
i66 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 Well, I suppose we have no doubt about tbe 
 answer. I suppose we, though some of us are 
 young, are old enough to see through the 
 angry nonsense which has been talked about 
 this matter, and to know that the Lord didn't 
 mean his Apostles to cease from walking with 
 Him when He told them not to forbid those 
 who had thus ceased. We know that it is not 
 because we value Him little, but because we 
 value Him much, that we insist on embracing 
 as brethren all who call themselves by his 
 name ; because we hold his blessed and ador- 
 able Person to be the centre and heart of all 
 our faith, and not any system of truths which 
 has been built up around that Person. 
 
 But Jessie asked me one more question, 
 which I suppose I must try to answer also. 
 She wanted to know how it was that our 
 Fathers the Bishops had not answered the 
 persecuting memorials with more earnestness 
 and straightforwardness. 
 
 Well, Jessie, I lament as much as you can 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 167 
 
 that they have not taken the great opportunity 
 which God has put in their way, of standing 
 in the front of his Church and proclaiming 
 that the same mind is in them which was also 
 in Christ Jesus. But, my lassie, you don't 
 know bishops as well as I do. Many of them, 
 I believe almost all of them, feel just as you 
 and I do on this matter. But when a good 
 Christian man gets made a bishop, there is a 
 great chain put on his tongue, and he can't 
 say a great many things which he could and 
 did say before. You must allow for this. A 
 bishop has not merely his own view to main- 
 tain, but he has the whole Church to govern. 
 If I had been a bishop, I never could have 
 said what I have said to you to-night. Half 
 my diocese would have been up in arms, thun- 
 dering, foaming, memoriaKsing, writing to all 
 manner of newspapers. 
 
 So I suppose we must be contented as things 
 are. For my part, I am most thankful to 
 have got the answers we have. Our fathers 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 have been led to commit themselves to some 
 noble truths which they had. not openly con- 
 fessed before, and which we^ who are not 
 bishops, shall henceforth take our stand upon 
 as acknowledged principles. 
 
 And that surely is no small gain. 
 
 But Margey is fast asleep on my knee, and 
 the servants will be wondering why the bell 
 doesn't ring for prayers ; so just get the books, 
 Jessie, and look out 
 
 " All people that on earth do dwell." 
 
XII. 
 
 ^HIS evening has been bespoken by our 
 Little Margey. And as she bides her 
 bead under my arm, and won't plead her own 
 cause, I suppose I must say for her what it is 
 which has made her wish for to-night to be 
 hers. So, little one, I am o:oinor to tell your 
 story for my text, and then to give you the 
 Homily which will follow. 
 
 Margey tells me she went to sleep last night 
 with the bright full moon shining in at her 
 window. The light on the blind was so white, 
 that she jumped out of bed and drew it up ; and 
 she could see the dark wood at the top of the 
 hill over the glen, and the white sheep in the 
 square fold, just as we watched the shepherd 
 put them in last night, and all the grass and 
 
I70 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 shrubs cut in level lines with the silvery mist. 
 And as she lay long afterwards, the great moon- 
 beam filled half the room, and sparkled on the 
 water-bottle, and threw a little glory on the 
 wall from the looking-glass. So she slept— 
 and had a dream. And the dream was all 
 strange and chopped up and confused, and — 
 yes, Margey, I feel the nudge — she had rather 
 I wouldn't tell it. But the " outcome of it, 
 as some of our friends say, is this : that she 
 wants me to give her an evening about the 
 Transfiguration. 
 
 Well, first let us remember a little of what 
 we said last Sunday about a certain time in 
 our Lord's life on earth : for it is near to that 
 same period that the Transfiguration belongs. 
 I have often thought of the Transfiguration as 
 like a guide lighting a candle when he is about 
 to take people into a dark place. He himself 
 knows the course perfectly well : every step, and 
 every stone, and every treacherous pool ; but 
 they do not. And therefore, less for himself 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 171 
 
 than for tliem, he takes a light, to show them 
 the way and make it cheerful for them. Now our 
 Lord, at this period of his ministry, was just at 
 the entrance of a very dark place indeed. As 
 we saw last Sunday, He had just begun to warn 
 them that He was going up to Jerusalem to 
 suffer and die. They, poor souls, had no mind 
 for his words, no feeling of their meaning. 
 They were to them so much damp thrown on 
 their glowing hopes ; but the hopes glowed so 
 brightly that the damp was thrown off or 
 absorbed. Still, think what they would, the 
 dark place was before them, and into it they 
 must enter. 
 
 And of these disciples there were three, 
 whose lot it would be to enter deepest and 
 farthest — to see the power of darkness in its 
 blackest gloom, and witness the lowest de- 
 pression of the Lord's human spirit. 
 
 All then, and these three more especially, 
 might need a candle in the gloom : might be 
 better and firmer for some recollection which 
 
172 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 should connect their Master's glory with, his 
 suffering — which might enable them by look- 
 ing back on it to reassure themselves that the 
 rejected of earth was yet the acknowledged of 
 heaven. ^ 
 
 And this was not all. One of these_ three 
 had lately confessed Him to be the Holy Son 
 of Gfod, the Christ, the Son of the living God. 
 Now this was a mighty stretch of faith in 
 Peter, and so was it treated by our Lord. But 
 the same Peter, on the first mention of his 
 coming sufferings, had taken Him and rebuked 
 Him, declaring that this should not be to Him> 
 and had incurred thereby his severe displea- 
 sure. And though these things were said by 
 only one, yet doubtless the Three, as leaders of 
 the Twelve, and the Twelve generally, had 
 both the same firm faith in his Godhead, and 
 the same aversion from the idea of his suf- 
 ferings. 
 
 Not only then to cheer and guide, but also 
 to convince them, was some such manifestation 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 173 
 
 needed as was given to tliem at the Trans- 
 figuration. 
 
 And now, my little one, we have come to 
 the point which you have been waiting for, 
 and shall soon be dealing with that of which 
 your dream reminded you. 
 
 St. Luke's account of what took place is the 
 fullest. He tells us that the Lord took the 
 three up into the mountain to pray. He 
 seems, and no wonder, to have been very much 
 in prayer about this time. His hour was fast 
 coming on, and his soul was more than ever 
 gathering strength for what was before Him. 
 
 It has been observed that St. Luke is espe- 
 cially fond of telling us that Jesus ioa8 pray- 
 ing. Thus he has this particular (iii. 21) 
 when He had come up out of the water at his 
 baptism: again (v. 16), when the fame, of his 
 healing was spreading everywhere, we read 
 that He withdrew himself into the wilderness, 
 and prayed : again (vi. 12) we read of his 
 going into the mountain to pray and con- 
 
174 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 tinuing all night in prayer to God : again, 
 just before the present incident (ix. 18), we 
 have Him praying alone and the disciples 
 coming to Him : and after this (ch. xi. 1), the 
 disciples, when He had been praying, ask Him 
 to teach them how to pray. All this is deeply 
 interesting. It shows us that this his constant 
 habit made a deep impression on the eye- 
 witness, whoever he was, to whom St. Luke 
 was indebted for the chief part of his collected 
 narrative. 
 
 Well, then, it was no unusual thing for Him 
 to go away with his disciples, or with some of 
 them, for the purpose of prayer. So He took 
 them into the mountain, says St. Luke, and 
 tells us no more about the place. But it is 
 in places generally that St. Luke's narrative is 
 not particular. St. Matthew and St. Mark 
 both tell us that this happened near Caesarea 
 Philippi, far away to the north of our Lord's 
 usual haunts by the Sea of Galilee. Our friend 
 Dean Stanley, than whom there hardly is a 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 175 
 
 better guide in such matters, thinks that the 
 glorious snowy height of Hermon was the spot. 
 In both St. Matthew and St. Mark it is "an 
 high mountain," and the Dean believes that to 
 be the only one in all Palestine which deserves ' 
 such a name. 
 
 Who can tell their converse as they went up 
 steep after steep ? It was evening. Perhaps 
 the great orb of glory was sinking to his rest 
 far in the sea-line to westward, and the ridges 
 of snow above them were rose-bathed with his 
 parting ray. Beneath them are fading into 
 mist the towers and hills and forests of one of 
 the grandest views in the world. And those 
 four — One leading, as with a purpose, the rest 
 following up the stony track, till at length 
 they reach the determined spot for prayer. 
 
 Was the prayer aloud ? Did the Lord go up 
 to pray idtli his disciples ? Or was it to com- 
 mune all night with his heavenly Father ? By 
 what St. Luke says, this seems most probable. 
 For he tells us that the three were heavy with 
 
176 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 sleep, but they kept awake, and saw what 
 happened. So that I suppose they were lying 
 or sitting, as we know they were in Gethse- 
 mane, at some little distance from Him, and 
 He was rapt in praj^er, possibly, but hardly 
 probably, uttering words which they could 
 hear. 
 
 They were drowsy, and perhaps, after the 
 manner of drowsy persons, listlessly watching 
 Him, one lifting up his eyes now and then, 
 when suddenly something unwonted calls their 
 attention. They could see his Face in the dim 
 light turned towards heaven. But now it 
 seems as if some new day had arisen and was 
 reflected from ifc. I^ot so — it is itself the day ! 
 From every feature light beams forth. ^sTor 
 only so : his whole Form becomes a pillar of 
 light. The garments of earth have become the 
 white robes of heaven ! Above, perhaps around 
 them, slept the snow in its purity. But sud- 
 denly, its purity has died back into dimness. 
 That raiment is white as the light, exceeding 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 177 
 
 white and glistening, so as no fuller on earth 
 can white them. And that Face, day by day 
 known to thera, it is strange and unendurable, 
 for it is as the sun — pulsing, swimming in 
 glory. Is it earth, or have they been trans- 
 lated into heaven ? 
 
 "Well might they doubt, for now borne 
 visibly through the night are present two 
 celestial forms, known to them by the loftier 
 spiritual instinct into which they are rapt ; — 
 the Servant of God who spoke with Him face 
 to face in the cloud on Sinai, — the Prophet of 
 Jehovah who was borne up from Jordan in 
 the chariot of fire. These appeared in glory. 
 Was their glory like his ? Theirs, the radiance 
 of redeemed ones, like his, a ray of the glory 
 which He had before the world besran ? TTe 
 cannot tell. 
 
 But they are speaking : three celestial beings 
 holding discourse in their shining robes and 
 with their countenances beaming with bliss. 
 They are speaking — of what ? "What words 
 
 2i 
 
78 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 are fitting for such a scene of splendour ? Oh 
 it is a lesson — a lesson to all splendour — a 
 lesson, not to teach that there shall be no 
 splendour, but to teach splendour why it ought 
 to shine — to teach pride what it ought to boast 
 of. They spoke of his decease which He should 
 accomplish at Jerusalem. The very theme for 
 touching which one of those three had laid 
 hands on the Son of man and rudely chidden 
 Him with his " This shall not be to thee ; " — 
 the very words which their hopeful spirits 
 refused to hear or understand; — these are 
 sounding amidst the dazzling light of those 
 wonderful forms. As they veil their eyes and 
 gaze, they may hear strange mention of the 
 scourge, the crown of thorns, the cross, the 
 three hours of darkness, the centurion's spear, 
 the counsellor's grave. 
 
 The sounds were incongruous, they im- 
 pressed them little perhaps at the time ; for 
 the rash and ready Peter, ever first to speak 
 the impulse of the moment, finds it good for 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 179 
 
 them to be there ; thinks it well to detain the 
 celestial personages, well to perpetuate the 
 transfigured state of his Lord ; wants to build 
 three booths, or tents, or shrines, for the 
 glorified ones to dwell in ; *' not knowing what 
 he said," says St. Luke ; for he wist not what 
 to answer, for they were sore afraid,'' says 
 St. Mark, writing perhaps with Peter himself 
 at his side. That is, joy, and excitement, and 
 fear, were mingled, and he uttered, as so many 
 of us do, words without meaning. 
 
 But his words passed away, and the great 
 Vision went on. A bright cloud came over 
 the mountain top — bright, not only with the 
 reflected glory of the Blessed Ones, but bear- 
 ing a glory of its own, even the glory which 
 came down on Sinai, the glory which appeared 
 between the cherubims, the glory of Jehovah 
 Himself. There was that in it which made 
 them tremble as they entered the cloud. Even 
 so had one of those glorified ones trembled 
 when called into the cloud on Sinai : even so 
 
j8o fireside homilies. 
 
 had Jehovah answered him by a voice. But 
 now it is not Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt 
 not ; " it is not These are the judgments 
 which thou shalt teach them ; " no — it is 
 another mountain and another time, though it 
 is the same Yoice : it is the fulness of time : 
 the end of the law is come, the desire of the 
 prophets is come : " This is my beloved Son, 
 this is my Son whom I have chosen; hear 
 Him." 
 
 And the cloud lifts off, the vision passes 
 away. Not for Moses, not for Elijah, shall the 
 disciples have to build : J esus was left alone ; 
 for Him they will have to build : not on Her- 
 mon, not on Zion, but in themselves : for there 
 is the place where He will dwell : in their hearts 
 by faith. 
 
 But we have been missing one main object 
 which doubtless this great event served; the 
 mysterious comforting and strengthening of the 
 Lord Himself for what lay before Him. If a 
 painful time were coming for any of us, say a 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 i8i 
 
 great trial in a foreign land, where none under- 
 stood or cared for iis, what a blessing would it 
 be to see, if but for an hour, some dear and 
 valued friend from home, who might talk over 
 our coming trouble ! And we need not be 
 afraid of likening the Lord to ourselves in this 
 matter. I cannot doubt that He came down 
 from this mountain strengthened and refreshed 
 in soul for his wonderful work of love ; that in 
 desertion and dejection that hour of glory and 
 that holy com^erse came back upon Him and 
 chee/ed his spirit. 
 
 Many years after, one of the three had occa- 
 sion to write of the truth and genuineness of 
 the testimony which he and his colleagues had 
 borne to his divine Lord. It was no clever 
 fable, he said, which they had followed ; they 
 had seen his majesty with their own eyes — 
 they had heard the voice from the Excellent 
 Glory bear witness to Him. And if you 
 turn to that place (2 Pet. i. 16) you will find 
 a remarkable and pleasing trace of what 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 passed at the Transfiguration. Then, Peter 
 had wanted to build lasting tabernacles, and 
 had instead heard of the decease, the exoduSy 
 the pilgrimage, of the Lord : now, he tells 
 them, in connection with his mention of the 
 heavenly vision, he is looking forward to 
 his own exodus, his decease ; for that the 
 Lord had shown him that he must shortly 
 put off this his tabernacle. And these words 
 lead him on to speak of that night on Mount 
 Hermon. 
 
 Well, Mar gey, it's a grand story : and I don't 
 wonder at the bright moon, and the sparkles, 
 and the silver mist, raising its image in your 
 sleeping thoughts. 
 
 From your dream we have gone back to the 
 past : and we might have gone forward to the 
 future. 
 
 Oh what will it be, dear ones, when the hills 
 of the blessed land shall be crowned with 
 transfigured ones, all appearing in glory, all 
 walking in light ! Much will then be changed 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 183 
 
 — but not those who meet — not the subject of 
 their converse. 
 
 There will be those who heard Moses and 
 the prophets, — the Church in the wilderness, 
 the Church in Shiloh, the Church in Jeru- 
 salem, the Church in Babylon : there will be 
 the first-fruits of Pentecost, the harvest of the 
 centuries, the gleaning of the latter ages. 
 And in the midst, the glorified Lord : wearing, 
 not the crown of light to be changed for the 
 crown of thorns, but the glory which He had 
 before the worlds and shall never put ofi". And 
 the decease accomplished at Jerusalem shall 
 still be the theme : infinite in its interest, un- 
 fathomable in its depths. 
 
 And now suppose we read that account in 
 St. Luke, and sing to the grand old tune the 
 hymn whose refrain is " Crown Him Lord of 
 aU." 
 
XIII. 
 
 now to-night for a reverie of my own ; 
 like your dream, Margey, a creature of 
 circumstances ; like your dream, graven deeply 
 on the mind. 
 
 It was in the hot dry South — no matter 
 where ; we needn't plague you with a geo- 
 graphy lesson — that mamma and I were to go 
 to see a strange old place up in the mountains. 
 All had been ordered the night before, and the 
 morning rose cloudless and glorious. At an 
 early hour we were up and had breakfasted, 
 and at the appointed time we were told (and 
 indeed discordant sounds were heard, as usual, 
 betraying it) that the donkeys were at the 
 door. 
 
 In the evening, when we went to give our 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 185 
 
 order, we had been introduced to our guides 
 tliat were to be. 
 
 Jacopo, a lad of about eleven, was to accom- 
 pany me, and his sister, Tina, a girl between 
 nine and ten, was to go beside mamma. They 
 knew every inch of the way, and Jacopo was a 
 marvel of steadiness for his years. 
 
 This morning, though we had heard the two 
 voices from our room, not the children, but 
 the mother, appeared, with something hanging 
 over her arm. She beckoned to them to 
 come forward, saying she hoped the Signorina 
 would excuse the children going as they were 
 " e troppo caldo per portare i redimenti,^^ and 
 in the heat of summer the children, about 
 there, always were as we now saw these. But 
 if we wished it, she had some more clothes 
 which the}' could put on. 
 
 They were dressed simply in a little skirt or 
 kilt, and nothing else ; and as we looked at 
 their smooth tawny forms against the deep 
 blue sky, we thought of those charming pic- 
 
86 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 tures of Dobson's, wliicli Jessie and mamma 
 Lave so often admired, and from one of which, 
 a little friend of mine now clasping my hand 
 could not turn herself away on her first visit 
 to the Academy last May. And we told the 
 padrona, to the evident joy of the children, 
 that we couldn't think of making them un- 
 comfortable, and hoped they would go as they 
 were. 
 
 So we set out : up steep rugged rock paths, 
 and slippery paved roads, with the two little 
 guides trotting b}^ us, now chattering and 
 playing with one another, now admonishing, 
 with noise and otherwise, our dull reluctant 
 beasts : the scene being as Oriental as Europe 
 could make it : flat- roofed houses, a burnt arid 
 vegetation, — prickly pears, and aloes, and figs, 
 and now and then a stately palm, and the 
 splendid vine rambling over all the fences and 
 terraces. And then we would pass through 
 woods of olives with their gnarled trunks and 
 silvery green foliage, and under them wheat 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 187 
 
 and lucerne, and bright pink cornflowers, 
 whicli little Tina was fond of running and 
 picking, and bringing to mamma for her hat. 
 
 At last Jacopo, with all the air of head 
 guide, came up to mamma's donkey, and 
 asked where the Signorina would like to rest. 
 It was about mezza via, and, as he said 
 feelingly, putting his hand on the heated 
 medal which hung on his chest, motto caldo. 
 He knew of a shady spot, a little off" the road, 
 with a spring of delicious water, and there we 
 could lunch. I needn't say we were only too 
 glad to close with the proposal. 
 
 Now I have brought you all to this spot, 
 because it was there that my half-waking 
 dream was suggested. We had discussed the 
 contents of our basket, and shared them with 
 our cheery little friends, while the animals 
 enjoyed their meal browsing on the rank 
 verdure round the spring. At last they lay 
 down, and we followed the example. And 
 now occurred that which set me dreaming. 
 
88 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 Jacopo and Tina had settled themselves to 
 sleep on the soft thymy grass. He lay, with 
 his arms stretched over his head, one leg 
 drawn up, the other straight, while she had 
 thrown herself with her head on his bosom, 
 one arm under his shoulder, the other across 
 him, and holding the medal, with which she 
 had been playing. I first drew mamma's 
 attention to the group, and then thought, and 
 thought, and closed my eyes, and thought on, 
 till the limit was passed between the thoughts 
 which we make and the thoughts which make 
 themselves, — and thus they went. 
 
 " Suffer them to come to Me." It was on 
 some such track as this, while He was teaching 
 and healing, that the parents brought the 
 children to the Lord. Some such burning sun 
 glared down on the group, and over soft brown 
 limbs like those lying twined there in childish 
 sleep, did He pass his blessed and blessing 
 hands. 
 
 Suffer them to come to Me. And how many 
 
FIRESIDE HO Mil IE S. 189 
 
 ways are there to Him ? One way was that of 
 those J udaean parents ; simple enough, if we 
 come to think of it. They wanted Him to 
 touch them. Well, this perhaps was super- 
 stitious — -foolish. So thought the wise dis- 
 ciples. The earnest Peter, the zealous James 
 and John, Thomas, slow of credence, Philip, 
 ambitious of the Divine vision, Matthew 
 versed in this world's money matters, — and 
 that one who never had a heart for his 
 Master's career at all, — all these combined 
 with the rest in keeping those fathers and 
 mothers away. But what thought, and what 
 said He ? " Bring them not for the touch 
 that passeth away, but bring them to be 
 taught, when they can learn ; " was this what 
 He said ? It was not : what He said was, 
 " Suffer them to come to Me": to come and 
 be touched, if they will ; to come as they will,, 
 as they can. 
 
 And thus the thought bore itself in upon 
 me, how the Lord's words are larger and more 
 
I90 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 glorious than ever we suspected them to be. 
 I had been talking to Jacopo about such 
 things, and I found that he, poor lad, had 
 been taught to shrink from the very thought 
 of Him who said these words. He hoped the 
 Madonna would intercede for him, for he had 
 been told that Gresu would judge him at the 
 last day, and he had seen over the great door 
 of the church the Judge going to throw light- 
 ning among the assembled crowd, but the kind 
 Madonna was holding back his arm. And 
 Tina, she was near death when she was little, 
 and she had been brought and laid in the arms 
 of the great Madonna in the church of San 
 Matteo, and so she was always to belong to 
 the Madonna, and would one day go and be a 
 little servant girl at the Convertite Convent. 
 But not a string of either of the little hearts 
 had ever vibrated in harmony with a word or 
 a look of the Blessed One. 
 
 Well, well : it is a very by- lane kind of way 
 this of coming to Him : foolish, superstitious. 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 191 
 
 So we think : and doubtless we have, as the 
 Apostles had, some right on our side. But 
 shall we not listen for ms voice ? Are there 
 no flowers of his planting in the by-lane, 
 though the children may not meet Him there 
 in person ? May not little Tina learn from 
 her devoted lot womanly purity, sweet 
 thoughts and deeds of charity ? May not 
 Jacopo, even now steady beyond his years, be 
 snatched from the burning flame of tempta- 
 tion, and learn to walk in the ways of One 
 whom yet he knows not as some know Him ? 
 Shall we, in our turn, rebuke those that 
 brought them ? Shall we whisper a passing 
 word, to break the spell of the childhood's 
 faiths ? Listen — the voice seems to come over 
 the blue sea lying in the haze of noon — the 
 gentle words seem to whisper in the leaves 
 of that vine under which the soft limbs are 
 resting — Sufi'er them to come to Me." 
 
 And then the thought took another turn. 
 How many dear children, by way of being 
 
192 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 
 
 brouglit to Him, are most effectually kept 
 from Him ? Horror of horrors used to be to 
 me, in my childish, days, that saying of the 
 Catechism on Sunday — that learning of the 
 Collect, and proving it by texts of Scripture. 
 And if this was so with me, surrounded by 
 kindly influences, what must all the fierce dis- 
 cipline be to thousands of children, whereby 
 folk try to make them religious ? Suffer 
 them to come to me — forbid them not ! " 
 They have their own ways, curious and foolish 
 some of them : let them come. Some play 
 at church, with chairs for congregation and 
 music-stool for pulpit, and nightgown for 
 surplice : I remember once playing at heaven ! 
 And then there are all the quaint questions 
 and queerly put original thoughts, by which 
 children try to approach Him who is the great 
 centre of all questions. To us, they savour 
 of irreverence : but not to them : the weaned 
 child may play in the hole of the asp : forbid 
 them not. If it thaws, God, they say, has 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 193 
 
 used up all the frost : if it thunders, the 
 angels are beating. God's big drum. So they 
 come : little faltering steps : shrill Yoices, 
 crying Hosanna after their fashion in the 
 aisles of the Temple : tiny hands, clapping, 
 clapping, when they should be folded in 
 prayer. Never mind : let them come ; forbid 
 them not. 
 
 And sometimes while they are coming, the 
 blessed Hand itself, even now, is laid upon 
 them and fetches them home ; the blessed 
 Voice, as of old, whispers, " Talitha, cumi," 
 " Come, my child." And the journey up 
 looks but blank to us who are below : for the 
 little rosy cheek grows blanched, and the light 
 of the bright eyes is dimmed, and the merry 
 voice sounds sad and far away, and there are 
 soft steps and watching. Again, let them 
 come, forbid them not. "We see but the wheels 
 and axle of the fiery chariot, all the splendour 
 is upward : and while we mourn reomd the 
 bed, the fair spirit is lifted to its place in the 
 o 
 
194 
 
 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 blissful ranks, and the pure in heart has 
 entered on the sight of God. When He calls, 
 when He fetches them, let them come to Him. 
 
 And one thing more was borne upon me 
 before that siesta ended and we rose and went 
 on our way. In those wonderful Beatitudes, — 
 and in this saying also, the Lord gave his 
 great and mighty reason. " Forbid them 
 not," He said : " for of such is the kingdom 
 of God." How, and why? Just now when 
 Jacopo and Tina were finishing our luncheon, 
 I was watching them. The only thing in the 
 shape of a delicacy was some sort of cake 
 or confection, which we had just tasted, and 
 finding too sweet, had put aside. This mamma 
 had cut for them into two equal parts. And I 
 saw Jacopo just play with his and eat a few 
 crumbs ofi" its crust, and then when Tina had 
 done hers and wasn't looking, he quietly laid 
 it in her lap. What did the Lord mean but 
 this, that the fresh simplicity of kindliness, 
 the one- aimed act of lovingness, belongs to 
 
FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 
 
 95 
 
 the child, and that such we ought by his 
 grace to keep ourselves, if we want to be of 
 his kingdom? 
 
 Of such is the kingdom of heaven. Then, 
 beyond a doubt, in that kingdom shall all the 
 little ones be found. For it is not as children 
 of Christians, it is not as baptized, but it is 
 as children, that of such is that kingdom. 
 Untainted by duplicity, by impurity, by the 
 schemes of ripened selfishness, they are they 
 who reflect the most unbroken rays of Him 
 who is the Light of the world, and in them 
 the Great Redemption takes effect at once and 
 unquestioned. 
 
 The Gospel of the Children — how pure, how 
 bright, how simple ! It is not made up of 
 doctrines, it has no sects, it never learned a 
 creed. " I believe," it has never descended 
 to : it dwells as yet in the higher realm of 
 " I love." In it the blessed Lord is not a 
 Personage in a book, but a shining Person, 
 ever present, ever radiant : not one who lived 
 
196 FIRESIDE HOMILIES,' 
 
 ages ago, but one seen and heard day by day. 
 It is tbe only Gospel tbat is written nowbere 
 but on the beart ; tbe only Gospel, every one 
 of wbose disciples sball come rigbt at tbe 
 last. For " of sucb is tbe kingdom of God ; " 
 and unless we turn back from our selfishness, 
 from our vanity, from our duplicity, and be- 
 come as one of tbem, there is no entrance for 
 us there. 
 
 So I awoke from my reverie, and the merry 
 voices of Jacopo and Tina were ringing round 
 us, and in a few minutes we were again on our 
 way to the strange old city in the mountains. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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8 
 
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12 
 
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32 Daldy, Isbister^ and Co?s Book List, 
 
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 WILLEMENT'S (E. E.) Familiar Things: their 
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 WILLIAMS' (Sarah) Twilight Hours. A Legacy 
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 WINDWAFTED SEED. Edited by Norman Mac- 
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 WOOD'S (Rev. J. G.) Man and Beast, Here and 
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 The Wife's Trials. Small 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 The Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D. 
 
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 Campion Court. A Tale of the Days 
 
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 ■ The Lillingstones of Lillingstone. 
 
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 Lottie Lonsdale ; or the Chain and 
 
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 • Evelyn's Story ; or Labour and Wait. 
 
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 WORDSWORTH'S Poems for the Young. With 
 
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 YORKE'S (Onslow) The Story of the International. 
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 YOUNG'S (John, LL.D.) The Christ of History. 
 
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 The Life and Light of Men. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d, 
 
 The Creator and the Creation, how related. 
 
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I