cu:s>m^ -^- 
 
 
 '>^^s31- 
 
 ■■^' 
 
 cZ .(Zl/^jE 
 
 ,«»<«•'*'*'"'"»"•' *'.»«,j,; 
 
 / 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Shelf 
 
^v<r >^ v\ 
 
THE RETURN TO THE 
 CROSS 
 
THE RETURN TO 
 THE CROSS 
 
 BY THE-REV. 
 
 W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A. LL.D. 
 
 Editor of ' ' The Expositor" ' ' The Expositor's Bible " 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD MEAD & COMPANY 
 
 149 df 151 FIFTH AVENUE 
 1897 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The Secret of Christian Experience 
 From the Tabernacle to the House 
 The Value of Peculiar Possessions 
 The Long Love of Christ . 
 The Sorrows of the Saviour 
 " A Listener unto Death '■ . 
 The Wisdom of God in a Mystery 
 The Prayer Meeting . . . . 
 " If Two of You Shall Agree " . 
 The Casting Away of Theology 
 Is the Gospel of Christ Forgotten ? 
 " Cast Your Deadly Doing Down " . 
 Is Christ Dead in Vain ? . . . 
 
 "Being Let Go " 
 
 " They Without Us" .... 
 The Weight of the Ends of the World 
 The Backwater of Life 
 The School of Tyrannus . 
 
 VAGE 
 
 9 
 41 
 53 
 69 
 
 79 
 89 
 
 97 
 109 
 119 
 129 
 
 143 
 155 
 167 
 179 
 187 
 195 
 205 
 
 213 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 The Mothers of St. Paul 221 
 
 From Glory to Glory 229 
 
 Givers and Receivers 237 
 
 Christ Waiting to be Gracious .... 245 
 
 " Women Received their Dead "' .... 251 
 
 The Theology of Little Children .... 261 
 
 The Evangelical Love for Cijrist .... 273 
 
 The Theology of Walter Pater .... 285 
 Is the Sermon on the Mount the Christian Gospel "' 297 
 
 " Geocentricism " ; The Latest Scarecrow . . 309 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN 
 EXPERIENCE* 
 
 T N his most beautiful book, " Grace Abounding," 
 * Bunyan speaks as follows: "Upon a day the 
 good providence of God did cast me to Bedford, 
 to work on my calling ; and in one of the streets 
 of that Toivn, I came where there were three or 
 four poor Women sitting at a door in the sun, 
 and talking about the things of God ; and being 
 now willing to hear them discourse I drew near 
 to hear what they said, for I was now a brisk 
 talker also myself in the matters of religion. But 
 I may say / heard, but I understood not ; for they 
 were far above, out of my reach. Their talk was 
 about a new birth, the work of God on their 
 
 * Address delivered at the close of the Session, Theological 
 College, Bala, July i, 1897. 
 
10 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 hearts, also how they were convinced of their 
 miserable state by nature. They talked how 
 God had visited their souls with His love in the 
 Lord Jesus, and with what words and promises 
 they had been refreshed, comforted, and supported 
 against the temptations of the devil. Moreover 
 they reasoned of the suggestions and temptations 
 of Satan in particular ; and told to each other by 
 which they had been afflicted, and how they were 
 borne up under his assaults. They also discoursed 
 of their own wretchedness of heart, of their un- 
 belief, and did contemn, slight, and abhor their 
 own righteousness, as filthy and insufficient to do 
 them any good. And methought they spake as if 
 joy did make them speak ; they spake with such 
 pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such 
 appearance of grace in all they said, that they 
 were to me as if they had found a new world, as 
 if they were people that dwelt alone, and were 
 not to be reckoned amongst their neighbours." 
 You observe the characteristics of this experience. 
 These saints were conscious of the love of God 
 in Christ Jesus. They were conscious of the 
 defences they received against the assaults of 
 the Wicked One. They were conscious also of 
 their own wretchedness of heart and unbelief, 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE n 
 
 and did utterly contemn, slight, and abhor their 
 own righteousness. And the result and outcome 
 of this mixed experience was an exuberant joy> 
 and such an appearance of grace as made their 
 hearer desire a place among them. They ap- 
 peared to him to have found the new world. 
 It is this combination of joy and wretchedness 
 that has to be explained. In a day when 
 ethical preaching prevails, in a day when some 
 profess to have found a perfect victory over 
 sin, and others not less loudly speak as if sin 
 should permanently darken the believer's life, it 
 may be well for us to ask whether the experience 
 of these women of Bedford is not the normal and 
 apostolic type, whether it is true that in the end 
 our best righteousness is to be utterly contemned, 
 slighted, and abhorred, whether it is true that to 
 the last we must speak of our own wretchedness 
 of heart and unbelief, and whether in spite of all 
 this we may not rejoice in God through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 I 
 
 In the first place what is supremely important to 
 a minister is that he should have a message. Other 
 
12 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 things are by no means to be despised. He should 
 be taught how to express that message in the 
 speech of his day, and in its relations to the varying 
 aspects of thought. The vindication of theological 
 colleges is mainly to be found in this necessity, 
 and nearly all wise Christians are of opinion 
 that the education of preachers, so far from being 
 lowered, ought to be made much more thorough 
 than it is. Melanchthon in his day and Westcott 
 in ours have specially brought out as against 
 pietists that Christianity is appointed for the 
 transfiguration of the human in every department, 
 that the worlds of science and art and literature 
 are accessible to the mind of Christ, and that the 
 crowns of these kingdoms also should be set on 
 His royal head. But I do not think it is needful 
 to dwell on this, but rather to insist on the other 
 side that the preacher without a definite message, 
 no matter how well furnished otherwise, is neces- 
 sarily impotent. Rely upon it that the people of 
 Wales, who have listened to the noblest pulpit 
 eloquence in the world, do not ask from you 
 secular teaching. As time passes they will ask 
 for it less than ever. It is by slow and piecemeal 
 deepening of the great divine thoughts that the 
 spring of life rises and abides in our churches. 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 13 
 
 No teaching that is purely ethical or intellectual, 
 or the result of the exercise of the human reason, 
 will do other than lay waste the supernatural 
 Church that is redeemed by the blood of the 
 Lamb. 
 
 Further, this message is always a secret given 
 by the Holy Ghost, and blessed by the Holy 
 Ghost. No book, no earthly teacher, can ever 
 impart that hidden wisdom without which your 
 ministry must be a thing of nought. You must 
 in your inmost souls live through the struggle 
 and the victory. Nothing avails at all in this 
 connection except an immediate and original ex- 
 perience of salvation. Dr. Dale has told us how, 
 when he was a mere youth, on his knees and in 
 keen distress about his personal salvation, he first 
 read through the "Anxious Inquirer." "Night 
 after night I waited with eager impatience for the 
 house to become still, that in undisturbed solitude 
 I might agonise over the book which has taught 
 so many to trust in God." It is through anguish 
 and fear for the most part, and always through 
 anxiety and eagerness, that we are led to that 
 quiet trust in Christ in which we find rest and 
 strength, and through which we are enabled by 
 the Holy Spirit to teach other souls to forsake 
 
14 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 sin and live for God. I ought to say that the 
 Christian secret is with us a secret that has to be 
 told. We are not with Newman, who denounced 
 the practice of preaching the Atonement to the 
 unconverted, who declared that the preacher 
 should connect the Gospel with natural religion, 
 and mark out obedience to the moral law as the 
 ordinary means of attaining a Christian faith. We 
 stand with St. Paul, who delivered first of all that 
 Christ died for our sins according to the Scrip- 
 tures, and rose again on the third day. 
 
 Again, we accept apostolic doctrine and apos- 
 tolic experience as normal. Of the attempt made 
 in our time to disparage the teachings of the 
 Apostles, in favour of the teaching of Christ, I 
 will only say that when we are done with the 
 Gospels we are not done with Christ. One might 
 imagine from certain writers that the subject of 
 one part, the golden part, of the New Testament 
 was Christ, and ihat the subject of the remaining 
 part was some one or something else. You know 
 that it is otherwise, that the Apostles, rightly or 
 wrongly, spoke of nothing but Christ. They used 
 the intensest expressions to describe their relation 
 to Him, that relation of utter humility, obedience, 
 trust, worship, intimacy, which almost passed into 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 15 
 
 complete identification. They speak without a 
 doubt not only of the Christ of Palestine, but of the 
 Christ who died and rose again. They profess to 
 know through the revelation of the Holy Ghost 
 the far-reaching significance of Christ's death. 
 More than this, the}^ claim to have penetrated the 
 veil which hides the risen Lord in heaven. I liey 
 profess to know how He fulfils His office as a 
 minister of the sanctuary, and of the true taber- 
 nacle which the Lord pitched, and not man. Now 
 I have simply to say that their claims are either 
 true or false. On these subjects no man may 
 speak without the spirit of revelation. All human 
 imaginings and suppositions are as idle as the 
 chattering of sparrows. We have therefore to 
 say either that we have no light, that the so-called 
 revelation may be cancelled, that we must not 
 concern ourselves with it, that we must content 
 ourselves with the imitation of our Lord's earthly 
 life, or else we must admit that the Holy Ghost 
 glorified Christ by taking of His and showing it 
 to the Apostles. What is not competent is to sit 
 in judgment on what is either a revelation or a 
 deception, and try to part it into false and true. 
 The Apostles must in the nature of the case be 
 trusted all in all or not at all. What we know is 
 
i6 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 that when Christian doctrine has been made a 
 living thing, when swelHng hearts and conquering 
 souls have been subdued by the divine grace and 
 mercy, it has been by those who, like the re- 
 formers, gloried in being scholars of the Apostles. 
 Once more, in discussing these subjects, in 
 maintaining that there is a normal Christian faith, 
 we are not judging those from whose theology we 
 dissent. If St. Paul himself said "we prophesy 
 in part," surely all of us may say the same thing. 
 There are those who have laid passionate hold on 
 certain aspects of the faith to the neglect of others, 
 who lived in the very household and court of 
 God, and at whose feet we may well sit in great 
 humihty. What we must say in such cases is, 
 " He appeared unto them in another form." In 
 His full-orbed glory Christ appears to His 
 people's hearts as their representative and their 
 substitute, the priest and the victim. But there 
 are those to whom He is rather a personal friend, 
 one to whom they turn in hours of need for in- 
 spiration and succour. They know Christ after 
 this manner, although they do not know Him 
 perfectly. Still, it is the business of preachers of 
 the Gospel to seek after the full Gospel of the full 
 Christ, and to mark divergences from it even 
 
THE SECRET OE CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 17 
 
 when they thankfully admit that these divergences 
 have often been used by God for the clearer 
 understanding of His truth, and for the rescue of 
 Christian doctrines which were in peril of obscu- 
 ration. 
 
 II 
 
 Let us now turn to the Christian experience of 
 the Reformation, and inquire how far it con- 
 formed with that related by Bunyan. In the 
 endlessly instructive spiritual history of Luther 
 we find that with him, from first to last, justifica- 
 tion by faith was the article of a standing or fall- 
 ing Church. Everything, he said, was contained 
 in it that he taught and urged against the devil 
 through his whole life. What was it that led 
 Luther to this great truth, and what did it ex- 
 perimentally mean for him ? It meant the satis- 
 faction of the else unappeasable inquietude for 
 sin which drove him from the Church of Rome. 
 If he had been seeking peace with man or peace 
 with the Church, his object would have been 
 attained with comparative ease. But he was 
 seeking a far greater thing. He was asking for 
 paacc with God. He knew that this peace was 
 
 B 
 
18 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 not to be found by grants from the Church, or by 
 the accumulated merits of his ascetic practices. 
 He needed something that would atone for the 
 guilt of the past. He needed a righteousness 
 which of himself he could never attain. He 
 found in Christ the true oblation and satisfaction 
 for his sins. He found that in Christ he was 
 delivered from all guilt, that Christ does with our 
 sins just as though He had committed them, and 
 therefore they are swallowed and drowned in 
 Him, One of the great errors of modern evan- 
 gelicalism has been to identify justification with 
 pardon. Justification is more than pardon. It 
 means something that is done once for all, and 
 the shelter of which falls alike upon past, 
 present, and future. It does not mean simply 
 that the believer is restored to the favour of God, 
 and that the penalty of the law is remitted. It 
 does not mean that Christ's work rendered the 
 remission of sin possible. It means that the 
 believer is delivered from condemnation by the 
 satisfaction of the law, and that the law no longer 
 condemns, but acquits and pronounces just. Any 
 doctrine short of this deprives the life of peace. 
 We receive in justification the present and un- 
 changeable forgiveness of sins through the blood 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 19 
 
 of the Atonement. Great is the message of for- 
 giveness, and I should not deny but far rather 
 maintain that it includes more ihan is commonly 
 imagined. Who, it has been asked, can put into 
 words intelligible to the mere understanding 
 what it is that he seeks when he says " Forgive " ? 
 We can say only what it is not. We are sure 
 only that none who from his heart has breathed 
 the prayer, whether into a divine or human ear, 
 has ever meant by it merely " Remit the due 
 penalty, help me to escape suffering." What he 
 does mean it is impossible perhaps to put into 
 other words, but we may be certain that it is 
 something that none can confer who cannot 
 also condemn. Justification is more even than 
 forgiveness, and justifying faith is not mere 
 faith in an impersonal word of Christ, but 
 a confiding resignation in the living Christ as 
 Reconciler, In Him faith lays hold of high- 
 priestly love. The Christ who brings us justifi- 
 cation enters into living relation with us. He 
 enters in through the dark soul's door, and the 
 Lord sups with His children, and they with Him. 
 We cannot originate the new life or confer it on 
 ourselves. We discover it in Christ, to whom 
 we are united by the faith that justifies. Faith, 
 
20 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 as is said by Dorner, involves love, and good 
 works are present in principle. There is a 
 logical but not an actual severance between justi- 
 fication by faith and that union with Christ 
 which is the source of sanctification. It is the 
 union between man and Christ that makes Christ 
 the propitiation, and without such a union we 
 could not have the remission of sins. It is also 
 through this union with Christ that we attain 
 His likeness. It is not merely that Christ 
 influences. It is not that the heart turns reso- 
 lutely from evil and the world of darkness, and 
 dares the toil and the endeavour by which it 
 attains the world of light. It is not that Christ 
 acts upon us as one soul acts upon another. 
 Wordsworth says that the mission of the poet is 
 to add sunshine to daylight, and we have all 
 known those spirits in whose neighbourhood 
 thought seemed clearer, feeling stronger, the 
 whole being stimulated and vivified. But the 
 Apostles were not satisfied with that. They 
 knew that not in that way could these dim, 
 infirm, half-blinded natures be conformed to the 
 image of the Son. It was true that the passions 
 and the forces of their life were drawn to Christ. 
 But that was not enough. In the spiritual order 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 21 
 
 Christ is the vine and we are the branches. The 
 life of the vine is active in all its members, 
 Christ in the fullest sense is related to us, for we 
 are rooted in Him, and our true life is lower 
 even than our deepest consciousness. It is not 
 on our own resources, enriched as they may be 
 through divine grace, that we rely ; it is a 
 deeper depth ; a depth to express which language 
 is taxed and exhausted. The fact is no less than 
 this, that the springs of our life and power lie 
 outside of ourselves in Christ, are independent of 
 the changes in our personal condition, and 
 furnish us with a joy and a strength which it is 
 out of our power to understand or account for 
 save as we know that His infinitude is under our 
 finitude, that we are rooted in the Eternal Son. 
 
 Now that we have put together those two 
 doctrines of justification by faith and of union 
 with Christ, what is the result ? Is it an experi- 
 ence of unmixed serenity and triumph ? No. 
 There is one relation, our new covenant relation 
 to God, which continues well ordered in all 
 things and sure. Through all changes in the life 
 of the Christian it remains the same. The 
 righteousness of Christ has been imputed to us, 
 that righteousness which God's righteousness 
 
22 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 requires Him to require, and who shall lay any- 
 thing to the charge of God's elect when it is 
 God that justifieth ? But it is otherwise in our 
 own personal conflict with sin. The life which 
 is joined to Christ has for its instrument an 
 organisation which is disordered and impaired. 
 Defects of intellect, weaknesses of the body, and 
 an imperfectly disciplined conscience obstruct 
 the perfect manifestation of the grace and beauty 
 and strength of the divine life. The new nature 
 is fiercely assailed by the world, the flesh, and 
 the devil. More than that : when we discover 
 our union with Christ we are oppressed as we 
 never were by the feeling of our own imperfec- 
 tion, of our own infinite distance from God. 
 The nearer we come to God, the greater seems 
 the interval between His righteousness and our 
 unrighteousness. The sense of sin grows as the 
 sin itself diminishes. It aches, and throbs, and 
 burns in the heart. We utterly contemn, slight, 
 and abhor our own righteousness. We have re- 
 jected it, cast it away as the ground of our justi- 
 fication before God, and after justification it 
 appears further and further from the divine 
 thought and ideal. Besides, though God for- 
 gives us, we do not forgive ourselves. The pain 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 23 
 
 of old sin burns through all the fog of the past 
 even when we are loosed from our past in His 
 own blood. What, then, is the relation of the 
 righteousness of faith to the righteousness of 
 life ? It is this — that the consciousness of peace 
 and even joy in God is perfectly consistent with 
 a consciousness of sin not only not vanishing, 
 but even becoming more intense. Fellowship 
 with Christ by faith and the faithfulness of 
 Christ come up and atone for our imperfection 
 before God, and are the pledge and seal of our 
 ultimate perfection. And so comes that strange 
 life which believers know, the humiliation of ill 
 deserts with the assurance of God's love, the 
 sense of unworthiness with the sense of peace, 
 happy confidence with humble self-distrust, the 
 self-renunciation and the self-abasement which 
 gleam and burn through all the writings of the 
 Apostles, and which make the normal Christian 
 experience. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I propose next to say something about the 
 evangelical revival and the controversy between 
 William Law and John Wesley. The study of 
 
24 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 William Law has lately been renewed among us, 
 mainly by the labours of Dr. Whyte. His works 
 have been reprinted in a cheap and complete 
 form, and another divine justly honoured by the 
 Evangelical Church, the Rev. Andrew Murray, has 
 followed Dr. Whyte in publishing a selection 
 from Law's books. No competent judge can 
 doubt for a moment Law's intellectual greatness, 
 his acuteness in argument, his power and charm 
 of style. His was also a very high and leading 
 religious mind, religious, perhaps, rather than 
 Christian. It is with diffidence that one dissents 
 in any way from those who have lately brought 
 Law's works before Christian readers. But it is 
 fair to say that since Wesley's time evangelical 
 theologians have looked askance at much in his 
 writings, and I venture to think justly. Law is 
 what may be called an extra-biblical writer, in 
 this respect resembling John Foster and differing 
 from John Bunyan. Bunyan's writings are satu- 
 rated with the Scriptures. He says himself, ** I 
 was never out of the Bible," and his mind fastened 
 upon it " as a horse-leech on the vein." Law 
 like Foster gathered a few great ideas from 
 Scripture, and both used their powerful faculties 
 for the illumination and enforcement of these. 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXTERIENCE 25 
 
 Law does not quote the Bible very frequentl}', 
 nor very correctly, and he assumes the right of 
 interpreting expressions which do not suit his 
 system in a sense peculiar to himself. In that 
 very striking book, "The Penfolk," Mr. Gilmour 
 describes for us a disciple of Law who says : 
 " I dinna often quote frae Scripture, for it is like a 
 fiddle; ye can play ony tune on it to people." 
 Law evidently held the view, described by 
 Robertson Smith as the essence of rationalism, 
 that revelations of God are given additional to the 
 Scripture. He said of Wesley that he and the 
 Pope were under the same necessity of condemn- 
 ing and anathematising the mystery of God 
 revealed by Jacob Bohme. Law's theology is 
 extremely difficult to characterise justly, and 
 I venture to think that the existing attempts 
 in this direction are unsatisfactory. You have 
 first of all to remember that he to a certain 
 extent altered his positions from time to time, 
 never so far as I know admitting any great 
 change of opinion. What is far more difficult is 
 that he continually uses scriptural and theological 
 language in a sense of his own which may very 
 easily be misunderstood. I think it would be 
 difficult to draw a perfectly consistent scheme 
 
26 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 from Law's books, to reconcile, for example, his 
 doctrine of apostolic succession and the sophis- 
 tical ribaldry on the Invisible Church which are 
 to be found in his letters to the Bishop of Bangor 
 with his letters to a lady who proposed to join the 
 Church of Rome. But on certain points he is 
 clear, and these points are so vital to evangeli- 
 calism that I cannot understand those who can 
 see no ground for Wesley's criticism. Let me 
 give a few quotations. **The one only work of 
 Christ as the Redeemer is to raise into life the 
 smothered spark of heaven in you." " The atone- 
 ment of the divine wrath and justice, and the ex- 
 tinguishing of sin in the creature are only different 
 expressions of the same thing." When Wesley 
 complained that Law grounded nothing on " faith 
 in His blood," Law replied, " What is faith in His 
 blood but a hearty willingness and a full desire 
 wholly to cease or turn away from all heathenish 
 or Jewish practice ? " Writing against the doctrine 
 of justification by faith alone. Law triumphantly 
 quotes from Christ's words at the end of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, " Whosoever heareth these 
 sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him 
 unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock," 
 the rock according to Law being not the saying, 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 27 
 
 but the doing of the sayings. In fact, he goes so 
 far as to say expressly that when St. Paul speaks 
 of works as unprofitable for salvation he means 
 only Jewish or heathenish works. In his later 
 days he used to speak passionately against the 
 idea of there being any such thing as the wrath 
 of God. When confronted by the overwhelming 
 Scripture testimony he coolly replied that the 
 expressions were all figurative, and yet he speaks 
 in the most orthodox way of Christ being the 
 atonement and satisfaction for sin. One has to 
 read him carefully and closely before discovering 
 that he does not mean by these expressions what 
 the Apostles meant, or what the Church has meant. 
 In the strict sense Law was a legalist, but he is 
 saved by his singularly firm hold of the truth that 
 all life in the creature must come from the birth 
 of the holy nature of God. No one insisted more 
 than he did on the sublimity of what the Christian 
 life may be and ought to be, and on the super- 
 natural powers that are available for reaching that 
 height. An extremely able, but as I venture to 
 think not too scrupulous, controversialist. Law 
 never hesitated, never admitted himself to be in 
 the wrong, and treated all differences not indeed 
 with personal acrimony, but with a cold disdain. 
 
28 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Nevertheless it cannot be doubted by any one 
 who looks into the subject that if Wesley had 
 continued to be a disciple of William Law the 
 evangelical revival, so far as it depended on 
 Wesley, would never have existed. When 
 Wesley broke from Law he struck on the wa}' of 
 salvation. It was Peter Bohler who led Wesley 
 into the truth. " Herein is a mystery, here the 
 wise men of the world are lost. Let Thy blood 
 be a propitiation for me." Ever after when 
 Wesley talked of the doctrine of the satisfaction 
 of Christ, he spoke of it as an inmost mystery of 
 the faith. Christ loved His own body less than 
 His mystical body the Church, and therefore gave 
 the former for the latter. Wesley never admitted, 
 and we must never admit, that the doctrine of 
 satisfaction can be made perfectly accessible to 
 the human reason. St. Paul leads us not into the 
 regions of common sense, but into those of pro- 
 found and awful mystery. Only it is to be main- 
 tained that by actual spiritual trial we may know 
 the doctrine and prove it, and live by it, and ex- 
 perience the blessing of justification. We may 
 understand how the Church lives in the strength 
 of her one perpetual oblation and sacrifice, and 
 why the awful Apocalyptic voices do not cease to 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 29 
 
 cry, ** Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." The 
 spirit in which Wesley contemplated the great 
 life-giving truth is expressed in his own quotation 
 from Madame Schurmann's pamphlet : " It is 
 precious to those who feel the weight of their 
 sins, who know that they are by nature 
 children of wrath, and at the same time 
 utterly incapable cither of paying the debt 
 or rising from the death of sins, of conquering 
 themselves, the world, and the devil, or meriting 
 eternal life." 
 
 Yet Law's views have conmiended themselves 
 from opposite sides to well-accredited evangelical 
 divines. Dr. Whyte, on his side, has done the 
 Church lasting service by his profound conscious- 
 ness of sin, by the keenness with which he recog- 
 nises the frailty that clings to even the best works 
 of man, by the sharpness with which he realises 
 the sense of personal guilt. Law's teaching about 
 human nature and about the divine requirement 
 has taken hold of him, and greatly reinforced 
 a tendency that already existed. We need such 
 preaching, and we never needed it more than at 
 a time when the corruption of human nature is 
 preached not so much by believing men as by 
 great unbelieving teachers like Ibsen. Many of 
 
30 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 US have fallen into the Romish error of thinking, 
 if we do not dare to say, that the corruption of 
 human nature is monstrously exaggerated — a 
 doctrine from which the idea of supererogation 
 naturally springs. But there is a danger in 
 the truer view. It is the danger of forgetting 
 in the torturing consciousness of sin the true 
 and everlasting distinction between those who 
 are justified and those who are not justified. 
 If justification and pardon are confounded, 
 Christians will come to believe that when 
 pardon needs renewal, justification needs re- 
 newal also. They will come to think that they 
 are in as unsheltered and perilous a state as 
 they were before reconciliation. The end will 
 be a dejection and weariness of the soul utterly 
 foreign to the buoyancy and triumph of the 
 Apostles, a shrinking from the great language 
 which it becomes the redeemed of the Lord 
 to use. It is true that in all things we offend 
 and come short, but it is true also that to those 
 who believe in Jesus there is granted a great and 
 permanent blessing that cannot be touched by 
 the infirmities, follies and sins which are daily 
 confessed and daily need forgiveness. Justifica- 
 tion is reduced to insignificance and worthlessness 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 31 
 
 if day by day we can be thrown back into the 
 wretchedness of being under the divine con- 
 demnation. 
 
 No preaching can be fully evangelical which 
 does not recognise in ever}' part the infinite 
 significance of this separation. Dr. Dale said 
 with much truth that the great secret of Mr. 
 Spurgeon's power was that he was always fully 
 conscious of his own free justification before God. 
 There are those before the preacher who in Christ 
 are justified. They are to be called to sanctifica- 
 tion. There arc those who are not justified, and 
 they are to be told that they cannot sanctify 
 themselves, and that their first step is to enter 
 by faith into the condition in which they are 
 accepted in the Beloved as righteous, in which 
 they enter into what is rather unity than union 
 with Christ, in which all the sanctifying forces 
 of the Holy Ghost work upon their souls. And 
 it has to be continually realised that in the 
 Christian experience the sense of personal guilt 
 and the sense of personal deliverance ought not 
 to be severed. If there is no sense of personal 
 guilt, the experience will be at the very best super- 
 ficial, and if there is no sense of personal deliver- 
 ance, the experience will be one of groaning 
 
32 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 and burden, an experience in which the soul is 
 an exile from the joy of our Lord. 
 
 On the other hand, Mr. Murray is attracted by 
 Law's call to perfection, and his high standard of 
 Christian holiness. Of Mr. Murray's teaching ^ 
 generally I have no right to speak, but he is 
 more or less identified in the public mind with 
 the school of teachers who proclaim that a higher 
 Christian life is accessible. He mistakes in the 
 most amazing way the ground of Wesley's 
 severance from Law. These theologians for 
 the most part make comparatively little of the 
 satisfaction of Christ to the divine justice, though 
 some of them honestly accept it. They get rid 
 of the sense of guilt. They do not seem to have 
 much or anything to confess. They have doubt- 
 less done great service in showing that Christians 
 are prone to rest satisfied with a lower degree of 
 attainment and joy than that which Christ has 
 made possible. That we should ceaselessly aspire 
 to be altogether hopeful, altogether loving, alto- 
 gether believing, altogether Christian — that is the 
 will of God. And it is right to acknowledge that 
 the Scriptures plainly teach us that experiences 
 which many of us have never shared are possible 
 to the soul that trusts in Christ. We must not 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 33 
 
 make too much of sin or allow it to obscure the 
 effects of grace. We must not deny that great 
 victories have been won by the Spirit of God 
 in human souls. Who can forget the tenderness, 
 the triumph, the quick hope with which the Holy 
 Ghost through the mouth of His servants wel- 
 comes every victory over evil ? But there are 
 grave dangers of forgetting that we cannot atone 
 either by sorrow or by righteousness, that it is 
 on the finished work of Christ, and on that alone, 
 that we must rely. These teachers so far as I 
 know, like Law, insist on the fact that all 
 Christian graces are the fruits of the Spirit of 
 Christ, but even though they are, they no more 
 avail for salvation than if they were not. It is 
 possible to dwell on these graces until we actually 
 rest upon them for our salvation and seem to lose 
 the very need of pardon. As to whether perfec- 
 tion may be attained in this life it is not necessary 
 to dogmatise. Doubtless the Divine Spirit may 
 subdue and ennoble our disordered natures 
 beyond what may easily be deemed possible. 
 It is a question of experience, and it may be 
 that many of us are of opinion after years and 
 years of communion with them that certain human 
 beings have attained perfection, the perfection 
 
34 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 that reveals the quality and power of a life that 
 is higher than the earthly. But even if it is so, 
 how could those spirits claim to be perfect ? If 
 they were perfect they would be perfect in a 
 kind, pure, self-forgetfulness that would not 
 know its perfection. Such people as I have 
 spoken of are quite unconscious of the good- 
 ness of which they are the temples. As to those 
 who profess to be perfect, it is but just to say 
 that they usually make the claim with faltering 
 lips. But has the claim ever been allowed ? Is 
 the type of character formed at perfection meet- 
 ings even up to the ordinary standard of the 
 Christian character? Is it not rather the type 
 of a Christianity which has returned to pietism ? 
 And the pietistic morality is piety. Morality in 
 the pietistic view is the sanctification of the 
 individual. In this form of religion the real 
 problem is not dealt with. Pietism does not 
 face life and conquer it, and throw the man}^- 
 chambered mansions of the soul into one. Rest- 
 ing upon its own achievement it becomes a kind 
 of Christian endaemonism. 
 
 In short, one error is common to both schools. 
 They look within and not without — one on in- 
 dwelling sin and the other on indwelling righteous- 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 35 
 
 ness. To say that Christ came merely to reveal 
 a higher morality is to be outside of Christianity, 
 For then He would have come to thrust the world 
 into a deeper condemnation. But, blessed be 
 His name, He came not to condemn the world, 
 but that the world, through Him, might be saved. 
 I know no Christian teacher who maintains that 
 Christianity is a system of ethics. But many 
 forget that, when He declared His saving 
 purpose. He went on, and that in the very 
 budding and beginning of His career, to explain 
 how it was to be effected. "As Moses lifted up 
 the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the 
 Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth 
 in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life." " It is not in our own wounds," sa^'S 
 Vinet, " but in the wounds of Jesus that we 
 must put our hands." And for us there is no 
 merit but the merit of His atoning sacrifice. 
 
 IV 
 
 Much has been necessarily omitted in this brief 
 survey, but enough perhaps has been said to 
 show that in a srenuine and normal Christian 
 
36 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 experience the elements described by Bunyan 
 are still present as much as ever. There is 
 first of all justification by faith by reliance on 
 the finished work of Christ. We have in St. 
 Paul's doctrine not merely a testimony against 
 human merit and self-righteousness. We have 
 not only the true ground but the true mode of 
 our justification by faith — a faith which works 
 by love. As to the ground there is no time to 
 notice the controversy raised among evangelicals 
 as to the active and passive obedience of Christ. 
 Writing against O'Brien, Birks said that Christ 
 was not a substitute in His active obedience to 
 the law of God. That obedience was a privilege 
 and not an evil or a burden, and to be set free 
 from obedience would be a curse and no blessing. 
 Perhaps it would be better to say that all Christ's 
 obedience on earth was an action and a passion. 
 Anyhow, it is upon a work outside of ourselves 
 and unaffected by the fluctuation of our moods 
 that our justification depends. This is a truth 
 which ought to have more place in Christian 
 experience, and I know no more powerful ex- 
 position of it than in Dora Green well's " Colloquia 
 Crucis." She delights in all statements, however 
 naked and literal, that bring the judicial aspect of 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 37 
 
 Christ's work into full relief. At the very centre 
 of Christianity in her view lie the doctrines of 
 intervention and substitution. They are the 
 glorious alphabet of Christianity. They may 
 be stammered over, travestied, and vulgarised 
 as by children in a village school, and yet they 
 contain within them all poetry, all eloquence, 
 in their sublimest and tenderest range. We are 
 to take our deliverance as a settled axiom of the 
 soul, as a certainty which remains valid whether 
 we for the moment realise it or not. The Cross 
 and faith in the work wrought upon the Cross 
 is a root that can spring out of a dry ground. 
 "Show Thy servants Thy zvork" is among the 
 deepest of prayers. 
 
 And the next element of Christian experience 
 is joy in the Holy Ghost. When the heart truly 
 joins itself to Christ's great sacrifice and to Christ 
 Himself, it can dare and endure all things. It 
 becomes strong, free, untrammelled, unperturbed. 
 It lays hold upon Christ in the fulness of His 
 self-communicating grace. It enters into the 
 kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in 
 the Holy Ghost. But it does not depend even 
 then on the rise and fall of ecstatic feeling. If 
 the divine act of justification is the bestowal of 
 
38 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 ecstasy the very foundation of justification is 
 shaken, and growth in sanctification ceases. The 
 true doctrine is that through the gate of God, the 
 Meritorious Sacrifice, the soul enters into the 
 great and comforting reaHty of pardon and 
 acceptance, into the love and peace and joy of 
 believing, and the Holy Ghost is made to it the 
 Lord and Giver of Life. By Him it subdues 
 kingdoms, works righteousness, obtains promises. 
 By Him it knits and binds together the every day 
 and the everlasting. Nevertheless, it has its 
 sorrows, its failures, its crucifixions, its for- 
 sakings, its despairs. 
 
 For there is present evermore that aching 
 sense of shortcoming. If we consent to the 
 presence of sin without striving, without repent- 
 ance, without grief, or if we lower the standard 
 of perfection till it is within our reach, we are 
 guilty of errors which have the same root and the 
 same fruit. Nevertheless, the normal Christian 
 life is the simultaneous presence in the soul of 
 grace and peace, and of the consciousness of sin ; 
 and by virtue of our union with Christ we who 
 are still sinners are nevertheless justified, and 
 partakers of the peace of God. So we utterly 
 contemn, slight, and abhor our own righteous- 
 
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 39 
 
 ness. We slight it as a possible ground of 
 justification before God. We slight it for what 
 it is in itself. Our best achievement is nothing 
 in the face of the eternal throne — so stained is it, 
 so faultful, so sinful in every part. If He will 
 but draw the red line of His blood through the 
 hopeless reckoning of our life! And so it comes 
 that at death believers ever gaze towards the 
 Cross, not to the Crown. The word they need 
 is, " I will be merciful to their unrighteousness 
 and to their righteousness, and their sins and 
 tlieir iniquities will I remember no more." It 
 is difficult in a time like this, which takes the 
 fact of salvation so easil}', to understand how 
 hard the first Christians found it to believe, and 
 how strong was the consolation which God 
 administered them. Remember how the Apostle 
 assured his trembling hearers of the awful, in- 
 credible wonder of the great salvation. " Where- 
 fore God, willing more abundantly to show unto 
 the heirs of promise the immutability of His 
 counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two 
 inmiutablc things in which it was impossible for 
 God to lie we might have a strong consolation 
 who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the 
 hope set before us." " I die," said one of your 
 
40 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 own ministers, " resting on oaths and covenants 
 and blood." He utterly abhorred, slighted, and 
 contemned his own righteousness. Over the 
 grave where the body of William Carey waits 
 the Redeemer's return are the words so dear to 
 our fathers — 
 
 " A guilty, weak, and helpless worm 
 On Thy kind arms I fall ; 
 Be Thou my strength and righteousness, 
 My Jesus and my all."' 
 
FROM THE TABERNACLE TO THE 
 HOUSE 
 
 WE have written of the normal Christian 
 experience on earth, the experience 
 of faith and joy, of tender contrition, of ardent 
 striving, the experience described by Cole- 
 ridge as " faith in the God-Manhood, the Cross, 
 the mediation, the perfect righteousness of 
 Jesus to the utter rejection and abjuration of all 
 righteousness of our own." It may reasonably 
 be asked whether this experience will end when 
 the spirit quits its dwelling of clay, and passes, 
 as St. Paul says, from the Tabernacle to the 
 House. " We know that if the earthly house of 
 our tabernacle be dissolved we have a building 
 from God, a house not made with hands, eternal 
 in the heavens. For verily in this we groan, 
 longing to be clothed upon with our habitation 
 which is from heaven, if so be that being clothed 
 
42 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 we shall not be found naked. For, indeed, we 
 that are in this tabernacle do groan, being bur- 
 dened, not that we would be unclothed, but that 
 we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal 
 may be swallowed up of life." When the hour 
 comes when we pass at last from the Tabernacle 
 to the House, do wc leave sin for ever behind us ? 
 There is no question which up till recently 
 would have been answered in the affirmative 
 with more confidence than this. There is 
 no revelation to which the human heart utters 
 its Amen more surely than to the words, 
 "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." 
 Carlyle's strange echo will be remembered 
 among many others, and yet we have seen 
 lately signs of a certain uneasiness. It is asked 
 whether a natural process like death can make 
 such a change. Revolutions in the spiritual life 
 are discredited, and with many the new birth and 
 the birth of the soul into heaven, with its accom- 
 panying transformation, are viewed with equal 
 suspicion. The time has come when the doctrine 
 of Scripture and of all Protestant churches on 
 this head needs to be pressed forward by Chris- 
 tian teachers with less reserve, and with more of 
 edge in their language. 
 
FROM THE TABERNACLE TO THE HOUSE 43 
 
 II is well to say in the first place that the 
 alternative to this doctrine is the doctrine of 
 Purgatory. The Roman Catholic Church has 
 been singularly cautious in its authoritative de- 
 clarations on this theme. There are but two, 
 and they tell simply that the truly penitent who 
 have departed this life in the love of God before 
 they have made satis 'action for their sins by 
 fruits meet for repentance, arc cleansed by purga- 
 torial pains after death, and may be helped by 
 the suffrages of the living. Of course, popular 
 teaching has been more detailed and explicit, par- 
 ticularly in its disposition to assert the use of 
 literal fire as the cleansing element. But Roman 
 Catholics are not obliged to believe this. What 
 they have to believe in is that Christian souls 
 with sin upon them pass into a state of expiatory 
 suffering, in which they can be helped by the 
 good works of living believers. Now the moment 
 we admit that souls are not perfectly cleansed at 
 death, and that the process of purification goes 
 on in the other life, we are compelled, not indeed 
 to postulate the efficacy of prayers, and alms, and 
 sacrifices on the part of the living, but the existence 
 of an intermediate state from which penitent and 
 sinful souls gradually rise to the world of holiness. 
 
44 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 We are also compelled to believe that their purifi- 
 cation is, partly at least, accompanied by pain ; for 
 so long as sin is present pain must be present 
 also, and under the conditions supposed it must 
 be working for remedial ends. Nor are we able 
 to put any limit on the duration of this period. 
 The arguments which go to show that death does 
 not mark the end of sin go equally to show that 
 the Second Advent does not make an end of sin. 
 Nor have we any clue to guide us to what period 
 may be necessary for many souls in order to free 
 them from their defilement, Protestant theo- 
 logians naturally shrink from reviving a doctrine 
 not to be found in Scripture, a doctrine which the 
 Reformed Churches entirely reject as the seat of 
 the very worst corruptions. But they cannot 
 logically escape from such conclusion of their 
 argument. 
 
 In one of her earliest books, "A Present 
 Heaven," Dora Greenwell urged that there was 
 no such difference between the experience of 
 deliverance in this life and in the other as it 
 was common to suppose. She said that Chris- 
 tians did not sufficiently use and prize the high 
 possibilities of their present state. They were in 
 danger of looking for another Christ than the 
 
FROM THE TABERNACLE TO THE HOUSE 45 
 
 all-sufficient Saviour already born into the world. 
 More, they were in danger of taking the key from 
 the shoulders of the true Eliakim, who openeth 
 and no man shutteth, when they looked to death 
 as their saviour and deliverer. A mere physical 
 process like that of death could not do the work 
 of faith. There is no theological writer from 
 whom we should dissent more reluctantly and 
 with more unfeigned diffidence than from Dora 
 Greenwell, and much of her teaching in that 
 volume has long perplexed us. It was a great 
 relief the other day to discover a new edition of 
 the book which she had called "The Covenant of 
 Life and Peace," and in which she frankly con- 
 fesses that she was mistaken, that she had failed 
 to see that the glory of the Celestial is one and 
 the glory of the Terrestrial is another, and that 
 the experiences of the world after death must 
 of necessity be immeasurably higher and greater 
 than in this world of sin and struggle and con- 
 flict. True, even here we are reconciled to God 
 by the death of His Son. For us there exists no 
 more the enmity which Christ slew in d3nng. We 
 are freely justified by His grace, and loosed from 
 our sins in His own blood, and made a kingdom 
 of priests to God, even the Father. Nevertheless, 
 
46 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 there is before us a grander emancipation, a com- 
 pleter joy, even to love as we are loved, and to 
 know as we are known, to arrive at that full com- 
 prehension of Christ which His most favoured 
 servants confess they must still reach after here. 
 
 For, to begin with, in dying we pass from 
 the Tabernacle to the House. From the rent and 
 harried home in which we groan, being burdened, 
 from the terrible realisation of what dissolution of 
 soul and body means, from the tent that is ever 
 at the mercy of the circumstances and storms of 
 time, from the weight of care and suffering the 
 body brings, and brings the longer it is inhabited, 
 we pass to the House in the heavens which is 
 God's work and God's gift, and in which we 
 groan no more. It is not in the least necessary 
 in this connection to discuss the question whether 
 St. Paul thought the seat of evil was to be found 
 in the body, nor is it even necessary to discuss 
 the precise interpretation of the passage on which 
 these remarks are based. Even if we concede 
 that the proper translation is, " For this cause we 
 groan " — and the rendering seems to us highly 
 improbable — no student of St. Paul, we had 
 almost said no one who knows what bodily frailty 
 means, could doubt that it was true that St. Paul 
 
FROM THE TABERNACLE TO THE HOUSE 47 
 
 knew what it is to live in a tent like this, that 
 he understood the humiliation of the body, that 
 sighs and groans were often pressed from him by 
 the load under which he laboured. He had his 
 own dread about death. Of the life to come he 
 never doubted as we do ; he had no fear that 
 men eat and drink, and die and vanish like 
 bubbles from the surface of the stream. What 
 he feared was the forlorn wandering of the un- 
 housed spirit. He earnestly desired to be clothed 
 upon with his house from heaven, if so be that 
 being clothed he might not be found naked. As 
 the end came the fear passed away, and it now 
 figures little in Christian experience. 
 
 " Jesus, to Thy dear faithful hand 
 My naked soul I trust," 
 
 is the word often repeated with great peace at the 
 supreme hour. " I saw the souls of them which 
 had been slain for the Word of God, and there 
 was given them, to each one, a white robe." 
 St. Paul was always at close quarters with death, 
 and he must have judged long before the last that 
 he had to pass through its searching trial. His 
 comfort was that he passed from the Tabernacle 
 to the House. 
 
48 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 But the main assurance of perfection at death 
 is the vision of Christ. All dark symbols are for 
 ever done with. We shall see Him as He is, 
 and we shall be like Him. Disclosures incom- 
 parably more vivid and more potent than we have 
 ever dreamed of will be granted us when the 
 earthly house of this Tabernacle is dissolved. 
 The soul will be encircled and absorbed in the 
 consciousness of God. " With Christ " is ihe 
 one piercing word that tears clear the whole 
 clouded heaven to the Apostle — "With Christ 
 which is very far better." Who shall tell what is 
 covered by the word " very far " ? Whatever it 
 is, it is enough. " With great mercies will I 
 gather thee," is the divine sentence whispered to 
 the soul. A spiritual operation, it is said, demands 
 a spiritual energy. Yes, but this spiritual energy 
 is exerted on certain conditions, and these con- 
 ditions are realised in dying. There is then the 
 entire union of the human and the divine. For 
 our part, we take no interest in the speculations 
 as to the ratioimle of this transformation. We 
 may say with Delitzsch that the sanctifying power 
 of faith bursts forth at death, and that the sight 
 of the reality of what is believed will wipe out all 
 sin. We may add with Phillippi that a creative. 
 
FROM THE TABERNACLE TO THE HOUSE 49 
 
 miraculous act of God always coincides in the 
 death of true believers. But the air is too rare- 
 fied. It is wise rather to raise our thoughts to 
 the few illuminated points in the mysterious region, 
 the suns and planets which light up the darkness, 
 and for the rest to lean upon God, and look with 
 calmness into the mysteries which He still leaves 
 so deep around us. These untravelled worlds 
 are more immediately than this within the region 
 of God's rule, and we shall find within them when 
 the time comes the fulness of content. 
 
 Once more, it is to be remembered that death 
 lifts the soul into sunshine. It immeasurably 
 extends and glorifies the outward conditions under 
 which the development of life will proceed. We 
 shall find ourselves where not only the first fruits 
 are holy, but where the lump also is holy. We 
 shall be in the fellowship of happy spirits for ever 
 joyful, for ever victorious, for ever conscious of 
 the mighty efficacies of the Christian redemption. 
 Love reaching its climax will cast out fear. Souls 
 perfectly redeemed will drink of the river of God's 
 pleasures and be satisfied. In the full sense then 
 we shall be delivered from this present evil world 
 and translated into the kingdom of God's dear 
 Son. 
 
 D 
 
50 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 This perfect life is a life which moves from 
 strength to strength, and which reaches its con- 
 summation in the resurrection of the body. 
 Christian apologists have laid too little stress on 
 St. Paul's doctrine of the resurrection of the 
 spiritual body that rises from the corruptible seed. 
 The human wisdom of the ancient world would 
 naturally have taken a view of this which science 
 could not accept. As Christ carried to heaven 
 not a fragment only of our nature, but human 
 nature complete in all the powers that are not 
 essentially connected with mortality, so His 
 people are clothed at last in a new body through 
 which the soul speaks. " A body hast Thou 
 prepared me," is the faith and hope of the 
 blessed dead. One recalls Isaac Taylor's quaint 
 and suggestive interpretation of St. Paul's words 
 before Agrippa about the promise of the resurrec- 
 tion unto which the twelve tribes instantly serving 
 God day and night hope to come. He refers it to 
 the tribes who have gone up thither, who have 
 every one of them appeared in Sion and before 
 God. He takes the worship of the desert as a 
 symbolic model of the invisible economy of spirits, 
 of the state into which the few brief years of 
 mortal life are to bring every true worshipper. 
 
FROM THE TABERNACLE TO THE HOUSE 51 
 
 In the furthest recess of the sacred paviHon is 
 displayed the visible splendour of the Divine 
 Presence. Before the Shekinah are the cherubs 
 symbolising the constant adoration of the angels ; 
 the tokens of the mediatorial covenant rest at the 
 foot of the throne. The mediator intercedes 
 within the inner chamber, and without the veils 
 are seen the seven lamps. From without the veil 
 goes up the perpetual incense of prayer from the 
 assembled thousands of Israel devoutly expecting. 
 The promise of the blessed resurrection, never 
 made in fulness to the Israelites before Christ, is 
 conveyed to them on their entrance upon the 
 world of souls, and there they, not having received 
 the promise, but waiting through the distant lapse 
 of ages, keep Sabbath with the people of God till 
 He whose memorial is with them rises suddenly 
 from His throne within the veil, and comes forth 
 to accomplish the redemption of the body. 
 
THE VALUE OF PECULIAR 
 POSSESSIONS* 
 
 NOT far from the heart of a great modern city, 
 you will sometimes come across old walls 
 and gateways which have been outgrown. What 
 was once country is now suburb, and what was 
 once suburb is now city. The venerable land- 
 marks remain, but the true boundary continually 
 stretches itself further out. This should be a 
 picture of your life if you continue to the end 
 students of divinity. You will fail if what now 
 marks the limit of your attainment and thought 
 is not transcended. But you will equally fail if 
 what you possess now does not remain to the end 
 central. If it is overthrown and dishonoured, 
 there is a real danger that no soul city will ever 
 take its place. What this college should do for 
 
 " Address delivered at the close of the Session in Hackney 
 Theological College, June iG, 1S96. 
 
54 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 you is to enclose you in a small circle permanent 
 at the centre, but ever tending to widen at the 
 circumference. A small circle it must be, for all 
 you know now of God and of the things of God 
 cannot be much. Yet if the centre is fixed, it is 
 that from which future thought and knowledge 
 radiate, and you will constantly go back to it in 
 the end, however free and spacious and fair 3'our 
 life may grow. 
 
 I wish to speak of the value of things which 
 are your very own, of which you may make your- 
 selves masters, and by possession of which you 
 may gain an enduring influence in the kingdom 
 of God. Much, very much, 3^ou must of necessit}' 
 have in common with others, but your lives will 
 make no mark if in addition there is not some- 
 thing which is 3'our peculiar possession. 
 
 I 
 
 In the first place you must find 3'Our own field 
 of reading. It is not uncommon, in speaking to 
 divinity students, to disparage reading. They 
 are warned against it as the idlest of human 
 occupations. And no doubt it is quite as impor- 
 
THE VALUE OF PECULIAR POSSESSIONS 55 
 
 tant to say, Think, think, think, as to sa}'. Read, 
 read, read. It is true that the greatest men of 
 all time have read extremely little. You will 
 remember how it was said of Descartes, for 
 example, that he cared very little for reading, and 
 that he left behind him an exceedingly small 
 collection of books. But when one comes to 
 think of it, is it true that people are so very much 
 addicted to reading ? How many men of your 
 acquaintance are there who would gladly forego 
 almost any engagement for the sake of a few 
 hours' quiet reading ? Is it not so that the vast 
 majority read only if they can find nothing else 
 to do ? How many ministers are there who have 
 a passion for reading ? It is perhaps not fair to 
 appeal to the size of their libraries, for the owners 
 are as a rule poor, and have not many opportu- 
 nities of getting books. Yet in this, too, the 
 adage holds that where there is a will there is a 
 way. In the course of my life I do not think I 
 have met with half a dozen persons whose read- 
 ing could be said to be very wide or various. 
 Further, of these there was not one who had not 
 greatly benefited by his reading, and was not 
 enabled through his knowledge of books to 
 exercise an influence which he would not other- 
 
56 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 wise have possessed. I am looking in vain for 
 two persons whom one frequently hears denounced 
 in sermons and in addresses — the man who wastes 
 his time in omnivorous reading, and the Christian 
 who needs to be warned against expecting too 
 much in the way of answer to prayer. But pass- 
 ing from this point, you ought to find the line of 
 reading that is congenial to you, and to master 
 in some measure one corner at least of the great 
 realm of knowledge. There is no kind of reading 
 that people so much delight in as lists of books 
 recommended by experts. The recommendations 
 are never perhaps carried out, but there is a glow 
 of virtue and hope in perusing them which has an 
 endless fascination. Remember that there is a 
 limit to the usefulness of such lists. I have read 
 a new book by an eminent Wesleyan minister 
 which is extremely typical. If you turn over it 
 j^ou find references to the books which, as we are 
 told, everybody should read in these days, and 
 which as a matter of fact many do read — the books 
 of Wendt, and George Adam Smith, and Drum- 
 mond, and Gore, and the rest. It is certainly 
 well to be abreast of current literature, but the 
 best literature is not current, and reading of that 
 kind inevitabl}' issues in what is commonplace 
 
THE VALUE OF PECULIAR POSSESSIONS 57 
 
 and superficial. Let me suggest some lines along 
 which reading ma}- be accomplished. 
 
 A deep and thorough familiarit}^ with the text 
 of the English Bible is a rare and precious attain- 
 ment. To have one copy in large type in which 
 you mark passages and make annotations for a 
 lifetime, which you peruse and re-peruse by day 
 and by night is an enriching thing. It was said 
 of Dr. Emmons, the New England divine, who 
 had few books, that he read and re-read the 
 English Bible so often and so carefully that its 
 words came to him like nimble servitors and 
 stood waiting for his call. In religious books 
 like these of Henry Dunn — books which owe very 
 little to general reading or to intellectual power 
 or genius — 3^ou will often find a phrase that 
 charms by its grace, but is hidden like the trail- 
 ing arbutus among the leaves of a preceding 
 summer, and as you inspect the phrase more 
 narrowly you find it a choice but concealed quota- 
 tion. This refinement and distinction of expres- 
 sion often characterises the prayers of humble 
 believers who know but one book. Another 
 line of reading extremely profitable, but much 
 neglected, is that of religious biography. It is 
 amazinsf to find ministers who do not know even 
 
58 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 such a great storehouse of thought as the " Life 
 of John Foster." Or it ma}' be wise to extend 
 your reading beyond the hmits of your own 
 church and country. I venture to say that there 
 is ver}' much to be learned from the great French 
 Roman Cathohc writers Hke Ozanam, Lacordaire, 
 De Maistre, Pere Gratry, and others. It was 
 from these that Dora Greenwell mainly derived in 
 her profound theological essays, and the influence 
 which has been exerted by Gratry over the 
 younger school of High Churchmen in thiscountry 
 is the more amazing the more it is investigated. 
 Perhaps you may be able to add something to the 
 literature of devotion or theology, and how man}' 
 obvious blanks there are in this field. For 
 example, I do not know in the English language 
 a single great or complete book on prayer, a book 
 dealing frankly with the teaching of Scripture. 
 Nor do I know any work in which the significance 
 of forgiveness is at all adequately discussed. The 
 way in which forgiveness comes is one of the great 
 topics of theology, but it is equally important to 
 understand what forgiveness means. In any case 
 you may rest assured that there is no danger and 
 no temptation you need fear less than the danger 
 of reading too much. Lagarde said in his bitter, 
 
THE VALUE OF PECULIAR POSSESSIONS 59 
 
 piercing way, " Thcologontm eos mores esse scinius 
 tit libros scribaiit Duilti, legant patici, emaiit milliy 
 " We know that those are the ways of theologians, 
 that many write books, few read them, and none 
 buy tliem." 
 
 II 
 
 I pass on to say something of opinions. Your 
 opinions to be of true avail must be your ver}' 
 own. In these days of controversy man}' people 
 seem to make up their minds by striking an 
 average between the extremes represented by 
 various champions. They like to be called 
 moderate men, and are great in condemning 
 "the falsehood of extremes." But they never 
 look at any question directly with their own eyes. 
 That is too anxious a task. But they think they 
 are likely to be near the mark if they stand in the 
 middle. For example, the higher criticism is up 
 for discussion. These persons read that some 
 scholars maintain that Isaiah was written by one 
 man, and others maintain, let us say, that there 
 were three authors. The people of whom 1 am 
 speaking would shrink from the labour necessar}' 
 to understand wh}' the Isaianic authorship is dis- 
 
6o THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 puted, but are probably wilb'ng to compromise 
 upon two authors. In the same way, when 
 practical questions which need not be referred 
 to are up, they veer uneasily between opposing 
 hosts, watching day by day how the clamour 
 rises and falls. They sometimes conclude that 
 they can be in both camps at once by saying that 
 one is logical and the other practical. Sir Boyle 
 Roche said that a man could not be in two places 
 at once unless he were a bird. Ecclesiastics are 
 
 not birds, and even if they were The fact 
 
 is that many questions altogether refuse to be 
 compromised. The fertiiiiii quid is generally, 
 like a quack medicine, vulgar and impossible, 
 and its meaning is that the right is never on 
 one side and the wrong on another. There was 
 once on a time high debate in a town whether the 
 streets should be watered or not. The contro- 
 versy waxed furious. The anti-water party 
 hated the slop of watered roads, and maintained 
 generally that the watering was a useless ex- 
 pense and a waste of the water supply. The 
 water party enlarged on the discomfort of the 
 dust, and the injury it caused to goods in shops. 
 The wrangle continued until the mayor, pene- 
 trated with the belief that compromises are the 
 
THE VALUE OF PECULIAR POSSESSIONS 6i 
 
 very essence of constitutionalism, offered a solu- 
 tion of the difiiculty. He proposed tliat the 
 water-carts should perambulate the streets, but 
 that there should be no water in them. He was 
 held by acclamation to have evinced statesman- 
 like qualities of the highest order, and the meet- 
 ing broke up in peace, perfectly satisfied that a 
 good result had been achieved. It is not your 
 business to be in a majority. It may be your 
 duty all your life to buffet a strong current in 
 Church and State. There are Three that bear 
 record in heaven, and if your witness goes with 
 theirs, the rest do not count at all. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But I wish to speak mainly of the necessity ot 
 having, as your very own, religious convictions. 
 There is no kind of criticism you are to encounter 
 which will puzzle you half so much as that of 
 humble exercised believers who are not edified by 
 your preaching. You may take a very modest 
 view of your own sermons, and willingly accept 
 suggestions from those you recognise as your 
 intellectual equals or superiors. But you will 
 
62 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 learn, perhaps slowly and painfully, that the true 
 arbiters are those who have been taught of the 
 Holy Ghost and who find in Christ their all. 
 They may not be able to put into words the 
 knowledge they have won, but they can judge 
 very well whether in the substance of your 
 ministry you are faithful to revelation. Let us 
 trace the law of the great decisive disclosures. 
 It is a familiar truth that grief is a great teacher. 
 Not till we have looked with yearning agony into 
 these last things beyond the veil are we able to 
 understand the enduring books of sorrow. It is 
 hardly possible, for example, that a young man 
 can in the full sense appreciate Tennyson's "In 
 Memoriam," and you will find in Dr. Hort's 
 recently published " Life " how he grew in his 
 estimation of the poem. Life and experience are 
 interpreters in the lower plane, but in the region 
 where you must move freely there is no interpre- 
 tation save that of the Holy Ghost. Learning in 
 a Christian minister is a desirable possession ; 
 eloquence is a rare and noble gift ; the power of 
 brilliant, pungent, memorable writing is much to 
 be coveted ; a familiarity with contemporary 
 thought puts you in easy relation with the minds 
 of your people. All these things, however, are of 
 
THE VALUE OF PECULIAR POSSESSIONS 63 
 
 subordinate importance, and do not affect the 
 essentials of the Christian ministry. What 
 Christian preachers should be is described by 
 St. Paul. They should be ministers of Christ 
 and stewards of the mysteries of God. Now, it 
 would be cruel and unjust to deny that in a sense 
 most preachers are ministers of Christ, Nearly 
 all preachers believe that our Lord Jesus Christ 
 fulfilled the office of a prophet in His estate of 
 humiliation, and thereby, if not otherwise, ac- 
 quired a certain shadowy kingship over the quick 
 and dead. But it is not every minister whom you 
 would readily and naturally call a steward of the 
 mysteries of God. The mysteries of God are 
 not, of course, the Christian sacraments. They 
 are the august and awful revelations of Christ, 
 which constitute the wisdom that was hidden, but 
 is now revealed to the Church. They are the 
 truths contained in and proceeding from the facts 
 that Our Lord in His humiliation and His exalta- 
 tion fulfilled the oftice of the Prophet, the Priest, 
 and the King of His Church, and that we are the 
 House of Christ, if we hold fast the confidence 
 and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. 
 There is much in the Bible that he who runs 
 may read. There is a natural sense discovered 
 
64 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 by the grammar and the lexicon. But nothing 
 which the unaided reader is able to discover is of 
 true saving worth. The mysteries of God are 
 revealed only to humble souls on bended knees. 
 In other words, for the understanding of all the 
 great truths which must constitute the strength 
 of the Christian ministry, there must be an imme- 
 diate and supernatural illumination. There is no 
 need to deny the value of speech. It will do 
 much. There are runes and speilwords by which 
 marvels are wrought in the poet's heaven of 
 invention. But what is needed is that your 
 hearers should feel the shock of a vital battery, 
 and such a battery is neither to be filled nor dis- 
 charged by words. No learning and no power of 
 intellect can by itself increase the substance of 
 your knowledge of divine and eternal truths. 
 And those who possess no learning, but who 
 have studied the mind of the Spirit, those in 
 whom Christ survives, are able to judge you 
 and your sermons, to recognise the field which 
 the Lord hath blessed and the streams that make 
 glad the tabernacles of the Most High. I believe 
 that no power of vision avails anything beyond 
 the light contained in the page of revelation. But 
 it is not wonderful when merely intellectual 
 
THE VALUE OF PECULIAR POSSESSIONS 65 
 
 preachers become the rulers in the Church that 
 the people turn to anything in the tbrm of 
 spiritual instruction. In the era of corrupt and 
 formalised Lutheranism, when the spirit of the 
 Reformation was lost in the letter, when every 
 one argued about Calvinism and crypto-Cal- 
 vinism, people turned with baited tempers and 
 barren hearts to the mystic Jacob Bohme. And 
 so it will be again. Many of you perhaps can 
 never be eloquent. You can never achieve fresh 
 discoveries in the intellectual construction of 
 saving truth. But this may be yours if you seek 
 it — a knowledge of the mysteries of God — and it 
 is an endowment so precious that all the rest are 
 not to be named in comparison with it. It is 
 stewards of the mysteries of God, speaking with 
 the accent of the Holy Ghost, that the Church in 
 these days supremely needs. And this knowledge 
 must be in a very peculiar sense your own. No 
 man, no book can impart it to you. It must be 
 learned direct from God Himself. 
 
 I believe that for the most part a faithful 
 ministry of Christ will not lack encouragement, 
 even outward encouragement. And yet there are 
 cases where one is baffled to understand the 
 secret of failure. Still, to the faithful there is no 
 
 E 
 
66 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 failure. I recall a beautiful comparison suggested 
 by Alfred Vaughan. Manj' a sunset has seemed 
 a vain splendour, burning itself away in the west 
 down to the water's edge. When its fires are 
 spent a som.bre chill falls over all things. But 
 these very vapours, gorgeous with such blazonry, 
 are drawn through the cooling air. They creep 
 along the fields, and hang their multitude of drops 
 upon the dusty bushes and the shrunken flowers. 
 It may come to pass that some of these very 
 drops, coloured a short while since with such a 
 red fire in the heart of the sky, shall live trans- 
 formed a crimson life again in the red petals of 
 the rose, and that the golden overlaying of the 
 heavens will take substance and reappear as the 
 dust in the heart of some flower that completes 
 its beauty with the clammy moisture. These 
 emblems of fancy show forth the realities of 
 faith, and represent that law of love which 
 suffers no true words and no holy endeavours 
 utterly to perish, even when to mortal eyes they 
 are lost and dead. Nothing in what I have said 
 is to be taken in disparagement of intellectual 
 culture. But you must be able to say, " I have 
 made my heart a holy sepulchre, and all m}^ land 
 of thought a Palestine." And it is not by learning 
 
THE VALUE OF PECULIAR POSSESSIONS 67 
 
 or talent, but by keeping the springs of your life 
 full, that you will be upborne through weariness 
 and care and sorrow and conflict, and enabled 
 to endure to the end, and counted at last worthy 
 to attain that world and the resurrection from 
 the dead. 
 
THE LONG LOVE OF CHRIST 
 
 I ^HE stronghold of the bibhcal doctrine of 
 ^ election is to be found in Our Lord's 
 words. Stated in dogmatic form, this great 
 truth has lost its hold on the consciousness of 
 the Church, and almost everywhere has dis- 
 appeared into the background. Yet the time 
 must come when it will resume its old place. 
 We cannot afford to be ignorant that God " did 
 not wait to love us till this late, lonely moment 
 which we call our life, that these poor years are 
 steeped in the light of everlasting years." The 
 regions of the spirit are but little to be measured 
 by the standards of time, and the thought that 
 God loved us when we did not love Him is 
 infinitely precious. His love was before our 
 knowledge, before our being. It knew all, was 
 mindful of all, embraced its children even in 
 their sleep, even in their dreams, unlighted by 
 any thought of it. Often in this world two come 
 
70 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 together after each has Hved a Hfetime. Each 
 finds in the other what the heart has been seek- 
 ing all the while through lonely, uncomforted 
 years. There is nothing to mar the gladness 
 of that great discovery, save the one thought 
 that each has missed so much of the other's 
 experience, and now the journey is short. It 
 is not so with the eternal, inalienable love of 
 Christ. The eternity of redeeming love expresses 
 itself in experience as securit}^ When we look 
 at Our Lord's last words to the disciples and to 
 the Father, it is plain that the eternal choice to 
 His mind is the assurance that His people are 
 safe. God gave Christ power over all flesh 
 that He should give eternal life to as many 
 as the Father had given Him. The men whom 
 God gave Christ out of the world were God's, 
 and God gave them to Christ. For these He 
 prayed, for they were God's and His. His 
 human consciousness might almost have reeled 
 under the thought of all they had to pass 
 through, when His visible presence was no 
 longer with them. Nevertheless the purpose of 
 God nuist stand. They were so few and so 
 feeble — their foes were so many, so strong, so 
 unrelenting, that it seemed inevitable they should 
 
THE LONG LOVE OF CHRIST 71 
 
 be swept away by the tide of hate. They were 
 to be condemned, persecuted, slain, and all in the 
 name of God. But the love of the Father who 
 gave them in answer to the love of Christ would 
 not fail. And their Redeemer willed that they 
 should be with Him where He was, that they 
 should behold His glory, and that will of His 
 would triumph, no matter what withstood it. 
 The sheep of Christ should never perish, neither 
 should any pluck them out of His hand. Can we 
 afford to miss the knowledge of divine pledges, 
 divine care, divine purpose in such a world as 
 this which surrounds us, amid so many deadly 
 antagonists of love ? If the keeping of the love 
 of Christ depended on ourselves, our heart's best 
 treasure would be insecure. But if He has loved 
 us from before the foundation of the world, who 
 shall separate us from the love of Christ ? 
 
 The long love of Christ, stretching from eternity 
 to eternity, had its special time of manifestation 
 and appeal. When we were blind and deaf and 
 dumb to Love, Love called us from Calvary. 
 Christ became incarnate, and for our sakes 
 made the journey from " the poor manger to 
 the bitter cross." He came into the world not 
 as a shoot from the innermost pith of divinely 
 
72 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 endowed human nature, for that nature was 
 diseased, but as a root out of a dry ground, 
 as the Word made flesh. As He hung on Calvary 
 in His mortal wounds, He disclosed Love's very 
 heart. When men in their hardness desired to 
 know nothing of Love, Love refused to forsake 
 them, Love had compassion upon them, and 
 manifested Itself anew to them in the work of 
 redemption. We know how it is with human 
 affection. It becomes as the years pass tranquil 
 and for the most part silent. It is content with 
 the memory of its old sweet time of speech. 
 How often between two who have taken the 
 long path together, the divine words rise in 
 the heart, though they may be unspoken : " I 
 remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the 
 love of thine espousals when thou wentest after 
 me in the wilderness in a land that was not 
 sown." "When thou wentest after me in a land 
 not sown " — that is, when you went with me 
 into the backwoods, into the bush, when you 
 were so brave and faithful, when youi' spirit 
 rose superior to all our straits and toil, when 
 you heartened me as I was sinking, when you 
 made our poor pittance go so far, when the 
 glory of your love transfigured the hard and 
 
THE LONG LOVE OF CHRIST 73 
 
 poverty-stricken days. When such memories 
 rise in a husband's heart, everything else is 
 forgotten. The work of time and toil is undone. 
 More than the long vanished loveliness shines 
 from the worn features — they are illuminated 
 in the light of the heart of God. And so the 
 long love of Christ has spoken to us once and 
 for ever from the cross on which He died, and 
 in the light of it we perceive in all our history, 
 in nature, and in providence what Heinrich 
 MiJller has finely called ** the preaching love of 
 God." 
 
 All human love, the noblest, the purest, the 
 tenderest, has its strange alternations, its terrible 
 checks and pauses. But to the communication of 
 the long love of Christ there need be no end. 
 We are able to think of that Love without the 
 shadow of fear. In how many homes love and 
 pain are joined together ! And the one makes 
 the other grow. Though the love is perfect and 
 unclouded in itself, although almost impregnable 
 fortresses have been built against worldly care, 
 the shadow of death begins to fall, and there is 
 never a mxoment of true peace. Charlotte Bronte 
 wrote about her dying sister Emil}- : " I cherish 
 hope as well as I can, but her appearance and 
 
74 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 her symptoms tend to crush that feeUng. Yet 
 I argue that the present emaciation, cough, 
 weakness, shortness of breath, are the results 
 of inflammation now, I trust, subsided, and that 
 with time these ailments will gradually leave her. 
 But my father shakes his head and speaks of 
 others of our family once similarly afQicted, for 
 whom he likewise persisted in hoping against 
 hope, and who are now removed where hope 
 and fear fluctuate no more. There were, how- 
 ever, differences between their case and hers, 
 important differences I think. I must cling to 
 the expectation of her recovery. I cannot re- 
 nounce it." But the blow fell, as it falls so 
 often, and what then ? Even when we have 
 received to the full all divine consolation, even 
 when we have submitted ourselves completely 
 to the truth and will of God, the fact remains 
 that the great separation has now taken place, 
 and that we miss the daily, hourly assurance of 
 affection which was once our life. We may say 
 with full hearts, " Even so, Father." We may 
 perfectly realise that the vision of the beloved, 
 if it were again bestowed, would smite us to 
 the earth as dead. We may know that any 
 meeting of the earthly consciousness with the 
 
THE LONG LOVE OF CHRIST 75 
 
 exalted spirit would almost break down the 
 powers of the mind and of life. Yet still we 
 are not content. 
 
 "Could I but win thee for one hour from otl that starry 
 
 shore, 
 The hunger of my heart were stilled for death hath told 
 
 thee more 
 Than the melancholy world doth know, things deeper than 
 
 all lore."' 
 
 But in place of the earthly affection, lost in 
 some measure for the time, we have the constant 
 presence of the love of Christ, a presence which, 
 if we will, is always seeking to break into com- 
 munication and comfort and strength. The ex- 
 pression of love is not giving, not sacrifice, but 
 love, and the long love of Christ is ever waiting 
 to be gracious. As St. Augustine has said, "the 
 divine love is a caressing love." This is the true 
 Easter message, the message of the eternal 
 presence of the risen Saviour. 
 
 The long love of Christ, as it began in eternity, 
 stretches on through eternity. Indeed, it is this 
 that makes the thought of eternity bearable. For 
 all things are mortal saving only love. All things, 
 however sweet, however prized, will at length 
 begin to fail, and when the time comes we shall 
 
76 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 be glad of their failure. But who that has loved 
 has ever desired an end to love ? Who that has 
 loved has ever felt the interruption of love as any- 
 thing but the chief calamity of life, a cruel break 
 in the eternal and divine order, the bitterest 
 penalty of wrong-doing ? The love which is so 
 near us, and in which our earthly life may be 
 spent in all its labour and conflict, is the love that 
 stretches out to the endless end. Those who 
 have gazed already, as spirits may gaze, on the 
 face of the eternal Christ, have found it in its 
 perfected manifestation, and we go forward to 
 meet them. To the heavenly Jerusalem, the city 
 of peace, the redeemed of the Lord go up from all 
 the lands of life. And if we are Christ's, received 
 into the communion of the Redeemer and His 
 righteousness, we shall feel that this and this only 
 is our true home, and we shall draw near to it, 
 not timidly, not shrinkingly, but with eager desire, 
 as those who are no more strangers and foreigners, 
 but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the 
 household of God. As we understand the depth 
 of the final rest, we grow reconciled to our 
 bereavements. It seems indeed more natural 
 that the beloved should be withdrawn from us 
 than that they should ever have been at our side. 
 
THE LONG LOVE OF CHRIST 77 
 
 Our Easter message then is that all of us may 
 find, and find now and find never again to lose, 
 the present love of Christ. How many in weary 
 and craving solitude through dark and melancholy 
 years have been seeking the crown that has never 
 come ! They have been saying, 
 
 " Does Love descend from heaven like light, 
 Or grow like flowers out of the ground "•" 
 For I mean to seek him day and night, 
 Till I find him, dear, as you have found."" 
 
 " Seek what ye seek," says St. Augustine — " it is 
 not where ye seek it." Human nature only feels 
 at home and well and safe and sound in love, but 
 earthly love, at least in full and satisfying measure, 
 may be denied. 
 
 " ' If I had married Aaron Miles,' went on 
 Aurelia thoughtfully, ' I might have had trials in 
 plenty. I reckon I was bound to, although that's 
 as the Lord wills ; I'm not maintaining I shouldn't, 
 but I guess that dreadful sort of useless feeling I 
 never should have known. It's rather unfair I 
 should know it, too, seeing there's plenty of 
 women, and unmarried ones too, that don't have 
 it. I just tried once to explain it to Mehitabel, 
 and I guess you should have seen her stare. I 
 don't rightly know why I'm telling you now, onl}' 
 
78 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 all this anxiety tells on me. Seems as if I had to 
 talk, or I should die right away. So the years 
 went on at home, and sometimes, although I was 
 always very quiet, the thought of, maybe, all I 
 might have had but for poor Mehitabel's principles, 
 and all the love I had missed, just grew intolerable. 
 It was not the being loved myself I cared for so 
 much as finding folk I could love that I wanted. 
 Wh}^, there have been days when I could hardly 
 bear the sight of a child's face, or the sound of its 
 little, shrill voice, through thinking that had 
 
 things been different ' " 
 
 But love is at our side with its wealth of grace 
 and peace, love in which the soul may find its 
 happiness and the heart its true life. He who 
 lived and died for us, and lives for evermore, is 
 near us all in our loneliness and our lovelessness, 
 and is still saying, **Come unto me, all ye that 
 labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest " — rest in love. 
 
THE SORROWS OF THE SAVIOUR 
 
 "IT pleased the Lord to bruise Him." He was 
 ^ " acquainted with grief." It had to be so, 
 for the Incarnate Saviour, with His messages 
 and burdens, could not come in the form of a 
 radiant angel, or as one of the bright and gay. 
 But the words carry far more meaning than this. 
 They mean that His experience was solitary, for 
 it has been truly said that we know not what 
 sorrow is, neither are we really acquainted with 
 grief. We have seen the black surface of the 
 Stygian pool and felt the chilling mists that 
 rise from it. But we have not penetrated the 
 ab3^ss or plunged into its drowning waters. 
 Sorrow has been our companion. She has 
 walked for a season by our side in black 
 garments, with veiled face and with a voice of 
 grief. But we have not received her into our 
 flesh and our heart for ever. Our Lord was to 
 be made in the days of His flesh one spirit and 
 
So THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 one body with grief. For him the veil was lifted 
 from death and hell. In the hand of the Lord 
 there was a cup which He was to taste for 
 us, taste in the sense that He should experience 
 the full bitterness of each drop and be verily 
 acquainted with grief. 
 
 It was by degrees that He reached this awful 
 knowledge. From the first it pleased the Lord 
 to bruise Him. He must have experienced the 
 keen pain of a nature wholly pure surrounded 
 by the guilty. When He comes full into our 
 view, we see first His heart of compassion and 
 hope. His heart was touched by the pain of 
 the world. The voice of suffering was heard 
 by Him in every wind of heaven, and rang in 
 His ears till He died. But for suffering He 
 was able to do much. He could speak peace 
 in absolutions and blessing. He could work 
 His wonderful works of love. In the morning 
 watch, in the evening meditation, in the stilling 
 of pain, in the answering of human needs. He 
 carried our sorrows. But as time went on He 
 endured the contradiction of sinners against 
 Himself. His miracles did not work the end 
 He was striving for. Even when the dumb 
 were speaking, when the lame were leaping, 
 
THE SORROWS OF THE SAVIOUR 8i 
 
 when the devils were fleeing, when the dead 
 were rising, His triumph was incomplete. For 
 the world did not believe His report. He was 
 the arm of the Lord revealed to men, and they 
 were blinded. For the sinner's sake He de- 
 scended into what we call hell. He sought the 
 outcast in her trembling shame. He offered 
 Himself separately to the guilty one by one. 
 With the clearest perception of human suffering 
 there was always combined in Him the conscious- 
 ness of knowing a great light and a saving name. 
 His speech was not the mere words of a human 
 being, but the breakers of the Everlasting Love 
 itself as they rolled in and shattered themselves 
 on this bank and shoal of time. But He came to 
 His own and His own received Him not. In the 
 name of the law and the prophets they rejected 
 Him in whom the law and the prophets ended 
 and were lost. We can see how His anguish 
 rose at the successive impediments to His godly 
 purpose. We can see how He was moved with an 
 overwhelming fear for the rebellious as the world's 
 enmity disclosed itself to Him. As the months 
 passed and the mystery of iniquity and the 
 devices of Satan became more and more clear, 
 we can understand how He said to Himself, 
 
 F 
 
82 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 " Why art Thou as a man ashamed, as a mighty 
 man that cannot save ? " He seemed to be 
 striking into the air, preaching and toiling with- 
 out fruit. Yet in Him faith never staggered. 
 Hope was never echpsed. Love was never 
 dried up. Of God's fulness He always received, 
 and grace for grace. He acquiesced and rested 
 in the Everlasting Love that foreknew and chose, 
 and would give to Himself the sheep for whom 
 He died ; and yet we know how He spake about 
 Chorazin and Bethsaida, where His miracles 
 were done in vain, and how He wept as he 
 saw the eyes of the Jerusalem that slew Him 
 close for ever. And so He saw the cup ap- 
 proaching, the cup which held the sorrow which 
 is more than the sorrow of a rejected messenger, 
 even though the rejected messenger was the 
 Eternal Son. 
 
 Next there came what we may call the far-off 
 vision of the supreme sorrow. He had known it 
 from the very beginning. But it grew clearer as 
 He advanced, and He set His face steadfastly to 
 go to Jerusalem. He must suffer many things of 
 the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be 
 killed. The arm of the Lord was made bare in 
 miracle and preaching, in flesh and blood, but it 
 
THE SORROWS OF THE SAVIOUR 83 
 
 had to be made bare in agony before its work 
 was done. Still, may we not say reverently that 
 the crisis of His pain did not come till the cup 
 was close to His lips ? We can ourselves partly 
 understand what it is to bear a sorrow that is 
 deferred. For when it is deferred, we picture to 
 ourselves the light that lies beyond it, and so did 
 He. Through the proclamation of His death 
 there rang the cry of triumph, " And be raised 
 again the third day," and from the distance He 
 could see the glory of the resurrection shining on 
 the Cross. He knew that He could not make a 
 tabernacle with His saints on the mountain, and 
 linger always there. He knew that the ecstasy 
 of the exalted heart must pass with the drifting 
 cloud and with the withdrawing vision. He 
 never deceived Himself, as we do who know not 
 what a day may bring forth. We pretend we do 
 not know, and cheat ourselves with hope. The 
 delusion helps us. We even seem to rise up by 
 degrees to take hold of life for a time. His vision 
 was clearer, and still for Him also day dawned 
 after day, evening after evening closed in, and 
 the dreadful hour was not yet come. But it was 
 coming. It was not far away, and He always 
 knew that through His ti-avail and agony. His 
 
84 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 cross and wounds, the redemption of the world 
 must be accomphshed. 
 
 Then came the time when the cup drew nearer 
 and nearer to the pahng hps, and when manifest!}' 
 the last hours and sorrows were nigh. And that 
 was Gethsemane. That was the prayer of prayers : " 
 '• Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from 
 me. Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be 
 done." Transcat calix — let this cup pass. That 
 we say is the prayer of prayers. There is no 
 time in which we cry to God as we do when 
 His sword is lifted to smite us, and when yet 
 it seems as if it might be turned aside ; when 
 the grief which we have long seen with foreboding 
 tears comes to us, and there are but minutes, or 
 at most hours, when we can plead. Then the 
 deep of misery calls to the deep of mercy, and 
 we know in the full sense what it is to pray 
 Transeai calix — let this cup pass. It seems as 
 if everything we could desire and everything 
 we could hope for were summed up in the 
 passing of the cup. Once the cup was not in 
 sight, or dreamt of, and yet oftentimes we fancied 
 that life was grey. But now there is nothing to 
 ask but one thing, and if that one thing were 
 given we feel that we should never ask from 
 
THE SORROWS OF THE SAVIOUR 8,5 
 
 God anything more. Let this cup pass. Let 
 it just but be as it used to be, and we shall 
 be more blessed than we ever were in our 
 wildest dreams. When it looks as if the in- 
 tensity of our praying might decide the wavering 
 balance, how the heart gathers itself up, how it 
 pours its emotion in full tide, how it seems to 
 greaten and grow irresistible, as if it might even 
 wrestle with God and prevail. This was how 
 Our Lord prayed in Gethsemane. But He prayed 
 as we cannot always pray, with perfect submis- 
 sion. We strive and struggle, we turn this way 
 or that for a door of escape, we would force our 
 wills upon God. But He, when He put His 
 hand to the plough, did not draw back, and 
 never once drove an unsteady furrow, though 
 His prayer was for a greater deliverance than 
 ever was asked for by merely human lips. For 
 at the moment He went down into — was lost 
 and disappeared in — grief, as He disappeared 
 when He was once buried in the waters of 
 baptism. The Lord entered the awful regions 
 spoken of by the Greek Church as His unknown 
 sufferings — tu ayvM<jTa TTaOn/xaTci. The rebuke 
 that broke His heart was the gathered rebukes of 
 all His people, the rebukes that else would 
 
86 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 have broken their hearts for ever in an irre- 
 mediable pang. We can never understand 
 the depth of that suffering. Suffice it that an 
 angel came to help Him when He seemed to 
 be swooning into death. The anticipation of 
 great agony, its rehearsal, is often the chief 
 element in the agony. When it is passed the 
 worst is passed, especially if we know that the 
 anguish is to be an end of all anguish, and 
 that death is behind. When once the spirit 
 has sobbed out, " Thy will be done," the 
 rest seems little. As the great heroisms of 
 life are often preceded by inward conflict of 
 which the world knows nothing, but which 
 is far harder than the outward conflict, so the 
 great griefs of life are suffered often in secret ere 
 they come to open manifestation. His warfare in 
 a sense was accomplished at Gethsemane, and 
 thenceforth He strove no more. He was led as 
 a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her 
 shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. 
 
 Last of all there came to Him the sorrow of the 
 Cross, the hours of the open shame and the power 
 of darkness, of the nails, the thorns, the hammer, 
 the bowed head, the death-cry, and the death. 
 It was not all darkness, for, as one of the 
 
THE SORROWS OF THE SAVIOUR 87 
 
 Fathers has written, He died in the risen sun- 
 shine of God's name, every cloud flying, and 
 the clear sky returning. He knew that when 
 all was over He was to be the chief corner- 
 stone of the Eternal City, never to be moved 
 nor disquieted again. There is a certain dread- 
 lessness in Our Lord's agony, a peace, a serenity, 
 a feeling of a travail gone through and ended, 
 never to return. Yet that we may remember 
 His unknown sufferings, that we may understand 
 that He died as our substitute, and that He was 
 bearing for the sins of His people the weight of 
 the divine wrath, we have the peace broken by 
 the dreadful cry, " My God, my God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken me ? " Then we know that He 
 has touched the last depth of the last abyss. 
 And these things were done in the Tree whose 
 root and head was God I It was thus that 
 -j-Love bore the sin of the world. Then the cup 
 of wrath was laid down, and He took in His 
 hand for ever the cup of blessing. He had gone 
 through what we may reverently call His deep 
 baptism into humanity, whence come those closest 
 interlacings, intercessions, and tenderness of His 
 eternal high priesthood. And all we who are bap- 
 tized in Christ Jesus are baptized into His death. 
 
"A LISTENER UNTO DEATH"* 
 
 T WISH to set forth briefly and simply an argu- 
 * ment for Christianity, that argument for 
 Christianity which becomes more and more con- 
 vincing as the years advance. Whatever we may 
 think of Christianity, we are all agreed that it is 
 right to do right, and good to be good. Duty is 
 God's compass to the end of all worlds. That 
 faith remains with us even when we are most 
 beclouded and most in doubt. 
 
 Now Christianity is simply a method of good- 
 ness. The will of God is our sanctification, and 
 Christianity is His means of effecting that end. 
 Has it effected it ? The answer is given in 
 history. Since the day on which Christ died, 
 or rather since the very early morning when 
 He abolished death, there has been in the world 
 the wonderful Church of Christ. Let us for the 
 
 * Address delivered to the students of Smith College, 
 Northampton, Mass., Sunday, October ii, 1S96. 
 
90 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 present ignore all distinctions. They are deep, 
 but the unity of the Church is deeper. You 
 know that there are everywhere companies of 
 people all striving after goodness, after truth, 
 after purity, and all of them confessing Christ as 
 Lord. To call upon the name of Christ and to 
 depart from iniquity is to be a member in full 
 communion with the Catholic Church of Jesus 
 Christ. You know this with a nearer intimacy of 
 knowledge. There is not one of you who has 
 not come close to one or more of those who are 
 true witnesses of the Saviour. Our great privi- 
 lege in this life and our great responsibility is 
 that each of us has known some who through all 
 their innocent years clave to that which is good, 
 lived with absolute unselfishness and unwavering 
 trust. Though they never realised it themselves, 
 and died in unconscious simplicity and humility, 
 it seemed to us who were beside them that they 
 were even in this life without fault before the 
 throne of God, and that they might face without 
 fear that last scrutiny of the Lord. Whatever we 
 may doubt, that remains to us steadfast and un- 
 challenged. And if that remains, everything 
 remains. In days when men make sport of the 
 sweetest certainties, the sweet certainty of the 
 
"A LISTENER UNTO DEATH" 91 
 
 Christian character abides, and the other cer- 
 tainties are involved and guaranteed by that. 
 For nothing is more sure than that the Christian 
 character is the result of Christianity. It has 
 often been pointed out that its very virtues are a 
 new creation. Take, for example, the virtue of 
 purity. Who will dispute that this virtue was 
 created by Christianity, and that Christianity 
 alone can save it ? Remove from the world to- 
 day the companies of confessing believers, and 
 you destroy that fair structure of aspiration and 
 achievement which testifies that Christ has not 
 lived and died in vain. It is idle to dispute this. 
 We see that wherever Christianity is openly and 
 definitely rejected, the Christian law of purity is 
 selected for immediate attack. Beginning at the 
 outworks, the citadel is at last assailed, and 
 mankind is left to sink back into the soil and the 
 beast. 
 
 Observe, in the second place, that all these 
 members of Christ unite in ascribing their victory 
 over sin to a power outside themselves. They 
 passionately disclaim any praise of their own 
 effort, their own desire. It was not merely by 
 desiring to be good and striving to be good that 
 they became good. They all of them say A'c// 
 
9"2 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 nobis — not unto us. They say that a power from 
 outside nerved the failing forces of their will, 
 guided them, blessed them, redeemed them. If 
 we care to have theological language, we shall 
 hear them all say that they owed everything to 
 the succours of grace. Or if we care to listen to 
 the last and deepest word of Christian experience 
 on earth, and to the new song in heaven, we 
 shall find them saying, in the words whose un- 
 imaginable wonder eternity will not exhaust, that 
 they washed their robes and made them white in 
 the blood of the Lamb. But it is unnecessary for 
 our purpose to use theological language at all. 
 Suffice it to say that we have the unbroken com- 
 pany of witnesses, the very flower and crown of 
 earth's virtue and loveliness, saying with one 
 voice, Non nobis — not unto us. Can we set aside 
 this testimony? The testimony is that to those 
 who believe in Christ help is given by which 
 they overcome the world. 
 
 The argument of Hume against miracles is well 
 known. It is that the experience of mankind is 
 against the occurrence of miracles, and that the 
 testimony for miracles is open to so much doubt 
 that the experience must count for more than the 
 testimony. Certainly, if all miracles ceased when 
 
"A LISTENER UNTO DEATH" 93 
 
 the last of the Apostles died, it will be difficult to 
 meet this reasoning. But our contention is that 
 miracles have never ceased, and that they are 
 still among us in their most amazing form. It 
 was indeed a transcendent experience to live on 
 earth while Christ was yet in the flesh, to see 
 Him lay His hand upon brows burning with fever 
 and make them cool, to hear Him calling into the 
 dull, cold ear of death, and winning answer and 
 obedience. But Our Lord said Himself, "Greater 
 works than these shall ye do," and His word has 
 been fulfilled. The miracle of a renewed heart 
 is matter of our knowledge every 6ay. So then 
 the Church of Christ is the argument for Chris- 
 tianity. Balzac, who, whatever else may be said 
 about him, is assuredly the greatest of Christian 
 novelists, by far the most profound interpreter of 
 that mystery of expiation and redemption which 
 is at the heart of Christianity, has somewhere a 
 picture of the Church of Christ marching side by 
 side with humanity, consoling and sustaining her. 
 What, he asks, if her great companion were to 
 sink down on the road and die, leaving humanity 
 to go on her forlorn and helpless way ? Every- 
 thing would have vanished then which now holds 
 us to duty and to hope. 
 
94 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 For those of you who are Christians these con- 
 siderations have an obvious message. It is from 
 you that others will learn or not learn of Christ 
 and His grace. One of the greatest thoughts 
 that has penetrated English theology in the 
 present generation is that of the Incarnation as 
 hallowing all life. You are to carry Christ into 
 every sphere of your activity. *'0n His head 
 are many crowns/' and you are to crown Him 
 King of your studies. He is the King of kings 
 not the kings of earthly descent merel}^, but as 
 well the kings of mind and heart. Into literature, 
 into music, into art, into the chosen labour of 
 your mortal years, you are to carry the thought 
 of Christ, and His light is to shine forth from all 
 these. He is indeed to be confessed with the 
 lips. That great duty of confession which is put 
 by St. Paul as the primary condition of salvation 
 never needed more to be enforced than now. 
 But besides that confession of the Lord Jesus 
 with the mouth, and besides that belief in the 
 heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, 
 there is to be also a silent, perpetual acknowledg- 
 ment of Him hallowing everything you do and 
 say. 
 
 You cannot live like this to the end without 
 
'•A LISTENER UNTO DEATH" 95 
 
 hearing and obeying your calls. It was said of 
 Christ Himself that He was obedient unto death 
 — in other words, a listener unto death. From 
 the first to the last Our Lord was listening, always 
 listening, for the still, small voice of God. If you 
 listen, you will hear that voice everywhere. You 
 will hear it especially in those needs of others 
 which are so many perpetual calls. Let us not 
 be deaf to them until it is too late to answer. 
 One of your own novelists has said that in the 
 resurrection we shall all of us first take to confes- 
 sion — confession not to God, but to the brother 
 and sister we have wronged. Our first business 
 will hardly be with God, but with those whom 
 death took from us ere we could obtain from them 
 a forgiveness almost more necessary than God's 
 own. It is vain for us to ask it here. 
 
 " So I hid my face in the grass, 
 Whispered, ' Listen to my despair, 
 I repent me of all I did. 
 Speak a little.' " 
 
 But we find no place of repentance, though we 
 seek it carefully with tears. We shall hear His 
 call in nature, which, if our ears are open, will be 
 vocal with remonstrance and appeal. Walking in 
 a wood this afternoon, I thought of Balzac's words 
 
96 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 on the subduing and mysterious influence of a 
 forest, which he ascribes to the subhme and 
 subtle effect of the presence of so many creatures, 
 all obedient to their destinies, immovable in sub- 
 mission. Christ was always listening to the 
 voice of nature, to the voice of men, to the multi- 
 tude on whom He had compassion. And God 
 spoke through them to His soul. 
 
 And we must be listeners unto death. We 
 most of us hear quickly and well at first. When 
 we are young we see visions and dream dreams, 
 and the high voices fall on us not in vain. But 
 we grow old and deaf and dull. We decline from 
 the lofty, the generous, the unselfish passion 
 that makes youth so beautiful. That it need not 
 be so Our Lord has shown us. He was a listener 
 unto death, and we, like Him, may keep listening 
 through the years of labour, and grief, and dis- 
 enchantment, and failure, till we hear the last 
 solemn call to go forth from these things and hear 
 it undismayed. 
 
 " All in the wild March morning I heard the angels call ; 
 It was when the moon was setting, and the dark was over 
 
 all; 
 The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll, 
 And in the wild Maixh morning I heard them call my soul." 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN A 
 MYSTERY* 
 
 "T^ R. WHYTE has written an admirable ap- 
 '-^ preciation of Jacob Bohme. It is perhaps 
 the best thing he has yet pubHshed, and only 
 those who know something of Bohme will do 
 justice to the care and thoroughness with which 
 the work has been done. What is far more 
 important in such a connection is sympathy, and 
 of this Dr. Whyte has a full measure. He has a 
 real aflinity with the mystics. It is true that 
 Jacob Bohme, by the amazing splendour of his 
 genius, has forced his personality upon all serious 
 thinkers. But the inner circle who regard him 
 with peculiar reverence, the quiet congregation to 
 whom he steadily makes his appeal, read him 
 with other eyes, and they will recognise Dr. 
 
 * " Jacob Behmen. An Appreciation." By Alexander 
 Whyte, D.D. (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier. ) 
 
 G 
 
98 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Whyte as one of themselves. In short, the 
 Edinburgh preacher knows what Bohme is saying. 
 That is enough. Nothing less would have been 
 enough. The mystics understand one another. 
 " Deep calleth unto deep," and the message is 
 understood, though to the outer world it be no 
 more than the chattering of sparrows or the 
 hooting of owls. 
 
 The appearance of this little volume gives 
 occasion for some thoughts on the position of 
 mysticism in the Church of Christ. The mystics 
 have never failed us, and sometimes, though very 
 rarely, their influence has been wide and obvious. 
 The critical movement of the present day is not 
 likely to find its legitimate end in mysticism, but 
 mysticism will make its own contribution to the 
 theology of the not far distant future. In the 
 first place, mysticism teaches the entire depend- 
 ence of the spirit of man on the Spirit of God. 
 The text to which Jacob Bohme especially clave 
 was, *' How much more shall your heavenly 
 Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask 
 Him." Good thoughts, in the mystical view, are 
 the free children of God, and do not come by 
 thinking. " It is not I, but the Spirit of the Lord 
 doth it in such measure as He pleaseth," is the 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN A MYSTERY 99 
 
 burden of BGhme's profession. In the works of 
 William Law we find the same truth insisted on 
 with even greater emphasis. Reason to Law is 
 the first and last grand deceiver of mankind. A 
 mystery is the deep and true ground of all things. 
 Perhaps, however, it would be correct to say that 
 what impressed Bohme and Law so deeply was 
 not so much the failure of the reason as the 
 failure of nature. They could not have denied 
 the legitimate function of the natural reason 
 among natural things. What struck their hearts 
 with wonder was the absolute failure of the 
 natural man at his highest to come within sight 
 or sound of spiritual things. It may be doubted 
 whether the mystics go further than Our Lord and 
 His apostles. '* A man can receive nothing, 
 except it be given him from heaven." St. Paul 
 dwells with profound solemnity upon the mystery 
 of divine knowledge. He spoke the wisdom of 
 God in a mystery, or, as we might say, in a 
 whisper. The substance of his message was 
 mystery, and therefore in form it was also a 
 mystery. True, the great facts of Christian 
 redemption are set before the opening eyes of 
 faith, and whosoever looks is saved. But these 
 facts have around them, above them, beneath them, 
 
loo THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 a rich and subtle philosophy. All the counsel of 
 God, from the eternal election till the final setting 
 of the Church in glory, makes up this wisdom. 
 To understand even the least part of it we need 
 the illumination of the Spirit, and so each scholar 
 in the great school where all Zion's children are 
 taught of God is, like Jesus Christ, a ** listener 
 unto death." To the natural man all is darkness ; 
 and for the spiritual man even the unveiling is 
 slow. We are, as it were, set in face of a curtain, 
 which is gradually lifted as we gaze in prayer. 
 Whenever we turn away it drops again. To 
 those who have looked long and eagerly it dis- 
 closes at last the very depths of the sanctities of 
 heaven. 
 
 Since this is the way to divine knowledge, we 
 cannot rightly speak of such things as the simple 
 Gospel. There is no simple Gospel. Neither 
 can we draw the frontiers of truth with geometrical 
 exactness. Overmuch definiteness in a creed is a 
 sign of its falsity. As Edward Irving said in his 
 great days, "To my certain knowledge the 
 atmosphere of theology hath been so long clear 
 and cloudless that there hath been neither mist 
 nor rain these many years, and even to talk of a 
 mvstery is out of date. But thotc must preach 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN A MYSTERY loi 
 
 Christ in a mystery." Bohmenism had its first 
 vogue in England when a cold and hard Calvinism 
 was dominant. We do not know that sufficient 
 stress has been laid on the fact that some of the 
 English translations of Bohme were published by 
 Giles Calvert, the official publisher to George Fox. 
 The grand passage of George Fox, written at the 
 age of twenty-four, and beginning, *' Now was I 
 come up in spirit through the flaming sword," is 
 surely an echo of Bohme, and if this be so, the 
 mystic must be credited with no small share in 
 the origination of Quakerism. 
 
 Next, the mystics teach that delight in God is 
 the true happiness of life. In manifold forms 
 they proclaim that all the happiness or misery of 
 all creatures consists only in this, that they are 
 more or less possessed of God, or, as one of the 
 best of them puts it, " We have no want of 
 religion but so far as we want to better our state 
 in God." The object of mysticism is indeed a 
 closer union with the divine. To sink in the 
 depths of God is the crowning, ineffable joy. 
 They claim to have realised it, " The triumph 
 that was then in my soul I can neither tell 
 or describe. I can only liken it to a resurrec- 
 tion from the dead." IBohme says that he found 
 
I02 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 him self in a seven days' soul-sabbath, where he 
 looked into the mystery of God as into an open 
 secret, where he regained the flower of paradise 
 in the new man. Thus possessing God, he 
 possessed nature. As Wordsworth said long- 
 after : 
 
 "By grace divine, 
 Not otherwise, O Nature, we are thine." 
 
 Can it be said that this conflicts with the Bible 
 view of religion ? Can it be said that such 
 experiences are common in the Church of to-day ? 
 May we achieve such a sense and possession of 
 God as shall carry us over our griefs and help us 
 to do our drudgery with an incredible lightness 
 of heart ? Let us not too quickly deny the reality 
 of what the saints have known. " You are dis- 
 appointed," said the Franciscan to Madame Guyon, 
 " because you seek without what you have within. 
 Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and 
 you will find Him." When she ceased from her 
 own works in obedience to this word, God took 
 possession of her soul. She prayed without 
 ceasing. Her heart was filled with a sense of 
 peace and possession. Time was annihilated, 
 and love became the habit of the heart. The 
 books of the mystics are witnesses, whenever 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN A MYSTERY 103 
 
 faith sinks, of the possibiHties open to the behev- 
 ing and surrendered soul. 
 
 It almost necessarily follows that the m3'stics 
 are not always intelligible. The action of 
 mysticism on the spirit may perhaps best be 
 compared to the action of music. It is not 
 possible to put into words all the emotions the 
 high strain raises. Nor is it possible to justify to 
 the man who has no ear the feelings which music 
 excites. In one of his dialogues William Law 
 puts this very well. He says that his neighbour, 
 John the Shepherd, " when he comes home from 
 the field in winter evenings, listens sometimes to 
 the Scriptures and sometimes to Jacob Buhme 
 read by his wife." He confesses that he under- 
 stands only a little of either, but maintains that, 
 whether he understands or not, the heavenly 
 flame is kindled in his soul. He quotes the lofty 
 words in Revelation which describe the eternal 
 throne, and says, with much justice, that it is 
 better that the heart should be kindled by them to 
 bow down with the elders than that it should 
 trouble about what Hebrew and Greek scholars 
 can tell of the passage. No doubt this may be 
 pushed to extremity. To exclude entirely distinct 
 form and expression from the apprehension of 
 
I04 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 spiritual truth, is to reduce that truth to some- 
 thing hke a fire-mist. We start with the Apostles 
 from a disc of really apprehended dogma. The 
 rays reflected are at first not clear. It is only as 
 the spiritual life proceeds that we keep transfer- 
 ring new truths from the region of mysticism to 
 that of clear apprehension, adding all the while to 
 those perceived only in the first stage. Emotion 
 both interprets and transcends language. It 
 takes a catastrophe to bring the tremendous 
 meaning even of the commonest words thoroughly 
 home. How much truer is this of words that try 
 to compass and reveal the experiences of the 
 spirit. The Bible is not anywhere to us what it 
 was twenty years ago. Passages we then passed 
 over as meaningless now take hold of us as with 
 living hands. One may doubt whether the highest 
 spiritual truth will ever go into words. The most 
 poetical region of all, says a living mystic, is that 
 which is incapable of taking the form of poetr}'. 
 The realities take away the breath that would, if 
 it could, give them forth in song. Some things 
 are impossible to utter, and other things it is 
 unlawful to utter. Over such truths the spirit 
 wanders brooding till it becomes vocal, and that 
 is the utterance we have from mystics. Mysticism 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN A MYSTERY 105 
 
 is the science of love — that love which supersedes 
 the sacraments, that love which the Apostle saw 
 lasting while tongues ceased, prophecy failed, 
 knowledge vanished away, and the princes of this 
 world came to nought. 
 
 Mysticism has often been charged with the 
 establishment of a church within the Church, or 
 rather an eccksiola in ccclcsia. This has little 
 relevance so far as Bohme is concerned, for he 
 himself adhered to the Lutheran Church and died 
 in its communion. He did not encourage the 
 establishment of sects. Bohme spoke to the 
 initiated. The phrase, " Enough to those that are 
 Ours " {Mystcriiim Magnum^ Gen. xliii. 32), is 
 characteristic. 
 
 " God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear; 
 The rest may reason and welcome ; 'tis we musicians 
 know," 
 
 The idea of a one and only perfect visible Church 
 did not appeal to the mystics. But \\\€\x cccksioJa 
 was rather a vcrcin than a gcuicindc, a religious 
 club rather than a regular church and congrega- 
 tion. The New Testament knows nothing of 
 class religion, and seriously discourages the need- 
 less formation of sects. But may it not be sug- 
 gested that one great need of the present time is 
 
io6 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 that those bent on the re-animation of lingering 
 causes and the revival of forgotten truths should 
 quietly associate themselves together to further 
 the common end ? There is too much isolation 
 among us. One man with strong convictions 
 may be able to do something, but if properly 
 reinforced by others of the same mind he might 
 do far more. Dr. Whyte, we have no doubt, 
 agrees with us that mysticism is not meant for 
 the Church at large. He would, however, do 
 great service if he organised the few to whom the 
 subject appeals. If we had space to dwell on 
 this fascinating theme, we should like to say 
 something of the English Bohmenists. Their 
 lives have not been written, nor is there, so far 
 as we know, any clear indication of the two 
 periods when Bohmenism was a power in the 
 religious development of our country. 
 
 Whatever be said of his theology and philo- 
 sophy, no one can deny that Jacob Bohme's 
 portion in life was the enjoyment of God. The 
 story of his beautiful and sacred death cannot be 
 told too often. Shortly after midnight one Sabbath 
 he overheard the Avorship of the world of spirits. 
 He called his son Tobias, and asked him if he did 
 not hear that sweet, harmonious music. The 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN A MYSTERY 107 
 
 door was set wide that he might Hsten more 
 peacefully. Then, smitten with desire, he ex- 
 claimed, " O Thou strong God of Sabaoth, deliver 
 me according to Thy will," and immediately after- 
 wards, " Thou crucified Lord Jesus Christ, have 
 mercy upon me, and take me to Thyself in Thy 
 kingdom." A little later the prayer was answered, 
 and with the words, " Now I go hence to Paradise," 
 he entered in. Over his grave at Gorlitz, which 
 is still a place of pilgrimage, is inscribed, " Here 
 rests Jacob Bohme, born of God, died in Christ 
 sealed with the Holy Spirit." 
 
THE PRAYER-MEETING 
 
 /^^EORGE MACDONALD describes in one 
 ^-^ of his books a prayer-meeting or week-day 
 service in a Kentish Town chapel. The preacher 
 was a stickit minister from Scotland. Few 
 people even in the North are now aware of the 
 tragedy that accompanied pulpit failure. In 
 these days of diminished sensitiveness and in- 
 creased fluency the agony seems inconceivable ; 
 but to this stickit minister the hour of anguish, 
 though it had gone past some thirty years, was 
 still vivid. It overshadowed his spirit. He 
 called back the place and the day — a Scotch 
 village, his own village, a golden wind blowing 
 on a wavy harvest morning, little clouds floating 
 in the sunny blue, the church filled with well- 
 known faces upturned and critical. Then came 
 swiftly the moment of collapse when he failed 
 utterly, pitifully, while his mother wept low, and 
 his father clutched hands of despair behind the 
 
no THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 tails of his Sunday coat. The three went home 
 together in speechless sorrow and despair, and 
 the hour vanished in a slow mist of abject misery 
 and shame. It was only very long after, when 
 he was growing old, that he again opened his 
 mouth to preach Christ, and then it was in cir- 
 cumstances the dreariness of which depressed 
 him. That huge slug the Coiiiiiionp/acc, the 
 wearifullest dragon to fight in the whole creation, 
 the monster whom you may wound but cannot 
 kill, holds great sway in the north-west of 
 London and was then specially powerful in dis- 
 senting chapels. Never more so in his beauty- 
 blasting, depressing power than on the night of 
 the weekly prayer-meeting, and that night a 
 drizzling one. The steaming glare of the yellow 
 lights that filled the lower part of the chapel, the 
 ugly twilight that possessed the yawning galleries, 
 seemed to illuminate the monster whose faintly 
 gelatinous bulk filled the whole place. There 
 were but nine hearers, and at first it seemed as if 
 their faces were but ganglions of the beast. 
 None of them was fit to deal him one of those 
 blows which he suffers from every sunrise, every 
 repentance, every childbirth, and every true love. 
 Stay ! there was one, a brooding, careworn 
 
THE PRAYER-MEETING iii 
 
 countenance of a woman who had a Hfe of 
 labour and vanished children lying behind her. 
 She was racked with the enigma of how to 
 pay her rent, consumed with pitiful worries, and 
 her look gave the preacher strength to tell the 
 story of sun and breeze, of resurrection and up- 
 lifting, of organ blasts and exultation which has 
 been written for every spirit which Satan hath 
 bound. At that time there was little suspicion 
 of neology. The monster was growling in Ger- 
 man jungles, but could not cross the sea. The 
 preaching gave the poor widow " strength in my 
 heart to bear up, and that is better than money." 
 She was not one to take the kingdom of heaven 
 by force, but one to creep quietly into it if a 
 gentle hand took hers. 
 
 From the same region of London, a region, 
 which has had a strange fascination for our 
 dissenting writers — for is it not there that Mark 
 Rutherford fixes the story of ** The Modern 
 Martyr " who resisted the will to die and went 
 on quietly in spite of the evolutionist correcting 
 exercises in Euclid ? — comes another and much 
 more cordial testimony to the helpfulness of the 
 week-night service. Thomas Lynch, whose in- 
 domitable spirit never yielded to the misery 
 
112 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 of his surroundings, his scanty audiences, and 
 his dreary chapels, left behind him a paper on 
 the subject. He urged that men often die of the 
 businesses by which they strive to live. Anxiety 
 dulls, frets, and then kills them. But if a man 
 can walk and talk with his God in the cool of a 
 hot day, the morrow's burden will be less heavy ; 
 or if he has a childlike gladness in seeing the 
 evening lamp lighted in the holy place, and in 
 both seeing and smelling the evening incense as 
 it curls heavenward, the air of next morning will 
 be sweeter to him, and its light will awaken him 
 to hope. If in winter time he will sit by the fire- 
 side of the church in brotherly love to all saints, 
 he will be less likely to drowse and sigh by his 
 own. And if in summer time he will walk with 
 companions in the garden of the Lord as heaven 
 and earth are communing sweetly and sacredly 
 together in the twilight, he will not walk moodily 
 about his own garden complaining that after all 
 its chief productions are the worm and the cater- 
 pillar. This is a good word, and we have no 
 doubt as to the blessing ministered to many souls 
 by quiet little week-evening meetings. We are 
 thinking, however, of services where the main 
 business is not preaching, but prayer. Is it 
 
THE PRAYER-MEETING 113 
 
 possible that the work of any cliurch can be 
 satisfactorily carried on where prayer is not 
 deliberately organised and practised ? Prayer- 
 meetings in the true sense are not week-evening 
 services, in that preaching, save as it helps 
 petitions, is of no account. For a week-evening 
 service it is natural that a minister should seek a 
 large audience. He is to be excused if he presses 
 the duty of attendance upon his people. Where 
 many come there is indubitable proof that his 
 words are prized. Week- evening services, we 
 suppose, cannot be kept up with spirit unless a 
 certain number are present, and we believe that 
 in many places they are abandoned for a large 
 part of the year, and in some given over alto- 
 gether. This does not apply to the ideal prayer- 
 meeting. It is constituted under the charter of 
 Christ. "If two of you shall agree on earth as 
 touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be 
 done for them of my Father which is in heaven." 
 Two, therefore, form a sufficient and a prevailing 
 meeting for prayer. Neither of them needs to be 
 eloquent, but both must be very much in earnest. 
 To urge people to come to a prayer-meeting 
 seems incongruous. They should be urged to 
 pray, and they should be taught that prayer in 
 
 H 
 
114 T^HE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 the highest sense cannot be single. Then they 
 must be left. If sympathetic souls find their way to 
 the gathering, and are able to enter with fulness of 
 heart into the supplication, great spiritual issues 
 will be decided. On the other hand, to have a num- 
 ber of hearers none of them fully imbued with the 
 spirit and faith of prayer, is an unmitigated calamity. 
 It may be said with confidence that a large prayer- 
 meeting is very often no prayer-meeting. 
 
 But surely from every church, even the hum- 
 blest and poorest, two might be found to make a 
 prayer-meeting. What is the power of two as 
 contrasted with the power of one ? 
 
 In the first place, when two agree as touching 
 what they shall ask, there is reason to hope that 
 a corrective element will be applied to the peti- 
 tions. Isolated, we grow selfish ; the burden of 
 our own sad need presses upon us too heavily, 
 the lower forms of desire and passion assert their 
 sway. There are, it has been said, three forms 
 of prayer — the evil, the non-moral, and the 
 spiritual. That there are evil prayers — sordid, 
 selfish and base — we know. We doubt whether 
 there are non-moral prayers. For as we are 
 always drawn out in tenderness for any one 
 who we see is looking to us in great expecta- 
 
THE PRAYER-MEETING 115 
 
 tion and tenderly confiding in us, this must also 
 be true of God. He will grieve a little because 
 we so persistently ask Him for the lower, because 
 wc think so much more of meat and drink and 
 clothes for the body than of God and love and 
 truth for the soul. He longs that only we would 
 put things in the right order, and seek the best 
 first ; but He knows that we must be guided 
 gently, and so in the New Testament no stern 
 distinction is drawn between temporal and spiri- 
 tual blessings, and the largest possible encourage- 
 ment is given to all souls to pray. So much is 
 the encouragement that perhaps nine-tenths of 
 the sermons on prayer consist of warnings not to 
 expect too much. God knows that if we once 
 come close to Him, if our hearts touch His, we 
 shall grow in grace and wisdom, and find that 
 even in the promise the half was not told us. 
 We learn from this contact that prayer prevails 
 not merely in that it subsides into God's will and 
 takes the fact as decided in our faith, but that it 
 brings a reason for God's hearing us and giving 
 the thing requested, as otherwise He would not 
 have a call to do. Besides, what strength and 
 depth of Christian communion there is between 
 two souls that have entered into a true league of 
 
Ii6 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 prayer, when each is not afraid to unbare to the 
 other his whole heart, and when everything that 
 is merely selfish fades away and is ashamed in 
 the light of the divine love ! 
 
 Not only is it well that two should agree in 
 prayer because in this way the lower elements of 
 petitions subside, but in ways we cannot fully 
 understand the addition of will to will increases 
 the force of prayer. On this subject Bushnell 
 has some wise remarks. He is commenting on 
 the palmary promises given by Our Lord to im- 
 portunity. He protests against the exaggeration 
 which demands that we are to renounce all will 
 to begin with, as if the will were part of our 
 human nature which God does not care to see, 
 makes no account of, and will not cherish. True, 
 the will must not push itself on God's will when 
 God's will is known, but we often do not know, 
 and we must hold on with inflexible tenacity 
 until we do. Many of our prayers have no will ; 
 they are dawdling, feeble and futile. But Christ 
 commends with especial heartiness the prayer 
 that will take no denial, that does not faint, and 
 that succeeds by importunity. This tenacity is 
 will, and God looks oii our will as a central part 
 of our personality. He means to ennoble it, and 
 
THE PRAYER-MEETING 117 
 
 not to crush it. There are many prayers that 
 can only be answered by the action of a great 
 will force in man. How, for instance, is one to 
 recover health when he discourages soul and 
 body in consenting to have no will "bout the 
 matter save in prayer ? Then it has to be 
 remembered that God is always answering prayer 
 on the ground of the largest reasons. All God's 
 purposes are set by God's reason, even as clocks 
 are by the sun, though the purposes may be as in 
 everlasting counsel before the prayers are made. 
 And so it is not too much to say that God is 
 always considering as to what the most and 
 weightiest things and people agree — where an}' 
 prayer for health makes as strong a suit as the 
 sensuality and pride petitioning for disease, where 
 so many Christian people praying for the times 
 can pray down what the times themselves invoke. 
 The only true, earnest way of praying is to get 
 as many things to pray with you as possible, and 
 as few to pray against. We may have little 
 power, but surely each of us may find one soul, 
 and when two agree in pra3'er there is an illimit- 
 able promise. We shall try to consider what 
 modificntion the frank adoption of this great 
 principle would make on the life of our churches. 
 
"IF TWO OF YOU SHALL AGREE" 
 
 T N the opinion of some who still profess to 
 •'■ be Christians, the idea of asidng and 
 receiving from God is a fond superstition or a 
 pitiable weakness. But asking and receiving are 
 of the essence of prayer, and it is no true 
 prayer-meeting where the main attraction is 
 the preaching of short, bright sermons, or even 
 common meditation on divine themes. Neither 
 is it a prayer-meeting where prayer is viewed 
 as a spiritual gymnastic, beneficial to the sup- 
 pliant, but otherwise of no account. If God is 
 absent, or bound in the chains of inexorable law, 
 there can be no true prayer. And it is the 
 caricature and counterfeit of all devotion to say 
 with some mystics that the will must be 
 annihilated, and that there is no permissible 
 prayer but the Prayer of Silence — Thy ivill be 
 done. Madame Guyon told Bossuet that she was 
 unable to pray for any particular thing — the 
 
I20 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 forgiveness of sins, for instance. To do so was 
 to fail in absolute abandonment and disinterested- 
 ness. It is true that we evermore enter into 
 God through death, but God works in man, and 
 not instead of man. Over against this negation 
 we set the teaching of Our Lord and His 
 Apostles, and earnestly seek to break once more 
 the seals of prayer. 
 
 " If two of you shall agree." Two are enough 
 to form a prayer-meeting, and what church is so 
 poor as not to be able to furnish them ? No 
 machinery is needed, no announcement, nothing 
 but the complete and sacred agreement of two 
 believers. When these come together, they will 
 come to pray. They will doubtless taste the 
 good word of God and the powers of the world 
 to come, that their hearts may be stirred up. 
 They will enter into a profound spiritual friend- 
 ship, into the inmost depths of one another's 
 souls. They will have much to ask for them- 
 selves. But their main business will be inter- 
 cession, and intercession is at once the highest 
 and most difficult form of prayer. Our Lord 
 Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, inter- 
 cedes before the Father, and His sacred function, 
 as Dr. Denney has pointed out, is mentioned by 
 
'•IF TWO OF YOU SHALL AGREE" 121 
 
 the Apostles with a kind of adoring awe, which is 
 quite pecuHar even in the New Testament. " It 
 seems to have impressed them as one of the 
 unimaginable wonders of Redemption, something 
 which in love went far beyond all that we could 
 ask or think. When inspired thought touches it 
 it rests as on an unsurpassable height." The 
 intercession of Christ is the culmination of His 
 priesthood, the crowning act of that love of 
 which the foundations were laid on Calvar}'. 
 Our intercession is a spark from the altar which 
 burns day and night before the Lord in heaven. 
 And therefore it is not easy, not light, but hard 
 and costly. It is a voice calling from that estate 
 of misery which has no explanation but the Fall 
 and no remedy but the Cross. Real intercession 
 wades as deep as love. It has hours that in 
 their measure are like the Lord's Gethsemane : 
 " I have great heaviness and continual sorrow ol 
 heart for my brethren, my kinsmen according to 
 the flesh." The great intercessors of the world 
 are secretly and immediately called by Christ 
 Himself, even as He, the Man of the Cross, was 
 called of God : " I sought for a man among them 
 that should make up the hedge and stand in the 
 gap before me." To suppose that the duty of 
 
122 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 intercession is fulfilled by attending what is 
 called a hearty prayer-meeting, to suppose that 
 it is completed when a list of names is called 
 over, is fundamentally to misunderstand. Inter- 
 cession charges itself with the want, the woe, the 
 load, the care, the sin, the anguish of all for 
 whom it pleads. 
 
 When two come together for intercession they 
 will, first of all, pray for the church they are 
 representing. Few things are more wonderful 
 than the service of unknown intercessors to 
 humble churches of Christ. How many men 
 and women there have been, whose names were 
 never tossed about in the great world, who had 
 no eloquence and no wealth and no learning, but 
 who by their continual and prevailing pra3^ers 
 made safe and sweet and blessed some corner of 
 God's vineyard on earth ! They prayed from the 
 depths of serene and strong hearts, and their 
 prayers were answered. With what profound 
 and passionate affection the very least of our 
 churches is regarded by one or two ! How 
 many of them have refused to perish, when it 
 often seemed as if they might go out, like the 
 " cresset's flame that the rough wind slew last 
 night." They have lived because their very dust 
 
"IF TWO OF YOU SHALL AGREE" 123 
 
 was dear to some among the saints, and for that 
 they are Hving still. There are, perhaps, hopeful 
 signs of a great and needed change in our con- 
 ception of the services of the Church. If we go 
 to church to hear sermons, then the sermons 
 must be worth hearing, and where they are not 
 we are absolved. If we go to be touched by 
 the externalities of worship, the true spiritual 
 stimulus must at last fail us. We must go 
 because there is a special manifestation of God 
 in the personality of Jesus Christ vouchsafed in 
 the Church, because there we are united with one 
 another and with the Lord. Our fellow disciples 
 have received from Christ the glory which the 
 Father gave the Son, and we must enter into 
 fellowship with Christian rnen if we are to enter 
 deeply into fellowship with God. Every wor- 
 shipper must think of his fellow-worshippers, 
 must merge his own life in the life of the Church, 
 and thus realise the idea of the communion of 
 saints. To do this it is necessary to attend faith- 
 fully the services as far as possible, whether or 
 not the preaching is eloquent and interesting. It 
 should be the continual prayer of the intercessors 
 for the Church that the Church may be a household 
 of faith in which no heart can sorrow or rejoice 
 
124 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 alone. The New Testament justifies far more 
 emphatic teaching on the necessity of the Church 
 and its institutions than one often listens to. It 
 may be doubted whether prayer or communion 
 with Christ or joy in God or any other great 
 experience of the Christian life can be realised in 
 any full sense by isolated believers. The inter- 
 cessors of the Church, knowing the Church and 
 its needs, will pray that the life of the Church 
 may be more and more a common life, that the 
 fellowship between the members and Christ may 
 be continually deepened and intensified, and if 
 that prayer is fulfilled there will be no need to 
 ask for more. 
 
 Once again. The intercessors must pray for 
 the individuals they know. We cannot love all 
 men in the strict and true sense. As Newman 
 said we may feel well disposed to all men. We 
 may act toward all men in a spirit of love. We 
 may view them as those for whom Christ died. 
 But the real love of man depends on practice, 
 and we must begin by loving those near to us, 
 labouring for them, praying for them, bearing 
 with them, suffering for them. It is in this way 
 that there grows in the heart that root of charity 
 which if small at first may, like the mustard seed, 
 
•'IF TWO OF YOU SHALL AGREE" 125 
 
 at last overshadow the whole earth, Wc love 
 God whom we have not seen by loving our 
 brethren whom we sec. Week by week we 
 should recall their case. There is one who after a 
 consistent life of many years has fallen into a 
 deep abyss of shame. He has dragged with him 
 others who are innocent, and he is at the point of 
 despair. There is one who is reeling under the 
 shock of sudden and terrible bereavement. There 
 is one who has undergone a business disaster 
 which will alter for him the whole aspects of 
 living. And there are those on whom the great 
 blessedness of life has dawned, or is beginning to 
 dawn. There are those who have ranged them- 
 selves on the side of Christ, and there are those 
 whose hearts are growing cold. Who can tell 
 what forces and succours may go forth to all 
 these as the result of intercession ? 
 
 The Christian Church ought to have in its 
 possession far fuller records of the answer to 
 prayer. But we are not left without witness. 
 In the records of Mrs. Bcecher Stowe's life we 
 are told that in her later years her consecration 
 took high forms and she especially devoted her- 
 self to intercession. There came a time in her 
 history when one who was very dear to her 
 
126 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 seemed about to sink away from the faith in 
 which she trusted, and she set herself resolutely 
 to avert this calamity. She put the full force of 
 her intellect to work upon this conflict. Letter 
 after letter found its way from her pen to the 
 foreign town in which scepticism was doing its 
 worst for the soul she loved. She wrote, she 
 reasoned, she argued, she pleaded, in vain. Then 
 she turned to her great faith. She secluded her- 
 self from all but God, and set her whole faith to 
 labour for her soul's desire. A few weeks after 
 a letter reached her, saying, "At Christmas-time 
 light came to me. I see things differently now." 
 In the life of Dr. Emmons we read that under a 
 great bereavement which had been seen to im- 
 pend for some time he was wonderfully calm and 
 peaceful. The secret of his composure was dis- 
 covered in the fact that some Christians had 
 made a league of intercession and had prayed 
 that his faith might not fail. 
 
 There must be many readers of these lines 
 who watch with deep solicitude the little churches 
 with which they are connected. They see that 
 spiritual life in them is languid and low. Perhaps 
 they are undergoing sharp trials and impoverish- 
 ment. It almost seems as if the strain was too 
 
"IF TWO OF YOU SHALL AGREE" 127 
 
 great to be borne any longer. Who will form a 
 league of intercession ? It is not enough to pray 
 in secret. Let there be anolher to make the two 
 — one other at least — and let these two make 
 importunate request to the Father and see whether 
 the tide will not turn and a glorious blessing be 
 granted. It will not, it cannot be without cost to 
 the intercessors, but in the spiritual order accord- 
 ing to our sorrow so will be our joy, and so we 
 may understand Our Lord's deep word, "Hitherto 
 ye have asked nothing in my name. Ask and ye 
 shall receive, that your joy may be full." In 
 proportion as the sorrow has been deep, even as 
 it has been the sorrow of the Cross, where the 
 heart of God is written out in blood, so will be 
 the grace and the depth of the joy. Intercession 
 can never lie lightly upon the soul of prayer. 
 
 "Two strangers happened to be passing 
 through a town where a great fire was raging. 
 
 " One of them sat down at the inn, saying, 
 ' It is not my business,' but the other ran into 
 the flames and saved much goods and some 
 people. 
 
 " When he came back his companion asked 
 him, ' Who bade thee risk thy life in this busi- 
 ness ? ' 
 
128 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 " He said, ' The brave man who bade me bury 
 seed that it may one day bring forth increase.' 
 
 " ' But if thou thyself hadst been buried in the 
 ruins ? ' 
 
 " 'Then should I myself have been the seed.'" 
 
THE CASTING AWAY OF THEOLOGY* 
 
 M 
 
 ISS PHELPS — we call her by her maiden 
 name — is a writer whose work has often 
 the fascination of genius. The peculiar character- 
 istics of New England are strong within her. 
 Those who have read the lives of her father and 
 mother will understand how highly strung her 
 temperament is, with what a proud, lonely, wistful, 
 refusing aspect she has looked upon life. In this 
 new book she has told more of her inner feelings 
 than in any other, for it would be idle to ignore 
 that she has described her father and the scenes 
 of her childhood and youth. Professor Austin 
 Phelps was a religious writer of considerable 
 mark, of great sensitiveness, and of a painful 
 conscientiousness. His life was both marred 
 and purified by continual suffering, and though 
 
 * " A Sin£(iilar Life." By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 
 (London : James Clarke & Co.) 
 
 I 
 
I30 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 his ears were open to many of the highest voices 
 of the world, he held tenaciously by the old 
 theology, and was exercised to the depth of his 
 nature when his college at Andover moved in 
 new directions. His daughter, while cherishing 
 an affectionate veneration for her father's character, 
 partly disagreed with his theology, and partly 
 viewed the problems that vexed him as unimpor- 
 tant. Since his death, she and her husband 
 have busied themselves in various literary ex- 
 periments, none of them quite successful. Nor 
 is " A Singular Life " to be described as in any 
 way a great book, although it has considerable 
 power. Its fault is its extreme conventionality. 
 The characters are fixed types, described without 
 the least subtlety or discrimination, and the 
 action all proceeds as it might in the world of the 
 imagination. Neither are there touches of power 
 such as we occasionally meet with in "A Struggle 
 for Immortality," and in some of Miss Phelps's 
 poems. Nevertheless, the book is good, pure, 
 wholesome, and spirit-stirring, although we should 
 not have given it prominent notice had it not 
 been for its moral. That moral falls in with the 
 tendency of much current thinking, and it is quite 
 worth while to examine it. The book may be 
 
THE CASTING AWAY OF THEOLOGY 131 
 
 described briefly as a plea for the retention of 
 Christianity and the casting away of theology. 
 
 Professor Carruth, of Cesarea College, is de- 
 scribed as a man of archangelic nature, full of 
 theology, rigidly orthodox, but so profoundly 
 Christian that sometimes he could not quite act 
 up to his barbarous creed. His wife was a com- 
 monplace, motherly old lady ; his daughter, 
 Helen Carruth, was a young lady of twenty-five, 
 a bright, deep orange blonde, whatever that may 
 mean, very beautiful, dressed in silk and purple 
 and white lace, fond of her father and mother, 
 but leading her life ver}' much apart from them. 
 In particular she was utterly sick of what she 
 considered the whole miserable business of 
 theology. Up to the somewhat mature age men- 
 tioned she had taken no interest in the college 
 and none in the students, and she regarded with 
 mingled impatience and contempt controversies 
 about inspiration, the punishment of the lost, and 
 the like. A remarkable student at this period 
 leaves the college and enters Helen Carruth 's 
 life. His appropriate name is Bayard. He is 
 marvellously beautiful, chivalrously brave, theo- 
 logically unsound, and a man of perfect spiritual 
 honour. It is easy to see that Miss Phelps has 
 
132 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 modelled him on her idea of Robertson of 
 Brighton. This Mr. Bayard, after beginning a 
 friendship with Miss Carruth, has a call to a 
 small seaport town, but when examined by the 
 council it turns out that he is not sufficiently 
 sound. He thereupon starts a church for him- 
 self, which is called the Church of the Love of 
 Christ. He does his duty in various respects, 
 displays much prowess as a pugilist, rescues a 
 man from drowning, lives in shabby lodgings, 
 with, of course, some very fine engravings on 
 the walls, is indifferent about food, devotes his 
 energies to work among the lost, and preaches 
 marvellous sermons. He has great troubles and 
 a miserable salary, but his courage does not fail. 
 In due time Helen Carruth appears on the scene. 
 She and her father and mother spend their 
 summer holiday in Mr. Bayard's town. The 
 professor is working at an article on the state of 
 the unforgiven after death — a subject which 
 appears to Mr, Bayard and Miss Carruth 
 infinitely trivial. Miss Carruth says : " If my 
 father weren't such an angel in private life 
 it wouldn't be so funny. I cannot see what 
 he wants the unconverted to be burnt up for." 
 Mr. Bayard quite agrees, and thinks that he has 
 
THE CASTING AWAY OF THEOLOGY 133 
 
 enough to do with the state of the unforgivcii 
 before death. We may mildly venture to suggest 
 that the Saviour Jesus Christ whom Bayard is 
 supposed specially to honour, and His Apostle 
 St. Paul, and many others whose lives were a 
 straight and thoughtful journey in their track, 
 were very deeply exercised about the state of the 
 unforgiven after death. But this may pass. In 
 due time Miss Carruth becomes a worker in Mr. 
 Bayard's church, while he throws himself into a 
 fierce battle against the liquor trade, which was 
 cursing the town. He confesses his love for her, 
 but does not propose to marry, as his salary is 
 so small. She goes with her father and mother 
 to Berlin. That amiable lunatic of a professor 
 is actually engaged in studying the question of 
 the authenticity of the fourth Gospel and the 
 eflect of German rationalism on the evangelical 
 faith. These trivialities give him peaceful and 
 plentiful occupation, and when after a stormy 
 passage the family returns, Bayard is able to 
 propose marriage, his uncle having left him a 
 house in Boston. They are married accordingly, 
 and very shortly after Bayard is killed by a stone 
 which an angry publican flung at him. The 
 moral of the book is that colleges should give up 
 
134 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 teaching theology, that ministers should give up 
 studying and preaching it, that the simple Gospel 
 of the love of Christ ought to be declared in a 
 free and unencumbered manner, and that ministers 
 should be prepared for their work by the study 
 of Socialism and the condition of the poor. Let 
 us look at these contentions. 
 
 Bayard called his church the Church of the 
 Love of Christ. He stood up in his pulpit week 
 after week and declared that God was love, that 
 Christ loved each soul in his congregation, and 
 would fain strain it to His bosom. What does 
 this involve ? In the first place who is Christ ? 
 He is unseen — that we know. He has been dead 
 nearly two thousand years — that we know. He 
 is no more among us in the flesh as He was in 
 Palestine. Then who is He whose love has 
 power to pass through the veil and the gate and 
 the silence of death, and touch and warm us 
 now ? Who would preach the Gospel of the 
 love of Abraham or of Moses or of Paul ? What 
 is there about Christ that puts Him in an 
 altogether different category from theirs, and 
 gives Him power to help us to-day ? The 
 answer is, we suppose, that Christ is God. Is 
 not this theology ? What happened after Christ's 
 
THE CASTING A IV AY OF THEOLOGY 135 
 
 death that gave Him power to reach us with Mis 
 love as the others who have died cannot ? He 
 rose again. Is not this also theology ? We 
 seem ali'eady to be dealing with two articles of 
 the Christian creed, the Incarnation and the 
 Resurrection, for without these the proclamation 
 that Christ loves the human souls that live is 
 a mockery. And how do we know that Christ 
 loves us? The answer, we suppose, is that His 
 heart was revealed in the Cross, and does not 
 that give us the doctrine of the Atonement ? In 
 other words, the inscription, the Church of the 
 Love of Christ, is a ghastly deception unless it 
 rests upon the fundamental articles of the Christian 
 creed — unless, in other words, it has a theology 
 behind it. Nor is that the whole. It may be 
 answered, We know that Christ loved us by the 
 gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth ; 
 was it not He who said, "Let not your heart be 
 troubled, neither let it be afraid " ? But then did 
 He say these words, or were they the invention 
 of some other ? Is not this that very question of 
 the authenticity of the fourth Gospel of which 
 Miss Phelps speaks with such magnificent scorn ? 
 More than this. We need to go far into 
 theology before we can make the belief of the 
 
136 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 love of God vivid or tenable to mankind. Some, 
 perhaps many, have no difficulty in believing it. 
 To them existence is a sweet, prolonged summer. 
 But the more the facts of life are dragged into 
 the daylight and studied, the deeper is the con- 
 viction in thoughtful minds that from these, taken 
 as they stand, the love of God and the righteous- 
 ness of God cannot be surely discovered. When 
 we come to know God in Christ, we look upon 
 all things in the light of reconciling love, and we 
 apprehend in '' the joined and four-squared 
 truth " the wonderful and majestic laws of storm 
 which work surely to a just and clear issue, 
 though they work so slowly. We are able to 
 interpret what we do not know by that which we 
 are sure of, and wc find ourselves re-echoing the 
 mild wisdom of Dorothy Winthorp in " Silas 
 Marner." 
 
 " But what come to me as clear as the day- 
 light, it was when I was troubling over poor 
 Bessy Fawkes, and it allays comes into my head 
 when I'm sorry for folks, and feel as I can't do a 
 power to help 'em, not if I was to get up i' the 
 middle o' the night — it comes into my head as 
 Them above has got a deal tenderer heart nor 
 what I've got — for I can't be anyways better nor 
 
THE CASTING AWAY OF THEOLOGY 137 
 
 Them as made mc ; and if anything looks hard to 
 me, it's because there's things 1 don't know on ; 
 and for the matter o' that, there may be plenty o' 
 things I don't know on, for it's Httle as 1 know — 
 that it is. And so, while I was thinking o' that, 
 you come into my mind. Master Marner, and it 
 all come pouring in — If / felt i' my inside 
 what was the right and just thing by you, and 
 them as prayed and drawcd the lots, all but that 
 wicked 'un, if //icyd ha' done the right thing by 
 you if they could, isn't there Them as was at the 
 making on us, and knows better and has a better 
 will ? And that's all as ever I can be suic on, 
 and everything else is a big puzzle to mc when I 
 think on it. For there was the fever come and 
 took off them as were fuU-growed, and left the 
 helpless children ; and there's the breakii}g o' 
 limbs ; and them as 'ud do right and be sober 
 have to suffer by them as are contrairy — eh, 
 there's trouble i' this world, and there's things as 
 we can niver make out the rights on. And all as 
 we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner — to 
 do the right thing as fur as we know, and to 
 trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit 
 o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a 
 good and a rights bigger nor what we can know 
 
138 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 — I feel it i' my own inside as it must be so. 
 And if you could but ha' gone on trustening, 
 Master Marner, you wouldn't ha' run away from 
 your fellow-creatures and been so lone." 
 
 But Silas Marner could not take home the 
 reasoning until there was given to him the love 
 of a little child. How many there are who have 
 no solace save the thought that there must come 
 an end at last of their numbered miles of pain ! 
 For them the winter will never be past, the rain 
 will never be over and gone, the time of the 
 singing of birds will never come. Never beneath 
 those skies. And even to the most faithful in 
 sight of the terrific tragedies of life, does it not 
 often seem as if the will of the devil were being 
 done on earth even as it is in hell, as if the 
 kingdom of God could never come ? Yes, the 
 Christian preacher must be very sure of his 
 ground when he stands up before a company of 
 men and women weighted with sorrow, crushed 
 with care, tortured by remorse, and tells them 
 that each individual has a place in the sacred 
 heart of Christ. 
 
 In fact there is one firm foundation, and only 
 one. God commendeth His love toward us in 
 that while we were yet sinners Christ died for 
 
THE CASTING AWAY OF THEOLOGY 139 
 
 US. That is the Gospel of the Cross with which 
 St. Paul confronted Jew and Greek, and it will be 
 found in time either that the preacher must meet 
 his hearers with that message, or cease to speak. 
 It is idle, very idle, to discuss whether in the 
 nature of the case the Apostles could be as per- 
 fect organs of revelation as Our Lord Himself. 
 The question is not whether St. Paul occasion- 
 ally rabbinises, not whether certain among his 
 lines of reasoning are untenable. The question 
 is whether the doctrines with which the Epistles 
 are threaded through and through as a leaf is 
 threaded by its fibres are true or false. If they 
 are true, then there is yet a heart to the world. 
 The Church of God is ransomed and the Church 
 of God is safe. If they are not true, then the 
 Apostles corrupted Christianity and all but de- 
 stroyed it, and we must tear out their writings 
 from the New Testament before we can hope to 
 get a glimmer of the Christianity of Christ again. 
 But are they false ? Let us consider what is put 
 in their stead. If God gave Christ and Christ 
 gave Himself as the propitiation for our sins, 
 then we are on adamant which cannot be shaken. 
 But if not, if Christ died as a martyr, then the 
 proclamation of His love has no meaning; then 
 
I40 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Calvary, instead of lifting the gloom from the 
 world, deepens it into despair. If Christ died 
 willingly to atone for our sins, all martyrdoms 
 are explained and glorified. If sin overwhelmed 
 Him, then God has been defeated by evil, and 
 His Cross is the tragedy of the world. The 
 Cross, we know, was victory. He overcame the 
 world in His dying, and no matter what appear- 
 ances may be, the final triumph of the love of 
 God is there to eyes that have seen the Lord and 
 His Sabaoth. 
 
 "German rationalism." We grant that the 
 phrase has often been used very idly and very 
 foolishly. We can understand Miss Phelps's 
 impatience with it. But we assure her that there 
 is a rationalism which is altogether fatal to faith, 
 and that she is drifting in its direction. She has 
 a noble and believing nature. Of her it is 
 eminently true that she has recognised " the dark 
 power of the gods of sorrow, and the sacredness 
 of unbending death." She has done more than 
 this ; she has acknowledged the power of the 
 name of Jesus, and she has crowned Him Lord 
 of all. It is grievous that such a woman should 
 join in ignorant and foolish gibes at scholars and 
 their studies, when a very little thinking would 
 
THE CASTING AWAY OF THEOLOGY 141 
 
 enable her to see that, unless our faith rests on 
 certain great facts, Christianity is a ruin and a 
 dream ; and that if these facts are true, they 
 necessarily take the form of a theology. As for 
 those whose Gospel is that Christ lived once in 
 Palestine, and that there are valuable sentences 
 to be traced to Him, and that with a little care 
 almost all the familiar verses of the New Testa- 
 ment can be used with the original meaning taken 
 out of them, it needs no prophet to foretell the 
 fate of a church controlled by such. It will live 
 just as long as it is not found out. When it is 
 found out, it will be swept from the earth as an 
 organised hypocrisy. 
 
IS THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST 
 FORGOTTEN ? 
 
 BEHIND the fact, that in many parts of 
 England the masses are ahenated from all 
 Churches, there may be another and even a 
 graver truth. Let us ask, without attempting 
 to answer the question. Is the Gospel of Christ 
 preached generally in our sanctuaries ? Or has 
 it been for the time lost and forgotten ? 
 
 The question may be put in another form. If 
 a preacher discourses in the following fashion, is 
 he declaring the Christian Gospel? "Christ has 
 come to reveal the glory of the higher personal 
 life. Our ideals have been too poor, too near, and 
 too partial. Let us take Christ as the measure 
 of the stature of the perfect man. Let us seek to 
 drink in constantly the spirit of His life. Let our 
 life be an everlasting ascent, through all failure 
 and defeat, to the height on which He stands. Let 
 
144 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 US be impatient of everything that comes short of 
 the highest, and let us spare no effort to attain it, 
 though it be with wearied feet and bleeding brow 
 and heart loaded with sorrow. Let us wait for 
 the gales of the Spirit, and let us seek to be 
 driven before them. If there is a virtue we 
 would emulate or a fault we would discard, let us 
 gaze on the one till our souls have risen under it 
 as the tide under the moon, or scourge the other 
 in sight of all our faculties till every natural 
 sense recoils from its company. Let us never be 
 stopped by falls. Let us arise from all these, and 
 repent and address ourselves anew to the great 
 task, until the yawning gulf between the actual 
 and the ideal is bridged at last. So yearning, so 
 striving, we are climbing the hill of God, and we 
 are in the way of salvation." 
 
 Supposing this were preached to a Christian 
 congregation, would there be any repudiation, 
 any revolt, any clear feeling that the Christian 
 Gospel had been denied ? Is it too much to say, 
 even when we are fully willing to distinguish 
 between the constant which we ought to keep 
 and the transient which we ought to let slip, that 
 this, if the New Testament is true, is the nega- 
 tion of Christianity ? For what is this but the 
 
IS THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST FORGOTTEN ? 145 
 
 righteousness of the law, by which no flesh can 
 be saved ? It is indeed presented in a lofty 
 fashion. The moral consciousness has been 
 strengthened and purified by the long centuries 
 of Christian history. The doctrine of justifica- 
 tion by works cannot any longer be proclaimed 
 in its lower form, for the spiritual sense and 
 craving of mankind have been sharpened, and 
 would not accept it. Nevertheless, in the end of 
 the day, it is the old falsehood which the whole 
 strength of the Apostles was spent in refuting. 
 Virtue under this creed is not created from the 
 order of an inner faith and love ; it is ultimately 
 obedience to a formula, and not the natural 
 action of a reconstructed soul. Righteousness is 
 obtained by the effort and struggle of the spirit, 
 and not by the atonement of the Lamb of God. 
 If this is generally preached, then the battle of 
 the Reformation has to be fought over again. 
 
 We are very far indeed from saying that those 
 who preach in this fashion reject the true faith. 
 Rather we believe it will come with a shock of 
 surprise to many of them that their teaching has 
 run in this mould. Spiritual faith may and does 
 remain under expressions that fit it very ill, for 
 certainly the Church, now and in all ages, is 
 
 K 
 
146 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 justified by faith. Nor would we deny — nay, we 
 are eager to admit — that the new legalism is in 
 many instances the fruit of an intelligible reaction 
 against the heresy of heresies, antinomianism, or 
 has taken rise in a righteous impatience of low 
 ideals of the spiritual life. To what extent this 
 reaction has gone we have no means of saying. 
 There are, however, a few tests that may be 
 applied. Wherever the higher legalism is at 
 work, it will be noticed that the doctrine of the 
 Apostles sinks into the background. The thought 
 of righteousness by faith loomed so large in the 
 mind of St. Paul as nearly to cover the whole hori- 
 zon, and it is natural that he should be patronised 
 or let alone or contradicted by those to whom 
 that doctrine is meaningless. It is no wonder 
 that they cr}^, " Back to Christ," and take refuge 
 in certain words of Our Lord which a criticism 
 largely subjective is allowed to choose. For the 
 preaching of the righteousness of the law, in 
 however lofty or exalted a manner, makes the 
 greater part of the New Testament, not only 
 meaningless, but glaringly and mischievously 
 untrue. Further, where such views have sway the 
 expiatory death of Christ sinks into the back- 
 ground, and practically ceases to be preached, 
 
IS THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST FORGOTTEN ? 147 
 
 Where His dying is referred to, it is expounded 
 in its magnificence as a revelation of sorrow and 
 self-sacrifice. And that is all there is to say. 
 A third test, applicable in cases where the mis- 
 chief has not gone so far, is that all the attendants 
 on Christian worship are treated as if they were 
 in the fold of Christ. Appeals to the unconverted, 
 prayers for the unconverted, practically disappear 
 from the service. The old rousing words, " Re- 
 pent," "Believe," never ring from the pulpit. 
 And this is perfectly natural and logical. For 
 if righteousness come by the law, the mere 
 attendance in a Christian sanctuary is proof that 
 the divine life has begun. The feet have been 
 set at the bottom of the ascent, and the preacher 
 sees before him men and women and children 
 who are in different stages of progress and need 
 to be helped in their advance. But to the Evan- 
 gelical preacher some are in the Way and others 
 are out of it. Some have received the Truth and 
 others are betrayed by falsehood. Some are 
 living and some are dead. All other distinctions 
 sink into insignificance beside this. All steps 
 are nothing in comparison with the process of 
 convulsion and re-creation by which those who 
 are without hope and without God in the world 
 
148 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 become fellow citizens of the saints and heirs of the 
 grace of life. It is impossible that any preacher, 
 duly burdened with a sense of this appalling 
 contrast, should ever long forget it in preaching 
 or in praying. Yet it would seem from the 
 practice of many Christian ministers that in their 
 view the lost are never to be found within the 
 House of God. 
 
 That this teaching can never permanently hold 
 the Church of Christ, and can never in any 
 degree hold it without destroying its force, may 
 be easily proved. There is, as we have said, 
 the great and powerful testimony of the New 
 Testament. But will proof texts in these days 
 subdue the minds of men and turn the course of 
 their thought ? Will they not say that if the 
 idea has not survived, and survived in its old 
 regnant place in the Christian Church, it is vain 
 to revive the words in which it was first clothed ? 
 Is not the relation between ideas and words this, 
 that the words depart and the ideas remain ? Is it 
 not so, that the spiritual structure is not built till the 
 scaffolding has been taken away ? Now, we say 
 in reply that though this may be and is generally 
 true, it does not apply to the words of the New 
 Testament. They are spirit and they are life. 
 
IS THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST FORGOTTEN ? MO 
 
 Or to turn to modern testimonies, they are, in 
 the phrase we are never weary of quoting, the 
 last words that can be said. They are words 
 which, whenever brought in and allowed time 
 enough to act, are found to fill the house with a 
 deathless fragrance. They are words, to change 
 the figure, which whenever our thoughts touch, 
 they are made perfectly whole. There is a vitality 
 in the ver}' words of Scripture which acts for 
 itself, even when he who speaks them has little 
 or nothing to bring of his own. When the 
 Gospel has died out amongst the rich and 
 powerful, amongst the great and wise, it has 
 been found again and again that the humble 
 Christian evangelist has changed the face of 
 things by a proclamation of the old message, 
 of the message received into his heart. 
 
 We might appeal also to the history of the 
 Church. The whole record of Christian life and 
 death has been moulded by the great truth of 
 ustification by faith. What Martin Luther calls 
 the true and holy and godly desperation of Stau- 
 pitius has been to countless thousands their 
 crowning experience. " I have vowed above a 
 thousand times that I would become better, but 
 1 have never performed that which 1 vowed. 
 
150 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Hereafter I will make no such vow, for 1 have 
 now learned from experience that I am not able 
 to perform it. Unless, therefore, God be favour- 
 able and merciful unto me for Christ's sake, and 
 grant unto me a blessed and happy hour, when I 
 shall depart out of this miserable life, I shall not 
 be able, with all my vows and all my good 
 deeds, to stand before Him." That " blessed 
 and happy hour " has been given thousands 
 and thousands of times in the death-beds of 
 believers, as in his, one of the greatest lights 
 of modern culture, who said that over the river 
 of death there was no bridge but the bridge of the 
 Saviour, 
 
 But we are willing to admit that these testi- 
 monies are not sufficient of themselves. If it can 
 be shown that these truths are needed no longer, 
 then it is not enough to say that they have been 
 needed hitherto. It may be, it is at least theo- 
 retically conceivable, that W. R. Greg is correct 
 when he says, " We only require steadily to go 
 right at once and henceforth in order ere long to 
 cancel the consequences of having gone wrong 
 for such countless generations." If it can be 
 shown that there is no weakness and no yearning 
 to which these divine revelations now come with 
 
IS THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST FORGOTTEN ? 151 
 
 any satisfaction, then the hour has arrived when 
 we must discard the Christian Gospel, and in the 
 words of the writer from whom we have just 
 quoted, look forward no longer to the glorious 
 appearing of Jesus, but to " the advent of a man 
 filled and fired with the enthusiasm of humanity, 
 the prophet of a great yet realisable ideal," But 
 if we can show that the constant needs of 
 man place us in relation with the true, divine 
 things, whether we will or no, then our end 
 has been accomplished. Beliefs cannot die 
 if they have their roots in the nature of man. 
 If they have no such roots, die they will and 
 must. 
 
 Where are we to look for the involuntary 
 revelation of the heart ? Where are we to look 
 for a true expression of the permanent interests 
 of humanity ? Sydney Dobell, in his eloquent 
 essay on the Brontes, anticipated that in the sure 
 and silent social revolution which is to give a 
 new and perpetually renewing aristocracy, and 
 with it a reorganisation of so many popular 
 forms of thought, there will be needed and will 
 arise some great novelist as a chief apostle. 
 Poets, whenever they are prophets, can only 
 speak to the highest. In doctrines and practices 
 
152 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 appealing to every man, wise and foolish, rich 
 and poor, old and young, the highest genius and 
 the lowest drudge, the evangelist, like the evangel, 
 must be cosmopolitan. More than forty years 
 have passed since these words were written, and 
 it cannot be said that the novelist, who is also a 
 prophet, has yet arisen. But more and more in 
 our day the novelist has become cosmopolitan. 
 The literature of fiction is the daily bread of 
 multitudes, and in common justice it must be 
 allowed that some of these writers, w'ho are most 
 opposed to Christianity, have taken their work 
 with true seriousness, have not said " Peace, 
 peace " when there was no peace, have recognised 
 that there are elements in our society of infallible 
 disruption and revolution. They may not speak 
 to us from a height. They may speak rather, in 
 Dobell's phrase, in thick thoroughfares of our 
 Lystras, but they have a message, and a message 
 which the Christian teacher ought to know and 
 seriously consider. They proclaim, if not the 
 remedy, at least the disease. They cry out for 
 the ills that still afflict us in the midst of our 
 boasted progress. They testify to the hunger of 
 the heart and the thirst of the spirit and the 
 
IS THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST FORGOTTEN ? 153 
 
 nakedness of the whole nature. They mourn 
 because the whole head is sick and the whole 
 heart faint. We shall try to find the meaning of 
 their plaint, and to see whether it is not a cry for 
 Christ in His perfect righteousness and His 
 atoning love. 
 
"CAST YOUR DEADLY DOING DOWN" 
 
 \ A 7E have asked whether there was not a 
 ^ ^ return to that preaching of a righteousness 
 by the law which the New Testament is written 
 to condemn. We admitted that if this preaching 
 reached its aim, there was no more to be said. 
 Testimony and experience might be pleaded 
 vainly in face of an altered human nature. But 
 is human nature altered ? Carlyle, it has been 
 said, made out that man's nature is only spiritual 
 on the side of its wants. Well, that is some- 
 thing; nay, it is very much. Do the old 
 cravings remain and assert themselves, the 
 cravings for which there is no answer save in 
 the Holy Gospel ? We shall take our reply 
 from those who are outside of the Church, but 
 who strive after a deep and serious under- 
 standing of human nature and human life. 
 
 It may conduce to clearness if we give the 
 old teaching in what seems to many its most 
 
156 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 offensive and uncompromising form. Mr. Froude 
 in one of his essays describes a revival meeting 
 at which he heard a hymn which he thinks it 
 worth while to quote as a sample and proof of 
 the immorality of evangelicalism. These are 
 the words : 
 
 " Nothing either great or small, 
 Nothing, sinner, no : 
 Jesus did it, did it all, 
 Long, long ago. 
 
 When He from His lofty throne 
 
 Stooped to do and die. 
 Everything was fully done — 
 
 Hearken to the cry 
 
 ' It is finished ! ' Yes, indeed. 
 
 Finished every jot. 
 Sinner, this is all you need, 
 
 Tell me, is it not ? 
 
 Weary, working, toiling ones. 
 
 Wherefore toil ye so ? 
 Cease from doing ; all was done 
 
 Long, long ago. 
 
 Till to Jesus you can cling 
 
 By a simple faith, 
 Doing is a deadly thing, 
 
 Doing ends in death. 
 
 Cast your deadly doing down. 
 
 Down at Jesus' feet. 
 Stand in Him, in Him alone. 
 
 Gloriously complete." 
 
••CAST YOUR DEADLY DOING DOU'N" 157 
 
 These lines may be thought an expression, so 
 sincere and poignant as almost to rise into 
 poetry, of the fundamental truth of the Gospel. 
 The phrases in it which apparently most provoke 
 anger and scorn are these : " Doing ends in 
 death," and " Cast your deadly doing down. 
 These words have been taken, and that by 
 accredited ministers of Christ, as deliberate 
 incentives to immorality. 
 
 For answer we shall not go back upon the 
 records of spiritual experience. We shall not 
 quote from these stories of vain attempts after 
 the righteousness of the law which are among 
 the most burning pages in all literature, so 
 terrible in their intensity that one seems rather 
 to hear a penitent sobbing out a confession with 
 white lips and bursting sighs than to read a quiet 
 page at a quiet table. But we turn to ask the 
 prophets of our time what their experience has 
 been. Let us begin on the level of ordinary 
 secular experience. A man desires to be a poet. 
 He studies the rules of grammar. He masters 
 the principles of melody. He acquires a rh3'ming 
 dictionary and stocks his memory with jingles. 
 He even acquires familiarity with the works of 
 the masters. All that labour can do is done. 
 
158 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 All that teaching can give is given. Is he then 
 a poet ? Take Ibsen's answer in one of his 
 early works. 
 
 " K. Sktile. Tell me, Jatgier, how came you to 
 be a bard ? Who taught you the art ? 
 
 ^* Jatgier. The art cannot be taught, sire. 
 
 ^^ K. Sktilc. It cannot be taught? Then how 
 came it ? 
 
 ^^ Jatgier. One gave me the gift , . ." 
 
 Or we may take the case of a painter. A 
 man desires to learn the mystery of art. 
 Teachers can do something for him, and they 
 take him on as far as they can lead him. He 
 masters the technique so far as his capacity 
 extends. The whole mechanism is revealed to 
 him, and, so far as rules can make him, he 
 is a painter. But what then ? Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds once examined a painting, and at the end 
 of his scrutiny, said significantly, " It wants — 
 THAT." "That" meant everything. It wanted 
 life, soul, quality, potency — all. 
 
 It would be both useless and tedious to accu- 
 mulate illustrations. They may be gathered 
 from every sphere, and has it not begun to dawn 
 on the mind of the reader that we are coming 
 back to the rude phrases of the hymn-writer? 
 
•'CAST YOUR DEADLY DOING DOWN" 159 
 
 Is it not SO that we say to the man who seeks to 
 be poet or painter by rule, " Doing is a deadly 
 thing," " Cast your deadly doing down " ? This 
 is the counsel of every master in the schools of 
 art. And are we not coming closer still to the 
 words of St. Paul, " If there had been a law 
 given which could make life, verily righteous- 
 ness would have been of the law " ? But 
 because no law has been given that can make 
 life, righteousness, perfection, achievement have 
 never been possible by obedience to rule, and 
 the end of mere obedience to rule is frustration 
 and defeat. 
 
 Is it otherwise in the sphere of morals ? We 
 take two witnesses, one of whom at least will not 
 be suspected of Christian leanings. Mr. George 
 Bernard Shaw, a very clever and unsparing- 
 critic, has pointed out with much penetration 
 that it is possible for a man to pass the moral 
 catechism, Have you obeyed the command- 
 ments ? have you kept the law ? and at the end 
 to live a worse life than the sinner who must 
 answer "nay" through all the questions. But 
 substitute for this catechism another in which 
 the one point to be settled is "guilty or not 
 guilty," and the whole world is condemned before 
 
i6o THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 God. Again, the ablest expositor of Browning 
 declares that the poet by implication rejects the 
 view ordinarily held without being examined, 
 that the moral life is preliminar}^ to the joy 
 and rest of religion. The same writer says, 
 echoing his master, that morality is the sphere 
 of discrepancy, and the moral life is a progressive 
 realisation of a good that can never be complete. 
 It would thus seem to be immeasurably different 
 from religion, which must in some way or other 
 find the good to be present, actual, absolute, 
 without shadow of change, or hint of limit and 
 imperfection. It will serve to clearness if we 
 analyse the answer of the deeper sceptical 
 thought of our time to the pretence that right- 
 eousness may come by the law. 
 
 In the first place, the greater modern sceptics 
 have joined with the Christian Church in con- 
 fessing the depravity of human nature. Browning 
 is not to be quoted in this connection, though he 
 was led to Christianity because it " taught original 
 sin, the corruption of man's heart." But he 
 viewed human nature at its worst in the spirit 
 of an apostle. We turn rather to the one writer 
 of great imaginative genius left to us (with the 
 possible exception of Tolstoi) — we mean the 
 
•'CAST YOUR DEADLY DOING DOWN'' i6i 
 
 Norwegian dramatist, Ibsen. All kinds ot" 
 morals have been drawn from Ibsen's plays, 
 and the critics will long be free to pick and 
 choose. But the truer view is that Ibsen does 
 not mean to be a moralist, but only to describe. 
 He insists that his readers should dare to face 
 facts and recognise reality. The business of 
 Ibsen has been to tear off the last mask from the 
 unbearable face of truth. Because he has done 
 so, his writings have been received with howls 
 of execration. He has been charged with only 
 caring to see what is foul, mean, and repulsive. 
 He has suffered from the wrath kindled by the 
 presence of a traitor among the conspirators of 
 silence. Second thoughts have chastened and 
 sobered his severest censors, and they have gone 
 from him with their glib optimism rebuked. Yes, 
 it is true ; evil has penetrated the last recesses 
 of man's life. " Who told thee that thou wast 
 naked ? " This comes from eating of the tree of 
 the knowledge of good and evil. Monstrous as 
 many of its performances have been, we are 
 inclined to think that the realistic school in the 
 closing years of this century has, as a whole, 
 made for righteousness by making for unwelcome 
 truth. It has been possible at various periods to 
 
 L 
 
i62 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 rover up the whole action of society under con- 
 ventional disguises. But, as Mark Rutherford 
 says, behind the walls there were secret passages 
 and staircases by which men gained access to 
 freedom. We repeat that the scepticism of 
 serious men in our day is entirely with the 
 Church in maintaining that evil is the dominant 
 power in human life. The good is overmatched, 
 and therefore at the start the effort to obtain 
 righteousness by the law is doomed to failure. 
 
 But scepticism does not accept the fact in 
 the spirit of Christianity. Renouncing the over- 
 coming hope of Christ, it has to find such anodynes 
 and palliatives as are possible. Perhaps in the 
 best minds the first result is contentment with 
 low ideals of goodness. It soon grows weary of 
 " the strain that bids nor sit nor stand, but go." 
 No one has ever preached more earnestly than 
 W. R. Greg against the base confusion between 
 Paradise and the pig-sty. Few modern writers 
 have got such glimpses of a possible moral glory, 
 and yet this really spiritual writer comes at last 
 to hope that men may attain the measure of the 
 stature of — William and Robert Chambers ! This 
 is a " realisable ideal." The people may become 
 as hardy, enduring, and ambitious as the better 
 
-CAST YOUR DEADLY DOING DOWN" 163 
 
 specimens of the Scotch peasants, and they may 
 value instruction as much. That is the end of 
 all dreams ! To be successful in the ordinary 
 struggle for wealth and responsibility, to be 
 content with an existence which after all is 
 essentially money-making and mundane ! Greg 
 himself, it is just to say, fretted restlessly against 
 such a climax as this. But his reasonable hopes 
 carried him very little further. We are very far 
 from disparaging the virtues of the eminent 
 Edinburgh publishers. But when we yield to 
 these hopes, which ought to be called despairs, 
 are we not back again in the days when David 
 Hume led the world out of the shadow of eternity 
 and showed that it was only an object of the five 
 senses, or of six, if we add hunger ? Are we 
 not back again in the days when, as a writer says, 
 the divine element was explained away and the 
 proper study of mankind was not man, as that 
 age thought, but man reduced to his beggarly 
 elements, a being animated by the sensuous 
 springs of pleasure and pain, who should properly, 
 as Carlyle thought, go on all fours ? The end 
 is that political economy supplants ethics, religion 
 gives way to naturalism, and poetry to prose. 
 Or, as the hero of one of Ibsen's plays concludes : 
 
1 64 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 " The requirements of this life are hopelessly 
 irreconcilable with high faith and lofty principle, 
 and man must choose between being sordidly 
 practical and nobly fanatical." 
 
 Again, the tendency of this scepticism is to 
 despair of moral progress. Those who are 
 affected by it never believe in the good results 
 of missions. They scoff at the thought of sudden 
 moral transformation. They have no expectation 
 of permanently raising the fallen. The picture of 
 human nature given by St. Paul in the beginning 
 of Romans is instructively confirmed by that of 
 Juvenal. But, as has been pointed out, the 
 contrast of their inferences is even more remark- 
 able. It was the same corruption of society that 
 wearied out the Satirist and made the Apostle 
 say, " I must see Rome." He was conscious 
 evermore of possessing the spell that could 
 subdue its worst corruption. 
 
 The lowest deep is the palliation and ultimate 
 denial of sin. When dreams are dust and hope 
 is dead, it seems needless to correct or to restrain 
 animal instincts. The sceptic is brought at last 
 to a confession of ethical agnosticism, and the 
 only sin comes to be the sin of passing a moral 
 judgment. One of the most powerful stories of 
 
-CAST YOUR DEADLY DOING DOWN" 165 
 
 our time is entitled " Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a 
 pure woman faithfully presented." The writer 
 has followed it by another book, in which he 
 seems to echo a saying in Ibsen, " Follow after 
 God or deny Him — either way thy deeds are 
 doomed." The empire of the spirit thus falls a 
 prey to the empire of the flesh. A daring writer 
 of that school says that all morality is relative. 
 Whether a woman is to be chaste or not depends 
 as much upon circumstances as whether she shall 
 call a cab or walk. He goes on to declare that 
 duty is the primal curse, from which we must 
 redeem ourselves before we can advance another 
 step on the road, God, once the most sacred of 
 our conceptions, has been denied ; reason, the 
 infallible Pope, has been defied ; and duty, 
 according to this writer, is not more sacred than 
 God or reason. He is right when he further 
 affirms that the terms of realist morality have not 
 yet appeared in our living language. 
 
 Do the words of the hymn seem quite so 
 strange? Is it not true that "doing is a deadly 
 thing," that " doing ends in death," that righteous- 
 ness cannot come by the law because the law 
 cannot give life, and that those who refuse to 
 seek the life above the law must die ? The true 
 
166 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Standard and unquenchable hope of goodness is 
 in Christ, who died and rose again, and sat 
 down incarnate at the right hand of God. 
 
 We have given one side of the argument 
 against the possibihty of a legal righteousness. 
 Another remains to be dealt with. 
 
IS CHRIST DEAD IN VAIN ? 
 
 T S the death of Christ to be counted for as 
 * little in His life as death is in ours ? He 
 might have died in peace and at a good old age for 
 all that many modern pulpits say. But this was 
 not the fashion of His dying. It was early and 
 cruel and purposed. We have seen week how the 
 New Testament argues against a righteousness 
 by the law on the ground that the law cannot 
 give the strength which is necessary for obe- 
 dience. Terrible is the mountain of Moses, 
 more terrible is the mountain of Christ, with 
 calls and commandments which human nature 
 vainly strives to fulfil. We pointed out the deep 
 consciousness of failure expressed in modern 
 literature, and the analogy which there is between 
 vain efforts to achieve ethical perfection without 
 a new force acting on the life, and the equally 
 vain efforts to acquire by compliance with rule 
 a skill in art which is only possible to those 
 
i68 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 who possess the initial gift. Another line of 
 argument turns on the significance of the death 
 of Christ. That death is the great fact in the 
 history of the world. But if righteousness come 
 by the law, it is inexplicable, useless. Christ is 
 dead in vain. Is there then a constant need in 
 the heart of man, only met by this offering up of 
 the Lord Jesus ? Supposing we could vanquish 
 sin for the future by an immense act of will, can 
 the old tangled skein be disentangled ? The 
 answer is that it cannot. No conviction is 
 burned more deeply into the inner heart of the 
 world than this, that sin is not done with us 
 when we have done with sin. There are men 
 and women by the hundred thousand who would 
 gladly give all they possess if they could but lay 
 their hands upon one hour of madness and pluck 
 it from the past. 
 
 It is often asserted that the sense of sin in 
 our generation is very weak, and in fact almost 
 extinct. That sin itself has been weakened in 
 proportion nobody affirms. In any case God 
 has not left Himself without a witness. If the 
 sense of sin is not strong, the sense of miser}'^ 
 is keener than ever. Surely no age since Christ 
 came has been more sick at heart than ours. 
 
75 CHRIST DEAD IN VAIN? 169 
 
 Amidst the splendours of outward prosperity 
 and the abandonment of faith and responsibihty, 
 gladness has almost died out. Wherever serious 
 joy and peace survive, it is on Christian soil. 
 
 The outstanding facts which forbid the hope 
 of righteousness by the law are those of retri- 
 bution and remorse. Men may sneer at " the 
 great cat Fate and her random selection of 
 victims," but no belief more obstinately persists 
 than the belief in a moral order, in the inevitable 
 punishment of transgression. The moral nature 
 must be satisfied by a moral rule. It is even 
 true to sa^' that in a great degree the consequence 
 of a moral nature is a moral rule. So long as 
 men believe in goodness they will desire to 
 befriend the righteous and to thwart the wicked, 
 and in that fashion to make themselves the in- 
 struments of the divine purpose. Outside of 
 Christianity, and indeed everywhere almost, 
 among all tongues and kindreds, men have 
 declined to rest in the troublous thought that 
 the ungodly are not plagued like other men. 
 A survey of the facts of life has brought them 
 to "absolve the gods." " Who is he," exclaimed 
 the ancients of Thebes — " who is he whom the 
 Delphic rock of prophecy has denounced as the 
 
I70 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 doer of deeds unutterable, the man of the bloody 
 hand ? Time it is that he should flee with foot 
 swifter than the horses of the winds. Already 
 hath the son of Jove taken arms against him. 
 Even hot thunderbolts and the fearful fates follow 
 after, and who shall escape them ? " " And when 
 the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on 
 the hands of Paul, they said among themselves, 
 * No doubt this man is a murderer, whom though 
 he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance stiffereth 
 not to live.'' " This strong belief has continually 
 fortified itself in the face of much that might 
 seem to stagger it. It has led to countless 
 observations like this, that the pen and ink 
 with which Charles signed the death-warrant 
 of Lord Strafford was the very same with 
 which he signed his own, in the Bill for the 
 Long Parliament. Indeed, the general disposition 
 to construe calamities into judgments, however 
 inaccurate in many cases, witnesses to the en- 
 during and ineradicable strength of the convic- 
 tion. 
 
 Even when retribution is delayed there is the 
 fact of remorse. Though the evil deed may not 
 for a time take bodily form and confront the doer 
 of it as a material fact, there is a spiritual cage of 
 
IS CHRIST DEAD IN VAIN ? 171 
 
 unclean birds in which it is ordained the soul 
 should sit. When the feverish happiness and 
 the stark insensibility have had their time, the 
 accretions of habit and custom fall away, the 
 disguising veils are rent, and that image of the 
 Son, to which we were to be conformed, gazes 
 on us accusingly. The fact of remorse is written 
 broadly, profoundly, over the whole face of 
 modern unbelieving literature. " I had nothing 
 of the nature of conscience till then, and therefore 
 I could feel no remorse, and now this is the truth 
 of the whole matter, I am a perpetual prey to 
 remorse. I cannot get that wretched Evelyn out 
 of my head. A wrong done lasts for ever. I 
 never realised that before as I do now. That 
 horrible cry of hers lingers in my ears, and her 
 white face." 
 
 And although remorse may be deferred for a 
 period, deterioration begins the instant after sin. 
 There may be a dreadful complacency and content 
 as friendship becomes mercenary and home squalid, 
 and love animal and everything sinks down out 
 of its nobleness. The perception may seem 
 hopelessly blunted, and the soul may take to 
 all sensual delight, saying not, " Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die," but " Let us eat 
 
172 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 and drink, for to-day we are dead." But sooner 
 or later the revealing hour arrives. We come to 
 know as in a flash the depths of the abyss we 
 have descended. And at last the tongues of fire 
 clasp the heart. 
 
 Where is the escape from this ? Is it not 
 matter of sober fact that only the religion of 
 Jesus has sought to answer this question, that 
 Christianity alone of all religions has fairly 
 measured itself with retribution and remorse ? 
 The tendency, increasing in later years, is to 
 look to the " mild gate of death," not very far 
 away from any, and indeed within a step of all. 
 Those on whom the unbearable misery of the 
 world lies heavily, glorify death as the great 
 peacemaker, the friend to be counted on who 
 never fails any one. And they try to believe 
 that in death is the final and complete payment 
 of the wages of sin. But something protests 
 against this. The obstinate will to live keeps 
 many, who are indeed most wretched, from 
 suicide. For what if death does not end all ? 
 What if, with terror-stricken hearts, sinners may 
 meet on the other side the old humanity which 
 death could not kill and take up for ever the 
 old battle and burden-bearing, which it would 
 
IS CHRIST DEAD IN VAIN? 173 
 
 seem as if no man could escape so long as he 
 is man ? An age like ours, which can believe 
 that there are malicious and cruel powers above 
 us, cannot find it so very difficult to believe that 
 these powers may bring us through death and 
 still torment us on its other side. It was said 
 long ago by a very acute critic — and we incline 
 to think it is true — that Bishop Butler in his 
 "Analogy" did not need to assume a belief in 
 the being of God. The real necessary starting- 
 point is in the facts of experience. Whether or 
 not there is one great personal first Cause, such 
 and such is the consequence of things in the 
 world of experience, and therefore it may well 
 be similar to this in the next world. Such and 
 such are the relations to one another of the 
 successive stages of life here, and therefore 
 there may well be similar relations between 
 this life and that to come — such and such is 
 the weakness of the presumption that death is 
 the cessation of existence, therefore the ground 
 is clear for the direct proofs that we shall live 
 hereafter. 
 
 But Christianity tells us that Christ has died 
 to take away our sins, and it speaks first to 
 our sense of remorse. It brings to us a sense 
 
174 THE RETURN JO THE CROSS 
 
 of pardon. Is it the experience of our readers 
 that they hear much of this in the preaching of 
 to-day ? If not, practically the whole content 
 of the Christian Gospel has been omitted. Our 
 sins are forgiven us for His name's sake. We 
 who have believed do enter into rest. The past 
 has been blotted from the memory of God, and 
 the soul is at home in the bosom of atoning love. 
 That is the primal fact. The New Testament 
 does not say much, though it says more than 
 might be supposed, of absolution from earthly 
 penalty. It does not define what God can or 
 will do among the shackling chains of inevitable 
 cause and effect. But even if the consequences 
 are unaltered, they are endured in a new atmo- 
 sphere of love which allays and soothes their pain, 
 and the suffering is not judicial punishment, 
 neither is it the uncontrollable working out of 
 forces set in motion by sin. It is under the 
 measure and administration of God the Father. 
 Believing, we pass from the world of fixity into 
 the world of life. Other lords, the forces of 
 law, stern, absolute, merciless, have had dominion 
 over us, now the Son has made us free indeed. 
 The adamantine chain has been broken in the 
 liberty of redemption, and we have entered into 
 
IS CHRIST DEAD IN VAIN ? 175 
 
 the freedom of Christ's hfc and work and death. 
 Protestant theology is as yet far behind Roman 
 Catholic theology in its handling of the great 
 doctrines of Solidarity, Reversibility, and Expia- 
 tion. But it is much, very much, to enter into 
 the joyful consciousness of reconciliation, and to 
 understand that nothing more can happen to us 
 that does not come in love and blessing, and that 
 the long agony between sin and grace will end 
 at last in the perfect and everlasting triumph of 
 love. 
 
 It follows that the doctrine of the Atonement 
 must not be discussed in vacuo. It cannot be 
 argued out like a mathematical proposition to the 
 satisfaction of those who do not need it. It is 
 understood where it is needed, and only there. To 
 know it, we must first grapple in earnest with the 
 immense terror of eternal ruin. The spirit, if the 
 expression maybe allowed, must be flayed, and thus 
 offer a surface quick to the lightest touch. Then 
 the great message of the Gospel is comprehended 
 in its everlasting fulness and simplicity. It needs 
 no commendation, no explaining. It meets the 
 whole wants of the guilty. The offering of the 
 Lord Jesus will be comprehended by the saints 
 more fully as the years advance. Since the awful 
 
176 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 day on which He died, it has opened before each 
 generation new abysses of significance. It has 
 manifested more and more wondrously the ex- 
 ceeding riches of God's grace. 
 
 And it meets a constant need, a need which 
 has no other answer, to which no other answer is 
 even attempted. If preachers are taking in these 
 times to a subHmated system of Christian ethics, 
 if they have practically discarded the whole 
 Christian revelation except the Sermon on the 
 Mount, the Church may still live, for there is 
 such virtue in Christ that even to touch the hem 
 of His garment is to be healed. But the life will 
 be languid and low. And wherever the Atone- 
 ment is not declared as the central glory and 
 gladness of the Christian faith, it will haunt the 
 background as a thing of fear, for St. Paul's 
 judgment cannot be disputed ; if righteousness 
 come by the law then Christ died in vain ; the 
 death which is the hope and peace of the world 
 takes rank as its worst horror and tragedy. 
 Righteousness comes through faith in His blood, 
 and the Church will recover her old hope and 
 confidence when she again strikes the deep organ 
 note of the hymn : 
 
IS CHRIST DEAD IN VAIN ? 177 
 
 " Thou standest in the holiest place, 
 As now for guilty sinners slain ; 
 Thy blood of sprinkling speaks and prays, 
 All prevalent for helpless man ; 
 
 Thy blood is still the ransom found, 
 
 And spreads salvation all around. 
 
 " God still respects Thy sacrifice, 
 
 Its savour sweet does always please ; 
 
 The offering smokes through earth and skies. 
 
 Diffusing life and joy and peace, 
 
 To these Thy lower courts it comes. 
 And fills them with divine perfumes. 
 
 " We need not now go up to heaven 
 To bring the long-sought Saviour down. 
 Thou art to all that seek Thee given. 
 Thou dost e'en now Thy banquet crown. 
 To every faithful soul appear. 
 And show Thy real presence here." 
 
 M 
 
"BEING LET GO" 
 
 I "ME liberations of life are its crises. Some 
 ■'■ of them are as the opening of doors at 
 which we have long beaten vainly, while others 
 are accomplished with all the agony of sacrifice. 
 But whether welcome or unwelcome, whether the 
 crown of ambitions long and ardently cherished 
 or the fulfilment of silent fears, they bring to 
 every one, save the most thoughtless, a certain 
 sobriety and seriousness. We feel that now we 
 have fallen under a new order of influences, and 
 that this may be followed by momentous catas- 
 trophes of character. Even if the first shock of 
 change is borne well, the slow, silent attrition of 
 time may work to a fatal end. So often a medi- 
 tative heart, entering into the full fruition of 
 desire, misses the expected happiness, seems to 
 stand in a desolate dream, knows for the first 
 time the real severity and trial of life. 
 
 It happens to some that their work in life has 
 
i8o THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 to be changed. They have given themselves to 
 some profession in preparation for which years 
 have been spent — in the work of which an appre- 
 ciable part of life has gone b3\ Through the 
 pressure of circumstances they are forced or 
 called out of the familiar way. It is best to be 
 compelled to yield. When the decision is taken 
 out of our hands, the conflicts and regrets which 
 often try the spirit long and hardly, become 
 impossible. When the way is not clear, it is best 
 to abide in our lot to the end of the days. Beware 
 of resignatiojis, was the wise counsel of an 
 experienced man. Yet to change may sometimes 
 be the path of duty, although no outward con- 
 straint is laid upon us. In the service of Christ 
 there is perhaps no distinction of high and low. 
 There is a deep truth in Emerson's saying that 
 every man is called to do somewhat unique, and 
 no man has any other call. But the forsaking 
 the work, the friends, the surroundings that have 
 become accustomed and easy, is a great crisis. 
 When the soul has to quit its whole system of 
 things, there is, there must be, peril. " Being let 
 go." Where shall we go ? To our own company. 
 What is our own company ? Those we took 
 sweet counsel with, and with whom we walked to 
 
"BEING LET GO" ' i8i 
 
 the house of God ? In the new world we are 
 entering the questions that once absorbed us 
 may sink into insignificance. We may be sur- 
 rounded by associates with other ambitions, other 
 standards. Above all, it may cease to be our 
 interest to fight for the causes once passionately 
 espoused. Will a new set of principles corre- 
 sponding to the new interests gradually replace 
 the old ? Will it turn out that our service was 
 no abiding devotion of the spirit ? Is the future 
 to be in disharmony with the past ? 
 
 Another liberation which is a crisis comes when 
 we are entering on easier circumstances. Poverty 
 narrows life, but in some ways it makes it easier 
 — less tempted, less entangled. It is the will of 
 God that many should be " straitened " all their 
 days, as Our Lord was " straitened." The image 
 is that of one walking on a narrow road between 
 two walls. He cannot deviate from the path ; 
 his easiest way is straight forward. We chafe at 
 this, and yet the restraint may be our salvation. 
 Nothing in human life impressed Our Lord so 
 deeply as the alienating effects of wealth. There 
 is the overpowering temptation to pride — a 
 temptation fatal to all save very high and simple 
 natures. There is the temptation to forsake old 
 
1 82 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 principles — a temptation which works with 
 wonderful subtlety. A man finds that the con- 
 victions of his youth put a barrier between him 
 and those on whose level he suddenly finds him- 
 self. He reasons that if he only were concerned 
 he could bear it, but he cannot accept exclusion 
 for his children. And, as Mr. Brierley recently 
 pointed out in a striking essay, the possession of 
 wealth brings other temptations, so that the 
 "dangerous years" are rather in mid-life than in 
 youth. In youth most people are held by poverty 
 in plain, industrious, self-denying paths. When 
 their ambition is achieved, and things grow 
 easier, they find that the once impossible has 
 become possible ; and when the old practice of 
 unsparing industry has been relaxed, and idle 
 hours occur for the first time in the life, there is 
 peril. So much is this true that wise and generous 
 souls impose upon themselves in the hour of 
 prosperity a noble asceticism. 
 
 We have to encounter also, as the years 
 advance, the loss of those friends whom we cared 
 to please, whose lives were a strong, silent 
 pressure towards God and goodness. The chill 
 of autumn begins to fall over us. When this is 
 realised, when the strain of existence has to be 
 
"BEING LET GO" 183 
 
 borne alone, when year by year we sit in a longer 
 gallery of our dead, the heart is filled with silent 
 forebodings, with the terror of the future. There 
 are none remaining to feed the fires of purity, 
 and they must die. Those to whom we were 
 bound by sweet and reverent affection have 
 become silent, and there are none to stir the 
 flagging powers of the spirit. We have been 
 " let go " of the hands that detained us before the 
 Lord, and what is to be the end ? 
 
 Again, the widening of opinion is a thing which 
 brings its own dangers. The children do not 
 believe in all things what their fathers believed. 
 It is not wise to desire that they should ; it is 
 better to trust bravely the increasing purpose and 
 the widening light. But too often, when one 
 article of the creed is abandoned, the whole is 
 left behind. And there are many who make it 
 their business to show that it should be so. 
 Admit, they say, one ray of light from science 
 and criticism, and you must cease to believe in 
 God. We are to take no heed of such voices, 
 from whatever quarter they come. They are the 
 utterances of faithlessness and despair. The 
 changes of the new knowledge have to be borne. 
 More than that, they have to be welcomed, for in 
 
i84 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 the end they will bring us good, and only good. 
 But if a wider creed means a relaxed life, there 
 has been no gain, but loss. We would not forget 
 that the new light is a test of fidelity, and that in 
 every fresh truth Christ draws near, claiming 
 that we must not love father and mother more 
 than Him. The peculiar temptation of these 
 times, however, is perhaps not that. It is rather 
 the temptation to relax hold of every Christian 
 truth when one assumes a different aspect. 
 
 It would be easy to add to this list, and most 
 people may do it from their own experience. It 
 will be more profitable to ask what we are to do 
 as the irreversible current flows on. Is the issue 
 to be lowered temper, fading purity, secular 
 thought and toil ? When we lose the precarious 
 secondary support, are we to lose with it also 
 that which is primary and unfailing ? Or, as the 
 temporal and outward vanishes, are we to find 
 ourselves armed with secret forces ? Gone forth 
 of human sympathy are we to find the divine ? 
 Does the spiritual life retire to its last retreats to 
 die, or is it, mayhap, to fall into the arms of the 
 eternal love ? Surely the answer of the Scripture 
 and the experience of the saints are not doubtful. 
 
••BEING LET GO" 185 
 
 Burdened, lonely, estranged, we shall still find it 
 gain and not loss if we receive succour from the 
 forces that wait to be gracious, " Being let go," 
 it will not be possible for us to over-estimate our 
 own strength, but our very weakness is an appeal 
 to the divine pity. Our hope, our only hope from 
 first to last, is in the retentiveness of the divine 
 love — in Christ's resolute hold. " We will come 
 unto Him and make our abode with Him," is a 
 promise great enough to meet the last extremity 
 of our need, to encounter the most formidable 
 enmity of circumstances. Our Lord has not for- 
 gotten how, as He moved towards the father, 
 He had at last to leave behind Him all human 
 companionship. "Sit ye here while I go and 
 pray yonder." It miy come to each of us to have 
 at last to " pray yonder." And that is the ulti- 
 mate experience of life. Thence we may come 
 back to the world and to our task assured that 
 we are safe, knowing that it is towards Christ 
 that our deepest thought and will and love have 
 been tending all the while, flagging under no 
 duty, simple and quiel in every labour, casting 
 no shadow over the brightness of others. If the 
 comfort of the Scriptures becomes to us thus 
 
i86 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 what it would be if faith were sight, if we win 
 the costly knowledge that spiritual support and 
 providential guidance are the abiding realities, we 
 may be of good cheer. For then we have over- 
 come the world. 
 
"THEY WITHOUT US" 
 
 " T^HEY without us" and with God— how do 
 * they regard us now ? We know what Hfe 
 is to us without them. But to-night, as they 
 sing their Evensong at the foot of the Eternal 
 Throne, are they touched by the sense of our 
 necessities and longings on earth ? How do 
 those who have crossed the sea of life look on 
 their old companions who are still tossing on its 
 stormy tide ? 
 
 For answer let us remember how Christ 
 behaved Himself when He was about to pass 
 into the higher lands of God. He knew what 
 awaited Him in the other world. The splendour 
 and the peace of eternal life had been His 
 before the world began. Did He then carry 
 Himself as One indifferent to those He was 
 leaving, as One who was to forget them and 
 content Himself in a higher fellowship ? Behold, 
 how He loved them 1 As He gazed out into the 
 
i88 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 glory of the Father, His thought was still for 
 them. Beneath the magic significant night, silent 
 with excess of meaning, He said, ** In my Father's 
 house are many mansions ; I go to prepare a 
 place for you." He asked to be remembered, 
 and He promised to return : " This do in remem- 
 brance of me. ... Ye do show the Lord's 
 death till He come." If Christ on the steps of 
 the throne dearly prized the remembrance of 
 those He left behind, if Christ's concern with the 
 world did not end with His dying, did not end 
 even with His ascension, surely the same is true 
 of those who had no life before this, to whom 
 heaven was a strange place, who bore into it no 
 loves except those which began on earth. 
 
 Phillips Brooks has said that the haunting fear 
 of the disciples during the days of our Lord's 
 flesh must have been that He would leave them. 
 Two friends begin life together. They sit side 
 by side at the village school, on the college bench, 
 and in due time they go out into the world. A 
 few years, and one has greatly distanced the 
 other. He has shown more various powers, 
 greater energy, quicker apprehension. His mind 
 has become familiar with the regions of which his 
 old companion knows nothing. The ancient 
 
"THEY WITHOUT US" 189 
 
 friendship may be kept up, but an element of 
 pain has entered it. One feels that his friend 
 has passed into other experiences, has gone 
 whither he cannot come. In other words, his 
 friend has left him in the spirit, if not outwardly. 
 Of two comrades, one discovers the glory ot 
 Christ, the other remains in blindness, and the 
 two spirits cannot again enter into free and rich 
 communion. Christ, as the disciples saw, was 
 rising higher. The interval between Him and 
 them seemed to widen. Near as He might be, 
 there was an infinite separateness which fell ever 
 and anon on all their relations. There was a 
 fear which He was at last to confirm, that He 
 would depart from this mortal life, and that His 
 visible presence would vanish from their eyes. 
 The last distress was but the culmination of 
 many misgivings that had gone before it. The 
 disciples kept thinking that the}' were not love- 
 worthy, that Christ, who knew them, who was so 
 far above them, could not be touched by an}' 
 abiding affection for men so ignorant, so sinful, 
 so weak as they. 
 
 This was because they did not understand the 
 meaning of love. A thoughtful writer has said 
 that one of the last lessons life teaches is the 
 
igo THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 difference between love and admiration. At first 
 we believe that they are the same, and think that 
 we prize love when we are really exulting in 
 admiration. But heaven is the world of love, not 
 the world of admiration. The disciples rejoiced 
 when men admired them, when the spirits were 
 subject unto them. At the outset of His work, 
 Jesus Himself was tempted to accept admiration 
 at the cost of love. He rejected it, and had to 
 make the most of such love as was given Him, 
 for of admiration He had very little from His 
 puzzled and stammering followers. Indeed, as 
 the same writer remarks, love is hard to express ; 
 one must master half a dozen languages besides 
 that of the tongue before he can render it. Ad- 
 miration is a pungent, concentrated, unmistakable 
 thing, and men drink it in as the elixir of life. 
 Doubtless, when admiration is sincere, it elevates 
 those who give it, and it may greatly help and 
 quicken those who receive it. It is the starved 
 heart that does not know what it is generously to 
 admire. Multitudes of men and women would 
 have acquitted themselves more worthily if they 
 had received at the right time the encouragement 
 they had earned. Still, admiration will not com- 
 pare with love. Admiration at the best takes 
 
"THEY WITHOUT US" 191 
 
 hold of something which is not the essence of the 
 soul. Admiration is based too often on the power 
 to do brilliant things. Admiration may have even 
 a lower foundation than that ; it may rise or fall 
 with the appreciation of the world. So long as a 
 man succeeds, it follows him. Whenever he 
 appears to fail, even though the apparent failure 
 may be an actual triumph, it turns away in dis- 
 appointment. Love does not depend on anything 
 external ; love does not ask the opinion of others ; 
 love lays hold of the heart and clings to it. It 
 attaches itself to what endures, rejoices, not that 
 the spirits are subject to the dear ones, but rather 
 is glad because their names are written in heaven. 
 " Love beareth all things, believeth all things, 
 hopeth all things, endureth all things." Love can 
 survive straining and bruising; admiration is 
 brittle. Admiration replaces one ideal very easily 
 by another. Love cannot forget. It holds the 
 door open for new-comers, but it lets no guest 
 pass out. Admiration is the spectator that turns 
 away when its eyes are feasted. Love is the 
 communicant at the table of a perpetual sacra- 
 ment. 
 
 Now the misgiving of the disciples was due in 
 part at least to this confusion between admiration 
 
192 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 and love. Very likely when Jesus chose them, 
 they imagined that He saw something in them 
 the world had missed, that He admired some gift 
 of force, or eloquence, or courage, or wisdom. 
 As the parting hour drew near, this illusion 
 wholly vanished. They saw that He was in- 
 finitely above them. The one possible consola- 
 tion was that He loved them, that He would not 
 cease, that He could not cease, loving them 
 wherever He went. The whole burden of His 
 sacred farewell was an assurance of this. He 
 expounded to them the deep mystery of love, 
 constant for evermore. He told them that true 
 love was union, that by union His people 
 were part of Himself, that seeing they were 
 knit to Him they must follow Him wherever He 
 went. He was to rise higher, but He rose to 
 raise them. The forces of His heavenly power 
 were to be spent for this, and He could not see 
 of the travail of His soul and be satisfied till the 
 Church was with Him in glory. So we know 
 that the last, the least, the weakest, is awaited at 
 the fountains of life. 
 
 Now we can answer our question, and silence 
 our misgiving. "They without us shall not be 
 made perfect"; "they without us" could not, if 
 
"THEY WITHOUT US" 193 
 
 we might dare to say it, be made perfect even by 
 the love of God. The perfection of the blessed 
 dead cannot be achieved till the living they wait 
 for come. We feel that we are not worthy now 
 to loose their shoe-latchet, or to touch their gar- 
 ments' hem ; but since love is love, that must not 
 trouble us. While they complete themselves in 
 regions beyond our view, we are to remember 
 them, to look for them, to prepare for them. We 
 must try to keep the straight path, so far as we 
 can see it, to seek that we may reach the spirit- 
 land unsoiled and noble. They remember us, 
 they wait for us, they will welcome us. They 
 are saying, if we had ears to hear, ** Dearly be- 
 loved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand 
 fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved." 
 
THE WEIGHT OF THE ENDS OF THE 
 WORLD 
 
 A A yRITING to the Corinthians, St. Paul 
 ^ ^ recalls the experiences of the fathers, 
 and tells us that these things were written for 
 our admonition upon whom the ends of the 
 world are come. Writing to the Romans, he 
 says more fully, " Whatsoever things were 
 written aforetime were written for our learning, 
 that we, through patience and comfort of the 
 Scriptures, might have hope." We are con- 
 scious, as the first believers were, of the weight 
 of the ends of the world. The century draws to 
 its close, and men are oppressed by an unwonted 
 burden. The buoyant enthusiasm of the years 
 not very far distant, when it seemed as if the 
 kingdoms of the world were to go under and 
 become the one kingdom of the Lamb, has passed 
 away. Apathy is the order of things in ever}- 
 
igG THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 sphere. Enthusiasms fail and flag, and even the 
 faithful question why so little has come of 
 schemes into which much heart has been thrown, 
 and for which great sacrifices have been made. 
 Of course there is true gain, though little plea- 
 sure, in getting rid of the false enthusiasms and 
 misleading hallucinations of youth. But to have 
 passed through vast tracts of thought and feeling 
 and effort, and to realise at the end of them that 
 the current is against us, to feel in its terrible 
 force the temptation to give all up, to drift with 
 the tide of opinion, and to end as the champions 
 and apologists of what our best years were spent 
 in rebuking and withstanding — this indeed is 
 bitter. Ours is, books like Max Nordau's tell us, 
 a time of feverish restlessness and blunted dis- 
 couragement. Nordau describes very well the 
 Jin de Steele sentiment as a practical emancipation 
 from traditional disciplines which theoretically 
 are still in force. It seems as if the higher 
 aspirations of life were stinted and cramped, as if 
 cold water were thrown upon noble and burning- 
 impulses, as if the wisdom of years were won 
 only to mislead and chill, as if high and severe 
 views of duty were but morbid states of con- 
 science, in due time to be outlived. 
 
WEIGHT OF THE ENDS OF THE WORLD 197 
 
 Nordau says, truly enough, that it is ridicu- 
 lous to attach importance to the end of a centur}- 
 in itself. A century is not a living being, born 
 like a beast or a man, passing through all the 
 stages of existence, gradually ageing and declining 
 after blooming childhood, joyous youth, and 
 vigorous maturity, to die with the expiration of 
 the hundredth year, after being afflicted in its last 
 decade with all the infirmities of mournful senility. 
 As he reminds us, the division of time is not 
 identical among civilised beings. The Moham- 
 medans are reckoning their fourteenth century, 
 and the Jews their fifteenth century, while every 
 day a hundred and thirty thousand human beings 
 are born for whom the world begins with that 
 same day. Still, he is wrong, perhaps, in saying 
 that they?;/ dc siecle tendency rises from the habit 
 of the human mind to project externally its own 
 subjective states. There is more than this. At 
 certain periods we strike a balance ; we are con- 
 scious of a transition ; we reckon our gains and 
 losses, and it is but too likely that the results 
 may disappoint us even before we have settled 
 accounts. There are forebodings that make the 
 heart sink and unnerve the hand. The harvest falls 
 far short of our hopes, and we cannot summon any 
 
igS THE RETUEN TO THE CROSS 
 
 true confidence about the future before us. The 
 earl}' Christians had something of the same feel- 
 ing. As the years wore on they, too, felt as if 
 every tradition were rending, and as if to-morrow 
 would not link itself with to-day. In other 
 words, it is to the fui dc sicclc feeling that St. 
 Paul addresses himself. 
 
 In such a world, and at such an hour, the 
 Apostle tells us, we are left with the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
 He reminds us, indeed, of the necessity and 
 the majesty of patience. Those to whom he 
 spoke, as he speaks to us, had seen much of life's 
 actual weariness, pettiness, failures, insignifi- 
 cance, but they had seen also, else they were 
 sadly blind, something of its wonders, its sur- 
 prises, its victories. Even a secular wisdom has 
 warned us against a too easy despair. Even 
 folly, as in the German song, has the same lesson. 
 
 " It will go better yet — it will go better yet ! 
 The world it is round, and will roll if 'tis let ! 
 'Tis the word of a fool ! but the word it is true ; 
 And if you be wise, you will think so too. 
 It will go better yet — it will go better yet ! 
 The world it is round, and will roll if 'tis let ! 
 
 This sighing, and moaning, and raging, and raving 
 But adds pain to pain, and new griefs to your grieving. 
 
WEIGHT OF THE ENDS OF THE WORLD 199 
 
 Oh ! shake not and shrink not in ill — look above ! 
 Time chan,s;e=; and changes wherever yon rove. 
 
 It will go better yet — it will go better \-et ! 
 The world it is round, and will roll if 'tis let I 
 It will go better yet — it will go better yet ! 
 The world it is round, and will roll if 'tis let ! 
 'Tis the word of a fool ! but the word it is true ; 
 A III if you be ivise.yoii ivill tlunk so too." 
 
 Time, in the poet's words, brings roses, and the 
 loveliest of them all is the white rose of death. 
 But our true, abiding rest, our unfailing comfort, 
 is to be found in the sacred Scriptures. Open 
 them, and if we will we ma}' escape from the 
 currents and waves of the atmosphere around us, 
 and be plunged in the profoundest sense of the 
 presence of God. 
 
 We take the word in the larger sense, and 
 include the full revelation of Christ. There is a 
 tendency to talk as if critical research had some- 
 how made the Bible less necessary, less final than 
 it was wont to be. We venture to say that as 
 time goes on it will be more and more clearly seen 
 that the Bible is the one essential book. Ewald, 
 in that characterisation of the Bible in which he 
 seems to have ultimately rested, says that the 
 Bible, and the Bible alone, is the mirror in which 
 we can read of the conditions and stages of the 
 
200 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 perfect, true religion which is necessary for all 
 future generations of men. Robertson Smith, 
 another believing critic, says that it is from the 
 Bible only that we learn how the one purpose of 
 history is the purpose of everlasting love worked 
 out in and through human personalit}' by a 
 personal redeeming God. Not only so. What- 
 ever religious thought has done, there is one 
 thing for which, after trial enough, it has proved 
 incompetent ; it has not added a sentence to the 
 New Testament. That closes where it closed at 
 first. 
 
 We commence then b}^ saying that always 
 the true beginning of the higher life and its 
 divine support are to be found in the word of 
 God, and there alone. As Our Lord has told 
 us, the seed is the Word of God. The Word of 
 God reveals the thought of God about Himself 
 and His purpose for the race. B}^ the Word of 
 the Lord were the heavens made, and by the 
 same Word is the divine life in man created, 
 nourished, and defended. Though every other 
 religious book disappeared from the face of the 
 earth, though the thoughts, the prayers, the 
 communion, the triumph, and the tears of the 
 saints were lost to us, we should still have 
 
WEIGHT OF THE ENDS OF THE WORLD 201 
 
 everything necessar3' for the maintenance and 
 enrichment of the divine society if the Bible 
 were left to us. With it alone the Church 
 would know all that it knows to-day, or rather, 
 we should say, would have in possession all 
 true knowledge, however much or little of it 
 had been grasped. This truth bears signifi- 
 cantly on many present tendencies. Even 
 believing preachers often try to gather the 
 people with words of man. They survey the 
 careers of heroes and saints, the}^ discuss poli- 
 tical and social problems of the time, and in 
 various ways attempt to interest and impress 
 their audiences. But unless the preacher in- 
 terests people in what God has said, he has 
 done nothing. Unless he impresses his hearers 
 by what God has said, he has not begun his 
 work. Though he were to attract a multitude, 
 and move them by the contagious influence of 
 his own earnestness, he w'ould have made no 
 advance towards the beginning of the Christian 
 life. Only when he is able to tell men what 
 God has said, does he begin to sow the true 
 seed. If he sows the Word of God, he will 
 never be unhopeful, he will be in the large 
 world of comfort, and peace, and strength 
 
202 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 which God Himself inhabits, and the pheno- 
 mena of the hour will be seen in their true 
 transiency. "The grass withereth, the flower 
 thereof fadeth away, but the Word of the Lord 
 endureth for ever." And this is the Word which 
 by the Gospel is preached unto men. . 
 
 Let us try to put the same truth in another 
 form. We have tried, many of us, by strenuous 
 effort and discipline to find God. It seemed to 
 us as if God were distant, and as if by our 
 own painful searchings and journeyings we might 
 find Him. But it is He who calls for us, who 
 speaks in the righteousness and pity of His holy 
 Word, ere ever we call for Him. The divine life, 
 it has been said nobly, begins when 2vc answer 
 the cry of God, not when God answers ours. 
 When He speaks to us, we are past the doubtings 
 and the perplexities which break and crush the 
 heart. We know. We rest in the work that 
 was finished by the dying Christ, we rely on 
 the will, and the thought, and the love of the 
 Eternal. Our life flourishes, for it has for its 
 deep root no conclusion of the human intellect, 
 no resolution of the human will, but the truth 
 and will of God. 
 
 Once more, we exaggerate our petty share in 
 
WEIGHT OF THE ENDS OF THE WORLD 203 
 
 the divine work of redemption. We think that 
 the Church would stand still if our task was not 
 performed rightly. We groan and fret as if the 
 whole burden of the future course of God's cause 
 among men rested on our bowed shoulders. But 
 it is He who has in charge the world which He 
 loved so well that He gave His Son to die for it, 
 and the Church which He purchased with His 
 own blood. The new life that is in the world 
 has its origin above the sphere of history. The 
 prophetic teaching, as Robertson Smith says, 
 proved by its operation on history to be what it 
 professed to be — no mere natural efflux of the 
 past history and past development of the people, 
 but a new and living power, the utterance of a new 
 life, which because it is a new life could spring 
 only from the infinite source of all life. When He 
 to whom all prophecy points appeared in the 
 fulness of time, the saving self-manifestation of 
 God was completed. Thus we know that though 
 the divine work of redemption has not been a 
 steady advance, though the course of the Christian 
 Church has not been always upwards and on- 
 wards, but sometimes downwards and backwards, 
 yet there has been no interregnum. There is no 
 interregnum now. The Lord reigneth. We are 
 
204 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 to do our utmost, and 3'et to be sure that though 
 we are needed b}' God, we are not necessary to 
 God ; God wants us, but God can do without us. 
 Our work is to be done with a peaceful and high 
 heart. If we keep ourselves to the Word of God, 
 we shall in time have imparted to us something 
 of its divine serenity. Why should we not rise 
 to the calmness of an Apostle's thought ? We 
 talk of the trend of things, of the irresistible drift 
 of opinion, where St. Paul would have quietly 
 spoken of the " spirit that now worketh in the chil- 
 dren of disobedience." About the great future we 
 may be confident, even though the little future is 
 dark to us,and even though attempts to penetrate it 
 may seem like straining the eyes at nightfall over 
 the edge of a precipice. 
 
THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 A NOTEWORTHY article was published 
 -'*■ lately by Mr. James Payn. The key- 
 note is struck in the first sentence : " It is a 
 strange feeling to one who has been immersed in 
 affairs, and as it w^ere in the mid-stream of what 
 we call life, to find oneself in its backwater, 
 crippled and helpless, but still able to see through 
 the osiers on the island between us what is pass- 
 ing along the river, the passenger vessels, and 
 the pleasure boats, and to hear faintly the voices, 
 and the laughter, and the strong language 
 mellowed by distance from the slow-moving 
 barges." He goes on to speak of the bitter sense 
 of humiliation which comes from being reduced 
 to dependence upon others. True, one is made 
 to know the immeasurable goodness of humanity, 
 but those in the backwater have no means of 
 showing the gratitude with which they arc filled. 
 
2o6 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 They think — and this seems to be the special 
 pang — of the blessedness of the past, when they 
 were too happy to be aware of their happiness. 
 The delights of love and labour are forbidden 
 them, and dead, unhappy nights usher in weary 
 days all empty of delight. " ' Oh, Lord, how 
 long ? ' is then our bitter cry." The paper closes 
 with the words : " One of the saddest conditions 
 to which the human mind can be reduced, not 
 from faith, but from pain and weariness, is no 
 longer to fear the shadow feared of man." This 
 cry of unfeigned anguish will arrest attention, 
 and will especially move those whom for many 
 years Mr. Payn has charmed by his wisdom, his 
 kindliness, and his wit. There is nothing weak 
 in his complaint ; it is a sad, hopeless, magnani- 
 mous confession that he has made to the world. 
 He has never been effusive, never wont to break 
 wantonly the silence that should shroud the 
 heart. With all his frankness, he has habitually 
 maintained the scrupulous and delicate seclusion 
 of self-respecting men. We have always known 
 him to be full of emotion, his vivacity has never 
 been hard, and his wit has never been merciless. 
 Sometimes, but very rarely, he has shown us 
 glimpses of his deeper nature, as in the pathetic 
 
THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 207 
 
 lines where he questions how long that pause of 
 niournfulest silence, which comes when the 
 doors have closed behind us, will last. But as a 
 rule, he has posed as a gay and cheerful stoic, 
 and it must be owned that the rags of stoicism, 
 threadbare though they be, have covered truly 
 noble natures in these days, as in the time of the 
 Antonines. But here his stoicism breaks down 
 hopelessly before the facts of life. 
 
 Mr. Payn's complaint of life's close chimes in 
 with a prevailing feeling. It would not be too 
 much to say that sententious wisdom and sen- 
 timental poetry combine in disparaging the final 
 years. " That powerful distemper old age," as 
 Montaigne has it, is universally looked upon as 
 at best bringing us to flat and dull experiences, 
 a period of disappointment, failure, and flagging- 
 life, full of losses that find no compensation. It 
 is useless to say in reply that the passing of 
 youthful ardour is made up for by experience, 
 by liberty, by the influence which years bring. 
 Especially is it useless when youth has been 
 brilliant and glorified. Nothing then seems to 
 atone for the flight of the passionate and exciting- 
 years. Nowadays, when the tendency is so 
 decidedly towards the enriching of early fife, it is 
 
2o8 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 inevitable that the later period should seem to many 
 poor in comparison. Readers of Horace Walpole 
 will remember his lugubrious forebodings when 
 he was only between forty and fifty. He wrote : 
 " Do not think it is pain that makes me give this 
 low-spirited air to my letter. No ! it is the pros- 
 pect of what is to come, and the sensation of 
 what is passing, that affects me. The loss of 
 youth is melancholy enough, but to enter into old 
 age through the gate of infirmity is most dis- 
 heartening." At sixty-six he described himself 
 as a ruin, and the gloom steadily advanced for 
 the fourteen years more left to him. We con- 
 stantly hear the fret and moan of dissatisfaction 
 that youth has gone. The observed of all 
 observers may even come to shrink with shame 
 from the notice they once courted. 
 
 " Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen ? 
 For only once in the village street, 
 Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face, 
 A grey old wolf and lean." 
 
 We bethink ourselves with a thrill of wonder 
 that Mr. Payn's " backwater of life " is John 
 Bunyan's land of Beulah. It is there, when 
 mortal strength is spent and the earthly life 
 almost run out, that the pilgrims " have more 
 
THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 209 
 
 rejoicing than in parts more remote from the 
 kingdom to which they are bound." The dreamer 
 is very bold. For Christians themselves it is 
 hard to believe that the days before death may 
 be the radiant crown of earthly existence, filled 
 with the triumph and the peace of heaven. This 
 is the ultimate glory of Christian experience, and 
 it rests daily on lives where the powers of the 
 world to come visibly counteract and reverse the 
 forces of time and nature. Is it so, that as life 
 lingers out to its last moment amid the wreck of 
 all things, as the air echoes dully with the sound 
 of lamentation, as death after death falls heavily 
 on the heart, a new lustre may fall on the fading 
 years ? Is it so, that the dry rod may bud and 
 blossom, and that at the moment of withering a 
 new life may rush in through all the arid fibres ? 
 Even so if the law of the spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and 
 death. 
 
 But we are willing to argue upon lower ground. 
 It is one of the most familiar and certain of 
 experiences that faith brightens the otherwise 
 darkened days of life. We will not speak of the 
 wonderful heroism with which hopeless, incurable 
 agony is often borne, and that by tender and 
 
210 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 shrinking souls. But there is a generous sub- 
 mission to helplessness, to being served, which we 
 have often thought reveals patience, tenderness, 
 purity, and religion at their highest. For it is 
 part of the Christian's training to be willing to 
 receive S3anpathy as well as to give it. Men and 
 women who are full of care and service for others 
 often keep a proud silence on their own grief. 
 Yet the Christian way would be to tell it, for the 
 Christian should recognise that the deepest and 
 most lasting joy is in giving rather than in receiving. 
 Some readers will remember how, when Miss 
 Bremer's character, " Ma chere Mere," is dying, 
 and her devoted servant, Elsa, is advised to be 
 comforted by the thought of her beloved mistress 
 in heaven, she says, " But what shall I do without 
 her ? And then she must have somebody in 
 heaven to wait upon her, and be at her side night 
 and day." " She will be with the angels then, 
 Elsa." " Ah ! dear madam, they could not conform 
 to her temper as I can. They have not lived 
 with her for forty years." The principle can be 
 carried much higher, so high that we do not 
 hesitate to say that willingness to be ministered 
 to may in certain cases be the most touching 
 and perfect form of self-abnegation. 
 
THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 211 
 
 Nor do Christians fear to recall the joys behind 
 them. They shut the door softly on the gladness 
 that is over, and look forward. No chill need 
 fall on the happy hours — they will be our own 
 again. Christ Himself had His " No more," but 
 all the sadness went as He thought of re-union. 
 " I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the 
 vine till I drink it new with you in my Father's 
 kingdom." So the Christian "No more" is only 
 till "the day in the kingdom of God." 
 
 Again, Christianity will help us to meet en- 
 forced inaction. It will help us more easily, no 
 doubt, if we have laboured while we could. Then 
 we can reflect in the long, passive hours that " of 
 toil and moil the day was full." Even if the 
 cherished work has been forbidden, if it has been 
 hardly begun, or not begun at all, the depression 
 of failure may very well be banished b}^ the 
 thought of an undying life in God. After all, we 
 are never old till we feel old, and nobody feels 
 old until he feels that his work is done. So long 
 as there is in us some faculty hidden from day- 
 light, some capacity still unrevealed, some work 
 still to accomplish, we are young, and faith looks 
 to the future life as the development and com- 
 pletion of this. The night taper, says one, burns 
 
212 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 long enough if it lets in the Eternal Day. There 
 may be, there doubtless is, a momentary pang in 
 surrendering some kinds of work to which we 
 thought ourselves specially elected, and yet in 
 these things also God is worthy of our trust. 
 Perhaps there is no such unspeakably pathetic 
 resignation as that of a mother parting from her 
 children. And yet every day with what vic- 
 torious faith is this care cast upon God ! Schiller, 
 on his premature deathbed, kissed and blessed 
 his youngest child of seven months old, and 
 gazed at the helpless creature with yearning 
 tenderness. Yet a little later, when the}' asked 
 him how he felt, he said, "Calmer and calmer." 
 Is there any better preparation for life and death 
 than that of the girded loins and the burning 
 lamp ? 
 
THE SCHOOL OF TYRANNUS 
 
 AS Dr. Liddon points out in his " Clerical 
 Life and Work," the great opportunity of 
 St. Paul's life was perhaps his teaching for two 
 years in the school of Tyrannus at Ephesus. 
 The Apostle himself describes it as " a great and 
 effectual door." Its claims were so urgent that 
 they kept him at Ephesus when a great moral 
 struggle was going on at Corinth, and his sen- 
 tence was imperatively demanded. He had been 
 preaching at Ephesus, first in the synagogue, 
 where he was denounced in terms of insult. 
 Then he and his gathered in one of the lounges 
 attached to the gymnasiums and public baths in 
 the city, which was frequented by Tyrannus, pro- 
 bably a teacher of rhetoric. There for two years 
 he preached every day, with results that affected 
 deeply both Jewish and pagan society. Dr. 
 Liddon remarks suggestively, " Every ministerial 
 life has such opportunities sooner or later. We 
 
214 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 may work for some years amidst the discourage- 
 ments of the synagogue, but the school of 
 Tyrannus comes at last." 
 
 "The school of Tyrannus comes at last." This 
 holds true of public workers in every sphere. 
 Those who set their thoughts high at the begin- 
 ning come in the end to their desire. There is a 
 point at which life spreads out and comes to 
 larger things. A sun-burst falls on the road. 
 The days grow full and rich. They are undis- 
 turbed by misfortune, reverse, and foreboding. 
 The preacher who has a gift for his work sooner 
 or later has a chance of showing it. He gains 
 the ear of the people, and is set in a conspicuous 
 place. He is able to hold and conquer men's 
 minds. There is a living interest in him and 
 his proclamations. This period may pass by. 
 Few men maintain themselves on the high 
 tableland of uniform prosperity for many years. 
 When their life is summed up, it is easy to 
 point out and to limit the period of shining 
 success. 
 
 The same truth, of course, applies equally to 
 the statesman, the artist, the author. There are 
 few more pathetic chapters in biography than the 
 story of Sir Walter Scott's sad, heroic struggle 
 
THE SCHOOL OF TYRANNU5 215 
 
 against disease and decay. He lived for many 
 years in the broad sunshine. His prosperity was 
 too great to last, too equal, too complete, too un- 
 chequered. At last something came to ** tame 
 the glaring white " of that splendour. One by 
 one the gifts of fortune were withdrawn. The 
 brave old man calmly saw them vanish, till last 
 of all his magic wand was broken. But he could 
 hardly realise that his imagination no longer 
 kindled to the old heat, that the spell was begin- 
 ning to fail him. " I have lost, it is plain, the 
 power of interesting the country, and ought in 
 justice to all parties to retire while I have some 
 credit ; but this is an important step, and I will 
 not be obstinate about it if it be necessary." 
 Lesser men have in their degree the same experi- 
 ence. With infinite reluctance they begin to note 
 painfully that their books excite less and less 
 interest, that the disappointed eyes of their old 
 readers are turning away from them. New stars 
 are rising, and the old are disappearing. So far 
 as these public experiences are concerned, 
 outsiders see the end of the golden hour 
 much more quickly than those who have lived it. 
 But even for them it becomes vain to struggle 
 against the conviction that the sunlight is 
 
2i6 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 over, and that henceforth the path must slope 
 downwards. 
 
 Nearly all of us, even the humblest, have in 
 our own lives a time which, as we look back upon 
 it, we know to have been blessed and warmed by 
 love as no time can be again. There were calm 
 years when the home circle was unbroken, when 
 the longings of the heart were answered. Days 
 succeed, it may be, in which we are tossed from 
 pain to pain. Even if the heartache is deadened 
 and the life finds an outlet in other interests, 
 there is still the memory of the past and those 
 who peopled it, 
 
 " Whose comin' step there's ears that won't, 
 No, not Hfelong, leave off awaitin'." 
 
 The Antiquary with his packet of letters 
 marked Eheu Evelina; Mr, Gilfil in the "Scenes 
 of Clerical Life," are types of what exists under 
 the most unlikely exteriors. 
 
 Looking back upon such times, after they are 
 irrevocably over, and after something has been 
 learned by actual experience of life and labour 
 and death, our wonder is that they gladdened 
 us so little. It seems incredible that these days, 
 now thought of with such yearning, should have 
 
THE SCHOOL OF TYR ANNUS 217 
 
 seemed common and tame while they passed. 
 Yet perhaps few can say that they prized as they 
 should have done the opportunity that was given 
 them. They took for granted what they had, 
 and looked on to a more abundant future. They 
 suffered small things to break their peace. They 
 were not aware, as they should have been, of the 
 goodness of God and man. These lines will be 
 read by many who, as they read them, have 
 greater means of happiness and usefulness than 
 they will ever have again. Let them prize their 
 good things, and yet not prize them overmuch. 
 Perhaps, when we have left the school of 
 Tyrannus behind, we shall perceive that our 
 work in it might have been done better. Many 
 preachers, many authors, lose their audience 
 because they yield to vanity and sloth. So their 
 hour passes never to return. But oftener, per- 
 haps, the end comes in the providence of God. 
 The message has been delivered, and there is no 
 more to say. If this is our case, let us be 
 thankful that our day was given us and that our 
 work has been done. Let us descend without 
 repining, and give over our place to others. 
 Those who are still in the noontide of 
 opportunity should not wait for trouble and 
 
2i8 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 failure to teach them sympathy with defeated 
 men. Too often, when things are well with 
 us, we refuse to see the importunate faces that 
 look through the silken curtains. We think we 
 can walk sure and strong and steady on the 
 heights, that we know how to abound. In- 
 fluence stays longest with those who use it 
 gently, whose power walks hand in hand with 
 tenderness, patience, consideration. There are 
 many who, like Cordelia, love and are silent. A 
 day will come when they would give the world 
 if they could say the words that might be 
 spoken now. 
 
 When the school of Tyrannus is left behind, 
 and we settle down to obscure labour, daily 
 becoming more obscure and feeble, when life 
 grows solitary, let us not too much regret what 
 has gone from us. The heart should not be dis- 
 turbed, but deepened by the thought that the 
 past is past. It was ours. We have had our 
 day and lived our life. There is still service to 
 render ; and true love knows no struggle of great 
 and little. What was best in the past is ours 
 more than it ever was. Wordsworth's lovely 
 poem on his last meeting with Scott is inspired 
 by the Christian temper : 
 
THE SCHOOL OF TYR ANNUS 219 
 
 " No public and no private care 
 
 The free-born mind enthralling, 
 We made a day of happy hours 
 
 Our happy days recalling. 
 And if as Yarrow, through the woods 
 
 And down the meadow ranging. 
 Did meet us with unaltered face. 
 
 Though we were changed and chang ng, 
 
 If then some natural shadow spread 
 
 The inward prospect over, 
 The soul's deep valley was not slow 
 
 Its brightness to recover. 
 Ah no, the visions of the past 
 
 Sustained the heart in feeling. 
 Life as she is— our changeful Life, 
 
 With friends and kindred dealing." 
 
 Besides, we are to look, not backward nor 
 downward, but onward. The best is before us. 
 Whatever has been forfeited or misprized, our 
 hearts are to be filled with a splendid and 
 exalting hope. Not far from us are the new 
 heavens and the new earth. This life at its 
 highest has the glory of the star, and we pass 
 to the glory of the sun. 
 
 In that He saith, A new earth, He hath made 
 the first old. 
 
THE MOTHERS OF ST. PAUL 
 
 IN his Epistle to the Romans St. Paul salutes 
 " Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother 
 and mine." In his Epistle to the Galatians he 
 applies the cherished name to that heavenly 
 Jerusalem towards which the tides of his heart 
 were set. "Jerusalem which is above is free, 
 which is the mother of us all." Life iiii Gaiizoi, 
 it has been said, is the life of one for whom over 
 and over again what was once precious has 
 become indifferent. For St. Paul this happened 
 once and for ever in the hour when he saw the 
 face of Christ and heard His voice from heaven. 
 
 The Apostle's life was rooted and grounded in 
 love, and, indeed, we hear more of love in his 
 epistles than in the Gospels. Love to him was of 
 the spirit, rather than of the earth and the senses. 
 The love that mastered and filled him was 
 primarily the love of Christ. From the day when 
 Christ called him, he was carried out to sea on 
 
222 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 that great wave, and he could not return upon his 
 former thoughts or resist the constant current 
 which drove him onward. That wave was never 
 spent. The returning tide never cast him upon 
 the shore. To the last the creating word of St. 
 Paul's universe was love. It was life's crown to 
 love and to be loved, and the Apostle, elect in 
 Christ, was ever stretching forth the hand of 
 redemption and blessing. Everywhere the great, 
 astounding, overwhelming fact that smote him in 
 the face was that men did not know this love of 
 Christ, or knowing it refused it. Yet he is silent 
 as to much. We may almost say that he ignores 
 human love in its deepest, most miraculous, most 
 revealing sense. Of course he had no room 
 in his redeemed nature for mere passion — the 
 handful of dry heather, as it has been called, 
 which is set on fire and cast into the waters of 
 death. George Meredith has rightly marked the 
 one false note in Mr. M^^ers's great poem, a note 
 struck in partial forgetfulness of this. And so 
 far as we know the great enchantment was lacking 
 to his cup, that human devotion to which the 
 solemn and sacred name of love is best applied. 
 And yet we cannot tell what lava there might have 
 been under the snow. We cannot gaze on the 
 
THE MOTHERS OF ST. PA UL 223 
 
 Apostle's inner life. He did not wear his heart 
 on his sleeve, and none may know what names 
 were graven there, names that never crossed his 
 lips, names that were part of the sweet and 
 dreadful past, names sunk into dim and deep 
 abysses whence no hand could pluck them forth. 
 What we do know is that his love was mainly 
 a paternal love. As Jowett says, there was in 
 his heart " an affection which seems to be as 
 strong and as individual towards all mankind as 
 other men are capable of feeling towards a single 
 person." St. Paul evermore beheld the world of 
 suffering beneath and beside the world of joy, the 
 innumerable multitude of the wretched, the for- 
 gotten, the lonely, benumbed by their long despair. 
 His place was with them. His portion was their 
 tears and toil. His affection was serious, patient, 
 deliberate as that of a heart touched to its core 
 by the universal woe in its length and breadth 
 and height. He was as one to whom the world 
 was a great hospital and himself an unwearied 
 nurse by the bedside of the patients. He strove 
 to heal the wounds that from generation to 
 generation remained unclosed, and he met each 
 emergency as it arose with the calm wisdom 
 which comes to saintly souls who have explored 
 
224 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 all and have looked at the worst in the light of 
 reconciling love. He carried in his heart that 
 inward Presence which was one day to be revealed. 
 He saw the fires of love rising up from under the 
 soil in the midst of a frozen world. He was 
 willing to be accursed from Christ for his brethren, 
 his kinsmen according to the flesh. Before him 
 life spread as a great shipwreck. Existence v/as 
 made up of pain. Men and women wore the 
 burning crown. He possessed the secret, the 
 anodyne that would turn the racking agony into 
 peace, and wherever men needed healing or 
 wherever the healed needed to be taught patience 
 and strength, he was busy — bearing upon him the 
 care of all the churches, coming out in every 
 trouble with all his faculties roused and stimulated, 
 knowing what to say and what to do, as a mother 
 by some divine instinct knows by the bedside of 
 her ailing child. It was typical of his life that he 
 stood forth in the doomed ship in Adria, in the 
 darkness and despair of the tempest, to take 
 command and speak the word of heartening 
 and hope. 
 
 It is thus very moving and significant that he 
 sometimes felt the need of being mothered and 
 found that need supplied. In the absence of 
 
THE MOTHERS OF ST. PAUL 225 
 
 human sympathy, he seemed sometimes ahnost 
 to lose the power of action. And human S3'm- 
 pathy came in its sweetest form when it asked 
 little and gave all, when it comforted and cherished 
 the weary, burdened Apostle and brought back 
 to him the security and restfulness and peace 
 of childhood. First of all, he found this comfort 
 in a nameless woman, the mother of Rufus. Of 
 Rufus we know very little, perhaps nothing. 
 But there is some reason to believe that he was 
 of Nero's household, one of St. Paul's converts 
 and friends in Asia and Eastern Europe, who 
 entered it after conversion as purchased slaves or 
 otherwise. The mother of Rufus, who was also 
 the mother of St. Paul, was thus probably obscure 
 and humble. But in the great school where all 
 Zion's children are taught of God and where 
 nothing avails but the illumination of the Holy 
 Ghost vouchsafed to the obedient heart, she was 
 among the foremost. Her life was doubtless 
 closely limited in one sense. But it was not 
 limited on the side of the ideal. She built for 
 her dark poverty a house not made with hands, 
 and St. Paul shared gladly and thankfully the 
 shelter of its roof. Wordsworth has pictured in 
 various places kind, great, motherly hearts among 
 
 p 
 
226 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 the poor, nowhere perhaps more effectively than 
 in his poem, " The Old Cumberland Beggar " : 
 
 " Man is dear to man ; the poorest poor 
 Long for some moments in a weary life 
 When they can know and feel that they have been, 
 Themselves, the fathers and the dealers-out 
 Of some small blessings ; have been kind to such 
 As needed kindness, for this single cause. 
 That we have all of us one human heart. 
 Such pleasure is to one kind Being known, 
 My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week 
 Duly as Friday comes, though pressed herself 
 By her own wants, she from her store of meal 
 Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip 
 Of this old Mendicant, and, from her door 
 Returning with exhilarated heart. 
 Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven." 
 
 So St. Paul and his mother built their hope in 
 the Heavenly City which was the mother of both, 
 which is the mother of us all. 
 
 We can well conceive how the thought of the 
 mother city comforted and strengthened the 
 Apostle as the years ran out. Existence to him 
 was always bounded and overspread by the Jeru- 
 salem which is above. His life was not a journey 
 on and on over the barren moor, with no prospect 
 before him but the waste and the sundown. 
 Jerusalem, stable, motherly, holy, was the end of 
 
THE MOTHERS OF ST. PA UL 227 
 
 his pilgrimage. She grew dearer and kinder with 
 the passing of the days. Some whom he loved 
 were in Christ before him. Many were in Jeru- 
 salem before him. What was strange to the 
 Apostle, it has been well said, was not the in- 
 visible, but the visible, not the life of the spirit, 
 but the life of the flesh. That life was death, 
 and what ensphered it was not reality, but phan- 
 tom. To him, as to all believing souls, the 
 thought of death came often, even in the midst of 
 life and labour, with a rush of home-sickness. 
 We can see it in this very Epistle to the Gala- 
 tians, where he braces himself to the task of 
 dispute, and yet protests that his last word has 
 been said, and that he is not to be troubled from 
 thenceforth, because he bears the absolving marks 
 of Christ. So we can conceive what was passing 
 when the hour of his release arrived. To the 
 eye of the world his career ended in desertion, 
 failure, collapse. But as the old man was led 
 along the Ostian way to die, his mother Jeru- 
 salem bent over him with rapturous welcome. 
 He saw those who had gone before, the martyrs 
 in their robes of crimson and the saints in white. 
 Life behind him was like a far-off storm at sea. 
 He was filled with a sense of everlasting triumph 
 
228 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 as he neared the high world he had longed to 
 dwell in, that world whose air was home. The 
 city of God is glad, and her gladness transfigured 
 him. He saw the earthly vanish and himself 
 entering into the fellowship whereof all the love 
 we know is but a trembling shadow, that city 
 where all we love is restored. To the eye of 
 sense his career ended as forlornly and lovelessly 
 as might be. To the eye of faith his death was 
 the rising of his mother to take her wearied child 
 to her breast. 
 
FROM GLORY TO GLORY 
 
 IF wc were asked at the beginning of a 3'car 
 to describe the course of life, we might be 
 slow to give for answer our very inmost thought. 
 And if we did, the response might run, " From 
 weakness to weakness, from failure to failure, 
 from humiliation to humiliation," or even it might 
 be " From shame to shame." How wonderful 
 appears the picture of St. Paul, who describes 
 the believing life as a passage " from glory to 
 glory" ! In the epistle where these words occur 
 the Apostle shows himself acutely conscious of 
 life's miseries, privations, and agonies. He was 
 then suffering from troubles whose pressure had 
 almost exhausted his strength. He describes 
 himself as nameless, poor, sorrowful, and dying. 
 He understood as well as any of us what it is to 
 feel that the romance of life has faded, that the 
 country of youth has been left behind, that there 
 is nothing one can do but bewail the irrecoverable 
 
230 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 sweetness of the past. Yet his spirit rises un- 
 subdued from the griefs and wrecks of time, and 
 he speaks as one of the great company who, 
 ** beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 
 are changed into the same image from glory to 
 glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." For 
 let it be noted that he was not speaking of himself 
 alone. Else we might have said, " This may be 
 true for such an one as St. Paul, advancing 
 through all those years without one backward 
 look or one yielding thought. But how can it be 
 true of us who are so weary of the incessant 
 struggle, and whose hopes cannot rise from un- 
 looked-for and merciless strokes ? " The answer 
 is that to those who see truly the course of every 
 redeemed life moves forward to its perfect con- 
 summation. 
 
 In the first place St. Paul affirms that life to 
 the believer is a glory. The whole current of 
 modern thought runs against this estimate. At 
 most it may be admitted that life in certain 
 conditions is a more or less happy delusion. 
 Even so much as this will scarcely be granted in 
 these years of the dying century, when pessimism 
 is eating out the very heart of our literature and 
 is gradually taking possession of the general 
 
FROM GLORY TO GLORY 231 
 
 mind. How far we have travelled in the days 
 between Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy ! 
 One may say without irreverence and with perfect 
 truth that to Dickens the Blessed Trinity was 
 practically identical with an omnipotent firm of 
 Cheeryble Brothers. To him the administration 
 of the universe was benevolent, benevolent in the 
 sentimental fashion of "A Christmas Carol." 
 Mr. Hardy's whole philosophy and religion arc 
 summed up in the infinitely bitter words, " The 
 President of the Immortals had finished his sport 
 with Tess." Open as "Jude the Obscure" is to 
 many criticisms, we cannot agree with those who 
 take it simply as an attack on marriage. It is 
 much rather an effort to show that the universe 
 and mankind are deliberately organised for miser3\ 
 Let human beings do what they will, let them 
 marry or abstain from marriage, and they will 
 still be wretched. The loftier the ideals that rise 
 before them, the more ardently they endeavour to 
 pursue them, the more absolute will their failure 
 be and their consequent agony. We need not 
 wonder at this. It is nothing but what must 
 happen as the world breaks loose from God. 
 Unless life is divine with the love of Christ, it 
 must be sunless. St. Paul was profoundly 
 
232 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 sensible of the sin and the misery of mankind. 
 After nearly two thousand years more of sorrow- 
 ful human history, no fact or experience has come 
 to light that would have taken the Apostle by 
 surprise. But to him the vastness of sin, the 
 vastness of pain, were not the first and over- 
 powering facts. He knew that which was greater 
 than them all. He was lost in the immensities of 
 the love of Christ, the love that signified its 
 strength on Calvary, the love whose length and 
 breadth and depth and height far transcended 
 knowledge. Life to St. Paul was a glory because 
 it had been redeemed by the precious blood, and 
 was wrapt round by the divine charity. True, its 
 inexorable facts remain. But they are wholly 
 transfigured. For the veil has been undone for 
 ever, and with open face we behold Christ. On 
 our poor house the rains may descend and the 
 winds blow, but it may be nevertheless the palace 
 of the great King. Life may go out wretchedly 
 and solitarily, in a garret, in a workhouse, and 
 yet to the eye of faith the promise of Christ may 
 be kept, *' I will come again and receive you unto 
 myself." 
 
 More difficult even for Christians is the next 
 thought, that life is a growing glory. After a 
 
FROM GLORY TO GLORY 233 
 
 certain period, we come to shrink from change, 
 and yet, as has often been said, Christianity 
 welcomes change. It takes " new " for one of 
 its favourite words. It keeps speaking of a new 
 covenant, new creatures, a new name, and new 
 heavens. It encourages us to go forward, to 
 grow tired of poor conditions, and to press against 
 hmits. Instead of fearing a change in our circum- 
 stances, we should rather welcome it. But some — 
 perhaps not many — of those who read these lines 
 will keep thinking that a change has come over 
 themselves, a change which they fear, and which 
 they can hardly understand. It may be that this 
 is the result — it is so most frequently — of some 
 blow struck straight and deep at the roots of 
 happiness. 
 
 We no longer hear much about the doctrine 
 of transmigration, the doctrine which was Henry 
 M ore's golden key to the mystery of the universe. 
 Perhaps we can hardly follow the arguments by 
 which it is supported. But when an appeal is 
 made to the latent elements that underlie our 
 present consciousness, and when it is maintained 
 that there is a hidden world in which the subter- 
 ranean river of personality flows, it is not 
 diflicult after certain experiences to understand 
 
234 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 what is meant. For does it not seem sometimes 
 as if a new spirit had taken possession of the 
 existing body, when the true soul has departed ? 
 Many people live until they die, but many people 
 do not. In Mrs. Oliphant's powerful novel 
 " Agnes," there is the most vivid expression ot 
 this fact that we know of in literature. The 
 vitality that survives so much is at last mastered 
 and disappears. Illness does not come, death 
 does not come, duties continue to present them- 
 selves and are laboriously discharged. But life, 
 so far as it is a matter of personal desire, 
 satisfaction, and actual being, has ceased and 
 stopped short. The sufferers feel that they have 
 had their day, and yet much may remain of the 
 hard tale of years which God sometimes exacts 
 to the last moment from those of His creatures to 
 whom He has given strength to endure. The 
 new spirit that inhabits the form may be angel 
 or demon, or it may be a most human spirit, but 
 it is a substitute even though no one may be 
 aware of the substitution. The life it was 
 pleasure to possess and happiness to continue 
 has been broken short off and has come to an end. 
 What are we to say in the face of facts like 
 these ? How can it be that such transmutations 
 
FROM GLORY TO GLORY 235 
 
 ai-e a passage from glory to glory ? For answer 
 we may reply that time must do its work. 
 "How deep and awful," says one, "are the 
 wounds that time and truth can heal ! " How 
 often wild, dark sorrows show themselves at last 
 the fair, enlightened work of God. The heart 
 may be wondrously revived and quieted, and a 
 new happiness may link itself with the old. But 
 this cannot always be. St. Paul himself spoke 
 not much of what lay before him in his earthly 
 course. He earnestly desired to be clothed upon 
 with his house from heaven. Then we must say 
 that in God is the continuous thread of all our 
 years. Then we must boldly rest in the faith 
 that there is a life in God which furnishes its 
 own health, its own wealth, its own good. The 
 whole discipline of Providence is bent towards 
 our securing and perfecting that secret immortal 
 life. It may seem as if the heart were rifled 
 and broken by the harshnesses and the amaze- 
 ments of its way. But if it clings to God, if it 
 seeks to be wrapt round in the Eternal Love, the 
 consciousness will come at last that the redeemed 
 life is a unity, a glory, a growth, and that this 
 is the will of God, even our sanctification. 
 
 And once more St. Paul teaches us that this 
 
236 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 growing glory of life will soon and for ever be 
 perfected. No matter what ruins we have left 
 behind us, the towers of the New Jerusalem 
 flash up in the unsearchable light. The white 
 radiance of eternity is before us, stained no more 
 by time. In the epistle from which our motto 
 is taken St. Paul describes suffering in every 
 form. But suffering is after all for the moment, 
 and love is everlasting. We may look at the 
 past and the future, and the worst they hold, 
 in peace. He will swallow up these deaths in 
 victory, be sure. We shall stand at the well- 
 head of living waters and thirst no more. The 
 bright thread of love holds together and illumi- 
 nates all experience, and we rejoice in the 
 unswerving hope of the glory of God. 
 
 And hope maketh not ashamed, because the 
 love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the 
 Holy Ghost who is given unto us. 
 
GIVERS AND RECEIVERS 
 
 '' I 'HAT humanity may be parted easily into the 
 '■ two classes of givers and receivers is a fact 
 which is written plainly on the very face of life. 
 There is no such thing as fair exchange. The 
 broad truth about some is that their lives have 
 been spent in loving and imparting ; the broad 
 truth about others is that they have throughout 
 coveted and received. Take, for example, the 
 fortunes of love. Does it not seem as if the most 
 royal faculty of the soul were often the most dis- 
 ordered and vagrant ? How much love runs to 
 waste, meets with no answer, is bestowed fool- 
 ishly, madly ! To the most loving the world is 
 often loveless, and they are forced to think that 
 they have nothing to draw with, and the well is 
 deep. Even when there is a response, it is 
 meagre and unsatisfying. Sydney Dobell, in his 
 poem, " The Captain's Wife," tells suggestively 
 
238 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 the story of an affection returned and yet not 
 returned. 
 
 " Yet there is something here within this breast, 
 Which, like a flower that never blossoms, lieth. 
 And though in words and tears my sorrow crieth, 
 I know that it hath never been expressed. 
 Something that blindly yearneth to be known, 
 And doth not burn, nor rage, nor leap, nor dart ; 
 But struggles in the sickness of my heart 
 As a root struggles in a vault of stone." 
 
 For multitudes of men and women the chief 
 bitterness of bereavement is the remorse for mis- 
 prizing the treasure of a heart. Only when death 
 has snapped the bond do they understand that 
 what they miss and must miss all the days is the 
 touch, the breath, the tread of love. 
 
 The same is true of impulse and service. The 
 palmary instance for Christians is that of the 
 Apostle and High Priest of our profession. It is 
 true that Our Lord came to confront the empire 
 of evil. He did not shrink from the shock of 
 battle, but He came loving and seeking love. 
 " He came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." 
 If there had been given to Him no vision of a 
 harvest in the far future, might He not have 
 looked upon the travail of His soul as vain ? 
 
GIVERS AND RECEIVERS 239 
 
 What was true of the Master is true of the dis- 
 ciples. It was true for St. Paul, it is true sooner 
 or later for every faithful minister. No life of 
 Christian service but is to be known by the mark 
 of the nails. One of the most successful and 
 beloved of modern preachers wrote : "I have 
 much observed of late how the afternoon of life 
 seems to lose part of its natural, well-deserved 
 recompense. I know and have heard of a good 
 many personal experiences of this kind both in 
 Church and State. The real spirit and character 
 of the persons affected are brought out by such 
 trials." In the sphere of public life no tmth im- 
 presses itself more deeply on the close observer 
 than this. The reader of Mr. Morley's often 
 finely felt pieces on political leaders must be 
 familiar with the French saying, which comes in 
 so often as a gloomy refrain : "In order to love 
 mankind one must expect little from them." 
 Early in life Burke warned a young man enter- 
 ing public life to regard and see well to the 
 common people, whom his best instincts and his 
 highest duties led him to love and to serve, but 
 to put as little trust in them as in princes. The 
 same statesman elsewhere describes an honest 
 public life as carrying on a poor, unequal 
 
240 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 conflict against the passions and prejudices of 
 our day, perhaps with no better weapons than 
 passions and prejudices of our own. How rarely 
 does a great leader witness the final triumph of 
 the cause to which he has given his life ! Even 
 if many years are granted him, and he attains the 
 glory of a feeble victory, in the height of the sun- 
 shine the shadow is rapidly stealing on. The 
 scene often undergoes a strange transformation, 
 final for this life. By the time the splendid 
 career is closed, men have forgotten it in the 
 worship of other luminaries. 
 
 There is something difficult and strange about 
 all this. It would be far more difficult if it were 
 not that, after all, the givers and not the receivers 
 are the blessed. Our Lord, the great Giver, left 
 His witness to this. " It is more blessed to give 
 than to receive." Men, in spite of themselves, 
 are compelled in their secret souls to admit that 
 His judgment was right, only they will not act 
 upon it. The great ambition of life for the vast 
 majority is to receive. They give grudgingly, 
 they accept eagerly; and they fancy that the 
 more they possess the more joyous, peaceful, 
 secure their life will be. Yet who does not know 
 that to bear all things, to believe all things, to 
 
GIVERS AND RECEIVERS 241 
 
 hope all things, to meet every defeat and refusal 
 with an unfailing and Christlike sweetness, is 
 the true path of peace ? Who does not know 
 that there is something better than possession ? 
 
 " The strength and the loving to gaze on each thing 
 That they have not, with joy in its beauty, and sing, 
 To some He hath given." 
 
 Upon these, as the beautiful German saying has 
 it, the sun smiles, while it only shines upon others. 
 They who love, and they only, live the true life 
 of humanity. Better to be the loving mother 
 than the unloving son. Demas forsook Paul 
 because he loved this present world, but St. Paul, 
 passing through the chequered scenes of a career 
 full of triumph and of failure, missing love where 
 he loved abundantly, and dying in poverty and 
 solitude, was happier than Demas in Thessalonica, 
 whatever his possessions were. Even men of the 
 world know this to be true in every hour that 
 holds the soul above itself. 
 
 For the givers receive the best. What is denied 
 by their fellows is bestowed by God, or rather 
 God has provided some better thing for them. 
 If the horizon were closed by the world of sense 
 and time, it might seem as if the receivers had the 
 best of it, but the homely saying holds — " It was 
 
242 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 never yet loving that emptied the heart, nor giving 
 that emptied the purse." Why ? Because there 
 is a miraculous divine supply, which counteracts 
 and reverses the forces that might impoverish and 
 drain. We cannot give, it is obvious, without 
 first of all receiving. The givers have the richest 
 hearts to begin with ; the more they give, the 
 richer their hearts grow, the sweeter and fuller is 
 their life. They pass from duty to duty, from 
 experience to experience, living heartily in them 
 all, bearing everywhere a sweet savour of Christ, 
 with an influence pervasive in proportion as they 
 have grace to pass through worldly solicitations 
 unaltered and unbeguiled. 
 
 How does Christ give to and bless His givers ? 
 Not so much by the permanent alteration of their 
 circumstances, though He sometimes memorabl}^ 
 blesses even in outward ways those who keep an 
 open heart. More often, however, the circum- 
 stances remain, and Christ's gift is victory over 
 them. The ultimate promise stands, " Verily 
 thou shalt be fed." To this there is oftentimes 
 no addition, because no addition is needed. It 
 is still as it was in Our Lord's time. Those who 
 have the royal heart are never left without the 
 means of giving, never left unhappy. " He said 
 
GIVERS AND RECEIVERS 243 
 
 unto them, When I sent you forth without purse, 
 and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And 
 they said. Nothing." It is a hopeful sign of 
 reaction against the hungry materialism of the 
 times that so many Christian people are turning 
 their thoughts to the inner, present, spiritual 
 blessings, that lift us above circumstance, that 
 may be ours for the asking, that are bestowed 
 instantly, in their beginnings at least, and that 
 lift the soul into the royalty of inward happiness. 
 We cannot live and be blessed as we are. There 
 the givers and receivers agree. But for the 
 receivers the blessing is found in the outward, 
 for the givers the true riches are an inward 
 possession. " Be not drunk with wine wherein is 
 excess, but be filled with the Spirit " wherein there 
 is no excess. The condemnation of the outward is 
 in this, that it ever tends towards excess. The 
 craving is increased by that which feeds it, the 
 stimulations that thrill the heart for a moment 
 need to be made stronger, and the reaction steadily 
 becomes swifter and more complete. But the 
 gift of the Spirit, which raises us above time and 
 nature, brings enduring strength and peace, and 
 can never be sought or bestowed in over-measure. 
 It will be poured into the open thirsty heart, 
 
244 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 filling it with unstinted joy and love and energy, 
 putting within our reach all the resources of God, 
 making us rich to enrich the world. Time and 
 circumstance, sorrow and impoverishment — over 
 these we may be more than conquerors. 
 
 " One eve, 'mid autumns far away, 
 I walked alone beside a river ; grey 
 And pale was earth, the heavens were grey and pale, 
 As if the dying year and dying day 
 Sobbed out their lives together, wreaths of mist 
 Stole down the hills to shroud them while they kissed 
 Each other sadly ; yet behind this veil 
 Of dreariness and decay my soul did build. 
 To music of its own, a temple filled 
 With worshippers beloved that hither drew 
 In silence ; then I thirsted not to hear 
 The voice of any friend, nor wished for dear 
 Companion's hand firm clasped in mine ; I knew. 
 Had such been with me, they had been less near." 
 
CHRIST WAITING TO BE GRACIOUS 
 
 A MONG the Logia or professed Sayings of 
 •^ *■ Our Lord recently found in an early Greek 
 papyrus, none has excited more perplexity than 
 the fifth. It begins with a reminiscence of the 
 great words which have been called the true 
 charter of the Church — " Where two or three are 
 gathered together in my name, there am I in the 
 midst of them." It goes on, " Raise the stone, and 
 there thou shalt find me ; cleave the wood, and 
 there am I." We do not accept the addition as a 
 saying of Christ, but it is at the least a comment 
 of high interest. Any satisfactory interpretation 
 must read it in the light of what precedes it, and 
 show it as exegetical or explanatory of that. For 
 this reason various interpretations that have 
 found currency are out of court. Let us try 
 whether it is. possible to weave the passages into 
 one. Whether our interpretation is right or not, 
 the truths which underlie it are of unending 
 significance and worth. 
 
246 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 We read the passage as a whole as meaning 
 in the first place, that Christ waits to be gracious. 
 When His people go to gather together in His 
 name, they find that He is already there. He 
 welcomes with a smile the first worshippers. He 
 has prevented them with the blessings of His 
 goodness. It is not as in the days after His 
 resurrection when the disciples were within, and 
 the door was shut, and Jesus came through and 
 stood in the midst of them, and said, '* Peace be 
 unto you." Many of our readers, we are sure, 
 count as among the highest and most luminous 
 hours of life the little praj'er-meetings they have 
 attended in humble places, in kitchens and barns. 
 It all comes before them so vividly that they are 
 tempted to think that no experiences have been 
 graven so deep as these. They recall the walk 
 to the meeting-place, perhaps on a moonlit night 
 of snow, the long shadows, the "holier day," the 
 hopeful loneliness, the sense that they were on 
 the road to Christ, to a full manifestation of His 
 presence. Thus we come to the low doorway 
 through which love, and grief, and patience, and 
 hope approach Him, and enter the little room 
 where we mark His blest abode, and into glory 
 peep. The little company of grave, subdued 
 
CHRIST WAITING TO BE GRACIOUS 247 
 
 worshippers gradually take their places, and one 
 is aware of the deep still current of thought 
 flowing towards -the present Christ, the growing 
 sense of His mastery over us, of His awful 
 righteousness, and of Mis more awful love. 
 Clouds are there, and tliey may be very heavy. 
 There are sad thoughts — thoughts of the lapses 
 of a stained life, of sorrows so black that scarcely 
 a pale beam shines through them, of bereave- 
 ments that have left life cold and dark as the 
 later hours of a winter day. It may even be that 
 the very faculty of emotion fails and sinks under 
 the subduing weight of depression and care. But 
 it is amidst these clouds that the Heavenly Star 
 arises. We feel in a little that we have come 
 into the presence of the personal Christ, that we 
 are looking in His face, that we hear His voice 
 and feel His heart beating. He has not cast 
 away His people whom He foreknew. Gradually 
 there rises the strong tide of "joy for pardoned 
 guilt," gradually we pass into a deeper compliance 
 with His will. We realise the worth of what we 
 rebelled against in the days of our darker ignor- 
 ance, and at last, as Christ is preached in a 
 mystery, the heart leaps up from the past pain 
 like a bird from its nest, and the brooding 
 
248 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 sadness fades from the face. Then is our mouth 
 filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing, 
 and long ere the meeting is done we know that 
 new, strong cords have been twisted that link 
 His life with ours. 
 
 But the human soul never speaks more truly 
 than when it says, " I cannot come to Him un- 
 less He first come to me." He always comes 
 first. " Raise the stone, and there thou shalt 
 find me; cleave the wood, and there am I." The 
 deeper thought of salvation ever stretches back 
 to anchor itself in the uncaused Love. Redemp- 
 tion is not an afterthought, but an eternal thought. 
 It is not we who ascend heaven to bring Christ 
 down from above, it is He who comes and unites 
 Himself with us. God's rich mercy is long kept, 
 and it is from everlasting to everlasting. The 
 Redeemer was anointed from all eternity to save 
 the yet unborn world. " Lo, I come," was His 
 word of quick obedience in the time before time 
 was. The vitality of Calvinism lies in its assur- 
 ance that love is not a thing that began yesterday 
 and may end to-morrow, but that it foreknew, 
 and fore-ordained, and will ultimately glorify. 
 "Alpha art Thou indeed," are the words in which 
 one of the deepest students of these mysteries 
 
CHRIST WAITING TO BE GRACIOUS 249 
 
 closes his meditations. Christ is Alpha and 
 Christ is Omega. He is the beginning and the 
 end, the first and the last. 
 
 The second thought is that His people may 
 find Christ when they seek Him in the strangest 
 places. They may have the stone to raise ; they 
 may have to worship, and they have often wor- 
 shipped, in dens and caves of the earth. In the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, which is at once so 
 passionate and so calm, the writer's voice some- 
 times breaks, as when in his recital of the suffer- 
 ings of the saints, " They wandered about 
 in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, 
 afflicted, tormented," he suddenly pauses to say, 
 " of whom the world was not worthy." But the 
 saints, even when they hide from an hourly 
 expected vengeance, and know by every testi- 
 mony that can impress man that their cause is 
 lost, meet Christ in their hiding-place, and hear 
 Him say, "Be of good cheer, 1 have overcome 
 the world." An old author said, when his chief 
 friend died, " The theatre of all my actions is 
 fallen." This can never be said by true believers. 
 The theatre of their actions can never fall when 
 it is Christ, and He is never so near as when 
 they are at the lowest ebb of fortune, and even 
 
250 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 nigh despair, " Raise the stone, and there shalt 
 thou find mc." It has been said with truth about 
 Coleridge and the wonderful reach of his thoughts, 
 " Go where you will, to the loneliest heights or 
 the lowermost parts of the earth, in the regions 
 of criticism and pure speculation, you are sure to 
 find carved on the rocks the initials S. T. C." 
 Christ's people find in the loneliest heights and in 
 the lowest parts of the earth the Real Presence. 
 Stones are to them consecrated bits of the old earth, 
 like that stone of Shechem which was a witness 
 to the people lest they denied their God. 
 
 " Cleave the wood, and there am I." The king- 
 dom of heaven sometimes suffers violence and the 
 violent take it by force. They may have forcibly 
 to break through closed doors to find a place of 
 security for their prayers. Even so He will be 
 there before them. He has passed through the 
 closed door like a spirit invisible to mortal eyes. 
 Cleave the wood, burst open the door, make your 
 way to me by any means or to any place, and still 
 there am I, To quote Phillips Brooks : " In the 
 deepest depths to which he can go, man shall still 
 find Christ waiting, and hear Christ speak. And 
 out of the heart of the unknown must come the 
 Christ he knows so well, saying, ' I am here too.' " 
 
"WOMEN RECEIVED THEIR DEAD" 
 
 THAT this life is a haunted house built on the 
 very confines of the land of darkness and 
 the shadow of death, that we are united by a 
 thousand fibres with the other world, is denied by 
 few. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 in his undismayed way infinitely extends this 
 truth for all who hold his faith. We are come, 
 said he (not we shall come), to the eternal realities 
 even now. For at this very moment true 
 believers touch angels and perfected spirits, and 
 are come to these even as they are come to God 
 and to the blood of Jesus. Now amid the mists, 
 the sins, the shakings of mortality, we are in the 
 midst of fairer and stabler things. For we are 
 come to Zion, exalted above the mountains, to 
 draw, like a loadstone, all tossing hearts. We 
 are now verily dwelling in the temple palace, 
 which is the home of the Great King. We have 
 our citi;^enship in the new Jerusalem, which is 
 
252 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 the mother of us all. In that Jerusalem, and in 
 its mountain, we worship the Father. We need 
 no longer utter the cry of homelessness, and envy 
 the sparrow that hath found a house and the 
 swallow that hath built a nest for herself, for we, 
 else unsheltered, have reached a home for our- 
 selves, even the altars of the Lord of Hosts. 
 
 But faith is needed for the constant peaceful 
 realisation of our present citizenship above, and 
 because faith often trembles, because the veil 
 which in our best moments is rent asunder, or 
 thinned at least, often seems to hang impene- 
 trable over what we would fain see, God has 
 come into our life, and deigned to give the proof 
 of what faith assures us. For it is the same 
 writer to the Hebrews who tells us that women 
 received their dead raised to life again, or rather 
 women received their dead by resurrection, and 
 he remembers one other at least who received 
 her dead in a belter way. He recalls Eleazar, the 
 heroic mother, and her seven sons mentioned 
 in the second book of Maccabees, who were 
 stretched on the wheel and beaten to death, re- 
 jecting the deliverance that was offered to them 
 at the price of their principles, in order that they 
 might obtain a better i-esurrection than any 
 
'•WOMEN RECEIVED THEIR DEAD" 253 
 
 return to this mortal life. The King of the 
 world shall raise us up, they said, unto everlast- 
 ing life. 
 
 Women received their dead. The writer is 
 thinking of the widow of Sarepta and of the 
 Shunammite. He recalls how one, after many 
 days when the barrel of meal wasted not, neither 
 did the cruse of oil fail, lost her son, and felt that 
 famine would have been better than the heavenly 
 miracle. He recalls how the prophet stretched 
 himself on the child, and the Lord hearkened, 
 and the soul of the child came into him again, 
 and he revived, and Elijah delivered him to his 
 mother. He remembers the little lad who said 
 to his father, " My head, my head," who was 
 carried to his mother and sat on her knees till 
 noon, and then died. He remembers how the 
 child's body lay on the bed of the man of God 
 through the slow torturing hours till his flesh 
 waxed warm, and he opened his eyes. He 
 remembers how Elisha called the Shunammite 
 and said, " Take up thy son," and how ere she 
 did, she fell at his feet and bowed herself to the 
 ground. And can it be so ? Did love verily 
 melt the iron rim of fate that surrounds this 
 weeping 'world of change ? Yes, for when our 
 
254 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Lord, "with woman's blood in Him," appeared 
 in the flesh, He, too, had compassion even as 
 His prophets before Him, and delivered her son 
 to the widow of Nain and Lazarus to his sisters. 
 The beginning at Sarepta and Shunem was the 
 dusky dimness just broken by these shafts of 
 light. When Christ came the solemn day was 
 breaking, and yet the full light was far off. 
 
 JVonien received their dead. The writer does 
 not say men, although it is true that Jairus re- 
 ceived his daughter. But what could pass the 
 love of women ? The power to live in others, 
 which is their gracious prerogative and happiest 
 attribute, is also their keenest agony. It is 
 woman that suffers the most, although her feel- 
 ing may be better hidden at first than man's. 
 We may not see so obviously in her case the 
 violence and the much bleeding that come with 
 sorrow, but it is woman who tries to arrest the 
 inevitable doom, who would detain the soul so 
 swiftly passing, who counts in awful agonised 
 moments every beat of the pendulum, who says 
 even when long years have passed, and when a 
 happiness comes again, " Oh, is there anything 
 in heaven or in earth that can make amends for 
 the despair of these hours ? " Despair has been 
 
" WOMEN RECEIVED THEIR DEAD" 255 
 
 SO Utter, so awful, so God-compelling, that it 
 rolled back the very gates of death. 
 
 But why are they now closed ? Mothers have 
 suffered every day pangs as terrible as tore the 
 hearts of the woman of Shunem and the widows 
 of Sarepta and Nain, and yet the dead remain. 
 Was it for nothing, then, that these miracles 
 were done ? No, they give us perhaps our 
 most enlarged measure of the everlasting tender- 
 ness. No tenderness was ever done by God, 
 could ever be imagined by man, more grateful 
 than this — the restoration of a child to his 
 mother. It tells how well He keeps them, for 
 though they had taken that far, swift journey 
 they soon came back, the Hush of health mantling 
 in their cheeks. What God did for these mothers 
 He would do for every mother if only it was 
 best. 
 
 And is it best ? Is it what mothers in their 
 very hearts desire, to receive their dead again ? 
 The dead whom they have watched, " patient as 
 a midnight lamp," on whom the}^ have lavished 
 inexpressible love and tenderness, would they 
 have them back ? The honours of the returning 
 dead were dear bought, for all had to come again 
 — the pain, the sickness, the sorrow, the death. 
 
256 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 They died twice, and it is more merciful that we 
 should die once. One can hardly believe that 
 these restored children erred from the path, but 
 doubtless they sinned and suffered like others. 
 Do we not say as our eyes grow clearer, How 
 excellent are the redeemed ! how blessed are the 
 unblemished children of life ! how fair are they in 
 the " moonlight of eternal peace, solemn and very 
 sweet ! " A greater hope, even the hope of a 
 better resurrection, enters strangely through the 
 rents and fissures of the broken heart, till mothers 
 are able to say quietly, even thankfully, ** I shall 
 go to him, but he shall not return to me." 
 
 We pass from this little ring of victorious 
 mothers to the great company of those who have 
 had to make peace with death. Women received 
 their dead. Do we remember that women in 
 heaven are always receiving their dead ? They 
 are expecting them, and they are welcoming 
 them. The happiness of the blessed is buoyant 
 and elastic, not passionless, dreamless, change- 
 less. There is a Sabbath-keeping for the people 
 of God, but the Sabbath is a high day and a 
 holiday. The mind does not eddy quietly round 
 and round itself instead of sweeping onward. 
 The blessedness is being evermore broken and 
 
" WOMEN RECEIVED THEIR DEAD " 257 
 
 heightened by fresh joys and hopes, and surely 
 the sweetest of all is the entrance of redeemed 
 souls. We have all felt when some died that it 
 was only as it should be, that they were more 
 needed in the other world even than they could 
 be in this, that some heart had a greater claim 
 upon them, and could not be content without 
 them, and it has seemed as if their welcome must 
 not be delayed any longer, and as if it were left 
 to us simply for the future to make sure that we 
 are come to the innumerable company of angels, 
 and the spirits of the just made perfect. The 
 joys of the angels we know are made more 
 poignant and keen by the repentance of souls. 
 The joys of the blessed dead are immeasurably 
 heightened by the receiving of their own. 
 Nothing can seem more solitary than the passage 
 into the other life, and yet it is not solitary. " I 
 will come again and receive you unto myself, 
 that where I am ye may be also." That is 
 company, and other company is waiting. There 
 are " the shining, shining hosts of saints, the 
 angels' burning tiers," but there are more than 
 these. 
 
 Where the child shall greet the mother, 
 And the mother greet the child ; 
 
 R 
 
258 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Where dear families are gathered, 
 That were scattered on the wild. 
 
 And so in the full sense heaven is home. 
 
 And at the end, whereof the dawn of Easter 
 prophesies, women will receive their dead in 
 another fashion, and completely, everlastingly. 
 The day will break jubilant, as if sorrow, sighing, 
 and death were a dream of the night. Tears, and 
 groans, and waitings, and sobs, and broken hearts 
 will be done away for ever as the scattered tribes 
 of God ascend His Holy Hill. It has been well 
 with the dead. They have been absent from the 
 body, but present with their Lord, as if Christ 
 robed and homed them. Yet they have waited 
 for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the 
 body, and at last it has fully come. They behold 
 one another as they once did here, and there is 
 to be no more separation. The reunion of that 
 day of days, its resurrection, is better than any 
 resurrection to earth, than any brief reunion in 
 this world. We have longed to receive our dead, 
 to roll the great stone away, to carry captivity 
 captive, to hear again the words that of old bowed 
 our hearts. We have imagined that a future in 
 this world with the dead restored would be a 
 future from which all sorrow was expelled. But 
 
" WOMEN RECEIVED THEIR DEAD" 259 
 
 it could not be. The mother will say when she 
 receives the Httle one that has been so long in the 
 more immediate keeping of Christ that it has 
 been well with the child. The son who has 
 desired the mother, and prayed for her return, 
 will rejoice that her rest has been unstirred. 
 
 Oh rise, and sit in soft attire ! 
 Wait but to know my soul's desire ! 
 I'd call thee back to earthly days, 
 To cheer thee in a thousand ways ! 
 Ask but this heart for monument. 
 And mine shall be a large content ! 
 
 A crown of brightest stars to thee ! 
 How did thy spirit wait for me, 
 And nurse thy waning light, in faith 
 That I would stand 'twixt thee and death 
 Then tarry on thy bowing shore, 
 Till I have asked thy sorrows o'er ! 
 
 Because that I of thee was part. 
 Made of the blood-drops of thy heart ; 
 My birth I from my body drew, 
 And I upon thy bosom grew ; 
 My life was set thy life upon ; 
 And I was thine, and not my own. 
 
 Because I know there is not one 
 To think of me as thou hast done, 
 From morn till starlight year by year ; 
 For me thy smile repaid thy tear ; 
 And fears for me, and no reproof, 
 When once I dared to stand aloof ! 
 
26o THE: RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 My punishment, that I was far 
 When God unloosed thy weary star ! 
 My name was in thy faintest breath, 
 And I was in thy dream of death ; 
 And well I know what raised thy head. 
 When came the mourner's muffled tread ! 
 
 It is better to rest in the Day of Redemption, 
 and to rejoice in that Spirit whereby we are 
 sealed unto it with joy unspeakable and full of 
 glory. The Good Shepherd when He spoke of 
 the sheep for whom He laid down His life, and 
 for whom He took it again, says, " I know my 
 sheep, and am known of mine." And in Him the 
 long-lost communion is renewed and the long- 
 sought good is found. In the resurrection morn- 
 ing each of His people says, " I have found Him 
 whom my soul loveth — Him and them." 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF LITTLE CHILDREN 
 
 F7ROM various quarters we hear at present 
 ^ that Httle children need no theology. Mr. 
 Birrell, in a recent speech, went as far as to say 
 that they could not be taught theology, and that 
 whatever the priests might do, the little ones were 
 deaf to their teaching. Mr. Birrell is a minister's 
 son, and to such as he occasional sallies into the 
 field of dogma are necessary, no matter what they 
 have kept or lost of their first faith. Professor 
 Bruce, who is held in deserved respect as a 
 thoroughly trained theologian, and one whose 
 conclusions are in the main those of the catholic 
 Church, has compiled a religious catechism for 
 children published as a sequel to his book, 
 " With Open Face." In this he asks and answers 
 questions about the earthly life of Jesus. He 
 recognises that Christ performed miracles of 
 healing. He tells the children that they should 
 love Christ with all their hearts as their Saviour, 
 
262 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 and worship and serve Him as their Lord. But 
 about the Resurrection he has nothing to say, 
 and about the present activity of Jesus there is 
 only one question and answer — " Where is Jesus 
 now ? — He is in the house of his Father in 
 heaven, where He is preparing a place for all who 
 bear His name and walk in His footsteps." There 
 the catechism ends. A book of religion for 
 children, which has been widely circulated and 
 much praised by orthodox divines, slurs over in a 
 few sentences the Resurrection, the Ascension, 
 and the eternal reign. And there is a section of 
 Nonconformists at present who think the problem 
 of religious education in public schools might be 
 solved by confining the instruction to the earthly 
 life of Jesus. It is obvious to remark that they 
 would be confronted at once with the question of 
 miracle. But our purpose at present is rather to 
 show that little children are from the first taught 
 ii theology which is deep and catholic, taught it b}^ 
 their earliest instructors, and taught it in those 
 hymns whereby God stills the enemy and the 
 avenger. 
 
 Our appeal is to the hymnals which have been 
 provided in all sections of the Church for the use 
 of children. For convenience sake we shall use 
 
THE THEOLOGY OE LITTLE CHILDREN 263 
 
 that of the late Dr. W. Fleming Stevenson, who 
 was a man of great catholicity and fine literary 
 taste. 
 
 It will be admitted by all who are familiar with 
 the movements of theology during the last fift}' 
 years that the deeper current has been running 
 and is running more strongly than ever towards 
 faith in the great revealing acts of God. There is 
 a Broad Churchism which has run to seed, which 
 is practically dead in the Establishment, and 
 which is dying everywhere in Dissent, There is 
 another Broad Churchism which is broad in the 
 sense that it has insisted on the hallowing of 
 all life by the Incarnation, and that is living 
 and growing. When " Essays and Reviews " 
 appeared, many blundering people could see no 
 difference between their teaching and that of 
 Maurice and his immediate disciples, Maurice 
 passionately protested against the association. 
 He refused to accept the name of Broad Church- 
 man, We can see now that he was right. He 
 was not content with believing vaguely in an 
 inward spiritual relation ; he knew that there 
 must be a saving faith in the divine acts by which 
 the divine light has an external as well as an 
 internal manifestation. It is by these acts, b}' 
 
264 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Resur- 
 rection of our Lord that we get our one true 
 ghmpse of eternal Being. Now we take our 
 children's hymnal, and everywhere we find these 
 great acts affirmed and interpreted. The earthly 
 life of Jesus is everywhere remembered as it 
 should be, but the eternal life of the Father and 
 the Son which existed before man and exists now, 
 is held to give these words and works all their 
 meaning. Without this present life of Jesus, the 
 past life would mean very little. It would be 
 indeed a heroic and pathetic memory, but it could 
 not reinforce us in our need, and when it was 
 considered attentively, it might seem as if they 
 had much to say for themselves who regarded it 
 as a shattered dream, a broken song, a magnificent 
 failure. But everywhere the hymns teach the 
 holy Incarnation. Did Jesus gather the children 
 about Him in Palestine, and bless them, and 
 lay His hands on their hair? He can do the 
 same to-day. 
 
 " Thou who here didst prove 
 To babes so full of love, 
 Thou art the same above, 
 Merciful Jesus." 
 
 Did He once still the raging waters of the lake ? 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF LITTLE CHILDREN 265 
 
 " O well we know it was the Lord, 
 Our Saviour and our Friend ; 
 Whose care of those who trust His Word 
 Will never, never end." 
 
 Do children wish now to have been with Christ in 
 the days of His flesh when He called the little ones 
 as lambs to His fold ? They will be with Him 
 yet, and not only may they have the same blessing 
 now, but they will have it to the very fullest 
 hereafter. 
 
 " In the beautiful place He has gone to prepare 
 For all that are washed and forgiven ; 
 And many dear children are gathering there. 
 For of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Was He born a babe in the manger? His birth 
 was proclaimed by the angels. 
 
 " For they knew that the child on Bethlehem's Hill 
 Was Christ the Lord." 
 
 Did He come to Sion bringing His salvation to 
 the children who praised His name ? 
 
 " Since the Lord retaineth 
 
 His love for children still. 
 Though now as King He reigneth 
 
 On Sion's heavenly hill, 
 Weil flock around His banner 
 
 Who sits upon the throne, 
 And cry the loud Hosannah 
 
 To David's royal Son." 
 
266 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Are children taught to sing the m3^stery of His 
 great oblation ? Do they understand the Cross 
 as the final manifestation of divine love and of 
 human need ? 
 
 " Glory be to Jesus, 
 Who, in bitter pains, 
 Poured for me the Hfe blood 
 From His sacred veins. 
 
 Abel's blood for vengeance 
 
 Pleaded to the skies ; 
 But the blood of Jesus 
 
 For our pardon cries." 
 
 Can children be taught that He was born to die, 
 that He came to save them by dying, and that 
 now He pleads for them a Priest for ever ? 
 
 " Oh what has Jesus done for me ? 
 
 He pitied me, my Saviour ; 
 My sins were great, His love was free, 
 
 He died for me, my Saviour. 
 Exalted by the Father's side. 
 
 He pleads for me, my Saviour ; 
 A heavenly mansion He'll provide 
 
 For all who love the Saviour." 
 
 Above all, if we may say so, these hymns are 
 saturated with the thought of the Resurrection 
 and the eternal reign. He was the King of 
 Glory ere He came to seek us. He is the King 
 of Glory now that He has returned from the 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF LITTLE CHILDREN 267 
 
 wilderness. It is hardly worth while to show 
 the pitiful mutilations and omissions to which 
 the Unitarians in their hymnal for children are 
 compelled to resort. In Reginald Heber's " By 
 cool Siloam's shady rill," the closing verses 
 are : 
 
 " O Thou whose infant feet were found 
 Within Thy Father's shrine, 
 Whose years, with changeless virtue crowned. 
 Were all alike divine ; 
 
 Dependent on Thy bounteous breath, 
 
 We seek Thy grace alone, 
 In childhood, manhood, age, and death, 
 
 To keep us still thine own ! " 
 
 In the Unitarian hymnal the lines read : 
 
 " O thou whose infant feet were led 
 Within thy Father's shrine, 
 Whose years, with holiest spirit fed. 
 Were all alike divine ; 
 
 We seek that spirit's bounteous breath, 
 
 We ask his grace alone. 
 In childhood, manhood, age, and death, 
 
 To keep us still thine own." 
 
 When the 3'oung gather to dedicate themselves 
 to God it seems as if they could not but lift up 
 their eyes to the Light, the Way, the Truth, the 
 Life. 
 
268 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 "O Light, O Way, O Truth, O Life, 
 
 O Jesu, born mankind to save, 
 Give Thou Thy peace in deadliest strife, 
 
 Shed Thou Thy calm on stormiest wave ; 
 Be Thou our Hope, our Joy, our Dread, 
 Lord of the living and the dead." 
 
 More than that, one of the most noble of 
 children's hymns dares to touch on the sub- 
 duing mystery of a child's death, and its far 
 journey to the new home : 
 
 " Little travellers Zionward, 
 
 Each one entering into rest, 
 In the Kingdom of your Lord, 
 
 In the mansions of the blest ; 
 There, to welcome, Jesus waits, 
 
 Gives the crowns His followers win. 
 Lift your heads, ye golden gates. 
 
 Let the little travellers in." 
 
 Now these great Acts of God when applied 
 in their practical bearing simply mean that 
 Christ is close to the very fountains of the 
 human spirit, that we can pray to Him, and 
 that we ought to pray to Him. The Ritschlian 
 teaching passionately denies this. We have no 
 contact with Christ, it affirms, save through 
 such facts as remain to us of His early life. 
 But then this school denies His incarnation, 
 denies His atonement, denies His resurrection, 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF LITTLE CHILDREN 269 
 
 and denies His heavenly reign. We are always 
 baffled to understand how orthodox theologians 
 can discuss their differences with the Ritschlians 
 as if they were talking of nothing more im- 
 portant than the conformation of a beetle. It 
 is no wonder that such men should revive 
 the view that Christ is a moralist speaking with 
 authority, giving an example, and wielding in 
 some way the power of judgment and punish- 
 ment. They view the Church as "a virtue- 
 making institution," making virtue by teaching 
 what Christ did and said in Palestine. The 
 Church is indeed a virtue-making institution, but 
 she makes virtue by directing her children to 
 the accessible and ever-flowing spiritual spring 
 and source of virtue. The Church teaches the 
 vital and organic relation of all believing hearts 
 with Jesus Christ Himself She teaches that 
 into the secret recesses of the believing heart 
 Christ pours the Divine Spirit, that believers 
 are continually fed as the apostles were fed by 
 Christ their Life, by Christ within them, by 
 Christ the Inspirer and Enabler of all good. 
 Now that means that Christ is to be addressed 
 in prayer, for if He speaks to the spirit of man 
 directly, surely the spirit of man may and must 
 
270 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 speak in return to Him. If our life and peace 
 are consciously drawn from Christ, we must 
 bless Him for what He has given and plead 
 with Him to give us more. To pray to Christ 
 as if He were more merciful than the Father is 
 indeed condemned from every fact of the divine 
 revelation. But even as we pray to the Father, so 
 we may pray to the Eternal Son. We can hold 
 communion as direct with any one Person of 
 the Blessed Trinity as with another. Now the 
 peculiarity of children's hymns is that they are 
 almost all prayers to the Lord Jesus. 
 
 " Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me ; 
 Bless Thy little lamb to-night." 
 
 Is that prayer answered ? Is it true that the 
 Great Shepherd is beside His lambs when they 
 sleep and when they wake ? 
 
 " Yet still to His footstool in prayer I may go, 
 And ask for a share of His love." 
 
 Is that a faithful saying, and worthy of all 
 acceptation ? 
 
 " Holy Jesus, every day 
 Keep us in the narrow way." 
 
 Does He then guide the feet of His children 
 home ? We ask for no theology beyond what 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF LITTLE CHILDREN 271 
 
 we find in the hymns sung by httle children, 
 sung with the understanding as well as with 
 the voice. The mysteries of God are spoken 
 there so far as human lips may speak them. 
 When it pleased God to reveal His Son in Paul, 
 He was revealed not only as the Lord of Glory, 
 but as the very life of his life. So the Apostle 
 said : " Though we have known Christ after the 
 flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him so no 
 more." It was not that St. Paul disparaged the 
 historical life of Jesus. Every word and every 
 deed kept for us is precious beyond price. But 
 the meaning would pass from them ; they would 
 become bleached, and faded, and outworn if we 
 did not know that they are perpetual signs of an 
 activity that is constant, of a love and care that 
 never cease, so that they are all transfigured by 
 the glory that excelleth. Let every mother who 
 reads these words ask what religion would be to 
 her if she were told that she must no more teach 
 her children to pray to Jesus, that she must no 
 more teach them that He is the King of heaven, 
 that she cannot speak to them of His present life, 
 but only of His past, that He will not be with 
 them in the long journey they can never take 
 with her. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL LOVE FOR CHRIST 
 
 IN his admirable portrait of Coventry Patmore, 
 published in the Contemporary Review, Mr. 
 Gosse tells us that Patmore prepared a book 
 entitled " Sponsa Dei." It was a mystical 
 interpretation of the love between the soul 
 and God by an analogy of the love between 
 a woman and a man — in fact, a transcendental 
 treatise on divine desire seen through the veil 
 of human desire. Mr. Gosse assures us that 
 the purity and crystalline passion of the writer 
 carried him safely over the most astounding 
 difficulties. But Mr. Patmore decided to burn 
 it. Perhaps it was better so. His theme, how- 
 ever, has engaged many Christian hearts, and it 
 has been especially expounded in mystical in- 
 terpretations of the Song of Songs. We have 
 before us a volume entitled "The Most Holy 
 Place : Sermons on the Song of Solomon," by 
 
 s 
 
274 T^E RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon.* Whatever ground there be for 
 the spiritual interpretation of Canticles — and 
 scholars generally reject it— there is no doubt 
 that we have in this volume a most valuable 
 contribution to Christian literature. The Church 
 does not yet know what a great saint and doctor 
 she possessed in Mr. Spurgeon. If religion is to 
 be derived from revelation, and if theology is to 
 be kept close to Christian experience, living or 
 dying therewith, then we do not hesitate to say 
 that Mr. Spurgeon was not a whit behind the 
 very chiefest of theologians. Of course, what 
 little criticism there is in the book is of small 
 account, and it does not profess to be important. 
 What is important is the depth of Christian know- 
 ledge the book discloses, and we have no hesitation 
 in saying that it is one of the greatest treatises 
 on the love of Christ to His people and on His 
 people's love to Christ that the Church possesses, 
 wonderful alike for fertility and exquisite delicacy 
 of thought. The writer plays with the images of 
 the Canticles, but always with a careful reverence 
 and reserve. " I am the rose of Sharon and the 
 lily of the valle}^," he comments upon thus : " Red 
 as the rose in His sacrifice, white as the lily as 
 * Passmore and Alabaster. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL LOVE FOR CHRIST 275 
 
 He ascends on high in His perfect righteousness, 
 clothed in His white robe of victory to receive 
 gifts for men," and the volume is full of such 
 beautiful fancies, though what is at the heart 
 of it is not fancy, but the very truth of truths. 
 Mr. Spurgeon was remarkable beyond most 
 preachers for the passion and intensity of his 
 personal love for Christ, and here it appears in 
 every sentence. He was not like Dr. Newman, 
 whose Christian creed perhaps did not vary 
 much from the beginning to the end, and was 
 always held with vehement conviction, but who 
 was ever solicitous to construct defences round 
 it, building up a new fort for every old fort 
 that was thrown down. With apologetics Mr. 
 Spurgeon had no concern at all. " Whereas I 
 was blind, now I see," was the first and the last 
 of his defences of the faith. 
 
 What is the evangelical love for Christ ? 
 What are its perennial sources and characteris- 
 tics ? It is not enough to say that evangelical 
 love is an admiration for Christ. Those who 
 do not admire Christ in a sense have smned 
 the sin against the Holy Ghost. Though the 
 terrible alternative, either God or not good, 
 logically holds, those who do not believe that 
 
276 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Christ was God see much in His life and teaching 
 worthy of praise. Literary unbelief has shrunk 
 from many words about Jesus, but when we 
 get at the meaning of the unbelief of such men 
 as Burns and Carlyle, we find that they thought 
 of Christ as an amiable dreamer. It is pathetic 
 to see how Renan endeavours to save His 
 character. He thinks that Christ partly de- 
 teriorated as He went on vindicating His 
 Messianic claims, and that it would have been 
 better if He had died after preaching the Sermon 
 on the Mount or by the well of Samaria. But he 
 pleads that sincerity in the modern sense is not 
 a Semitic virtue, and that all Christ's fault was 
 that He took humanity with its illusions and 
 sought to act upon it and with it. It is needless 
 to say that the evangelical love of Christ rests on 
 an implicit faith in His sinlessness. But it is 
 more than this faith. It is more than honour, 
 it is more than trust, it is more than obedience, 
 it is something warmer and tenderer than all 
 these, for it is love. 
 
 The evangelical love for Christ rests first upon 
 His love for us. There is a love for the dead we 
 have never known, a true love, a love that may 
 grow with the years. Companionship with the 
 
THE EVANGELICAL LOVE FOR CHRIST 277 
 
 words of a noble spirit like St. Paul may quicken 
 the ardour of a true affection. But then there is 
 no answering love in return. They do not love 
 us, and have never loved us. They do not even 
 know us, but Our Saviour knows us, has known 
 us from the beginning — has loved us from the 
 beginning. " Who loved me ? " There is nothing 
 in life which is at once so humbling and so 
 ennobling as it is to be loved by a nature far 
 higher and purer than our own, and, thanks be to 
 God, it is a common experience. In every form 
 love is precious. The love of the weak, the love 
 of the ignorant, the love of the sinful, if it is true, 
 is not to be lightly thought of. But it is the love 
 of the higher bestowed upon the lower that rallies 
 the sinking forces of life and helps us to play the 
 man. Down into the depths and failures of our 
 history this love comes streaming, however wc 
 may be despised of men. "Thou hast been 
 precious in my sight, and honourable, and I have 
 loved thee." There is a saying of an old mystic 
 that it is impossible for love not to be returned 
 in some measure or another. That may be 
 an exaggeration, though it has its element of 
 truth, and yet it is hard to think that any one 
 can believe in the love of Christ to ////;/, and 
 
278 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 not be constrained in some way to give the love 
 back. 
 
 The deep foundation and the certain assurance 
 of the love of Christ is that He died to redeem 
 us. Whenever the heart is most kindled, it is 
 by the thought of the well of God dug by the 
 soldiers' spears, of the cross, the sponge, the 
 vinegar, the nails, of the red wine of love that 
 flowed when He trod the winepress alone, and of 
 the people there was none with Him, of the sweet 
 and dreadful cry, " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ? " 
 Perhaps every intense, passionate, human love 
 has its foundation in some act, some sacrifice, 
 some day of days to which the heart keeps turn- 
 ing in its darkness, and Mr. Spurgeon says, " 1 
 should not like to guess how heavy a true heart 
 may sometimes become." The old hymns are 
 full of this. 
 
 " Lo\-e so vast that nought can bound, 
 Love too deep for thought to sound ; 
 Love that made the Lord of all 
 Drink the wormwood and the gall ; 
 Love which led Him to the cross, 
 Bearing there unuttered loss. 
 
 Love which brought Him to the gloom 
 Of the cold and darksome tomb ; 
 Love which will not let Him rest 
 Till His chosen all are blest. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL LOVE FOR CHRIST 279 
 
 Till they all for whom He died, 
 Live rejoicing by His side." 
 
 Our love flames up as we recognise that He has 
 not in vain suffered life and death for us, that the 
 strings that bound our burden to us begin to 
 crack, and our load falls into His sepulchre to be 
 seen no more. Perhaps it is true that in this 
 love there is an element of remorse, and is not 
 that the most quickening element in a great 
 human afliection ? Few can say that they have 
 answered back the love that was given them as 
 they should have answered it, and at the memory 
 every energy of the heart aw^akes. 
 
 " I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song, 
 It is not true that Love will do no wrong. 
 Poor child ! 
 
 And did you think, when you so cried and smiled, 
 How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake. 
 And of these words your full avengers make ? 
 Poor child, poor child. 
 And now, unless it be, 
 
 That sweet amends thrice told are come to thee, 
 O God, have Thou no mercy upon me. 
 Poor child ! " 
 
 Is not that the meaning of the Song in heaven ? 
 " Worthy is ihe Lamb that ivas slain to receive 
 power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and 
 honour, and glory, and blessing." He was slain, 
 
28o THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 and we slew Him. We can never make it up. 
 Tlie thorns of the thorn-crowned head pierce the 
 heart, the fever of His death wakes the fever of 
 our passion till all the loves that once strayed 
 abroad gather to a burning centre, and the 
 fountain of our affections has but one channel, 
 and that is He. 
 
 The evangelical love for Christ rests on the 
 constant consciousness of His presence. He is 
 really present. We speak to Him, we tell Him 
 of all our weaknesses, our want, our sin, our 
 failure, our longing. It is this which the mystics 
 most desire to teach. Love must be able to come 
 near, to enter into the closest, most endearing 
 intimacies. There is a real peril in trying to 
 parallel the sacred mysteries of the spiritual life 
 from earthly analogies ; and yet what could be 
 more significant of the waning of Christianity 
 than that Christians should actually be gravely 
 discussing whether people who deny any present 
 communion with Christ at all may not be as good 
 Christians as those whose life-habit it is ? Let us 
 not deceive ourselves. There is no Christianity 
 which does not mean this, and we find in the 
 New Testament language strained and pressed to 
 its utmost meaning in order to express this truth. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL LOVE FOR CHRIST 281 
 
 " We will come unto him, and make our abode 
 with him," said the Son. " I live, yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me," said the Apostle. The 
 mystery of union with Christ is the ultimate 
 m3'stery and experience of the Christian faith. 
 There was one of whom it was said that he 
 often fell asleep talking to Christ, was often 
 heard in his dreams speaking to his Saviour, 
 and there are multitudes now who are not 
 speaking emptily when they say that their 
 Redeemer has been with them this many a year. 
 
 This love of the soul for Christ is a love that 
 trusts His love as constant and almighty. It is 
 constant, and human love is much of it incon- 
 stant. Even where it is truest the communion 
 may be snapped at any moment by death. And 
 human love is weak, and cannot even by the last 
 sacrifice accomplish what it yearns for. " Would 
 God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my 
 son ! " There is little here that we can count on. 
 Friends fail us, death takes our truest, and 3'et 
 we can count on that love which is constant 
 in all worlds, through all years, that love 
 in which the dead are living and the lost are 
 found, that love which does not die when we 
 die, that does not cease to care when we can 
 
282 JHE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 care no longer, that love in which we and our 
 
 beloved dwell as in a fortress-home. Aubrey de 
 
 Vere writes of one who imagines herself dead 
 
 and her lover living alone, and then, reproaching 
 
 herself, remembers the love which can still be 
 
 his : 
 
 " Upon my gladness fell a gloom ; 
 Thee saw I — on some far-off day — 
 My Husband, by thy loved one's tomb ; 
 I could not help thee where I lay. 
 
 Ah, traitress I, to die the first ! 
 Ah, hapless thou to mourn alone ! 
 Sudden that truth upon me burst, 
 Confessed so oft, till then unknown — 
 
 There lives who loved him ! loves and loved 
 Better a million-fold than I ! 
 That love with countenance unremoved 
 Looked on him from eternity. 
 
 That love of wisdom and of power, 
 Though I were dust would guard him still, 
 And faithful at the last dread hour, 
 Stand near him whispering, ' Fear no ill.' '' 
 
 This evangelical love for Christ is then a pas- 
 sionate love. There is on earth the vividness of 
 first love, the fervour of early passion, and this 
 finds its likeness in the Christian's love for 
 Christ. But there is on earth a love nobler 
 than that, a love that glows with a great, steady 
 
THE EVANGELICAL LOVE FOR CHRIST 283 
 
 ardour, with a still, intense, vehement flame, and 
 this is the Christian ideal. This is the love that 
 labours when all labour without it would be hard 
 and heavy. This is the love that fights when 
 all seems dead against it. This is the love that 
 lifts up its spear against ten thousand, and turns 
 the strength of the foemen at the gates. This 
 is the love that welcomes suffering for the be- 
 loved's sake. Sacrifice is continually changing 
 its form, but it is always present in the life of 
 the Christian. Where it is most present there 
 is love warmest and kindest. When Ignatius 
 was led to his martyrdom, and thought of the 
 nearness of his death and pain, he said, " Now 
 I begin to be a Christian." Well has it been said 
 that wherever the Church goes the thick smoke 
 of her suffering ascends to heaven. " We are 
 alway delivered to death for Jesus' sake." 
 
THE THEOLOGY OE WALTER PATER* 
 
 THE alienation between literature and the 
 Church is at last recognised as a serious 
 and formidable fact. And the idea has gained 
 currency that if large parts of the Christian 
 dogma could be abandoned or thrown into the 
 shade, the result would be a religion acceptable 
 to the cultured. If it were so, our duty would in 
 no wise be changed. We should still have to 
 declare all the counsel of God. We should still 
 have to say, " I have received of the Lord that 
 which I deliver unto you." Otherwise preaching 
 descends to the level of speech-making. But we 
 maintain that it is not so, that a volatilised 
 Christianity has no more attraction for the 
 man of letters than it has for the rest of man- 
 kind. A very striking proof of this may be 
 
 " Essays in the Giianlian. By Walter Pater. Privately 
 printed. 
 
286 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 found in a curious little volume of which one 
 hundred copies only have been printed for private 
 circulation. This contains nine reviews contri- 
 buted to the Giiaj'dian by Mr. Walter Pater. 
 Mr. Gosse, we believe, has edited the volume, 
 and that distinguished critic correctly says that 
 though the positive value of the essays may be 
 slight, they are of value and interest as proceed- 
 ing from Mr. Pater. It seems to us that they 
 are of very eminent value in helping us to under- 
 stand the exact theological position in which he 
 finally rested. It is quite superfluous to say 
 that Pater was an ideal exponent of the culture 
 of his day. 
 
 In " Marius the Epicurean," his most elaborate 
 and living book, Mr. Pater enforces and enlarges 
 the philosophy of his work on the Renaissance. 
 It is expressed in few words : A counted 
 number of pulses is given us of varied dramatic 
 life. We have an interval, and then our place 
 knows us no more. Our business is to expend 
 that interval in getting as many pulsations as 
 possible into the given time. This might be 
 called Epicureanism ; the author calls it New 
 Cyrenaeicism. When the glamour of youth dies 
 away, something more is needed than this philo- 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF WALTER PATER 287 
 
 sophy of moments. Life seeks pathetically for 
 continuity, for what lasts and binds, and can be 
 handed on from soul to soul. That continuity it 
 finds in the ancient and wonderful ethical order 
 which is in impregnable possession of humanity. 
 The crystallised feeling that is stored in the 
 world's moral belief attracts the seeker for 
 pleasure. Pleasure is not to be found as he first 
 thought, in the violation of this moral order, but 
 in submission to it. His sceptical attitude may 
 be, and indeed is, still maintained. Morality 
 may have no absolute virtue or validity, but 
 obedience is a source of pleasure and quickening 
 faculty to the individual. It will be seen that we 
 have advanced to morality, but not be3'ond 
 Epicureanism. A further step is taken towards 
 religion, and it is in the same direction. Christi- 
 anity may not be true, but it is best to treat it as 
 if it were. True Christian feeling gives bright- 
 ness and sweetness to life and mitigates the 
 awfulness of death. Christianity enshrines much 
 of the most heroic and noble feeling and utter- 
 ance of the human spirit. Therefore it is wise to 
 take it on trust. The intellectual citadel should 
 be kept inviolate. You may think, if you please, 
 with the elect who are the small minority. But 
 
288 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 you will be wise to give yourself at the same 
 time to the prayers and tears and dreams of the 
 the majority. In this way the sweetest, most 
 elusive, most delicate flavour will be given to life 
 and death will lose something of its terror. 
 Marius, who in reality died but a half Christian 
 death, was generously recognised as a martyr in 
 times when mart3'rdom was taken as a kind of 
 sacrament with plenary grace. 
 
 In his unfinished last book, " Gaston de 
 Latour," Pater goes further. His editor, Mr. 
 Shadwell, says that the book w'as to be a picture 
 of a refined and cultivated mind, capable of keen 
 enjoyment in the pleasures of the senses and the 
 intellect, but destined to find its complete satis- 
 faction in that which transcends both. The final 
 expression of Pater's mind in this book has been 
 well summed up in the text, " I have seen that all 
 things come to an end, but Thy commandment is 
 exceeding broad." The utmost limits of the new 
 ways are reached, and the restless and immortal 
 spirit pursues its quest further and finds its large 
 room in the commandment. It was stated, though 
 not very prominently, when Pater died, that he 
 had been for years a professed believer in Christ, 
 and we owe much gratitude to Mr. Gosse for 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF WALTER PATER 289 
 
 giving us the proof of this, and i'or indicating the 
 Hnes on which Pater advanced beyond his 
 Epicureanism. The most interesting passage is 
 perhaps that in which he deals very courteously 
 with Robert Elsmere. " We have little patience," 
 says Pater, " with the liberal clergy who dwell on 
 nothing else than the difficulties of faith and the 
 propriety of concession to the opposite forces." 
 He goes on to say : " As against the purely 
 negative action of the scientific Ward, the high- 
 pitched Gray, and the theistic Elsmere, the 
 ritualistic priest, and the quaint Methodist, Flem- 
 ing, both so admirably sketched, present perhaps 
 no unconquerable differences. The question of 
 the day is not between one and anotlier of these, 
 but in another sort of opposition, well defined by 
 Mrs. Ward herself, between 'two estimates of 
 life, the estimate which is the offspring of the 
 scientific spirit, and which is for ever making the 
 visible world fairer and more desirable in mortal 
 eyes, and the estimate of St. Augustine.' To us," 
 Pater goes on, " the belief in God, in goodness at 
 all, in the story of Bethlehem, does not rest on 
 evidence so diverse in character and force as Mrs. 
 Ward supposes. At his death, Elsmere has 
 started what to us would be a most unattractive 
 
 T 
 
290 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 place of worship, where he preaches an admirable 
 sermon on the purely human aspect of the life of 
 Christ. But we think there would be very few 
 such sermons in the new church or chapel, for 
 the interest of that life could hardly be very varied 
 when all such sayings as ' Though He was rich, 
 yet for our sakes He became poor/ have ceased 
 to be applicable to it. It is the infinite nature of 
 Christ which has led to such diversities of genius 
 in preaching as St. Francis, and Taylor, and 
 Wesley." Again, in his essay on Amiel he 
 criticises Amiel's religion, and says that his pro- 
 foundly religious spirit might have developed 
 " had he been able to see that the old-fashioned 
 Christianity is itself but the proper historic 
 development of the true * essence ' of the New 
 Testament. Assenting on probable evidence to 
 so many judgments of the religious sense, he 
 failed to see the equally probable evidence that 
 there is for the beliefs ; the peculiar direction of 
 men's hopes, which complete those judgments 
 harmoniously, and bring them into connection 
 with the facts ; the venerable institutions of the 
 past, with the lives of the saints. By failure, as 
 we think, of that historic sense of which he could 
 speak so well, he got no further in that direction 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF WALTER PATER 291 
 
 than the glacial condition of rationalistic Geneva." 
 It is that very Genevan rationalism which is ever 
 and anon being recommended as the specific for 
 our ills, but Pater saw that if any powerful part 
 of Christianity is accepted, it involves the rest, 
 and that ultimately the witness of all the saints, 
 and not only the experience of the individual, is 
 to be relied upon, for it was to the saints that the 
 faith was first of all delivered. 
 
 We go back on another typical figure of the 
 world of culture, one who never, like Pater, com- 
 pletely surrendered his unbelief. Clough, whose 
 inexplicable attraction, notwithstanding the small 
 amount of his enduring product, continues, left a 
 fragment belonging to the last period of his life, 
 on "The Religious Tradition." Most readers 
 know something of his hard battle with moral and 
 intellectual perplexities, from the time when he 
 went to Oxford, and was for two years, in his 
 own words, like a straw drawn by the draught of 
 a chimney, on to his premature death. But his 
 later years, if they were not filled with the strange, 
 unearthly peace which is the final token of Christ's 
 indwelling, were much more quiet than the earlier. 
 He had begun to see that it was not his business 
 to construct a religion or a theology, or to achieve 
 
292 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 his own salvation. He began to recognise, 
 though dimly, that these things were the work of 
 Another. In his last writings he laid emphasis 
 on the significance and depth of the moral and 
 religious teaching which passed by the name of 
 Christianity, and wrote that "implicit reliance 
 cannot be placed on the individual experience, 
 reason, judging power." Therefore, he says, " I 
 see not what alternative any sane or humble- 
 minded man can have but to throw himself upon 
 the great religious tradition." His opinion on a 
 pared-down, accommodated Christianity is seen 
 in the words : " I contend that the Unitarian is 
 morally and religiously only half educated com- 
 pared with the Episcopalian." So it comes at 
 last that the wisest begin to doubt themselves, 
 begin to see how little way their individual 
 faculties carry them, discover that Christianity is 
 not a new thing, but that for all these centuries 
 the Spirit has interpreted the Word to the hearts 
 of believers. They accept some word of God- 
 guided men, prove it in their own experience, and 
 then, even if their experience tarries behind, they 
 trust the inspired leader and go on with him. 
 They have lost the desire to construct a new path 
 to heaven ; they are content to take the way 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF WALTER PATER 293 
 
 which the saints have trodden, the way that leads 
 to the Fountain. 
 
 Something may be said also of Balzac — a writer 
 who is at last coming to his own in England. 
 It is quite true that Balzac's novels are not for 
 everybody, and that many of them, perhaps most, 
 should be kept out of the hands of the young. 
 He was the greatest of those who have explored 
 the subterranean ways of life and set in a terrible 
 lustre the secret things of darkness. His books 
 are full of the tremendous pursuit of retribution, 
 of the slowly gathering coils of fate, of the 
 mysteries of pain and shame lying under the thin 
 surface of life. His characters are haunted by 
 thoughts of the past, by hopeless hopes, by 
 devouring recollections, and he shows us — and 
 this perhaps is his greatest achievement — that 
 these things are to be found no less in the quiet 
 woods and fields than in the crowded city. We 
 will steadily refuse to say that this literature, 
 when done grandly, has not its place and use. 
 It brings home, as few things do, the sense of 
 human sinfulness and human misery, and in 
 many passages of Holy Scripture the same 
 method is used to produce the same result. 
 Indeed, we believe that if the Christian Churcli is 
 
294 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 to recover its old power, it will be in recoiling 
 from the shallow optimism which refuses to put 
 aside the silken curtains and see what is behind. 
 The question of Balzac's greatness as an artist is 
 one of criticism, and we should think few com- 
 petent judges will deny that he is incomparably 
 the finest of French novelists, and indeed the 
 first novelist, with one exception, of the whole 
 century. Nor must it be forgotten that he him- 
 self, notwithstanding his long, pitiful struggle, 
 was one of the friendliest, gentlest, and kindest 
 of men. Few records are more touching and 
 noble than the collection of his letters, and we 
 have dwelt again and again, with deep emotion, 
 on many passages — on his filial love, on his in- 
 vincible courage, on his impatience of the 
 materialistic creed, on the heroism with which in 
 his rainy garret he went on year after year with- 
 out encouragement, doing his very best. And 
 above all, where shall we find such a story of 
 pure, tender, delicate devotion as that of his 
 fifteen years' love, or a more pathetic episode 
 than his death, after but three months of the 
 long-waited happiness ? That Balzac was free 
 from follies it would be ridiculous to deny, 
 but how much of passionate affection and 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF WALTER PATER 295 
 
 devotion lay behind them ! When in the end 
 of the day death set the doors open and let 
 the sun shine in, the closet of this man, who 
 had drawn such pictures of the skeleton in 
 every closet, was found empty. We have not 
 space to make quotations, but where in the litera- 
 ture of fiction can one find so complete an expo- 
 sition of remorse and expiation as that, for 
 example, in his book, " The Country Pastor " ? 
 His great intellect and noble heart rested de- 
 voutly on the experience of the saints. He 
 found no difficulty in the humble acceptance of 
 the Christian creed, and one can imagine what 
 scorn would have awakened in him by the gaunt 
 and forlorn structure which is dressed out and 
 set forth among us anew as the Christian faith. 
 How often, even in his least ungenial writing, 
 when he seems abandoned to the spirit of cynicism, 
 does his faith flash up and drive it out of sight ! 
 There be those who, with Matthew Arnold, still 
 hear the melancholy, long withdrawing roar of 
 the sea of faith as it steadily retreats and leaves 
 the barren shingles naked. Others, more wise, 
 hear the wave of joy. and hope that is to lift the 
 world coming- nearer and nearer. 
 
IS THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 
 THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL?* 
 
 I "HERE is great room for some independent 
 ^ and robust works of native manufacture 
 dealing with Christian ethics. We have been too 
 much dependent upon foreigners for instruction 
 of this kind, and at the moment of writing the 
 only epoch-making English contribution that we 
 recall to this subject is the admirable work of 
 Dr. Wace on Christianity and Morality. Mr. 
 Strong's book is therefore very welcome. He is 
 already known to a small circle of readers as 
 the author of a handbook of Christian theology, 
 which somehow strangely failed to make an im- 
 pression, but which, although it has its short- 
 comings, contains much that is both masculine 
 and devout. It is perhaps impossible to rate his 
 
 ■•■ " Christian Ethics." The Bampton Lectures for 1895. 
 By T. B. Strong. M..\., Student of Christchurch. Long- 
 mans. 
 
298 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 Bampton Lectures as highly, yet they will take a 
 good place in the series, and they deserve an 
 attentive perusal. The book is well written, 
 although there is a lack of ring and concentration, 
 and an amount of repetition possibly to be 
 excused in the pulpit, but inevitably resented b}' 
 the reader. All parts of the book are not of 
 the same value. The concluding chapter on 
 Ethics and the Church is unsatisfactory, and 
 the same may be said of all the passages 
 where the Church is introduced. Mr. Strong's 
 reading, extensive and careful in some directions, 
 is limited in others. For example, he makes no 
 reference to Rothe and Martensen, though both, 
 and especially the former, could have taught him 
 very much. It is nothing short of a scandal that 
 the great work of Rothe in Holtzmann's edition 
 has not been translated into English. The third 
 section of the book, the PJlichtenlchrc, in par- 
 ticular, is worth all the English books on Chris- 
 tian ethics put together. Mr. Strong, though he 
 has studied the Fathers and given us some fresh 
 and interesting details of their ethical theories, is 
 weak in the Reformation literature, and his section 
 on the Reformation is very defective, not from any 
 will to misrepresent, but from want of knowledge. 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 299 
 
 There is, however, much that is valuable in 
 this book, and we propose to reproduce Mr. 
 Strong's argument against the view that has been 
 revived in our day, that the whole of Christianit}' 
 lies in the Sermon on the Mount — in other words, 
 that the Sermon on the Mount is the Chris- 
 tian Gospel. It is against this theory that 
 he directs the whole force of his reasoning, 
 and with complete success so far as he goes, 
 though, as we shall see, he has almost wholly 
 neglected a line of argument equally weight}^ and 
 important with that to which he has done such 
 justice. 
 
 Mr. Strong shows that the fault of Greek and 
 Jewish ethics was that they commanded from 
 without. Righteousness, therefore, could not 
 come of them. The Jews, it is true, under the 
 guidance of revelation, found a purer morality 
 than the Greeks ; the}' went deeper into the 
 causes of moral failure, and found them in the 
 will. All the same, that law in which they de- 
 lighted could not save them, and the worship of 
 the law produced in Judaism the most unlovel}', 
 hard, and unspiritual of all characters. For a 
 greater depth of tenderness one had to look for 
 those who in a sense dispensed with the law. 
 
300 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 waiting for some better thing to come, even the 
 consolation of Israel. 
 
 When our Lord appeared and preached the 
 Sermon on the Mount, the situation was not 
 altered in essence. The Sermon on the Mount 
 asserted the authority of a new teacher, and it 
 laid stress on the spiritual virtues — in this follow- 
 ing the loftier strain of Hebrew thought. It gave 
 a promise of perfection — the perfection of the 
 Father in heaven. Nevertheless it remained a 
 law. It gave commands to the will, set before the 
 will an ideal, but it did not give any direct pro- 
 mise of guidance, and it did not say how per- 
 fection was to be reached. And therefore it is 
 true that the Sermon on the Mount kills as relent- 
 lessly as the law, nay, even more relentlessly, 
 because it is more difficult. The heights to 
 be scaled are impossible heights. Mr. Strong 
 points out very frankly that whenever people 
 have tried to obey the Sermon on the Mount from 
 an external point of view they have failed hope- 
 lessly, and ended in utter confusion. The Sermon 
 on the Mount constrains and presses the will at 
 every point, closes avenues of action, and opens 
 a path which unaided none are able to tread. So 
 the old sober view of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 301 
 
 that expressed by Dr. Robertson Smith in his 
 words that the Sermon on the Mount was the 
 preliminary part of Christ's work, and that its 
 object was to show how His teaching attached 
 itself to and transcended Jewish teaching, must 
 stand. It is the only one that coheres with the 
 New Testament, that coheres even with the 
 Gospels. When we read the Gospels, we find in 
 them very little moral exhortation, and no armoury 
 of ethical precepts. They are largely historical 
 anecdotes of a life, of the ideal life. St. John 
 sees more profoundly into the springs of moral 
 action than the Synoptics, but his book, too, is 
 historical. It is no answer that in the case of 
 Jesus the ideal was real, the Word was made 
 flesh. Still the ideal remained external to the 
 will, and such an ideal, whether expressed in the 
 life or in the commandment, may very easily 
 hurt rather than help. It may so confound, dis- 
 courage, and abase that the impulse to moral 
 struggle is utterly destroyed. And even as an 
 ideal it is incomplete ; no one can say that Christ 
 has solved all, or nearly all, the problems of lil'e. 
 On many points He has not touched. The change 
 of circumstances, the progress of civilisation, have 
 called into existence many new difficulties on 
 
302 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 which, viewed from the outside, His career gives 
 us very Httle light. Considered as external, this 
 ideal, great and supreme as it is, must gradually 
 fade away with time. 
 
 But Christ in His last hours opened His heart. 
 He had previously been behaving very differently 
 from the ordinary teacher of a new theory. 
 Instead of seeking fresh disciples and larger 
 audiences, He turned to the inner circle, and 
 gave His force to strengthening them. He 
 told His disciples that the Spirit of Truth 
 would come and dwell within them, and open 
 up the way to a complete communion between 
 God and man. Through His death and through 
 His rising again a new power would enter into 
 the world. The Holy Ghost dwelling in the 
 heart would take of the things that were Christ's, 
 would interpret their meaning, and would give 
 the power to fulfil them in actual experience. In 
 other words, Christ does not so much exhort as 
 promise. The real centre of investigation into 
 the ethical meaning of Christianity must be 
 transferred from the Gospel story to the time 
 after Pentecost. Then the disciples and the 
 world too, little though it knew it, entered into 
 another order, in which forces had begun to 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 303 
 
 stir which were able to transform sinful men 
 into the image of the Son. Jesus was the Lord 
 and the Mediator; Mis resurrection sealed His 
 life and work with the good pleasure of God, and 
 opened in the Holy Spirit a new spring of ethical 
 activity which at once sharpened the perceptions 
 of the conscience and gave power to follow them. 
 Thus the whole notion of morality moved inward, 
 and under all circumstances, even in the circum- 
 stances sketched in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 the new faith Avas equal to its battle, and ready 
 to meet whatever strain might be imposed upon 
 it. 
 
 In this way we understand, what indeed has 
 always been easily understood by the Christian 
 Church, the position of the Apostles. They say 
 very little about Christ's teaching. It is amazing 
 how few direct references to His precepts can be 
 discovered. But they lay the whole stress upon 
 those points which most distinctly give evidence 
 of the entering of the new order and the abroga- 
 tion of the old, namely, the Crucifixion and 
 the Resurrection. This fresh vital force, this 
 bestowal of health, this power set in motion 
 by the Holy Spirit, was to be the true deliverance 
 of mankind — mankind that hitherto had been 
 
304 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 haunted and depressed by failure. To the 
 Apostles the insistence on the Sermon on the 
 Mount as the sum of Christianity would have 
 appeared a relapse into hopeless paganism. 
 
 They felt this all the more because they under- 
 stood the depths in which mankind had been 
 plunged by the Fall. The Greeks knew nothing 
 of a Fall, the Jews thought that the Fall might 
 be reversed by the action of the will, but to the 
 Apostles, as to Christ, our whole nature was 
 touched by incapacity. The abnormal element 
 in human nature had gained the mastery, and so 
 we were enthralled in a captivity from which only 
 the death and resurrection of Our Lord could set 
 us free. Mr. Strong has some penetrating 
 remarks on the respective tempers in which sin 
 is treated by the Old Testament and the New. 
 There is a passion against sin in the Old Testa- 
 ment, a passion all the fiercer because sin seems 
 so strong. The New Testament treats it far 
 more calmly. It is equally severe, perhaps more 
 severe ; it preaches the present judgment of sin 
 as well as the day of reckoning at the Parousia, 
 but it looks upon sin as a power that may be 
 conquered, and that has been implicitly conquered 
 by the death of Jesus. It finds no explana- 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 305 
 
 tion of the life and death of Jesus that 
 does not recognise the Fall and the Retrieval. 
 It is little to sa)' that the modern washed-out 
 version of Christianity, which represents the 
 death of Christ as a sacrifice in the sense of a 
 resignation of good things, would have been 
 rejected by the Apostles. It would not even 
 have been understood by them. In that sense 
 they did not use the word sacrifice at all. 
 
 It is the weak point of Mr. Strong's book that 
 while he by no means rejects, but rather cordially 
 accepts, the doctrine of the Atonement, he gives 
 it no proper place in Christian ethics. He has 
 one lecture, for example, on the great text of 
 St. Paul, "We preach Christ crucified," but it 
 is hopelessly unexegetical. He rides off on the 
 phrase " the wisdom of God," trying to connect 
 it with the Old Testament thought of the wisdom 
 which was with God when He prepared the 
 heavens. For the Apostle's word " power " he 
 substitutes "love," and he argues that "the 
 reason why the life of Christ has a real meaning 
 for our lives is because in it the whole wisdom 
 and love of God were manifested in full in their 
 inseparable unions." He almost wholly ignores 
 the fact that the Apostle is laying stress upon 
 
 u 
 
3o6 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 the Atonement, that his meaning is, " We preach 
 Christ as crucified." It is another sign of the 
 same blindness that he treats the Reformation 
 as if it estabhshed a certain difference between 
 morality and religion. What the Reformation 
 did was to establish the connection of morality 
 with the Atonement. In the Catechism of Heidel- 
 berg the whole system of ethics is embraced 
 under the article concerning gratitude. And so 
 in the Confession of Basel we read : " We do 
 not ascribe righteousness and satisfaction for our 
 sins to work as a fruit of faith, but solely to 
 true confidence and faith in the Blood of the 
 Lamb of God, which was shed for the remission 
 of our sins, for we freely confess that all things 
 are given to us in Christ. Therefore believers 
 are not to perform good works to make satisfac- 
 tion for their sins, but only in order to manifest 
 their gratitude for the great mercy which the 
 Lord God has shown us in Christ." A deeper 
 study of the conditions which caused the Re- 
 formation would have helped him to see that it 
 was a reaction against self-righteousness which 
 he condemns, that self-righteousness whose end 
 is pride, or impotence, or recklessness. We read 
 in the Confession of Augsburg, " That the doc- 
 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 307 
 
 trine of faith, which must be the chief of all in 
 the Church, lay long unknown, as all must con- 
 fess that in preaching there was the most 
 profound silence concerning the righteousness of 
 faith, and that only the doctrine of works was 
 urged in churches." The result of preach- 
 ing of the doctrine of works, by which some 
 believe that the Church ma}' be revived, was 
 that the practice of the Evangelical Church 
 fell into the deepest decay, ending in an 
 entire and terrible denial of Christ and His 
 Gospel. Mr. Strong speaks indeed of the barrier 
 of sin being taken away, but he does not under- 
 stand what was central alike to Apostolic and 
 Reformation teaching, that in the reconciliation 
 once made by the death of Christ, and not in the 
 second reconciliation realised internally is the 
 essential redeeming principle. 
 
 We have no space to work out this idea or to 
 traverse the objectionable portion of Mr. Strong's 
 teaching. Though unsatisfactory in his treat- 
 ment of the Atonement and in the part of his 
 book we have sketched, he is in harmony with 
 the New Testament, with the Church, and with 
 all the better thinking of our time, whether 
 Christian or not. It cannot be too strongly said 
 
3o8 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 that the unconscious retreats into the old 
 Socinianism which we have to lament here and 
 there are not in the line of the serious thought 
 and study of our time. As for the complaint 
 that the Christian standard is too high, Mr. 
 Strong meets it nobly. He says that the appeal 
 to expect less is the most dangerous form in 
 which the world calls upon us for our allegiance 
 to it. ** For we know how much there is still to 
 do, and how slow the march of God's purpose 
 seems to short-li\-ed men, how far off the coming 
 of the kingdom. But it has never been a mark 
 of the spirit to hope and scheme only for what 
 human foresight sees may easily be achieved. 
 When the Lord pours out His Spirit, young 
 men see visions and old men dream dreams, 
 visions and dreams that rise like other dreams 
 out of an experience actually attained in life 
 and are prophetic of a fulness of triumph yet to 
 come." 
 
"GEOCENTRICISM": THE LATEST 
 SCARECROW 
 
 \ A /E may as well explain at once the hideous 
 ^ ^ word which gives the title to these pages. 
 In his new book, *' Guesses at the Riddle of 
 Existence," Mr. Goldwin Smith contends that 
 those who believe in the Christian redemption 
 believe that the earth is the centre of the universe. 
 According to Mr. Smith, the Christian view of 
 the world does not take into adequate account the 
 insignificance of our earth in comparison with the 
 vastness of the planetary S3'stem. We shall repl}' 
 to Mr. Smith on this head, but ere doing so it may 
 be worth while to answer from his own mouth 
 some of his detailed objections to Christian doc- 
 trine. His early books were so occasional in their 
 nature, they were published so long ago, that 
 even ver}' well-informed critics, like a writer in 
 the Guardian, do not know them, and credit Mr. 
 Goldwin Smith with a much greater degree of 
 
310 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 ignorance than he can rightly claim. They think, 
 and the mistake is natural, that Mr. Smith ap- 
 proaches Christianity from the outside. What is 
 true is that he has gone outside it. 
 
 In three little books published about the same 
 time and under the same influence, there is, we 
 believe, more genuine Christian passion than will 
 be found in equal compass through the whole 
 range of the Victorian literature. These three 
 little books are Dora Green well's *' The Patience 
 of Hope," F. W. H. Myers's "St. Paul," and 
 Gold win Smith's " Does the Bible sanction Ameri- 
 can Slaver}' ? " All three books were written 
 under the inspiration of Josephine Butler. Since 
 the volume referred to Mr. Goldwin Smith has 
 written much, and his style is so brilliant, his 
 moral ardour so contagious, that though he has 
 adopted the strangest ways of publication, some 
 readers have kept track of him and missed nothing 
 that they could find out. He has written no book 
 that will live. Indeed, it would be true to say 
 that he has written no book at all. All his work 
 is occasional. He has been a critic, a corres- 
 pondent, a pamphleteer, a contributor, but he has 
 never braced himself to the deliberate treatment 
 of a great subject. He is himself an argument 
 
THE LATEST SCARECROW 311 
 
 for that immortalit}^ which he has come to doubt, 
 for it is hard to think that an intellect so wakeful 
 as Goldwin Smith's should ever fall on sleep. 
 One of his earliest and most effective pamphlets 
 was written in reply to Mansel's Bampton Lectures, 
 and is entitled " Rational Religion." From its 
 pages we find that Mr. Smith was in 1861 a firm 
 believer in Christianity, and a learned and en- 
 lightened student of theology. He was in the 
 main a follower of Coleridge, whose thought, 
 according to him, was the anchor by which the 
 religious intellect of England had ridden out the 
 storms of this tempestous age. He argued for 
 Christianity from its effect in the regeneration of 
 the world, and from the type of character displayed 
 in the life of its founder. He was willing to con- 
 cede the fact of miracle, finding miracle reasonable 
 on the ground that the first believers naturally 
 had such evidence as they could understand. 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith talks now as if he had never 
 read Coleridge, and the Guardian naturally 
 supposes that Mr. Smith has been trained in 
 the old theory of strict verbal inspiration, in 
 which the Bible is a miracle and nothing else, 
 and the ordinary conditions of authorship are in 
 abeyance. It is true that Mr. Smith now argues 
 
312 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 as if that were so. Either, he says, the six days 
 of creation must be rigidly maintained, as well as 
 the precise literal truth of all the early narratives 
 of Genesis, or the whole Bible is discredited. If 
 any one suggests that there ma}^ be allegory' in 
 the opening chapters of Scripture, Mr. Smith says, 
 " If it was from the Holy Spirit that this narra- 
 tive emanated, how can the Holy Spirit have 
 failed to let mankind know that they are alle- 
 gories ? " Such fatuities are almost incredible in 
 a man who once at least knew a great deal better 
 than that. Why, it is more than thirt3^-five years 
 since Mr. Smith complained that Mansel insisted 
 on the bare hard text of Scripture as if it were 
 a brazen regulator thrust into the world by an 
 almighty Power. It was Mr. Goldwin Smith who 
 complained that Mansel's system drove 3'ou either 
 to accept the literal accuracy of every part, or to 
 reject the authority of the whole. He justly 
 scouted the idea that a trivial discrepancy may 
 deprive man of revelation and God. He said 
 nobly : " If we can know God and know His 
 voice, these difficulties are as nothing. If we 
 cannot know God, they are death." Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith now meddles a little with criticism, and he 
 has a good deal to say against the Old Testament. 
 
THE LATEST SCARECROW 313 
 
 He regards it as a great burden which Christianity 
 has to carr3^ He was wiser once. Nobody spoke 
 more eloquently than he of the righteousness and 
 pity of the Divine Word. No one spoke with 
 more scathing scorn of those who attack the 
 morality of the Old Testament, blind to the fact 
 that the Jewish nation was not a miracle, but a 
 people. No one pointed out more clearly the 
 gradual spiritual elevation of the Old Testament, 
 the way in which the essence of morality keeps 
 growing through its pages. He showed that such 
 a moral progress is what we must have expected 
 to find, '* unless it had been the design of Provi- 
 dence entirely to exempt the Jewish nation from 
 all spiritual effort, and to make their religious 
 history an automatic exhibition utterly discon- 
 nected with the general travailing of humanity, 
 and alien to the sympathies of mankind." He 
 now denies the Johannine authorship of the 
 Fourth Gospel, but then he was able to show 
 how in its concluding chapters we saw how divine 
 and human love could be the same. Although 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith has manifestly failed to study 
 recent Biblical criticism, and although those parts 
 of his book in which he refers to the subject may 
 properly be called contemptible for their ignorance 
 
314 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 and unfairness, it is sufficient to say that on these 
 subjects he may be invited to answer himself. 
 
 Mr, Smith has now come to doubt the immor- 
 tality of the soul. It is impossible, he thinks, to 
 find a decently cogent proof of a life to come. 
 Here again we answer him out of his own mouth. 
 He argued once that our moral life is the essence 
 of our being, and that our moral life does not end 
 when the body dies. " If," said he, " a single 
 man can be found whose conscience, fairly inter- 
 rogated, tells him or suffers him to act on the 
 belief that the death of the bod}' closes the moral 
 account, and that when he is dead it will be all 
 the same for him whether in his life he has done 
 good or evil, I may think it possible to believe 
 that there is no proof, except in Scripture, of the 
 immortality of the soul." Now he has come 
 to question all the arguments, but he does 
 not willingly resign himself to the new situa- 
 tion. "A glory has passed from earth, for 
 on every festal board in the community of ter- 
 restrial bliss will be cast the shadow of approach- 
 ing death, and the sweeter life becomes, the 
 more bitter death will be." Mr. Smith has not 
 come to the comparative acquiescence of W. 
 R. Greg in his later writings. Greg found that 
 
THE LATEST SCARECROW 315 
 
 three score 3'ears and ten quenched the pas- 
 sionate desire for hfe. \Vear3' with toil, satiated 
 with pleasure, having had sufficient experience of 
 those blessings of human affection which are 
 mingled with such intense agonies, he found that 
 renewed existence offered no inspiring charms, 
 that he was tired of one life and felt scarcely 
 equal to another, that he yearned most for rest, 
 and the peace he could imagine easiest, because 
 he knew it best, was the peace of sleep. This is 
 not Mr. Goldwin Smith's as yet, but he, too, has 
 come to believe with Greg that the faith in immor- 
 tality is built rather upon a craving of nature than 
 upon a grounded conviction, and that it has cling- 
 ing to it the curse attaching to all illegitimate 
 possessions. Yet Mr. Smith is not satisfied. 
 Through all his career he has clung to faith in 
 the moral order. One rock is still to him staringl}' 
 above water, but he does not know how to save 
 the ship that is drifting straight upon it from 
 wreck and ruin. He does not understand, he 
 cannot tell, how if we give up the belief in God, 
 we shall be able to preserve the old morality. 
 Neither can we. In old times Mr. Smith would 
 have turned this inability into a splendid and posi- 
 tive argument for theism and Christianity. 
 
3i6 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 But it is high time we came to the business of 
 geocentricism. It takes us back to the days of 
 our fathers, to the " Astronomical Discourses " of 
 Dr. Chalmers and the literature they evoked, to 
 the writings of Isaac Ta3'lor and Whewell and 
 Brewster. It should be noticed in the first place 
 that Mr. Smith himself once saw and main- 
 tained with great eloquence that no arguments 
 drawn from history can destroy Christianit3^ 
 " No question," he said, " that concerns the 
 validity of mere historical evidence can be abso- 
 lutely vital to religion. For religion is a spiritual 
 affection excited by nothing less than the assured 
 presence of its Object. Christianit}^ has been 
 the life of the world for eighteen hundred years. 
 It is the life of the world still. No serious attack 
 has been made upon its essence. Reason is the 
 creation of God, and it is not likely that He will 
 be dethroned by the work of His own hands.' 
 And in the same way science and its discoveries 
 can never touch the life of Christianity. Chris- 
 tianity is friendly to all true science and history, 
 but it is not of their order. It is impassive to all 
 their attacks, it does not need their defence, it 
 did not come from the mind of man, it descended 
 from a higher region, and holds its inexpugnable 
 
THE LATEST SCARECROW 317 
 
 place in the heart and conscience. But to come 
 closer to the argument. There is to begin with 
 no comparative measure between the infinite and 
 the finite. Whatever tlie universe may be, no 
 matter how our conception of the immensities be 
 extended by further astronomical discoveries, it 
 remains true that the universe is finite. It is not 
 infinite any more than a drop of water is. 
 Because our vision is limited and weak, it may 
 seem to be infinite, but to the Infinite Being, as 
 Coleridge says, the distance between the stars 
 and systems is no more than that between 
 particles of earth is to us. Hence every argu- 
 ment grounded on the supposition that mere 
 vastness approximates infinity, and is more to 
 God than comparative littleness, is from the 
 very nature of the case a fallacy. Further, the 
 measure of the spirit and the measure of matter 
 are not the same. Pascal put the whole case in 
 his pregnant sentence : " If the universe were to 
 fall and crush me, I should be greater than the 
 universe, for I should be conscious of defeat, and 
 it would be unconscious of victory." The lustre 
 of suns and constellations, whatever it may be, is 
 nothing beside the glories of the human spirit. 
 The universe, no matter how extended it may be. 
 
3i8 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 is dead. It cannot think, or feel, or imagine, or 
 love. The child from whose mouth God has 
 perfected praise is greater than the sun, greater 
 than all the worlds which, though put together, 
 are dumbly magnificent. And as the Guardian 
 points out, Dr. Hutchison Stirling has shown 
 that except to an e3'e and ear the whole system 
 of things is simply an indefinite extension of 
 stones vibrating in silence and in darkness. We 
 ourselves make the marvels of the universe. 
 Light is mere undulation of particles except to 
 us. The music of the spheres itself is music 
 only to an ear. Man exists in a universe of 
 hustling and dancing atoms which are material 
 through and through. The physical insignifi- 
 cance of man may be contrasted with the 
 incomparable vastness of his surroundings only 
 when it is forgotten that man is more than 
 matter, and that matter, save in its relation to 
 percipient beings, has no true existence. 
 
 These arguments have not been needed of late, 
 because the belief in the existence of thinking 
 beings in other worlds is less strong than it was. 
 Isaac Taylor in his "Saturday Evening" has a 
 fine essay, entitled, "The State of Seclusion." 
 In this he points out that we are insulated from 
 
THE LATEST SCARECROW 319 
 
 Other worlds in order that our probation may 
 be more completely secured. He argues that if 
 we saw from this world all the consequences of 
 good and evil as manifested in the innumerable 
 worlds which, he thought, were replete with 
 intellectual and moral life, we should be driven 
 into virtue, not led into it, by a consideration of 
 its results. But God hides these from us that 
 our great choice may be a matter of voluntary- 
 consent. Even if there are intellectual and moral 
 beings in other worlds, that does not concern us. 
 We do not know it, we do not know them. If 
 they exist we know nothing of their conditions. 
 What we do know is that into our world the Son 
 of God has come, and that in our world the pure 
 in heart may see God. Our Lord and His 
 Apostles were never daunted, far less over- 
 whelmed, by the immensity of the universe. He 
 who stood behind the tremendous curtain of 
 creation, who knew the ineffable secret, who 
 beheld with open face the glory of the Lord, 
 promised the same vision to all who should trust 
 Him. His Apostle said : " All these things shall 
 be dissolved. The heavens shall pass awa}' with 
 a great noise ; the elements shall melt with 
 fervent heat ; the earth also and the works that 
 
320 THE RETURN TO THE CROSS 
 
 are thereon shall be burnt up." But though the 
 starry splendours be folded up like a vesture and 
 changed, we are to survive them. We are not to 
 be dissolved. We, according to His promise, 
 look for new heavens and a new earth wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness. We see beyond us the 
 enduring realities that last when this majestic 
 universe, which was the nursery of the budding 
 soul, has passed like a dream, and when the 
 glories of the visible creation are as toys that 
 have been surmounted and put away. We may 
 see, as Apostles did, the invisible order. Our 
 thoughts may be with the enduring — with the 
 great High Priest set over the house of God, the 
 perpetual liturgy of the world of spirits, the 
 Throne behind the veil. 
 
 ^P 
 
Date Due 
 
 ^.- J^v 
 
 JliU 
 
 
 x~. 
 
 5^ 
 
 x: 
 
 7 - ■< T \ 
 
 T . "1 
 
 r T-Vw'\>^. >k /-S^ T X ."v^