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 BX 5133 .H38 S6 1881 
 Hawkins, Edwards Comerford. 
 Spirit and form 
 
a 
 
SPIRIT AND FORM. 
 
SPIRIT AND FORM: 
 
 SEBMONS PREACHED IN TEE 
 PARISH CHURCH OF LEATHERHEAD. 
 
 BY ^ 
 
 EDWARDS COMERFORD HAWKINS, M.A. 
 
 HEAD-MASTER OF ST. JOHN S FOLXDATIOX SCHOOL. 
 
 LOXDOX: 
 
 C. KEG AN PAUL & CO., 1, PATEENOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 1881. 
 
rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.) 
 
DEDICATED, BY PERMISSION, 
 TO HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, 
 WITH A GRATEFUL SENSE 
 OF THE WISDOM AND CHARITY WITH WHICH 
 FOR THIRTEEN Y^EARS HE HAS GUIDED THE COUNSELS OF 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
The following sermons (with two or three excep- 
 tions) were preached in the parish church of Leather- 
 head by invitation of the late and the present Vicar, 
 and were written for the congregation to which they 
 were addressed. 
 
 The writer has attempted, (1) to regard the subjects 
 of them from the point of view of his hearers ; (2) to 
 mitigate some of the difficulties occasioned by the 
 contrasts of Faith and Experience ; and (3) to com- 
 pare the morality of the New Testament with some 
 of the accepted usages of society. 
 
 The earlier sermons will be found generally to be 
 devoted to the second of these objects, and those in 
 the latter part of the volume to the third. 
 
 They are published in deference to opinions which 
 the writer has reason to respect, and not from any 
 notion on his part that there is anything in them 
 which has not been said before and better. 
 
 E. C. H. 
 
 Leathekhead, 
 February 15, 1881. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Man's Judgment of God's JudCxMENts ... ... 1 
 
 Law and Love ... ... ... ... 13 
 
 Overcoming Death ... ... ... ... 25 
 
 The End of Pain ... ... ... 36 
 
 Mysteries of Earth and Heaven ... ... 46 
 
 The Threefold Eevelation ... ... 57 
 
 The Pride of Power and the Joy of Love ... 68 
 
 Trials of Faith ... ... ... ... 78 
 
 Expectation of Christ ... ... ... 89 
 
 Christianity and Civilization ... ... 100 
 
 The Communion of Saints ... ... ... m 
 
 The World ... ... ... ... 124 
 
 Eeligious Excitement ... ... ... ... 135 
 
 The Meaning of Limitations ... ... 146 
 
 The Bible ... ... ... ... ... 156 
 
 Reading ... ... ... ... 167 
 
 Culture and Sympathy ... ... ... 178 
 
 Providence and Anxiety ... ... ... 188 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Last Words ... 
 
 ... 199 
 
 Self-Denial 
 
 211 
 
 Love and Hatred 
 
 ... 220 
 
 Social Pressure ... 
 
 229 
 
 Clergy and Laity 
 
 ... 240 
 
 Bridling the Tongue 
 
 251 
 
 T^wTT "RnNri ott IVT ATTJTivrn'MV 
 
 262 
 
 Joy and Sorrow ... 
 
 275 
 
 True Almsgiving 
 
 ... 286 
 
 Treasure in Heaven 
 
 298 
 
SEEMO^TS. 
 
 MAN'S JUDGMENT OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. 
 
 St. John ix. 2. — " Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he 
 was born blind f " 
 
 People who are at all past middle life may remember 
 a time when calamities were much more commonly- 
 set down as "judgments" than they are now. The 
 verdict of mankind used to be much less hesitating 
 than it has since become in declaring particular 
 sufferings to be the consequences of special faults. 
 Moral story-books written for children inculcated this 
 lesson — the idle, disobedient, or vicious child came to 
 a bad end ; but an end often in no way resulting from 
 his character or career, and in no way connected with 
 his peculiar fault. And popular judgment went with 
 them, for it was equally careless of any causal con- 
 nexion between the suffering and the sin ; if any evil 
 befell those who were committing or had committed 
 any sin, it was a judgment. If the ice broke or a 
 boat upset on a Sunday, it was a judgment for Sabbath- 
 breaking ; though it was evident that, as a matter of 
 
2 MAN'S JUDGMENT OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. 
 
 course, more people were drowned on other days of 
 the week, when they could not be accused of breaking 
 the fourth commandment at all events. The feeling, 
 however mistaken in expression, is entitled to re- 
 spect. It is not only true, but it is a truth most 
 important to remember and proclaim, that God does 
 signify and maintain His moral government of us by 
 riveting sorrow upon sin. The general course of 
 human events which does upon the whole bring happi- 
 ness to well-doing, and suffering upon evil-doing, is 
 one of the strongest indications that we live under 
 the rule not merely of a Governor, but of a moral 
 Governor. 
 
 Mistakes arise in the application of this general 
 truth. The difficulty of all principles is to apply 
 them to practice. But it was a difficulty evidently 
 little felt by those who were ready with their hasty 
 verdicts on the occurrence of any disaster ; and they 
 have produced their natural crop of evil. They 
 weakened the wholesome lesson of suffering, which 
 was the obvious result of wrong, by the uncertainty 
 they begat as to the consequences of action. And they 
 awakened a strong reaction against the belief in any 
 moral government at all. " What," it might be asked 
 — and it was asked — must be the moral character 
 of a Euler who could punish faults in such a way that 
 no one could see any connexion between the fault and 
 the punishment ? " or "in such a way that a little 
 more skill or caution would have averted the penalty 
 altogether, though the fault would have been the 
 
man's judgment of god's judgments. 3 
 
 same ? " Some of the disbelief of our own day is no 
 doubt due to the assumption of those who claimed to 
 know more of the mind of God than He has shown to 
 us by the order of nature or in the writings of revela- 
 tion. And it cannot be said that this habit of declar- 
 ing that calamities not only are judgments, but of 
 declaring of what sins they are judgments, quite 
 independent of any connexion of cause and effect 
 between the fault and the punishment, is yet extinct. 
 The subject has been forced upon public notice within 
 the last few weeks by a conspicuous utterance. 
 
 It was stated that the excessive rainfall of this 
 summer,* was a judgment of God upon us as a nation 
 for certain sins, public and private, individual and 
 national, of which we are only too conscious, and of 
 which we hear from the pulpit, the press, and the 
 platform. 
 
 There is, of course, no possibility of proving or of 
 disproving such an assertion; and it may be freely 
 conceded, without venturing to say that such a season 
 is a punishment for faults in no way connected with 
 it, that such a period of suffering is well adapted 
 for making men think seriously of the habits and 
 feelings engendered by a state of prosperity, and that 
 it may in all probability be the will of God that we 
 should use it so. But still it seems especially 
 dangerous teaching. If a physical phenomenon 
 which, as far as we know, no conduct on our part 
 could produce or avert is proclaimed to be the penalty 
 * 1879. 
 
4 man's judgment of god's judgments. 
 
 of vices which have their certain and corresponding 
 results of evil, will not the known penalties lose much, 
 if not all, of their deterring efficacy ? If the penalty, 
 as in this case, falls heaviest on those who have 
 the least share in the stated national faults an(i 
 the least tendency towards and opportunity of the 
 specified private vices, will it not weaken faith in any 
 moral government at all ? It will be said, of course, 
 that those who thus trace calamities to their source 
 in wrong have the authority of the Old Testament to 
 rest upon ; where we find war, famine, and pestilences 
 following as punishments for idolatry and other sins 
 which have no natural tendency to produce such 
 results, except in so far as the disunion and con- 
 sequent weakness produced by idolatry, together 
 with the loss of enthusiasm to a nation with such a 
 history as that of the Jews, were likely to tempt an 
 invader ; and it will as naturally be added, that the 
 New Testament dispensation is the continuation and 
 development of the Old, and that we claim to be 
 living as much under Divine government as the 
 Jews were. All this is true ; but one important factor 
 is omitted, viz. that the Jews had in the prophets a 
 body of teachers commissioned, as they believed, to 
 declare the mind of God to them, and who professed 
 on each occasion both to foretell the results of par- 
 ticular conduct and to assign them to their cause 
 when they occurred. 
 
 Now we have no teachers whom we believe to be 
 empowered to tell us that pestilence, drought, or 
 
man's judgment of god's judgments. 5 
 
 flood are the penalties of presumption, aggression, 
 injustice, or extravagance. There may be men ot 
 sufficient moral insight to discern that such offences 
 must bring their evil consequences, and when the 
 natural results occur by way of moral or physical 
 sequence then- intuition is allowed and commended ; 
 but no one without Divine authority can assert that 
 a calamity is the result of conduct which has no 
 moral or physical tendency to produce it. There 
 are certain classes of sins which do bring down a 
 punishment closely connected with themselves. No 
 one, for instance, can hesitate to connect the horrors 
 of the Reign of Terror in France with the long period 
 of tyranny and oppression which preceded it ; and 
 outbreaks of cholera or diphtheria appear as the 
 natural result of neglect of the conditions of health. 
 
 Such visitations when they occur are in the strictest 
 sense judgments of God ; occurring in the way of phy- 
 sical sequence, they are the expression of His mind 
 about the events which have produced them. The 
 present depression in trade is thought by many 
 persons competent to form an opinion, to be the 
 natm-al result of certain courses of action which pre- 
 ceded it. But bad weather and bad harvests, as they 
 cannot be traced to human conduct, and as no one 
 is authorized to declare their penal character, do not 
 convey the same lesson ; whatever use serious-minded 
 persons may derive from them as seasons and oppor- 
 tunities for reflexion. 
 
 There are, in fact, considerations of an a priori kind 
 
6 man's judgment of god's judgments. 
 
 which create great difficulty in declaring the penal 
 character of calamity, and which are calculated to 
 make a thoughtful person pause before he commits 
 himself to such an assertion. In the first place, there 
 is a sense in which we do not know God, and in which 
 He is unknowable. We know Him where we come in 
 contact with Him ; at the point of tangent, that is, in 
 a vast sphere of Being. We know Him by His rela- 
 tions to us of Creator, Father, Eedeemer, Inspirer, and 
 Moral Governor. But these are but broken lights of 
 Thee, and Thou, 0 Lord, art more than they." Of His 
 great purposes for us and for the world in the future 
 we are ignorant; "there are more things in heaven 
 and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." 
 This may well make many of His dealings with us 
 unaccountable. 
 
 Again, there is not only a complexity of natures in 
 ourselves — of the spiritual and the animal natures — 
 but there is also the crossing and the interaction of the 
 physical and the divine order in the world, with their 
 consequent penalties for the infraction of either. We 
 are related to God as individual souls to the Father 
 of spirits ; we are related to the Creator as parts of His 
 material universe. We may be good in one relation 
 and bad in another. We may be loving and docile 
 children of the Father ; useless or even mischievous 
 members of the great order of nature. On the other 
 hand, we may confer great material benefits on the 
 world and be an indispensable element in progress ; 
 and yet be unloving, impatient, or impure. Men may 
 
man's judgment of god's judgments. 7 
 
 be sagacious in the conduct of worldly business, and 
 mere children in the development of a moral nature ; 
 they may have the temper of angels, and wreck every 
 scheme they put their hand to. How is the success 
 which is the natural reward of conformity to the laws 
 of material natm-e to be granted without shocking 
 the moral sense ? how can the misfortunes of the 
 unworldly be regarded without a feeling of injustice ? 
 Offences against the order of nature we feel must 
 bring their punishment, whether they are the impru- 
 dences of a good man or the deliberate ill-will of a 
 vicious one ; and her remorseless onward march must 
 crush the sinner and the saint with impartial stern- 
 ness. Nor can the greatest benefactors of their species 
 be exempted by world-wide services from the conse- 
 quences of spiritual omissions or transgressions. Secret 
 faults must bring their secret penalties in the midst of 
 success and renown. Evil thoughts must ensure their 
 own predominance and make the mind powerless to 
 resist them. The temper which has been the terror of 
 others must become a torture to ourselves. Some of 
 these penalties may not be felt here ; there are men 
 to whom their evil thoughts are the reverse of suffer- 
 ing; and others who rejoice in observing the influence 
 of a fierce temper ; but it is impossible to believe that 
 this is the will of God about us. Such a state of 
 things demands the belief in a more spiritual exist- 
 ence — in which spiritual forces may have more free 
 play, and in which there may be a possibility of a 
 man's ridding himself of his evil by becoming con- 
 
8 man's judgment of god's judgments. 
 
 scious of it. These are some of the difficulties we 
 should expect to encounter in assigning sufferings as 
 the consequences of faults, and experience of human 
 life by no means tends to remove them. Its tendency 
 is rather to add to the number. 
 
 Sometimes, in the case both of nations and of indi- 
 viduals, punishment seems to halt, so that it never 
 overtakes its victim. Sometimes periods of prosperity 
 appear to follow upon a national aggression, or on a 
 successful but not illegal fraud. Some men are so 
 indifferent or insensible that they suffer nothing from 
 a loss of reputation, which would be the acutest 
 anguish to others. Some are so sensitive and self- 
 tormenting that they are made miserable by the re- 
 collection of blunders or of vices, which would glide 
 off the better-armoured conscience of duller natures. 
 The reckless youth ruins his health by an unguarded 
 excess, the cautious voluptuary is enabled to indulge 
 himself to the last. Some men are always prosperous 
 in spite of conduct, to others no merit can bring 
 success. Some are serene in spite of many causes for 
 remorse ; some are happy in spite of hard-hearted- 
 ness. Cases like these puzzle the judgment ; and 
 when we try to "justify the ways of God to men," to 
 bring all cases of suffering under the wide law of 
 sorrow following upon sin, of well-being following 
 upon well-doing, we are brought up by the inherent 
 difficulty of coming to general conclusions, and by 
 the numberless cases which refuse to fall under our 
 general rule. "We also see the wicked in such pros- 
 
man's judgment of god's judgments. 9 
 
 perity we are not able to say that we never saw 
 the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their 
 bread." And we, too, are reminded, as many gene- 
 rations of men have been before us, of the lesson of 
 the Book of Job, and of the hasty generalization of 
 his friends. This book, which almost exhausts all 
 that can be said on the subject, shows us his friends 
 arriving at what they thought a satisfactory account 
 of his sufferings ; they went beyond the usual limit of 
 the confident expounders of human experience, and 
 inferred that the patriarch must have sinned because 
 he was suffering. His consciousness of integrity re- 
 jected this interpretation, and they were taught that 
 it is not so easy to account for things as they thought. 
 " Happy is he who is able to discern the causes of 
 things ! " but perhaps he is happier who is content, 
 amid the puzzles of the world, to wait for light ; who 
 is able, amid the manifold difficulties of faith, to 
 believe in the righteousness of God, and in the ulti- 
 mate triumph of good. 
 
 It does not follow that calamities are without their 
 purpose because we cannot trace them back to sin ; 
 that they are unjust because the innocent suffer with 
 the guilty. In most cases the righteous would be the 
 first to acknowledge their justice, and the quickest to 
 reap from them their appropriate spmtual harvest. 
 The danger and the mistake arise when we attempt 
 to point then- moral in the case of others, without the 
 guidance of any connexion of cause and effect between 
 the conduct and the suffering. There are few good 
 
10 MAN'S JUDGMENT OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. 
 
 men who could not find in any private misfortune or 
 national disaster food for reflection and matter for self- 
 reproach. There are few whom the sight of trium- 
 phant evil or suffering innocence would not remind of 
 their own spiritual nature ; of the mixed character of 
 this world ; of the prospect of a more spiritual existence 
 which may explain many of the riddles of this life ; in 
 which the strictness of moral causation may be as ob- 
 vious as we have learnt from science that the order of 
 physical causation is in this. It is difficult to exag- 
 gerate the value of this contribution from science to 
 the cause of religion. It is not only a clear warning 
 against the abuse of nature or the violation of its laws, 
 and so one of the most powerful sanctions of morality ; 
 but it is an indirect assurance that we may trust the 
 Mind which has imposed this strictness of causation 
 on the material world for a like rigid order in the 
 moral and spiritual world also. Causes may seem a 
 long time in j)roducing their effects. Conduct may 
 seem to fail in bringing happiness. Vast periods 
 of time are required to bring about the births of 
 nature, and yet they never fail; is it likely that 
 moral and spiritual results will be less certain in a 
 sphere of being in which there are none of the 
 opposing influences that modify the operation of 
 natural laws ? 
 
 We are links in a long chain, and there is a vast 
 order to take into account; it is not wonderful that 
 we should not be able to catalogue every phenomenon, 
 to assign every effect to its cause. The difficulty of 
 
man's judgment of god's judgments. 11 
 
 connecting sorrow with sin in particular cases migbt 
 teach us modesty and caution in applying the law 
 to others ; our certainty of its general truth ought 
 to be the support of moraHty and the defence against 
 temptation to ourselves. Every examination of the 
 conditions of human existence results in a confession 
 of ignorance, but without ignorance there can be no 
 faith. As man can have no higher aim and no higher 
 state than righteousness, so, amid the puzzles of life 
 and the failure of expectations, faith can find no 
 higher expression than the first and most famous 
 of all confessions of faith, " Shall not the Judge of 
 all the earth do right?" It is possible for the con- 
 fession of ignorance to have another issue. It may 
 issue in the resolve to care nothing about that of 
 which we can know nothing, but this is to reject 
 the many indications of a Divine order which per- 
 meate life like a golden thread in a tissue. There are 
 signs enough of judgment in the issues of human 
 affah's without the artificial adjustments of those for 
 whom Divine penalties are not clear enough without 
 their explanations ; who cannot wait to see the end, 
 and want the Judge of all the earth to minister justice 
 according to their notions of it. And those who 
 stand at the opposite pole in religious thought, who 
 can see only a law of ph^-sical causation at work 
 in the world, and who would describe the varying 
 conditions of the spirit of man as the results of 
 molecular change, these might be led to reflect that 
 a system in which physical sequence is one of the 
 
12 man's judgment of god's judgments. 
 
 firmest supports of moral order, in which material 
 change is the minister of spiritual penalties and the 
 dispenser of spiritual joys, although appearing as a 
 rigid and unchangeable order, may be the plastic 
 instrument of a righteous will. 
 
LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 St. John iv. 48. — " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not 
 believe." 
 
 This is one of our Saviour's many protests against 
 those who asked Him for a sign of His mission. He 
 had had some experience of this temper already. On 
 His first visit to Jerusalem He was met with the 
 question, "What sign showest Thou unto us?" after 
 the force of His personality had made Him of suffi- 
 cient importance to test His pretensions. And before 
 He left the town Nicodemus — liberal-minded as he 
 was for a Pharisee — can get no further than this 
 inference, **No man can do these miracles except God 
 be with him." The Saviour's answer, Except a man 
 be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," i.e. 
 the Spirit of God alone can enable a man to see the 
 true and permanent signs of the kingdom of God — 
 " that which is born of the flesh," like your inference 
 from miracles, "is flesh," the deeper discernment of 
 the kingdom of God in the life and spirit of a man 
 is born of the Spirit ; — this answer is another expres- 
 sion of the same distaste for the same temper. And 
 he encounters it again among the Samaritans who 
 
14 
 
 LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 believed on Him for the saying of the woman, "He 
 told me all that I ever did." 
 
 Perhaps it was because He was at Cana (where His 
 first miracle gave Him a local renown) when the 
 nobleman came to Him, that He suspected the pre- 
 sence of the same feeling in him. He may have felt 
 that He was associated in the minds of Galileans 
 with this wonder, and have determined to make one 
 more effort to base their belief on true grounds. 
 
 The sign that He was so repeatedly asked for was 
 no doubt something different from His miracles of 
 healing; and He indicates this when He answers 
 those who ask for one according to their folly — 
 " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build 
 it up ; " an answer intended, no doubt, at once to 
 mystify and to condemn men who could see no signs 
 of a Divine mission in His words and works. 
 
 His miracles of healing were an inevitable issue of 
 His personality and of&ce ; necessary tokens of the new 
 reign of love ; forecasts of the wonders that human 
 love and care were to work for the benefit of man 
 when the same spirit had penetrated the world, that 
 possessed Him. But He was conscious of the danger 
 that lay in them. He knew how surely men would be 
 blind to the regular and permanent beneficence of His 
 life p.mong them, and would be attracted by excep- 
 tional mercies ; how likely they were to be insensible 
 to the influence of His character, and to be 
 stirred by manifestations of His power. He knew 
 how transient this enthusiasm was ; how little like 
 
LAW AND LOYE. 
 
 15 
 
 the slow and sure development of the seed in the 
 ground, and the leaven in the meal, to which He 
 compared the growth of the kingdom of God. To 
 have been followed and regarded as a worker of 
 miracles merely would have marred His whole career. 
 He seems to have felt this ; for He was chary of 
 working mu'acles ; He was exacting in the conditions 
 on which alone He would work them ; He was precise 
 and authoritative in forbidding their publication. He 
 is always betraying this anxiety about any mistake 
 being made about His office. It was one part of His 
 office to show men what they ought to do for one 
 another — to show them the source of that love and 
 power which was to accomplish even " greater works " 
 of the same sort when He was gone away. But to 
 fill men with the spirit to go and do likewise, and not 
 to heal their diseases, was the great work of the 
 Saviom- of the world. And there was danger that 
 His reputation as a Healer should overshadow His 
 office as a Eedeemer, as a Teacher, and as an 
 Example to men. Some such feelings as these may 
 have suggested His remark to the father who came to 
 Him in an agony about his son. Sign-seeking was 
 a weakness of the people He lived amongst ; the whole 
 history of their race had begotten in them the expecta- 
 tion of the marvellous, and the belief in special 
 interpositions in their behalf. No doubt our Lord's 
 wonderful career among them had served to stimulate 
 an already deeply rooted feeling ; it is a weakness not 
 confined to Jews, but common to mankind. The 
 
16 
 
 LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 savage who sees in an eclipse a sign of the power of 
 God which he fails to see in the regular rising and 
 setting of the sun ; the believer in " special provi- 
 dences " who finds a stronger reason for belief in 
 some fancied interposition in his favour than in the 
 Providence which adapts the order of the solar system 
 to the steady progress of his race, exhibit alike the 
 same temper. It is the temper against which our 
 Lord utters His protest. It is a declaration by Him 
 of the mind of God against a mistaken view of His 
 way of ordering the universe. 
 
 Viewing both nature and religion as proceeding 
 from Him, we may expect to find the same system at 
 work in both. Nature is more and more being clearly 
 revealed to us as a vast order ; showing evident signs, 
 in its highest organizations, of having been originated 
 by a ruling will, and proceeding in its unbroken 
 march according to fixed laws. Throughout its end- 
 less operations we see means used to attain ends and 
 causes producing effects, and as far as can be ascer- 
 tained, no end without a means, no effect without a 
 cause. We find ourselves obliged to conform to these 
 laws, our will is limited by them ; or again, they are 
 the means by which our will is alone able to pass into 
 act. We can attain no end without means ; we can 
 originate no effect without a cause ; we can hinder no 
 cause from producing its effect. To those who realize 
 the condition of things by which they are surrounded 
 it presents itself sometimes as a reason for thankful- 
 ness, sometimes as a reason for despair. But men 
 
LAW AXD LOVE. 
 
 17 
 
 are for the most part so used to take the immutability 
 of nature as a matter of course, that little thankfulness 
 is felt for it, though very different feehngs would be 
 soon expressed at any irregularity in its operations. 
 Its very order has banished the idea of a Living Will 
 beyond it. 
 
 Every operation and arrangement of life is based 
 upon the conviction of this unchangeableness — but its 
 beneficence ascends above convenience. "Without law 
 and order in nature ; if causes could not be trusted to 
 produce effects ; if ends could be reached without the 
 necessity of jDreceding means adapted to them, not only 
 would all the works of man come to an end, but the 
 earth would cease to be a place of discipline for the 
 spirits of men. The course of natm-e is conformed 
 to ; is submitted to ; is made use of ; but it seldom 
 evokes any feeling of trust in the Mind which made it 
 proceed in such an unbroken order. It is not often 
 appealed to as almost the best ground for that con- 
 fidence in God which is the foundation of religion. 
 It is even common to go beyond this, and to find in 
 this irresistible, or as it seems to some, remorseless, 
 march of nature a reason for despau'. Men are im- 
 patient of this iron rule ; they cannot get outside it ; 
 they long to ascend beyond it into a Living Presence 
 where its laws are broken, and where they can have 
 the happiness of obedience to a Personal Will. They 
 speculate on the beginnings of this system of things, 
 and imagine that, in a more free communion with the 
 Great Author before He had imprisoned human wills 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 in an economy, service would have been easier, love 
 more spontaneous, devotion more personal, God more 
 near. But as we ascend the course of time and try 
 to realize the beginning of things, we find ourselves 
 no nearer to God. If we have failed to find Him in 
 nature all about us, we should not find Him there. 
 If we cannot see Him in the perfect adaptation of His 
 works to the wants and the longings of men, we should 
 not find Him in the rudiments of matter or in primary 
 organisms. And if in the regular course of nature's 
 operations men often fail to see the presence of God ; 
 in the exceptional calamities and disasters of life and 
 nature they often cry out against His absence. They 
 miss, as they think, the presence of a Living Euler 
 who would have averted the consequences of the greed 
 or carelessness of men. They cry out that is, be- 
 cause causes have produced their inevitable effects. 
 An accident occasions a wholesale destruction of 
 human life, and men, who would have thought little 
 of the death of two or three times the number of men 
 in battle, secretly or openly arraign the providence of 
 God for permitting it. This is only because they can 
 trace the effect to human agency more clearly in one 
 case than in another ; though there is no form of 
 suffering in which the innocent suffer for the guilty 
 on a larger scale than in a battle. They are perhaps 
 mourning the loss of an innocent victim of other 
 men's ambition or recklessness, or they are rejoicing 
 over the providential escape of a relation from the 
 same calamity. In neither case is the providence of 
 
LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 19 
 
 God in allowing causes to produce their natural effects 
 discerned. Those who mourn over a loss and lay the 
 blame on God for not interfering to prevent it, and 
 those who think that an escape was an interposition 
 of Providence, miss the true lesson of such sufferings. 
 
 We are being taught here ; and we are hard to teach ; 
 and the most precious teaching of such events is that 
 Nature will not allow her laws to be broken ; that 
 death comes on innocent and guilty alike; that the 
 loving Father who allows us to suffer in order that we 
 may learn, is set upon our perfection ; that in the long 
 run it is best for mankind that causes should produce 
 then- natural effects. But it is not the permanence 
 of the law, but the violation of it, which evokes belief. 
 Much is written and spoken on all such occasions over 
 which our Lord would say again, " Except ye see 
 signs and wonders, ye will not believe." The use and 
 beauty, the beneficence and the discii^line of law are no 
 proof to you of the far-sighted love of God ; but when 
 His laws appear to be interrupted in your behalf, then 
 is awakened the cry, " Doubtless Thou art om- Father." 
 
 But exceptional disasters are not the only occasions 
 which break down men's faith in God ; there is much 
 in the regular features of human life which produces 
 the same revolt. Perhaps the most notable one is the 
 suffering of childi'en for the sins of their parents, 
 which may be taken as representing all such objec- 
 tions, as far as men are concerned. The cruelty of 
 brutes to one another is part of the same subject, but 
 not directly affecting man's relation to God. ^liether 
 
20 
 
 LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 or not it is wise and right that children should suffer 
 for the sins of their parents, it is surely inconceivable 
 that they should not. We cannot imagine, that is, 
 a state of things in which it should make no difference 
 to a child what manner of man his father was. And 
 even if the physical difficulty were overcome, there 
 would remain the objection that the transmission of 
 good qualities of mind and body would vanish when 
 the entail of evil was cut off ; and who would consent 
 to the compromise ? And again, supposing the 
 descent of evil could be prevented, and the succession 
 of health and virtue, of intellect and position, could 
 be retained, would mankind on the whole be the 
 gainer ? If it could be arranged that the whole results 
 of a man's faults or follies could be confined to him- 
 self, would not one of the most powerful of all known 
 securities for prudence and good conduct be removed ? 
 Would not the world be on the whole worse instead 
 of better if men were liberated from this restraint ? 
 The certainty of the inheritance of evil to his children 
 is the one motive which binds many a man whom no 
 other tie could hold ; the removal of it would be the 
 breaking of one of the strongest bonds of society. 
 But how seldom does the certain operation of this 
 law evoke any gratitude for the wisdom and the love 
 of God ! how often do instances of its occasional 
 hardship provoke complaint ! And yet it is only its 
 unfailing certainty which gives it its value as a 
 discipline. The contemplation of the seemingly 
 mechanical action of these and similar laws may 
 
LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 21 
 
 perhaps make men long for the sign of a Living Ruler ; 
 but however natural this feeling may be, the truer 
 and higher state of feeling is to see in them proofs of 
 a Living Euler — of His foresight, and of His power of 
 adaj)ting our surroundings to our nature. " To trust 
 in God in spite of the remorseless march of law," it 
 has been said, " this is faith." It would be more true 
 to say that to trust in Him in consequence of it, is 
 faith. Not only to beheve without " signs and 
 wonders," but in consequence of their absence, seems 
 the highest trust of all ; the faith our Saviour seems 
 to be longing to see when He utters the complaint in 
 the text. 
 
 And to those whose faith stands in need of these 
 proofs of signs and wonders, religion offers the same 
 difficulties that nature does. 
 
 It could hardly be expected that there would be any 
 difference of plan between them, considering their 
 common som*ce. And it is found, as a matter of fact, 
 that religion presents the same phenomenon of a 
 Living Will, unchanging and persistent, working to- 
 wards a definite end, viz. the perfection of man. It is 
 only another side of the education of nature. We find 
 it, or rather God through it, using means to produce 
 ends ; adai^ting them to the variety of objects to be 
 attained ; and always producing His results according 
 to law. 
 
 Even the great interposition of Providence for the 
 salvation of men was an illustration of the universal 
 law of sacrifice, and of another law as wide — that all 
 
22 
 
 LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 the good and evil that comes to men comes from their 
 fellow-men ; that as by man comes death to man, so 
 by man comes also to him the resurrection of the 
 dead. And the means employed were in nicest 
 adaptation to the end sought. Those who look 
 deepest into the nature of man, and into the scheme 
 of man's redemption, will see in them a refined applica- 
 tion of means to ends ; a harmony with the system of 
 nature ; and a conformity to its laws, which will more 
 than compensate them for the want of interpositions, 
 or of signs and wonders to assure their wavering 
 hearts that there is a Living God. In the spiritual 
 as in the physical world progress is according to law ; 
 means are required to produce ends ; effects demand 
 causes ; and we rule our conduct and manage the 
 world upon this hypothesis. But in spite of all proofs 
 that growth in godliness is slow ; that each step rests 
 on the one before it ; that a character no more than a 
 city can be built in a day ; there are men who all their 
 lives look for a sudden conversion, and for the sign of 
 it ; or profess to have been converted, and can tell 
 you the sign ; or have a proof that they are saved ; or 
 yearn for a proof of the love of God for their individual 
 souls. They can draw no inference of God's love from 
 nature ; they cannot see that God is speaking and 
 acting in and through it tow^ards the same end 
 that all their spiritual disciiDline is pointing to ; as 
 if a child could see no proof of his father's love in 
 sleepless care and self-sacrifice, and only knew it by 
 occasional indulgence. Like the Jews of our Lord's 
 
LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 23 
 
 time, except they see signs and wonders tlie}^ cannot 
 believe. 
 
 It is strange that men from such opposite poles of 
 thought as those of the superstitious and the sceptic 
 should have di'awn a similar conclusion from the 
 uniformity of law. 
 
 The one demands some proof that God hears and 
 loves him, other than nature and religion afford ; 
 the other infers the absence of a Designer from the 
 perfection and regularity of His work. Neither of 
 these seem to be the mind that Christ desired to form 
 in us. He taught us that in the midst of law there 
 was one sphere of freedom — in the communication of 
 the spirit of man with the Spirit of God. We are to 
 use this " Freedom within the bounds of Law; " not to 
 pray that the laws of nature ma}^ be broken for our 
 comfort or safety, but that we may be conformed to 
 them, and may use them as a discipline for attaining 
 a fuller knowledge of His mind who is the Lawgiver 
 also of the kingdom of grace. We are to pray not 
 that means and processes may be dispensed with in 
 our behalf, or that we may be converted and saved by 
 a mh-acle, but that we may beheve in and make use 
 of the means and aids to perfection with which alike 
 in the natural and supernatm*al world He sm-rounds 
 and teaches us. The mind of God, as revealed to us 
 in both these spheres of His action, is one of persistent 
 purpose and patient employment of secondary causes 
 to attain a definite end. Our work on earth is to 
 grow ourselves, and to mould others to the likeness of 
 
24 
 
 LAW AND LOVE. 
 
 this mind. The means to this end are equally clear : 
 to use the freedom we have of communion with Him, 
 that we may be taught to imitate His processes and 
 trust to the education and efficacy of His laws; to 
 learn by the experience of results the wisdom and 
 love which has ordained them. It is only this 
 experience of the mind and character of God which 
 will give us a faith which can resist all shocks and 
 disappointments and lead us up through knowledge to 
 that love of Him which is Eternal Life. 
 
OVERCOMING DEATH. 
 
 St. John viii. 51. — " Verily I say unto you, If a man keep My 
 saying, he shall never see death." 
 
 The world, we are told, is apt to take a man at his 
 own valuation, and to concede the claims he makes for 
 himself. But it is very quick also to discern their 
 hollo wness if they are not supported by his life, and 
 to expose, deride, and reject the pretender when he is 
 found out. 
 
 No teacher ever put forth such personal pretensions 
 as Jesus Christ; and yet they are not stated as 
 reasons for rejecting Him by those who have deserted 
 or opposed the religion which He taught. Just before 
 He utters the sweeping promise of the text, He throws 
 down what was a very daring challenge to acute and 
 malignant opponents, " Which of you convinceth Me 
 of sin ? " involving a claim which would have seemed 
 so arrogant and ignorant in the mouth of any ordinary 
 human teacher, that it would have alienated rather 
 than attracted followers; from which a cultivated 
 society, like that which in these days professes to 
 accept the Speaker as its ideal, would have turned 
 with some distaste, as from words which in them- 
 
26 
 
 OVEKCOMIXG DEATH. 
 
 selves condemned Him, who knew so little of Himself, 
 as unfit to be a Teacher of others. But borne out by 
 the evidence of a spotless life, they attract rather than 
 ve-pel us, and we accept them as the natural ex23res- 
 sion of conscious sinlessness ; not uttered as a boast, 
 and not extorted by persecution. Men even rejoice 
 in this claim — which is allowed by not being refuted 
 — as a testimony of His power to deliver them from 
 sin because He was free from sin Himself. His pre- 
 tensions rise still higher in the words of the text : 
 " If a man will keep My saying, he shall never see 
 death." The former claim was one of passive excel- 
 lence, but this is one of active power. No pretension 
 can go beyond this ; it is not the only high claim to 
 be found in the Gospels, but in its height and breadth 
 it represents them all. 
 
 It is not easy to divest ourselves so completely 
 of the associations of a lifetime as to conceive the 
 feelings with which His contemporaries must have 
 heard the " carpenter " make this stupendous claim. 
 For death had been to the old world in one sense 
 more terrible than it is to the new. Then the future 
 was dark and uncertain to all alike ; if there was less 
 fear in the impenitent, there was less hope in the 
 good. To most men it seemed the end of all things ; 
 of life, energy, and enjoyment ; and its dark shadow 
 fell all along the path from the cradle to the grave. 
 And here was an obscure teacher whose words, He 
 said, would transfigure life by delivering it from this 
 universal dread ; who would do for His followers 
 
OVERCOMIXG DEATH. 
 
 27 
 
 what had not been done for Abraham and the prophets. 
 They might well say, '*Whom makest Thou Thyself?" 
 
 And the contrast between the greatness of the evil 
 and the seeming powerlessness of the remedy has not 
 ceased to affect us, though we profess to accept His 
 words and to believe in His power. Death still re- 
 mains the great event of life. Eegarded from a simply 
 human viewpoint, it is not the chief of life's ills, nor 
 wholly an evil in itself. For it stands to life in the 
 same relation that a fixed unalterable engagement 
 does to the business of each day. It gives definite- 
 ness and regularity to it all. It determines all life. 
 It regulates the preparation for maturity as for a time 
 which is limited, and must condense into a few j-ears 
 all the results of preparation. It gives force and 
 intensity to the energies of manhood by reminding 
 us how short is the time for carrying out all ideas 
 and realizing aU hopes. It gives a dignity to old 
 age, of which uselessness and heljDlessness might in 
 some cases rob it, if it were not invested with the 
 mystery of the unknown futm^e which seems so near. 
 
 For there is a dignity about death which saves the 
 meanest life from insignificance. And this is true 
 not only of the actual presence of death, which awes 
 all but the thoughtless and the hardened, but it 
 is true as an idea which must always accompany 
 our estimate of living men. The thought that to 
 the most feeble and obscui'e must come a time when 
 there is no future; when the only look is back- 
 ward ; when they must sum all results, and confess 
 
28 
 
 OVERCOMING DEATH. 
 
 that there is nothing more for them; a time when 
 they must go on the lonely journey, and learn the 
 great secret, and he on a level at last with the greatest 
 and wisest of the earth ; — the thought that the tramp 
 and the convict and the drudge bear about in their 
 bosoms the mystery and the burden of ours, gives 
 them an importance which no worldly distinctions 
 can obliterate ; an interest which no degradation can 
 quench ; and clothes them with a dignity of which 
 they may be unconscious, but which impresses all 
 who think about anything but the objects of sense by 
 which they are surrounded. 
 
 But it is in truth impossible to regard death in 
 this merely positive light as the natural termina- 
 tion of animal life, which may or may not have a 
 future; though there are cultivated men now who 
 refuse on principle to think of it otherwise. The 
 instincts of mankind, varied and uncertain as they 
 have always been about the character of the life to 
 come, are far from doubtful about the fact. This con- 
 viction has added the new element of anxiety to the 
 idea of death; has clustered about it a new set of 
 feelings ; has derived from it a new set of motives, 
 which are wanting to it when merely viewed as the 
 natural limit of active life : while to Christians the 
 clearness with which Kevelation assumes the fact of 
 a post-mortem existence, though it does not diminish 
 the importance of death as the inevitable end of all we 
 can do on and for this planet, yet seems to dwarf it by 
 the comparison of a life to whose possible duration 
 and energies we can conceive no bounds. 
 
OYERCOmXG DEATH. 29 
 
 It cannot be denied that Eevelation has added to 
 its terrors also, though this is not its natural effect, 
 nor, as far as we can see, its Divine intention. 
 There were no such lurid pictures conceived of the 
 state of the majority of mankind in the old world, as 
 certain schools of Christian theology have painted to 
 terrify and alienate the new. They are descriptions 
 which, if we would soberly try to realize them about 
 ourselves or those we love, would drive us into mad- 
 ness or revolt. But apart from conceptions incon- 
 sistent with a belief in God as our Father, there is 
 enough that is impressive, if not appalling, to the 
 imagination in the idea of the irrevocable past; of 
 the great change ; of the sohtude of death ; of the 
 new experience; of the possibility of more conscious 
 relations with a Divine Person; of a life possibly 
 quite out of harmony with all former dispositions 
 and habits ; of the transformed personality of those 
 we have known; of the chance of characters being 
 read there as faces are here ; — there is enough in 
 all these possibilities to give meaning to the prayer, 
 " In the horn- of death . . . Good Lord, deliver 
 us," and to make us turn for refuge to the promise, 
 "If a man keep My saying, he shall never see 
 death." 
 
 All these are in prospect at that hour ; but present 
 at every conscious death are the pathos of the situa- 
 tion ; the sadness of saying good-bye to cherished 
 scenes and old habits, and useful work and uncom- 
 pleted plans ; of parting with friends, and with those 
 
80 
 
 OVERCOMING DEATH. 
 
 who are closer still. There is the sense of failure 
 in life, and the fruitless longing to live it over again; 
 of being cut off in the midst of our days — a feeling 
 which is hardly ever absent from those whose lives 
 are full of energy, however late the last day is. All 
 these circumstances of death no less than its fore- 
 bodings would make any one who should deliver us 
 from it appear a Saviour indeed. It would be foolish to 
 deny that all these prospects and accompaniments are 
 evils, and that they are very keenly felt — more keenly 
 felt now, perhaps, than at any former time. There 
 are conditions of life, and there have been periods of 
 the world's history, when death must have seemed a 
 release ; and the pain of its surroundings and the 
 fear of its future have seemed light in comparison 
 with the evils from which it was a deliverance. But 
 now, when so many things combine to make life 
 desirable ; when civilization has removed so many 
 hardships ; w^hen liberty and justice have made life 
 endurable to all, and opened up a career in the world 
 to so many ; when refinement of manners and of 
 living allows of a chastened and continuous enjoy- 
 ment of almost the whole of life ; when love of nature 
 and of art are giving a new charm to existence ; when 
 education is giving a widespread sense of enjoyment 
 in the exercise of developed powers of mind ; when 
 easy means of communication enable men to 
 multiply and retain their friendships ; the evils of 
 death are perhaps more keenly felt than ever, though 
 the words of the Deliverer have been ringing in men's 
 
OVERCOMIXG DEATH. 
 
 31 
 
 ears for nearly two thousand years. In spite of 
 religion and of culture, these aspects of pathos and of 
 anxiety are still those under which death continues to 
 present itself to mankind, and few of us have yet found 
 any specific in the words of Christ against them. It 
 is to be found, He says, in keeping His sayings. 
 
 The sa}TQgs of all true men, of whom He is the 
 Kepresentative, are the expression of theii* lives; 
 and the Hfe that He exhibited to men through 
 these words was the Divine life, what we call the 
 life eternal, which knows not death. As He showed 
 to the world for the first time the complete union 
 between man and God, estranged before (not only 
 the possibility of absolute harmony between their 
 wills, but a living instance of the possibility of the 
 eternal life being exhibited in and through a human 
 nature and surroundings), so we must believe that He 
 gifted all men with a potency of the same intimate 
 union, and of the same incorporation into the natm*e 
 of God. 
 
 If the life of God had not been the true life for 
 men, the Divine nature could not have expressed 
 itself in the human; but there was no antagonism 
 visible between them. His human natm-e had the 
 freest play ; it was manifested in the tenderest social 
 relations ; it was exercised in the manliest energy 
 and endurance; it fed itself by the most abstract 
 contemplation ; it braced itself by voluntary trial and 
 daring. It was emphatically a human life. In the 
 varied experiences of three short years it exhausted 
 
32 
 
 OVERCOMING DEATH. 
 
 most of the possibilities of feeling, many varieties 
 of action and of suffering ; and it vindicates its claim 
 to true humanity by standing out as the typical life 
 of man, as no other recorded life has done, ever since 
 its brief history closed. So far was the human life 
 from being hampered by the Divine nature, or ab- 
 sorbed in it, that the human seems to have found 
 freer scope through the medium of the Divine. The 
 manhood of Christ was wider, and more fully repre- 
 sentative both of man's and woman's nature, than 
 any other life that history has preserved. It is this 
 revealed harmony between the two natures ; this 
 possibility of human life being lived in the strictest 
 and most literal sense in God, that gives such point 
 to His promise about the mode of deliverance from 
 death. For if He could live this life Himself as a 
 man. His words must make known the " secret " and 
 the " method " by which it is to be achieved. And to 
 attain this life in God is to be delivered from the pain 
 and the fear of death, for death has no more dominion 
 over Him. It is e?isy, no doubt, to admit these as 
 theological truths, but they are no help and no 
 realities to men unless they can see how they shall 
 escape death by pursuing His method for attaining 
 Divine life. Will not all that is sad and all that is 
 awful about death still remain ? Will His sayings 
 change all these circumstances ? To keep his words, 
 to enter into their meaning, to absorb them, till our 
 lives become their natural expression, will change not 
 the aspects of death, but us who behold them. It 
 
overcojIixg death. 
 
 83 
 
 will make us look with ^' changed ej'es " on iDartings 
 which are only the i)reludes to reunion ; on the loss 
 of pure enjoyments and noble work and loved com- 
 panionships as an exchange for a perfect future which 
 will minister food to every faculty of heart and mind, 
 to intellect and to imagination, even to the senses of 
 a transformed and purified body ; a place to work for 
 every one, where he will neither faint nor grow weary, 
 or dread that his work is all in vain. If, as we must 
 believe, the Divine Life shall entu'ely animate and 
 penetrate the world to come, there is nothing fantastic 
 in hoping for such a future, when we have seen with 
 our eyes how free and noble were the energies of 
 human nature when in closest union with the Divine 
 in the person of Christ Jesus. 
 
 To keep His sayings will make this change in us, 
 because it will make Life and Death to consist of 
 new and different elements. As their inner meaning 
 takes possession of us, it will slowly unfold the truth, 
 that since the highest life for man is to be lived in 
 another — that is, in God — the essential virtues of a 
 man must needs be relative ; must consist in his 
 actions and feelings towards others. 
 
 It seems only natural that love, which now makes 
 part of the bitterness of death, should enable men, 
 when purified of all self-regard, to face it — for men 
 and women have overcome the fear of death for 
 love of others ; that truth, which consists in reflect- 
 ing by our lives a perfect image of ourselves to G od 
 and man, should arm us with confidence in His 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 OVERCOMING DEATH. 
 
 truth when we are on our way to Him ; that purity of 
 heart, which is the one condition of seeing what is 
 godhke in the nature either of God or man, should 
 give us an imperishable life in the being of others 
 that death can neither quench nor appal. A new 
 life is begotten within when the chief interest is in 
 characters ; for character cannot die. Life becomes 
 eternal here on earth when it is fed by elements 
 that death has no dominion over. Just in the same 
 way death eternal may be experienced here also, in 
 a self-centred life. Death is something more than 
 laying aside the body ; it may come before it is laid 
 aside, and coexist with the plenitude of powers, 
 activities, and enjoyments ; and may only then be dis- 
 covered to be death, and not life, whose caricature it 
 has been so long, when the time comes for all things 
 to slip out of our grasp which seemed to make up life, 
 along with the body which was their instrument. 
 Eternal Life and Eternal Death must be the same 
 here and hereafter ; the same in kind, however di£fer- 
 ent in degree : the one finds its joy in the highest joys 
 of others, and may be capable of vast expansion in a 
 spiritual world. The essence of the other being that 
 it is self-centred, it may be felt with more bitterness 
 hereafter, where the very soul of life must be com- 
 munion, than here where all its longings can be fed 
 by indulgence. 
 
 Life is the promise of the New Testament, and 
 Death, not Punishment (a death, that is, that is its 
 own punishment), is its invariable opposite. The Life 
 
OVERCOMIXG DEATH. 
 
 35 
 
 is to be sought and won for its own sake, not for any 
 rewards that it may bring ; because the highest Life 
 is its consequence, not its reward. Death is to be 
 shunned not for fear of any other punishment than 
 the worst doom of all, to have quenched the Divine 
 spark, to have degraded a natm-e capable of union 
 ^vith God ; so far as this life is concerned, to have 
 made the Example and Deliverance vain. If no sense 
 of this Eternal Life within will ever brighten the sad 
 parting and the anxious futm'e, it will turn anxieties 
 from within outwards ; it will discern in others the 
 blossoming of the same life we feel ; it will give hope 
 that He whose natm*e we have in part put on will 
 complete the vestm*e, and give us the fulness of that 
 Life of which keeping His sayings has given the 
 foretaste. 
 
THE END OF PAIN. 
 
 Eev. xxi. 4. — "And Ood shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; 
 and there shall he no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 
 neither shall there he any more paioi.''^ 
 
 The abstract conditions of man, either now or here- 
 after, are not thought to c@me within the ordinary 
 calculations of prudence. Men are ready enough to 
 study or to guess at their own lot in life, or the lot of 
 their children ; by which is meant, for the most part, 
 the place they will occupy in society, the friends they 
 will make, the work they will do, or the money they 
 will have to spend. But these are not the properties 
 of the race, but the accidents of individuals ; they are 
 interesting, not in themselves, but in the way in which 
 they affect us. And yet it might be thought that such 
 questions as that suggested by the text about the con- 
 trast between the present and the future of humanity 
 might have an interest for many minds. It does not 
 appeal for its interest solely to the religious sentiment ; 
 if it did, its interest might well be expected to be more 
 limited. But it appeals to all who are of a specula- 
 tive turn of mind ; to all who feel that the fate of their 
 fellow-men is the most absorbing of all questions ; to 
 all to whom any great problem of life has the attrac- 
 tion of an unexplored country. 
 
THE END OF PAIN. 
 
 37 
 
 Perhaps the fii'st thought about a future life, of 
 which the differentia was the absence of pain and 
 sorrow, and not the presence of some peculiar sources 
 of joy, would be that it was a very meagre conception 
 of Heaven. This would occur to those who, while their 
 lives had been free from suffering, had known little of 
 the higher joys of which human natm-e is capable. But 
 whether the description is adequate or not, it is very 
 natural ; for most men have a very imperfect capacity 
 for joy ; they are much less capable of feeling happi- 
 ness than misery, and they find it much harder to 
 sympathize with joy than with sorrow. And on the 
 other hand so many have experience either of pain 
 within or of trouble about them, that it is not un- 
 natural that their idea of heaven should be a state 
 of freedom from all the burdens of life on earth. So 
 that a notion of heaven has grown up in some minds 
 as of a world like this, without its drawbacks. For 
 we speak of the icorld to come; and wherever we 
 live will be om* world. But this is to be a world 
 in which we shall live in no resisting medium ; in no 
 atmosphere of friction ; a world in which there will 
 be no anxieties, disappointments, or pain. In all 
 else a world of men and women, of work and j)leasure, 
 of energy and rest. However easy or hard this may 
 be to conceive, however it may agree with or differ 
 from the general descriptions of Scriptm-e, it is like 
 the promise of the text in its main featm-e of the 
 absence of all that is painful from the condition of 
 the futui'e. And this immunity from suffering con- 
 
38 
 
 THE END OF PAIN. 
 
 stitutes the difficulty of the conception. It may 
 be none the less true, though we cannot conceive it. 
 We cannot comprehend God, but we believe that He 
 exists; and we may find out that what seemed an 
 inconceivable dream is a realized condition of ex^ 
 istence. 
 
 But the whole experience of life is against us 
 when we try to imagine a state of the highest joy, 
 and of the noblest conditions of life without a throb 
 of pain or an emotion of sorrow. The records of the 
 highest of all lives are of One who, besides bearing 
 the burden of the sin of the world, "had not where 
 to lay His head; " and ever since, the foremost men 
 of the world have bent the knee before the " Man of 
 Sorrows," and have looked up to a Leader "made 
 perfect through suffering." It may be said that this 
 was the condition of His human life, but is not true 
 of His life in heaven. But if He is with us to the 
 end of the world, the cries of humanity must reach 
 Him still; He must be daily crucified afresh by its 
 sins. If sympathy is of the essence of the highest 
 nature, the Eternal Life of the Son of God must be 
 receptive still of the same emotion by which it was 
 brought to perfection here. And with all we know 
 about ourselves is it possible to conceive of happiness 
 unbroken and unalloyed in store for us for ever ? 
 
 Few people are so constituted that they could 
 endure it — their natures would infallibly deteriorate — 
 even if it were a life in which they could find pleasure. 
 And this suggests again what a different feeling joy 
 
THE EXD OF PAIX. 
 
 39 
 
 may be from our conception of it. Many of the 
 elements of it, — like excitement, self-complacency, 
 the sense of security and of superiority, not to speak 
 of physical sensations — must, of course, be absent, 
 and we are throTO back on the joy we can find in 
 others, the somxe, no doubt, of our highest happiness 
 here. Setting aside the ineffable delight of more close 
 and conscious relations with perfect natures, the joy 
 of a future life must depend on the happiness we are 
 capable of deriving from watching, sharing, and for- 
 warding the happiness of other people. In the last 
 analysis, then, of the possible sources of futm-e hap- 
 piness, we come to one which seems inseparably 
 associated with sorrow; even the blissful existence 
 of the Son of God seems as if it must be shadowed 
 with the sombre cloud of human anxiety and sin. 
 And we cannot imagine any deep interest in others 
 without its companion shadows of anxiety and pain. 
 All we know of those we love best reminds us how in- 
 separable is the companionship between anxiety and 
 love ; all we know of om*selves warns us how much 
 we should lose in character and aim, without the 
 discipline of doubt and fear and hope being added 
 to our faith and charity. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no feeling of incompleteness in a 
 life exceptionally free from trouble, but the want is often 
 visible to outsiders. A whole side of the natm-e seems 
 undeveloped, and in a heart full of pity no sympathy 
 is to be found. This is the best fruit that comes to 
 those who sow in tears; " but there are other pre- 
 
40 
 
 THE END OF PAIN. 
 
 cious products too. To stand face to face with a 
 great grief is to feel, for the first time, our true 
 relation to the universe and our fellow-men. " I am 
 as other men, subject to the same blows, and pangs, 
 and ills, and marching towards the same death." It 
 dispels many illusions, and puts in the right point of 
 view many of our surroundings which were coloured 
 or refracted by the glare of prosperity. We see things in 
 a white light " then ; and find that conscience within, 
 and God above, and man about us, are the only true 
 realities. The path of duty, so dull before, is the 
 only way of peace and comfort now ; the charity and 
 consideration, vfhich seemed a gracious condescension 
 before, are now the fitting attitude for one so stricken 
 to poor fellow-mortals who may so soon feel the stroke 
 themselves. From this experience come the higher 
 results of chastened will and affections ; of a new 
 j)ovv^er of symxpathy ; of a persistent emotion of charity 
 instead of the irregular impulse of pity. And every 
 day's experience brings some of the smaller trials and 
 pains of life, out of which we may rise to more strength 
 and tenderness, from ashes of our former selves." 
 Many of om- trials seem so purposeless that, unless 
 they have such an end as this in view, they are out of 
 harmony with the order of the universe — blemishes 
 and interruptions to it. But, viewed in the light of 
 agencies of an unseen order working out a restoration 
 or reconstruction in man for the purpose of bringing 
 him into harmony with that order, they fall into their 
 right place ; they have a meaning and a purpose, 
 and are essential parts of a great plan. 
 
THE EXD OF PAIX. 
 
 41 
 
 But experience of those who have had no troubles, 
 or of those on whom they have not produced the 
 proper effect, leaves untouched the difficulty of imagin- 
 ing a state where sorrow is unknown, and where we 
 shall have none of the chances and means it offers for 
 rising and growing in moral and spnitual life. The 
 retrospect of our inner life must convince us that joy, 
 according to our notions of it, if unbroken, would be 
 hard to bear ; would rob us of much experience ; would 
 shut out much knowledge ; would withdraw many op- 
 portunities of improvement in feeling and character. 
 Eegarded from a distance, with the experience of 
 years and the perception of their effects, some of the 
 sorrows of life appear as the best featm'es in it, and 
 we find it hard to imagine what is to take their place. 
 
 It would seem as if the joy of the life to come must 
 have a good deal of the element of pathos in it, if it 
 is to be a progressive life ; if men are to continue to 
 grow in worth and tenderness ; if to some souls, at all 
 events, it is not to be less rich in opportunities of 
 improvement than the present. 
 
 iNor would the loss of happiness be less than the 
 loss of spiritual advancement. For no doubt the 
 deepest joys have their pathetic side ; all the tenderest 
 recollections of the past are associated with sorrow ; 
 all our fondest hopes for the future are toned with 
 anxiety. There may be a hope without fear, and a 
 memory without regret; but we are so constituted 
 that it is hard to conceive them ; and it is impossible 
 to resist the conclusion that we must be very dif- 
 
42 
 
 THE END OF PAIN. 
 
 ferent sort of people from ^vhat most of us are, not 
 merely to be able to enjoy, but to be able to endure 
 such an experience. The calls on compassion; the 
 claims on sympathy ; the pathos of so many situations 
 in life ; the sadness produced by so many aspects of 
 nature, perhaps by all its grander features ; these are 
 some of the elements of the training of an immortal 
 spirit that seem to have done less than half their work 
 in the best of men; to have little chance of com- 
 pleting it before the threescore years and ten. If all 
 the trials of life and the misfortunes of friends and 
 the pathos of nature have failed to draw forth a sigh 
 or a tear; if they have come and gone and left no 
 mark higher up on the scale that registers inner 
 growth; what have w^e to look forward to, in the 
 promise to wipe away all tears," if we have no tears 
 to wipe away ? 
 
 So many of the sorrows of life arise from the 
 failures and imperfections of others, that it may well 
 be thought that in a perfect state we shall be free 
 from them ; and that we shall find the same discipline 
 from the tax on our sympathies with their joy, that 
 we now derive from sympathizing with sorrow. We 
 know by experience that this is the higher effort of 
 love. But one of the greatest evils of life — pain — is often 
 in no way derived from or related to others, and is 
 entirely individual ; it springs from, and ends in the 
 sufferer. It is often traceable to no cause, and leads 
 to no physical end. For though it is true in some 
 cases that pain is a valuable warning of disorder, and 
 
THE EXD OF PATX. 
 
 43 
 
 a hint to take precautions in time, it is equally true 
 that some of the most fatal diseases are painless ; 
 and, on the other hand, that some of the acutest pains 
 are not symptoms of danger at all. So that those 
 who believe that the Lord of the universe is the Lord 
 of their spmts too, are driven to seek for some pm-pose 
 in such a widespread and unaccountable feature in 
 human experience. If it can be traced to no cause of 
 our own creating, and if no physical benefit can be 
 found resulting from it, it is natural to such minds 
 to seek for some correspondence between it and the 
 unseen order of things with which they find themselves 
 united by so many ties. The twin facts of an unseen 
 order of things and of physical pain are among the 
 most intimate and personal facts of consciousness ; 
 there is nothing fantastic in assuming a correspond- 
 ence between them. 
 
 If it is the pui'pose of God, as representing this 
 unseen order, to work a change in us, to efiect a reno- 
 vation of oui- natm-e ; and if we find om-selves suffering 
 without cause and without result — other than this 
 change or renovation — it is natm-al to believe that He 
 is using this agency to promote this end. Connecting 
 oui- experience with this end, we can read it anew. If 
 we could see in pain a use and necessity to our own 
 nature, and to others through its improvement — if we 
 could see it as existing for, and essential to this end 
 — om- view of the mode of God's working in the world 
 would be modified, and the whole aspect of oui- painful 
 experience would be changed. Just as physical 
 
44 
 
 THE END OF PAIN. 
 
 science has shown us in the material world forces un- 
 seen and unsuspected by us working out regular and 
 necessary results, so the hidden forces of personal 
 experience may, through the gradual elevation of 
 individuals by the discipline of pain, be working 
 out the redemption of the world, and the perfection 
 of man's being. Even the first rudiment of perfection 
 — the sense of the goodness of God for the blessing of 
 animal life — can hardly come without a sense of the 
 interruption of its enjoyment. Certainly the liveliest 
 gratitude for the Divine benevolence is found in 
 habitual sufferers. For some reason it has a spiritu- 
 alizing effect of its own ; perhaps because no merely 
 personal feelings have any chance of being mixed up 
 with it. There can be no sense of wounded pride or 
 self-love in it ; no remorse in it ; no self-reproach, no 
 revolt against ingratitude, no envy, and no up- 
 braiding; the sufferer is not to blame, and no one 
 has brought it on him ; there is nothing to fall back 
 upon, no one to whom to impute his misery, no 
 energy of action to blunt his grief. It is there ; and it 
 must be borne, till it stops and peace comes; and 
 there is no moment of life when the sense of peace is 
 so deep as when a great pain goes away. The feeling 
 is another link of likeness between pain and the un- 
 seen world ; for the cessation of it leaves nothing to 
 desire, and makes it easier to conceive the reality of 
 perfect happiness being indeed what it is said to be, 
 **the peace of God." 
 
 It adds another mystery to the thought of the life 
 
THE END OF PAIN. 
 
 45 
 
 to come to remember tlie promise that there shall be 
 *'no more pain." This intimate, personal, deep- 
 seated teacher mider whose discipline those who know, 
 tell us that the fairest flowers of human hope and 
 love, gratitude and resignation, have grown up ; how 
 are we to attain to perfection without it ? Will God 
 i give us a softer discipline to take its place? What 
 manner of men must we be vrhen the time comes to 
 enter into the painless state, unless the experience of 
 life has been so used by us as to have provided some 
 substitute for its hallowing influence ? 
 
MYSTEEIES OF EAETH AND HEAVEN. 
 
 St. Luke viii. 10. — " Unto you it is given to know the mysteries 
 of the kingdom of heaven^ 
 
 Men are more conscious now perhaps than they have 
 ever been before that they are surrounded with mys- 
 teries, and more hopeless of being able to solve them. 
 There are still men, and perhaps there will always be 
 men, who, for part of their lives at all events, will 
 refuse to accept the experience of others, or believe 
 that certain problems are insoluble until they have 
 run their own heads against the dark wall which 
 bounds all knowledge, and have heard for themselves, 
 **Thus far shalt thou go," in answer to one more 
 attempt to speculate and to penetrate. 
 
 In despair of all possibility of demonstration, some 
 shape their lives on an hypothesis of necessary igno- 
 rance and, as far as they can, abstain even from all 
 conjecture about the most interesting questions that 
 can occupy the mind of man. But they will not be 
 expelled by a theory — they return, to puzzle and to 
 baffle ; as outraged Nature will revenge herself, stifled 
 inquiry will crop up in more eager curiosity still. 
 
 It will perhaps seek a vent in some new direction, 
 
MYSTEKIES OF EAETH AND HEAVEN. 
 
 47 
 
 and try to get, by a side way, behind the curtain it 
 cannot lift, like the attempt of the spiritualist to learn 
 the secrets of the imdsible world. 
 
 In some way it will find vent, till it wears itself out ; 
 and men settle down to one of two convictions : either 
 that it is not worth the while of a reasonable being to 
 concern himself with an order of things which cannot 
 be proved to exist ; or, that enough is revealed for life 
 and conduct ; enough to show what is the order of the 
 universe, and that for the rest they must be content 
 to wait. On these mysteries the great revelation of 
 the Son of God throws no light. He left us with a 
 hint that He might have told more, but there is no 
 suggestion in any word of His that any of the "many 
 things " would have made any of the dark spots 
 brighter than they are now. This is not the kind 
 of light He gave. Perhaps these are not mysteries 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven at all. Certainly they are 
 not among those that unfold themselves to an eager 
 desire to know, or even to the pure heart that can 
 see God Himself. For clear heads and pure hearts 
 have chafed all their lives against ignorance, and 
 have gone down to the grave cheered by the prospect 
 of "more light." 
 
 Men to whom our Lord would have granted every 
 privilege of the Kingdom of Heaven have left the 
 earth as much in the dark about the great problems 
 of existence as the most gross and careless of their 
 race. We must accept the indication as final on the 
 subject, though there are men, especially young men, 
 
48 
 
 MYSTERIES OF EARTH AND HEAVEN. 
 
 who will never cease to speculate : perhaps it would be 
 a sign of something wanting in them if they did. Our 
 Lord cannot, then, be speaking of such problems 
 when He promises a solution of the mysteries of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven to some of His followers. 
 
 Most people would prefer the answer to their own 
 questions to the spiritual discernment which He ex- 
 plains as the knowledge of the mysteries of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven ; they would regard the key to 
 their favourite puzzles as the greater boon ; but He 
 taught us the relative values of a good many things, 
 and it is likely that the knowledge He promises is the 
 more important, if not the most interesting. In other 
 spheres besides the spiritual one, the most essential 
 knowledge is not always the most welcome. 
 
 But, at all events. He does promise special insight 
 to some, while the other knowledge is impartially 
 withheld from all. It must to a spiritual being be 
 vital as well as interesting knowledge, and yet it is 
 not common to mankind. Men have at all times 
 been ready to seize on such words ; to build theories 
 of selection on them; to construct religious systems 
 on them; learning neither from the whole drift of 
 Scripture nor from the experience of life. But Scrip- 
 ture and Life are the very teachers which would give 
 the wisdom to all which Christ promises to the few. 
 
 A little thought about His words might possibly show 
 that the few might be all; that the "selection" was 
 natm-al," not arbitrary ; that the " survival " was of 
 the fittest," not of the favoured ; and again, that the 
 
MYSTERIES OF EARTH AND HEAVEN. 
 
 49 
 
 fitness depended on qualities which all alike possess ; 
 that the knowledge came from the use of them. 
 The privilege in this case was granted to those who 
 came to inquire. The desire to know was the only 
 qualification for initiation into those mysteries. 
 " The disciples and those about Him," St. Mark 
 says, came for the explanation; that is, all who 
 had shown an interest in His life and works, and who 
 had been able to see under the cloke of His common- 
 place position and circumstances the tokens of a 
 Divine nature. Most of them had had fewer ad- 
 vantages than many of their countrymen for dis- 
 cerning the hidden significance of common objects; 
 but by the afiQnity of spiritual natures they had read 
 the great secret of all time — the revelation of the 
 Divine Spuit in the forms of matter. It belongs to 
 the idea of the word " mystery," as it is used in Scrip- 
 ture, that men should be able to understand it, if they 
 care to find it out. A mystery is not a secret ; it is 
 a revealed secret. So the revelation of the nature of 
 God in Jesus of Nazareth is a mystery alike to those 
 who can and to those who cannot see the essence of 
 the Divine nature in that humble Life. 
 
 Here the parable of the Sower is spoken of as a 
 mystery, though probably many of us who are famihar 
 with Christ's style might have guessed its meaning. 
 
 The Pharisees, we know, caught the drift of some 
 of His parables, and " perceived that they were spoken 
 against them," not from spiritual affinity, but because 
 their wits were sharpened by self-regard. The loftiest 
 
 E 
 
50 MYSTERIES OF EARTH AND HEAVEN. 
 
 and the lowliest of mysteries are brought together — 
 the Incarnation and the parable of the Sower. Between 
 them lie all the mysteries of life and nature by which 
 we are surrounded. It is suggestive to hear a com- 
 parison of the germination of seed to the spread of 
 the Word of God, called a mystery of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. It might have seemed more natural to look 
 into the library of the Fathers ; into discussions on 
 the relations of the Persons of the Trinity, or into 
 such a book as the ''Paradise Lost" for heavenly 
 mysteries, without such a guide as this into what 
 is truly heavenly. But if this is a parable of things 
 Divine, then all life is full of such parables, for the 
 life of plants is the lowest form of life; and if this 
 has its Divine significances, much more must the 
 life of animals and of man be crowded with teach- 
 ing for those who have eyes to see and ears to 
 hear. The Saviour's question, ''Do ye not under- 
 stand this parable?" sinks into a complaint — 
 " How then will ye understand all parables ? " as He 
 thinks how little men see of all that is about them. 
 He complains of being misunderstood, or not under- 
 stood at all. 
 
 Like a great artist observing the indifference of 
 the crowd to his picture, or listening to their ignorant 
 remarks ; or a great writer reading reviews of his 
 book which show his whole meaning to have been 
 missed; the great Artist of the universe looks on 
 at us for whom He has made all this, and wonders 
 that we can only see surface, and natural laws, and 
 
MYSTEEIES OF EARTH AND HEAVEN. 51 
 
 cause and effect, and evolution and development, 
 when He has made each one of these features of 
 His creation eloquent of the Mind that made it ; 
 a revelation of the laws which guide and the love 
 which sustains an unseen world in which He and 
 "we live and move and have our being." The 
 crowning instance of this union of matter and spirit 
 is in His own Life, in which it is impossible to dis- 
 criminate the human from the Divine, or to classify 
 the motives, so complete is their affinity. And He, 
 as representing this union in His own person, fitly 
 calls attention to its universality. 
 
 Things are so made. He seems to say, that only 
 perverseness can fail to see that all created things 
 not only owe their natural Ufe to the one Great Spirit, 
 but are the body and permanent revelation of Himself 
 to the senses, and through the senses to the soul of 
 man. 
 
 And it is because the life that is in them comes fi'om 
 God that they are able to address what is Divine in 
 us. ''The starry night " that filled the philosopher 
 with wonder, and the poet's "meanest flower," with 
 its "thoughts too deep for tears," alike testify by 
 their influence on the spirit of man to the existence 
 of something besides matter in the visible universe ; 
 and not only to its existence, but to its power to teach. 
 To ignore the informing spirit in matter, which is the 
 way of most ; or to deny it, a conclusion to which 
 study has led a few — this is to make its teaching im- 
 possible. But it is common to go beyond this failure 
 
52 
 
 MYSTERIES OF EARTH AND HEAVEN. 
 
 to recognize the symbolism of nature and life. Even 
 religious people designedly separate the two worlds, 
 into earthly and heavenly ; into this world and the next; 
 as if next meant that which comes after, and not 
 that which is nighest or nearest to this — into things 
 human and things divine. This is to exclude all the 
 experience of life from the sphere of spiritual teaching. 
 And what is there left then ? Only the hours that 
 are spent in the house of God or in private devotion. 
 What fraction of a life are they to counteract the in- 
 fluence of surroundings confessedly out of sympathy 
 with all that is highest within us ; with all, as we 
 believe, that can survive what we see about us ! The 
 balance of a life so conceived and so led must be 
 immeasurably on the side of the obvious motives to 
 action. The scale of spiritual influences must in- 
 evitably kick the beam. The points of contact with 
 them are few and far between ; their effect, when they 
 are in contact, is not always to correct, it is sometimes 
 to confirm the tendencies produced by the other side 
 of life. For a religion which consists in religious 
 services is apt to degenerate into a more subtle form 
 of selfishness, which has been aptly called "other 
 worldliness ; " a sort of insurance against risk after 
 death, instead of being the service and the consecra- 
 tion of all life to perfecting the Divine Image in our- 
 selves ; to making some, however few, more what men 
 and women were meant to be. And it is easy to 
 guess what contact with a world in which no Divine 
 life is believed to dwell ; with men who are never 
 
MYSTERIES OF EARTH AXD HEAYEX. 53 
 
 regarded as temples of an indwelling Christ — it is 
 easy to guess what effect such an association must 
 produce. According to a man's conception of the 
 world will be its effect upon him. 
 
 It is obvious to answer that this is the practical 
 view of life and religion, and to sneer at the other 
 as the imaginative one. The question is this very 
 one which is the most practical. As long as any 
 religion is professed at all, the view that gives us the 
 truest conceptions of om' spiritual condition must 
 be the most practical. Christians will be slow to 
 deny that Christ's was a practical view of life, and 
 yet He took the poetic rather than the literal view of 
 men and natm*e. He saw in little children, heirs of 
 heaven; in an old cripple, a siDiiitual daughter of 
 Abraham ; in sparrows, objects of His Father's care ; 
 in the lilies, a faii'ness surpassing the glory of Solo- 
 mon. Of all men He discerned most clearly the spu'it 
 underlying matter, and saw " the soul of goodness in 
 things evil ; " claimed this world as His own, and by 
 drawing lessons fi'om the lowest form of life, vindicated 
 the sanctity of it all, and declared its sufficiency to 
 enlighten and to exercise in a true religion the spiiit 
 and the affections of men. 
 
 But even without consciously ignoring this charac- 
 ter of life and nature, it is easy to miss their signifi- 
 cance. This spii-itual discernment needs cultivation, 
 and the obscurer hints of Nature are mute and invi- 
 sible to those who have learnt nothing from her broader 
 parables. Men cannot understand the mysteries of 
 
54 MYSTERIES OF EAETH AND HEAVEN. 
 
 the kingdom of God, unless they believe that they 
 are living in it. Early associations may sometimes 
 account for this. We are taught to call ourselves 
 children of God, and are not always brought up as if 
 we were living in His kingdom, but in at least a 
 foreign, if not in an enemy's country. And this is 
 as true of those who enjoy the pleasures of the world 
 without compunction, as of those who dread and 
 denounce them. By neither is the lesson taught of a 
 world redeemed by God, and united to Him by the 
 Incarnation — a world which speaks of the moral quali- 
 ties of His nature in every leaf and flower, no less 
 than in the spirit of man, and in the stars in their 
 courses. This world will not, of course, be fruitful in 
 its lessons of God to those who hate its pleasures 
 and fear its influence, and think the aim of life is to 
 get through it with the least possible prejudice to 
 contingent interests hereafter. But eyes may be 
 blinded and ears stopped in other ways than by a 
 foregone conclusion. 
 
 The more familiar experience is to love the world 
 not wisely but too well. Every one knows what it is 
 that makes him blind and deaf to the mysteries of 
 the Kingdom of Heaven ; what makes him fail to see 
 the significance that lies hidden in the most familiar 
 forms. The hurry of life is too severe ; the pursuit 
 of pleasure gives no time for quiet, and destroys the 
 taste for it ; social ambition makes simpler pleasures 
 pall on the taste ; literature that demands no thought 
 destroys the habit of thinking ; sympathies never 
 
MYSTERIES OF EARTH AND HEAVEN. 55 
 
 cultivated by association with sorrow and distress die 
 of starvation. The mind has no time for rest ; is 
 never forced back upon itself, and compelled to review 
 its position. It is entangled with its preoccupations ; 
 the thorns have sprung up and choked it ; it fails to 
 see the reahties of life because of its eager clutch of 
 the shadows. And yet this power of seeing the hidden 
 meanings of things, of interpreting the parables of 
 nature and of life, is one which all would have, if it 
 were to be had easily ; it would add infinitely to the 
 pleasures of the country ; it would combine gracefully 
 with the enjoyment of society. It would, of course, 
 do far more ; for it is the gift of the poet, the artist, 
 and the philosopher, and it is the confirmation of the 
 hope of the Christian. But the special blessing of 
 being able to read the mysteries of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is this, that it sanctifies all life ; it does not 
 make equivocal enjoyments pure ; or turn excess into 
 moderation ; but by bringing men face to face with 
 the realities of being it makes them real; by revealing 
 the Divine under the forms of the natural, it teaches 
 them to extract the good and reject the evil in the 
 persons, scenes, and occupations of their lives. 
 
 If in family life, for instance, we saw the type of an 
 eternal union, it would not be without its effect on 
 the relations of husbands and wives, of parents and 
 children. More regard might be had to impressions 
 produced and influences exercised on children if this 
 strangely close communion were thought of as a 
 mystery revealing an endless association. Friend- 
 
56 MYSTERIES OF EARTH AND HEAVEN. 
 
 ship, casual co-operation, social acquaintance, all 
 human relations would be big with the same signifi- 
 cance. The solemn procession of nature's operations 
 would speak to us of the trustworthiness of the 
 Creator ; its beneficent action in the support of ani- 
 mal life ; the love of brutes for their offspring ; of 
 the mother for her child ; would convince us of the 
 Father's love with an assurance no dogma could rival 
 and no doubt could shake. The beauties of earth 
 and sky and sea would tell us of a mind rich in 
 sympathy with all the purest human tastes, and give 
 a promise of a future in which they would find ap- 
 propriate objects. 
 
 The whole system by which men and brutes and 
 plants are sustained would tell us of that law of self- 
 sacrifice which is the expression of God's nature ; to 
 which we must conform and subordinate intellect, 
 will, and affections as the first condition of being able, 
 under the shadows of the risible world, to see the 
 kingdom of God. 
 
THE THREEFOLD REVELATION. 
 
 Acts xvii. 28. — ^'For in Him we live, and move, and Tiave our heing.^* 
 
 St. Paul displays his natural tact and largeness of heart 
 when he supports this assertion by a quotation from 
 a Greek poet. Addressing Athenians, he calls Aratus 
 one of their own poets, though he lived in Paul's city 
 Tarsus, because Aratus was a Greek. He claimed that 
 the God both of Jews and Greeks was the same God, 
 by whatever name He was called. He wanted to show 
 them that they *'Hved, and moved, and had their 
 being" in the shadowy impersonality whom they 
 addressed as an "unknown God." It was not the 
 name or the want of a name that made the truth of 
 worship ; but the clean hands and the pm-e heart, and 
 the character of the Being to whom heart and hands 
 were raised. A certain one of om- " own poets," too, 
 teUs us that it is this which makes the true God ; not 
 the name, be it " Jehovah, Jove, or Lord." 
 
 We are some way from St. Paul's sympathy with 
 those who pay a genuine homage to an abstraction 
 or, as we say, an impersonal God. We are more care- 
 ful to get an idea of God into our heads than to be 
 sure that it is the right idea. We are impatient of 
 
58 
 
 THE THREEFOLD REVELATION. 
 
 uncertainty about Him, and less studious to avoid 
 wholly inadequate conceptions. But the moral im- 
 pression made by the fact of God is quite out of pro- 
 portion to this zeal for an accurate idea. Men are 
 stirred to indignation when physical science declares 
 a creation impossible and a Creator unnecessary ; 
 but the assertion of the existence of such a Being as 
 God must be, if He exists at all, does not produce the 
 effect that might be expected, not to say on their lives, 
 but on their feelings. The source and the foundation 
 of all religion has perhaps a disproportionately small 
 share in religious thought. It is easy to be so much 
 occupied with the details of a creed ; with inferences 
 from Eevelation ; even with our own worship, as to be 
 less conscious of the idea that ought to possess a man 
 if he has any religion at all. And yet this is the 
 ground which all religions, worthy of the name, 
 occupy in common. In Him men of all the great 
 religions acknowledge that they live, and move, 
 and have their being," however much they may mis- 
 conceive or misrepresent Him. All alike have His 
 great revelations of Himself, in nature, history, and 
 the soul, whether they read our Sacred Books or 
 repeat our Creeds. 
 
 The fact that the course of nature is on the whole 
 favourable to those who conform to its laws, is the 
 post obvious and natural way of revealing the ex- 
 istence of a righteous ruler. Physical well-being is 
 attained both without and within our own persons 
 by this conformity ; but we may ascend higher than 
 
THE THEEEFOLD EEVELATION. 
 
 59 
 
 this, and discern an employment of the laws and 
 forces of nature for moral ends ; an education of 
 man conducted by means of physical agencies. The 
 punishments of selfishness, of improvidence, of in- 
 dulgence, are secured by physical causation. Even 
 when they are inflicted by men on one another, they 
 are still the work of natm-e. For we are parts of 
 nature, and are used by God to bring about moral as 
 well as physical ends. We can use either moral or 
 physical means to bring about either moral or physical 
 ends, but we are unique in nature in our power of 
 using means to moral ends. Granting the use of 
 means in nature, we establish a higher than merely 
 natural relation to its Author by the conscious adapta- 
 tion of them to moral ends. This relation is man's 
 singular privilege ; but considered as a part among 
 other parts of nature, his relation to God is through 
 its laws. To live in a true relation to Him we must 
 know the laws of nature, and those who are revealing 
 them to us are more and more revealing Him to 
 us as the God of natm-e. 
 
 Some, in the study of origins, may have lost sight 
 of the Originator (perhaps some day to arrive at a 
 higher and wider conception of Him) : this is part of 
 the price paid for the great gain in the knowledge of 
 nature which om- days have seen. To men in general 
 this new hght ought to reveal God in a new relation, 
 and ought to multiply their conscious relations to Him. 
 
 One of the ways in which this increased knowledge 
 may elevate om- relation to Him, is seen in the effect 
 
60 THE THKEEFOLD REVELATION. 
 
 which the demonstration of the Keign of Law in the 
 universe has had in spiritualizing prayer. It has had 
 the effect, with the most spiritually minded persons, of 
 limiting the objects of prayer in a great degree to 
 spiritual objects. So far as it has done this, it has 
 approached nearer to the model of all prayers, which 
 contains only one petition for any material object, 
 viz. for daily bread ; nearer, too, to our Lord's teach- 
 ing on prayer, when He says, " If ye then know how 
 to give good gifts to your children, how much more 
 will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to 
 them that ask Him ? " Here is an instance of the 
 physical order of things teaching not only a moral 
 but a spiritual lesson. 
 
 Not less spiritual is the lesson taught by the energy 
 and care of Divine Providence in all the details of 
 nature. It exhibits an example and a sanctification 
 of honest labour in all the operations of life ; a call to 
 conscientiousness and a rebuke to unprincipled work, 
 which those who run may read as plainly as in the 
 print of their Bibles. Even from those whose studies 
 have led them to deny Him, has come a call to a more 
 intelligent homage to God, for they at least have 
 learnt to reverence nature in which He has expressed 
 Himself to man. Something of the spirit of awe and 
 wonder which they feel for His works might with 
 advantage be more habitual to some of us for the 
 Mind which designed and controls them all. 
 
 If there is no one behind the veil, it is a coin- 
 cidence that history teaches the same lessons of 
 
THE THBEEFOLD EEYELATION. 61 
 
 benevolence wisdom and righteousness, which natui^e 
 declares to be the attributes of God. As we look 
 back we can see a harmony in its great movements, 
 and a purpose running through all the ages. Empires 
 are seen succeeding to one another ; order replacing 
 anarchy; the force of law substituted for the force 
 of will; migrations bringing the best races into the 
 best places ; the highest morality the world has ever 
 learnt received by the most powerful and impressive 
 races of men. All down the course of time there has 
 been " a stream of tendency making for righteous- 
 ness," and men's conception of right has risen and 
 grown with its onward com'se. There has been, that 
 is, a force within or without men, making them more 
 like God ; and capable at the same time of enlarging 
 their view of Him and of their own obligations, so as 
 to engage them for ever in the pm'suit of a receding 
 and unattainable perfection. The most spiritual 
 lesson of the New Testament, ''Be ye therefore 
 perfect," and the problems in natm^e to whose solution 
 we can approximate but cannot reach, teach us in the 
 same manner of a mind like but beyond our own, 
 working in natm-e, history, and the human soul, and 
 vindicating its likeness to us by the fact that its 
 perfection does not cease to be a motive, though it 
 is known to be unattainable. 
 
 It is an evidence of the divine element in history 
 that the idea of right should have been the grow- 
 ing one ; for righteousness not only involves all 
 virtues, but it is in its barest form the most diffi- 
 
62 
 
 THE THREEFOLD REVELATION. 
 
 cult and painful to attain and practise. Kind actions 
 are often pleasant ; right actions are often pain- 
 ful ; to discern that what is right is what is most 
 truly kind; to carry this out at whatever self- 
 sacrifice ; this is the temper we assert to have been 
 growing all through history, and it is the character 
 we ascribe to God. It is none the less His work 
 because it is the product of natural forces, or of 
 evolution. It is the characteristic of mind to use 
 physical means to produce moral ends ; and all 
 behind us in the life of our race, all around us in 
 the universe, we find these agencies steadily and in 
 the long run tending to impress on man his own 
 highest idea of what is perfect. We can assert that 
 this is an underived attribute of matter, if conscious- 
 ness will allow us. 
 
 There have been, of course, many checks to this 
 stream of tendency; corrupt morality has followed 
 on Stoic virtue; wars, that cannot be justified be- 
 cause good has come out of them, but which yet 
 have shown which way the stream was flowing, 
 and what was the tendency of human affairs. This 
 steadfast purpose of divine evolution, overruling way- 
 wardness, employing wilfulness, putting up with 
 weakness : this holiness of character, and pertinacity 
 in well-doing, give us a different idea of what the 
 Spirit of God really is than any mere notions of 
 largeness. We speak of God as omniscient, omni- 
 present, omnipotent ; but there is a qualitative as well 
 as a quantitative appreciation of Him; and we dis- 
 
THE THKEEFOLD KEYELATIOX. 63 
 
 cern in His treatment of nations an intensity of 
 spiritual life ; a burning energj^; a patience, resolution, 
 and sympathy that never fail to produce singular 
 results when exhibited by men. But the goodness 
 of God does not seem to impress us at all to the same 
 extent that the goodness of men does. " The Great 
 Fh-st Cause least understood," is least understood still, 
 in history and conscience as well as in natm'e. The 
 primary fact of religion is not the substance of it. 
 Such knowledge may be too wonderful and excellent 
 for us ; but the effort to attain it is a reHgion in 
 itself. 
 
 Men who have the taste and power for mental 
 abstraction may close their eyes and try by the 
 utmost force of their imagination to realize such a 
 being as God ; but the mind is unequal to the task : 
 they arrive either at a magnified man," or a being 
 without the moral and spiritual quahties which make 
 Him conceivable to us, and which we can discover 
 from His relation to nature and history — qualities 
 which are in the strictest sense the salvation of men 
 by giving them an example, an aim, an ideal, and a 
 hope. 
 
 But if we are only mediately related to the 
 Spirit of God in nature and history by the oj)eration 
 of natural and social forces producing moral and 
 spiritual effects in us, we are also directly related 
 to His Spirit as spiritual beings. ''We are His off- 
 spriQg" in this highest sense of all. And because 
 man is related to Him as no other part of nature is, 
 
64 
 
 THE THREEFOLD REVELATION. 
 
 as men in the mass are not ; from the time when he 
 first walked upon the earth he has heard within him 
 *'the voice of the Lord God in the cool of the day;" 
 in the quiet afterthoughts when passion is still and 
 interest is forgotten. This indwelling presence of the 
 God within completes the cycle of our possession and 
 surrounding. " Whither shall I flee, then, from Thy 
 presence?" If I look out on sky or sea, on plains 
 or mountains, Thou art there ; on wars or migra- 
 tions, on revolutions, or the orderly growth of com- 
 munities. Thou art there also. If I soar aloft, or 
 descend into the depths of my being ; in the heaven 
 of aspiration, or in the hell of remorse and shame, 
 even "there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right 
 hand shall hold me." 
 
 For within us as well as without there is a power 
 ''that makes for righteousness." Its ascendency is 
 acknowledged not only in the general outcome of a 
 career, when it is easy in review to trace its drift, 
 and put the finger on the causes which have con- 
 tributed to the result of failure or success; but it 
 makes itself felt in the great crises of life, and on 
 small occasions too, when there is a distinct sense 
 of obstacle to be overcome in the way of human 
 passion or human pride. For the action of this 
 power within harmonizes exactly with the spirit 
 of the New Testament; it opposes all that men 
 naturally tend towards; all that they feel, even in 
 the impetus of an irresistible tendency, to be a de- 
 rogation from their true nature. It rouses them 
 
THE THREEFOLD REVELATION. 
 
 65 
 
 always to seek what is above, which they at once hate 
 as difficult and irksome, and own to be sublime. If 
 the authority of this voice were not established by 
 its harmony with the spirit which breathes through 
 the life and words of Him who is the most Divine of 
 all the sons of men, it would be proved by its an- 
 tagonism to all that is weak^and mean, to all that 
 is cruel and false in human tempers and human 
 ways. 
 
 And if this power of resistance and of self -judgment 
 is Divine and universal, then all men have, as a 
 common endowment, what is noblest and best in the 
 nature of the highest; a gift compared to which all 
 others are insignificant. In what is most important 
 all men are equal. They are all equal, we say, in the 
 sight of God ; they have an equal claim on and share 
 of His love ; but they are not all equal in the sight 
 of man, because we only know God generally and 
 not as He is. The first result of learning Him 
 through all His revelations would be this power of 
 regarding men as He does. But the sense of this 
 common relation to Him and to one another, which 
 is the spiritual side of the social precept to "honour 
 all men," and the reason of it; this sense is last 
 arrived at. Men are content to be good haters, if 
 they are good lovers ; to be tolerant of humanity at 
 the cost, perhaps, of a mild contempt for it ; not 
 to have a single friend out of their own rank in 
 society. If the time the prophet speaks of ever comes 
 on earth, when " all shall know Him, from the least 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 THE THREEFOLD REVELATION. 
 
 to the greatest," it will reveal to men, among other 
 things, the way in which God regards them ; as the 
 first hint and help towards a true estimate hy men 
 of one another. We read in the New Testament, 
 ''This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true 
 God." Our Liturgy tells us that eternal life consists 
 in this knowledge ; but we are apt to think that 
 knowing God is the same as knowing that there is 
 a God, which has no necessary connexion with eternal 
 life at all. But if this knowledge is the path of life, 
 men have only to open eyes and ears to gain it ; they 
 may learn as they look ; and grow in it as they read ; 
 and be unknowingly filled with it as they pile year on 
 year. Natui-e and human history are theii* teachers, 
 and there is the voice of a Friend more persuasive 
 than a teacher. Whether the result of this silent 
 teaching has been righteousness or not, each knows 
 best ; but few would deny that the issues of their 
 actions and habits correspond to all that nature and 
 history had told them of the waj^s of God to men. 
 Few would deny the growing sense of a power within, 
 not themselves, though very near them, and seeming 
 to them more and more to be of God, because it m-ged 
 them, whenever choice wavered, to right ; and because 
 they found that right brought joy ; because in retro- 
 spect it is always teaching men, by the harmonies and 
 contrasts of their career with the Divine Life, that 
 with all that sense of being " parts of one stupendous 
 whole " which nature and history are always forcing 
 on them, they have besides an individual relation to 
 
THE THREEFOLD REVELATION. 
 
 67 
 
 the Author of all, not weakened, but confirmed by 
 participation with others ; and can hear within a 
 voice that harmonizes with the many notes of nature 
 and of man, which utter the same language to theii' 
 souls. 
 
THE PEIDE OF POWEK AND THE JOY OF 
 LOVE. 
 
 St. Luke x. 20. — ^' In this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject 
 unto you ; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in 
 heaven." 
 
 Such language as this would be set down as figurative 
 in the conversation or literature of to-day. It is 
 thought appropriate in sermons, though it is only so 
 far suitable in them as it reveals and does not hide 
 realities. It seems natural in the Bible, where it is 
 meant to convey truths, but sometimes veils them. 
 No doubt much of the teaching of the Bible, loses its 
 force from forgetfulness that it is the utterance of 
 the Spirit to human spirits ; that its meaning must 
 therefore be above all things spiritual ; that the figure 
 is but the husk which holds the kernel. 
 
 Thus regarded, a caution to missionaries elated 
 with the success of their work, and with the effect of 
 their words and presence on the poor victims of dis- 
 ordered mind who were so common in Palestine in the 
 Saviour's days, becomes a philosophic maxim of the 
 higher Hfe; a counsel of perfection for those who 
 
THE PKIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOVE. 69 
 
 think about, and work at, both personal . and public 
 improvement for all time to come. 
 
 Limited to its first and obvious meaning, the warn- 
 ing has the charm of all teaching; it was exactly 
 suited to the hearers ; it was quite clear to them ; and 
 it was just what they wanted. They had felt their 
 influence over the insane, and they could appreciate 
 the joy of being enrolled on the register of His followers 
 whose kingdom was coming on the earth. And the 
 joy of His love and confidence was worth more than 
 any exercise of power. But the habit of mind of our 
 own days has made what was almost literally true to 
 them, pm'e allegory to us. We want to know the 
 modern equivalents of such phrases ; what they mean 
 when translated into the language we use when we 
 escape for a time from talk about persons, and objects 
 of sense, and the business of the visible world. 
 
 We want to know what they represent of the thoughts 
 we stray into when sight and hearing are shut out, 
 and the things that are unseen assert their claims to 
 notice. 
 
 Most people, no doubt, think they know pretty well 
 what Christ meant His disciples to understand by 
 this precept ; but the effort to transfer the words to 
 a life and circumstances so different as their own is 
 too much, even if it occurred to them that the Bible 
 was intended for such treatment. And those who do 
 philosophize about their being do not always perceive 
 that their abstract terms have their analogies in the 
 concrete figures of the New Testament. If the soul of 
 
70 THE PKIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOVE. 
 
 Christ's teaching is its fitness for humanity, then it 
 must have its lesson for all ; for the philosopher as 
 well as the man of action, for the nineteenth century as 
 well as for the first. And the first thing that must 
 strike the most superficial thinker about these words 
 is the way in which the great Teacher passes, by an 
 easy bound, above all the ordinary causes of pride 
 and self-congratulation. He fastens at once on the 
 highest and (to our thinking) the most legitimate 
 som'ce of joy ; the pride of personal influence for the 
 highest objects ; and says it is not to be compared 
 with the true ground of joy which it was His mission 
 to reveal to the world. 
 
 He has nothing to say to the " fool " that said to 
 his soul, " Thou hast much goods laid up for many 
 years ; " nor to the pride that rejoiced in the front 
 rows at synagogues and the high places at feasts ; 
 nor to pride in " the claims of long descent " that " the 
 grand old gardener " is said to " smile at ; " nor to the 
 pride of beauty, nor the pride of rank, nor to the pride 
 of wit. These are surface vanities, silly of course, 
 but often not touching deep or tainting the character. 
 People often rejoice in such things without being 
 much the worse for it. But there are deeper-seated 
 sources of self- congratulation which He passes by too, 
 in all His teaching, as if He thought all such feelings 
 were included in this condemnation. 
 
 There is a pride which makes a man not rejoice in 
 any of his possessions or acquirements, but in him- 
 self ; that despises those whose advantages it envies ; 
 
THE PRIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOVE. 71 
 
 that claims exceptional treatment for itself; that 
 thinks its wishes laws, and its ways a standard of 
 right ; that is too proud to be vain, and too self- 
 satisfied to change places with any one ; that has no 
 other sentiment towards men but a gentle scorn for 
 them. Such feelings as these, not unknown among 
 people we are intimate with, yet not recognized in 
 their naked antagonism to the spirit of the Gospel, 
 are swept out of the range of possibilities for a 
 Christian character by the simple warning against 
 pride in personal influence. 
 
 And what is there to rejoice in if this is a for- 
 bidden pleasure ? It is the only thing worth having 
 in the world, after love ; and multitudes of men and 
 women would put it first. 
 
 In any form, and exerted by whatever means and 
 for whatever end, it is a pleasure too intoxicating for 
 most heads to stand, and a result for which men are 
 ready to give health, time, money, life, and reputation. 
 There are times when the visible impression made by 
 words thrills a man like electricity ; when the applause 
 of a crowd is like music to his ears ; when the in- 
 fluence of his character is seen in national movements. 
 The poet who, like Goldsmith, wrote his verses for 
 fame and his prose for bread ; the painter who works 
 his hardest at a picture he knows will not sell, and 
 trusts to later ages for his reward ; the soldier or 
 sailor who dies happy in the thought of "Westminster 
 Abbey;" the statesman who is content to leave his 
 reputation to history; — all these have felt "the spur 
 
72 THE PRIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOVE. 
 
 that the clear spirit doth raise ; " all acknowledge the 
 irresistible attraction of personal influence ; all would 
 say in some form or other what has been put into an 
 epigram in our days, " Glory is the only thing that is 
 not vanity." 
 
 But when this magic power we call personal in- 
 fluence is not self-regarding ; when the desire is not 
 to win a name or to exert influence by doing good, 
 which is one of the commonest ways now of becoming 
 known and powerful in society ; but, to take the purest 
 case of all, when the aim is simply to impress others 
 for their own sake ; to do them good by the action of 
 mind or character on other minds with no ulterior 
 aim ; — to see the success of such work seems the 
 highest and purest joy that can be granted to men, 
 and not to rejoice in it seems more than human. 
 This is, of course, exactly what the disciples were told 
 not to do ; or, to take the most modified form of the 
 warning, what they were at all events taught was a 
 poor subject of rejoicing compared with that other 
 inward joy which the new Teacher first introduced 
 into the world. He puts forward this joy as the result 
 and the reward of that preference of the inward over 
 the outward, of the unseen to the seen, which was the 
 core of His spiritual philosophy. For the disciples 
 had claimed, as many are claiming now, to subdue 
 the spirit of evil in men about them ; — by their words 
 and presence to infuse a Holy Spirit which should 
 expel the spirits of lust, and lies, and cruelty. They 
 rejoiced in their success ; but many noble men and 
 
THE PRIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOVE. 73 
 
 women who, unnoticed and unknown, are trying now 
 to expel the evil spirits of pauperism, improvidence, 
 intemperance, and immorality, have no other support 
 than joy and hope in their work. For many see no 
 results, and have no success to rejoice in ; and for 
 them the true meaning of the Saviour's caution is seen. 
 It is transformed into a comfort. There is always 
 this joy, which He describes in figurative language, of 
 having " their names written in heaven," to cheer and 
 to sustain those who are working for others. 
 
 It is a promise, probably, which few people correctly 
 realize. But light is thrown upon it by its conjunction 
 and comparison with the highest happiness we can 
 imagine here, viz. joy in the success of unselfish 
 work. It must therefore be a joy at least as un- 
 selfish, and a joy capable of being felt at the same 
 time and by the same people, as the other. The word- 
 ing of the Saviour's promise might suggest a different 
 character of joy, and a distant period for its fruition. 
 It has, perhaps, misled people. The notion of names 
 registered, coupled (as it must necessarily be) with 
 popular conceptions of heaven, might suggest places 
 secured hereafter in a sphere of ha]3piness ; and the 
 hope of these might be thought to be the deeper joy 
 which He contrasts with the joy of successful work for 
 the good of men. But, compared with this joy, surely 
 the hope of any happiness for ourselves is a lower 
 motive ; inconsistent with His teaching who said that 
 " if a man would save his soul he must be ready to 
 lose it " for the great cause ; at variance with our 
 
74 THE PEIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOVE. 
 
 deepest instincts, and no doubt with our experience. 
 For we see people living all their lives with a com- 
 placent assurance of heaven, who (as far as it is fair 
 to judge our neighbours) seem to derive no very keen 
 joy from working for mankind. They take the text 
 very literally, and do *'not rejoice because the spirits 
 are subject to them," but do "rejoice because their 
 names are " (as they suppose) written in heaven." 
 
 But perhaps it is only those who are capable of 
 the one joy that can appreciate the other ; the 
 Saviour may have added the promise of the better 
 joy because He saw His followers capable of what 
 can hardly be called the lower happiness. The 
 capacity for the one may be the condition and 
 measure of the power of enjoying the other. Perhaps 
 He saw, too, that the workers in the noblest field 
 wanted this assurance and this help, because it is 
 precisely in such work that success is rarest and the 
 fruit of slowest growth. Joy in success is a delusive 
 and uncertain consolation, and pure as it is when it 
 comes, He offers them a surer and a purer sustenance. 
 But not surely the promise of a distant happiness in 
 return for what they have done and suffered here. 
 This would be to leave them without support in their 
 work, and to substitute a lower for a higher joy. It 
 must be a happiness higher in kind, capable of sup- 
 porting and inspiring them now. To ascend to such 
 a height of spiritual joy is to breathe an atmosphere 
 too rarified for most lungs, for it is to find it not only 
 not in the success, or even in the energy, but in the 
 
THE PRIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOVE. 75 
 
 motive of work ; to find in the love which prompts the 
 highest work of all its highest joy. And there is 
 nothing men are slower to believe in as a reason for 
 rejoicing, purer and stronger than the most successful 
 work, than the love of God. If it is hard for any 
 man to believe that God loves him, and harder still 
 to find in this conviction much more than a sense of 
 relief and comfort, a kind of assurance against future 
 contingencies, and not a delight which ought to 
 amount to exultation ; how rare it must be in ordinary 
 men and women really to be made happier by the 
 thought of God's love for everybody ! how hard, per- 
 haps, to believe that He does love all ! — the false, the 
 foul, the cruel, the thief, the murderer, and the sot ! 
 It is because we find it so hard to love people ourselves 
 that we find it so hard to believe that God loves them. 
 It is because we believe so little in the love of God 
 that we love Him so little. It is because we love both 
 God and our neighbour so little that we find it so hard 
 to believe in His love for our individual selves. It is 
 a chain in which every link must be perfect. As the 
 first link in this chain, the Gospel teaches that if we 
 would love either God or our neighbour we must begin 
 by realizing and maintaining the spiritual bond that 
 unites us to the Father of all ; by perfecting within 
 the powers of love and spiritual perception, which 
 are the moving and the directing forces in our approach 
 to God, and in our intercourse with men. The kingdom 
 of Heaven is within us — if we like, that is ; there is a 
 capacity in each to feel that love for man, for self, 
 
76 THE PRIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOVE. 
 
 for God ; that joy in the love of man, and in God's 
 love for man, which is heaven, and is the som:ce of all 
 the good we can hope to do. Its course and progress 
 must he from within outwards. 
 
 Self-love like this is as far from selfishness as the 
 hope of future happiness, which attends but often 
 does not sanctify life here, is from the heaven which 
 consists in the love of God and man. Few men need 
 the caution, or the rebuke, or the comfort, of the text. 
 They are not for the most part in any danger of 
 rejoicing overmuch in the subjection of evil spirits to 
 their influence. The promise of the higher and surer 
 joy is to those who are resting in the lower and more 
 uncertain ; the warning and the rebukes are not only 
 to those who rejoice in success, but to thoee who have 
 neither effort nor success to rejoice in. Most of all is 
 the warning to those who " rejoice because their names 
 are written in heaven," but have not found out what 
 the joy of heaven is while they lived on earth. Man's 
 love for God is hard to gauge ; few of us could say 
 that He is the object of any very lively emotion at all. 
 To most He is still "the unknown God;" in part 
 inevitably, in part from want of study of the indica- 
 tions of His love, and of the revelation of His being 
 in the person of Christ. 
 
 We know much more of Christ from the closer study 
 of His life of late, by writers orthodox and unorthodox. 
 He has been brought out into reality and humanity as 
 He never was before ; but to how many does devotion 
 to this ideal ; devotion to mankind for His sake ; His 
 
THE PEIDE OF POWER AND THE JOY OF LOYE. 77 
 
 testimony to the eternal love — to how many does this 
 assurance of requited love bring the repose and 
 ecstasy which come of a deep love given and returned 
 among men ? If we can find a heaven in a true love 
 for one — as in the true love of man and woman — so 
 that we ask nothing more, and can live with nothing 
 less than so to love and in return be loved ; this is 
 surely the voice of the Divine Spirit, hinting to us the 
 true home and the true source of Heaven ; that it is 
 independent of Life and Death, of here and hereafter. 
 
 If the love of one is all sufficient, and can ''make a 
 palace of a cottage," and heaven anywhere-, it seems 
 no exaggeration to say that it hath not entered into 
 the heart of man to conceive " the heaven of a deep 
 love of our kind ; the heaven of finding that true love 
 IS returned by the love of God. 
 
 As a man's notion of heaven is, so will his life be. 
 If a heaven to come is compatible with a joyless and 
 unloving life here, it must depend on something else 
 than the knowledge of God and communion with 
 the good. If the great Teacher's account of heaven 
 be true, we may judge severally what we know of its 
 joys now ; what reason we have for rejoicing because 
 our names are on the roll of ''this goodly company," 
 and what pleasure it may bring us in another state of 
 being to depend for all our happiness on emotions 
 and on energies in which we find only a faint and 
 fitful satisfaction here. 
 
TRIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 St. James i. 2. — " The trying of your faith worketh patience" 
 
 It might rather be expected that the trying of faith 
 would produce assurance, and that this was the provi- 
 dential design of it. For patience cannot of necessity 
 be a perfect state ; it is in its nature a condition of 
 not having what we want, of looking forward to some- 
 thing that is better, of submission for the time to that 
 which is worse. But yet this imperfect state is all 
 that is reached by trials of faith ; not conviction or 
 joy, but only the power to wait. This is aU that is 
 achieved by what tests a man's faith in that which 
 is the only means he knows for rising from the lower 
 to the higher — all that he can hope for as the result 
 of what shakes his faith in the only ground he has for 
 hoping and enduring at all. But whatever may be 
 thought of it at first, it must be a result worth having ; 
 for the struggles are often sharp, and the occasions of 
 them so numerous, that it is impossible not to beheve 
 that they are an intentional part of the education 
 which it is the will of God we should pass through. 
 
 Many of the things which put our faith to the proof 
 will suggest themselves if we consider what is the 
 
TKIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 79 
 
 faith that is necessary for life and work. It is not 
 given to every one to be able to support the burden 
 and the temptations of life by his own conviction of 
 right ; h-orn a sense of the dignity of his own nature, 
 and what he owes to it ; though he can see or guess 
 nothing beyond the dark curtain that bounds this 
 world, and has nothing to hope or fear in another. 
 Noble hves have been led with nothing else to support 
 them ; but most men need the strength that comes of 
 the belief in a wise, and mighty, and loving Father ; 
 and fi'om a conviction of the Divine Life which was 
 hved on earth by His only Son, being the true hfe 
 for man. This belief in a Father who wills and 
 knows, and can accomplish, what is best for us is our 
 support under the trials of Hfe — this conviction that 
 the highest life for man must be based on the example 
 of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, is om* strength against 
 its temptations. Any of the riddles or the sufferings 
 of hfe that shake our conviction of the wisdom and 
 love of God, these are trials of our faith in such a 
 God. Any of its allurements which make us doubt 
 after all whether such a life as Christ's is the best, 
 are trials of oui- faith in Him. 
 
 Men do not find it easy to reconcile themselves to 
 such ignorance as they are compelled to live in. They 
 find themselves ignorant alike of the past and of the 
 future ; they do not even know whether they ever lived 
 in any previous state of existence before they were 
 conscious of this one ; they know almost as little, or 
 quite as little, of their next stage of being. No one 
 
80 
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 comes to them from beyond the world to tell them of 
 any life their souls may have had before they animated 
 these bodies, or of the experience of their souls in the 
 passage from one life to another, or of their condition 
 in that other. They find death the universal lot, and 
 sorrow the heritage of those who are left behind ; and 
 they find it falling alike on the evil and on the good, 
 on the infant who has hardly tasted life, or the aged 
 and worn out ; and, most mysterious of all, on those 
 who can least be spared ; on the loved, the useful, 
 and the gifted. They find Nature at war with man ; 
 now refusing him his needful sustenance, now over- 
 whelming him with the sudden action of some of her 
 unsubdued forces ; they find their bodies subject to 
 disease and pain — even the passage to a happier life 
 often the keenest anguish of all. They find the 
 innocent suffering for the guilty, or victims of their, 
 selfishness, negligence, or malignity. They find 
 virtue difficult, temptation irresistible, doubt over- 
 shadowing conviction, and experience paralyzing hope. 
 All these things seem so different to what might be 
 expected in a perfect world, and from the love of a 
 perfect God, that they try men's faith in Him ; they 
 put it to the test, that is to see whether it will bear 
 the strain. 
 
 The Word of God seems to contemplate this strain. 
 There is nothing wrong and nothing to be ashamed 
 of in it. It would be a sign of some indifference 
 about the great truths on which the Christian grounds 
 his life, if none of its puzzles ever shocked or shook 
 
TEIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 81 
 
 him. St. James would not have spoken of '' the 
 tiying of faith " if no cu-cumstances Hkely to try faith 
 ever occurred to men. He would not have sjDoken of 
 it as bringing forth the fruits of patience if it had 
 been a state of mind wholly to be condenmed. On 
 the contrary, he knew that in a condition in which 
 there is no proof of the unseen — in which the most 
 treasured convictions must be taken on faith — there 
 must be occasions that would test it. He knew from 
 his experience how many and painful would be the 
 strains to which the constitution of natui'e and the 
 course of society would expose it. If we feel no need 
 of the belief in a Father above, and of all that is 
 im]3hed in that belief — no pm-pose in life which will 
 make the example of Christ a necessity to us — it is 
 easy to conceive that we may look on all the mys- 
 teries of the world, and all the trials of life that affect 
 ourselves, with dissatisfaction, no doubt, but without 
 cm'iosity ; on all that do not with indifference. It is 
 easy under such circumstances to say how the world 
 might have been made better, but its imperfections 
 and ii-regularities are no trial of fgiith to those who 
 have no convictions to try. 
 
 The very notion of a test implies strength, and all 
 who hold dear what they cannot see must expect to 
 have their faith often tried as they pass through hfe, 
 and do often experience this trial. It is a mark of 
 the vigour and health of faith in God to examine and 
 inquire into all about us that does not square with 
 om' convictions about Him ; it is a sign of its vigour 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 too, to be able to hope on though the dawn is long 
 commg. 
 
 The explanation of things that have shocked and 
 puzzled us often comes later on in life, as many have 
 found out, but sometimes it never comes ; partly, 
 perhaps, because we have set out with a WTong notion 
 about the world we live in and the ways of men. 
 There is much in the course of nature which disturbs 
 Christians in their belief in the Fatherhood of God, 
 much that unbelievers i)oint to as a proof that He 
 cannot be at once benevolent, omnipotent, and loving. 
 But the doubt of the Christian and the argument of 
 the unbeliever both seem to assume that the w^orld 
 was meant to be perfect — that man was put into a 
 wwld ready-made, and adapted for his ease and 
 comfort and happiness. And so of the order of 
 society; it is assumed that our circumstances w^ere 
 meant to be such that virtue would be easy, and 
 happiness would come as naturally as the air we 
 breathe. 
 
 But the command ''to replenish and subdue the 
 earth " is a hint that it was given "rough hewn " for 
 man to "shape; " that it was a vast mass of latent 
 capacities rather than a developed machine which 
 was given as the subject-matter of the brain and the 
 will of man. The physical order of things and the 
 moral atmosphere of life are the training-ground for 
 raising man to the level of the ideal in the mind of 
 God in creating him. Not in arraigning the wisdom 
 and love of the Creator for the imperfections of Hig 
 
TEIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 83 
 
 work, but in perfecting the work which was design- 
 edly given to him imjoerfect, Hes the highest exercise 
 of our nature. It is easy to guess how poor and feeble 
 a race man would be without the struggle against 
 natme, for we know all the high qualities that are 
 brought out by the strife ; the resource and inven- 
 tiveness, the resolution and energy which the pressui*e 
 of circumstances and the cruelty of chance daily ex- 
 tort and exercise. How should we have been trained 
 into men without these ? Death would have found 
 us full-grown infants, only less prepared than when 
 we left our mother's knee, to begin the struggle out of 
 which alone manhood can issue. 
 
 "In the reproof of chance lies the proof of men; " 
 and those who lay to God's charge the faults of nature 
 or the failures of life, should consider whether man 
 has ceased to want this proof of manhood, and 
 whether he has yet done aU that can be done to 
 subdue natm-e, and to make himself safe against its 
 forces. Is it not rather true that hardly one of these 
 accidents or calamities happen which distress us so 
 much, without immediately suggesting how it might 
 have been avoided, without setting us on at once to 
 prevent its recurrence in the future ? 
 
 We have already insured ourselves against many 
 causes of sickness, starvation, and sudden death, not 
 to mention other victories over nature. Is it not 
 possible in these instances to penetrate the mind of 
 God about om*selves — to regard Him as having the 
 final and general welfare of the whole race at heart ; 
 
84 
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 as viewing in a very different way from ours the 
 passage from this life to the next ; as subordinating 
 the individual to the race ; as regarding the departure 
 of more or fewer before their time as of small impor- 
 tance compared with the perfecting the race, and this 
 earth for the habitation of those who are made in His 
 image, and are meant to complete it in all its linea- 
 ments ? 
 
 We know very little, of course, about the mean- 
 ing of the opposition and cruelty of nature ; but we 
 cannot derive arguments from our ignorance, and 
 justify ourselves in charging God foolishly because 
 something happens that we do not understand. We 
 must know first His purpose in placing us here, and 
 how that purpose is affected by what has happened, 
 before we can question His wisdom or His love. In 
 this very question of the struggle against nature His 
 Spirit and our own experience have shown us some- 
 thing of His purpose ; it would be wiser to argue from 
 the known to the unknown, than from the unknown 
 to what is equally obscure ; from what obedience to 
 His law has taught us of His will, rather than to infer 
 His nature from circumstances we cannot comprehend. 
 
 And what is true of nature without is true of the 
 moral life within. Faith is subject to the same trials 
 here as when it looks on at the phenomena of the 
 physical universe. As they witness the difficulties of 
 virtue, the allurements of vice, the success of bad 
 men, the poverty and suffering of the good, the ob- 
 structions put in the way of duty, the discourage- 
 
TEIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 85 
 
 ments opposed to the enthusiastic, the patronage by 
 the vicious and indifferent of those who are ready to 
 swim with the stream; — in all times faithful souls 
 have wavered as they have noted these features of 
 life, and have wistfully inquired their meaning. The 
 unbelieving have pointed to them as signs that God 
 does not rule, or that He is not wise and loving if He 
 does. 
 
 They have been, and they are, trials of faith. No 
 one can regard them without perplexity, unless he 
 believes above all things that God's first design in 
 creating us and placing us here is to form in us 
 certain characters ; to make us men of a particular 
 kind. Bearing this in mind, it is easier to see how the 
 trials of life may have the same effect upon one part 
 of character that the opposition of nature has upon 
 another ; how the difficulties of God's moral govern- 
 ment may try our faith just in the same way as the 
 hardships of nature and of life try it. The convic- 
 tions that sustain life can only be reared in the at- 
 mxO sphere of opposition, and faith would vanish away 
 (with the need of it) if all things went well. But 
 since men appear to be intended for higher degrees 
 of communion with God, they must learn to approach 
 Him nearer while they live, to strengthen their be- 
 lief in His being and character by questioning its 
 grounds-. No strength would come from the choice 
 of good, if there were no enticement to evil ; nor from 
 love of virtue, if vice were never triumphant. There 
 could be no growth of character if our wills were not 
 
86 
 
 TEIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 free ; no trial of patience if limits ^vere not set to our 
 strength ; if our desires did not outrun our ability, if 
 our aims did not surpass our powers, if our energies 
 did not droop when the will was strong, if the flesh 
 did not lust against the Spirit, if we could always " do 
 the things that we would." 
 
 These are not all the moral difficulties we encounter 
 in life, and their effect on character is not perhaps a 
 sufficient account of them; and there may still be 
 some which we find it hard to reconcile with our 
 notions about God. But their seeming purj)ose (as 
 far as it has been discovered) is light enough about 
 them to save us from rebellion or desj)air, and we 
 are enough in the dark about others to call for the 
 exercise of faith. This condition of insufficient light 
 is the very arena of faith. With no hint from heaven 
 it could not have been born ; in eyesight it must 
 vanish away. But those who seize upon every clue 
 that the perplexing problems of the earth and man 
 afford them to strengthen their belief, will find ex- 
 planations of many things that once looked hopeless ; 
 and about harder trials of faith they will find that 
 they have learned to be more patient of ignorance. 
 
 For it must be remembered, that as far as can be 
 seen, we are intended to be in difficulties of this kind. 
 To believe that God is all we mean by God ; that 
 Christ's is the perfect life, m the face of appearances, 
 and in the teeth of allurements to the contrary, is 
 our spiritual discipline. We rise and grow by this 
 opposition, just in j^i'^portion to the struggles that 
 
TEIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 87 
 
 conviction has cost us. Sucli convictions are often 
 most real to those vrho have known what it is, for a 
 time, to be without them, and to have had no sup- 
 port but an inward Law of right to resist the currents 
 of passion and self-interest. Those who profess to 
 hold fast convictions of which it has pleased God for a 
 time to deprive others who desire to serve Him, should 
 imgrudgingly admit the nobleness of a hfe which, 
 without the motives of a Divme faith, can still pre- 
 serve the upright walk, the pm-e heart, and the loving 
 devotion of self to the service of humanity'. Men may 
 admire such lives, and thank God for them, even 
 though they add a fresh mystery to their present 
 being. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that those who claim 
 higher hopes, and make i^rofession of undoubting 
 faith, are committed to at least such a life as is some- 
 times led without them. It is easy to say we beHeve 
 in the Father and the Son, but the true expression of 
 that belief is to aim in om* individual lives at the 
 perfection we ascribe to God ; to set before om* own 
 the example of the human life we profess by saying, 
 " I beheve in Jesus Christ ! " to consider the perfect life 
 for man. What else does belief in Him amount to ? 
 How else than in practice can this conviction be ex- 
 pressed ? The true infidelity which ruins states and 
 degrades social life is not scientific scepticism, but 
 the faithlessness which neither loves nor delights in 
 what is good; which presses forward to no high aim, 
 and shapes itself to no high ideal ; which mocks at 
 
88 
 
 TRIALS OF FAITH. 
 
 the entliusiasm of those who sacrifice the joys of this 
 life for the sake of the next, or themselves for the 
 sake of others; which without hope or sympathy, 
 while professing to believe in the Father and the Son, 
 gives the true devotion of its life to pleasure, or 
 23ower, or self-indulgence. 
 
 Let those who so often say that their faith has 
 stood all trials] hitherto, believe in the power of their 
 creed to purify and to exalt ; let them encounter with 
 it the turbulent reactions of vanity, desire, and self- 
 will ; let them give it free scope to act upon them in 
 the impressionable moments of solitude, that they 
 may exhibit its fruits in home-life, where the practical 
 following of Christ is so important and so difficult. 
 Faith so learnt and practised will follow them out into 
 the world, whatever their work is ; and without preach- 
 ing or profession, only by a perceptible elevation of 
 motive, will prove to many whose belief may want 
 such support, that the faith which has made Christen- 
 dom what it is, has not yet lost its power to make 
 men the light of homes, and the strength of states. 
 
EXPECTATION OF CHEIST. 
 
 St. Matt. xi. 3. — ''Art TJiouEe that should come, or do lue look for 
 another f " 
 
 The explanation that is often given of this mission of 
 the Baptist's disciples to Christ, that though his own 
 mind was made up on the subject he sent his followers 
 to satisfy theirs, is probably seldom satisfactory, 
 though it is often accepted. 
 
 There is an unreality in it very unlike his character, 
 and unworthy of all the actors in the scene. When 
 he was convinced, his followers shared his conviction. 
 When he said, Behold the Lamb of God," two of his 
 disciples who heard him speak followed Jesus. If 
 he had not begun to waver now, there would have 
 been no need to send them for their assm'ance or for 
 his own. But he may have thought that there was 
 enough to shake his faith. He had been a great man ; 
 the leader of a popular movement ; the first to discern 
 the Eedeemer ; the herald of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 upon earth. Now the Eedeemer was come ; echoes of 
 His mighty works pierced even into the dungeon ; the 
 kingdom was begun; and he was lonely, forgotten, 
 and a prisoner. He might well have expected to be 
 
90 
 
 EXPECTATIOX OF CHRIST. 
 
 among the first to be " set at liberty of those that 
 were bound." So apt are we to measure social 
 changes by their effect on ourselves ; to estimate their 
 value by our own share in their benefits. He was in 
 fact disappointed in Christ for personal reasons, and 
 His Master hints at this in the words with w^hich he 
 wmds up his answer: "Blessed is he whosoever 
 shall not be offended in Me." Delicate as the hint 
 was, it conveyed a rebuke ; but He is not j)revented 
 from doing justice to the mission and character of 
 John in His address to the people after the messengers 
 had left Him. 
 
 Amongst the countrymen of Christ, John was not 
 the only one disaj^pointed. For various reasons, 
 quite familiar to those who read the Gospels, there 
 was a very widespread feeling of disappointment; and 
 however little we may approve of the feeling, it is by 
 no means difficult to account for it. It is much 
 harder for us to realize the expectation of Christ's 
 coming, than the disaj)pointment with Him when He 
 came. Not to mention the associations of so many 
 peo]3les and so many centuries in which His coming 
 has been remembered and celebrated, there is a 
 natural difficulty in imagining ourselves to be looking 
 forward to the coming of a Messiah, with all that is 
 implied in that name. It is common to hear a long- 
 ing for a great man to arise who shall let in the light 
 on dark places, or cut social knots, or restore sim- 
 plicity of life, or give exj)ression to feelings with which 
 many hearts are burning. But the case was different 
 
EXPECTATIOX OF CKRIST. 
 
 91 
 
 then. The Comer ^-as not only to change the con- 
 dition of society, He was to change the relations of 
 heaven and earth. He did effect the greatest social 
 reformation the world has ever seen, though it was 
 neither striking in appearance nor sudden in occur- 
 rence as it was expected to be. And He did more : 
 He made not only a revolution, but a revelation ; He 
 revealed to Jew and Greek the Father who had been 
 a mystery before ; but His revelation lacked the same 
 striking and visible features in which His revolution 
 was wanting. In both cases exactly those features 
 were absent of which the prospect must have wound 
 up expectation to its utmost tension ; exactly those 
 to which it is so hard to imagine om'selves looking 
 forward ; and the difference between the anticipation 
 and the reality is enough to account for the dis- 
 appointment. But hard as modern thought and feel- 
 ing have made it to realize a state of expectation of 
 the Messiah, the effort should be made ; for what we 
 should anticipate from His coming is probably a true 
 test of our actual relation to the Christ who has come 
 and is gone, and is " with us always, even to the end 
 of the world." 
 
 And it must be remembered that the men who did 
 expect Him did not Hve in any remote antiquity, 
 before the old empires ; but rather on the verge of 
 modern history. Trustworthy history goes back far 
 beyond them ; they had many of the books which 
 we read now ; many of the events which are old to 
 us were old to them ; many of the Messiah's country- 
 
92 
 
 EXPECTATION OF CHRIST. 
 
 men live among us ^Yllose pedigrees might possibly be 
 traced back centuries before the date of His birth. 
 One is struck by the modernness of many of the ways 
 and thoughts of men who lived long before Him. So 
 that the effort to put ourselves in their position ought 
 not to be so great as it looks. Its greatness shows the 
 difference between looking forward to Christmas and 
 looking forward to Christ. It might prove quite as 
 useful an exercise for Advent to try in thought to put 
 ourselves in the position of men who lived in that 
 waiting-time, as to spend it in anticipation of a 
 second coming of Christ. Of that coming we know next 
 to nothing ; of our own hearts, and of what Christ did 
 and was and said, we know a good deal. 
 
 If we were looking forward to a Messiah in about a 
 week's time, instead of to an anniversary of His birth, 
 can we at all conceive what kind of expectations He 
 would have to fulfil ? It might be possible to guess 
 some of them by considering what are the most urgent 
 and vital inquiries of the day. He would be expected 
 to answer a good many questions, and to solve a good 
 many doubts. The main inquiries of all, "What is 
 the origin and destiny of man? who, what, and 
 where is God ? these would with confidence expect 
 their solution from Him; and they are only two of 
 the many speculative difficulties that He would be 
 expected to settle. Almost every class in the com- 
 munity would look to Him for the removal of its 
 practical evils. Many of the questions which exercise 
 the thoughtful and benevolent — such as the relations 
 
EXPECTATIOX OF CHRIST. 
 
 93 
 
 of rich and poor ; the elevation and education and 
 housing of the numerous classes ; the distribution of 
 land ; the reciprocal attitude of capital and labour ; 
 the secrets of health and disease ; the best means of 
 inspiring the wealthy classes with a more living 
 interest in the problems of social and spiritual life, as 
 an alternative to the see-saw of business and of 
 amusement ; — these and other practical " enigmas of 
 life " might well await, so it would seem, some light 
 to fall upon them at His coming. Hope and cm'iosity 
 would be wound up to their highest pitch at the 
 prospect of such an Advent as this. Curiosity might 
 even make men fail to notice how little share any 
 deep longing of the heart to know more of God and 
 to be more like Him had in their eager anticipation 
 of the " express image of the Father." 
 
 Guesses would be rife at such a time as to the 
 country and the class in society in vdiich He would be 
 born ; and it might be hard to hear, without some 
 revulsion of feeling, the news that He was born in an 
 out-of-the-way village and of the class of artisans. 
 Some would expect Him to be born in a great seat of 
 wealth or learning ; some would regard the class He 
 sprang from as in antagonism to the institutions of the 
 country ; some would think it more fitting that He 
 should appear among those who natui'ally guide the 
 thought or legislation of the people. All these feel- 
 ings would be so much prejudice that would have to 
 be overcome before we could receive it that "this was 
 Messias which was for to come." And if, as time 
 
94 
 
 EXPECTATION OF CHRIST. 
 
 wore on, it came to be learnt that He gave no in- 
 formation about interesting questions ; no answer to 
 the " whence came we, and whither go we, or why are 
 we here ? " which are the permanent problems of 
 thought ; no description of God — only the exhibition 
 of a godlike nature among us ; no picture of heaven — 
 only the mystic assurance, The Kingdom of Heaven 
 is within jon ; " and if He proved to have no more 
 news to tell about social than about speculative 
 questions ; no universal panacea for all evils ; no cure 
 of ignorance, poverty, vice, disease, and class ani- 
 mosities ; nothing to give us by way of help out of all 
 the evils of a crowded population but the precept to 
 
 love one another ; " if these were the whole results 
 of His coming, would not prejudice in the case of 
 many end in disappointment? How few or how 
 many would be among the blessed who were not 
 offended in Him " ? 
 
 In some or all of these points He would no doubt 
 fail to satisfy many ; but we know, from the history of 
 His Life, that the feelings which He excited did not 
 end in mere disappointment. We know that He gave 
 great dissatisfaction not only by what He failed to do, 
 but by what He did. His life was a continual war- 
 fare against the two most influential classes in any 
 community ; against the rich, and against the 
 teachers of religion. He denounced the hollowness 
 of their worship ; the hypocrisy of their good works ; 
 their oppression and contempt of the poor. He cut 
 the ground from under the feet of the pretentious ; 
 
EXPECTATION OF CHRIST. 
 
 95 
 
 He exposed the unseemly nakedness of plausible lives ; 
 and the selfishness of ceremonial almsgiving. No 
 other words can equal the strength of His denuncia- 
 tions of the ways of men about Him eighteen hundred 
 years ago. It might be found that He had something 
 to say about us, and that no more in our case than 
 in theirs would disappointment express all our feeling 
 against Him. Every one can lay his finger on his 
 own sore, and knows best where he would wince; 
 ever}^ one knows the skeleton in his own cupboard 
 and the streak of light the Saviour's words would cast 
 all across his Kfe, bringing out the hidden things of 
 darkness. 
 
 But to awaken individual consciences would not 
 perhaps make Him unpopular, for no one would 
 confess to his neighbour the stab which pierced 
 him. It would be when He took to denouncing 
 classes, to protesting against habits sanctioned by 
 custom ; against indulgences protected by fashion ; 
 against ways of thought, modes of worship, cmTents 
 of feeling that had become traditional ; that disap- 
 pointment would be turned into hostility. 
 
 It is too easy to see how " Can any good come 
 out of Nazareth?" "Is not this the carpenter?" 
 ''Show us a sign from heaven;" *'If thou be the 
 Christ, show Thyself;" ''Art Thou He that should 
 come ? " — how such utterances of defaulting hopes 
 turned into hatred, and ended in, " Crucify Him ! 
 crucify Him ! " It would be sanguine to expect that 
 ail our social economy would pass His examination ; 
 
96 
 
 EXPECTATION OF CHEIST. 
 
 that He would see nothing to expose or condemn in 
 all the ways of politics, religion, business, pleasure, 
 or domestic life. He might have something to say 
 about the party-feeling which so warps and discolours 
 facts, that a plain man finds it hard to get at the 
 truth about them ; — about the religious beliefs and 
 observances which separate the men they were meant 
 to unite ; about the frauds which disgrace commercial 
 life ; about the pleasures which enervate the character 
 of those who indulge in them, and degrade the large 
 class who live by being their ministers ; about the 
 excess and the tyranny of the whole system of sport 
 in England; about the want of love in homes, and 
 the growing estrangement in feeling and interests 
 between parents and children. This is not very un- 
 like the line He took in Palestine ; but if He adopted 
 it now, how much self-love He would wound ! how 
 much malignity He would exasperate ! Disappoint- 
 ment would feebly ex^Dress what men would feel about 
 Him after this experience ; and if we had to look for- 
 ward to such an arrival ; to One who could and would 
 expose and denounce as He did, we should say, ''Who 
 may abide the day of His coming ? " with an appre- 
 hension quite as genuine as that with which we regard 
 the time when He shall come at the right hand of 
 Power and in the clouds of heaven ; and with quite as 
 good reason. 
 
 But even this was not the whole of the offence 
 He gave to His contemporaries. Before prejudice 
 had issued in deadly hatred, He offended them in 
 
EXPECTATION OF CHKIST. 
 
 97 
 
 a way in which it would be very possible to give 
 offence now. There is nothing that an old society is 
 more intolerant of than anything that is unusual ; 
 what is called unconventionality. Our Saviour came 
 as a teacher, and early in His career He disregarded 
 every decorum and violated every convention of the 
 religious teachers of His time. He lived His own 
 simple life, most human, most divine in its simplicity, 
 among men — talking, eating, and drinking with rich 
 and poor, with clean and unclean, with pubhcans 
 and sinners, with unwashen hands and travel-stained 
 feet ; and we know what was said of Him. The re- 
 proach of His natm'al ways and pure reality to the 
 frozen social ritual of His day, was as hard to bear 
 as His denunciation of vice. We may measure our 
 tolerance of such a phenomenon as His life among 
 us, not by the allowances we make for genius, but by 
 our tolerance of ordinary men who try to do good in 
 their own way, independent of the world's opinion — 
 often not regardless of it, if we knew their hearts. 
 There is nothing we are so impatient of as eccentri- 
 city ; and we mean by it all conduct that does not 
 run in the grooves which custom and fashion lay 
 down. Every one knows this : when nothing else 
 can be said against a man who is doing a great work, 
 this small hole is picked in his character — that he is 
 so unconventional. It is a vii'tue to be unconven- 
 tional when convention chokes the free development 
 of a nature ; when it represses the- utterance of truth ; 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 EXPECTATION OF CHRIST. 
 
 when it hampers a career, or dams up the natural 
 current of sympathy between men or classes. 
 
 After expectation had long been strained with look- 
 ing forward to Him that should come, is it not too 
 Hkely that He would add to all His other causes of 
 offence when He came, this one more — that He was 
 unconventional ? 
 
 Something like this which I have tried to con- 
 jecture might be men's experience of Christ if He 
 came among them now. If it seems to furnish 
 any better reason for the disappointment expressed 
 in the question, Art Thou He that should come," 
 or any more excuse for the hatred which crucified 
 Him, it seems a natural inference that to those 
 who think so, looking forward to the anniversary 
 of His birth is a pleasanter prospect than antici- 
 pating His actual appearance. It shows at least to 
 those who cannot in their hearts deny that such a life 
 would disappoint their hopes of one who was to come 
 from heaven to give light on the earth, that they 
 must put out of their hearts and lives all that cannot 
 bear His glance or His words ; all the unreality that 
 prefers form to truth ; all the profession that bears 
 no fruit in practice. For how can there be any joy 
 at the thought that He has come, if His presence 
 among us would only awaken opposition and alarm ? 
 
 To those alone belong the true joys of Christmas 
 who can see in that life the true picture of the life of 
 God ; who find in the new commandment a solution 
 of social problems, and a remedy for social evils ; who 
 
EXPECTATION OF CHKIST. 
 
 99 
 
 find in His promise a relief from the bondage of sin, 
 and in His sympathy a relief from the burden of 
 sorrow ; who find realized in Him their ideal of the 
 manhood of men and of the tenderness of women ; 
 the satisfaction of all their wants and the solution of 
 all their doubts ; the fulfilment of all, and more than 
 all, they dared to hope. 
 
CHKISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Phil. iv. 8. — " Finally, Ireihren, whatsoever things are true, what- 
 soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things 
 are of good report ; if there he any virtue, and if there he any 
 praise, think on these things." 
 
 The many-sidedness of St. Paul's teaching could 
 hardly be better illustrated than by the contrast 
 between the teaching of this verse and what goes 
 before it: *'The Lord is at hand; be careful for 
 nothing ; but in everything by prayer and suppHcation 
 let your requests be made known unto God." This 
 and similar passages have seemed ample justification 
 for the fanaticism of "Fifth Monarchy Men," and for 
 Latter-Day Saints ; " for those whose vivid apprehen- 
 sion of the unseen has made them neglect the only 
 means for attaining a knowledge of it ; for those who 
 have made the precept " Be careful for nothing " an 
 excuse for abandoning all care of themelves or others. 
 But in the words of the text we pass from what (taken 
 by itself) would seem like the exhortation of an enthu- 
 siast to the precepts of a lofty philosophy. And the 
 point to be observed is not that the two duties are not 
 
CHKISTIAXITY AND CIVILIZATION. lOl 
 
 incompatible — the shallow contrast so often pointed — 
 but that they are mutually dependent the one on the 
 other, and that neither can be achieved without the 
 other. 
 
 The friends and the enemies of Christianity alike 
 insist on this incompatibility. We are warned on the 
 one hand to " set our affections on things above," to 
 
 work out our own salvation," as if such excerpts 
 were the whole of the wide teaching of Holy Scripture. 
 We are wearied with contrasts between the " Church 
 and the world," between ''earthly and heavenly 
 things," between "this world and the next," between 
 '*the spirit and the flesh." 
 
 The times are gone by when men fled into the 
 desert to be nearer God, as though they thought the 
 farther they fled from God's image the nearer they 
 were to Him ; but they still seek refuge fi'om what 
 they call the world, to fly into another world of some 
 rehgious community; evading the highest and the 
 hardest service, and losing the most elevating dis- 
 cipHne that the world has to give. And as we are 
 warned by friends to shun the world, so has Christi- 
 anity been before now taunted by its enemies with the 
 reproach that it tends to make bad citizens. The 
 inevitable tendency (so it has been said) of a re- 
 hgion which teaches men to look mainly to a future 
 life, and to find their present happiness in that hope, 
 and in contemplation of the unseen, is to make them 
 unfit and indisposed to do the most and the best they 
 can for the men about them — a postulate which is 
 
102 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 rightly assumed to be true as a description of the 
 duty of all men. 
 
 No doubt the warning and the reproach have both 
 been justified ; on the one hand by those who have lost 
 sight of the use of the world whilst its abuses forced 
 themselves on their eyes ; and on the other by those 
 who forget the motive and the restraint of the unseen 
 world in all their use of and contact with what is 
 seen. For St. Paul's two precepts — to be careful 
 for nothing because the Lord is at hand, and to 
 have regard to everything that the best men love and 
 aim at — hang very closely together. It is that con- 
 sciousness of invisible realities (the modern equiva- 
 lent for the phrase and the idea of ''the Lord is 
 at hand") which supplies the motive and sustains the 
 energy of all the efforts after all that is true, and 
 honest, and pure, and just, and lovely. Life would 
 lose its poetry, and men would be very dull without 
 this presence always understood, sometimes expressed. 
 
 The experience of times which have been so bad — 
 like periods of siege, pestilence, or famine — that men 
 have begun to disbelieve in God, by no means 
 teaches that it is the tendency of the denial of every- 
 thing beyond and beside this world to lead men to 
 make the most and the best of human life while it 
 lasts. 
 
 Such times have often been distinguished by selfish 
 disregard of the sufferings of others, by selfish in- 
 dulgence in such pleasures of sense as were within 
 reach. It would be natural to think that a behef 
 
CHRISTIAXITY AXD CIVILIZATIOX. 
 
 103 
 
 that there was no one else to care for men would 
 move men to care for one another ; that a belief that 
 there was nothing after this Hfe would encourage them 
 to treasure and to elevate it. It may be true of a few 
 highly cultivated men, but this has not been its effect 
 on the mass. 
 
 Everywhere and always the sense of the worth of 
 this life has been in proportion to the intensity of 
 conviction in the existence of another ; everywhere and 
 always the sense of an invisible order of things about 
 us has increased the value of the best features of the 
 present world. The idea that there was a happier lot 
 in store for men hereafter has acted as a stimulus to 
 improve the conditions of society, not as a permission 
 to leave men in their ignorance or squalor or slavery. 
 
 Consciously or unconsciously men have combined 
 the caution and the precept of St. Paul. The Lord 
 is at hand " has been the motive, not only for the 
 personal holiness of the Christian centm-ies, but for 
 the persistent effort to improve the lot of the helpless, 
 which has distinguished them. And in spite of 
 Fanaticism and Negation they have caught his 
 catholic spirit and claimed, as the sphere of Divine 
 Inspiration and the arena of Christian discipHne, all 
 the graces, as well as all the virtues of life. It might 
 be necessary to remind Christians in a Pagan city — as 
 it has been necessary to remind Christians in Christian 
 countries — of the duty of truthfulness to Pagans or to 
 Heretics ; that there were parts and aspects of their 
 country's laws and worship, of its memories and 
 
104 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 associations, which were venerable; that there was 
 a purity of motive as necessary as the purity of Hfe ; 
 that all that was lovely was not to be found in the 
 new faith ; but that there was much that was sacred 
 and beautiful in the ties and the traditions, in the life 
 and the accomplishments of the old. 
 
 Whatever was well spoken of; whatever virtue men 
 prized ; whatever won their honest applause ; to these 
 they were to have regard ; not, notwithstanding that 
 the Lord was at hand, but because He was. This 
 inspired conception is the secret of European progress. 
 The spiritual aim has been the secret of material 
 progress, and the area of the Spirit's work has been 
 gradually widening, to include within the sphere of 
 duty to God all that men admire in their neighbours' 
 characters or covet as ornaments to their own. And 
 the motive has been one which might have been sup- 
 posed to diminish the value of everything but the 
 sternest duty, or the most ardent devotion. Honour 
 and courtesy, patriotism and hospitality, fair-minded- 
 ness and freedom from prejudice, — these are samples 
 of social virtues, not always recognized as Christian 
 duties, and not monopolized by Christians; existing 
 before and beside them, but distinctly placed by St. 
 Paul alongside the cardinal point of all rehgious life 
 — the belief in the presence of God; and distinctly 
 growing and spreading in proportion as his letters are 
 read. No doubt he intended to include in the same 
 recommendation accomplishments which can perhaps 
 scarcely be called virtues; but which (it is easy to 
 
CHKISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 105 
 
 see) may spring naturally out of the same belief ; may 
 naturally be regarded as part of the worship which 
 various men pay in many different ways to their 
 Creator. 
 
 The sense of the presence of God has spread over 
 two continents the art and science which were confined 
 to a few spots before ; and the perfect literature of one 
 small state, under the stimulus of the same convic- 
 tion, has developed into the great and wide-spread gift 
 of matter to read, for all classes, ages, and conditions. 
 
 It is very significant that the great teacher of 
 Europe should have proclaimed the connexion 
 between the belief in the presence of God, and the 
 cultivation of all that makes life worth having, in 
 the first city in which he set foot in Europe, and that 
 the two convictions should have grown and spread 
 together. With the belief came the motive for the 
 study ; with the practice of all that is true, and pure, 
 and lovely, and venerable comes the confirmation of 
 the belief. For God is not only the moving cause 
 of this devotion to what is beautiful in thought or 
 life, in art or nature ; but He is the object of it all. 
 It all reveals Him. 
 
 There is no need to go into details ; but the fact that 
 the sense of the beauty of nature is curiously deficient 
 where art is absent, or backward ; that art has grown 
 out of a sense of the beauty of nature, but that this 
 sense does not spread, hardly exists where art is not ; 
 this fact would seem to show the need of man's efforts 
 to reveal God to men. The Lord was not in the 
 
106 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, any more than 
 in the flowers and the countless laughter of the ocean 
 waves," until study of nature found Him there ; until it 
 made men conscious of nature under the influence of a 
 sense that God was beneath and above it all ; a sense 
 which in turn revealed to them more and more of 
 the God who had first inspired them to love and study 
 nature. As we learn His moral character from man, 
 and as men justly feel that they are being deluded, if 
 (as we are sometimes told) the moral qualities of 
 man are no index to those of God ; so do we infer 
 the features of His mind from nature, and rise to 
 an apprehension of it from the study and practice 
 of all that is pure and true and lovely, which 
 no mystic could reach with the utmost stretch of 
 imagination. " No man hath seen God at any time ; " 
 but the conviction that He is has given fresh worth 
 and beauty to much that men by nature love; has 
 given value and preciousness to many qualities that 
 would be lightly thought of without this belief. And 
 as all that He has inspired comes to be known. He 
 begins to stand out in almost human reality. 
 
 Instead of the shadowy abstraction of a Presence, 
 or a Tendency, He is (not invested with) but the 
 embodiment of grace and truth ; and we begin to see 
 with love and pride that humanity is indeed His 
 child ; and yet with a consciousness of imperfection 
 that keeps pace with pride, that the only begotten 
 Son is a title that belongs to One alone. 
 
 In these days we are rather getting out of the 
 
CHEISTIAXITY AND CIVILIZATION. 107 
 
 narrowness of those who taught us that the world 
 was wholly bad; that its pleasui'es were snares of 
 Satan ; and much else of which the phraseology was 
 once only too familiar. Of coui\se it was a creed very 
 difficult to square with facts. Why were our sur- 
 roundings such as they were, if they were all to be 
 shunned ? What was the meaning of the desires and 
 instincts corresponding to external objects, if they 
 were all to be crushed? Who was to do the work 
 of this world, if every one spent all his time and 
 thoughts in contemplating and preparing for another ? 
 No doubt excellent men have often been disquieted 
 by such teaching. Perhaps they have taken their 
 pleasure under protest, and have felt only half-satisfied 
 with their work in the world. The feeling may linger, 
 though the outspoken teaching is rare. Religious 
 men who are engaged in what is called secular work 
 may not be able to see the bearing of that which 
 consumes all their energies and thoughts upon their 
 profession as Christians. "Labour not for the meat 
 that perisheth " may ring like a knell in their ears, 
 and they may find it hard to reconcile what they 
 must do if they are to live at all, with what they 
 profess to be and to beheve. Of course no sanction 
 can make a selfish career noble ; a base man may 
 make the noblest calling vile, and no dignity of sub- 
 ject-matter can redeem work in which every consider- 
 ation is sacrificed to the rapid accumulation of money. 
 This is assumed. But men who rejoice in their 
 work may want to be assured that they not only may, 
 
108 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 but must, work at that particular calling for which 
 they are qualified. What they can do is what God 
 requires of them. They might like to serve God more 
 directly, and to see that they were spreading on earth 
 the kingdom of Christ. But the fact that they are 
 set, or fit, or called to do other work, and can do it 
 well, is an indication that this is the very form of self- 
 sacrifice that God requires of them. It is easy to 
 think of professions which have quite unrivalled 
 opportunities for teaching and spreading the love of 
 truth and justice. What an engine, for instance, for 
 the diffusion of these ideas and of this love is the 
 great profession of the Law ! 
 
 And who can rival the painter, the sculptor, the 
 poet, the dramatist, the novelist, in their power of 
 diffusing the love of all that is pure and lovely and of 
 good report ? Names might be mentioned of artists 
 and of writers who have done so much for the growth of 
 the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth that almost any 
 one, if he had done as much, might lie down, content 
 to die with " Nunc Dimittis " on his lips. We are 
 rid of much of this narrowness ; but probably there 
 are still many who can hardly feel that they not only 
 may, but must, serve God in their office, or studio, 
 or study, though they might choose some other 
 work. 
 
 And yet there may still remain some who have not 
 got out of the way of regarding God rather as a 
 kind of High Priest or Pope than as the Euler of an 
 universe, with mind and heart inconceivably large 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 109 
 
 in foresight and insight and in love. He need not 
 be thought of merely as considerately allowing each 
 man to do his work in the world ; but may rather be 
 believed to demand from each, as a tribute, whatever 
 work he can do best ; as having set each with his ap- 
 pointed faculties to his proper work, and as exacting 
 that service of him and no other. No one of us can 
 imagine the manifold agencies required for the per- 
 fection of this world's movement ; many must be so 
 subtle as to escape our eye. We cannot choose, nor all 
 have one part ; nor yet believe (if they are all His) 
 that there are degrees of sacredness in them. The 
 world has nearly outgrown this narrow conception 
 which divides sacred from secular work ; but not all 
 men yet have risen to the happiness of believing that 
 their daily work is sacred and the tribute to the 
 Kingdom of Heaven which is required of them. 
 
 And we are encountered, besides, with a reac- 
 tionary narrowness in another direction. We are 
 told now that the world is all-sufficient for a man; 
 that it absorbs all his energies, supplies him with 
 motives, and presents to him an object of devotion : 
 that he can know nothing about the unseen; that 
 thought about it and working for it only di'aws off 
 men's energies fi'om necessary duties. This is not 
 the occasion for entering into any argument as to 
 the probability of the existence of Invisible Persons 
 and invisible realities, though of com'se, if only a 
 strong probability for their existence could be ad- 
 vanced, it would place us in relations which would 
 
110 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND ClYILIZATION. 
 
 have to be recognized in any view of life as a whole. 
 The charge may be best met by facts. Is it true that 
 men's consciousness of their relation to an unseen 
 God and their prospect of a boundless life have made 
 them neglect themselves, their duties, or their fellow- 
 creatures? Is not the whole experience of the 
 Christian centuries against such an assertion ? Have 
 not men, on the contrary, grown in the sense of duty to 
 themselves and to all about them, whether man, brutes, 
 or inanimate nature ; under the influence of Chris- 
 tianity ? Have they not grown in those special studies, 
 art and literature, which it is said ought to be culti- 
 vated for their own sake, since the revelation of Christ 
 has given a shape and reality to the idea of God He 
 never had before ; since His appearance in the form 
 of a servant has given men a sense of brotherhood 
 with all those to whom art and science, grace and lite- 
 ratm'e, can as yet bring as little joy as they can 
 supply motive to any one to devote them to the service 
 of mankind, if the idea of God is eliminated from the 
 world ? Whatever may be said about religion being a 
 hindrance, or at least useless to the work of the world, 
 the paradox remains, that the religion which taught 
 its followers to set their affections on things above has 
 seen in its own centuries and in its own continent 
 the steady growth, just in proportion as it has grown, 
 of all that elevates, strengthens, and purifies men ; of 
 all those charms and graces of life for the sake of 
 which those who are beginning to say it can be dis- 
 pensed with think " life best worth living." 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Eph. iii. 15. — " J7ie whole family in heaven and earth." 
 
 This day is dedicated to the memory of the multitude 
 that no man can number who have departed this Hfe 
 in the faith and fear of God, most of whose names 
 are not written in any calendar of saints. The 
 celebration of the memory of the dead has come 
 down to us from very early times, times when there 
 were no Christians and very few Saints ; and it was 
 probably connected in those days with the rejoicings 
 which took place at the close of harvest. It is stiU 
 associated with merry-making and half-Pagan rites 
 by some nations ; while to others it is a day of mourn- 
 ful observance ; of tender dwelling on the memory of 
 the departed ; of visits to their tombs ; of recalling 
 their traits of character and the active virtues of their 
 lives. 
 
 We bear witness to this universal feeling in the 
 existence of a bond uniting the living and the dead 
 when we repeat, in the words of our Creed, " I believe 
 in the communion of saints." Popular superstition, 
 religious and irreligious, goes much beyond this, and 
 
112 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 confesses by its fears a connexion between the living 
 and the dead (though neither may be Saints) which it 
 would sometimes be glad to be able to shake off ; or 
 a fond desire goes much beyond what reason or Scrip- 
 ture sanction, in its loving belief about the com- 
 munion that is possible between those who remain 
 and those who are gone before. We have no ground, 
 either in reason or Scripture, for thinking that the 
 dead, however good or however dear to us, can hear 
 our prayers or know our thoughts. The utmost effort 
 to project our thoughts or feelings to them, as far 
 as we know, can meet with no response ; of their 
 tenderest anxieties about us we never can be con- 
 scious. It is impossible to say that our thoughts 
 and feelings may not affect each other unconsciously, 
 because it is impossible to say what spiritual in- 
 fluences may affect a spirit, nor how they may be 
 conveyed. Some of the impulses and moods, regrets 
 and resolutions, which pass over us, may be due to 
 the mysterious connexion existing between the souls 
 of men, but there is no ground for this belief, and 
 there are few phases of thought or feeling connected 
 with our departed friends that cannot be traced to 
 the influence of memory; and none of the holy 
 thoughts and good desires that sweep across our souls 
 which we must not ascribe to the Spirit of God. To 
 believe that the dead can hear our prayers or know 
 our thoughts, would be to ascribe to them one of the 
 attributes of God; to treat them as if they could, 
 would not only be robbing Him of due homage, but 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 113 
 
 putting ourselves in a false relation to them with 
 whom we can only have any communion by being 
 in fellowship through the Spirit with the Father and 
 the Son. For it is only by common relation to Him 
 that we can be united in any fellowship on earth 
 or in heaven. "That they all may be one, as Thou 
 Father art in Me and I in Thee ; that they also may 
 be one in Us." 
 
 But those who have knit their souls together here 
 and have become one in heart, while they have an 
 opportunity of sharing thoughts and feelings, may 
 preserve the same communion when they are parted 
 by death that they had in life, though neither 
 can give the other any sign of it. Space and time 
 do not separate those whose hearts have once been 
 knit together. Long years and wide oceans may part 
 them, but they feel that their hearts are one, and 
 they know that thoughts they have shared will be 
 awakened in each by the same events ; and that the 
 same hopes and anxieties will come and go to each 
 as the times are bright or cloudy, as they remember 
 in the days they were together. And why not when 
 one is more wholly spirit than he was before, and the 
 other spiritualized by the thought of the condition of 
 his lost friend, and of his possible nearness to him, 
 though they seem so far asunder? To be one in 
 heart and thought, this is communion; there is no 
 more reason that death should dissolve it than that 
 distance should ; and those who cling to this belief 
 may assure themselves that there may be a true 
 
114 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 communion of saints, though they offer no prayers 
 to them, and see no miracles done by them. 
 
 But what are the conditions of this communion ? for 
 this is the practical point, and this will suggest the 
 reason why this clause is inserted in our Creed. No 
 one would be anxious to claim a continuation of inti- 
 macy between the bad. Endless communion with them 
 would not be a privilege, but a curse. The wickedest 
 men might be intimately acquainted with each other's 
 thoughts and feelings, and the knowledge might only 
 produce common misery and hate. This knowledge 
 might continue beyond the grave, and bring only 
 torture there, if their union had been based on what 
 was bad in each, and they had been united for evil 
 purposes. Of course men who are far from Saints 
 may be united in a very true friendship, but this can 
 only be when each recognizes under the crust of evil 
 what is good in the other, and this discovery unites 
 them. Then the recollection, both in the living and 
 the dead, may be the one bright spot in a black 
 memory, and each may have a true communion with 
 what is good in the other ; each may be purged by 
 it and bring forth more good. But association in evil, 
 or for evil, can never produce union, nothing but 
 discord ; or only bonds we struggle to break here, or 
 recollections we try in vain to escape from when the 
 outward bond is dissolved by death. And this bondage 
 in discord, which comes of partnership in evil, is the 
 opposite of communion ; it is a disunion worse than 
 the blackness of total ignorance or of final separation. 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 115 
 
 The first condition then of this communion is that 
 it be a communion in good; a fellowship in Christ; 
 a friendship) formed between men for the good there 
 is in each ; for the good they may do, each to the 
 other, or, by common action, to other men. This is 
 the meaning of our Saviour's prayer, that "we may 
 be one in Him," and it finds its confirmation in the 
 reason and experience of men. We may not know 
 what it is to be "one in Christ," but we know very 
 well what is the character of our several intimacies ; 
 whether we have been attracted by what is good or 
 evil in another, whether our influence is for good or 
 evil on him. Just as a partnership in sin is worse 
 than a solitary crime — and the law bears witness to 
 the common sense of mankind in punishing the results 
 of a conspiracy much more severely than the crime of 
 an individual — so do revelation, and human nature 
 too, declare that there is something in companionship 
 in good, in the knitting of souls one to another from 
 the sight of what is good in each, in mutual trust and 
 in common effort, as much above the level of human 
 natm-e, as a conspiracy to do wrong together is below 
 it ; something that has its origin above and beyond 
 humanity, has its spring in the Spii'it of God, and 
 cannot be dissolved by death because it is based on 
 what is undying and eternal. Other communion than 
 this there may be, but it is not for us to claim ; we 
 may find it true some day, and it may add to the 
 bitterness of our thoughts as we look back ; but it is 
 not one of the "things which a Christian ought to 
 
116 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 know and believe for his soul's health," except in the 
 way of warning, to prevent him from being a partner 
 of other men's sins, and to save him from making 
 other men worse by sharing his. 
 
 There can be no communion then such as we 
 desire, except between those who have been united 
 by a common love of good ; if we would be one, it 
 must be in Christ, in this world or in the world to 
 come. But those who claim this high privilege of 
 communion between their spirits and the spirits of the 
 good who are gone to their rest, must endeavour to 
 be one in heart with them while they are here, and 
 must endeavour to live and walk in their spirit when 
 they are gone. We may admire what is good in those 
 about us without trying to imitate it ; every act and 
 every impulse may be at variance with a character 
 we love and revere. A parent may deserve and 
 awaken such feehngs in a child, and the child may 
 be nothing but an anxiety and sorrow to him. A 
 child may have a parent whom he cannot respect, 
 though he cannot help loving him. Where is the 
 communion between them ? what hope can they have, 
 when the parent is beyond the grave, of any com- 
 munity of thoughts and feelings, who were so widely 
 parted when they were together? If there can be 
 no assurance of communion except between what is 
 good in each, how can it exist when the good was 
 on one side only? how can it exist when the one 
 knows that there is no sympathy in the other with 
 what is good in him? How can separation fail to 
 
THE COMMUXIOX OF SAINTS. 
 
 117 
 
 sever a tie which daily intercourse barely held to- 
 gether ? Death is a real parting to those who have 
 nothing in common, and a bitter one to those who 
 feel that they have little in common with some they 
 love best. 
 
 Those of us then who long to believe in this com- 
 munion, and do not like to think that death will 
 end theii- fellowship with some of theii" fiiends, should 
 try while God keeps them together here, to grow like 
 what is good in those they love, that they may not 
 lose them when they go, but that fellowship in good 
 on earth may be continued in the communion of saints 
 in heaven. And not only while we live with the good 
 and the beloved on earth, but when they have left us 
 (if we are sincere in believing in a communion of 
 Saints) must we continue to live and walk in the spii'it 
 of those we love. We claim this communion, and try 
 tobeheve that our depai-ted parents and friends are 
 watching over us. If we beheve this of our fiiends, 
 let us try to remember how constant is God's care, 
 how omnipresent is His watchful eye ! If we beHeve 
 in the guardian angels of those we love being present 
 and communing with us, let us secure that com- 
 munion which we can achieve. The memory of theii* 
 love and theii* warnings is with us; the image of 
 their examples is before us; does the spii'it of their 
 life and words guide our life, or do we live as if they 
 could not know anything we do ? Is theii* memory 
 no restraint, no guidance, no encom-agement, and no 
 inspiration? If last words are forgotten, and last 
 
118 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 looks effaced, then be sure that, however loudly we 
 may profess the truth of the communion of Saints, 
 we do not believe in it ; for we are not trying to make 
 it true, either by cherishing the communion there 
 once was, or by forming within ourselves such a 
 character as could have communion with any Saint. 
 Let all those who have parents, friends, relations, 
 dead or absent, put their belief in the communion 
 of Saints to this test, and then pray to God that they 
 may come to believe it and live as if they did. 
 
 And there is another way in which a practical 
 belief in this doctrine may be shown, and by which 
 men may attain to a belief in what they profess, if 
 they have it not already ; and that is, by freely ac- 
 knowledging the good there is in other men, and 
 seeking union with them on the ground of what they 
 believe and love in common. It is comparatively 
 easy to discern and to acknowledge what is good in 
 people we like for other reasons — in persons belonging 
 to our own family, or circle, or station in society, or 
 the members of our own party in religion or politics. 
 It is when people are separated by interest, by as- 
 sociation, or by opinion, that the difficulty arises. 
 Men find it hard to give opponents the same credit 
 for generous actions or disinterested lives that they 
 freely accord to members of their own party or per- 
 suasion. That is to say, they refuse communion with 
 what is good in others because their opinions differ 
 on points unconnected with the common ground they 
 share with them. Nothing is more frequent in poll- 
 
THE COMMUNIOX OF SAIXTS. 
 
 119 
 
 tieal life than to impute bad motives to account for 
 good deeds ; and though happily this injustice does 
 not leaven English life except at times of political ex- 
 citement, it cannot be denied that at such times, and 
 in political life generally, the tendency of difference 
 of opinion to separate men is stronger than the 
 tendency of a belief in one Lord and one Faith, of 
 common hope and effort for the good of all, to draw 
 them together. We may hope that some of those 
 who are most at variance now, may some day come 
 to see and to acknowledge that in their highest aspi- 
 rations both were one ; in their conflicting efforts both 
 were pure. But meanwhile, what is this unbelief in 
 the good of those who differ from us but a practical 
 denial of the attracting and cohesive power of a love 
 of truth and seeking after good ? 
 
 And in the sphere of religion it must be admitted 
 that the want of power in mere goodness to attract and 
 retain fellowship is even more apparent. No more 
 melancholy proof of it could be found than the use or 
 abuse of the word " communion," which (as used as a 
 name for religious bodies) has so entu-ely lost its sense 
 that it has come to signify now rather separation than 
 unity, rather exclusion than comprehension. . Eeligious 
 excitement, unlike political, has no period of calm ; 
 it permeates life incessantly, and shows itself, now in 
 controversy, now in social exclusiveness, to such an 
 extent that to differ on certain points of Christian 
 doctrine seems almost a greater bar to friendship with 
 Christians, than not to be a Christian at all. This 
 
120 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 could not be if it were not for the fatal effect of 
 difference of opinion in blinding men to the good there 
 is in those from whom they differ. For the amount 
 of Christian doctrine we hold in common with those 
 from whom our lives are so wide apart, is enough, and 
 more than enough — in those who truly believe and try 
 to act up to what they profess — to secure a unity of 
 character and effort strong enough not only for the 
 affection of friends but for a communion of Saints. 
 But we are slow to recognize what is good in those 
 who take a view ever so slightly different from our 
 own of what Christ has taught us both. We go 
 beyond this, and are forward to impute, each party to 
 the other, interested motives for the most disinterested 
 efforts for the common good. We are ready to deny 
 to others the special virtues of our own communion ; 
 we are slow to allow them the same graces and virtues 
 of private life which we know by experience to exist 
 amongst ourselves, and which we might find among 
 them if we were ready to carry into practice the belief 
 we profess in the communion of saints, by making 
 the good we already know a means of knowing more, 
 and a reason for union with those from whom we are 
 parted for no reason now. When we next declare our 
 belief in the communion of saints, it would be well to 
 ask ourselves whether we are united in heart to all 
 that we know of what is saintly now ; whether we do 
 not find it easier to be at one with the worse men of our 
 own party, than with the better of those from whom 
 we differ. We cannot have an exclusive communion 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 121 
 
 of Saints in the world to come ; and we may find then 
 perhaps that want of sympathy with the good has 
 so chilled our hearts as to make communion impos- 
 sible with those whom it would be our highest happi- 
 ness to love. 
 
 It is hard to conclude without alluding to the form 
 of this belief in the communion between the living 
 and the dead which is known as Spiritualism. It 
 would not be right to speak hardly of it from this 
 place, because there may be persons present to whom 
 this belief is some consolation, and they have no 
 opportunity of defending it. But it is at least true 
 of it that it is attended by circumstances that make 
 it suspicious ; that it violates the fii'st principle of 
 spiritual communication — if we may judge from God's 
 ordinary mode of dealing with us, who always influences 
 our spirits either by some agency of this world, or by 
 the direct action of His Spirit, and never by audible 
 words or visible forms from beyond the grave — that it 
 violates the first principle of physics, in ascribing 
 material acts to spiritual existences, insomuch that the 
 adherents of this belief should rather be called mate- 
 riahsts ; that it has never yet shown any reason for 
 belief in so stupendous a revolution in all we have ever 
 learnt about God and ourselves, by any single revela- 
 tion of the smallest benefit to mankind at large ; that 
 it claims for men, both living and dead, a power never 
 exercised by God Himself ; that it confers that power, 
 in the case of the living, not on all men, as all God's 
 great spiritual gifts are bestowed, but on men and 
 
122 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 women here and there, apparently by no means dis- 
 tinguished from others by having more of the Spirit 
 of God in them, in some cases certainly marked by 
 characteristics inconsistent with guidance by the Holy 
 Spirit at all ; and that these communications alleged to 
 take place between the living and the dead can seldom 
 correctly be termed a communion of Saints. The title 
 of Saint in many cases would hardly be claimed by 
 themselves or their friends, for either party. The 
 conversation which is reported to go on could hardly 
 be dignified with the name of spiiitual communion ; 
 while to those who believe in the awfulness of this life, 
 with a wall between it and the other, and the greater 
 awfulness of communications from beyond the grave, it 
 is incredible that such communications can be made 
 by and to such persons, in manners and for objects so 
 unworthy (to say the least of it) as we hear they are. 
 
 And if the object claimed for them is more serious, 
 what hope can we have that those to whom all Scrip- 
 ture, Life, and Nature speak in vain, will listen to a 
 voice from the grave ; that those who hear not Moses 
 and the prophets would be persuaded if one rose from the 
 dead ? The true antidote to such a fancy is to believe 
 more in what is spiritual and less in what is magical; 
 more in the Divine Spirit who pervades the universe, 
 and makes spiritual our common acts and daily utter- 
 ances, if we submit ourselves to Him ; to believe not 
 less, but more, in the constant action of spirit on spirit, 
 whether here or beyond the grave; to refine and 
 elevate our own spirits that our spiritual communica- 
 
THE COMMUXIOX OF SAINTS. 
 
 123 
 
 tions may be of good and not of evil, so that we may 
 part without remorse from those we have known here ; 
 and with less regi'et, in hope of a happy reunion, 
 fi'om those who leave us behind ; to cleave to what is 
 good in all, and trust for eternal communion with 
 them to that ; and not to hope for any voice of om's to 
 penetrate there ; nor for any voice from there to reach 
 us save such as are heard in the conscience and whis- 
 pered in the hearts of those who have tried and known 
 one another, and have found a rock of goodness 
 whereon to base theii' love and trust. 
 
THE WORLD. 
 
 St. James i. 27. — " Pure religion and undefiled hefore God and 
 the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their 
 affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." 
 
 A GOOD many definitions of religion have been 
 attempted both by its enemies and its friends, and so 
 far as each of them has come near the truth it has 
 included the principle which is the essence of the 
 definition of St. James. 
 
 Viewed either from its practical or spiritual side, as 
 a mode of life or a habit of mind, the essence of 
 religion is self- surrender. It finds expression in 
 practice in the devotion of time and energy to the 
 service of others — condensed into the brief injunction 
 to " visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction " 
 — though many are called to serve their fellows in wider 
 and less direct ways, and can only now and then get 
 the help and elevation that come from contact with 
 suffering while they are trying to help and comfort 
 sufferers. And self- surrender expresses itself also in 
 a habit of mind, or in a disposition of the heart. It 
 is this surrender of self to the service of others and 
 to its spiritual surroundings that constitutes religion. 
 
THE WORLD. 
 
 125 
 
 There is much activity of religious life nowadays, and 
 men are seeking new religions or developing old ones ; 
 imagining that, by some fi-esh addition to a creed, or 
 by acceiDting some new dogma, they are approaching 
 nearer to the truth. There are speculations as to the 
 being and nature of God ; as to the person and work 
 of Christ ; as to the modes of communication of Divine 
 Grace. Men in various ways are seeking after God, as 
 if He was some one to be found ; as if He was not 
 everywhere, all in all, all that there is in each ; as if it 
 was not "in Him that we live, and move, and have 
 our being." The very phrases that are current bear 
 witness to the same self-consciousness, and are incom- 
 patible with the very idea of self- surrender. " To 
 belong to a persuasion," ''to profess a creed," "to 
 accept a dogma," though they may have theii- con- 
 venience in the vocabulary of the machinery of 
 worship, are yet phrases which imply rather that men 
 are seeking or making a religion for themselves, than 
 accepting the facts to which they are born, and in- 
 haling the atmosphere by which they are suiTOunded. 
 To realize the universality of God; that we come 
 from, live in, and go to Him ; that, as the saying is, 
 He is " in the air," and we cannot escape Him ; to 
 give ourselves up to the Spirit we cannot see, instead 
 of to the matter we can see ; to rest and be tranquil 
 in that self-devotion, — this is the spmtual side of 
 religion which seems to be implied in St. James's 
 practical definition of a religious life. And it is by 
 this inference that the first part of his definition is 
 
126 
 
 THE WORLD. 
 
 connected with the second. Not only must the work 
 of a man's life (whatever it is) be a conscious service 
 of men, but the consecration of himself must be to 
 God and not to the world. A life of useful work with- 
 out, of undivided homage of the heart within, is a very- 
 complete idea of religion, and it is one which can only 
 be realized in the world, or in some world. For 
 wherever men are is their world, so that we even speak 
 of the future life as the world to come. The influence 
 upon us of men who are in the world, or the reaction 
 upon ourselves of the nature we brought into it, this 
 is the world to each of us. We must make up our 
 minds to the fact that we cannot be in the world and 
 out of it at the same time ; that we cannot live upon 
 earth and not be in a world of some sort. If we 
 could succeed in escaping from the world altogether 
 we should of course not be influenced by others ; but 
 there would remain the action of the same spirit that 
 there is in other men upon ourselves. We might avoid 
 evil influences from without, but we should not be free 
 from evil within ; we might keep ourselves more pure 
 from external evil, but we should at the same time lose 
 all chance of doing good. And this, as far as we can 
 see, would be to sacrifice possibly the main end for 
 which we were born. It is not possible either to 
 ignore or to escape from the world ; and it would be 
 strange if it were possible, as it seems to be the 
 appointed means of man's education. Escape from 
 it in the selfish hope of escaping from evil, and seek- 
 ing individual salvation in seclusion, is often prompted 
 
THE WORLD. 
 
 127 
 
 by one form of the spirit of the world. For the spirit 
 of the world manifests itself in various forms. It is 
 common to hear the world spoken of as if it consisted 
 of those who live a good deal in society ; who spend a 
 good deal of time in pleasure ; who lead what is called 
 a gay life ; but this is only one of its manifestations ; 
 perhaps not the least innocent of them. It is quite 
 possible for a man who lives alone and shares in none 
 of the pleasures of society to be as deeply imbued with 
 this spirit as the gay and the reckless and the profuse. 
 He may look out with religious condemnation on the 
 gay world, or look down upon it with contempt ; not 
 because he is not worldly himself, but because he is ; 
 because he is filled with a spirit just as much at 
 enmity with God as theirs, and derived from the same 
 source. He may regard the others as ''lovers of 
 pleasure rather than lovers of God," and be himself 
 a lover of neither the one nor the Other. He may 
 look upon them as spotted with the world, and be 
 himself dyed deep with its stain. 
 
 For a censorious temper springs of necessity from 
 some worldly motive. Either it can find no pleasure 
 in the pure sources of enjoyment common to all ; or 
 it is stung with a sense of neglect ; or it is discon- 
 tented with its lot ; or it has no trust in God ; or no 
 love for man ; or no pity for the feeble. In any case 
 its ruling force comes from the world that it condemns, 
 and shows itself in another form of the worldliness 
 from which it recoils. Probably every one, after a 
 little reflection, would agree in classing the self-tor- 
 
128 
 
 THE WORLD. 
 
 mentors, the censorious, and the scornful among the 
 worldly ; but not every one would be prepared for the 
 hint conveyed in this definition of religion by St. James. 
 It cannot have been without a purpose that he warned 
 people, even while they were visiting the fatherless and 
 the widow in affliction, to keep themselves unspotted 
 from the world. He seems to hint at the possibility of 
 being worldly, not only in spite of such an antidote, 
 but at the possibility of being worldly in such work ; 
 of doing it from a worldly motive; or in a worldly 
 manner ; of even being made more worldly by doing 
 it. It is not necessary to speak of the cases in which 
 such work is done for the motive of gaining a reputa- 
 tion, of pleasing some one, or getting his good opinion, 
 for these are probably very rare, and further because 
 such persons can hardly be deceiving themselves. 
 
 Eeligious hypocrisy is the very spirit of the world, 
 as our Lord showed when He singled out the pro- 
 fessors of religion at Jerusalem as types of the 
 world. But such charitable work may seek no 
 applause of men and yet be worldly ; as worldly as 
 a Front-de-Boeuf's dying endowment of religion to 
 atone for a life of sin. It may be suggested, that is, 
 by uneasiness at a soft and smiling life of enjoyment, 
 and a desire — possibly unconscious — for some make- 
 weight to it. It may arise from no sympathy with the 
 suffering, but only from love of self. And no doubt 
 there is danger also not only of undertaking such 
 work from a wrong or poor motive, but of evil arising 
 from the work itself ; of its fostering a subtle form of 
 
THE WOELD. 
 
 129 
 
 worldliness ; of its producing self-complacency with 
 work and the results of work, instead of mistrust of 
 both ; of its ceasing to he spontaneous and becoming 
 mechanical ; of its producing pride and fussiness and 
 love of managing, instead of humility at the thought 
 that man's dealings with the world have brought the 
 world so low ; thankfulness for the power and chance 
 of being useful ; self-reproach at being able and 
 willing to do so httle ; love to God for the wide love 
 that makes all our puny efforts look so cold and small. 
 
 People who lead a serious, or a busy, or a religious 
 life, are fond of talking of the hollowness of pleasure 
 and of the superficial joys of society; but it should be 
 remembered that, as . there may be pleasure without 
 happiness, and society without fi'iendship ; so there 
 may be the quietest domestic circles without love ; 
 the most active usefulness without unselfishness ; the 
 most secluded retreat without repose of spirit ; the 
 closest association without communion of soul. 
 
 The notion that society is more worldly than soli- 
 tude, that numbers make the worldly spirit, is to 
 be met with again in the estimate of the relative 
 morality of town and country. We hear large towns 
 and the slums of London spoken of as if they were 
 in an especial manner the hot-beds of vice and crime ; 
 but statistics do not bear this out. The darkest crimes 
 of blood and lust are committed where trees are 
 rusthng, and brooks are babbling, and birds are sing- 
 ing, and " Sweet Auburn" quite holds its own in the 
 deadly race of evil. It is no more possible to fly 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 THE WOELD. 
 
 from the spirit of the world than it is to fly from the 
 presence of God. If I go into the slum, it is there ; 
 or into the study, or into the saloon, it is there also ; 
 if I take the wings of the morning and fly into the 
 happy valley or to the mountain-top, there too it finds 
 and holds me. 
 
 It presents itself to one man as a desire for society 
 and popularity ; it prompts another to shun society, 
 perhaps because he thinks himself too good for it ; 
 though society may be both sought and shunned from 
 noble motives. The wealth on which one man prides 
 himself, his neighbour may despise ; but the pride 
 and the scorn may spring from the same source. 
 It is by no means always or necessarily true that the 
 rich are more worldly than the poor ; they may have 
 only a different way of manifesting the same spirit. 
 
 Nor should it be hastily assumed, as is often done, 
 that there are great differences of thought and 
 feeling between class and class. The notion arises 
 in part "from want of association with various classes, 
 and in part from an original want of power of 
 realizing the brotherhood of man ; of knowing by 
 intuition that the likenesses between men as men 
 must be strong enough to override the superficial dif- 
 ferences created by variety of circumstances. This 
 original error or defect is often corrected by wide 
 experience of all classes of men, but it is not always 
 due to the want of it. We start with a misconception, 
 because the spirit of the world is stronger in us than 
 the Spirit of God. And from this mistake arises one 
 
THE WORLD. 
 
 131 
 
 of the most wide-spread of all the manifestations of 
 the spirit of the world, viz. the dislike of whole classes 
 for one another ; not only the separation between rich 
 and poor, between employers and employed ; but the 
 ill-feeling between what may be called the vertical, 
 no less than between the horizontal strata of society ; 
 the dislike of the gay by the serious ; of the serious 
 by the gay ; of the worldly by the religious ; of the 
 religious by the worldly ; though of course it ought 
 to be impossible for a man who was really religious 
 either to dislike or be disliked by any one who was not 
 absolutely wicked, and hated goodness for its own 
 sake. If we add to these all the dislikes that arise 
 from difference of temperament, interest, opinion, 
 and habit ; harsh social verdicts on social mistakes ; 
 the mutual contempt of the cultivated and the un- 
 cultivated, the energetic and the easy-going ; not to 
 mention the wide gulf of distrust and dislike in some 
 countries between the laity and the clergy ; the spirit 
 of the world will seem to be everywhere and the Spirit 
 of God nowhere. 
 
 But it is the very fact of worldliness being a temper 
 that throws men off their guard. The world being 
 visible and material, it is easy and natural to come 
 to the conclusion that its spirit clothes itself in matter 
 too, and that objects which gratify the lust of the eye 
 and the pride of life are its only drapery. When it 
 is realized that it is a state of feeling which need 
 spring from nothing that can be seen or felt, and can 
 express itself without any of these forms, then its 
 
132 
 
 THE WOKLD. 
 
 universality is more recognized and more dreaded. 
 So far from it being true that worldliness finds its 
 expression only in luxmy, or pleasure, or display, 
 it is often manifested by censorious condemnation of 
 pleasures we have no taste for, or an expenditure 
 beyond our means. 
 
 For there are few subjects in which the world more 
 clearly shows its spirit than in its treatment of 
 pleasures. They are allowed or condemned by a purely 
 artificial standard. It would be too much to say that 
 their usefulness or harmfulness has nothing to do with 
 the verdict, but it is certainly not the only consideration 
 of weight with those who approve or denounce them. 
 Certain pleasures, innocent in themselves, are often 
 called wrong, or wrong for certain persons. If they 
 produce no bad effect on the spirit of a man, they are 
 wrong for nobody ; if they do, they are wrong for all. 
 There can be no question of the lawfulness of in- 
 dulging in them at all if they are wrong ; degree in 
 that case does not enter into the question. And in 
 the case of innocent pleasures the only question is 
 one of degree ; they are lawful for those who can afford 
 them, so far and only so far as character is not 
 deteriorated by them and work not neglected for 
 them ; so long as they neither cause duty to be left 
 undone, nor make men disinclined for duty after- 
 wards. There can be no classes of persons to 
 whom pleasures innocent for others are unlawful, if 
 they choose to partake of them to such extent as 
 their means and duties permit. But the world-spirit 
 
THE WORLD. 
 
 judges otherwise, and its judgment about pleasures, 
 notably in the case of the clergy, is a conspicuous 
 instance of its true character. It is thought that this 
 and that pleasui'e is wrong for the clergy, not in 
 degree, but absolutely ; not because it interferes with 
 their work, or because they cannot afford it, but 
 because they are clergymen — though it is perfectly 
 innocent for other people. Ai'e the laity so different 
 from the clergy that they can come spotless through 
 experiences which stain their pastors ? 
 
 This has gone so far that there are said to be States 
 in America where a minister of religion dare not have 
 a bottle of wine in his house. And the same spirit, 
 differently manifested, is visible in England. There 
 is a desh'e to exact a higher degree of hohness from 
 others than we profess ourselves ; and this desire is 
 generally in exact proportion to the absence of strict- 
 ness in the lives of those who are most exacting about 
 the lives of others. The clergy can see this, and do 
 see that in the favourite watering-places, for instance, 
 and in the most fashionable quarters of London, 
 public opinion as to how the clergy ought to live is 
 most rigid, artificial, and imperious ; and this is only 
 one more manifestation of the many illustrations of 
 the spirit of the world. To suspect and dread the 
 presence of this spirit everywhere, most of all in our 
 own hearts, may help us to pass gentler judgments on 
 oui' neighboui's ; to think less of appearance and more 
 of reality ; to believe more in the great common 
 features of humanity, and to have less regard for 
 
134 
 
 THE WOELD. 
 
 superficial distinctions ; to remember that good nature 
 may be frivolous, and conscientiousness hard ; that 
 if society is hollow, solitude may be selfish ; to be 
 more afraid of our good opinion of ourselves than we 
 are of the bad word of our neighbours ; and to re- 
 member always and everywhere that we are spirits 
 only to be harmed by what can influence spirit ; only 
 to be helped, strengthened, purified, and softened 
 by conscious communion with the Divine Spirit, 
 whose most constant miracle of love on earth was 
 to expel from suffering men the s]3irits of evil. A 
 parable no less than a miracle for us. 
 
EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 St. ^Iatt. xi. 12. — " Ttie hingdom oflieaven suferefh violence, 
 and the violent take it hy force." 
 
 This is part of a rather nioui-nful comment made by 
 Christ U23on the men of His own age. He discusses 
 it, as a man now might make a speech or wi'ite an 
 article on the religious tendencies of the latter half of 
 the nineteenth centmy. 
 
 His conclusion about the leading men among his 
 contemporaries is not altogether satisfactory. He 
 characterizes their eagerness to hear the Baptist in 
 an unmistakable manner when he says, What went 
 ye out into the wilderness for to see ? " 
 
 They were chiefly concerned, he implies, with the 
 external features of the man. Was he supple and 
 pliant enough to bend to their will ? Was he hkely 
 to be a corn-tier to any party — National, Herodian, or 
 Eoman ? Was he possibly another prophet of the 
 old Hebrew type — one more flicker of the dying 
 embers of the flame that once had bm-nt so brightly ? 
 Did they in the least perceive his true greatness, or 
 understand that his real inspiration was seen not so 
 much when his presence and his voice di'ew a whole 
 
136 
 
 RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 province after him, as when he said, " I have need to 
 be baptized of thee, and comest Thou to me ? " Did 
 tliey know that it was greater to desire to be baptized 
 by Christ, than to baptize Jerusalem and all Judaea, 
 and all the country about Jordan, even though the 
 Messiah were among them ? Did they see that John 
 the saint was greater than John the preacher ? Did 
 they see that even as the least in the kingdom of 
 heaven, he was greater than he could have been on 
 the highest pinnacle of popular favour, if he had 
 been unable to see the Divine nature under the lowly 
 form of the Prophet of Nazareth ? 
 
 For a long time the Jews of the middle and lower 
 classes had been ready to follow any one who seemed 
 to give the faintest promise of being a po2)ular 
 leader ; this tendency was always bringing them 
 into collision with their Koman masters. It was so 
 before Christ came, and it led to their ruin after- 
 wards. But their devotion to John took a higher 
 form : if they did not fully understand him, they yet 
 perceived that he was a preacher of righteousness ; 
 he inspired them with a lively interest in their own 
 salvation, and with a fear of the future. They went 
 out to hear his message ; and they asked him, " What 
 shall we do?" as if he knew and they were prepared 
 to obey. 
 
 He made some impression on them, but it passed 
 off; the crowded audiences and the eager attention 
 did not fulfil their promise. Neither the preaching of 
 John nor of Christ could regenerate their own people, 
 
RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 137 
 
 as we know from history ; as the Saviour Himself 
 confesses, they were " like children sitting in the 
 market," calling to one teacher to " dance when they 
 piped," to another to " mourn when they wept ; " to 
 be like them, to live their lives, speak their words, do 
 their will ; and because they would not, departing and 
 walking no more with them. If the crowds that 
 followed John, and that wanted to make Christ a 
 king, had " brought forth fruits worthy of repent- 
 ance," He would not have been seen, in the last week 
 of His life, " beholding the city and weeping over it." 
 
 But still our Saviour says that all through His 
 public ministry there had been this eager interest 
 about the kingdom of heaven. Men had been taught 
 that there was a good to gain, or that there was an 
 evil to avoid, and they had been eager to secure the 
 one and escape the other by some means. 
 
 They seem to have thought of it as a sort of fortress 
 to be carried by a coup de main, or to be entered by 
 a postern-door, if they had the secret ; and they 
 hurried with anxious curiosity to any one they thought 
 could help them. It was an epoch of religious excite- 
 ment, as there are periods of religious apathy, and it 
 presented the usual features of such an epoch. It 
 was a phase of emotion which met with no encourage- 
 ment from the preaching of John, but was reproved 
 and corrected by him. It was as opposed as it well 
 could be to the teaching of Christ, who told the men 
 of His generation that the kingdom of heaven was 
 within them, where it would germinate like a seed or 
 
138 
 
 KELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 ferment like leaven; who rebuked His two disciples 
 for thinking about the rewards of the world to come 
 when there was a life to lead and work to do on 
 earth. It is very significant that immediately after 
 saying that men are taking the kingdom of heaven 
 by force, He should upbraid the cities wherein most of 
 His mighty works were done because of their unbelief, 
 as if unbelief were quite compatible with the desire to 
 take the kingdom of heaven by force. He seems 
 to have looked with anything but approval on the 
 kingdom of heaven suffering violence ; and to have 
 regarded it as by no means the same thing as be- 
 lieving on Him. All the rest of His speech is full of 
 sad hints of the mistake of those who thought that 
 what they were seeking was the kingdom of heaven, 
 and that theirs was the way to win it. He thanks 
 His Father for revealing the true secret to babes ; He 
 says no man knoweth the Father save He to whom 
 the Son reveals Him ; He bids not the violent, but 
 ''the weary and the heavy laden," to ''come unto 
 Him for rest." 
 
 No doubt the same features characterize all such 
 periods as marked this one ; and it would be a good 
 test of their Christian character to note how they 
 would stand being tried by such a comment as 
 Christ made upon the religious movement of His 
 own time. What he appears to condemn is a kind of 
 selfish haste and cowardly anxiety to secure whatever 
 advantages may be gained from religion, without a 
 corresponding desire to elevate the affections, to 
 
RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 139 
 
 regulate the desires, to purify the thoughts ; in a word, 
 without any desire to set up the kingdom within first 
 before seeking it without. Judged by such a standard 
 as this, of how many rehgious movements that the 
 world has seen would He not say, The kingdom of 
 heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by 
 force " ? 
 
 Such a movement seems to be passing over Europe 
 now ; there is hardly any country in which religious 
 questions are not j^rominent, though in several places 
 they are taking a political and not a personal form. 
 In our own country the political is at present subordi- 
 nate to the personal interest, though both are active ; 
 and it is said by some persons that it is only to be 
 expected, after a period of successful devotion to com- 
 merce such as society has recently passed through — * 
 when the prudence and energy of men have been 
 rewarded by an unexampled increase of wealth — that 
 there should be a religious reaction, and that men 
 should think that there are other affairs to attend to 
 and other interests to consult. If this is a true 
 account of the matter, we might expect to see the 
 same desire to secure profit and escape loss ; the same 
 belief in energy and foresight, and in an investment 
 producing a return in the affairs of the other world 
 as in those of the present life. Of course, men who 
 are immersed in business and have acquired an in- 
 eradicable habit of weighing the value of any scheme 
 by one invariable test (and without such men there 
 
 * Preached in 1875. 
 
140 
 
 RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 would be no material progress in nations), and are 
 at the same time without that higher cultivation of 
 character which Christianity in its best sense can give, 
 are Hkely when their thoughts are strongly turned 
 to religion, to bring to bear upon it the habits of 
 mind in which long experience has made them trust, 
 which long exercise has made inseparable from their 
 thoughts. They are apt, as the saying is, to take 
 "a profit and loss view" of Christianity; to regard 
 it as a system from which some advantage is to be 
 expected in return for some obligations accepted and 
 some pleasures renounced ; to value it not for the 
 character that it will develop within them, and the 
 capacity for feeling the highest enjoyments which it 
 will create, but for some results which are only the 
 consequences of these — for support in the hour of 
 death, for salvation in the world to come. It is a 
 temptation very near to every one, whatever his work 
 or character, because it appeals to the universal 
 motive of fear, and not to the motive of the New 
 Testament ; and it would probably be found to be at 
 the root of many of the more energetic religious 
 movements in our own country. 
 
 It cannot be denied that religious excitement may 
 be a tm'ning-point in a man's life, and that fear may 
 be the motive to him for doing what he ought to do, 
 and leaving undone what never should have been done ; 
 but fear can have no part in the slow process of build- 
 ing up a character like the one revealed in Christ, which 
 is the only notion we can have of heaven. It may be 
 
RELIGIOUS excite:\iext. 
 
 141 
 
 a tui'ning-point, no doubt ; but the question is, fi'om 
 what ? and to what ? Of course it is a gain to society 
 that men should leave off distinctly wicked ways ; but 
 it is not a satisfactory result of what is often called 
 conversion that a man should be only tui-ned from 
 selfish concern about the affaii's of this hfe to selfish 
 concern about the affairs of another. We are called 
 by the name of a ^Master — Christians — and the very 
 token of discipleship is a confidence which should 
 make us ready to leave om* fate in His hands ; con- 
 tent that He should do as He thinks best with and 
 for us ; happy in finding salvation from the tempta- 
 tions which beset us here in a distant imitation of 
 His life. But to come to Him^ as we are sometimes 
 exhorted to do, not for the pm*pose of following Him, 
 but to ask what shall we have therefore *? " not be- 
 cause we love Him, but because we di'ead God, this 
 would be trying to take ''the kingdom of heaven by 
 force," and it might show us, by its effect on our own 
 lives, how far we are fi'om it. 
 
 As a rule men do not know, except in their own 
 cases, the results of such appeals to the feelings ; 
 but unless they are suppoi'ted by regular training 
 of motive and conduct afterwards, it is difiicult to 
 beheve that they can have much efiect for good. It is 
 a familiar saying, that after excitement comes re- 
 action — a distaste that is for the exciting cause, and 
 a weakened power of effort in the dii-ection of the 
 excitement. This is a very serious result in such 
 an important matter to every one as personal cha- 
 
142 
 
 EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 racter ; for personal character is Christianity, and 
 it is a great loss to find ourselves less capable of 
 response to appeals to higher motives because our 
 sensibility has been worn out by incessant playing 
 upon the lower. It is never wise or safe to appeal 
 to transient feelings when there are persistent emo- 
 tions to act upon ; and the feeling of fear is not only 
 in its nature transient, but is the lowest and the 
 poorest motive to action. Little good could be hoped 
 from it, if the appeal succeeded ; if it fails, as is most 
 likely — for it is of all impressions the one most quick to 
 fade, with the circumstances which produced it — what 
 is left but a weakened dread of that which was the only 
 restraining motive before, and a weakened suscepti- 
 bility to any higher ajDpeals ? It is -impossible for 
 those who feel the difficulty of Christian life ; its varied 
 and infinite demands ; the modes and the motives by 
 which it is sustained, not to criticise attempts which 
 are made to convert a population on a sudden, and on 
 a large scale. They have experience themselves of the 
 results of appeals to the feelings, and they cannot but 
 look on with some anxiety when great crowds are 
 warned " to flee from the wrath to come ; " to come to 
 Christ to save them from it ; to make their peace 
 with Him before they go about their business again. 
 It is not so easy to annihilate past history as to be- 
 come new men and women by the religious experience 
 of a few moments ; nor can it be expected that a life 
 begun with so little change will be very different from 
 the one which preceded it ; that an impulse so sudden 
 
KELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 143 
 
 and arising from such a motive will be permanent. 
 The sj'mpathy of large numbers is exciting enough, but 
 when there are added to this, thi'eats of the world to 
 come, and agonizing descriptions of oui' Lord's phy- 
 sical sufferings, and promises of happiness after death 
 in return for some mystic apprehension of their effects, 
 a state of feeling is produced which may be very 
 potent for good, but which seems to need the wisest 
 teaching and control to save it from resulting in dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 We are not as a nation very susceptible of religious 
 impressions, but certain classes among us, when we are 
 moved at all, are generally influenced by those that 
 have been referred to. Such preaching is almost 
 always sm*e to collect large crowds and to move them 
 strongly; but it has not often happenel that the at- 
 tempt has been made on a larger scale than now.* 
 It is impossible not to regret that more advantage is 
 not taken of such an opportunity for Christian teach- 
 ing ; for showing the bearing of the words of Christ 
 on the details of life, and how His Spirit should in- 
 form it ; for pointing out the characteristic faults of 
 classes ; for speaking home to the conscience about 
 faults that have gi'own inveterate by long toleration ; 
 about tempers that have become masterful by long 
 indulgence. The sympathy of numbers would be as 
 powerful to send such reproaches like an electric 
 current through the crowd, as it is to transmit other 
 
 * Messrs. Moody and Sankey were preaching in England this 
 year. 
 
144 
 
 RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 appeals. Surely the picture of the Perfect Man ; of 
 the fatherly care of God, with its constraining motive 
 to live as sons of such a Father ; the appeal to what 
 is Divine in every man, if he would only let it appear, 
 and live up to the level of his true nature ; surely 
 such appeals to the higher emotions (which we make 
 when we want to cultivate the nature of a child), 
 though they might not produce the turbulent reactions 
 of fear or religious excitement, would raise men to a 
 higher platform, and set a motive before them which 
 would be at once elevated and enduring. Such ideas, 
 when they once enter into the mind, take root there ; 
 they are a constant reproach to an unworthy life, and 
 a persistent power of raising it. There is no reaction 
 from their stimulus, but an abiding strength from 
 their contact. Their claims upon allegiance and en- 
 thusiasm are not satisfied by a " decision once for 
 all for Christ ; " by any professions of conversion > 
 but remain always exacting, exalting, and inspiring ; 
 at o;ace an aim, a guide, and a power; pointing the 
 perpetual contrast between what we are and what we 
 are meant to be. 
 
 All are not of course attracted, or led, or misled, by 
 religious appeals to the feelings of this sort ; but some 
 perhaps by others, and some may find it very hard to 
 be impressed at all. The lesson of a religious move- 
 ment is lost on those who only thank God that they 
 are not like these poor fanatics, as they may think, 
 but have a purer faith and a more elevating ritual ; 
 and on those also who, claiming to be Christians, are 
 
EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 
 
 145 
 
 rather pleased to be callous to all addresses to affec- 
 tions as well as to feelings. It is as easy to mistake 
 one kind of excitement for religion as another. Art and 
 taste will not save it fi'om being as evanescent as the 
 emotion of the crowd, even though it be more refined. 
 Nor can we afford to disjoarage the crudeness or the 
 hoUowness of the religious experience of others, if 
 loftier ideas will not stk our own hearts to action ; 
 if we can praise and pray without finding that any 
 higher motives regulate our conduct. It is the presence 
 of these motives which Christianizes society ; and their 
 importance and their force is that they are permanent 
 sources of conduct based on the true ideals of God and 
 of man. Once set up as a standard, they will be found 
 in times of temptation a rebuke to unworthiness ; and 
 in the horn- of pleasure an antidote to excitement. 
 Men cannot have the strength of these motives when 
 it is needed, and be free from their restraint when 
 they are a burden. 
 
 Hearts in which Christ would say that His kingdom 
 could not be found, will always be liable to seizures 
 of panic or of hope — as long as any rehgious feeling 
 remains in them — which will suggest some machinery 
 of magic or self-delusion for taking it by force." 
 
 L 
 
THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 Gal. v. 17. — " Ye cannot do the things that ye would." 
 
 Like most great sayings, this consists of few words 
 and short ones, but it carries a wide meaning. It 
 lives because it embodies the experience of human life, 
 and it would be hard to express it more concisely. 
 And it is a conclusion about a great subject, for it 
 sums up in a short sentence the mortal condition of 
 men: They cannot do the things that they would." 
 And the reason is that human nature is not single, 
 but twofold ; compounded of two opposing forces, set 
 against each other, the desires of each directed against 
 the other. This is St. Paul's account of us. It seems 
 a natural result, until one gets the mastery, that we 
 never should do the things that we would ; that we 
 should at least not do them with that freedom of the 
 will which is necessary to the idea of liberty of action. 
 The restraint is common to both ; the animal part of 
 a man is in most cases controlled to some extent by 
 the spirit of the man ; hardly any one's fleshly desires 
 have uncontrolled liberty ; the animal impulse to sleep, 
 food, or any indulgence is rarely followed always and 
 
THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 147 
 
 unresisting. The flesh cannot do the things that it 
 would, exactly as if there were no spirit. Man has 
 not the liberty in this respect of the lower animals. 
 He is checked, balked, rebuked, reproached; even 
 his animal nature is imperfect in this respect, that it 
 cannot obey its instincts. It is true to his whole con- 
 dition in being limited, and unable fully to express 
 itself. It is of course true that many men follow to a 
 great extent the lead of appetite ; but it is probable 
 that those who are least conscious of any resistance 
 to it are quite unaware how constant is the resistance 
 that is maintained ; how seldom it is true of any one 
 that the flesh can and does invariably the things that 
 it would. The conscious resistance of the spirit to 
 the impulses of the flesh (under which St. Paul in- 
 cludes a good many more sins than those of appe- 
 tite ; things as aloof from appetite as envy and party 
 spirit) is a standing hint of destiny, an indication 
 of call and of final cause as clear as the voice of 
 Eevelation, and as strong as the instinct of immor- 
 tality. It is something to be thankful for that we 
 cannot do the things that we would; that there is 
 that within us which will protest and be heard. 
 
 But the hindrance is mutual. The spirit cannot, 
 any more than the flesh, do the things that it would. 
 And it is like the flesh in this resj)ect, that it cannot 
 carry out its own desires by reason of the antagonism 
 of the other part. It seems hard that, besides all the 
 hindrances of external nature and of society, men 
 should be so constituted as to carry about with them 
 
148 
 
 THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS 
 
 always a standing difficulty to doing what they know 
 to be right. It is so characteristic of man to have 
 these high thoughts and holy wishes, that there seems 
 a kind of hardship in the inevitable obstacle. It 
 seems so creditable to feel such aspirations, and so 
 desirable to fulfil them, that it looks like the caprice of 
 power that the check should be as ever-present as the 
 desire; the stoppage as invariable as the attempt to 
 escape out of prison in some direction into freedom and 
 action. But it is a matter of unchanging experience. 
 
 The difficulty of personal reformation, of the prac- 
 tice of any particular virtue — like gentleness of speech, 
 for instance — the struggle against unsatisfactory or 
 questionable habits, the control of temper or self- 
 indulgence — all these are so hard that their difficulty 
 is proverbial; and it is not occasioned by obstacles 
 without, but by resistance within. Men see clearly 
 enough the beauty of what are called the fruits of the 
 Spirit ; there is no want of taste for them, and no ex- 
 ternal hindrances to their acquisition. The reason why 
 so few aspirations are gratified and so few attempts 
 successful, is the obstacle which is set against them in 
 the same nature that feels the longing and makes the 
 struggle upwards. " A man's foes are they of his own 
 household." It is this that makes human life the 
 problem and the trial that it is. Hard to account for, 
 hard to deal with, hard to analyze, hard to make the 
 best of as a matter of fact. This nature — in which the 
 lower part cannot have its way unresisted and unre- 
 buked ; in which the higher finds itself thwarted and 
 
THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 149 
 
 crippled by the strength or the weakness of the lower ; 
 in which man has wisdom enough to see the riddle 
 and not wisdom enough to unravel it — this nature, 
 " darkly wise, and rudely great," is what we find to be 
 our own, without hope of escape or of radical change. 
 
 This would be a depressing view of life if there were 
 no hope except in complete transformation ; but the 
 degrees in which what is best and what is worst in 
 men have their way are infinitely various, and they 
 mark the differences between characters. There is 
 always hope of some victory over evil, even if a small 
 one ; there is always hope of an onward step in purity 
 of thought, in some cleansing or strengthening of the 
 sanctuary within (which is the citadel of Christianity) ; 
 there is always hope enough of rising, horror enough 
 of falling below even the present mark, to serve for 
 daily motives ; and one step is enough for me ; lead 
 Thou me on," for "I cannot do the things that I would." 
 Love and zeal and faith look down long vistas, or on 
 to shining heights, but they do not see the hindrances 
 because they rise on a sudden in their path ; the pil- 
 grim carries them with him in his progress. Some 
 master some difficulties, none all ; some yield to most 
 of them ; some master most ; but the more that are 
 mastered the higher rise the aims ; the more that 
 stop us, the fewer we do of the things that we would. 
 
 Under all conditions of spiritual life and of moral 
 effort, the description of the Apostle holds true as a 
 pictui'e of the inner life of man. And it is no less true 
 of his outer life. Consider the physical limitations 
 
150 
 
 THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 of an animal body such as ours ; even as a parable 
 of our social and spiritual bounds they are worth a 
 thought. We find ourselves on a planet which, small 
 as it is, is vastly too big for our unassisted powers of 
 movement ; on a surface from which we cannot, un- 
 aided, rise much more than a yard ; surrounded by 
 an ocean which we cannot traverse without artificial 
 help ; hindered by laws of natm-e, as we call them, 
 from freedom of action ; seeing ourselves outdone in 
 merely physical powers by the fowls of the air, the 
 beasts of the field, the fishes of the sea, while we are 
 the lords of the animal creation. The attempts which 
 men have made at various times to overcome these 
 inabilities look like a parable of that opposition to 
 human will that seems to be the token and the essence 
 of our present state. A man can no more be rich or 
 wise by wishing, than he can be as swift as a swallow 
 or as strong as a lion. There is not only the in- 
 firmity within — the entire incapacity perhaps for 
 being what he wishes, as well as the want of moral 
 fibre to carry out the intimations of mind — but there 
 is the want of chance ; the want of friends ; the want 
 of means ; perhaps the want of length of days. All 
 these may be wanting, when there is both the power 
 to design and the resolution to work ; and when such 
 a case occurs, it is as true a token of an imperfect 
 state as the unaccomplished desires of the spirit by 
 reason of the opposition of the flesh. 
 
 Almost all men who are worth anything begin life 
 with high aims. They will achieve something ; they 
 
THE MEAXIXG OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 151 
 
 will not be as other men are; they will not follow 
 the multitude in folly or vice. And it is well that it 
 should be so, for they need the impetus of this en- 
 thusiasm to start in life ; but such feelings are cor- 
 rected by experience. It is soon found out how few 
 things can be accomplished in a lifetime ; how few 
 aims achieved ; how few ideals made real. It is 
 well when the bitter lesson is not learnt from 
 this experience, that since so little can be accom- 
 plished, it is not worth struggling for the little that is 
 attainable. The truer lesson that life teaches is of the 
 need to work on. Since time is short and circum- 
 stances hard, to try harder ; to make sure, at least, of 
 leaving something behind when the battle is done. 
 But with all the enthusiasm of youth and with all the 
 belief in striving that the experience of life may bring, 
 life as a whole must present itself as a condition in 
 which, whether from opposition from within or from 
 without ; from want of help, time, or opportunity, we 
 cannot do the things that we would. Man is made 
 up of high thoughts and low desires ; of great aims 
 and small means ; of grand ideas and poor results. 
 He has visions of work that he will do, which he never 
 does; hopes for himself that are never fulfilled; in- 
 tentions of being what he never is. He feels within 
 himself a capacity for tasks that he is never set to 
 perform ; of wielding an influence for which he never 
 has the opportunity ; of diffusing good that he never 
 has the courage or self-denial to undertake. These 
 thoughts and longings are the offspring of that within 
 
152 
 
 THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 US which is nobler than what we see without ; but they 
 die beneath its weight. Children from beyond the 
 world, they come to us as hopes and plans ; but they 
 perish almost at birth, overlaid by the nature that 
 bore them, or crushed by the conditions of the visible 
 world into which they are born, and are reckoned 
 among the things that we would but cannot. 
 
 It is this condition of incapacity which constitutes 
 the true mortality of men. It is not merely that after 
 a certain number of years they must change their 
 state ; must go away and be seen no more. If life had 
 been fruitful successful and progressive within and 
 without, the signature of death would not be so 
 broadly written upon it as it is. It would be life, and 
 full life, while it lasted, if ever so short. There would 
 be none of that feeling of imprisonment and failure 
 about it which arises from finding that we cannot 
 be the kind of persons, nor do the kind of things that 
 we would. St. Paul speaks of the flesh in his own 
 case and its opposition to his higher nature, as of the 
 cumbrous weight of a dead body tied to a living man : 
 
 Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" 
 meaning, from this dead body. As if he was not 
 only encumbered with a load which barred all free 
 action, but fainting in an atmosphere of death that 
 was fatal to effort and to aim. 
 
 These limitations that hinder all attempts to achieve 
 or to be, when their effect is as decided as their 
 tendency, make our present state our true death ; and 
 if they have any significance, they point to what we 
 
THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 153 
 
 call death as our deliverance. They all point forward 
 that is, and contain within themselves a presumption 
 of immortality ; for they seem to show that man was 
 meant for a state into which he has not heen horn. 
 Consciousness of a capacity for work which we never 
 have a chance of doing; visions of a holiness we never 
 reach ; fitness for associations we never experience ; 
 feelings that we cannot express and coming to us 
 from we know not whence ; struggles that end in 
 failure ; strivings that end in relapse ; love that is 
 never retm*ned ; and energy that beats the air, — these 
 are hints not only of a life after death, but of a hfe in 
 which the contrast between power and performance, 
 between the ideal and the real, shall not be so broadly 
 marked as it is here. Otherwise the second part of 
 man's life would oppress him with the same sense of 
 ineffectualness and failure that the first does. 
 
 It may be that they point to more than this ; that 
 they point to a life of energy, where to try is to 
 succeed ; where the resisting medium which walls up 
 both effort and feeling here will exist no more; but 
 where free scope and perfect companionship may de- 
 velop powers and feehngs that have long beaten in 
 vain against their barriers. This is the kind of immor- 
 taUty that we are destined to, if we may trust the sug- 
 gestions of om- own nature — a change from " cannot " 
 to " can," from less life to more ; or else death would 
 be no deliverance, but only another name for a fresh 
 lease of bondage. It needs the thought of such a 
 possible career to inspire men under the burden of the 
 
154 THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 sense of failure which a contemplation of their present 
 life suggests. 
 
 Few thoughts could be more inspiriting than this 
 to all those to whom life appears as only another 
 name for vigour of action and freshness of feeling. 
 For to them the difficulty of living, the struggle of, 
 not for, existence, is a bracing atmosphere to fit them 
 for a purer air and for intenser efforts ; the hardships 
 are steps to mount higher upon; the faitees cor- 
 rections of mistaken endeavours ; the consciousness 
 of power an encom-agement to work on; the vision 
 of holiness a promise of communion with the Holy 
 One. It may be then that the general sense of diffi- 
 culty and of resistance in life is meant to suggest 
 another career, since we find from experience that 
 there are characters which it strengthens to bear 
 their part in this one. It may help some to bear 
 the disappointment of obscure work or humble station, 
 when they feel capable of higher things, to remember 
 that this contrast between feeling and condition may 
 be both a hint and a preparation for a higher state. 
 It may cheer some under the mortification of making 
 no progress in spiritual life ; of winning no love ; of 
 accomplishing nothing ; to feel that these disappoint- 
 ments are, rightly understood, almost a promise of 
 changed conditions hereafter, and so ought to be a 
 strength in overcoming the temptation to a bitterness 
 which may be excusable here, but can find no plea 
 for existence in a condition of ideal surroundings. 
 And to all the tendency of such thoughts must be to 
 
THE MEANING OF LIMITATIONS. 
 
 155 
 
 make them regard this life more as a stage in a great 
 design, whose seeming imperfection constitutes its 
 very fitness as a preparation for the stage to come ; 
 and so to increase their sense of its importance ; even 
 of the importance of the small efforts and the small 
 failm-es, the good resolutions and the poor results 
 that make up each day's history. 
 
THE BIBLE. 
 
 2 Cor. iii. 6. — " The letter killeth, hut the spirit giveth life.'' 
 
 It is easy to pass over unnoticed even a caution so 
 important and so singular as this. It is contained in 
 the most sacred portion of our Sacred Book, and in 
 one of the most undoubtedly genuine writings of this 
 portion. St. Paul is, as usual, undervaluing himself 
 and magnifying his office. All the qualification he 
 has, so he says, to be a minister of the Gospel is from 
 God. He it is who has qualified him to be a minister 
 of the new covenant; "not of the letter, but of the 
 spirit " of it, for " the letter killeth, but the spirit 
 quickeneth." It is worth while to note the context, 
 because the same Divine authority which is his 
 commission to teach is implied as sanctioning his 
 distinction between the spirit and the letter, and his 
 verdict about them. It is not about the varied 
 contents of the older Scriptures alone that he makes 
 this assertion. Their mingled elements of record 
 and revelation might seem to justify it ; but about 
 that part of the Scripture which is more especially 
 spiritual, the truths he was teaching and the words he 
 
THE BIBLE. 
 
 157 
 
 was writing, he says, The letter killeth, the spirit 
 giveth life." 
 
 There is probably no other book in the world in 
 which such a caution exists against misunderstand- 
 ing its purpose and use ; which contains, so to speak, 
 such a protest against its own literal infallibility. 
 Great men have written great books, and after careful 
 revision have published them in the full belief not 
 only of the truth of their general views, but of the 
 accuracy of individual statements. But they have in- 
 serted no caution against everything they have said 
 being taken literally ; no appeal fi'om the letter to the 
 spirit of what they have written. In spite of the 
 absence of any such caution, mistakes have been 
 found in the greatest books ; no one therefore 
 questions their general truth and value. One reason, 
 though not the chief one, why St. Paul thought such 
 a protest necessary, may have been that om- Sacred 
 Book is the product of many minds. Thus, though 
 there was a unity of spirit, there was a diversity of 
 intelligence in the various writers ; and it was this 
 spirit in which all agi'eed that was to be sought and 
 preached, and not the divergences in which it was 
 expressed. 
 
 But he goes beyond this, not only in this place but 
 in others. He warns his converts against being 
 bound by the letter of the law, which is the shadow, 
 but the substance is of Christ ; against being subject 
 to ordinances, which ''perish with the using." The 
 law, he says, gives sin its power over the conscience; 
 
158 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 and much in the same spmt in which he asserts the 
 slavery of a religion of mere obedience to precepts, he 
 says here, " The letter killeth." If we consider for a 
 minute what death and life mean in the Bible, it will 
 be more easy to understand him. They answer to 
 bondage and freedom; to fear of error and seeking 
 after truth ; to dread of doing wrong and to aiming at 
 perfection ; to despair and to hope ; to isolation and 
 to love ; to fear and to faith ; to sloth and to energy. 
 They are spiritual conditions of a being whose nature 
 responds quickly and truly to every influence. And 
 to him the Apostle ssijs the influence of the letter of 
 the New Testament is death, and of the spirit, life. 
 
 We should hardly have accepted this judgment 
 from any one but an Apostle ; but since the greatest 
 of the Apostles has said it, it must be worth while to 
 consider how it is true, and if possible to find some 
 instances in which it has proved to be. And the 
 spiritual meaning of life and death is the key to his 
 declaration. The common phrase of "being bound by 
 the letter " of a document is tacit evidence of the effect 
 of the letter upon the will. There is a duty to obey 
 or to accept it, but there is no stimulus to the will, 
 and no enlightenment of the conscience from the 
 obedience or the faith to which we are bound. A 
 prohibition or a proposition may impress men with the 
 fear of error in faith or practice, but cannot inspire 
 them with trust in a living person, or possess them 
 with the passion of imitating his perfections. " Thou 
 **shalt" or "Thou shalt not" do or believe this or 
 
THE BIBLE. 
 
 159 
 
 that, may make men despair and hang down their 
 hands ; they never can give them hope or energy to 
 go on. We feel, without thought about it, that such 
 words as forgetting those things which are behind, 
 and reaching forth unto those which are before, I 
 press toward the mark" — that such words were 
 born, not of the letter, but of a spirit which could 
 quicken a man so to conceive his Hfe and so to live it. 
 
 Besides this paralysis of the energies and of the will, 
 to cling to the letter, to be blind and deaf to the spirit 
 which breathes and burns all through our sacred 
 books, produces another characteristic of death, viz. 
 separation. It is the cause and the token of death 
 to everything created, from the unconscious life of the 
 plant to the mind and heart of man, which depend 
 upon association for their life. And the creature's 
 first instinct about the Uncreated is that He is such 
 as His creatures are — desiring children as the objects 
 of His love, and as so much feeling the need of it, 
 that He even commands them to love Him in return. 
 
 But what is and has been the effect of the letter on 
 the way that men have regarded one another ? The 
 whole preaching of Christ is a protest against that 
 literal interpretation of the Bible, and that blindness 
 to the spirit of it, which were killing his fellow-country- 
 men. They were so hidebound in their law as to think 
 that death, and not life, were outside it; as to hate 
 all who were without ; as to be hated by all for their 
 inhuman exclusiveness. Even to the great mind of 
 St. Paul it was a mystery, i.e. a secret revealed from 
 
160 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 heaven, to his surprise and joy, that to the Gentiles 
 also was opened the kingdom of heaven. He was 
 not the first Jew that saw this : the great prophet of 
 the captivity was also quickened by the same spirit 
 of revelation. But the Jews could see nothing in all 
 he told them but the turn of fortune in their favour, 
 and the glory and greatness of Zion. They were more 
 in bondage to the letter after the captivity than be- 
 fore ; and the Gospels tell us how little all the contact 
 they had had with Greece, with Eome, with Alexandria, 
 had widened their minds or opened their hearts. 
 
 While they were saying, " This people which 
 knoweth not the law is cursed," One came who said, 
 "Blessed be ye poor" (though ye know not the law), 
 "for yours is the kingdom of heaven;" and when 
 " the common people heard Him gladly " — when He 
 taught them not as the scribes, but with a spirit that 
 gave a strange new life to imprisoned hearts, — then 
 the letter killed Him ; " We have a law, and by our 
 law He ought to die." The spirit which moved some 
 of the best of them to sympathy with His Divine 
 nature was silenced, and the letter closed their hearts. 
 It killed Christ, after it had first killed His murderers. 
 The influence of the Spirit, on the other hand, is seen 
 in the enthusiasm of the day of Pentecost, and of the 
 early days of the Christian Church. These are not 
 the only instances of the effect of the bondage of the 
 letter and of the freedom of the Spirit in the history 
 of our religion. The contrast is for ever presenting 
 itself, not only in individual life, where the letter 
 
THE BIBLE. 
 
 161 
 
 blinds the understanding to truth and shuts the heart 
 against neighbours, ^rhile the Spirit gives light and 
 warmth, but it is seen more broadly in the divisions 
 of Christendom. It might have been thought that 
 " the unity of the Spirit " which animates the followers 
 of Christ would have kept them in the ''bond of 
 peace ; " but the isolation of the letter has been too 
 strong for the comprehension of the Sphit. It is of 
 com-se a truism that if we were ruled by the Spirit 
 of God there would be no divisions among us ; but it 
 is woi'th rememberiag that it is of this Spu*it especially 
 which makes for unity that we are subjects and 
 ministers ; while we refuse to be led by the spirit of 
 revelation, and tmTi agaia to the weak and beggarly 
 elements " of the letter, to which we prefer to be m 
 bondage; with what results to ourselves and to the 
 Chm'ch of Christ those who look within and without 
 know best. 
 
 The history of most of the great ecclesiastical con- 
 troversies would illustrate the opposite effects of being 
 led by the spirit of Scripture and being lq bondage to 
 the letter of it. How the fine impalpable spirit of a 
 truth may escape fi*om those who are batthng for the 
 letter ; how men become dead to the substance while 
 they are contending for the form, may be seen in 
 most of them, but nowhere perhaps more disastrously 
 than in the gi-eat dispute about that which was meant 
 to be '' the outward and visible sign of the inward and 
 spiritual gi'ace" of unity. ''This is My body." It 
 is enough to make angels weep to see men analyzing 
 
162 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 a sentence like this, with untold spiritual loss to them- 
 selves whichever way they conclude. What no one 
 can doubt is the spirit in which the elements were 
 given and the spirit in which they ought to be taken, 
 if we, through them, are all to be one ; if they are to 
 be to us " meat indeed and drink indeed." It would 
 be well if we could all apply the impressive teaching 
 of this great division to many and minor ones. It 
 throws such a broad light on the contrast between the 
 letter and the spirit of the Bible (which is the spirit of 
 the Word, that is of Christ) that there is no need to 
 quote other cases; only to learn from this one the 
 deadening effects on men's hearts, and the separation 
 from hearts they were meant to be at one with, that 
 may result from a rigid adherence to the letter with- 
 out being penetrated by the spirit of Holy Scripture. 
 
 If we are able to observe such effects as these, 
 what is the temptation to this idolatry of the text of 
 Scripture ? 
 
 It seems to proceed largely from a mistaken view 
 of what religion is ; from looking at it solely as 
 an objective and historical system without regard 
 to what is internal and subjective — as something 
 which can be taken up and laid down, professed and 
 practised, rather than as a permanent state of mind 
 and feeling with regard to invisible Persons and in- 
 visible realities. 
 
 For religion, viewed as an external historical sys- 
 tem, demands an infallible external guide, and this 
 leads to the preference of bondage with certainty to 
 
THE BIBLE. 
 
 163 
 
 freedom without it ; without certainty that is in 
 details, for no Christian has any doubt of the spirit 
 of his Bible. But we have no promise of certainty, 
 and no blessing is attached to it. " The kingdom of 
 heaven," says the Word of the Father, "is like treasure 
 hid in a field," and must be sought diligently till it 
 is found. We must search the Scriptures not like the 
 Pharisees, for texts to be used as missiles against 
 opponents, or as props to our own views, but because 
 "they are they which testify of" Christ. It is 
 possible for us, as it was for them, not to find Him 
 there. Uncertainty is the very condition of our 
 existence here, and it seems the especial Nemesis of 
 aU views that they must necessarily be uncertain. 
 But the Nemesis may be a blessing in disguise, for 
 certainty about them would be that death of the letter 
 which we are told to dread. 
 
 Again, men cling to the letter because they love 
 to be ruled; they hate the responsibility of having 
 to judge for themselves, and the trouble of deriving 
 rules of conduct from principles of life. 
 
 Rules are comparatively easy to carry out. Prin- 
 ciples are hard to master and to apply. A religion of 
 formularies and of obedience might have the same 
 deadening effect upon us that the moral maxims 
 of Confucius (without an ideal to inspire them) have 
 had upon the Chinese ; but we prefer the simplicity 
 and certainty of it to the search after truth, and the 
 endless effort and the seemingly hopeless command 
 to "be perfect." 
 
164 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 Our Lord gives us no encouragement to live by the 
 letter. He, contrasting the spirit with the flesh, as 
 St. Paul contrasts it with the letter (a suggestive 
 parallel), says, "It is the spirit that quickeneth." 
 As if to warn men against making any external system 
 founded on His teaching the whole of their religion, 
 He says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." 
 As if to caution them against expecting definiteness, 
 He is repeatedly saying, " He that hath ears to hear, 
 let him hear." He that can penetrate into the spirit 
 of My teaching, let him live by it. 
 
 No teacher ever lived whose teaching so much 
 demanded that his followers should be possessed with 
 the spirit of their master. The letter of many even 
 of His sayings would kill just in proportion as their 
 spirit gives life. " This is a hard saying," his dis- 
 ciples said once ; and ever since His friends have been 
 fain to pass over some of His sayings with a sigh as 
 hopeless, and His enemies to cast others in the teeth of 
 His followers as impossible, because neither friends 
 nor foes have entered into the spirit which animated 
 the life that found expression in them. 
 
 For the Bible is not the only inspired creation of 
 the Father. Man is inspired too, and the Holy Spirit 
 is infused into him, and God is revealed in him, that 
 he may find in all God's other revelations of Himself, 
 especially in the revealed Word, " a correspondent for 
 every movement towards the better which is felt in 
 his own heart." * It must not be thought that it is 
 * Coleridge's "Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit." 
 
THE BIBLE. 
 
 165 
 
 easy to find the spirit that underlies the letter ; it 
 requires thought and longing to learn, and above all, 
 a life to match, which will grow by what it feeds upon. 
 " But even in the life that least consists with it, if 
 there be the desire after God, there will be answering 
 grace ready to enter in." 
 
 "The Bible," says Coleridge, in the "Confessions of 
 an Inquiring Spirit," " is a spiritual world — spiritual, 
 and yet at the same time outward and common to all. 
 You in one place, I in another, all men somewhere or 
 at some time meet with an assurance that the hopes 
 and fears, the thoughts and yearnings, that proceed 
 from or tend to a right spirit in us are not dreams, 
 or voices heard in sleep, or spectres which the eye 
 suffers but does not perceive. The hungry have 
 found food, the thirsty a living spring, the feeble a 
 staff, and the victorious warrior songs of welcome and 
 strains of music ; and as long as each man asks what 
 he wants, no man will discover aught deficient or 
 amiss in the vast and many-chambered storehouse." 
 "For more than a thousand years it has gone hand 
 in hand with the moral and intellectual cultivation 
 of man, always supporting, often leading the way. 
 Its very presence as a believed book has rendered the 
 nations emphatically a chosen race that have accepted 
 it, and this too in exact proportion as it is more or 
 less generally studied." 
 
 Such words from so great a teacher might well have 
 been the last words of a sermon on the Bible, but he 
 adds a caution and a comfort to those who are easily 
 
166 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 shaken in their belief in the general spirit of their 
 Book. If a peerer or a scoffer detects here an ignor- 
 ance or there a contradiction, here a seeming sanction 
 of cruelty or of immorality, are we who are quickened 
 by its spirit, and know by inner experience its effect 
 upon life, are we to be frightened or lose faith in 
 it, and not rather to ask, Is that, on the whole, the 
 spirit of the Book?" 
 
 If that is what a man finds in it, instead of finding 
 what finds him, he has not gone to it with the desire 
 to be more like God or to know more of Him. 
 Like all His gifts to us, it may be misunderstood, 
 misused, abused; like them, we find in it what we 
 bring to it. Men should not, therefore, be alarmed if 
 those who are dead to the Spirit, who is the life of 
 men, fail to hear Him speaking in its pages because 
 here and there His utterances are blended with the 
 notes of human infirmity, of human passion and of 
 human pride ; since the Divine is ever mingled with the 
 human in all that men do and are ; knowing, as they 
 do, that the message of God to the souls of men is 
 there ; that there is a spirit breathing beneath and 
 through the imperfections of the letter which is the 
 " power of an endless life." 
 
READING. 
 
 Rom. XV. 4. — " Whatsoever things were written aforetime ivere 
 written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort 
 of the Scriptures might have hope." 
 
 This would be a very suitable day * to observe as a 
 day of thanksgmng for the spmtual harvest. It is 
 the Sunday which is set apart for giving thanks for 
 good books ; and it is possible that there is as much 
 reason for being thankful for good books as for the 
 fruits of the earth. Most Hkely men wiU continue 
 to be influenced by books not only after the earth has 
 ceased to bring forth fi'uits, but after it has ceased 
 to exist. Unlike the fruits of the earth, they do 
 not " perish with the using," but gain new life with 
 every use. Death is not the condition of wider Hfe 
 to them as it is to the seed, for they bring forth 
 fruit without passing through the gate of death. 
 
 Use is their condition of life, as it is to the seed ; 
 but it is a hie that is not preceded by death nor 
 followed by it ; nor is it bounded by the Umits of time 
 and space, but spreads and grows fi'om every fresh 
 root, leaving results that it is certain the world can- 
 * Second Sunday in Advent. 
 
168 
 
 HEADING. 
 
 not exhaust, whick perhaps can never be exhausted. 
 The influence of good Hterature need not be dwelt 
 upon ; the marvel is that it enters so little into men's 
 thoughts as a matter of thankfulness. It would be 
 difficult to dilate upon the power it exercises and the 
 blessings it confers without being commonplace ; but 
 probably it is not often consciously included in the 
 catalogue of " all the blessings of this life " for which 
 public thanks are offered up in our Liturgy ; not per- 
 haps because it may be among the blessings of another 
 life too ; but because it is too faintly felt to be a blessing 
 of either. And good books are a blessing for which 
 the world ought to be more and more thankful as it 
 grows older. Every generation is the " heir of all 
 the ages," and richer than its predecessor by the 
 contribution of the last. The store accumulates as 
 time goes on, and it is a store that increases instead 
 of diminishing with consumption. There is no fear 
 of population overtaking production in this harvest ; 
 for this is food of which the demand produces a new 
 supply without lessening the old. The fear is not 
 that the good seed should be consumed, but that the 
 weeds and the chaff should be taken instead. 
 
 The Epistle and the Collect for this Sunday give two 
 hints about reading which are as useful now as at 
 the time they were written. Any hint about reading 
 comes with especial force from St. Paul. His early 
 training seems to have been in a wider literature than 
 was common with his countrymen, and he had all the 
 culture in their special learning of which the most 
 
READIXG. 
 
 169 
 
 carefully educated of them could boast. But the sprmg 
 of his life and the source of his inspiration are 
 ordinarily regarded as being independent of book- 
 learning ; he is generally thought of as a man new- 
 made at his conversion, and as so fully equipped with 
 the revelation of Christ, as to need no other furniture 
 for his mission; as to have dispensed with his 
 previous acquirements ; as to have gloried in knowing 
 nothing but Jesus Christ. He is moreover often 
 conceived as being thoroughly anti-Judaic in senti- 
 ment. However this may be, his evident independ- 
 ence of Jewish ideas ; the completeness with which 
 he was possessed with the idea of Christ ; and his 
 wide acquaintance with the thought, and perhaps 
 with the literature, of other nations combine to give 
 especial value to any recommendation of his to study 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 
 For it would be an affectation of liberality to suppose 
 that St. Paul is referring to any but the Holy Scrip- 
 tui'es when he speaks of what was wiitten aforetime. 
 Animated as he was by his special commission ; by 
 the assm-ance of the resurrection which was the food 
 of his life ; by the strange joy of the new revelation 
 that the gospel and the redemption were meant for 
 all mankind ; in the glow of this excitement ; in his 
 exuberant sense of life in carrying this news about 
 he is still mindful of the quiet delight and strength 
 that come fi'om reading. It is difficult to imagine him 
 reading. Preaching, travelling, wi'iting his earnest 
 letters, working at his craft, conversing with his 
 
170 
 
 READING. 
 
 friends — these occupations are the recorded features 
 of his life ; hut they scarcely seem to leave time for 
 reading or calm to enjoy it, however much a life of 
 such restless energy might seem to demand it as an 
 antidote. But his whole life belies the notion that he 
 preached what he did not practise ; and no man who 
 did not love reading would have written with such 
 discriminating appreciation of its characteristic ad- 
 vantages. No one who had not read good literature, 
 and read it well, would have spoken of the patience 
 and comfort that come from careful reading ; and the 
 sentence is a suggestion of the way in which the 
 intervals of the writer's busy life were passed. Many 
 men since St. Paul wrote have found in the pages 
 of a great book their only refuge from the sense of 
 pain, or shame, or failure, or loss. Many as they 
 read have stored the quiet strength of character which 
 life demands for its higher work, and which the busi- 
 ness of the world frets away. 
 
 He was speaking of course of the revelation of 
 God in the older Scriptures, and he was writing 
 at a period and to a city in which there was need 
 of all the patience and comfort that the assm'ance 
 of a loving Father and an eternal righteousness 
 could give. He was writing to a people who had 
 other literature ; both contemporary writings and 
 that which was written aforetime." He might 
 not intend to limit their reading to the Hebrew 
 Scriptures, as he set a different example himself; 
 but he probably saw that this was the advice most 
 
READING. 
 
 171 
 
 suited for their time and circumstances ; as he might 
 think that the caution to read above everything ^hat 
 was " written aforetime " might be most needful for 
 a reader now. 
 
 For the contemporary literature of our day is 
 immeasurably gi'eater than it was then, and than 
 it has ever been. The temptations to desultoriness 
 are increased in proportion ; and waste of time, to 
 say the least of it, is hard to be avoided. No 
 better rule could be prescribed to one who wanted 
 to know what to read than to begin with the great 
 names. Every one knows the names of the great 
 masters, and their books are translated into every 
 language. How many of us who are curious about 
 the last pamphlet, or the last article ; who are fretful 
 if we do not receive our new books when we expect 
 them, and think we must have missed something 
 if we have not read the periodical belonging to the 
 day, week, or month, — how many of us have read, 
 even in translations, the great books which are the 
 common heirlooms of the world ? And yet it might 
 be thought that men would be glad of the assurance 
 that the test of time gives to a book. Xothing is more 
 common than to waste time over a book before it is 
 discovered to be worthless. Not every one has the 
 critical faculty to discern at once that a book is good 
 for nothing. In consequence, men who are supposed 
 to know what is worth reading are continually asked 
 to recommend books. They might answer the in- 
 quii'er with the question. Have you read all you do 
 
172 
 
 BEADING. 
 
 know to be worth reading ? Not to speak of the great 
 names of all time, have you even read the good light 
 literature that has received the stamp of the approval 
 of one or two generations ? 
 
 But this is not what is meant, for the most part, 
 by the inquiry. A literature is sought and is pro- 
 vided now which reflects the excitement, the self- 
 consciousness, and the imperfect education of the age ; 
 an age in which, with all its boast of culture, feeling 
 has gone far ahead of education, and which demands 
 in literature as in life its appropriate stimulants. 
 
 It is easy to see that books of this kind, even when 
 the moral of them is wholesome, must have a bad 
 effect upon character. They aggravate the evil that 
 good reading tends to allay ; they make only a faint 
 demand upon the intellect, but appeal loudly to the 
 passions ; they do little to elevate the reader on to 
 the serene and neutral plane of taste and art ; of wide 
 interests and human sympathies, but hurry him along 
 through the mire of prejudice and passion, of con- 
 ventional folly, and too conventional sin. For the 
 especially conventional sin is the groundwork of a 
 good many of the second and third rate popular 
 novels. 
 
 No patience can come from such reading; only 
 impatience of the prosaic conditions of life, and of the 
 limits imposed by external control or by self-interest. 
 No comfort can come from it ; but only a growing in- 
 capacity to meet and bear inevitable trials, and to do 
 the duties that lie nearest to our path. 
 
READING. 
 
 173 
 
 There is of course much literature of our own day 
 free from all such faults, and of the highest and 
 pm-est kind ; but it is not accessible to all, and not 
 every one has the means of knowing the good from 
 the bad without experiment; so that most readers 
 will find that the Apostle's advice to read what was 
 "written aforetime" is not a superannuated caution 
 yet. As this delight in exciting narratives is the 
 caricature of true sympathy, so there is a curiosity, 
 as marked a feature of the time, which is the parody 
 of the true spiiit of inquiry. The noblest study of 
 mankind is man," but perhaps the meanest study of 
 mankind is an inquisitiveness about the faults and 
 follies of our neighboui's. The " delight in merely 
 personal talk," which is a permanent social vice, has 
 now become a public craving, and papers exist to gratify 
 it. They would be a sensible blot upon the character 
 of the English press, if the cheaper and more widely 
 read journals did not redeem its fame. These supply 
 then- millions of readers with that contemporary 
 history which is as natural an interest, at least, as 
 the history of any other epoch, and taken altogether 
 they show a wholesome interest in public life among 
 the masses of the EngHsh people, and an honourable 
 sense in those who manage them of the legitimate 
 office and Hmits of public writing. But, as every one 
 knows, there is a class of newspapers, the growth of 
 recent years, which is not cheap ; which do not 
 appeal to the nation, but to a class ; whose staple 
 commodity is not public news but private history; 
 
174 
 
 READING. 
 
 the gossip of a class for a class ; they live by it. 
 Journals could be named from which, if the columns of 
 personal anecdote were cut out, would lose half their 
 circulation at once. It is hard to imagine a greater 
 dishonour to the press than such writing, or a more 
 binding duty to literature than to discourage it. It 
 would seem obvious, at all events, that no one can 
 take a wide view of the Collect for this Sunday, and 
 interpret it to mean a thanksgiving for all good 
 books, and continue to encourage, by reading or by 
 purchase, papers which strike at the root of all 
 healthy literature, by destroying the taste for it ; to 
 say nothing of them as a social outrage. 
 
 The caution to read what was ''written aforetime " 
 is applicable to the broadsheet as well as to the 
 volume ; it would leave us the papers that have been 
 accepted by the common approval of men ; it would 
 save us from the personal journals which are the 
 product of the day. 
 
 If the Epistle gives a hint of the matter for reading, 
 the Collect speaks plainly about the manner of it. 
 " To read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest " much 
 of the literature of the hour would not only be mis- 
 applied labour, but it would be impossible ; much of it 
 does not supply matter for such a process. It would 
 defeat its object to read it so ; it is meant to be read 
 fast ; it does not aim at style ; it does not convey 
 information ; it does not stimulate thought or self- 
 questioning. There is no cultivation of interest, taste, 
 or character to be found in these mere appeals to the 
 
READING. 
 
 175 
 
 passions. But cultivation of some sort is the end of 
 reading ; and a book cultivates exactly in proportion 
 to its demand upon the reader for thought. A book 
 which costs the reader no effort, which leaves behind 
 no result, in fresh knowledge, in keener perceptions, in 
 wider interests, in grace of character ; which makes 
 nothing worth having om-s which was not ours before, 
 cannot be one of those for which we give thanks. 
 We cannot digest what has no wholesome residuum 
 to assimilate after all the innutritions parts have been 
 rejected. 
 
 The education of EngHsh boys and girls is essen- 
 tially an education in literatm-e. They are taught to 
 read at school, if they are taught nothing else. They 
 are taught, that is, to see what is in a book and to get 
 something out of it. But how very little this jpower 
 is used ! With a few exceptions, there is a great 
 falling off in passing from the studies of boyhood to 
 the reading of youth. The manly taste in books 
 which was cultivated in the boy deserts the man ; it 
 is a sign of his emancipation that he can read what 
 he likes, and he finds a literature to his hand which 
 he can neither " mark, learn, nor inwardly digest." 
 He takes to it without thought ; as if this j)i'actised 
 facility of digesting a book had been acquired for 
 nothing ; as if he thought it made little difference to 
 his children what books were read by theii* parents, 
 what tastes in books were encouraged or repressed in 
 homes. 
 
 It is easy to conjectm-e the effect which the matter 
 
176 
 
 EEADING. 
 
 and the manner of reading adopted by this genera- 
 tion may have upon the next. It will be some- 
 what the same, probably, with regard to social 
 questions and social life, that the manner in which the 
 Bible has usually been read has had upon religious 
 opinion, and the attitude of Christians to one another. 
 
 It is too large a subject for the end of a sermon, 
 but it is worth considering what effect the inward 
 digestion of the Bible — systematic study of it as a 
 whole, with the view of extracting its spirit — what 
 effect this would have on partial views; on second- 
 hand opinions ; on burning questions of doctrine and 
 ritual ; on traditional interpretations ; on the respec- 
 tive value of religion and godliness ; on our relation 
 with other Christian and non-Christian societies ; on 
 our estimate of the lawfulness of recognized habits of 
 business and of society. 
 
 If it were even probable that by this "digestion" 
 we might extract the true spirit of this Book which is 
 the Spirit of God, it would be a worthy exercise of our 
 acquired power of reading ; it would vindicate the 
 character of what was written aforetime ; it would give 
 a real instead of a formal value to these writings which 
 we profess to reverence, but of which we really know 
 little ; it would interpret by its results the prayer of 
 this day's Collect ; and, what is above all, it would place 
 us on firm ground in our relations with God and man. 
 It might not leave us perhaps so certain on some 
 points as we are now ; but this kind of certainty may 
 not be very firm ground. It might leave us in doubt 
 
HEADING. 
 
 177 
 
 about many things of which we are now convinced. 
 It might demonstrate the impossibiHty of being con- 
 vinced about them ; but it would leave behind a hope 
 which is not to be derived from opinions, but which 
 would be grounded on the uniform revelation of the 
 purpose and the character of God, and a patience 
 and comfort derived from the conviction that in strict 
 conformity to this purpose and this character the way 
 of salvation for the creature was to be found amid all 
 differences of view and ceremony, in a life in harmony 
 with the will of the Creator, and in growing likeness 
 to His mind. 
 
CULTUEE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 PREACHED AT MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE ON THE ANNI- 
 VERSARY OF THE CONSECRATION OF THE CHAPEL. 
 SEPTEMBER 29, 1877. 
 
 St. Matt. xix. 20. — " The young man saith unto Him, All these 
 things have I kept f rom my youth up : what lack I yet ? " 
 
 It can hardly be called a fanciful analogy to adopt as 
 the modern representative of this young man one 
 trained with the systematic teaching and the careful 
 discipline of an English public schooL He had 
 received all that teachers could give him, and he felt 
 a want that no learning could supply. The law had 
 done all it could for him, and it left him craving for 
 life." 
 
 It is fair, I think, to take the best view of his 
 question, and to assume that it implied a higher 
 longing than the mere wish for the happiness in 
 another world which his wealth had secured to him in 
 this. 
 
 He was experiencing a reaction from learning and 
 a desire to ]Dut his knowledge to the test of practice ; 
 or he was eager for a wider sphere of usefulness ; or 
 
CULTUKE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 179 
 
 he felt that there were mysteries in the worlds around 
 and above him on which the law shed no light, but 
 which the new Teacher might reveal to him, and he 
 came for the interpretation of his longings. Anyhow 
 his question represents that impatience of pupilage, 
 that craving after more room and more light which 
 are the inevitable, perhaps the intentional, result of 
 systematic training. To him the law had been in 
 more than one sense " a schoolmaster to bring him to 
 Christ," and the Saviour's answer was meant to be 
 the cure for his restlessness and the satisfaction of his 
 wants. The Son of Man introduces him to humanity 
 as the object not only of his riches and of his educa- 
 tion, but of himself. 
 
 He was young, rich, highly taught, and there was 
 no worthier work for him ; he was aspiring, and there 
 was no higher aim. It was easier for him, I sup^^ose, 
 to approach Christ than the poor to whom he was told 
 to give his wealth, but the result was the same. Men 
 approach God and find themselves cast upon mankind 
 as the one means of serving Him — or they begin with 
 humanity and arrive at God. Men seem all to be 
 gathered up into Christ and to issue again fi'om Him 
 as the sum-total and the source of us all, so that it is 
 only by identifying om'selves with men that we can 
 share the life of Christ. And this was, I suppose, the 
 di-ift of His answer. Eternal life is the gift of God 
 through the Divine Man ; because it is to be achieved 
 by living for mankind. 
 
 We know how the young man shrank fi'om this 
 
180 
 
 CULTURE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 test. He had expected perhaps to combine the enjoy- 
 ment of his wealth and station with the high com- 
 panionship and mystic teaching of the new Prophet ; 
 and he was condemned to a hfe of toil, privation, and 
 obscurity. He failed, we are told, because of his 
 riches ; but his education did not save him from 
 failure. If the saying of the Pharisees "this people 
 which knoweth not the law are cursed "is to be ac- 
 cepted as expressing the spirit of the education given 
 to Jewish youths of the higher classes, it is easy to 
 see why its exclusiveness would indispose a young 
 man so trained to accept the view and the condition 
 of eternal life proposed by Christ to this inquirer. 
 
 It is not dif&cult, as I said, to trace some analogy 
 between his training and its result, and that of a 
 young man of the same condition in England nowa- 
 days. No one can feel so keenly as teachers do the 
 danger of a similar issue to their work. For the 
 education of an English public school which rightly 
 aims rather at condition of mind than breadth of 
 knowledge ; which instils into the mind a certain 
 number of general principles and teaches to classify 
 from a necessarily limited experience, produces the 
 high result of intellects ready to attempt new sub- 
 jects with practised ease ; and tends to produce also 
 the disposition to think that everything can be learnt 
 in the same way the first knowledge came, and that 
 there is nothing more to do except to learn of some 
 new book or of some new teacher. 
 
 It is only by its highest products that an education 
 
CULTURE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 181 
 
 can be judged ; and in some of these the best modern 
 teaching seems to have left, as one of its results, a 
 tendency to rest in learning ; to make it, apart from 
 its effect on character, or on the common good, a 
 sufficient end; to look to it alone for growth and 
 light, to divorce learning from working. My own ex- 
 perience would lead me to say, that among the more 
 cultivated young men of the day the number of those 
 who show any desire to carry out into practice what 
 they have learnt is small as compared with those who 
 are eager to sit at the feet of the latest philosopher 
 and to discuss the newest possibility that has been 
 hazarded. They go to every new teacher with the 
 question what lack I yet ?" as if he had " the words 
 of eternal Hfe." 
 
 And side by side with this tendency may be seen 
 another and less subtle tendency of the character of 
 our studies, and of our mode of life. For our learn- 
 ing is for the most part the learning of a class — 
 almost of a caste. It is the privilege of the upper or 
 at least of the wealthier classes. It is a knowledge of 
 subjects which as a rule do not interest, not merely 
 the poor, but the large class which lies between our- 
 selves and the poor. It tends therefore apart from 
 counterpoise, to separate us at least in thought from 
 the great majority of our fellow-men. It may narrow 
 the sympathies it was designed to expand, and lower 
 the aim it was meant to exalt. It may produce a 
 feeling of pride in learning denied to others, rather 
 than a sense of responsibility for the use of wider 
 
182 
 
 CULTURE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 knowledge, and for the loss of irrevocable opportuni- 
 ties of carrying it out into practice. 
 
 The peculiar character of academic life also is likely 
 to have its effect in contracting sympathies. An aca- 
 demic society is made up of all similar elements ; it 
 excludes one whole sex; it excludes besides, the old, 
 the very young, the feeble, and the poor. The variety 
 of nature's grouping is not represented in it.* As a 
 consequence it is rich in the virtues which are called 
 forth by association with equals. " Self-reverence, 
 self-knowledge, self-control," are forced upon us by 
 the pressure of our surroundings. Truthfulness, 
 courage, and self-reliance are developed as a natural 
 defence in such a society. We mix with those who 
 are like us in most ways, who reflect our tastes, quali- 
 ties, and judgments, so that it is not surprising that 
 these should move in a narrow circle. We meet with 
 comparatively few calls on our compassion, and few 
 persons who want our help. Most of those about us 
 have all that we have, and most are lacking in the 
 qualities and experience of which we are empty. So 
 that this want of more varied elements in academic 
 life is another difficulty to be encountered, and another 
 cause of the bounded sympathies which may be one 
 of its results. 
 
 And to these two causes of isolation we have to 
 add a third which from its important share in school- 
 life demands mention. For school-games, valuable 
 as many of their effects are, have become so costly 
 * Eev. James Martineau's " Endeavours after a Christian Life." 
 
CULTUEE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 183 
 
 and elaborate that the shopkeeping and working 
 classes have neither leisure nor money to share in 
 them. They demand too a kind of aptitude and elas- 
 ticity of body seldom found in those who work for their 
 bread with their bodies, or are much shut up within 
 doors. They have become in fact almost as much 
 the privilege of the upper classes as their intellectual 
 culture and their academic life. So far from fusing 
 classes they have divided them more ; and the worst 
 charge that can be brought against English sports 
 and pastimes in our day is that the poor minister to, 
 but do not share them. If we all related our expe- 
 rience we should be obliged to confess, I think, that 
 they are not the best of the poor who perform this 
 office, and that they are not the better for the service. 
 The social effect of these games must necessarily be 
 exclusive. They may and do produce many quali- 
 ties of especial value in association with equals ; but 
 limited as they are to a class, they must increase 
 class sympathy at the cost of human sympathy ; they 
 must be an influence not to be weakened, but to be 
 balanced by those who adjust the moral forces of 
 school-life. It is perhaps worth while to add that 
 the personal effect of athletic games in producing a 
 vigorous and dexterous body added to a privileged 
 culture and a long association with equals may be to 
 produce a self-reliance and sense of completeness, not 
 of course incompatible with compassion for the less 
 fortunate, but not favourable to sympathy with them. 
 It is less easy for those who have never wanted any- 
 
184 
 
 CULTURE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 thing from others to imagine the numbers who want 
 much from them. 
 
 It is possible no doubt to allow that school-life and 
 training may tend to produce this result, and yet to 
 deny the result as a matter of fact. But the complaint 
 of the hardness of culture has been made against other 
 periods of Renaissance in art and literature than our 
 own ; and it is heard now. It is not very uncommon 
 to meet men with the keenest sympathies for all 
 nature except human nature ; without interest in any 
 one outside a narrow circle of congenial souls; and 
 exalting the canons of taste almost into a moral 
 code. What they lack yet appears to them to be not 
 wider knowledge of men and the elevation that comes 
 of serving them, but a further initiation into the 
 refinements of art or the subtleties of inquiry. 
 
 Great as is the number of men who are devoting 
 the best results of education to lifting up their feUow- 
 creatm'es, it is small compared to the great increase 
 in the number of those whose education fits them for 
 the task. And the cry is still for more men ; for men 
 of leism^e, cultm-e, and zeal, for a task which somehow 
 or other our education does not seem at all necessarily 
 to dispose us. It cultivates to a high pitch the 
 intellect and the taste ; it develops to noble propor- 
 tions our sense of duty to ourselves and our equals, 
 but it leaves the sympathies only partially expanded ; 
 and it somehow fails, as a general rule, to impress a 
 sense of the wide society of the future life on earth, 
 and of the duty of using all these cultivated energies 
 
CULTUKE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 185 
 
 in its service. To be of use is the highest privilege ; 
 and the usefulness or failure of his life in the world is 
 the natural motive to a boy at school. It is his future 
 life ; so imminent and so engrossing as to banish into 
 dim distance his Hfe beyond the grave. It is an ever- 
 present motive to thoughtful boys (not always perhaps 
 realized in consciousness but always there), like the 
 motive of the world to come which crowds closer upon 
 men as they advance in years. It is natural and 
 healthy that it should be so ; but the effect of modern 
 education on a boy is, perhaps inevitably, to fill the 
 prospect with himself. It is impossible not to make 
 success the condition of reward, or to dispense with 
 the motives of distinction and a career. The satis- 
 faction of the natui'al hopes of friends and the 
 supreme duty of making the best of ourselves come 
 in as motives to save the others from the danger of 
 degenerating into selfishness ; but their range is 
 limited at best; and the highest result of culture 
 is not reached unless the highest motive of culture 
 is prominent. 
 
 There are many elements in the education of a man 
 which no teaching perhaps can enable a boy to realize. 
 He can only faintly feel the discipline of responsi- 
 bility ; the influence of change ; the expansive force 
 of wide interests ; the sobering action of suffering ; the 
 purifying effect of the dependence of others upon him. 
 But he can learn that if his highest cultivation must 
 come from communion with the Father, he must love 
 those whom the Father loves or how can he love God ? 
 
186 
 
 CULTUEE AND SYMPATHY. 
 
 It will be comparatively easy for him to extend his 
 sympathies to all his equals, and to feel compassion 
 for his inferiors, but it will be less easy to convince 
 him of his common humanity with the worst and 
 most wretched of his kind ; and of the burden, which 
 his very birth imposes on him, of doing something to 
 make them more like what God meant them to be, 
 what man alone can make them. 
 
 Some callings directly or indirectly work towards 
 this end. Others are so remotely connected with it 
 that they demand the devotion to it of some regular 
 portion of time, unless in the struggle for existence 
 one of the two chief ends of life is to be lost sight of ; 
 unless the opportunity of forming some of the highest 
 elements of human character is to be missed. This 
 influence of association with suffering, this duty of 
 helping the helpless, might be impressed on boys as a 
 wholesome alterative to the influences of school-life ; 
 as a means of the highest culture ; as the natural 
 duty of manhood. That no life is perfect without this 
 service might take rank with others as a maxim of 
 education. It would supply some if not all that is 
 lacking in it ; and might suggest a different answer 
 to the self-questioning which, in the pause after school 
 and college life, rejDeats in various forms " what lack 
 I yet ?"— from that which it sometimes receives now. 
 
 In addressing an assembly like this it is impossible 
 not to speculate on its influence upon the world and 
 on the world's reaction upon it ; for the reflexions 
 cannot be separated. By the world is commonly 
 
CULTURE AXD SYMPATHY. 
 
 187 
 
 meant the class which represents the wealth and the 
 wit, the power and the refinement of the world. This 
 is a class which it is hard for average minds to in- 
 fluence, and it is the class whose influence upon the 
 young is the cause of anxiety to their friends. But 
 the great world, "the unkno^vn quantity," is material 
 upon which ordinary minds, with good education, can 
 act with decisive effect, and no undesirable reaction 
 need be feared upon those who go to it as teachers 
 and helpers. It is natm-al to look to the pubHc schools 
 of England for recruits for this service, and all who 
 are interested in their future and in the futm*e of our 
 country must hope that they will justify their high 
 renown, by contributing to the relief of one of our 
 greatest national wants. I can form no better wish 
 for this great school (to which I am bound by many 
 ties) than that it may add to its many other distinc- 
 tions, the glory of sending out young men year by 
 year, who, though separated by diverse callings and 
 opinions, may be united by a common sense of the 
 obligation of helping the ignorant, the suffering, and 
 the degraded, and by a common attachment to the 
 place where they leamt that such work as this was a 
 prime element of a perfect Hfe. 
 
PEOVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 St. Matt. vi. 25. — " Take no thought for your life, what ye shall 
 eat, or what ye shall drink; neither for your body, what ye shall 
 put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the hody than raiment ? " 
 
 It was to be expected that our Lord's exposition of 
 the principles of His kingdom and of His rule of life 
 to His disciples would be at once more exalted and 
 more stringent than His teaching to His ordinary 
 followers. 
 
 They were missionaries of His religion, and had 
 accepted the hardships and responsibilities of that 
 life. Their lot was a peculiar one, demanding a high 
 degree of courage, forbearance, discretion, and self- 
 denial. Their instructions, accordingly, are sometimes 
 exceptional; necessary in their case, but impossible to 
 carry out in the letter as the maxims of civil society. 
 It is because people have forgotten this, and have 
 interpreted some of the teaching of the Sermon on 
 the Mount by ''the letter which killeth," that some of 
 it has been condemned as unpractical, visionary, and 
 ill-advised. The spirit of it gave life to those who 
 heard it to brave death in every form ; it is the life 
 of family and social union now. 
 
PROVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 189 
 
 It was not unreasonable that He should warn His 
 hearers against anxiety about food and raiment, for 
 they had left all and followed Him. Even the sweep- 
 ing order of the EngKsh translation of what He said 
 might be necessary for them, as it has been neces- 
 sary for, or has at least been carried out, by many 
 missionaries since His time. In the most Hteral 
 sense Xavier took no thought for food or raiment. 
 But even if He had required so much as this of His 
 disciples, there would have been a spirit breathing 
 through the words to modify their application. It 
 would not therefore be safe to conclude, because the 
 Sermon on the Mount is in part at least (so to speak) 
 a professional address to exceptional persons and for 
 exceptional work in the first centmy, that it has no 
 meaning for Christians who are carrying on the 
 common work of the world in the nineteenth. 
 
 Few orders could appear more hopeless to ordinary 
 people than to be told to take no thought for food or 
 raiment. It seems almost like a mockery of a life 
 which is more than half mad'e up of such anxiety. 
 What blessing could be greater to the infinite majority 
 of mankind than to be able to obey this command ? 
 Obedience (if it were possible) would seem to make 
 heaven on earth. 
 
 But, in truth, our Lord imposes no such impossible 
 task. He even asserts the regular order of the world's 
 industries and man's share in them, when He con- 
 trasts us with the birds of the air, because they 
 neither sow nor harvest — the first and most universal 
 
190 
 
 PEOVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 instance of taking thought for the morrow. Are we 
 not "much better than they?" Better, not only 
 from the ennobling experience of taking thought for 
 the morrow, but better because we are able, after 
 taking thought, to cast off all anxiety about it. His 
 appeal to men to do this is His tacit tribute to their 
 worth in His sight. God had made something more 
 than birds in making man; they were merely crea- 
 tures of the air or of the earth ; there was scarcely 
 need to add, ''Are ye not much better than they?" 
 But it is hard to keep people up to the thought of 
 what they really are. For men to take no thought 
 for the morrow would be to live below the level of the 
 brutes with whom our Lord contrasts them, because 
 they sow and harvest. It would not only deprive 
 them of one of the best schools of character, but 
 the ceaseless anxiety of such a Hfe would leave no 
 time for higher work, and no inclination for nobler 
 thoughts. It is only when men have taken thought 
 for the morrow that they can be free from anxiety 
 about it, and free to serve God in better ways. To 
 talk of putting our trust in Providence is the merest 
 irreverence until we have done all we can for our- 
 selves ; it is rather putting our trust in improvidence. 
 
 The lesson of the text is different ; it tells us of a 
 God who gives the harvest to the sower, and may be 
 relied on to give it ; it tells us when we have taken 
 thought to cast away care, for the Divine Creator may 
 be trusted to maintain the Divine order of the universe. 
 It is hard to see how we could protest against the 
 
PKOYIDEXCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 191 
 
 extravagances and improvidence to be seen in all 
 classes of society ; how especially we could go to the 
 poor with the ceaseless lesson of prudence and fru- 
 gahty, if we believed they could show us our Saviour's 
 authority for taking no thought for the morrow; un- 
 less it was true that care and foresight were as much 
 conditions of the kingdom of heaven as they are of 
 civil society and of domestic life. The inner freedom 
 to work and think is the result of forethought, not 
 the token of the want of it. Men who can see before 
 them, and know not only what ought to be done, but 
 how much of it is possible and how much bej'ond 
 their reach — who do all the}' can and then cast off all 
 care — are the men who can devote themselves to the 
 higher human ministries. 
 
 The counterfeit of this fi*eedom fi'om anxiety is the 
 recklessness of those who are beneath this care, not 
 superior to it ; who are none the more the servants of 
 God because they are not the slaves of mammon. It 
 is possible to be very heedless and very selfish ; very 
 easy-going and very hard-hearted; very indifferent as 
 to how food and clothing are to be ]3rovided, without a 
 thought above them, or a care for others. 
 
 But it is necessary to face the question of food and 
 clothing which is raised by this passage. It seems 
 intended, on the one hand, to speak words of comfort 
 to those whose chief anxiety is and must always be 
 about food and raiment. They are encouraged to 
 trust in a heavenly Father who feedeth the fowls of 
 the air, and to believe that He will much rather feed 
 
192 
 
 PKOVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 them, if they are true to their nature and to the laws 
 of His creation. On the other hand, it is hard to 
 escape the inference that a caution is intended for 
 those who, being by their circumstances free from all 
 anxiety about such things, spend too much time, 
 thought, and money upon them. To be a Christian, 
 if the word has any meaning, must be first of all to 
 regard things from the point of view of Jesus Christ, 
 and so in this case to endeavour to find out what 
 view He would take of the expenditure of time and 
 money on food and dress in which we allow ourselves. 
 
 It is worth while to notice first the ground which 
 He takes in His teaching. He dwells entirely, in 
 this passage at least, on the reflex action on character 
 of over- attention to these things. He does not raise 
 the question of political economy involved in the dis- 
 tribution of wealth, nor the question of charity raised 
 by the disciple who thought the perfumed ointment 
 might be sold for the benefit of the poor. He regards 
 it as a personal matter. He appears to condemn 
 excess in dress and food, whether of amount or variety, 
 because it dwarfs human nature ; because it provides 
 an interest at once low and ever present, in which 
 men may rest and never try to rise above it to the 
 higher regions where the human mind can find its 
 more appropriate objects ; because of the tendency of 
 such tastes to become ends in themselves ; to be at 
 once energy and aim, and to leave no room for higher 
 wishes in the satisfied heart. 
 
 If it is fair to infer that this was the opinion 
 
PROVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 193 
 
 expressed by our Lord about the matter, it is more 
 than ever necessary to consider the morahty of the 
 question, because probably no one whose memory 
 reaches back a quarter of a century can deny that 
 there has been a great increase in costly living since 
 that date. One seems almost to remember a sudden 
 impulse given to it about then, and to be able to trace 
 a regular growth in it ever since. It must have a 
 considerable effect on the character of most of those 
 who are able to indulge in it, though no one would 
 say that it is impossible to live for the glory of God 
 and for the good of man, amid purple and fine linen 
 and daily sumptuous fare. There may be people on 
 whom these things sit very lightly — women who 
 dress richly, and men who live daintily, whose lives 
 are a pattern; who go about their life's work un- 
 conscious almost how they live. But it is probable 
 that this is only when other conditions of life and 
 character harmonize with such modes of living. When 
 they occur to people whose aims are for any reason 
 above such things and their thoughts be^^ond them ; 
 when there is neither any disposition to be absorbed 
 in them, nor any need for anxiety about them ; then 
 they seem to cause less wear and tear of the fine 
 texture of a man's nature. At the best, enjoyment 
 of such things needs some counterpoise; it is pro- 
 vided sometimes by a strong sense of the invisible 
 world ; by active sympathy ; by more elevated tastes, 
 like the love of art or nature ; by the desu-e to rule, 
 or by love of managing. It can hardly be doubted 
 
 0 
 
194 PKOVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 that without something within or without to raise 
 men above such interests and make them feel they 
 are independent of them, the mere fact of sumptuous 
 living is likely to damage a man, and of varied and 
 costly dressing is likely to damage a woman. Of all 
 those who need such antidotes as have been men- 
 tioned, the proportion of those who possess them is 
 probably small ; but even with them this style of 
 living can only be harmless when it comes as a matter 
 of course. As soon as it becomes a difficulty it begins 
 to degrade ; and it cannot descend far in the social 
 scale before it causes painful effort ; before it consumes 
 an important share of income, and occupies thoughts 
 which have higher objects. People to whom it comes 
 as a matter of course and to whom it may be harmless, 
 are often without knowing it putting a painful strain 
 on poorer neighbours by the general lift of the whole 
 level of expenditure which their way of living occa- 
 sions. 
 
 We are accustomed to hear of the large propor- 
 tion of income spent by the working class on food 
 and dress, and we are told that they take their cue 
 from those above them ; but the evil does not begin 
 with the lower class; it ends there. There are 
 many of the refined and comparatively wealthy class 
 living in all respects like the wealthiest, to whom 
 the expenditure on "the body," as our Lord calls it, 
 must be a very serious consideration, and who, by 
 the damage done by such anxiety to a more sensitive 
 moral tissue, must be suffering a deterioration cor- 
 
PKOVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 195 
 
 responding to, but very different from, what appears 
 either as a brutalized nature or as a vain and frivolous 
 one in the working classes. 
 
 There is hardly any duty of which the upper classes 
 in this country are more honourably conscious than 
 that of setting a good example. It is surely worth 
 the while of those who feel this obligation, even if 
 they believe themselves to be unaffected by the way 
 in which they live, to consider whether what is harm- 
 less to them (because it comes to them without 
 thought) may not be the means of absorbing thoughts 
 and degrading aims in people of feebler characters 
 and smaller means. It is difficult to conceive the 
 benefit it would be to society if people of wealth and 
 influence would set a resolute example of greater 
 plainness in food and dress. The force of example is 
 no doubt very great, but it is not always proportioned 
 to the effort made to set it. We do things as a matter 
 of duty and for the sake of example, as it is said, 
 and are discouraged from making further attempts 
 by the failure of what we have done already. But 
 we can hardly expect imitators when we pass by a 
 great and obvious source of influence like this, and 
 set examples in matters of our own selection as make- 
 weights against what is left undone. For we are 
 never so little likely to be imitated as when we are 
 posing as examples ; never so likely to have followers 
 as when we are setting an example without know- 
 ing it. 
 
 But our Lord gives a further hint to those who try 
 
196 
 
 PROVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 to make their neighbours better by the way they live, 
 and that is not to be content with merely negative 
 action, but to counteract one taste by suggesting and 
 encouraging another. When He says, " Is not the 
 life more than meat ? " He means to rebuke a de- 
 grading anxiety ; but He seems also to say, If the life 
 and the body are to occupy your thoughts, surely the 
 life which is sustained by food is a nobler object of 
 thought than the food which sustains it ; the body 
 that is clothed than the clothes which cover it. 
 
 It is one of His suggestive bywords, easy to pass 
 over, and ma}^ be meant as a hint, to those who have 
 no taste for what is spiritual, of an ennobling relief 
 from the sordid care of providing for the body; or as 
 a rest and change for those who have. If the life is 
 more than meat, he who thinks about the life is more 
 of a man than he who thinks about the meat. The 
 very fact of life, apart from the origin of it, is enough 
 to fill us with wonder. To have begun to live at a 
 given time and then to go on living always ; to come 
 from and to go to, we know not where ; to think that 
 generations of men have gone on so appearing and so 
 disappearing since we know not when ; to be planted 
 on the surface of this little planet with infinite space 
 all round, insignificant in the midst of universes and 
 yet able to control their forces and to determine their 
 laws ; to find this mysterious power so intimately 
 connected with the materials of the earth that it 
 gains or loses by every change in the matter with 
 which it is connected ; to feel it acting in and through 
 
PEOYIDEXCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 197 
 
 each molecule of matter, and yet to be wholly unable 
 to trace its origin, to find out its connexion with 
 matter or to know what it is ; to observe that this 
 force is maintained by what we put into the body and 
 what we put on it ; to mark its development through 
 all its stages to the border-land which unites rather 
 than separates plants and animals ; then to follow it 
 from the sentient plant and the half-conscious 
 animal till it culminates in man, and is strangely 
 associated with something higher than animal life in 
 him ; — this is to find a new meaning in our Saviour's 
 question, " Is not the life more than meat ? " 
 
 The body is as interesting as a subject of study, 
 as the principle of life is as a matter of speculation. 
 Some little knowledge is necessary even to teach that 
 respect for it without which we cannot work or think. 
 We inhabit this house all these years and never 
 penetrate to its secret chambers, or care how or of 
 what materials it is built up. And yet we are de- 
 pendent on the condition of every nerve for doing 
 work that will live when the body is dust. This is 
 not a question of men's moral relation to life or body, 
 but of the claims of each to thought ; of the high 
 claim of the body put forth by Him who wore a human 
 body, when He asked, in almost pitying wonder, " Is 
 not the body more than raiment ? " It is fair to 
 conclude that our Lord was encouraging men to the 
 study of nature in these words ; that He was suggest- 
 ing more elevated interests than some of the relations 
 in which men habitually study their bodies. 
 
198 
 
 PKOVIDENCE AND ANXIETY. 
 
 We are told of Him that He knew what was in 
 man ; not only his affections, that seek a home, and 
 his spirit, that longs after immortality ; but his in- 
 tellect, that cannot rest without knowing all that can 
 be known. He has given us not only a spiritual 
 world to long after and to dream on, but the "material 
 universe as the complement of the mind of man ; " 
 and the study of its laws, not only to redeem him 
 from lower thoughts about food and raiment, but to 
 raise him to a higher level of self-knowledge. " The 
 author of man's reason is the author of nature's facts ; 
 they must be commensurate. The reason must be 
 meant to act upon the facts, the facts must be 
 capable of being grasped by the reason." * The Divine 
 Author comes with man's capacities into the world of 
 nature which is their object, and goes in and out 
 among his fellow-men, dropping hints of His will 
 to those who have ears to hear, and revealing details 
 of His administration that could only come through 
 the familiar intercourse of the lips. Laws of varying 
 dignity and kind, but all tending one way ; all parts 
 of the divine philosophy that is His nature expressed 
 in words ; all tending to raise us to the level of our 
 humanity that is to Himself; all in various ways 
 building us up into the perfect man, the Divine ideal 
 whose education is begun on earth and whose home 
 is the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 * Professor Tyndall, 
 
LAST WOEDS. 
 
 St. John xvi. 12. — " ITiave yet many things to say unto you, hut 
 yc cannot hear them now." 
 
 This is what always happens on the eve of a parting ; 
 there are always many things to say which are left 
 unsaid, generally because the speaker cannot say 
 them, and not because the hearers cannot bear them. 
 Hearts are too full then for much speech, and looks 
 and gestures and signs well understood take the place 
 of words, and silence seems more natural than speech ; 
 but with us it is because we cannot speak, not because 
 others cannot bear now what we have to say. 
 
 It was not so with Christ ; what He said and left 
 unsaid was regulated by regard for others, and not by 
 His own feelings. The great thought of His universal 
 redemption never made Him unmindful of His chosen 
 friends. More than once He resisted attempts to 
 impose on them what they could not bear ; and even 
 at the last, when He knew how precious His words 
 would be to millions of His followers yet unborn. 
 He kept silence about " many things," He tells us, 
 because those who had been with Him could not bear 
 to hear them. We have read of the last words of many 
 
200 
 
 LAST WOKDS. 
 
 of the great teachers and friends of humanity, but most 
 of them have left us with a farewell, with a closing 
 scene, in which they have summed their teaching 
 and said their last word ; and it has rarely happened 
 that any one has gone away, saying that he "left 
 half told " his principles or his prophecies because his 
 followers could not bear to hear them. 
 
 Though we have the full report of that last meeting 
 which St. John has preserved, it is difficult to sup- 
 press a feeling of disappointment as we read these 
 words. We may have another Socrates or Marcus 
 Antoninus, but this was an unique occasion. The Son 
 of man comes only once among the sons of men, and 
 after a short life goes away with the saying on His 
 lips that He has ''many things to say" to us, which 
 He does not say, because His followers, untrained 
 and ignorant men, are not fit to receive them. 
 
 According to our way of thinking they might have 
 been disregarded in the interests of humanity : as we 
 may think that Christ might have taken some means 
 to have His other words recorded and preserved for 
 future ages, instead of leaving them to the memory 
 of those who heard them, to be committed to writing, 
 some of them half a century after He was gone 
 back where He was before. Besides the many things 
 He would not say, we have lost many that He did 
 say ; and it is no easier to understand why we have 
 lost these than why He did not say the others. But 
 what an opportunity seems to have been wasted ! We 
 gather from what He did say, that His teaching then 
 
LAST WORDS. 
 
 201 
 
 would have been, even more than usual, concen- 
 trated and direct, dealing with the high spiritual 
 truths that marked His conversation on that last 
 night, speaking plainly perhaps about difficulties and 
 mysteries which have divided Christendom almost 
 ever since He left the earth ; revealing more of the 
 truth about our relation to Him, to the Divine Spirit, 
 to the Eternal Father, than He has left us now. 
 All His discourse at that last supper is so exalted 
 and far-reaching ; it seems to sum up all He said and 
 did among men ; it has so much the special value of 
 last words in its penetrating suggestions and in its 
 spiritual insight that they may well grudge the loss 
 of "many things" like these, and wonder what the rest 
 could have been; and wonder more that anything could 
 have stood in the way of their being spoken. Such 
 a chance can never come again ; it seems to have 
 been missed for such an inadequate reason ; the loss 
 can never be known ; it can never (so it seems) 
 be repah'ed in any other way. These are natural 
 thoughts ; but it is quite as true as any of these 
 views about it, that our Lord never did profess to tell 
 everjihing ; that He spoke briefly, sometimes darkly ; 
 that He left us much to work out for ourselves ; that 
 He represented His life rather than His words as 
 the Gospel to men. 
 
 It does not seem to be the object of the Gospels to 
 provide a set of rules for every condition of Hfe, not 
 even to tell in detail all the truth about the relations 
 in which men stand to the visible and the invisible 
 
202 
 
 LAST WORDS. 
 
 world. In no sense and in no case are men treated 
 like children, with all duties mapped out, and all they 
 have to learn explained ; so that there is less excuse 
 than seems at first for any feeling of surprise or regret 
 that He should have left the earth with the hint of all 
 He had to tell, when the hour of parting came. Those 
 who had heen with Him all throughout ought to know 
 (He seems to say) what His teaching would be on the 
 questions which arose in them and among them — 
 dividing their own hearts, and dividing heart from 
 heart among His followers — though they could no 
 longer hear His voice nor see His shape. And it is 
 quite consistent with this treatment that He should 
 not only leave many things untold, but that He should 
 tell them so. Without this warning men might have 
 thought that He had told them all, and that there was 
 nothing more to learn : and when He was gone they 
 would have rested on what they had got, and remained 
 always in the pupilage which it does not seem to be 
 His will that they should linger in. For it would have 
 been a state of pupilage if He had been always here ; 
 to listen to His teaching about "many things" that 
 men have now to decide for themselves ; to submit to 
 His authority questions that puzzle or divide opinion. 
 But the visible Master was removed and the age of 
 Christian manhood began, when the time for tutors and 
 governors was past, and each was left to the teaching 
 of the Spirit; as in the experience of individual life 
 we are left (as has been said) to our own responsibility, 
 to teach ourselves that is when education is done, as 
 
LAST WOEDS. 
 
 203 
 
 the only condition of forming any character. From 
 the analogy of human life (for so large a part of Tvhich 
 we are a guide to ourselves) we should have expected 
 that our Lord would have left us to the teaching of 
 the Spii'it. "What is remarkable is, that He should 
 have told us "He had many things to say unto us" 
 which He would have said ; and should have implied 
 that He left us to find them out for ourselves. He 
 went further. He promised the Holy Spirit as a help 
 to find out " all truth ; " to find out, that is, the many 
 things He would have told us. So that things as 
 great and true as He would have told are within the 
 power of man, with the help of the Spirit, to dis- 
 cover; and he is urged by these parting words of 
 Christ to find them out. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be remembered that if 
 we had heard the many things He had to say, it is 
 not likely that any of them would have been such as 
 man is not able with Divine help to discover for him- 
 self. The Spirit, He says, will guide us into all truth ; 
 but we know that there are many questions of the 
 deepest interest on which the wisest and the holiest 
 men can get no light. On these it may be assumed 
 then that He would have shed none. Only what the 
 Spirit reveals to pure eyes and thoughtful hearts would 
 He have told us if He had finished the story which 
 He "left half told." It is tempting to think of the 
 number of questions which vex individual hearts 
 and array Church against Church that He could 
 have decided. His word about Church government, 
 
204. 
 
 LAST WORDS. 
 
 about the nature of the Chiistian ministiy, about the 
 character and efficacy of the sacraruents, about His 
 own atoning sacrifice, about the authority of the 
 Chui'ch and the Bible — His word about these would 
 seem to have ensured the fulfilment of His prayer that 
 we might all be one ; " doubt and difference would 
 have been at an end in the presence of that authorita- 
 tive decision. So of the great human questions of God's 
 foreknowledge and man's free will, of a previous exist- 
 ence, of the origin of man, of the conditions of a 
 future state, of the mystery of the existence of sin and 
 pain in the world — inquiries that occur to intelligent 
 childi'en, that have exercised anxious men fi'om gener- 
 ation to generation. How strange it seems that we 
 should be left in almost absolute darkness about 
 them ! How irresistible would have been the impulse 
 to inquire ! How little likely that any of the many 
 things He had to say would have satisfied cm-iosity ! 
 
 But if it may be assumed that insoluble questions 
 and great mysteries would have been left unsolved and 
 mysterious still, to discipline men, to elevate, and to 
 brace them ; surely this hint of the many things He 
 had to tell gives a new importance to all that men 
 have discovered since He spoke, gives the authority 
 of His words to what His Spirit has revealed to them, 
 and leaves the possibility of ever fresh discoveries — the 
 result of that guiding into all truth, which is their 
 consolation for losing the man}^ things He had to tell. 
 
 We rightly look back with reverence to writers of the 
 apostohc age, as to those who lived near to the source 
 
LAST WOKDS. 
 
 205 
 
 of the sacred spring, and naturally look back for in- 
 formation to those whose works have stood the test 
 of time; but it must not be forgotten that darkness 
 was hanging then over many subjects on which now 
 there is daylight, and that the promise of the Spirit 
 to guide men into all truth shows that His guidance 
 is with them still, and warns them that they need it 
 to guide them into the truth about what they read, no 
 less than about what they hear and see about them. 
 Much that was written to explain or to expand the 
 teaching of Christ for which we might claim the in- 
 spiration of the Divine Spirit, is rejected by large 
 bodies of our fellow-Christians, who therefore would 
 not allow that it was written under His guidance. 
 Many of the secrets of nature known to us the Holy 
 Spirit did not reveal to them ; why are we to con- 
 clude then that the same gracious guidance is not 
 with us (as He was with them) to unfold and illustrate 
 Divine truth that we believe to be unlocking the 
 mysteries of nature to our eyes ? Side by side with 
 the study of nature has grown up the science of 
 historical criticism, which applied to the Bible, may 
 yield to us some of the many things He would have 
 told us. More important still is the increased study 
 of metaphysical science, which has given a spiritual 
 force to words that were imprisoned in a material 
 meaning before. 
 
 We can feel no stronger impulse to apply all the 
 light at our command to the elucidation of Scripture 
 than the hope and the hint that we may possibly be 
 
206 
 
 LAST WORDS. 
 
 discovering some of all He would have said if those 
 who heard Him could have borne it. It gives so 
 much dignity to human life to think of this vast 
 mission of discovering what was left unsaid, that this 
 alone is reason enough for withholding it. 
 
 Every student of the kingdom of heaven, or of the 
 kingdom of nature, is thus transformed into a prophet, 
 commissioned to declare truths from the Lord of both 
 kingdoms, bound to tell nothing that any prayer 
 or any study can make more sure to him, and 
 binding us to receive what he says with no scoffs and 
 no impatience, but to search diligently whether these 
 things are so. It is this condition of the possibility 
 of receiving new light from heaven at any time which 
 makes human life at once so difficult and so sublime ; 
 it might have been otherwise with all truth written 
 plain and mapped out like children's books ; but men 
 would have been children all their lives, and progress, 
 i.e. moral health and life for the world and for indi- 
 vidual men, would have been impossible. And if it 
 be as true of us as of any other age, that we may be 
 taught of God even in things pertaining to the king- 
 dom of heaven, as we know we are about the order- 
 of nature, we must accept the responsibility of re- 
 ceiving or rejecting the teaching of past ages, as we 
 do that of receiving or rejecting the discoveries of 
 living teachers or of contemporary books. If God is 
 always with His people. He is guiding them now as 
 ever into the truth about what His people have 
 written and said in past ages ; showing them perhaps 
 
LAST WORDS. 
 
 207 
 
 a new meaning in old words ; presenting an aspect 
 of truth to them which was hidden from a less meta- 
 physical age ; revealing Himself, in a new relation 
 undreamed of by those whose training and experience 
 did not suggest or demand it, but vital to our depend- 
 ence on Him, whom He has guided through other 
 truths into new longings, and new conceptions of Him. 
 
 If it be true again, as is said, that we cannot ex- 
 haust the meaning of Divine truth or of the true 
 speech of any man about Divine things, then it would 
 seem to be the very function of the Eternal Guide to 
 show us new meanings of old words ; to flash upon us 
 His own light reflected fi*om another face of some 
 old truth, that never beamed on men who may have 
 seen other light that we have not. 
 
 It may be as true of words as of things, that they 
 reveal new meanings to reverent study. For many 
 ages men looked on the forms of nature and saw little 
 of the meaning in them that has been revealed to this 
 age. They saw isolated entities where we see unity 
 and design. As we have found life and energy and 
 order in dead matter, may it not be granted also to us 
 to advance more and more towards a spiritual inter- 
 pretation of words that were encased in a material 
 husk before ? may not this be a natural and parallel 
 revelation to the discovery of life and order in natm'e ? 
 may it not be the instrument of liberty to many hearts 
 and consciences ? may it not be the means and the 
 .signal of unity amongst ourselves ? 
 
 But it cannot be denied that there are many indi- 
 
208 
 
 LAST WOKDS. 
 
 cations that if Christ were visibly present among us 
 now He might say to us, as He did to His disciples, 
 not only " I have many things to say to you, but ye 
 cannot bear them," but ''I am saying many things, 
 and ye do not bear them." Men do not bear well 
 what is true if it be new. It is a shock to be delivered 
 from the old bondage to the letter, and to be ushered 
 into the new freedom of the Spirit. They feel as if 
 they had lost something when the old material vesture 
 of a doctrine or a truth is cleared away, and the spirit 
 of it is disengaged. They like to have all their religion 
 fixed and formalized for them, and dread the progress 
 of politics and science, for fear of slipping from their 
 old moorings and losing all they had to assure them 
 that they were right and safe. It demands more 
 effort and more trust to see and receive the spiritual 
 meaning of words as their true meaning, just as it 
 demands more faith and courage to accept all fresh 
 discoveries in politics and science as revelations, as 
 part of what He would have told to His first followers 
 if they could have borne it ; as what He is tellmg us 
 through the guiding Spirit. 
 
 For it is inseparable from a belief in an inspiring 
 Spirit that we should believe that He is a Spirit of 
 progress; and if of progress at all, above all of 
 progress in the knowledge of Divine truth, in the 
 knowledge of the material universe, and of the con- 
 dition of man. And yet these are the very spheres 
 in which men are most impatient of new light. The 
 spiritual interpretation of Scripture seems to be un- 
 
LAST WORDS. 
 
 209 
 
 dermining the foundations of faith ; the discoveries 
 of physical science seem to be the overthrow of what 
 the other has undermined, and the progress of man- 
 kind seems to some to be the same as the destruction 
 of society. We cannot bear even now the Hght that 
 is flashing on every eye, the voices that are pouring 
 into every ear. We shut eyes and ears to them, not 
 because they are not true, but from an uncomfortable 
 suspicion that they are ; and as yet without the con- 
 viction that if they are true they can only come from 
 the Spirit of truth. 
 
 We have many things that we must accommodate 
 both eyes and ears and hearts to, but the experience 
 of life which has reconciled us to so many revelations 
 in the past, seems to have no effect on the majority 
 in making them hopeful or trustful of new light in 
 the future. But however much we may dread the 
 spirit of the age in which we live, it must be allowed 
 to be seeking truth — truth at all risks, and in all de- 
 partments. And if what is true can only come from 
 One som'ce ; though it may clash with old preposses- 
 sions and shock old feelings, it must be received and 
 welcomed as a new gift from Him whom we profess 
 to follow, with more emphasis perhaps than some 
 who are entering into the truths that startle us. All 
 that we find it hard to bear now may well be compared 
 with the originality of Christ's teaching to the men 
 of His own generation. We have accepted this and 
 we want to stereotype our own interpretation of it, 
 and to go no fm^ther. We are loath to believe that 
 
210 
 
 LAST WORDS. 
 
 much that offends us in modern inquiry is His teaching 
 too, and feel like Pharisees and Sadducees when some 
 law or some truth of His kingdom takes the unwel- 
 come shape of a practical invasion of our prejudices 
 or our rights. 
 
 Belief in the Holy Spirit implies above all things 
 a confidence that all He is revealing to men now will 
 show them more plainly of the Father by opening 
 wider the book of nature and the book of revelation ; 
 and will teach them more and more to see in all about 
 them the work and the image of the Divine Son. 
 
SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 St. Luke ix. 23. — " A7id He said unto them all, If any man will 
 come after Me, let him deny himself." 
 
 As if to show the breadth of this injunction, it is 
 uttered just after our Lord had been feeding the 
 hungry multitude. The disciples had urged Him to 
 send them away ; they may have been weary of them 
 — at least, they were embarrassed with the difficulty 
 of feeding them. Perhaps they grudged the quiet 
 hours of their Master's company they were losing as 
 the people stayed. 
 
 They did well to think much of this privilege, and 
 probably did not suspect that they were thinking of 
 themselves as much as of Him in their desire to be 
 alone. Anyhow, it is not to the people he speaks of 
 self-denial. He feeds them and lets them go. An 
 ordinary teacher might have talked to the fainting 
 crowd about the duty of subduing their appetites, and 
 reminded them what a much more glorious thing it 
 was to be listening to His teaching than attending to 
 their bodily wants. Or he might have expressed sur- 
 prise that they should even be conscious of physical 
 longings at such a time. We can fancy some 
 
212 
 
 SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 preachers who would have thought this a great oppor- 
 tunity of inculcating the subjection of the flesh. But 
 there is not a word about self-denial until the people 
 are gone, and He is alone praying with His disciples. 
 Then comes out, as it so often does, His deep insight 
 into their hearts, and His subtle and delicate way of 
 showing that He had read them. It was a time for 
 fostering any pride they might have had in their ex- 
 clusive intimacy with him. The multitude sent away, 
 and they alone retained ; the lonely hillside and the 
 common prayer ; the privileged companionship with 
 His mysterious personality ; all circumstances so pro- 
 ductive and so suggestive of self-devotion ; all so likely, 
 under the subtlest veil of self-devotion, to tend to the 
 exaltation of self. So He seems to have thought, for 
 He chooses the time when one of them, in the name of 
 all, had confessed Him to be the Christ, and when all 
 thought of self might seem to have been lost in adora- 
 tion of Him, to say, " Whosoever will come after Me, 
 let him deny himself." It is a very suggestive sur- 
 rounding to His words. A superficial view of things 
 might have led men to expect such words at some 
 rich supper at a Pharisee's ; at the table of the wealthy 
 publican ; at the great feast at St. Matthew's house ; 
 even at the wedding when He was asked for wine. 
 We can fancy a solitary or an ascetic appearing like 
 a spectre at banquets where He was a genial guest, 
 and denouncing their indulgence and display. He 
 taught different lessons there : " When thou makest a 
 dinner or supper call not thy friends and rich neigh- 
 
SELF-DENIAL 
 
 213 
 
 hours," but those who cannot recompense thee ; or 
 again, " Seest thou this woman ? " — thou who at a 
 feast, the very symbol of fellowship, will scarcely own 
 her common humanity. Or He showed His sympathy 
 with the innocent joys of a peasant's wedding by 
 furnishing the wine. At feasts He taught the lessons 
 of feasts ; but for the teachers of men He had 
 different ones. They had to set Him forth before the 
 eyes of all men ; and how could they represent His 
 perfect image, whose nature was self-sacrifice, unless 
 they were first delivered from the bondage of self ? 
 
 The men that followed Him in His temptations were 
 in little danger from the common allurements of life. 
 They had settled their account with these, and had 
 come to find out, as they listened to warnings of seK- 
 denial addressed to those who had left all and followed 
 Him and who had not where to lay their heads, that 
 the victory over seK-indulgence was only half the 
 battle. For after the thought "we have left all and 
 followed Thee," arose in one of them the hope " what 
 shall we have therefore ? " When all the claims of the 
 body had been subdued, and all the delights of friend- 
 ship and of home abandoned, there remained the wider 
 field to win of self-assertion. 
 
 Many men who never heard the name of Christ 
 have effectually mastered all their appetites, and for 
 various motives ; and many Christians in all ages 
 have done the same. But it has often happened 
 that this discipline has been the mere handmaid 
 of personal ambition ; conquerors, philosophers, and 
 
214 
 
 SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 devotees have practised it for distinctly personal ends. 
 Its tendency, without the controlling and purifying 
 influence of an exalted motive, is by no means neces- 
 sarily in the direction of what is now called self- 
 effacement. 
 
 Our Saviour saw that there were less obvious but 
 more deadly foes than any that asceticism could face ; 
 and He gives His little band of followers, who might 
 be thought to have lost even their personality in His, 
 the unexpected warning, that if they mean to follow 
 Him they must deny themselves. He spoke as to 
 Christians, knowing that it was a small thing for 
 those who claimed His name to have risen above such 
 temptations as men share with brutes, but knowing 
 too that when all these voices are hushed, new sug- 
 gestions arise, more seductive, if not so loud as the 
 claims of appetite. 
 
 They were separated from the world, and made the 
 most important persons in it. How could the self 
 which had been checked at one outlet fail to attempt 
 another ? How likely they were to assume that self- 
 indulgence was conquered, and to seek its compensa- 
 tion in self-importance ! It would be quite natural 
 for any body of Christians professing the same devo- 
 tion to Christ that that little group did, to make the 
 same assumption about themselves ; and it might not 
 seem extravagant to expect that men who profess to 
 be servants of such a Master, and honour by public 
 services the men who followed Him as Saints, had 
 got beyond this prehminary trial of courage and faith. 
 
SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 215 
 
 How far it is true of each man is only known to him- 
 self; but whoever has satisfied himself on this point 
 must know himself well, and must be prepared for 
 the harder struggle of which our Lord warned His 
 followers. 
 
 It is easy to throw stones at any class in the 
 community about this matter of indulging personal 
 tastes, for it is the habit perhaps of most men to 
 limit their self-indulgence in more or less refined 
 forms by their income only ; and it is extremely 
 difficult to draw the line where personal expendi- 
 ture begins to be excessive, and ceases to conduce 
 to the benefit of the individual, and of the com- 
 munity at large. It would not be wise to try to draw 
 any such line, or to denounce any indulgences except 
 such as stand condemned by the profession of Chris- 
 tianity. It will be much more profitable to consider 
 whether there are any personal habits which tend 
 to make men less fit to occupy their appointed places 
 in the world ; whether there are any which make 
 them indolent when it is time to work; luxurious and 
 effeminate when exertion is required ; irritable when 
 they ought to be patient ; exacting when they ought 
 to be considerate ; for there are indulgences which 
 have this effect upon the nerves. Do any of our in- 
 dulgences scant the enjoyments of others ? do any of 
 our pleasures demand degrading offices of them ? do 
 any of our ways make us an element of discord, in- 
 stead of harmony, in home-life ? do any of them make 
 it irksome to meditate or pray ? is life without them 
 
216 
 
 SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 insipid, and the prospect of death intolerable ? If a 
 man would examine himself honestly in this way, 
 and would act on the results of this analysis, he would 
 find more benefit from it than from dietary obser- 
 vances ; though it may be a very good thing to have 
 rules when we cannot do without them. 
 
 "When all this is done there remains the more 
 formidable enemy, self-assertion ; for to deny is the 
 opposite of to assert as well as of to indulge, and we 
 live in an age in which self-assertion is the more 
 common temptation, at least among the more educated 
 classes. For in spite of the great increase of wealth, 
 it may be doubted whether the upper classes spend 
 a larger proportion of income on mere physical in- 
 dulgence than the lower — except the actual labouring 
 class — if we set aside the items of comfort and display. 
 But independent of mere personal pampering, every 
 one is conscious how obtrusive and domineering his 
 own personality is — the ascetic as well as the volup- 
 tuary, the poor as well as the rich ; how each man 
 is the centre foreground of every picture in his mind's 
 eye, rather how he fills all the canvas. How ready 
 all are to assert their dignity, to stand upon their 
 rights, to fancy themselves slighted, to back their 
 own opinions, to believe in their own infallibity, to 
 consider how everything will affect them ; how swift to 
 speak most men are, and how few good listeners there 
 are in the world ! Our most sacred moments tend 
 to make us think we are not as other men ; our most 
 Christian duties are tainted with this spirit of self. 
 
SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 217 
 
 These are all manifestations of the same spirit of 
 exclusiveness, the habit of thinking that we are excep- 
 tions — not like other people — and demanding a dif- 
 ferent treatment. It is a spirit which may reveal itself 
 in many other ways than in those already noted. It 
 may be too deep-seated and self-satisfied to show itself 
 at all ; for there is a pride too proud to ask for homage 
 or to court sympathy, or to condescend to assert 
 itself, and the sociable man as well as the reserved 
 may be the victim of it. It is the wrong side of self- 
 respect, and of that abiding sense of individuality no 
 thoughtful man can ever lose — a feeling that itself 
 tends to evil when it is not corrected by the sense, 
 as strong, of being members of a society knit together 
 in Christ, and every one members one of another. 
 A man who has made his sense of the equality of all 
 men before God a working conviction of his daily life, 
 and not merely a speculative inference from his reli- 
 gion, has got the best antidote to this pride of heart. 
 
 These are great human faults, as old as the world 
 and as widespread as mankind ; but the spirit of self 
 has taken different shapes in different nations and at 
 different times. Nations have been carried away by 
 the passion for military glory, and have lost sight 
 of the rights of others in indulging their passion; 
 they have been carried away by insane beliefs in El 
 Dorados beyond the seas ; have been immersed in the 
 pursuit of wealth at home ; they have been borne 
 along by the cm-rent of rehgious fanaticism ; they have 
 crushed the great majority of their feUow-country- 
 
218 
 
 SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 men under a feudal or social or royal oppression. 
 We may see in our own country (besides the pursuit 
 of wealth, which is losing its passionate force now 
 that wealth comes so easily to so many people) a 
 deliberate preference of sell avowed as the motive 
 not only of private lives, but, in a sense, of public 
 undertakings, though not of national legislation. 
 
 There is much on the other side; much effort, 
 national, social, private, that is purely Christian ; 
 more than ever, perhaps, of unselfish working for 
 the good of all. But the doctrine of ''the survival 
 of the fittest," to those who watch the tendencies of 
 the time, is beginning to bear fruit in practice; and 
 the axiom " that the weakest must go to the wall " 
 has found a learned and eloquent exponent. It may 
 be seen in the way in which those who think their 
 lives or their work important shun social duties, 
 claim exceptional treatment, and exact multifarious 
 services ; in the way in which the great duty of self- 
 culture is made an excuse for neglecting many others 
 — for being deaf to the claims of the ignorant and 
 needy, for want of sympathy with the uncultivated 
 and unrefined. It appears in much of the language 
 heard about the new impulse recently given to educa- 
 tion, which is often regarded merely as a means of 
 advancement in the world ; and the motive put before 
 the young is often no higher than that if they learn 
 they will be rich. I am not denying the value of what 
 is called secular education — it is so infinitely better 
 than none that words cannot express the difference ; 
 
SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 219 
 
 but a really secular education, if it is possible — one, 
 that is, from which every motive but material ones 
 should be excluded — would exactly express this spirit 
 of the exaltation of self, for it would banish the ideas 
 of love and duty as motives for self-improvement. 
 It cannot be denied that much that we hear about it, 
 though probably little of its practical working, exhibits 
 it to the young in this naked ugliness . History teaches 
 us that an artistic and literary age is apt to be a hard 
 one (as has been seen in the successive periods of 
 revival in literature and art), and there are not wanting 
 signs of a certain hard indifference to the poor and 
 the rough in our distinctly cultivated classes, not 
 only yielded to, as a temptation too strong to resist, 
 but avowed as a theory, and adopted as a habit of life. 
 
 Every man, as he can watch and control the 
 rising of this sj)irit of antichrist in his flesh or in his 
 spirit; in his home life, in his private habits, in his 
 social or official relations ; so he can do something as 
 a member of the commonwealth to check its mani- 
 festations wherever it takes the shape of a public 
 undertaking or the set of a current of social feeling. 
 It is difficult to detect in its disguises, which are as 
 plausible and delusive under the form of public good, 
 as w^hen it betrays us with the plea of personal rights 
 or justifiable indulgences. There is no possibility of 
 living a merely negative life of opposition to its 
 influence ; only the might of a new love can expel 
 the dominion of the old; only the setting up of a 
 supreme object of our affections can prevent them 
 from being centred on ourselves. 
 
LOVE AND HATEED. 
 
 1 St. John iii. 13. — "Marvel not, my brethren, if the world 
 hate you.^^ 
 
 A MAN has perhaps more to fear now from the love 
 than from the hatred of the world. For whatever 
 other meaning the ''world" may have (and its 
 meaning varies a good deal with those who use it), the 
 opinion of the world must always mean, to any one 
 person, the opinion of the great mass of people who 
 do not know him well, and therefore judge him 
 superficially. A man may win the love of the world 
 in this sense by gaining credit for qualities he does 
 not possess ; by actions which are an exception to the 
 whole bent of his character and not the expression of 
 it ; by conduct which is more likely to please than to 
 benefit those who give him in return the transitory 
 compensation of their applause. Now and then such 
 an undeserved return might shame or stimulate a 
 generous nature to live up to the world's estimate and 
 be what others think him ; but most men find it a 
 difficult position to be "popular," and realize the 
 truth of the saying, " Woe unto you, when all men 
 speak good of you ! " For besides that it is likely to 
 
LOVE AND HATRED. 
 
 221 
 
 make people foolish and vain, the temptation is strong 
 to continue the role which has succeeded so well at 
 first, and pass from an unconscious into a conscious 
 hypocrite. Praise is sweet, and it is easy to win from 
 the undiscerning ; but it is not always gained by the 
 exercise of the highest qualities or by Hying out the 
 truest life. The first loss then is the sacrifice of what 
 is best to what brings the speediest return. And the 
 end can be nothing but self-contempt to those who 
 are alive enough to look into themselves at all, and a 
 cynical estimate of those who pay the hire for the 
 labom* done, hardly less damaging to character. 
 
 It is not a very wholesome state of mind to be in- 
 different to the world's opinion; for it may come of 
 envy, or of despair of popularity, or from crediting 
 ourselves with vii'tue because we are wanting in the 
 qualities which win a shallow renown fi'om others ; 
 so that a man may congratulate himself on the in- 
 difference of the world, though he has nothing in 
 him to win its love. Or it may be a reaction fi*om 
 the love of praise and from the experience of the 
 worthlessness of honour won from those who do 
 not know us, for actions which they cannot rightly 
 value. " Extremes meet," and the step from the 
 popularity-hunter to the misanthrope is not a long 
 one ; the popular youth may easily become the Timon 
 of middle age, as sated with praise as with pleasure ; 
 with no more respect left for himseK than for those 
 who tried to persuade him that he was what he knew 
 himself not to be. 
 
222 
 
 LOVE AND HATRED. 
 
 With a very small verbal change St. John's warn- 
 ing to his friends would be a very useful one to 
 address to many Christians nowadays, who have a 
 good many ways of winning liking, if not love, besides 
 the solid qualities which alone deserve it. If the 
 caution were well thought of, few better warnings 
 could be given to such people at the outset of hfe, or 
 at the beginning of a new career, or on assuming a 
 new place in society, than "Marvel not, my brother, 
 if the world" love "you." It is likely that it will; 
 but do not you be made giddy by it, nor despise the 
 world, nor plume yourself on the borrowed feathers 
 in which it has dressed you uj). Neither despise ap- 
 plause nor seek it, for either will make you indifferent 
 to the approval of the good which is worth having 
 (even as a test of conduct), and either will make you 
 think of yourself more highly than you ought to 
 think ; and the end of both is a cold contempt of men 
 who are probably as good as yourself, and contempt 
 of men is much the same as death, if love is life. 
 
 The first readers of this Epistle would have 
 marvelled if the world had loved them; there was 
 no reason why it should. The world knew that 
 the young community stole away children from 
 fathers, and husbands fi'om wives, and wives fi'om 
 husbands, and friends fi'om friends, by a new and 
 mysterious charm. Those who were so stolen were 
 lost to them and to all that seemed to make life 
 precious, and they thought that it was a "pestilent 
 superstition " which denounced their old worship and 
 
LOVE AND HATRED. 
 
 223 
 
 their old pleasures, and practised hateful rites of 
 its own in secret ; perhaps encouraged treasonable 
 purposes under the guise of worship. The world 
 was likely to hate it; it was like a garrison in an 
 enemy's country, with every man's hand against it ; 
 it needed all the consolation that the assurance of the 
 love of God and of the brethren could give it to 
 enable it to keep up its heart. 
 
 There was probably some danger in using such 
 language, even to the first Christians ; only the 
 strongest contrast of conditions could justify it ; only 
 the Christian's extreme need of caution and of comfort 
 could require it. It would have been easy to exagge- 
 rate this feeling of contrast and separation, and make 
 the believers think it more their work to preserve the 
 faith undefiled than to proclaim it to the world ; to 
 make them forget that it was for the world which 
 hated them that Christ lived and died. 
 
 The history of all religions bears constant witness 
 to the strength of this temptation. Men have prized 
 religious truth not for its power of winning the many, 
 but because it was the exclusive possession of the 
 few. They have looked, it might almost be said, 
 with complacency on the lost condition of the world, 
 if the faith of the true believers was unimpaired ; 
 they have thought the truth itself of more importance 
 than the lives of those for whom it was revealed ; as 
 if man was created to receive the Gospel, and not the 
 Gospel preached to redeem mankind. And the more 
 they have departed from the simplicity of the first 
 
224 
 
 LOVE AND HATEED. 
 
 message and exaggerated the importance of their own 
 inferences, or even substituted them for that which 
 was first delivered, the stronger has been this tendency 
 to regard their own Church or their own sect as the 
 faithful, and all others as the world ; on whom perhaps 
 God may have mercy, but for whom man can have 
 little hope. There is a strange incongruity between 
 this claim to the profession of an orthodox belief and 
 this want of sympathy with all who do not hold it, 
 with the pm-pose of Christ to seek and to save those 
 who were lost, and with the Mind which saw that all 
 who were "not against Him were on His side." He 
 might see much of His spirit in those who are often 
 called "the world," and much of the world in the 
 spirit of those who profess to be on His side ; if He 
 were among us now. 
 
 It is interesting to speculate what class or classes He 
 would call the world now. For there is no such broad 
 line of distinction as could be drawn between the con- 
 verted and the unconverted in apostolic days — though 
 even then there were many whose hearts were with Him 
 before they heard His name. Most of us, probably, 
 have our own notions of what the world is, and most 
 likely it does not include ourselves. If we derive our 
 idea of it from the New Testament, it cannot. Our 
 very profession, even our presence in church, forbids 
 that ; for if it means anything in the New Testament, 
 it means the spirit which is at enmity with the spirit 
 of Christ ; and the least claim that they can make who 
 call themselves by His name is to rule their lives 
 
LOVE AND HATKED. 
 
 225 
 
 and hearts by the spirit that is in Him. But we 
 generally apply the term to some part of the Chris- 
 tian world, and when we use it are seldom thinking 
 of nations yet unconverted, or of what are called 
 the " heathen masses " of our own country, or of 
 the small body whom inquiry has led to a rejection 
 of the Gospel. We are seldom thinking of these 
 when we speak of the world. For the most part, 
 what is meant by the world is the great mass of 
 people who make some religious profession and prac- 
 tise some religious observance ; and the conception 
 is so far true that we can seldom assemble in any 
 church without seeing that the spirit of the world 
 has intruded there too. It is visible in most congre- 
 gations, and just as each has his own notion of what 
 the world is, so is it likely that each would be said by 
 some body of Christians to belong to the world him- 
 self. The notion that any line can be drawn between 
 the Chm^ch and the world must be given up in these 
 days ; the world is too much leavened by the spirit of 
 Christ, the Church is too much leavened by the spirit 
 of the world, to make that possible ; but it does not 
 therefore follow that they are the same, or that there 
 is no meaning for us m the caution, " Marvel not if 
 the world hate you." 
 
 Very few people have any experience of being hated 
 by the world ; at all events for qualities which even 
 to their own minds can give them any grounds for 
 thinking that they are hated for Christ's sake. For it 
 is very far from diminishing a man's chance of popular 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 LOVE AND HATRED. 
 
 favour now to profess Christianity ; indeed, those who 
 are most hated for their opinions are the men whose 
 speculations have led them to renounce it, so that no 
 one can console himself under unpopularity with the 
 thought that he is suffering for righteousness' sake, 
 or be sure that he does not escape it because his 
 Christianity is modified by the spirit of the world. 
 But if we do not find ourselves hated, it might seem 
 to many ^'no marvel" if they were; for we find within 
 the seeds of hatred to others, and are perhaps con- 
 scious of a life that would not bear the light, and of a 
 steady drift of inclination that is unrelenting in its 
 cold indifference to all other joy or welfare except our 
 own. We must not marvel that the world hates us if 
 we merely use and enjoy it, and find easy good temper 
 souring into weariness, or ready to start into active 
 animosity with the first taste of satiety or the first 
 symptom of opposition. 
 
 Certain classes, certain persons, certain subjects, 
 rouse most men's hatred, not from deliberate disap- 
 proval, but from instinctive dislike ; they take no 
 trouble to control the feeling, but justify it, and 
 make large exceptions to every amnesty. They may 
 perhaps have grounds for their dislike, but they give 
 grounds for dislike to others, of the same sort ; and 
 they know their own hearts besides, and all there is 
 in them that would win little love if it were known; 
 so that they cannot marvel if the world hates them. 
 Some use might be made of these feelings — from the 
 sternest moral disapproval down to the most fantastic 
 
LOVE AND HATRED. 
 
 227 
 
 horror — if they only suggested to us the reasons and 
 occasions for dishke we daily give, and the many 
 more of which we are conscious. But those who are 
 most ready with their intolerance of opinions, habits, 
 and manners, often need the largest toleration for 
 themselves, and go on all their lives never learning 
 the lesson of charity from their own need of it ; never 
 learning to correct in themselves the superficial faults 
 that have awakened their rather artificial disgust 
 in other people. 
 
 But love and hate are too large parts of character, 
 too important for the welfare of the world, to be mis- 
 directed or frittered away. It is so easy to be exclu- 
 sive and to reserve all love for our own set, and all 
 our opposite feelings (hatred is too strong a term) for 
 others. There are cliques of all kinds, religious, poli- 
 tical, social, artistic ; and the divine feeling of hatred 
 of wrong is misdirected against men because we differ 
 from their opinions, or is parodied in a fashionable 
 abhorrence of all who are outside a certain sacred 
 pale; or diviner love is wasted in affected raptures 
 over those who agree with us, with no other result 
 than a weakened capacity for loving and hating what 
 ought to attract and to repel. 
 
 There is too little love and too little hatred in the 
 world; too little love of what is good for its own 
 sake ; too little independence in om' choice of friends ; 
 too little resolute countenance of worth, compared 
 with the claims of more conventional attractions. 
 Hysterical admiration and affected enthusiasm leave 
 
228 
 
 LOVE AND HATRED. 
 
 the heart rather too dry and cold to discern and grasp 
 what is lovable for its own sake ; and it would be well 
 if dislike of other men's opinions, and revolt against 
 their tastes or their manners, were consistent with a 
 more sturdy hatred of evil — a hatred that would allow 
 no polish and no power to condone it. Let us hate, by 
 all means ; but let us remember at the same time not 
 to marvel if the world hate us if we hate amiss, and 
 not to care though it do hate us if we hate aright. 
 We have one power by which we can bear its hatred ; 
 one test by which to try our own ; one consolation if 
 in the way of duty we have lost friends; one lesson 
 of hating the sin of the world without hating the 
 sinners. We should be sure, before we venture to 
 smile, or to repine at the hatred of the world ; before 
 we venture to indulge our hatred of the evil of it, of 
 being able to say, We know that we have passed 
 from death unto life, because we love the brethren ; 
 by this we know that we are alive, when we feel the 
 death of all evil in ourselves, and the living pulse of 
 love for all men quick within our hearts. 
 
SOCIAL PEESSUEE. 
 
 St. Ltjke xiv. 1. — " And it came to pass, as He ivent into the house 
 of one of the chief Pliarisees to eat bread on the Salbath day, that 
 they watched Bim." 
 
 The Sabbatarianism of the Pharisees does not seem 
 to have excluded giving entertainments on the 
 Sabbath, and the liberty allowed by Christ in the 
 observance of it seems to have included going to them. 
 
 This is not the only time that we hear of His being 
 at a feast on the Sabbath day, and His host on this 
 occasion was not the only Pharisee who invited Him. 
 
 Want of hospitality (as far as it consists in giving 
 entertainments) does not seem to have been one of the 
 faults of the Pharisees. But guests are invited to 
 houses for very various motives, and the motive 
 determines the question of hospitality. Perhaps if 
 the reasons for their being sent always accompanied 
 invitations, there might sometimes, even among 
 Christians, appear to be as little real hospitable 
 intention in them as there was in the conduct of men 
 who ''watched" a guest at a banquet, to see whether 
 He would commit Himself. 
 
 No doubt He was the principal guest. His social 
 
230 
 
 SOCIAL PRESSURE. 
 
 importance, and the dishonourable motive for which 
 He seems to have been invited, make that likely ; and 
 the leading share He takes in the conversation fits 
 the position. He had a dangerous and disagreeable 
 part to play, for He knew the feeling of the company 
 towards Him; but He did not shrink from it. His 
 place as a social reformer was wherever men gathered 
 together, and He knew that there might be something 
 in the customs of feasts, and in the manners of hosts 
 and guests, that might wear a different aspect from 
 the point of view of the kingdom of heaven. Abuses 
 perhaps might have grown up that might be corrected ; 
 or persons might be present who might get a hint that 
 would fructify of a higher standard of morality regu- 
 lating even such observances as these than that by 
 which society is content to judge them. 
 
 If an ordinary person went into society now with 
 this notion of a mission to reform it, it is probable 
 that he would give much offence and would achieve 
 nothing. But if his words were the least part of his 
 witness for an invisible order of things, and his life 
 proclaimed the highest law of love and right — if he 
 was independent of men's opinions and at the same 
 time devoted to their good, as the few great reformers 
 of the world have been — there is no reason to think 
 he would not be listened to and followed. The same 
 truths, burning and irresistible as they were from the 
 lips of Christ, would seem visionary and Utopian from 
 one who did not show, before he began to teach others, 
 that he was himself convinced. 
 
SOCIAL PRESSUEE. 
 
 231 
 
 We repeat and listen to the Divine philosophy of 
 His original teaching and admire His lofty maxims, 
 with the thought that they are perhaps too elevated for 
 common use ; just as we admire His life, like a part 
 acted on a stage; but they do not stir us to action 
 like a living voice with the strong lever of a life to 
 move the dead weight of custom. And yet more than 
 any life and any words they have moved and made 
 society ; so that no duty can be more binding and (it 
 may seem sanguine to say so) no prospect more 
 hopeful than still to proclaim the truths which once 
 regenerated the world ; still to have courage and self- 
 denial enough to endeavour to live the life to which 
 they commit His followers. 
 
 There are few things in which men are more 
 mistaken than the way in which they underrate 
 their influence for good or evil. Nothing is more 
 incalculable than the results of a character or an 
 action ; few inquiries would be more surprising in 
 their results than tracing the pedigree of an act or 
 disposition, if we could foUow it as we do a family 
 to its source. To those who believe in the efficacy of 
 a life for good or evil — who hope that, without being 
 eccentric or presumptuous, they can bear witness in 
 their ordinary daily duties and relations for greater 
 reality of feeling and more pronounced unselfishness 
 of motive than they see about them — such scenes as 
 these in the life of their Master afford peculiar en- 
 couragement. They will not make the mistake of 
 imitating His special actions, if they are filled with 
 
232 
 
 SOCIAL PRESSURE. 
 
 His Spirit ; for the Spirit will express Himself through 
 the peculiar genius of him whom He inspires ; perhaps 
 in quite different ways and words fi'om those in which 
 He made Himself known in the life of Christ. But the 
 effect will be the same, viz. that elevation of feeling 
 about common things w^hich seems to have been the 
 aim of all He said at this feast. He makes no new 
 rules. Life was too much formalized ah-eady for the 
 men He was teaching. He refers the commonest 
 usages of society to a principle of the kingdom of 
 heaven, wide enough to determine many such cases. 
 The lawyers and Pharisees assembled at the feast will 
 give no answer as to whether it is lawful to heal on 
 the Sabbath day. It is a professional question about 
 which they will not commit themselves. He lifts it 
 above the plane of technicalities when He asks. Which 
 of you would not pull his ox out of a pit on the 
 Sabbath day ? The question is referred to the prin- 
 ciple that ''the Sabbath was made for man," and 
 therefore that everything that tends to promote the 
 good of men is helping to fulfil the intention of 
 its Founder. Every one must apply this principle 
 for himself, remembering that it is equally violated by 
 those who coldly neglect the obligation altogether, and 
 by those who petrify the principle of its institution 
 into forms and rules. 
 
 There is not much danger of any excessive Sabba- 
 tarianism nowadays, but it is as well to remember 
 when we are judging others, that there may be, as has 
 been said, ' ' a believing non-observance ' ' of the Sabbath ; 
 
SOCIAL PEESSUKE. 
 
 233 
 
 and when we are determining our own course, that 
 there may be an unbelieving observance of the 
 Christian Sunday. 
 
 Another scene at this famous feast diverts our 
 Savioui-'s comments from the ungodliness of the 
 religious world to the vulgarity of the pohte. For 
 Pharisees and scribes and doctors of the law were of 
 the ujDper classes in Judc^a, and this charge of trying 
 to get the best places at table is definitely brought 
 against Pharisees in another place. 
 
 He noticed them choosing the best places at table, 
 and the arrangement of their tables made some places 
 much more important and agreeable than others. 
 But he does not determine any questions of precedence 
 or comment on ill-manners, but again raises the 
 subject above anything that could create soreness or 
 controversy. He reminds them of the highest standard 
 by which men are judged, whether in earth or heaven 
 — the opinion of the wise and good, of perfect wisdom 
 and goodness ; and of the fall to zero in this estimate 
 that awaits the man who exalts himself. In fact, it is 
 not necessary to be very wise or very good to condemn 
 self-importance ; the only wonder is that men should 
 so invariably forget that it almost necessarily defeats 
 its own object. 
 
 The same feeling that was displayed in the house of 
 one of the chief Pharisees in the scrambling for places, 
 perhaps in manoeuvring for invitations beforehand, 
 exists still, even if its manifestations are different. 
 The point for us to dwell on as Christians is not that 
 
234 
 
 SOCIAL PRESSURE. 
 
 it is foolish or ill-mannered, but that it is inconsistent 
 with our belief in the higher value of the invisible 
 world ; that it outrages the principles which we profess 
 as the guides of our life ; that it shows a want of quiet- 
 ness and confidence in what is really worth having 
 in life ; an insensibility to the difference between being 
 and only seeming to be. 
 
 Nothing can bring out more strongly this con- 
 trast between fashion and reality than His next 
 caution. Probably He marked again the style of 
 guests assembled to meet Him, and noted that they 
 were such as seemed likely to be able to recompense 
 their host in some way. His well-known advice 
 about receiving "the poor, the maimed, the halt, and 
 the blind," was more necessary, and more easy to 
 follow, in a thinly peopled country with few inns and 
 without any hospitals or poor-laws ; it might be un- 
 wise or impossible now, but the principle which 
 underlies it is undying — to look for nothing in return 
 for kindness. In a matter so purely conventional 
 as hospitality has become, to try not to follow the 
 multitude ; to try to spiritualize a custom into a 
 grace ; to determine each for ourselves that we will 
 do something, in ever so small a way, to resist the 
 current of fashion ; to be simple and natural in the 
 matter; to make people our guests because it will 
 please them, or at least please ourselves by expressing 
 our regard for them, would be to enter into the spirit 
 of the kingdom of heaven about this matter more truly 
 than any mechanical obedience to a rule. 
 
SOCIAL PRESSUEE. 
 
 235 
 
 The true value of the pious ejaculation which 
 follows, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the 
 kingdom of heaven," is perhaps insinuated in the 
 parable which follows. The speaker's association of the 
 kingdom of heaven with a feast seems to indicate His 
 notion of it. The Jew's conception of happiness (into 
 which comfort and prosperity entered so largely) 
 comes out here ; and the parable told at table (in 
 harmony with the Eastern habit of story-telling) is 
 designed to correct and elevate this view of heaven 
 here or hereafter, and to suggest that all men are not 
 so very eager to enter into it ; that the constituents of 
 happiness to the Jewish mind, property, land, and 
 domestic happiness, might hinder its realization, 
 instead of being essential features of it. One purpose 
 of the parable seems to be to sum up His previous 
 teaching ; to embody, by a few typical instances, the 
 various forms of that " social pressure " which hinders 
 so many men from being what they are capable of 
 being, and doing what they know they ought to do. 
 
 It was quite natural that One who came to renovate 
 the world by founding a society, and lived in the society 
 which was contemporary with Him, should anticipate 
 and guard against some of the adverse pressure which 
 He foresaw. Encountering the force of His teaching, 
 which would compel men to do things they approved 
 but did not like. He foresaw a force which would 
 compel men to do things which they neither liked nor 
 approved; which, unlike the allurements of appetite 
 and the impulses of temper, would offer no satisfaction 
 
236 
 
 SOCIAL PRESSUKE. 
 
 in return for the obedience which it claimed ; which 
 had no inducement to offer but the convenience and 
 pleasure arising fi'om conformity to the ways and 
 opinions of other men, or immunity fi'om the dis- 
 abilities and annoyances which are the penalties of 
 nonconformity. The greater part of our life is of 
 course regulated by what is customary, and the cases 
 in which it is innocent or praiseworthy to follow this 
 rule are beyond enumeration ; but every one is aware 
 of cases in which it clashes with a higher law of 
 which he is conscious. The problem of social life is 
 to determine these exceptions, and its trial is to dare 
 to disregard the lower and to follow the higher obliga- 
 tion. The problem is difficult because the pressure 
 of opinion, like that of the natural atmosphere, is 
 not only heavy but uniform ; it surrounds us on every 
 side ; it represses all attempts to rise ; it bars every 
 outlet to independence of thought or action ; it applies 
 an irresistible force, which is often hardly felt because 
 it is never uneven or intermittent, and because we have 
 grown up under it and have never known what it is 
 to be free. The trial of resistance is severe, because 
 it often involves the loss of friends, the sacrifice of 
 the good opinion of those whose good opinion we think 
 worth having, the imputation of self-assertion and 
 a character for eccentricity. There is no support 
 under it but the knowledge of a higher law of life to 
 which the lower law of society must yield, and the 
 joy of carrying out in conduct the convictions which 
 are the bread of life to the soul within. 
 
SOCIAL PRESSURE. . 237 
 
 It is impossible to review our lives as members of 
 a society without being aware of a number of cases 
 in which, with no temptation of pleasure or interest, 
 we do things which we disapprove or fail to speak 
 or act independently — in obedience to fashion. The 
 mighty motives of pleasure and interest are equal 
 hindrances to living that high life of conformity to the 
 dictates of an enlightened conscience from the pure 
 motive of love of God which Christ calls " entering into 
 the kingdom of heaven." But social pressure often 
 comes with no such bait in its hand ; it claims obedi- 
 ence ; it violates conscience ; it leaves behind self-con- 
 tempt, until we have got used to om* chains. It does 
 not press with equal weight on all strata of society : 
 perhaps some of us here belong to the stratum to 
 which it is most oppressive. Some are placed high 
 enough to disregard it ; in some classes its laws are 
 less exactly formulated, its penalties less regular and 
 severe ; but it is the lot, no doubt, of a portion of 
 society to feel its force very painfully ; to find it very 
 difficult to be at once independent and not regardless 
 of the world's opinion ; to dare to carry out convictions, 
 and at the same time to be sure that there is neither 
 vanity nor perverseness in the venture to stand alone. 
 For the liberty with which Christ has made us free is 
 a deliverance as much fi'om these spiritual temptations 
 as from servile deference to the usages of the society 
 in which we live. 
 
 Those who wish to see with how little reference to 
 the higher law many of our relations with our fellow- 
 
238 
 
 SOCIAL PRESSURE. 
 
 men are determined, may review their lives under 
 a few main and very obvious heads. The motives 
 for which acquaintances are sought; the artificial 
 boundaries which exclude for the most part all below 
 our own level in society ; the means by which these 
 limits are kept up ; the customs which regulate the 
 spending of money, and even the giving it in charity ; 
 the motives and the usages of hospitality ; the reasons 
 for which opinions are adopted and maintained ; even 
 such a matter as the allotment of places in church ; 
 — all these are instances in which use has sanctioned 
 habits, many of which are open to question ; many of 
 which, if looked at in the abstract, without the mis- 
 leading light upon them of prepossession or long 
 famiHarity, would be at once condemned. Peoj^le are 
 perhaps not very much to be blamed for falling in 
 with the ways of those about them, until they become 
 conscious of their inconsistency with their own pro- 
 fessions ; with the highest spiritual life for men on this 
 earth, in which conduct answers quickly and truly to 
 conviction ; with the very motive of the existence of the 
 Christian society in the world. 
 
 It may be thought that to refer trivial social 
 acts and habits to such high principles is to ex- 
 aggerate ; to say that they involve such momentous 
 issues is to be unreal ; but nothing can be smaller 
 than the habits which our Lord deigns to condemn, 
 nothing higher than the principles to which He 
 refers them. The reason why public opinion has 
 accumulated such force, and why social pressure is 
 
SOCIAL PKESSUKE. 
 
 239 
 
 so heavy, is because for so many centuries Chris- 
 tians have gone on separating their life from their 
 religion, forgetting that their life is their religion ; 
 thinking the small acts and habits which make up 
 common lives too unimportant to be ruled by the law 
 of heaven ; not seeing the danger of making all life 
 godless by ruling all its constituent, if trivial, parts 
 without regard to God. Every one who without 
 thought conforms, adds to this weight which hangs 
 heavy round men's necks ; every one who, in however 
 small a matter, has the com^age of his convictions, 
 does something to lighten it ; and so far as he can he 
 is supporting that protest for independence and for 
 charity against the pressure of our social surroundings 
 which is the lesson to society from the social life of 
 the Son of Man. 
 
CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 Acts vi. 1-4. — " And in those days, when the number of the dis- 
 ciples ivas midtiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians 
 against the Hebrews, because their ividows were neglected in the 
 daily ministration. Then the twelve called the multitude of the 
 disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave 
 the word of Ood, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out 
 among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and 
 wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will 
 give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the 
 word." 
 
 It is no wonder in a community in which the 
 members had all things in common — in which land- 
 owners brought the price of their estates to the 
 Apostles, in which distribution was made to every 
 man according to his need — that murmuring aros-e. 
 It would have been surprising if it had not. Unless 
 the first Christians were something more than men, 
 there must have been murmuring before that which 
 led to the appointment of the seven deacons. It 
 was the fact, probably, that the murmurings at last 
 became organized and found expression as a party 
 cry, that brought about the remedy. As long as it 
 was general, and everybody was dissatisfied, there 
 
CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 241 
 
 was perhaps not much to find fault with ; but when 
 one body of the converts, and those not of the inner 
 circle of Judaism, thought themselves aggrieved, it 
 was time to grant relief. These "Grecians" were to 
 some extent strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, 
 and were more likely to imagine a slight where none 
 existed, or to exaggerate a small grievance, than if all 
 their associations had been as Hebrew as their blood. 
 Anyhow, as those who complained were in some sense 
 Greek, it is a proof of the desire of the Church to deal 
 fairly with them that all the deacons were men of 
 Greek connexions too, if one may judge from their 
 names, for they are all of Greek formation. 
 
 It is not quite certain what of&ce they were ap- 
 pointed to, for to " serve tables " may mean either to 
 superintend the daily ministration in the most literal 
 sense, or it may mean the higher duty of keeping the 
 accounts of the new community; and " tables" may 
 be used somewhat in the same sense in which we say 
 multiplication tables. The accounts of a society 
 which had all things in common must have been large 
 and complex enough to require the care of men ''full 
 of faith and of the Holy Ghost," as we hear the chief 
 of the deacons was. But whatever their work was, 
 it is remarkable that we never hear of one of them 
 doing any of it. The names of five of them are never 
 heard again. They may have done it quietly and con- 
 scientiously, as men full of the Spirit of God do any 
 work they are set to do ; or they may have been like 
 Stephen and Philip, who seem to have left their table- 
 
242 
 
 CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 serving to preach the Word of God, almost as soon as 
 they were appointed to the new office. 
 
 The office of deacon in our own Church seems 
 rather to have conformed itself to the example of the 
 first deacons, than to the intention of those who 
 appointed them. St. Paul, in his letter to the Philip- 
 pians, addresses himself to ''the saints in Christ 
 Jesus, with the bishops and deacons ; " and in writing 
 to Timothy, he exacts very much the same qualifica- 
 tions for a deacon that he does for a bishop ; evidently 
 regarding them as offices the same in kind, spiritual in 
 character and in functions . And the Church in our own 
 day, whatever may be the custom among the sects, 
 has refused to recognize any difference of a spiritual 
 nature between the offices of priest and deacon, or to 
 mark any distinction between what is called secular 
 and what is called sacred in their service of Christ. 
 
 The Apostles seem to have tried to make this dis- 
 tinction ; and to judge from all that is recorded in the 
 Bible of the doings of the first seven deacons, and of 
 the history of the office afterwards, it was a failure. 
 They evidently recognized the sacredness of the office, 
 as they would probably have claimed a sacred cha- 
 racter for all lawful callings ; for they chose men full 
 of the Holy Ghost, and they ordained them to the 
 office with prayer and the laying on of hands ; but 
 quite as evidently they regarded it as an inferior office 
 to their own. We do not always imitate them in this 
 belief of the sacredness of all honest work, though 
 we often fall into the error — if it was one — of sepa- 
 
CLEEGY AND LAITY. 
 
 243 
 
 rating duties Tvhich should be joined together, of ap- 
 pointing men to inferior offices who turn- out to be fit 
 for higher ones. 
 
 Churchwardens, reHeving officers, guardians of the 
 poor, these are some of the offices which more nearly 
 express the duties of the first deacons than the 
 modern diaconate does ; and it would be a little shock 
 to modern sentiment to insist that candidates for 
 these offices should be full of the Holy Spirit and of 
 wisdom. There would be few men to whom it would 
 not appear fantastic to demand or expect such a 
 heavenly gift for some of these duties. 
 
 But there are many signs in our day of the same 
 desire which possessed the Apostles to separate the 
 lower and the higher functions in the work of the 
 clergy. And this theory of duty, strange to say, 
 exists side by side with a growing necessity imposed 
 on the clergy of undertaking all sorts of work — much 
 of it of the very same kind as the first deacons were 
 ordained to do. Notwithstanding the lesson of the 
 origin and history of the diaconate, men are found 
 who talk with some contempt of "table-serving," and 
 of "secular" ways of doing good, as if we had any 
 faculties for judging of the relative importance of the 
 "different administrations of the same Spirit." And 
 supposing it were possible to do this — i.e. to judge of 
 the relative importance of the manifold duties a 
 clergyman has to do in these days — it would be im- 
 possible to deny the importance of any one of them, 
 or to measure it. 
 
244 
 
 CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 The clergy are expected to work for the good of men 
 in every way ; to cultivate mind and heart, feelings, 
 will and emotions ; to study the laws of health and 
 disease ; to provide counteractions for the influence 
 of occupations or dwellings on the majority of most 
 of their congregations. This is because every man is 
 such a complex being that they do not know how to 
 approach him, nor what influence is most likely to 
 affect him. 
 
 Very few clergymen have the chance of doing what 
 the Apostles did or hoped to do, i.e. of leaving all 
 secular business to be done by others, and giving 
 themselves to the ministry of the Word and to prayer. 
 Some, probably, consider this a misfortune and a 
 drawback. It is more likely to be a great blessing 
 and help to themselves, and to both departments of 
 work in which their life is spent ; for no one can doubt 
 that it would be a misfortune for most parishes if the 
 clergyman gave himself wholly to prayer and the 
 ministry of the Word. It is easy to imagine this 
 without enlarging on details ; but the damage to his 
 own character from this separation from all the 
 interests and associations of his flock would be instant 
 and obvious. It would not only not tend to make 
 him less worldly, as the phrase is, but it would in- 
 tensify all the worldliness that was in him by con- 
 fining all his thought on worldly interests to his own ; 
 by cutting him from the great antidote to such world- 
 liness, sympathy in the good of others. It would be 
 no reproach to be worldly if the world were what it 
 
CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 245 
 
 ought to be ; and it is the work of the clergy to make 
 it, by whatever means, more and more the kingdom of 
 Christ as it gets older. They cannot do this by reckon- 
 ing anything they can do for it as less than the 
 noblest work, or by separating themselves from it as if 
 it were not all God's world, and men were not all His 
 childi'en. It is doubtful whether even prayer and the 
 ministry of the Word would not suffer from the same 
 divorce — whether prayer could be as real, whether 
 preaching could be as dh'ect ; but it is certain that 
 this separation of sacred from secular functions in 
 the work of the clergy would give a sanction to 
 opinions always too ready to show themselves. 
 
 Nothing could be more mischievous both to Chris- 
 tianity and civilization than anything which would 
 tend to broaden or deepen the line that separates the 
 things of the visible from those of the invisible world, 
 the layman from the clergyman. Nothing is more 
 hopeful in modern Christianity than the way in which 
 the sacredness of all useful work is recognized, or than 
 the unprofessional light in which it is regarded. Good 
 works are no longer now regarded as the exclusive 
 duty of clergymen. There are many ways in which 
 laymen do much of what was either not done at all, 
 or was done by ladies or by the clergy not many years 
 ago. The distinction between the two orders is being 
 obliterated in the way it ought to be, that is from the 
 positive side, from the growing conviction in many 
 minds that we all have an ordination at the hands of 
 God to do His work here. It is being obliterated 
 
246 
 
 CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 not by clergymen becoming more like laymen, but 
 by laymen, in this respect at all events, becoming 
 more like clergymen. There is no sign that men 
 wish to release the clergy from the obligations they 
 have taken upon themselves, except by the formal 
 way of act of parliament ; for side by side with this 
 assertion of the laity that all the Lord's people are 
 prophets, and have a right to labour in the vineyard, 
 are stricter claims upon the clergy, higher demands 
 upon their thought, upon their spiritual life, upon the 
 elevation and discipline of their character. We have 
 passed from the sphere of the magical into that of 
 the spiritual in our conception of theii' person and 
 office. 
 
 Perhaps there never was a time when the official 
 pretensions of the clergy as a body were, on the whole, 
 so low in comparison with their personal influence, 
 as at present. Their influence cannot be measured 
 by the extent to which men admit their miraculous 
 powers or their mysterious commission; for these have 
 been freely acknowledged when their social influence 
 has been at zero ; but now that it is felt that their 
 influence is the same in kind as that of all men in 
 whom God has put His Sj^irit and the will to work for 
 others, we feel that modern analysis has driven them 
 from an insecure position and founded them upon 
 a rock. Not less but more is exacted of men who 
 venture to occupy such a position, and the more the 
 real ground of the sacredness of this calling is ac- 
 knowledged, the more likely are we to see all needless 
 
CLEKGY AND LAITY. 
 
 247 
 
 barriers and distinctions removed that separate the 
 two orders in a Christian state. 
 
 We ah-eady see our priests and deacons among the 
 most active at serving tables ; may we not look for- 
 ward to a time not far off when some of our table- 
 servers shall imitate the example of the first seven, 
 and preach Christ with wisdom and power ? 
 
 There are signs of the possible realization of this 
 community of office ; symptoms, if not of the abolition 
 of all distinction, yet of a time — as some think — 
 when the clergy shall cease to be a paid order of 
 ministers, and shall imitate some of the earliest 
 preachers of the Gospel in working for their living 
 with their hands (or with their heads, as some of 
 them do now), and being chargeable to no man. We 
 are probably a long way from this state of things, 
 which some hope and others dread, and meantime 
 in many churches in England financial affairs are 
 in a very bad way. District churches have neither 
 the freedom of unestablished communities nor the 
 emoluments of endowed churches. They have neither 
 the security of an established religion nor the zeal of 
 the voluntary system ; for this reason, because finan- 
 cially they are in the same condition as a nonconfor- 
 mist chapel, and yet the persons who attend them 
 belong to an establishment. To belong to an establish- 
 ment is to grow up with the notion that your religion 
 is provided for you; that you have as much right to a 
 seat in your parish chm'ch, and to the benefit of the 
 services performed there, as you have to a seat at your 
 
248 
 
 CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 own tables — which is true. District churches how- 
 ever are not parish churches, and they have not the 
 means of providing seats and services gratis. But we 
 have been brought up to expect our pubHc worship 
 as a free gift, and it is hard to divest ourselves of 
 these associations. We forget the new population 
 that has sprung up in England since the tithes were 
 settled on the Church ; and since the investments for 
 money were created which are at once effect and 
 cause of the new class. Whatever may be the pro- 
 portion that all the other capital of England bears to 
 the value of the soil, it pays nothing (except by way 
 of voluntary offering) to the National Church, while 
 the land pays a tenth of its produce ; and this is 
 a fact which should be borne in mind by all who 
 derive their incomes directly or indirectly from other 
 capital. The result of belonging to a National Church 
 is that we have not been brought up to give to our 
 public worship. We give freely to other things, but 
 while we are most exacting about the character, 
 ability, and work of the clergy, we have no idea how 
 to pay them. 
 
 The case is quite different with Nonconformists. 
 It is a tradition with them to support their ministers, 
 and they do it on a scale which shames us. Three 
 or four dissenting chapels in and about London might 
 be named where the congregation guarantee their 
 pastor much more than the value of an exceptionally 
 rich benefice, free of all trouble and all charge for the 
 services ; and on the other hand, what is the history 
 
CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 249 
 
 of almost all district churches, of all but a very few 
 free and open churches ? Is it not a constant record 
 of underpaid clergy, and a perpetual debt to the church- 
 wardens ? There are very few unendowed churches 
 in London, except those that are especially attractive 
 from theu' ritual or preaching, which pay their way, 
 and give a decent income to the clergyman. People 
 who go to church and see everything as they like to 
 see it, forget who pays for all these things, or think 
 the clergyman the proper person to pay for them. A 
 little calculation would convince them that, after the 
 expenses of the church are paid, there must be little 
 or nothing for the clergy. Any one who would take 
 the trouble to go into the accounts would be convinced 
 of the truth of this, and would find that the churches 
 where all the seats are free are as a rule the worst off. 
 
 The whole subject ought to be considered indepen- 
 dently, and on its merits, and not according to con- 
 ventional notions or established customs, and men 
 ought to ask themselves who are the proper persons 
 to bear these expenses, and what proportion they 
 severally ought to contribute. Evidently much more 
 than it is the custom to give now. 
 
 People would be slow to confess that the small sum 
 paid in pew-rents represents at all their sense of the 
 advantages of public worship ; or that the income 
 arising in most cases from this som-ce to the vicars of 
 district churches is a fit remuneration for the brains 
 and the work of such men ; or that the personal, as 
 distinguished from the real property of this country, 
 
250 
 
 CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 pays anything like its fair proportion towards the 
 support of the established religion of the land ; or that 
 what they individually give represents their thankful- 
 ness for " all the blessings of this life," or that it is 
 at all consistent with the profession of gratitude they 
 make every Sunday for " the means of grace." 
 
BKIDLING THE TONGUE. 
 
 St. James i. 26. — " If any man among you seem to he religious, and 
 hridleth not his tongue, hut deceiveth his own heart, that man*s 
 religion is vain."" 
 
 The Epistle of St. James is very unlike most of the 
 other writings of the New Testament. It deals very 
 little with the comforts or the hopes of the Gospel ; 
 very little with the appeals or the encouragements, 
 with the arguments or the inferences, which St. Paul 
 and St. John base on the facts of the Incarnation, the 
 Atonement, and the Eesurrection. And it does not 
 touch at all on the theology of the gospel history. It 
 is a protest for morality, and it may have been called 
 forth by the very sense of freedom which the gospel 
 awakened in its first converts, and the license into 
 which it betrayed them ; and so may be compared to 
 St. Paul's appeal to the Thessalonians, not *'to use 
 their liberty for a cloke of maliciousness ; " or the 
 writer may have seen the Jews to whom he wrote 
 sharing in the general corruption of manners which 
 characterized the time. It is in character both more 
 ancient and more modern than gospel writing or 
 teaching. Its denunciations of one vice after another 
 
252 
 
 BRIDLING THE TONGUE. 
 
 are like the woes of Isaiah or Ezekiel against the 
 vices of an advanced civilization. And they are like 
 the earlier utterances in their abrupt transitions and 
 unconnected warnings. St. James is the prophet of 
 the apostolic epoch, with whom "to obey is better than 
 sacrifice," and " to do justice and to love mercy " is 
 what is required of a man. And if, in his threats 
 against oppression and servility, against falsehood 
 and boasting, we are reminded of the old teachers of 
 Israel, it must be allowed on the other hand, that his 
 definition of pure religion, his condemnation of evil- 
 speaking and of partisanship, his protest for the 
 Giver of every good and perfect gift, remind us at a 
 great distance, and in spite of many differences, of the 
 moral teaching of Christ, and show where " the Lord's 
 brother " had learnt his zeal for godliness, and his 
 true intuition of Divine service. 
 
 But if his letter is ancient in its tone, it is modern 
 too. It is in substance, though not in style, like a 
 modern sermon ; a sermon preached by a man who, 
 thinking he had taught his hearers enough of the 
 theology of their religion, set himself to apply it to 
 practice. His analysis brmgs out fault after fault in 
 character, and shows how false the view is ; how 
 pernicious the habit ; how fatal the result ; how vain 
 all profession without conscientious practice ; how 
 necessary and wholesome is submission to the will of 
 God. Nothing can be less like St. Paul's stirring 
 appeals: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek 
 those things that are above;" "Walk worthy of the 
 
BRIDLING THE TOXGUE. 
 
 253 
 
 vocation -^herewith ye are called : " appeals which 
 underlie when they are not expressed in the moral 
 teaching of the modern preacher — than this cata- 
 logue of sins with their wrong, their folly, and their 
 doom. 
 
 The ch'cumstances of his life prohably account a 
 good deal for his mode of teaching. He lived in 
 Jerusalem (and seems hardly ever to have gone out of 
 it) when it was filling up the measm-e of its iniquity. 
 In those last sad days which preceded its fall, his 
 righteous soul was vexed by the sight of moral evils 
 that the world has seldom seen surpassed, and his 
 writing takes its tone from his experience. The place 
 was corrupt with the corruption of a worn-out civihza- 
 tion, and accordingly the vices he denounces are not 
 the brutal violence or the brutal excesses of savage 
 life. But it was not the corruption of a Pagan town, 
 like Corinth or Ephesus, whose religion encom-aged 
 foulness and sensuality ; it was the degradation of a 
 society which at its worst remembered that it was a 
 witness against the abominations of the people about 
 it ; and it was the degradation of a religion which, 
 with all its mistakes about God, had never thought 
 that He would wink at personal impurity, or the out- 
 rage of domestic life. Again, it must be remembered 
 that he lived in a large town. People were crowded 
 together ; thought and feeling were stimulated by 
 personal collision to an extent unknown in smaller 
 communities, or among the scattered population of 
 the country. The sins he enumerates in his letter to 
 
254 
 
 BRIDLING THE TONGUE. 
 
 his scattered countrymen, and which he imputes to 
 them, seem to be town sins ; just those he would be 
 likely to see in such a society as he lived in, where 
 the husk of a religion was still the social basis and 
 the dominant influence ; where foreign rule had barred 
 all the careers of ambition and all the outlets of 
 energy, and the dammed-up forces spent themselves 
 in rivalry, in jealous}^, in covetousness, in formal 
 religionism, in local partisanship, in slander and 
 boasting. 
 
 His neighbours, he says, have lost the essence of 
 pure religion in their ceremonies and wrangles ; even 
 in visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction 
 they have failed, he hints, to keep themselves un- 
 spotted from the world. They have come to lay 
 their sins at God's door, and to think that their party 
 strife can forward His truth ; as so many think still. 
 They are servile and cringing to the rich, and super- 
 cilious to the poor. They have forgotten the common 
 duty of speaking the truth, and the claims of party 
 among them are stronger than the claim of right; 
 they are slanderous and boastful. The same men 
 who cried out that they were " tempted of God," had 
 no thought of His providence as the ruling power of 
 their lives. And he repeats once more the cry that 
 was heard in Jerusalem, from Isaiah to Nehemiah, 
 against the oppression of the agricultural labourers 
 by the landowners who lived in the city. This was 
 the curse of Judaea as of France and Eome ; an 
 aristocracy living in the capital, and leaving their 
 
BETDLING THE TONGUE. 
 
 255 
 
 estates to be farmed by bailiffs, and the poor to be 
 defrauded and oppressed. 
 
 His Epistle contains, besides, a strong exhortation 
 to submission to the will of God, and to patience 
 under persecution, which may perhaps help to fix 
 its date ; but this is a summary of the evils he sees 
 about him in the capital, and it is against these 
 that he warns his countrymen who are scattered over 
 the towns of Western Asia, Southern Europe, and 
 Northern Africa. This, it must be observed, is the 
 teaching not of a prophet under the monarchy, nor 
 of a moral preacher in the eighteenth century in 
 England; but of an apostle, of the Lord's brother, 
 in the first century of Christianity, when the Lord 
 had barely left the earth, when the enthusiasm of 
 His presence might be thought still to be kindling 
 those who were called by His name. That name is 
 hardly mentioned in the Epistle ; only once after the 
 dedication. From the beginning to the end there is 
 hardly an appeal to a distinctively Christian motive. 
 But it is easy to see how really Christian it is, how 
 true its insight into the core of Christianity, how 
 manful the anatomy which could cut down to the 
 canker and expose it. He sees clearly enough that 
 as the gospel is the revelation of a life, the religion of 
 Christ must be a life and not a ritual ; and the first 
 warning, Do not err, my beloved brethren," seems to 
 accompany the exposure of every sin, and to remind 
 the sinner who had a reputation for religion that his 
 religion was vain. 
 
256 
 
 BKIDLING THE TONGUE. 
 
 This is easy to understand of the grosser sins, for 
 no one could imagine a religious life to be consistent 
 with cruelty, falsehood, or impurity. But it sounds 
 like a wide and hopeless verdict to hear of a man 
 who bridles not his tongue," but deceives himself 
 in thinking that he bridles it when he does not, 
 that " his rehgion is vain." No more disheartening 
 epitaph could be written upon a life than this. The 
 waste of time is as nothing in the balance against 
 wasted feelings and the long mockery of self. And 
 yet it is this fault that is singled out as the crucial 
 instance of self-deception among the many evils that 
 seem worse ; as the poison that can blight a life among 
 many that seem more acrid and noxious. And by no 
 chance selection, for he quotes it again and again for 
 warning and reproof. In one shape or other it is 
 almost the burden of his letter ; and it is a suggestive 
 fact that it presented itself to him as the most 
 prominent temptation of a civilized society, so strong 
 a temptation as to connect itself naturally with all 
 their sins. 
 
 It shows his insight into human nature. For 
 speech is the outlet and the expression of what is 
 within ; and in civilized states, where action is re- 
 strained by law and custom, it is almost its only 
 expression ; so that to regulate it is the essence of that 
 self-denial, to practise which is to follow Christ ; to 
 give it a loose rein is the self-assertion which is the 
 denial of Him. And there is no temptation so en- 
 during and universal. For there is no condition of 
 
BEIDLIXG THE TOXGUE. 
 
 257 
 
 life, except solitude, where it does not arise. No age 
 is too old or too young, no station too high or too low 
 for it ; appetite may fail or be satisfied, passion may 
 cool, malice may weary, but the temptation to talk 
 never fails. 
 
 The least harm that can come of constant yielding 
 to any temptation is to make the character thin and 
 frivolous. A very short experience of life will show 
 that the worst that come of this one is to make it harsh 
 or imscrupulous ; false or censorious ; arrogant or 
 impure ; in fact, to stamp it with that special fault 
 to which the tongue is most commonly used to give 
 expression ; besides its effect of weakening self-control 
 in other directions by opening a free channel to feeling 
 and passion in one. 
 
 One value of this warning is that it introduces 
 Christianity within the inmost sphere of life, and not 
 only brings under its control a habit which, when it 
 is neither false, malicious, nor im^Dure, is not thought 
 in general to have a moral aspect at all ; but makes 
 the regulation of it the turning-point of faith, the 
 battle-ground on which is to be fought out the ques- 
 tion whether we will follow Christ or the lead of 
 impulse or of whim. If Christianity is not a pro- 
 fession but a character, everything that tends to 
 weaken or to mar it makes or shows the profession 
 to be vain ; either vain as an untrue representation 
 of what is within, or vain as an influence on the life 
 it is meant to mould. 
 
 But there are two special points to be noticed in 
 
 s 
 
258 
 
 BEIDLING THE TONGUE. 
 
 this caution against an unbridled tongue. First, that 
 the writer does not say that conversation which every- 
 one would acknowledge to be unchristian is the sign 
 that a man's religion is vain. He does not stop 
 to particularize self-assertion or ribaldry, misrepre- 
 sentation or innuendo, falsehood or slander (which are 
 faults of character expressing themselves through the 
 tongue) ; what he condemns is uncontrolled speech 
 of any kind, as tending by its action on character to 
 counteract all the sobering and bracing effect of 
 religious conviction and religious observance. 
 
 Indulgence of one kind begets weakness to control 
 others ; and this leads to the second and more im- 
 portant point, viz. that an unbridled tongue is not 
 only a sign but a cause of the evil to which it gives 
 expression. Faults of character finding this easy 
 power of taking form in action are, if not produced, 
 at least confirmed and intensified by it. The tongue 
 being the readiest instrument to express all feeling, 
 if it is uncontrolled, it makes as well as shows an 
 uncontrolled nature. The character tends to grow 
 like the expression of its transient phases. 
 
 The moral importance of this department of self- 
 control is seen at once if it is shown to be the arena 
 both for restraining and indulging vices which seem 
 at first to be only accidentally connected with it ; 
 and the value of the warning is that it goes down 
 to the fount of character and finds there a spring 
 of action, which, branching into many streams, con- 
 taminates or enfeebles a whole nature with the varied 
 
BRIDLING THE TONGUE. 
 
 259 
 
 poisons borne on their currents. But even if the 
 stream of talk be not poisonous but harmless, to 
 yield to every impulse to it is a form of intemperance, 
 and the result can hardly be much better than the 
 reaction after any other stimulant. The end must 
 be a character without composui'e, without reserve 
 of energy, without self-respect. The habit is in 
 reality self-assertion, because the desire is not pri- 
 marily to give vent to certain views or feehngs, but 
 to give vent to self. Whatever are the individual 
 feature or features of the self within, for the time 
 being they become the whole man, and the desire to 
 express them is an impulse of selfishness. 
 
 Thus dominant impulses tend by repeated indul- 
 gence to cover the whole ground of character. The 
 tongue, for instance, being the readiest outlet of 
 anger, breeds intemperance of the passion it ex- 
 presses; utterance of falsehood weakens regard for 
 truth ; the habit of unfiiendly criticism of the absent 
 begets a pleasure in the failings of others; impure 
 words breed again the unchaste thoughts from which 
 they spring. 
 
 Such a tendency cannot be regarded merely as a 
 pecuharity, not affecting a pure faith or benevolent 
 activities ; it is, on the contrary, the permanent ally 
 of all that is evil within by its versatile power of 
 combination with every besetting sin. For it not 
 only stamps a man's character in his own sight, and 
 makes the next transgression easier by the previous 
 license, but it commits him to evil in the eyes of 
 
260 
 
 BKIDLING THE TONGUE. 
 
 others, and by destroying his self-respect, breaks 
 down the last bulwark against temptation. 
 
 Nor is the account balanced by the opposite power 
 of the tongue as the exponent of all that is true and 
 pure and loving in the heart ; for the tendency of 
 words in strengthening and intensifying good impulses 
 is by no means proportionate to their force in diffusing 
 and consolidating what is evil. Under many circum- 
 stances their effect is quite the reverse of this ; they 
 may weaken the force of good resolutions, and waste 
 the energy of virtuous impulses either by exaggerat- 
 ing them, or by giving them an apparent but unreal 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Experience of the world soon teaches men that an 
 unbridled tongue is ruin in affairs, and they learn 
 to weigh the effect of words before they speak. Weak- 
 ness and disorder come of it in a sphere where 
 success can be measured and failure is obvious and 
 unwelcome ; but the slow degeneration of a spiritual 
 nature, that is its sure result, is only marked by 
 those who watch themselves, and the general failure 
 along the whole career is hidden in the grave. 
 
 It may sound like the exaggeration which is com- 
 monly charged against preaching, to trace such a 
 consequence to such a cause ; but not so, perhaps, 
 to those who have observed how a sore spreads in a 
 character; how feeble violence of talk reappears in 
 fitful purpose ; how petty insincerities issue in self- 
 deception; how the conventional antipathies and 
 artificial enthusiasms of society sap reality of feeling. 
 
BKIDLIXG THE TONGUE. 
 
 261 
 
 Students of human nature will infer from hints like 
 these that the moralist of the apostolic body took 
 no superficial view of his subject when he despaired 
 of the religion of the unbridled talker, and did not 
 exaggerate when he said, "If any man ofiend not in 
 word, the same is a perfect man." 
 
THE BOND OF MATKIMONY. 
 
 1 Cor. vii. 14. — " For the unhelievwg husband is sanctified hy the 
 wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified hy the husband." 
 
 A GOOD deal of the inconvenience of what are now 
 called mixed marriages was no doubt experienced 
 by the early Chm:ch. Marriages of Christians with 
 Pagans would of course sometimes occur, and conver- 
 sions, most often probably of the wife, would occasion- 
 ally take place after marriage. St. Paul seems to 
 have acted very sensibly about them. If the husband 
 and wife in such cases can agree to live together, he 
 says, let them not separate on account of their differ- 
 ence in religion. 
 
 It would perhaps have been well if the same sort 
 of moderation had prevailed in the dealings of some 
 modern missionaries with their converts in poly- 
 gamous countries. St. Paul recognizes the sacred- 
 ness of marriage as an obligation independent of the 
 profession of any religious opinion, and as one not to 
 be disowned in consequence of any divergence. In 
 countries where polygamy is or has been practised, 
 it has not been in defiance of religious sanction or of 
 the conception of marriage ; but in obedience to the 
 
THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 263 
 
 one and with genuine, if mistaken, recognition of the 
 other. To dissolve marriages conscientiously con- 
 tracted seems opposed to the teaching of this chapter ; 
 and to be as unwise as it is cruel to a number of 
 women who entered innocently into them, and who 
 break all their social ties and lose their home by an 
 arbitrary dissolution of them. To sanction the form- 
 ation of fresh polygamous marriages after the pro- 
 fession of Christianity would be unfaithfulness to some 
 of its best teaching, and a deliberate sacrifice of one of 
 the chief trium^Dhs it has won. To be able to say that 
 slavery and polygamy disappear before Christianity is 
 to claim for it the credit of perhaps the two greatest 
 forward steps in morality that have marked the pro- 
 gi'ess of the world. 
 
 But it was no trifling concession that St. Paul 
 made, and it was no slight conquest of his Jewish 
 prejudices. Sj^rung from a race that would not eat 
 with a Gentile, he suffers men and women to live 
 together in the most intimate of all relations, between 
 whom he could see a far more vital divergence than 
 between ch'cumcision and uncircumcision. He mas- 
 tered a feeling as powerful as the prejudice which 
 his fellow-countrymen have not overcome to this day. 
 It was a proof of the large and human view he took 
 of Christianity and of the sacredness in his sight of 
 human ties. No one can take a higher view of mar- 
 riage than St. Paul ; so sacred is it with him that he 
 even permits this mysterious bond of spiritual and 
 corporeal identity to remain unbroken between those 
 
264 THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 who to him were at the opposite poles of existence ; 
 between those who confessed and those who denied 
 Christ ; for to him to Hve was Christ. Few men in 
 his circumstances and with his convictions would 
 have had the courage and the largeness of heart to 
 grant this liberty, or to recognize the superior claim 
 of this great human tie to all obligations that might 
 be entered into after it. 
 
 The same kind of difficulty about mixed marriages 
 often arises now, but with less excuse ; for they are for 
 the most part contracted between persons who do not 
 differ as the Christian and the Pagan did by, what 
 it is hardly an exaggeration to call, a fundamental 
 difference of conception about good and evil on many 
 practical questions. The parties to such marriages 
 are for the most part both Christians, and differ little 
 or not at all about the being and character of their 
 objects of worship — but only about the mode of 
 worshipping them. They can never have any differ- 
 ence about what is right and wrong in practice ; they 
 must have the same hopes and aims ; salvation to 
 them must mean the same deliverance from evil ; and 
 they must look for it to the same Saviour. 
 
 But we hear lamentations over such marriages, as 
 if they were calamities rather than inconveniences ; 
 and we hear observations on them which show that a 
 good deal more is thought of the profession of any 
 religion than of the practice of virtue. For it must 
 surely be granted that a man or woman would be a 
 better husband or wife in proportion to their sincere 
 
THE BOXD OF MATRBEOXY. 
 
 265 
 
 adherence to any form of Christianity. The disquali- 
 fication or disadvantage would arise, not from the 
 genuineness of the religious life, but from the zeal for 
 the peculiarities of the sect ; fi'om what is human in 
 religion that is, and not from what is Divine. It 
 ought of course to be considered a much greater mis- 
 fortune for a man or a woman to be united to a cold or 
 indifferent professor of the same faith than to a sincere 
 Christian of a different persuasion. But this is little 
 regarded in comparison ; and an excellent Christian 
 character is not thought much of a make-weight 
 against the di-awback of belonging to a different 
 Church. What is of the essence of Christianity that 
 is of less account than its accidents. 
 
 The inconveniences that arise, not so much from 
 these marriages themselves as from the view taken of 
 them, are fi'equent and conspicuous. Questions arise 
 about the education of children and the disposition of 
 property which one cannot help thinking would hardly 
 occur if the first devotion of the heart were to Him 
 whose name husband and wife bear in common; if 
 they could believe that the bond which unites them 
 made them "heirs together of the grace of life," and 
 was a channel of that grace to those who recognize 
 its sacredness ; if "the heritage and gift that cometh 
 of the Lord " were thought of as one not to be squab- 
 bled about in law-com'ts, but as a cause as well as a 
 sign of their unity ; to be devoted to Him at all 
 hazards, in whatever Church they might be reared. 
 It is difficult to believe that, with a wedded pair 
 
266 THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 belonging to different Churches, many such cases 
 would not find a loving settlement if love were there 
 already; and if Christ, and not their own Church, 
 were uppermost in their hearts. 
 
 We know what suffering — through no fault of their 
 own — has been brought by persecuting laws on the 
 partners in mixed marriages, and on the clergy who 
 have performed the ceremony, even within the com- 
 pass of the British Isles ; and we cannot help trying, 
 as we read of such things, to imagine what St. Paul 
 would have thought of the Christianity of the eighteenth 
 and nineteenth centuries ; how he would have mourned 
 over the body from which the spirit had fled, as 
 he saw men and women suffering social and legal 
 disabilities for marriages with Christians differing 
 only on points which he would not recognize, and 
 Christian ministers punished for consecrating the 
 union of those whose hearts were already one. He 
 might even see a greater anomaly yet : for we have 
 heard of wives and husbands separating from one 
 another on account of religious difference; even of 
 religious men, if not rupturing at least slighting the 
 most solemn of all ties on the plea of the hindrance or 
 inconvenience the presence of a wife belonging to a 
 different Church occasioned them in their public work. 
 The kind of wall of ice it raises nowadays between 
 members of the Church of England and their former 
 friends to join the Church of Kome is well known to 
 every one. 
 
 Of course marriages between members of different 
 
THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 267 
 
 Chiu'ches are not the only mixed marriages in the 
 world. If they were, as has been said, and both were 
 Christians first and Church-people afterwards, the 
 evil and inconvenience would be slight. But besides 
 these, and leaving out of account for the present 
 mere differences of character great enough even to 
 make living together almost hopeless — the really fatal 
 kind of mixed marriage — there is a growing number 
 of marriages between women who believe and men 
 who do not. And this arises fi'om two causes : (1) 
 because the natm-e of a woman is more disposed to 
 rehgion ; and (2) because men take more interest in 
 the literature and the inquiries which have such a 
 powerful influence on the religious opinions of the 
 day. There must be many such marriages between 
 men of all shades of religious behef down to agnos- 
 ticism, and women devoutly orthodox. There must be 
 many excellent husbands in the world about us who find 
 themselves quite unable to accept the faith and the 
 formularies of their wives. Perhaps no marriage would 
 be more suitable for a man of this class than with a 
 woman who was religious in the best sense of the word ; 
 who looked to God as the Father of men and to Christ 
 as their Saviour from all evil, whether delusions of 
 mind or defilements of body ; who knew in her own 
 heart (and was convinced that God must think) that 
 sin was worse than intellectual error ; and that belief 
 in goodness without belief in the supernatm-al was 
 beyond expression better than orthodox profession 
 and a bad life. 
 
268 
 
 THE BOND OF MATKIMONY. 
 
 The real difficulty (referred to before in the mar- 
 riages of Eoman Catholics and Protestants) that 
 arises in these marriages, and is arising all about 
 us, is how to educate the children. If a husband in 
 such a position is sensible and considerate, he will 
 remember how he arrived at his own doubts ; he will 
 confess that children cannot be brought up on nega- 
 tions ; and that the only honest doubt is the result of 
 individual inquiry. He will be generous enough to 
 give his children the chance of his own experience 
 of life, and the training that all their Christian 
 brethren have ; and he will not prejudge the case for 
 them before they have a voice in the matter. He will 
 feel that to bring them up Christians is not to prejudge 
 the case ; for men always advance towards liberty of 
 thought and breadth of view from their earliest teach- 
 ing; whereas to bring them up agnostics would, in 
 almost all cases, be to shut the door behind them. Of 
 course the difficulty would be only postponed; for 
 childi'en, as they grow up, see the difference in habits 
 caused by difference of opinions. But the recognition 
 of absolute divergence would come only when their 
 minds were beginning to be capable of thinking and 
 deciding for themselves. 
 
 Such a marriage is a difficult but a very noble 
 position for a woman and for a man too. It is more 
 easy to imagine than to set down the number of 
 claims that would be daily made upon their gene- 
 rosity, their self-restraint, and their high principle. 
 On the one hand the unbelieving husband might be 
 
THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 269 
 
 sanctified to a Christian holiness of character by the 
 wife; on the other the pure life and the high tone 
 and the righteousness of the man firmly believing in 
 right and goodness, although believing in nothing else, 
 might strengthen and elevate the woman who had 
 much to strengthen and purify her which was denied 
 to him. For it might be found by the orthodox wife 
 of a sceptic that her husband believed that some 
 things were duties which she ignored, and that some 
 failings were faults, though she thought them venial 
 habits of society. And the husband might learn by 
 experience that his wife had a resource in times of 
 trouble and temptation which his own convictions did 
 not afford to him. There is no doubt that marriages 
 of this kind are a growing difficulty in the world, and 
 it is as well to consider what is our duty about them. 
 
 It must of com'se be the first of all duties to 
 recognize the good there is in either party, to ac- 
 knowledge its source and to believe in its inevitable 
 tendency ; to be convinced that those who believe in 
 right and in one another have a broad and strong 
 basis for their wedded life and must build on that, 
 with frank acknowledgment of difference and good 
 hope that each will sanctify the other by holding fast 
 and living up to so much faith as they have in 
 common. 
 
 For it is possible to conceive and to contract ''mixed 
 marriages" of a worse type than this, where the 
 one party or the other, without denying what he can- 
 not see, believes only in what he can. It is possible 
 
270 
 
 THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 to be agnostic of, or not to recognize, other objects of 
 faith than the persons and events of Divine history. 
 Truth and love, justice and purity may be the gods 
 of the agnostic who has no other, and may be ignored 
 by one who calls himself by the name of Him who to 
 us is the incarnation of all that is noble in man. An 
 unbelieving husband or an unbelieving wife may be 
 one who believes neither in men nor women ; not in 
 the marriage he has contracted ; not in honour, or 
 kindness ; not in justice, or self-control ; not in duty, 
 compassion, or mercy. He may be one who is either 
 coldly self-absorbed by conviction, or grossly self- 
 indulgent from want of self-restraint, or imperiously 
 self-asserting, or heedless of any feelings or interests 
 that stand between self and its gratification. 
 
 No doubt there are married persons of this class, 
 unbelievers as real as the pagan consorts St. Paul 
 wrote about. No one ever thinks their want of faith 
 a reason for dissolving the marriage tie ; though it 
 is a yoke harder to bear than difference of faith, 
 which the hard or gross husband, or the cold vain wife, 
 imposes on the partner's neck. 
 
 Here is an opportunity for the believing husband 
 to sanctify the wife, for the believing wife to sanctify 
 the husband ; and by the same means by which the 
 believing partner amongst St. Paul's Corinthian con- 
 verts was to sanctify the pagan spouse, viz. by ex- 
 hibiting in life and conduct the strength of those 
 convictions which are mere names to the unbeliever, 
 whether they are belief in the creed of a Church, or 
 
THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 271 
 
 in whatsoever things are pure, true, just, lovely, and 
 of good report. Is it not possible, by revering the 
 ignored sanctions of wedded life ; by asserting in life, 
 and not in words only, the supremacy of slighted 
 virtues ; by patient continuance in well-doing ; by the 
 protest of conduct, not of speech — is it not possible 
 for the believer in the unseen realities of human 
 holiness to sanctify the believer only in what is seen ? 
 Is it not possible to reverse the issue of the Poet 
 Laureate's description of such a marriage ? He makes 
 a slighted lover say — 
 
 " Is it well to wish thee happy ? — having known me — to decline 
 On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine ! 
 
 " Yet it shall be : thou shalt lower to his level day by day, 
 What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay. 
 
 " As the husband is, the wife is : thou art mated with a clown, 
 And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee 
 down." 
 
 This is a picture of desecration, not sanctification ; 
 perhaps it is not uncommon, and not always the 
 work of the man, though the process of a man's 
 deterioration through his wife may be different. The 
 ruling infirmities of either sex must of course be 
 looked to as the prime causes of evil influence ; what 
 Tennyson calls the grossness of nature in the man ; 
 and the very evil the lover in his poem is suffering 
 from, viz. selfish vanity and cold disregard of the feel- 
 ings of others, in the woman. No doubt there are 
 more homes that need to be sanctified by the believer's 
 faith from evils such as these, than from modern in- 
 
272 
 
 THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 fidelity ; and there is as little doubt that the task is 
 harder. 
 
 It needs a strong faith to undertake it ; a faith 
 not only in the supremacy of goodness, but in its 
 power to conquer ; a patience not to endure only, but 
 to wait and to hope ; a courage not only to go on, 
 but to resist " being lowered to his level day by day; " 
 or a motive so powerful as the longing desire to 
 sanctify the husband or the wife for the sake of the 
 children which are the pledge, and ought to be the 
 sacrament of wedded love — the outward and visible 
 sign of the grace of true matrimony, a possession in 
 common of what is dearest on earth to both. 
 
 It may be said that we bring such evils on our- 
 selves ; that marriages are made in haste ; that 
 there are few opportunities to people of knowing one 
 another, even that there is a deliberate concealment 
 of real character on either side ; that selfish or 
 sordid motives actuate both ; that the influence of 
 the man on the woman, and the woman on the man, 
 is not good before marriage ; that neither tries to 
 discover, to evoke, and to foster what is noblest in 
 the other ; that the woman does not value the man 
 or the marriage for his high qualities, or set a high 
 ideal of life before him ; that the man does not choose 
 the woman always or chiefly for the crowning virtues 
 of woman ; that the effect of his attention is often to 
 encourage the vanity which is her besetting infirmity, 
 and not to elevate her to reality of study, work, 
 or aim ; that, in a word, people associate in an atmo- 
 
THE BOND OF MATRBIOXY. 273 
 
 sphere of affectation and unreality before marriage, 
 in which antipathies and enthusiasms are equally 
 artificial, and that nothing better can be expected 
 than is seen often to be the result. Of coui'se there 
 is some truth in all this ; and the truer it is the 
 more manifest is the power of marriage to sanctify a 
 union thus brought about ; the more need of the con- 
 viction of this power to make it what probably a large 
 number of marriages are, som-ces of joy, strength, and 
 hohness to wife and husband. For by whatever means 
 brought about and under whatever misapprehension, 
 marriage, to those who use it right, will be always the 
 means of a subtle and elevating discipline of character 
 that can be gained in no other way. So elevating 
 because the virtues of a social being find in it a sphere 
 of voluntary exercise. Husbands and wives do not feel 
 bound to " assume a vh'tue if they have it not," and 
 in the privacy of home there is no " social jDressm-e " 
 to force them to be courteous, considerate and fair- 
 minded. So subtle because some of the vital elements 
 of happy wedlock are bred and nourished uncon- 
 sciously. Self-restraint becomes instinctive in the 
 perpetual presence of those whose relation demands 
 it as a right. Self-denial is tm-ned into indulgence 
 when it is exercised for those who are nearest to self. 
 Trust is naturally engendered by association with a 
 life identified with our own. Homely vii'tues like 
 these lead up to the highest level of associated life ; viz. 
 to sympathy, which is living in another's life, and is 
 the sanctification of the husband or the wife who 
 
 T 
 
274 
 
 THE BOND OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 may have begun wedded life without believing in 
 marriage. 
 
 And besides the unconscious action of the state 
 upon the man or woman, it supplies the most power- 
 ful of all motives to self -improvement. Wife, and 
 children, or husband and children, are sometimes 
 a check or stimulus to those whom nothing else can 
 rouse or can restrain. ''For their sakes I sanctify 
 myself," has doubtless been the motive and the 
 secret history of many a changed career. However 
 the change comes, by unconscious action or by con- 
 scious effort, those who by being true to the spirit 
 of marriage, seek their joy and live their lives in the 
 joy and the lives of others, find that they have attained 
 to the secret of the life eternal. 
 
JOY AND SORROW. 
 
 2 Cor. vi. 10. — " As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing" 
 
 It seems impossible to characterize the great facts of 
 natm-e (of our own or of external nature), the qualities 
 of the Divine Natm-e, our relation to Him and to one 
 another, except in the language either of contrary or of 
 contradictory statements. For instance, when we come 
 to speak of the greatest of all facts — short of spiritual 
 existences — space and time, though we find it im- 
 possible to speak of them either as limited or unlimited, 
 yet in trying to think of them we find oui'selves un- 
 consciously combining these contradictory attributes. 
 And how often is it true in conversation about great 
 subjects, when one view has seemed for a time con- 
 vincing and exhaustive, that it suddenly appears that 
 the opposite view is true also, and we leave off trying 
 to define as a whole what we can see in its details ; 
 or to harmonize truths which we can neither deny 
 nor reconcile. It may be difficult or impossible in 
 thought, but it is often the only possible mode of 
 approaching a just conception ; and in practice almost 
 the whole of conduct depends on it. The problem of 
 life, which so often arises in the shape of a decision 
 
276 
 
 JOY AND SORROW. 
 
 between opposing claims, is how to reconcile them. 
 How to reconcile truth and love ; how to reconcile 
 justice and mercy, faith and reason, prudence and 
 candour, duty to the individual with duty to society, 
 duty to the seen with duty to the unseen. These 
 come before us as intellectual puzzles and as ques- 
 tions of conduct ; as high abstractions or as homely 
 duties; but always hinting this, that we are in a 
 state which is perpetually bearing witness to another 
 order of things, in which such questions of intellect 
 or of conduct may no more exercise us than it does 
 now to see a noble character made up of opposing 
 qualities ; about which contradictory aspects may 
 seem to have been the natural means of arriving at 
 a true idea of it. The same state of things suggests 
 not only a higher existence, but a higher order of 
 intelligences, more like the Supreme Mind, to whom 
 no one truth can contradict another; and a higher 
 order of characters too, more like the Supreme Cha- 
 racter, whose undivided perfection includes all know- 
 ledge and all virtues. It is hard to see how any man 
 can doubt about his immortality who is familiar with 
 these questions either of thought or conduct. They 
 are proofs of a capacity which has no object here — 
 indications of a moral nature which want of know- 
 ledge must leave undeveloped; a capacity which is, 
 so to speak, an organ without a function; and the 
 thoughts begotten of it are like springs that rise within 
 us and flow away past our horizon, where we cannot 
 follow them now, but we shall follow them hereafter." 
 
JOY AND SORROW. 
 
 277 
 
 And yet we never cease to be surprised every time 
 we are puzzled afresh by some insoluble question, 
 every time we are torn afresh by some conflicting 
 claims ; as if this was not the very condition of our 
 lives. We do not always remember that such a state 
 of things may be as necessary a discipline for a higher 
 life as it is regarded by some to be a certain indication 
 of it. 
 
 Just hke this seemed all life to St. Paul — not only 
 thought and conduct, but experience too ; and he 
 seems to have thought not only that all life was so, 
 but that all life ought to be. He gives us his expe- 
 rience as a minister of Christ, and it is made up of 
 opposites. 
 
 Every pair of these contraries would make the 
 subject of an essay; every pair must be most true of 
 the greatest men; of those who try most to hve in 
 the sight of God and to walk by the hght of their own 
 conscience. The higher men rise, the brighter will 
 seem the light and the darker the shadow ; but the 
 contrast of light and shade must be strong in the lives 
 of all who turn their thoughts inwards, upwards, out- 
 wards ; who reason on the experience of life ; to whom 
 the fact of God makes any difference at all ; whose 
 attitude to their neighbour is not a matter of caprice 
 or accident. Still there are few men who could say that 
 ''sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing," was a true descrip- 
 tion of their life ; always either sorrowful or rejoicing 
 would seem more like the truth ; the times of joy and 
 sorrow are not the same, however quickly the seasons 
 
278 
 
 JOY AND SORROW. 
 
 follow one another. Men who have thought them- 
 selves above these moods have laughed at human 
 nature and its childish quick-succeeding fits of tears 
 and laughter, of joy unchastened by reflexion, and 
 sorrow unillumined by hope ; and we smile at the 
 brief joys and griefs of children, while we seem chil- 
 dren ourselves to those who have got beyond our level. 
 It does not seem a matter to laugh at, but rather to 
 mourn over ; and to mourn over, not because there is 
 so much joy and sorrow in the world, but because 
 there is so little ; because both joy and sorrow are so 
 poor in quality and so small in quantity. The greatest 
 capacity both for joy and sorrow belongs to the greatest 
 natures ; it belongs to all just in proportion as they 
 exalt and expand their own. It is easy to rejoice in 
 our own success, and people may be found who rejoice 
 in the failure of others ; it is easy to some natures 
 (but not to all) to enjoy ; but we do not rejoice enough 
 because we cannot. We have been reproached as a 
 nation with being very sad, and perhaps we deserve 
 the sneer ; but a capacity for enjoyment is not the 
 same as the power of rejoicing : and perhaps we know 
 as well how to rejoice as the countrymen of Froissart. 
 But rejoicing is rare and difficult to all men. It 
 demands high objects, however homely some of them 
 may seem ; it belongs to great hearts, and it must 
 often live on hope. 
 
 There is no lack of occasions for joy, if men had the 
 sympathy to detect and use them ; but we miss half 
 the happiness the world has to give us from want of 
 
JOY AND SOKKOW. 
 
 279 
 
 power to feel it. Even the happiness that art and 
 nature offer to all are often presented in vain ; and 
 excitement or indulgence fills the gap that will not be 
 left empty. 
 
 And what do most men know about such rejoic- 
 ing " as St. Paul's — the joy of watching men won 
 day by day to a higher Hfe ; of watching the progress 
 of the loftiest work ; the joy of friends indebted to 
 him for more than life ; the joy of gratitude to God ; 
 of men's gratitude to him ; the joy of the revelation 
 of Christ in him ; and the joyful hope of fuller com- 
 munion still? 
 
 It is a great thing to be able to derive intense joy 
 from friends, from books, from art, from childi-en, 
 from nature ; it is hard to exaggerate the blessing of 
 this Divine prerogative. But there must be higher 
 joys ; for it is possible to conceive a man rejoicing in 
 a dungeon — friendless, childless, without hope, except 
 from death ; and his joy would be something like that 
 with which St. Paul was alway rejoicing." To 
 rejoice in the thought that God is a Father; that 
 Christ is the true image of the unknown Omnipotent ; 
 that we bear His immortal nature ; that, bad as things 
 sometimes look. He is to reign till He hath put all 
 things under His feet ; that, with many drawbacks and 
 with slowest progress. His law is beginning to sway 
 the world. His example to form mankind ; that our 
 countrymen are rising every day to better conditions ; 
 that avenues are daily opening before them along 
 which they may advance to all that men should reach 
 
280 
 
 JOY AND SOEKOW. 
 
 to ; that Tve ourselves individually belong to this great 
 world-family as brothers, and to God as sons, and are 
 conscious of these relations ; that we have been per- 
 mitted to do the least work for Him and for them, and 
 to see the labour of our hands ; that we are what each 
 is, so born, so trained, so loved ; with minds for re- 
 flexion, with hearts for communion, with all the 
 avenues of sense to receive impressions from without ; 
 with spirits to receive impressions direct from the In- 
 visible ; — here are reasons enough for joy, and the 
 more we rejoice in them the wiser and better we 
 shall be. Wiser, because we have learnt the relative 
 values of things; better, because fellowship in joy brings 
 us nearer to our neighbours and to God. Much of our 
 joy separates us from both. 
 
 It will, of course, occur to every one that there 
 is another side to aU these reasons for rejoicing. 
 No doubt there is, and it is because of the manifold 
 reasons for sorrow that men should learn to rejoice 
 over the true occasions of joy. To remember how 
 few of aU His sons own God as their Father ; how 
 few behold in Christ the ideal of the God they 
 worship ; how few are true to the nature they share 
 with Him and try to conform it to His ; how few 
 of those who are called Christians give any sign of 
 their allegiance except by a name and by conformity 
 to a certain kind of worship; to think of the un- 
 happiness we bring on ourselves and others ; of the 
 misery to which many seem as it were doomed from 
 their cradle for no fault of their own ; of the failure 
 
JOY AXD SOEEOW. 
 
 281 
 
 of our several lives compared with what they might 
 have been ; of their negative results, theii* low aims, 
 their poor interests, when they might have been 
 redeemed to nobleness, even in the humblest lot ; to 
 think of all the evils that might make angels weep ; 
 and then to remember that it is not for these we shed 
 the bitterest tears, but that mortified vanity or 
 wounded self-love could wring oui* hearts more than 
 any of them — this is to see why St. Paul sets it down 
 as a token of a noble nature to be sorrowful, but still 
 " alway rejoicing," because of the light behind the 
 cloud, because of the measui-e of success in the midst 
 of failm-e. 
 
 If there were more of such sorrow in the world 
 there would be more rejoicing: but both must ex- 
 pand from a narrow cu'cle to a wider horizon : both 
 must begin where the old proverb says charity begins 
 — at home. The charity that can " rejoice with them 
 that do rejoice," and " weep with them that weep ; " that 
 can sympathize with the dulness and the anxiety, the 
 pathos and the small interests of ordinary domestic 
 Hfe, and can illumine with the poetry of love the 
 most prosaic home ; that can rise to self- forgetting 
 cheerfulness on every innocent occasion of home-joy — 
 this is the charity that, "smiling through its tears," 
 is most like the gi'eat Apostle's, who could write that 
 he was alway rejoicing," even when men were hunt- 
 ing him to take away his life. Few households are 
 without experiences varied and acute enough to give 
 a power of sympathy in joy and sorrow that would 
 
282 
 
 JOY AND SORROW. 
 
 leaven and exalt the world, if it could only be carried 
 out-of-doors. 
 
 It is this ''mingled skein of joy and v/oe," this 
 varied hue of human life, making its incessant calls 
 on delicate sympathies, and finding them untutored 
 respond, that our National Church, faithful to human 
 nature, tries to represent in its annual round of 
 seasons and of services. It is for this reason that 
 it balances Christmas and Easter and Whitsuntide 
 with the forty days of Lent, not intending that the 
 joy should be unsanctified by thoughtfulness, nor 
 the seasons of sorrow unredeemed by joy. By this 
 allotment of seasons it endeavours to represent the 
 mixed character of life as we find it, and to satisfy our 
 instinctive craving after something in our relations 
 with the unseen world to correspond to our experience 
 of life. The Christian seasons of joy must be always 
 tempered in thoughtful minds by the recollection 
 of the Divine tragedy in which they are epochs ; 
 and to correspond to this is the element of sadness 
 which is never wanting when friends and famihes 
 meet together, and suggestive gaps mark how '' one 
 generation goeth and another cometh." 
 
 The virgin mother, when she went up in her pride 
 with her Holy Child to the Temple, heard of the " sword 
 which should pierce her heart ; " and many a father and 
 mother, before and since her time, looking on a child, 
 have found the purest of all joys toned by the thought 
 of the possibilities in store for him. Perhaps all the 
 more refined joys have this suggestion of sorrow in 
 
JOY AND SORROW. 
 
 283 
 
 them, and for this reason they are as elevating as 
 suflferings. 
 
 But there are pleasui-es which do not elevate 
 and pains which give no strength. Common life, as 
 we treat it, supplies little cultivation of the higher 
 feehngs to most of us ; affords few occasions of the 
 pure joy of which we are capable : and so Easter 
 and Christmas come, with their appeals to genuine 
 human sympathies, to remind men of the joys of 
 which they are partakers, to stimulate them to the 
 discovery of kindred occasions of joy in the experience 
 of daily life. 
 
 And there can be no better antidote to the carking 
 care of small anxieties and small disappointments that 
 waste and wear men, than earnest thought about 
 what they are and what they were meant to be. It is 
 a sort of natural counter-irritant to expel the sting of 
 anxiety and disai^pointment by a healthier smart; 
 and so those who feel most nearly the need of a season 
 like this are the men who see its naturalness, who 
 know that it is their own fault if any time or condition 
 is one of unmingled sorrow, and that no state and no 
 season is all joy to thoughtful hearts. This is the 
 very spirit of the Collect for Ash Wednesday ; it ushers 
 in a time when we are called upon to be still and sober, 
 to reflect and to be serious, by condensing into a 
 sentence the most joyful news that ever was proclaimed 
 to men : ''Almighty and Everlasting God, who hatest 
 nothing that Thou hast made, and dost forgive the 
 sins of all them that are penitent." How many 
 
284 
 
 JOY AND SORROW. 
 
 generations of men have yearned to be able to believe 
 this ! What untold miseries have they brought on 
 themselves and others because they could not ! It is 
 wisely ordered that this gracious promise, which 
 hangs like a garland over a gloomy porch, should 
 accompany us all through Lent,, because there can 
 be no incentive to repentance so powerful as to be 
 reminded day by day of the injQ.nite worth of the 
 Divine Love. It is an appeal strong enough to make 
 us though sorrowful yet alway rejoicing, even under 
 the sense of shame and failure and relapse. However 
 much we may differ as a nation about the observance 
 of such seasons, and as a Church about the mode of 
 their observance, there are few persons of any serious- 
 ness of character w^ho do not feel that such seasons 
 must come to all natures that are not meant to sink ; 
 perhaps many will think that it is wise to adopt the 
 suggestion of an appointed one. However variously 
 we may interpret the recommendation of an abstinence 
 that is to subdue the flesh to the spirit (and it is left 
 to each to determine what the manner of it shall be), 
 there are few men who would say that such words 
 have no meaning for them ; who would deny their 
 consciousness of a higher part within them that was 
 meant to rule the rest ; few whose experience has not 
 taught them that the subjection of the lower and the 
 dominion of the higher is the best state for them, and 
 that the authority of the higher is increased by their 
 own efforts to support it. 
 
 The need of this subjugation must, of course, appear 
 
JOY AND SORKOW. 
 
 285 
 
 in forms and be suggested by incidents as various as 
 are the characters and experiences of men, and as 
 various must be the abstinence which is the lonely 
 path to this self-mastery. 
 
 It would be foolish, because it would be false to 
 men's consciences, to attempt to impose one routine 
 on all. Most men who have thought at all have got 
 beyond the need of drill in such details. They know 
 only too well the ways and tempers that have made 
 the fair ideal they have conceived for themselves as 
 distant and hopeless as the effort to recall a dream ; 
 the call to " follow Me " sounds half like irony in the 
 midst of settled habits and conventional morality. 
 Men do not want teaching in such matters (which they 
 know for the most part as well as their teachers) so 
 much as motive, stimulus, occasion ; they want some- 
 thing to lift them, and to brighten the uphill work of 
 self-amendment. And the second Collect for this sad 
 season (as we call it) is streaked with a ray of light, 
 too ; for it reminds us of what ought to be a source of 
 purest joy ; of Him who, " for our sakes," did more 
 than we are asked to do, that He might lift us above 
 all that shames and mocks and hinders, all that blinds 
 and burdens us ; above 
 
 " The passions wild and follies vain. 
 Pleasures soon exchanged for pain," 
 
 up to a nobler and manlier life, where joy is refined 
 by an abiding consciousness of the endless reasons 
 for sorrow, and where sorrow, when it comes, is 
 brightened by the permanent sources of joy. 
 
TRUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 2 Cor. vi. 10. — " As poor, yet making many richy 
 
 In this and similar pairs of contraries St. Paul de- 
 scribes himself. They are epigrammatic in form, but 
 in this as little as in any one of them could it be 
 said that he sacrificed truth to epigram. His power 
 of making many rich lay in the wealth of his own 
 spiritual endowment, which enabled him to invigorate 
 others with his own strength ; to inspire them with 
 his own hopes ; to fill them with his own enthusiasm ; 
 to enrich others with the qualities which constitute 
 greatness. Most people are poor in these gifts. Some 
 of those who are rich in them lack the power of 
 sympathy to share them with others. 
 
 We are not compelled to take his own word for the 
 accuracy of this description of himself. He is evidently 
 the animating spirit of the early Church ; by friends 
 and enemies alike he is regarded as the prop and genius 
 of it. And his influence was not confined to his pubHc 
 life, and to its effect upon men in the mass ; but he 
 drew men to him by the force of a personal attachment, 
 and had more devoted friends than any other man 
 
TRUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 287 
 
 mentioned in history. He is the only man in the 
 Bible who has the more modern than ancient privilege 
 of a large and intimate personal acquaintance. His 
 greetings to the brethren ; his private interest in his 
 own converts ; his affectionate mention of individuals ; 
 his warm gratitude to the faithful friends who shared 
 his hardships; the crowd which ''sorrowed most of 
 all for the words that they should see his face no 
 more," testify alike to his power of sympathy and 
 to the need he felt of it himself. The hard life he 
 led ; the great interests that were at stake ; the un- 
 broken consciousness of a presence in which he always 
 lived, and of a Master to whom he owed a constant 
 duty ; — all these in a smaller nature might have pro- 
 duced a fanatic, an ascetic, or a recluse. But they 
 left his heart none the less open to individual friend- 
 ships, and were the means not of isolating him, but 
 of surrounding him with a band of friends whom he 
 inspired with his own principles, and who loved him 
 above all for this, that he had made them like himself. 
 He made friends by his power of love, and he made 
 his friends great men by his power of communicating 
 his own greatness. 
 
 No man ever stood up more strongly for the legi- 
 timacy of his title to be an apostle; but he quotes 
 a different qualification when he wishes, as in this 
 passage, to establish his position as a minister of God. 
 A legitimate title by succession is beyond our control. 
 In the case of some ministers of God it is in all proba- 
 bility historically true, but it can never be certain ; in 
 
288 
 
 TEUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 the case of others, what we mean by a legitimate title 
 is not pretended, though they have their own notions 
 of their right. But however valuable lineal descent 
 may be as a matter of order, there is a true apostolical 
 succession resting on the graces of the chief of the 
 Apostles, which all may emulate ; which will constitute 
 all who aim at these graces his spiritual descendants, 
 whether in or out of the line of descent. But much 
 as St. Paul exalted his mission, perhaps no man 
 would have been more surprised at the broad dis- 
 tinction between clergy and laity now. Perhaps no 
 man would have been less likely to think that the 
 qualities he ascribes to himself as a minister of God 
 were intended for the imitation of the clergy alone. 
 All Christians in his view are chosen, adopted, con- 
 secrated to set forth by their lives the glory of Him 
 by whose name they call themselves. No duty there- 
 fore can be more binding on a society so gifted, than 
 that of enriching others with the strength of those 
 spiritual gifts which are at once the bond and the 
 basis of their own communion. 
 
 All men cannot be spiritual prodigies like St. Paul, 
 but it is the very inequality of the higher graces of 
 character which is the constant guarantee of the 
 need and of the opportunity of helping others with the 
 strength and the light that are increased when they are 
 shared. They cannot be imparted till we have them ; 
 they grow by exercise ; and they come by personal 
 contact with the Spirit of all, as good resolutions and 
 a higher tone come from the society of good men. 
 
TRUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 289 
 
 They come that is in a natural way to all men, unless 
 it is unnatural for the spirit of man to converse with 
 the Spirit of the Father who made him in His like- 
 ness. 
 
 There is an unreality to most minds about theo- 
 logical language, when applied without modification 
 to the experience of life ; but there is no uncertainty 
 about the existence of this gift of enriching others 
 with the elevation and the purity of a noble character. 
 Such rare natures are met with now and then, and 
 they generally get into their right place in the world, 
 by the force of their own character and because men 
 like to give those the means of doing good who have 
 the power. Characters like these diffuse a spirit of 
 contentment and of truth, of com^age and kindness 
 through a wide circle by a sort of natural infection. 
 But though there must be few who could influence 
 none, there may be some who, if they would diffuse 
 anything like strength or joy among their acquaint- 
 ance, would have to turn their lives round and set out 
 on an entirely new course. Like all virtues, a sphere 
 for their exercise is not far to seek, for Christianity is 
 a social religion ; its characteristic grace is denied to 
 the hermit; and no man's circle is so small as to 
 contain no one that is not stronger or weaker, richer 
 or poorer in what Christ calls ^'the true riches," for 
 being included within it. 
 
 Men touch one another at many points ; at home, 
 in business, or in pleasures ; and it is easy, without 
 thought and conscientiousness, to sour homes by 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 TRUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 reserve or harshness; to enervate them by indul- 
 gence ; to dishearten those who serve us by exaction ; 
 to degrade them by the language used to them, and 
 the services demanded of them. The privilege of the 
 strong is to make life easier for those whom they 
 control or influence or employ ; to make it easier, not 
 by lowering standards of conduct, but by raising 
 motives of action ; not by pressure or precept, but 
 by example and encouragement to make duty easy 
 and progress natural. But strength is often used 
 in quite another way. It is only too common to 
 see a strong will, by domineering, starve the natures 
 of those who are subject to it. It drains them 
 dry of hope and love and cheerfulness, when no- 
 thing but obedience is expected or exacted, and the 
 lord and master is satisfied with that. 
 
 Meanness in money matters is one of the most un- 
 popular of all faults of character, but it is perhaps quite 
 as hateful to be niggardly of the gifts of the spirit as 
 of the gifts of fortune, and certainly does far more 
 harm. To reduce children or servants to a relation of 
 mere obedience ; to condemn those whom we deal with 
 or employ to a pounds shillings and pence view of 
 life and duty; to regulate friendships by fashion or 
 interest ; to brighten no lives ; to elevate no motives ; 
 to strengthen none who are weak ; to recall none who 
 are wayward; — all this grudging of personal wealth 
 to enrich the poor in spirit or in character is not 
 perhaps unpopular, but it is a virtual denial of the 
 Gospel and a sacrifice of the prerogative of humanity. 
 
TEUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 291 
 
 One had better have never been born. It is a way 
 of life in which a man being rich may make many 
 poor. 
 
 An instance of the evil effect of the influence 
 upon the weak of those who are by education, 
 nature, or training stronger (though it is often un- 
 conscious and generally well-intentioned) is sometimes 
 seen in the work of those who take upon them, or 
 are called to, the duty of visiting the houses of the 
 poor; or are moved by conscience or compassion to 
 give them their money. It is only too easy, being 
 rich, to make many poor by such work, unless the 
 basis of it is that personal sympathy which is the 
 only instrument we know anything about at present 
 for effecting personal improvement. All experience 
 goes to show how mere gifts tend to impoverish and 
 not to enrich. Giving without conditions and without 
 that social relation which can elevate a gift into a 
 kindness, have created a class in which gifts may be 
 received without a sense of degradation ; but they may 
 degrade without the degradation being felt, and this 
 is the lowest deep of all. The effect of such giving is 
 to destroy independence and self-respect, to paralyze 
 effort, and to make friendly relations between the rich 
 and the poor impossible ; for how can friendly visits 
 be made when one side expects to be asked, and the 
 other is hoping to receive? Difference of means 
 ought to be no bar to confidence and friendliness; 
 associating a gift with a caU is a certain obstacle to 
 it ; and it would tend very much to more cordial 
 
292 
 
 TRUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 relations between rich and poor if gifts could be less 
 inseparably associated with visits than they are; if 
 visits were more generally paid only to those houses 
 where they are known to be welcome; and if gifts 
 were as far as possible a consequence and an ex- 
 pression of the friendly feelings produced by such 
 intimacy. 
 
 The way we adopt with the poor is not the way 
 men treat their friends or kinsmen. They do not 
 feed the poor relations or scapegraces of their families 
 from hand to mouth by small gifts, but try to pro- 
 cure for them the means of keeping themselves ; they 
 give to them, that is, out of the wealth of their 
 minds or influence ; and enrich them out of their 
 personal store, not out of their purses alone. This is 
 the way in which the " Father pitieth His children." 
 He gives them brains or sinews to earn, and does 
 not put bread into their mouths without work. But 
 in helping the poor we are lavish of our money, 
 but niggardly of time, of trouble, of companionship. 
 These things we ought to do, and not to leave the 
 other undone. There is abundance of need no doubt 
 for money, but there is more need of the time and 
 trouble of those who have heart and mind to know 
 how to spend it wisely. The new doctrine that has 
 ousted the old impulse to give to every beggar with- 
 out inquiry, has its other side. The complement of it 
 is that we should inquire, not that we should not give ; 
 but it insists that if we will not take the trouble 
 to be sm:e we are giving wisely, we must not take 
 
TKUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 293 
 
 the responsibility of giving at all. It is easy to 
 adopt one half of the new teaching and to turn the 
 face from every poor man for fear of doing mischief ; 
 and probably, in the present state of the country, 
 more harm would be done by giving than by refusing 
 in every case. But those who give without inquiry 
 must take the risk of swelling the great army of 
 beggars and casuals that are the canker of the 
 country ; those who uniformly refuse all applications 
 saddle themselves with the duty of doing some higher 
 work for the recipients of the open-handed doles of a 
 less reflective age. The great burden is laid on this 
 generation of helping the helpless, not in their help- 
 lessness, but of helping them out of it ; and it is work 
 in which all may take a hand who have the kind 
 heart and the clear head, and the strong will to do it. 
 Men who make it their aim not to feed or clothe the 
 hungry and the naked without any effort on their 
 part, but to enrich them with the gifts that make 
 their own labour sweet and their own life a joy — 
 these "though poor, may make many rich." Even 
 those who think they have no gifts and no chance 
 for doing this kind of work must see how its lessons 
 apply to their own lives. The relation of estrange- 
 ment between rich and poor has grown up from the 
 same causes which produce estrangement in families 
 and small societies, viz. want of communication of 
 what is within us to those who are without. The 
 same roof often shelters strangers in heart, akin in 
 blood. There is conscientious provision on one side, 
 
294 
 
 TRUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 formulated obedience on the other ; but none of the 
 communion of heart and thought which enriches him 
 that gives and him that takes. 
 
 And if it be thought that care of the poor is 
 rather the work of the clergy than of the laity 
 (though it has in fact got far beyond the power of 
 the clergy, and if it had not is no more their espe- 
 cial work than the duty of all Christian men) it 
 might be answered that these words of St. Paul 
 express exactly what is their peculiar work, as dis- 
 tinguished from duties which they may share with 
 all Christians. His friend, the writer of the Acts of 
 the Apostles, tells us that men were appointed to look 
 after the poor, in order that the Apostles might give 
 themselves to prayer and to ministry of the Word. 
 This rather looks as if it was thought that the dis- 
 tinctive office of the clergy was different ; as if their 
 especial duty was to make many rich with the stores 
 they drew from communion with the Source of all 
 gifts of mind and character. They could have no 
 higher part than this one, of cultivating themselves 
 that they might satisfy others with their fulness, 
 enlighten them with their light, and strengthen them 
 with their strength. 
 
 It is of course none the less the work of all Chris- 
 tians to dispense such gifts, but it is a duty which lies 
 heavily on the clergy to make many rich with them ; 
 it lies heavily on them as ministers of a National 
 Church, which gives to all men the right to look to 
 them for the best results that thought and prayer can 
 
TRUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 295 
 
 produce ; to learn from them the more excellent way 
 of living ; to get some light about difficult questions ; 
 something to soften and sweeten life ; something to 
 raise thoughts above it ; something to make the years 
 more fruitful as they fly; something to look back 
 upon and to look forward to when the end comes. 
 It is common to hear of things done *'to promote the 
 glory of God; " but the phrase is much less often 
 applied to the influence of man upon man for good, 
 than to some material addition to God's house or to 
 the stateliness of ceremonial worship. It is implied 
 of course that the glory of God is promoted by the gift 
 or the ceremony through its effect on men, and it is 
 also significant that this is not the first thought. 
 But in truth we know no other way of promoting His 
 glory than by making men better ; and all beauty 
 and dignity of church or worship are good only so far 
 as they advance this end. 
 
 It is implied in the very terms of this description 
 of one of the effects of character that it is the 
 privilege of the poor to exercise it, and it is easy to 
 perceive their advantage ; for they are not hindered by 
 the undoubted difficulty which wealth causes to the 
 purely spiritual influences of man on man. The 
 spiritual influence of the rich and powerful must often 
 be weakened to their own or other minds by the di'ead 
 or by the consciousness of the presence of interested 
 motives to mar, if not to neutralize, the direct action 
 of spirit on spirit. 
 
 It is hard for the rich to be sure of the true 
 
296 
 
 TEUE ALMSGIVING. 
 
 source of their influence; hard for those who listen 
 and follow the teaching of men who have much 
 besides the weight of character to give force to their 
 recommendations, to be sui'e enough of their motives 
 to preserve their self-respect. 
 
 The moral effect of wealth, apart from the influence of 
 character, is probably not good on the world ; it needs 
 a counterpoise, just as narrow means require the 
 dignity that comes from a sense of power of some sort. 
 The Apostle's words seem to point out to the rich a 
 way in which they can counteract some of the influ- 
 ences of a large distribution of wealth ; and to the poor 
 a path of usefulness wide enough to make up for the 
 want of material power. If riches give a man many 
 chances of cultivating natural gifts into handy instru- 
 ments, and of training his longings and his powers 
 into an art of raising and purifying men ; the poor 
 start with fewer difficulties, and their example and 
 appeals go straighter home. On all the duty presses, 
 as we pass through life, to lift and to console ; to 
 brace and to purify. Some find their personal habits 
 in the way of bettering others; or are staggered to 
 find those they seek to improve already better than 
 themselves. Circumstances are too strong for others, 
 and condemn them to a life that seems to demand 
 an attitude of distance and repression towards their 
 fellow-men, and to forbid personal contact altogether. 
 But spiritual laws refuse to regard personal habits 
 or exceptional cu'cumstances ; they maintain their 
 unvarying exaction ; they leave it to us, in seeming 
 
TRUE AL:\rsGiyixG. 
 
 297 
 
 irony, to aim high or to settle down ; promising no 
 reward but the sense of having tried ; holding out no 
 threat but the supreme compunction of having Hved 
 to please self and having failed in that. 
 
 Behind the eternal laws is the loving Father calling 
 us to the true life of sons ; and the gracious Son 
 wooing us, by the example of perfect manhood, to live 
 the noblest life of men. 
 
TEEASUKE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 2 Cor. vi. 10. — "As having nothing, and yet possessing all things." 
 
 It was because St. Paul, though having nothing, yet 
 possessed all things, that he was able, though poor, 
 to make many rich ; for there are possessions of 
 which a man loses none by sharing them with others, 
 just as there are possessions which the giver is the 
 poorer for parting with and the receiver none the 
 richer for obtaining. He had been telling his Corin- 
 thian friends of his qualifications as a minister of 
 God and as a minister of men ; and it is instructive, 
 when qualifications different in kind from these are 
 put forward as the essentials of the Christian minister, 
 to note what they are. They may be read in the half- 
 dozen verses which precede the text ; and any one who 
 reads them may see plainly that they are graces and 
 virtues and works which distinguish a Christian from 
 one who is not a Christian, and not those which dis- 
 tinguish an office-bearer in the Christian Church from 
 the general body of Christians. They are an enume- 
 ration of gifts exercised, of works done, of sufferings 
 endured ; they not only show what an essentially 
 
TREASUKE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 299 
 
 Christian minister St. Paul was, but they are a 
 refined intuition of what a Christian minister ought 
 to be, which may well make any man despair who 
 aspires to the same position. For they show him 
 not only how far he is behind his own ideal, but 
 that there is a conception of the character which 
 never could have occurred to him ; which he finds it 
 hard to enter into ; almost hopeless to make his own 
 when he has mastered it. 
 
 It was almost literally true of St. Paul that he 
 " had nothing," for we find him labouring with his 
 own hands at a humble trade to support himself ; and 
 no doubt this absolute personal independence, of which 
 he seems to think a good deal, was a great help to 
 him. It saved him from all suspicion of interested 
 motives, for it showed that he had nothing to gain 
 from preaching the gospel ; and it must have made a 
 deep impression on the poorer people to see a man of 
 great endowments and large reading living as they 
 did, while he seemed to belong to another world ; so 
 far above the level of then- lives, though not above 
 their comprehension, were the heavenly truths he 
 taught them. There are men of great gifts and care- 
 ful training nowadays who preach the gospel almost 
 for nothing, but they do not live as St. Paul did; 
 perhaps our Church would be more the Church of the 
 poor than it is if some of them did. They may be as 
 disinterested as he was — jprobably many are ; but the 
 experiment of "having nothing" for Christ's sake has 
 seldom been tried in our Church, though it has been 
 
300 
 
 TREASUEE IX HEAVEN. 
 
 tried, and with some success, in otliers ; and wherever 
 it is untried there must be felt, as a want, the inex- 
 perience of the effect of that sharp contrast between 
 the material poverty and the spiritual wealth, the 
 " having nothing " of visible things and " possess- 
 ing all things " invisible, which made a large part 
 of the force and of the magic of the preaching of 
 St. Paul. " Having nothing " is of course a qualifica- 
 tion with which a man may easily invest himself, and 
 without gaining any of the possessions which "make 
 many rich ; " though it is likely that St. Paul's poverty 
 made easier to him that sympathy which was the 
 means by which he shared with others the abundant 
 stores of his own ardent and spmtual nature. " Who 
 is weak, and I am not weak ? who is offended, and I 
 burn not?" *'As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing;" 
 *'As poor, yet making many rich; " — these are hints 
 to us of the wealth a man may have who owns nothing. 
 They are instances of blessings which money cannot 
 buy, and of which it cannot make men independent. 
 They are an encouragement to hope for our race when 
 we are inclined to despise or to despair of it ; and 
 they point out paths of Christian progress in which 
 all may walk ; in which especially those who claim 
 to be successors of St. Paul are bound to exercise 
 themselves. 
 
 He did not see the full scope of his words, or 
 guess when, as the first Christian who set foot in 
 Europe, he landed at Philippi, that he was to be the 
 great apostle of civilization, and of the races whose 
 
trp:asuke in heaven. 
 
 301 
 
 duty it seems to be to evangelize the world. He did 
 not see how wide his words were when he spoke of 
 making many rich ; he did not know that for thou- 
 sands of years after he thought the ''end of all things" 
 would come, he would go on inspiring generation after 
 generation of Christians with the fire and the tender- 
 ness of his own nature, and enriching them with the 
 wealth of his knowledge, of his sympathy, of his faith, 
 and of his zeal. It is not given to many men to own 
 such property as this, and to fewer still to be able to 
 entail it on posterity ; but it is something to have 
 a high aim set before us ; to see the Christian life, 
 as taught by Jesus of Nazareth, lived out before our 
 eyes ; to have it expanded into details, easier to prac- 
 tise than it is to be guided by first principles ; to 
 discern the wealth that may' lie hid beneath the cloak 
 of poverty ; and to be obliged to own, in spite of our 
 appreciation of the powers that wealth confers and 
 the comforts it can purchase, that these are the true 
 riches. 
 
 For it is possible to find men now, and it has always 
 been possible to find them, of whom it would be true 
 to reverse St. Paul's description of himself, and to 
 describe as "having all things, and yet possessing 
 nothing." For St. Paul makes a difference between 
 "having" and "possessing," and speaks of himself 
 as possessing the undying qualities that make up 
 character, and as holding, as we should say, only a 
 life-interest in things visible, of which he had actually 
 none. What a man possesses in St. Paul's sense he 
 
302 
 
 TREASUKE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 can never lose, but many things may deprive him of 
 what he only holds. Long before death comes he may 
 find that there are things which wealth cannot purchase. 
 Love and health and honest friendship, even plea- 
 sure, are not to be bought, though they come un- 
 sought and unbought to those whose character is the 
 storehouse they have stocked with treasures that ''no 
 moth corrupteth, neither thief approacheth." Whether 
 a man is dependent on sympathy or not, he soon finds 
 out that he is not independent of the hidden treasure 
 of a cultivated mind, of disciplined affections, of ele- 
 vated tastes, of impulses and emotions regulated and 
 refined. These are a true possession that makes the 
 visible things of less importance in their absence, 
 that doubles the value of them when both are found 
 together. 
 
 A man with none of the powers of which he can 
 acquire so many is said to have ''no resources in 
 himself." Not only is he unable to be of any use to 
 other people, but he cannot even be sufficient for him- 
 self. Nothing can more plainly show the helplessness 
 of such natures than the complaint often made by idle 
 people that they " do not know what to do with them- 
 selves." A confession not only that they are no use 
 to their neighbours, but are even unequal to the burden 
 of consciousness. Time is their enemy ; and they are 
 so empty of all imperishable possessions that they 
 cannot even live without the help of aids and appli- 
 ances that many conditions of life even now deprive 
 them of, to say nothing of a more purely spiritual 
 
TKEASUEE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 303 
 
 existence in which it can hardly be supposed that 
 such resources will be found. A man might get a very 
 good notion how he would stand the loss of all things, 
 and of the sort of store he had laid up against such a 
 risk, by the temporary loss of his accustomed plea- 
 sures and defences against enmd. It might be occa- 
 sioned by enforced solitude, by an accidental confine- 
 ment to a sick-room, by a sudden disappointment of 
 some expected pleasure which would make everything 
 else seem without flavour or coloui' for a time. 
 
 A picture, striking from its broad contrast of light 
 and shadow, of such helpless emptiness may be seen in 
 the accounts of criminals stopped in a career of crime 
 and of fierce if coarse excitement and suddenly shut 
 up alone in a cell, to feed themselves on such food as 
 their own meditations supply, and with nothing to 
 stave off or stupefy the thoughts they hate. Our 
 thoughts may not poison, but they may be very meagre 
 food ; and when we are thrown back on them, or on 
 such resom'ces as we have been able to create for our- 
 selves, then is the time to take stock of the true riches, 
 and to find out what we have got in fee-simple, and 
 what in Hfe-interest only; what proportion of all the 
 furnitm-e of body, soul, and mind which we have accu- 
 mulated here will resist the influence of poverty, soli- 
 tude, sickness, and disappointment ; for so much and 
 no more will survive death. Only a little more will 
 last till death comes, for few men can carry their en- 
 joyment of material things to the edge of the grave. 
 There comes a time to most men when the only plea- 
 
304 
 
 TREASURE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 sures are pleasures of the mind and the joy of the 
 heart that belongs to those who can be happy in the 
 joy of others. 
 
 To lay up treasure when the brain is active and 
 the heart is soft that will bear such interest as this 
 in old age would be a true ^' Hfe insurance ; " an in- 
 vestment that would insure the future against all that 
 sometimes makes us fain to draw a veil before the 
 last stage of an active life, and would make it as rich in 
 its peculiar graces as the best years of youth and man- 
 hood. An old age may sometimes be seen for which 
 such provision has been made, and a beautiful sight it 
 is ; perhaps it is no harder to secure it than to secure 
 a competence for it, and to leave a competence behind 
 for those who are to follow. Some of the purpose 
 and the foresight that are spent on seizing on oi^por- 
 tunities for making a fortune would produce great 
 results if they were applied to making the most of 
 men. 
 
 Whatever kind of old age is awaiting each man, 
 or whether any kind is, one event in every man's life 
 is certain, for which, if he tried to realize it, he would 
 find that he was making less provision than for any of 
 the contingencies against which prudent men are care- 
 ful to protect themselves. The literature of all ages 
 contains warnings that a man can take away nothing 
 with him when, he dieth, neither can his pomp follow 
 him," and this is forcibly expressed in the homely 
 words of the Book of Job : Naked came I out of 
 my mother's womb, and naked shall I return." This 
 
TREASUEE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 305 
 
 nakedness is what all must experience when they go 
 on that journey alone. It is a feeling hard to realize 
 now, when excitement makes up for the want of 
 thought; when indulgence can occupy the place of 
 affection ; when people can secure companionship if 
 they cannot make friends ; when there is no need to 
 withstand inclinations that can be indulged, or create 
 internal resources when they can buy external distrac- 
 tions. It is hard to realize ; but, as has been said, 
 there are conditions which should warn a man who 
 thinks, of what may be coming, and should make him 
 ask himself what would be left to him of all the joys 
 that make him love his life, if he were suddenly 
 pai-ted from the body which is the channel of so 
 many. Of that day and of that hour knoweth no 
 man ; " and it is a trial to most men to think reso- 
 lutely about it ; each only knows that it must surely 
 come. 
 
 It seems natural to pass on to the next thought — 
 that each must be then what he has made himseK. 
 Some will find themselves "poor indeed" when the 
 sudden change has dried up all the springs of their 
 life ; has cut off all their supplies of pleasure ; has 
 banished them from all then* interests ; robbed them 
 of aU the excitement that made them blind and deaf 
 to the warnings of their own true poverty in the 
 midst of their wealth of all things. We get warn- 
 ings of this nakedness every time we find solitude 
 oppressive, or confinement tedious, or sympathy dijffi- 
 cult, or intellectual pleasures vapid, or affections cold. 
 
 X 
 
306 
 
 TREASUKE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 We are warned to make a fairer division of time and 
 energy ; to spare for nobler acquisitions, some of all 
 the will and all the time that are consumed in 
 England in laying up treasures that moth and rust 
 can corrupt ; to devote a larger portion to garnering 
 the true riches that will save us some day from de- 
 scribing ourselves in bitterness of spirit as " having 
 all things, yet possessing nothing." Old men may be 
 seen going on to the verge of the grave accumulating 
 wealth, who seem to those who have much less to have 
 enough and more than enough for all the pleasures 
 that life can give them ; and we are tempted to ask, 
 Why cannot there be a time to stop ? Is there no 
 such thing as enough ? Is there no higher ambition 
 or pleasure than accumulation ? 
 
 It is hard to imagine the blessing to this country if 
 some of all the force of character and brain which 
 are devoted to making money, long after huge fortunes 
 are already made, were given to public affairs ; to 
 steady efforts to improve the general condition of our 
 fellow-countrymen ; to holding public offices which, 
 except the county magistracy, are almost all refused 
 now except by inferior men. There comes a time to 
 many men when such a change would seem to be most 
 elevating to their own character; most satisfying to 
 their own ambition ; most beneficial to their country- 
 men. The interests and the sympathies that would be 
 awakened by such occupations in those who took part 
 in them would in time perhaps stir some of them to 
 try to remove a slur that is often cast on the owners 
 
TREASUKE IN HEAYEX. 
 
 307 
 
 of great wealth in England, viz. that while so many 
 contribute liberally to charities, so few devote great 
 sums to magnificent or useful public works. 
 
 And not only do the old seem, to leave off too late, 
 but the young to begin too soon. Youth is the recep- 
 tive time, and the mind and character should be stored 
 with as many impressions as can be printed before the 
 character hardens, so that life may have some other 
 interest than that of getting ; and that men, when they 
 leave off getting, may have other resources and not be 
 helpless, as we hear they are, not only because the 
 excitement of accumulation is over, but because they 
 have never felt the fascination of other interests. It 
 is probable that necessity cannot always be pleaded for 
 sending young men so early into business : there are 
 other riches besides those that come from commerce, 
 and youth is the time for storing them; and "it 
 cometh not again." To learn all that can be learnt, 
 to see all that can be seen ; to get a wider knowledge 
 of their fellow-countrymen by studying the opinions, 
 by sympathizing with the interests and occupations, 
 and by working for the good of the more numerous 
 classes ; to extend their acquaintance among the 
 gifted, the thoughtful, and the influential few; to 
 cultivate h'iendships and affections that can grow freely 
 where there is no poverty to stunt them, — these are 
 some of the advantages that wealth can secure for 
 the young ; privileges that some covet who do not 
 envy it its indulgence or display. Can we not all 
 think less of what is without, and more of what is 
 
308 
 
 TREASURE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 within ; less of what a man has, more of what he is ; 
 more of what we can do for others, less of what we 
 can buy for ourselves ; more of what each is in his own 
 sight, less of the opinion of his neighbours ; more of 
 joy, and less of enjoyment ; more of deserving the love 
 of men, and less of winning the favour of society; 
 more of enriching and endowing the divine nature 
 that is at once the special and the universal endow- 
 ment of all men and less of an accumulation of wealth 
 that knows no end, even after all the lower wants and 
 all the higher longings have been provided for? 
 — so that, even if we are poor, we ma}^ make many 
 rich ; and if we are rich, may find, when all our wealth 
 is left behind, that though we have nothing then, we 
 are yet in possession of all things. 
 
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 An Essay on the Culture 
 
 I of the Observing Powers of 
 Children, especially in connection 
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 with Notes and a Supplement, by 
 Joseph Payne, F. C. P., Author of 
 " Lectures on the Science and Art of 
 
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 First Book of Botany. 
 
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 tion. Crown 8vo. Cloth, price 2s. 6d. 
 
 YOUMANS (Edward L.), M.D. 
 A Class Bookof Chemistry, 
 
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 YOUNG (William). 
 I Gottlob, etcetera. Small 
 
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 j ZIMMERN (H.). 
 
 Stories in Precious Stones. 
 
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