PEIHGETOIT 
 Hii^, APR 1884 
 
 THEOLOGICAL 
 
 MumKtk 
 
 Dlvlslon.^,SS30 
 Section „jVVr5*S' 
 No, 
 
THE 
 
 SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. FRANCIS WHARTON, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, 
 BROOKLINE, MASS. 
 
 ^m 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY, 
 
 ©Hrcjj 3PubUst)ers. 
 
 1867. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 riverside, cambridge: 
 
 ;T'£R£Otyp£d and printsd bt 
 
 h. 0. houghton and company. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The following pages include the substance of a series 
 of sermons delivered in the usual parochial service at 
 Brookline. My object, for the purposes of the pulpit, 
 was to notice the practical inferences to be drawn from 
 the Silence of Scripture, in some of those instances in 
 which this Silence is most marked. Although Dr. 
 Wordsworth speaks the common opinion of most com- 
 mentators when he tells us that the Silence of God's 
 Word is itself inspired, yet the subject is one which has 
 been comparatively unexplored.^ In the course of my 
 investigations of the extent and teachings of this Si- 
 lence, particularly in the New Testament records, the 
 materials in my hands so expanded as to adapt them to 
 the press rather than the pulpit. I have concluded, 
 
 1 The only instances in which the subject, so far as my reading in- 
 forms me, is distinctively considered, are to be found in the sections on 
 the " Omissions in Scripture," contained in Archbishop Whately's 
 Essays, and in his Cautions for the Times ; in Canon Miller's Lecture 
 on the Silence of Scriptures, delivered before the London Young Men's 
 Christian Association, in 1858; and in the Rev. Robert Hall's re- 
 markable sermon On (he Glory of God in Concealing. 
 
IV PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 therefore, to place them in the present channel ; and 
 I earnestly pray that this, the consideration of the Si- 
 lences of the Divine Text, may make, to all in whose 
 hands these pages full, those utterances which are re- 
 vealed not only more distinct, but more precious, as 
 containing God's sole and exclusive message to man. 
 
 F. W. 
 Brookline, February 25, 1867. 
 
mti^ets Eorlr, iDf)0 fjajSt tm^e^ all l^olg ^orijituroi to fie 
 iDxitttn far aux teaming : jarant tf)at toe mag in iut^ iaiit 
 l^car tf)em, realf, marfe, Irarn, antr intoartrlg IrifleiSt ti^em, 
 tf)at, fin patience antr comfort of Cl^g ?^oXm ^X^ortr, toe mag 
 embrace, anU eber l)aXis fajSt ti)t l^ope of eberla^tinjs life, 
 tD!)icib Cnbou I)a^t Qibtn u^ in our ^afaiour Sle^itij Cl^riiSt. 
 
MiO. APR ;884 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. 
 
 PAOX 
 
 Antecedent probability of reserve in Divine revelation i 
 
 Hence the Silence of revelation has its particular teaching, and 
 
 is itself inspired 2 
 
 This silence considered in reference to the creation of the 
 
 world 3 
 
 Curiosity felt by men in the details of creation 3 
 
 A revelation constructed by man would seek to gratify this 
 
 curiosity 3 
 
 On the other hand, the details given by Scripture are few and 
 
 meagre 3 
 
 They leave almost every thing, except the Divine authorship, 
 
 undetermined 4 
 
 Reasons for this silence 5 
 
 1. A premature revelation of science would not be likely 
 
 to be accepted as a revelation of religious truth 5 
 
 2. If accepted, it would paralyze the intellectual energies, 
 and weaken faith and humility 7 
 
 3. A perfect revelation of science would not meet the spir- 
 itual wants of man 8 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 Probability that a man-made religion would attempt a solution 
 of the origin of evil lo 
 
VIU TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Silence of Scripture on this point lo 
 
 This silence analogous to the silence of Nature 1 1 
 
 Nature gives no clew to this great mystery 13 
 
 Lessons to be learned from it 13 
 
 1. Limitedness of our faculties 13 
 
 2. Existence of a spirit of evil 15 
 
 His nature 15 
 
 The restraints on his power 15 
 
 His ultimate overthrow 16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 DIVINATION. 
 
 Divination a chief feature in man-made religions 18 
 
 The universality of the superstitions it appeals to 19 
 
 Christianity the sole religious system that does not recognize 
 
 this 21 
 
 Lessons to be derived from this 21 
 
 1. Absolute dependence on God 21 
 
 2. Benefits of this veiling of the future 22 
 
 Our blindness to the future is the parent of energy, 
 
 fortitude, and patience 22 
 
 Without it we could but illy bear disasters, bereave- 
 ments, or future shocks 23-25 
 
 Christ bore for us the foreknowledge of sorrow 26 
 
 Christ the Averter 27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LITURGY. 
 
 No form of liturgy prescribed in the New Testament 28 
 
 Such an omission unprecedented in ecclesiastical history 28 
 
 Causes of this omission 29 
 
 Not as connected with disapprobation of a liturgy 29 
 
 A liturgy used by our Lord 29 
 
 And adopted by the early Church 29 
 
 And most fitted for public worship 29 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. IX 
 
 PAQK 
 
 1. But as based on the truth that prayer is not maris me- 
 chanical repetition of Gocfs precepts but man's volutttary . 
 response to Gocfs revealed Word 30 
 
 Formularies become mechanical just to the very 
 extent to which they are regarded as arbitrarily 
 imposed 30 
 
 Prayer, to be acceptable to God, must be the action 
 of individual intellect and heart 30 
 
 2. Liturgical liberty essential to church universalization. . 32 
 
 The Church to comprehend all phases of nationality 
 and culture and temperament, and to adapt itself to 
 
 each 33 
 
 Liturgical flexibility in Primitive Church 34 
 
 Importance of such flexibility now 35 
 
 Prayer always to be individual 36 
 
 Revelation is of God: Prayer, of Man 36 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CREEDS. 
 
 Creeds and catechisms necessarily used in the apostolic teach- 
 ing 37 
 
 Their omission only to be accounted for by Divine direction. . 38 
 
 Reasons to be supposed for such omission 38 
 
 I. Such a compendium would supersede the present 
 
 Scriptures 38 
 
 (a.) Patient induction would be no longer exercised. . 38 
 
 Analogy between Scriptures and Nature 39 
 
 Neither in themselves systematic 40 
 
 Both must be studied to draw out systematic 
 
 truth 41 
 
 Wide and varied field of induction presented by 
 
 Scripture 41 
 
 Important moral and mental qualities exercised 
 
 in this induction 42 
 
 (b.) Such a compendium would make man the omnis- 
 cient reflection of an omniscient God 43 
 
 (c.) By such a process spiritual assimilation would be 
 destroyed 43 
 
X TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 2. Such a compendium would imperil church universaliz- 
 
 ation 44 
 
 Christ Himself universal 45 
 
 Universal relations of Scripture .... 46 
 
 Adaptation to various temperaments 46 
 
 Representativeness of the several inspired teachers. . 46 
 
 Illustrated by St. Paul and St. John 47 
 
 Converging roads of access to the cross 48 
 
 Illustrated by predestinarian controversy 48 
 
 Doctrine of conversion 49 
 
 I. Objections to this position. 
 
 1. That this leads to universal license 50 
 
 Answer. 
 
 (a.) The only escape of heresy is in vitiating the text. 50 
 
 {d.) The objection applies with equal strength to arti- 
 cles and creeds 5 ^ 
 
 {c.) Doctrinal formularies often open new points of 
 departure 5^ 
 
 {(/.) There is an especial promise of grace attached to 
 the reading of Scripture 52 
 
 {e.) Religious indifferentism apt to be produced by an 
 alleged infallible church test 53 
 
 2. That by this position creeds are superseded 54 
 
 Answer. 
 
 {a.) The creed thereby acquires its true force, as 
 man's response to God, as revelation is God's utter- 
 ance to man 54 
 
 [b.) A creed is a protest against error 56 
 
 {c.) Creeds and articles become thus the tests of indi- 
 vidual membership in the church 57 
 
 No one not accepting has a right to remain in the 
 church that imposes them 58 
 
 II. Practical consequences of this truth that all doctrine is to 
 be verified fi-om Scripture. 
 
 1. Devout care in reading the sacred text 59 
 
 Rules for such study 59, 60 
 
 2. Toleration of those who differ on points which the sa- 
 cred text does not determine 60, 61 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE VIRGIN MARY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Silence of Scripture on whatever would draw our thoughts 
 
 from the worship of Christ 64 
 
 This peculiarly the case as to the Virgin Mary 64 
 
 Others employed as missionaries — she never 65 
 
 Others invested with supernatural power — she never 66 
 
 Others spoken of as counselors — she never 66 
 
 Cause of this silence to be found in the fact that God screens 
 from us whatever would draw us from the great central truth 
 
 of revelation — God manifest in the flesh 68 
 
 1. The nature of this truth 68 
 
 Christ the one perfect and universal Man ... 69 
 
 As such He is the sole Mediator for all, whatever be 
 their temperaments, or rank, or nation 70 
 
 2. The danger to this truth, from the imwillingness of the 
 natural heart to adtnit in the Godhead those qualities of 
 sympathy arui of tenderness toxuard man which are essen- 
 tial to a true belief in the incarnation of Christ 7 1 
 
 Illustration of this tendency in the Church of Rome, 
 which, from divesting Christ of his perfect and all- 
 sjnmpathizing Humanity, has proceeded to set up 
 human mediators in His place 75 
 
 3. The lessons of Christ's Humanity as thus brought be- 
 fore us 75 
 
 {a.) His oblation and satisfaction 76 
 
 {b.) His elevation of humanity 76 
 
 (<:.) His intercession as Man 77 
 
 {d.) The union of His people with Him in glory 77 
 
 Application of this doctrine to our practical life 78 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE lord's personal APPEARANCE, AND ITS RELATIONS. 
 
 The tendency to commemorate the appearance of a departed 
 
 friend, almost universal 80 
 
 Silence on this topic in the sacred narratives 81 
 
am TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOX 
 
 This silence not to be attributed to want of affection 82 
 
 Nor to want of circumstantiality 82 
 
 Nor to scantiness of personal association 83 
 
 But to the divine purpose to withdraw us from the local- 
 ization and materialization of God ift epoch, or image, or 
 
 shrine 86 
 
 Express warnings against this tendency 86 
 
 I. The deep-seatedness of this tendency 87 
 
 (a.) As to epochs and anniversaries 87 
 
 (d.) As to relics and images 88 
 
 (<r.) As to shrines 89 
 
 {d!) As to Christ's merely human example 91 
 
 The acknowledgment of this truth does not prevent the Church 
 
 from establishing commemorative days 93 
 
 They must be, however, to edification 93 
 
 Danger of numerous holidays 94 
 
 Value of Christmas and Lent .' 95 
 
 Caution as to use of such days 96 
 
 Christ not to be localized in temple or altar 97j 98 
 
 True honor to be paid to the sanctuary 98, 99 
 
 Christ not to be localized in a path 100, loi 
 
 But to be received as the divine Source of strength loi 
 
 Christ's divine as well as His human nature thus guarded by 
 
 the silence of the revealed text 102-104 
 
 Conclusion 104 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Creeds, not finalities 107 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 Christ, the sole sinless Sympathizer I08 
 
 APPENDIX c. 
 
 Our Lord's Personal Appearance 1 14 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 Christ not to be localized in a path 118 
 
THE 
 
 SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. 
 
 IN a divine revelation, we must expect many points 
 of information to be reserved. You send a child, 
 for instance, on an errand to a distant street ; and 
 you give him the street's name, and the number of 
 the crossings, and repeat to him perhaps more than 
 once his particular business ; but you do not detain 
 and perplex him by either a history or a panoramic ex- 
 position of the city he visits. " When I was a child, 
 I spake as a child ; " and the converse is also true : 
 " When I was a child, I was spoken to as a child : 
 such knowledge was given to me as was proper for 
 my childhood's estate." And even in our manhood, 
 and in reference to our fellow-men, there are always 
 topics as to which we are more or less ignorant, 
 and as to which speculative information is withheld. 
 Thus a government sends forth a colonist ; but gives 
 him just information enough to enable him to per- 
 form his particular work. A general charges an inferior 
 officer with a special duty, but here, too, there is silence 
 as to whatever does not belong to this duty. To en- 
 1 
 
2 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 large the official directions given in either case so as to 
 include all the knowledge the superior may possess, 
 would perplex the agent, and withdraw his attention 
 from that which concerned his work to that which did 
 not concern it. And if we are to expect such silence in 
 a parent's dealings with a child, and in a government's 
 dealings with a subaltern, how much more reason have 
 we to expect it in the dealings of God with man. God 
 knows all things and endures from eternity to eternity : 
 man comes into the world knowing nothing ; lives at 
 the best a life which endures for a few years ; and in 
 this short life is charged with the momentous question 
 of settling his own destiny for the eternity to come. 
 Silence, then, on all irrelevant questions is what we 
 would expect in the revelation of an all-wise God ; and 
 of the irrelevancy. He is the sole judge. 
 
 Hence it is, for the purpose both of pointing out this 
 irrelevancy and of concentrating our attention on those 
 topics which revelation presents to us, God's silence 
 in the inspired record has been considered by devout 
 minds as only inferior in importance to His express 
 utterance. "There is such fulness in that book," says 
 Boyle, " that not only its expression but its silences are 
 teaching, like a dial in which the shadow as well as the 
 light informs us." So Archbishop Trench speaks of the 
 Bible's silence as being more expressive than other 
 books' speech ; ^ and Dr. Wordsworth, of the silence of 
 revelation as in itself inspired ; ^ and Dr. Arnold, of in- 
 spiration, being marked by what it does not say as well 
 as by what it does.* In expansion of this thought, I 
 
 1 Hulsean Lectures, 1845. — Lect. VI. (Am. ed. p. 86.) 
 
 2 Occasional Sermons, XII. p. 100. 
 
 * Sermon on the Interpretation of Scripture, p. 9, &c. 
 
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. 3 
 
 propose to take up for exposition and application, some 
 of the points in which this silence may be observed. 
 
 First, then, comes the question of the creation of the 
 world. A passion for antiquarianism is common enough ; 
 and men have not been few who have spent their 
 lives in the deciphering of inscriptions and the collec- 
 tion of relics. The fascination of historical study, if not 
 so absorbing, is more widely spread ; and in proportion 
 as the dignity of a character rises, our curiosity is 
 sharpened to possess ourselves of the pettiest details of 
 his life. How natural, then, the eagerness with which 
 we would turn to the creation of the world ! If the 
 revelation is one which is complete, how much to in- 
 terest, to fascinate, and absorb ! I say nothing of the 
 vast periods of time needed to possess even the keenest 
 minds with but a portion of the details of such a stu- 
 pendous work ; but I would notice the profound depths 
 to which the observer would be thus led, and the awful 
 mysteries on which he would gaze face to face. How 
 laudable the desire, we might then at the first glance 
 say, to be possessed of a revelation giving such a his- 
 tory at large ! 
 
 Yet what is really given us is only this : " In the 
 beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And 
 the earth was without form and void ; and darkness was 
 on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved 
 on the face of the waters. And God said. Let there be 
 light, and there was light." And then follows in greater 
 detail a narrative of the creative work, grouping it in 
 six distinct days or eras, closing as follows : " And God 
 saw every thing that He had made, and behold, it was 
 very good." The whole history is comprised in a 
 chapter occupying not more than a single ordinary page. 
 
4 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 " But is this all ? " — so the speculative inquirer may 
 be supposed to ask. " In fact you tell me little more 
 than that there is a God, and that heaven and earth are 
 made by Him. Each word of your narrative opens a 
 new depth infinitely profound ; and my speculative ig- 
 norance is increased, not diminished, by what you tell. 
 What, for instance, were the counsels of God, when this 
 mighty work was achieved. What were his agents ? 
 Was it by the slower processes of chemical and me- 
 chanical action that He worked, or by the application 
 of intelligent force ? Was God in solitude before this ? 
 Did He live in space without matter ? And if so, how, 
 as a spirit, can matter be acted on by Him ? 
 
 "And then, again, as to the word ' beginning.' When 
 was this ? What existed before it ? Bet^veen this be- 
 gifini7ig and the events your history narrates, how much 
 time elapsed ? Was it a myriad of years, during which 
 the earth seethed with multitudinous changes ; or was it 
 but a moment ? And so as to the term day that follows. 
 ' One day with the Lord is as a thousand years ; ' so 
 the same book afterwards tells us ; and in the Hebrew 
 tongue this word day, besides its ordinary signification 
 of t^venty-four hours, implies any distinct epoch, deter- 
 minate or indeterminate. Which do you mean here ? 
 
 "And so as to the word heavens. What does this 
 mean? Are these heavens infinite? Are they com- 
 posed of planets inhabited like our own ? On this point 
 your revelation is silent : it utters no speech." 
 
 But " God," says the patriarch, " discovereth deep 
 things out of darkness," and it is for us reverentially to 
 inquire what are the lessons which the silence of 
 Scripture on this point imparts. And I think they may 
 be summed up as follows : — 
 
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. 5 
 
 And first, a detailed scientific exposition of the 
 earth's history would have been a great impediment in 
 the way of a reception of revelation. Men are impa- 
 tient of whatever contradicts their senses ; and are by 
 no means disposed to welcome any system in which 
 such contradictions are contained. A French traveler 
 tells us of an Indian tribe to whom one of their own 
 number sought to explain the wonders he had seen on a 
 late visit to the great cities of the white men. He ro- 
 manced a good deal on the subject of magic, to which 
 he ascribed much that he had seen ; and this they very 
 readily accepted as truth. After a while, however, he 
 described a balloon, as a canoe that sailed on the clouds ; 
 but this they at once rejected, declaring that so great an 
 impostor as was the narrator of such a story did not de- 
 serve to live. And such has been very much the history 
 of society in reference to any great discoveries which 
 contradicted the superficial view the senses gave. Men 
 would believe in witches and ghosts; but they would 
 not tolerate the truths that Albertus Magnus, and Roger 
 Bacon, and Galileo, proclaimed. " The story is absurd : 
 it tells us that the earth moves round the sun : it tell*- 
 us, therefore, what we know is untrue, and it thus assails 
 doctrines which lie at the foundation of the public faith ; 
 its propagators must be put down." So were the first 
 proclaimers of the true theory of the heavens treated ; 
 and if the Mosaic narrative had broken its silence to 
 give a correct exposition of astronomy, it is difficult to 
 understand, supposing the present providential arrange- 
 ment of gradual scientific development to have obtained, 
 how that narrative could have commended itself to the 
 popular faith. As it is, with all the powerful external 
 and internal evidence by which the Bible has been 
 
6 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 vouched, men have been reluctant to receive it ; and the 
 slightest supposed discrepancies have been seized on as 
 pretexts for its rejection. But how would it have been 
 if its whole terminology, if not its dogmatic utterances, 
 were in the teeth of what men thought they saw with 
 the bodily eye. A premature revelation of science 
 would not be likely to be accepted as a revelation of 
 religious truth. 
 
 Nor, secondly, would the consequences be less peril- 
 ous if men should at once accept such a revelation of 
 science. For, observe, that if an objection holds good 
 to the reservation of truth on one point, it holds good 
 to a reservation of truth on all others ; and hence, a 
 Bible, to be accepted as inspired, must contain an abso- 
 lute, complete, perfect exhibition of universal knowledge, 
 squaring, not with what we know now, but with what we 
 would know if our powers were infinitely extended, and 
 our perceptions infinitely acute. Now how incompatible 
 this would be with that gradual progress of the race in 
 scientific attainment which Providence has been pleased 
 to ordain ! The question that thus arises, is, therefore, 
 not between the Bible and science, but between the pro- 
 gressive development of scientific truth, which now ex- 
 ists, and a system in which all truth is presented at 
 the outset, in full detail, to the eye. I do not presume 
 to contrast these systems ; for the first is that which na- 
 ture as well as revelation traces directly to God ; but I 
 do say, that there are one or two obvious reasons why 
 we must consider the course thus established by Provi- 
 dence as that which is most conducive to our interests 
 as creatures under probation for a higher and a better 
 world. " If God should open the question," so sub- 
 stantially spoke Leibnitz, one of the most devout as 
 
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. 7 
 
 well as profound of philosophers, " and should be 
 pleased to offer me on the one side absolute scientific 
 truth, and on the other, the search after such truth, in 
 all humility I would say, let it be the search after truth, 
 as that which belongeth to Thy creature, O Lord." For 
 who could see God face to face and live ? Who without 
 struggling can ascend the heavenly heights? Can 
 knowledge ever be obtained without long endeavor ; 
 and is complete knowledge compatible with this our 
 creature life and probationary condition, and limited 
 days ? And even supposing such a complete and uni- 
 versal revelation to be obtained, how would the stimu- 
 lus to patient experiment, to laborious study, to eager 
 intellectual effort, at once depart ! If the delights and 
 the invigorations of seeking belong even to celestial 
 spheres, how eminently do they belong to our own ! 
 How emphatically, then, is this very silence of God, the 
 voice that calls forth the laborer to his work, and cheers 
 student and philosopher on as each seeks to enter some 
 new circle of action or thought ? And how does this 
 silence whisper to us one truth more, and that the pro- 
 foundest of all — our own littleness before God ! The 
 highest reach of science is to show us our own igno- 
 rance ; our greatest strength serves best to illustrate our 
 helplessness in the Divine hand. So learn we to adore, 
 to revere, to obey.^ 
 
 1 " The mysteries of Nature with regard to the z&5mce.s of things, and, 
 indeed, to a great multitude of subtle operations, are kept in a kind of 
 sacred reserve and elude the utmost efforts of philosophy to surprise them 
 and bring them to light. "While Science goes on from step to step in the 
 march of her discoveries, it seems as if her grandest result was her con- 
 viction how much remains undiscovered; and while nations in a ruder 
 state of science have been ready to repose on their ignorance and error, 
 the most enlightened of men have always been the first to receive and 
 
8 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 And then, thirdly, such a revelation would but 
 imperfectly reach those wants to which a revelation is 
 peculiarly addressed. " To the poor the gospel is 
 preached ; " such was the crowning proof given by our 
 blessed Lord that His was truly the revelation of God. 
 You may take either the extreme of ignorance, or the ex- 
 treme of cultivation, and you will find that this poverty 
 of spirit is a necessity to those who would approach 
 their God. Here, for instance, is a negro slave, in the 
 old days of slavery, listening to the preacher's voice, or 
 spelling out, it may be, in his Bible, the divine message 
 it contains. What form of communication could better 
 meet his wants than that which marks the sacred text ? 
 There he finds history and biography ; all involving 
 events and characters he can conceive, and couched in 
 language which sounds like hearth-talk to his untutored 
 ear. And then there is the mystical teaching of redemp- 
 tion, which at once meets with a verification in the 
 voices of his own soul, — 
 
 " I the chief of sinners am, 
 But Jesus died for me." 
 
 So he cries, from the depth of his heart ; but does the 
 most profound philosopher speak otherwise, when he 
 awakens to the truth of spiritual life ? A Bible that 
 would be a scientific text-book would be no Bible for 
 the poor in spirit, whether they take rank among the 
 multitudes who are ignorant of this world's knowledge, 
 
 acknowledge the remaining obscurity which hung around them, just as 
 in the night, the farther a light extends the wider the surrounding 
 sphere of darkness appears." — Robert Hall, Sermon on the Glory of 
 God, &c. 
 
 " Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire." So quotes Sir W. Hamilton, who 
 thus paraphrases the proverb : " The highest reach of human science is 
 the scientific recognition of human ignorance." 
 
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. 9 
 
 or the few who are versed in it. From all such the ap- 
 peal is : "I seek other things ; I rise higher ; I must 
 learn those truths which concern my Saviour and my 
 soul." 
 
 And then, lastly, revelation, by its silence on these 
 questions of natural science, shows that it is to the soul's 
 condition and destiny alone that God points us, as the 
 supreme object of thought. Let us suppose that when 
 the entrance into a mine has been choked, a miner, of 
 superior intelligence, pours the light of a dark lantern 
 solely upon the spot where he sees a path of escape can 
 be hewn out. "That is the point; scatter not your 
 strength : work thereJ^ Somewhat of this character, 
 though of an infinitely higher degree, is the light poured 
 by revelation on the way of life. " It is not elsewhere 
 that your soul is to be turned ; revelation condescends 
 to this one theme ; thither all its rays converge ; on 
 this topic all its light is poured ; how fallen man can be 
 raised and saved." There is an awful prominence given, 
 therefore, to this topic, by the silence of God. All else 
 is shrouded in darkness ; here alone is light given to the 
 soul. Study this book : it contains all that is neces- 
 sary to your spiritual life. " Thy word is a lamp unto 
 my feet, and a light unto my path." It is a light which 
 not merely points out the path of life, but distinguishes 
 that path from the darkness in which God is not to be 
 found. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 IF a religion should be constructed by men, for hu- 
 man effect, one of the points on which it would be 
 most likely to seek to satisfy curiosity would be the ori- 
 gin of sin. To no topic have men's eyes been so 
 eagerly turned. To the natural mind, none is so insol- 
 uble. Supposing no revelation to exist, in what mazes 
 of contradiction do we find ourselves here involved. I 
 cannot look into my own heart ; I cannot look at the 
 conduct of others ; I cannot look at the history of the 
 world, without this cry : " Here is sin ; whence came 
 it ? " And I turn to the Bible for a solution, and find 
 only this : " God created man in His own image, and 
 blessed him, and gave him dominion over the earth in 
 which he was placed. But there were limits within which 
 man's liberty was restrained, and the physical penalty of 
 breaking these limits was future death. But there was 
 a still greater penalty, and that was the curse of sin. 
 And man broke these limits, and disobeyed the Divine 
 command, and received the penalties, — physical death 
 and sinfulness of soul. To this he was tempted by an 
 evil being, who, as a serpent, visited the garden where 
 man dwelt." Such is the substance of the narrative of 
 the fall of man, and beyond this, revelation speaks not. 
 " But you do not reach the mystery into which we so 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. II 
 
 much desire to penetrate ; " so we may hear the ob- 
 jector say. " You tell us something about one of evil's 
 cofiquestSj but nothing about its cause. Whence came 
 it? We have had speculations enough on this point 
 from inquirers, but nothing that carries with it any 
 proof. One supposes that evil is coexistent with good. 
 Another supposes that evil must always exist where 
 there is unshackled liberty of choice. Another inti- 
 mates that evil is the result of God's decree. Certainly 
 tsvo things we must postulate : one is that evil actually 
 exists ; the other that God is all-holy, all-wise, and all- 
 good. How can these be reconciled ? What clew does 
 your revelation afford ? " 
 
 " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place 
 whereon thou standest is holy ground." God, for our 
 own benefit and His glory, — to discipline us, to vindi- 
 cate His own majesty, — is pleased, over this mystery of 
 the origin of evil, to drop an impenetrable veil. " Ver- 
 ily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, 
 the Saviour." And where He is pleased thus to dwell 
 in silence, there He places the cherubim with the flam- 
 ing sword. 
 
 Nature cannot penetrate where His secrets thus lie 
 hid. Nature takes you to an endless series of cause 
 above cause, or effect after effect, but neither above nor 
 below is God to be found. Her ladder rests below on 
 earth, but does not extend upwards to those heavenly 
 tents where dwells the great First Cause. She says 
 this effect was produced by this cause, and this cause 
 was produced by another cause ; and so from cause to 
 cause, until she turns faintingly back, and declares, 
 " Here is the veil ; further I cannot penetrate ; the se- 
 
12 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 cret things belong to the Lord our God." And so, also, 
 is she speechless when she seeks to trace the cause of 
 the evil by which the world is racked and stained. 
 
 " Thou makest thine appeal to me: 
 I bring to life, I bring to death ; 
 The spirit does but mean the breath, — 
 I know no more." 
 
 We may kneel, it is true, 
 
 " Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
 
 That slope through darkness up to God," — 
 
 But out of the darkness Nature has no power to lead. 
 
 If the Bible were closed ; if the only Divine book 
 open to us were the book of Nature, with what still 
 greater awfulness and emphasis would this same si- 
 lence speak. " God has reserved this question ; He 
 does not choose that its mystery should be penetrated 
 by the children of men. Evil stands as much truncated 
 in nature as it does in the inspired text : here is the 
 base — here is sin — but the head, the original devis- 
 ing source, is removed from your view. Every act of 
 folly or crime reproduces the sin in the garden ; every 
 deed of blood, the violence of Cain. There is the fall, 
 and the heart bears witness to the tempter." This Na- 
 ture shows us, but she shows us no more. This the re- 
 vealed text shows us, but it shows us no more. If there 
 is an edict in natural religion that is distinct and unmis- 
 takable, it is this, " This subject is sealed." If there be 
 an attitude in which Nature most vividly exhibits God, 
 it is in affixing these solemn seals. " He is a God of 
 secrets," — so she whispers to us, — " He is a God that 
 concealeth ; " " no searching can find Him out ; " " stand 
 back, and know that He is God," " Verily, Thou art a 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. I3 
 
 God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour." 
 God of Israel, exhibiting Thyself in the history of Thy 
 ancient people ; God the Saviour, exhibiting Thyself in 
 Thy incarnation for the salvation of humanity ; but in 
 Thy essence, and in respect to Thine own mysteries, hid- 
 ing Thyself from the vision of men. Nature thus tells 
 us that the entrance to these mysteries is sealed ; and 
 Revelation but repeats what Nature proclaims. To ob- 
 ject to this reserve is to object to the system which 
 per\'ades not merely the Bible but the world. 
 
 And yet, as this reserve is God's own utterance both 
 in act and in book, like all His other utterances, it has 
 meanings on which it well becomes us to ponder. Of 
 these meanings I shall for a few moments dwell on two. 
 
 I. First, then, observe the narrowness of the limits 
 in which our powers of religious investigation are con- 
 fined. There have been cases in which the secrets of 
 great mechanical discoveries have been so scrupulously 
 preserved, that for a while the most curious eye was 
 baffled in its attempts to penetrate the chambers where 
 the process of manufacture was carried on. High walls 
 concealed the inclosure ; sworn sentinels stood guard 
 at its gates ; and yet, even with such checks, these 
 walls might be scaled, or these sentinels corrupted ; or 
 at last a chance guess would discover the key to the 
 secret which mere care sought so jealously to preserve. 
 But it is otherwise with this great mystery of evil, and 
 its relations to the All-Holy God. Around this, the 
 council chamber, as it were, of divinity, a wall is built 
 which no human vision can pierce. We are thus 
 shut out from any accurate speculative theology ; for 
 the door is closed to that region without a knowledge 
 of which no accurate speculative theology can be 
 
14 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 framed. "What we are concerned with is the faith of 
 the heart and the obedience of the life ; it is not spec- 
 ulation on the unrevealed, but submission to the re- 
 vealed. Though " we may know," says Bishop Butler, 
 " somewhat concerning the designs of Providence in the 
 government of the world, enough to enforce upon us 
 religion and the practice of virtue ; yet, since the mon- 
 archy of the universe is a dominion unlimited in extent 
 and everlasting in duration, the general system of it 
 must necessarily be quite beyond our comprehension. 
 And since there appears such a subordination and ref- 
 erence of the several parts to each other, as to consti- 
 tute it properly one administration or government, we 
 cannot have a thorough knowledge of any part, without 
 knowledge of the whole." " Knowledge," proceeds 
 this great thinker, " is not our proper happiness. It is 
 evident that there is another mark set up for us to aim 
 at ; another end which the most knowing may fail of, 
 and the most ignorant arrive at : — * The secret things 
 belong unto the Lord our God : but those thifigs which 
 are revealed belo7ig tmto us, a?id to our children forever, 
 that we may do all the words of this law.^ Which re- 
 flection of Moses, put in general terms, is, that the only 
 knowledge which is of any avail to us, is that which 
 teaches us our dnty, or assists us in the discharge of 
 it." Reason is given us to judge of the evidences of 
 religion, which are addressed to men ; and to apply the 
 precepts of religion, which concern practical life ; and 
 not to penetrate the mysteries of religion, which belong 
 to God. 
 
 II. Such being the lesson we learn from God's si- 
 lence as to the origin of evil, let us conclude by inquir- 
 ing how what has been revealed as to this mystery 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 15 
 
 bears on our practical life. What we thus receive may 
 be summed up under the following heads. 
 
 I St. We are assailed not only by an inner tendency 
 to evil, inherent in our corrupt wills, but by a powerful 
 spiritual adversary, who seeks the ruin of our souls. 
 He is the chief of the fallen angels, cast down from 
 heaven for his pride and revolt against the Most High, 
 and now he ranges the earth, with his subordinates, 
 tempting men to sin. So he tempted our first parents ; 
 so he tempted David, Judas, and Ananias ; and so, with 
 awful skill and power, he tempts us all. 
 
 2d. And yet, in the second place, powerful and in- 
 sidious as Satan thus is, he is under restraint, and can- 
 not destroy us if we resist him in the proffered strength 
 of the Lord. " Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath de- 
 sired to have thee, that he may sift thee as wheat ; but 
 I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." And if 
 we fa//, it is because we yield. There is an allegory, 
 traceable, I believe, to Luther, which portrays to us a 
 missionary meeting at which the Prince of Wickedness 
 himself presided, to hear the reports of his emissaries, 
 returning from their errands of evil about the earth. 
 " I dogged a caravan of Christians crossing the desert," 
 cried one, " and I hounded the wild beasts on them, 
 and they were torn to pieces, and their bones lie whiten- 
 ing on the sand." " But what of this," answered Satan ; 
 "for their souls were all saved." "And I just now 
 spied on the waves a boat full of Christians," reported 
 another, " and I flung a storm down on them, and 
 they foundered, and there lie //leir bodies fresh under 
 the sea." " But what of t^at," cried Satan ; "for their 
 souls were saved." "And I," said a third, the subtlest 
 of them all, "was twenty years tempting a righteous 
 
l6 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 man to commit a sin, and I succeeded, and he con- 
 sented, and I left him asleep in his sin." " Then Sa- 
 tan," so follows the allegory, " cried, ' Well done ! ' and 
 the night stars of hell shouted for joy." But it is only 
 over the consenting Christian that the tempter prevails. 
 " Satan hath desired to have thee, but / have prayed 
 for thee that ^/ly faith fail not." Christ's intercession, 
 the believer's faith, — these form a sure armor against 
 attack from our soul's foe. We must trust ; we must 
 work in Christ's vineyard, and in our own partic- 
 ular secular labor, and through His mighty interces- 
 sion we are safe. And if so, temptation builds us up 
 rather than destroys. It is like the torrent that pours 
 down an embankment of sand around the piers of a 
 bridge firmly planted in the river bed. It may rage, 
 but it only adds strength to that which it assails. 
 Temptation may thus become, as St. Augustine tells, 
 the ladder by which heaven itself is reached. Meeting 
 and surmounting each temptation as it in turn is pre- 
 sented, first the coarse, and then the more refined, the 
 soul at last reaches the heavenly heights. And thus it 
 is, on the one hand, that there is no temptation so great 
 as not to be tempted at all, no danger so great as un- 
 consciousness of danger ; so on the other hand, con- 
 sciousness of temptation is the soul's safeguard, and 
 conquest of temptation the soul's ennoblement. 
 
 3d. And then the last truth is, that there is a final 
 day coming when temptation will cease, and when Sa- 
 tan and his angels will be imprisoned finally and for- 
 ever. " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven," 
 says the Lord, speaking prophetically of this great day. 
 " Then shall that Wicked be revealed," writes St. Paul, 
 speaking of the final great struggle, " whom the Lord 
 shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 17 
 
 destroy with the brightness of His coming."^ And 
 hear of the glory of the regenerated world, under this 
 the dominion of the Lord Christ : " And he carried 
 me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, 
 and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, 
 descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of 
 God : and her light was like unto a stone most precious, 
 even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. . . . And I saw 
 no temple therein : for the Lord God Almighty and 
 the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city hath no 
 need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it : for 
 the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the 
 light thereof." There enters neither sin, nor suffering, 
 nor death ; and there the redeemed and glorified soul 
 will grow forever in the blessed knowledge and service 
 of the Lord, unpolluted by sin, and unassailed by temp- 
 tation. What, then, is revealed to us of the power of sin, 
 teaches us to watch, to work, to trust, to hope, and to 
 conquer. The foe that contends with us is great, but 
 greater is Christ our King, and in these things we shall 
 be more than conquerors, through Him who redeemed 
 us, and died for us on the tree. 
 
 " For though my sinfulness is great, 
 
 Atoning grace is greater; 
 And though all Hell should lie in wait, 
 
 Supreme is my Creator ; 
 And He my Strength and Fortress is, 
 And when most helpless, most I 'm His, 
 
 My Strength and my Redeemer! " 
 
 " Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God 
 of Israel, the Saviour." Thou hidest whatever it is 
 not needful for us to know ; Thou revealest whatever 
 is required to lead us into the path of life. 
 1 2 Thess. ii. 8. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 DIVINATION. 
 
 IN a man-made religion, Divination is a chief feat- 
 ure. It may be Divination by means of certain 
 prescribed mechanisms ; or it may be Divination through 
 a particular priesthood ; but from such a system, Divi- 
 nation of some sort seems inseparable. It may be 
 that, under the grossest form of superstition, witches 
 mutter their incantations over the ashes, or sing out their 
 prophecies in wild orgies round the caldron in which the 
 mystic decoction seethes. Or it may be that from mar- 
 ble statue, or from consecrated grove, proceed the pro- 
 phetic utterances, charming the refined by their classic 
 elegance, and overawing the superstitious by their mys- 
 tic terrors. And before these oracles men of all classes 
 have knelt. It is not merely the peasant, stretching 
 out his hand in dull credulity for the gypsy's edict; 
 for men of all stages of enlightenment have besought 
 the soothsayer to open to them the secrets of their 
 future. It may be that the imposture was so trans- 
 parent that in any other subject-matter it would have 
 been scornfully disdained. Be this as it may, the vortex 
 of Divination is approached by rapids, which, when 
 once they are entered, it seems impossible to escape. 
 What, for instance, is more shallow than Spiritualism ? 
 What has been more ignominiously exposed ? And yet 
 
DIVINATION. 19 
 
 Strong men are sometimes swept into its depths by the 
 very force of this yearning to penetrate the secrets of the 
 Invisible World. " Have you not lost a beloved friend ? " 
 — so is one bleeding under a recent bereavement ad- 
 dressed. " Would you not hear from that friend ? " 
 And the grieving and yearning heart is thus drawn into 
 a current from which few return with minds perfectly 
 uncrazed. Or, with some momentous future ahead, and 
 some question of great doubt besetting the present, the 
 same yearning to penetrate the veil becomes equally 
 irresistible even to men of the serenest and most intel- 
 lectual mould. Marcus Aurelius, the most philosophic 
 of emperors, sought consolation from an oracle of some 
 of whose deceptions he was necessarily aware. Wallen- 
 stein, one of the most statesmanlike of generals, took as 
 his guide an astrologer whom he could not but despise ; 
 and on the eve of Pultowa made the question as to who 
 was the trustiest of his friends depend upon the verdict 
 of an omen.^ Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of the 
 keenest of skeptics, hung his religious creed on the un- 
 expected occurrence of a meteoric shower. The pre- 
 tended ability to predict the unforeseen and determine 
 the future, has enabled the most presumptuous of impo- 
 sitions to number among their votaries the intelligent as 
 well as the ignorant ; the sage as well as the child. And 
 if a religion was devised by man for the purpose of win- 
 ning human support, such a claim would almost surely be 
 advanced. It was so with the mythologies of old times ; 
 it is so with the fraudulent superstitions of our own. 
 And yet, immense as is the power which such a pre- 
 
 1 " Gib mir ein Zeichen, Schicksal ! Der soil's se>Ti 
 Der an dem nachsten Morgen mir zuerst 
 Entgegen kommt mit einem Liebeszeichen." 
 
 Wallenstein's Tod, II. 3. 
 
20 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 tension gives, it is one which Christianity, solitary in 
 this respect among all religions appealing to Divine sanc- 
 tion, most expressly disclaims. It avails itself of no such 
 curiosity j it appeals to no such superstitious yearnings, 
 tremendous as is the power to be thus invoked. It gives 
 no mechanism by which the future may be forecast. It 
 appoints no oracular priesthood. And not only this, 
 but it pronounces the future destinies of the individual 
 to be impenetrable to the human eye. " I returned, and 
 saw that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to 
 the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches 
 to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill ; 
 but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man 
 also knoweth not his time." " We know not what shall 
 be on the morrow." And again : " There shall be two 
 in the field : the one shall be taken and the other left. 
 Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord 
 doth come." "Go to, now," so speaks St. James, "ye 
 who say. To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, 
 and continue there a year ; whereas ye know not what 
 shall be on the morrow." Strange utterances these, at 
 a period when every religion had its oracles ; and when, 
 as if on the eve of some great convulsion, voices of Di- 
 vination, mixed with the cries of demoniac possession, 
 seemed to issue from the whole surface of the moral 
 world.^ And stranger still the silence which Chris- 
 tianity, when all other religious systems provided oracle 
 and shrine, preserved on this whole question of the in- 
 
 1 Archbishop Trench, in his Treatise on Miracles, (p. 162,) says: — 
 " If there was anything that marked the period of the Lord's coming in 
 the flesh, it was the wreck and confusion of man's spiritual life. The 
 whole period was the hour and power of darkness ; of a darkness which 
 then, immediately before the dawn of a new day, was the thickest." 
 
DIVINATION. 2 1 
 
 dividual future, standing with finger on the lip, as if to 
 say, " As to this I have no voice, neither shalt thou.'* 
 In view of the prevalence of Divination in those days ; 
 in view of the immense power it exercised over the sen- 
 sibilities and fears of men ; in view of the fact that in 
 the popular mind, oracle and shrine were indispensable 
 to religious faith,^ — the silence of the Apostles on this 
 point, — their stern dissociation of themselves and their 
 
 1 Juvenal, in his sixth satire, speaks at large of divination as an essen- 
 tial ftature of all religious rites. After specifj-ing several cases, the fol- 
 lowing summary is given : — 
 
 " The curse is universal : high and low 
 Are mad alike the future hour to know. 
 The rich consult a Babylonian seer, 
 Skilled in the mysteries of either sphere ; 
 Or a gray -headed priest, hired by the state, 
 To watch the lightning, and to expiate. 
 The middle sort, a quack, at whose command 
 They lift the forehead, and make bare the hand. 
 The poor apply to humbler cheats, still found 
 Beside the circus wall, or city mound; 
 While she, whose neck no golden trinket bears, 
 To the dry ditch, or dolphin's tower, repairs. 
 And anxiously inquires which she shall choose. 
 The tapster, or old clothes-man ? Which refuse ? " 
 
 Gifford's Translation, lines 83&-60. 
 
 The reference to Judaism is much weakened by Mr. Giflford. I give 
 the original : — 
 
 " Cum dedit ille locum, cophino fenoque relicto 
 Arcanam Judaea tremens mendicat in aurem , 
 Interpres legiun Solymarum et magna sacerdos 
 Arboris ac summi fida intemuntia coeli — " 
 It will be seen by this that the claim to divination was prominently 
 put forth by the Jews at Rome. 
 
 No impostor would have neglected so powerful an element of fascina- 
 tion ; but by the Apostles it was not only disclaimed but denounced. In 
 St. Paul's case, one of the most violent persecutions he encountered was 
 from his having silenced an oracle of Divination out of which the 
 owners obtained " much gain." — Acts xvi. 16. 
 
22 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 work from any such power, is accountable in no other 
 way than by the direction of the Most High. The 
 utterances which human wisdom could not have averted, 
 must have been silenced by Divine. 
 
 But it is with the lessons of this, the silencing of 
 Divination, that we have to do ; and the first is, that we 
 find in Christianity alone a true revelation of the real 
 relations of man to God, so far as the disposal of the 
 future is concerned. In His hand are contained results, 
 leaving duties alone to us. The oars of Providence are 
 muffled. We know not our hour ; and hence we are to 
 labor as if we were to live forever, and trust as if we 
 were to die to-night. Our eyes are blinded to the future 
 wherever we have freedom of action ; they are open 
 to the future only when that freedom of action is 
 refused. We can foresee an eclipse a thousand years 
 hence, but we cannot avert it ; we could avert a con- 
 flagration by which our own home may be burned 
 to-night, but we cannot foresee it. On the one side, 
 consciousness of mighty powers of perception in things 
 not concerning self ; on the other side, the necessity of 
 trust, faith, and resignation in all that concerns self j — 
 these are the spiritual truths we here learn. 
 
 Nor is the subject without moral lessons of almost 
 equal moment. There could be no courage in the en- 
 durance of difficulties ; no energy in surmounting them ; 
 no wise care of emergencies ; none of that sagacious 
 industry which provides against each of the several 
 chances of loss ; none of that heroism which derives its 
 dignity and manliness from its battle against opposition 
 which is often as unexpected as it is defiant. The 
 highest type of moral greatness, in fact, is built up and 
 developed by the very endurance and comprehensive- 
 
THE FUTURE : WHY VEILED. 23 
 
 ness which this struggle against the unforeseen imparts. 
 It has been said that Washington and William of Or- 
 ange became great generals by defeats ; to these they 
 owed the majesty which disappointment could not 
 shock ; the training of mind and nerve which neglected 
 nothing, and presumed on nothing ; the habit of asso- 
 ciating the triumph of right with the far future, and not 
 with the present's verdict ; and the largeness of intellect 
 which could plan for success comprehensively, and when 
 success at last came, receive it with tranquil and un- 
 dated brow. And so it is with us in the battles of life. 
 Whatever greatness may belong to our moral powers 
 will be largely traceable to the difficulties which this, the 
 future's darkness, heaps in our path. 
 
 But it is mainly with our affections that this question 
 concerns itself; and living as we do in this world of 
 wrongs and griefs, it is hard to see how our affections 
 could grow, were not the future mercifully hid. Ob- 
 serve how it would be with our wrongs. It would be a 
 weary and unbounteous Vv^orld in which men should al- 
 ways foresee the alienations and ingratitudes of the days 
 to come ! It would be a world in which there would 
 be little of that unselfish trust ; that hoping against 
 hope ; that readiness to try once more and forgive ; 
 that long patience with the erring, which are among the 
 most beautiful features in this our fallen state. All 
 would be either horror at the certain crime, or selfish 
 partnership in the assured success. 
 
 And so with the griefs of life. I do not know how 
 we could bear these if we saw them ahead. Most men 
 who have reached mature years have known what it is 
 to meet with some stunning blow on the hearth and 
 heart ; what would it have been if this blow had been 
 
24 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 foreseen ? It may have been in some matter of busi- 
 ness economy, when, without any moral wrong, the 
 whole fabric of prosperit}^ may be suddenly swept away. 
 It may be such a case as that of the late Mr. Wilder, 
 whose history has recently been so effectively told ; and 
 in which almost a lifetime of honorable business suc- 
 cess, and of noble hospitalit}^, and of large beneficence, 
 was suddenly, and sharply, and finally terminated by a 
 bankruptcy as undeserved as it was irremediable. But 
 how would that noble hospitality have become a grief 
 and a shame, and that liberal hand have been para- 
 lyzed, had the ruin of final years been foreseen ? Mac- 
 beth, as soon as the event on which depended his pre- 
 dicted overthrow ceased to be improbable, — when the 
 woods approached the castle, and he not born of woman 
 appeared, — cried out in despair that his resolution was 
 palled, and his manhood gone. And so others less 
 guilty than Macbeth would speak, if the disasters of the 
 future were to each of us foretold. 
 
 And so with bereavements. There may be some who 
 can recall some sharp, unwarned affliction which to 
 have foreseen would have been to the heart an agony 
 beyond its capacity to endure. It was the stunning 
 qualities that belonged to the blow's suddenness that 
 made it tolerable ; it was the ether of unexpectedness 
 which enabled the sufierer to sustain a pain which 
 otherwise would have been beyond his strength. And 
 it is one of God's tenderest providences, that often this 
 oblivion to the coming shock continues, to those to 
 whom it would be greatest, when with those less near 
 the eye is opened, so that the heart that would be other- 
 wise crushed, is able cheerfully to persevere in its min- 
 istry of love. Hoping with hope and against hope, such 
 
CHRIST LIFTING THE VEIL. 25 
 
 is the philosophy written on this veil by which the 
 future is shut off. I do not know how we could bear it 
 were it otherwise. I do not know where would be the 
 brightness left to life were this veil withdrawn. To 
 those who ever followed a child to the grave, — what 
 years of hope, of delight, of the sweetest pleasure that 
 earth affords, would have been lost ; with what leaden 
 skies would those years have been overhung, could that 
 death have been foreseen ! How would it have been 
 possible to have looked on that childish face without 
 the bitterest of pangs! And the future — how with 
 that ? Who is there that may not in a few months be 
 summoned to that sternest and most awful of scenes, 
 — the parting with our most loved ? To whom may 
 not soon be assigned the solitary house where no 
 longer is heard the voice at once most familiar and 
 most cherished ? And what a stupor would fall over 
 us were this revealed ; how would each step forward 
 be only a step into deeper gloom ; how would the 
 fountain of affection pour forth not love, but bitterness, 
 and horror, and despair. It is in mercy that God con- 
 ceals as well as reveals. It is to make this life a true 
 period of probation, in which grow not only the noblest 
 virtues, but the most refining affections of heart, that the 
 future is thus covered by a veil. 
 
 Yet there was One before whose eye this veil was 
 lifted ; One who, in assuming humanity's griefs, took 
 not humanity's blindness, but united grief's dread an- 
 ticipation with its present pang. From the outset of 
 His public ministry the desertion and horror of its close 
 stood out fully before His Divine eye. " I have a bap 
 tism," so He spoke almost at the outset, " to be baptized 
 with ; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." 
 
26 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Even in the glory of the Mount of Transfiguration, when, 
 in communion with His celestial visitants, " they spake," 
 so it is recorded, " of the decease which He was to 
 accomplish at Jerusalem." Then, as the event drew 
 nigh, He went forth to meet it with a full knowledge 
 of its approach. " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and 
 the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the Chief Priests 
 and Scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and 
 shall deliver Him to the Gentiles, to mock, and to 
 scourge, and to crucify Him." And when the last sharp 
 blow was about to fall, " Jesus, knowing all things that 
 were to come upon Him, went forth." He stood alone, 
 therefore, in bearing the full burden of human affliction, 
 for He bore its anticipation as well as its shock. It 
 brings the loveliness and grandeur of His character 
 more fully before us when we recollect that thus fore- 
 seeing He shrank not back, neither turned with averted 
 eye from those whom He knew would desert and betray 
 Him ; would scoff Him, and nail Him to the tree. He 
 drew not back, but calmly went forward to the cross. 
 He reproached not, but blessed, and healed, and 
 pleaded, yet not for Himself but for them. There is 
 something in this combination of tenderness, of pre- 
 science, of power, which in itself proclaims the Divine, 
 and leads us to kneel and cry, " All hail unto Thee, O 
 Christ, despised and rejected of men, bearing for us the 
 foreseen cross." And as we thus gaze and worship, 
 other features in the Master appear. He was chastised 
 for our iniquities ; the burden of our sins was upon 
 Him ; and this He bore that we might be saved. It 
 was the fuller cup that He took, leaving the lesser to us ; 
 He sheltered us from a storm which was greater than 
 we could bear, sustaining its full shock. The doctrine 
 
CHRIST THE AVERTER. 27 
 
 of His substituted sacrifice for us, therefore, ripens to 
 its fulness as we view His life and passion in this light : 
 it was a finished work, a full mantle ; a robe whose 
 protection from the judgments we deserve is complete. 
 Tremble not, then, O believer, who takest refuge in Him, 
 in a loving and living faith, for the salvation of the Lord 
 is sure. And in all your sufferings and griefs, and be- 
 reavements and fears, lean on Him in perfect trust, 
 knowing that more than this He bore for the love of you, 
 and that there is no pang you can bear which He cannot 
 Himself feel, as your just and merciful High-priest. 
 But what will it be to be left to bear alone, unsheltered, 
 and unsoothed, the full storms of those eternal pains 
 where the despair of a certain future of wretchedness 
 is joined to the remorse for an abused past ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LITURGY. 
 
 LORD, teach us to pray, as John also taught his 
 disciples ; " and in answer to this petition our 
 blessed Lord set forth a prayer, which, precious and 
 obligatory as it is, must constitute, from its very brevity, 
 but a small fraction of the petitions offered on occasions 
 of stated public worship. And the omission is most 
 remarkable. History gives no other example of the in- 
 stitution of a religious communion whose founders did 
 not include in its articles a directory for public worship. 
 And yet so far from such being the case with Christian- 
 ity, our Lord, in His reply to His disciples, leaves the 
 whole mode and material of public worship undeter- 
 mined ; and His Apostles exercised with equal scru- 
 pulousness the same reserv^e. There is no form of 
 prayer set forth in the New Testament except the 
 Lord's Prayer ; and while we have frequent mention 
 of prayers being offered, of the breaking of bread, and 
 of baptism, the only two prayers of the Apostles which 
 are recorded in words, had reference to such extraordi- 
 nary occasions as make them unsuitable for the usual 
 purposes of worship.^ To what, then, is this remark- 
 able and evidently designed omission of a settled form 
 1 Acts L 24; iv. 24. 
 
LITURGY : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 29 
 
 either for worship or the administration of the sacra- 
 ments to be traced ? 
 
 And first, clearly not to disapprobatmi of a liturgical 
 form. If such disapprobation, on so important a point, 
 were to be expressed, it would be expressed distinctly ; 
 and besides this, the silence strikes deeper : it reaches 
 to the order of all worship, of whatever type. And 
 if the test of presumption is to be resorted to, the pre- 
 sumptions all are that liturgical worship was at least 
 not discountenanced by our Lord. He certainly wor- 
 shiped according to the liturgy in use in the Jewish 
 Church. He showed that there was no principle 
 against liturgical worship, by setting forth at least one 
 form of prayer, — a prayer which, as in the plural 
 number, implies that its first scope is that of joint, 
 as distinguished from individual, use. He attached 
 peculiar efficacy to prayers in which His people " shall 
 agree together touching something they shall ask in 
 His name ; " and this agreement requires some sort 
 of joint prior preparation. And again, liturgies sprang 
 up in the Primitive Church at a period so early as to 
 raise an almost irresistible presumption that liturgical 
 worship of some kind was common under the directions 
 of the Apostles themselves. And then, how essential, 
 we may well argue, must have been a grave, settled, 
 common worship, to communities so uninstructed and 
 so heterogeneous, as those which made up the early 
 Church. If now a liturgy is one of the most effective 
 instruments of Christian education ; if it brings up the 
 young, by their holiest memories, in the true faith ; if it 
 is the only adequate method of introducing to us ki due 
 order the Christian Year in its spiritual fulness and pow- 
 er ; if now, when prepared with devout comprehensive- 
 
30 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 ness, it is a more effective agent of spirituality than is 
 an extemporaneous system, in which all depends on the 
 gifts, the culture, the doctrine, or the tone of the minister 
 for the time being ; if now one man's liberty in public 
 prayer is often every body else's enthrallment, and the 
 only true liberty is a common form agreed to by all ; — 
 if thus, even with ourselves, orthodoxy, spirituality, and 
 liberty unite so largely in recommending some sort of 
 a liturgy, how eminently must this have been the case 
 in the early Church, where the people were compara- 
 tively untutored, and where on public worship, religious 
 instruction so largely depended. In view, then, of the 
 individual usages of the Lord and his Apostles, in view 
 of the practice of the early Church, in view of the wants 
 of that Church, we have no right to connect the omis- 
 sion, in the New Testament, of liturgical presumption 
 with any thing like a disapprobation of a liturgical form. 
 What, then, does so remarkable an omission teach ? 
 
 And first, we may find an answer in the truth that 
 prayer is not man's mechanical repetition of God's pre- 
 scripts^ but man's voluntary response to GocTs revealed 
 word. Formularies of aJl kinds become mechanical 
 just in proportion as they are arbitrarily imposed. How 
 dully, for instance, do the forms of our common-law 
 courts sound to the officers compelled by law to repeat 
 them, and how vivid and momentous they are to those 
 not under such constraint, but who are individually con- 
 cerned in their application. How sharply does the ar- 
 raignment of a prisoner, and the swearing of a jury, cut 
 into the consciousness of the prisoner himself; yet how 
 smoothly do the same forms float over the attention of 
 crier and clerk. I do not say that this tells against a 
 liturgy ; because a liturgy, in a Protestant communion, 
 
liturgy: why not divinely prescribed. 31 
 
 is taken not as divinely prescribed, but as the choice of 
 the worshiper himself. But I do say that this passive- 
 ness on the worshiper's part is apt to rise just in propor- 
 tion as a liturgy is supposed to be verbally prescribed 
 and limited by the express direction of God. Hence the 
 tendency in the Romish Church, which claims this au- 
 thority, to turn its prayers into formulas used largely in 
 an unknown tongue, and designated by their first words, 
 and packed up, as it were, and labelled in this way, and 
 attached to beads, recited as if by title. A missionary 
 who penetrated into Tartary a few years since, mentions 
 a habit he there observed in the native priests, of attach- 
 ing particular prayers to the spokes of a wheel, and 
 then, on giving the latter a whirl, supposing their de- 
 votions were properly offered. Devout as are many 
 metnbers of the Romish Church, the idea that their 
 prayers are made up by an infallible authority, and 
 that they are complete in themselves by God's own fiat, 
 tends very often to the notion that with them human 
 participation has nothing to do, and that they are to 
 be offered up, as far as possible, unalloyed by human 
 choice or human thought. It is a vicarious worship ; 
 if the priest does not intercede for the worshiper, the 
 prayer does. And the silence of our Lord on this point, 
 while it strengthens the reasons for a liturgy in public 
 worship, by enhancing the responsibility of the exercises 
 in which we thus engage, unites with the express utter- 
 ances of Scripture in warning us how thoroughly we 
 must throw our choice, our judgment, our consciousness, 
 our affections, into the petitions we offer to His throne. 
 " God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must wor- 
 ship Him in spirit and in truth." " Use not vain rep- 
 etitions, as the heathen do." " Pray without ceasing." 
 
32 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 " Pray with the understanding." " Men ought always to 
 pray and not to faint." And then the Lord's silence on 
 this point seems to add : " Listening and answering are 
 mine ; praying, yours. See then that prayer indeed be 
 yours. Choose the words ; choose them gravely and 
 ably ; choose them as individuals in personal prayer ; 
 choose them, it may be, as a Church, for congregational 
 prayer ; but choose them as yours ; and with all your 
 powers of attention and supplication, approach the 
 throne." 
 
 And then, a second reason for this omission may be 
 found in the universality of the Church. It would have 
 been easy to have framed a single liturgy which would 
 have satisfied the wants of the first disciples ; but very 
 soon, as the Church expanded, a system so narrow 
 would have been a great impediment to growth. For, no- 
 tice the varied elements which the Church was destined 
 to comprehend. Almost at the outset are gathered to- 
 gether " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the 
 dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappa- 
 docia, in Pontus, and Asia ; Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in 
 Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and 
 strangers of Rome, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and 
 Arabians," — nations embracing almost every peculiar- 
 ity of language and of blood. And then, when the 
 Church began to take organic shape, how varied were 
 the phases of civilization which she was to meet and 
 absorb. On this very question of worship, remember 
 how the Latin intellect tended to comprehensive gen- 
 eralization ; the Greek, to refined individualization ; 
 the Oriental, to mystic contemplation. And then, even 
 in our own time, after so many centuries of religious 
 and commercial assimilation, how prominently do these 
 
LITURGY : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 33 
 
 contrasts of race start out, not merely between the in- 
 habitants of distinct countries, but between those of dis- 
 tinct races living on the same soil. An eminent clergy- 
 man of the North of Ireland tells us that, during the 
 Crimean war, he had occasion to see successively a com- 
 pany of Irish soldiers, a company of English soldiers, 
 and a company of Scottish soldiers, parting with their 
 friends. " The parting of the English was undemon- 
 strative but hearty and deep ; it was an attempted cheer 
 ending in gushing tears, which they neither encouraged 
 or discouraged. The Scottish women waved their hands, 
 and had then to turn away to bur}' and hide their faces 
 and the rolling tears. The Irish let it all out in unre- 
 strained bursts, and loud and affecting wails." ^ Such 
 are the variations of national temperament in the ex- 
 pression of emotion ; and in individual temperament 
 the variations, if more subtile and numerous, would be 
 .scarcely less marked. " There are so many kinds of 
 voices in the world," so speaks St. Paul, " and none of 
 them without signification." ^ The gospel dispensation 
 does not force these voices into one key and tone, but 
 draws each to itself, according as each is best able to 
 utter its prayer and praise. 
 
 So it is that our blessed Lord left no liturgical form 
 except one prayer, which is in the nature rather of a com 
 mon base of worship than a universal structure ; and 
 so it is that the Primitive Church, at the earliest period 
 to which history takes us, possessed a series of litur- 
 gies, each more or less free, and each adapted to the 
 use of specific provinces or districts. There were diver- 
 
 1 The Ulster Revival^ etc., a pamphlet by the Rev. Jas. McCosh, LL. D. 
 1859. 
 
 2 1 Cor. xiv. 10. 
 
 8 
 
34 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 sities of order ; there were varieties of expression ; 
 there were openings for non-liturgical prayer ; there 
 was a liberty which would have been inconsistent with 
 a divinely prescribed liturg}', and which was at the 
 same time essential to a Catholic Church which was 
 to embrace all nations and tongues.-^ For men of 
 all varieties of temperament were to join in that wor- 
 ship : men, some of whom would find their most nat- 
 ural expression in symbolism ; men, also, of passionate 
 temperament and coarse temper, to whom the rude and 
 
 1 The Chmstian Remembrancer, a paper very far opposed to liturgical 
 liberalism, thus fairly states the case with the early Church : — 
 
 " It does not seem as if, at first, any thing more than the simple outlines 
 of a ritual were given, fixing the few essential parts, and leaving the 
 rest free. The very diversities of order in the Liturgies is a sign of this, 
 still more the variations of expression, and, so far as Ave can judge from 
 history and extant remains, those variations were greater in the early than 
 in the later ages. The object of the requests, the evils to be depre- 
 cated, the persons for whom intercession should be made, Avere in the 
 main fixed ; beyond this it was left to the discretion and prayerful spirit 
 of the Bishop of each church to choose the expression, to enlarge the 
 subjects, to extend and contrast the fulness of his pra^-ers. Hence we 
 read in St. Justin Martyr, that the celebrant praj^ed and gave thanks 
 6<TTj Swafiis avTw. If a form were now found which professed to be a 
 fixed, formal Liturgy of any church, or any number of churches, in the 
 Ante-Nicene period, the very fact of its professing to be such would 
 throw the strongest suspicion on its genuineness." — London Christian 
 Remembrancer, INIay, 1854. 
 
 The Preface to our Common Prayer-book recites the truth on which 
 primitive usage was based: — 
 
 " It is a most invaluable part of that blessed liberty Avherewith Christ 
 has made us free, that in His worship, different forms and usages may be 
 without offence allowed, provided the substance of the faith be kept 
 entire " 
 
 The Articles of the Church of England speak to the same effect: " It 
 is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, or 
 utterly alike: for at all times they have been divers, and ma}' be changed 
 according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that 
 nothing be ordained against God's Avord." — Art. xxxiv. 
 
LITURGY : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 35 
 
 vehement cr)' for aid would be the most natural utter- 
 ance ; men whose communion would be that of adora- 
 tion ; men of calmer nature, whose instinct and com- 
 fort it would be to place their wants, their confessions, 
 their thanksgivings, with systematic and classic com- 
 pleteness before the Divine Throne. In that Church 
 was to be subtle Greek and stately Roman ; mystic 
 Alexandrian and precise Jew ; scholar and barbarian, 
 bond and free ; and in that Church was each to find in- 
 struction and peace. -^ 
 
 And we must be equally flexible and comprehensive, 
 if we would enlarge ourselves as a true branch of the 
 Catholic Church of Christ. For Christ speaks not to 
 one line of tastes, but to all ; not to one line of temper- 
 ament but to all ; not exclusively to the contemplative, 
 or the fervid, or the refined, or the ignorant ; not ex- 
 clusively to him who receives the truth only through 
 elementar}^ statement, nor exclusively to him who re- 
 ceives the truth only through symbol and illustration ; 
 but comprehensively to all, each approaching Him 
 through the several avenues of expression which He 
 Himself has framed. " Thou that hearest prayer, 
 unto thee shall all flesh come." "What God hath 
 cleansed that call not thou common." Dare not to 
 
 1 The Romish Church has understood this, varj'ing her services as she 
 does from the gorgeous ceremonial to the preaching by cross or station, 
 where the priest's passionate appeal is preceded only by a moment's 
 prayer; and extending her missionary organizations, so that for deeds of 
 mercy she offers the Carmelites, passing through their rounds of mercy to 
 sick and starving; and for the scholastic work of the Church, the Bene- 
 dictines; and for its missionary labors, the Paulists and Passionists, unit- 
 ing often the simplest machinery with the most powerful vernacular 
 eloquence. The Church of Rome has sanctioned many abuses, and has 
 been sadly false to her sacred trust, but she has been wise in this, — the ' 
 flexibility of the liturgical system she adopts. 
 
36 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 close up any of the paths through which the sinner 
 approaches the Lord ; but if thou canst, stand by the 
 opening to each, and invite the ignorant, the careless, 
 the self-deceived, the slave of sense and of sin to enter 
 in ; invite each in the tongue that he best understands, 
 to implore the Saviour of souls for pardon and life. 
 
 So it is then — and this is the sum of the teaching 
 we have just considered — that Christ speaks to all^ 
 and He speaks to you. He speaks to all : " Ho, 
 every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ; " — 
 " Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest." He speaks to all in His 
 terms , — an inflexible, absolute message it is, sal- 
 vation through the cross ; but you must answer in 
 yours. You must answer, not in another man's nature 
 but your own \ not in form but in spirit ; in the full sin- 
 gle earnestness of your own heart must you plead with 
 the God of hosts, and offer as your own the prayers by 
 which you approach His throne. Revelation is of 
 
 God ; PRAYER, of MAN. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CREEDS. 
 
 THE remarks which have been made on the omis- 
 sion in the New Testament of any prescribed 
 liturgy for public worship, apply in many respects to 
 the absence of creeds and catechisms. It is in every 
 view probable that some such formularies were set 
 forth, if not by the Apostles, at least by the evangelists 
 and teachers whose labors they directed. Compen- 
 diums of doctrine, suitable for the particular wants of 
 the times, — catechisms for the young, if not for adults, 
 — are among the first necessities of religious instruc- 
 tion ; and in the apostolic age they were at least as much 
 needed as in our own. The doctrine was then entirely 
 new. It was contained in a large number of books, 
 partly historical, partly prophetic, and partly exeget- 
 ical, hortatory, and practical ; but in none of these any 
 thing like systematic articles of faith were set forth. 
 
 The people who comprised the Apostolic Church were 
 most of them ignorant of letters ; and even were it 
 otherwise, the want of copies of the sacred record must 
 have made it necessary for them to depend very largely 
 upon oral instructions. Such instructions would nat- 
 urally have taken a compendious and systematic shape, 
 and in this shape would have been put on record, even 
 supposing that no creeds or catechisms were set forth by 
 common consent. The omission, then, of such creeds 
 
38 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 and catechisms from the New Testament, is a very re- 
 markable fact. It is so unparalleled in religious history ; 
 it is so antecedently improbable when we view the nature 
 of the work and the duties of the inspired penmen, that 
 we can readily understand how one of the most acute 
 of modern divines should consider such an omission as 
 in itself proof of the divine authorship of the Gospel 
 revelation.^ " An omission which is, on all human prin- 
 ciples, unaccountable, amounts to a moral demonstration 
 of the divine origin of our religion. For that which 
 cannot have come from Man, must have come from 
 Gody 2 
 
 I. But it is with the teachings of this omission that 
 we have now to do. And those teachings may be best 
 collected by considering the reasons on which we may 
 reverentially suppose such an omission to be based. 
 
 These reasons we may thus state : — 
 
 I St. Such a compendium would supersede the books 
 of Scripture as they now exist. It would act as a statute 
 acts on the common law : the histories, biographies, 
 prophecies, and exhortations on which the compendium 
 would be based would cease to be consulted ; they would 
 be absorbed in such compendium, and it alone could be 
 the authoritative guide. The consequences of this 
 would be as follows : — 
 
 (i.) Those processes of individual thought which God 
 now makes the prerequisite of all conception of truth, 
 would be no longer exercised as to that which is the pro- 
 foundest and most important truth of all. Observe how 
 it is in the natural world. God has not been pleased to 
 write a compendium of science on the skies, or to im- 
 
 1 Whately's Essays^ 3d Series, p. 119. London, 1850. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
CREEDS : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 39 
 
 plant it among the intuitions of the mind. On the con- 
 trary, scientific truth is ascertained by induction and by 
 induction alone. Thus God neither engraved the chart 
 of the Gulf Stream on the waters, nor revealed it as a 
 scientific conclusion to the mind ; but He appointed 
 in the Gulf of Mexico a reservoir by whose tropical 
 fires the waters of this wonderful current were to be 
 heated ; He opened a channel through which it was 
 to flow through the colder waves of the Atlantic ; and 
 then, He directed its final action to the shores of Great 
 Britain, converting what would otherwise have been a 
 coast as inhospitable as that of Newfoundland into a 
 region in which unite almost every constituent of com- 
 mercial success, as well as almost every climatic ele- 
 ment which serv^es to build up a hardy, enterprising, and 
 high-hearted race. But it is with the facilities lent to 
 navigation by the Gulf Stream that we have now to do ; 
 and remember here that the direction and force of the 
 Gulf Stream were never compendiously revealed by God, 
 but were left to be inferred from a vast field of facts, 
 widely scattered, and requiring great industry in their 
 collocation and great care in their comparison, as well as 
 the exercise of individual judgment in the conclusion to 
 which they led. God has in fact ordained these proc- 
 esses of labor and of reasoning as the prerequisite to all 
 conception of His natural laws ; and we may therefore 
 presume that He would make these same processes the 
 prerequisite to the conception of the truths of grace.-^ 
 
 1 Since the text was written, I have met the following: — " So is*the 
 outer world fixed, determinate, palpable to the unerring senses, the 
 same now as it was two thousand years ago, yet science has been pro- 
 gressive ; generation after generation has learned to see more in Nature, 
 and to understand it better; and there are still measureless treasures 
 of this knowledge reserved for generations yet unborn. And does not 
 
40 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 He has, in wonderful richness and variety, placed before 
 us the materials from which these truths may be drawn. 
 Over these the soul must itself ponder ; and such is the 
 plainness of the divine records, such their wonderful 
 variety, such the multitudinous avenues of human ap- 
 prehension to which they in turn open, that 'there is no 
 devout student, no matter how simple his understand- 
 ing or how narrow his range of extraneous information, 
 but may conclude from them that creed which teaches 
 trust in God ; redemption from sin by the obedience 
 and death of Christ ; and a holy life as the product of 
 a loving and faithful he art. ^ 
 
 the history of the Church prove that this is the very course which waspre- 
 scHbedfor man, in order that he viight attain to a reasonable, systematic 
 knowledge of divine things^ Here, too, truths which in one age are almost 
 latent, or recognized singly and insulatedly by faith, on the authority of 
 a positive declaration, are brought out more distinctly by subsequent 
 ages, and are ranged in their mutual connection, in their positron as parts 
 of the system of truth, and in their relation to the rest of our knowl- 
 edge concerning the nature and destinies of man. Meanwhile God's 
 Word stands fast, even as the heavens and the earth, and is the mine 
 from which everv new system is extracted, and the canon whereby it is 
 to be tried; and as more than fifty generations have drawn the nurture 
 of their hearts and minds from it, so will generation after generation 
 to the end of the world." — Hare, Mission of the Comforter, note G. p. 
 246. To this it may be added that this ripening in the appreciation of 
 Divine Truth is no more to be compared to the "development " of the 
 Romish Church, than is the truth uncovered by Galileo to the Brah- 
 min's fiction that the earth rests on an elephant. The progressive recep- 
 tion of truth b}' the devout study of God's Word by the churches, brings 
 out the treasure hid in the field; the " development " by a corrupt Church 
 substitutes, in place of this treasure, base coin. 
 
 See, also, Goulburn's Stmly of Scripture, ch. iii., iv. 
 1 This broadness of Scripture, as a field for the induction of doctrine, 
 is well traced in Burns's well-known lines: — 
 
 The priest-like father reads the sacred page, 
 
 How Abram was the friend of God on high, 
 Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage 
 
 With Amalek's ungracious progeny : 
 
CREEDS : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 4I 
 
 And it is a striking fact, that each successive writer 
 in the New Testament, instead of giving a compendium 
 of what had been already written, adds to the field of 
 induction from which such a compendium is to be drawn 
 by the individual soul. Thus, as has been well said by 
 Bishop Ellicott, St. Matthew has written Annals, St. 
 Mark, Biography, St. Luke, History, and St. John, Dra- 
 matic Portraiture. The Acts of the Apostles is an 
 independent book of history, covering a new subject 
 matter ; and the Epistles are in the main specifically 
 adapted, each to meet a particular want, or to touch a 
 particular audience, or to combat a particular error. 
 St. John, when at Patmos, might well have been looked 
 upon as likely to give a compendium of doctrine, if 
 such a compendium was within the divine plan ; but 
 instead of this, he produced that wonderful book which 
 added to the inspired records the mystic revelation of 
 the future Church and world. Here, then, the mate- 
 rials for induction were complete ; they embrace the 
 Saviour's life and death, viewing them in four independ- 
 ent relations ; they embrace history of the past, and 
 prophecy of the future ; they embrace the application of 
 
 Or how the ro}-al bard did groaning lie 
 Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire ; 
 
 Or Job's pathetic plaint and wailing cry ; 
 Or rapt Isaiah's wild, Feraphic fire ; 
 Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. 
 
 Perhaps the Christian Tolume is the theme. 
 
 How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed ; 
 How He who bore in heaven the second name, 
 
 Had not on earth whereon to lay his head : 
 How his first followers and servants sped 
 
 The precepts sage they wrote to many a land : 
 How he who lone in Patmos banished. 
 
 Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, 
 And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command.'* 
 
42 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 this histoi^' to the heart in its varied phases, — an ap- 
 plication not systematic and general, but particular and 
 concrete. And then the command goes forth, " search." 
 Individual study is to be invoked. There must be a 
 thoughtful comparison of text with text. The mind is 
 not to receive the truth at short-hand, as by some royal 
 road ; but what is true of all other truths is eminently 
 true of this. It must be dug out by labor as treasure 
 hidden in the field ; the mind must ponder over it, and 
 must survey the wdiole field for study, feeling that to 
 neglect any portion would be to lose the meaning of the 
 whole. " Whatsoever things were written aforetime were 
 written for our learnings that we, through patience and 
 comfort of the Holy Scj-iptures^ might have hope'' Learn- 
 ing and patience ; these are the great qualities which 
 the Scriptures invoke ; and comfort is the reward, — 
 comfort in the conquering of doubt, comfort in the won- 
 derful light which is kindled when text is fused with 
 text ; and comfort in the precious meanings which, day 
 after day unfold themselves, making more and more 
 clear the verifications of revelation, and more and more 
 precious the truths of grace. God gives in scriptures 
 the materials from which man forms his belief ; — but 
 the creed, the credo, the confession, the belief, 
 is man's conclusion and response. And the creed is 
 withheld by God in order that it may be heartily and 
 intelligently given by man, after patient study of the 
 sacred text. And this patience, this constant study, this 
 struggling with and conquest of doubt ; this discovery 
 day after day of values still more precious and blessed 
 in the treasure hid in the field ; this long striving, 
 this quiet pondering, this delightful appropriation of 
 truth after truth, each glowing more and more brightly 
 
CREEDS : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 43 
 
 as it is intelligently sought and prayerfully studied ; — 
 these belong to the verifying of the creed from the text 
 of the Inspired Word.^ 
 
 (2.) Should such a compendium of divinity be in- 
 cluded in the sacred records, it would revolutionize the 
 relations of man to God. For such a compendium, by 
 the very assumption on which it is called for, must be 
 a complete exhibition of divine wisdom, and man, in 
 receiving it, would be resolved into an omniscient mir- 
 ror reflecting back an omniscient God. All choice, 
 comparison, doubt, probation, subordination, and humil- 
 ity, would be destroyed. 
 
 (3.) By such a process the reception of divine truths 
 would be endangered in heart as well as in intellect 
 " Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them ; " such 
 is the process by which the Collect for the Second Sun- 
 day in Advent describes the appropriation of Scripture 
 to the spiritual comfort of the soul. It is true that a 
 mere formula is not of necessity incapable of this diges- 
 tion, for in many cases it is spiritually appropriated, 
 either at first or after the action of time. But the 
 
 1 " Supposing such a summary of gospel-truths had been drawn up, 
 and could have been contrived with such exquisite skill as to be sufficient 
 and well adapted for all, of every age and country, what would have 
 been the probable result? There would have been no room for doubt, 
 no call for vigilant attention in the investigation of truth, none of that 
 effort of mind which is now requisite in comparing one passage with an- 
 other, and collecting instruction from the scattered, oblique, and inci- 
 dental references to various doctrines in the existing Scriptures ; and in 
 consequence, none of the excitement of the best feelings, and that im- 
 provement of the heart, which are the natural, and doubtless the designed, 
 result of an humble, diligent, and sincere study of the Christian Script- 
 ures." — " In fact all study, properly so called, of the rest of Scripture, 
 all lively interest in its perusal, would have been nearly superseded." 
 Whately's Cautions, No. xxv. p. 444. See also Bishop Hinds' Inquiry into 
 the Proofs of Inspiration^ p. 79. 
 
44 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 example of the Church of Rome shows us that these 
 formulas may remain in the heart as unassimilated and 
 unappropriated as are those frozen animals which an 
 iceberg retains lifeless but unchanged for centuries. If, 
 as has been already seen, induction is the process by 
 which the intellect most readily receives truth, so this 
 process of assimilation, by which chapter after chapter, 
 text after text, are gradually received and appropriated, 
 is that by which truth is most readily received by the 
 heart. " Holy Scripture thus progressively unfolding 
 what it contains," says Archbishop Trench, " might be 
 likened fitly to some magnificent landscape on which the 
 sun is gradually rising, and ever as it rises is bringing 
 out one headland into light and prominence, and then 
 another ; anon kindling the glor)'-smitten summit of 
 some far mountain, and presently lighting up the recesses 
 of some near valley which had hitherto abided in gloom ; 
 and so traveling on till nothing remains in shadow, no 
 nook or comer hid from the light and heat of it, but the 
 whole prospect stands out in the clearness and splendor 
 of the brightest noon." ^ There is a spiritual blessing, 
 then, in this, the reserve of Scripture, which no revela- 
 tion of scientific theology could impart. For it is the 
 base of the Christian's growth in grace and in the 
 knowledge of the Lord. 
 
 2d. Such a compendium would imperil church univer- 
 salization. Judaism was meant to be local, and tempo- 
 rary, and eclectic ; and the religion prescribed for the 
 Jews was marked by symbols and a ritual adapted to 
 their specific character and era. Christianity is meant 
 to be universal, and permanent, and catholic, and it 
 possesses no creed or ritual divinely prescribed. It be- 
 1 Trench, Huhean Lecture on the Development of Scripture. 
 
CREEDS : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 45 
 
 longs to no type or nationality of men ; it is neither Jew 
 nor Greek, Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free ; but it 
 is every thing to each, and each is equally embraced 
 within its bounds. 
 
 So it was with its Master, who, unabsorbed by any 
 nationality, uncontrolled by any form of human tem- 
 perament, has condescended to bless and sanctify each 
 of them to Himself. He does not destroy these pecul- 
 iarities of national and individual character ; He does 
 not exact an average and uniform type ; but visiting 
 them as they are, He condescends to draw each of them 
 to Himself. It is with Him as with the portrait whose 
 eyes meet and respond to the eyes of all turned to it ; 
 He looking into the souls of all who gaze on Him, 
 whoever they may be, and wherever and whenever they 
 may live. As in heaven, one star differeth from 
 another star in glory, so on earth, men are infinitely 
 varied in the modes in which they receive God's teach- 
 ings ; but Christ comes as a Saviour to all, each finding 
 the centre of life in Him, He planting one common, 
 supreme truth in each. Qualified and controlled by no 
 form of religious temperament, He qualifies and draws 
 all to himself; He, the one sole being who ever trod 
 the earth, who teaches, not partial truth, but the whole ; 
 who is not national, but universal j not eclectic, but 
 Catholic ; not of one time, but of all times ; not one, 
 but all ; not the creature of side-lights and influences, 
 but the one God-man, unmoulded by any one age, 
 country, or world, yet occupying all. 
 
 Christ, then, being the one common centre, the in- 
 spired records are the channels through which His 
 gface streams forth on men. In early Christian art, as 
 we are reminded by Archbishop Trench, this diverging 
 
46 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 power of Scripture was illustrated by an often-repeated 
 symbol, "wherein from a single cross-surmounted hill 
 four streams are seen welling out ; and these streams 
 were likened to " the four rivers of Paradise, that to- 
 gether watered the whole earth, going each a different 
 way, and yet issuing from a single head." ^ Nor can we 
 study the sacred text without seeing, that while each of 
 these streams contains the same waters of grace, drawn 
 from the same fountain, they appreciably separate, so 
 far as concerns the regions which they reach. Thus 
 St. Matthew turned towards the devout Jew ; St. Mark, 
 to the practical Roman ; St. Luke spoke to men as 
 grouped by the then common and almost universal 
 Greek tongue ; St. John, to humanity as united by that 
 still more universal sympathy produced by a common 
 sense of sin, and a mystic yearning for the truth of 
 God. So as to St. John, both in his epistles and gos- 
 pel, as contrasted with St. Paul. Remember that the 
 Western and Eastern minds, in reference to revealed 
 truth, rested on widely separated planes. The Western 
 mind pondered over the divine nature as it came in 
 contact with man ; the Eastern, over the divine nature 
 in its relations to itself What stirred the West to its 
 inmost depths were the questions of free-will and of sin ; 
 what most agitated the East were refinements on the 
 doctrine of the Three in One.^ Western Orthodoxy 
 took maji's nature as a basis, and ascended from thence 
 to God's justice and redemption ; Eastern Orthodoxy 
 took GoiVs nature as a basis, and descended from this 
 to 7na7i's sin and salvability. And it would seem as if 
 while St. Paul's dogmatic writings were pointed directly 
 
 1 Ilulsean Lecture on the ^[an^foldness of Scripture. 
 
 2 Milman's Latin Christianity^ Vol. I. pp. 22-24. 
 
CREEDS: WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 47 
 
 to the Western mind, so St. John was to be more pecul- 
 iarly the Apostle to the East. Observe how St. Paul, 
 in his Epistle to the Romans, begins with man's sinful- 
 ness and ruin as a base ; and how St. John, in his Gos- 
 pel, begins with the mystical nature of God. " Who can 
 fail to see in the great Apostle of Tarsus, in his discur- 
 sive intellect, in his keen dialectics, in his philosophic 
 training, the man armed to dispute with Stoic and Epi- 
 curean at Athens ; who should teach the Church how she 
 should take the West for her inheritance ? Nor less was 
 he the man who, by the first struggles of his inner life, 
 and the consequent fulness and power with which he 
 brought out the scheme of our justification, should be- 
 come the spiritual forefather of the Augustines and 
 Luthers, of all those who have brought out for us, with 
 the sense of personal guilt, the sense, also, of personal 
 deliverance, the consciousness of a personal standing 
 of each one of us before God. And in St. John — - the 
 full significance of whose writings for the Church is 
 probably yet to be revealed, and it may be, will not 
 appear till the coming in of the nations of the East into 
 the fold — we have the progenitor of every mystic, in the 
 nobler sense of the word, — of every contemplative 
 spirit that has delighted to sink and to lose itself, and 
 the sense of its own littleness, in the brightness and in 
 the glory of God. Shall we not thank God, shall we not 
 recognize as part of His loving wisdom, that thus none 
 are left out ; that, while there are evidetitly among men 
 two leading types of mi?id, He has made provision for 
 them both ; for the discursive and the intititive ; for the 
 schoolman and the mystic ; for them who trust through 
 knowing to see, and for them, also, who believe that only 
 through seeiftg they can know ; that, whatever in their 
 
48 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 intellectual condition meft may be, the net is laid out to 
 catch themy^ 
 
 But if from the cross these several roads diverge, 
 reaching all the distinct regions of human temperament 
 and intellect, so on the very tracks through which grace 
 travels man-ward, may faith travel God-ward. God has 
 not opened these various approaches to the human heart 
 in order that they should be barred up, whenever the 
 sinner seeks to approach by the same channel by which 
 he was reached. The channel is one of ingress as well 
 as of egress ; it is open for the sinner when he seeks 
 the word, as well as for the word seeking the sinner. 
 And one of the great blessings attending the absence 
 of a divine compendium of systematic theology is, that 
 there is thus opened in Scripture such a liberty as will 
 embrace within its gracious promises all phases which 
 a devout faith in Christ may assume. The extent and 
 limit of this liberty I will for a moment illustrate. 
 
 (I.) Take, for instance, the question of predestina- 
 tion and free-will ; and here we will find this liberty 
 admirably stated by Cecil : " No man will preach 
 the gospel so freely as the Scriptures preach it," writes 
 that most able and faithful divine, " unless he will sub- 
 mit to talk like an Antinomian, in the estimation of 
 a great body of Christians ; nor will any man preach it 
 so practically as the Scriptures, unless he will submit to 
 be called, by as large a body, an Arminian. Many 
 think they have found a middle path, which is, in fact, 
 neither one thing nor another, since it is not the incom- 
 prehensible but grand scheme of the Bible." ^ " If 
 there be not free-will in God," so exclaims St. Augus- 
 
 1 Trench, Eulsean Lecture on the Manifoldness of Scripture. 
 
 2 See fully on this pomt, Mosley On Predestination, p. 77. 
 
CREEDS : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 49 
 
 tine, " there is no God to save us ; if there be not free- 
 will in man, there is no Man to be saved." So, in 
 setting forth the gospel, the faithful expositor will press 
 the more strongly, sometimes the one and sometimes 
 the other of these great truths, always keeping within 
 the limit which forbids him to hold either the one or the 
 other otherwise than in its full force. 
 
 (2.) And so with regard to the doctrine of conversion, 
 supposing conversion to mean in this sense a moral 
 change of heart and life. And on this point Tholuck 
 thus truly speaks : " According to the diversity of natu- 
 ral dispositions will men be brought, at different periods, 
 to the sense of the value of such a faith. One passes 
 through the sharpest conflict at his first awakening ; 
 another, in the season of base lukewarmness which so 
 frequently follows the first glow of love; a third is 
 drawn to Jesus with feelings and views not strongly 
 defined, and only after long intercourse with Him learns 
 to know his own corruption, and to rely firmly on the 
 atonement, when he has already tasted somewhat of the 
 Saviour's grace. This latter way God often chooses 
 with minds of strong powers, but whose depravity is 
 proportionally deep ; who, if they had been made fully 
 sensible of their own corruption before Christ had been 
 manifested to them, would have sunk stupefied in the 
 arms of despair. For this reason it is impossible to lay 
 down any settled modes of conversion ; the Spirit of 
 God *bloweth where He listeth, and as He listeth.* 
 Only earthly things are to be determined by line and 
 measure ; divine things are not contrary to, but above 
 our line and measure." And this question is inde- 
 pendent of that of baptismal grace. Luther attributed 
 to the sacraments a very high degree of spiritual effi- 
 4 
 
50 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 cacy. Zuinglius held them to be mere commemorative 
 exercises. Calvin took an intermediate position between 
 the two, holding that the .sacraments, like the sacred 
 text, are the vehicle of divine truth, but involve no 
 opus operatum, and may be, in like manner, wrested 
 to the destruction of those who unbelievingly receive.^ 
 Yet Luther, Calvin, and Zuinglius held with equal rigor 
 the same truth of the necessity of a conscious, volun 
 tary moral change. 
 
 II. But I proceed to notice two objections which 
 may be naturally offered to the proposition that the 
 Bible sets forth no systematic creed, but that a creed 
 is the believer^s response to Revelation, which is the 
 declaration of God. It is argued, firsts that the in- 
 dividual liberty thus allowed is the parent of universal 
 license. The position has been thus expressed : — 
 
 " This is the book where each his dogma seeks, 
 And this the book where each his dogma finds." 
 
 But the falsity of this position will be seen from the 
 following observations : — 
 
 (i.) So incompatible is an honest reception of the 
 sacred text with such license, that there is scarcely a 
 heresy whose advocates have not found it necessary to 
 mutilate that text, or to affix to it a non-natural sense. 
 Either, like Dr. Priestly, they declare that St. John, 
 
 1 " Quamobrem fixum maneat, non esse alias sacramentorum quam 
 verbi Dei partes; qua; sunt oft'ere nobis ac proponere Christum, et in eo 
 coelestis gratiae thesaurus: nihil autem conferunt aut prosunt nisi fide ac- 
 cepta." Inst. iv. § 17. This high view is sustained throughout the same 
 book. In his controversy with Westphel, he denied that he limited his 
 belief to a merely spiritual presence in the Eucharist, and while rejecting 
 the idea of a local presence of Christ's body, held to one that was dynam- 
 ical. Hagenbach, Ex$. of Doct. by Shedd, Vol. II. § 259, note. 
 
CREEDS : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 5 1 
 
 like Homer, sometimes " nodded ; " or, like Strauss, they 
 rarefy particular passages into myths ; or, like the Gnos- 
 tics, they eliminate whole books ; or, like the Romanists, 
 they affix a patristic gloss, which gloss varies accord- 
 ing to the interpreter's mind. 
 
 (2.) That the variations of exegesis which arise among 
 honest interpreters of the Word, who accept it as the 
 sole rule of faith, spring, not from uncertainty in the 
 sacred text, but from the differences of mental structure, 
 is shown by the fact that there is no creed that is not 
 in like manner affected by this variation.^ Thus the Ar- 
 ticles of the English Church were framed with pecul- 
 iar care on the very questions of grace which have just 
 been specifically noticed ; yet in the construction of these 
 articles those same fundamental variations of stand- 
 point are exhibited at least as freely as in the interpre- 
 tation of the inspired records. No one can doubt, 
 for instance, the loyalty of Tillotson to these Articles ; 
 yet in what strong contrast is his interpretation to that 
 of Toplady, equally honest in his devotion to these 
 great symbols of faith ; and Calvinists and Armin- 
 ians have differed as much about the Articles as they 
 differed about the sacred text. So the Westminster 
 Confession was drawn for the express purpose of deter- 
 mining those questions which the Thirty-nine Articles left 
 open ; and yet, in the interpretation of this standard, the 
 schools of Andover and Princeton differ, I apprehend, 
 even more widely than do devout Arminians and Cal- 
 vinists in the English Church. So no papal bull was 
 able to quiet the Jansenist controversy ; but each new 
 test increased the points on which interpreters differed. 
 The more minute and copious the standards, the more 
 numerous and refined became the questions at issue. 
 1 See Appendix A. 
 
52 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 (3.) Doctrinal formularies, from the abstractness and 
 succinctness of their phraseology, open points of depart- 
 ure which cannot be found in the inspired narrative. 
 The abstract has interpretations possible to it which are 
 impossible to the concrete: the Idea, those which are 
 impossible to the Fact. What theoretic statement, for 
 instance, of the Redeemer's miraculous power could so 
 close up controversy as the record of those miracles 
 themselves ? And hence it often has been the case that 
 men who have rejected large portions of the sacred 
 text, have subscribed, as in the case of Dr. Middleton, 
 and of the mythical Lutheran interpreters, the most or- 
 thodox of creeds. The words " miracle," and " inspira- 
 tion," and " Divine," they generalize into abstractions, 
 or universal predicates of all God's works ; but not so 
 with the awful and isolated words and acts of our Lord. 
 
 (4.) God's promises are eminently to those who faith- 
 fully search His Word, as distinguished from " the tra- 
 ditions of men ; " and a wisdom above all other wisdom 
 is assured to those who, pondering over its sacred 
 pages, and accepting them fully and in their natural 
 sense, seek for light.* " My word shall not return unto 
 me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, 
 and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I send it." ^ 
 " Search the Scriptures ; . . . they are they which testify 
 of me." ^ " Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by 
 the Word of God." ^ " Receive with meekness the in- 
 grafted Word, which is able to save your souls." ^ " The 
 Holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto 
 salvation, through Christ Jesus." ^ These promises are 
 to the sacred text, and to that alone. 
 
 1 Prov. viii. 34; John v. 39. 2 ig. ly. 10. 
 
 8 John V. 39. 4 Rom. x. 17. 
 
 6 James i. 21. « 2 Tim. iii. 15. 
 
CREEDS : WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 53 
 
 (5.) History tells us that religious indifferentism is 
 far more likely to be produced by the arbitrary and ab- 
 solute imposition of a human test, than by that liberty 
 which calls upon the soul devoutly to seek for truth in 
 the sacred text. Thus there was far greater religious 
 indifferentism in England during the operation of the 
 Test Acts, than subsequent to their repeal. The reign 
 of the first three Hanoverian kings, when these acts 
 were in force, was one of disgraceful religious torpor, 
 when almost all signed and conformed, but not many 
 vitally and fervently believed. So indifferentism exists 
 largely in the Romish Church. It is constantly avowed, 
 while the standards of the Church are accepted ; and 
 now, even under the mask of an outer submission to 
 papal supremacy, it is questionable whether the great 
 body of thinking men in that communion do not treat 
 religion as a matter for the state, and not for the indi- 
 vidual heart. Indifferentism exists, also, in our own 
 New England, wherever philosophical superciliousness 
 is permitted by society to hurl at religious earnestness 
 anathemas which pretend to be as infallible as those 
 of the Papal Court. Indifferentism, in fact, will always 
 exist wherever you allow any external authority, 
 whether it be that of a pretended infallible church, or 
 that of a self-constituted but equally pretentious philo- 
 sophical coterie, to override the convictions of the indi- 
 vidual heart. But allow these convictions freely to 
 form and express themselves, and the day for indiffer- 
 entism is past. In matters political, indifferentism may 
 well exist under a despotism which tramples down all 
 individual expression of thought; but political indiffer- 
 entism cannot exist in a country such as ours where free- 
 dom of thought has full scope. And so in matters the- 
 
54 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 ological ; and here, on this base of rehgious liberty, do 
 I most confidently rest the doctrines of the cross. For, 
 if our hearts are turned in prayer to honestly search the 
 Scriptures ; if with meekness we receive the ingrafted 
 word ; if we do this as conscious, responsible creatures, 
 intent upon possessing ourselves of the Revelation of 
 God ; if we come to the work undriven, not as if com- 
 pelled by arbitrary authority to mechanically receive a 
 prescribed formula, but as individuals determined to 
 " read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest " the Divine 
 message, it cannot be but that an earnest, living, sav- 
 ing faith in the Cross of Christ will be the reward. 
 
 2dly. But it may in the second place be objected to 
 this position, that it supersedes the use of creeds as 
 human standards of faith. So far from this being the 
 case, I apprehend that this view makes them peculiarly 
 necessary, for the following reasons : — 
 
 (i.) The creed thus becomes man's response to God, 
 as inspiration is God's utterance to man. It is so from 
 its very nature. " Rehearse the articles of thy belief ^^ 
 so asks the Church of England in her Catechism ; and 
 the answer is, " /believe in God," &c. It is not, " This 
 is a perfect compendium of God's plan of salvation ; " 
 but it is, " I believe in certain grand though insulated 
 truths." So virtually speak, in fact, all Christian com- 
 munions, uniting as they do in this most general of 
 symbols. And so particular communions and particu- 
 lar persons speak, when, in reference to points more 
 minute, and distinctions more refined, they confess their 
 faith.i 
 
 1 " To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the first of the Creed, 
 and not only so, but is diffused through every article and proposition of 
 it, is to assent to the whole and every part of it, as to a certain and infal- 
 
USE OF CREEDS. 55 
 
 (2.) A creed is a protest against error, put forth for 
 the purpose of specifically condemning such error. No 
 creed claims to be a systematic exposition of all truth 
 for all time ; it is simply a statement of such truth as is 
 necessary to shut out a specific error by which the 
 Church is at that time assailed. Thus, at the time of 
 the formation of the Apostles' Creed, neither the divin- 
 ity of Christ, nor the atoning merit of His blood, was 
 doubted in the Church ; and these truths are implied 
 rather than expressed in that venerable symbol. But 
 the heresy that Christ did not actually suffer and die, 
 but was represented at the passion by a phantom, — a 
 heresy at that time prevalent, — was met by a distinct 
 and particular statement of His crucifixion and death. 
 So, at the formation of the Nicene Creed, the Arian 
 heresy was that which was the most instant and peril- 
 ous ; and this was met by asserting dogmatically the 
 divinity and atoning sacrifice of the Lord. Then, at 
 the time of the Reformation, the errors by which the 
 truth was most closely assailed, were those of the as- 
 cription of divine authority to tradition ; salvation 
 through human merit ; Pelagian views as to sin and 
 grace ; Church infallibility; the power of works of 
 supererogation, and purgatory ; and these were met by 
 specific statements of belief, necessary to preserve the 
 Church's then orthodoxy and integrity. But it was never 
 
 lible truth revealed by God (who by reason of His infinite knowledge 
 cannot be deceived, and by reason of His transcendent holiness cannot 
 deceive), and delivered unto us in the writings of the blessed Apostles and 
 Prophets, immediately inspired, moved, and acted upon by God, out of whose 
 writings this brief sum o/" necessarj' points of faith was first collected, and 
 this is properly to believe, which is our first consideration ; so to say, I 
 BELIEVE, is to make confession or external expression of this faith, which is 
 the second consideration propounded." — Pearson On the Creed, Art. I. 
 
56 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 pretended that the Thirty-nine Articles were a complete 
 compendium of truth. ^ This on their face they dis- 
 claim. Particular churches, they declare, specifying 
 those of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, " have 
 erred ; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not 
 only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also 
 in matters of faith." ^ And again, — "General coun- 
 cils may err, and have sometimes erred, even in things 
 pertaining to God." ^ And then, again, — " It is not 
 necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all 
 places one, or strictly like ; for at all times they have 
 been diverse, and may be changed according to the di- 
 versity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that 
 nothing be ordained against God's word." * But it was 
 against the then, most dangerous heresies alone that the 
 Thirty-nine Articles spoke ; and they contain no precise 
 dogmatic utterance on the two questions by which the 
 orthodoxy of the Church is now most closely pressed, 
 
 1 Dr. Hook cites several authorities to this point, of which I quote one : 
 " It is a mistake to imagine that creeds Avere at first intended to teach, in 
 full and explicit terms, all that should be necessary to be believed by 
 Christians. As heresies gave occasion, new articles were inserted; not 
 that they were originally of greater importance than an}' other articles 
 omitted ; but the opposition made to some doctrines rendered it the more 
 necessary to insist upon the explicit belief and profession of them." 
 Waterland, quoted in Hook's Die. of the Church, tit. Creeds. " "When 
 there is a revival of faith, if this revival coincides with, or is succeeded 
 by, a period of energetic thought, a deeper or clearer insight will be 
 gained into certain portions of truth, especially appropriate to the circum- 
 stances and exigencies of the age, and which have not yet been set 
 forth in their fulness. Thus, to cite the two most memorable examples, 
 the true doctrine of the Trinity was brought out more distinctly in the 
 fourth century; that of Justification by Faith, in the sixteenth; the prev- 
 alence of error acting in both cases as a motive and spur to the clearer 
 demarcation and exposition of the truth.^'' — Hare, Mission of the Com- 
 forter, note G. p. 249. 
 
 2 Art. xix. 3 Art. xxi. 4 ^jt. xxxiv. 
 
USE OF CREEDS. 
 
 57 
 
 viz., eternal punishment and plenary inspiration. Creeds 
 and articles, therefore, are like a line of fortresses by 
 which a country is defended from enemies ; and which 
 from time to time are built up on the side on which 
 the enemy appears. They are therefore not extensions 
 of the truth, but simply defenses ; and consequently, as 
 the Sixth Article states, " Holy Scripture containeth all 
 things necessary to salvation ; so that whatever is not 
 read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be re- 
 quired of any man, that it should be believed as an article 
 of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation^ 
 (3.) Creeds and articles become thus the tests of in- 
 dividual membership in the church by which they are 
 imposed. They are not the inspired exponents of 
 truth. This is shown by the fact that no such creeds or 
 articles are set forth in the sacred text ; and that they 
 are subject to that liability to error which belongs to all 
 things human. They claim belief, not because imposed 
 by the Church, venerable as that authority is, but when, 
 as is stated in the Eighth Article of the Church of Eng- 
 ^land, in reference to the early creeds, "they maybe 
 proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture." 
 But while this is the sole base of authority on which 
 they rest,^ they are nevertheless final and absolute 
 
 1 As to the meaning of the term " Authority " Archbishop Whately 
 has some pertinent remarks in the Appendix to his Logic : " This term is 
 sometimes employed in its primary sense, when we refer to any one's 
 example, testimony, or judgment; as when we speak of correcting a 
 reading in some book, on the authority of an ancient MS., giving a state- 
 ment of some fact, on the authority of such and such historians, «&:c. In 
 this sense the word ansAvers pretty nearly to the Latin Aucioritas. It is 
 a claim to deference. Sometimes it is employed as equivalent to * Potes- 
 tas,' power; as when we speak of the authority of a magistrate, &c. 
 This ia a claim to obedience. It is in the former sense that it is used in 
 our 20th Article, whick speaks of the Church ha.viug power to decree rites 
 
58 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 standards between the church that imposes them, and 
 members of that church. Nor have men any claim to 
 remain in such church, to hold its benefices, or enjoy 
 its communion, if they maintain views in conflict with 
 the tests it imposes. " Every particular or national 
 church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish 
 ceremonies or rites of the Church, ordained only by 
 men's authority, so that all things be done to edifying." ^ 
 So " the Church hath authority in controversies of 
 faith ; " and though it is " not lawful for the Church to 
 ordain any thing that is contrary to God's Word," ^ 
 yet, in questions concerning the membership in its own 
 body, its own standards are the exclusive tests. These 
 standards, then, become the tests of church member- 
 ship, while the Scriptures are the sole tests of truth. ^ 
 When the Church from time to time sets forth articles 
 of belief, these are to be construed according to their 
 natural sense. W^hoever cannot accept them in such 
 sense, has no right to remain in the church that im- 
 poses them. 
 
 III. It remains, then, for us to consider what are the 
 
 and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith. On the other 
 hand, ench particular church has authority in the other sense, viz : Power 
 over its own members, (as long as they choose to continue members,) 
 to enforce any thing not contrary to God's Word." 
 
 1 Art. xxxiv. 2 Art. xx. 
 
 3 " If you ask whose judgment ought to take place, the judgment of 
 the Church, or of every private Christian? I answer, the judgment of the 
 Church of necessity must take place as to external government, to determine 
 what shall beprofessed and practised in her communion; and no private 
 Christian has any ihinp to do in these matters. But when the question 
 is, what is right or wrong, true or false, in what we may obey and in 
 what not, here every private Christian who will not believe without un- 
 derstanding, nor follow his guides blindfold, must judge for himself; and 
 it is as much as his soul is worth to judge right." — Dean Sherlock, Dis- 
 course concerning a Judge of Controversies, p. 11. 
 
SCRIPTURES : HOW TO BE READ. . 59 
 
 practical consequences of this, the silence of Scripture, 
 as to all creeds or articles of belief And these prac- 
 tical consequences may be thus stated. 
 
 I St. As the Scriptures are the sole depositories of di- 
 vine truth, we are admonished of what paramount impor- 
 tance it is for us to make them the objects of devout 
 study. Some of the requisites of this study I now pro- 
 ceed to state. 
 
 — It should be with a pure intention ; with the honest 
 desire of honoring God, and acquiring the knowledge of 
 salvation through His word. 
 
 — For devotional reading we should select in course 
 lessons from those portions which bear practically on 
 our own hearts and lives ; pausing to apply each passage 
 to ourselves in meditation and prayer. A careless reader 
 cannot be a close walker with God. To an undevout 
 reader the most profound texts are written in cipher ; 
 prayer, and the Holy Spirit, are the keys by. which their 
 meaning is disclosed. 
 
 — Our attention should throughout be fixed on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, as Him whom it was the great object 
 of Revelation to set forth. And the sacred record when 
 thus lifted up towards Him, like the prism held between 
 us and the light, not only displays Him in the fulness 
 and manifoldness of His glory, but glitters itself with a 
 lustre before unperceived. 
 
 — The sins and shames of Scripture characters should 
 be applied to ourselves, with the words, " Thou art the 
 man." Those things were given to us as ensamples, 
 lest we, too, should fall. 
 
 — Threats as well as promises should be applied to 
 our individual souls ; none so secure that he may not 
 fall ; none so lost but that he may be reclaimed by the 
 
60 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 full grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. The doctrinal 
 books {e. g. the Epistles) are not to be exclusively read in 
 single chapters ; but at distinct periods we should read 
 each of them through by itself, in this way drawing out 
 its general character and scope. ^ 
 
 — Figurative language should be carefully distin- 
 guished from literal, lest the Infinite Presence of the Tri- 
 une God be limited to symbol, or type, or ceremony, or 
 place. Nor should any article of faith be based on 
 "metaphors, parable, or single, obscure, and figurative 
 text. " 2 
 
 — Subtle speculations are to be avoided, it being re- 
 membered that it is the plain meaning that belongs to 
 us, and that it is the immediate duty to which the Script- 
 ures apply. The veil that God has dropped it is not for 
 us to pierce. 
 
 — Our reading should be periodical, morning and 
 night; it should be thoughtful and devout. Texts of 
 peace and instruction should be repeated to the sick and 
 dying ; they should be so appropriated in the daily med- 
 itations of our life, that in our own dying hour they may 
 be our comfort and stay.* 
 
 2d. And one other practical consequence remains to 
 
 1 Mr. Locke lays great stress on acquiring this habit. " It must be re- 
 peated again and again, with a close attention to the tenor of the dis- 
 course, and a perfect neglect of the division into chapters and verses. 
 On the contrary, the safest way is, to suppose that the epistle has but one 
 business and aim, until, by a frequent perusal of it, you are forced to see 
 that there are distinct independent matters in it, which will forwardly 
 enough show themselves." — Preface to Treatise on the Epistles of Saint 
 Paul. 
 
 2 Home's Introduction, Vol. II. p. 669, from which some of the above 
 points are taken. 
 
 3 " Oratio et meditatio conjunctione necessaria sibi ad invicem copn- 
 lantur. Et perorationem illuminatur meditatio, et in meditatione ex- 
 ardescit oratio." — St. Bernard, Opera, torn. V. p. 260. 
 
CREEDS: WHY NOT DIVINELY PRESCRIBED. 6l 
 
 be considered ; and that is, the duty of a tender and 
 comprehensive toleration of those who differ from us on 
 points which the sacred text does not determine. For 
 specific purposes, " every particular or national church 
 hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies 
 or rites of the Church ordained only by men's author- 
 ity, so that all things be done to edifying ; " ^ but no 
 visible church, or school in such church, has the right to 
 break up the unity of the Church Invisible, by laying 
 down tests other than those God's Word prescribes. 
 " Holy Scripture " — and this article of the Anglican 
 Church cannot be too frequently repeated — " contain- 
 eth all things necessary to salvation ; so that whatsoever 
 is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to 
 be required of any man, that it should be believed as an 
 article of the faith ; or be thought requisite or necessary 
 to salvation." 
 
 Loyal must we indeed be to every ordinance of our 
 Church, whether its source be human or divine. But 
 while this loyalty must be scrupulously observed, we 
 must jealously beware of breaking up the unity of that 
 Holy Spiritual Church, which is the mystical body of our 
 blessed Lord, by the introduction of tests based " on 
 ceremonies or rites ordained only by man's authority." 
 In things essential, unity ; in things non-essential, lib- 
 erty ; in all things, charity. And of things essential, 
 the only test is that which has just been pronounced ; 
 they must be found in, or proved from, the Word of God, 
 — whatever is not so, is not of the essence of faith. 
 Our own Church must be obeyed in all things, ceremo- 
 nial or doctrinal ] but in matters outside of scriptural 
 prescription, not merely charity but liberty must be al- 
 1 Art. X2txiv. 
 
62 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 lowed to those who have adopted conclusions differing 
 from our own. 
 
 Bishop Jeremy Taylor closes his great work on " Lib- 
 erty of Prophesying," with an allegory to which almost 
 every advocate of toleration has since then appealed. 
 When Abraham was once sitting in his tent, — so he 
 writes, quoting from a Jewish author, — an old man ap- 
 proached him, weary with age and travel. Him the pa- 
 triarch received and entertained, until he discovered that 
 his visitor refused to join with him in the adoration of 
 the one true God. Abraham then thrust him ignomini- 
 ously out; but afterwards God called Abraham, and 
 asked him, " Where is the stranger whom thou didst 
 entertain ? " "I repelled him, because he would not 
 worship Thee," was the reply. But God answered, " One 
 hundred years have / suffered him, though he dishonored 
 me; and couldst not thou endure him one night? " 
 
 So ran the tradition, and so spoke Bishop Jeremy 
 Taylor on the question of the toleration of those who 
 deny even a God. But when we rise to differences 
 among devout followers of the Lord Jesus, we hear 
 breathing in our ear injunctions still more sublime. It 
 is no longer within the tent that we rest, sharing the pa- 
 triarch's dignity and repose ; but without^ with the Man 
 of Sorrows, the one Saviour of men, in the waste over 
 which sweep the world's contempt and scorn. Sin, 
 within the tent, may be reveling in the haughtiest indif- 
 ference to the Divine message ; but still that heavenly 
 Visitor pleads, " Open, and let me in, for I bear the bur- 
 den of thy sin ; I die that thou mayest live ; open, and I 
 will sup with thee, and thou with Me." No upheaval of 
 indignant rock by Him, the Almighty God ; no flash of 
 consuming lightning ; only this tender pleading through 
 
CREEDS. 63 
 
 the long night of rebelHous sin. There, with the Master, 
 let us stand, bearing His reproach, breathing His spirit, 
 striving at once for His zeal and His love. For as 
 His messengers we have a sinful w^orld to plead with 
 and to win ; and grievously will our trust be betrayed, 
 and guilt-stained may be our hands, if we spend our 
 strength and dishonor our cause by struggles with each 
 other about points as to which His Word leaves each of 
 us free. With the Lord Jesus, then, let us stand without 
 the tent, setting forth His truth in the voice He has 
 given each of us, knowing that there will be those in 
 the wide world of sinners to whom that voice, feeble as 
 it is, wull speak with power. Let us stand with Him 
 without the tent, and soon this w^orld's blindness will be 
 over, and in perfect light the triumphant Church will see 
 truth as it is. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE VIRGIN MARY. 
 
 IT has pleased God to screen from us by a veil al- 
 most impenetrable any objects which might with- 
 draw our thoughts from the worship of His dear Son. 
 We observe this with regard to the souls of His de- 
 parted saints, concerning whom we know not whether 
 they are conscious of the strivings and yearnings of 
 men, and whether the wishes and wants of those whom 
 they loved on earth are the subject of their heavenly 
 interest and care. The same veil, also, is cast over the 
 Apostles of the New Testament Church, whose history, 
 so far as earth is concerned, is singularly incomplete ; 
 and of whom we have not one word of information sub- 
 sequent to the period on which they entered on the glo- 
 rious life of heaven.-^ 
 
 It is in respect to the Virgin Mary, however, that this 
 reserve is most marked. Full as are the notices of her 
 in connection with our Lord's miraculous birth, we hear 
 almost nothing of her in relation to His public ministry, 
 and nothing at all of her as one of the glorious host 
 of heaven. It is true that Mary and Martha, Mary 
 Magdalene, and " other women," are frequently men- 
 tioned as being among those who attended the Lord ; 
 
 1 The contrast in this respect with Mohammedanism is very marked ; 
 the performances of its saints and prophets in the next world being one 
 of the chief features of its pretended revelation. 
 
THE VIRGIN MARY. 65 
 
 but the position of the Virgin, in spiritual matters, is 
 clearly defined in that remarkable passage, when, upon 
 one saying to Him, " Thy mother stands without^ de- 
 siring to speak unto Thee ; " "He stretched forth His 
 hands towards His disciples^ and said. Behold my mother 
 and my brethren I For whosoever shall do the will of my 
 Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and 
 sister, and mother." ^ So in the marriage of Cana of 
 Galilee, in answer to an intercession of Mary, he replied, 
 " What have I to do with thee : Mine hour " (or the 
 period appointed by Myself for the performance of this 
 particular work) " is not yet come." ^ And the only 
 interpretation we can assign to the preservation of this 
 remarkable reply, is, that it was intended to show that 
 in the exercise of His supernatural power, the Virgin 
 Mother was utterly dissociated from the Divine Son. 
 And what is at least equally remarkable, is the fact, 
 which is the peculiar subject of this chapter, that in the 
 narrative of our Lord^s divine work as the Mediator 
 between God and man^ Mary is throughout carefully 
 screened from our eye Others who were employed by 
 Him as missionaries of mercy and of power, are men- 
 tioned to us in this their sacred capacity ; Mary never. 
 A centurion intercedes for a sick servant, and the inter- 
 cession was effective.^ His disciples cry unto Him, 
 " Lord, save us, we perish ; and He arose, and calmed 
 the sea." ■* A certain ruler worshiped Him, saying, 
 " My daughter is even now dead : but come and lay Thy 
 hand upon her, and she shall live ; " ^ and He came and 
 took her by the hand, and the maid arose. In many 
 
 1 Matt. xii. 46-50. 2 John ii. 4. 
 
 8 Matt. viu. 5. 4 Matt. viii. 25, 26. 
 
 6 Matt. ix. 18. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 instances, after the Lord's ascension, the Apostles ap- 
 plied to Him for miraculous power, and in each case 
 the prayer was granted. But we hear of no intercession 
 made to Him by Mary except that in Cana of Galilee, 
 and in that case the intercession was rebuked. 
 
 So, also, we have frequent mention of specific dele- 
 gations of power. Thus, at one time, the Lord " called 
 his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and 
 authority over all devils, and to cure diseases." ^ Then, 
 again, He sent out seventy, with other powers.^ Then, 
 after the resurrection, the eleven were charged with the 
 great work of evangelizing the world, and for this were 
 endowed with miraculous gifts.^ And in the infant 
 Church, as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, partic- 
 ular Apostles were specifically employed in miraculous 
 work. Yet in no case is Mary mentioned as thus dele- 
 gated or thus empowered. 
 
 And so, again, w^e are pointed to those who were the 
 intimate attendants, and as it were counsellors of the 
 Lord, during His obedience and passion. There were 
 Peter, and James, and John, who were with Him at 
 Tabor and at Gethsemane. There was John whom he 
 so peculiarly loved, and who leaned on the Lord's breast 
 at the Paschal Supper.'* There was Peter to whom he 
 said, " Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, — thou art Pe- 
 ter, on this rock," — on the confession of My divinity, 
 " I will build my church ; " ^ — Peter to whom He gave 
 the keys ; ^ Peter on whom he looked with such melting 
 tenderness in the judgment-hall ;'' Peter to whom he 
 gave the final command, "Feed my sheep."® There 
 
 1 Luke ix. 1. 2 Luke x. 1. 
 
 3 Matt, xxviii. 16; Luke xxiv. 49. ■* John xiii. 23. 
 
 6 Matt. xvi. 18. 6 Matt. xvi. 19. 
 
 7 Lake xxii. 61. 8 John xxi. 17. 
 
SILENCE AS TO THE VIRGIN. 67 
 
 were Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the 
 mother of James, who are specified as first at the sepul- 
 chre.^ There were the disciples with whom He com- 
 muned at Emmaus,^ and those whom He made the 
 chosen witnesses of His ascension.^ Yet there is no no- 
 tice of Mary in either of those relations, or as in any way 
 the partaker of the counsels of the Lord when in His 
 divine work. She was, it is true, at the cross ; but we 
 are informed of this only incidentally, from the fact that 
 she was committed to John's care, not John to her, as 
 would have been the case had she been assigned a 
 position of any thing like superior power ; and it is the 
 hojTic of John, not his office, with which her name is to 
 be allied.* She is not mentioned as having even seen 
 the Lord after the resurrection ; she performs no act 
 in the New Testament Church. That she associated 
 with the disciples at Jerusalem after His ascension, we 
 are indeed informed,^ but beyond this, there is no rec- 
 ord. Of her subsequent life and death, copious as is 
 the sacred narrative in other respects, not a word is 
 told. 
 
 Why, then, we may well ask, is this remarkable si- 
 lence preserved as to one so highly blessed of the Lord \ 
 one who was herself honored by both the Old and New 
 Testament Church as the mother of the Lord ; one who 
 was a prophetess, uttering one of the most glorious 
 hymns the sacred history records ; one who bore the 
 Lord, and watched over His infancy, and carried Him 
 on that mysterious Eg)'ptian flight 1 Why is this screen 
 interposed whenever we would gaze on a form which, 
 
 1 Luke xxiv. 10. 2 Luke xxiv. 13. 
 
 8 Luke xxiv. 48. 4 John xix. 27. 
 
 ^ Acts i. 14. 
 
68 SILENCE AS TO THE VIRGIN. 
 
 of all Others in the New Testament records, is next to 
 that of our Blessed Lord, surrounded with associations 
 the most sacred and tender ? 
 
 — Sometimes, when a great picture is to be stud- 
 ied, canopies of cloth are so hung on either side, as 
 not merely to form a gradually contracting avenue to it, 
 but to conceal whatever would distract the eye. And 
 so it is with regard to the great central truth of reve- 
 lation : God, manifest in the flesh. Thither all lines 
 of history as well as prophecy converge. And on either 
 side of its approaches, God, in the great gallery of His 
 revealed Word, has mercifully dropped veils, so that 
 nothing human should there appear which would draw 
 us from the worship of His only begotten Son. Let us 
 then inquire, ist, what is this central truth ; 2dly, to 
 what abuses of it our fallen nature tends ; and sdly, 
 how this practically applies to our hearts. 
 
 I St. The truth itself: and this the Nicene Creed very 
 clearly states, when it tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 " the only begotten Son of God ; " " God of God, light 
 of light, very God of very God ; being of one substance 
 with the Father j " " for us men and our salvation 
 came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy 
 Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man, and was 
 crucified for us under Pontius Pilate ; " and then rose to 
 heaven, to the right hand of God, from whence He shall 
 come in glory to judge both quick and dead. The 
 Lord Jesus, then, was both God and Man, uniting, not 
 confounding, the two natures. He is Jehovah, our right- 
 eousness, and yet of the human seed of David.^ " He is 
 God over all," " blessed forever," and yet " of the fathers 
 concerning the flesh." ^ He is " the mighty God," and 
 
 ^ Zech. viii. 7 ; Jer. xxiii. 5 ; Bom. i. 3. ^ Rom. ix. 5. 
 
NO MEDIATOR REVEALED BUT CHRIST. 69 
 
 yet " a child born to us, a Son given." ^ He is " God 
 manifest in the flesh," "^ and this Word, which became 
 flesh, dwelt among men, and they saw His glory, as of 
 the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' 
 But while for us men, and for our salvation. He came 
 down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy 
 Ghost of the Virgin Mar}^, He became, not a man, but 
 MAN ; he took upon Him not the narrow, provincial, 
 limited nature of an individual, but our universal hu- 
 manity, bounded by neither age, nor country, nor race, 
 nor idiosyncrasy of temperament, but comprehending 
 the common nature of all mankind. Abraham was the 
 representative of the faithful of all ages and classes and 
 climes, a host as great and various as the stars of 
 heaven ; and the Lord Jesus, in His incarnation, took not 
 upon Him the nature of angels but the seed of Abra- 
 ham : " Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be 
 made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merci- 
 ful and faithful high-priest." ^ In Him there is " neither 
 Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, neither 
 male nor female," ^ " neither circumcision, nor uncircum- 
 cision. Barbarian or Scythian ; " ^ " but Christ is all and 
 in all." " He was the representative of no one time, but 
 of all times ; of no one school of thought, but of all 
 schools ; of no one phase of character, whether that be 
 masculine or feminine in its type, but of all phases ; ^ of 
 
 1 Is. ix. 6. 21 Tim. iii. 16. 
 
 8 John i. 14. 4 Heb. ii. 16. 
 
 6 Gal. iii. 28. 6 Col. iii. 11. 
 
 7 Col. iii. 11. 
 
 8 Robertson, in commenting on the last cited texts, says : " A human- 
 ity in which there is nothing distinctive, limited, or peculiar, but uni- 
 versal, — your nature and mine, the humanity in which we are all broth- 
 ers, bond or free. . . . His nature had in it the nature of all nations; but 
 also His heart had in it the blended qualities of both sexes. Our human 
 
70 SILENCE AS TO THE VIRGIN. 
 
 no one line of religious obedience, but of all lines ; of 
 no one condition of society or nationality, but of all con- 
 ditions. Hence it was that in the Apostolic Church 
 characters so varied as Peter and Thomas and John, — > 
 as Mary and Martha, on the one side, and the Mag- 
 dalene on the other ; as the Roman officer, and the 
 Jewish fisherman, and the Greek scholar, found in Him 
 the one God-man ; the very God of very God, and 
 yet the Man by whom humanity was to be redeemed ; 
 the Intercessor for themselves, the one who, though 
 God, took a nature common to themselves ; their own 
 Redeemer-kinsman ; the bearer of their particular bur- 
 dens, the atoner of their own particular sins, the soother 
 of their own particular grief Hence it is that believers 
 of all temperaments, degrees of culture, social rank, and 
 national characteristics, find in Him their Lord and 
 their God.^ 
 
 ity is a whole made up of two opposite poles of character, — the manly 
 and the feminine. In the character of Christ neither was fomid exclu- 
 sively, but both in perfect balance. He was the Son of Man — the human 
 being — perfect man. There was in Him the woman-heart as well as the 
 manly brain ; all that was most manly, and all that was most womanly. 
 ... So long as the male was looked upon as the only type of God, and 
 the masculine virtues as the only glor\' of His character, so long was the 
 truth unrevealed. And so long as Christ was only felt as the Divine 
 Man, and not the Divine Humanity, so long the world had only a one- 
 sided truth. One half of our nature, the sterner portion of it, only was 
 felt to be of God and in God. The other half, the tenderer and purer 
 qualities of our soul, were felt as earthly." — Robertson's Sei-mons, 2d 
 Series, p. 269. 
 
 The whole of the very able sermon from which the abore is taken, 
 bears, though from another stand-point, on the present question. See, 
 also, on the full comprehensiveness and universality of Christ's man- 
 hood, Bushnell, Nature and the Supeimatural, chap. ix. ; Bayne's Testi- 
 mony of Christ, p. 126 ; Ecce Homo, chap. xiv. ; and Uhlman, Die Siind- 
 losigktit Jesu, Sechste Aufiage, § 228-270, — a book which, of all others 
 on this point, is the most satisfactory. 
 
 1 See more fully on this point Appendix B. 
 
SILENCE GUARDING CHRIST S HUMANITY. 71 
 
 2d. Let US next notice the abuses of this doctrine to 
 which our fallen nature tends. To these abuses the 
 creeds serve as guides ; creeds and articles being, as we 
 have already seen, not so much formal and Systematic 
 expositions of all truth, as defenses erected to shut out 
 from the Visible Church those who at any time deny 
 either of the vital doctrines of the faith.^ And in this 
 view, observe how vividly the creeds point out to us 
 what was the first danger to which this central truth of 
 the Incarnation was exposed. St. John foreshadows this 
 danger when he writes : " Every spirit that confesseth 
 not that Jesus Christ is come i?i the fleshy is not of God ; 
 and this is that spirit of Antichrist whereof ye have 
 heard that it should come, and even now already is it 
 in the world." 2 
 
 It was not the denial of Christ's divinity, — that 
 equally vital error, which will be considered in the next 
 chapter, — but it was a denial of His blessed Humanity ; 
 and to meet this, and this mainly, are the specifications 
 of the Apostles' Creed turned. He was conceived by 
 the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under 
 Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried. And what 
 this creed thus points to us as the earliest heresy as to 
 our Lord's nature, is that to repel which the efforts of the 
 first Christian apologists were summoned.^ And the 
 tendency that was the base of this heresy, and with 
 which we are now particularly concerned, was one 
 which has pervaded all periods of the world, and this 
 is, the unwillingness of the natural heart to achnit in the 
 Godhead those qualities of sympathy^ and of te?iderness 
 
 1 Ante, p. 55. 2 i John iv. 3. 
 
 8 See Wilberforce On the Incarnation, p. Ill, where the doctrine in this 
 relation is very fairly stated. 
 
72 SILENCE AS TO THE VIRGIN. 
 
 towards man, which are essential to a true belief in the 
 incarnation of Christ. 
 
 Observe this in the view of the Lord most promi- 
 nently brought forward by the Church of Rome. Re- 
 call, for instance, that most impressive picture which, as 
 the altar-piece of the Sistine Chapel, is spread before 
 the spectator in the most conspicuous and august ser- 
 vices of pontifical worship. Remember that, as there 
 the Liturgy is mainly in an obsolete tongue, it is by the 
 medium of picture and gesture that doctrine is taught ; 
 and then see what is the view of our Lord's character 
 that is here set forth. Beautiful, it is true, but with the 
 beauty of an athlete ; with a countenance in which this 
 beauty, by the most consummate artistic power, flames 
 with implacable wrath ; with frame of marvelous mus- 
 cular strength, -as if it were a humanity made perfect, 
 not to rescue but to crush ; with uplifted hand ready to 
 strike ; the incarnation of awful justice unmingled with 
 a single element of tenderness or compassion ; thus in 
 that extraordinary picture is represented the Lord. 
 Mercy, it is true, is there exhibited ; but it is in the 
 person of the Virgin, herself the exquisite embodiment 
 of gentle pity, yearningly seeking to appease her Son's 
 wrath. In Christ, even in this His human person, is ex- 
 clusively portrayed the idea of relentless justice ; of 
 severe, inexorable might ; while in the Virgin alone are 
 tenderness and mercy displayed. And see how this 
 same distinction pervades the Romish ritual. The 
 finest and most evangelical of all its hymns is the Dies 
 Irce, but how severe and frigid is the view of the Re- 
 deemer here set forth. There is a plaintive appeal to 
 Christ's human history, it is true, but no cry of glorious 
 faith in His finished work ; the whole key is that of al- 
 
SILENCE GUARDING CHRIST S HUMANITY. 73 
 
 most despair at the suppliant's sinfulness, and the 
 Judge's awful and terrible power. ^ And with such a 
 
 1 The Protestant versions somewhat lessen the august severity of the 
 
 original : — 
 
 "Dies irse, dies ilia! 
 Solvet eaeclum in favillS, 
 Teste David cum Sybilla. 
 
 " Quantus tremor est futurns, 
 Quando Judex est venturus, 
 Cuncta stricte discussurus. 
 
 " Judex ergo cum sedebit, 
 Quidquid latet, apparebit : 
 Nil inultum remanebit." 
 
 And then, though Christ's mercy when on earth is touchingly appealed 
 to, yet, even after this most affecting of retrospects, the strain resumes 
 and closes with the original notes of dread and gloom : — 
 " Lacrj-mosa dies ilia I 
 Qua resurget ex favilla, 
 Judicandus homo reus 
 Huic ergo parce, Deus ! " 
 
 But the heart cannot dissociate the idea of mercy from God ; it must 
 find an intercessor; and a natural sequence of this hard view of redemp- 
 tion is the investing of the creature with mediatorial power. " The more 
 absolute deification, if it may be so said, of Christ ; the forgetfulness of 
 His humanity induced by His investment in a more remote and awful 
 Godhead, created a want of some kindred and familiar object of adora- 
 tion. The worship of the intermediate saints admitted that of the Vir- 
 gin as its least dangerous, most affecting, most consolatory' part." (Mil- 
 man's Latin Christianity, Vol. I. p. 205.) So is the Latin origin of Virgin- 
 worship stated ; and the long subsequent development of this culture in 
 nations of Teutonic type is thus traced to the same cause. " Perhaps as 
 the Teutonic awe tended to throw back into more remote incomprehensi- 
 bility the spiritual Godhead, and therefore the more distinct human im- 
 age became more welcome to the soul, so perhaps the purer and loftier 
 Teutonic respect for the female sex was more prone to tlie adoration of 
 the Virgin mother. So completeh' was this worship the worship of Chris- 
 tendom, that every cathedral, almost everj" spacious church, had its 
 Chapel of Our Lady. In the hymns to the Virgin, in everj' breviarj', 
 more especially in her own 'Hours,' (the great universal book of devo- 
 tion,) not merely is the whole world put under contribution for poetic 
 
74 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 view of Christ, — the tenderness and sympathy of His 
 human nature so lost sight of in the splendor and majesty 
 of His divinity, — we cannot wonder that man, craving 
 pity, and feeling that some medium of pity must be 
 vouchsafed, should seek for another mediator by Christ's 
 side, and that by the Dies IrcB the Stabat Mater should 
 take its place, and that the Stabat Mater should be the 
 prelude to those multitudinous prayers to the Virgin 
 for her intercession, with which the Romish breviaries 
 abound. It was because the human nature of Christ 
 was lost sight of in His divine, that a human mediator 
 was set up in Mary. It was because men would not 
 fathom the depths of divine pity ; because they shrank 
 from that wonderful revelation, that God's Divine Son 
 actually took our humanity for us, and for us bore, and 
 bears eternally, a perfect human nature, — perfect in its 
 knowledge, perfect in its sympathies, perfect in its in- 
 tercessory powers ; that, in contemplating His divine 
 person, they closed their eyes to the human, seeing only 
 the One Divine Master and Judge, living in incommuni- 
 cable splendor and majesty, — isolated, awful, and severe, 
 with nothing in common with humanity, approachable 
 only by deified or canonized men. He ceased to be the 
 One Mediator between God and man, and human medi- 
 ators were imagined to take His place. He ceased to be 
 the One sole Intercessor at God's throne, and so, also, 
 human intercessors were imagined in His place. He 
 ceased to be the One eternal High-priest, and human 
 
 images, (but) a new vocabulary is invented to express yet inexpressible 
 homage ; pages follow pages of glowing similitudes, rising one above 
 another. In the Psalter of the Virgin almost all the incommunicable at- 
 tributes of the Godhead are assigned to her ; she commands by her nat- 
 ural influences, if not by authority, her eternal Son." — Milman's Latin 
 Christianity, Vol. VIII. pp. 20&-208. 
 
SILENCE GUARDING CHRIST S HUMANITY. 75 
 
 priests in His place offered the sacrifice and made atone- 
 ment for sin. No longer the One sole Divine Sympathizer 
 with human griefs and Remitter of human transgressions, 
 in His place the confessional has poured into it the 
 burden of the broken heart, and from the confessional 
 the edict of forgiveness goes forth. And when we trace 
 these heresies to the one fundamental error of bringing 
 despite on the cross of Christ by denying that very 
 nature which that cross bore, we can understand the 
 awfulness of that Silence of Scripture, which, equally 
 with Scripture's language, leads our love, our reverence, 
 our faith, all to converge to the one Incarnate Son. 
 We no longer wonder that all other objects are thus 
 screened off from our view ; and that as the One Inter- 
 cessor, the One Mediator between God and man, the 
 sole High-priest, we see the Lord Jesus Christ. We 
 are thus, as it were, left alone with Him as our sole 
 Mediator and Priest. All other spiritual existences in 
 this work of intercession and sacrifice, are shut out from 
 us. And the Silence and the Screen unite in saying to 
 us, — " This is My beloved Son : hear ye Him." 
 
 3d. Our sole Mediator and High-priest, then, is the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, who, while the eternal Son of God, 
 of one substance and equal with the Father, was and 
 continues to be God and man, in two distinct natures, 
 and one person, forever. Neither of these natures can 
 be veiled without peril to the Christian faith ; each is 
 brought out before us in fulness by Revelation's shadows 
 as well as its light ; each has its own particular meaning 
 and force and consolation to the devout heart. Of the 
 practical relation to us of our Lord's Divine Nature, I 
 shall speak in the following chapter : to the practical 
 bearings of His human nature, I now turn. 
 
76 LESSONS FROM CHRIST's HUMANITY. 
 
 — The Lord Jesus became man that for us He might 
 obey the law, and suffer for us, offering a perfect and 
 sufficient oblation and satisfaction for our sins ; He 
 who was sinless becoming sin for us that we might be- 
 come the righteousness of God through Him. Hence 
 it is no imperfect justification that the believer pleads 
 as his title to heaven ; it is no inner work of his own ; 
 it is the fbll, perfect, and sufficient merits and suffering 
 of the God-man. 
 
 — The Lord Jesus became man that our fallen and 
 ruined nature might be lifted from its curse, and in 
 Him, the one representative man, restored. His very 
 incarnation made this earth the most glorious of orbs, 
 for it was here that He condescended bodily to dwell. 
 And if so with the earth which was His abode, how 
 much more so with the human nature that He accepted 
 as His own ! " / was sick and in prison," — I bore even 
 the infirmities of this nature ; in some sense all this 
 nature, wherever it exists, was accepted by Me. Who 
 can scorn, then, a fellow-creature, when it is remem- 
 bered that it was that fellow-creature's nature in which 
 the Lord abode ! It is a temple which may be dese- 
 crated, but it is a temple in which the Lord came to 
 dwell. And how should each of us detest those sins 
 by which this nature is debased. We are not only 
 redeemed by His blood, but this nature we bear was 
 lifted from ruin by His incarnation. Woe be to us if 
 we by our sin drag it back to that ruin, to rescue us 
 from which He paid such a price. 
 
 — The Lord Jesus became man that in our nature 
 He might make intercession for us at God's right hand. 
 He is a true Ambassador from our earthly courts, speak- 
 ing our language, trained in our discipline, bearing with 
 
LESSONS FROM CHRISt's HUMANITY. 77 
 
 Him our burden. It may be that intercession belongs 
 not to divinity, as divinity ; and what is revealed to us 
 is, that the Lord Jesus took our nature in order that He 
 might be our just and merciful High-priest. Divinity, 
 as such, would have had a perfect knowledge of our 
 infirmities and sorrows and temptations ; but no one 
 could know them personally who did not feel them ; no 
 one share their burden but one who bore them as did 
 the Lord Christ. " He was touched," says the Apostle, 
 "with the feeling of our infirmities, having been in all 
 points tempted as we are, yet without sin." ^ Ever 
 with us, we can at all times and in all places, in every 
 temptation, sorrow, and infirmity, receive His sympathy 
 and aid. Would that our spiritual blindness could be 
 removed, and that in all our trials and adversities we 
 could be both strengthened and kept from sin by seeing 
 Him, our all-powerful, all-sympathizing High-priest, by 
 our side ! 
 
 — And the Lord Jesus became man that we might 
 partake of His Divine blessedness, as children and co- 
 heirs of the glory that is His. He was made of a 
 woman, and made under the law, not only that "He 
 might redeem them that were under the law," but that 
 " we might receive the adoption of sons j " ^ and " come 
 boldly to the throne of grace." ^ Christ has taken our 
 very nature Himself to His throne ; Christ being heir 
 of all things. His people, in Him, are " heirs of God, 
 and joint heirs with Christ." '* We are His very mem- 
 bers, incorporate in His mystical body ; we are inher- 
 itors of His kingdom of heaven. And, believing thus, 
 what manner of men should we be ! How should we 
 
 1 Heb. iv. 15. See^«<, Appendix B. 2 Qal. iv. 5. 
 
 » Heb. iv. 16. * Rom. vul. 17. 
 
78 CHRIST, THE GOD-MAN. 
 
 hate that sin by which our inheritance was once for- 
 feited ; which now, if we become its slave, will drag us 
 from this glorious future to the regions of the lost ! 
 How should the King's children, how should those re- 
 deemed at such a precious price, shrink from that which 
 would soil their glorious robes, and bring dishonor on 
 their beloved Lord ! And how gravely should those who 
 reject the oifer of Christ consider what is the destiny 
 they thus accept. Sin, in all its pollution and degrada- 
 tion and unhappiness, might have taught them this ; but 
 if sin did not teach them their danger, they must see it 
 in the incarnation of Christ. For them He lived and 
 suffered as a Man. His condescension and His passion 
 are the standard of the ruin He would avert. It is 3-S 
 if the grandeur of the Godhead was the measure of the 
 wretchedness of sin ; the height of heaven, of the 
 depth of hell. And the love of God manifest in the 
 flesh, therefore, while it calls the believer to a higher 
 sanctity and purer holiness, speaks with tremendous 
 meaning to the sinner who rejects the proffered sonship 
 of God. 
 
 Before Him, then, the Lord Jesus, Perfect God and 
 Perfect Man, let us bow ; imploring from Him holi- 
 ness if we have received this adoption ; imploring from 
 Him sonship if we are still aliens to the kingdom of 
 His grace. He is the One Saviour of our souls, and 
 beside Him there is none else. And to Him, she who 
 was in her humanity nearest to Him of all his people 
 thus leads. She, His human mother ; she, the chosen 
 handmaid of the Lord ; she, to be ever blessed among 
 women ; if we seek her, she turns from us as if simply 
 with the words, This is my Son; whatsoever He 
 
SILENCE AS TO THE VIRGIN. 79 
 
 SAITH UNTO THEE, DO ; claiming for Him that humanity 
 which makes Him our fellow in all that concerns our 
 griefs and temptations, but obscuring herself before His 
 Divinity as one who was only to be saved, like us, by 
 His unmerited grace. The veil is lifted about her in 
 all that concerns this her motherhood, — in all that 
 through her brings out the true humanity of His nature ; 
 the veil is dropped when this office is closed, and the 
 Magnificat sung, and Christ, the Son of Man, is shown 
 as such by her. His mother, to men. Then the shadows 
 fall on either side, and before us, and alone, is the 
 One Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE lord's personal APPEARANCE, AND ITS RELA- 
 TIONS. 
 
 I CLOSE with a topic on which the silence of the 
 evangelical historians strikes me as peculiarly touch- 
 ing and impressive. When we lose a dear friend, one 
 of our first objects is sacredly to set apart for preserva- 
 tion memorials of his person, or portraits by which his 
 appearance may be recalled. If his life be written, with 
 what tenderness are his features described ; and how 
 carefully is the date of his birth, and of the main inci- 
 dents of his life, recorded. Precisely as our love to him 
 grows, do we dwell on whatever will keep his memory in 
 all its living loveliness before our mind. In the whole 
 range of human biography, I do not know of a case in 
 which, when a life has been written by friends and disci- 
 ples under the influence of affection and reverence, such 
 materials as these are not affectionately and sedulously 
 invoked ^ — " This day the Master was born ; and so he 
 looked and spoke." The writer's affection yearns over 
 these things ; the interest of the reader calls for them as 
 forming a chief part of the agencies by which the lost 
 is to be recalled. 
 
 1 As an illustration of this may be mentioned Dr. Sprague's Annals 
 of the American Pulpit. Here is a collection of several hundred biog- 
 raphies of religious teachers, mostly by their pupils and friends ; and in 
 each of these, when thus contemporaneous, the personal appearance of the 
 person commemorated, and the main dates of his life, are points on which 
 the biographer most tenderly dwells. 
 
THE LORDS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 8 1 
 
 And yet, instinctive as is the impulse to impart such 
 information in those who seek to commemorate a be- 
 loved leader and friend, — universally as we find such in- 
 formation imparted in such cases, — we notice on this 
 topic an almost entire silence in the history given us of 
 our blessed Lord. The day of His birth is left undeter- 
 mined. No epoch of his life, except that of His Passion, 
 Resurrection, and Ascension, is so designated that its pre- 
 cise anniversar}' may be commemorated.^ We hear of 
 no relics connected with His Divine Person being pre- 
 served. And of His personal appearance, not one word 
 of description is given. The character of His features, 
 the tone of His voice. His general bearing, — much 
 as we might desire to know what these were, — before 
 them we find an impenetrable veil interposed. Old Tes- 
 tament prophecies, indeed, speak of Him in this rela- 
 tion; but when we learn that there was no form or 
 comeliness in Him, we know not whether this refers to 
 the want of pomp and state by which His human ad- 
 vent was marked, or whether it was ever accepted by 
 the evangelical historians as applying to Him as He 
 bodily walked among men.- Unlike all other biogra- 
 phies ever written, these are silent on those very points 
 on which affectionate memory would be most likely to 
 dwell. 
 
 To what, then, is this silence to be traced ? Certainly 
 not, we will at once say, to any want of attachment on 
 
 1 This seems to have been the line drawn by the early Church. Nean- 
 der's Church History, Vol. XIII. p. 406. According to Chrv'sostom, Christ- 
 mas only came into observance about 385. Augustine speaks of Good 
 Friday, Easter, the Ascension, and Whitsunday, as being in his day uni- 
 versally obser\-ed; but of Christmas, as then only beginning to be specifi- 
 cally set apart. Aug. Ep. ad Januar. ; Ep. ad Gal. lib. 214. 
 
 2 See Appendix C. 
 
82 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 the part of the sacred biographers to their ascended 
 Master and Lord. They encountered, in the publication 
 of His gospel, contempt, persecution, and death. The 
 love they felt for Him when living, so far from being 
 abated by His death, was augmented to a devotion 
 which formed the controlling principle of their lives. 
 Others, when there was still an uncertain future, have 
 been loyal to a martyred chief ; but the disciples main- 
 tained the same dauntless devotion not merely in the 
 face of the bitterest obloquy, but when the Holy Ghost 
 witnessed in their hearts that bonds and death awaited 
 them wherever they might go. And this devotion con- 
 tained those elements which must have led them to in- 
 dulge in constant retrospect on that beloved life, — 
 " Remember the words of the Lord Jesus ; " " The Lord 
 Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed," — such 
 was the authority to which they constantly appealed. 
 Theirs was the personal love which was due to a beloved 
 friend who had laid down for them His life. Theirs 
 was the veneration due to a holy teacher, and the 
 adoration to an ascended God. " The love of Christ 
 constraineth us ; " * " We love Him because He first 
 loved us j " ^ " Unto Him who loved us and washed us 
 from our sins, be glory and dominion forever ; " ^ these 
 were not merely their instinctive cries, but displayed the 
 motive power by which their whole action was inspired. 
 In the whole range of history, there are no instances 
 of devotion to a departed Master so heroic, so tender, 
 so unfading, as that shown by the disciples to their as- 
 cended Lord. 
 
 Nor can this silence be attributed to any general want 
 of circumstantiality in the sacred historians. On the 
 1 2 Cor. V. 14. 2 1 John v. 19. 8 Rev. i. 5. 
 
THE lord's personal APPEARANCE. 83 
 
 contrary, this circumstantiality — vivid, discursive, and 
 minute — distinguishes them to a degree ahnost unpar- 
 alleled. Each of them, from his own stand-point, no- 
 tices just those collateral points which would strike an 
 observer of his particular temperament, and then inci- 
 dentally touches on what he thus notices, with a natu- 
 ralness which is one of the strongest proofs of the au- 
 thenticity of the text. Take, for instance, the case of 
 St. Mark. " The details point clearly to the impression 
 produced on an eye-witness, and are not such as would 
 suggest themselves to the imagination of a chronicler. 
 At one time we find a minute touch which places the 
 whole scene before us ; at another time, an accessory 
 circumstance, such as often fixes itself on the mind, 
 without appearing at first sight to possess any special 
 interest ; now there is a phrase which preserves some 
 trait of the Saviour's tenderness, or some expressive 
 term of His language."^ As to the scenery about our 
 Lord ; as to the persons who met Him ; as to His own 
 journeys and discourses, details are profusely scattered 
 over almost every page : circumstantial reference is the 
 rule ; severe narrative the exception. The avoidance of 
 a topic so interesting as that before us, cannot be ac- 
 counted for by a desire on the part of the historians to 
 avoid descriptive detail. 
 
 Nor, once more, can we trace this silence to any scant- 
 iness of personal associations. Mary, who watched over 
 His infancy, was in her turn watched over by St. John, 
 with whom she dwelt ; yet how few are the incidents of 
 that divine childhood which were preserved. St. Mat- 
 thew could not but recall the Master's appearance, either 
 when the Sermon on the Mount was spoken, when above 
 1 Westcott's Introduction^ p. 365. 
 
84 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 flitted the fowls of the air, and about glistened the lilies 
 of the field, — or, when he, Matthew, was called from the 
 receipt of customs to the Apostleship, and gave a great 
 feast to which the Master came. St. Peter, whether 
 speaking or writing, could never have forgotten the 
 Lord's face, as he turned and looked on him ; nor that 
 solemn interview when the commission was given him, 
 " Feed my sheep." St. John, whenever he wrote, could 
 scarcely recall a scene in which that Divine presence did 
 not reappear : Jesus by the Jordan's side ; Jesus at Laz- 
 arus's grave ; Jesus at the last supper ; Jesus at the cross ; 
 Jesus uttering those final words, — " If I will that he 
 tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? " And indeed 
 this presence was constantly before the beloved disci- 
 ple whenever he spoke or wrote, — " We beheld his 
 glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father," — 
 such is part of the introduction to his gospel, — " full of 
 grace and truth." ^ " That which was from the begin- 
 ning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked 
 upon, and our hands have handled ; " so his first epistle 
 general begins. "I beheld one like unto the Son of 
 Man ; " ^ such is the recollection by which he assures 
 himself that the Lord of the Apocalypse was the Master 
 whom he had seen and loved in the flesh. But here the 
 historian's lips become mute. Much, indeed, must those 
 to whom in his old age he spoke — those who had not 
 themselves seen the Lord — have clung to him as the 
 last link between the immediate disciples and the 
 Church, which, though not seeing, was to love. Yet, 
 however full may have been his communications, — 
 whatever may have been the unrecorded teachings of 
 the other disciples, — it was the divine will that on this, 
 
 1 John i. U. 2 Rev. xiv. 14. 
 
THE lord's personal APPEARANCE. 85 
 
 the personal appearance of our blessed Lord, the sacred 
 text should keep silence ; that of the days of His birth, 
 and of the main epochs of His life, with the exception 
 of His Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, there 
 should be no record ; that no relics should be referred 
 to or individuated as in any way connected with His sa- 
 cred person, and that the memorials of His infancy 
 should be meagre and slight. To the meaning of a 
 silence so emphatic, — so antecedently improbable when 
 we remember the tender love the inspired historians 
 bore to Him whose life they wrote, so unparalleled in 
 the range of contemporaneous biography, — let us now 
 turn our thoughts. 
 
 In the last chapter, I referred to the silence of the 
 New Testament as to the Virgin Mary, as one of those 
 screens which are so placed by Divine Wisdom as to 
 shut off our wandering minds from other and false ob- 
 jects of worship, and to confine them to the Lord Je- 
 sus, and to Him alone. " There is One Mediator be- 
 tween God and Man, the man Christ Jesus." ^ " This 
 is My beloved Son, hear ye Him ; " such was the com- 
 mand given to the disciples on the Mount of Transfig- 
 uration, when they sought to detain Moses and Elias, as 
 objects of veneration jointly with Christ ; and " when 
 they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save 
 Jesus only." ^ So God veils from us whatever would 
 withdraw us from the worship of His beloved Son, as 
 the one God-man ; our sole Mediator, Intercessor, and 
 Priest. I showed, when speaking of the veil thus in- 
 terposed between us and the Virgin and God's other 
 glorified saints, how merciful was such a dispensation, 
 in view of the tendency of the natural heart to exclude 
 1 1 Tim. li. 5. i Matt. xvii. 8. 
 
86 SILENCE GUARDING CHRIST'S DIVINITY. 
 
 from its idea of the Godhead those qualities of sympa- 
 thy and of tenderness toward man, the recognition of 
 which is essential to a true belief in the incarnation of 
 Christ ; and I noticed how this tendency had shown 
 itself in the post- Apostolic Church, in the obscuring of 
 the Lord's human nature, and in the seeking out, in- 
 stead of Him, of mediators in the person of the Virgin 
 and saints. And now, of another tendency we have to 
 speak, that tendency to materialize and localize God, 
 against which the silence we are now considering is ex- 
 pressly pointed by the sacred text. " It is expedient 
 for you that I go away ; for if I go not away, the 
 Comforter will not come ; " ^ so spoke our blessed Lord 
 when sorrow filled His disciples' hearts that they could 
 no longer detain Him in the body as a personal associ- 
 ate and friend. " Touch me not ; " so He said to Mary 
 when she sought to hold Him as if in bodily connection 
 with His Church.2 Christ " died for all," so declared 
 St. Paul, " that they which live should not henceforth 
 live unto themselves but unto Hii7i which died for them 
 and rose again ; wherefore henceforth know we no man 
 after the flesh ; yea, though we have known Christ after 
 the flesh, yet now henceforth k?iow we him no more. 
 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; 
 old things are passed away ; behold, all things are be- 
 come new. And all things are of God, who hath rec- 
 onciled us to Himself by Christ Jesus, and hath given 
 us the ministry of reconciliation ; to wit, that God was 
 in Christ, reconciling the world tmto himself y ^ God the 
 Omnipresent is in Him ; reconciling the whole world to 
 Himself He is to be worshiped, as was seen in the 
 last chapter, as the sole Mediator ; but the very silence 
 1 John xvi. 7. 2 John xx. 17. 3 2 Cor. v. 15-19. 
 
THE lord's personal APPEARANCE. 87 
 
 of which we now speak, hiding from us all that would 
 lead us to localize Him in relic, or image, or epoch, 
 shows us that He is also to be worshiped as the one 
 Omnipresent God. This thought I now purpose to ex- 
 pand. 
 
 First, then, observe how deeply seated is this tendency 
 to localize and materialize the Divine. We see it exhib- 
 ited in the idolatrous tendencies of Jew as well as of 
 Gentile ; and we see it soon manifesting itself in the 
 Christian Church, notwithstanding the prohibitions of 
 the Decalogue ; notsvithstanding our Lord's emphatic 
 declaration that " God is a Spirit, and they that wor- 
 ship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth ; " ^ 
 notwithstanding the doctrine set forth in His last dis- 
 course that the dispensation of grace was to be a dis- 
 pensation of the Holy Spirit, from which the visible 
 presence of the Redeemer was to be withdrawn ; and 
 notwithstanding the constant warnings and injunctions 
 of the Apostolic epistles. 
 
 Observe this as to epochs a?id anniversaries. " Ye 
 observe days, and months, and times, and years," writes 
 St. Paul to the Gatatians ; "I am afraid of you, lest I 
 have bestowed on you labor in vain." ^ And so widely 
 has this tendency operated, that in the Church of 
 Rome, exclusive of saints' days, there are now seventy- 
 four distinct festivals prescribed, of which sez'e/i are in 
 honor of the Lord and seventeen of the Virgin. There 
 is a serious difficulty in the way of such a system, arising 
 from its interference with the duty of labor ; the divine 
 command,* and the social obligation, being in like man- 
 ner abrogated. But the spiritual consequences are still 
 
 1 John iv. 2-i. 2 GaL iv. 10. 
 
 8 " Six days shalt thou labor." 
 
88 SILENCE GUARDING CHRIST's DIVINITY. 
 
 more perilous. Specific indulgences are attached to wor- 
 ship on those days, and while they are consecrated, other 
 portions of the year are supposed to be withdrawn from 
 any sacred influence or susceptibility. God is localized 
 in these epochs, and dissociated from days not thus con- 
 secrated. 
 
 So, also, with relics and images. When, in the Old 
 Testament Church, it was found that the Brazen Serpent, 
 the most sacred visible type of our blessed Lord, was 
 retained for veneration, it was destroyed by King Hez- 
 ekiah, who, we are told, " did that which was right in the 
 sight of the Lord." ^ In the New Testament, no de- 
 scription of our Lord is given, and no relic, as connected 
 with His Divine Person, is referred to as retained by the 
 subsequent Church ; and yet, in face of this, — in face of 
 the wall thus erected between us and all such objects of 
 adoration, — in face of the solemn warnings against idola- 
 try and declarations of the Divine Invisibility, relics and 
 images came to be regarded as the represejitatives not 
 merely of the Lord Himself, but of His saints, script- 
 ural and unscriptural. The Spiritual thus represented 
 was lost sight of in the Material in which it was sup- 
 posed to be embodied. The Invisible was absorbed in 
 the Visible ; and divine gifts were supposed to stream, 
 not from the Invisible and Omnipresent God, but from 
 picture or relic which was His symbol. Where the im- 
 age or relic was, there was God, or His Son, or one of 
 His canonized saints ; and image or relic was carried in 
 procession to stay the plague, or extinguish the fire, or 
 repel the foe.'^ The distinction between reverence and 
 
 1 2 Kings xviii. 1-4. 
 
 2 See Milman's Latin Christianity, Vol. II. p. 299. Pope Gregory II. de- 
 fends this in his letter to the Emperor Leo. •' Where the body is, says our 
 Lord, there will the eagles be gathered together. The body is Christ; the 
 
SILENCE AS TO EPOCHS AND SHRINES. 89 
 
 worship was soon lost sight of; the vulgar adored relic 
 and image ; the philosophic, unable thus to localize that 
 which could only exist as Omnipresent and Invisible, 
 too often ceased to worship at all. 
 
 So, again, with regard to shrines. " The hour com- 
 eth," said the Lord, " when ye shall neither in this 
 mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 
 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor- 
 shipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." ^ 
 " The Most High," cried St. Stephen, " dwelleth not 
 in temples made with hands." ^ "I will, therefore," 
 wrote St. Paul, "that men pray everywhere, lifting up 
 holy hands." ^ But these teachings the corrupted 
 Church reversed. Not merely was God to be sought 
 in the visible temple, but there was a portion of that 
 temple where He corporeally dwelt, and to which all 
 worship was to be turned. From this, the earliest su- 
 perstition, the idea seemed to grow up that the Divine 
 Nature, no longer omnipresent, was divided into a series 
 of radiating centres, of greater or less splendor, by con- 
 tact with which alone the flame of individual devotion 
 could be kindled, or the spark of grace received. 
 
 What were the consequences of this localization 
 and materialization of God, the history of the Church 
 has but too abundantly shown. God thus localized and 
 limited, ceased to be, in the eyes of multitudes, an 
 All-seeing, All-directing, All-avenging God. Religion 
 
 eagles, the religious men who flew from all quarters to behold Him. 
 When they beheld Him, they made a picture of Him. Not of Him alone: 
 they made pictures of James, the brother of the Lord; of Stephen, and of 
 all the martyrs; and so, having done, they disseminated them through- 
 out the world, to receive, not worship, but reverence." Milman's Laixn 
 ChristiQTiity, Vol. II. p. 313. 
 
 1 John iv. 21-23. 2 Acts viii. 48. 8 1 Tim. ii. 8. 
 
90 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 became a sort of magic : " Resort to the consecrated 
 
 relic or shrine, touch and adore, and all will be cleansed." 
 
 Common life was desecrated by this concentration of 
 
 all Divine influence in epoch, or relic, or temple. 
 
 " We travel far to find Him, seeking still, 
 Often in weariness, to reach his shrine, 
 Ready our choicest treasures to resign. 
 He, in our daily homes, lays down the line, — 
 ' Do here My will.' " 
 
 So even the most devout would cry, striving to recon- 
 cile this localization of God with the consciousness that 
 if He be to them a God of guidance and of peace. He 
 was to be present with them in their hearts and homes. 
 To them it was a painful religion of works, in constant 
 conflict with the benignity and freedom of gospel 
 grace. But the undevout, unrestrained by any sense 
 of religious accountability in their every-day life, took 
 refuge, when alarmed, in shrine or relic, and there, the 
 purgation being accomplished, returned to a fresh career 
 of impiety and sin.-^ 
 
 1 I know no more vivid illustration of this than the circumstances at- 
 tending the death of the Dauphin, the son of Louis XIV., as related by 
 Saint Simon, an annalist in perfect religious sympathy with the whole 
 system, and therefore by no means disposed to narrate its workings ex- 
 cept with accuracy and respect. 
 
 The Dauphin, who Avas notoriously profligate in his private life, as the 
 annalist very circumstantially narrates, was passing one day through the 
 streets, when he " met Our Lord on His way to a sick man; '■ this being 
 the expression used by Saint Simon to denote the carrying of the conse- 
 crated elements to the sick. Upon this the Dauphin kneeled, as was 
 customary, to adore the Host. Subsequently, however, he inquired what 
 ailed the sick person to be thus visited, and on being informed it was the 
 small-pox, he was struck down with terror, and was shortly afterwards 
 attacked by the same disease, of which he had always lived in the most 
 abject fear. He died, continuing, however, his profligate relations to the 
 last. Here we have brought out in tragic prominence, the union between 
 a profligacy which was the ruling habit of life, and a religion which was 
 
CHRIST NOT MERELY AN EXAMPLE. 9I 
 
 But, when we speak of this localization of Christ, — 
 this veiling up of His Divine Nature, and viewing Him 
 solely in certain limited, human, material relations, in 
 which He is supposed exclusively to reside, — is there 
 not an analogous temptation to which, while avoiding 
 any thing like materialistic idolatry, we are too much 
 disposed to yield ? Relics we do not retain ; in shrine 
 we may not believe the Infinite Saviour to corporeally 
 reside ; but is there not a tendency to contemplate Him 
 in the modes and dealings of His Humanity alone, thus 
 humanizing and limiting Him to a mere Example, and 
 not viewing Him as the One Almighty God, pervading 
 all the universe with His Spirit ? " It is expedient for 
 you that I go away \ " ^ may not these words be addressed 
 
 a mere magic ; the grossest immorality and the most slarish superstition 
 being thus combined. According to the almost universal usage of the 
 da}"-, lives of pleasure were supposed to be made holy by the insertion of 
 an occasional parenthesis of religious retreat to monastery or shrine. 
 These may be called extreme cases, and cases of hypocrisy may be 
 cited on the other side, where men, theoretically holding to a spiritual 
 faith, have led immoral lives. But the distinction rests in the fact that 
 immorality in the latter case is in the teeth of the principles avowed; in 
 the former case, the principle is pleaded as an excuse. The man who 
 feels at all times and at all places, "Thou, God, seest me; Thou art 
 the Omnipresent Observer and Avenger of sin," is under a restraint of 
 •which he is unconscious who conceives the Divine Presence to be se- 
 cluded within shrine or emblem, there to be corporeally received, when 
 necessary, by mechanical act. 
 
 1 John xvi. 7. " It (the passage in the text) affirms, not merely that 
 the Holy Spirit was to come, but that, unless Christ departed. He could 
 not come; that the disappearance was the necessary condition of the 
 Advent, that a Visible Christ and an ' Invisible Spirit of Christ ' were in 
 the present dispensation incompatible." — Archer Butler, Strmon XIX. 
 In this, and the two accompanying sermons by the same very able writer, 
 will be found an elaborate disquisition on this whole topic. 
 
 St. Augustine, in his commentary on John xvi. 7, thus writes: — 
 " Could He not, ht'mg here, send Him? Who would say this? For 
 it must not be imagined that He had left the place where that Spirit was, 
 
92 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 not merely to those who would detain the Lord in 
 His Bodily Presence on earth, but to those who would 
 
 and was in such manner come from the Father as not to abide with the 
 Father. In short, how should He not have power, even being here, to 
 send Him whom we know to have come upon Him at His baptism, and 
 to have remained with Him; nay, indeed, from whom we know He was 
 at no time separable? Then what meaneth it, If I depart not, the Com- 
 forter will not come unto you; but ye cannot receive the Spirit, so long as 
 ye persist in knowing Christ after Hie fieshf Whence he who hath now 
 received, the Spirit saith, Though we have known ChHst after the fiesh, 
 yet henceforth know we Him no more. (2 Cor. v. 16.) For, even the flesh 
 of Christ, that man knoweth not after the flesh, who spiritually knoweth 
 the Word made flesh. — Only we must not imagine that the Father 
 is in any man without the Son and the Holy Ghost, or the Father and 
 Son without the Holy Ghost, or the Son without the Father and Holy 
 Ghost, or the Holy Ghost without the Father and Son, or the Father and 
 the Holy Ghost without the Son ; but where any one of Them is, there 
 is the Trinity, One God." —Oxford ed. of Fathers, Vol. xxix. p. 886. 
 
 The same great thinker, in a sermon on the same passage, writes: 
 " Now there would be no great merit or glorious blessedness of believing, 
 if the Lord were always in His risen body visible to human eves. The 
 Holy Ghost, therefore, brought this great boon to them which should be- 
 lieve, thai Bim whom with fleshly eyes they should not see, they should sigh 
 after, with a mind sober from fleshly lusts, and inebriated with spiritual 
 longings. This blessedness the Holy Ghost the Paraclete hath brought, 
 that, the form of a servant^ which the Lord took of the Virgin's womb, be- 
 ing removed from the eyes of the flesh, the purged eye-sight of the mind 
 should be directed to the very form of God, in which He continued to be equal 
 with the Father, even when He deigned to appear in the flesh. By His 
 Godhead indeed He is ever with us; but unless He had departed bodily 
 from us, we should always see His body carnally and never spiritually be- 
 lieve: by which faith justified and blessed, we should be meet with 
 cleansed heart to behold that self-same Word. God with God, by whom 
 all things were made, and which was made flesh to dwell in us." — Ibid. 
 Meyer, with his usual precision, thus states the same truth : — 
 " Uebrigens streitet der Satz nicht mit der alttestamentlichen Geistes 
 wirksamkeit, da an u. St. von dem Geiste, so fern er das Princip des 
 speciflsh christlichen Lebens ist, geredet wird. In dieser Bestimmtheit, 
 mit der christlich charismatischen Fiille, war er noch nicht da. Grund: 
 weil Jesus noch nicht zur Glorie erhoben war. Er musste erst durch seinen 
 Tod zum Himmel zuriick kehren, mn den Geist vom Himmel ans zu 
 
SILENCE GUARDING CHRIST S DIVINITY. 93 
 
 hold to Him simply as a holy Example and unerring 
 Guide ? And to such, this Silence of Scripture has a 
 message almost as emphatic as that which it bears to 
 those who would confine Him to material image or 
 spot. For, we have not merely those repeated declara- 
 tions of Scripture which speak of the Lord Jesus as 
 " equal with God ; " as " God manifest in the flesh ; " 
 as one with the Father ; as being the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily ; as God, above all, and in all ; but 
 we have Divinity so encircling and enclosing the Hu- 
 manity of Christ, that to receive Him as Human we 
 must receive Him as Divine. " Touch me not," — As 
 mortal, I by mortals am not to be approached. There 
 is nothing Human that you can clasp, unless you em- 
 brace and worship the Divine. To the Human, the 
 human avenues have been closed. No portrait here ; 
 no relic, or prescribed channel up which human ener- 
 gies may climb ; no visible foot-prints which the human 
 foot may in its own strength pursue ; there is vividness 
 in spiritual portraiture, it is true ; there is awful close- 
 ness in spiritual application, as if the Lord, no longer 
 on the mount or in the boat, was breathing in our very 
 soul ; but there is nothing which Divinity does not now 
 inclose and incorporate ; nothing in that All-Holy Ex- 
 ample which we can detach and make ours, while we 
 still continue to walk as unrenewed men, apart from the 
 
 senden. Diese Sendung war die Bedingung des nachmaligen etvai (adesse). 
 ' Die Anpgiersung des Geistes war die Enveisung seiner eingetretenen 
 Uebenveltlichkeit.' (Hoflfm. Scriftbeweis, I. p. 169.) Bis dahin blieben 
 die Gliiubigen an die personliche Erscheinung Jesu gewiesen : dieser aber 
 war der Inhaber des Geistes, welcher jetzt noch anf ihn selbst beschrankt 
 und erst nach seinem Hingange znr Mittheilung an die Glaiibigen als 
 Stettvertreter Jesu zur Fortfiihrung seines Werks bestimrat war." — 
 Meyer, Evang. Johan. 3 Auf. 242. 
 
94 SILENCE GUARDING CHRIST S DIVINITY. 
 
 Spirit of God. And if we thus seek to reduce the Lord 
 to a mere human example, venerable as we may make 
 it, we hear those mournful words : " It is expedient for 
 you that I go away." And Inspiration herself, with 
 finger on her lip, turns us from the merely human, with 
 the words, " He is not here ; He is risen." He, the 
 God-man, is to be sought at the throne of gface. Per- 
 fect Man He indeed is, but only to be found as Perfect 
 Man when sought also as Perfect God.-^ 
 
 But to these views it may be objected that the princi- 
 
 1 2 Cor. V. 16. On this point, Hedinger (cited by Lange, in hco) 
 writes : — 
 
 "Von Christo haben sie (Christen) nicht mehr Jleischlic/ie GedanJcen, 
 suchen oder gewarten nichts Fleischliches an ihm, erkennen ihn diirch 
 den Geist als den Sohn Gottes, ihren einigen Heiland und Seligmacher 
 
 — Inwendiff musst du ihn kennen, in ihm und durch ihn eine neue Kre- 
 atursein: die f/ilt, sonst nichts.'''' The last words touch the core. This 
 spiritual knowledge of Christ is not of the flesh; it can only come by 
 the new creation of the Holy Ghost. (Gal. v. 6.) 
 
 The same essential truth, which underlies this whole doctrine, is thus 
 admirably stated: "Die mit Christo allem absterben, haben keine 
 menschliche oder fleischliche Bekanntschaft oder Anhtinglichkeit mehr. 
 
 — Die kindheit muss dem Jiinglings- und Mannesalter weichen: tvir 
 miissen nicht bei der blossen Menscheit Christi slehen bleiben^ sondern zu 
 seiner Gottheit selber 7ins nahen Itrnen. Denn dazu ist jene vom Sohne 
 Gottes angenommen, uns schuchterne und abgewichene Kreaturen 
 durch ihre Freundlichkeit wiederum mit Gott zu verbinden. — Die neue 
 Kreatur ist des Herrn Jesu Leben in uns, aus Gott geboren, ein heilig 
 Let en." — Berlenb. Bibel, 2 Cor. v. IG, 17. 
 
 St. Chrysostom, in his homily on 2 Cor. v. 17, adds to this the follow- 
 ing thought: "For in us, indeed, aftei' the fiesh is being in sins, and 
 not after the flesh not being in sins! But in Christ, after the flesh is His 
 being subject to the affections of nature, such as to thirst, to weariness, 
 to sleep. And not after the flesh is being thenceforward freed even from 
 these things, not the bein«^ without flesh. For with this also He cometh 
 to judge the world. His being impassible and pure. Whereunto we 
 shall also advance, when our body hath been fashioned like unto His 
 glorious body." — Oxford ed. xxvii. p. 139. 
 
TRUE VALUE OF ANNIVERSARIES. 95 
 
 pie on which they rest debars us from all commemora- 
 tion of our blessed Lord except such as Scripture pre- 
 scribes. As this objection is one of much doctrinal as 
 well as practical interest, I will notice it somewhat in 
 detail. 
 
 So far as concerns any commemorations which are 
 founded on false assumptions of fact or doctrine, no 
 doubt the objection holds good. No relics can be con- 
 nected by history with the Lord ; and so far as concerns 
 images of Himself or His saints, they should be care- 
 fully excluded from any position \vhere, in violation of 
 the scriptural command, they would be likely to be con- 
 sidered objects of worship. But with regard to com- 
 memorative days and commemorative places, the ques- 
 tion stands on different grounds. 
 
 Take, first, commemorative days ; and observe that 
 while the only periods which we can determine by 
 Scripture are the Lord's Day and Easter, including the 
 events of the preceding week and that of the Ascen- 
 sion which succeeds, the whole question of such services 
 falls within the Church's proper jurisdiction. " Every 
 particular or national church, hath authority to ordain, 
 change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church, 
 ordained only by man's authority, so that all things be 
 done to edifying." ^ In no way could the question be 
 stated more succinctly or satisfactorily. Wherever a rite 
 or ceremony is not ordained by Scripture, the question 
 is open for the action of " each particular or national 
 church ; " but the test is, — edification : that which con- 
 duces to it may be established ; that which is not con- 
 ducive to it should be left untouched. Here, then, the 
 tendency of the whole question of frequent festivals 
 1 Art. xxxiv. 
 
96 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 comes up ; and for myself, I cannot doubt that in 
 climates such as those in which the English tongue is 
 spoken, with temperaments such as those of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race, our ecclesiastical festivals should be limited, 
 with but few exceptions, to the weekly rests of the 
 Lord's Day. " Six days shalt thou labor ; " such is the 
 divine command, a frequent dispensation of which has 
 been found conducive neither to public morals nor in- 
 dividual piety. " Orare et laborare ; " such is the spirit 
 of the scriptural injunctions, working prayer into labor, 
 so that men may pray without ceasing, retaining, at the 
 same time, the Divine appointment of the weekly day of 
 rest. There is a danger, on the other view, of piety pre- 
 siding over our mactio?i, and deserting our action ; heaped 
 up in periods of stated worship, but leaving those far 
 more extended periods, when we act upon others and 
 upon the world, bleak and bare, unsubdued, uncor- 
 rected, unsanctified by the appeal to the presence of the 
 Most High. 
 
 And yet, at the same time, it is perfectly consistent 
 with this view that there should be established certain 
 grand anniversaries in which the signal epochs of our 
 Lord's ministry should be commemorated. 
 
 " It was the winter wild 
 When the Heaven-bom Child, 
 All meanly wrapped, in the rude manger lay." 
 
 So sang Milton, in this soaring from the very 
 breadth and power of his genius, above the atmos- 
 phere of the Puritan reaction ; and though the period 
 has been arbitrarily fixed ; although the wintry asso- 
 ciations with which, for so many centuries, it has been 
 connected, must be detached from it when it is observed 
 in southern hemispheres ; although the date was left an 
 
TRUE VALUE OF ANNIVERSARIES. 97 
 
 open one by those who with inspired pen recorded the 
 Lord's life ; ^ yet is this sweetest and tenderest of all 
 our festivals one which it would be well for our nation's 
 home life, as well as our nation's religious life, to sa- 
 credly observe. So, also, to the fast of Lent. Who can- 
 not but feel that as there are specific periods of the day 
 which we set apart for peculiar communion, so there 
 should be specific periods of the year when the divine 
 injunction of fasting and prayer should be especially ob- 
 served ; not, indeed, so as to suspend weekly labor, but 
 in sanctifying and solemnizing that labor by leading the 
 mind to dwell in peculiar closeness on the sufferings and 
 death of our blessed Lord, and the sins which nailed 
 Him to the tree. The mind must have such periods ; it 
 cannot blend all states in one, — joy, penitence, self-ex- 
 amination ; it cannot blend all commemorations in one, 
 without losing its distinctness of conception of each. 
 And so it is with the Ecclesiastical Year, as a means of 
 religious instruction on the Lord's Day. We must re- 
 member, as has been already seen, that the Scriptures 
 do not present to us a scientific scheme of theology, but 
 a series of detached facts and doctrines from which the 
 individual creed is to be drawn ; and among these, by 
 far the most vital are the facts connected with the 
 Incarnation of the Lord. He was born ; He was sub- 
 ject to the law's ordinances for us ; He was tempted ; 
 He was betrayed ; He was crucified for us, dead and 
 buried ; He rose again, and ascended into heaven. 
 Each fact has its significance ; each its full teaching ; 
 it is by study of them, by pondering over them, by 
 contact with them, that the full truth of redemption is 
 breathed into our hearts. Our eye is too limited to 
 
 1 See Alford'3 Greek Testament, Luke iii. 1, note. 
 7 
 
98 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 survey this vast field at once ; the field is too divine ; 
 blurred and feeble and vague are our impressions if 
 we attempt it. And what method of study is so devout 
 and effective as this of having these great truths set 
 before us in succession, corresponding with the prog- 
 ress of His own blessed life, and culminating with 
 the descent of the Holy Ghost ! AVhat method of in- 
 struction so simple to the young mind, so consola- 
 tory to the old ! And yet great caution is to be exer- 
 cised, lest the commemoration should be viewed as 
 bringing down and localizing the Lord in particular 
 epochs.^ Christ revisits us not on these particular 
 days, for He is always with us ; but that we may best 
 know and worship Him, we set apart in order periods 
 when we will dwell on the successive epochs of His 
 life on earth. We cover up none ; if we do so, — if 
 either be lightly considered, — the fulness of His di- 
 vine work may be lost to us. We fear always to blend 
 them, lest the acute and vivid realities of the Godhead 
 manifest in the flesh be dimmed. But while, in a large 
 portion of the year the moral and spiritual teachings 
 of the incarnation are presented to us in their various 
 general relations, from Advent to Whitsunday do we 
 follow Him from His miraculous incarnation to the 
 consummation of His ministry in the descent of the 
 
 1 Mr. Croswell's lines touch this point ven' beautifully: — 
 " Oh let the streams of solemn thought, 
 Which in His temples rise, 
 From deeper sources spring, than aught 
 Born of the changing skies. 
 
 " Then though the summer's pride departs, 
 And winter's withering chill 
 Rests on the chceriess words, our hearts 
 Shall be unchanging still." 
 
TRUE PURPOSE OF THE SANCTUARY. 99 
 
 Holy Ghost. God grant that thus walking with our 
 eyes turned heavenward, recalling His blessed ministry 
 for our redemption, it may be ours on the last day to 
 see the King in His beauty face to face. 
 
 And so with regard to the edifices in which our wor- 
 ship ascends. Once a patriarch lifted up his voice and 
 cried : " Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I knew 
 it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful 
 is this place ! This is none other but the House of God, 
 and this is the gate of heaven." ^ But when Jacob thus 
 spoke, he stood in the open field, where the sole tem- 
 ple was the heap of stones which he had collected 
 for his pillow, but where angels ascending and descend- 
 ing spoke of the close presence of God. " Surely God 
 is in this place, and I knew it not ; " such must be our 
 waking thoughts whenever we arouse ourselves from the 
 dreams of the flesh. For the heavens are His throne, 
 and the earth His footstool ; and wherever we are, sin- 
 ning or praying, obeying or rebelling, there is He. 
 And yet, obligatory as is the divine injunction to assem- 
 ble ourselves together for His worship, it is meet that 
 particular and adequate sanctuaries should be erected 
 and consecrated for this purpose, and for the especial 
 service of the Lord. In such sanctuaries it should be 
 far from us to dare to symbolize a habitation for Him 
 who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, but who 
 has consecrated the devout and contrite heart for His 
 particular seat. It is a dishonor to the infinite and 
 awful Deity, by structure or by gesture, to treat Him as 
 localized in altar or shrine ; it lowers the eye of faith 
 and sensualizes worship to hold Him forth, not as spirit- 
 ually communing in His omnipotence with the devout, 
 1 Gen. xxviii. 16, 17. 
 
lOO THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 but as removed from them, with a dreary and godless 
 blank between, only to be approached on epoch or at 
 site. But, while this is the case, the house where His 
 people assemble to worship Him should- be made wor- 
 thy of the most glorious office of which our race, in its 
 social relations, is capable. There is no propitiation in 
 this ; there is no sacrifice in this ; there is no visible 
 altar to be erected as His especial abiding place ; ^ but 
 there is much to be done in commemoration of His 
 love, as a token of His priceless and complete sac- 
 rifice on the cross for us. "Against the day of my 
 burying hath she done this."^ " Verily, wheresoever this 
 gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall 
 also this be told for a memorial of her." ^ So said Jesus 
 of the woman who poured the costly ointment on His 
 feet. So of her who anointed Him with ointment 
 brought in an alabaster box, he spoke : " Simon, seest 
 
 1 See Heb. x. 1-13. Celsus made it one of his principal charges 
 against Christianity that it could not come from God, as it established 
 neither altar nor image. Origen (c. Cels. viii. 17) states the objection 
 thus : " After this, Celsus says that we abstain from setting up altars, 
 images^ temples.'''' And the truth of this Origen does not dispute. In the 
 Oxford edition of Tertullian^ p. 109, we find this passage from Origen 
 cited, with the following addition : " Caecilius ap. Minuc. F. p. 91. 
 ' Why have they no altars, no temples, no known images ? ' — Arnobius 
 I. vi. ' Ye are wont to charge us, as with the greatest impiety, that 
 we neither erect sacred buildings for the offices of worship, or set up the 
 images or likeness of any of the gods, or make altars,' " &c. — Lact. de 
 Mortib. Persec. 12. And this the Christian apologists admitted. 
 
 Now these extracts prove two very important points : — 
 
 1. That which ran counter to the then universal idea of a divine reve- 
 lation could not have been the conception of either impostor or enthusi- 
 ast ; and that, therefore, which we cannot trace to man, we must attrib- 
 ute to God. 
 
 2. The notion of the localization of Divinity in altar, or temple, or 
 image, was a conception of the later Church. 
 
 2 John xii. 7. 8 Matt. xxvi. 13. 
 
TRUE PURPOSE OF THE SANCTUARY. 101 
 
 thou this woman ? I entered into thine house, thou 
 gavest Me no water for My feet : but she hath washed 
 My feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of 
 her head. Thou gavest Me no kiss : but this woman, 
 since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss My 
 feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint : but this 
 woman hath anointed My feet with ointment. Where- 
 fore, I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are 
 FORGIVEN ; FOR SHE LOVED MUCH." ^ Here, then, is the 
 motive power and the consequence ; the motive power 
 being consciousness of sin producing love to Him by 
 whom sin is expiated ; the consequence being love 
 showing itself in grateful and costly gifts to Him and 
 His worship. There is no merit in this ; God accepts 
 not the gift for its value, unworthy of Him as is that 
 heart by which such offering is grudged. We must not 
 withhold from the poor, or from the Church's missions, 
 in order to add strength and beauty to the building in 
 which we worship ; but, if needs be, we must withhold 
 from ourselves. We dare not provide massive founda- 
 tion and stately wall, — we dare not invoke the archi- 
 tect's genius and the laborers' patient toils for the homes 
 in which for a few years we and our children may 
 reside, — and refuse them to the temple which we think 
 worthy of the commemorative rites of our Saviour's 
 sacrifice, and in which generation after generation is to 
 worship God. If economy in structure or decoration is 
 to be applied, let it not be here ; and yet, let it be 
 always recollected that it is as a memorial of God's love 
 to us that the temple is built ; that it neither draws 
 God nearer to us, nor adds to the power of our worship ; 
 and that it is because He is an ever-present God, ours 
 1 Luke vii. 37-50. 
 
I02 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 everywhere and ever, that we would offer to Him the 
 most precious of what we have.^ 
 
 1 Mr. Ruskin speaks admirably on this point : "If there be an^ 
 difference between the Levitical and the Christian offering, it is that the 
 latter may be just so much the wider in its range, as it is less typical ia 
 its meaning ; as it is thankful instead of sncrifcial. There can be no ex- 
 cuse attempted, because the Deity does not now visibly dwell in His tem- 
 ple ; if He is invisible, it is only through our failing faith ; nor an}' ex- 
 cuse because other calls are more immediate or more sacred; this ought 
 to be done, and not the other left undone. It has been said — it ought 
 always to be said, for it is true — that a better and more honorable offer- 
 ing is made to our Master in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowl- 
 edge of His name, in the practice of the virtues by which that name is 
 hallowed, than in material presents to His temple. Assuredly it is so; 
 woe to all who think that any other kind or manner of offering may in 
 any sense take the place of these ! Do the people need place to pray, and 
 calls to hear His Word ? Then it is no time for smoothing pillars and 
 ca.Tx'mg pulpits; let us have enough first of walls and roofs. I insist, I 
 plead for this ; but let us examine ourselves, and see if this be indeed 
 the reason of our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is not 
 between God's house and His poor; it is not between God's house and 
 His gospel. It is betiveen God's house and ours. Have we no tessellated 
 colors on our floors? — no frescoed fancies on our roofs? no niched statu- 
 aries in our corridors ? no gilded furniture in our chambers ? no costly 
 stone in our cabinets ? Has even a tithe of these been ofiered ? They 
 are, or they ought to be, the signs that enough has been devoted to the 
 great purposes of human stewardship, and that there remains to us what 
 we can spend in luxury; but there is a greater and prouder luxury than 
 this selfish one, — that of bringing a portion of such things as these into 
 sacred service, and of presenting them for a memorial, that our pleasure 
 as well as our toil has been hallowed by the remembrance of Him who 
 gave both the strength and the reward. And until this is done, I do not 
 see how such possessions can be retained to happiness. So, also, let us not 
 ask of what use our offering is to the Church ; it is, at least, better for 
 us than if it had been retained for ourselves. It may be better for others 
 also; there is, at any rate, a chance for this; though we must always 
 fearfully and widely shun the thought that the magnificence oj the temple 
 can materially add to the efficiency of the worship 07' to the power of the 
 ministry. Whatever we do, or whatever we oflfer, let it not interfere with 
 the simplicity of the one, or abate, as if replacing, the zeal of the other. 
 That is the abuse and fallacy of Romanism, by which the ti-ue spirit of 
 Christian offering is directly contradicted.'' — Seven Lamps of Architect' 
 ure: Lamp of Sacrifice. Pp. 14-16. 
 
CHRIST NOT LOCALIZED IN A PATH. I03 
 
 And then, finally, with regard to that view which 
 limits the Lord, not indeed to shrine and epoch, but to 
 certain merely human acts ; let us remember that it is 
 only by the possession of the Spirit of Christ and in 
 the recognition of Him as Perfect God as well as Per- 
 fect Man, that men can imitate His holy life. To 
 conquer in our own strength the temptations by which 
 we are assailed ; to extirpate in our own strength the 
 sin by which we are polluted ; to rise in our own 
 strength over the powers of Nature, of death, the 
 grave, and hell ; this is not for us, in this our fallen 
 state. But in Christ and by Christ our nature is re- 
 deemed, and, partakers with Him in His triumph, we 
 ascend with Him to His throne.-^ Holy, indeed, was 
 His life, and full of mercy and truth His deeds ; but we 
 cannot localize Him in a path^ though it is the path 
 which He Himself trod, any more than we can localize 
 Him in epoch or shrine. We clutch the human, and 
 we fall, for it is vanished. But if in devout prayer we 
 seek the God-man, then divine grace speaks : " The 
 Comforter is come, whom I send unto you ; He shall 
 
 1 " For such persons as have no other knowledge of Christ, no other 
 fiaith in Him, than that which I have been just describing, it is most ex- 
 pedient that Jesus should go away from them. It is expedient for them 
 that the man Jesus — the fair ideal which they have formed of perfect wis- 
 dom and virtue, which has shone as an example before them, and which 
 they have fancied themselves able to follow — should pass away from 
 their minds, — that they should feel its inadequateness to strengthen 
 what is weak in them, and to supply what is wanting — in order that 
 they may be led to seek Jesus and to find Him, no longer as a mere 
 teacher and example, but transfigured into their God and Saviour and 
 Redeemer. That is to say, we must lose Christ as a man, to regain 
 Him as a God." Hare, Mission of the Comforter, p. 55. 
 
 See also Stier's Evangelien-Predigten (1:^0.33, Am Sonntage Cantate) 
 — a collection of sermons which, though as yet untranslated, fully equals 
 in merit the Commentary on the Words of the Lord Jesus. 
 
104 THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 testify of Me," — and then a new life bursts into the 
 heart ; not the toilsome and grievous following Christ 
 after the flesh, but the new creation of the Holy Ghost. 
 With a feeling that all sin is freely pardoned by the 
 oblation of our ever blessed Lord, — that His merits 
 cover all our sins, and His strength will supply all our 
 weakness, the pardoned sinner, through grace, rises step 
 by step to the state of the sinless and glorified saint.^ 
 
 So I conclude these thoughts on the Silence of Script- 
 ure as to the Lord's Personal Appearance and its Rela- 
 tions. In the last chapter, on the Silence as to the Vir- 
 gin Mother, and as to whatsoever would withdraw our 
 minds from His all-sufficient tenderness and compas- 
 sion as the One Mediator and Intercessor for our Sins, 
 I said that this silence was a screen so placed as if to 
 bring before us, as divinely isolated from all mortal 
 companionships, the human nature of Him, our ever 
 blessed Lord. And now, silence stands on the other 
 side of His all-adorable Being, and, in the great pres- 
 ence-chamber of Inspiration we worship Him alone. 
 If, on the one side, all that would distract our concep- 
 tion of His human nature is veiled ; so, on the other 
 side, is veiled all that would distract our conception of 
 His divine nature. He is Human, as performing obe- 
 dience to the law for us ; as for us, becoming perfect 
 through suffering ; as for us, restoring our ruined hu- 
 manity by assuming its flesh ; as for us, in our nature, 
 making intercession for us ; as for us, having a fellow- 
 feeling for our infirmities, being tempted at all points 
 as we are, yet without sin ; as in this nature raising His 
 people to heavenly places as one with Himself He is 
 1 See Appendix D. See also notes on pp. 91, 92. 
 
SILENCE GUARDING THE REVEALED WORD. 105 
 
 Divine, as coming Himself to be a willing offering, 
 preexistent to man, to expiate man's sins ; as, by the 
 power and might of His divinity bearing a weight of 
 expiation which no creature could sustain ; as the Di- 
 vine Source from whom springs the Comforter to solace 
 and direct us until He return in glory to reign ; as the 
 Conqueror of sin, the world, and death ; as the Captain 
 and Guide by whom His people are to be led over the 
 vale of this mortal life, until they reach the divine roy- 
 alties of heaven ; and as their glorious Welcomer to 
 those eternal abodes. And these two natures are in 
 one, not confounded, but united, so that He can be the 
 One Mediator betv\'een God and man. Of Him as such 
 all Scriptures speak ; and then these Silences encircle 
 and shelter the inspired voice, conducting it — awful,, 
 single, and severe — to our mortal ears. So, then, is 
 this Silence the Trumpet which brings to us, unmixed 
 with human notes, the message : — " Behold the Lamb 
 of God ; Christ, manifest in the Flesh ; God's Divine 
 Son, yet born of a Virgin ; dying for your sins ; as- 
 cending as your Saviour to the throne of the Most 
 High." We are shut out from all else ; and if we could 
 imagine the heavens to be filled with God's angels and 
 saints, — if we could imagine ordinance and altar and 
 sacrament to join their testimony to that august host, — 
 each would turn from us as we appealed to them, and 
 looking orily to Him, cry, " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord 
 God of Hosts ! Heaven and earth are full of Thy 
 Glory : Glory be to Thee, O God Most High." 
 
 And to Him, our ever - adorable Lord, with 
 THE Father and the Holy Ghost, be all domin- 
 ion, power, and glory, world without end. 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 (P-5I-) 
 
 CREEDS, NOT FINALITIES. 
 
 ST. AUGUSTINE thus writes in his " Essay on 
 Faith and the Creed " : — 
 " However the CathoHc Faith is known to the faithfUl, 
 and committed to memory with as much brevity of 
 speech as the matter allowed, in order that to those who 
 have been bom again in Christ, commencing and still 
 suckling, 7iot yet strengthened by most diligent and spirit- 
 ual ha7idling of the divine Scriptures^ there might be put 
 together in a few words for their belief what was after- 
 wards, in many words, to be expounded to them as they 
 should advance, and rise unto divine doctrine by the 
 assured firmness of humility and charity. Wherefore 
 beneath these very feiv words put together in the Creed, the 
 most part of heretics have endeavored to hide their poi- 
 sons ; whom the Divine mercy hath resisted and doth resist 
 by means of spiritual men^ — Oxford ed. xxii. p. i6. 
 
I08- APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 (pp. 70, 77.) 
 
 CHRIST, THE SOLE SINLESS SYMPATHIZER. 
 
 I hesitated to enlarge on this topic in the text, for fear 
 of breaking its continuity. The following additional 
 points, however, may not be without value in expanding 
 the argument : — 
 
 First, on the human side, as showing our need of this 
 sympathy, let us remember man's loneliness in the most 
 solemn junctures of his life. Take, as the first of these, 
 conviction of sin ; and see how this loneliness is necessi- 
 tated by sin's profound subtlety and depth. Our super- 
 ficial sins are known to all who observe us. They are 
 like the countenance, which is inured to the open air, 
 and bears without wincing human sight and touch. But 
 there are secret and yet dominant sins, which lie imbed- 
 bed in such sensitive recesses of our nature, that the 
 heart shuts convulsively over them, whenever a searching 
 eye draws nigh. And there are other sins, more fearful, 
 which are stationed, as it were, at the portals of the 
 heart, warding off scrutiny with flaming sword and flushed 
 brow. 
 
 " That man was never born whose secret soul, 
 With all its motley treasures, of dark thoughts, 
 Foul fantasies, vain musings, and wild dreams, 
 Was ever open to another's scan." 
 
 These sins, so subtle, so secret, so defiant in their fear 
 of discovery, are hidden from ma7i's sight, yet they form 
 often the burden of our life, and if there be no help, its 
 controlling power. We must sit alone with them, and 
 
CHRIST, THE SOLE SINLESS SYMPATHIZER. lOQ 
 
 Struggle alone, for our fellow-creatures cannot aid us in 
 this dread encounter. Man knows not with whom we 
 are fighting, or for what we fight. Hence it is, that in 
 the great crisis of conviction of sin, the kindest hands 
 that touch us seem cold and dead ; the tenderest eyes 
 that look on us seem dreamy and alien ; the most en- 
 dearing words, meaningless. Crowds may eddy about 
 us, yet we are spiritually alone in this momentous issue, 
 unless we be with Christ. 
 
 Loneliness, again, is an incident oi all great resolutions. 
 Duties only strike us with their full, healthy, pure force, 
 when we rise above the bias and prejudices of society, 
 just as the air only meets us in its full bracing energy 
 when we are on the mountain summit. And peculiarly 
 is this the case, when the resolution is to renounce self. 
 It is not merely the ivorld that we must then leave. 
 Very often this self-renunciation may involve surrenders 
 which even our Christiafi friends may resist. They know 
 not our weakness ; our unfitness for temptation ; the 
 necessit^^ upon us to follow Christ closely, and take up 
 His heaviest cross, or not to follow Him at all. They 
 may desire from their very love of us to knit us more 
 closely to our temporalities than we would do ourselves. 
 In all cases of the first conversion in a family this is so ; 
 for the young Christian must take his pilgrim's staff, and 
 forsake the mansion of self and all who cling to that 
 mansion, loved and revered though they be. Sometimes 
 it is so in conversions even in Christian households, 
 when the coals on the hearth have smouldered, and the 
 old, heroic love to Christ become faint. " Wherefore 
 wilt thou go forth ? " they ask, and the young believer 
 replies, " I must go, for the Lord stands without, and 
 calls." So he goes forth, forlorn and broken-hearted, 
 
IIO' APPENDICES. 
 
 but trusting in Christ, with whom he journeys. He goes 
 not alone, but with One whose presence will amply com- 
 pensate for the loss of all earthly ties. Nor does he go 
 unfollowed ; for other steps on that same road are soon 
 heard from that same home. Moved by his example, 
 they follow in his path — the quickened pace of old love, 
 the buoyant tread of new. 
 
 Then as we are alone in these first great crises of our 
 life, so we must all of us be humanly alone in the last. 
 For when we reach the end of this world's entry, and 
 stand on the threshold of the next, the fleshly departs 
 from us, and the spiritual is unveiled. Those about us, 
 even the dearest of them, fade and flit away, and we are 
 left in solitude to meet our God. 
 
 Then let us, in view of this need, view Christ as the 
 sole sinless Sympathizer with the sinner ; and for this 
 very reason, in view of His Divinity, the sole mediatorial 
 stay on whom the sinner can rely. Observe, then, how 
 this follows, from Chrisfs holiness. Among me?i^ we can- 
 not but observe that sympathy wanes as sin increases. 
 Take the extreme case, and go to the haunts of the 
 profligate and reckless, and ask how mucfi sympathy we 
 find in them ? The answer is given as we listen to the 
 vulgar taunt, the cruel joke, the fierce oath, the wild 
 cry of hate, the chuckle of delight when innocence falls, 
 the hiss of treachery when another can be exposed, — 
 sounds which we can never separate from the scenes 
 where profligate crime holds sway. 
 
 But is it otherwise with respectable crime ? View this, 
 for instance, in the phase of the love of wealth for the 
 mere purpose of accumulation, and ask how it is here ? 
 Do you find any mercy in capital whose object is simply 
 its own growth ? From the petty tyrants of the clothing 
 
CHRIST, THE SOLE SINLESS SYMPATHIZER. Ill 
 
 shop to the merchant emperors who hold India under 
 their corporate sway, do we not see that it is the tend- 
 ency of wealth, when thus simply seeking accumulation, 
 to crush out whatever of individual heart or happiness or 
 right may stand in its way ? 
 
 " Oh, men with mothers dear," — 
 
 So wrote a great satirist, — 
 
 " Oh, men with sisters and Avives, 
 This is not linen you 're wearing out, 
 But human creatures' lives." 
 
 And so, also, to capital in its larger aspects, when 
 engaged in this work of selfish accumulation. " You are 
 trampling out human souls," — so it may be well ad- 
 dressed ; — " you talk of subdividing labor, but you are 
 really subdividing me?i, making them petty, and nar- 
 row, and mechanical ; you are drawing out of individual 
 life all its freshness and faith ; you are making an athe- 
 istic world ; yet what do you care / All you ask is that 
 your dividends be good ; no inquiry do you make as to 
 the miser)- this great machine of capital produces as it 
 turns itself over and over on human hearts." Sympathy 
 with a fellow-creature has no place in those machines 
 which capital erects for its own multiplication. 
 
 Then take another passion : the love of luxurious ease. 
 It is not that in such a case there may not be a refined 
 perception of scenic or sensuous beauty, for wealth and 
 delicacy may be guided in their most noble labors by 
 such a hand. Sympathy with imaginar)' sorrow may be 
 active, for tears for fictitious grief may readily flow on 
 a countenance which would sternly frown away the in- 
 trusion of real distress. But what we here see before us 
 is a gradual withering up of true sympathy, under the 
 
112 APPENDICES. 
 
 enervating influence of self-indulgence. There is first a 
 withdrawal of this sympathy from the outer circles of 
 vulgar or distant life ; then a proud indifference to all out 
 of our immediate circle ; and then the extinction of all 
 that does not touch individual interest, and then perfect 
 selfishness is the result. " Close the curtains more tightly ; 
 heap up the cushions ; shut the door, so that I cannot 
 hear the voice of humanity imploring aid, or even of 
 divinity commanding sacrifice." And so luxuriousness 
 at last has no love left in it but self-love ; it has love 
 neither to God or man. 
 
 Then observe, on the other hand, how sympathy grows 
 with holiness ; and how this is peculiarly the case when 
 there is a personal experience of temptation. A per- 
 fectly holy being, without this experience, could not but 
 recoil in horror from human guilt as incomprehensibly 
 odious and fearful. It would start shiveringly back, as 
 the bird from the reptile ; and its object would be to fly 
 as far as possible from the accursed thing. But it would 
 be otherwise with one who had borne the burden of this 
 sinful nature, and had felt at once its awful power and 
 its insidious magic. The more saintly does one thus 
 experienced become, the more profoundly does he feel 
 the reality of this power, and the more tenderly does he 
 mourn with those who sink under its yoke. There is 
 nothing in them from which he can start back in horror, 
 for there is nothing in them which he has not felt in him- 
 self Growth in sympathy in him is inseparable from 
 growth in grace. And do we not see this in practical 
 life ? Is not censoriousness and a severe view of others' 
 guilt a mark of spiritual declension ? Are not the most 
 saintly and the most lowly at the same time the most 
 merciful ? Was there ever a finer love of souls shown 
 
CHRIST, THE SOLE SINLESS SYMPATHIZER. II3 
 
 except by such ? Who but these have threaded the forest 
 to speak mercy and comfort to those red men, whom 
 unsaintly civilization only approaches to debauch or to 
 destroy ? Who but these have taught patiently under a 
 tropical sun ; or in the lassitude of Asiatic skies have 
 preached love to those whom the world has only sought 
 to pillage ? Is it not in such also that we see the most 
 sympathy with physical distress and grief; so that those 
 thus growing in holiness, have also grown in tender 
 watchfulness of the wretched, and in heroic guardianship 
 of the desolate and the outcast ? 
 
 If this be the case, the perfect sinlessness of our 
 blessed Lord constitutes the feature which, taken in 
 connection with His Humanity and His Divinity, points 
 Him to us not only as our sole Mediator, but as the only 
 true sympathizer with us in our temptations and griefs. 
 He appears in this, His High-priestly office, as at once 
 holy and undefiled, and yet as tempted at all points as 
 ourselves. He is at once the sublime holiness of God, 
 and the bearer of this mass of human guilt, in all its 
 mysterious weight. He is at once the holy Creator of 
 the world in its beauty, evolving it majestically out of 
 formless space, and the sorrowful sacrifice of the world 
 in its sins, staggering under it wearily up the road to the 
 cross. He bore the full load, for He expiated its full 
 guilt. He met it and vanquished it, and this without 
 sin Himself. And we may indeed reverently think that 
 the sense of the wretchedness of sin produced by His 
 conquest of it in its full force, is far deeper than that 
 felt by us, who so often yield at its first approach. Our 
 perception is dulled by yielding ; His was perfect and 
 unsoiled to the last. We cannot measure temptation, for 
 we give way at its first approach, as would the most 
 
114 APPENDICES. 
 
 fragile of bridges when the freshet begins to swell. But 
 He received its storm to the utmost, and He resisted its 
 full torrent as it accumulated against Him its entire force ; 
 and therefore He can tell what it is when we plead to 
 Him for help in our trials and temptations whensoever 
 they beset us. In Christ, then, we find perfect knowledge 
 of sin and perfect holiness, and with these the perfect 
 sympathy, which they alone can produce. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 OUR lord's personal appearance. 
 
 (p. 8i.) 
 
 The patristic traditions on this point are thus ad- 
 mirably stated in a note by the Oxford Translators of 
 Tertullian, appended to their edition of that Father : — 
 " Tertullian seems to understand the words of Isaiah 
 liii. 3 literally, as though the absence of every thing 
 highly accounted of among men were part of His hu- 
 miliation, (c. Marc. iii. 7, and adv. Jud. c. 14, *nec ad- 
 spectu quidem honestus ;' c. Marc. iii. 17, at length; de 
 carne Christi, c. 9, very explicitly) ; T. however speaks 
 of lowliness, of absence of any outward dignity or 
 majesty to command respect, of what might readily be 
 despised, not as M. Medina and others (ap. Moreau t. i, 
 Hsereses Tert. p. 54, Christus indecorus) say, that He 
 was ' non speciosus forma, sed fcedus et deformis.' 
 Thus in the de c. C. : ' These, Matt. xiii. 54, were the 
 words of persons despising His appearance. So that 
 He had not a body even of human dignity (honestatis), 
 
OUR lord's personal appearance. 115 
 
 much less of heavenly brightness.' It is also true (as 
 Moreau contends) that T. uses these terms, partly in 
 reference to His sufferings and indignities at the hands 
 of men ; as 1. c. : ' Were even the prophets silent as to 
 the absence of dignity (ignobili) in His aspect, His very 
 sufferings, His very indignities, speak ; the sufferings 
 of a human flesh, the indignities of one undignified' 
 (inhonestam), but not exclusively, since he argues that 
 had He had the dignity of a heavenly countenance, 
 they had not dared this ; and adv. Jud. he distinguishes 
 the ' nee adspectu,' &c. from the rest. T., on the other 
 hand, explains Ps. xlv. 2 exclusively of ' spiritual 
 beauty,' adv. Marc. iii. 17. The passages of S. Clem. 
 Alex. Psed. iii. r, rrjv oxptv ataxpov, in reference to Is. liii. 
 (coll. Strom, ii. 5), will, from the contrast, have the same 
 meaning, of contrast with, and absence of, human beauty. 
 So again, very plainly, Strom, vi. 17, (p. 293, ed. Sylb.,) 
 €VT€\r]^ is opposed to a beautifulness which would fix 
 the mind on itself : ' Not without purpose did the Lord 
 will to employ a lowly form of body, lest any praising 
 the comeliness and admiring the beauty, should be dis- 
 tracted from the things said.' And Strom, iii. 17, p. 
 202 : ' He Himself, the Head of the Church, passed 
 the life in the flesh unattractive and without form (dryS^s 
 Kttt a/xopffio^), teaching us to look up to the invisible 
 (dctScs) and incorporeal of the Divine Cause.' In like 
 way when Celsus had said, that whereas it was ' impos- 
 sible that whoso had something Divine above others, 
 should not differ from others,' but that His form ' was, 
 as they say, small and Sva-eiSh and abject' (dyevh), Ori- 
 gen admits the Svo-ctScs, ' but not, as Celsus explains it, 
 abject, nor is it clearly shown that it was small,' (c. Cels. 
 vi. § 65.) S. Basil, again (in Ps. xliv.), says only nega- 
 
Il6 APPENDICES. 
 
 tively, that it * does not celebrate beauty of person, for 
 we have seen Him and He hath no beauty/ &c. Is. 
 liii. So S. Aug. in Ps. xliii. § i6 : 'As man He had 
 neither beauty nor comeliness ; but He was beautiful in 
 form in That, whereby He is "above the sons of men.'" 
 Ps. xlv. : ' Therefore manifesting that forma deformis 
 of the flesh ; ' &c. and on Ps. cxviii., ' The Bridegroom 
 Himself, lovely not in outward form but in excellency.' 
 
 " It appears, further, that these writers do not rest on 
 any tradition, (for Celsus', 'they say,' implies, at most, 
 only a current notion in his day,) but on an exposition 
 of a prophecy ; and, therefore, their words are not to be 
 taken further than the prophecy bears, if interpreted of 
 the outward form, ' absence of outward comeliness.' 
 
 " This same passage of Isaiah is by others interpreted 
 of the ' marring of His countenance ' through His suf- 
 ferings; (whence the Jews thought that He was near 
 * fifty years old ; ') and this is evidently the meaning of 
 Thaddaeus in the document from the Syriac, ap. Eus. i. 
 13, * of the power of His works and the mysteries which 
 He spake in the world — of the lowness and meanness 
 and humiliation of the Man, Who appeared visibly, and 
 how He humbled Himself and died and minished His 
 Divinity.' This T. himself joins with the other mean- 
 ing, and S. Aug. gives it as tAe meaning, in Ps. xliv. § 3, 
 and in Ps. cxxvii. § 8, ' That Bridegroom than Whom 
 nothing is more beautiful, of Whom Esaias said a little 
 before, " We saw Him, and He had no beauty nor come- 
 liness." Is then our Bridegroom unlovely? (foedus) — 
 He seemed unlovely to those who persecuted Him, and 
 unless they had deemed Him unlovely, they had not 
 assaulted, had not scourged, had not crowned with 
 thorns, had not dishonored Him with spittings ; but be- 
 
OUR LORDS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. II7 
 
 cause He seemed to them unlovely, they did those things 
 unto Him, for they had not the eyes to which Christ 
 would appear lovely — Those eyes are to be cleansed, 
 that they may be able to see that light ; ' which gives a 
 sort of comment on T.'s stronger language de came 
 Christi, 1. c. Theodoret explains Is. liii. 2, 3, of His 
 sufferings (in Ps. xliv.). 
 
 " This passage of S. Aug. further shows that these 
 Fathers did not think of what we should mean by 
 
 * meanness of countenance ' and the like, but only a 
 lowliness of the outward form, which (as is the case 
 often now in such degrees of moral dignity as men may 
 reach unto) had nothing attractive except for those who 
 had a certain sympathy with it, and whose eyes were 
 purified to see the hidden Majesty. Thus Origen, who 
 admitted the Suo-ciScs imputed by Celsus, says (Comm. 
 in Matt. § 100, t. iii. p. 906, ed. de la Rue al. Tr. 35) : 
 
 * A tradition has come down to us of Him, that there 
 were not only two forms in Him, one according to which 
 all saw Him, another, according to which He was trans- 
 figured before His disciples in the mount, when His 
 countenance also shone as the sun, but that He appeared 
 to each according as he was worthy. And being the 
 Same, He appeared as though He were not the Same to 
 all ; ' (which O. likens to the Manna, Wisd. xvi. 20, 21.) 
 
 * And this tradition does not appear to me incredible, 
 whether as relates to the body, on account of Jesus Him- 
 self, that He appeared in different ways to men, or on 
 account of the very nature of the Word, which does not 
 appear alike to all.' And S. Jerome (in Ps. xliv. Ep. 
 65, ad Princip. § 8) having explained Is. liii. 2 of His 
 sufferings, and Ps. xlv. of the ' beauty of His excel- 
 lences in a sacred and Adorable Body,' subjoins, 'for 
 
Il8 APPENDICES. 
 
 had He not had in His countenance and eyes a sort of 
 starry lustre, neither had the Apostle s instantly followed 
 Him, nor they who had come to seize Him fallen to the 
 ground,' and this (on S. Matt. ix. 9) he explains not 
 to belong to the human countenance, but the Divinity 
 gleaming through. * Certainly the very brightness and 
 majesty of the hidden Divinity, which shone through in 
 His human countenance, could at first sight draw be- 
 holders to Himself. For if the magnet and amber are 
 said to have the power to join to themselves rings and 
 straws, how much more could the Lord of all creatures 
 draw to Himself whom He would ! ' " 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 (p. 104.) 
 
 CHRIST NOT TO BE LOCALIZED IN A PATH. 
 
 The futility of the attempt to follow Christ simply 
 as a human leader, appears not merely from the reasons 
 stated in the text, but from the want of an adequate 
 motive power. Contrast, in this light, the morality 
 which springs from the endeavor to obey certain pre- 
 cepts, or to pursue a particular path, with that which 
 is inspired by love to Him Who is the divine sacrifice 
 for sin, and which is the fruit of the holy Spirit of God 
 indwelling in the heart. View this contrast in the 
 following relations : — 
 
 (i.) Law, as an exterior rule, is, in its nature, a 
 restraint on the natural will; saying, "Thou shalt not 
 
CHRIST NOT TO BE LOCALIZED IN A PATH. II9 
 
 do that which thou dost wish, or thou shalt do that 
 which thou wishest not." It is, therefore, a battle and 
 a bondage. It marshals the will's wild power in per- 
 petual warfare with an external yoke. But love is an 
 inner energy, absorbing and uniting with itself the most 
 secret purposes of the heart ; so that the whole nature, 
 in sweet accord, cries, " I will." The first forces us 
 into a path to pursue which is beyond our strength, and 
 at each step of which we stumble and fall. The second 
 leads us to Christ Himself; and with His love planted 
 by Him in the heart, to follow Him is a joy and de- 
 light. 
 
 (2.) Law is superficial, and deals with observances. 
 It says, " Perform this or that ceremony, submit to 
 this or that outer discipline." It tends to make relig- 
 ion, therefore, a superstition ; to turn it to the slavish 
 performance of rites, and the idolizing of symbol's ; and 
 this with a heart unspiritual and rebellious. But love 
 deals with the essence, and elevates the whole nature 
 to the obedience and worship of God. 
 
 (3.) Law works but for the moment. Its labor is 
 like that which placed for a day, along the desert over 
 which the Russian empress travelled, transplanted and 
 rootless trees, to be removed when the procession 
 passed by; so that the next morning the landscape 
 was as sterile and unadorned as before. Law puts up 
 for the moment's use, upon the sterile soil of an un- 
 changed heart, the rootless foliage of virtue ; but soon, 
 when the occasion passes, this foliage is removed, or 
 dies out. But love, though working more slowly, sows 
 a divine growth, which draws its support from the heart 
 itself, and which continues while eternity lasts. Law 
 cannot fit for heaven, for it only sticks the semblance 
 
I20 APPENDICES. 
 
 of heaven's principles on the outside ; but love does 
 fit for heaven, for it plants those principles within. 
 Law may cage up the offender, but it cannot change 
 his nature. It may bring him to the scaffold, but it 
 cannot reform his life. As it can only supply the outer 
 appearance, so it can only repress the outer act : it has 
 neither fetter nor axe to affect the immortal soul. But 
 love frees not merely from sin as a tempter, but from 
 the law as a bondage. It liberates, it ennobles, it assim- 
 ilates the creature in his sympathies and desires with 
 the all-holy God. 
 
 (4.) And then law leaves the offender in despair, 
 under the burden of unreduceable and accumulating 
 guilt. It says, " You broke the law, and for that these 
 penalties are assigned ; " and so on through irremedia- 
 ble transgression and measureless condemnation. But 
 love says, " All this was canceled by the cross. Christ 
 fulfilled this law perfectly for you ; Christ suffered its 
 penalties fully for you, that you may arise and obey it 
 for yourself" To one oppressed by the law's weight 
 there is no motive, for there is no hope of removing 
 the sentence of condemnation to which each day's new 
 transgression adds. But love gives hope and strength ; 
 and in the atonement of the Saviour, and the sureness 
 of His grace, supplies the stimulus and the power of 
 a new and holy life. Law immures the eternal spirit 
 in the grave of hopeless sin ; love graces it with a saint's 
 pardon, and wings it with a seraph's strength, and 
 speeds it to God's own home. 
 
 The whole question, then, is one of marCs power as 
 distinguished from GocTs power, of our feeble purpose as 
 contrasted with His divine grace. A holy example can- 
 not give us strength : the strength must be from above. 
 
CHRIST NOT TO BE LOCALIZED IN A PATH. 121 
 
 It is here, then, we see the full meaning of St. Paul's 
 words in 2 Cor. v. i6, 17: "Though we have known 
 Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him 
 no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new 
 creature." " For," writes Archbishop Cranmer, "if we 
 will be the heirs of God and of everlasting life, we must 
 be born again, and sanctified, or made holy, as apper- 
 tains to the children of the most Holy God. Now this 
 new birth, or sanctification, the Holy Ghost works in us ; 
 and therefore he is called the Holy Ghost, because every 
 thing that is sanctified or hallowed, is sanctified or made 
 holy by Him. "Wherefore, when the Holy Ghost is not in 
 man, then it is not possible that he should be holy, al- 
 though he did all the good works under the sun. And 
 for this cause St. Paul, writing to the Romans, calls the 
 Holy Ghost the Spirit of sanctification, that is to say, 
 the Spirit that maketh holiness. Learn, therefore, good 
 children, that all we must be made holy and new men by 
 the virtue of the Holy Ghost, and that we cannot attain 
 this holiness by our own strength or works. . . Now the 
 Holy Ghost works by His word in this manner. First, 
 he that believes the gospel, and receives the doctrine of 
 Christ, is made the son of God, as St. John witnesses in 
 his gospel, saying, As many as receive Him, He hath given 
 them power to be made the children of God. For when 
 we believe in Christ, and are baptized, then we are born 
 again, and are made the children of God. And when 
 we are His children, then He gives the Holy Ghost into 
 our hearts, as St. Paul testifies, writing thus : Forasmuch 
 as you are now the children of God, therefore God hath 
 sent the Spirit Of His Son into your hearts, which crieth, 
 Abba, Father. And when we have received the Holy 
 Ghost, He kindles in our hearts true love toward God, as 
 
122 APPENDICES. 
 
 St. Paul writes in the Epistle to the Romans, in the fifth 
 chapter. The love of God, saith he, is poured abroad 
 in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. 
 And where the true love of God reigneth, there are God's 
 commandments kept, and there beginneth a certain obe- 
 dience to His will and pleasure. . . . Furthermore, the 
 Holy Ghost doth stay the flesh and the lusts of the same, 
 and helps us to overcome them, that we be not carried 
 away by them, but may continue in cleanness and holi- 
 ness of life. These are the benefits and works of the 
 Holy Ghost in us." 1 
 
 1 Cramner On Catechism, Sermon III. 
 
\JX^-^^ 
 
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