tihxaty of ^e theological ^eminarjo PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 'd^^t' PRESENTED BY The Estate of the Rev. John B. Wiedinger BV 4253 .S464 S91 1910 Selby, Thomas G. 1846-1910. The strenuous gospel > THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE IMPERFECT ANGEL, and Other Sermons. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. THE LESSON OF A DILEMMA, and Other Sermons. Crown 8vo, 6s. THE UNHEEDING GOD, and Other Sermons. Crown 8vo, 6s. THE GOD OF THE FRAIL, and Other Sermons. Crown Svo, cloth, 6s. CHINAMEN AT HOME. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. net. LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON THE STRENUOUS GOSP MAY 25 1949 SERMONS BY / THOMAS G. SELBY Cincinnati : JENNINGS AND GRAHAM New York : Eaton and Mains CONTENTS THE FALSE EQUATION PAGE I II TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 26 III THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 45 IV THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK 64 vi CONTENTS PAGE THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD . . . -7^ VI THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION . . . . 95 VII THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION . . • H? VIII THE FREE SACRIFICE ..... 139 IX THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION . . . . 160 THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL . . . . 184 CONTENTS vii XI PAGE THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION .... 20^ XII THE NEW IMMORTALITY . . . . .225 XIII ABNORMAL UNBELIEF ..... 245, XIV THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS . . . 265 XV THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST .... 296 XVI THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP .... 314 viii CONTENTS XVII PAGE ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT ..... 336 XVIII INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES . _ . . 357 XIX THE ENDLESS ETHIC. . . . '. . 380 XX THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES .... 400 THE FALSE EQUATION " For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts."— IsA, Iv. 9. All knowledge of Divine things begins in a sense of our kinship with God. It is impossible to gain any strong, soul-dominating impression of the Eternal unless we recognise that in the stupendous presence which fills heaven and earth, there is a centre of personal consciousness, not unlike that upon which the sense of our own identity rests, God thinks His counsels, chooses His lines of action, loves, and also welcomes the love which is offered to Him, according to the self-same scheme upon which human nature is constituted, and its functions proceed. And yet we have not got far in our search for God before we feel the check-rein and are constrained to admit that, whilst there are points of contact between His being and ours, there are also points of enormous dissimi- larity. We have worked from the scale of the dwarf, and the larger mensuration is beyond us. There is a basis for common fellowship in the elemental truths which arise from these methods of comparison ; but 2 ' THE FALSE EQUATION we must not make God according to a petty, mundane ground-plan and transfer the limitations of human life and character to His incomparable person and government. These words, which remind us of the great gulf between God's thoughts and ways, and the ways and thoughts of His frail creature man, were spoken with a twofold purpose : first, to show reason why a transgressing race should come back to God ; and secondly, to hearten them, in the event of their return, with the prospect of a forgiveness unexampled and boundless. The prophet had just been speaking, in the name of the Most High, of the wicked man's thoughts and the unrighteous man's ways. The thoughts and ways of a holy, compassionate God move in diametri- cally opposite pathways to those of a transgressing, rebellious people, and men must rise into accord with the plans and counsels of heaven, unless they are to frustrate the promise and annul the benedictions of life. If terms of working harmony cannot be arranged between God and those whom He has called to be His people, disaster and final over- throw are inevitable. The riot and license of sin, and its bitter results within the individual and the community, are signs of this cleavage between the human and the Divine. All history, with its set towards wrong and its perpetual confusions, is an ominous illustration of man's refusal to understand the thoughts of the Infinite, and of his stubborn unwillingness to accommodate himself to its methods. Unless we take account of the disparities, as well as of the resemblances between ourselves and God, the religion we profess will end in practical negations. THE FALSE EQUATION and the ground where the spirit of man may meet that of his Maker will be a scene of defeat and disas- trous overthrow. To the master-mind, which is above all worlds, every other mind must give heed. The failure to reach agreement means an unequal con- troversy sure to confound and destroy those who challenge it. A railway, traversing a huge continent, could not be smoothly worked if it were laid down upon different gauges and mapped out according to the plans in favour amongst incongruous populations. Such a clash of arrangements would involve the breaking up and re-handling of the freights upon different sections of the line, many errors, mortifying delays, exasperating cross-purposes. It would not do to staff a Cape to Cairo railway with men of promis- cuous nationalities, — British drivers, German guards, American signalmen, Russian stationmasters, Japa- nese booking-clerks, — all so patriotic, too, that they insist upon the times, metric systems, the telegraphic gestures of the respective countries from which they come. Bugles, bells, whistles, flags are used without mutual agreement and understanding. Some clocks are set to Greenwich time, others to that of Tokio, Washington, or Berlin. From such rigid and obstinate narrowness would ensue chaos, disaster, carnage. Men employed in enterprises of international mag- nitude must come into tune with each others' thoughts and follow common methods, and they must do this by grasping the scheme and carrying out the instruc- tions of one master-mind. Over every section of the line there must be a clear scientific agreement, for all are servants, who must sink their partialities and bow to the one controlling brain of the system. And if we would escape pain, confusion, spiritual overthrow, THE FALSE EQUATION the gauge of our thoughts and ways must be made to agree with the magnitude of God's counsels, as far at least as we — dwarfs that we are — can grasp them. He claims to guide because His reason is higher than ours, and His principles of action are immeasurably nobler. He requires our acquiescence since the reali- ties of the infinite wisdom and holiness transcend the best of earth's poor, dim, faltering types. We must forsake our own judgments and stand by His, for His methods are incontestably best. The working out of God's thoughts and ways refines the earth into a similitude of heaven, whilst the substitution of our thoughts and ways for His tends to produce hell with all its darkness and degradation. But these words minister encouragement as well as press home a strong motive for the soul's swift return to God. They confirm and echo from heights, into which we cannot soar, a promise of unstinted forgive- ness, which human nature is too slow to receive. With a magnanimity to which there can be no earthly parallel, God forgets the dishonour we have done to His name. We must not judge the grace which comes from above by human examples and test by earthly standards the assurances with which He meets us. The societies in which we live, and their petty scales of the possible, have no right place in any method of computing spiritual values. A daring metaphor is used to enforce these views of God and His economies. The inspired poets of Israel compare the Divine righteousness to the great mountains, and the Divine judgments to the mighty deep. Isaiah leaves the picturesque imagery of earth behind, for the highest peak may be climbed and the broadest stretch of ocean crossed, and perhaps, in THE FALSE EQUATION due time, plumbed. But even in modern times the study of the heavens has sighted no final goal. And we can never overtake the interval between God's thought and man's. It is like the incalculable vista of space, which expands itself in belts of endless azure, between the valleys of earth and the last out- post star of the invisible firmament. We cannot ascend to God's thoughts and ways. Both now and through endless years they will assert their illimitable supremacy over ours. The counsels of the Most High are differentiated from those of man by the vastness of the mind which conceives them ; by the character which determines the subjects with which they deal ; and also by the conditions under which an all-ruling and infinite intelligence moves and acts. Thoughts derive many of their qualities from the inherent attributes of the mind within which they are produced. Lofty ideas caimot be got out of stunted little natures any more than nuggets of gold can be picked up out of slum dust-bins. Wide inequalities exist between the minds of different races, as well as between the individuals belonging to those races. The minds of some of our own countrymen are as rich in ideas as the British Museum or the Bodleian Libraries, whilst the ideas of others might be put into a thumb-diary, and leave blank pages to spare. In the public schools there are children whose brains can absorb every kind of knowledge, and other children whose brains soon reach saturation-point. Through all grades of society minds vary in strength, alertness, range of apprehension, grooves of chosen pursuit and movement. The thoughts of men living together under the same civilisations are stamped THE FALSE EQUATION with values varying as much from each other as coins issued from the mints at London and Peking vary in ingredients and in purchasing power. The Indian canoe-builder of the Far West and the Constructor of the British Navy, if brought together into the same room, would have few ideas in common. Their ex- periences run in different planes, and their capacities do not belong to the same spheres of craftsmanship. If the illiterate native from the Congo, who counts the tale of his mutilated or murdered friends in tied-up bundles of sticks, could be presented to the Astronomer Royal, he would not comprehend the arithmetic of the great man or credit its results. There is scarcely any point of artistic contact between the Polynesian tatooist and Alma Tadema. The ideas of such extreme representatives could scarcely be incorporated into one and the same school of colourists. These disparities, which almost let man down to the level of the brute on the one hand, and raise him into near kinship with the seraph on the other, are nothing, and less than nothing, when placed side by side with the stupendous inequalities of which the prophet speaks. Whilst spiritual religion is im- possible unless we think of God as a person, we must not forget how much is involved in the contrast between the human and the Divine. If all finite personalities could be graded into a series, the dis- tance between the lowest and the highest extremes of the scale would not carry us far in computing this amazing interval. He is higher than the highest. His is the mighty, incomprehensible mind out of which all worlds with their wonderful adjustments and adaptations have come. His understanding is THE FALSE EQUATION boundless. He knows without effort, discipline or experiment. More freely than an infant breathes, He thinks His thoughts of transcendent insight and splendour ; and His thoughts are fiats. To think, in the moment it takes to pronounce His name, the thoughts which possess God's mind, would use up the vitality of a lifetime. Within the hidden recesses of His being all truths lie illuminated as in the light of a myriad of suns. Do not be discouraged because you cannot understand Him at a bound. By your tiny table of systems and diagrams do not presume to set forth the measurements of His thoughts and ways. His path is in the great waters, and His foot- steps are not known. The contrast between God's thought and man's is intensified when we remember that it means the difference between thoughts issuing from a mind of eternal perfection, and thoughts produced within minds of immature growth and undisciplined crude- ness. The rarest wisdom of earth is only in stages of incipient germination, and needs to be described not so much as an attainment, but as a release from a series of limitations. The man into whom the least gleam of self-knowledge has entered is appalled to find that right up to yesterday his grasp was infantile, and the time is still far off when he shall have put away, once and for all, the childish things which have occupied him. We blush as we look back upon recent stages of intellectual development through which we have been passing. The only proof of progress we can see is that we are still busy shedding the imprisoning moulds of yesterday. It would pain us to think we should be judged by the notions we flung upon the world in a spasm of adolescent egotism THE FALSE EQUATION which is not quite spent. The first, the second, and indeed the third forms of expression into which we have put our ideas about God, the world He orders, and human life, so far as we can explain it, are as obsolete as the last year's leaves upon which we trample. In the man who can pride himself upon the intellectual exploits of his youth, or of his middle and late manhood, there is a symptom of brain-decay. A cruel ossification soon begins to cramp the mystical part of us, like a stone dungeon narrowing its walls round a chained athlete. We know enough of our- selves to be convinced that our minds are capable of a manifold maturity we shall find neither time nor strength to reach on earth ; and if our thoughts and ways are to be brought into any worthy comparison with God's, it must be in some unopened chapter of our destiny, when we shall think under new conditions, with finely organised spiritual bodies responsive to every enlargement of the mind. Our successors will outstrip us, as we outstrip the patriarchs, for man has by no means attained the knowledge and intellectual perfection of which he is capable. There is no apparent promise of finality in the thoughts and ways of brief- lived mortals. Our faculties are in a state of transition to which no term can be put ; and the thoughts they originate cannot rank in value or in splendid breadth with the counsels of an understanding which never had to find for itself an equilibrium of stable perfec- tion, an understanding which unites the freshness and flexibility of youth with the fulness and finality which long aeons can alone bring to finite intelligence. Does it seem vague and unmeaning to contrast a slowly developed with an uncreated intelligence and to infer enormous differences in the thoughts and THE FALSE EQUATION lines of conduct they are qualified to yield? Let us picture to ourselves a being lower than God, but greater than the greatest intellect the human race has yet evolved, a firstborn son of light who has been treasuring knowledge from the dawn of Creation, and has acquired corresponding capacities to assimilate it. He has watched the growth of art, science, letters, civilisations, and has also deciphered the secrets of every natural law. In many schools has he culled rare wisdom, entering into the heritage of every epoch making discovery. Through periods which bewilder the imagination his reason has got a swift and unerring mastery of the problems which chal- lenge it. He has been alive to all the currents coursing through the varied circles of finite con- sciousness. Any comparison between the thoughts of such a being and the greatest genius of the historic centuries would be impossible. The huge differentia- tion which has arisen is scarcely conceivable. But the firstborn son of light is a superior dwarf before the Eternal God who has anticipated the experience of the longest lived and the wisest of His creatures. When the first seraph broke into song and heralded the day-dawn of the awakening worlds His under- standing was already perfect. Is it not rash to assume any kind of parity between the thoughts of such a mind and our own ? The thoughts filling the mind of Gabriel and the thoughts of the Most High are separated by an unexplored interval, vaster than that between the princeliest angel and our own? Into the deeper mysteries of redemption angels long desired to look. Can we think God's thoughts in their unknown vastness ? As well expect Tubal Cain's rude forge with its feeble lo THE FALSE EQUATION bellows of goatskin to send out steel-plates and girders to bridge the Victoria Falls. The products are as incommensurable as the respective capacities from which they arise. Thought, and the action to which it leads, is dependent upon character and the animating motives it supplies. The disparities between the perfect character of God and the frail, blemished characters of the children of men must tend to widen the gulf between His ends, and the methods by which He seeks them, and ours. Opposite moral habits tend to cause sharper dissimilarities of view than com- monly arise from the most marked intellectual separations. Men of diverse intellectual endow- ments may be attuned and confederated if their ethical instincts are akin. An understanding naturally agile and robust is, now and again, combined with a deficiency in the power of entertaining those impulses which deter- mine right conduct. High intellectual endowment associated with grave moral weakness suggests the picture of a many-storied mill, furnished with costly modern machinery, but built over a fickle, oft- disappearing runlet in a desert. The splendid plant lacks adequate driving-power, and the output of work is regulated not by the polished, modernised machinery, but by the stinted dynamic of the treacherous burn. A brain may be finely organised, rich in ability to deal with great problems, and the capacity to achieve magnificent effects may be proudly flaunted ; but the principles which energise uncommon faculties into fruitful exercise are want- ing and no commensurate results are forthcoming. Through a life of huge potentialities sparse moral THE FALSE EQUATION ii forces crawl in languid dribblets, and the man favoured by Nature is debilitated by a shallow character. He does not abound in ideas or attain results worthy of the capacities he has received. It is, of course, true that a bad man may sometimes live, for a time, a full intellectual life and show prolific brain power. In the history of French literature we are told of one who was no mean poet, and at the same time practised the profession of a highwayman. Work- manship with a halo of rare genius about it may come from a coarse, dissolute soul, but such achieve- ments are exotic, and the phenomenon is fleeting. When the thinker of vicious habits forgets his moral disease, and for the moment transports his faculties into a realm of sacred dreams, the innate defect of character still asserts its crippling power over the thoughts. His praise of goodness is bated and perfunctory. The faint aside of unconscious mockery appears. There is a note of constraint in the eulogy of the things which are lovely and of good report. A brief, diverting picnic has been held in the realm of ideal purity, and the mind is not quite at home in such a clean, holy world, and soon finds the atmo- sphere ungenial. Given men of equal capacity but of divergent characters, the bad man's thoughts will seek out meaner and swampier channels than the good man's. The personalities strike root in different subsoils, and the ideas to which they give rise lack common affinities and resemblances. The ideas of James Chalmers, the apostle of New Guinea, and of thd cannibals who clubbed and ate him, were not made of the same stuff. General Gordon and the x^rab slave-raiders, whose power he set himself to break up, thought in divergent grooves 12 thp: false equation and represented antagonistic schemes. The philan- thropist who founds a Garden City and the pitiless Shylock who rackrents a slum have antithetic views of life because of the contrasted types of character which give impact to their notions. The passions cooped up in our close criminal communities do not produce rare art, seraphic music, supreme literature. The dreams flitting through Pentonville, Dartmoor, or Broadmoor brains, and the dreams cherished in a Peace Congress, would make books for different sections if written down and presented to a library. For good or for evil, habits of conduct shape the orbit within which a human mind moves, and a virtuous man's notions vary immensely from a profli- gate's. This fact is a new measure of the disparity between God's thoughts and ways, and those of His degenerate people. Can we estimate the moral diffe- rence between the human and the Divine ? God spends the incomputable term of His Eternal Being in ministries of unwearied grace, — upholding the weak, doing good to all, setting forth in mighty deeds His truth and righteousness, so proving within Him- self that "it is more blessed to give than to receive"; whilst we, though outwardly blameless, have spent much of our time in gathering for self-enrichment, taking toll of our neighbours, asserting our place in the world, bringing others into captivity to our will. And, compressed as we are into moral dwarfishness by the traditions of an imperfect society, we think a selfish scheme of life quite defensible. The Divine nature, like a fountain, is ever pouring itself forth in benediction, without taint of self or stain of darkness; whilst human nature is a turgid, devouring whirl- pool, sucking down into its depths whatever may THE FALSE EQUATION chance to drift within its range. When we think and act, we are weighted by the incubus of past aggressive- ness and dishonour ; but when God thinks and acts, His character of age-long goodness upHfts all His ideals beyond the uttermost heights. Can we reason- ably expect an unbroken parallelism and congruity between God's thoughts and ways and our own ? Beyond the highest heavens is it not possible there may be visions and counsels such as cannot be conceived amidst the poor, mean habitations of men ; and is it fitting that we should seek to correct by by our own poor reckonings the intimations of these things which reach us ? The sense of unequal responsibilities in dissimilar relationships tends to differentiate both thought and action. The notions of a child have little in common with those of a man of affairs. The musings of a king's mind revolve round topics other than those which engage the alien wayfarer who may be passing through his realms. A householder dissents from the views of a sodden tramp, and a father has ideas of what is becoming in his neighbourhood, which are not always those of a man who is without kith or kin. It is said there would have been no Inquisition if there had been no celibate clergy, for husbands and fathers look upon human life with more tenderness than priests and cardinals, who deal with abstract questions of statecraft. The home relationships in which we stand compel us to a more humane outlook as we turn our eyes across the world. It is not often that responsible and irresponsible people find their judgments in perfect accord. A right-minded ruler, with a hundred millions of people looking up to him for succour and guidance, must think in other cate- 14 THE FALSE EQUATION gories than those to which the adventurer who has just stepped out of a balloon is partial. Of course, this rule of criticism may be carried too far. It is sometimes assumed that a fool can be changed into a sage if you put serious affairs into his hands for settlement. But this is no more possible than to change a pariah dog into a St. Bernard by tying a basket round its neck and letting it loose in the Alpine snows, or than to convert a mule into an elephant by putting across its back a golden howdah within which a rajah is seated. But, without exaggerating the rule, is it not obvious that the conscience is quickened and the mind steadied by events of critical significance ? The girl with silly, frivolous dreams grows wise, resourceful, trustworthy, when some family disaster swoops down and she has to uphold the pillars of the home. The old fashion of thought changes, and is replaced by a nobler. The man with the cares of administration upon his mind sees things differently from the leisured trifler. The first touch of the sceptre has sobered many a giddy young prince into wisdom, and marked a new era in his capacity for high thinking. He who feels the burden of sacred interests pressing upon his soul thinks more deeply, broadly, intensely, veraciously, than his neighbour. The faculties of his mind apply themselves in new directions. God is not detached, irresponsible, self-secluded, but a God who thinks with burdens resting upon His spirit which we cannot weigh. It is true His sovereignty is such that no finite being can challenge it, and yet though essential and underived God lives and lives only for the worlds He has made. He is the Head of all authorities, King of kings, Judge of THE FALSE EQUATION 15 judges, and His thoughts must differ from ours, who are less than nothing and vanity. His is the Father- hood from which every family in heaven and on earth is named, and the outlook of His pity is more many- sided and far-reaching than man's. His dominion is over known and unknown worlds, and endureth throughout all generations. He thinks for each, and, at the same time, thinks for all. Towards us, and towards spheres of which we have not heard, His hand is stretched out, and His many counsels meet and merge in some wider harmony we do not com- prehend. It is folly to expect that His thoughts will keep step with ours and conform to their scale and pattern. His aims and methods are beyond our reckoning. In the early years of the last century Walter Scott, poet and novelist, took a voyage round the north and west coasts of Scotland in company with Stevenson, the lighthouse constructor. Scott went for pleasure, and wherever they landed spent his time in visiting ruined castles, talking with the old gossips of the hamlets and picking up local traditions, which he afterwards wove into his fascinating stories. Stevenson was sent out by Trinity House to survey the coast, mark out dangerous reefs, and choose the best sites for lighthouses. Scott landed when the weather was fair and the sea smooth. His friend faced the gales in open boats, visited jagged rocks over which the white surf boiled, and braved countless dangers, because he was commissioned to find out where warning beacons must be fixed and lighthouses placed, and how in the coming generations imperilled lives could be saved. When the storm outside shakes doors and windows we sit by the fireside deriving i6 THE FALSE EQUATION pleasure from the wizard's books ; but the seaman battling with the waves finds salvation through the thought and work of the romance writer's comrade. The two men were the best of friends, and as they met day by day had many interests in common. But their thoughts ran in different directions because the one had no responsibilities and was catering for the tastes of his admiring readers, whilst the other bore upon his soul a great burden of human life. Their paths diverged for their duties varied, and their minds were acting in different grooves. God thinks with the burdens of a doomed race resting upon His soul of love, and acts to ransom them from the power of destruction. His thoughts and ways are beyond ours, even as the heavens are higher than the earth. Do we pay the mighty God due deference by always bearing in mind the interval between His thought and ours? Perhaps we treat Him with scantier consideration than we show in dealing with our fellow-mortals. When brought into contact with a neighbour we allow for his idiosyncrasy, if we see that the average rules of social intercourse do not quite apply. We bring into account his training, the racial strain in his temperament, the place of his birth and its traditions, his associations, the special business groove in which he moves, and, unless we are very unsophisticated, we guard ourselves against assuming that his views must match with our own in every detail. By looking out for the personal equation and studying the shaping influences of his past, we get on to easy and workable terms with him, in spite of initial dissimilarities. If we enter into commercial relations with a foreign client we take pains to understand the type and prepare THE FALSE EQUATION 17 ourselves for wider divergencies than obtain amongst our fellow-citizens. We glance at the history of his fatherland, acquire familiarity with the etiquette to which he has been accustomed, get a little hand- book of his grammar and smatter our way through five or six pages. We may even glance at a text- book of the literature of the country to which he belongs. Perhaps we ask about the climate in which he has lived, and prepare for any modification in his habits it may have produced. And thus in some rude, tentative fashion we bridge the interval of nationality. We allow for the variation between his mental standpoint and our own, when it is our interest to do so. Of course there are persons who do not take this trouble, and assume the world should bring its own staff of interpreters and bow down at the feet of the favoured Briton. It is meet that men of all races should conform to the insular caprices of John Bull. They must accept his pat- terns, his colour schemes, his models of machinery, his standardised nuts and bolts. The German, the Turk, the Hindoo, the Chinaman, must learn the tongue of the great world-empire and its citizens, and it is not for the member of an elect race to bend to the caprice of the Gentiles. For this peculiar development of a narrow patriotism we pay the penalty, and lose not a little trade on four continents. But the humour pleases us. Do we not too often treat God by the same boastful and unhappy precedent ? We wait for Him to come over to our prejudices, to bow Himself to our parochial fashions of thought, to take pattern by our peevish, petty ways and conventions. His notions must merge into ours and He must needs i8 THE FALSE EQUATION follow all the twists and obliquities of our little orbits. But the great problems of faith and life do not solve themselves thus : and we are not pleased. Staggered at finding that God does not always condescend to be of our opinion, we begin to ask, " Can there in very truth be a God ? Many things in the theology which seeks to interpret Him are displeasing to our tastes and even make a mock of our predispositions. We have settled beforehand our canons of evidence, but the Bible does not always fall in with them." So we think, and sometimes think aloud. But are we allowing a just margin for the inevitable disparity between the thoughts of mortals and of the great Immortal? It is true no better test of that which we are bound to believe can be found than a conscience kept alive by the breath of a holy and jealous God. Granting this, however, we soon pass into the realm of the incom- prehensible. Do we take the trouble of accommo- dating ourselves to the greatness of the God who is in heaven whilst we are upon earth ? God's method of teaching us would not be by a revelation if the finite could adjust itself at once to the infinite mind. In a revelation we have presented to us some of the unassimilated disparities between God's thoughts and ways and those of His creature man. Without realising it we verge upon the impiety of assuming that God has nothing to teach us and that we may have something to teach Him. You do not hope to master Newton's " Principia " with as much ease as you grasp snippets of toothsome frivolities in the columns of the daily press. You ought not to think the Most High as easy to under- stand as a plain, plodding, transparent neighbour. THE FALSE EQUATION 19 Is it seemly to expect that the mighty God will adopt our methods and put Himself into step for all time with the dwarfs of earth? This gross, phenomenal self-complacency, this thrice-assured infallibility proof against all doubt of itself, is an offence. God does sometimes bow the heavens and strangely condescend to our infirmity, but it would be a poor kindness to us if He were to make those infirmities, rather than His own higher thoughts and surpassing ways, the limit of His self- revelations and the bounds of our destiny. We are not slowly evolving ourselves into the knowledge of God, but God is meeting us with a vast body of truth con- cerning His being and His providential ways, the vaster part of which yet remains to be touched and assimilated. It is easy to find practical illustrations of this divergence between God's thoughts and ways and man's. Men often arraign the order of the universe and pass judgment upon its methods in a temper which implies that no appeal from their verdict is possible. The master of the latest science has reached finality in his researches and poses as one wiser than the creative power itself Nature, he asserts, has no aims, but is simply the presiding genius at a biological lottery. But surely the most advanced thinker of our generation is unfit to pronounce upon consummations which may be reached ten thousand years hence, reached in spheres to which we cannot at present penetrate. We know in part, and the coadjustment of the part to the whole is hidden from us. They could have improved, forsooth, upon Nature's methods if they had been consulted 20 THE FALSE EQUATION at the beginning. In comparison with many of our brilliant contemporaries the patriarch Job was a child, and research has travelled far since his day, and yet we make bold to say the Almighty's challenge to His servant is still valid. We do not know the innermost secrets of life, and are still less fit to judge of the end towards which all things move. The Australian black man thinks the revolving wheels of a wagon miraculous, and when a thunder- storm breaks or a hostile tribe appears he hides under the axle-tree as under a protecting fetish. Carried away with an idea of this sort how can he interpret the thoughts in the brain of the white man who is driving through the bush? He neither sows nor reaps. How can he appreciate the place of harvests in the order of the civilised world as he sees the man who directs the reaping machine or the steam plough sitting in a framework above wheels. When his brain has been emptied of the witchery of revolving wheels he may find room for other ideas to which these adjustments contribute. The accom- plished thinker is often so absorbed in watching the revolutions of the worlds and the cycles of evolving life that he is oblivious of the distant goals. He cannot appreciate an end in Nature unless it is utilitarian. He sees nothing but a series of physical adaptations and adjustments. All disciplinary and educational uses are absent from the visible order of things, or only appear as for- tuitous by-products. He ignores the higher stand- point at which the severities of Nature may take on an aspect of exquisite and inexhaustible kindness. Like the little child who screams and fights when the ambulance appears to carry off to an unknown THE FALSE EQUATION 21 place some stricken member of his household, he fumes with ignorant revolt. A child has short views, but in due time this act of brutal roughness presents itself in a new light. The invaders despoil so that they may give back, for they are disguised ministers of healing and salvation. Nature is full of such disguised ministries which her children misunder- stand. As well try to judge the flight of an angel through the sky by the fossil footprints of lizards in the primeval slime, as trace God's ways by the signs in Nature. His footsteps are not known. A hard, narrow materialism caricatures God by speaking of Him as though He were a finite being, charged with the unequal burdens of an infinite universe. We are told that He cannot regard such a fraction of the stellar immensities as our poor, mean earth and its ultra-microscopic inhabitants. We occupy a minute point in space. This notion preached in season and out of season is common both to polytheism and to the modern philosophy which scoffs at all possibility of personal relations between the human soul and God. The great King of Heaven, argues the Pagan, must have ranks of little gods to help Him if He is to concern Himself with human affairs. The man of an unbelieving science declares it is impossible for God, if there be a God, to cherish and direct human life, and we are left to the pre-ordained mechanisms of law and force. A captain of labour must needs have a chief manager, with a staff of smaller overseers, and cannot enter into the individual circumstances of five thousand hands. A landed aristocrat puts his power into commission with stewards and farm bailiffs, and cannot spare time to study each peasant 22 THE FALSE EQUATION scattered over half a county. The Tsar of all the Russias governs through a caste of Grand Dukes, for his brain will not hold a greater complex of interests than ours. A direct appeal is useless, and the petitioner is referred to General Trepoff and the police. This world with its thousand millions of human souls is a sand-grain, stained with a tiny growth, and it is out of all proper proportion to believe that God can care for us. Christianity with its sublime romance of the Divine Fatherhood and redemptive Providence is the symptom that human nature thinks far too much of its own importance. God does not vex Himself with the task of either judging the sins or healing the wounds of such minute and ephemeral things as we are. He cannot care for us, or pay heed to our prayers, for if He really exists there are more important things to engage His thought. This quasi-scientific view demeans the capacity of God as much as it ignores the true significance of man, putting into the Divine mind thoughts which more properly belong to a Caesar, a Grand Duke, a feudal baron, who has no more aptitude for complex affairs than the rest of us, and whose mental powers do not stretch with the breadth of his acres. It attributes to the Most High the restricted outlook of the patrician who does not and cannot think of the common herd. It reduces the Almighty to the level of the finite, crediting Him with no wider range of thought than can be contained within a human brain. Is it con- ceit, forsooth, to say that God thinks of us ? Is it not a blasphemy to say that He does not ? We cannot depict a world in which men are made insignificant in the sight of God, without first pulling THE FALSE EQUATION 23 God down to our own earthly levels of character and capacity. Such a view involves an anthropomorphic belittlement of The Eternal surcharged with insult and blasphemy. It is not always easy for us to accept, in all their unknown dimensions, the motive principles of God's thought and activity. His righteousness and His pardoning compassions are both asserted upon a scale of superhuman magnitude, and the one does not cancel or circumscribe the other. Large spaces in human life are monopolised by arid selfishnesses, whilst the generosities of love shine here and there like coy blooms in infrequent nooks and crannies, so that we are tempted to think that greed, strife, retaliation, are the dominant, all-comprehending laws of life. It is difficult to believe in the grace of re- demption. We all find it so, and the Gospel comes to us with a dreamy atmosphere about it. But it is the tradition of a mean, aggressive character which makes the evangel seem vague, elusive, unintelligible. Those religious despondencies which sometimes insinuate themselves into men and women who are the excellent of the earth are exhalations from human infirmity and imperfection. We are vic- timised by a fixed habit of applying the human scale to the thoughts and ways of God. Our ideas of that which is beyond us are limited by our own unhappy natures and we cannot get out of the vitiated psychic atmosphere which imprisons the soul. When we are outside the home, and some- times even within the home circle itself, we are merciless in judgment, unsparing in temper, sordid in policy ; and the shadow of our limitation flings its cold eclipse upon the throne where the infinite 24 THE FALSE EQUATION love reigns. Every cruel war plotted for by ministers of the Evil One and fanned by a brutal press, till the populace pants for blood, fetters religious faith in God's goodness. The great Teacher had to make an ethic of cosmopolitan altruism a part of His Gospel lesson. Faith in the Most High is cramped by all that cramps the finer genius of humanity. The virtues which have scarcely a rudimentary beginning in our own hearts we cannot credit to others, not even to God Himself As a rule we do not soberly expect bigger generosities in God than we find in the world. We fashion God out of the substance of our own exclusiveness and retaliation and are terrified into despair by the monstrosity we produce. Is the method right ? Can we measure with the cubit of our forearm the space between ourselves and Sirius? If God does indeed transcend the finite our doubts and mis- givings are an illogical madness. Of course it is hard to believe this gospel of incredible freeness. We all find it so, for doubt is born of the unhappy past which lies behind us. But if God's forgiveness were expressed in the measures appropriate to human experience would it not prove the earthly origin of the message? We have just as much right to draw God's natural attributes to the scale of the monad as to draw His moral attributes to the scale of a man. If God forgives at all He will do it with God-like freedom and grandeur. If He permits us to crawl across His threshold He will not merely tolerate our return but welcome us with music and priceless gifts. Alas ! alas ! we put into the match- less mind which delights in mercy poor Simon Peter's thought of a forgiveness stretched and THE FALSE EQUATION -^D strained to seven times, whilst all the time His mercy outsoars and outspeeds ours as the path of a sun outsoars the track of a glow-worm in the ditch. His thoughts are not bound by our petty precedents of limitation. The story of redemption is too much for our faith, and yet, if the misgivings we feel are honestly analysed, must we not admit that the hardness arises from forgetfulness of this disparity between God's thought and man's ? The holiness and love which are its paramount motives imply intensities in the Divine mind exceeding our zeal as much as the central fires of the sun exceed the heats of the summer noon. One wonders how the thought of such an intervention first got into human minds if God Himself did not lodge it there. The length and breadth, the depth and height of God's thought baffle all computation, and this is the clue to the sublime extravagance in the central thought of the Gospel. We cannot believe God gave His only- begotten Son for the spiritual healing and salvation of His enemies, since such an act would be impossible to us. No hero of whom we have read or heard is equal to a like sacrifice. It defies probabilities. Is not this a sign that the Gospel, and the message within it, was thought out in a mind transcending ours, and the way of the Cross was a way suggested by no analogies of history ? When we come within the circle of the Divine ideas let us empty our minds of the meagre, dwarfish, ignoble conceptions within them and let us prepare ourselves for new spiritual magnitudes. Let us wait for that supernatural en- largement of nature which can alone enable us to re- ceive the thoughts which are high above our thoughts. II TESTED BY THE INCARNATION " Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God."— i John iv. 2. The midnight scene of the Nativity, when wit- nesses from heaven came to assure the shepherds of that Advent for which their race had long been waiting, has its counterpart in the after-generations. Shapes of Hght no longer gleam before the vision nor do strains of unearthly music greet the ear ; but behind the veil of the prophet's personality, and within the consciousness of every true believer, a witness to the Incarnate Saviour speaks, and that voice of witness may sometimes be challenged by the spirits which speak in the world and mutter their oracles of ill-omen in our selfish, doubting hearts. The signs and wonders imprinted upon the senses of the shepherds called attention to outward mani- festations of God which the apostles and their con- temporaries were privileged to behold. These men saw with their eyes, and beheld, and their hands handled the form assumed by the Eternal Word. It is with the Incarnation in its more spiritual aspects 26 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 27 that we have to do in these last times ; and witnesses and counter-witnesses address us still from unseen realms of both good and evil. The Spirit who attests the Incarnate Saviour and His virtues is one, although He identifies Himself with the personality of the prophet, and as seen through His gifts is manifold. It is well within our power to distinguish between the spirits coming from God's throne and the spirits of selfishness and unbelief which would fain seduce us from the cardinal truths of redemption. " Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." The process by which the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us is incomprehensible. The doctrine presents more serious difficulties than that of the vicarious Atonement. All the active instincts of our moral life respond at once to the idea of reconciliation with a righteous God, achieved for us through the cross of our kinsman, the Divine Mediator; but the Incar- nation is bound up with those elementary mysteries which are at the root of all life and which baffle us. That a pre-existent life should take upon itself a permanent human form is outside that order of things we can perceive and experience. But although the doctrine may challenge and even stagger faith, it furnishes no just ground for denial. The central miracle is ethical, and if we can receive that, the other mysteries will not, in the end, prove themselves insuperable. The physical sciences are sometimes used to cast doubt upon this foundation doctrine of the Christian religion. Our world, we are sometimes told, is one of a many-millioned multitude, and it is incredible that the Supreme God should focus upon one point 28 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION in space all the glory of His ineffable attributes and consecrate its scenes with a special forth-putting of His holy presence. But the difficulty is greatly exag- gerated, for man's significance cannot be expressed in geometric terms. We do not measure genius by the cradle, the nursery, the infant school of unpretending dimensions from which its splendours emerge. The room in the town-street of Stratford-on-Avon where William Shakespeare first saw the light of day, and the acreage of the fields over which he after- wards wandered, offer no base-line for estimating the dramatic ranges of his intellect. Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace has recently attempted an answer to this class of objection in a book by which he tries to show that our earth may be the true astronomical centre of the universe. No other orb seems to present the same complex fitness to sustain that sen- tient, organic life which reaches its highest consum- mation in man. If neighbouring worlds are inhabited the creatures must be either made of asbestos, or capable on the other hand of resisting unimaginable degrees of cold. But the argument is irrelevant and it is perhaps a pity that this devout scientist should have spent his keen powers and his wide knowledge upon the discussion of such a question. The orien- tation of our planet in the huge maze of worlds is a subject that does not touch the core of the problem. What is man.? Is he worth redeeming? Are his sins and sorrows of so tragic an order that a benign God might feel them and be moved to compassion ? Man is at least the highest created being we know, capable of an unrivalled sovereignty over the humbler kingdoms of life, with huge potentialities of good and evil in his span of days, with an elastic and many- TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 29 sided sensitiveness in his faculties and affections, to which no corresponding example presents itself The doubt that God, perhaps, may not think us worth saving at a sacrifice is bred by our proud, selfish temper towards many of our fellow-men whom we classify as unemployable and not worthy of being lifted up. It is hard for creatures such as we have made ourselves to believe in that central mystery of ethics, through which the Sovereign mind of the universe bows itself to our low estate. But do not let us make the mistake of supposing that the difficulty is organic rather than moral. The space objection is illusive. Is God love, as the Apostle John affirms? If He be it is no wonder that He should direct His compassions towards us and put that seal of distinction upon the world, with which it is stamped when it becomes the scene of His Incarnation. Human selfishness rather than pure science brings in the stumbling-block which impedes our faith in this doctrine. The mystery which invests the method of the Incarnation has its parallels in the facts of common life. The nerve-substance of the brain is the medium within which an invisible intelligence operates that cannot be produced or explained by any of the properties known to physical science. The link of vital association between mind and the bodily form within which it pulsates, cannot be detected or defined. How is it that a hidden act of will, or a series of complex and perhaps abstract ideas, sets up subtle discharges of chemical force within the brain and the muscles ? No answer has yet been given. The thinker, who postulates an eternal relation between certain groups of electrons and the higher 30 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION processes of thought, makes the elemental substance of the universe an incarnation, which had no begin- ning. His biologic assumption is just as great as that made by John when he tells us that the Word was made flesh, which reflected into human vision the glory of the only-begotten Son. The metaphysic of the Pantheist, who says that God is the sum-total of all that exists, needs as large or even a larger groundwork of mystery. And it is curious to find that for the purpose of explaining or justifying his faith, he requires some such theory of depotentiation, as the theologian has formulated to harmonise God and man into one personality. In the lower kingdoms of matter he must first make God empty Himself before He can affirm His perfect immanence. In fact the Pantheist sees in the uni- verse a composite of three or four incarnations, bound together into a cosmic unity, more or less conscious. Through the realms of inert matter the All-Soul diffuses itself, but these realms can only set forth the greatness of Divine power. God's intelligence, benignity, and purposes of effective righteousness find a very limited expression or embodiment there. And then the All-Soul pervades organic life, pervades it much more richly in the keen and many-sided discernments and sensibilities of the animal than in the duller functions of the plant. And in a still higher degree God is immanent in man, transcendently so in One who sums up in his own character all the best qualities of the race to which he belongs. When brain and conscience have reached their highest evolution, hidden magnitudes of the Divine nature emerge into consciousness and open manifestation. Whilst all things are woven into the sensitive web TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 31 of one infinite life, man, at his best, becomes the culminating expression of the Divine reason and righteousness. Ralph Waldo Emerson has said : " We see the world piece by piece as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree ; but the whole of which these are the shining parts is the soul." " Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest soul who in his integrity worships God becomes God ; yet for ever and ever the influx of this new and better self is new and unsearchable." Such phraseology implies a mass of successive and nebulous incarnations ; but the process postulated by the Christian theologian, who says that God became man, not by the conversion of Godhead into the flesh but by taking of the manhood into God, is reversed. Human nature in its spiritual ecstasies adopts the Divine into itself No theory of the world and of human life can dispense with some form of the postulate which underlies the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. The thinkers of many lands have been accustomed to regard every new birth into the world as an incarnation, not indeed of the Supreme God in His infinite perfection, but of a pre-existing soul. From the prairie of the West where the red man is fading into oblivion to the plains of the Far East where the yellow man is pressing into view, in Egypt, in India, amongst many of the thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, the belief in tranmsigration has held the ground against all other theories of the genesis of personality. For men who are not monotheists by training it is easier to believe in a rebirth rather than in a continuous creation of new souls, destined to enter into and possess the new forms which arise in the 32 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION world with every fresh generation of history. Some- times in the popular imagination the reincarnation is stamped with a peculiar significance, and there appears upon the scene of life a being who transcends the average limitations of the race, a new god or a pro- vidential hero, the organ of Heaven's august will. The commonness of these alleged incarnations has been held to prove that the Christian doctrine is plagiar- ised from Paganism itself But the Incarnation, taught in the Gospels and the Epistles, stands quite alone in its moral and religious significance. The avatas of the gods are not supposed to manifest ineffable moral attributes or to achieve ends of sur- passing spiritual grandeur and benignity. They are mere displays of power, self-exalting acts intended to assert over human hearts the authority of the beings who rule in the over-bending azure. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the avatar-legend reflects the selfishness, the ambition, or the tragic revenges of the human heart. No Oriental can easily believe that one who has once outsoared the illusions of deceptive senses, and passed into the higher planes of being, willingly descends to take upon himself human pains and mortal imperfections. The Godhead is every- where held as a prize to be seized upon and never surrendered. When a reincarnation is supposed to transcend the normal order of life, the event is treated as though it were apparitional rather than organic, and the philosophy which interprets it corresponds with that behind the Nestorian heresies of the early Church. In the popular imagination, God cannot suffer, and if God becomes specially immanent in a human form, all that is essentially Divine must depart from that form, before the TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 33 suffering begins. The East believes those ontological mysteries which lie at the foundation of this Chris- tian doctrine, but to escape what seems a greater marvel, and it lacks an overpowering moral motive to justify its faith. If we can be led to believe that the Christian mystery is ethically credible, we need not stumble over the other part of the question, for multitudes of keen Oriental thinkers have found it easier to accept an endless series of incarnations than to believe in the independent creation of human souls at each terrestrial birth. The biological problem bound up with this doctrine has its human counterpart in the laws of heredity. That not a few of the specific qualities of a parent's mind and character should be conveyed to his children and to his children's children, rests upon the same underlying assumptions as the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Heredity is a species of mental transmigration, disengaged of course from that faculty of continuous memory which is the unifying element in the personal consciousness. Plato thought that all ideas were dim recollections surviving from some pre-existent state. The tastes, aptitudes, in- stincts, nervous impressions, which show themselves in the members of certain families, are reprints and duplicates from the corresponding qualities of a near ancestry. The experiences of preceding generations may be inherited, and even knowledge in some of its forms. These biological bequests, these habits and inclinations produced by the accumulated pains and pleasures of remote forefathers, descend to those who are their legatees through channels which science may never be able to locate or explore. They have passed out of the brain, the blood, the nerve-ganglions, 4 34 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION the soul-histories of a group of ancestors, into the germ-cells of an uprising posterity. That these dis- connected elements of the personality should be conveyed from the forms of an old life into a new is a fact within the range of common observation, but the laws which are at the root of these facts are inscrutable. This transmission of mental and psychic attributes is not one whit easier of explanation than the doctrine, that the pre-existent personality of the Son of God should come into the babe at Bethlehem, manifest itself through the public ministry of our Lord, and remain indissolubly united to the form that was nailed to the cross. Perhaps the biological problem involved in the scientific doctrine of heredity is more difficult than that which is raised by the theological doctrine of the Incarnation. That the seed of some tropical plant should be drifted to our shores by tides and currents, marked on no nautical chart, is more wonderful than the feat of a skilled collector who brings a perfect plant and acclimatises it to our soil. That two or three of the pearls or jewels from some tiara, should be washed up on to the beach, is perhaps less probable than that all the pearls and jewels wrought into some specific design should be brought across the sea in a treasure-chest. The preacher of heredity claims that without the attendant synthesis of the personality, the discon- nected attributes of the personality find their way into the life-shapes of a new generation. The preacher of the Incarnation claims that, through the unknown grace and power of God, the unifying consciousness, and the complete circle of attributes belonging to a Divine personality, have come into a human form. TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 35 The analogy of biological inheritance may carry us a further step towards the mystery of the Incarnation. The Incarnation would be a logical impossibility if it involved no self-limitation on the part of the Eternal Son, for the infinite can only unite itself to the finite by a process which the theologian describes as depotentiation. The Divine attributes become quiescent capacities rather than active and effectual functions through the earlier stages in the development and manifestation of the God-Man. And does not the common law of heredity work in this particular way ? The inherited aptitudes of the child lie dormant for years. It is only through the discipline of training, and the stimulants furnished by the environing society within which the child grows, that ancestral gifts, latent in brain and blood, rise into conscious activity and impressive manifestation. It has been pointed out by our theological teachers that Creation itself, especially that part of it which brought moral and intelligent beings upon the stage, involved an act of self-limitation in the Infinite God. He could not continue to use powers and preroga- tives made over as a perpetual trust to men fashioned in His image, or could only put behind and beneath those momentous endowments, the reserve rights of final control belonging to His inalienable sovereignty. God's past revelations to seers, prophets, and righteous men, implied a process of momentary depotentiation, as does the act of every learned man who takes a child by the hand and tells him a fairy tale with a wholesome moral. The scholar could not meet the mind of the child unless, for the time being, he put his own accomplishments 36 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION out of view. In all those disclosures of truth destined to emerge from God's fellowships with men, a principle of self-limitation is implied, for the infinite cannot be exhaustively known. The more permanent self-limitation, to which the Eternal Son submitted Himself when He became man, was anticipated within the Divine mind itself, and by the Son in that life which preceded His sojourn upon earth. His essential attributes were em- ployed in subordination to the will of the Father and the restrictive laws of the corporeal order into which He afterwards came were symbols of the sovereign will to which He bowed. All the normal powers of His humanity He put forth without any special and immediate direction from the Divine Father in heaven, for pure and untainted natural instincts counselled Him aright in the common events of life. But His latent supernatural endowments were only used in response to the call of the Father, as that call made itself known in His life of continuous, illuminating prayer. That the Son should have emptied Himself, and should have continued to do so through His career of redemptive service, was in harmony with the Divine action of the past, and miraculous chiefly when viewed from the ethical standpoint. In the verse before us the Apostle puts peculiar stress upon the reality of the Incarnation. Belief in the Gospel of the Incarnation may be neutralised by imperfect views either of the Divine, or of the human natures of Jesus Christ. When John was writing his Epistle the latter would seem to have been the dominant peril of the hour. The philosophy which treats the senses as illusory, and the worlds which TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 37 they explore as an intangible mirage, a philosophy adopted b}- Gautauma Buddha and upheld by Theo- sophists and Christian Science people at the present time, was not unknown in the districts where the Apostles preached and founded Churches. Such notions, always current in the East in varying forms, had found their way into some of the primitive Christian communities, and as soon as the Divine Sonship of Jesus Christ was accepted and confirmed, began to dilute the doctrine and empty it of spiritual virtue. It was a phase of the old unbelief, working under the formulas of an Oriental metaphysic, which tended to take away the substance of the Incarnation and leave in its place a tenuous shadow. How could God suffer ? Was He not in His essential nature above the possibilities of pain and distress? He might perchance come to earth and sojourn in its scenes, but could scarcely become an integral part of its sensitive, palpitating life. And so the real, inner- most Son of God was held to be practically separable from the bodily form with which He was invested. He had no organic union with the sensibilities of the flesh, making Him subject to shame, humiliation, and bitter pain. In some vague, indefined way the Incarnation was apparitional — apparitional through a longer. term of time than other superhuman manifes- tations. The Eternal Son was as superior to the vicissitudes and desolations of this earthly lot as the shining messengers who came to the patriarchs at their tent-doors, appeared to Jewish peasants of the olden days at their threshing-floors, or filled the courts of the Temple for a moment with their flaming glory. The Spirit of the Divine Son came down to enshrine Himself within a sinless young 38 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION carpenter from Nazareth when He was baptized in the Jordan, wrought mightily by His hand through many days of miraculous power and triumph, and before the abysmal abandonment of the Cross, with- drew from the quivering, tortured flesh. A recently discovered fragment of the Gospels, in its description of the Passion, bears upon its phraseology the trace of this old Nestorian heresy. The Apostle John felt that such a notion emptied the redeeming ministry of significance and made it a piece of Olympian stage-magic. If God did not truly suffer in His Son, the coming of Jesus into the world could be no real revelation of Divine love. God had drawn near to human life as a phantasmal visitant rather than as the friend, the kinsman, the Saviour of an accursed race. To affirm the perfect humanity of Jesus was vital, and the rest of the Gospel story could have no significance, if sundered from this foundation. In the Peninsular War, the Duke of Wellington was greatly vexed and embarrassed by the fact, that his soldiers were accustomed to pillage the farms and the houses of the peasantry. To stop these irregu- larities he issued an order that the next soldiers guilty of such lawlessness should be hung. The following day three men were caught red-handed in a raid, and the cases were reported to the commander as he sat at a table in his tent. " Take the men out and hang them on the nearest tree," was the curt reply. The officers entrusted with this unpleasant commission felt sympathy for the men and wished, if possible, to avoid carrying out a sentence so harsh. Three men had died in the hospital the previous night, so the ingenious subterfuge was adopted of taking the corpses and hanging them from the branches of TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 39 a tree, past which the troops were to be marched in the course of the morning. The habit of raiding the peasantry was effectually stopped by this stage-spec- tacle of justice. If the soldiers had found out that they had been played upon by a make-believe penalty, the lawlessness into which they were falling would not have been checked. If a phantasmal sub- stitute is made to seem to suffer for the guilty race, the sacrifice can have no virtue either before God or in the eyes of men. If Jesus Christ was an apparition of the glory of the Divine Son, more or less perma- nent, and nothing beyond, if statements of His Incarnation were to be qualified by the idea that the real Godhead within Him could not suffer, if Jesus Christ had not indeed come in the flesh and the Divinity withdrew itself before the last distress and humiliation overwhelmed the sufferer, the Cross was a hollow symbol, the Gospel based upon it a romance, and the ethic, imposed by the Apostles upon the Churches they founded and cherished, must have shrunk into an impotent counsel of perfection. St. John affirms that the heart-felt, uncompromis- ing confession that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh bears a significant and unmistakable imprint of its origin. The spirit who inspires such an avowal is a messenger from God and the voice of every spirit, within ourselves or within others, which thus speaks, we may venture to trust without doubt or reserve. The tribute paid to the superhuman rank of Jesus by an evil spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum : " We know Thee, who Thou art, the Holy One of God,'' and at once repressed with stern, holy indig- nation, was a revived form of the temptation in the wilderness. It suggested sovereignty over the world 40 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION by compromise. The confession was a cunning flattery which passed by the essential ethic of the Incarnation and ignored its need. No spirit of evil could conceive and applaud the stupendous act of self-humiliation involved in the work of Our Lord amongst men. It is possible to ascribe Divine attributes to Jesus, to call him God with a pagan latitude in the use of the word, and yet to pass by the profoundest truth at the root of His sojourn amongst the guilty children of earth. The difficulties of this momentous subject are moral rather than scientific, and grow up out of the weakness and rapacious egoisms of our fallen nature. Incredulity in presence of this sublime fact is a symptom of selfishness and unconquerable pride. To the tribe which is in the habit of abandoning its sick, its aged, its infirm, the story of the palatial homes in which we cherish hopeless victims of disease is incredible. Such charities are without parallel in the customs of the forest or the prairie. Why prolong life when it can add nothing to the fighting strength and efficiency of the tribe ? The names of George MuUer of Bristol, and Dr. Barnardo of Stepney, represent mere fictions to the populations where infanticide is common and involves no shame. The practice of centuries must be reversed, and a new set of precedents established before the reports of such work can be believed. An inhospitable nation which, whilst caring to some little extent for its own subjects, admits no responsibility for tending the subjects of other nations, is moved with frenzied suspicion and invents monstrous slanders, when the foreigner builds a hospital and seeks to care for those who are not of his own flesh and blood. Our TESTED BY THE INCARNATION 41 natural selfishness, together with the notions begotten of it, cause us to stumble when the truth of the Incarnation is first presented to us, and our disinclina- tion to receive it can only be overborne by a gift from God, which removes the evil bias of age-long growth. Within the modest limits of your daily life practise the humility of the Incarnation, and you will make yourself ready for a less hesitating faith in it. Repeat the Christian Creed and at the same time hunt for rank, position, luxury, the trappings of wealth, popular applause, and you will have no inkling of the grand truth uttered with the lips. It is easier for a philanthropist to believe in the Gospel than for a miser, because he is proving daily that " it is more blessed to give than to receive " — an ethical axiom which is the key to the interpretation of God and His dispensations of grace. No nature but that which is God-inspired and God-renewed can embrace the Gospel with unreserved sincerity. Taste the sweetness of humility and self-sacrifice so that your faith in a Divine Saviour may be no longer staggered. Count yourself less than the least of the poor, mean, stricken members of the human race, and then half the difficulties which surround the subject of the Incarnation will disappear. Our belief in the Incarnation is part of our belief in God's love, and is established and vindicated by that pregnant, essential truth which is at the heart of all things. The doctrine, it is sometimes said, is a product of human pride. But man must be a pheno- menal egotist to believe, of his own free intent, that God takes upon Himself human flesh for our redemp- tion and dwells with us. If the doctrine originated in human pride it would not have furnished the most 42 TESTED BY THE INCARNATION crushing rebuke the idolatry of self has ever received, giving at the same time to humility a sanction that virtue has at no time possessed away from the manger and the Cross. In the Incarnation we see God's scorn of that grandiose pretence to which we are so prone. It is not in human nature to invent such a satire upon worldly pomps and the insanities of our self-exaltation as this doctrine presents. It is not the question of the Virgin Birth, or the union of Divine and human natures in one person, which staggers our understanding ; but the ethical magnitude of the fact. Let this central problem settle itself, and the problems which are incidental to it will disappear. Did the great God will to be- come man and to die for the race? Your nature must be renewed into unselfishness so that you may receive this tremendous truth. You may adopt the dogma upon a basis of authority, whilst the heart is at the same time unchanged, with the result that all the accumulated pride and selfishness of your unre- generate years will rise in revolt and secretly protest that it is incredible. Ill THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD "But emptied Himself."— Phil. ii. 7 (R.V.). Amateur students of Comparative Religion have sometimes said that the stories of the Nativity gathered up into the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke are offshoots from an old-world myth, which had mixed itself up with the traditions of Jesus before His biography had been committed to writing. Elaborate essays have set out to prove that the Incarnation Story is either the revival of an early sun-fable or perhaps a Jewish adaptation of one of the avatar legends of the East. It is true the date of the Nativity falls in close proximity to the winter solstice ; but no stress can be put upon such a coincidence when we remember that the Nature-worship resting upon these myths, never concerned itself with the ethical problems which received their paramount expression in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. It is not inconceivable, moreover, that the early Church may have found it expedient to fit some of its festivals into the holidays observed by Pagan neigh- bours. 43 44 THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD The second objection raised loses its apparent relevance when we remember that the Gospel doctrine of the Incarnation has essential characteristics, to which neither analogy nor parallel can be found in the religious history of mankind. The Fatalism of the East makes such a choice as is set forth in the words of the Apostle unthinkable. Not only are all the rebirths, with which Oriental thought deals, successive phases in working out a series of rigid sequences, but the gods themselves assume their positions in the visible Pantheon by a necessity, into which it is as little possible for a moral choice to enter, as into the stations of the stars. The Incarna- tion, with all the history which issued from it, is self- chosen. In no system of Pagan mythology does an essentially spiritual being seek a fixed earthly incar- nation for unselfish and vicarious ends. The ideas which underlie the New Testament language upon this subject lack any touch of kinship with the most daring speculations of religious dreamers. The Son took upon Himself our flesh, not because He was destined to such humiliation, or because it belonged to Him in His elemental origins so that His life must needs reach thereby its highest phases. The Incarna- tion implied a self-determined disability, and He did not thereby magnify Himself. So that He might become man He emptied Himself. Looked at from the standpoint of the angel He died down into the babe. This was perhaps the nearest conception im- mortal spirits in the spheres of light where their life centred could have of death — the Eternal Son sinking down from the power and majesty of His first estate into the helplessness of the babe. The cradle- manger, till the significance of this self-humiliation THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 45 was interpreted to their thought, must have seemed Hke an entombment of Deity amidst scenes of meanness and dishonour. The Apostle here brings before us two separate illustrations of our Lord's humility. The first great illustration had for its immediate scene the presence of the Father and of the holy angels in heaven ; the second was set in the civil and ecclesiastical courts of Jerusalem, in an olive orchard by which the Kidron swept, and on a green hill near by the city, where in the midst of frenzied and unsympathising crowds He poured out His holy life. He humbled Himself to the dim, feeble beginnings of human consciousness and was born a babe, and in that event His nature was shorn of the glorious attri- butes which expressed its Divine rank. Having assumed the form of a servant, by a reiterated act of inexhaustible condescension. He passed into a more tremendous abyss, for He again humbled Himself by accepting the lot and enduring the mortal condemna- tion of a felon. The second step of the descent would have been impossible without the first, since He who only hath immortality cannot die. The first was the starting-point and the second the goal of His earthly life, and those who transpose prelude and climax by resting human salvation upon the holy Nativity rather than upon the sacrifice to which it led up, assume that the providence of redemption worked retrogressively in the history of Jesus. He bore the likeness of sinful flesh that He might become an offering for sin. It is not for us to say which act of humiliation in- volved the bitterer distress or in which the Saviour's condescending love reached its climax of more 46 THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD effectual grace. Perhaps it was a more poignant lot to sink out of the light, power, conscious majesty of heaven into the meanness, imprisonment, restraining conditions, sin-charged atmospheres of earth than, after having already been made perfect man, to die back again through a strange ordeal of torture, into the hidden glory of heaven. The sacrifice of the Cross upon earth had its earnest and its counterpart in that sacrifice of self-limitation in heaven, which was the first step to the coming Incarnation. Perhaps that was the shadow in heaven by which angels divined the coming tragedy of love upon earth. It is to the first illustration of humility, that act of self-effacement in heaven, of which the Father and His holy angels were witnesses, that our thoughts are now directed. " Emptied Himself." This implies that, in the inscrutable experiences antecedent to the Incarna- tion, the Eternal Son was a free, self-choosing, re- sponsible actor. At no time in the days of His flesh was He under the temptation to regard Him- self as a victim of Fate. We find ourselves in the world by the choice of others, and when the storm of its gathering distresses bursts upon us, like Job and Jeremiah, we may feel moved to curse the day of our birth, and the Fate which permits us to become the poor, dismantled victims of catastrophe and defeat. But Jesus Christ always made His followers see that His lot of obscurity and grievous pain was self- selected, and that, whilst He was in active harmony with His Father's Eternal decree. He at the same time was following out the counsel of His own un- fettered love. It is true some passages of the New Testament speak as though Jesus, in that transition THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 47 from a higher to a lower order of intelligent being through which He came to bear our similitude, were a passive subject only. " Made a little lower than the angels." " The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us." "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall over- shadow thee ; wherefore also that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God." But before the Spirit, whose mystic inbrooding became the creative power of the Incarnation, received this per- sonality into His guardianship and blent its attri- butes with our flesh and blood, the Divine Son had already humbled Himself and surrendered His sacred life to the will of this unseen minister of the eternal mysteries. This acceptance of our nature, no less than the suffering of the Cross itself, must be self- chosen if it is to have virtue for the help and salvation of the human race. That the self-abasement was free must have been just as manifest to those who witnessed the act of humiliation in heaven whereby He made ready to take upon Himself the form of a servant, as to those who contemplated upon earth the events which led up to the unconstrained sacrifice of the Cross. From the first scene on high, when He left the throne of His majesty, to the last scene below, when He yielded His hands to the cords and bowed His thorn-girt brow on the tree. His spirit moved in a sphere of moral self-determination and made the series of closely linked events an incomparable sacri- fice of love. There was no strife with Fate, no anger at His lot, no imprisoning coils ; but the act of empty- ing Himself, in which the Incarnation began, was repeated through all the incidents of His sojourn amongst men. 48 THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD The Gospel has its source in our Lord's free choice of the pains and privations involved in an Incarnate life, and Christianity contains no gospel apart from this. The pre-existence of Jesus Christ is sometimes rationalised away by a reference to the eternal decrees. " Before Abraham was I am." The sinless, well-beloved Son was an ideal in the Divine mind when the worlds were not yet made. Yes, but if an ideal only, and not also the possessor of the attri- butes of a complete conscious personality, His life of humiliation must have been determined by a Divine fate or destiny, and therefore lacked the moral virtue which would have attached to it, had the earthly lot been accepted from the beginning by His own free act. If there was no unconstrained co-operation with the Father's counsels in heaven above, as well as upon earth below, and His birth, work and sacrifice were prepared and enforced by the irresistible will of another, it is idle to make this the ground of an appeal for love to Jesus Christ. The benefactors, who brighten and enrich our lives, win a sure foot- hold in our love by what they do for us in the heyday of their strength, and not by the mere fact that they have come into the world. We may make our lives express mercy and good-will to our neighbours, but we cannot imprint any such significance upon our birth, for that is beyond our control. William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln have not entitled themselves to the praise and admiration of the negro race by the fact that they consented to be born, but because in the full maturity of their powers they set themselves to the task of emancipation. This august being held a pre-existent life, in which He stripped off the glories with which He had been apparelled, THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 49 suffered His primal attributes to pass into eclipse, and stooped to make a human form the shrine of His Divine personality. The Godhead, which was His, passed for a time into finite conditions, and its transcendent potentialities became latent and self- restrained. He entered into a rank lower than the angels. The Divine nature must accept poignant limita- tions before an Incarnation becomes possible. Let us face the facts of the problem with a courageous and devout intelligence. How often is language used upon this sacred subject which makes the truth a jumbled and a jarring paradox ! A crude pulpit rhetoric speaks of the Omnipotence that slept in a manger, of the baby fingers that clasped the sceptre of the universe, of the tiny brain that held the secrets of all knowledge, and of the spell of mighty, far- ranging attributes before whose subduing presence shepherds and magi were drawn to pay their inevit- able homage. Such transcendent powers were there, but in the sense only in which the strength of the timber and the bounty of the fruit are present in the seed. The Divine nature which had merged itself with the human could not at once convey to the little shape of flesh, in the encircling arms of the Virgin, the noonday splendour of its own active and unqualified attributes. Matter that can be weighed, measured, disintegrated and described in finite terms, however sublimated the form into which it combines, is unfit to express that which is infinite in the integrity of its deepest essence. There are points at which the human becomes a negation of the Divine and the Divine of the human, although each possesses many attributes in common and there 5 50 THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD are intimate affinities between the two. The Incar- nation could only take place upon the basis of a voluntary self-limitation. For the elucidation of such a profound subject it is impossible to find exact analogies, but the new psychology has directed our attention to a strange class of facts which are an improvement upon many of the older illustrations. It would be rashness to do more than point out the limits between which possible explanations may lie. Can human per- sonality find within its unexplored labyrinths a place where Divine attributes may slumber for a time, till at last they emerge into consciousness and suffuse the entire life? Within recent years we have been compelled to study the wonderful feats of the un- conscious mind. It can will certain acts whilst we are not in the least aware of the volitions which work within us. In the restless economies of the physical life it regulates vital processes which are hidden away from us. Antitoxins, more wonderful than any of which Pasteur or Koch have dreamed, are manu- factured by its skilful art to combat the disease germs which invade the blood ; whilst at the same time it relieves perilous pressures, thickens bony structures when there is the risk of deformity and breakdown, provides against threatened lesions in veins and arteries, and repairs disease with untiring cunning and consummate patience. A writer of wide reputation has said, " I believe that a natural power of prevention and repair of disorder and disease has as real and as active an existence within us as have the ordinary functions of the organs themselves." This active, intelligent providence in the body was once called the healing strength or genius of nature. THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD ^i It is an invisible minister of repair and recuperation which we can neither see nor hear, feel nor know. The devout man will, perhaps, not go far astray if he calls it the immanent and effectual benignity of God Himself, or of Him by whom God made the worlds. Perhaps psychologists treat it as an integral part of the human personality, because it is subject to perversion and morbid derangement. And yet it does not belong to the conscious man, although there is close sympathy and reciprocal action between the two halves of the being. Well, if our definitions of human personality must find room for this unconscious providence, greater than the self we know, which watches over the welfare of the body, can it not also find room for the Divine attributes of the Son, in the days when he was child and youth and toiling artisan, and His superhuman knowledge and power had not yet emerged into full and final consciousness ? Most of us know that there are certain chambers in the mind to which we hold the key. We can unlock them at will and reproduce past events, memories retained from our earliest training, work- ing motives necessary for us in the round of daily life, and all the forces, powers and impressions which inhere in our sense of personal identity. On the other hand, there are unexplored recesses of the mind which contain, perhaps, faded lessons, vague influences which permeated our unobservant infancy, dim reflections of ancestral emotion, perhaps also the influences radiated by an immanent Deity ; and to these deeper recesses of the mind, which under peculiar conditions yield up their secrets to the light, we possess no key. This shrouded half of the per- 52 THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD sonality has been called the subliminal consciousness. It has been said that " mind may be conscious, sub- conscious, or unconscious. The second state may be brought into consciousness by effort, the last cannot." It seems to me that during the opening days of His youth and manhood, our Lord's sense of the pre-existent life in heaven and of the Divine attributes which belonged to Him, must have been hidden away in the subliminal consciousness. At rare intervals, and when the Father expressly willed it, the glory of the Divine Son flashed up into view ; but for the most part His life in home and school, shop and synagogue was delimited by the same frontiers as our own. How were the disparities between the finite and the infinite, the human and the Divine, ultimately recon- ciled in one undivided being ? By what law did they interact and finally coalesce ? It is impossible to give a dogmatic answer to the question, and yet the mind will persist in groping after solutions. Recent researches have shown us that human personality sometimes breaks up into two streams which subsequently merge again. Cases are not unknown in which, after shock, accident or disease, memory is lost for a time. In a moment the stored- up knowledge and the highly trained powers of the past vanish. And then the first steps in educa- tion have to be taken once more. The disabled thinker must sit down to his alphabet, be taught again how to count, add, subtract, and multiply. When the processes have been continued for weeks and months the old knowledge has flashed back upon the consciousness and the forgotten past has been restored. Trains of sleeping ideas have been THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 53 touched, as with an electric current, and the mind has found again its lost resources and its early sense of power. And may we not, perhaps, trace hints of a corre- sponding process in the life-history of Jesus? Before making His abode with men He permits His im- measurable knowledge to be bound by finite restraints and yields up His stupendous powers to narrow con- ditions akin to those which circumscribe our own. His spirit once free to diffuse itself at will through the universe, attaches itself to a rigid local centre, like that round which the personality of a normal human being revolves. And then in this nature, which had thus emptied itself, the pathetic methods of a natural education begin. The muscles, stretched or relaxed by a meshwork of tiny nerves, have to learn their uses and functions. Through many a trivial error and mishap the senses grow into accuracy. The first ventures into the new sense-world are made and the first steps are taken. This is followed by efforts to acquire the higher elements of learning. He " grows in wisdom and knowledge, and in favour with God and man." As the simple processes, by which the normal faculties of the mind are trained, advance a step at a time, strange and illimit- able memories start up within the nature. The old wisdom comes back in flood-tides from unfathomable springs of mystery. A sense of unbounded power thrusts itself up into the mind of the young Galilean. The subconscious Godhead asserts its forces and takes possession of the area of the entire life. The new life on earth joins itself by an unbroken chain of sequence to the old life in heaven, for the Holy Spirit has come upon Him to unseal His Divine THE SUBLIMINAL GODHZa: senses. The attributes of the Godhead have been secretly present under a human fornL But in the height of His recovered p>ower He empties Himself again and, by the way of the Cross, passes at last to the sanctuary-, from which He had descended to represent and redeem mankind. In what sense did the Incarnate Son of God possess Divine attributes, if the\- were hidden away beneath the level of His normal consciousness as a member of the human race ? His realisation of the transcendent powers which . tr- His birthright, and the assertion of those powers in supematura' acts was self-inhibited. Can we not trace this the three scenes of the temptation in the wi z : By acts of daily self-repression the Divine ~ -, of His nature was concealed not only from others, but even from Himself, and this self-repression was the law of His redemptive life. It was thus He fulfilled all righteousness. The commander of a fleet who puts out to sea with sealed orders in his keeping is in a different position from the private citizen who stands outside the circle of State secrets. The knowledge upon which so much depends is moment by moment within his grasp, and it is his loyalty to the Cro¥ra which kee{)s him from breaking the seals of the secrets entrusted to him, till the appointed hour. Superhuman wisdom and power were within reach of the only-begotten Son befirt the days of His baptism and the descent of the Spirit who led Him forth to His redemptive vocation. But it was of the essence of His righteousness that He should wait for the Father's bidding and do nothing of Himself. This Divine consciousness was unsealed by the Spirit which came from the Father anew to possess Him THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 55 for His work. After entering human flesh and going forth to preach in the towns and villages of Galilee, He continued man, not by the pressure of an irresistible hand from without, but by His free sub- mission to the common conditions of those whom He was sent to save. When the sense of Divine attributes revived within Him He went on emptying Himself, till at the height of His earthly career, the humiliation by which He became man asserted itself in a new form and He bowed himself to death, even the death of the Cross. The death to which He devoted Himself would have been impossible, as a human experience, apart from that laying aside of His glory by which it was pre- ceded. If a vicarious sacrifice was indeed the goal of His earthly mission no hands could have bound and slain the victim, still His outshining Godhead had been subdued bv the softening^ veil of the flesh. The glory of His untempered attributes had power to disarm all adversaries and bar out the Cross and its humiliations. To the light in which He once dwelt no man could draw nigh, and the eclipse of that light was the first condition necessar>' to His atoning passion. Whilst traces of the majestic transfiguration lingered upon His form violence was kept at bay. The fourth Evangelist tells how the quick, irrepressible outflash of His majesty awed into helplessness the ruflfian bands sent to arrest Him in the garden. The same impression of inviolable dignity was conveyed, though in less intense degree, as He sat teaching in the Temple, and those charged to bring Him before the priests and rulers returned with- out their captive. If when the sun of His celestial life had set in the Incarnation, the after-glow of His 56 THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD splendour was so irresistible, what effect would have been produced by its noonday brightness ? With a charmed life He would have glided through the world, whilst the mercenaries of the Crucifixion would have been as helpless as Saul wallowing at the gates of Damascus. Needless then the early flight into Egypt, for the murderer of the Innocents would have been overawed. Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod, the centurion charged with the execution and his four soldiers, would have been smitten with an impotence like that of the guards on the morning of the Resurrection. The assumption of flesh and blood, through which He became perfect man identified with the brethren He was to save, put Him within the power of His enemies. His death was made possible by a prepara- tory act of depotentiation. "He emptied Himself" to bring His holy life within reach of those who took it by violence, and became unwitting contributories to the great mystery of redemption. The glory which He had with the Father before the foundation of the world, unless obscured, would have created conditions making His life as inviolable as when surrounded by cohorts of angels ; and He laid it aside. The act described in this singular phrase was neces- sary, for lacking a perfect humanity, the offering up of His life upon the Cross for all men, would have been the formality of a sacrifice, lacking the true virtue of vicarious pain. The experiences we associate with death are in- compatible with the conscious and plenary possession of all Divine attributes at the awful crisis. Robert Buchanan expresses the core of the truth, with more or less of irreverent exaggeration, when he says : " To my mind Christ did not experience the ordinary THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 57 sufferings of man if He claimed to be more than man. In other words, His Divine claim quite destroys His power of suffering or sacrifice." There is a third view, however, left out of sight in that criticism. In- finite strength, unless held in abeyance, is a bar not only to suffering, but to that separation of the spirit from the body in which life ceases. Almighty attri- butes in league with the self-defensive instinct of a robust humanity makes a panoply through which no stab of mortal pain can pass. The extraordinary power of abstraction possessed by some men brings exemption from many of the ills which fall upon their fellows. The strong faith of the Stoic in the supremacy of mind over matter often works wonders. With a proud mandate he can dismiss from the sphere of the senses the more extreme forms of distress, and rob torment of its worst sting. Much more could a will clothed with Almighty power accomplish the same end and make the Man of Sorrows an unsub- stantial phantom. It was only by divesting Himself of His prerogatives and becoming perfect man, with a man's physical frailties, that the Son of God could die. If through the hours of the Passion, His conscious presence had outflown the limits set by the bodily senses, the Cross would have been no burden, and its shame and torment no crushing tragedy. Speaking with Nicodemus, the great Teacher affirmed that though come down from heaven there was a sense in o which He was still in heaven. His thought, know- ledge, affection returned day by day to the primal centre from which His life issued. He counted in its counsels, knew its secrets, asserted the virtue of His mediatorial personality in its decrees. But the pene- 58 THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD tration of His presence into realms on high had changed in form. He was not there in the same sense as when Prince of its shining hosts. He kept Himself in a locaHsed Hfe of redemptive humihation by a holy act of will, renouncing for the time His more majestic attributes. If He had transported Himself, at every natural impulse, to that sanctuary in which no violence was found, and actively exercised that transcendence over space-limits which was His birthright. He could only have died a stage-death. Nothing but an unsuffering shadow could have been nailed to the tree. His life is to be made a genuine offering for sin, and the orbit of its conscious activities must therefore be narrowed to humbler dimensions than even that of the far-ranging angels. To die, as a man the consciousness must be with- drawn from the vastness of illimitable time, and pass into such purely finite conditions that the momentshall contain and confine it. The Son of God had lived in a magnificent past, and, by the force of His mysteri- ous foreknowledge, had lived also in a no less magni- ficent future ; but till He drew His first earthly breath He had never been a being of the passing day only, unless by a process of intellectual accommodation. And yet if He is now truly to offer His soul to the Father in death. He must empty Himself and be clothed with the attributes of time rather than with the powers of eternity. Gleams of the larger pre- incarnate life, it is true, hover within the shrouded depths of His personality, gleams prophetic also of His coming enthronement and victory, but they are gleams only, and not the clear, strong, steady shining of the Divine prescience through the whole round of the horizon. He could only suffer by being shut up THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 59 within the moment and feeling the impact of the terrible experiences coincident with it. If the light of eternity past had mingled freely with the light of eternity to be, flooding even the scenes of the Cross and driving away its shadows, He could have had no sense of the hiding of the Father's face because of the sin-burden which He bore. That brief, inscrutably awful interval of desolation could have had no foothold in His consciousness. He must lay aside Divine wisdom if He is to taste the bitter and unutterable verity of death. " He emptied Him- self" By no other method could He prepare Himself for all that lay before Him as the Saviour of a fallen race, perfected through suffering. For one of infinite knowledge death is disarmed of its common terrors, and it is inconceivable that he should taste its uttermost sadness. It is the unknown element, rather than the pain attending the exodus of the soul, which affrights and overshadows. The man who has conquered large domains of knowledge and commands them at will, has an inward city of refuge to which he can flee from nine-tenths of the ills harassing his comrades. When it so pleases him he can divert himself with the ideas and sensibilities appropriate to another sphere. In the midst of irk- some and depressing environments he can lock himself in with ideal interests which engross and captivate his heart. Many men have discovered in books a wonderful immunity from the wounds and heart-aches of the world. Each page exhales an anodyne, and they pass swiftly out of the desert to belts of fruit- trees and lie down by waters of refreshment. The poet, the historian, the naturalist, or the writer of romance leads the soul from the angry turmoil into 6o THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD new and healing atmospheres. In art, music, and science, a sweet forgetfulness of bereavement, stifling solitude, and the gnawings of cruel disease is often found. A man can get away from himself when hard- bestead if his mind has been enlarged into liberal culture and his range of knowledge widened. In how unlimited a degree must this be true for one who can traverse at will realms of boundless know- ledge, so escaping the distresses of the passing hour. Our Lord retained enough of His original power to assure His disciples that His attributes were superhuman, and His birth was not as that of other men. But though this was so, He could not have suffered death for us unless, He had con- sented to forego for a time His infinite know- ledge and take the form of a servant. If by transporting Himself into fresh domains as He hung upon the Cross, He had changed the centre of His consciousness. His redeeming passion would have been void, and lacked power of appeal to the heart of either God or man. But all theories of the way in which the Divine and human natures were harmonised in the history and personal consciousness of Jesus Christ are, to some extent, subjects with which the intellect is exercised, whilst the matchless humility and love set forth in the self-limitation of the Incarnate Son appeal to the conscience and the character. Herein love reached a manifestation which exceeds the noblest of human experiences. A renunciation of the highest powers and functions of the personality implies a more stringent sacrifice than the mere sur- render of possessions. The most tenacious millionaire, when put to the test, is more ready to give up his THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 6i treasures than to cast aside his wisdom or submit to the eclipse of his facuhies. Wit, learning, intellectual strength and resource set forth the inherent dignity of human nature, whilst wealth is a symbol of adventi- tious power, and to surrender the inherent is pro- portionately hard. We speak, and rightly speak, of one who, " though rich, for our sakes became poor " ; but the homage, worship and service, which encircled Him in the place where He reigned, were the ac- cessories of His lot, rather than attributes of His person ; and to surrender these things was unspeak- ably less than the self-limitation into which He passed for our sakes. The glory which He had before the foundation of the world consisted in the ineffable attributes which clothed Him, and when an essentially majestic nature accepts mortal limitations it is the crowning achievement of humility. For a high- minded man to empty himself is the severest sacrifice to which he can be called. Who would not rather cast away the best of his possessions than suffer the faculties of his spirit to be immured within constricted ranges ? Let riches go rather than hearing, eyesight, power of wide movement, and let the senses themselves be atrophied rather than that a single faculty of the mind should fail ! Men dread the partial blotting out of the consciousness more than they dread pain. A weird repulsion seizes us when we find the memory fading out, the power of clear argument sinking away, the capacity for under- standing and intelligent action breaking down. The man who has roamed at will through all the zones of the earth finds himself at length the captive of disease looking out from a little casement ; the light fails for the artist who has painted nobly or dreamed 62 THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD of it ; the accomplished musician loses the sense of touch ; the statesman who has dominated a nation must find his poor empire in a sick-room. This putting off, this self-divesting ordeal, this pouring-out like waste water upon the ground of the most splendid gifts of genius is a pathetic experience, which men in the full flower of their strength scarcely understand. All such illustrations of this act of self-renunciation are faint in outline and scant in meaning. The self- emptying of which the Apostle speaks was the exchange of eternal strength for mortal weakness, all-comprehending wisdom for a child's pittance of knowledge, an illimitable presence for the space- bounds of a human form, the sublime immensity of Divine attributes for a perfect manhood in which the superhuman glory only shone at rare intervals. " But emptied Himself" In the background of the Apostle's thought it is not improbable the humility of the Incarnate Son is contrasted with the fateful pride of Adam. With no birthright to superhuman knowledge and sovereignty, the first transgressor thought equality with God a prize to be grasped. The primeval act of disobe- dience was a presumptuous usurpation, as is every subsequent repetition of the offence. There was a wild attempt to grasp what did not belong to man. The guilt of the race was redeemed and the fruitful error of the beginning rectified by One who divested Himself of the high estate and prerogative of His Eternal birthright. Paradise was lost by the man who strove to make himself equal with God and gained by the unexampled meekness of the Son who humbled Himself to man's low estate. From the heights of infinite majesty He stooped to the level THE SUBLIMINAL GODHEAD 63 of the guilty ; and stooped once more from the common lot to the ignominy of the Cross. The first Adam grasped after a majesty to which he had no claim and found himself the slave of life-long toil ; the second renouncing His Divine rank and taking hold of the burdens of an outcast race is proclaimed in due time a Prince and a Saviour. From first to last we must be saved by humility, by the humility which did not shun the Cross, and which should become a persuasive pattern to those who would find salvation. Let us learn the lesson and empty ourselves so that we may be filled. Adore the meekness and love of the Incarnate Son. It is little enough that we have to abandon and renounce. The lowly mind is the qualification of the Saviour, and of him who would win salvation by His redemptive ministries. It is pride which keeps us from worshipping at His feet, pride of intellect, pride of character, pride of ethical standing. Faith is impossible to the haughty for the contrast of ideals repels. " I am rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing." Such pride must be cast out before faith can arise. Jesus reached His enthronement over a redeemed universe by self-renunciation, and the ethic of the manger must rule us if we are to be gathered before His face. IV THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK " In the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin." — Rom. viii. 3. The Apostle John has been styled the special teacher and exponent of the Incarnation, for in both his Gospel and Epistle this doctrine is an oft-recurring keynote. The two writings are bound together by a common theme, in spite of striking dissimilarities. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." " That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of Life." The teachings of Paul abound with the same doctrine, although he approaches the theme by a different pathway and subordinates it to the cardinal truth of redemption by the Cross. John's interest in the subject was excited by what he had seen of the superhuman glory of Jesus, by his habit of pondering upon the primal mysteries of being, and especially by that basis for union with the living Lord which the great truth offered. Paul goes back 64 THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK 65 to the Incarnation, and the pre-existing Sonship it implied, because his doctrine of the effectual, recon- ciling sacrifice, apart from the superhuman birth, must ever be built in the vacant air. The self- emptying of Him, who was in the form of God, had its grand motive in the death whereby men were ransomed from a doom of wrath. The teaching which puts the main stress of the Gospel upon the Incarna- tion is at least a reversal of Paul's order. The Apostle of the Gentiles makes the inn at Bethlehem the portal leading to the Cross, whilst some teachers incline to make the Cross itself a mere signpost pointing back to the Incarnate mystery of which the manger is a symbol. The precise relation between these two momentous truths is laid down in the words before us : " God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin." The text implies that the Divine Sonship of Jesus was not a relationship built up in the course of His life upon earth by acts of obedience and spiritual fellowship. A king can only send as his messenger and representative one who has already grown into such ripe wisdom and proven loyalty that he can fulfil the trust imposed upon him. To send implies an antecedent character and personality which qualify for the special mission. To send in a frail form of flesh implies mighty spiritual at- tributes, sufficiently exemplified in a history which antedates that of the flesh and is in contrast to it. To send in the likeness of the flesh of sin implies graces and virtues so inviolably established, that no fresh catastrophe can arise through this organic participation in a substance that has hitherto proved 6 66 THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK itself corrupt, treacherous to moral issues, and guilt- stained. When we speculate too freely, and dogmatise with undue confidence, about what feelings must have been called forth within the heart of the Divine Fatherhood by the event of the Incarnation, we offend against both taste and reverence. And yet to some extent we are allowed and encouraged to interpret by the analogies of our own experience these inspired statements concerning the Father's gift and the Son's self-humiliation, and all the deep stirrings within the Divine mind for which they stand. We should shrink back with a shudder if it were suggested that one of our children, untested and undeveloped in character, and of half-expanded intelligence, should be sent forth into a foreign land and incorporated with a savage tribe. By such an experiment the child's moral possibilities might be jeopardised and a futile oblation to Moloch might be offered. Perhaps we could consent, and even glory in the honour, if a grown-up son were to feel it his vocation to go forth and become one with the tribe, so as to abolish its degradations, and by wisdom and compassion uplift it to better things. We could trust his character and make quite sure that, whilst saving others, he himself would rise rather than fall in the moral scale. That the Son of God had to take upon Himself the likeness of sinful flesh was perhaps the bitterest and most agonising humiliation of His earthly lot. The fact that He received at birth a body sus- ceptible to pain, frailty, privation, with a sentence of death written upon its constituents, was not the THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK 67 saddest part of His destiny. If one of our children were to show constitutional symptoms, marking him out for a career of weakness and long-dragging pain, it would trouble us less than if, through some inex- plicable cause, he were to resemble in features a notorious criminal, or carry to the grave a birth- mark linking him with some scene of infamy and shame. Upon the form assumed by Him, who was the express image of His Father's glory, the likeness of a criminal race was stamped. The spirit and character of Jesus could not fail to refine and beautify the flesh with which He was invested, and painters are true to the genius of the Gospel when they idealise His features into celestial charm. But the Eternal Father could not forget that it was into the likeness of sinful flesh the Son entered through His birth on earth, a likeness in which traits sacred and Divine were curiously mixed with the linea- ments we associate with moral deformity and trans- gression ; nor could the Son Himself forget this burning humiliation through which He must pass in His work of saving men. A missionary traveller in inland China once had to reach a ferry by taking off shoes and socks and traversing a muddy pathway from which the flood had only just retired. After walking a few paces he noticed a poor unsightly leper, a few yards ahead, slowly moving to the same point. The marks of his disfigured feet were imprinted in the mud, and it caused a shudder as the missionary found himself treading, with bare feet, in the steps of a loathsome beggar. The contact was indirect, and perhaps there was no risk, but the sickening association haunted his imagination for days. If the identification had 68 THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK been more intimate, and the white man had been compelled to shelter in the sufferer's grass-hut, to share the same couch, to wear his contaminated raiment, it might have maddened an over-sensitive brain. To a pure and holy nature sin is more repulsive than any leprosy, and the union of the flesh with the spirit in human nature is closer than that of a man with the house in which he lives, or of the body with the raiment which drapes it. The corruption which inheres in human flesh, the brand of traditional guilt imprinted upon it, the signs of ancestral transgression which, at its best, it still bears, is more repellent to God's beloved and only Son than the uttermost odiousness of disease. And yet Jesus takes upon Himself this likeness. It is true the human form He assumed could not affect the Father's judgment of His holy Son, or impair the relations of eternal tenderness, and yet it must expose that Son to human disparagement and contempt and so make the Father a participator in the saving sacrifice of love. It is conceivable a well-born child might develop a face akin to the types with which the student of criminology is familiar, such a face as is figured for us in the pages of Lombroso, and it is conceivable that the father of the child might know all the time that his young soul was sweet as the dew and white as the snow of the untrampled Alp. He might be fully persuaded, moreover, that this uncomely and repul- sive child had in him the making of an uncommon saint or a great philanthropist. And yet the father could not fail to feel distress, knowing that the unhappy features must challenge the dislike and misjudgment of the world for years. God sends THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK 69 His Son to bear the likeness of the outcast race of the universe, so that He might redeem it from degeneracy and perdition. He is always well pleased with the Son, for His knowledge goes beyond that which is outward. Yet from the beginning the Son wears the garb of the condemned race and bears branded in His flesh a sentence of death. He has to make His grave with the wicked and to be numbered with transgressors, and for the time being is bereft of the honour which belongs to His lofty character and His high estate. A well-known American story by Dr. Wendell Holmes, in which romance and scientific speculation are curiously blended, deals with the problem of prenatal inoculation by snake-bite. The mother of Elsie Venner into whose blood the poison of the adder has entered dies in giving birth to her baby girl. The child grows up with eccentricities bordering on insanity and becomes an object of dread to neigh- bours and school-companions. She is gifted with a curious power of fascination and is able to dominate those upon whom she fixes her weird and glittering eyes. Her movements are serpentine and she shows a special fondness for snake-like trinkets of gold. Sometimes she secludes herself in a mountain cave haunted by the creatures of whom before her birth she was an unconscious victim. All her gestures are suggestive of this tragic misfortune, known only to her father and her negro nurse. Before she dies her nature is softened and beautifully humanised. If such an incident were possible of course the law of moral responsibility could only cover one half of her life. But that question apart, what a distress to the father to find his child shunned and abhorred, although 70 THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK he himself might know the secret of her birth and have faith in the complete innocence of her deepest nature. The assimilation of the child for a time to a lower and a dreaded type of life, — a type that has been an age-long symbol of mahgnant and deadly temper, — must surely have been a tragedy of the deepest and most mysterious distress. That a holy and loving Son should be made in the likeness of the flesh of sin, a likeness in which Divine traits were blended with the marks of a flesh associated with depravity and transgression, must have had a meaning in the heart of the Divine Fatherhood into which we cannot enter. Perhaps the father of Elsie Venner could divine the secret more fully than the profoundest theologian. For us men and for our salvation Jesus was born out of the Divine order to which He belonged. The sacrifice of love must be measured by what a human father feels when he sees his child conforming in the linea- ments he has assumed to a type of being which has become abhorrent. The angels called to worship the only-begotten Son, when He was brought into the world, must surely have been smitten with astonish- ment as they saw Him made in outward visage like unto His transgressing brethren. " In the likeness of sinful flesh." The question has been asked, " Would God have become Incarnate if the disobedience of the race had not required such a method for its deliverance ? " The statement has been hazarded, by a school of speculative theologians, that apart from the Fall of Man the Eternal Word would have ultimately entered into some kind of corporate and visible Headship with the world He had made, and that a pre-ordained THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK 71 Incarnation was simply stamped with a special mean- ing by this incident of sin which had emerged in human development. The argument is urged that it is scarcely conceivable God could have held Him- self always aloof, a remote, imperfectly discerned, unknown God, entering into no visible fellowship with the created Universe. But to argue con- cerning what might have been in the absence of certain eventualities is a precarious process that can lead to no definite conclusions. Unless man had corrupted himself, God might not have needed in any degree to bring Himself into the field of human vision, by assuming a form of flesh. The Divine purpose could have been met by the ascent of man into fellowship with God, through the Eternal Word, rather than by the descent of God. Indeed, no problem of separation could have arisen. The speculation assumes that matter itself, rather than the incompetence caused by moral disease, is the cal- losity which has overspread man's delicate spiritual senses. In the days of his innocence, man did not find God afar off, and the story of Eden, with its artless blending of history and moral parable, supplies the first suggestion of the truth that the pure in heart see God in virtue of an essential law, and not as an arbitrary privilege. If God had needed to address Himself directly to the senses of His finite creatures, the self-emptying for the suffering of death could not have been required, and what was more than self-emptying — the taking upon Himself of blurred, corruptible flesh, bearing upon it the brand-mark of a fallen race, would have been inconceivable. Into the texture of the humanity He had assumed there was wrought, as in threads of burning fire, the 72 THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK " Scarlet Letter " of human shame. Under the fair, unblemished form carried into the Temple to be presented for God's service, Simeon seemed to read the lineaments of a Man of Sorrows, through whom the long expected redemption was to come. It was in His birth and all it comprehended that Jesus was consecrated to the work of sacrifice, of which the Cross is the enduring emblem. The Incarnation has no intelligible motive, apart from the preparation of a body for sacrifice. The condemnation of sin in the flesh is one form of stating the great motive of the Incarnation. Evil receives its sentence of death when God bans it in this solemn form, and at length humanity itself is brought to ratify and enforce His condemnation. Sin in the flesh was tolerated and condoned before Jesus came down to live His sinless life amongst men. It was accepted everywhere as a necessity inherent in the visible organic framework of things. It is interesting to think that the old tradition, which makes a Persian king one of the Magi, lends itself to an instructive interpretation, because the religion of the ancient Persians held that matter was inherently evil and could never by any possibility become good. The babe before whom he bowed was to prove in His personal history and example that it was not so. Bearing though He did "the likeness of sinful flesh," He lived a perfectly sinless life. Through His Incar- nation He became sensitive to all the temptations which master the flesh and triumphed over them, so proving that it is not an inseparable property of matter to be evil. The modern doctrine of scientific Determinism has much in common with the ethic of the ancient world, for it implies that the acts we are THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK 73 accustomed to call sins are inseparable from sentient life. Jesus condemned sin in the flesh by exempli- fying the supremacy of the spirit over all the passions of the body, a feat impossible apart from the Incar- nation. Brooding in far-off circles of being, inac- cessible to the dwellers upon earth, and more or less incomprehensible, how could He allure by high ex- ample those who had become estranged from the life of holiness and win them to confess their errors? Till He had made Himself one with all flesh His sympathies could not be specialised to answer the cry of the woe-begone heart. He could know no power of succouring men in temptation unless He had trodden the same wilderness and been made in all things like unto His brethren. Man would never have submitted to the verdict which condemns sin in the flesh and brings its dominion to an end, but for the pattern of One who bore the likeness of sinful flesh and passed unhurt through its temptations. No hidden God, of the thick darkness, could make Him- self a spring of strength and hope to men, in their conflicts with unholy passion ; and the attempt to lay hold upon His strength would have proved the endless pursuit of an infinite phantom. By His birth in a human form the Son of God was designated to a service of redemptive sacrifice, in which God's counsels of grace were consummated. " As an offering for sin." The processes of the In- carnation reached their zenith in the solemn, vicarious surrender of this spotless life to the Divine righteous- ness. The elements of the mysterious passion were prepared when the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us, and the Mediatorial reign focuses upon countless generations of men the redeeming grace 74 THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK of a death made ready for by the earthly birth and endured upon the Cross. The work could not be otherwise accomplished. How vain to think of a hidden helper making the sin of the race his own and removing its deadly burdens ! The highest virtue of the spiritual world was unequal to the task. In Beth- lehem we find the first link of association built up with the marred, complex, far-stretching life He was to heal and deliver ; and through each succeeding stage of His history, this vital and intimate contact with the race, of which He had become a part, was to be main- tained. He could not save men whilst standing outside the current of their interests. From a far-off throne, begirt with clouds and darkness, a sign of august solitude and majesty. He could not lead His people into their release. He must become subject to the law and, in the likeness of sinful flesh, must bow before the anathemas waiting upon its broken precepts. The birth was the pledge and prophecy of the Cross, and the Cross was the earnest of the Mediatorial reign. It was in the manger He was bound by human limitations a victim for the altar and on the altar He was made ready for His throne on high. By coming into scenes devastated by human sin, and assuming a form moulded of the same clay as transgressors, this act of vicarious love took on a meaning which appealed to human under- standing. From the days of His infancy He wore the garment of the condemned. The human family had become corrupt, bringing by disobedience a blight of criminality upon the fair home within which God had lodged it, and He who set Himself to save His brethren must enter into this blemished lot and bear this evil likeness. Through nothing short of a THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK 75 sentient, organic, permanent affiliation with mankind could this mysterious messenger from above become Redeemer, interceding Priest, sceptred King. God's condemnation of sin in the flesh could not have awakened an echo in human life unless an atonement for sin had been made by an Incarnate Being of infinite holiness. Whilst man feels himself compelled to bear unhelped the burden of his own transgression, he will always be tempted to excuse that transgression, and so sin must maintain its foot- hold. The law of God acquires a new and more profoundly solemn sanction, if God permits His holy Son to endure vicarious penalties, so as to secure the release of those who are the objects of His compassion. The hope of a new moral order arises within human life and that without the intrusion of a hurtful license. Our hearts are stirred by the story of Bethlehem, but, it is before the Cross, rather than in presence of the Nativity, that distraught and remorseful consciences are pacified. The Apostle, with a mind possessed by the idea of sovereign, inviolable, righteous law, knows on what doctrine to put the stress of emphasis. The amend for a broken law is made by a holy, unselfish, reverent obedience to the will of the Father, exem- plified under all the drawbacks of the flesh. By the hope springing up from a vicarious atonement a term is put to sin in the flesh. The usurper is cast down and destroyed. Men often go on sinning, avowing that sin is no sin, for want of hope. They accept it as a part of the inevitable order when no remedy appears. It is despondency which marks out much of our social wreckage as irretrievably derelict. Many unhappy beings around us have given up the fight and see no encouragement to attempt better 76 THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK things. They justify themselves in wrong-doing and invert all ethical classifications, because it seems no longer possible, for such as they are at least, to reap the rewards of virtue. The new voice of hope which speaks in the heart, the voice of the Incarnate and sin-atoning Saviour, is a sentence of death upon the evil which has so long been rampant in the flesh. God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh wrote a sentence of final condemnation upon sin in the flesh. Through our union with the Redeeming Head sin in us is sentenced to its final overthrow. By that mystery of love we call the Incarnation, affinities with the life of mankind were created, in virtue of which human salvation becomes possible. Plants can be grafted into each other, and seeds cross-fertilised, which have been grown under the same conditions. Jesus came into our conditions, submitting Himself even to the pains of a broken law on our behalf, that we might come to have a common life with Him and enter into the secret of holiness. The sentence of condemnation passed upon sin in the flesh through the Incarnation is seen in the glori- fied sinless flesh of Jesus Christ. By the life begun under such abject conditions, and the death endured in the image of a transgressing race, the flesh is delivered from the doom which had been written upon it. The Redeemer came into our flesh, not as the passing guest of a tabernacle that was to be finally taken down, but to associate it with Himself for ever. He carried into the presence of the Father on high, refined and sublimated, the form which He had borne from His earthly birth, which had been numbered with transgressors, and laid in the grave as sharing the lot THE COMMON BIRTH-MARK 77 of an evil race. He who was thus wiHingly made flesh, in virtue of His work received "power over all flesh that He should give eternal life to them that believe." The words used in the last prayer in the Paschal chamber were impressive for they were uncommon. The power He received over all flesh dawns with His assumption of the place of the servant, and the resur- rection from the dead is the power of absolution asserted in its final phase. Because of His holy Incarnation, and the sacrifice which completed it, we may venture to look forward to deliverance from all that frets and dishonours the flesh. Apart from Him, flesh, as we know it here is vitiated with irretrievable evil. V THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD " I delight to do Thy will, O my God : yea, Thy law is within my heart." — Psalm xl. 8. These words are quoted by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews as a Messianic prophecy ; and are used at the same time to indicate the supreme element of value in the sacrifice which redeems mankind. No offering, however great, vitiated by a grudging spirit could have ransomed transgressors under the curse of a broken law. Without the help of such an interpreter we should not have discovered this special reference in the Psalmist's words, for this servant of God, who aspired so nobly, goes on to declare how an overpowering sense of personal sin conflicts with the part allotted to him in the counsels of the Eternal. " Mine iniqui- ties have taken hold upon me so that I cannot look up." If the stanzas are autobiographic, the glow of the Messianic dream fades and great aspirations are stifled by an oppressive sense of unworthiness. Such a confession shows how impossible it is to apply the undivided Psalm to a sinless Saviour, in whom the 78 THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD 79 hopes of long and weary centuries were at last realised. The words were indited in some sweet, thrilling spring-time of the singer's history, possibly at his anointing for the kingship, or when the Lord had given him rest from his enemies ; but he fell short, and generations afterwards the ideal was fulfilled by another. What principle guides the New Testament writer when he picks out from an early document a salient sentence, or a coronation motto, and puts it into the lips of the Saviour, whilst the hymn as a whole admits of no such reference ? Our reverence for Apostles, and for the men who wrote under their direction, would be weakened, if we could think the sense they had of their prerogatives as interpreters of the early religious documents, betrayed them into arbitrary and illogical methods. They surely did not read, without rhyme or reason, into ancient texts fanciful evangelical meanings we cannot trace. A superficial glance at this Psalm may perhaps suggest to us that the writer, whether David or some other inspired man, was thinking of himself from beginning to end, and not consciously speaking in the name of a descendant. But we must not unduly narrow our view. Two or three considerations may serve to show how, without doing violence to the thought of the man who first used the words, they may pass into a watchword of the Messianic work and mission. A vague Messianic hope was widely diffused among men from the beginnings of history ; and this hope tended to centre itself in the kings of primitive peoples, perhaps because of the priestly functions they exercised. Recent researches in Assyriology tend to show that the rulers of the oldest empires were priest- 8o THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD kings, and that their civil prerogatives were grafted on to their rank as high Pontiffs of the popula- tions over which they were set. As the religious representatives of the people they offered sacrifices, which in some cases bore a vicarious and piacular significance. The sense of blood-affinity, in com- munities of a pure and unmixed descent, gave force and vital emphasis to the representative character of the ruler in his acts of sacrifice. Indeed, this union of the high" priesthood with the kingship existed beyond the area of the Semitic populations, and one of the rulers of ancient China, praying before the altar of heaven for his distressed people, asked that the Divine judgments might alight upon his own person. A strain of pathetic magnanimity entered into the prayer, which may perhaps justify us in describing it as semi-Messianic. The priest was identified with the sacrifices he was offering. Perhaps the ideal of the office in those days was nearer to that of Jesus Christ, than in the later days when men looked for a deliverer, who should wield a swift and invincible sword of righteousness. The final separation between the priestly and the kingly office, which was not com- pleted till the last days of the Jewish monarchy, may have tended to rob the Messianic ideal of some of its most essential characteristics and have given rise to that discrepancy between the current tradition and the actual life-work of Jesus Christ, upon which those students fasten, who assert that the Teacher of Nazareth did not claim to fulfil Messianic prophecies. In the days of the first kings of Israel, men were looking for the fulfilment of the Divine promises in the person of a providential ruler. Notwithstanding THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD the separation of a special family to the work of the priesthood, the king still represented his people before God, and often performed the act of sacrifice. The promise made to Abraham, and renewed from time to time to his descendants, was put in trust with the house of David, and the believing expectation con- centrated itself in his line. The ideal coloured the hopes of himself and of his successors, just as ideals of science, art and conquest have fixed themselves in the blood of select groups of families within recent periods of our own history. Such hopes contained the germinating forces of genuine Messianic prophecy. David who had received the hope of his fathers both for himself, and as a trust for his descendants, at least brought that hope a stage nearer to its accomplish- ment, in spite of his grievous defections. Assuming that the Psalm in its first form was that of the royal shepherd, the voice of a mighty descendant speaks by the lips of a chosen and inspired forefather. This coronation-motto links itself on the one hand with a chequered past and on the other with a sure future of fulfilment ; and does not deal only with the events which revolve round the personal fortunes of the writer. The verse preceding our text is clearly retrospective, and carries the thought back to the faithless and rejected Saul. " Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, neither hadst pleasure in them." Samuel's words, when he reproved Israel's first king and representative who had forgotten God and sought his own ends, are caught up by Saul's suc- cessor and mark the passing away of a fruitless and the beginning of a more vital epoch. No holocaust of flocks and herds, raided from Amalek, could undo the fateful decree which had put aside the reprobate 7 82 THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD ruler, and for the time being involved the people in distress and privation. But in the person of the new king who comes to his task with a finer appreciation of God's will and a more resolute purpose to fulfil it, the wrath was removed and the nation reinstated in Divine favour. This at least was typical of what Jesus accomplished upon the wider scale and with more complete perfection. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has in mind the tragedy of Saul and his rejected oblations, reproducing as the incident did an earlier rejection of mankind in the headship of its primitive ancestor. The sacrifices and service of the preceding centuries, had no more virtue to restore men to God's favour than the bleating flocks and lowing herds of Amalek. This early crisis in the fortunes of the Jewish monarchy marks the transition from ritual sacrifice to that free and rational obedience in which true redemption was in due time to be attained. " Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust in the Lord." The Psalmist's watchword at least marks the attainment of a new stage of progress. This joyful, unspotted career of righteousness and piety, after which David longed when he came to the throne and by which he hoped to establish the kingdom of God upon earth, was, alas ! imperfectly realised. The confession, in the after-part of the Psalm, shows how far he had come short of his aspirations, perhaps even how utterly he felt his unworthiness, when standing upon the threshold of authority, he uttered his high and memorable vows. The Messianic dream failed once more, and failed through the moral incompetence of the dreamer. And yet his high aspirations had not been unwar- THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD 83 ranted and presumptuous. His instinct was true, for the overshadowing of a Divine presence cherished it into Hfe. This persistent ideal was no mocking, vagrant offshoot of an undisciplined fancy. His great resolve was written in the Book of the Divine decrees. The failure of David was re- deemed in his matchless descendant. When he called to mind his untarnished ideal and his sub- sequent shortcoming he could only plead for the pity of his God. But the fulfilment came in One who adopted the watchword and after a life, in which there was no need to confess a shortcoming, died upon the Cross with the shout, " It is finished." The new programme of sacrifice — the sacrifice of un- grudging, spontaneous, all-comprehending obedience which was dawning in the mind of the Psalmist — became the prophecy of a new dispensation. Perhaps the bond between the dreamer and the far-off son, in whom all things were accomplished, surpassed in its intimacy and tenderness our poor guesses at inter- pretation. Just as the genius for art or music, which may break forth into creative genius in a remote descendant, is born in us when we suddenly awaken to the spell of painting or the charm of melody and pass into a new world, so the spirit of a Divine Son of the after-years may have been already brooding within this devout and lowly singer. There is a sense in which the outlook towards lofty and unselfish progress has in it a diffused and unfocussed light of prophecy. Whenever we see perfection from afar, and set our hearts upon it, we join hands with Moses, David, Isaiah, and all the righteous men who waited for redemption in Israel. But the weight of the world lies heavy upon us, and 84 THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD we cannot often rise even in retrospect to the levels reached by prophets and kings through the power of inspired prevision. In every magnificent life-purpose and in every unselfish, absorbing ambition there is a faint gleam of Messianic prophecy. One shall yet appear to help us in the fulfilment of watchwords that for the time have proved too great and daring. This ideal of joyful obedience to the redeeming counsels of the Most High, corresponds with a new view of the Divine character, which was dawning on the horizon of Jewish thought. It speaks of a God, who, whilst still zealous for the righteousness which has been the staple of past revelations, wishes to be known by a love which accepts only the service of con- genial minds. He is no longer satisfied by outward conformity to a code enforced by remorseless power. The question, whether a ruler enlists into his service freemen or slaves, is a test of what he himself is in his essential spirit and life. The pitiless despot of iron is content if he can gain by any instrumen- tality the things upon which he has set his desire. He has taught himself to glory in the ruthlessness which crushes out opposition, and perhaps he would rather gain his ends by methods of terrorism than by the persuasions of gentleness and sympathy. It flatters his self-importance and pampers his im- patience of restraint. No man of fine feeling cares for the work wrung by whip and goad, even from dumb cattle, not to speak of creatures of a common blood with his own. The least sensitive traveller recoils from every added mile taken out of sore, parched, over-driven, oft-halting horses. The good captain of labour looks with pride upon the cheerful and willing crowds who go in and out at his mill- THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD 85 4 doors, and loathes the thought of indentured serfs kept to their toils by brutal overseers. No virtuous sovereign can find pleasure in his State, if its citizens are oppressed, querulous, weighed down into faintness by the yoke put upon them, and sometimes ex- asperated into suicide. Corn-law rhymes are not the kind of music good kings like to hear. Perhaps the old brood of despots, all but extinct, might take pleasure in them. Now and again it may be necessary for a constitutional sovereign to put his seal on measures which compel and constrain, but he feels humiliated by the policy to which he is driven. Soldiers have been sent in chains to fight for the recovery of far-off provinces, in which they had no stake ; and we have heard of press-gangs breaking into village homes and dragging peasant-conscripts from their beds to fight in a war they did not under- stand. Such service lacks moral value, and a humane and righteous king would loathe to accept it. Men who represent human nature at its best shrink from the use of compulsion. Unless some dire emergency demands it, to conscript must always be alien to a benevolent mind. The service of free and loving children is preferred to that of bondsmen, for it gives purer satisfactions. In his prevision of a joyful and perfect obedience, rendered to an inscrutable law of spiritual sacrifice, the Psalmist anticipates in faint outline that reve- lation of the Divine character which the work of Jesus Christ put into intense light. Any trace of the servile temper, in either the life or death of our Lord and Master, would have implied a despotic God, or, at least, a God who glories in the terrible strength which exacts, rather than in the lovingkindness 86 THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD which wins the response of a free devotion. The offering which ransoms the race must be an act of fihal love rendered to a Divine Father. He who sent His Son into the world to be man's atoning Mediator and example, must needs be served in tasks of supreme difficulty and pain, with cheerful and uncomplaining loyalty. Jesus who knew all the depths of the Divine heart fulfilled the will of the Father, in its most mysterious and distressing demands, with complete consecration of spirit and an invincible sense of blessedness in His high vocation. The spirit of unconstrained delight which domi- nates an act of service is a test of the true nature of Him who renders it. " I delight to do." " Thy law is within my heart." A ministry, which runs counter to the immediate interests and harrows the super- ficial sensibilities of the flesh, must be fed from deep inward springs, and accord with principles of permanent sacredness in the life, if it is to be hearty. When an inherent congruity between the essential character and the motive of the task undertaken is wanting, the pursuit of the task cannot possibly satisfy the soul. No man is master of the art or craft which occupies him, nor indeed fitted by in- born aptitude for its special pursuit unless its ideals are a constant pleasure to him. The fact that it frets and nauseates is proof that it has been imposed from without rather than prompted from within. Every lofty and refining vocation has its alphabet of initial drudgery, but if the sense of drudgery continues, the conclusion is rightly drawn that the inborn talent is wanting. The thrush needs no goad to drive it into song. Nature pours her gifts of colour, fragrance and fruitfulness into the lap of man THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD 87 because her heart is too large to contain itself, and she needs no impertinent compulsion from without. And in a life vexed by the contradiction of sinners, and upon a redeeming cross of shame, our Incarnate kinsman and representative fulfilled the law of righte- ousness, making salvation possible to all, because the law was that of His own deep and holy nature, and obedience to it brought a contentment, exceeding at length the bitterness of those torments which vexed His shrinking flesh. When the solemn hour of His Passion was at hand there was no temptation to truancy or compromise. The work of Jesus, in making good our default under a righteous law and binding its renewed obligations upon our natures, all those high fulfilments to which he devoted Himself as our representative, would have been a service of the letter, and indeed worthless in the eyes of the all- searching Father for the ends proposed, if this hearty inwardness had been wanting. Men unhappily prize obedience, not so much for the moral values it con- tains, as for its material utilities. The planter wants sugar, tea or indigo out of the soil, and scarcely con- siders the temper of the coolie who digs and hoes in the hot sun. The mine-owner wants tons of gold- bearing rock hewn from the depths of the earth, and whether the human machines immured there in darkness are indentured or free agents is a trifle of which he makes little account. The general must take a fort and wants the result, whether his regi- ments are made up of conscripts or volunteers. But God does not need secular and material ends, least of all to enlist instruments for His purposes by the methods of the press-gang. " If I were hungry I would not tell thee." In the service which dedicates 88 THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD itself to His sovereign will He seeks moral qualities. He is not satisfied with the flawless and the immacu- late, if it is that of the outward behaviour only. The obedience whose virtues are consonant with His own character must be free and untrammelled as the winds of heaven. This ideal was realised in Jesus Christ for the first time, and, wonderful to say, pre- eminently realised in His sacrifice. It was this which gave to His offering incomparable value and endowed it with age-long and all-availing efficacy. The joyful- ness of the response to God's redemptive call and the inwardness of the motives declared in the response, were two aspects of one and the same fact. The crowning worth of our Lord's obedience to the law of redemptive sacrifice consisted in its winsome whole-heartedness, for the temper of the sacrifice was the key to that amazing love which found its last expression in the Cross. His oblation belonged to a realm sharply divided off from that in which ritual expiations were presented to God. The virtue of the noblest life placed upon Jewish altars ended with the thought of the worshipper and could not ascend into the moral and spiritual heights, because in the poor dumb meagre life, taken from the sunshine of the green hills and slain by the knife of the Levite, it was impossible that there should be the least trace of rational consent. The greatness of man can only assert itself in conditions of liberty, and the merit of his gifts and offerings rises or falls with the degree of voluntary devotion they symbolise. The greatness of the God-Man and the worth of His atonement are determined by yet higher conditions of freedom. In Jesus Christ, love of the righteous Father conjoined with compassion for the human race, issued in a THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD 89 spontaneous self-surrender, which was the crowning glory of His redemptive work. It was the burning and self-determined loyalty whereby He met each successive throb of pain, which transfigured into a supreme power of reconciliation the tragic experiences of the Passion. The Father could not accept a con- strained obedience, however complete and unblem- ished in its outward form, as the ransom price of a race, guilty and condemned. We sometimes muse upon the pale, bowed form, the scourged flesh with its red furrows and blood gouts, the thorn crown, the drooped head, and say, " Surely it was these things which redeemed ! " Nay. Rather was it the transcen- dent moral qualities whose dimensions were reflected in these abysses of unfathomable pain. Acts rise in ethical value with the freedom of spirit which attends their accomplishment. The soldier does not win the highest honour of his vocation by responding to a word of command, but by a valorous initiative which is the fruit of his own free humanity and goes beyond the letter of common duty. The law of vicarious redemption was binding upon Christ's higher nature, as decalogues are binding upon our inferior natures, but it found its sanctions within. It had its roots in love to the Father, pity for the fallen children of men, and boundless honour for a dishonoured law, and was written by no external inscription like that which Pilate put over the cross. The restraint we associate with the idea of law is alien to the infinite fulness of love and would have vitiated the sacrifice of Calvary itself. It was the spontaneity of love which made the Man of Sorrows as cheerful and willing a messenger of redemption, as the gladdest angel in heaven sent to wait upon the 90 THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD steps of a saint ; and it was this which stamped the sacrifice of the Cross with unexampled efficacy. The history of the human race, and, we may venture to add, the long story of the universe, had seen no such triumph of love. Was this ideal of unqualified and spontaneous loyalty to the law of redemptive sacrifice fully realised in the work of Jesus Christ ? If it was noi; the world still lacks a full and trustworthy atonement for its sin. The ideal could not be attained by the grace of a plaintive resignation, by the silent acceptance of inevitable burdens, by uncomplaining acquiescence in the Cross and its untold fate. The Sufferer must take up the tremendous burden of His own free intent. In this higher spiritual realm was there any falling short of the Messianic watchword, as Saul and David and other aspirants failed in the sphere of outward duty ? In the court of the Temple on the day before the Passion, and in the Garden of Gethsemane, we have glimpses of the mysterious struggle be- tween the flesh and the spirit, with which the passing moment was fraught; for the humanity of Jesus would scarcely have been one with our own, unless this transcendent conquest of the senses by a will of invincible holiness had been acquired by progress, rather than inherited from a pre-incarnate state. Every incident of the history serves to show how victory over all human weaknesses followed the con- flict, and in the end the grand watchword was fulfilled to its last jot and tittle. Through the whole of His public ministry. His death had been foreseen, and announced again and again to unheeding disciples. But His face was "steadfastly set" to go up to Jerusalem, a sign of the will resolute and free, that THE mp:ssianic watchword 91 could not be diverted from the Cross. The paschal feast, with its solemn innovations, reflecting though it did the Master's near death, was a feast of sacred and chastened joy. Consolations, which built up the will in its holy choice, came through these strange channels. The Psalms sung by Jesus with His dis- ciples ere He left the guest-chamber, were sung in all sincerity by lips which could not lie, and if we read the Hallel Psalms we shall find that there are but few minor passages in them. We could not honestly sing them under some of the lighter troubles and vexations of life. If His will seemed to waver for a moment, as the drops of red sweat fell upon the ground, its freedom was immediately vindicated, for He delivered Himself up to the men who had been sent to arrest Him and wavered in their task. He was no mere victim at the place called Calvary. The portents would have favoured His release, if He had pressed home their import to His superstitious tormentors. An active ministry of pleading and inter- ceding love dominated the awful scene. He would accept release from no hand but that of His Father, and, in the last flash of earthly consciousness. He delivered His spirit into the care of Him whose face was mysteriously veiled. The death of redeeming love is free and unconstrained. Such willing obedience to a lot so dark and terrible is without parallel, a distinct break in the established course of a moral and intelligent universe, a culminat- ing miracle in spiritual history. He, whose visage was more marred than any man's, and His form than the sons of men, was the joyful Herald and the active Perfecter of the redemptive will of His Father, amidst these overpowering tribulations. A new order of 92 THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD qualities offered itself to the contemplation of men and to the eyes of the Eternal. Nothing can be reconciling in its final issues, if this gracious work falls short of it. Herein lay sufficient proof of the Divine elements in His sacrifice. It had infinite efficacy not merely because the Sufferer was clothed with the wisdom, power and high authority of the Godhead, but because He was pre-eminently clothed with its distinctively spiritual attributes. This pure essential love, without beginning or end, shows itself under conditions of perfect freedom, the freedom which belongs to the Supreme God and the only conditions under which He can show His spiritual greatness. Jesus Christ, in His act of sacrifice, was not obeying compulsions that were outside His own nature. Ought not this view to remove some of the difficul- ties which have hindered our faith ? That Jesus should be sent to die for us seems against the liberty of the Eternal Son, and a shadow upon His just blessedness. It is true He came in the form of a servant. Such representations are necessary to safe- guard the doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty, for if the Father be not engaged in this solemn and myste- rious work, the atonement made by the Son can have no assured validity. But no servant with a servant's temper could accomplish this task. It must be the free act of filial love. And when we look into the mind of the Son we find that His sacrificial work is freer than the freest human acts, loving beyond the most devoted human service ; and the two things are the two sides of one and the same truth. The love which saves men if it is infinite must be infinitely free. The spirit of our Lord's surrender to the Divine THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD 93 will foreshadowed the free obedience He hoped to create in His redeemed people. Obedience at its best had hitherto been an outward formality lacking the highest motive-power. The conscience of the most religious nations had been satisfied by con- formity to visible tests and standards. The setting up of the Cross was a call to the future ages for a moral and spiritual service, free and winsome as the genius of life itself It was the beginning of a new heaven and earth, the abodes of inward righteousness. The root of this Divine grace is destined to fill with colour, fragrance, and har- monious music this black, evil, warring world. It is our slow-moving, reluctant righteousness, the temper of constraint in our habits of law-keeping, the grudging vein in our sacrifice and consecration, which makes the world so unlike God's purpose concerning it. If there were no trespass in our world, whilst the last touch of compulsion lingered in its virtue and outward piety, it would still have the shadow of inward blemish upon its activities, for it would be not a household of free and rejoicing sons but a colony of disciplined slaves. Keeping an outward precept whilst there is no spontaneity of holy and unselfish consecration, no gladness of love in its ministries would stamp the world as a gilded Pandemonium with burning heartache at its core. If the yoke of spiritual perfection weighs heavily on men's shoulders, no light can shine, no melody entrance, no rapture thrill through their acts of formal obedience. The Cross was to introduce a new order and set up an inward standard. The obedience which is reluctant, grudging, morose, has no promise of endurance and triumphant perfec- 94 THE MESSIANIC WATCHWORD tion within it. A granary in one of the cities of Holland, built upon stakes and piles, driven into a sandbank, sank and disappeared from view with all its freight of food. It was overweighted. And the harvests of a scrupulous, life-long, outward piety may sink into oblivion if the soul is pressed down by vexation, discontent, and all the strain of an incomplete surrender to God's will. We may burden our pieties by superfluous asceticisms, by the invention of fictitious duties, by worldly views of the hardness of Christ's precepts, till at last the fabric may vanish, and if saved at all it will be with those whose works are destroyed. Obedience to God's call must follow the pattern of the Master's in His incomparably higher work and be joyful and inward. VI THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION " Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf ; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." — 2 Cor. v. 21. The Apostle's words refer to those sufferings which were endured for men by Jesus Christ to effect their reconciHation with God, and imply that the sufferings were both penal and vicarious. It is vain for us to suffuse ourselves in meditations upon the Passion of the Cross, unless we realise what the Cross achieved, and our personal interest in its benefits. The primary aim of the Cross is to create new character, but it can only create new character by removing the tremendous disabilities of the past and putting the offender against God into a new status. Character cannot grow better whilst it is weighed down by clouds electric with black con- demnation. Its only chance is in benign sympathy and forgiving tenderness. The revised gospel of the hour asserts that men are redeemed by revela- tions of love made to the reason, the conscience, and the affections in the death of Christ ; but this 95 96 THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION is only half a truth, the secondary and not the primary intention of the Atonement. In the govern- ment of God there is a non-imputation of trespasses which precedes the message preached to men, and to beseech men to be reconciled, unless the argument rests upon a pre-existing fact, is not a gospel but the precept of a law. New theories upon this vital subject do not, as a matter of fact, produce the old experience, and if we are to recover the strong, joyful assurance, which was the glory of the earlier generations of believers, we shall have to get back somewhere near their old standing-ground by the Cross. To the recovery of the lost foothold our text surely guides us. St. Paul's words present us with an accurately- balanced antithesis. Jesus was made sin for us, so that, through our union with His person, we might become righteous in God's reckoning. The two parts of the statement are coextensive, and must correspond with each other. In due time we must, of course, attain actual righteousness of nature, but this is not within the Apostle's immediate thought, for the contrast to personal righteousness in us would be actual sin in Christ, an idea which is repugnant and profane. For the moment, the inspired writer is thinking of status before the law, and of that only. Jesus assumes the burden of our guilt and shame, as though it were His very own ; and we enter into His standing of favour and acceptance before God. By His self-abasement and by His Passion on the Cross, Jesus, who was without sin, changed our relationship to the holy God. For some years past there has been an outcry against the doctrine of substitution, and perhaps THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION 97 we needed to be warned against some of the dangers attaching to old forms of stating the doctrine, but the danger is now at the other extreme, and the echoes of this outcry still disquiet and distract us. At the root of our repugnance to the doctrine of a vicarious Atonement there is the despotic tradition of a selfish, exaggerated, and all but obsolete individualism. We bring into our ethics and into our theology the economic maxim of a ruthless commercialism, — that men are only entitled to that which they can earn by their personal service. But the vicarious principle has its foundation in Nature, and in the New Testament statements of the great doctrine of redemption, is safeguarded against misapplication and abuse. In his search for parallels to this vicarious law the popular theologian has ransacked every de- partment of physics and zoology. The forces of the inorganic world, he reminds us, have acted as man's uncomplaining helper and substitute through all stages of his development, and do so still. The sun has been a storehouse of energy upon which he has drawn in many ways. Frost and rain, storm and flood, have preceded his husbandries, breaking down rocks and making ready the soil which yields his food. Winds and tides aided him in his weak- ness and made light his toils. The flower, the vine, and the corn-stalk root themselves in the rack of past convulsions, and bloom in the graveyards of forgotten worlds. It is upon the sacrifice of inorganic things that Nature builds the lowest forms of organic life. If the factor of substitution had not come into play man must needs have generated his own light and heat, and have devised some plan 8 98 THE VICARIOUS DISPEXSATIOX of extracting from space chemical foods for his sustenance. A self-contained creature, in no sense whatever beholden to the ministries of Nature, is a contradiction of terms. This, of course, is perfectly true, but the argument is irrelevant and far-fetched. The forces which underlie the beginnings of life are moved by no principle of goodwill, and self- sacrifice does not here come into the question, unless we assume with the animist, that rocks and winds, storms and thunder-clouds, have indwelling spirits ; and that in the work to which they yield themselves there is conscious choice and the sense of pain. These age-long processes cannot be brought into an ethical category. Neither can the vicarious analogies, upon which we alight as we rise in the scale of being, altogether satisfy the reason and the conscience. Flowers secrete nectar for the bee, and the bee stores honey which is annexed by man. Birds shelter their young in nests fashioned from the mosses of the hedgerow and the wool of the sheepfolds. Insectivorous plants live by preying upon a life which is more highly organised than their own. Man himself sublets his toil, clothes his bod}-, and feeds his strength by subduing animal life to his will. But this com- pulsory vicariousness scarcely helps our theology. It might put another aspect upon the subject if we could know what the animals have to say from their side of the question. There can be no true vicarious- ness till conscious love begins and the sacrifice is thought out and chosen. Life dawns through the operation of a vicarious principle, and motherhood is a classic illustra- tion of the law. A substitute means one who THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION 99 is stood under another to uphold his weakness or to sustain obligations on his behalf for whidi he himself is not fit. The strength of a mother bear? up her offspring in the fragile beginnings of its being. Her functions play a ^^cariou5 part on behalf of the new and imp>erfect life, which is informed and energised from her resources. Her senses act in place of the unde\-eloped senses of the infanL She lives and breathes, eats and drinks, moves and acts for one helpless as a foundling of the prairie The eye watches, the ear attends, the hands move on behalf of another, who cannot as yet do these things, or can do them ver\' imf>erfect]y. The first promise of redemption linked itself with a birth, for not only did the birth bring the seed of the woman into the scene of His conflict and triumph, but the birth itself was emblematic, setting forth a law under which the endowments of one life minister to a life wfaidi is yet in the making. Where sentient creatures are ushered into the world fully equipped for the strug^gle to 5ur\-ive. little or no natural affection is evoked. You look in -^"^in for famDy sentiments amongst those orders of insects which emerge in the spring from lar\-aE deposited months before by a generation of vanished parents. The ostrich is said to leave its eggs in the sand to be hatched by the heat of the sun. A bird in the Malay Archi- pelago constructs an incubator of fermenting leaves, and, as soon as the forsaken chick is released, instinct directs it to the forest where it may find food and defence. Xo trace of the moral sentiments can arise under such conditions. The babe who, equipped like the infant Hercules for defence or attack from the beginning, can strangle serpents around its loo THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION cradle, is not likely to grow up a model of filial piety. No debt for the guardianship and nurture of helpless days and nights would be felt. A planet peopled by such sturdy, robust, self-contained pro- digies would be bleak, loveless, desolate. It is the vicarious principle which humanises all the fibres of our life. There can be no love without it. It is from weakness and the benign strength which upholds it that the nursery and the home derive their atmosphere of moral charm. If we could devise a new birthplace and breeding-ground for the human race, in which this principle had no hold, we might find that we had invented hell. Apathy, crime, and rampant hooliganism would be the rule, if vicarious mothering were to cease. The measure of a being's indebtedness to the care of others is the measure of all his moral possibilities in the after-years. The vicarious pains and toils of the mother for her growing child are shared by the head of the home, as he goes forth to his daily tasks in the world. The gold and silver, with which his little ones are fed and clothed, sheltered and taught, are symbols of substi- tution in humbler forms of embodiment, no less than the Cross itself. And if the law of labour has still mingled with it the elements of a primeval curse, as well as much of blessing, the substitution is to some extent penal. Leaving out of the reckoning unearned increments and tolls taken from the community by speculative finance, the stamped coin is a token of so much thought, toil, strain and weariness endured to meet not only the workers' own needs, but for the sake of others also. Children not fit for the duties of self-support constitute the majority in the THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION loi population of every land, and 75 per cent, of the labour of the world is therefore vicarious. The Government has simply stamped the precious metal with the standard value that gives it currency. No worthier use can be made of that which is sometimes described as "unrighteous mammon," than to purchase for children those blessings of civilisation and those amenities of life, which for years to come they will be unable to earn by their independent toil. A just and equal standing-ground must be won for them in the world, and won before they are able to occupy it. All are the beneficiaries of a vicarious law. The father puts his sinewy frame under the frail forms of the little ones, giving himself in their stead to toil, privation, and all too often, because of the hard conditions of modern labour, to premature death. That is the price of their continued well-being. Many a man c^n only keep the wolf from the door at the price of feeling its fangs in his own flesh. It may be said, property is often inherited and one part of the world has no need to toil or spin. Putting aside the cases in which property has been un- righteously acquired, where it is inherited it repre- sents the thrift, self-sacrifice, and industry of a bygone generation, and the vicarious law is only put back in its incidence a few tens or hundreds of years. If the dream of some social reformers were realised and the State were to feed and clothe all children, there would be no escape from this principle, for the State would then act for the child in the days of its weakness and incapacity, and the toils and sacrifices of parents for their offspring would be subdivided into smaller quotients amongst all the citizens. That would be reverting to a custom which 102 THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION prevails amongst certain tribes of low culture where children belong to the clan. We could not live in a world from which the vicarious principle was excluded, any more than we could live in a world covered from pole to pole with glaciers. In the years of our weakness we have been upheld by the strength of others, and our genial lot has been made by unselfish predecessors. Our indebtedness to the vicarious order does not end with childhood. However strongly we may resent any modifications of the rights of property, as understood by the last generation of political econo- mists, we all recognise the fitness of a limited family communism, and the law of the State gives its sanction to the principle. If correct sentiments rule a home, the elemental gifts needful for life and godliness are shared by all the members, whether they contribute in equal proportion ^p the common stock or not. When a man is the victim of sickness or misfortune he has no scruple at receiving help from those who are of his own flesh and blood, whilst perhaps he would feel his independence compromised if he were to become a pensioner of the State. Amongst some of the highly civilised peoples of the East, where primitive clanships still survive, corporate properties are held for the benefit of all affiliated to certain groups of families, and the poor and the ill-starred are rarely left to hunger and nakedness. This stated in other words means that the bygone founders of certain villages tilled and toiled for the benefit of unborn descendants, and the contemporary generation perhaps has added to the clan-revenues by skill, industry and self-denial. In some parts of China, tumble-down villages are THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION 103 frequently rebuilt for allied groups of families, out of the savings of two or three returned emigrants. The resources accumulated by the sacrifice of the few are placed at the service of all and the clan tradition requires it. This principle was the root idea of those guilds and companies which were founded in the Middle Ages. There are social reformers who would like to turn the fabric of modern society into an enormous clan, with a common fund out of which equal distribution could be made ; and perhaps if we had the clansman's sense of kinship we should not be staggered by the proposal. The vicarious law would necessarily come into play unless you could make sure that each man would draw out only what he put in. On behalf of the helpless and the forlorn we recognise a collectivism which involves a vicarious principle. The State makes its indent upon our money, which is labour, for the aged poor and the incurably diseased. We should need to kill them unless they could be sustained by the substituted toils of their neighbours. Whilst we challenge and impeach and travesty the doctrine of vicarious sacri- fice as expressed in the Cross of Jesus, we honour it to the utmost when it takes shape as a social philanthropy ; and the inconsistency is glaring. The citizen who toils and stints himself for fifty years to build an orphan home or a cripples' refuge we acclaim as a hero in spite of our dread of this same root-principle in theology ; and yet everything he has done is in virtue of a vicarious law. He has been a noble substitute putting his strength, his wisdom, his large-heartedness, his garnered resources under the helpless lives which were ready to perish. This substitutionary law is the foundation of 104 THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION civilised life and citizenship. It rules through every stage in the evolution of national greatness. We are not the creators of those facilities and contrivances which smooth the roughnesses of the daily pathway and refine our modern life. Now and again an inventor lives to reap the fruit of his labours, but not a few of the things, which increase our power and contribute to our comfort were devised by men who endured privations, and whose work was not recognised by their contemporaries. We enter into an inheritance of rights and privileges made ready by the sacrifice of others. We have only to think of the terrible price which is being paid for civil and religious liberty at this very hour in Russia, to realise the debt we owe to our own forefathers. Just and equal laws have been secured for us by men who never enjoyed the grand harvest they had sown in blood. The commonwealth to which we belong was founded, and has been guarded against violation, by many martyrdoms. When we pay rates and taxes, grievous to be borne, we perhaps think that we pay to the uttermost farthing for all we get. We only pay the cost of the upkeep, and this does not always reach those who deserve most at our hands. Patriots, who made nothing for themselves out of the cult, suffered to free posterity. Their goods were spoiled, they fought on battle-fields, they mounted scaffolds ; and we possess the patrimony they won for us. Their agonies took the place of agonies which would have been exacted from us, if the day of redemption had been put off to our century. " By their stripes we are healed." The principle of substi- tution is the chief corner-stone of all worthy citizen- ship. If you resent the thought and desire to be THE VICARIOUS DISPP:NSATI0N 105 quite consistent, you must emigrate to a country under the heel of Grand Dukes and through personal struggle win your own civic franchise. If a vicarious law is not to be admitted into your life, seek out a desert island and found a one-man colony. Your children also must needs be planted out after the same fashion, or you will make them your debtors in virtue of this inevitable principle. Whatever may have been bequeathed to you by forefathers should be burned, as barbarian tribes burn the clothes and weapons of their departed chiefs, or you will not escape the noxious and inequitable law. But this surely would be individualism run mad. There can be no inheritance without vicariousness. Nature makes us all coUectivists, up to a certain point, and compels us to accept the fruit of other men's sacrifice and labour. The communism which is originated and informed by love, and not by force, is surely lawful, and love cannot be otherwise than vicarious. This principle is interwoven with all intellectual life. Art, music, literature are not the first-hand inventions of those who occupy themselves in these pursuits and enter into their high pleasures. We owe a debt to the research and unrequited endeavour of hosts of forgotten pioneers. In these later cycles of time we reap what others sowed under condi- tions of hardship and distress. The harmonies of preceding musicians tremble in our modern anthems and sonatas, musicians who were slighted, aggrieved, thrust aside. Earlier schools of artists, neglected for generations, made ready for later and more successful schools, and the achievements not only of those whose names are household words, but of unknown path- finders, have determined the ideals and made the io6 THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION brilliant successes we find in our galleries and exhibi- tions at the present day. Plato, Chaucer, and the blind Milton have, directly or indirectly, moulded the style of every master in modern literature. The brain activity of a great author, perpetuated through his printed page, becomes a mainspring of thought in the stimulated reader of his works. The faculties of the first man are put under the limpness and languor of the second man who derives delight and invigora- tion from his writing. If I go to my book-shelf for the delight of fellowship with great minds, the warmth of zeal, the glow of feeling, the subtlety of taste in the guide I select, strengthen divers processes of thought in me. In the intellectual sphere, I am just as much dependent at the outset upon the nutrition ministered by another, as the babe is in the physiological sphere. Pictures, oratorios, great poems do not suddenly spring up amongst the Patagonians. Such things can only arise where there is a slowly accumulated inheritance of culture. There is no inventiveness or spirit of discovery without earlier labours to furnish a base-line from which further progress begins. Minds, which have already travailed in pain and brought forth great things, act upon mine and dispel the stupor to which it is prone. The vicarious law rules the play and interchange of all thought. Unless we are to sink into imbecility we cannot decline this law and live outside its ranges. Sympathy, by common consent one of the holiest and most influential forces in social life, is a vicarious emotion. Its presence implies that we are putting ourselves into another man's place and participating in his experiences. By an act of imagination we bring our sensibilities into unison with kindred sensibilities THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION . 107 in groups of sufferers and so enter into their lot. There has been a mental substitution of our per- sonaHty for that of a neighbour who is racked with pain, stricken by tragic bereavement, or wallowing in want and abject privation. It is quite possible we may suffer as much as the ill-fated victim himself, or even more, if his temperament chance to be slow and stolid. By an act of mental transmigration we share the dire conditions of another,' and the process may be momentary or persistent. This act of thinking ourselves into another's place may be so vivid that his trouble will continue to haunt us for years. Who will venture to deny that there is the dawn of a great virtue, in every generous impulse which compels us to put ourselves at the standpoint of a sufferer? Sympathy when divorced from wise, practical action may cease to be a virtue. It may pass into hypo- crisy, and be cherished because of the sense of spurious self-approval to which it ministers. But all the same, we are bound to recognise that it is the source of altruism, and that the sincere emotion is one of the great healing forces at work in a woe- begone world. We extend some measure of sym- pathy even to the undeserving, especially when they begin to eat of the bitter fruit of their doings. A father or mother would be quite unworthy of the name, if they lacked sympathy in thinking of an offending child and devising wise methods of dealing with him. Vicarious emotion is the beginning of vicarious action, and both are surely good, and in no sense adverse to the rational equities of society. We are the channels of a common emotional life, and sympathy is the necessary complement to that social solidarity, which is as much a fact as our own io8 THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION personality. If substitution is an immoral expedient, it is as much so in the realm of mind as in the world of the senses ; it may be more so, for many have a keener susceptibility to mental than to physical pain. There is a substitutionary element in all unselfishness and the vicarious law only becomes a demoralising license when it is pushed beyond its appointed limits. The fact that the vicarious principle, expressed in the Atonement, may be grossly abused does not in- validate it. It is abused in common life, and we are confronted with an intractable difficulty in solving our social problems. That the child, the cripple, the victim of grievous misfortune should have the full benefit of this kindly principle is simple justice, not to speak of charity. But we protest when we see a lazy, thriftless, dissolute son living on the toils and sacrifices of his parents, and vicious, insolent, unem- ployable members of the community eating the honey gathered by their more industrious neighbours. Half the tramps on our highways are bent on exploiting the good nature of their countrymen, and do not ever intend to do a hand's turn of work. The doc- trine may be turned to licentiousness, just as the drug of healing virtue may become the occasion of a new debauchery. But the gracious law reigns in human life, and ought to reign. We disentitle our- selves to the redemptive benefits of the law if we mean at any future time to ignore our common duties. The Cross, whatever temporary help it may bring to us in our dire emergency, does not finally abrogate responsibility, but restores and solemnly reaffirms it. It saves our sense of responsibility from being engulfed in the deep despair which, THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION 109 sooner or later, follows sin. It is during the frail and unhappy childhood of our momentous being, when guilt and misfortune are strangely mixed, that Jesus Christ puts Himself under us and becomes our substitute. He cherishes us in the crisis of incompe- tence, and having delivered us from the doom against which we were too weak to wrestle, makes us strong for active righteousness. The Cross, whilst atoning for transgression, binds the transgressor to higher and nobler precepts. A new foundation for responsi- bility is laid, and from the fearfulness and angry chaos of the past a fresh consciousness of obligation is born. However injudicious and exaggerated some methods of stating the doctrine may have been, there is to be no dismantling of man's moral nature. The doctrine of a vicarious Atonement is clear from the impeachment which the unbelieving controversialist would sometimes direct against it. It more than justifies itself by the moral changes it produces. Dr. James Martineau, in the latest volume of his addresses, admits that it quickens the moral life and does not tend to practical lawlessness. It recovers for man his lost self-sovereignty, and saves from that maelstrom of necessarianism into which he drifts, when the sense of his helplessness is not counter- acted by those hopes which the preaching of this specific gospel awakens. St. Paul does not for a moment assume that man's part in working out salvation is superseded by the Cross. After the strong statement of our text he goes on to plead, " Labouring together with him, we beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain." But it is not so much the vicarious as the penal element in the old doctrine of the Atonement which no THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION is repugnant to us. That one who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, should have to bear our just retribution, or any portion of it, is an offence to our best sensibilities. But mysterious as the law may be, this is only an extreme example of what daily takes place in our midst, and human society would be impossible if it were otherwise ordered. Labour, when conducted under the most humane conditions, still has traces in it of a primeval penalty, so that he who tills the soil or drudges in a workshop for others, is bearing a vicarious burden to satisfy a broken law. The stumbling-block of the Cross is present in some degree within the home and the community. The mother puts her strength under- neath and round about the child who has been burned by playing with forbidden fire or brought on pneumonia by fractiously loitering in the rain and the cold of approaching night. She bears, for weeks and months, one half of the penalty incurred by dis- obedience to her own commands. That sympathy which the vicarious mind exhales, like a healing balm, is extended to the scourged and penalised transgressor, if at least he is not defiantly impenitent and irreclaimable. We remember that the delin- quent was tempted, over-persuaded by foolish com- panions, hard-beset, and that kindness may perhaps win him back into right paths. The prodigal of a virtuous family lies on a plank-bed, but he gives to those who are of his own flesh and blood many a night of restlessness and torment. As a community we pay in hard cash for our neighbour's vices and crimes, because we cannot leave prisoners to starve, as is the practice in Turkish and Chinese gaols. A village feels its very cottages tarnished and dis- THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION iti honoured by the felon bred there. The juryman who consents to a verdict, the judge who passes a capital sentence, the king who signs a death-warrant, the inhabitants of a district in which an execution takes place, suffer distress, if they are of normal sensitive- ness. The lives of children may be quite over- shadowed by the conviction of a parent or a companion. We bear one another's burdens, whether we wish it or not. This principle is recognised in the Statute Book of the realm. When a man has the alternative of fine or imprisonment the fine may be paid by his friends ; — a survival perhaps from the law of associated responsibility. Jesus Christ introduces this principle of the ransom into our relations with the invisible universe and its holy God, exemplifying it upon a scale of incon- ceivable vastness. As the only - begotten Son, sharing the infinite and eternal holiness of the Divine nature. He can make uses of this vicarious principle impossible within the range of an arch- angel's life. Perhaps our objection to believe in an Atonement set forth under legal forms rests in part upon the fact that the laws of earthly realms are sometimes far from perfect, and their administration is now and again in the hands of blind and inept blunderers. The very term forensic, by which certain thinkers try to discredit one aspect of the Atonement, has asso- ciations of pedantry, incongruous with the highest ideal of righteousness. The life of the law-abiding man rarely comes within cognisance of the courts, and its inexorable procedures may be viewed at a safe distance. But we need to remember that God's law covers all life, that we are not dealing with Him 112 THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION in sharply divided relationships when we deal with Him as a Divine Father and a Divine Judge, and that His act of justifying us, through the virtues of a vicarious sacrifice, is not vitiated by the imperfections, which necessarily attach to the methods and sentences of earthly courts. The sacrifice, moreover, which satisfies a dishonoured law and brings us nigh unto God, has no element of compulsion in it, like the vicarious pains and disabilities we sometimes endure as members of defective and offending human societies. In arguing from these analogies it is necessary to bear in mind two distinctions. The highest illustrations of this vicarious law are limited and fragmentary. We give little bits of our- selves for the help of others, a fraction only of our working time, a single faculty of the brain, a few ounces or pounds of the physical strength. At the utmost we tithe the output of our personality for the common benefit. Jesus gave Himself, in all the com- pleteness of His sublime and unrivalled personality. Do not let us imagine that we have been robbing the vicarious doctrine of its unique distinction in the sacrifice which redeems us because we have tried to vindicate its essential principle by a series of every- day illustrations. The law is present in all history, but it reaches an illimitable magnitude in the Cross. We see broken gleams of it in our common life, but the primal sun, inimitable in splendour, dazzles us when we gaze upon the uplifted victim of Calvary. There is a specific Divine authority for the sacrifice which ransoms mankind wanting in the every-day illustrations of this principle. God the Father selects and certifies the vicarious offering. " Made Him to THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION 113 be sin for us." It was by an inward law of His life, derived through eternal communion with the Father, that He became our substitute. The conscious love, which made Him account the burden of a guilty race His own, was replenished from the springs of this secret union. The providence of the Father also appointed and co-adjusted to each other the events under which He offered His life for the sin of humanity, and the witness of the Father stamped the sacrifice with its imperishable significance. " Made Him to be sin for us." Have courage. Trust the principle and the sanctions which uphold it. The doctrine needs stating with discrimination. Now and again, it has been presented as though the Redeemer's personality, on the one hand, were lost in the multiple personality of the offending race, and as though the believer's past personality, on the other, with all its inherent imperfections, were lost in that of the Lord to whom he becomes united. But no such confusions mar God's redemptive government, or were allowed to becloud the consciousness of Jesus. In the last desolations the J^ord knew Him- self to be the holy and unblemished Son; and in all the unknown after-times and seasons of the believer's history, the believer still knows himself to be one who is rescued from the offending and shameful past by an act in which vicarious law has reached its last possibility of power. Children find no difficulty in accepting this doc- trine of a vicarious sacrifice, for it is typified and sanctioned in the regimen upon which their early history has been based. Of course they do not set themselves to justify the doctrine by formulating reasons from the analogies of the home, its institu- 9 114 THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION tions and ministries ; but the doctrine is an im- measurable expression of the spirit in which they have been cradled, and upon which through all their days of weakness they have been used to lean. Neither does man in primitive conditions of society stumble at the doctrine, for he is familiar with the law as it is embodied in the communism of his family and tribe, and in the mutual sponsorship of blood kinsmen. The crippled, contorted, half-palsied sufferer in a home for incurables alleges nothing against the doctrine through which he is cherished, for he knows that tender-hearted neighbours account it a privilege to bear the burdens which cannot be put upon himself and these pale, prostrate creatures around him ; and surely God must be better than the most gentle and compassionate citizen. Others pay without grudging the price of their continued well-being. The difficulties of faith begin when we are dominated by the axioms of a harsh, economic individualism, and affirm that a man is entitled only to that which he himself can earn. Perhaps we are ready to say, " If I were a child I could accept the vicarious law and be willing to live on, indebted to the ministries of others who act on my behalf, till mature years arrive. It is a part of the system of Nature, and home, surely, is the sphere of mutual love and service." Perfectly true ; but are we not all in the infant stage of our being, less than babes in presence of the tremendous spiritual prob- lems which touch us and the gigantic destiny we are facing ? and does not God wish to make the world a home of love and succour, in which we can receive the benefits of this vicarious law ? " If I were utterly incapable, I could consent to THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION 115 profit by a vicarious law, at least should help be offered by one near to me by ties of kinship and in no sense a stranger." Exactly ; but are you not helpless and shut up under condemnation ? This is what the doctrine of inherited or birth-sin means. It is true you have to reproach yourself also with actual transgression, but if you had not been born under a disability you might not be able to claim and to take all that which is conceded to one, who is in some sort a victim. You are impotent as a prisoner of war, crippled with rheumatism or dis- abled by paralysis. And is not God nearer than your nearest kin, and more concerned to bear your load ? The blood of Him who was made like unto His brethren in all things is the pledge of something more sacred and soul-uniting even than kinship. The race is God's family, and it is because the wisest and best are but little ones that we can receive the benefits of this benign law. The vicarious sacrifice takes account of human weakness, for it was " when we were without strength " that " Christ died for the ungodly." " When we receive in childhood the benefits of a vicarious law we expect to pay it back to the world. I might bring myself to accept it if, in due time, I could only be allowed to make some return." Well the Cross does not foreclose your opportunity, but proclaims, accentuates, and urges it. You are not to be a pensioner upon this vicarious law for ever, at least not to the same extent. True it is, that you will never be able to discharge the debt to infinite love under which you are placed, but the Cross is meant both to redeem you by a vicarious offering and to raise you into co-operation with its precepts ii6 THE VICARIOUS DISPENSATION and grand principles, so that you may in due time bear the burdens of the Lord and of the world He redeemed. The Apostle puts stress upon this view in the chapter before us. Jesus died to make His sovereignty effectual in the souls and over the actions of men through unknown ages. VII THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION " How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." — Heb. ix. 14. It has been said, that the Christian doctrine of the Atonement tends to make men less strict in conduct than they would be, apart from the relief it brings to their fears, and that in some periods of religious history it has fostered lawlessness. The peril needs to be watched against, for good men inadvertently speak of the finished work of Christ in tones that seem to minimise the need for repentance and amended habits of conduct ; whilst bad men flatter themselves that by faith they can share in the benefits of the Cross, even though they are in a state of flagrant unregeneracy. The scandal arises through the infir- mity and deceitfulness of human nature, and not because of the genius of the doctrine itself Perhaps the more vital a doctrine is, the greater will be the temptation to misconceive and abuse it. The dangers which beset a sophistical treatment of this subject 117 ii8 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION must be patent to all, but a right interpretation of our text and other New Testament Scriptures ought to show us that the efficacy of the Cross is rooted in its inward virtues, and that, whilst readjusting our relationships with God, it at the same time works a profound inward change which fits the spirit for the Divine service. The first view we take of the message of redemption is necessarily crude, superficial, unheroic. We think of the Cross in terms of pain, and we think of the benefits it effects for us as a release from pain we ourselves have deserved. The view, though rudi- mentary, is true as far as it goes. For the time being, at least before we have been uplifted to a holy, unselfish plane of life, we are incapable of a better view ; and we need to remember that it is along these mean, earthly levels of thought that base and selfish natures must be brought into the fulness of the Christian faith. Little is realised for the moment of what lies beyond these elementary definitions. The sacrificial death of Jesus brings recuperative forces into play and turns back disease and spiritual death. It protects natures which are stamped with a Divine similitude against degradation and impending ruin. But with the first experiences of the new life we begin to find there is a goal beyond this. The agonies of the crucified are a veil behind which hide virtues of ineffable grandeur and matchless intensity, and He gave Himself for us on the cross to create out of the poor stuff of our corrupted natures a ministry, to separate a priesthood, to consecrate by the sprinkling of His sacred blood a new service and sovereignty in the realms over which He is enthroned. The Cross works not only by the magic remissions. THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 119 of which it is the channel, but by processes of sym- pathy and moral assimilation. We need to grasp its meanings, as far as we may, for we are unfit for the service to which we are designated, whilst our judg- ments are in suspense and we refuse a response to its intention. At one time perhaps the tendency was to find the essential potency of the Atonement in the pains endured for men by the Lord Jesus. More recently the sacrifice has been looked upon as a vast store of incomparable moral virtues, which achieved the great reconciliation by making a resistless appeal to the Divine Father's heart. In the filial obedience of the Son to the far-reaching laws and counsels of eternal holiness, some modern theologians have found the root-mystery of redemption. If we make either view exclusive of that with which it is brought into con- trast, we may fall into a mischievous onesidedness. The intense and all-comprehending holiness of Jesus, apart from the conditions of judicial pain under which it was manifested, would have fallen short of that necessary reparation for a guilty race which was the first step towards its recovery. In the New Testament doctrine of Christ's death the two things are inseparable. Infinite and immaculate righteous- ness nailed to a cross of agony, and asserting through the bitter ordeal its unabating virtue, was a new spectacle in the presence of the heavens and the earth. The first-born sons of light, as far as we may argue from the brief glimpses of their life made known to us, have not reached their sanctity by rough and thorny paths of development. Such types of unchastened and impassive holiness stand in an inferior order, and can achieve no expiations. The I20 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION righteousness of our Lord and Saviour is unexampled because it is maintained and manifested under con- ditions of profound, unfathomable pain, and especially of punitive and vicarious pain. Virtues less than infinite in their breadth and depth and height could not have availed at this tragic crisis in the fortunes of the spiritual universe. It is in the darkness of an experience, dominated by the principle of substitu- tion, that we measure the range and the splendour of these moral qualities. A new universe of graces founds itself on the Cross. In an act, which unites supreme mercy and righteousness, Jesus bears the sin of a transgressing world, thus showing His zeal to restore men, at whatever cost to Himself, into harmony and communion with His Father. This love, devoting itself with equal fervour to the laws of truth and eternal justice and to the interests of a forlorn and hopeless race, gave to His death, in the judgment of the Father, illimitable worth and sanctity. What are the ethical properties which give to this death its singular and triumphant efficacy? No exhaustive answer is possible, but instinct impels us to explore the mystery, and the human mind will not consent to leave the question in final obscurity. Those properties are as unfathomable as the ele- mental forces of the Divine character itself. The age needs a more adequate answer than is commonly given, so that it may recover its wavering faith in this first doctrine of grace. " The blood of Jesus Christ " is a watchword of Sacramentarian and Salva- tionist alike, but explanations are not usually offered to us of the ethical values which belong to this dread symbol. Under this old-world form, the Bible tells THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 121 us that " life" was offered to God upon the altar ; and we cannot get far beyond this point. But the writer of this Epistle takes us some steps in advance, and reminds us of the lofty moral attributes in which the life, presented as a final sacrifice for us, was so incomparably rich. Hence the saving and sanctifying efficacy of this sacrificial blood. Some preachers say that a theory upon this solemn subject is impossible, and that if we trust in the death of the Lord Jesus, without trying to form any specific idea of what it achieved for us in the sight of God, we shall find deliverance and enter into the benefits of the Cross and Passion. But this is to treat the sacrifice and its virtues as though the Cross were the mere instrument through which a Divine magician wrought upon our destinies and required no intelli- gent and rational response from us. There may be circumstances under which this is the best thing a man can do, and when our apprehension has stretched itself to the utmost possible limits, there will still be mystic efficacy in the Cross which exceeds the widest scope of our understanding. But we need a doctrine of the Cross, and we must not turn back from a line of thought to which the New Testament points the way. The sovereign virtue in this death was its holy, unblemished, self-devoting pity, its entire dedication to the Father's sacred will, its compensating honour for the severest demand of a broken law. We are told that it was through the Divine dignity of the Sufferer that the Atonement was made. The life, offered as an act of homage to the Eternal Holiness, was incomputably more precious than the least blemished life of a dependent creature. This is true, but we must not interpret by mediaeval notions 122 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION of spiritual rank the guilt-removing efficacy arising from the death of One who shared the glory of the Eternal Godhead. Not so many centuries back, men thought of God under the analogies of a feudal aristocracy, and honoured Him because He wore the crown of a far-ranging and irresistible sovereignty, rather than because of what He was in essential character. The death of Jesus, summed up in the perpetual symbol of His blood, availed to put away sin, not because He belonged to a Divine caste. It is true He was enthroned above all ranks and orders of celestial beings, enriched with a wisdom and clothed with a majesty they could not rival, and these things were measures of His amazing condescension when He undertook our cause on the cross. But His Divine sacrifice became illimitably meritorious through the zeal and active exercise of His splendid moral attributes. It was thus that His Divine estate declared itseff, for His essential dignity was attested by His high spiritual perfection. He was not only co-equal in power and majesty, of one substance with the Father, but He shared the deepest secret of the Divine holiness ; and it was this which invested His death with superhuman efficacy as a propitia- tion for the sin of the world. The virtues of His offering were demonstrated not by the startling omens which attended His death, but by the spirit in which He died. We can have no more convincing sign. It was the only and well-beloved Son of God who died, and His sacrifice is all-victorious in its preva- lence, because it gathers up into a final and complete redemptive act all the elements of spiritual perfection. The Father found here under the tragic conditions of the Passion an eager and reciprocal righteousness. THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 123 The writer of the Epistle gives three notes which tend to determine the surpassing greatness and sufficiency of this last sublime sacrifice. He suggests that Jesus brought to this offering the characteristic forces of a Divine personality, " who through the eternal Spirit." So recent commentators, including Bishop Westcott, explain this phrase. That personality was the home, from everlasting to everlasting, of sacred virtues and affections, to which human life in its best develop- ments is a stranger. And in the flesh, taken up into the Divine Sonship and transfixed to the cross, these virtues and affections shone with strange spiritual splendour. Forces of eternal excellence pulsated in this sacrificial life, not the kind of perfection which is reached through the straining flight of a moment, the perfection which blooms into transcendent perfection for a brief space of summer only, but that which was Divine, changeless, unbegotten, immortal, or the efficacy of redemption might have been limited in quality, and bounded in time. The essence of the Divine attributes, in their sacred integrity, flowered out into an inconceivably meritorious act, and made it a sweet incense before God and the coming generations of men. The genius of this amazing personality was as mighty and invincible as in creating the worlds, of which processes He had been the Father's chosen instrument. By spelling the word " Spirit " with a capital letter, the Revised Version, following the Authorised, shows perhaps that the recent translators still hold by the old view, which makes this term refer to the place of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnate life of Jesus. The two views may be made to merge into each other 124 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION without violence, for the Incarnate life from its earliest dawn had been suffused with the indwelling presence of Him who had been given to Jesus without measure. This heart, pierced at last by a soldier's spear, was the first heart in which the Spirit had dwelt without a pang. From infancy upwards all the sweet, spotless affection of this unfolding life has responded swiftly to His inward breathings. The indwelling Searcher of secrets knew how complete, unwavering, whole-hearted had been the obedience to the Father's counsels. The enlarging insight into human sin, which came with the advanc- ing maturity of Jesus, fed the fountains of His pity and strengthened Him to be the willing substitute of the race. The Spirit had kept Him in conscious communion with the Father, and helped that partici- pation in the Divine nature, through the forthputting of whose virtues He redeemed men. The Spirit was a witness of the fitness and adequacy of the sacrifice He was in due time to offer. In the thirty years of His humiliation the Spirit illuminated His mind with the Father's secret counsels, assuring Him that His offering of Himself, though free, was not pre- sumptuous. The Spirit who led Him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, led Him also to the cross, knowing that He would be as blameless in the second and the more awful ordeal as in the first. " Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself." The love which actuated this sacrifice was spon- taneous and uncompelled, according to its own Divine order. " Offered Himself" The noblest sacrifices of the law were enforced upon the wor- shipper by a demand he could not oppose, and the THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 125 victim presented was incapable of moral choice and had no sense of the rite to which its poor life was subservient. Such offerings could have but a tem- porary, didactic value in a system of symbols. It is only under conditions of complete liberty that the principle of a deep, spiritual self-devotion can manifest itself. The pathetic submission of a child to sacrifice at the will of a father, as illustrated in the histories of Abraham and Jephtha, was not free in the modern sense of the term, because in primitive societies the child was trained to bow implicitly to the terrible dominion of the parent over each member of the family. That power of self-determination, whence all actions derive whatever value they possess in the cur- rency of the moral world, is clearly a greater thing in a Divine than in a human being, and covers a wider area of issues. The freedom of a finite creature is confined within narrow bounds, and cannot exceed the restrictions imposed by the scope of his personal attributes. In the Son of God, this self-directing faculty operated through domains, measured upon the superhuman scale. The faculty was of sovereign dimensions, and its exercise created transcendent spiritual values. The issues with which this act of sacrifice was charged were spontaneous in their uprisings, and proportionately mighty as moulding factors in God's after-discipline and judgment of the human race. Obedience to the redemptive law of the Cross was not the unconsenting, automatic subservience sometimes produced by suggestion from without, or enforced upon an inferior in- telligence by hard, unrelenting pressures. " Who . . . offered Himself" A consummate precept of vicarious love kept in suspense the instinct of self-preservation, 126 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION implanted in every kingdom of sentient being. The life thus offered was in no sense meagre or unsatis- fying, but broad, rich, plenteous, blessed, in proportion to its surpassing attributes. It was more to Jesus than the most gladsome life on earth to the man who exults in his favoured fortune. He presented Himself, not for a world applauding His un- selfishness, an easy task perliaps to some men under the spell of intoxicating enthusiasms, but for a world gathered in anger and execration at His bleeding feet. This was the first and last sacrifice possessing such qualities. A less spon- taneous surrender could not have made satisfaction for the world's transgression. This offering up of Himself was " without blemish," and is thus contrasted with the offerings of the Temple, which needed to satisfy only a prescribed standard of physical development. The description implies perfect reason, complete self-choice, intense inward holiness, characteristics necessarily wanting in meaner victims. In the Incarnate life, which was crowned in an atoning death. Divine virtues were set forth under new and difficult conditions. It might have been thought beforehand that such high spiritual graces were too rare and exquisite for incorporation into flesh and blood, and that no complete embodiment of Divine qualities under coarse and selfish surroundings was possible. Now and again perhaps hardy social and domestic virtues, long acclimatised amongst the higher races of mankind, may produce themselves without canker and blemish, just as simple field-flowers may grow to perfect form and texture upon poor soils and in grimy atmospheres. But that the peculiar sanctities THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 127 which belong to the circle of a Divine life should reproduce themselves under forbidding circum- stances, in a lot of common toil, obloquy, and shame, and should shine forth in unmarred loveli- ness in death, might seem an impossible problem. With this inner group of Divine qualities, which could only be set forth in the Cross, the Apostles themselves had at first little sympathy, for it was beyond the range of their experiences. And yet the flesh, to which this spirit of infinite holiness joined itself, and which was at last tortured on a cross, brought no taint to the nature with which it had been united. The sacrifice avails because it is informed with boundless virtues, and when brought into the eternal light is spotless. The Spirit who searches the deep things of both God and man does not decline to affix His seal to this incomparable offering, guiding and cheering the spirit of Him who presents it. The outshed blood was replete with marvellous moral values. Perhaps it was the fact that the sanctity of Jesus seemed to belong to a higher order than the human which led the Baptist to see in Him "the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." Peter empha- sises the same view from another standpoint. Jesus was offered as a lam.b without spot and blemish, to redeem those who could not be saved by the costliest gifts of earth, and the proof of His Divine- ness was His meek and unmurmuring submission to a cruel death of apparent injustice, against which all the common instincts of natural righteousness rise in protest. Jesus set forth the unspotted perfection of a holy God, a far higher group of qualities than the perfection of a holy man, as He hung upon the 128 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION cross, and presented Himself to the Father in our stead. But the Atonement is not only ethical in its foundation qualities : it contemplates distinctly ethical ends. According to the writer of this Epistle, it has power to reinstate men in God's service, by cleansing " the conscience " from the defilements which profane it. No sane king would fill his courts with the ministrations of those who are leprous, unsightly through disease, infection-centres unfit for intelligent response to his demands, under a death-sentence. Far less can a holy God suffer a ministry disfigured by spiritual disease and deformity, clad in grave-clothes, and with the overlordship of the sepulchre branded upon it, to appear in His presence. A dead king may perhaps be served by the ghosts of dead slaves who are slaughtered to honour his burial. But an immortal God must have living servants. He requires life, health, vital sanctity in those who are His appointed instruments. This truth was asserted in the ritual of the Temple. The worshipper needed to be washed from the defilement produced by contact with corruption, in either its open or insidious forms. The priest must not appear in the sanctuary with the conventional marks of mourning upon his person. A living God to whom death is impossible dwells within the temple, and his shrine must be filled with the spirit of life. Perhaps the hiding of God's face, when the Son endured His vicarious death, may have asserted this principle in its dreadful finality. The creation of a sanctified and responsive priest- hood, coextensive with the race and breathing in THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 129 fellowship with Him who hath life in Himself, must begin at the true nucleus of the moral personality, and have for its first step the washing of the conscience from " the dead works " which burden it. The " dead works," from which the conscience needs to be freed, are works done in a state of separation from the living God, works which are vitiated by an impious wilfulness, and carry within themselves a sentence of doom. In some men the conscience has shrunk to a social faculty, and frets only at the memory of a vice or a crime. It is no longer religious. But with the new awakening to spiritual sensitiveness, which comes sooner or later to all men, tempers and acts, showing alienation from God, cause a pain quite as keen as the remorse felt by the man who has been hurried into flagrant delinquency. A conscience poisoned with guilty memories disqualifies for service of the living God, and effectually hinders the joy which should attend sincere obedience. This vicarious sacrifice, replete with eternal virtues, takes away the fear begotten by the memories of the past. It does for men what Paul's gracious letter to Philemon did for the runaway slave in Rome, and more. It frees from dread of punishment and restores the delinquent to the circle of duty in which he was once faithless, restores him, not as a bondsman haunted with a prospect of torture, but as a son ; and the damage of the temporary defection is made good by the covenant pledge of a persuasive intercessor. The condemnation of the sinner is removed so that a new vantage-ground of moral activity may be reached. Salvation finds its goal in a dynamic, which is the key to a better and loftier 10 I30 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION order. We are ransomed, not only that we may escape the whips and fetters of captivity, but that we may be a people for the Lord's possession. In the view of those who have learned the secret of the Gospel this is no abatement from the blessings of redemption, for true believers find their best satis- factions in the service of Jesus Christ amongst men. By washing the conscience from its guilt and inward pollution, the Cross creates a new ministry within God's boundless household ; and we have not read its purpose aright if we are sluggish and worldly-minded seeking for ourselves nothing more than release from legal pains. The atoning sacrifice cleanses for God's uses, because the living God cannot be served by works done in a state of separation from His presence. The one problem into which every other problem of history runs back is the problem of con- science. Men are restless, and in many cases degenerate into the unemployable, because of their shiftlessness, and they are shiftless because they are ever seeking new hiding-places from self-reproach and condemnation. Fugitives from pursuing judg- ments, and not infrequently from painful self- judgments, hurry through the obscure labyrinths of the crowded city and are pilgrims and strangers, not quite perhaps in the patriarchal sense. Men are gamesters, sensualists, drunkards, because they dread being alone with themselves. Whilst religious melan- cholia sometimes victimises the most estimable people, minds are not infrequently unhinged because of secret inward remorse. A nervous specialist of repute has declared that many of the distressing suicides which take place around us find their explanation in the troubled conscience. The social THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 131 reformer is faced by two difficulties : he wants to bring relief to those whose consciences are in torment, and he wants to do it without benumbing the conscience of the multitude, and the two things are incompatible. How can the conscience be both healed and stimulated ? The question is answered in Christ's gospel of reconciliation. It is sometimes said that the death of Jesus manifests the love of God and appeals to the affections, which is perfectly true. But the Gospel appeals to the affections by first of all appealing to the conscience, a faculty whose work it is to deal primarily with the simple issues of right and wrong. The Atonement secures our forgiveness, in harmony with an inviolably sacred and immutable law. The deepest love of the soul is won by cleansing the conscience. Some difficulties in life, which at first appal, solve themselves, and other difficulties can be fought down by a valiant and strong-minded man, but this problem is beyond the range of our utmost skill. To quell the inward pain which racks the moral senses is the best service a benefactor can render, and rarely fails to awaken gratitude. There is no natural recuperation for a soul burdened with the sense of wrong-doing, stung as by an unsleeping scorpion nested in the heart, darkened with the shadow of death. None but God can appease the pain, the God who deals with it by the Cross. We may divert the imagination and lull for a moment the moral torment which is preying within, but in the reflective stages of life, when pensive moods take possession of us, the past transgression returns, a persistent and unwelcome guest. He who can hush for us the accusing voice, speaking pitilessly 132 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION in the inner silences of the soul, deserves a thousand- fold greater love than other acts of friendship can earn. This gratitude becomes the mainspring of acceptable service. If we think of the service which God seeks from us, we shall see how impossible it is to meet His claim, till the Cross has wrought its saving changes within us. The work we do at His bidding must be a whole-hearted work of love, a work of faith, a work informed with clear moral discriminations. These qualities take their rise in the cleansing of the conscience. The child troubled by the memory of an evil act he has not the courage to confess, is preoccupied with many fears, and cannot give undivided attention to his daily tasks. He becomes shy, shrinking, reserved, in the expression of his affection. The atmosphere of the home seems hostile, and he is tempted to run away from it, no matter into what miseries. The workman with a guilty secret is slack, slipshod, lacking in concentration, and at length becomes unfit. The man with a black past, who goes from mining camp to mining camp, or from sheep-farm to sheep-farm in the colonies, is in constant fear of detection, and vanishes as soon as a face he has known in the past appears upon the scene. He looks upon society as his enemy, and has no faith in it. The professional man who has been led into a crime he hopes to conceal, either loses all heart in his work, or plunges himself into a mad whirl, which leaves no time for reflection. Unless the conscience is washed from the poisoned memories which choke and impede it, devotion to God's will cannot be whgle-hearted. The faith in THE INWARDNESS OF REDEiMPTION 133 God, which secures the only success which is worth havinor, is beyond the reach of the man who is driven by his guilty fears away from God. The exploits of believing men, immortalised in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, cannot be repeated by one within whose moral sense there is an open sore, for he cannot confide in a holy and righteous God. Till the conscience is rectified, according to the Divine method, no man's service can be informed by clear moral discriminations. To ignore the guilt of the past can only end in one of two ways, in either stupefying the moral sensibilities and producing a condition akin to drug-drunkenness ; or leaving the neglected conscience free to revenge itself upon us, in its own time, and producing a condition akin to the delirious fever, which distorts and deranges perception. Unless sin is righteously forgiven, the conscience lapses into the category of a neglected faculty and is of no more use than a degraded officer in a campaign. Jesus Christ died, not only to save us from hell, but to make and keep us conscientious, conscientious with the fidelity of the Japanese artist who carves and lacquers the hidden parts of his work in the temple with the same fastidiousness as the parts which are open to public view. Redemption is essentially inward. The errors in the clock are not repaired by gilding the hands and painting the letters on the dial, but by cleaning pivots and wheels and adjusting the fine and delicate mechanisms which are behind the dial. Salvation begins with the work of the Cross in the conscience. There is a right and a wrong in everything, and our work in the after years cannot show fine and veracious discriminations, till the conscience is purified from guilt and assured 134 I'HE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION by the power of Him who died for us, of release from a condemnation once justly incurred. And thus we find that the earlier and the later view of the ends to be achieved by the Cross harmonise with each other. To be separated from God by evil tempers of mind and the actions which express them is wrath, remorse, the beginning of hell ; whilst to be reunited with Him in the fellow- ship of consecrated work is health, salvation, and enduring blessedness. Antinomianism arises when- ever men get into the habit of thinking that sin and pain, unselfish service and sacred felicity, are separable from each other. No gladness and inward satisfac- tion is possible apart from the complete and sustained activity of our ransomed powers in the ways of a Divine vocation. The bodily organ whose function stagnates is always a centre of disease, secreting poisons, breeding inward distress, and making for the degeneration that withers and finally destroys. And this is true in the spiritual life. Unless the highest faculties of the soul are exercised and employed men consume away in vanity, but when Christian believers enter with cleansed consciences upon the duties assigned by the great Taskmaster the tides of a pure bliss course through all the veins. The path into the activities of the kingdom is the path into beatitude, and it is into this path we are directed by the Cross. We are so constituted that it is impossible for us to find a stable Paradise in sweet languor and lassitude. The young lady, who for two years had been rushing in feverish enthusi- asm through all the show places of Europe and Asia, and could not bear to think of heaven, but wished to be wrapped up in lavender sprigs and put on a THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 0:5 shelf for a thousand years, was expressint^ the mood of a fatii^ued moment and not a sober philosophy of life. Before many weeks had passed a keen, strenuous nature would find the shelf, even with its mitigations of lavender, a bed of torture. Sal- vation may be into a state, as we first conceive it, but the state must provide for the keen, tense activity of every power with which we have been endowed. Only thus are we saved from soul-sickness and condemnation, and in this new experience of the delight of consecrated service, the two views of the Atonement meet. How can this sacrifice cleanse the abysmal recesses of the nature and pour balm into its deep-seated inward pain ? When with contrite hearts we respond to its persuasions it satisfies the Divine claim against us because it is rich in the virtues, which have a counterpart in the Godhead itself; and it satisfies the conscience of the man who is united to Christ because it satisfies the God who reflects His judg- ments into the conscience, and pervades it with His holy light. The truth that we are members one of another, and that God Himself has come into the partnership, receives its most impressive affirmation in the Cross. Jesus joins Himself not only with our past for its expiation but with our future for its guidance and control ; and the one process without the other would be impossible. The Atonement could not be made by a Being, however mighty, who stood outside our life. It was for His own possession that He ransomed us by the Cross, and if His Cross did not release us from the guilty, woebegone con- ditions of the past, Paul's enforcement of the Lord's title is based upon a fiction. 136 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION But human nature is always bent upon expiating its own transgressions, and the doctrine of the Cross sometimes seems a shock to the moral sense itself. If we scrutinise our hearts with unsparing severity we may perhaps discover that it is pride speaking under a mask of conscience which thus protests. Sin is a fact which must be dealt with, and cannot be dealt with as our inbred vanity dictates. We may think it a mark of robust, self-respecting independence to repudiate the doctrine that we are saved by the pain of an innocent substitute, but it is vainglory in an impotent and departed virtue, and giving rein to such tempers of vainglory only makes things worse. The evil of the past will repeat itself in spite of our struggles, if the Cross cannot indeed cleanse and console the conscience. " But this attitude of faith in a vicarious sufferer is ignoble. What becomes, moreover, of the wrong done to others?" We must repair it so far as this is possible, for to do so is a part of the repentance required from us ; and if those who have felt the sting of our misdoing have passed beyond our range, the Cross which saves us will bring to them in- demnities quite beyond our power to offer. The shrine in which the Divine Intercessor abides is a clearing-house of ethical judgments, and out of His own unsearchable riches. He is ever discharging debts we cannot meet and repairing wrongs which are beyond our skill to heal. No human benefactor could do this, but we must not measure the efficacy of the Redeemer's sacrifice by our standards. It was replete with the virtues of the eternal Godhead. An atonement of sheer pain could not appease either God or the clamant conscience of a race overwhelmed THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION 137 with the sense of guilt, but there were exhaustless virtues in the offering up of His own being" Jesus made to God, and those virtues are conveyed by unseen channels to us and prove the seed of a regenerate life. We become Christ's and enter into the possession of His sacrificial gifts by nothing less than a process of inward purification. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts special stress upon the death of Jesus, not only as the channel through which the Divine forgiveness is able to reach men, but as the method by which the grace that sanctifies operates upon human souls. A force less potent than the appeal of the redeeming Cross cannot win our mean, frost-bound, self-centred natures to holy fervour. He gave His life, and this the richest in all worlds, not to deliver from the wrath which bruises the sensibilities and to make us into decent formalists and exemplary church-goers, but to set the soul ablaze with devotion to the living righteousness ; and the Cross was the most moving demonstration of righteousness and judgment the world has ever witnessed. We dishonour the Cross by our little, tepid conventions and self-seeking pieties. The right to live for ourselves was destroyed when Jesus died. We were not ransomed from an evil bondage so that we should walk according to our own desire, — foolish, worldly, wilful, pleasure-loving. The Atonement is entirely misapprehended if it seem to make its final address to our religious self-interest. We cannot accept forgiveness, sealed as is the gift with sacred Covenant blood, and repudiate the larger ethic which has been made binding upon us. This new temple, in which the God of all the families of the earth 138 THE INWARDNESS OF REDEMPTION is served in manifold ways, is very large, and its ministries include men of every speech, and kindred, and aptitude; but there can be no far-reaching service of humanity apart from the service of the living God, and this high ministry is impossible for men, apart from the cleansing of the conscience through the Cross. VIII THE FREE SACRIFICE " And I lay down M}^ life for the sheep. ... I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment received I from My father." — John x. 15, 18. In these qualifying statements which follow the allegory of the Good Shepherd, we see how limitations inhere in all analogies drawn from pictures of the common world. Whilst there are points of likeness between Jesus and the honest shepherds of a pastoral community, there are points of contrast also, even when the shepherd reaches unaccustomed levels of heroism and fidelity. If now and again he gives up his life for the flock, the sacrifice is not self-chosen in the full and unqualified sense of the term. Indeed, all natural, as contrasted with moral courage, is blind, for through dulnessof the imaginative faculty, danger is not vividly realised. When the shepherd sees the peril which arises and nerves himself to face it, he counts upon chances in his own favour, ignoring, as far as possible, the chances against him in the struggle. Should he have to venture his life in face of great odds, he yields himself to die, only after a 139 I40 THE FREE SACRIFICE frantic struggle. He fights against the overwhelming drift of his destiny, ev^en when the fight is one of despair and the hope he leads is forlorn. Far otherwise is it with Him who is the central subject of this allegory. The danger He confronts for the deliverance of His flock is not made up of vague, shapeless elements, that can only be fully appreciated after the event. The whole scene rises before Him in strong, vivid colours and cruel sharp- ness of outline ; and yet He enters into it. He is not a pressed combatant against a destiny of pain which He knows to be inevitable. He controls, and indeed immediately fashions, His own destiny. It is not under conditions that have been irresistibly imposed upon Him from without, that He gives up His life to redeem the sheep of His flock. The conditions of His loving, vicarious sacrifice have been accepted and established by an act of His own free will. " I lay down My life that I may take it again." This voluntary factor in the self-surrender of Jesus Christ should protect the doctrine of Atonement against some of the objections which have been alleged against it. An atonement through the act of another, if it were constrained by either the repre- sentative of the broken law or the pressure of public opinion, would be quite indefensible. Let it be unimpeachably free, and it is difficult to see how it clashes in any way with our best moral intuitions. Two limits only can be put to the right of self- sacrifice. The first is the claim that the family, or the community, to which a man belongs, may have upon his service in other ways. The second is the bar arising from a man's own imperfect knowledge of the nature of his sacrifice and the result it is likely THE FREE SACRIFICE 141 to produce. The same government which by threats and terrors restrains its subjects from suicide, sends its chosen soldiers to certain death for the salvation of the commonwealth. No service that Nazareth, Jerusalem, or even Rome, might have been able to claim from Jesus the citizen, could weigh for one moment against the historic service He rendered to universal man b\^ His death, even if we regard that death as a common martyrdom, with no supernatural end invoK^ed in it. A father controls the rieht of a child over his own life, because of the imperfect knowledge possessed by that child of the conditions under which he is acting ; and the State controls the right of the father, because it is assumed to be wiser in its collective counsels than the individual head of the household. Our Lord's transcendent knowledge surely made good the claim He put forth to sacrifice Himself freely for the spiritual welfare of mankind. If, from the narratives of the four evangelists, we can sustain the assertion that the sacrifice of the Cross was definitely foreseen ; that at the outset there was a complete appreciation of the significance of all that it involved and implied; that His tragic death was an act of self-surrender in the fullest possible sense, we dispose of many objections raised against that doc- trine of a penal atonement, which is now indissolubly bound up with His death. It is said that the sacrifice savours of the hard and cruel barbarities of Fagran worship, but where in the religious ritual of either Jew or Gentile is the altar to be found whose sacri- fices express a free consecration ? Savage tribesmen, and even some of the great military empires, offered up to their gods the prisoners of war. The Jew dragged the victim from the fold and the farm to 142 THE FREE SACRIFICE the altar. No damnatory accusation can lie against the doctrine of salvation by the pain of a substitute if the pain is self-chosen, and the endurance of it is free, at each successive stage of the ordeal. Let us see how our Lord's claim that He was consecrating Himself with a perfectly free mind to a sacrificial death is borne out by the incidents of His history. The prevision of the Cross, attributed to Jesus by each of the evangelists, made escape from it possible and brought into unmistakable prominence the voluntary factor in His death. His unvarying fore- knowledge was a lamp that lit up each stage of the coming pathway. Some twelve or fifteen distinct in- stances are recorded in which He predicted His death, together with not a few of its attendant circumstances. On the occasion of His first visit to Jerusalem, in the character of a public teacher, He intimates that His career will close in riot and violence, and after a brief interval will be mysteriously renewed. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it again." After the great confession at Cesarea-Philippi, to the dismay of Simon Peter and his companions, Jesus announces His coming death. This unwelcome subject He resumes on His descent from the Mount of Trans- figuration in company with the elect three. He had conversed about it with Moses and Elias, and broken fragments of the dream-like discourse seemed to linger in the air. The impending event is made known again to the whole company of the twelve on the return to Capernaum. In His discourse on the bread, spoken in the synagogue of the lake-side town. He utters the paradox that He will give His flesh for the life of the world, and that men must eat and THE FREE SACRIFICE 143 drink of the sacrifice, if they are to receive eternal life. He reaffirms His death, six months before the close of His ministry, as He is leaving Galilee for the last time, and setting out to Jerusalem. Into the parable before us, spoken, at the Feast of Tabernacles, He .weaves again the tragic announcement, and the announcement has a new significance because of the gathering wrath of the authorities. After crossing the fords of the Jordan on His return from Perea, as He is pushing His way through the thickets of bending oleanders which cover the plain, He speaks of it again to the twelve who are pre- possessed with other views. When Mary pours forth her ointment, in the house at Bethany, He says she does it for His " burial," since the cross is near. The shadow lies across almost every parable spoken in the Temple during the last week of His teaching, and He suggests also that His death will be directly instigated by the Jews. The paschal feast on the night preceding His crucifixion is an abiding monument of this foreknowledge. The history has not been stretched or recast to accentuate this view, for the disciples were in moods that made them, for the time, all but inaccessible to the idea. Now this indisputable knowledge of an awaiting peril made escape possible, for one at least who was not paralysed by the fatalistic temper. The traveller who sees the standard of his enemy on the citadel of a far-off horizon can change the course of his march. The great mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, foretold the time of his own death, but such a premonition, by depressing the vitality of the will, always tends to fulfil itself. A modern doctor would probably have tided him over the crisis by opiates. Our Lord's 144 'i^HE FREE SACRIFICE forecast of the end was not like the premonitions with which the nerve-specialist has to deal, pre- monitions, which when intractable to treatment, carry in themselves their own sentence of fatality. He foresaw the day, the part played by each separate asrent, the scenes and circumstances of the crucifixion, every link in the series of events not yet forged into an unalterable chain. The forecast did not resolve itself into a sense of some mysterious power withering up the life from within, slowing down the pulses by an inscrutable touch, and paralysing the functions of the brain. It was a premonition of causes which lay in an outward history and might have been met by shrewd counteraction. The prophetic light in Jesus Christ was again and again projected upon His future, for the purpose of making obvious to His followers, that every step in the way that led to the cross was a step in the light, — a conscious and purposeful movement towards the scene of sacrifice. He said little or nothing about the coming fortunes of His disciples. Simon Peter's question about the after-days of his comrade John was passed by, and the half-century which lay before him was a dark and troubled sea over whose tides no single ray of prophecy quivered. But the path before the Lord Himself was a vista through which light shone so that His progress to the dreadful goal might be recognised as a progress of choice, deliberation, free-will. Not a step, whatever the peril towards which it might be moving, was in shadow. Some of the famous marches of our armies have been marches in thick darkness, with every bit of glittering metal covered up from view. The march of the Son of Man to His cross was in the broad noonday. He THE FREE SACRIFICE 145 Himself saw whither the path was trending and was free to turn aside, as you and I are free to face right or left, when we pass into the street. It was no spirit of gloomy fanaticism which directed our Lord's action, for He was eager to secure the escape of His disciples, and bade them when persecution should arise in the after-years, to flee from danger and not challenge it ; so proving that He felt the peculiar separateness of His mission and how His sacrificial work must be ennobled into redemptive virtue by its freeness. And not only was the path to death illumined by our Lord's piercing prescience, but there diverged from it many a side-track, by which less noble and un- selfish men would have found escape from impending pain. The Via Dolorosa was no gorge shut in by mountain walls. Other routes were open with no forbidding cross blocking the exit. Years ago an army in the Soudan was led by a treacherous guide into a defile where overpowering numbers swooped down upon it like an exterminating whirlwind. The Son of Man did not need to fold His hands in fatalis- tic despair with the whisper of " kismet " upon His lips. On every side new opportunities seemed to open and invite His work as teacher. Through the Roman centurion, of open mind and amazing faith, He might have found entrance into more hopeful circles of hearers. The nobleman, whose son He had healed, was of the house of Herod, and would perhaps have been too glad to become the patron of such a prophet. Was it impossible for Him to find refuge from His troubled life amongst the devoted Samaritans at Sychar ? In the borders of Tyre and Sidon, with the words, " I am not sent II 146 THE FREE SACRIFICE but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," He had to turn aside from the open doors which invited Him. The Jews of the Dispersion in Egypt, Asia Minor, or Babylon, might have given Him sanctuary from persecution, and indeed His enemies at Jerusa- lem half suspected Him of a serious intention to make His home in some distant colony of His countrymen. It was His own decision to go up to Jerusalem for the fatal Passover. An old tradition says that the Greeks, who sought to speak with Him at His last visit to the Temple, had been sent by the King of Edessa to offer Him sanctuary from the malice of the Jews ; and though the tradition may be a pious romance, it serves to show that, in the view of the primitive Church, He could have found escape from the cross by meeting Gentile good-will half way. There was no impasse in His destiny. The superstitious ruffian, Herod, affects the benevolent despot when Pilate's prisoner is put into his hand. A paltry miracle wrought before the eyes of the Idumean tyrant would have conciliated the credulous soul and he might have thereafter received Jesus into the palace as a counter-charm to the ghost of the Baptist. But the Prophet will not buy Himself off at such a price. When the unwelcome prisoner is sent back to Pilate, the governor almost forgets the austere dignity and reserve of a Roman official, in the attempt to instruct Jesus how to get out of the toils which entangle Him. A word of concession to Pilate, a bow in acknowledgment of the Roman suzerainty, an explanation of the incriminating words He is reported to have spoken, and He is free. No impossibilities immured Him. He is master of His own career to the very end. THE FREE SACRIFICE 147 But not only was the path to the Cross lit up by the Master's unclouded prescience, and a path, moreover, from which there branched out many possible courses of escape, but the dangers which finally overwhelmed His life might have been quelled and hurled back by the power that was His daily possession. Obedience to His redeeming vocation not only led Him to the post where a sure and cruel death awaited him, but He held in abeyance forces by which He could have disengaged Himself from the terrible fate that was closing in upon Him. A few weeks before the end. He passed unharmed through the stones that were uplifted against Him in the Temple. The magic of His speech disabled the strong, hardy constables, who had been sent to arrest Him as He was teaching, and their sinewy arms fell limp at their sides. John tells us that the soldiers and servants of the high priest, led by Iscariot into the garden, stepped back overpowered, and fell helpless to the ground, as though awed by a new gleam of the transfiguration light. The signed warrant, the official power which commissioned them, and the weapons they clutched seemed to shrivel into nothingness in presence of this trans- cendent personality. They were dumb, and could not discharge the formalities of their task. It is the Master who steps up to them with the words, " I am He whom ye seek." And to show how He was to stand alone in the supreme act of sacrifice, looking towards the disciples. He says, " Let these go their way." He surrenders Himself into hands that are unable to seize Him, and mobbed and hounded though He had been for months, till that moment, when He Himself let loose the powers of 148 THE FREE SACRIB^CE hell, not a scar had disfigured His form or a drop of His sacred blood had been shed upon the ground. To show that His power is undiminished and that His dedication to death is free, He heals the wound in- flicted by a rash sword upon the ear of the high priest's body-servant. His touch is still miraculous, and He can undo the work of violence and, if needs be, of death itself. When the rough soldiers brought out cords and hammer and nails, a word or glance from this wonderful captive would have made them forget the discipline of ruthless obedience to which they had been drilled. He appeals to the disciples against their old deprecation of the Cross, which now trembles on the verge of violence. " Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to the Father and He will presently send Me twelve legions of angels ? " One had already drawn near unasked to show that His prayer could have filled the empyrean with their glittering ranks of aid. They hovered near to prove that no man could take His life from Him. They remained uncalled to prove that He was the Good Shepherd who was laying down His life that He might take it again, entitled by His free sacrifice to an unlimited dower of the Father's love. The freeness of our Lord's self-dedication to death was asserted in two significant forms when He hung upon the cross, by His refusal of the medicated wine ; and also by the conscious entrustment of His spirit, with His last breath, into the hands of the Father. He dominated the crisis which arose, when soul was to be separated from body and made death itself, in the moment when it took place, a strictly voluntary act, — an exploit unprecedented before and unparalleled since. THE FREE SACRIFICE 149 The assertion of moral liberty is not always continuous in form or unfluctuating in degree. By vow, artifice, or contract it is possible for the free- will of to-day to supersede, override, or delegate, the free-will that belongs to the morrow. The heroic blacksmith of the story did this who, bitten by a mad dog, at once forged the link and staple which bound him against the hour when uncontrollable convulsions should set in, and he was likely to be a peril to others. Mary Lamb did this when symptoms of the mania, which had created the tragedy of her life, were beginning to reappear, and hand in hand with her brother she quietly walked to the asylum, where she was to be put under restraint till the danger was overpast. When Ulysses filled the ears of his sailors with wax, having first bidden them knot him to the mast, and was rowed past the isle of the Syrens that he might listen to their lyre and song, by the act of one day he made himself a bondsman robbed of his liberty for the next day. When he heard the strains of enchantment he would fain have freed himself The exercise of his liberty was not con- tinuous. The voluntariness of our best acts is broken, spasmodic, subject to interruption. Jesus Christ bound and nailed to the cross, unlike Ulysses knotted to the mast, has not ventured upon a position yesterday from which He would be gladly set free when the brutal scene of His crucifixion has been reached. Offer Him escape from the cross into a realm of dreams by the opiate, which the kindness of Jewish women was accustomed to provide for the condemned in the hour of their mortal pain. " When He had tasted thereof He would not drink." In the storm- 150 THE FREE SACRIFICE centre of His terrible Passion His self-surrender is no less free than when He talked of His death by the lake-side or on the mount of glory. He is not drifting on the stream of an uncontrollable destiny. Through each successive stage of the tragedy, the self-directing will is at work, in co-operation with the Father's counsels of redemption. In coming down the white raging rapids of great rivers the helmsman makes the rowers toil with all their strength, for unless there is " weigh on " the boat cannot be steered. Drifting is for the quiet pools below. In the swift-moving turmoil of the last agony there was clear, strong, self- directing power. The last flutter of the breath, which is so often a half-conscious moan of helpless pain, renewed the dedication of His life to God for the race, in words stamped with choice, purpose, the clear intent of unshadowed love. " Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit." The claim, that His resurrection was as free and self-determined as His death, does not lend itself to the same process of historical argument, for the materials with which to build the syllogism are wanting. No mortal eye could watch the volition which directed the spirit, when it came back from the Father's presence to the form sleeping within Joseph's tomb. But the sovereign vigour of will in the hour and event of death seems to speak of an unrelaxed motive-force that can work beyond death and undo the devastations of an irretrievable fatality by the same kingly mandate which had produced separa- tion from the outward form. Unlike the common death-process, sooner or later awaiting all of us, no depressed sense of vitality appeared, no weakened hold upon the secret and mystic principle. Some THE frp:e sacrifice 151 writers have seen in the miracle of walking upon the sea, which implied perhaps a temporary transfigura- tion of the body, as well as in the more complete transfiguration on Hermon, graded signs of the resurrection. Such analogies are instructive. The miracle of walking upon the sea implied an ante- cedent miracle which took place within the human form of our Lord Himself, or rather perhaps was the putting forth of latent reserves of power which had long been sleeping within the subliminal conscious- ness. By dormant attributes of His nature just called into uprising He was lifted above the physical restrictions which hem in common men and women. He could pass beyond those frontiers with which the disciples were confined for the term of their mortal lives. To show that He is master of all physical conditions is a long step towards proving that His subjection to death is free and that He cannot be holden of it as a helpless victim. The transfiguration which brought Him into open fellowship with the spirit-world was an illumination shed by an inward sun, till in due time face and form were suffused with radiance, and the raiment itself became white and glistering. His will, invigorated by prayer, and joining itself to the will of the Father, could transcend the conditions of mortality. May we not here see a voucher for the claim that having laid down His life He could take it again, and an anticipation of what the disciples afterwards saw when the first day of the week began to dawn? If the spirit, bound by the senses, could lift the flesh above the infirmities and limitations of earth, could not that same spirit, fresh from the presence of the Father and from the eternal well-springs of life on high, reanimate the 152 THE FREE SACRIFICE flesh and raise its transformed powers into deathless realms ? Let us look for a moment more closely at the terms in which Jesus describes His voluntary sacrifice. His self-elected death is guarded by the assurance of a resurrection, equally free and self-determined, against the reckless selfishness which rushes from the burdens of life. " I lay down My life that I may take it again." His responsibility for the flock does not end in a scene of violence and bloodshed, with a final act of heroism. The premeditated descent into death links itself with a voluntary return from death. A relaxed hold on life may now and again be due to considerations which are sordid and predominantly selfish. The martyrdom of the battlefield is in some instances a thinly-veiled felo-de-se. The soldier who rushes with set teeth into a hailstorm of death may chance to be a man crossed in love or thwarted in his early ambition, one who has fled from the entanglements of early folly or the miseries of a divided home, and who has little to bind him to life. Lord Byron's valour in espousing the cause of Greek independence, and entering upon the campaign in which he fell a victim to fever, owed not a little of its impelling motive to disgust with European society, combined with that acute self-disgust inseparable from the past life he had lived. Direct or indirect self-slaughter, whatever the public pity it may call forth, is some- times mean, ignoble, cowardly. The wish to com- pound for the crosses, mortifications, and fretting duties of life, may not be quite strange to the minds of some of us. A death, bepraised by THE FREE SACRIFICE 153 jingo poets and pressmen as sublime, may have in it unsounded depths of moral delinquency, if it is sought as an escape from something which ought to be faced. Extreme meanness, or matchless heroism, may be concealed under a death identical in its outward form. The Saviour of men entered into death not that He might evade responsibilities which were pressing with intolerable weight upon His soul, but that having renewed His life in the presence of the Father, He might sustain old respon- sibilities with new spiritual forces derived from His atoning death. He was seeking no plunge into the unknown, or the possibly non-existent, as a refuge from the tempest of His hurtling woes, no Buddhist state of unconsciousness, where He might forget His own blighted programme and the ingratitude and rancour of His countrymen, no dreamless sleep, in which He would be incapable of either pain or sympathy. " I lay down My life that I may take it again." His assurance that He could recover it at will was the only justification of His sacrifice. A solemn trust from God must not be lightly resigned. Jesus felt in His hand the keys of the grave, and, because of His equal command over seen and unseen realms, He bowed his head upon the cross, with a new life already emerging into view, whose powers and capacities He was to use as minister of salvation to His people. The sacrifice was protected against the wilfulness of caprice by the authority which ordained it. " This commandment have I received of My Father." It was no private experiment upon which He was venturing that might issue in futile pain and vacuous soul-travail. The temper of the volunteer 154 THE FREE SACRIFICE who despises law is apt to degenerate into a wanton and precarious slavery to self. The phrase " I will because I have so chosen " represents a mood of offensive, headstrong, fantastic egoism. There are morbid and obstinate people who are better contented by pain than by pleasure. The alienists sometimes describe a mental disease which shows itself by a preference for states of misery. It is a specific mania. Perhaps such people have been tempted into their abnormal moods of mind by the self-pity they bestow upon themselves, or by the bid they thus make for the sympathy of others. Or such minds may be obsessed with a chronic sense of demerit, which leads them to expect worse retributions, when the common daily afflictions seem to pause for a moment. This diseased state of mind sometimes leads to inordinate self-mortifications, which have for their object the idea of appeasing Divine dis- pleasure. Men afflict themselves, and their piety is a hideous form of self-indulgence, the luxury of caprice, the wanton, malignant egoism which obeys no law. The self-elected death of Jesus was kept from the least taint of wilfulness by the spirit of filial love, which informed every act converging towards it. Freedom attains its crowning distinction in the loving acceptance of the noblest law. The choice of death made by Jesus Christ was enlightened submission. The victim did not exceed or outrun the lines of His appointed destiny. There was no ostentation or extravagance in the sacrifice, but a meek, free, obedient co-operation with the righteous purposes of the Father. " This commandment have I received of My Father." Such a sacrifice, irrespective of a specific requirement in the Divine Government of men, would have made THE FREE SACRIFICE 155 the Trinity a schism and a paradox. By offering an unwarranted oblation, Jesus Christ would have repeated the sin of the first Adam, and perhaps also of Cain, grasping Divine prerogatives and ac- counting Himself one qualified to prescribe to the Eternal. The terms in which Jesus sets forth His sacrifice pay homage to the Triune mystery. Here, too, we find the point of harmony between our Lord's avowal that He had power to take back His life, and Paul's subsequent statement that He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. It was the perpetual outflow of the Father's life and authority into the Son, which gave to Him the power of effecting His own resurrection, an outflow that could never be suspended or broken off. The glory of the Father had been in Him from the beginning, inspiring His will, animating His redemptive love, energising and irradiating His holy flesh, till, like a greater Samson, He carried away the gates of Hades and on the wrecked empire of darkness planted His new throne of grace and power. The great Teacher asserts that His voluntary sac- rifice establishes a surpassing claim upon the Father's love. " Therefore doth My Father love Me because I lay down My life that I might take it again." Beneath this avowal there lies the great common principle, which is the key to the problems of a universe whose foundations are laid in moral freedom. For the moment tremendous drawbacks are inseparable from the principle, but yet greater drawbacks would arise if it were revoked. God can only love, with all the affluence and fervour of this sacred passion, the being who is free. The capacity for moral liberty is, from another point of view the 156 THE FREE SACRIFICE capacity for an appreciative acceptance of God's rich, unstinted, immeasurable favour. No creature devoid of moral functions can ever hope to be filled with the fulness of God. Whilst God looks with pleasure upon all the beings His hands have made, and rejoices in the tuneful movements of their life, no slave of an inevitable necessity can ever move His love to its profoundest depth and awaken its most complete response. Love is limited in the range of its mani- festations, to the areas of moral freedom in the unseen life of those who are its objects. The mani- fold and varying orders of nature grouped around the throne of God are like different qualities of gold- bearing quartz. The most perfect chemistry and the most ingenious methods cannot get fifty ounces of gold out of a ton of crushed quartz, bearing only five ounces. God Himself cannot draw a love, which is the most precious thing in His universe, out of a tree, an impersonal stream, a sentient automaton or a mere slave, within whose soul the gift of liberty has not yet dawned. It is out of the freest natures that God receives the highest love and responds to it, and the nature of God's Son is free with the freedom of God Himself, and His transcendent sacrifice is unconstrained. He receives more love from the Father than any other because in His self-dedication to death He has shown a love for which no other being possesses the capacity. The measure of moral freedom in one order of being may be less wide and comprehensive than in another, and He may be capable, therefore, only of a narrower obedience. This fundamental gift in all rational life reaches its maximum in Jesus Christ, and His obedience to death was unconstrained as no THE P^REE SACRIFICE 157 other act of obedience, and possessed merits and virtues that have no parallel. Here was the cul- minating exercise of a gift that had hitherto been chiefly abused, a transcendent choice of the best under conditions of tremendous pain, of a death to which He marched by His own unselfish intent, and it was this which entitled Him to His ample and munificent inheritance in the Father's love. With power to lay down His life and power to take it again, He gave Himself for our sins and rose again for our justification. In a world of necessitated acts, God would be robbed of the love of His creatures, and creatures would be robbed of the richer love of God ; and such a sacrifice as that which enthrones the Redeemer in the Father's love, where He makes intercession for us, would be impossible. The claim established upon the approval of high Heaven by this free sacrifice is as much an advance upon the quality of our imperfect moral actions, as our best actions are an advance upon the movements of unconscious atoms. Here we must find the true measure of our Lord's power as Mediator. He is put, by this free devotion, into a place of influence which we can no more imagine than we can search out the deep mysteries of the eternal love. It was no unwilling Son who was punished for the sin of a guilty race. A holy, righteous, and gentle God could not accept the expiations of a constrained obedience. The higher virtue of Christ's sacrifice, as compared with those of the Old Testament times, rested upon His immeasurably higher nature, and in nothing did that transcendent nature more im- pressively assert itself than in the complete and infinite freedom of His devotion to death for man- 158 THE FREE SACRIFICE kind. This sacrificial act was without constraint, meritorious beyond words to describe, Divine, free with the incomparable freedom of infinite love and power. If our Lord's dedication to the work of redeeming men was free, make your dedication to His service free likewise. Let there be no constraint of law, of tradition, or of circumstance. Make His voluntary service of the race your standard of constant service to His person, and His kingdom amongst men. If, in denying yourself worldly lusts and living the life of godliness and faith, you are still indebted to the pressure of public opinion, if you are kept in the path of duty by human influences, associations, importunities, rather than by your sense of obli- gation to the God of redeeming love, if religious service is a bondage and not the assertion of per- sonal will, choice, and deliberate consecration, you have scarcely any glimmering of the ideal set for the disciple in the free and unconstrained love of the Lord. You know and feel that God could not have accepted for men the vicarious sacrifice of His Son, unless it had been free, nor would you demean yourself by accepting the grace of the Cross if it were offered to you by a bond-slave, one who suffered for you in virtue of a dark and inscrutable fate, rather than of his own free intent. Answer this willing sac- rifice by a willing consecration. Do not wait to be moved by forces which are little short of compulsory and resistless. Do not desire overwhelming pressures, entreaties, exhortations. The spiritual manifestations which would save you, willing or nilling, could not put you into an improved standing before God. Answer the voluntary sacrifice of vicarious love by THE FREE SACRIFICE 159 free personal dedication. He came to earth without a constraint and marched through His pilgrimage of woe to the end without a compulsion. Let this spirit possess you in your approach to the Cross so that you may be enriched by its graces. Make it the note of your daily self-consecration in the presence of this unexampled love. IX THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION " Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross." — Heb. xii. 2. Our Lord's work is here presented to us under a common similitude with that of the disciples. The exhortation of the preceding verse brings before us the picture of a Greek athlete running his race, and the same kind of phraseology is used to depict the work of Him who is both the Saviour and Example of His followers. His prize was the joy set before Him as the crowned and triumphant Saviour of mankind ; His destined course the cross He meekly endured and the shame He effectually despised. The impression conveyed by the earthly life of the Son of Man was not that of gloom and despondency. The ecclesiastical tradition, that He was never seen to smile, is untrue to the spirit of the Four Gospels, and was obviously the after-fancy of a morbid and ascetic generation. It is from the observer's stand- point, rather than from that of His own interior consciousness, that Jesus is described as " a Man of 160 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION i6i Sorrows and acquainted with grief." The Cross, it is true, was often present to His mind, but the vision of a joy beyond the Cross was no less real and abiding. His nature had not been shrivelled and desiccated by the omens of His coming Passion, like some tree on a north-east shore bitten by Arctic winds. "The Son of Man came eating and drinking," for He did not need to mortify His holy nature by asceticism, and His appointed sacrifice was bound to have its surpassing compensations. The dark, sunless moods, which might have seemed inseparable from the tragedy in which His ministry was to close, would have been fatal to the magnetism of His personality. No rabbi, with eyes red from daily weeping, could have woven his spells about healthy, stalwart fishermen whose life had been passed in the open air and the sun. No prophet, consumed with a cancer of incurable inward grief could have been welcomed at banquets, by those who questioned his teaching and resisted his message. Is it conceivable that Simon the Phari- see, and the select circles of Perea, wanted Him as a death's-head at their feastings, just as the eccentric Egyptians used to bring a mummy into the midst of their merry-making, a dumb monitor of mor- tality? Some secret of inward joy kept Him winsome, or He could not have drawn women and children in crowds wherever He went. No man with thoughts always fixed upon his own lot of ignominy and distress, could have said, " I will give you rest," without making his promise a burlesque, and exciting derisive smiles. With a life wasted in sighing and fear He could not have spoken to His disciples of a joy that was to be filled from the head-springs of His 12 i62 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION own. At the base of the passion-flower a drop of nectar was hidden, incomparable in its sweetness. His joy, drawn from sure forecasts of the future, availed to alleviate and transfigure the oppressions of the passing hour. It enabled Him to sustain the heaviest of all crosses, the cross weighted with uni- versal sin ; and to despise the most stinging of all shames, rejection at the hands of those whom He had loved with unexampled sincerity and devotion. It nerved for that heroic shout of triumph, as death made ready to steal upon the senses, which startled the iron-souled centurion. A gibbet loomed like a grim landmark over the last lap of His earthly pathway; and its indescribable torture and degradation were to be endured alone. A profound reproach the first shadow of which was to drive every disciple into hiding was to be con- fronted by One accustomed to the reverence of devoted followers and with the high praises of heaven yet ringing in Pi is ears ; to be confronted and despised ! And all this in the strength of a joy that seemed very far off! An uncommon joy this, and assured by no light guarantees! What was the joy? and how was it assured? One element of this joy was the sense of satis- faction, inherent in all acts which are noble in their own essential qualities. It is just as much a joy to God, and to those within whose nature gleams of His high moral attributes are reflected, to do holy and gracious things, as it is for the bird to sing, the \ young creatures of field and forest to leap in the . first bliss of life, the born artist to group and colour i4eal forms, or the musician, with a genius for his wo^rk, to beat out his rushing inspirations in cadence THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION 163 and symphony. The fulness of God's nature pro- claims itself in deeds of spiritual splendour. The heroisms that uplift the sentiment of nations, calling forth epics and anthems to stir the life-blood through the successive centuries, are the staple moralities of His daily life, the sum and substance of His com- mon consciousness. But redemption is the crowning heroism of God, in comparison with which His daily providences of grace and righteousness are normal moralities. The ideal set forth in the Atonement must have had a power to enchant the soul of the Eternal Son, beyond any other thought growing up out of His relation to the order of the created worlds. One factor in the joy set before Him was the hope of compassing a heroism supreme even amidst the sublime achievements of the Godhead. The thrill which belongs to all noble doing, vitalised His mission, and did not altogether cease amidst the dark and painful processes of its accomplishment. His nature was possessed by the high and daring thought which expressed itself through His sacrifice. Another element in this joy, or perhaps we should rather say the same element traced back to its root- sanction, was the blessedness felt in working out His Father's counsels of redemption. As He judged things, noble doing gathered a higher fascination from that clear, gracious light of vivid approval, with which the Father looked upon it. The Atonement was an act of filial piety. Love always finds the service of the being who worthily attracts it a beatitude, and the strength and intensity of the love become a measure of the beatitude received. The joy of Jesus in fulfill- ing the redemptive purposes of that heart in which He had always dwelt, is commensurate with His i64 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION deep, unsounded, mysterious, age-long love to the Father. A touching legend of filial piety has connected itself with one of the great bells in a temple near Peking. A famous worker in metals, it is said, had received the Emperor's command to cast a bell of unusual size, the tone of which was to surpass in richness and melody all other bells. Severe penalties were threatened, if he came short of the wishes of his exacting master. He tried and failed, tried and failed again, and was upon the point of giving up his task in despair. At this crisis in his fortunes, his only daughter, a maiden of great beauty and virtue, went secretly to consult an astrologer. The man of magic told her the work could only be brought to a suc- cessful accomplishment, if the blood of a chaste virgin were mingled with the molten metal, when it was ready to be poured into the mould. Returning home she asked leave to watch her father's work, and when the ingredients had been fused and were seeth- ing in the vast cauldron, in an outburst of filial piety, she threw herself into the sea of fire. The bell thus cast proved of incomparable quality, and whenever it is struck, the natives of the district think they hear the girl's dying cry, in the sweetness and pathos of its notes. Such filial piety, if achieved at all, could only be achieved through struggle and consummated in dire distress. The legend represents the last cry of the victim as a weird note of pain, a vox huniana trembling up out of inscrutable abysses of tribulation. The Chinese imagination had scarcely soared into those spiritual realms where Divine love can change pain into contentment and perfect triumph. Jesus passed through seas of mysterious darkness and THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION 165 fire to fulfil His Father's ^ood pleasure in human salvation, but before death came, the wail of distress passed into the shout of triumph. Love made it a profound and solemn delight to do the Father's will in awful scenes of sacrifice. Whilst the pathos of redeeming sorrow still surges like an undertone in the message of the Gospel, that undertone is reinforced by a major note of victory and fulfilment. It was more than life to have a sense of the Father's utter- most approval. The joy set before Him consisted also in a vision of the immeasurable benefits He was to bring to His redeemed people, through the reconciliation achieved by the Cross. The knowledge that along this thorny and shadowed pathway He was carry- ing health and healing to a multitude, whose num- bers were beyond human reckoning, was in itself an earnest of endless satisfactions. Those who have studied the human heart are the first to recognise that its most definite and enduring felicities arise from the possession and exercise of power to assuage and dispel pain. What a luxury to give rest to some dumb, suffering brute which comes to the feet of its wise master with fixed, beseeching eyes ! What a delight to dry a child's tears, even when those tears have been started by the trivial disappointment, or the ignorant fears of a moment only ! How soul- contenting to have suggested some way of abating the fever in the veins of a tossing sufferer, or to have sent that which gives ease to the cramped and aching limbs of the bed-ridden ! If the discoverer of chloro- form could have realised how for millions who must needs pass under the surgeon's knife, he has changed the operating theatre from a chamber of torture into i66 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION a house of dreams, surely he would have lived for the rest of his days in a halo of radiancy and peace. If some gifted mind healer could go into an asylum, dispel as by a wand the morbid images thronging the air, dismiss into oblivion the fears and fixed ideas that tyrannise over diseased minds and send crowds of sufferers, in brave and cheerful health, to their homes, he would have more happiness than all the million- aires of New York City possess in common. Great victories, achieved in the fight against pain, have within themselves a magic reward which is simply Divine. How can we conceive or describe the soul-satis- faction realised by Jesus in cooling, with the balm of His mercy, the torment of human passion, in un- loosing the coiling, crushing madness of sin which enthrals deathless spirits, in drying not the tears of passing vexation and disappointment only, but tears charged with the omens of bitter, irreversible despair? It may sound like rhapsody and romance to selfish ears, but to go down into the gulf and hush the wail of condemned, habit-bound, desponding spirits and to awaken there the hallelujahs of the saved, was a crowning felicity reserved for the infinite love of Jesus ! Every joy in the man who becomes the subject of the great deliverance repeats itself in the author of salvation, for not only is He afflicted in all the afflictions of His people, but in a hundredfold degree He participates in all their gladness likewise. What a joy He anticipated in being able hereafter to enter upon that rich inheritance of love, from His redeemed people, to which He should entitle Himself! Through the mystery of the Cross He was about to win for Himself of a strain of devo- THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION 167 Hon, hitherto unknown through the ranges of the intelh'gent universe. Whilst the shining hosts, serving before the throne of God on high could say, " Our being has its rise in His creative power, and the glory which clothes us is a dim reflection of the eternal splendour," it would hereafter be the privilege of the Church, purchased with His blood, to say, *'He led us from abysses of shame by giving up a sacred and perfect life for our ransom, and we were washed to this resplendent whiteness in streams which issued from His broken heart." The ever-widening visions of the ages will deepen this grateful devotion, for to set forth the greatness of the salvation wrought out by His sacrifice, a vast series of successive revela- tions will be needed. Nothing less than a whole eternity can open out the deep meanings of the expiation which rescued the race from its despair, and no term of time however extended, can unfold and express the rapt love of those who find themselves numbered with the redeemed. Most suitably is the Lord who died for us, named the Bridegroom of the Church, for a love responds to His transcendent service, such as none other can receive. The intense, overflowing homage paid to His glorified humanity represents a new quality of emotion in the uni- verse. No other being can enter into its secret. The worship of angels is a chastened reverence in com- parison with the rare and sacred love He is winning from His Bride the Church. Such a superhuman sacrifice was sure to receive its tribute of unexampled gratitude. To be thus enriched was a joy that out- weighed the Cross and the shame. If the fragrance from Mary's broken cruse of nard, carried its silent message of sympathy to His wounded [68 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSAt.CON spirit and became a solace beyond price as the chill shadow of death fell, how plenteous will be the blessed- ness, when from every kindred, manifold types of womanhood made tender and holy by the Cross, sanc- tified into finer gentleness and vibrant with higher emotion, bend at His feet! If, when Judas had left the feast. He called His poor remnant of followers chil- dren and friends, and the stress of the inward storm ceased for awhile, who can tell the serene delight with which when this world's night-tide flushes into the endless dawn, having called to His side the perfected fellowship of the disciples. He shall celebrate with them anew in the kingdom of His Father the mercy which has redeemed ? H, after receiving the troth of the repentant apostle by the lake-shore. He was satis- fied with the first-fruit of His soul-travail, and could take painless farewell of His friends, who can describe His deep content when recovered wanderers of every age and clime meet in the domains of light where He reigns, loving much because they have much forgiven, and bearing the scars of patient crucifixions and God- glorifying deaths? When He receives the Bride, ransomed by a price paid for no other, and vowing a love yielded to no other friend or lord, well may the anthem fill regenerated worlds, " God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." How incomparably strong and sacred the bond woven between Himself and His elect people ! By the way of a soul-oppressing sorrow He passed to a new secret of peace. This was another element in the great sum of joy which outweighed shame and Cross. This joy included also the high pleasure of holding His throne, not by prescriptive right or hereditary THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION i6q power, nor by a majestic and irresistible investiture, but by the willing suffrages of a ransomed world. In becoming the Son of Man, and offering Himself through His vicarious sacrifice, to the homage of a disaffected, rebellious race, He submitted His sove- reignty to the free acceptance of all the ages, and henceforth He holds its powers by the acclaim of those who were once in revolt against the Divine righteousness. The satisfaction of making good a title resting upon the gracious moral suasion of His personality was surely second only to that of receiving it by the gift and designation of His Father. To reign over a kingdom without prisons, fetters and compulsions, a kingdom throughout the vast areas of which the discipline of pain becomes needless is, for the present at least, a distinction achieved by no human potentate. But it shall yet belong to Jesus Christ, and He foresaw the golden day and was glad. What a feat of goodness it would be, if some absolute ruler of the hour, were to march forth from behind his gates of brass and battalions of massed soldiers, to abandon his fortresses of floating steel, and declare to the seething multitudes, " I will hold my throne by the power of love or turn my back upon it once and for all ! I renounce all things and go forth to an enterprise which will give me the right to a perpetual place in the hearts of a free people. Henceforth the voice of the poor and the helpless shall acclaim me, and I will know no other type of kingship." This is what Jesus does. By His Cross He is coming to sway the sceptre of a sovereignty against which, from the rising to the setting of the sun, shall be heard no murmur of dissent. All obedience is bondage in comparison witli this. The loyalty won by the Cross 170 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION shall be freer than the freest worship of the angel's heaven. To exercise such a sublime and unrivalled rule was another element in the prospect that inspired Him. This joy, however, did not extinguish the dire dis- tress inseparable from His redeeming death. That no such immunity could be set up was ensured by the character of the Incarnation itself In that event of impenetrable mystery, the Divine attributes became subject to such limitations, that they could not make either mind or body proof against the onslaughts of pain. The Son of God had " emptied Himself," and the joy from whose head - springs, the energising forces of His mission were fed, flowed through the meagre and finite channels of a holy human nature. If Jesus had retained, in the days of His flesh, the unlimited knowledge and the unclouded consciousness of the Godhead, He could not have suffered, for all His hopes would have had the pro- perties of present attainment and possession. His vivid and complete perception of all that lay wrapped in the future ages, would have acted as an ancxsthetic to present distress, cutting off entirely the pains of the passing moment. His nature became just as much subject to time-limits as our own, and, whilst the far-off future of roseate hue did not pass into complete eclipse, an environment of humiliation formed the big-looming foreground of His daily experience. The joy was set before Him by an un- alterable covenant, but we must not so exaggerate His human sense of that joy, as to bring back the old Gnostic heresy, which made the Lord's flesh and its tribulations an impassive mirage reflected into the senses of the beholders. When He " emptied Him- THE redp:mptive compensation 171 self," He was debarred by that act of depotentiation from tasting at once of the plenary fruitions of His earthly work. The Cross was not changed into a painless, phantom cross by the counteracting joy. The suffering and the shame were intensely real, real beyond that of all other crosses, because the flesh, in which the guileless victim was put to death, was sen- sitive beyond all human flesh. Divine love could not enshrine itself in a human body, without making that body feel with a quivering keenness, to which men had hitherto been strangers. The Cross crushed and the shame scorched as Cross and shame had not here- tofore been wont, for the life on which they wrought was incomparably fine and exquisite. And the converse of this fact must receive equal emphasis. As the essential pain of the Cross was not taken away by the looked-for joy, neither was the joy quite quenched by the Cross. In no single bend, or deep descent, of the course he had to run, did Jesus lose sight of the prize of His great vocation. Some gleam of the golden hereafter alighted upon every cloud of His life, even upon the dense darkness which folded itself around the Cross. But how was this joy sustained amidst the limita- tions of His earthly life ? What guarantees assured it ? What secret influences could make it, in the crisis of a tragic agony, such a well-grounded certainty as outweighed the cruel reality of the Cross? His faith in the firm covenant of which He was the appointed Mediator, the insight of a Son, which penetrated far beyond that of the prophet into the counsels of the Father, His constant converse with One who showed to Him all things that Himself did, and would yet give all things into His hands. If we may speak of His 172 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION superhuman illumination, after the manner of men, His prophetic office was necessary, not only for the instruction of His people, but as the basis of personal fortitude in the hour of His Passion. He so restrained and subdued the sensibilities of the flesh, that the perceptions of the spirit were luminous with a penetrating power, no inwalling night could obstruct. The prophetic merged into the priestly work and up- held its energies. He could not present His life, a willing sacrifice to the Father for an offending world, apart from His unfaltering insight into the blessed issues of this act of love. The Seer must have his .millennial visions in order that the self-oblation of the intercessor may be free and unmurmuring. If an inadequately assured joy had been the motive directing His steps to Jerusalem, across the Kidron to the garden, outside the gate to the place of His uplifting from the earth, the sacrifice would have been grudging, irresolute, void of redemptive virtue. The present, with its black, pitiless Fate, might seem to leave little space for brighter backgrounds, but, however deep the profound into which God's waves and billows swept Him, He never quite lost sight of the joy that was His pole-star. The Cross, when it stood before His gentle eyes, inexorable as iron and quite as cruel, never brought total eclipse upon the crown that shone through the darkness beyond. He could discern its golden outlines in the midnight. The doubt we sometimes feel about the Divine authority for this sacrifice, which is the heart of the Gospel, and its ethical fitness, is a doubt we feel about the reality of the recompense, or at least should have felt if placed at our Lord's standpoint. Our diffi- culty arises from the fact that we lack the Lord's own THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION 173 faith. His confidence in the issue, which was more than the insight of a prophet, guarded Him against the temptation to shirk the Cross, which would have mastered one less Divine. The joy set before Him, by a revelation from the Father of lights, clearer and more abiding than the day, enabled Him to endure the unknown burdens of a sacrificial death and to despise the shame. The motive of our Lord's self-dedication to the Cross, as stated by the writer of this epistle, is a key to some of the ethical difficulties which invest the Christian doctrine of the Atonement. The joy upon which He had fixed His hope justified His choice in yielding Himself up as a propitiation for sin. That Jesus should bear the Divine wrath for men, and taste death in their stead, is an idea which has excited keen resentment, especially within recent years. Some interpreters of the New Testament Scriptures have set themselves to expunge from its language the notion that Jesus appeased the wrath of a holy God, and have given us, what is known as a sub- jective theory of the Atonement. But the attempt has not been a success in exegesis, for the language of the apostles does not always lend itself to this mode of treating the subject. That temper of humanitarianism, which in spite of many drawbacks is slowly taking possession of the modern world, seems inconsonant with the old in- terpretation of Christ's death. But this admirable spirit may sometimes overpress its ideals, and assert them under conditions where they are irrelevant. It is assumed that in the evangelical doctrine of the Cross we have a lurid reflection of repulsive features in the propitiatory rites of savages, combined with a 174 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION survival of fetich-conceptions of the gods. The ethic of our recent history as an empire is against every- thing that could give countenance to these crude primitive beliefs. Whilst seeking to make our flag a symbol and pledge of toleration ev^erywhere, we have set ourselves to stop the self-immolation of the fakir, the burning of widows, and every form of human sacrifice. Our finer instincts tell us we are right in this. But on the other hand there are forms of self-sacrifice which we tolerate and even praise as Divinely beautiful. We applaud to the echo the man who rushes on to his death so that he may save women and little children. No honour is good enough for the doctor who sucks in diphtheric poison in his ministry to a choking and half-dead child. The investigator who, to acquire a knowledge that will relieve the torment and lengthen the days of thousands, inoculates himself with a deadly disease, earns a martyr's crown and not the disdain we feel for the selfish suicide. Perhaps we have not defined to ourselves the line of distinction which runs between these two classes of action. The victim of fierce superstition is often hounded to death by family clamour, or driven to self-torture by ignorant and fantastic pride, but the hero of science or of humanity who devotes himself to death is both intelligent and free. We rightly prohibit the fruitless pain which results from here- ditary ignorance, whilst Vv'e concede liberty to the pioneer in medical discovery because he can gauge by his independent and instructed judgment the gain that will come to a community when in grand self-devotion he forgets the risks of death. The sacrificial price, needful for his work, is paid once for THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION 175 all, and requires no useless and harrowing reitera- tions. In the praise and affection of posterity, as he views things, he will have his reward. It is needless to show how the futile savage immolations, we con- demn and repress, have little or nothing in common with the redeeming death delineated in the pages of the evangelists ; whilst the self-devotion we approve and extol in modern life fits in with all the analogies of our Lord's sacrificial work. He might have turned aside from Mis last journey to Jerusalem, and was often urged to avoid the risks it involved, but of His own free love He went to the cross. The dis- ciples deprecated the sad ending of which He had given them intimations, and when Peter exclaimed^ " Be it far from Thee, Lord," he was spokesman of the rest. If we doubt the Divine Sonship of Jesus, we must at least allow that His ethical know- ledge was more penetrating than ours, and that He judged with amazing accuracy many of the benefits which were to ensue from His death. He felt Himself sure of compensations, and the sacrifice was once for all, admitting of no specious repetitions. A brilliant preacher of the last century, whose sermons are still widely read, takes Caiaphas, who held it expedient that a guiltless life should be wantonly immolated for the nation, as the type of all believers in a substitutionary atonement. He further asserts that " The conception of this doctrine which makes Christ bear the wrath of God for the sin of the race is borrowed from the most atrocious and revolting Pagan superstition. It repre- sents God in terms which better describe the un- governed rage of Saul missing his stroke at David, who has offended, and in disappointed fury hurling 176 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION his javelin at his own son Jonathan." That is a fearful charge to bring against even rash exaggera- tions of this sacred subject. But the parallel, in this scathing indictment, fails at many points. The dis- pleasure of a holy God at sin is widely different from a fit of irresponsible madness. David was not a substitute who had offered to bear the offences of his friend, but a man obedient to the instinct of self- preservation who made good his escape as fast as possible. And the young harper did not dream of satisfactions which would fill his immortal years, if he offered himself as a victim in place of his com- .rade. A sure and sufficient joy was set before our Lord, when He steadfastly faced the Cross and shame. To all that has been urged against the evangel of a vicarious Cross we may find an answer if we apply the principle at the root of the text. The blessings of His coming reign outweighed the curse laid upon Jesus when He hung upon the tree. We allow that God's law for the universe, from Gabriel down through man, and right on to the meanest monad, is a law of joy. The largest possible happi- ness for the largest possible numbers is a safe principle, if we first settle our definition of happiness and take note of the conditions under which it may be obtained. The test applied by a blind sensualist, indifferent to all the pleasures which arise within the higher consciousness, would make the world into a sink of drunkenness and putridity. The test applied by a discerning moralist would give us a world full of chastened blessedness, with Calvary as the central shrine of its altruisms. The secular philosopher so often forgets, what Jesus emphasised again and again, THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION 177 that the greatest happiness may sometimes be reached by a cross which may be either a stumbling or a stepping-stone. Dark rivers svvirhng at our feet must sometimes be crossed before the Delectable Mountains, which glow in unearthly loveliness, can be reached. Divest the Atonement of its penal aspects, deny to Jesus the right of entering into the guilt of the race, lay it down as an immutable law that He cannot be allowed to bear the curse for His brethren, and He is barred out thereby from all the raptures of His spiritual triumph. The joy upon which He had fixed His heart was proportioned to the degree in which He could become man's substitute. It was one of the rights of His free personality to take the place of the condemned race, if He could do so without bringing the laws of individual responsibility amongst men into chaos and contempt. The principle is one and the same with that of thrift, although the degree of its application may differ enormously. If I am free to deny myself a pleasure in youth, so that I may receive it with compound interest in manhood or old age, Jesus was surely free to carry a cross and suffer upon it, so that He might possess Himself of endless years of victory. He looked for a matchless and eternal harvest from the seed He went forth to sow in tears and blood. His hope was fixed upon overflow- ing compensations. Such a morning was destined to succeed His night of tears as neither earth nor heaven had known before. Much of our difficulty disappears when we re- member the standpoint of infinite illumination, from which our Lord contemplated the Cross and the great things which lay beyond it. We think the 13 178 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION joy set before Him an insufficient consideration, because we look at it through the clouded, minifying atmosphere of our suspicious selfishness. When we implicitly receive Him as our prophet, and tread the steps of a firmer faith, we shall be brought to see that the abounding joy of the far-off years justified His sacrifice, and every sacrifice however stringent and sweeping that we ourselves may be brought to make under the spell of His Cross. We need have no fear of abasing Christ, by con- templating His forlornness as a victim whose judg- ment had been taken away, if we remember the exceeding joy, sufficiently assured, which was the motive of the Cross. He was in harmony with the Father's highest law for Himself when He was in the act of being bruised and put to grief. He is not the pale ascetic of endless ages crowned with thorns which never lose their power to stab. Let this principle be a clue, leading us back to the Cross, from which we have been turned aside by the stumbling-blocks some modern thinkers have recklessly placed about it. The faith of sincere Christians has in some cases been weakened, if not vitiated, by the controversies which have been waged upon this ground of incomparable sacredness. We are not fully persuaded in our own minds, and strains of diffidence and uncertainty enter into our expe- rience. Perhaps we have not been convinced by the arguments of those who would revolutionise the fundamentals, and take us away from our first evangelical standing-ground ; but we are not infallible, and the thought that we may be wrong troubles us more frequently than in the past. THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION 179 Perhaps we have tried to exercise a vague trust in the mediation of Jesus, which takes no account of specific theories of His death, to cling to the Cross and yet maintain an attitude of doctrinal neutrality ; to confess the central significance of the Cross in apostohc schemes of theology, and yet to keep an open mind on the subject. But this undefined trust has not brought the inward peace which was our heritage in the unsophisticated days when we took Christ as the One who died for us, and lifted up our burden on the Cross. We cannot get back the old rest whilst we look upon a most vital aspect of Christ's death as debateable. If we are repelled by the idea that another bore our penalty, and are too proud to accept such help, let us remember the mystic compensations whereby the riddle of vicarious pain is solv^ed. In the forests of Cambodia are to be found the remains of massive stone temples and palaces, which have been long forsaken by the race which built them, and are now overgrown. The reason why these elaborate and highly finished structures were abandoned is a puzzle not easy to solve. The original builders were not dispossessed by a con- quering race, for no record of any such invasion exists, and a conquering race would have made some use of its annexations. The people who reared these amazing edifices, with a skill and a perfection worthy of the highest civilisations, are now jungle-dwellers in the vicinity of the colossal ruins. The buildings were not overthrown by earthquake, for the walls are still true, every stone is in its position, and the foundations have not been disturbed or displaced. A writer on Asiatic subjects has recently suggested i8o THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION that they were forsaken under the influence of super- stition. A series of sh'ght earthquake shocks, not sufficiently violent to work desolation, got upon the nerves of the citizens, and called forth their dread of the displeasure of the gods. In a temper of panic they forsook these colossal stone-built cities and became degenerate squatters in the surrounding forests. Similar changes tending to degeneration go on in the theological world. Men's views and feelings about the Atonement have been exposed to a long series of recurring shocks, by no means revolutionary in the force of their logic, and they have begun to feel more or less uncomfortable in the mighty and massive strongholds of faith, where their forefathers found rest and assured salvation. Is the vicarious principle right ? Ought the burden of a guilty race to be put upon One who is without ofl'ence, so that He can make atonement for trans- gression ? Does not the doctrine of propitiation present the character of God in a mistaken light, and make the burden-bearing of Jesus a cruel enslavement and an unlovely device ? Does not the forgiveness of sin through the Cross involve a breach in the continuity of the great law of retri- bution ? If God cannot forgive as a pure act of Fatherhood, and without a sin-offering, is not His character austere and His sovereignty limited ? Our faith is not quite overthrown, and the logic of the evangelical doctrine is as massive as ever. But we have felt the disturbing and recurrent shocks. We have little mind for the old refuges, and are in peril of becoming religious degenerates, unworthy of the past. We are the victims of subtle, disconcerting super- stitions of the intellect and theological pin-pricks, THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION i8i Whilst grappling with all honest problems, as best we may, let us ignore these shocks, which in the long run may count for trifles, and let us continue to rest upon the one foundation, Jesus Christ. The joy for which Jesus looked, as He hung in shame and distress upon the tree, should prove a master-argument for our speedy acceptance of His salvation. Our personal reconciliation to God is charged with such high issues and meanings that it may minister, in some appreciable degree, to the Saviour's satisfaction. What cause, that can justify itself to the reason and the conscience, do you allege for barring out, even for an hour, the Saviour's claim ? Whilst you make light of such sacred rights, can you look at the Man of Griefs, and feel no sense of self- condemnation ? Tenacious as you are of all that has been won by patient and honest toil, think of the heritage Jesus has earned for Himself by His strange suffering and shame. That He should be able to rejoice over you is surely His due, and are you not impugning His title whilst you continue in a proud indecision, which defers, at least for a season, the full fruitage of that death? Ought the sweat and struggle of your daily tasks to find a recompense in the plenty of your table and the restfulness of your home? and has the sweat of Gethsemane earned no right of gladness and festive communion for your knocking Lord ? Have the hands which toil at an earthly task, and the feet which move through an appointed round of service, a meed of recompense, admitted by the maxims of every land ? and are the pierced hands and feet to be deprived of the tribute for which they plead? The prize to which He looked as He moved along a i82 THE REDEMPTIVE COMPENSATION pathway stained with His own fast-falhng blood, is your salvation, now and through all ages. What answer do you give back to the Cross and shame endured with such steadfast, pathetic unsel- fishness? His Spirit attends to receive your submission. Oh that men would put off their dulness and hear His breath in the evangel which is still preached ! The sweetness of His voice surges through the message, the pathos of His unforgotten Passion, the mandate of His blood-bought sove- reignty. Would that we could rid ourselves of the worldly tempers which obstruct our finer discern- ments ! Forget the human note in the voice which speaks and listen for the Divine accents which reinforce its feebleness, the voice from the cross which, after so many centuries, still vibrates, where- ever the honest Gospel is preached ; the voice which gathers up pathos, entreaty, kingly command into an appeal that ought to hush into speechless and reverent heedfulness: "Admit the rights born in the shame and bitter distress of the cross ; tender those inward satisfactions for which My pained spirit has long been thirsting." What an encouragement to faith this subject offers ! The salvation of the souls He ransomed was no task imposed upon Jesus by a remorseless destiny, but the prize towards which He lifted His wistful gaze. If on the way to the cross Jesus strengthened Himself by picturing the coming release of His people, and went to His awful task refreshed by the far-off vision, can you not trust Him to complete His work in your soul ? His joy is not fulfilled in the common redemption, of which He laid THE RP:DEMPTIVE compensation 183 the foundations as He hung upon the cross. It is continued through all the processes of personal salva- tion, processes which derive their informing virtues from His death. Indeed, it is in your experience of salvation that He attains one of the many goals to which His eye was turned. Through the shadows of the cross He saw the joy in a dim figure of prophecy ; but when He applies His death to take away a penitent's condemnation He receives the substance of a long looked-for recompense. Can He deny Himself? If so, He may cast you forth from His presence and decline to help you, scorning your penitence for its lack of depth, poignancy, tears. It is impossible that He should think lightly of a joy for which He endured the Cross, and that joy is linked with your redemption. Trust Him. It fills His great nature with Divine contentment to save a soul, and to save it now, for that was why He bore the Cross. Your faith is a part of His earthly coronation. He consents to receive at your unworthy hands one of the gifts for which He became incarnate and bore Cross and shame. X THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL "And one said unto Him, Lord, are there few that be saved ? And He said unto them, Strive to enter in at the narrow door : for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able." — Luke xiii. 23, 24. This question was asked towards the close of our Lord's ministry, when He was making His way by slow and toilsome stages to Jerusalem, the city where His career as a teacher was to end in ignominy and apparent disaster. We can only conjecture the motive prompting the inquiry, from the circumstances in which the Master found Him- self, and the drift of the answer He thought fit to give. Perhaps some echo of the Sermon on the Mount, with its admonitory allusion to "the strait gate" and " the few " who found it, may have been lin- gering in the mind of the man who introduced this pregnant subject. If this was so, his meaning may be, " Are the precepts of the new kingdom as rigid and unsparing as popular rumour asserts ? The truth must surely bend itself somewhat to the weak- 1S4 THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL i8q D ness of the multitudes, or only a limited number of the chosen nation will reach salvation." It is conceivable also that the declining popularity of the Prophet, and the melting away of His fol- lowers under the stress of persecution, may have given painful relevancy to the inquiry. The day when excited multitudes greeted Him with acclaim was past never to return, except for the brief pathetic hour of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This man who sought to lift the veil from the mysteries of the judgment may have implied, " Surely these few followers do not represent the entire fruit of a three-years' ministry, reinforced by the missions of apostles and evangelists. How the movement, in spite of its early promises and its many miracles, has collapsed into a forlorn hope." Some strain of pride and self-sufficiency may have entered into the question, " Are we a select and steadfast few, ' the saved remnant ' spoken of aforetime by the prophets? Is it our portion to be the exclusive recipients of Thy favour and kingly good-will ? " Or the man, who voiced also the curiosity of others, may have been musing upon the destiny of the human race and asking in the interests of populations, larger than those with which his own citizenship was counted. '' What must be said about Greek, Roman, and Scythian, the man of mixed Jewish and Gentile parentage, the far-off colonies, the teeming souls of bygone generations, and the generations of the unknown future ? " '* Are there few that be saved ? " Our Lord gives only obscure hints of the answer to this engrossing problem. He tries to turn the i86 THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL man's thoughts, in common with that of the multi- tude, from the speculative to the practical, from the general to the particular, from things remote and undefined to the duty of the passing hour. The reply to such a question cannot be the same for every decade and for every century. At the moment perhaps few are saved ; in the after-times assuredly many, or the prophets were misled and dreamed vain dreams. From the east and the west, the north and the south, multitudes shall stream into the kingdom. What standard of comparison is set up within the mind ? What geographical area does the question cover? How long will the world go on? Every period must have separate consideration, just as every separate member of the race must receive a reward or a punishment congruous to the require- ments of Divine equity. Whatever else may be hidden, the hour has its clear duty, as well as its impending peril. Take heed lest a temper of vagrant curiosity occupy the soul, when the hour for action is striking and is already on the wing for a flight from which there is no return. Strive and strive now, for no opportunity is termless, and too many, alas ! will fail of salvation. The old question is still asked, and sometimes re- ligious teachers presume to babble forecasts of effusive sweetness where the Master maintained an admoni- tory reserve. Is the majority with or against Jesus Christ? Is the flowing tide on the side of the Churches ? Do those who, in the end of their days, soar into eternal light, outnumber those who sink into darkness ? " Lord are there few that be saved ?" Such questions do not admit of answers free from am- biguity, and proof against disastrous misapplication. thp: strp:nuous gospel 187 " Few " and " many " are relative terms. The minority of one generation often becomes the majority of the following generation. This question cannot have the same answer in a society dominated by the maxims of the "smart set," and in a society leavened by the spirit of a Welsh Revival. In ages of de- cadence and degeneration the verdict may be depressing, and yet after-generations of religious faith and zeal may redress the balance. We are appalled when we think of the moral and social wreckage in nominally Christian lands ; and to the very end of life vast numbers of the degraded show no sign of improvement. And yet we like to dream that before the human race lie long ages of history, in which good shall be victorious— ages far out- numbering the bygone ages of darkness. Men will not always be fools. The earth may be covered for thousands of years with pure, devout, regenerated races, ten times as populous as those of the Far East: and that would fix the ultimate ratio. The prophecies warrant such dreams. Leaving entirely out of view the question of a probation after death, the earth itself may have before it vistas of illimit- able history, which shall turn the mass of past moral failures into nothingness, when they are considered side by side with the whole. And yet, in spite of such prospects, the ignorant and careless of some specific period may be in a tremendous majority in comparison with their devout contem- poraries ; and the kind of answer the inquirer wished for might strangely mislead. Taking human nature as it is, any answer given to the question easily passes into a grave temptation. Suppose the answer were " Alas ! but few ; " how THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL would it tiave influenced those who heard it ? One morbidly sensible to the social atmosphere in which he moved, and predisposed, like Thomas, to gloomy views, might have been tempted to egotism and led to exaggerate the worth of his service to the cause of Christ — " I at least shall be numbered with the elect remnant, small though it be in number." An impious, worldly-minded man might have said, " I will take my chance with the overwhelming multi- tude, for the many cannot be finally lost, or God would have made man in vain. He surely cannot consume all the inhabitants of a world, any more than a king can imprison or execute the entire race over which he rules." And, on the other hand, if the word had been spoken, " The lost shall be but a handful and preponderating multitudes shall be saved," the worldly man would have ceased to concern himself with the problems of the after-life, and would have presumptuously trusted to the prospect of being swept into the kingdom with the masses of mankind. He would have looked to be saved in spite of himself. This is the common tendency of preaching the larger hope, as though it dogmatically involved the complete restoration of an undivided race to God's favour. Such views release the godless multitudes from a wholesome fear of the wrath to come, producing a condition of carelessness much more difficult to remove than that stupor begotten by glaring vices, with which the revivalists of the eighteenth century had to contend. The people outside the Churches, and two-thirds of the people within the Churches, who a generation ago were exercised with deep religious anxieties, expect to be carried by resistless tides into the sunny THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL 189 shelters of the eternal kingdom. The question which Jesus refused to answer, the preacher of the hour often answers with a strange temerity, and the effect upon the community is disastrous. The man in the street has not quite rid himself of the fear of ghosts, but he has lost all dread of a holy and righteous God, " who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell." Behind the question there lurks a permanent tendency to attach undue importance to numbers, and an answer might have strengthened the tempta- tion for every coming age. Then, as now, men were pre-disposed to measure themselves by the views and feelings of their neighbours, and even to pit human opinion against God's judgments. VV'c assume too often that the masses of our contemporaries cannot be entirely wrong ; that if a new craze is fluttering West End drawing-rooms there must be something in it ; that if a new investment is boomed and the public are coming in, big dividends are at hand ; and that the religious teacher around whom crowds hum has the latest revised edition of God's Gospel. Such rude methods of judging are essentially false. If the human race were polled to-day there would be a majority on the side of a flat earth, spurious medicine, the Ptolemaic astronomy, irra- tional religions, although perhaps a century hence things may be entirely changed. The majorities in one country or in one niche of the universe, are no guide to the majorities elsewhere, and the ma- jorities of the twentieth century may form no key to those of the twenty-fifth century. A popular astronomer tells us that the mathematical chances against bodies of matter being kindled into light iQo THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL are such that the dark stars probably outnumber the stars which glitter in the constellations above us. But this is no proof that darkness should be accounted the sovereign principle of the universe rather than light. If it be true that the multitudes of the first, or the fourteenth, or the twentieth century are in the blackness and stupor of spiritual night, that is no reason why I should ally myself with them. I have to deal with God and the duties He lays upon me, and not with the distribution of opinion amongst various groups of my contemporaries. From the temper and attitude of the crowd, we can argue nothing one way or the other, when the issues of spiritual destiny are at stake. We must neither assume that the few are saved, and that it is our high distinction to be classed with them ; nor assume that the many are saved, and that as things go our chances are good, even if we do not bring our souls under the yoke of Jesus, and incur the charge of eccentricity through the zeal which Jesus accounts needful for salvation. The age still occupies itself with this question, to the neglect of personal religion. But the exact and exhaustive answer to it is reserved to the Judge of the assembled nations, and it is our wisdom to wait. If we deal with the personal problem first we may come to find that we are taking the best way of answering the question happily for the race at large. No man saves himself without, at the same time, saving some of those who are bound up with him in a common life. The address to the multitude introduced by this question implies that effectual salvation must begin in strenuous personal action. Whether many or few THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL 191 attain final blessedness is not an issue fixed by a Divine decree into which we may venture to probe, but rests with each separate seeker after life. In so many words, the Great Teacher says, " Before you concern yourselves with your neighbours' destiny, and that of the race, look well to your own soul." Does not the Master, for the moment, here seem to put Himself on the side of spiritual selfishness ? Such counsels run counter to some things we hear at the present time, and half justify the taunt directed against the evangelical faith of our fathers that its one watchword was, " Give heed to yourself first and make sure of heaven." But no broad survey of the words of Jesus can justify the criticism that in caring for the spiritual state of the individual He overlooks the multitude. To give heed to ourselves may be the noblest way of serving our neighbours. By zealously working out individual salvation, we shall further with supreme success, the spiritual well-being of the community. We do not belong to a race of unfallen angels who have no need to make good their escape from guilt and wrath, before they can minister to others. The man who is not right before God, and who, nevertheless, professes to concern himself primarily with the weal or woe of contemporary multitudes, is a mischief-breeding busybody, who will best befriend his neighbours by first looking to his own spiritual state. To send a consumptive nurse to minister to consumptives would be a hollow and extravagant affectation of altruism. Her highest duty is to care for herself and recover the health v/hich fits for service. When the fire-alarm rings a dozen streets away, no one expects the patients in a fever ward, or in an infectious hospital, to answer the 192 THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL call. It is humanity for all such to stay within bounds till they are convalescent. They may give a hand in putting out the next fire. It is no mark of bar- barism to quarantine a plague-stricken ship, even though Red Cross doctors on the way to the battlefield, may be amongst the passengers. We must save ourselves, before curiously dropping our plummet into the mysteries of the last things, and working out in a curious sum the ratio of the redeemed to the re- probate. Whilst we remain one in character with the thoughtless crowd, we cannot turn back the steps of those who are in the broad and busy highways of death, even though we have a sweet, somnolent gospel of the larger hope upon our lips. When we are within the door, we may well stretch out our hands to draw others from their peril into the sanctuary we have gained. The religion of Jesus, wide in its sympathies and aims as all worlds, is yet individualistic in its first steps. But whatever the motive of the question, and the final answer which must be returned to it, the con- ditions which ensure salvation cannot be relaxed or popularised. " Gate " and "way" are just as narrow in this last stage of the Lord's ministry as when He preached on the mountain in Galilee. There can be no compromise to suit the stress of the times. The earliest precepts must not be diluted. Let the men who would be saved fit themselves to the terms, and not expect that the terms will be accommodated to the ignoble weaknesses of human nature. Access into salvation is not like an undelimited prairie frontier, over which men can pass at will, but is, rather, a narrow door, reached by a difficult track. Here again the Master's words run counter to not a THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL 193 few of the current prepossessions of our century, and they doubtless crossed men's tastes and prejudices when they were first spoken. We are in love with breadth, blindly so, and narrowness is one of the most scornful terms found in our vocabulary of condemnation. But breadth may be either a virtue or a vice, according to the things of which it is predicated. To have wide knowledge, far-ranging sympathies, a versatile understanding which can look at things from many standpoints is good ; but to ask for latitude, under conditions and in circum- stances which often occur, may prove folly and ruin. For the captain to give himself plenty of sea-room and vary his course in mid-ocean may be good sea- manship ; but he is insane who when taking his ship through straits strewn on the right hand and on the left with floating torpedoes, as was the channel into Port Arthur, talks of breadth and latitude. In its methods of dealing with native races our Government exercises a breadth and tolerance which is expedient, whatever we ma\' think of its humanity. If a Kaffir likes to have his medicine-man when he is sick, and the Hindoo his exorcist, whilst Science smiles, our statecraft says, " All right ; be it so ; let the man follow his customs." But if the life of your wife and child were trembling in the balance, and the medicine-man, the exorcist, or the astrologer were to creep up to the door of the sick-room, your tolerance would be at an end. We must have a rigid science which excludes empiricism to deal with a momentous crisis in the home. The door in this case must be narrow, and the law of love makes it so. For some men, be they rich or otherwise, salvation is through the eye of the needle. Strictness is the only 14 194 THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL condition which affords the slightest ground for hope. To put the Hfe under an inflexible regime is not the way to pre-eminent saintship only, but to an elemen- tary salvation. The men who missed the door, and bruised themselves against the inevitable, prided themselves on their tolerance. They were not fanatics either in their opposition to Jesus or in espousing his cause. This call to a more vehement strife after salva- tion derives much of its intenseness and solemnity from that significant hour in the Masters' own history and in the redemptive destinies of mankind which was so near at hand. The Son of Man had passed that last turn in His pathway which brought the cross into view, and His sensibilities already felt the strain and oppression of the great tragedy. It seemed to Him scarcely conceivable that men could be saved unless they entered into the inwardness of His redemptive passion. He had set Himself to work out the deliverance of the race, through conflict and infinite distress, and the experience of reconcilia- tion with God in each individual member of the race must needs come through a conscious oneness with Himself Salvation cannot be made so easy by the vicarious act of another that the recipient of it is released from all obligation to strive. What sentient union could there be between the Man of Sorrows and the light-hearted trifler, the man who made religion one of a group of refined diversions, the soul growing complacent at the contemplation of its own formal virtues, or stupefied by rank, enfeebling voices ? There must be some kind of compatibility between the genius of the Cross and the spirit of the man who would find refuge from wrath through its vicarious THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL 195 woes. Just as the tremors of the earth are registered by fine instruments placed in a modern observatory, so the Cross was a sensitive seismograph in which the forces batth'ng to frustrate and overthrow the Divine in man, displayed all their rage and convulsion. As the Son of Man hung there He felt within Himself the fierce tumultuous upheavings of the nethermost hell, and he endured the Cross by a strong tran- scendent counterpassion. It was inconceivable that the forces which asserted themselves in the crisis of the agony, and were even now rending His sacred soul, would leave the individual to work out His salvation without stress or friction. Jesus knew too well the condition of the problems touched in this question of questions, and He would not pamper men into moods of softness and tempers of seductive security. It was no syren's gospel He had come to preach. Fools may think salvation child's play, and that the risk of falling short is inappreciable ; but by His own experience Jesus was compelled to think otherwise. He knew that the man who would enter into salvation must be prepared to share the fellow- ship of His soul-consuming zeal. If two pieces of metal are to be welded together, they must both be raised to the same white heat. Metals in states of contrasted temperature cannot be annealed. A new struggle was asserting itself in our Lord's conscious- ness, and He felt that he who would be saved must share it. Our chemists liquefy atmospheric air by applying portentously cold temperatures, two or three hundred degrees below freezing-point, and it has been found that under these ultra-Arctic conditions chemical reactions are no longer possible. The sun's rays 196 THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL lose their actinic power. A lecturer at the Royal Institution several years ago exposed sensitised paper, parts of which had been sponged with liquid air, to the light. The parts untouched were changed in tint, as in the ordinary processes of photography, but the sponged parts were proof against the action of the sunbeams. In these phenomenally low tem- peratures substances, which have the most violent chemical affinity for each other, refuse to combine. And is there not a corresponding fact in the sphere of religion ? Whilst our natures are abnormally cold the intensest emanations from the Light of the World cannot transform us ; the likeness of His death and resurrection fails to imprint itself on our natures. If we continue cold, inert, impassive, how- ever close the original affinities between the human spirit and the Divine, there can be no effectual, re- creating fellowship. The religion which saves is not generated by the cold, calculating reason, but in hearts aglow with exalted fervour, for reason acting alone can work little or no change in human life. We must be raised above freezing-point before we can have part and lot with the work of Him who redeems us. It is an essential part of our salvation that there should be effort, struggle, holy contention. Men must wrestle to win the door of escape from final darkness. The all-pervading energies of trans- formation, with which the redeemed world pulsates, are dormant in a cold, religious atmosphere. Jesus points men to a realm of rest, but at the same time He remembers that they are benumbed by the blandishments of sin, and must be spurred into struggle. When the snov/storm has deadened the senses of the weary wayfarer, and he is tempted thk strenuous gospel 197 to sleep, it is not enough to point to the ruddy glow in the cottage far away on the mountain-side. He is the victim of a stupor akin to death, and must be stimulated to effort, revived by friction, perhaps even scourged with whips, to keep the senses alive. Those who want salvation must enter as far as their strength and natural limitations allow into Christ's struggle. The conscience must be roused, the fears of short- coming awakened, all the resources of the life called forth. At this crisis in His history, Jesus felt, as perhaps never before, how formidable were the forces against men, and that the flag of the victorious alien was reared wherever there was lethargy and inaction ! " Strive to enter in ! " The admonition called forth by the question of this unknown man puts momentous emphasis upon the difference between " seek " and '' strive." To " seek " only may mean to fail, but to " strive " is to attain. The effort which prevails must begin at once ; whilst to knock when the appointed term of opportunity has run out is a woeful futility. The conditions being such as the Divine wisdom has determined, the astute Laodicean cannot hope to pass within the door. The word " agonise " used by our Lord suggests the fierce desperate onset of the wrestler. In modern usage the word has come to stand for keen, bitter suffering, but it implied, at first, the tension of effort in the man himself, rather than the burden of pain laid upon him. He who would enter the kingdom and find himself secure from all that threatens his well-being, must be a Samson Agonistes. Like Jacob, by the brook Jabbok, he must contend. The strong- willed, dauntless wrestler, whose heart dilates. i9« THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL whose muscles are stretched, whose veins expand, and who puts the entire weight of his body into the work, is the type of the spirit which cannot fail of salvation. A one-sided presentation of the gospel may sometimes depict this supreme task as free from hardship and difficulty. To do some things is child's play, because no barriers lie across the pathway by which we move. Formidable forces, however, bar our progress towards the door which is set before us — the terrible and diversified auto- cracies of unseen evil, principalities, powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world ; worst of all, in the heart of man himself they too often find an ally. Sin is no trifling purposeless accident, in the history of an irresponsible race, but a camp of unholy legions wedged in between man and his highest destinies, and it must needs be overthrown. He who does not put his whole strength into the task, and that right early, will irretrievably fail. No man will find that which he has been taught to look for, because it is his good fortune to have been born a child of Abraham. Struggle is just as necessary for him as for the unprivileged Gentile. Whether many or few are being saved, salvation is at least the meed of struggle ; if the many struggle the many will be saved, whilst if only the few struggle it is to be feared that the blessings of final redemption will be shared by the few. Nothing can change the ground-facts of the problem. Those who seek when the door is closed will find them- selves the victims of an exasperating and irreparable privation. Each man must answer the question for himself by a strenuous and life-long contention. To enforce this demand for zeal in the pursuit THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL 199 of salvation, the great Teacher paints a prophetic picture of the last day. Those who show no sus- tained earnestness in the spiritual strife will be overwhelmed by a disappointment, bitter and immi- tigable. The door, though narrow, may be entered by the man who sets himself to it ; but when the narrow door is closed, seeking and striving with the might of the wrestler will alike be fruitless. It is no temporary exclusion from the fellowships of the kingdom which is here threatened by the King and future Judge of the race. In a memorable oracle, Isaiah describes a judicial hardening of the people, which in due time was to pass away and give place to better dispositions of the mind. The scene painted by the prophet belongs to a panorama of earthly life ; but the light of eternity rests on this solemn picture, for Abraham and the elect of the Gentiles are brought face to face. There is finality in the separation as soon as a supreme hand closes the door of opportunity. When the Light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world sets, and rises upon hidden realms, the darkness is invested with strange terrors. The shadows dis- pelled by no returning day-dawn deepen once the Master withdraws, and sin begins to punish itself. We know little at present of its grim punitive power, for sin as now seen is incipient only, passing through incubation stages. When from beyond the closed door the voice of the departed Master speaks to men a fearful judgment has begun. The man who has failed to make good his access at the appointed time boasts that he has been on good social terms with Jesus, sitting even at the same table and showing at least a tepid friendship ; 200 THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL " We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence." When Jesus was persecuted by others this belated suppHant claims that he at least was tolerant of the gospel message : " Thou hast taught in our streets." But the basis for salvation is not laid down in a policy of sufferance. The man who is outside the door lacked genuine sympathy with Jesus, showed no common consciousness, no comradeship in the strife against evil. Such is the penalty which alights upon the languid and belated seeker of salvation. The note of the temper which enters into salvation is promptness. Do it now and lay aside the habit of peering into the destinies of others, like a theolo- gical crystal-gazer. He is no wrestler who is content to trust himself to the chances of the morrow. To-morrow is far more likely to be as Jesus pictures it, rather than as the man imagines who does not press at once into the kingdom. We care more for physical health than for the deathless soul. A doctor was recently recom- mending that diagrams of microbes should be painted as big as wolves and tigers, and put up for the contemplation of children in elementary schools. The new generation ought to be indoc- trinated with a wholesome fear of epidemics and made to watch against the daily peril of infection. There would be a tremendous outcry if the modern preacher were to warn men by such vivid methods of the wrath to come. And yet Jesus drew very solemn and startling pictures to hang before the eyes of the crowd. The present-day pursuit of salvation lacks earnest- ness, and in this respect at least is aloof from the thought which possessed the mind of the great THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL 201 Teacher. There is so much good in human nature that the bad side of it, with its attendant perils, scarcely need come into the reckoning. " Easy all " is the word from many a pulpit caught up and echoed by the heedless outside crowd. Religion is no longer a quest for escape from a tremendous jeopardy, but a seventh-day task for the early morning, to be followed by golf, motoring, or a whiff of the sea on a pleasure-yacht, if a man can afford it. Such an order of life has nothing in common with that marked out by the Lord for His disciples. The intense concentrated struggle to which He urged men, is commensurate with His own forecasts and premonitions of judgment. The Church has no such disquieting belief in retribution nowadays, or holds it as an esoteric doctrine to be kept out of view. The wrath to come is what no one fears, least of all the infatuated creatures, who are in a welter of elementary animalism. Readjustments of the language used by our forefathers may have been necessary, but the readjustments have been made to rest upon such vague and indirect inferences that the average man looks upon the entire subject as flimsy and speculative. To work out our salvation with fear and trembling is foreign to the spirit of the times. We must appeal to the nobler motives of the gospel. But the difficulty is that the tendencies of the times are, in many cases, against these nobler motives, and that there are multitudes needing the spur of fear who cherish the traditions of a roseate gospel, which has not the slightest influence over them. They hold nothing which would incline them to make the quest of salvation the grave and all-important subject which Jesus accounts it in this 202 THE STRENUOUS GOSPEL discourse. Our view of the future has nothing in common with His, or we should think more seriously of His idea of a narrow door, entered by struggle. A few years ago, on a keen, bitter winter's night, a vessel went down on our East coast, in sight of land, and scarcely a survivor was left to tell the tale. The reason assigned for the disaster was that in the wet, freezing night, the ropes had become rigid as bars of steel, and would not run through the blocks and pulleys, when an attempt was made to lower the boats. God's processes of salvation cannot work themselves out within us when every fibre of the temper is rigid and all the functions of the religious nature are choked with ice. We can only be saved by zealous and concentrated struggle. The Lord comes to preach and to justify hope to the children of men ; but only to those in whom there is kindled fervour and consuming earnestness. XI THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATIOX " He shall glorify Me." — John xvi. 14. These words were spoken when our Lord was on the brink of His nethermost shame. Whilst their accents still lingered in the air, the official repre- sentatives of a temple, in which His Father was still worshipped, were taking the last steps of the plot they had contrived for His overthrow. He was going forth to become the butt for Jewish scorn and Gentile cruelty. Such a prospect might have blotted out all His hopes had He been such as we are. And yet this dark and bitter ignominy brought no misgivings, for a startling revolution was at hand. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon men was destined to effect tremen- dous changes, through which the blind, impious, criminal multitudes with their leaders, who now set Him at nought, should be transformed into adoring believers. The movement within human souls set up by the incoming breath of God, would endow them with new perceptions and entirely change the old view-point. Earth, no less than heaven, would soon 203 204 "I'HE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION become a sphere in which He would be crowned with strange honour. In scenes of blackest discourage- ment He maintained, what we so often lack, faith in the sufficiency of the Spirit to put the facts of His life and death in a new light, and make His name high above every name. Meek and lowly in spirit and speech. He had never sought to magnify Himself Again and again He refused openly to announce His Messianic office, and limited Himself to brief hints concerning the nature of the work He was sent to do. But in this last hour He ventures to say that, even here upon earth, a day of honour is about to dawn, sure as the day of His triumphal entry into heaven. For a moment only, in the strange chronicles of human history, was he in disesteem and contempt ; but for many ages He should be encompassed with praise to the glory of the Father and for the uplifting of mankind. The splendour of the great coronation in heaven was soon to reflect itself through all earthly kingdoms, and that splendour was to be the unfading light of a new dispensation. This confidence was bound up with the sure ministry of the Spirit within all human souls. In a temper of pathetic trust He committed all things to that Divine kinsman who should hereafter vindi- cate His name and set forth His power and immortal sovereignty. This declaration vouchsafes some gleam of insight into the mysterious relations existing within the God- head. Each sharer of the Triune life can seek His Fellow's honour, without falling into the fault de- nounced by Jesus Christ, of seeking his own praise. The Son exalts not Himself, but through- out His life of humiliation upon earth is exalted THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 205 and magnified by the witness of the Father, and the work of the Spirit in the congregation of the faithful continues the work of the Father. We sometimes think of the throne of God and of the Lamb in heaven, encircled by the songs of redeemed hosts, as though that were the only place where meet honour is paid to His name ; but the heart opened to the approaches of the Spirit on earth is a meaner, though no less true, shrine, where great tributes of homage are rendered. In consecrating our souls as spheres for the ministry of Him whose work is to glorify Christ, we echo the honour Jesus receives at the right hand of the Father, and the Spirit through us pays honour to the majesty of the Son. It is to the glory of One who was once despised and rejected, and who hung upon a cross, that the Comforter renews and sanctifies successive genera- tions of disciples. The reverence we accord to Jesus Christ is no uncertain test of our baptism into the power of the Spirit, and illustrates the stage reached by His sacred illuminations within the soul. Is there a revelation of Jesus by the Spirit, uplift- ing and energising our ideas of His work and person, distinct from that which is purely historic ? Was not Jesus sufficiently vindicated and extolled by the four- fold portraiture of His life, character, and achievement presented in the Gospels ? Does the ministry of the Spirit add anything to the impression received through the story of His oft-repeated miracles, the Transfigura- tion on the Mount, and the Resurrection from the dead? The Gospels certainly show us the glory of God's Son, and give signs and assurances that he is en- throned at the right hand of power as a royal Mediator for sinful men. But the Epistles put us in 2o6 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION possession of a more mature view, and in these exalted conceptions the work of the Spirit, foretold by Jesus, reflects itself He who brought all things to the remembrance of the apostles glorified the Son with ever-growing clearness in the earlier and later portions of the inspired Word. But side by side with the inspiration of the apostles a process of illumination was going on in the multitudes of believers, and is still continued, which fulfilled this promise. Such test-axioms as " No man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Ghost/' and " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God " must be traced back to these words of the departing Lord. The work of the Spirit, of course, implies that these widespread and perpetual revelations have, as their basis and starting-point, the substance of a historic personality. It is no subjective creation in mid-air which the Spirit is sent to achieve. His ministry does not merely precipitate into concrete form holy dreams which visited a group of Galilean mystics. The Spirit developes within men new senses, whereby they see the glory of Jesus upon the earth, claimed as the domain of His redemptive power. He founded a new doctrine of the God-Man by enlarging the range of spiritual perception in His followers. He who teaches me to see the more subtle and delicate qualities in a noble painting puts new honour upon the artist and enlarges the circle of his admirers. We all know the name of the man who discovered Scotland, and by his rare romances peopled with scenes of heroism and chivalry, its lochs and rivers, its mountains and moors. After Walter Scott had THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 207 written, no one could speak of the country in the disdainful tones assumed by Samuel Johnson, for that master of modern romance had shed a new glory upon bleakest landscapes. We have read of the skill with which patient, large-hearted educationists have trained poor souls afflicted with the triple loss of speech, hearing, and sight, and by addressing the one sur- viving sense of touch have brought the soul out of its dungeon and made it free of the world. Such ill- fated beings have at last been able to tell by a psychic instinct how many people were present in a room, to discriminate dispositions, and to know themselves in a realm ^peopled with throbbing personalities and not by mere moving forms and shapes. They have learned something of the glory of the world, have acquired the love of flowers, and have developed a taste for precious stones, jewellery, and the beautiful things which adorn civilised life. Their instructors have changed the world from a monotonous prison-house into a glowing and opulent mansion. If they have not created new senses they have taught new uses of the one surviving sense of touch. And the Spirit brings men into realms, from which they were once debarred, where they acquire a new sense of moral values. He glorifies Christ by revolu- tionising past estimates and bringing home to the conscience and the heart His incomparable worth. The process is complementary to the worship Jesus receives at the right hand of power : and perhaps it is just as grateful to His heart. The first step in the work of the Spirit was to put upon the human character of Jesus Christ a halo of matchless glory. He dispelled with a swift magic, the ignominy of the Cross, and made the spiritual excel- 2o8 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION lence manifested by its meek, unselfish victim the new ideal of the human race. To bring this to pass was not the whole of the work assigned to the Spirit, but it was a most wonderful thing, the full significance of which is not easy to grasp. Jesus had been rejected by men who belonged to the most enlightened and religious race of the world, and put to death with every mark of obloquy, because a claim he had ad- vanced seemed at the first glance to conflict with one of their foundation dogmas. The multitudes were blinded by deference to a biassed judgment of their unscrupulous leaders, just as we are sometimes mis- led by rash verdicts upon men and nations pro- mulgated through a mercenary press. And yet within a few decades the judges were judged, and the reversal of the sentence had become all but world-wide. The man crucified between two thieves, as though he were the ringleader of a miscreant band, rose to be accepted as a pattern of perfect and un- blemished holiness. Not to overstate the question, at the present time he is recognised in both hemi- spheres as the Catholic example of what humanity should be, the matchless flower of all its virtues. No other teacher so entirely harmonised high theory with the uncompromising daily practice of the best he could conceive. The fine ethic taught by some representative leaders is a product of the imagination, for they dreamed nobler things than they could materialise into the normal habits of their imperfect age. It was otherwise with Jesus, for He drew His ethic from the fibres of His own essential life, and it borrowed neither outline nor colour from an over- strained intellectual art. Wherever there is a man in whom the best moral aspirations have been aroused, THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 209 that man wants to imitate this subHme Jewish out- cast. When a poet or a statesman becomes famous, his admirers set themselves to copy what is adven- titious, affecting even the same fashions in dress and flowers. But before many years have run their course, such trivial mimicries droop and die, becoming in due time the jest of the biographer. For centuries serious moralists have felt that they could do nothing better than catch the spirit of Jesus ; and the spell of his fascination has not yet spent itself His spirit and behaviour, his purpose, method, and programme have been accepted as of culminating excellence. Not for the Jew only, but for every leading race of man He has become the supreme pattern of conduct. And this in itself involves an amazing revolution. Not only has His character been rescued from the reproach which foes sought to cast upon it, but it has become accepted as a sovereign ideal, and the natures most embruted are often constrained to feel its mystic attraction. We might quote many examples of the revised judgments which have taken place in history, but this does not belong to the secular category, for such revisions are often slow in taking place, and have to wait till many a prejudiced generation has died out. The change in the temper of the crowd was sudden as the veering round of the wind in a magnetic storm. Within a few days of His death, and in the very city where he had been put to un- deserved shame, the conversion of public opinion came. It was but the first step in the patient, long- continued work of the Spirit, but this outpoured gift placed Jesus high above the saints and prophets of His race. Whilst a hundred and twenty men and 15 210 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION women were praying in a private house the rushing wind came. Three thousand were pricked to the heart as Peter preached, and this fair name was cleansed from its momentary reproach in the tears of penitent persecutors. From that day to this the work of the Spirit has been growing through wider areas of population, and has given to Jesus the fore- most place in the reverence of the race. He is surely enthroned in the higher consciousness of the nations as the one pattern of goodness, and through the long centuries, no rival has appeared. The moral sense of an evil generation has been rectified from its grosser errors and obliquities, and the fulfilment of the word began, and still continues, " He shall glorify Me." What a vast change triumphantly achieved and with incredible swiftness ! The next step in the Spirit's work for Christ was to shed light upon the dark, deep meanings of the Cross. By His inward illumination. He not only took away every trace of scandal from the tree to which Jesus was nailed, but demonstrated the power of the death endured there to accomplish what no sacrifice, however heroic, had hitherto wrought. The Cross was no sickening fatality, no repulsive miscarriage of justice, no new martyrdom, exceeding all its pre- decessors in painful inscrutability. It was bound to take on a redemptive significance, or to stand as a grim, age-long monument of the anarchies of a God- forsaken history. Over the apse of an old cathedral in Normandy a rough cross of wood is hung, behind which looms a window of solemn blues and purples. If a stranger enters the place as the shadows of night close in the custodian suddenly turns on the electric light, and THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 21 i the outlines of the dreaded tree are studded with glittering stars. The ancient instrument of ignominy and torture is made to shine through the shadows like a matchless constellation of the firmament. In a far higher sphere such a transformation was wrought before the awe-struck gaze of the world. The symbol of infamy and shame, where the rejected Messiah hung in the blackness of a preternatural eclipse, suddenly shone forth as a token of redemption. Divine glories radiated from the tree to which He was nailed, and drew to His matchless sacrifice, the wonder, the worship, and the trust of the world. It is the illumination of the Spirit which changes the weird spectacle of the desolate night, and glorifies Christ in the crisis of His uttermost reproach and tribulation. The moral attributes that there clothed Him outshone the mighty natural attributes men had hitherto associated with the Godhead. Before the Pentecost the Cross was a gibbet, at which the beholder stumbled in the darkness ; but when the day of the great outpouring was fully come the gibbet became an altar-stair by which men rose into the beatific presence. Not only did the Spirit vindicate the suffering Son against every allegation of guilt or moral heresy, but by the creation of a new order of experience wherever the Cross was preached, he proved that this death had in it a power to dispel the condemnations stifling the soul, and to cleanse the conscience from every spot cleaving to it. Such a fact was without parallel, and the sufferings of Christ became indissolubly linked with the glory that was to follow. How did this doctrine of reconciliation, so closely identified with the glory of our Lord's person arise ? 212 1'HE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION Were those upon whom the truth first dawned led through an experience of salvation, to infer the pro- pitiatory power of the Cross ; or did they first accept a specific and formulated article of faith and so reach that life of trust upon which the Spirit afterwards put his seal ? In other words, did the experience come first and produce the doctrine ; or did the doctrine come first and produce the experience ? Perhaps the two processes were more or less coincident and com- bined. For the apostles themselves and all after believers, the disencumbered conscience held the substance of an evangel. This work of the Spirit, through which the motive of the Passion was illuminated, gathered up into itself many factors. The Spirit brought back to mind the words of Jesus, who had said the Scriptures testified that He must needs suffer. New light began at the same time to dawn upon the typical sacrifices of the temple, whereby ritual expiation of offences had been made. And, above all, the superhuman life of Jesus, ending in such incongruous and abysmal pain, cried out for an interpetation of commensurate significance and solemnity. But the world would have had no Christian doctrine of atonement apart from the sin-convincing work of the Spirit at the Pentecost. The sense of guilt aroused by His witness within the conscience- smitten multitudes made them realise that a Divine sacrifice was necessary for the putting away of trans- gression. The cry of the soul, haunted with a sense of its own misdeeds, was met through those pacifying inspirations which gave new insight into the character, majestic personality, and sacrificial work of Jesus. That the Lord Himself said so little about the THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 213 meaning of His own death need be no surprise to us, for the work of interpretation was reserved to the Spirit who glorified Christ. It was the crowning distinction of His ministry to set forth the Saviour's redeeming love and power. Through his Pentecostal movement upon the soul and through all the forces emanating from His after-ministry in the world, He transformed a tragedy into a gospel. To the dis- ciples, as well as to the contrite multitudes, there came a simultaneous discovery of the deeper in- tention, the soul-hallowing virtue, the mediating power of a death which had hitherto been a soul- paralysing offence. Other deaths divide, pre-emi- nently deaths of violence, but this had within its mysteries a secret of reconciliation. The mortal frailty of our Lord's flesh was shown to be the sub- lime and final revelation of the love of God. The Spirit could put no higher glory upon Jesus than to show that His holy attributes gave a world- redeeming efficacy to an ignominious Cross. The Spirit glorifies the Son by opening up, to the Church on earth, visions of His high estate at the right hand of power. When Jesus was still standing on Olivet, awaiting His final call into the Father's presence, He spake yet again to the disciples of the coming of the Holy Ghost. This inward ministry was to bring to their knowledge things not to be seen through eyes of flesh, as they stood gazing into heaven. The upper room proved itself a nobler vantage-ground, for, through its baptisms, there came to the disciples and their comrades, a larger apocalypse and a more penetrating insight into the heavenly sanctuary than could be obtained from the ridge of a hill, made sacred by His footsteps. On 214 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION the wings of that uplifting inspiration they rose into the heavenly places, and learned the power of their Master's work as Priest and King. Through the Spirit of revelation in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, they felt and knew that their Friend was possessed of all authority in heaven, as well as on earth, that His saving sovereignty was unlimited, and that He was indeed co-partner with the Eternal Himself The vision was the proof that He had power in heaven to forgive sins, as the miracle in bygone days had been the sign of His power on earth. This new sense of His prerogatives cast a retrospective light upon His sacrifice, showing that within it there were Divine qualities which made it a sure ground for the for- giveness of human sin. The life within the disciples became linked with the life before the throne, and every rich and varied gift of the Spirit, so freely bestowed, became a new sign in which they read the message of their Lord's enthronement on high. The holy forces seizing on human hearts and subduing them to better things emanated from the presence within the veil. Release from fierce, tormenting soul-bondage, a note of the acceptable year of the Lord to those who welcomed the gospel, was the earthly complement to His heavenly kingship. His advocacy was mighty as in the days of old and His intercessions as fruitful. Every new aspect of the salvation, into which disciples entered through faith, linked itself with the dominion of Jesus in the heavens. The Spirit, by bearing witness within human hearts on earth to the efficacious and redeem- ing ministry within the veil, reaffirmed day by day the fact of His triumphal ascension. His revelations suffused with the transfiguration of a supernal light THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 215 the cross, the mediatorial throne, and the Church amongst men, within which His spiritual presence still tarried. The glory of Jesus, set forth on earth by the ever-present Spirit, was sometimes seen in visible symbols of His exalted sovereignty. It is instructive to remember that the men who had the clearest visions of the transfigured Lord were said to be " filled with the Holy Ghost." Stephen saw the radiant humanity of Jesus through sense-perceptions, which had been exalted into ecstasy. Perhaps the words spoken by Jesus before this same council, had shaped and coloured the high fulfilments this disciple perceived in the hour of His martyrdom. This vision of Jesus, at the right hand of power, may have been the keynote of the language after- ward used in some of St. Paul's Epistles. It was when John was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day that he saw Jesus in kingly vestments, with a countenance like the sun shining in His strength — a Jesus sceptred, many-crowned, and with a dominion growing in spite of persecuting Caesars on the throne at Rome and the shadows of war, famine, pestilence sweeping over the face of the nations, like storm-rack from the abysses of destruction. Amidst these portentous scenes the Spirit was vindicating the power and majesty of the Son. It is not necessary to assume that the Divine glory of Jesus, made known to the early dis- ciples by the Spirit, was always visualised into pictures. Within the consciousness of the common believer there was a sure and unassailable sense of the power of the triumphant Christ, and all spiritual life was an expression of it. That was enough. 2i6 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION Every step of progress was a witness to His re- demptive sovereignty. Tlie glory of prevailing prayer was the effulgence of Him in whose name the Spirit prompted men to offer it. The sanctities which beautify the Church, in the successive gene- rations of its history, speak of His name and inward dominion. The good and perfect gifts divided to men by the will of the Spirit, came down from above, stamped as the largess of a Son who, having led captivity captive, passed beyond earthly humili- ations. The Church on earth, in which the Spirit dwells, perpetuates His tenderness, succour, boundless charities, and Jesus lacks His due honour apart from these glorifying inspirations. It is not by the wealth of sacred fanes, not by the radiance of art, not by the gold of Ophir or the gifts of kings that He is honoured, but by that inward homage won for His name by the transforming Spirit. When every knee shall bow, it will be not by imperial edicts, or the mandate of states, but through this all-subduing, inward ministry. We see His glory as did Esaias, a glory which is filling heaven and earth, and the minister of the illuminating revelation is the Spirit. Those who find in Jesus the chief of the world's saints, a Prince of teachers, the best of reformers, a sublime personality, but lacking a Divine crown, are not like John in Patmos suffused with the influences of that Spirit whose mission it is to glorify Christ. Our Lord looked upon the souls of all future be- lievers as the special sphere within which He should be glorified by the Comforter. It was not only through the doctrine of His work and person, formu- lated by future leaders of the Church, that He was to be raised into an object of faith and adoration, nor THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 217 by the outward homage won to His name through the testimony of others. The doctrine of His person and work asserts itself anew, and is sealed afresh, in all evangelical experience. The Spirit magnifies His name wherever there is a docile and contrite soul, and at all times. It is not sufficient for the man, within whose mind some unredressed wrong rankles, to see the glory of the British throne reflected in the crown-jewels, so jealously guarded within the Tower of London. The victim of an incurable disease finds little glory in the Coronation procession, of which he catches glimpses from the balcony of a hospital. It is not enough that the British subject, who has been misjudged and cast into a foul foreign jail, should be shown a photographic reproduction of the great Charter, signed at Runnymede, which secures our liberties. That is to mock his misery and bring the realm of which he is a subject into contempt. The power which is sworn to uphold the Charter and keep it from becoming a dead letter, must show itself strong to remove the outrage. The true splendour of the throne is not seen in pageants and durbars. These are only symbols. The glory of Christ as a Saviour does not depend upon the circles of light painters put about His head, nor upon the hymns poets sing in His praise, nor upon the marble shrines dedicated to His honour, but upon the fresh unveiling of His power to successive generations of men ; and with this work the Eternal Spirit is charged. It is needful that this tribute to Christ's power and majesty should be paid within each single soul, and that His redeeming sovereignty should be shown wherever a stain of <7uilt eats itself 2i8 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION into the conscience or an evil habit impoverishes the Hfe. Just as the Son was sent to do the will of the Father, and further His purposes of grace, so also is the Spirit sent to continue by His un- w^earied activities the mission of the Son, and to make Him known in the experiences of the age- long Church. It is His vocation to clear the Son from the aspersions cast upon Him by the princes of this world, and to put immortal honour upon the work they had set themselves to frustrate and destroy. In such a vocation the Spirit cannot fail. The new filial consciousness, with all its sure consolations, is a part of the experience created by the Spirit to the glory of the Son. It is from this standpoint that the high privilege of the believer must be judged, for the witness of the Spirit in the heart gathers up and expresses a tribute, not to a lost and recovered merit of human nature, but to an honour pertaining to Him who has entered the soul to redeem and sanctify by His indwelling grace. The certainties of salvation, which root themselves in the man who is united to Christ, are derided as though they were the products of ex- travagance and spiritual pride ; but the assurance which frail, contrite offenders receive as the children of God, is no homage paid to their personal worth, but a reiteration, in new form, of the homage received by the well-beloved Son, in whom the Father is ever pleased. It is quite true that they are not good enough, of themselves, to enjoy a distinction which separates them from their fellow- sinners in the world, for they have gone astray and have forfeited the signet-ring as others. The inward and soul-gladdening persuasion of which THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 219 they speak, is undeserved, and belongs to the honour of Him who fulfilled all righteousness, and who is repeating His work within those who, through His transcendent merits, are made heirs of all things. That to which the Spirit bears witness, when He brings the sense of sure salvation, is the virtue of the one solitary sacrifice, and the power of His ever-present love to comfort and transform. The possibility of assurance must be determined by the question. Is Jesus thus magnified through the Spirit who conveys the gift, and guards the mind in its possession? It is inconceivable that such a witness should be given to the man who, in his own unaided strength, has risen highest in the scale of moral attainment. If it be clear that this gift is bestowed in honour of the Son, to withhold it is not to humble human nature by keeping alive the remembrance of its failure, but to prolong, beyond its appointed time, the humiliation of Jesus Christ. To impugn a sincere believer's pos- session of this gift is to obscure the reflected light of the Lord's glory, at the right hand of power. Assurance claims to be neither more nor less than a sign of the consummate perfection of Christ's work within the heart which receives Him. By His redemptive ministry He not only frees from guilt and wrath, but brings a sense of restored son- ship within the compass of human experience ; and in setting this forth the Spirit honours the first-born Son. It could not be to the glory of Christ to keep in doubt, misgiving, tormenting fear, those incorporated into His fellowship. The appointed work of the Spirit in glorifying Christ gives us the standard of reckoning by which 220 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION the possibilities of human character must be judged. Can the power of Christ be so magnified in these struggh'ng, oft-thwarted, dust-soiled lives that we may become without spot or blemish ? The loftiest altitude to which men may ascend under such economies is not some paltry mean between the weakness of the flesh and the capacities of the re- newed soul, in which nature and grace seem to find a working compromise. Our Lord is glori- fied when His image is so reflected in us that the world can trace the kinship. It is not as a palliative of imperfection that His righteousness is imputed to us, but as a final pattern of spirit and behaviour. When we say that liberty from wilful sin is impossible to those who are weighted by the infirmities of the flesh, we put a limit to the work of the Spirit in extolling and upholding the moral sovereignty of Jesus Christ in the hearts of His people. The ministry of the Spirit, to the honour of the Master's name, must surely bring to an end our persistent blemishes. The glory of the sun, with all the tremulous magic concealed within his encircling rays, cannot by any chance assert itself in the thick, sickening denseness of a London fog. The atmosphere must be cleansed by wind and rain, its impurities precipitated, the defilements with which it is charged driven away, before rain- bows will begin to shape themselves to the vision. And the whole atmosphere of human life must be organically changed and sweetened, the darkness that cleaves to us must be chased, the impurities we breathe must be got rid of, before the transfiguration splendour of the Son of God can appear in the Churches ; and Jesus is glorified when the subtle THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION 221 environment of the personality is renewed by the work of the Spirit. Paul speaks of his comrades in the service of the gospel as " the messengers of the Churches and the glory of Christ." The Spirit had made the evangelists a new creation, and had so sensibly sanctified them to their sacred missions that they mirrored Jesus Christ in their unselfish lives, thus constraining men to confess the power of the ascended King and to magnify His name. In the sufferings and faithful deaths of the disciples, the Spirit consummates His work of glorify- ing Jesus upon earth. He who can devise new methods of mitigating pain, or of lengthening by a few short years the span of life upon earth, is always greeted with acclaim and crowned with the best honour a grateful generation can offer. The Spirit of revelation, in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, makes men masters of pain and death. If the Saviour, who is extolled by these inward interpreta- tions, invented no anodyne. He brought compensations which "still outweigh the heaviest affliction. If He does not at once abolish the cross, he links it with an incorruptible crown. If He does not at once bring to His followers the promise of a translation, akin to that of Enoch or Elijah, He makes men who know the best joy of living to realise that to die is gain, — a persuasion to which hitherto the most virtuous men have been strangers. In this Jesus stands alone, and vindicates His name on earth as the only-begotten of His Father, the author of benign destinies which lie beyond the grave. " Most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities," exclaimed the apostle, " that the power of Christ may rest upon me." The Man of Sorrows trans- 222 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION figured the sorrow which beset the fainting flesh, fostered a new order of heroism in human Hfe, and taught a rare secret of triumph in death ; and this through the Spirit, who blends with mortal frailty the genius of an ever-living and victorious personality. The glory of Jesus came down to change a scene of brutal violence and blood, and put a celestial sky over the sinking form of Stephen, for he was a man " full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost." A sufferer, without such illumination, would have been absorbed by his own undeserved distress, but this sufferer outside the gates, saw the victim of an earlier tragedy standing in light and majesty at the right hand of God. Hence- forth patience, meekness, fortitude, fidelity became irradiated with new dignity, for the Son of Man Himself was glorified before the eyes of those to whom the Spirit, through these manifold graces, was ever unveiling His presence. In every death- scene, from which fear is dispelled, Jesus is manifested as the Conqueror who has destroyed the power of death, and the Spirit in His name continues the victory through all generations. It is true saints are sometimes depressed by the shadows of the falling night, and the last scene is not always one of spiritual transport, but Jesus is glorified wherever the Spirit shows through the solemn gloom, however dimly, the fair form of Him who holds the keys to every prison-house. The apostle desired to glorify Jesus by his death, and such an end is possible to all men through the Spirit, whose unfailing comforts add new splendour to Christ's name. How futile it is to ask from men the homage due to Jesus Christ till the Spirit comes into their hearts ! The vision of our Lord crowned with glory THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION and honour, together with all the evangelical ex- periences of which it is the keynote, is a fruit of the Pentecost in whose encircling influences every man must receive his baptism. We may press upon a neighbour's acceptance dogmatic creeds of unim- peachable soundness, and preach the authority of the Church ; we may use our best intelligence in clearing away the stumbling-blocks, which sometimes obstruct the path of the understanding ; we may free the channels of the reason from the misconceptions by which they are clogged ; but till the mystic Spirit broods over the chaos men can only know Christ after the flesh. It needed a Divine afflatus to enable the contemporaries of the apostles to rise higher than the mass of their unbelieving neighbours. In the sanctified heart a mirror is fixed which reflects the power, majesty, and worship of Jesus in heaven. The most highly burnished and costly mirror will not reflect if it is shut up in a darkened room. Cultivate the open mind. Hail the uprising of the Spirit within. Be accessible to His finer methods of revelation. Greet with genial response the successive disclosures of grace and power. It is by the Spirit Jesus is glori- fied, and we can only honour our King aright if His unseen interpreter is within us. We are dependent upon this ethereal breath from the unseen, which may sometimes stream unawares into the soul ; and we must extol the Spirit, so that we may have power to extol the Christ He brings to us. It was because John was "in the Spirit on the Lord's day" that those sublime apocalypses visited his rapt mind which had for the centre of their interest the Lamb and His redeeming exploits. 224 THE MINISTRY OF VINDICATION And when our minds are absorbed by the strange influences which touch us, we shall see visions, more or less clear, of the celestial transfiguration. In the early pages of the Apocalypse the Spirit appears under the symbol of the seven lamps of fire, but the symbol fades from the later pages, for the Spirit passes into the life of the Churches on earth and becomes the hidden spring of the faith and worship they offer to the Son. Let us confess our dependence on these fine, ever-present inward ministries, for we cannot honour the Son if the Spirit be grieved or withdraw His influence from our hearts. Where He is not, men inevitably do less than justice to the character, work, and high estate of the Lord who ransomed them, accounting the blood by which they are sanctified a common thing. XII THE NEW IMMORTALITY " Who abolished death and brought Hfc and incorriiption to light by the gospel." — 2 Tim. i. 10. The doctrine of human immortality is the common heritage of all races. It is widely diffused as the atmosphere, and perhaps no tribe, however rude in civilisation and secluded from the rest of the world, has been quite destitute of the belief in it. It is true that, here and there, an individual may reject it, just as he may mistrust some of the less tangible in- fluences which are knit into the scheme of nature, but it has its roots in a primal instinct, and no community or nation has ever been possessed by the temper which denies the unseen life. And yet there is a sense in which the deep, abiding essentials of the belief were created by Jesus Christ, or at least brought into view by His work, witness, and personal history. No critical reader of the Old Testament Scriptures can be blind to the fact that down to the times of the prophets the doctrine is treated with a curious reserve, if, indeed, it is not passed by in silence. From this 16 226 THE NEW IMMORTALITY reserve it has been argued that the Bible does not recognise the natural or inherent immortality of the human soul. The term " natural," or " inherent im- mortality," however, belongs to an order of ideas concerning the universe which has been obsolete for the last half-century, and the argument is worthless. Life is the continuous gift of an immanent God, and not constructed by an artificer once for all, like a piece of mechanism, and left to run on by itself with {q\v interventions for readjustment, till at last the framework which holds it is worn out by friction. The life which is an ever-repeated gift from Him who only hath immortality may be as unconditional as the life which is presumed to have in the quality of its natural faculties an undefineable guarantee of endlessness. The patriarchs fulfilled their appointed courses and died placid, unfretful deaths with an unabated faith in the Covenant God of their race, attempting no guess whatever at the severe mystery of the beyond — the best thing they could do under the circum- stances, and, indeed, the only thing. It is not for us to say how much faith in the hereafter was implicit in this imperturbable temper of soul. Those portions of the Pentateuch still ascribed, by all but the most destructive critics, to the authorship of Moses make no reference to the grave subject with which human thought had everywhere busied itself In the fragmentary teachings which have come down to us from the lips or the pen of the great lawgiver no attempt is made to lift the veil, and yet in the days of his sojourn in Egypt he must have been familiar not only with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, but with that also of the resurrection of THE NEW IMMORTALITY 227 the body — a tenet much more limited in the field of its acceptance. Why this strange and studied reticence? If the grotesque forms in which the doctrine was held by idolatrous nations repelled the higher instincts and sensibilities of the inspired founder of the Jewish commonwealth, he might surely have revised these momentous truths and have expli- citly authorised a better and a more intelligent faith. The true answer is probably that suggested by Dr. Charles in his instructive book on "Eschatology." A clear, well-defined faith in God and a true appre- hension of His nature must precede a just and a reasonable faith in human immortality. It does not need any wide or minute survey of the religions of the ancient world to show that the doctrine of immortality was in sad need of recon- struction, and that the reconstruction could only come through a radical improvement in the world's ideas concerning God. The primeval belief had assumed grotesque and extravagant forms which distressed the imagination and at the same time involved sinister reflections upon the supreme power and goodness of God. In ancient Egypt the immortality of the soul and its reunion with the body in a future resurrection were made contingent upon the preservation of the fleshly form from corruption by the art of the embalmer. Personal immortality was not thought of as the immediate gift of an infinite Being, from whose fiat life, in all its types and gradations, issued, but as conditioned in part by the skill of the physician, whose work preserved skin and bone from dissolution. The primitive races of the Nile valley must have held in some rough, crude way 228 THE NEW IMMORTALITY the theory of the modern materiaHst that all thought and feeling depend upon physical structures and that mind is disabled, if not annihilated, when sundered from the material form through which it has been accustomed to operate. If the bodily shape is lost the " Ka," or spirit, with which it has been identified, must pass into final oblivion. Such ideas disparage the power of the Almighty God and deprive Him of His unlimited sovereignty over all life. To rectify such superstitions it was needful to bring before the mind thoughts of the Eternal, who hath immortality in Himself and who can impart the gift to body or mind from His own fulness, according to the good pleasure of His will. The Assyriologist tells us that amongst the earliest populations of the Mesopotamian plains, the state of the dead was conceived of in pictures which were full of gloom and profound distress. For virtuous and degraded alike the underworld was wrapped about in thick darkness and dominated by universal pain. The possibility of reaching a state of spiritual beatitude there had scarcely entered into the dream of the men who founded those imposing civilisations. Perhaps the ruthless warriors who moulded the strong, primitive empires transferred to this mysterious hereafter the shadow of their own misdoing upon earth. Men of blood, drunk with the fanaticism of the sword, made many and cruel gods after their own likeness, and the most implacable of these truculent, blight-breathing gods swayed sceptres of dominion in the underworlds. Neither the Semite nor any other branch of the human race could have a right conception of the life beyond the grave till he had learned to worship a holy, a THE NEW IMMORTALITY 229 righteous, a humane God, who swayed His sceptre of dominion over all worlds. Such affrighting ideas received their death-blow when John saw in the hands of the gracious and triumphant Son of Man the keys of the grave and the underworld. And in subsequent centuries this weird Babylonian view of immortality projected its glooms into the religions of India and the Far East, as well as into those of Greece and Rome. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls, with many purgatories inter- posed between each rebirth, spread far and near, filling the popular imagination with endless, appall- ing dramas of changing destiny. In the absence of a benign, personal, supreme God the scheme of retribution became a rigid revolving mechanism of steel, from which all possibilities of pity and forgive- ness were excluded. To a solitary hero or moralist once in a century, death might mean gain, if the doctrine of reward and punishment should prove itself true ; but for the many there was no outlook from death towards a land of promise but the descent into inevitable woe. Immortality under such condi- tions was a fate to be shunned rather than a prospect which could attract and allure. And the sense of sin, when it became strong within the human con- science, seemed to give verisimilitude to these pre- vailing views of the life after death. Such a burden did this idea of countless, ever-revolving epochs of penalised existence, which was the old substitute for immortality become, that men began to look upon endless being as an infinite curse and aspire after a dreamless quiescence which should effect a release by dissolving the normal consciousness. New ideas had to be put at the roots of this belief in the 230 THE NEW IMMORTALITY immortality of the soul before it could become a gospel with music in its accents. In our own time this doctrine of immortality, with no God of love and power behind and beneath it, which sickened the ancient world, is being preached anew by a group of spiritualists, who have renounced the Christian faith ; and some of us shudder at the message. A few years ago a book, by one of the leaders in psychic research, was published, called " The Survival of the Personality after Death." The chapters classify some of the more obscure processes of the human mind, furnish a new and ingenious vocabulary in mental science, and whilst inconclusive in argument, are of deep and inexhaustible interest. The atmosphere of the studies brought together envelopes and saturates the sensitive reader like a cold, clammy, depressing mist, and refuses to be dispersed. It produces continuous nightmare. The writer more than hints that human personality persists after death, and also finds itself in contact with kindred personalities, but at the same time does not acquire a higher consciousness of the sove- reign presence of God than men possess in the present world. When the veil of the flesh is removed, there is no access into a Divine sanctuary. This is a reversion to the old heathen notion of the after-life, rid perhaps of some of its grotesque- ness. Such a scheme of the unseen universe leaves death armed with its old terrors. What a horrible idea that as soon as we have crossed the mortal threshold a spirit-world awaits us, where, bereft of the presence and controlling providential sove- reignty of the Almighty God, we may find ourselves plunged into promiscuous communities of disem- THE NEW IMMORTALITY 231 bodied beings ! Imagine a pure, refined, sensitive human spirit, after its escape from the fleshy taber- nacle, jostled against the unclean spirits of Herod, Nero, Diocletian, Genghis Khan, Duke Alva, Spanish Inquisitors, Bashi Bazouks, Kurds, Cossacks, Chinese Boxers, and Indian Thugs whose religion was murder. The mere thought of the risks lurking in a for- tuitous immortality makes the blood run cold. We deprecate the unknown possibilities it involves and turn away with loathing. Immortality without God, the God made known by Jesus Christ, is abhorrent. When John was in Patmos, tasting the fury of the oppressor, he felt that the city of his inspired hopes must have a throne at its centre, with pro- tecting walls and guarded gates ; or the heavenly Jerusalem would be no better than Pagan Rome. It is no comfort for us to keep the belief in personal immortality if we have to give up God. Unless He make ready the house for us, when we leave the fleshy tabernacle, death may prove an illimitable catastrophe. The doctrine of God needed its re- construction before men could be inspired with the hope of a glad and well-ordered immortality. The endless life is a burden of tremendous import, which we can take with confidence only from the hand of an Omnipotent Friend. We should be slow to welcome some gifts, if oflered to us, because we lack implicit confidence in the motive of the strangers who would fain bestow them. He who sits at the table of a treacherous savage suspects the hospitality which is lavished upon him, and tastes with fearfulness the outspread viands and the drink with which his cup is filled. Men have sometimes tempted with costly and seductive toys those whom they wished 232 THE NEW IMMORTALITY to ruin. In their mutual commerce, nations do not always exchange commodities which make for the stable happiness and prosperity of the people. The hand offered in apparent friendship and goodwill may hold within its grasp the secret of a fatal revenge. It is said that one of the Popes of the Middle Ages used to wear a ring, within which a deadly poison was concealed, and when he pressed it deeply into the flesh of a hand clasped within his own, it became a swift sentence of doom upon the man ostensibly honoured with this familiar courtesy. What kind of an immortality is it which is offered to us ? Whose is the hand stretched out in the dark- ness to tend it? Does Nature bestow immortality or God, because, according to some men's interpreta- tions. Nature is not always kind ? As a first step to the new unveiling of immortality we are told that Christ abolished death, or made it inoperative, as the words may be rendered. The preacher of a secular ethic asserts that death is a part of the natural order and ought to be faced with fortitude. x'\nd sometimes a man, not in anywise embruted by sin, meets it without a misgiving, and at the same time confesses no obligation to Jesus the Redeemer. We wonder at the calmness and good- humour with which Socrates drank his cup of hemlock and at the high mettle with which some men, not distinctively religious in spirit, face the end of life. We are amazed at the impassivity with which tens of thousands of Japanese throw away their lives in an outburst of loyalty and patriotism. Perhaps the courage of the man who is without a formulated Christian faith may be inspired by a vague sense of the benignity of the cosmic order, — a subconscious THE NEW IMMORTALITY 233 temper of mind which may contain not a little faith in solution. Death, it is said, was in the world before man came upon the scene, and he is woven into the same web with trees whose blossoms fade, with birds which perish in the cold, and with insects which die by myriads without a sign. But what may be normal in some kingdoms of nature becomes tragically abnormal to man when he acquires speech, reason, imagination, the instinct for the infinite, and awakes up to the grand fact that having been made in the image of God he stands in peculiarly intimate relations to the Eternal, and above all when he becomes haunted by the sense of sin. Leaves and flowers, birds and animals have presumably no guilty memories to harass and depress them. Sin puts a new aspect upon death and invests it with a portentous fatality in human fortunes. If unfallen man had been destined to pass through changes corresponding to physical death, his normal consciousness of God might have made such a crisis into a translation. A vague sense of sin bred the glooms and shrouding, terror-haunted shadows of the Babylonian underworld, and sin arms death with a noxious sting wherever a soul becomes burdened by a sense of demerit and transgression. Man might have died without any sign of trepidation or foreboding, if his animal sleep had continued un- broken. When rational beings find out how far they have gone in a downward path, the terror of death starts up within them, and is in no sense a creation of theology. The heir of immortality trembles at the thought of his inalienable heritage. But in re- deeming us Jesus took away the power of death. The Cross declared the truth of man's immortality, for 234 THE NEW IMMORTALITY if man had been one with the grass of the field Jesus would not have set himself, at such a cost, to remove a blight on the bloom of an hour. His holy passion inscribed a new value on human life. By destroying sin he changed a dark, soul-withering, wrathful under- world into a realm filled with peace, forgiveness, goodwill, and the fruits of righteousness. In speaking of the life and immortality brought to light by the gospel, the apostle does not limit his thought to the physical resurrection of our Lord, and the human destinies of which it was the earnest. He had in mind the deeper principles, which found their expression in that history. As far as he himself was concerned the substantial genuineness of the narratives admitted of no possible doubt. He was a personal witness, and had spoken face to face with others whose experiences were more complete than his own, for they had been with the Lord from the beginning. Men dispute the evidence to-day. In a temper which is not quite reasonable they ask for contemporary proof and corroboration, other than that offered by the disciples themselves. For such an unexampled miracle they demand more than the kind of evidence, which is enough to ratify salient events in the history of nations. To those who dispute the proofs furnished by the Evangelists, and confirmed by the unbroken faith of the early Churches, we cannot yield up our ground. Neither is it necessary for us, as devout believers to pass judgment upon the mode of the resurrection, or the special properties of the body which issued from the tomb. Theories of the resurrection are held at the present time, ranging through many shades, from the grossly corporeal which regards the crucified body THE NEW IMMORTALITY 235 as vivified in its identic substance to a tenuously spiritual, which verges on a denial of the place of the sepulchre in the story and the reality of the nail- prints. Some of these theories perhaps involve questions of philosophy which are not of the essence of faith. The disciple of Bishop Berkeley, who believes that the outward world is created by the percipiency of the mind itself, may have a perfectly valid faith in the resurrection ; whilst, of course, no one would think of doubting the orthodoxy of a noble Anglican theologian, the late Dr. Lathom, who, in his last book, suggests that the form assumed by the risen Lord had such properties that it passed through the textures of the grave-clothes and the napkin wound about the head, and left them un- disturbed. New theories of the ultimate atom, from which matter is built up, will affect the way in which the imagination conceives this subject. He who believes that chemical elements are combined from electrons must think of this problem in a way that may almost seem to verge upon the idea of a spiritual resurrection, for the grosser aspect of visibility is eliminated from the mind-picture. Per- haps Paul would not have debated such topics, since they involve the postulates of a philosophy, with which he refused to concern himself. His thoughts take us into depths which underlie each and all of the possible methods, by which the resurrection may have been brought to pass. Jesus Christ brought immortality to light by set- ting in the brightness of a cloudless noon, the faith- ful, unchanging, all-begetting and all-sustaining love upon which every order of finite life rests. His manifestation of the mysteries beyond the veil was 236 THE NEW IMMORTALITY closely identified with His manifestation of the Father Himself. His own incomparable Sonship, antedating as it did the sentient universe, was an infallible sign of the Infinite, Eternal love, and His days, in their inconceivable sum, were a record of blessed and unceasing recipiency from the primal fount of Being. The doctrine of personal immortality was inseparable from the sense our Lord possessed of His own complete Sonship. The Divine Father- hood, to which His filial consciousness was a perennial response, the mystery of mysteries without morning dawn or evening twilight, was an indestruc- tible pledge of His own endless life ; for if it had been otherwise the love, by which God named His own essential nature, began to be at some specific point of time, and was not from everlasting to everlasting. In bearing His unique witness to this love Jesus postu- lates an Eternal " I " and an Eternal " Thou." The first essential of the Divine nature is that it must love, and there can be no love without responsive and interacting personalities. Our own instinctive horror of continual solitude arises from the fact that it excludes love, and in a nature of eternal benignity there must be something which corresponds to this same instinct in us. And the personality of the Son, which could not be finally subject to death, includes and involves the indestructible personality of His followers. His own immortal life, visibly asserted in the resurrection from the dead, comprehended theirs in some humbler form. " Because I live ye shall live also." He demonstrated immortality by demonstrating the love of which He was the subject before the cosmic dawn, the supreme witness in time, and of which His cross was the most THE NEW IMMORTALITY 237 impressive and uttermost assurance to a redeemed universe. But that Divine Fatherhood, in which the assurance of immortality was rooted, not only satisfied itself by imparting the gift of deathless being to the Eternal Son, but by making those recovered to filial rela- tionship through His sacrificial work, sharers in the gift. Jesus Christ gave to the world new pledges of immortality by giving it a new God, a sin-forgiving God, a God who cancelled the just condemnation incurred by transgressors, and made the reconciled face of His Fatherhood to shine upon them once more. Such a God became an argument for the future life of invincible force. The daily ministry of Jesus Christ, not to speak of His sacrifice only, vindicated the ideal of an endless life by making life worth living, not for threescore years and ten, but for countless ages. There can be no true and inviting disclosure of immortality for men who are under the ban of a broken law, apart from a vicarious and effectual redemption. It is not in human nature to desire a prolonged personal consciousness unless deliverance from the burden of sin is at hand, and the Divine Fatherhood itself would be dishonoured by such an offer to the race. The starveling of the slum would not care to live an endless life, in the foul welter, where for the moment he finds himself. The victim of a tormenting disease does not want his life to run on for five hundred years, if no allevi- ation is possible. The prisoner chained in a dungeon, whose mind is sinking into blankness or fretting itself into insanity, does not desire for himself an antediluvian longevity, even though he can get a glimpse of snow-peaks and blue lakes through the 238 THE NEW IMMORTALITY loophole of his dungeon. And the case is aggra- vated when remorse mixes itself with torment and the reflection comes back that such disabilities are the wages of past wrong-doing. Immortality under a sentence of wrath, if at last inevitable, must at least be preceded by the hope and promise of an immortality in the light of God's beatific presence, or the prospect is as repulsive and terrorising as that of the Babylonian underworld. If immortality is preached to us as a gospel, it must be under con- ditions which admit of progress towards perfection. Endless life, elsewhere than before God's approving face, might well be a burden too grievous for human strength. Salvation through the Cross must precede the great disclosure, if we are to welcome it with gratitude and anticipation. It is fitting that the hand which carried in its touch healing, emancipation, cleansing, should draw aside the veil cast over the vast incalculable future of the human soul. From the Saviour we may accept this gift without fear or misgiving, and we may well hesitate to welcome it from another. In manifesting the love of the Eternal Father, Jesus brought into view a foundation-reason for the doctrine of human immortality, which placed it beyond the range of assault. We sometimes meet with that most forlorn of all human beings — a father who has outlived his last surviving child. What a monument of helplessness ! Death is the mockery of love, vexing its fine sensibilities with unhealable torment ; and the triumph of death is the casting down of love from its high throne of power. Alas ! for the poor souls, rich and resplendent though they be in outward circumstance, who know the joy of the THE NEW IMMORTALITY 239 parent for a few short days only. A lady once wept herself blind because the children strangely bestowed upon her by an inscrutable fate, drew the breath of life for a few hours only. The instinct of parental love was thwarted, exasperated into pain, dissi- pated into dust and futility, by this implacable lot. Such bitterness and vexation might suffice to turn a palace into a prison. The Eternal and Omnipotent Father, who begets generations of brief-lived, perish- able children, is a riddle in the art of self-mockery and torment no ingenuity can solve. In such a God of contradictions we cannot believe. Is He, forsooth, the sceptred sovereign of a far-extending Ramah, riven with the wails of perpetual bereave- ment? If this be the universe in which He reigns, let it be draped in sackcloth. In spite of our blemishes God loves us, and loves us as abiding persons, not as the raw material for some future absorption process which shall obliterate every linea- ment belonging either to body or soul. Love, where- ever it is strong, makes for life, and for the endless prevalence of life in all its personal hues and aspects, and we cannot stop short of affirming less than this when we are dealing with the love which is Divine. In the great home of light to which God's children are to be gathered the lowliest finite personality is necessary, through all the forthcoming ages, to fill the largeness of God's heart, as well as to satisfy the instincts of kindred personalities created in His similitude. God's love is such that He thought of us before we came into being, " chose us in Jesus Christ " ; and this is chiefly what the apostle means by foreknow- ledge and predestination. We, who are so imperfect. 240 THE NEW IMMORTALITY like to live with the pictures of our loved ones in daily view, and find a subdued sweetness in calling back the forms of those who have long since faded from our earthly horizon. In eternity past God has dwelt with the pictures of the redeemed before His thought, and if His love be such that He anticipates their characteristics before existence entered upon its birth-stage, after they have once come into being, surely He will not suffer them to be dissolved back into nothingness. In revealing God as a God of love, and especially of the love which sets itself to redeem from condemnation and abolish death, Jesus gives us new underworlds, from which the thick night has passed away, and where the faithful dead are cheered by the promise of return to nobler and sublimated forms of the old life. Jesus brought life and incorruption to light by showing that within the lovingkindness of the Most High lie the springs from which the gifts of a manifold and perfect life shall issue. Our own noblest affection compels us to cling to personality, and all the associations which have been lifted into sacredness through its touch. A faded rose-leaf, a useless book, an old-fashioned bit of needlework, a fractured photograph, a child's first present, bits of ugly furniture are treasured, although they lack intrinsic value. They have been polarised into sacredness, for they are links with vanished personalities. Love can scarcely bear the obliteration of a dust-grain which has grown into a memento. And it is the law of Divine, no less than of human love. " And this is the will of Him that sent me, that of all which He hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day." The love which watches over erring THE NEW IMMORTALITY 241 children redeems, and redeems with incorruptible things into an incorruptible life. Immortality was bound up with the doctrine taught by Jesus Christ, because it is the deepest impulse of Fatherhood to bestow life, and to be always enlarging and enriching it with ever-repeated gifts. From his own sure, far-reaching, inexhaustible consciousness the Master preached a love which lives through an unresting bestow ment of bounties upon others, and which, by the sheer spontaneity of its own essential qualities, must needs be always giving. Such a view of that love, which is the true fountain of being, obviously excludes the idea that death has final power to contravene or cancel any of the properties which make for the permanence of human life. The spiritual history of our Lord, stretching as it did into the impenetrable dimness of the past, was an unassailable witness to this truth, for was He not begotten before all worlds ? and had not the things He had thought and felt, known and done, been carried out in virtue of an infinite and endless gift of love ? His own mission amongst men was true to the mysterious experiences of the past, for did he not go about lifting burdens from the souls and bodies of the distressed, and enriching and enlarging with nobler gifts the life of those he was able to touch ? The highest life is irrevo- cable, if, indeed, it flows from the Almighty's longing to give, and death is a brief eclipse, not a dread sunset, followed by black, unbroken, age-long night. The conscious existence, obscured for the moment by the passing of the spirit, cannot fail of after- stages of succession, since it is bestowed by Him who only hath immortality. It is destined to be 17 242 THE NEW IMMORTALITY given back, and to be always given afresh. It is in harmony with this view that the apostle declares in his famous resurrection-argument, " God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him," and in the manifold evolutions of the future the gift may be varied, enlarged, enriched and ennobled. It is from this point of view we must think of the mode of immortality. The organic secret is not put into a man once and for all. The use of such a word as " inherency " is misleading, and obscures the thought that it is a living, ever-repeated, perpetual gift. The conscious lives we possess in the present world are not mere pieces of delicate mechanism adjusted and left to work through some psychic mainspring which resists friction, and must outlast the flesh. Such a scheme of vitalistic clockwork would not satisfy the longing of the eternal heart to be always giving. The life which is incorruptible is made up of a series of countless gifts, conveyed through the power and indwelling presence of the Most High. In the world to come there will be processes of continuous re-creation. The life thus brought to light by the gospel includes the resurrection of the body, for if it were otherwise the triumph of love would be incomplete, human personality would stand forth dismantled of its outward form, and new currency would be given to the old heresy that matter has something within it which can defy a holy Sovereignty. One half of life is intractable to God's redemptive processes if an important fraction of it is to be finally scrapped and put into the waste heaps of the charnel-house. The Bible cannot do otherwise than present the future life to us in pictures and similitudes. It puts THE NEW IMMORTALITY 243 before us God-built, shining cities, symbols of defence and beauty ; realms with no wasting fever or invading sickness, symbols of contentment and exultant strength ; mansions and banquets, the out- ward signs of dignity and festive fellowship. But we must get through the metaphors to the final truth which awaits us when we have reached the substance behind the symbol. " Believe in God and believe in Me," said the Master, as the dulness of the disciples seemed to baffle His effort to give them further insight into the life upon which He was entering, and whither they were by and by to follow. Immor- tality is based not upon the faculties conferred upon us, but upon the being and character of God and His relationship with His people. Immortality with- out God is a curse from which we may well flee. We cannot desire it, for it is immortality without the conditions which prompt our most sacred longings. Such a God as Jesus makes known is inseparable from the kind of immortality that can attract or comfort. If you believe in the one, you are committed to be- lieve in the other. Jesus Christ is alone in His power to free from the bondage of death and to illuminate the unknown realms to which we are pilgrims. The sombre death-scene is changed by the revela- tion of Christ through the gospel. The best of the patriarchs never rose to a higher temper than that of placid, solemn resignation to the will of God. They died without the sense of triumph. Their gaze turned to the coming fortunes of their children in the land of promise rather than towards the dim realms into which they were passing. Stephen, Paul, and the generation which caught their spirit, anticipated the time of departure with joy and eager hope. A 244 THE NEW IMMORTALITY different atmosphere had been created, and over the riot of violence and brutahty the Lover of human souls hovered, stretching out His arms to receive disciples into the fellowship of His immortal reign. The kindling of these new hopes had made a revolution. It is true saints sometimes suffer, and in their last days pass through moods of fierce depression, but He who holds the keys is in the shadows of the background and the desolation passes as His footsteps are heard moving in the dread silences. So has Jesus changed the outlook for all who accept His message and rest upon His work. He cannot betray our hope. Near a small Norman town there is a stream which local superstition has invested with magic virtue. It is said that whoever drinks of its waters will come back to end his life at Gisors. Many a conscript, on his last night at home, has bowed to take a deep draught from the stream and has then been hurried away to fight in wars of which he had little understanding. It is needless to say, amidst the fevers of the tropics and on the fire-swept battlefield he has enjoyed no greater security from death than his comrades of other provinces. As the writer who gives the tradition says, " How often must these smiling waters have broken faith ! " Jesus who abolishes death and destroys its power is no preacher of vain hopes. He does not beguile us with a pathetic romance. He knows the sure foundations upon which immortality rests, and He has verified His own message in those inscrutable realms from which we shrink back. " He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him, it shall be in him a well of water, springing up unto everlasting life." XIII ABNORMAL UNBELIEF '•'And He marvelled because of their unbelief." — Mark vi. 6. The sense of surprise is always excited by objects to which we are unused, and by contact with habits of life which diverge from the norm of past experience. If the explorer of unknown lands came across a bit of the pre- Adamite planet with saurians wallowing in the swamps, giant bats flapping through the air, and behemoths crashing through the forest — in comparison with which the hippopotamus is a mere poodle — he would feel himself in a strange world and be filled with wonder. An English child seeing for the first time flying foxes, forests lit with phosphorescent fungi as for some ghostly carnival, tribesmen burrow- ing in the soil or nesting like birds in the branches of trees, would think himself in a land of fable. He has been cradled in other surroundings. The lithe Malay youth who is ready to dive under the keel of an ocean steamer for a small silver coin, or the South Sea Islander, who is as much at home a couple of fathoms below the surface of the lagoon as on land, would be puzzled if set to perform his feats in the 245 246 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF Dead Sea, where the buoyant water makes diving difficult, if not impossible. He would assume that he had been brought into a country where water lacks its common properties. When the traveller through some tropical domain is vexed and angered at seeing women sent to plough the fields, whipped into burden- bearing, bought and sold like cattle, you know that he has been brought up in a European atmosphere of chivalry ; and when a visitor to our own land is amazed at seeing a man give up his seat in a crowded train to a woman, money spent on the education of daughters, and the sex, treated elsewhere as though it were soulless, honoured with countless acts of courtesy, you take the foreigner's surprise as a sign that he is an Oriental, and has not been bred in our gracious traditions. The two hemispheres differ, and their inhabitants are equally astonished at the inverted behaviour of the other. The degree of surprise is a key to race and past training. It classifies into different categories. And such sharp contradictions often exist in two sections of the same community. Though Jesus had lived in Nazareth for thirty years, when these acute symptoms of unbelief began to show themselves, He felt as though He were in a strange world. The temper of pertinacious doubt in His fellow-townsmen was a shock to His Divine instincts, because He belonged to a different order. " He marvelled." Is this a form of speech due to the limitations of earthly language ? or does it indi- cate a mental characteristic peculiar to the life of Jesus in the days of His flesh, and more nearly akin to the human nature He bore than the Divine? Shall we be inferring too much if we say that perhaps this ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 247 temper of astonishment reflects some faint light upon the change through which the Eternal Son passed, in the mysterious process of the Incarnation ? We can scarcely imagine an all-wise, soul-searching God ex- pressing surprise at any new phase of human frailty which starts up into view. His survey is so close and exhaustive that no development of evil can take Him unawares. That Jesus should have to make succes- sive discoveries of the hard-hearted unbelief which was resisting His ministry and checking its mighty functions, shows how the taking on of human flesh had veiled His knowledge, or at least put a part of that knowledge into abeyance. As man He was no longer cognisant of the things which, because of His plenary participation in the life of the Deity, had been open to Him from the beginning. The mood of doubt could not have been a surprise to Him, if His outlook upon the heart-secrets of the synagogue at Nazareth had still been one and the same with that of the Father. And yet whilst His knowledge of the enigmas of character seems to have come through human channels and in common ways. His sense of the Divine verities was such that He felt men ought to have responded to them by a consistent faith. His descent into a human form had not impaired the glory of His moral affections, and He was vividly alive to the just degree of trust due to the Father ; so conscious of it indeed that it startled Him to find others were not, to some extent at least, impressed with the obligation of faith. This apprehension, through the indestructible instincts of His spiritual personality, of all that the Father claimed from the souls of men, was quicker than His sensitiveness to 248 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF the scorn and dubitations in the souls of His neigh- bours. Whatever ecHpse might have overtaken His natural attributes there had been no self-emptying of the contents of His moral attributes, and the spiritual principles of the consciousness which belonged to Him as He dwelt in the bosom of the Father were still alive within His soul. Throughout the days of His flesh He was sensibly united to a realm in which unbelief was counted a profane anomaly. As Jesus stood face to face with the unbelief of His townsmen, His kinsfolk, and even of the disciples themselves. He found Himself in a world that jarred His Divine instincts and sensibilities. These deformed attitudes of the human mind were like nightmares. With a sudden start of pain He woke up to the fact that, in this social environment to which He belonged, there was a temper of abnormal doubt, conflicting with His own deep intuitions and the mission He had been sent to fulfil. He had to adjust Himself to a new view-point, or at least to judge what the view- point of these rude sceptics of Nazareth was ; and the process was an ordeal. This peculiar and intract- able temper, shown by people who called themselves children of a believing patriarch, was one of the most startling things which came within the compass of His experience. This Prophet of mysterious ante- cedents, who was just entering upon His public ministry, belonged to a spiritual kingdom, where faith was the one catholic and all-pervading law, and the unbelief of the mountain-town where He had been brought up, which defied His authority, limited His work, and divided even His own household, was a displeasing and sinister phenomenon. We might perhaps have looked upon it as natural, but ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 249 He viewed it as a strange religious obliquity which had intruded into the midst of worshippers of that Divine Father who was in the act of redeeming His children from thraldom — worshippers who, strange to say, still professed the age-long hope of their race. The temper showing itself in Nazareth was incompatible with the vocation to which He was bidden, against the tenor of His own spiritual habits, and outside His central experience and anticipation. He could scarcely have been more surprised to find Himself in a fable-land of monstrosities than He was at being confronted with this chilling suspicion and scepticism, which, after all, was one and the same thing with mistrust of the power and fidelity of the Eternal. Such mal- formations and unnatural attitudes of the spirit were more distressing than the maimed limbs and the twisted spines, for the cure of which His help was asked. Although it was true of Him here, as in Jerusalem at a later stage, " He knew what was in man," He did not look for such a deadening psychic atmosphere. The crisis through which He passed must have been akin to that of the child trained in a refined and gracious home, who goes forth into the world to find a treasured name bandied about by scoffers and treated as though it were of little worth. " He marvelled because of their unbelief." Is not the pained surprise flushing His face as eloquent of Divine Sonship as a glint of transfigura- tion splendour ? Our Lord's amazement at this widespread unbelief is a sign of separateness from His infirm and blemished contemporaries. Could He visit again even those who call themselves by 250 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF His name, the same anomaly would recur. In that realm of feeling to which we contribute, and which in its turn reacts upon our own souls, the same sharp sense of incongruity would arise. Do we not look at things from a point of view which has little in common with His, and thereby show a difference of essential origin ? At our best we are from beneath, children of the dust with an earthward twist in our natures, and doubt is a more facile habit to us than faith. Deep-seated, insidious unbelief fails to excite our wonder, unless it be blatant, blaspheming, anarchic. We do not apologise for it, because in our judgment demonstrations of the supernatural are few and far between, and the incapacity for faith is just what might be expected from the conditions in which human nature is placed. Unless religious scepticism outrages established conventions we accept it as a part of the customary order. Whilst the dearth of faith called forth the astonish- ment of Jesus, any sign of its vital, triumphant presence in our midst excites us to an equal measure of surprise. We think of those heroes of faith immortalised in the Epistle to the Hebrews, who subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness, as a race of demigods who crossed the stage of history when the world was young, and have never since thought fit to revisit it. If we were to meet them in the cities of our modern civilisation we should be as much astonished as if we chanced across a group of Mahatmas from the cloudland of Thibet on Hampstead Heath or in Epping Forest. The singular trust in God by which Spurgeon, Moody, and Muller of Bristol walked, we regard as due to a happy combination of temperament and good ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 251 fortune. Their stories will soon belong to the pious myths of the last century. That prayer should be answered is quite romantic, and there is a factor in the case we do not understand. Perhaps it is telepathy. The faith which, in the domain of personal character or social reconstruc- tion removes mountains, is the exception ; and we do not assume that it will become the rule in any age or land. We look upon this gift which achieves and overcomes as the kind of tree which blooms once in a hundred years. The more shame to us that faith and its feats should be relegated to the realm of the uncommon, if not of the impossible. We are acclimatised to an atheistic world and faith surprises us, whilst Jesus belonged to a contrasted world, and it was the lack of faith which surprised. In His amazement the Master reveals an origin quite unlike ours, with habits, instincts, attitudes of mind peculiarly His own. This flash of surprise shows that, during His thirty years' sojourn in Nazareth, Jesus had not been subdued to the temper of doubt abroad, but had kept untarnished the first fine bloom of His faith. His soul had continued to dwell in a realm of ideals where sure confidence in the redemptive counsels of the Father, and in Himself as the chosen instru- ment for working out their ends had the force and the obviousness of a primary duty. Through early years of learning and through later years of common toil His soul had been domiciled amidst spiritualities where the highest faith seemed congruous and rational, whilst unbelief implied ignorance of the all-besetting providence of Heaven. The average man becomes so steeped in the social atmosphere he breathes, and 252 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF so mastered by ignoble precedents, that nothing surprises him. The fact that faith should still seem so entirely natural to the mind of Jesus, nothing less indeed than a prime essential of righteousness, was a sufficient witness that He had always been true to the Father, and obedient to the leadings of His unfailing presence. He had not been dragged down by strain, vexation, religious negligence out of the high habitations of His spirit into common currents of passion and prejudice, or He would have been content to interpret the responsibilities of His townsmen by a lower standard, and would have taken their scepticisms as a matter of course. Habits of Divine fellowship were more real and absorbing than the secular ties, associations, and employments of the sphere where His lot was cast. The germ-faith, brought with Him into the world, was carefully nourished by the Scriptures, which portrayed Himself and His work. His life was ever turning back to find its resting-place in the bosom whence it came, and in the days and nights of common toil He doubtless prayed intently as in the hours of silence afterwards snatched from an active ministry. He moved in a realm where the obligation of faith presented itself as inviolably sacred ; and, unlike some of us, always made it a ruling aim to keep Himself there. He watched for the dawn in others of the faith by which He Himself was possessed, and wondered when no sign of it appeared. Belief, after all, is not intel- lectual, but is determined by the ethical and religious influence within which a man anchors himself. Our Lord could not bring Himself to the local standpoint, for it was unthinkable that a ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 253 Jew at least, should be exempt from the obligation to believe. It is said that the diamond cannot be cut by a stone of inferior hardness, because its constituent atoms move in such swift revolutions that the slow currents of softer substances are powerless to break in upon them, and arrest their tremendous velocities. And there was a swiftness and intense force in the thoughts of the Son concerning His Divine Father, exceeding that of light rushing from central suns, so that the sluggish traditions and prejudices of unspiritual neighbours and comrades, with whom He had been reared, could not break in upon His pure and vehement consciousness, or flaw His character with defect, religious infirmity, and fashionable scepticism. As we see this surprise reflected in the face of Jesus, may we not infer that He came down to His work amongst men from a holy world, where faith was the all-pervading law ? That world had put its enduring imprint upon His personality, or rather His per- sonality had put its sovereign imprint upon the world. Perhaps we are not always correct in speak- ing of this earthly sphere as the one school in which intelligent beings may acquire a faith which is contrasted with sight, while heaven is filled with immediate manifestations of God which make faith needless. Although some of our present riddles may find a solution beyond the veil, realms irradiated with God's unclouded presence may still offer scope for the practice of faith, no less than the tangled and troubled life of earth. The Advent made plain things into which the sons of light had long looked with fixed wistfulness, but it also left many things 254 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF for the spreading illuminations of the after-days. In the spheres of the unseen there are, and always must be, inscrutable mysteries challenging the faith of those who dwell there, differing perhaps, from those which for the moment perplex us. But the baffled understanding cannot degenerate into unlovely mistrust. The obedience to God's will rendered by the shining hosts, no less than ours, is an obedience of faith. The ministries to which they are commissioned are ministries of faith, faith in the redemptive Covenant of God, as well as in the perfectibility and upward progress of those to whom they are sent. They work for hidden goals beneath the furthest horizon lines to which they see. As fast as the old problems of God are solved, new problems mount into view. The larger apprehensions of God's ways are preceded by a spirit of trust, the demand for which never slackens. Trust and love are the twin laws of heaven, and doubt is a strange treason, an abnormal crime, a godless errancy abhorred by all. Every faculty of our Lord's rare personality had inhaled the spirit of those realms where faith in the immanent power and untiring goodness of God was the keynote of order, the breath of worship, the mainspring of ministry. It was there that the deep roots of His mysterious being were grappled, and no wonder that unbelief should startle and repel Him. The temper was abnormal, an atrocious dissonance, a distressing deformity, a flagitious offence in the realm where His spirit had its home before He became man. It was a shock, an unhappy discovery, a pained amazement for such an one to encounter the fierce unbelief of the world, and especially of that part of the world which was sup- ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 255 posed to be religious and had been knit to His heart by the associations of childhood. He reddened with mingled shame and wrath as the murmurings passed through the crowd, like a virgin spirit making its first discovery of evil. This feeling of amazement, provoked by the upsurgings of unbelief, throws some light upon our Lord's antecedent history. His uncommon per- sonality had not been cast in the moulds furnished by the everyday life of Nazareth. This incident itself is an undesigned testimony to the fact that elements entered into it which were a preincarnate inheritance. Biologists tell us that our natural instincts are often the vestiges of experiences stretching beyond the individual life, and having hidden roots in a past incalculably remote. In un- conscious acts there may be seen traces of the path by which a race has travelled from its cradle to the goal of its mature accomplishments. It has been said that the surprising grip-strength in the hand of a new-born babe, is an inheritance from the days when the progenitors of the race were arboreal in their habits, and clambered amidst the branches of forest trees. The divergent moods and disposition which contend within us perhaps represent different strains of blood that came into the tribe in pre- historic, or even later times. Such statements may not express the final dogmas of science, and yet there can be little doubt that in striking ways the past is revived and lives again in us. In the amazement of Jesus at the unbelief which marked the weekly hearers in the synagogue is it not possible that the past world of faith, over which He was enthroned before entering into human form. 256 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF lives again ? With these people of the Galilean hillside He had gone in and out for a generation, watching them with knowledge and true insight. He is familiar with their frailties. And yet the degree of this unbelief is a distressing surprise. Ethically He belongs to another world, and is not quite acclimatised to that in which He sojourns. He had thought faith the most natural, spontaneous and binding thing in the universe, and yet perhaps even the best of the apostles excused unbelief on the ground that it was natural to men, whilst faith seemed overstrained and artificial. He and His . followers were affiliated to widely different realms. Because it was His age-long habit to believe. He was as much startled by an epidemic of sceptical criticism, as the inhabitants- of an equatorial isle would be startled by a sudden snow-storm. Does not this temper of amazement carry our thoughts to a pre- human life of pure and perfect faith ? He had lived in such high fellowship that distrust of the Father's power and goodwill, as set forth in the works of His chosen Son, was a stupendous anomaly. Is not this the note of a personality which had moved and breathed in the bosom of the Eternal love and assimilated its counsels of redemption ? This wonder was not impulsive only, but involved a deliberate judgment upon what was due from a privileged people. The faith so natural to Himself, He felt to be also binding, in some degree, upon those who came within the circle of His influence. If these Galilean sceptics had been placed under the disabilities of a pagan upbringing, He might have excused their slowness to believe. But they were familiar with the Old Testament histories and knew that the unbelief ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 257 which had brought penalties upon their forefathers was still fraught with the same sure retributions. They knew also that the good in their past history was a fruit of faith, and the spiritual law had not become obsolete. They were learning these lessons every Sabbath-day in the synagogue. It was marvellous that with such a training they should have withheld their faith from One whom thev knew, and who had been marked out by mighty works as the Messenger of redemption. They had lived side by side with Jesus for thirty years, and influences so long making for faith could not be ignored. It was in a temper of reason and equity that the Lord estimated this and the kindred obligations which were resting upon them. He did not meet every man with the same scale of expectation in His mind. He marvelled at the faith of the Roman Centurion, just as much as He marvelled at the woeful lack of it in His Jewish neighbours. At no time in his career had the stern soldier enjoyed opportunities likely to bring him into sympathy with the Messianic hope. Un- like the synagogue, camp and barrack-room tended to make a man cynical, evil-judging, unspiritual. But he rose above his surroundings. The tradition of the service in which he was engaged became a parable, and wrought in him an attitude of holy confidence in a wonder-worker who had but little honour in his own country. In defiance of probabilities, the soldier rose into a faith which eclipsed that of his Jewish contemporaries. The people of Nazareth ought to have been a valiant bodyguard of their own Prophet, to have held up His hands, and to have copied the early heroes of faith. They were atten- dants at the most highly favoured synagogue of the 18 258 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF land. The Lord had sojourned here for a generation, whilst He paid brief visits only to other places. They could watch His demeanour, weigh His claims, walk by His side, propound their questions. But all their criticisms centred in the fact that He was apparently of humble antecedents, and had been so wanting in local patriotism as to work more miracles in other places than at home. If like Simeon and Anna they had been waiting for Israel's redemption, in the deeper sense of the word, they would have recognised in Him One sent by the Father and have confessed His authority. These Old Testament saints could see the Deliverer in the babe,, whilst the folk of Nazareth failed to find Him in the full-grown, consecrated man, mighty in word and deed. How unworthy of their descent from the father of the faithful ! Their opportunities were rich and indeed unrivalled, but, then as now, the persons who will not believe are often the heirs of transcendent privilege. Alas for the heart-breaking scepticisms of those who seem to be pillars of the synagogue ! Our Lord's amazement must have been aggravated as He marked the frivolous causes which fostered this unbelief, and the poor apology His fellow-townsmen made for themselves. Faith is a spiritual principle, demanding for its growth and fruitful development congruous conditions. It is not intellectual in its origin, although some of the perplexities which assail our faith and test its genuineness can only be dis- pelled by close and clear thinking. It cannot be created by the methods of logic, or finally destroyed by the processes of criticism. If we analyse current phases of unbelief, we find that many causes have ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 259 entered into it. It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at when the great tumultuous passions of the flesh bhnd the eyes, and men refuse to beheve what is holy ; but it is strange and curious, when the only excuse men offer for their lack of faith is that the authority which invites it is devoid of pomp and outward trappings. Hands which have held plane and saw can scarcely be Divine. If the townsmen of Nazareth had believed in a man of God because He was a professional scribe, rather than a carpenter, such homage of social rank would have been specious and would have been no better than the unbelief which astonished Jesus. The neighbours of Jesus became doubters through sheer force of caste-worship. They were respecters of persons, and had no appre- ciation for high spiritual attributes. A carpenter, and the reputed son of a carpenter, with commonplace brothers and sisters forsooth ! In the sycophant we may sometimes see the chrysalis from which an unbeliever emerges. They despised the man who had lived and wrought alongside them, though He was wise in word and holy in deed. In the sacred- ness of One who had toiled for His daily bread, and wore homely clothes, they could put no confidence. They had eyes for dress and rank, but none for truth, honour, holiness, transcendent personal force. Peasants, it is true, had sat upon the throne of their fatherland, and herdsmen, shepherds, ploughmen re- ceived the unction from on high, long ago, but they would not acclaim to-day a deliverer whose hands had been roughened with toil. This vainglorious temper, which paralysed faith, was against all the best elements of their training and history. They wanted, in the little hillside town, what was fashionable, 26o ABNORMAL UNBELIEF invidiously superior, well-born, academic, Sanhedrim hall-marked, and the finer spiritual virtues, if they are to enlist homage and be taken as valid proof of a Divine vocation, must be gorgeously attired. Vanity always proves itself a prolific soil for the growth of unbelief. Petty social jealousies and superfine conventions may be just as fatal to faith as the coarser and more degrading passions, which some- times devastate and profane the soul. Where trivial and tenacious class-distinctions made the staple of public opinion, it was impossible to call forth a just trust in those covenant promises which had been handed down from the forefathers of the race and were now verging towards their fulfilment. The peril is not peculiar to one place or age. Men some- times desire a religion which is fashionable, a religion adorned in its outward types by the highest con- temporary taste and scholarship, a religion which involves no effort, sacrifice, or reproach, no strenuous devotion or self-discipline, a religion well spoken of by the princes of this world, a religion with the pomp and trappings of State to give it due place and dignity in the earth ; and such a demand may be fatal to the faith which Jesus sets Himself to evoke. It may suspend or neutralise His special methods. Now, as in the days of His advent, the Messenger of redemption comes without ostentation and displays His spiritual glory in circles of obscure life, and if we go forth expecting to find Him in scenes of rank and splendour, searching the palace for our Messiah and forgetting the workshop, we shall suffer a great and ominous mortification. There is sometimes just as much unbelief in the Church as in the world, unbelief based upon the most frivolous and irrational pre- ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 261 judices, and it is this which calls forth the astonish- ment of Jesus. He found the leaven of Atheism in the synagogue at Nazareth, amongst the most decorous classes of the town, and it was a Sabbath- day discovery. This incident suggests that unbelief is a petty parochialism, of the earth mean and earthy. When a man loses his early faith in God and the economies of redemption, the worldly-wise are ready with the comment "he is broadening out in view, taking larger groups of facts into his horizon, putting away childish things, growing comprehensive, philosophical, scien- tific in his habits of thought." It is sometimes said that the latest education makes men too intelligent for Christianity. What an absurd misrepresen- tation of this disastrous change ! The man who withdraws his faith from a Saviour, whose secret and active presence always hovers over a ransomed world, is shrinking into littleness, like these people of Nazareth with insular ideas of the kingdom which were such a surprise to the great citizen of heaven. Dupes of our senses, tenants of mere mud- drops peering out towards the shining amplitudes of the firmament, dust-grains clinging to the fragile web of conventions woven about our doll-house homes, who are we, forsooth, that we can measure the eternal reason, pronounce judgment on the central verities, and set aside the claim of Jesus of Nazareth because He does not take the precise place in the scheme of human society that we think He ought to have filled? It is unbelief which is insular, parochial, the dream- ing, shortsighted product of a restricted environ- ment. He who steps into our midst from infinite realms, who belongs to the great heavens and has 262 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF explored their secrets, declares that it is anomalous for men, favoured with light and privilege, to settle down into petty, sullen tempers of questioning and mistrust. In presence of that higher order replete with unknown potencies He has come to establish and explain, the marvel is not that men should now and again have faith and do great things, but that they should ever be without it. Many pains and ailments, which did not enter into the original plan of human lives, are the brand of this spiritual mis- demeanour. Men who scoff at what has been un- happily named " the supernatural " are not in tune with the larger and nobler order of Divine Govern- ment. Faith is cosmopolitan. It rules in every sane and luminous part of the universe. Doubt, with all the mischievous blights which follow in its train, is a symptom scarcely known out of the infection-wards in which we pass our days. To those who people the spheres overarching our sickly earth the unbelief, to which we are prone, is phenomenal. The princi- palities and powers in heavenly places would be wonder-struck if they could explore those mazes of distempered feeling in which God is dishonoured. To believe is in harmony with the age-long order to which Jesus was related. Faith was stamped upon every fibre of His Incarnate life and the lack of it in others amazed Him. In His dependence upon the co-acting faith of men, Jesus Christ reflects the ways of God in the world to-day. We forget how God conditions His work in our midst, and aim inane reproaches against His dealings with us ; whilst all the time we know that, apart from our co-operation. He will not do great things for us. This is an established method ABNORMAL UNBELIEF 263 of His redemptive government. In the unpeopled spaces of the firmament the Divine activities are subject to no restraint or limitation, for He is free to do as He thinks fit with impersonal things ; but when He brings rational and responsible beings upon the stage, in that very act He defines and deter- mines the rule of His own subsequent methods. He has to delimit a frontier. He circumscribes His power in giving man freedom. If this were not so, man's functions would be inconstant and, like the rights of a Duma, liable to a capricious suppression. Jesus Christ did not enter upon His vocation in Galilee with the one aim of ending the ailments and distresses under which its population laboured, but to heal as a sign from the Father, and an earnest of the goal to which it was His office to lead men, after they had been brought into co-operation with His work. Miracles were futile unless they availed to give some glimpse into the verities of His person and produced believers in His power of bringing to fulfilment redemptive aims. God could end all pains by causing a dew of anodynes to descend upon every home of suffering and distil itself into every convulsed and heaving bosom ; but such an expedient would bring the race into no nearer union with the Divine life. A baptism of anesthetics for an agonised race would leave it at the same religious levels, falling short as ever of the Divine image. When men say, " He does nothing," the reply is inevitable if we understand His ways, " It is because we believe nothing." Let us see to it that we have a faith which satis- fies the Lord upon whom it takes hold and helps on His redemptive acts. And if we are to rise to 264 ABNORMAL UNBELIEF this it must be remembered that a natural and not a strained and artificial habit of mind is that which is required from us. Men ought to walk by faith, so normal and unstudied should be the exercise. Faith is not a convulsive leap. It is our indecisions, our chronic questionings, our disabling doubts which are abnormal. When we reach loftier vantage- ground these evil questionings of the heart will look like irrational phantoms. The unbelieving world is a fable-realm full of shadows, grotesqueness, and deformity. As He tries our reins and our hearts, God forbid that the depth and contumacy of our scepticism should provoke His wonder and pain. May He rather find a faith which shall lead Him to say, " This is what I looked for from the men in whose place I died " ! XIV THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS " Behold I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. And he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame." — Rom. ix. 33. We sometimes hear this' and kindred texts of Scripture quoted as though the Bible, in its sterner parts, taught an unlovely doctrine of reprobation, alien alike to reason and the best instincts of human nature. But when we so read Isaiah, and this section of the Epistle to the Romans, we miss the right emphasis of the message. It was not to magnify the prerogatives of an arbitrary and terrific sovereignty that God laid in Zion a foundation, which to many proved a " stone of stumbling and a rock of offence." If men are indeed evil and need to be saved at all, in His method of dealing with them, God must often place Himself athwart their ingrained prejudices and sensibilities. The process of salvation through Jesus Christ cannot be self-soothing in all its stages : and, for those who will not brook contradiction and submit to the vexing of their pride, the process must prove itself 265 266 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS ineffectual. The hand stretched forth to rescue an imperilled soul may perchance seem rough and unmannerly in some of its movements. A gospel that allows men's deepest prejudices to sleep on unmortified and undisturbed, leaves them without improvement in their essential spirit and character, and contributes nothing to the new creation of the world. Prejudices are of two kinds, innocuous and fatal. There are long-established, and perhaps unreasoned, racial customs that lie upon the surface, and do not touch questions of vital morals, to which we may bow without detriment. It matters little whether we greet each other with a handshake or with a Hindoo salaam, eat our food seated at a table or crouched upon a mat, show our respect when we enter a house by taking off our hat, or our shoes. These are trifles which every country settles for itself according to its past traditions. It was of such prejudices that Paul was thinking when he boasted that he was " all things to all men." But there are prejudices which intertwine them- selves with essential fibres in the character, stretch down to the root of vital functions, and secrete a virus with fatal ingredients in it. To such prejudices the apostle could not for a moment bend. His gospel could countenance no terms with them. It was of these grave, ingrained prejudices fraught with every kind of evil issue, that Paul thought when he spoke of Jesus as an occasion of stumbling to many who were Jewish in birth and training. Such deadly tempers cannot be allowed to pass un- challenged. A prejudice may have all the soul- blighting characteristics of a transgression. We need not stand aghast, as though it were only THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 267 in spiritual realms that prejudice has this prodigious power of mischief. It is not less so in secular things. The suffering created by prejudice, under which the world writhes at the present moment, is just as great as the suffering engendered by war, perse- cution, commercial tyranny, thriftlessness. Hundreds of thousands of people spend their days on the verge of starvation, because of the unreasoned distaste they feel for new conditions of life in a strange land, or perish of famine because they will not take food which is against the rules of their caste. Prejudice adds enormously to the bill of mortality which follows every Indian drought. In many parts of the earth ignorant animosities, inherited from earlier centuries, feed racial feuds that never abate and demand year by year a fresh toll of blood. The enmities that keep some nations ever armed to the teeth against each other often rest upon a basis of rude and obsolete preconception. Men and women die because of their old-fashioned contempt for the new surgery and the latest ideas of sanitation. Asiatics perish in enormous multitudes every day, because of their rooted antipathy to every physician but the astrologer. From many a door in China and Thibet Sir Frederick Treeves would be driven as though he were a monster of butchery and assassination. The methods of scientific surgery proved salvation, upon an unexampled scale, to the progressive army authorities of Japan in its recent campaign, but to the preponderating multitudes of Eastern Asia are still a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. For the time, at least, prejudice hinders healing and deliverance from death. 268 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS We cling to the notion that God's methods of dealing with us should soothe the feelings and uphold within us a sense of sweet and undisturbed comfort, but moral sicknesses often require a regimen of affront and alarm. The likes and dislikes we have nursed for years must be ignored, and our sensi- bilities aroused into angry combat. It is sometimes said the burnt child fears the fire, but the wholesome lesson could not be learned under the influence of anodynes and sleeping draughts. When a narcotic has been swallowed the treatment is not to induce but to prevent sleep. There must be no muffling of the door-knocker and no street spread knee-deep in straw to deaden sound. Somnolence must be prevented by rough and painful methods, and all the antagonisms of the nervous life must be made to react against the poison. A crisis may sometimes come in which God can only save us by shocking our prejudices. The devil within the soul is not to be driven out by such soft harpings as those which soothed, for a time, the madness of Saul. If he is to be cast out the scene will perhaps be one of uproar, struggle, resentment. In saving men through His Son and building them into living temples God has to Dwrtify the spiritual pride which puffs up the te^nper and blinds the mind. His methods run counter to the prejudice which every man feels in favour of his own imperfect and superficial righteousness. We are placed midway between fellow-men whose moral standards are defective and a God of transcendent holiness, and have some touch of kinship with each. We share our neighbours' frailties, and are also made in a Divine image, the glory of which is not altogether THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 269 eclipsed. We may set up comparisons with that which we find on the one side or the other, and reach very different results. The choice we make between these alternative standards is a clue to character and a test of the promise of progress. If we constantly appraise ourselves by that which is beneath rather than by that which is above and within us it is clear that our first aim is to be on good terms with our- selves and not to rise in the scale of spiritual perfec- tion. The painter who compares the work on his easel with the work done in the juvenile class of an art school, and not with the masterpieces of the immortals, wants to think well of himself rather than to achieve the best, and is a mere coxcomb. He stumbles in the first years of his career, becomes a laughing-stock, and is put to shame. And so is it with the man who does not wish to know the worst about his own character by placing himself alongside the highest and the best. The Jew who received not Jesus when He came to His own was the victim of a self-infatuated pride, which declared itself in three ways. He was ever comparing himself with his Gentile neighbours to his own advantage. In his prolonged national dis- tresses he looked upon himself as a martyr rather than as a chastised child. And he trusted in the efficacy of his heroic suffering, combined with divers ritual expiations. The Jew had acquired a habit of comparing him- self with the Egyptians, out of whose land God called him to a purer worship and a more consecrated life ; with the degraded Canaanites, who had been dispossessed to make room for better and more wholesome tribes ; with the Assyrians, who in spite 270 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS of the prowess of an imposing civilisation, were idol- worshippers ; with Greeks and Romans, who, not- withstanding their art, their literature, their massive systems of law, were the slaves of superstition. And the result was flattering. It was pleasant to think how, political appearances notwithstanding, he must surely stand far higher in Jehovah's favour. Every privilege and blessing of the past was a tribute to the virtue of the Hebrew race rather than an undeserved gift of God's bounty. And this one- sided method of reckoning blunted that sense of perfection which would have asserted itself in peni- tence and quenchless aspiration, if he had thought of the Divine holiness. It was only an elect soul here and there, whose mind moved in other channels, and who was crushed by the thought of his estrange- ment from the Divine pattern of perfection and in no degree elated by a sense of his commanding superi- ority to the men of other races. A knowledge of the many virtues of Gentile races scarcely checked this bias towards one-sided comparisons, which had its beginnings in spiritual pride and its end in religious blindness. The Gentile was a foil, and his calling in Jesus Christ gave the death-blow to that pleasing fiction. Another symptom of this self-righteous temper was that the Jew, in his infatuated pride, got into the way of looking upon his sufferings as a meritorious martyrdom for the truth rather than as a chastise- ment meted out to him for his grave shortcomings. This bias in favour of his own superior sanctity was rooted and confirmed by all the humiliations endured at the hands of his conquerors. He could not for a moment imagine that the woes alighting upon himself THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 271 and his brethren were an appointed penalty of pride, hollowness, and social greed. His sufferings for the truth to which he was still clinging placed him in the front ranks of saints and heroes. A member of the elect race, fallen on evil days, was always under the temptation to think of himself as more or less of a victim. If God blessed Abraham's seed because of the faith of a forefather surely this zeal for the law, this devotion, this patient fidelity under Gentile despotisms would be counted for righteous- ness and in due time bring blessing to his offspring. But when his stock of personal virtues ran short not only were there the expiations of the altar, but a thousand and one punctilious formalisms through which the Jew might achieve self-expiation of his offences. Lavish alms-givings to the poor, fre- quent fastings, a scrupulous daily ritual, hand- some offerings for temple and synagogue might surely prove a sufficient offset to secular short- comings. By all that he endured in the long days of darkness and humiliation, by fastidious zeal in the details of self-discipline, and by many prayers he might surely store up merits which would be a sufficient offset to his faults. The law itself provided all that was necessary in the work of recovering a status before God that might have been compromised. It was a mortal stab to religious pride to be saved in another name than his own. Was the Jew to put out of his reckoning all that separated him from the publican and the Gentile ? Were these habits of piety, continued through generations of oppression, to count for nothing ? He had always been jealous for the honour of God's name, and surely God would requite it. He had 272 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS upheld the great traditions of his history, and the reflection fed his self-esteem. He was not as the outcast races, and to this fact he anchored his hope. But the moral contrast between himself and God rarely came into his mind, so there was nothing to check the growth of a vainglorious self-com- placency. The mental habit insensibly acquired, in virtue of which a man compares himself with the inferior rather than the transcendent, convicts him of egoism and shows the unreality which enters into his piety. The zeal displayed is for his own repute rather than for his Maker's honour, and he sets himself at all hazards to establish it, even at the cost of his own growth into spiritual greatness. That which blinds a man to the contemplation of the ineffable in character puts the drag upon his advance- ment. If the problem were one of higher develop- ment only, and not of the forgiveness of sin by an offended God, such a temper would need to be destroyed. The Jew could not gain in likeness to the God whose glory he was created to reflect till this temper had been brought low. If the sacrifice of the Cross had not been necessary to atone for sin and to give man that standing in the Divine favour to which he could not attain by his own worth, it would have been required to save the Jew from false views of himself and from that spiritual stagnation to which those views led. The Jew must be taken away from his own shrivelled righteousness, with its earth- bound limitations, so that he might be gifted with a new sense of perfection and spiritual destiny. God could not make the children of Abraham any better than they had been for centuries without mortifying their prejudices. By flattering men's prejudices we THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 273 may allure them to do certain specified things, but no character can be changed by such arts. The foundation-stone of the new world must be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, or the new will be no improvement upon the old. Human nature has still the same characteristics. Before men can be brought to build upon Christ's foundation, sooner or later they have to pass through the same crisis of offence as the Jew. It must not be imagined that this form of prejudice is an obso- lete ailment, which affected the kinsmen and con- temporaries of Jesus, but has now been stamped out. Resentment of salvation through a vicarious sacrifice is common as human pride. Ingrained in our nature, everywhere and at all times, there is an undying revolt against the doctrine that we are justified by a gift of love, offered to us in the Cross. And this revolt does not rest only upon a wholesome protest against abuses of the truth of justification by faith, or upon incomplete statements of the evangel which ignore the need for repentance and a new life ; but upon man's bland, imperturbable satisfaction in his own virtues. This innate spiritual pride displays itself in the habit of taking a faulty neighbour as the standard of obligation, and measuring our attainments by his tem- per and characteristic action. If human nature were unfallen, and society were perfectly regulated, some- thing might be said for the methods upon which such acts of self-judgment are based. But the common standard has been lowered. We might as well attempt to verify our bodily health, not by stethe- scopes, weighing-machines, and instruments for testing muscular strength, but by contrasting our 19 274 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS bodily organs with the morbid, monstrous growths on the shelves of a medical museum. Perhaps the man in the police-court or the man who lives at the liquor-bar is the pathological specimen against which we match ourselves. How eminently respectable we are in comparison ! Or it may be that the unworthy professor of religion, church official and notorious company director, an aldermanic glutton, the well-fed parasite of a sweated industry, is the particular Gentile with whose record we contrast our own. How spotless the character we bear if put into such company and judged ! Many men keep a black- sheep catalogue, written up to date, which they peruse at intervals for their comfort and self-assurance. It coddles one's self-esteem to dwell much on the inconsistencies of reputed saints. We have at hand tabulated sample-books of blemished reputations to which we can turn when our optimistic egoisms show signs of flagging. If we cannot find sufficiently grievous shortcomings in our next-door neighbours to furnish pertinent and soul-soothing contrasts, we imagine, overcolour, and even improvise them. Of course we far outshine the morbid, patchey, imperfect saints who are the leading figures in the adjacent churches. If the moral standard of Church membership is fairly high, and does not lend itself to invidious methods of self-appreciation, we invent new patterns of perfection, which convict the herd of well-meaning pietists of shortcoming and give us an advantage in the comparison. Our sense of superiority must be upheld. Is it not this temper which has led some men to affirm that even Jesus Himself was not quite sinless, or at least that He shared the infirmities THE SALVATION WHICH AP^FRONTS 275 of the race to which He belonged, and the tinae in which He lived ? He ought to have attacked social problems along other lines than those of moral influence, and have made Himself a practical, con- structive reformer. That gifted and unhappy writer Robert Buchanan once said, "It may be doubted whether Jesus loved mankind as much as Buddha." Perhaps we try to make out that our personal religion is not bad, considering the insufficiency of the revelation we have received. Our conduct rises as high as the positive truth which is accessible to us. "We shun comparisons with God and His holy law, as though God were afar off, forgetting that He is in us, and that it is having " come short of His glory " that makes the chief burden of our shame. The second note of self-righteousness in the Jew, a habit of looking upon his suffering as a mysterious martyrdom rather than as the just chastisement of his many offences, is prevalent in modern life. Our method of treating the problem of pain is warped by an unconscious Pharisaism. The distresses and privations men inflict upon each other, either by personal or by collective action, and for which they are partly responsible, lie outside the range of this problem. Much of the suffering in the world ought not to be, for it is gratuitous and artificial. But there is a residuum of suffering, coming through the direct act of God and falling sometimes upon the apparently innocent, which we call undeserved. Things ought to have been much better for us and our friends. We are the pale, writhing martyrs of an inscrutable severity, running through all the methods of that strange providence which is enthroned over the world. Men are victims rather than malefactors. 276 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS How few subscribe to the words of the prophet, " We will bear the anger of the Lord for we have sinned against Him." Does not this martyr-pose show that we are set upon maintaining our innocence before God, like the patriarch Job, but with far less reason. If such be our habit of thought the Cross cannot fail to bring a deep offence into our lives and is sure to prove itself a foundation of stumbling. The Jew thought that by punctilious obedience to the religious ceremonies prescribed to his forefathers he could atone for the shortcomings of his secular ethic. When his conscience became uneasy he burdened himself with new disciplines, so proving himself a Pharisee of the Pharisees, in whom zeal for God had no bounds. Within the Churches that particular phase of self-righteousness has not passed away. Men sometimes do themselves more justice in religious than in secular spheres. They make many prayers, frequent communions, and show much zeal for the rites of religion, so hoping to atone for grave week-day lapses. Magnificent cathedrals are not infrequently monuments of Pharisaism, for they have been founded by kings and dukes to atone for execrable crimes. A handsome and superabundant piety can never blot out a breach of the least com- mandment in social life, and God makes ready a foundation of stumbling for the man who thinks it can. But outside the Churches the tendency is as marked as within its borders, though in an inverted form. Men try to atone for religious neglect by a strenuous secular ethic. A God, who is inadequately made known to the reason, ought not to require more than obedience to a round of self-evident duties, set off THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 277 perhaps by a few special charities practised in the service of mankind. The world sometimes boasts that its commercial integrity surpasses that of the Church and its givings are more lavish. All this may be the boast of a covert Pharisaism, which seeks to atone for blemishes in the service of God, by a surpassing zeal for the welfare of the poor and the oppressed. Men say within themselves that, if these good works cannot cancel the sum-total of their errors, they will pay in their own bodies the penalty of their past lapses, and refuse to be debtors to a vicarious redemption. The position assumed by such men is inconsistent. They exercise charity in certain ways towards others but cannot accept for themselves the charity of the Cross. It is their glory to be altruistic in a fierce, self-seeking world, and that must be their expiation, if expiation is needed. This temper which is affronted by the gospel hides itself in unsuspected places. It is present in not a little of our popular literature, which is some- times an unconscious apologetic for the ugly side of human nature. Hero-worship is often Pharisaism speaking in the third person. It assumes that coarse vices may be compensated by uncommon virtues, and that the need for redemption by the Cross is not so dire as our theology teaches. The worst man can right himself by a noble sacrifice, at least before the bar of human judgment. Courage on the battlefield, the generous care for a comrade's life in scenes of danger, the risk of one's own, expiate the most glaring misdemeanours of the past. In some familiar sketches it is the whiskey-sodden, blaspheming soldier who wins the Victoria Cross, or 278 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS achieves moral grandeur by a last solitary act. A grateful country should forget a blotted record, and give the champion a foremost place on the roll of honour. Up to that point perhaps no misgiving need trouble us. But it is an easy inference that the man who tells the story is not without insight into the judgment which binds or looses in heaven. The leaven of the Pharisees gets into our history. The man whose private morality is as base as it can be is a brilliant admiral, an astute statesman and proves himself the saviour of his country in its hour of humiliation. He is canonised. It is true he is a speckled martyr, but he redeemed himself by his death-pangs. We are in danger of accepting the plea of self-atonement, and of assuming that the process may prove valid before the bar of God's judgment. This sentiment, implicit in all hero- worship, feeds the pride of Pharisaism and deepens the offence of the Cross. In all loose interpretations of the doctrine of responsibility there is the same insidious animus against admitting the need for justification by the grace of another. Determinism is not an abstract philosophy only. It may be presented in a strictly logical and scientific form from which there seems no appeal. Vice and crime are symptoms of physio- logical derangement or the by-products of an ill- balanced civilisation. People whose conduct is abnormal cannot be other than they are. And so the nightmare of the theologians is got rid of, and with it the need for redemption. But in reaching this conclusion philosophy has made secret terms with the Pharisaism of human nature, and when we fall under its spell, we resent the assertion that TH^ SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 279 the mysterious transaction of the Cross must save us. Where there is no responsibility there is no sin, and where there is no sin there is no place for a suffering Messiah. Are we not sometimes beguiled by the ambition to be our own saviours, assuming of course that in any serious sense of the word we need salvation ? Do we not set out to display the inborn virtues, so repudiating any share in a common depravity? Do we not whisper to ourselves the flattery that we are able to bear our own burden ; and feel bitterly humiliated to see it placed, by the story of the gospel, upon the crucified ? This, after all, is a phase of self-idolatry which must needs be driven from the heart. Resentment of the call to self-abasement, the insistence upon our claim to be judged by human conventions rather than by Divine standards of rectitude, the resolve to be content with our past record, be it good or bad, rather than to be over- whelmed with shame in presence of the Divine glory, is common to Jew and Gentile, to the first and to the twentieth century alike ; and the prejudice must be shocked, mortified, destroyed before we can come within sight of salvation. Jesus Christ is a stone of stumbling to some men because before they can cross the threshold into his kingdom, God has to mortify the overweening reveretice they have cherished for the institutions of the past. " Have any of the rulers believed on Him ? " was a searching question for many a Jew, who could not bring himself either to reject Jesus or surrender his faith in the Divine authority of the courts to which he had hitherto bowed his judgment. It is always easy to revere traditions which are upheld 28o THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS by the public opinion of the hour. Those in power are surely fitted to weigh contending spiritual claims for they have been trained and chosen for the work. It needed no great act of self-renunciation to follow a well-dressed scribe, or a popular ruler of the synagogue ; but to be the disciple of a carpenter or a fisherman was a different question. The right to solve religious enigmas and determine Divine truths rested with the schools of scribes, the priesthood of the temple, and the supreme council at Jerusalem. It was a mark of religious patriotism to be loyal, through good and evil report, to the existing order. Much might be said in favour of obedience to those organised councils of religion, which were putting themselves into deadly conflict with the claims of Jesus of Nazareth. Was there no ground for expecting a succession of faithful and discerning teachers ? Through many generations the line of the prophets had not failed, and when supernatural gifts tended to disappear the prophets were replaced by honest and well-trained interpreters of the law. God's purposes towards mankind had always focussed themselves into the history of this elect race, and surely its leaders still expressed the highest develop- ments of religious life. The predecessors of the scribes were the organs of a theocracy, and the theocracy had not formally lost its mandate. It is true the position was somewhat changed, when the prophet had to make way for the king, and still more radically changed when the priests and scribes discharged their functions by the sufferance of heathen conquerors. Yet God had not surely for- saken His people, and the interpretation of His will must be looked for amongst the official repre- THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 281 sentatives of Israel. Orders are indelible. It was the merit of the Jew to be obstinately true to his own past. Religion and patriotism were indissolubly merged. He must bow to the existing order, even at the risk of doing less than justice to Jesus the Prophet of Galilee. And yet, on the other hand, it was clear that the religious leaders had been living on the reputation of their forefathers. Their minds were closed to new ideals and developments, and they had long outlived the commission they claimed. They had forgotten that the religion of Jehovah had been revealed by slow increments, and that larger disclosures of its significant principles had yet to be made. They looked upon the age of prophecy as finally closed. The right of private judgment they treated with contempt, and met in a temper of flagrant worldli- ness and expediency the solemn issues of the hour. They could not assimilate the sayings, and resented the methods, of this new Prophet from the hills of Galilee. Blindness had obviously overtaken them, and by the act in which they condemned the guilt- less benefactor of thousands they discredited them- selves through all subsequent ages. It must have been a shock to the unofficial Jew who had believed in his leaders with pathetic persistence, and had made it a part of his religion to uphold their power. But in this mixed and misguided patriotism was there not some element of goodness and virtue ? Why vex it? Why not treat this posture of the common mind with an indulgent tolerance and make it a little easier for the Jew to accept a crucified Messiah ? Why must this sentiment, which led the Jew to glory in the religious institutions of his 282 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS fatherland, be so sorely mortified? For three chief reasons. This submission to obsolete authorities closed the mind to new unfoldings of the faith, and made a progressive religion impossible. If the Jew had accepted Christ, and retained confidence in his old leaders, he would have been condemned to the same limitation of vision as the synagogues. God was not going to impose the shortsightedness of the ruling oligarchies upon the redeemed multitudes, when fresh and wonderful revelations were at hand. Divine Providence could only save Jew and Gentile by saving them from that idolatry of visible institutions which tended to put God in the background. The Jew had repudiated the image-worship of his neighbours without quite escaping the taint of idolatry, for he had given much of the glory, which belonged to God, to His visible Church and its institutions. Corporate bodies, claiming a Divine sanction for their enact- ments, had come between the human soul and God, sometimes alas ! grievously misinterpreting the Divine will. Till the specious centres, around which the religious loyalty of the Jew once gathered, had been discredited and destroyed, there could be no active response and submission to that spiritual headship, which was to rule the new life of faith and love. Those who were to inherit the blessings of the Redeemer's kingdom, must be brought under the immediate instruction and guidance of the Spirit of God, and this could only be effected by detaching them from the past and its standards of judgment. But the all-important reason was that the Jew could not believe in the sacrifice of the Cross, as the ground of his salvation, whilst he deferred in any THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 283 degree to the religious authority which had com- manded his reverence in bygone days. The Sanhe- drim had branded Jesus as a blasphemer, and had given a sentence against Him that was legally just if the count could be proved. To uphold its prestige was to condemn one innocent beyond all human example — one whose Divine and incomparable purity was to expiate universal sin. The blood, which was to hallow the soul of the human race, discredited for ever those representatives of a degenerate Jewish piety, who so wickedly shed it. How impossible it had become at one and the same time to believe both in Jesus and the Sanhedrim ! Belief in the resurrection, and in all the signs and wonders which accredited it to those who were not its eye-witnesses, was incompatible with belief in the wisdom and justice of the scribes and priests who crucified the Lord of life and glory. No such sharp, gigantic and appalling alternative had ever presented itself in human history. A middle course of belief in the Divine authority and inspiration of Jewish officialism, tempered with a hesitating half- belief in the Victim of the cross, was quite impossible ; and God in His providence meant it to be so. All loyalty to the corporate institutions of the past, in so far as they were assumed to be validly perpetuated in contemporary history, took away from loyalty to Jesus Christ, and divided into inert fragments the faith which was due to His sacrifice. The cross, whilst a symbol of redemption, was, at the same time, an unmistakable sign of the downfall of the Jewish hierarchies. Jesus became a stumbling-block to all who in tempers of idolatry and self-righteous- ness refused to break with the past. Loyalty to a 284 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS defunct religious order took upon it the colour of participation in a huge crime, and no man could find in the cross a power of Divine redemption, without being made to feel this. The prejudice of early Jewish training, which might seem to have in it some of the ingredients of a genuine religion, needed to be mortified. This peril did not cease with the fall of the Jewish commonwealth. Men still put a strained emphasis upon the visible, and so exaggerate the power of religious corporations and their leaders that God is left in the background, and His immediate ministries to the individual soul are obscured and despised. Respect for the traditional authorities of religion may be carried to a point at which ignoble worldliness and unbelief are engendered. The Church itself, with all the pomp and ostentation of its organised orders, may interpose itself between God and the soul of an age, asking a reverence long forfeited by repeated acts of unfaithfulness. The patriotism which upholds a Church because it is national rather than Christian — a Church which may perchance join itself with the music-hall and the drinking-bar in clamouring for innocent blood — is in conflict with Divine verities, and crucifies the Son of God afresh. When the State guides itself by counsels of political expediency, and the Church derives its mandate from such a State, the religion of the Man who died upon the cross will be disparaged and despised. It is some men's boast that they accept the Church on prac- tically the same ground as the Jews accepted the institutions of their fathers. What can be finer than hereditary loyalty ? Yes, but loyalty to the THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 285 Church may sometimes be incompatible with loyalty to Jesus Christ, when the Church loses its responsiveness to the spirit of its Master and strays from the way of righteousness and humanity. The doctrine of indelible orders has often led men to side with the Church against the great Lord who founded it. It is true the Church is visible, but not always visible in one place, or certified by one set of outward tests. If, like the Jews, we seek it thus, we mav find ourselves allied with a body, which, whatever its historic claims, has no present union with the living Head. Many a man becomes alienated from Jesus Christ through blind subjection to a nominally Christian society, which contradicts the principles of its founder. To idolise a school of priests, to put our reason and our conscience into commission with a coterie of teachers may end in despite to that Divine witness of the truth which is in every man. We cannot properly believe in the freedom, the catholic grandeur, the saving efficacy of the Cross, whilst we kneel at the feet of the man who trafficks in its virtues. The idolatry must be mortified so that our life may rest upon spiritual foundations. He who was despised, in the degenerate days of the Old Testament Church, may sometimes be despised in the New. Every prejudice which divides our loyalty to the living Lord, and detracts from the whole-heartedness of faith, must be mortified. The tastes and intellectual prepossessions of men are affronted by the new disclosures of the gospel ; and it is a part of the process of recovering them to humility and righteousness that it should be so. " Can any good come out of Nazareth ? " The 286 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS fine disdain expressed in the question was a wide- spread temper, especially amongst the learned. The rough hill-town lacked refinement, and was no true home of devotion and scholarship. The Scriptures themselves had not spoken of it as the birthplace of a prophet. The Jew of the crowd, whilst not slow to greet the rabbi and honour his authority as an expert on certain reserved questions, had tenacious views, on which he was accustomed to boast himself. Intellectual dogmatism permeated the learned and unlearned classes of society alike. Pride of personal respectability generally brings with it pride of religious knowledge and discernment. The multi- tudes of our Lord's day flocked into the synagogues, and were well indoctrinated into the salient truths of the Old Testament Scriptures. Whilst leaving problems of casuistry and moot interpretations to the scribes, they held fast to well-defined elements, for which they claimed the highest of all sanctions. What more could be needed ? The system was complete, with the one exception of a Messiah who should bestow political autonomy. No ex- tension of the truths of the past into new realms was either necessary or possible. The tendency was to resent anything with the least show of strangeness in it. It made people angry, for to announce the new implied they had lacked the insight which would have enabled them to grasp it before. And this temper of intellectual complacency was confirmed by the observances they so strenuously kept. If at any time they fell short of perfec- tion the conscience was appeased when they had offered the prescribed sacrifices. Such sacrifices THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 287 had comforted many jTenerations. But now Jesus implies that men can only have true life through the sacrifice He was shortly to offer in His own person, and his critics burlesqued the doctrine, professing to find in it some degrading cult, current amongst the fabled men-eaters. " How can this Man give us His flesh to eat ? " They could not accept salvation through the self-immola- tion of a fanatical carpenter, with whose offering they must come into mystical fellowship. Their system of thought had received its coping-stone and afforded no room for such revolting novelties. Finality had been reached, and the message of the Cross was an irrelevancy. But God had to mortify this tacit assumption of infallibility. Pride of understanding must be brought low, and till this was realised the foundation-stone of the new kingdom must seem a rock of offence. The redemption based upon sacrifice is still a rock of intellectual offence. The gospel implies that we do not know everything about ourselves and sin, and the suggestion is distasteful. We have been trained to think, and some kind of deference rather than a regimen of humiliation is due to our training. When we are reminded that our scheme of thought is not complete without the Cross, it goads into mental revolt and insurgency. The doctrine of vicariousness affronts that temper of independence, which we have thought of as one of the highest civic virtues, and which must surely have its place in religion. From childhood upwards we have surely known all that is necessary to a right relation with God, and we resent the new. We are vexed because our apprehension is baffled, even when 288 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS there seems to be little or no leaven of self- righteousness in us. After the heart is melted, the conscience appeased, and the life swayed by the genius of the Cross, the reason often persists in its protest and dissent. The gospel of propitiation is an affront to our intellectual Pharisaism. It is said that plants which throve upon every plain in Europe during the glacial epoch have retreated to the tops of the highest mountains, and are now found only above the snow-line. And this offence of the Cross, when driven from the melting heart, often entrenches itself on the highest pinnacle of the intellect. At the feet of this ideal Sufferer our pride and our self-complacency vanish, our affections are moved, and tears fill the eyes as we yield to the sublime captivation. We have little or no doubt about the broad outlines of the history. The story of the Passion is one of the sure facts no sane criticism can impugn. But is the incident specifically and providentially correlated to the order of God's moral government? Do we receive through the Cross blessings which could not otherwise be ours ? Why should the penalty due to an offending race be borne by a Divine representative of it? Is the vicarious law equitable ? How can we fit the Cross into a well-considered scheme of evolution ? Is not the spectacle of a spotless Victim, convulsed with pain and draining to the dregs the cup of humiliation, as He hangs between earth and the frowning heavens, a dishonour to the , Divine Sovereignty ? Why should this terrible interpolation come into the life of a realm over which the azure bends and where sweet flowers blow ? The prejudice has retreated to some obscure and frozen height of the reason. THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 289 Not infrequently men who are the friends of Jesus, and well-wishers to His cause, are perplexed by this doctrine, and for the time being kept back from discipleship. Specialised studies may create an intellectual prejudice. Those who have been engaged in purely scientific researches for a generation cannot find a place for the Cross in their schemes of thought. They have been absorbed by subjects in which the ethical factor is obscure, if not wanting, and they formulate no analogies which can help the acceptance of the doctrine. It is perhaps much easier for one who has been absorbed in the study of law, jurisprudence, history, or social evolution, to see the moral significance of the Cross than for a pure scientist. We are offended. The elementary truths of religion are rational and have the authority of primary intuitions ; but at last we reach a point when the old logic begins to fail. Our specialised methods of verification hamper us and perhaps become a spiritual peril. The visitor to the power- house of an electric works is told to take off his watch and leave it outside before he goes near the dynamos. The watch may be of the highest accuracy, set in jewels, fitted with a compensated balance, guaranteed to keep time in all temperatures, but if the electric currents reach the mainspring it will be deranged and for the time rendered useless. With reason in the abstract, the doctrine of reconciliation through the sacrifice of Jesus is in perfect accord. The more richly the mind develops, the less incongruous it seems. But reason, as we find it in ourselves, is sometimes deranged by the currents pulsing through the blood, and deflected by the axioms which dominate the worldly societies around us. W^e have to lay our 20 290 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS boasted reason aside, for a time only and not for the entire hereafter of our lives. We are humbled. But why should we protest and revolt? If the tragedy of the Cross was once unfathomable to the first-born spirits of light, who long desired to look into its meanings, is it likely, at the very beginning, to commend itself to all the tastes and the intellectual faculties which are unfolding themselves within us? What approves itself to the infinite reason may perhaps prove an intellectual offence to us in the first stage of our training. Indeed it must do so, if we contend at any cost for the sufficiency of our own untrained judgment in Divine mysteries. In both Jew and Gentile there is an instinctive resentment of that call to self-renunciation which speaks from the Cross to the ends of the world. And this resentment is no mere recoil from hardship and self-denial, but a proud challenge of the judgment passed upon man by treating him as a subject for chastisement and humiliation. The violent death of the Galilean reformer brought to the Jew a total eclipse of the national aspirations he had been accustomed to cherish. He looked for happiness and much outward prosperity, and the Messiah, of whom he had dreamed, was to inaugurate a true golden age. This view of the work of the deliverer, which had been slowly growing for centuries, was not an intellectual miscalculation only, but had borrowed its salient features from the self-complacency of the race. It is vividly illustrated in the demeanour of the rich young ruler, whose outward virtues attracted Jesus. He had been trusting in a faultless obedience to the letter, and, after the fashion of his class, he doubtless looked upon great possessions as a sign THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 291 of approval put by Heaven upon his scrupulous rectitude and the rectitude of his fathers. The Master's word was intended to mortify his tacit Pharisaism. To strip himself of all that he had, was to admit unworthiness of the gifts lavished upon him, and to confess that his piety, however sufficient on its temple-side, lacked social perfection, for he must needs give to the poor. His slowness to accept the law of renunciation was rooted in self-esteem. He surely deserved something more than the privations of a starveling disciple. Jesus could not conciliate His prejudice, but must needs prove a foundation against which the youth tripped, perhaps only for a time. And from the days of the Greeks to our own time, this same indulgent, self-glorifying temper, has been at the root of that light-hearted naturalism, which men hold as a legitimate ideal. Why should we deny ourselves ? It is true there is a morbid and unchristian asceticism, but the spirit of the man who feels that he is not worthy of the least of all the Lord's mercies is sometimes described as ascetic. The revolt against the pain which is disciplinary, rather than a result of human tyranny and selfishness, rests in part upon the assumption that we have fitted ourselves for a better lot. The new life in Christ must begin in shame, unconditional abasement, the confession of unworthiness, and unless we know ourselves this new foundation is a stone of stumbling. Why should we practise self-denial and join the cross-bearers ? Because it is thus that we acknowledge ourselves sinners, and through this shame of the moment escape eternal contempt. Another fateful prejudice, which God often needs to cross by His sovereign grace, is that which we have 292 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS formed concerning the manner of our entrance into His kingdom. This is perhaps one of the last lingering symptoms of that uprising pride which makes us stumble. When we are convinced it is by- grace, free and unalloyed, that we must be saved, many of us still want to reserve to ourselves some right of choice. We are admittedly undeserving, and yet surely we may prescribe the regimen under which we shall be placed for our soul's good. The Jew knew the kind of Messiah he wanted, and thought he had the right to insist upon one after his own specifications. He wished to be dealt with in consonance with the usage and tradition of his history. He did not dream that the new theophany would flash upon him in a common guest-chamber, or amidst the din and babble of a street crowd. It would have been more seemly in the temple. The Syrian leper thought it would be equally efficacious if he washed in the rivers of his fatherland, as they splashed cool from the snows of Lebanon and with the scent of orchards lingering about their banks. He could not bear the thought of washing in the turgid stream of a third-rate power. Some men think it is not quite correct to be saved outside the walls of the national Church, yet perhaps it is in a tent at Keswick, or on a hillside in Wales, that they enter into the rest of faith. The man who looks for the channel of the new life at the sacramental table sometimes finds it at a lowly mission, and the man who expects to find it at a revival has to go for the gift to the sacramental table. Trivial prejudices are often an offshoot of pride, and God cannot pamper them. The edge of humiliation might be taken away if we could choose the method by which God's grace THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 293 operates upon our natures. One man desires for himself a conversion in harmony with his ideas of Church order, and speaks of growing into the consciousness of the new hfe, as behoves quiet and refined people. Perhaps he shrinks from the publicity of confession and in his preference there is a temper of pride. Another man wants portents to wait upon his entrance into the kingdom. A new star must shine over his spiritual birthplace. The heavens must open in mysterious vision. The spiritual change must lend itself to vivid narrative. This also is pride. One seeker after God cannot shed a tear, but another finds strong emotions come un- bidden, and he would have it otherwise. All these caprices are bred of the old insidious self-worship, and it would be no true salvation if God were to flatter our wilfulness by His methods of bringing us into the kingdom. His ways cross the grain in every detail. Till the last bit of the old unyielding vanity is gone from our natures the stone laid in Zion will be a stone of stumbling. Let it not be said, or even thought, that God is treating us with superfluous harshness, because in His saving wisdom He sees fit to wound our proud, silly prepossessions. He could not do otherwise because the inward discipline is necessary for our renewal into a better life. Our prejudices are not infallible that they should have such careful re- spect shown to them. Unless eradicated they may embarrass our future advancement. You do not impugn the Creator's pity because He has lodged in the earth elements some of which have the power to blight, crush, or destroy ; but you might have reason for complaint had He left you void of senses to 294 THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS detect and announce these dangers. He who perishes through the destructive forces sleeping in nature, perishes through inattention to the danger-signals of the senses, at least in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. God has given us timely warning of the prejudices which war against salvation, and it is the infatuation of a stiff-necked pride which makes us heedless of His warning, to our own overthrow. The Jews to whom Jesus was a stumbling-block were warned by the prophet Isaiah, by the Psalmist, by the aged Simeon, who spake of the Divine Child as set for the rising and falling of many in Israel and for a sign that should be spoken against. They were warned again and again by the Lord Himself The faithless Israel was not surprised into destruction. He was not victimised by the illusions of a child-like innocence. The ill-fated people had ample oppor- tunity of ridding themselves of their prejudices and of escaping the doom to which unteachable tempers led. In seeking to save us by His Son, God puts Himself against our evil prepossessions and burns out the nerve of our perverted sensibilities. If we harden ourselves in notions, which run counter to our salvation, we are at least forearmed against the danger. Prejudices often grow in stubborn fixity with our years. They occupy the empty place of our dis- possessed passions. To suffer a prejudice to grow into intractibility may put the soul into peril. It was prejudice in Judas which masked in specious shows of patriotism and philanthropy his insidious avarice. It blinded him to the depths of evil in his own soul and equipped him for his crime. Naaman stumbled at God's method for the moment and felt his sentiment of nationality outraged, but he recovered himself THE SALVATION WHICH AFFRONTS 295 before it was too late, and went back to his friends unashamed. Nathaniel held to his early prejudice against Nazareth with a light hand and confessed Jesus, " Thou art the Son of God " ; and he has been recompensed with a responsive confession in the presence of the Father and is not put to shame. Building upon this foundation many rise into eternal honour, whilst others find Jesus a rock of offence and stumble in darkness and woe. XV THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST "This people draw nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips ; but their heart is far from Me." — Matt. xv. 8. " Having a form of godliness, but denying the power there- of."— 2 Tim. Hi. 5. Form is not without its value, if the forces of life have free course through its channels. Indeed all life requires organic embodiment for its manifestation, although mere form, as we know too well, does not always imply life. Habits of devotion inculcated in childhood and practised in the after-days bring men into the paths where God and His saving gifts are most often found. Conscientious attendance upon the ordinances of religion keeps the soul within range of those mystic forces which tend to spiritualise and sanctify. Public worship needs symbolic acts, appointed hours and seasons, confessions of a common faith, bodily gestures and attitudes, through which the thoughts of many minds are confederated into unison and fellowship. By conformity to religious customs, when the conformity is disinterested and sincere, men remind themselves and the watching 296 THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 297 world of obligations to the Supreme Being under which all alike are placed. Rites and ceremonies may be a tribute of priceless significance to the claim God has upon the homage of His creatures. Form is the providential organism made ready for the breath from heaven when it surges into human societies and suffuses them with the mysteries of a Divine life. A man who ruthlessly tramples underfoot those pre- scribed habits and traditions of worship, which to many of us are real channels of grace, is not likely to know much of the power of godliness. But in every age form has its perils. It may offer a false centre for human thought and hope, arresting the soul in its progress towards invisible relations. It may be mimetic and meretricious. It may be a monumental lie making a vain parade and pretence of life, where life is woefully lacking. It may be a palliative of the conscience when that faculty needs to be provoked into activity by vigorous expostulation, and to soothe may be fatal. How often is the form a shrine whose treasures have been rifled and replaced by paste jewels which cozen the eye with an illusive show ! It is only too possible to have temple, altar, and a legitimate priesthood when the sentence of spiritual desolation has gone forth. If there was no hollowness in the routine pieties of Christendom the Church would be a vaster power than Cabinet Councils, the chamber where knees bend in prayer would reflect greater issues than the Stock Exchange, and the hour of the world's redemption would be making ready to sound. The reproach our Lord addressed to the scribes, pointing it as He did with words from the prophet Isaiah, proves that the bias towards formalism was no 298 THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST new symptom in Jewish life, but had been at work for centuries. The proneness to unreality was perhaps one of the evils inseparable from an elaborately systematised code of worship, or at least statutory ceremonialism furnished the peculiar conditions under which this tendency of human nature forced itself into view. All the prestige of the State, too, was used in favour of these august and complex func- tions, into which the simple faith of the patriarchs had at last evolved itself. It was chiefly against this peril that the prophets were constrained to lift up their voices, so bringing themselves into positions of more or less sharp antagonism with the priests. Writing to Timothy, St. Paul declares his convic- tion that, sooner or later, the selfsame tendency was sure to reveal itself in this new and highly spiritual- ised form of faith it had been his lifework to spread. Perhaps for the moment the peril was not acute. The apostle was labouring in hard and stormy scenes which were not by any means congenial to the growth of pretence, decorous routine, and mere formality. Sometimes, indeed, he met with cases of flagrant, shameless imposture which overpassed the average limits of specious, self-deceiving religion ; but they were comparatively rare. Men had nothing to gain by an insincere profession of the faith. When the gospel is first promulgated amongst races strongly wedded to their own superstitions, the acceptance of it involves civic and social disabilities, perhaps indeed terrible and unrelenting persecution, which help to sift out the sanctimonious make-believes. If a new convert should measure his interests in the terms of current temporalities, in nine cases out of ten he must THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 299 obviously prove himself a loser. Unless he have those inward satisfactions which wait upon a complete surrender to the will of God, he is not likely to pay the price involved. But the apostle knew that the times would change. The predominant opinion of the communities he was striving to evangelise must assuredly, one day, be on the side of the gospel. Jesus was not always to rank as a Jewish outcast, but kings would make haste to bow at His feet and offer their gifts. When those in high places came to accept His nominal authority the old danger was destined to return. The change is not altogether to the good when religion goes in its silver slippers. The undesirables affect friend- ship with it. The formalism, into which Judaism had again and again degenerated, would then threaten Christianity itself, for no system is so vital as to be permanently immune from the peril. Men would be attracted by its worship, hail its institu- tions, conform to the popular interpretation of its behests, and yet at the same time set themselves to conciliate the old indwelling lusts. This always produces the formalist. Men use the watchwords of the Church, prostrate themselves in its assemblies, subscribe to the theory of its admirable ethic, and yet refuse to accept the spirit of Jesus as a supreme, authoritative, and vitalising force in their lives. Another consideration, perhaps, entered into this wider outlook. Both the Jewish and Christian Churches, at different epochs of their history, were more or less influenced by the precedents of heathen religion. Intercourse with both Babylon and Rome tended to establish, amongst the worshippers of the Most High, tests and standards of devotion not 300 THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST always helpful to spirituality. The claim of the great world-religions of antiquity was satisfied by pomp, dramatic movement, extraneous service. If the object of worship might be seen, handled, felt, regaled with odours, fed up with sacrifices, well pleased with wine, it was natural to assume that the rules of the temple might be fulfilled in terms of the sensuous life, and that it was an over-refine- ment to set up severe inward standards of thought and feeling beyond the reach of the crowd. Whilst a people's notions of God are unspiritual, and He is regarded chiefly as a dispenser of temporal bless- ings, and not as a Being of vivid moral attributes, it is obvious that conformity to the letter of a rite will suffice for an acceptable service. If a visible object of devotion is visibly honoured, that is enough. The result follows amongst many races that religious and ethical ideas move on distinct lines, and lan- guage is used which baffles those who are the adherents of a more spiritual worship. In some countries of the East, a man who lies, cheats, steals, and lives in loathsome sensualities, is described as of great sanctity, because he practises austerities, is punctilious in the invocation of a favourite god, and is stirred with consuming enthu- siasm for a self-chosen cult. His observances are counted for much, and questions of practical conduct do not find place, on either the debtor or creditor side of his reputation. In the olden days, when the isolation of the race was broken down, and the Jew came into intimate converse with surrounding nations, he could not but be in danger of adopting their conventional estimates and engaging in a routine of rites and offerings, which would tend to THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 301 make Jehovah-worship a more or less hollow show. And this experience was repeated in apostolic and sub-apostolic times. Whilst the drift towards for- malism is one of the chronic infirmities of human nature, there can be little doubt that the drift was accelerated into a tremendous peril by the traditions, which new and half-taught converts brought with them into the Christian Church. The old habit of putting stress upon outward rites, whilst forgetting that acceptable service must have its springs in the power of a new life, was often persistent, tenacious, despotic. This peril is still in our midst, and its spread is often fostered by those histrionic develop- ments into which worship sometimes runs. The genius of heathenism wins back its old ascendancy even within the Christian Church, and form is ac- counted of equal value with that conscious sense of spiritual things in which real discipleship consists. This tendency to formalism is inherent in the temperament of the race, and does not show itself in the sphere of religion only. We find it in art and literature, in the rules which regulate social intercourse, and in secular morals. It might be in- vidious, although by no means difficult, to name writers of eminence who are stylists, artistic phrase- makers, manicures devoted to the task of beauti- fying with patient fastidiousness the mean and the insignificant. Vast talents and the best oppor- tunities of a lifetime have been spent in polishing adjectives and mounting them into shining sentences, just as the lapidary deals with the agates and rubies of his craft. The form has been all in all, and the substance a frivolous incident of the process. A just classification of these writers would 302 THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST perhaps put them into the guild of filagree workers. What is the sum of the message taught with such laboured and painful elegance ? Half a dozen truisms. One is sometimes amazed at the meagre thought hidden by folios of graceful, balanced, opulent diction. This tendency to illusive formalism shows itself in the codes of etiquette observed amongst the castes and nationalities of both Europe and Asia. Men in rags, and coated with every variety of filth, address each other in long-drawn, honorific titles. Much is professed, flatteries flow like rivers of oil, gifts are offered not intended for acceptance, and the plain outsider, who has not been taught to reckon for the traditional rebates and discounts, is taken in. These effusive, resonant euphemisms are pretence and stale custom only and may some- times hold malignity and contempt. The instigator of the Indian Mutiny, Nana Sahib, was suave and insinuating, and had been a smiling, plausible, popular guest in high circles of Anglo-Indian society. In some countries it takes years to learn how little is signified by sonorous exaggerations, compliments, and courtesy titles. A society rotten to the core may now and again chance to be squeamish in its superficial sentiments and ban a vulgar phrase or a lapse in taste more severely than flagrant trans- gression. It affects the airs of the professional saint, whilst at heart it is coarser than the swine. Men drill and school themselves into codes of correct behaviour, and a huge void yawns where we expect to find the first essentials of character. This weak- ness is pointed out in one of the letters of Junius. Addressing a nobleman of his day, he says, "That THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 303 you are a civil, polite person, is true. Few men understand the little morals better or observe the great ones less than your lordship." Eastern lawgivers, who base their teaching upon elementary instincts and affections, are not slow to note this universal tendency to pretence. The sages of China, two thousand five hundred years ago, found it necessary to denounce the son whose filial piety consisted in lavish funeral rites, whilst his life had been one long inward rebellion against those who had the first claim to be honoured. Con- fucianism, no less than Judaism, and Christianity, has had to battle with all the weaknesses and temp- tations which tend to evolve the formalist. Human nature finds it easy to forget its defects and deformities when it has covered them over for years with a rich, embroidered robe of stately rites and ceremonies. By putting ourselves into attitudes which express certain groups of emotions, it is possible to call forth a simulated experience of those emotions. Postures and bodily movements suitable to the lighter moods of the mind stimulate a vague, un- reasoning sense of pleasure, whilst acts expressive of grief bring into the mind a sense of undefined depression. A French psychologist has said : — " We know that various emotions show themselves in certain spontaneous movements and attitudes of the body, which constitute their natural expression. Emotion is the cause ; the movements are the effect. It is less generally known that the movements and attitudes of the body, artificially produced, are capable of exciting the corresponding emotions. Remain for some time in an attitude of sadness 304 THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST and you will feel sad : by mingling in cheerful society and regulating your outward behaviour in accordance with it you may awaken in yourself a transient gaiety. If the arm of a hypnotised sub- ject is placed with a clenched fist in a threatening attitude the corresponding expression appears in the face and the rest of the body. Here the movement is the cause and the emotion the effect. There is an indissoluble association between a given movement and a given feeling. Emotion excites movement — movement excites emotion, but with this very im- portant difference : that movements are not always capable of exciting emotion, and when they do succeed the states they bring about are neither intense nor permanent." This curious fact, in which we may have repro- duced an ancestral association between a posture and the emotion it symbolised, is not without a bearing upon the subject of religious formalism. There can be no doubt that certain acts tend to generate religiosity, and that such feeling, when experienced, is brief, and brings no genuine accession of power to the deeper religious life. The more superficial sentiments of piety, a simulation of reverence, rapt moods of soul, tremors of faith and love, even transports of ecstasy may be propagated from the bodily circumference of the being, rather than evolved from its mystic centres. We need to be on our guard lest these insidious symptoms, from which a certain degree of devotional gratifi- cation may be derived, should deceive and betray us. The whirlings of the dervish, the prostration of the Christian devotee in scenes of subduing colour combined with undulating music, the measured. THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 305 martial processional hymn, the systematised method and the loud ejaculations of the revival, may foster what is specious and short-lived. But true religious emotion, sweet and vivifying as the dew, must issue out of great spiritual facts grasped with unrelaxing faith, and lend itself to strict moral tests. There is danger both in elaborated ritual and in uncon- ventional simplicity. Religious acts which once represented life may, after an interval of years, cease to do so, and the faint emotion they call forth may be a surface ripple rather than a tidal throb from the infinite deeps. We may get misleading satis- factions from the accidents of the outward regimen into which we have schooled ourselves. It is only by the fresh inflow of grace, which continually quickens and saves, that we can be kept from corrupt and pernicious formalisms. There is a formalism, akin perhaps to infirmity rather than spiritual transgression, which arises from those instinctive economies of nervous force which run side by side with the successive stages of our growth. Nature prompts us to do many things with the least possible expenditure of thought and vital activity ; and religion is apt to slip into this category, and at first, perhaps, there may be little or no moral obliquity in the process. It is a part of the habit of self-preservation to hold in reserve the latent forces of our organic life, and existence would be impossible if every daily act demanded an equally intense concentration of our powers upon its performance. Acts which were once conscious and intentional, like the putting-on of spectacles, the winding-up of a watch at bedtime, the separation of words into distinct letters whilst reading, tend to become auto- 21 3o6 THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST matic ; and we do them at last without formulated purpose or reflection. Dr. Samuel Johnson, we are told, had a trick of touching alternate posts as he walked through the streets — a trick to which the inner faculties of the mind were scarcely consenting parties. We call the phenomenon " unconscious cerebration," and the symptom makes itself evi- dent in religion as much as in other departments of human activity. The rosary was devised by the Buddhists, and adopted by certain sects of Christians, to tell the tale of prayers that were tending to be- come somnolent, languid, half-conscious mutterings. Even good men acquire slovenly tricks of mind, and are not equally real and earnest at all times. It is said that it takes an unpractised priest a full hour to go through all the minutiae of High Mass, but after many repetitions he can discharge the office in twenty minutes. In speeding up the performance, it is obvious that more or less conscious movements of the mind and body must be replaced by subconscious. Such an accomplishment surely has its perils. It is with the object of guarding against the facile formalism, which comes from use and wont, that in some parishes of the Scottish Highlands, the sacrament is celebrated only once a year. The temptation begins just as soon as a routine is established, which makes no demand on the finer energies of the spirit. Human nature is readier to give of that which is outward than of the con- science, the will and the supreme submission of the soul. The most exacting outward rite is easier than the rudimentary acts of spiritual obedience. The spirit of unresting progress is the best defence against this temptation to religious automatism. THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 307 The soul becomes a mere whirligig when it is altogether centred in the trite and the old, and the romance of the new fails to win and engage its dull, undeveloped powers. Servile, unthinking conformity to a prescribed rite may stupefy the higher conscious activities, producing a string-moved puppet, rather than a child of God, able to grow into ever higher perfection, with the growing grace and revelation of the ages. Religion, with no principle of expansion at its centre, degenerates into a vain, tiresome show of devoutness, as much outside the real nature of the man as a Thibetan praying-mill. Prayer itself may stagnate through the monotony of its interests and the narrow groove within which it moves. Fresh ideas and inspirations are needed to guard our holy things from sameness, insipidity, and corruption. Well-meant routine may be humdrum, servile, soul- less. Some samples of piety belong to the category of clockwork. A short time ago, in one of the city shops, cycling costumes were advertised. The made- up figure of a lady faultlessly clad, was seated in the saddle of a fine machine. The feet were in proper position, pedal, crank, and wheel ran smoothly all the day long, but the working model was a feat in mec- hanics and no progress was made. Passing the shop window a week later one might still see the placid, wax-faced lady at her task, free from dust, in no hurry, and disdainful of fatigue. No milestones had been passed, no records broken, no silver trophies won. It was round upon round, without romance or meaning, the perpetual turning of the wheel, without any gain in mileage. Such scenes we may perhaps see in our churches, as well as in shop windows, if we look with discerning eyes ; perhaps even in the soul- 3o8 THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST mirror within us. There is an endless round of service, communions, district visitings, many prayers, but no perceptible gain. Where the standing-ground of the soul is one and the same with that occupied twenty years before, there is always a strong suspicion of automatism. A show of diligent letter-service meets the eye but no nearer movement towards God, or fuller participation in His life has been achieved. The first foundations, with their ritual elements, are ever being laid anew, and there is no daring stride towards perfection. We have need to ask ourselves. Is our religion one whit better than formalism? But the formalism denounced by Jesus and His apostles is that under whose fair surface the temper of habitual sin conceals its venom and inward obliquity. Religion, when divorced from an un- reserved surrender to the will of God, inevitably tends to an externalism which too often passes into flagrant hypocrisy. Evil, secretly cherished in the soul, turns the most orthodox and immaculate customs of worship into a hollow, loathsome insin- cerity. Formalism is the ever repeated, yet ever hopeless, endeavour of human nature to conciliate God, whilst the soul is out of harmony with His ways. This relation between sin and a futile letter- worship is suggested by the context of our Lord's words, when He denounced the hypocritical scribes, as well as by that of St. Paul's prophetic forecast in his letter to Timothy. This indictment of Jewish worship for its unreality is preceded by a terrible inventory of the evils issuing from the hearts of those who are painstaking in their outward pieties. " For out of the heart cometh forth evil thoughts, murders, THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 309 adulteries, fornications, thefts," in spite, too, of so much concern for the outside of cup and platter and frequent ritual washing of the hands. In looking forth into the future the Apostle Paul saw that the dismal evils he had specified — greed, contempt of parents, ingratitude, love of pleasure, violence — would still leave the mere husk of Christian observance intact and undestroyed ; "holding a form of godliness but having denied the power thereof" Wherever there is an attempt to harmonise a respect for religious ordinances with low standards of conduct, formalism becomes rampant, and Christianity, judged by the temper of its professors, is in imminent danger of passing back into a non-ethical religion. It is one of the puzzles of history that Christianity should often subdue men to an acknowledgment of its outward claims, whilst they rebel against its strenuous ethic. In his book of Travels, Montaigne tells us that in the city of Rome, when the bells sounded the hour for the worship of Mary, painted women in their chambers of wantonness, would rise from beds of shame and drop upon their knees. In our own land, famous soldiers and statesmen, who blasphemed much during the week, have pre- sented themselves on Sunday morning in the village church at the sacramental table. We still hear of men in some of our rural districts who are the last to leave the ale-house on the Saturday night, and are at early communion next morning. Patrons of the Turf, with its debaucheries and sordid dissipations, are often the most zealous of churchmen, and Bridge, alas ! is not unknown in homes once ruled by the Puritan tradition. It is easy to conform to the letter, and also expedient. 3IO THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST Religious form may sometimes represent the external skeleton, which at one time guarded a life now passed away. How often is it the monu- ment of an unconfessed apostacy ! Little by little he first surrender to God has been revoked and the spiritual consciousness, which once expressed itself in outward acts of devotion, has faded into oblivion, whilst the perfunctory acts were continued in spite of their sterility. The surviving habits and customs speak of days of spiritual prosperity, now succeeded by days of decadence. The conformity to religious traditions, out of which all spiritual vitality has disappeared, is like those curious desiccated forests to be found jn some parts of Turkestan. Trees once rose into the air, tall, well- proportioned, strongly anchored in the soil, but they are now sapless, denuded of foliage, bereft of fruit, and no longer capable of producing it. Sand- storms have turned woods and orchards into clumps of fossil-trees. The trees have lost all power of drinking in the dew, absorbing sunshine, ministering of their sweetness and bounty to the world. The rare essence of life evaporated genera- tions ago, and yet the old shapes it assumed still dominate the landscape. And Churches with a history reaching back to the days of the apostles, holding in trust priceless fragments of early Christian literature, reciting ancient liturgies and creeds, punctilious in the administration of the sacraments, may lack growth in grace, enthusiastic enterprise, and all the fruits of holiness. In the lands of sacred story, fossil Edens, as well as incinerated cities of lust, survive in grim and doleful irony. And the same features of degeneracy may sometimes be THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 311 seen in the individual as well as in the religious societies founded by the toils and tears of apostles. The Bible is still read and the knee bent in wonted habits of prayer. The good custom of coming to God's house is unbroken. The sacrament is duly received. And yet the dew is gone from the soul and the vitality of faith is lost. Perfect ortho- doxy and lamentable petrifaction of soul meet in weird association. When the mortuary chapel of the Medicis in Florence was disturbed some years ago, the sus- picion, bruited abroad centuries before, that one of the princesses of that famous line had been poisoned by her husband, Francis the First of Austria, was confirmed. It was found that not a single trace of decay had passed upon the form of the princess. She lay in a dress of red satin trimmed with lace, red silk stockings on her feet, and jewelled earrings peeping through the blond tresses of her hair. The brow was white and firm as marble, the colour had not quite left the cheeks ; and although more than three hundred years had lapsed, no sign of disfigurement and dissolution had appeared. Arsenic, whilst swiftly and completely destroying life, at the same time safeguards the flesh against corruption. And mortal sin often acts in much the same way. It leaves the outward form of piety undestroyed, whilst it paralyses all the religious capacities and cuts the soul off from God. Beauty may linger in all the rites of worship when a stupendous spiritual tragedy has come to pass. Nothing short of sincere spiritual service will meet the claim of a just and holy God. Men, necessarily unable to carry their demands into the spheres of the 312 THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST soul, are satisfied when outward conformity to the visible standards set up is secured. Politicians who patronise Christianity, without believing in it, and are zealous for State Churches, wish to use religion as one of the expedients of Government. Christianity, said a newspaper editor in private conversation, is a good national religion but has little or no virtue for its individual adherents. All he expected or desired was patriotic conformity to a few outward rites, combined with a blind devotion to the flag. He who searches the heart and tries the reins of the children of men, and is ever walking in the midst of the golden candlesticks, asks much more than that. It is reported that at the Coronation Durbar, an Indian Rajah, who had a somewhat sullen countenance and was not supposed to be over well affected towards the British Crown, appeared in the great bejewelled procession, with a face painted for the occasion by a native artist into an unalterable smirk. Such a show of loyalty might satisfy a Viceroy, and also amuse a good-natured king, if he happened to hear of it, but would not count in a crisis. One wonders how the census of worshippers would work out if the specious formalists were omitted from the reckoning. God does not count the complaisance towards His authority and the smiling obsequiousness to His claim which is skin-deep only, or not so much as that. He scorns all painted loyalties. Our homage must be intense and inward. To poor, fallen men and women with a weakened and perverted sense of spiritual things, the outward observance is a thousand-fold easier than dutiful tempers and habits of mind. Childhood may be trained into gestures that will be as ineradicable as THE RELIGIOUS FORMALIST 313 the measured tread of the soldier twenty years after he has left the forces ; but such feats fall short of religion. To teach the index finger to shape the outline of a cross, to enjoin the folding of the hands and the closing of the eyes, to practise well-timed and graceful genuflexions, is easier than to light within the soul the flame of a pure devotion. The asceticism of the man who stands on one leg for twenty years, with arm stretched out above his head, is easier than the publican's frame of mind when he stole abashed into the temple. To walk in spiked shoes to a shrine a thousand miles away, or to measure the distance with bodily prostrations, is child's play compared with the journey of the prodigal from the far-off country to his father's threshold. To wriggle one's way up to some high- perched Himalayan shrine on hands and knees re- quires less fortitude than to come through the rent veil into the holy place. It is so easy to rest in that which is outward, because Nature prompts the method and apparently approves the feat. We are formalists by birth, and God's miracle is needed to lift us above the temptation to letter-worship and make us spiritual. The breath of God must create us anew and revive us hour by hour from the earthly slumber to which we are prone. It is only regenerated children who can worship God in the spirit, trust in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, so making good their claim to be of the elect Israel. XVI THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP " But be not ye called Rabbi ; for one is your teacher and all ye are brethren. And call no man father on the earth ; for one is your Father which is in heaven. Neither be ye called Master ; for one is your Master, even the Christ." — Matt. xxiii. 8-IO. Jesus here warns His disciples against those caste distinctions which had embittered the religion of His times, destroyed that sense of brotherhood on which the Mosaic law was based, and was helping to bring a swift Nemesis upon the faithless nation. Such distinctions must not be allowed to grow up in the new society He was founding. Rank and the flatter- ing titles conceding homage to it, would blight the movement which was to find its centre in His own person. Our Lord here implies that He has a right to teach truth shared by no other ; that the Divine Father- hood permits no competitive claim upon man's gratitude and obedience ; and that the Christ Himself has undivided authority to direct the gifts, allot the work, and shape the vocation of His followers. His words imply no censure upon the use of civil 314 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 3^5 titles and the powers they define. Jesus and His apostles conformed to the courtesies of official life in their methods of address, although He spoke lightly of the princes of this world and denounced the idolatries begotten by their pomps. He did not raise His protest against schools of learning or challenge their qualifications to appraise and certify knowledge. Such subjects were beyond His immediate survey, and might be left to settle themselves. But neither the titles used in the world nor the prerogatives corresponding to them were to be reproduced amongst His followers. The new faith, into which He was expanding the old, did not rest upon technical knowledge or the witness of experts ; orders and hierarchies, corresponding to those of this world, were therefore superfluous. The atmosphere of the discipleship must be frank and simple as that of the home. Perhaps the potentates of this world are at their best and gain most in the quiet retreats, where titles and court ceremonies are dropped, and the root-affections of the nature can express themselves without formality or reserve. Where Jesus dwells and makes known His deepest secret there must be no vain show or pretence of greatness. In view of this memorable protest, is it not strange that the chief ministers of the Roman and the Greek communions should have assumed such titles as " Pope " and " Patriarch," and have claimed that the majestic prerogatives of a Divine Fatherhood are embodied in their formal acts ? Such names go against both the spirit and letter of this deprecation addressed to the Twelve. The Tsar at St. Petersbursf also calls himself " the little father of his people" and 3i6 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP the Chinese Emperor is described as " the father and mother " of four hundred million souls ; but the acts of these rulers no more reflect the wisdom and power of the Most High than do the acts of some Popes and Patriarchs. Sweet and pleasing designations may sometimes mask ferocious despotisms. All disciples have a common standing-ground in Christ's school, and spiritual privilege and oppor- tunity are equal. Jesus does not imply that no after-distinctions will arise, but rather the contrary. The highest honour belongs to the man who is free from ambition, and, renouncing loud-sounding names and glittering decorations, covets the humblest tasks. The genius of His kingdom is incompatible with the growth of governing aristocracies, shaped after the course of this world. It is sometimes argued that social castes may quite legitimately reproduce them- selves within the Church, and that it is indeed expedient for a selected group of its clergy to be invested with the rank of princes, so that they can speak on equal terms to the great ones of the earth. Kings, and nobles who trace their titles back to the Norman Conquest, do not care to be preached to by peasants and fishermen. A good and wise man, like the late Bishop Ewing, may sometimes make himself an apologist for a condition of things never contemplated by Jesus. In one of his '' Present-Day Papers " on the " Christian Ministry," he has said: — " In Rome and Constantinople we find the Church with an Imperial system ; in Switzerland with a Republican ; in England with a constitutional or limited episcopacy ; and in America, where many nations are in embryo with representations of all methods of Government together. Moreover, it is thp: common discipleship 317 evident among ourselves that the subdivisions and denominations of Churches and the outward dis- tinctions which prevail in matters of religion are more owing to social or worldly causes than to spiritual or international differences. The upper classes affect an organisation in conformity with their own habits and position and the lower with theirs ; and the outward aspects of the Churches affects the choice of individuals. Marquises and Countesses do not gravitate to dissent, but rise to the Imperialism of Rome ; Dissenters do not leap per saltuni to the Papacy, but ascend the constitu- tional steps of the Church of England." The facts, perhaps, are correctly stated, but Church attachment is looked upon as though it were a question of social convenience, and the meekness and gentleness of Jesus Christ, and His many counsels to the disciples, seem to be left, for the moment, out of the reckoning. In the early centuries different types of Church organisation appeared in different provinces, influenced more or less by the precedents and traditions of the local governments. It was so important that men should accept Jesus Christ and be loyal to the teaching of His apostles, that much freedom was conceded, and the methods of Church administration were treated as of subordinate importance. But it is a mistake to assume that highly graded oligarchies were the appointed patterns, to which Churches were bound to conform, when the missionary conditions, in which they were cradled, had once passed away. Imperial ideas within the Church always engender pride ; and poor, washed-out mimicries of Csesar- worship, however attenuated, are against that equality 3i8 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP of privilege which is one of the root-principles of the gospel. Rank, and the social cleavage to which it tends, is the product of a temper Jesus Christ came to cure, and in so far as Christianity has failed, it has failed because it has been subdued to the traditions of a world brimful of self-assertion and heart-burning. Jesus Christ did not intend gulfs to open up within the society founded in His own blood. He came to create a communion clear from the watchwords of caste, and in the end He will do it. " All ye are brethren." Ministerial office is no exception to this rule, for it is created to meet a human need, and defines an appointed work rather than to confer spiritual rank. " Esteem them for their works' sake." The Church mocks Jesus Christ when it changes itself into a Bureau of trumpery heraldries. It is as natural for men of the world to sort themselves out into ranks and castes, as for denuded and disintegrated rocks to arrange themselves into clearly defined beds. We look around us and see castes which rest on wealth, on descent, on physical beauty, on skill in war or handicraft, on learning and scholarship; and also castes which are religious in their basis. And these last are perhaps the most pernicious of all. An angry, unresting protest murmurs through the world against the rigid and exclusive classes into which society crystallises anew, after every fresh upheaval and revolt. Hard, super- cilious inequalities clash with the world-wide sense of justice, and where men are meek and obsequious, and quietly accept things as they are, ^he attitude assumed perhaps conceals a leaven of hypocrisy. In the realms of Art and Science, Jurisprudence and THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 319 Religion, authorities to direct and administer are necessary, but ranks and castes are often created at the bidding of human pride and not to meet urgent practical needs ; and such gratuitous inequalities are always hurtful. They impair the influence of those who complacently parade them, and stab with pain those who are thus reminded of the inferior places allotted to them in Church life. Till the multitudes acquire the art of self-rule, some one in both Church and State must hold the helm ; but office brings temptations, and there are few men who do not deteriorate in the relaxing atmosphere of publicity and adulation. The official conscience is one of the most painful and perplexing riddles presented to our judgment and our charity. If Simon Peter had really possessed the powers assigned to him by a later age, he might perhaps have even strengthened his statement that the righteous are scarcely saved. A desire for authority, and for the stately titles corresponding to it, is latent in most men, and certain ecclesiastical doctrines feed and pamper it. Men sometimes speak of " pastoral rights " in a strain which mocks the instinct for fraternity in the soul of every right-minded man. Those who have schemed for place and power in ecclesiastical assemblies are as sensitive to the offence of lese- inajeste as the Kaiser, and think it graver than a moral trespass. From Christ's standpoint such an offence is impossible. Positions of responsibility ought to be filled in a temper which " vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up"; but alas! the boaster is often found in the seat of authority whose motto is " I am holier than thou," by the right of office at least, if not in private character. It would be 320 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP instructive to hear Jesus Christ pass judgment upon such pretence. There are two ways of getting rid of these artificial distinctions in Church and State, which exasperate the best of men. The reformer, who is of this world and toys fondly with its weapons, says, Let this proud flesh be cut out of our national life, by a sharp-edged sword if needs be. Our inane disparities are a stigma upon the life of any self-respecting commonwealth. Meet with force the man who thinks that by fair means or foul he ought to be at the top. Level what is meretricious and lay it in the dust. Scoff at the trappings in which the pride of office often disports itself if stronger measures are impossible. But when this is done men still cling with frenzied tenacity to the privileges of the past and prize ancient prestige more highly in retrospect than in actual possession ; whilst new broods of pre- tenders march to the front, the doughty champions of common rights, who prove at length unwelcome as the old-school autocrats. Every revolution, into which the element of violence enters, tends to overdo itself, and to perpetuate these vainglorious inequalities which offend and affront us all. It is needless to say that in dealing with this, as with other vexing problems, the great Teacher adopted moral methods. He had as little liking for artificial distinctions as the fiery demagogue, but He sought to eliminate them from both social life and religion by putting before His followers distinctions of absorbing interest and surpassing magnitude. In this way He designed to found a spiritual commonwealth, free from caste as the best- THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 321 ordered family. Let the soul bow to an authority which defies rivalry, and the chilling barriers built up between man and man will swiftly dissolve. He who proposed to quarry and blast away the glaciers and ice-walls hemming in the Arctic zone, would make himself a laughing-stock, however many the millions of gold at his command. Chisels and hammers, dynamite and gunpowder cartridges are useful in dealing with slate and granite in little local quarries, but grim Nature in her Northern heights would smile contemptuously on hosts of miners furnished with such tools. Let the summer sun break forth, and the work is done. When the new spirit created by Jesus seizes and melts the souls of men, the rights and titles, which pride tempts them to assume and assert, are renounced, and separating barriers dissolve like wax. A seeker after truth looking stedfastly to the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Jesus Christ, uplifted by thoughts of the strength and tenderness of the Divine Fatherhood, bowing before the Cross through which Jesus vindicates His sovereignty over a ransomed race, does not wish to be called " Rabbi," " Master," or " Father " ; nor is He tempted to pay homage to fellow-mortals who claim such names. All pomps and dominions shrivel before the face of the Eternal who dwells with us, and earthly lore loses its significance in the presence of the Rabbi of Galilee, who alone makes the Father known to us. If religion as conceived by Jesus did not need a school of Rabbis, with lines of successors in the coming generations, but centred in His own immortal presence, it is clear that it does not rest upon the 22 322 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP technicalities of the letter and those fine-drawn disputations in which the Rabbis took pride. Christianity is not an occult doctrine put into trust with experts, but is broad, simple, and catholic, con- sisting of principles which awaken a chord within every human breast. No man need be indebted for grace and truth to another than the Mediator Himself. In the future Church gifts were destined to appear, and the recipients of those gifts would be acknowledged and welcomed by their brethren ; but of continuous and irreversible orders, shaped to one pattern and accredited by historical methods into which accidents might enter, the Master did not for a moment think. This tendency of the disciple to separate himself from the crowd, and to set up as a religious suzerain a tendency endemic in all periods, works a double injury. It unfits the man who seeks to be chief from receiving the Divine word ; whilst at the same time it diverts the reverence of those who should profit by his teaching from its one true object. The way in which some men scheme for prestige, and become more frozen in sympathy and impoverished in spiritual life with every fresh pinnacle of distinc- tion they reach, is sad indeed. They are stripped by their overweening ambitions of the gifts made ready for them, and realise Solomon's description of the beggars who ride upon horses. It gratifies them hugely to be encircled by devotees, and perhaps they seldom think of the injury thus done both to themselves and others. They are no longer channels through which Divine influence freely flows, and the people from whom pious homage is exacted are seduced into an insidious THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 323 idolatry, practised under the form of honouring God in the person of His representative servant. It is as much an idolatry to put up a piece of living human flesh for God as to make Him in the fashion of gold or silver. This disguised heathenism within the Church hinders that receptive temper demanded by the gospel when it comes to work its chief good in us. Many races, nominally Christian, have almost lost the capacity for seeing the invisible, because the gaze has been fixed so intently upon a visible church, with its pomps and shows and processions of dignitaries, organised in the name of religion. The eye has lost the art of focussing itself upon the things beyond. The student cannot get the right impression of a masterpiece in Dresden or Venice by looking at a copy, nor even at a photo- graphic reproduction ; and the soul does not get the right impression of God by being told some ecclesiastic is His representative upon earth, for the ecclesiastic is not always a decent copy. To obtrude the religious guide and director, to give him a great name and put him high in the scale of dignitaries, is to substitute the fallible for the unerring and the perfect ; and we are no better off if we are told that God's viceijerent on earth is infallible only when he speaks in his official capacity, for the line between the official and the unofficial is hard to draw. The faculty of reverence is mocked, impaired, deadened when these earthly counterfeits are presented to it under a Divine name and stamped with the superscription of Jesus Christ. God can neither put into us all He desires, nor get back from us in service all that of which we are capable, if we prostrate ourselves before earthly oracles. The 324 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP discredit done to religion by asking homage for even its best representatives is tragic. The coming Christianity needed its precept against idolatry no less than Judaism, for its tendency was to exalt the human. But something nobler is offered for our faith and grateful homage than the divisive and irritating lordship of the disciples over each other. These admonitory counsels rest upon a spiritual fact of surpassing importance, the perpetual presence which makes pompous differentiations of authority within the brotherhood needless, — " One is your Teacher," " One is your Father," " One. is your Master," and " all ye are brethren." The authority to which disciples must submit is as real and as near as that of the aspirant to a grand viziership who flaunts a title to the right or the left-hand throne. This word of the Lord Jesus to the Twelve was pertinent, not to the passing moment only, but looked towards a far-off future, in which the conditions would be greatly changed. The violent death which was to separate the Master in bodily presence from His disciples was close at hand. And yet in days and months and years following the great bereave- ment, when the eye could no longer discern the outward form of that mystic personality through which God had been realised, He was to be their Counsellor and Supreme Guide, as completely as in the months, so full of interest, since He had called them from their homes and their lake-side tasks. This and all that it would hereafter mean they could only grasp by letting vapid distinctions dissolve out of the society into which they were bound, and all the high-sounding titles for which THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 325 they were secretly clamouring die into silence. A genuine spiritual fellowship with Jesus was to be continued under greatly altered circumstances, whereby they would be able to know His mind and receive His interpretations of the gospel of God. The presence of the Son in their midst, spiritually discerned, would attest and ensure the living presence of the Father, so that their suppli- cating cry should not fail to reach His ear. These words cover both the near and the remote future. Behind this triple precept there is a silent, inviolable pledge of an effectual presence, abiding within the Church, the sense of which ought so to absorb the disciples that they will be in no mood for paying court to each other and receiving honour of men. If no such pledge had been implied, Jesus would have been bidding His disciples strain their eyes towards an unheeding Deity and an absent Lord. But the Heavenly Father is as near as the earthly, and needs no visible official delegated to represent Him. Notwithstanding the cross, the tomb and the Ascension from Olivet, the Rabbi of Galilee will be as truly present to those gathered in His name as Hillel, or Gamaliel to the learners in their schools. God the Father touches men as closely as any human benefactor, and the Rabbi of Galilee is not going away to open the doors of His school in some distant world. He will still be here and the door will be always open. " One is your Teacher " and " One is your Father, which is in heaven." Such reasons, used to dissuade from self-exaltation, would be unmeaning, unless the words implied the continued presence of God through His Son in the after-fellowship of the disciples. A wise 326 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP friend does not ask us to confide in some counsellor who is on the point of death or who may chance to be on the other side of the world. We should suspect the sanity of the man who recommended a physician just embarking for equatorial Africa to study the causes of sleeping sickness ; or who bade us settle some point in navigation by waiting for the return of a member of Sir John Franklin's expedition to discover the North- West passage ; or who urged a Government to plan the strategy of a new war under the guidance of one of Napoleon's generals frozen to death at the retreat from Moscow. When one kind of help is pressed upon us, and our pre- ference for the inferior help to which we may be inclined is discouraged, it is implied that the more efficient help is accessible. An accomplished surgeon in Berlin is of no use to the man who has just been run over in the streets of London, and the busybody who stepped up and gave the address would be looked upon as a madman. The best succour for us in an emergency is that which is nearest. Jesus Christ is not only wiser than all other teachers, but He is within call ; and God Almighty is not only better than all other fathers, but He is nearer than the nearest. Unless the Teacher, the Father, the Master commended by Jesus Christ to His disciples, is in close and direct contact with human need, the praise of these august and benign authorities is wide of the mark, and their counsel, defence, and priceless gifts cannot reach us. When Jesus, after having repre- hended the vainglorious assumptions to which His disciples were prone, says " One is your Teacher," He vouches that lessons of saving wisdom will be brought home to us ; and when He says, call " God THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 327 your Father," and be slow either to receive or accept such titles of honour from men, He means that we may always hide ourselves under the shadow of the Almighty, and find ourselves cherished in the em- brace of His all-forgiving love. The view here set forth by Jesus Christ knows only of one God and of one Mediator, who in the things which make for salvation deal directly with human souls. In those far-off days He thought no men too dark for His personal instruction, or too guilty for His absolving grace ; and the Lord and His redeeming methods are the same to-day. Whatever else the establish- ment of the Christian ministry was intended to do, it was not designed to obscure God by official pretence, or put mto the mind of the penitent a mistrust of his own capacity to realise the presence which purifies from sin. When Jesus Christ chose twelve apostles, and in later days created evangelists, pastors, and teachers by His Mediatorial gifts, whilst they were sent to set forth His mind to those who knew Him not, or knew Him only in part, He did not intend them to be plenipotentiaries. If I sign a document giving power to some friend to act as my proxy it implies that I shall either be absent from the country or unable to watch in person my own business interests. If our Lord had made priests His proxies, and reserved exclusive teaching rights to a close corporation, and put His reconciling grace into commission with the clergy, this would have implied that He was intend- ing to withdraw Himself from the world, or to break off direct converse with the disciples, through many dark and chequered days. But He had no such idea in His mind. He looked forward to a future of con- 328 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP tinuous intercourse with His people. When we give to some imaginary representative upon earth that implicit trust and devoted homage, which belong to the Saviour alone, it implies that we know Christ only after the flesh. We distrust the spiritual verity which is always touching us. Do God, and the Son through whom He is known, seem far off? He will take our problem into His own hands and solve it. The Rabbi of the moral derelicts of the Jewish race long centuries ago is at hand to teach us, and wherever He teaches He brings a new sense of God. We are not put into the school of Simon Peter, of John, of Paul, and their successors in the last times. Good physician that He is. He takes upon Himself the burden and the responsibility of the worst cases. He is not going about doing good in distant spheres and leaving His work here to temporary assistants and substitutes. The school of this Rabbi is not set up now in a distant star. If Jesus and the Holy Father He reveals are to be preferred to human authorities it is simply because they are near to us. He who can shape our life aright and make it fruitful with eternal blessing is at hand, and the great door through which we may reach Him is open. High-sounding titles in the Church, and the vain tempers they foster, tend to create spurious centres of authority and make the chief servants of the king- dom, not stewards of common gifts, but headsprings of spiritual grace. When artificial pride creeps into any section of the discipleship, that truth of a free Divine favour, on which Jesus founded His society, is compromised and obscured. The assumption of superior status, other than that which is vindicated THE COMMON DISCIFLESHIP 329 by its own sterlintr and unostentatious qualities, ofTfends us and offends God much more gravely, because it is against the superb breadth of His re- demptive work. The living waters flow down every hillside and run through all the valleys, but he who flaunts a priestly prerogative before the world seeks to divert the waters from their free channels into a parochial well, under lock and key. " Who is Paul and who Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as God dealt to every man ? " If you have been raised by the skill of a famous physician from the brink of the grave you do not thank the boy who brought made-up prescriptions to the door, although his honest punctual service deserves praise, but the man of whom he has been the messenger. The name of the boy does not enter into your thought. The apostles who seem to be pillars are only God's instruments, used by His sovereign choice for the accomplishment of His saving work. Effectual faith is a direct gift of God to the man who hears, and human ministries have simply carried the message which has quickened it. The teacher must lose his visibility and the Eternal Giver behind him must be discerned. It is to be feared that the process is often reversed. You see the teacher, especially if he adver- tises, and are blind to God whose ambassador he is. You may make a gifted preacher fruitless as an effete scribe, by paying him exaggerated honour, and for- getting that the holiest men are passive when God's gifts flow through them most freely. The soul- conquering force of Him who taught as having authority sprang from the fact that He was a miracle of lowliness, and therefore a perfect instrument of His Father's will. If the message of the gospel has 330 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP the force of a demonstration none can gainsay, remember that the breath of the Galilean Rabbi is in it, whatever accent it may take on from the lips which repeat it. Kings in primitive conditions of civilisation require their attendants to strip off all gay attire in the royal presence, thus reminding them that they are slaves and have nothing of their own. And if we are to become ministers of God's saving will we must lay aside our blazon- ries and our patents of rank, and recognise that we have nothing which we have not received. Then only will He clothe us with the garments of . salvation. " All ye are brethren." The boastfulness expressed in titles which solicit honour rather than define work is against the freedom and the impartial catholicity of faith. It is a sin against the common status of the believing brotherhood, and may embarrass those shrinking souls who ought to be boldly claiming their spiritual birthright. He who asks, by either word or sign, for the homage of comrades, suggests that he has outstripped the rest, and is entitled to pre-eminence. In various stages of growth and education, we are yet members of one family, and have equal rights. Spiritual wisdom comes from above, and its possession, unlike that of earthly lore, does not imply accumulation by meritorious toil. In the New Testament Church authority to teach or to rule is not indelibly inherent in either the persons or the offices of those who may be " in orders." He who is enriched with noble gifts gains the pinnacle of distinction because he is humbler than his fellows, and thus through lowli- ness gets nearer to the Lord and partakes more THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 331 richly of His fulness. When a man attains the right to rule in the household of God and surpasses others in the worth of His service, it is because he has been so free from self-vaunting that God can clothe him with authority, knowing that he will use it meekly and for spiritual ends. No one challenges influence of spontaneous growth, the influence accruing to that man who acquires power by suppressing him- self. To obtrude power is to forfeit it. To take to oneself the name of " Rabbi " or " Master " is spiritual suicide. When the mind of Jesus triumphs there are no dividing walls in the midst of His followers, no priestly castes, no inner and outer circles rigidly marked off from each other by Divine edicts and decrees. There is the same freedom of access to all, the same open doors, the same inviting highways of advancement. An impartial hand reaches out to all, if not the same gifts, yet gifts which may ultimately prove to have equal spiritual value. For every man who comes into the kingdom there is a common vantage-ground. All are brethren, and the primo- geniture belongs to Jesus alone. We share one Father's bounty. His presence fills the Church, and there is no need that the sceptre should be put into another's hands. The foundations of the kingdom are so laid that the highest is he who steps into the meanest place without a murmur, and the weak and the foolish are the coming princes. When it is otherwise the keynote of the gospel has been forgotten. Must we not allow something for rhetorical em- phasis, or perhaps even for Eastern hyperbole, in this saying? If the letter of it is carried out to its logical issue, surely it must preclude gradations of office in 332 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP the future Church, and invaHdate the manifold minis- tries called forth by the outpoured Spirit. Did not some of the apostles, who listened to these words, afterwards sanction arrangements which seemed to run counter to them ? Had the saying passed out of mind ? Is there no distinction of work and office in the life of the angels ? Does not the Bible speak of thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers ? Are we not told that in the resurrection of the dead one star will differ from another star in glory, and does not the difference often begin here ? Of course all gifts must be welcomed and encouraged. If it was necessary for a time to separate teaching, adminis- trative, and missionary orders in the Church, these were but the organs of a common life. Gradations of rank, moreover, are by no means the same as distinctions of work. Governing orders belong peculiarly to the missionary stages of Christian history, and in a perfect Church are as needless as criminal judges and an armed constabulary in a country free from crime. In every new generation the Spirit must create His own elect servants, and the new orders, which may arise, are not necessarily offshoots from the old. There can be no succession to office without an inward call and a congruous character, and these two things imply that lowliness of mind which refuses to think of oneself in any other aspect than as an instrument of the Spirit. Self- exaltation sterilises the vital functions of office. The names under which various types of ministerial service are spoken of describe the subdivided parts of the labourers in a common task, and are not titles bestowed to enlist admiration. The man who claims honour for himself or for his office, apart from the THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 333 work which the Spirit may be furthering by his hand, forgets the enabHng power, without which he is less than vanity. Others have functions equally vital to the well-being of the body, and those functions are often hidden from the public view. The steward of sacred gifts forfeits his character, and poses for some- thing better than he really is, when the temptation to boastfulness and parade masters him. Those who turning many to righteousness shine as the stars think little of themselves, or they would fail in their benign ventures. The distinctions of human pride must be thrown down before the new distinctions of grace can be built on their ruins. Disciples who would be great must trample in the dust the honours which tempt them, and become fools for the sake of the kingdom. The gifts of the new fellowship are common to all, and the assumption of any kind of primacy by a select few tends to disparage and supersede the illumination of the many. The man who dreams that he has been singled out for special endowments and for a standing higher than that of his comrades, is in no less dano-er than scribes and Pharisees of landing himself and his adherents in a miserable ditch. It is a perilous thing for a human soul to surrender itself to the will of a spiritual overlord, and it is perhaps still more perilous to the aspirant for chieftainship. The conscience, through which God immediately teaches a man, is subject to no earthly tribunal, and he who claims authority to reverse its intimations is fighting against God. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a man must guide himself through all the incidents of his daily life by the normal senses, into the possession of which he has 334 THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP been born. If he is blind, of course he must be indebted to the eyes of others, possibly of inferiors ; and i( he is deaf, he must guide himself by the quicker hearing of friends and neighbours. But in the field and by the wayside Nature does not intend that any man should be overruled by the senses of his so- called " betters." And the analogy holds good in spiritual things. Although the teacher has his proper place in God's order, especially for the young and the grossly ignorant, each man's spiritual senses must be exercised, and when this is neglected spiritual development ceases. The independent use of the spiritual senses will not destroy but achieve unity. If a few autocrats were to set aside the testimony of the eyes and ears of the multitude upon simple questions of fact, that would create schisms and factions innumerable rather than minimise and remove them. In all the higher issues of the spirit every disciple possesses a faculty by which he can discern, and his fellow-disciples must respect its independence and encourage its use. Our spiritual gifts are meant to be common, and are not bestowed to single us out from our fellows. The prophet who went to Bethel acknowledged, to his own undoing, the primacy of a prophet whose inspiration had lapsed. Hungry, thirsty, and faint, desiring perhaps still more the support and recognition of a fellow-prophet, he slighted the voice which had spoken within his own breast, and which would have continued to speak if he had been heedful. In a temper of specious deference and affability he bowed to a sham primacy and brought upon himself swift ruin. By putting yourself into the Rabbi's seat, by assuming a direc- torate over the souls of others, you may be contend- THE COMMON DISCIPLESHIP 335 ing against the one Master's voice within a redeemed comrade, and bringing that comrade to his overthrow. The voice which speaks within every man blends with the voice of the evangel and guides sooner or later to a sure salvation. XVII ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT " The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, u'hich a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened." — Matt. xiii. 33. Leaven is a living organism needing the same con- ditions for its propagation as the plants around us, and must not be classified with those inanimate substances which occupy the study of the chemist. The fact, of course, is not patent to the casual or half-equipped observer. In this familiar thing, known to almost every race, the unaided eye sees only a thread of tiny bubbles ; but it belongs to the kingdoms of life as truly as moss, or fern, or tree. Thirty thousand cells occupy one square inch of space. The yeast-plant multiplies with amazing rapidity, and the only limit to its growth is the amount of meal within which it is lodged. When the analogy of the parable is fulfilled among the Churches we may hope to see a nation born in a day. For our present purpose it is needless to attempt an answer to the much-debated question. What is 336 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 337 life? Its principle is indefinable, and the mystic riddle baffles our clumsy, groping solutions. Primi- tive man found out the properties of yeast and applied it to his domestic needs centuries before any scientific conception of its nature was reached. And it is possible for men to have the vital secret of religion without either grasping its philosophy or appreciating the intellectual significance of the pro- positions into which it is formulated. The kingdom proclaimed by Jesus Christ is not primarily a series of dogmas, although sooner or later faith is compelled to define itself in precise and logical forms. It is not a collection of sacred and inspired books, although such writings set forth historic facts which are the foundation of the Christian religion and show us how to gain possession of this inspired ferment. It is not systematised knowledge conveyed in orthodox and well-balanced creeds, although no sane man would dispute the worth of such creeds. Schools and families and nations would all be the better for definite catechetical teaching given in fitting places by qualified people, and at the cost of the right purse. But the spread of the kingdom is not determined by these methods. We cannot extend Christianity by ingenious apologetics, for in the beginning it is a secret and hidden leaven whose working is beyond the cognisance of the senses and whose virtues are unostentatiously asserted in the changes wrought upon man after man, and in due time upon the whole world. However humble our gifts and obscure our lot, we may all be tracks, channels, sub-centres of these subtle potencies which in the end shall assimi- late mankind to the ideals of Jesus Christ ; but our souls must first be permeated by the transforming 23 338 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT experiences which we are to convey to others. When an individual Christian or a Church ceases to assimi- late to its character and Hfe the outside world the Divine germ-cell of this leaven has been lost. Life contains within its own keeping the shapes and patterns to which it conforms, and accepts no rigid and predetermined schemes of outward structure which may be offered to it. So when this mystic force disseminates itself through human souls it accommodates Itself to no conventional moulds. All orders, functions, and governments in the kingdom of God are built up by it, and are not the conditions out of which it is generated. To hear some people talk it might be supposed that the secret of spiritual assimilation is in the pattern of the vessel which contains the impregnated meal, and the emblems which are inscribed upon it, and not in the leaven itself. The shape of the vessel within which the vital processes effect themselves is a trifle. This benign and widespread change foreshadowed in the parable implies preceding stages of prepara- tion. Not only must there be the work of the plough and the seed-basket, the sickle and the winnowing fan in the field, but there must also be the lighter toils of the hand-quern and the kneading trough in the home. The yeast-plant will not grow in a barn bursting with wheat - harvests, if the grain be unhulled ; nor even in a mass of the finest flour till the flour has received its due and fitting treatment. As every housewife knows, the familiar conditions must be met. The leaven will only spread and assimilate that within which it is lodged, when the flour has been moistened throughout and well mixed together. If the earlier stages are ignored and the ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 339 liquid ferment is poured in and left to do its own work and that of the kneading hand as well, failure and waste must ensue. It is necessary that the bread-maker should carefully and thoroughly mingle the ingredients. Any degree of muscular energy spent on the meal, without the inpoured leaven, and any amount of leaven without the vigorous mixing of the meal, must prove futile and disappointing. If humanity is to be renewed and assimilated to spiritual ideals, there must be diligent teaching, public and private exhortation, faithful witness- bearing to the truth, combined at the same time with those triturating disciplines, by which Provi- dence is ever making the heart ready for the power of the gospel. It is only too easy to slur over these preliminary conditions which, in due time, usher in the silent and victorious assimilations of the Spirit. Men need to be the subjects of these initial processes. Perhaps we see little of the virtues of the leaven because we do not make the truth understood in the circles to which we belong, and fail in pressing it home upon the heart and the conscience. In those revivals of which we have read with mingled wonder and gratitude — revivals in which the human instru- ment all but vanishes from sight and the self- propelling and self-sustaining power of the movement answers to the essential characteristics of this leaven parable, — the people are prepared by the worship and psalmody of the fireside, by careful training in Sunday Schools and Adult Bible Classes. Such movements are impossible amongst communities less completely saturated with Scriptural truth and with reverence for the inspired Word. It is to be feared that in many places men are 340 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT enlarging their knowledge in every direction but one. They know more of literature, of art, of popular science in its various branches, of secular history, than did their forefathers, but less of the Bible. We need to instruct the individual and break up the husk within which the kernel of his true life lies hidden, so co-operating with the providence which is ever striving to bring out of all the experiences of the personal history true self-knowledge. The essential qualities of the nature must be opened up to view. It is fitting that the truth should be well kneaded into the human consciousness, after the old Jewish fashion of speaking it in the home, and when walking by the wayside. The self-respecting housewife would feel her reputation gone if lumps of flour and of heavy dough were to appear in the bread placed upon the table, and would not blame the leaven. The crude knowledge shown by many, for whose instruction we are responsible, ought to make us blush. The assimilating power of the gospel cannot fully show itself under such conditions of neglect. The leaven has not had a fair chance, at least in our generation. Have patience with the preliminary 'processes, especially in the benighted regions where prejudice has to be worn down. In the meal made from sfrain grown in every zone of the earth leaven will show its virtue, but it will not act upon unbroken grain and unkneaded flour. It cannot illustrate its dissemi- nating and uplifting qualities till the first steps have been taken to prepare for it a sphere. This unresting and prolific yeast-plant is no labour-saving invention or discovery, but works where diligent hands have made ready for it, works without delay or failure. ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 341 A summer temperature is needed for the culture of the leaven. The dough will not rise whilst the thermometer verges on freezing-point, even though days and w^eeks be given for the experiment. The different yeasts need from 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit for their growth. Without either the warmth of the summer sun or a glowing fire, how- ever long the kneaded meal may be left in the vessel which contains it, no change will be observed. A temperature too low on the one hand or too high on the other, stunts and destroys this minute plant, upon which fermentation and its kindred processes depend. If the principles of a new life are to disseminate themselves amongst men, and society is to be renovated into nobler virtue and more spiritual aptitudes, an atmosphere of fervour must encircle those who are to be the subjects of these gracious changes. The genius of true religion may be reduced by moods of frigidity into insipid and empty pretence, or turned by wildfire fanaticism into pernicious soul-poisons. We need to avoid the cold, rationalistic temper, which has attenuated the Christianity of some periods into a mere philosophy tempered with morals ; and also to watch against the riot of excitement which led Edward Irving to crave for the abnormal, and turned his great career into the collapse of a meteor. Unless the environ- ment is permeated by an atmosphere of fervent affection kindled by Divine fire, the most faultless enunciations of truth and the most correct enforce- ments of duty will fall upon unheeding ears and hearts unresponsive as the stones. Let zeal and love be want- ing in those encircling influences which react upon the 342 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT soul, and the evangel will prove a tissue of futilities, and the promise of assimilation a mockery. In spite of its origin and its august authority, Christianity can do nothing in an Arctic atmosphere. The followers of Jesus ma\' even maintain a high standard of Christian conduct and consistency, but where there is a sense of constraint and frigidity, and the tongues of living flame fail, real religion will not spread. Jesus had to thaw out the formalism in the house of Simon the Pharisee before He could make the heart of the woman who was a sinner bound with the high ecstasies of His forgiving and renewing love. He created a genial atmosphere for the leaven. Christian people are sometimes accused of being proud, stiff, cold as glacier caves — perhaps unfairly accused, for shyness and constitutional reserve may sometimes give an unreal resemblance to such faults. But if it should be our misfortune to create this impression, as we prize the gospel and its influence upon the world, we must take pains to correct the fault. If the Divine leaven is to extend its virtues through all classes, and permeate the deepest instincts and sensibilities of society, the psychic atmosphere must glow with radio-active kindness. The sublimer the gospel, the more difficult is it to spread into men's minds and subdue their natures, without enkindled fires in the hearts of those who profess to exemplify- it. The evil leaven is diffused through warmth, excitement, sociability, comradeship, and the leaven of good is dependent upon the same ardent sensibilities. An impassive religion cannot save men from greed, gambling, the frenzy of wine, the tvrannies of lust. The kingdom of heaven must have strong counter-excitements wherewith to combat the ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 343 gigantic fascinations of this world. The tendency to eh'minate strong emotion from religion is a symptom of decadence, and arrests effectual evangelism. The faith which does not bring into play the forces of zeal and enthusiasm, and create a new atmosphere for the moral functions, must leave men in the gross, embruted conditions in which it finds them. The diffusion of leaven through a given mass of meal is dependent upon contact. The particles already permeated must touch with close intimacy the particles not yet subdued into a homogeneous whole. Yeast in one room of a house will not convey its virtues to meal in another room of the house, partitioned off from it by doors and walls. The assimilation process going on before the house- wife's fire, will not pass through the flimsiest screens without connective material, and repeat itself in the bin of the storeroom. Leaven, though a wonderful organism, cannot fl\' across the tiniest chasms of empty space. It must have tracks and bridgeways of suitable material by which to travel. The yeast- cell has neither wings nor feet, and cannot migrate into meal a few inches apart. It spreads by a chain of continuous organic activities. This is the true doctrine of succession — a doctrine which includes the common experience of the disciples — and if a link is dropped from the chain society suffers a tragic privation. Interruption means widespread and in- calculable failure. Whenever a group of particles is intractable, and acts as a check to the vital move- ment, the particles beyond must remain untouched. Our Lord's ideas of the spread of the kingdom — ideas enforced by personal example and precept, as 344 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT well as suggested in this parable — involved the closest contact between the multitude of the disciples and the world waiting to be transformed by their influence. Those who are vibrant with the new life must convey the inward secret to those who lack it, through ever open channels of sympathy and inter- action. If the holy leaven is to be spread through us, we must take our place side by side with our neighbours, and share their daily interests. Aloofness is the most potent counteractive to the diffusion of the gospel which has yet been discovered. We cannot bring the liberating principles of a new life to our fellow-citizens unless we get right down into their hearts and establish perfect community of feeling. The Lord Jesus could not heal a leper, in agreement with His own methods at least, without touching him and making him akin once more with the elect race. The poor sufferer found it hard to believe with all his heart whilst he was an outcast. The Spirit takes account of the laws of social association and reciprocity, and the Divine forces which have renovated us and are destined to renovate the world travel along the tracks of those laws. The leaven does not construct for itself a dozen detached and self-contained centres within the mass of the meal. All the ramifications of the yeast-plant join on to the primitive cell from which they were produced. Social schisms and cleavages may arrest the redemptive developments of Christianity, and to a religious man this is the saddest side of our class-divisions. If at the root of our own life there is a Divine secret of blessedness, we must convey it to those who are bound up with us in the same social organism, and we can only do this by being true to those instincts ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 345 and afifinities which relate us to our neighbours. We try to evangelise b}' argument, by sermon, by the dissemination of literature, by theology more or less polemical, but the leaven cannot jump over those forms of cleavage which are a product of self- absorbed and worldly tempers — disruptiv^e forces which at the present moment menace the very framework of our civilisation. That the gospel does not spread, apart from the genius of brother- hood, is a lesson interwoven with the structure of the parable. The ideas of feudalism, even in the attenuated forms in which they survive, are hostile to the gospel, and you have only to listen to the speech- makers and lecturers in our public parks to learn this. The most tremendous barrier to the spread of Christianity is the social barrier, and if we were honestly set on the prosperity of God's kingdom our class-schisms would be swept away, and the spirit of Jesus Christ would acquire an unexampled mastery over the thoughts of men. The divisive temper of caste, the monastic walls which shut off the unregeneracies of an outside world, the tub of the philosopher when he happens to be a baptized c}'nic, the library door of the intel- lectual recluse who is privately a devout Christian, are so many barricades which intercept the leaven, because they isolate from each other the spiritualised and the unspiritualised peoples of our times. Not infrequently it is the poor man who has a religion to give to the rich, and the rich can never receive it from him whilst these supercilious distinctions prevail. The swift and incalculably mighty influence of genuine discipleship will only begin to be known when the valleys are filled and the hills brought low. 346 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT The work of evangelising the non-Christian races of the world is sometimes slow because the white missionary cannot forget his superiority to the yellow, the brown, or the black man, and put himself by close sympathy into the same groove of life. For the sake of his wife and children, and perhaps also in the interests of his own health, he is compelled to dissociate himself from native habits and interests. But the separation is carried too far and neutralises his influence. When a native, be his place in the scale of civilisations high or low, is looked upon as fit only for serfdom and kept in quarantine, there is but a poor chance of bringing him to share our faith. Leaven does not drop down from the heights of the clouds. However much we may deplore the curious growth of Ethiopianism, and see in many of its features omens of a sad apostasy, we have to remember that the jingoism of the white missionary has sometimes provoked the movement. The problem in our own, as well as in other countries, is the problem of social disparity rather than a purely spiritual problem. The leaven will take care of itself and its own virtues if we give the conditions it requires. A holy life passed in a Park Lane mansion will not change the moral atmosphere in a tenement house in Stepney. A defect in the sense of brother- hood arrests the vitalising influence of an example, in other respects, perhaps, of noteworthy godliness. We have our fashionable churches, our churches for the professional classes, our middle-class churches, our labour churches, and our slum missions ; and till society is reorganised upon a broader and more humane basis it is difficult to see how we are to escape such anomalies. But it is the social gulf ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 347 which separates multitudes of men and women from the leaven acting within the limited circles of the faithful. The problem of the world's salvation is for the moment a social problem. The leaven put into fine flour in Buckingham Palace or Grosvenor Square is not likely to act upon the second-grade meal in a Wapping or Whitechapel kitchen, because the social gulf intervenes. It must spread by contiguity but with many, who need to be permeated by the spirit and power of the gospel, the average Christian does not desire any closer intimacy, and would shrink from the mere mention of it. Society is too deeply intersected for the pure and vital leaven to assert its power. If an East-end saint is to change for good the character of a West-end worldling, or if a West- end saint is to inspire with new and sublime thoughts the waster of Old Kent Road, we need a new set of social conditions. Leaven requires sympathy and intimate unreserved contact as the first condition for the assertion of its mysterious virtues. Social contiguity explains the spread of all religions quite as much as the fascination of the truths they teach. Moses, the man of God, under- stood this when he gave to the children of Israel the broad constitution under which they and their descendants were to live. He crystallised into his civil code the temper of brotherhood which had been the note of a simple patriarchal life. At the distribu- tion of the land equal allotments were made. The religion of Jehovah would not have taken such a tenacious and widespread hold upon the Jewish race but for the fact that in the beginning they enjoyed a common civic life, and were in the closest possible intimacy with each other. The swift and marvellous 348 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT spread of Buddhism throughout India is to be explained by a similar principle. That religion set itself to destroy caste, as well as to throw down every barrier between man and the lower kingdoms of life- It was easy for any system with a core of good in its ethic to spread when the distinction between high- born and low-born, rich and poor, prince and peasant, had passed away and soul could meet soul on common ground. Islam owes not a little of its success to this same cause. The sword has been freely used, but the equality of slave and master, of Arab and Negro, in the sight of God was upheld from the beginning. The converse of the desert is free, and there are no barriers between man and man. It is only when men get into great cities that castes and their rigid separations become possible and com- munities are no longer homogeneous. If imperfect religions could spread where a temper of equality and free mutual intercourse prevailed, how victoriously ought a more perfect religion to spread when it can secure the same conditions of comradeship ? The most notable revivals appear in villages and small towns where the old-fashioned clannishness has not quite died out and neighbours take interest in each other. Perhaps the eighteenth- century revival could scarcely repeat itself in an England of overgrown towns and cities, where people live next door for a decade and scarcely know each other's names. We should be nearer to great revivals in our swarming cities if we could restore the genial intimacy of the past, which put people into complete and familiar understanding with each other. Some one has described cities as great conspiracies, and most of us have felt at times ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 349 the strangeness, bordering on antagonism, which meets us in the seething crowd. Cities, by the wide divisions and the isolating reserves they foster, are conspiracies against the gospel, for the Christian leaven can only spread through that temper of genial contiguity, which is all but extinct in some huge centres of population. This parable suggests that congruity of character is at the root of a genuine and prosperous evangel. The analogy carries with it the lesson that soul- renewing truth can only reach the community at large through the holy tempers and the upright lives of those who have already received it. The principle of moral assimilation determines the spread of the kingdom and the uprising of those virtues which are a sign of its sure establishment. One handful of meal cannot convey leaven to another, unless it has itself undergone this specific transformation. The parable is a rebuke to the spurious evangelism which is academic or professional only. The characteristic graces of Christianity are not created by new theories of morals or new phases of doctrine, nor yet by conformity to an appointed code of rites and ordi- nances. The new life is not produced by the supernatural acts of a priesthood or through the official functions of a separated ministry. A historic succession may be temporarily invalidated by the corrupt temper, or the lax conduct of the man who boasts himself of orders for which he is glaringly unfit. We hear it affirmed by certain schools with audacious iteration, that grace is conveyed through sacramental channels in virtue of an episcopal ordination, and that its measure and degree are quite independent of the personal character of the man who may 350 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT minister at font or altar. A greedy, incestuous, blood-guilty celebrant of the Christian mysteries, by the inviolable prerogatives with which he was invested through the laying-on of hands, brings the germ of a new life into the child he baptizes and conveys the presence of the Redeemer to the communicant who receives the wafer at his hand, while the sacra- ments of Richard Baxter, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Chalmers, John Angell James and Charles H. Spurgeon, are void of grace. It is true that a bad representative of Christ cannot keep a contrite soul out of communion with the Lord, but it is equally true that the gift which unites him to the Lord may not necessarily come through a sacrament, still less through a sacrament dispensed by unclean hands. The unholy ministrant in sacred things cannot make a disciple's salvation surer — no, not even by virtue of his office as distinguished from his character. The Spanish Friars whose bastards swarm in the chief cities of the Philippines, and the French clergy who had a leading share in the Dreyfus plot, can have no power to impart the gifts which renew and make fit for the kingdom of heaven. The man whose inmost self is not leavened cannot leaven. The meal upon which the yeast-plant is not acting cannot change the meal adjacent to it. " I convey grace in virtue of my orders," says the priest. Surely this is one of the most humiliating doctrines ever taught in the name of God's Son, and tends to degrade Chris- tianity itself into a non-ethical religion. The drift of the parable is inconsonant with such assumptions. Grace depends for its spread from soul to soul upon the principle of congruity. Those whose natures are dominated by the leaven spread the leaven, and ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 351 others, tio matter how high their status in the Church, are quite incapable of helping on this issue. A man's own character must be assimilated by the spiritual potencies which work within him, before he can convey to others the secret of transformation. He who is saved becomes a channel of the grace that saves, and it is beyond the power of an unsaved man to sustain this benign function. A good disciple spreads the virtue which has made him good and helps on the same change in others ; whilst an unreal disciple — a disciple only in outward office or pro- fession — cannot convey that which he does not possess and experience. No soul in the great contemporary multitude, of which we form a part, will be leavened by us unless we ourselves are leavened. The best and most successful disseminators of the gospel are those who live it. We must teach, exhort, convince, encourage, but groups of conversions are produced only by groups of earlier conversions. Open your natures to all the influences and energies of the gospel, and then let your suffused faculties act freely upon friends and neighbours, for to these conquests of silent assimilation there is no limit but the frontiers and horizons of the world. The highest and most influential evangelism rests upon collective action. This parable is a charter which asserts the place of the elect multitude in bringing near the kingdom of God amongst men. Jesus, of course, did not intend to depreciate the services rendered to His cause by men endowed with special gifts of the Spirit and qualified by personal companionship with Himself. The Church He was founding must needs have teachers and guides. Some of His parables deal with the tasks 352 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT of the household in which He was Master, and with the conduct of the servants. In the parables of The Sower and of The Drag Net, as well as in that of the Tares, we see, moving to and fro, the figures of those whom He has associated with Him- self in the ministry of the truth. He sent apostles and evangelists to heal and to teach in all the places whither He Himself would come. But dis- tinctions of order, function, and differentiated ser- vice disappear from this parable, which is, perhaps, the picture of a later epoch than some of the introductory parables. Great issues in the after- days are limned by this Divine Seer. The meal in which leaven is lodged may be of wheat from the Plain of Sharon or the Valley of Sychar, from the uplands of Moab, or the heights of Lebanon. Different strains of wheat may have been blended together, as in our own day. But each fragment of the mass, coarse and fine alike, shares in receiving and giving forth this wholesome principle of assimi- lation. It is not the exclusive privilege of apostle, evangelist, pastor, or teacher, to convey the grace which renews and uplifts the world. All that goes to make the meal has been reduced to one common term, and the transmission of the mystic vitalities of the gospel is not limited to sacraments or reserved to those who administer them. The life in the leaven runs through the channels open in the souls of all. The swift, complete, and resistless growth fore- shadowed in this parable follows upon collective action. In the parable of the Mustard Seed, which is often taken to represent the growth of those in- stitutions characteristic of Christian civilisations, the ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 35:5 developments indicated may be more or less slow. The parable of the Sower needs long seasons for the working out of its issues, and we must not assume that the percentage of failure will always be so discouraging. The lesson of the leaven suggests that character can change quickly, and rapid trans- formations take place sooner than we look for, and upon a wider scale. We sometimes say, " Great and enduring things need decades and centuries for their development." The axiom is used as an apology for the slow progress of the gospel, espe- cially in Eastern lands. This is so far true that in some countries little success appears in the first and even in the second generation of missionary labour. Perhaps the Scriptures have to be trans- lated into a difficult and complex language, and a Christian literature must be built up from un- promising foundations. Hymnology has to be adapted and acclimatised. It may also happen that pride has to be worn down, long accretions of pre- judice removed, and rooted suspicions dispelled by the patient philanthropies of a lifetime. In lands long imbued with Christian traditions men of certain types of temperament are not easily moved. The missionary pushes his way out to the virgin soil of an unoccupied city, or an unvisited province, and a few converts gather around him, and then for decades afterwards little or no progress is made. A revival breaks out in an English village and a series of remarkable conversions takes place, and then little or no appreciable advancement is made for years. The early success is not continuous. Does not this parable shed light upon such prob- lems ? Certain parables contemplate the work of 24 354 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT the first heralds of the kingdom. After a few sporadic successes the hearers lose interest, and religion seems to be at a standstill. In this domestic picture, which has its own special aspects and meanings, the work advances swiftly to the goal. It perhaps reflects the second stage in the history of the Christian Church, the stage at which the evan- gelism of the apostolic pioneer is taken up and carried on by the common zeal and enterprise of a sanctified multitude of believers. If we would learn the lesson of the parable, and take home the truth the Master has in mind, we must recognise that the centre of a world-renewing energy is, in the aggregate, activity of the Church. The evangelism which issues in supreme triumph must be collective. When we appreciate this a new era of prosperity comes into view, and the gospel disseminates itself with a silent swiftness, of which this parable is a prophetic symbol. Apparent stagnation, the lack of the power which converts and transforms, success disappointingly partial, may belong to the transition periods between the revivals which are led by a chosen band of heroic evangelists, and the revivals which are pro- moted and carried to mighty issues by the common action of the believing crowd. The progress in- dicated by the swift growth of the leaven may belong to the times when the apostles, and those upon whom their mantles fell, have passed out of view, and multitudes in every land, filled with the sacred, strenuous energies of the new life, infect others with their blessed inspirations. Now and again happy revivals arise which illus- trate one of the foundation thoughts of this parable. The neighbour is stimulated and sanctified by the ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT 355 spiritual dispositions of his neighbour. Leaven is life, and life is leaven, and each particle of the mass helps the change in adjacent particles. When men sink themselves and forget the outstanding rights and honours of the separate vocations to which they are called, when distinctions of order and diffe- rentiated function are lost sight of, and a common impulse moves those who are followers of Christ to collective action, only then does the gospel grow with a pace which amazes, and its characteristic graces begin to dominate the community. In the meanest and most obscure member of the devout multitude there is something on which the leaven can fasten and extend the area of its gracious vitality. The layman is just as good a vehicle of this sacred, subtle force as the man in orders. It is the aggregation of cells which gives rise to new colonies of cells. This parable hints at the amazing influence which will yet be exerted by a sanctified democracy. It puts an approving seal upon the work of the common people. The millennium will be brought to pass by a series of people's revivals. The prophecy of the Pentecost contemplated this, and treats young and old, male and female, as the subjects of plenary and impartial inspirations. When the leaven has reached a certain point of growth, the after-work must be promptly undertaken. Delay or procrastination is disastrous once the yeast- plant has attained its full limits and subdued the meal. If the ferment is allowed to continue after this stage has been reached, the sugar on which the leaven feeds is exhausted, and the mass of dough turns sour. When the mysterious forces of the gospel are acting upon the minds around us, we 356 ASSIMILATION BY CONTACT must allow time for the processes. It may be fatal to hurry the subtle changes which are taking place beneath the surface. But on the other hand, undue delay may be equally mischievous. A moment arises when the great decision must be taken and the will must mature its resolves. If religious influences play too long upon the mind, and the practical issues of the Christian profession are declined or postponed, the mind itself may be soured against spiritual things, and the first promise of good may be irrevocably lost. The processes must ripen into vow, holy deed, and open association with Jesus and His cause. XVIII INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES " For each man shall bear his own burden." — Gal. vi. 5. " Neither be partaker of other men's sins." — i Tim. v. 22. " For what is our hope or joy or crown of glorying? Are not even ye before our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming ? " — I Thess. ii. 19. Is the law of responsibility merely individual in its applications, or does it stretch far and wide into that social organism of which each man is a sentient and effectual part ? Are all the fibres through which the Divine judgments must one day make themselves felt, shut up, like the filaments of the nervous system, within the compass of the body, and do they abruptly end with the finger-tips ? or may the influence of acts which affect large sections of the community come back with accelerated force into the personality from which they issued ? Let us put the question into a commercial metaphor. Is a man in the position of the individual capitalist who risks nobody's money but his own and whose gains and losses are strictly personal ? or is he in the position of one who directs the interests of a society, and whose doings may blight or bless countless homes ? Or does the truth 357 358 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES lie somewhere between these two extremes, and include both personal and social factors ? The traveller in Eastern deserts sometimes sees a solitary palm-tree by a well. It has an axial root, which goes deep down into the sand in search of moisture, but has no lateral roots ramifying right and left. No branches are thrust out from the stem, but it breaks at the top into a tuft of fronds. What a symbol of isolation ! Even when the palm-tree grows in groups and groves the same peculiar sense of separateness is produced. There are no lateral extensions, no interlacing outgrowths. The tree seems set upon living its own life, disclaiming all relations with its neighbours. In other regions of the East the traveller sees the mangrove and banyan- trees, which drop adventitious roots from their branches and propagate new stems, till at last a growth covering the area of a small spinney is produced, which, after all, is practically one organism. The original stem can scarcely be identified, for the functions of the tree are merged and all parts share one common life. It is said that one such tree on the banks of the Nerbudda River is able to shelter seven thousand men. Is the root of responsibility in a human being axial only, or do responsibilities extend beyond the area of the individual life and, for good or evil, interweave their fibres into adjacent lives ? Is man an individual growth only, or must he be looked upon as the member of a confederated colony of growths ? Does a family, a church, a municipality, a nation, possess a common life, for the qualities of which the separate members, in proportion to their influence, must be held jointly responsible ? May a man help INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 359 or hinder his nei^rhbour in the things which pertain to salvation, as well as in the pursuit of just social ideals? Does he, like Timothy, sometimes need to be reminded of the fact that it is possible he may be a participator in other men's sins, and that perhaps without intending it? May he, like Paul, be justified in describing those for whose well-being he has toiled as the crown of his rejoicing in the day of Jesus Christ ? Is there a law of social responsibility so sure that in the Judgment Day men will be abased or exalted, in strict proportion to the way in which they have directly or indirectly dealt with their neighbours ? Is it possible for any man to really isolate himself from his contemporaries, like the anchorites of the Egyptian deserts, the castaway sailor on his lonely island, or the lighthouse-keeper ten miles out at sea, and so to live his life that the law of reciprocal influence, and the issues with which it is pregnant, may pass him by? Can we claim the exemptions which might rightly belong to Alexander Selkirk? The law is just and reasonable which distinguishes between " the leader " in a misdemeanour and " an accessory," although the distribution of guilt between the two may sometimes turn upon subtle factors which elude our knowledge. Every normally constituted man is the prime-mover in his own transgression ; but at God's bar, those who put temptation in his path, harden him on in wrong-doing, or make it any- wise difficult for him to do right, are accounted accessories. This self-evident principle is full alike of encouragement and of stern admonition. There is no soul in the pain and blackness of final perdition, but others have helped its overthrow. The lost 36o INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES have unnamed and unknown partners in their guilt and condemnation. And there is no redeemed spirit in the presence of God's throne in heaven, but others have helped on the happy escape from the destruc- tions of sin and done something in the work of making meet that spirit for the realms of light. Saints in glory have owed much to the fidelity of their fore- fathers, the prayers and intercessions of the Church, the edification ministered by their brethren in the faith ; and have sleeping partners who shall in due time be exalted in their triumph and beatified in their eternal gains. Our ideas of responsibility are too often chaotic ; and culpably so. We use the doctrine of environ- ment to minimise personal responsibility, and we use the doctrine of individual moral agency to minimise our collective responsibilities, and in this way we confuse and deaden our social conscience. The preacher of social evolution flourishes before us the vague, pedantic catchword " environment," and does his best to attenuate to a vanishing-point the doctrine of personal responsibility. The good and evil in human life do not issue from acts of self-determination, but are the products of rigid antecedents. If they could really choose, most men would be other than they are, not in station only but in mind and disposition. Temperament arises from many ingredients which for centuries have been slowly depositing themselves within the blood. Early training in which the individual himself had no voice, roughs in the broad outlines of the personality. The sympathies are excited by companionships which come in the way of the youth and are not deliberately selected. The standard of manners INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 361 is formed in the railway carriage, the office, the Club, the Exchange, and the Daily Press plays its little part in the scheme. Men obey external impulses through the formative periods of their history. They are driven. The choice is made for them, and they have scarcely any idea that they choose for themselves. The influences which shape and colour character are in human life before the man himself comes there. Environment is the foster-mother of all that appears in the personality. But what is environment? Has it not been created by the impact of many vanished and also of many contemporary personalities ? It is simply aggregate influence ; and aggregate influence is but another phase of collective responsibility. We use the term as though it denoted what is impersonal, whereas it means the power of outside personalities over the personal character. Such a plea is, after all, a disguised testimony to the fact that men of the past and men of the present generations both make their contributions to those ruling standards of conduct which help to mould the lives around us. On the other hand, there are teachers who put so much stress upon personal moral agency that they minimise the influence men have over each other's characters. The doctrine of collective responsibility is made to pass out of view and responsibility is treated as though it were rigidly separate and personal. Man is not a manufactured article who does that for which he was moulded and nothing more, and the voice of the inward conscious- ness agrees. Each member of the race is just what he chooses to be, and hereditary predispositions, together with the social influences which play upon 3^2 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES the plastic personality, are subordinate factors in the sum-total of good or evil accumulated within the life. The character is built up slowly by the will, although co-operative influences are also present, built up as truly as each polyp of the coral colony builds its own addition to the branching fabric. The child born into the world is free to take his own path in the society of which he is an organic part, and the guilt of transgression or the peace which instils itself into a life of virtue is his own acquisition. He who is in the wrong puts himself into that unhappy attitude, and has no one upon whom he can devolve blame. A just judgment, in the end of the days, must be primarily personal in the range and intensity of its application. The doctrines of individual and collective respon- sibility ought not to be looked upon as mutually exclusive. We do not disprove the one by establish- ing the other. The root-fact in human life is that each man must bear his own burden and render account to God ; but this root-fact may have important collateral extensions. The abstract notion of an environment is no set-off to the strict doctrine of individual moral agency, with all that it involves and implies. Environment is in part a mirror passed on by others as an heirloom, in which we may see reflected the quality of influence exercised both by preceding and contemporary generations ; and for that influence they must be judged. But the equilibrium is restored. We in our turn make ready environments both for our contemporary neighbours and for our posterity, and these new environments are mirrors of judgment which show forth the tides of influences issuing from us and reaching far beyond INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 363 the circle of our personal history. Social account- ability is an inevitable outgrowth from the fact of our personal accountability, and, however much we may wish, we cannot lop off the outgrowth. Men interpret responsibility as their interests suggest or the expediencies of party politics re- quire. They often lay stress upon that particular aspect of the subject which may be necessary for their self-justification. Men who get dividends out of the weakness and degradation of their fellows, give a narrow interpretation to the doctrine of responsibility, for that way lies the exculpation of the trades from which they draw a livelihood or glean their luxuries. They make it rigidly personal, and ignore the social ramifications and complexities of the law. For a valiant champion of the truth that every man must bear his own burden, commend me to a brewer or a barman. No set of men preach the freedom of the will, and all that it entails in common life, with equal loudness and volubility. All respon- sibility rests with the individual delinquent, and you cannot cure drunkenness by either Act of Parliament or recipes from Bergen and Gotenberg. Really these men outclass the theologians, in the astute and ingenious defences they make of the doctrine of moral freedom. Men should learn self-control. The people need education. If the masses had religion they would not fall into animal excess. The liquor-dealer can scarcely be held accountable for the inevitable abuses contingent upon that and every other trade. It is a matter for the conscience of the individual drinker. He and he only is responsible and deserves to be brought to book for the mischief done to 364 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES his own health and the injustices inflicted upon pinched wife and squalid children. One who has reached years of discretion ought to know how much he can take without injury, and stop before the line is overpassed. The barman who serves, the license- holder who hires the barman, the brewer who puts in his tenant, the magistrates who give the seal of their approval to the license-holder are not to be blamed ; least of all the man who is in the wholesale part of the business, and lives twenty miles away from the sordid scene. No more strenuous advocate of the doctrine of personal responsibility is to be found than the man who is enriching himself through the degradation of his fellows. The owner of slum property usually belongs to the same school of moral philosophy. It is the hopeless people who make the slum, and the slum-lord must not be blamed in any degree for the foul, degrading conditions in which they live. Put such people into a Victoria Street or a Hampstead flat, and they would turn it into a stye before the rent-collector came round. On the other hand, we find ourselves face to face with a school of secular reformers who, in pressing their policy of social betterment, sometimes ignore the doctrine of personal responsibility. Men drink because they live in the tenement houses of mean streets rather than in Garden Cities. They bet and gamble for lack of wholesome excitements and because their ill-paid occupations are drearily mono- tonous. They cannot do otherwise in such con- ditions. Till the abuses of our civilisation are rectified and society is reconstructed upon the Fabian plan, it is madness to blame men for their vices. INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 365 They are irresistibly driven. Our swarms of moral pariahs are not more culpable than the fever patient, who has escaped from the hospital tent and is wandering in delirium upon the veldt. The blame, if blame there is, must be put upon society and those who rule in its name. At least let the problem be treated as an abstract problem of sociology. But is it not obvious that society, after all, is a con- gregation of responsible persons? We do not need to go outside our own hearts to find this fine-spun logic of shiftiness and confusion. We disclaim or underestimate our responsibilities, at the bidding of fitful moods and not because we have deep hold of the truth of God's judicial order. If we have settled into habits of open sin we take a mere modicum of the blame to ourselves, and by much ingenious argument and apology show that we are more sinned against than sinning. Our conduct has been determined by the inevitable associations of our lot and others turned us aside from the better things to which we were looking. The element of personal responsibility is kept well out of view. If, on the other hand, we have played some worthy part in the community to which we belong, we take much of the credit to ourselves and make light of the help we have received from others. It was our own thought, our dogged persistence, our heroic will-power which led to the great moral achievement, and we owed comparatively little to the counsel and encouragement of friends. We were the makers of our own spiritual fortunes. When we are found in sin, we put stress upon the collective view of human responsibility ; but if we do what is right and good, we put stress upon the individual aspects ^66 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES of responsibility and admit no partners to our honours. We reverse the principle if we have to explain unworthiness in those who once belonged to our circle. The man who was our comrade disgraces himself, and how careful we are to prove that we had practically no influence over him, and that his lapse is purely the fruit of his own recklessness and headstrong folly. On the other hand, if one who has been identified with us becomes known for distinguished service to the kingdom of God and the cause of human progress, how we magnify the influence we had over him in the opening periods of his history ! We instructed him. In days of weakness we furnished him with inspiration and encouragement. When he was alone in his struggles we smiled approval upon his ideals and heartened him through many hours of depression. He is our protege. Such examples serve to show what one- sided judges we are, and how to suit our purpose we emphasise now the law of personal, and now of collective responsibility ! In primitive ages the family, the tribe, and the nation were treated as though it were involved in the offence of any one member of the group who had shown himself a law-breaker. A whole household might be incriminated by the act of a prodigal member of it. Such usages were complementary to the autocratic ideals of government current in all ancient communities. If one governing head or chief was recognised in every family or tribe, it was a part of the compact to treat all moral failures in the group as due to his slackness or corrupt example. He was the keynote. In the days of Socrates ideas of in- INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 367 dividual freedom had been long established, and yet his accusers tried to inculpate him before the judges by pointing to the evil record of some of his most assiduous disciples. Such axioms are still observed in those parts of the Eastern world where the institu- tions of antiquity have been stereotyped. When a crime of unusual atrocity occurs in one of the cities of China, not only is the chief culprit put to death, but such stress is put upon the system of mutual guarantees that uncles and schoolmasters, who ought to have moulded him to better things, are made to share his death-sentence in some milder form ; and even the presiding mandarins are cashiered. The Chinese recognise the other side of this principle, for in ennobling a hero or a wise and faithful statesman, they confer posthumous rank upon his ancestors. The criminal and the hero alike respond to the influences which have been acting upon them. Men imbued with such traditions laugh at our European idea of dealing only with the individual delinquent, and tell us his kinsmen ought to be punished at his side, whilst the city of his birth is dismantled. This principle is recognised in the sentence passed upon Achan and his household, and other Old Testament incidents, as well as in the rite for the purification of a village from the guilt of an undiscovered murder committed within its boundaries. The idea expressed in such codes of punishment is not so much that of a raging revenge which thirsts to punish a man through his friends, as well as in his own body, but an instinctive feeling that those nearest to a man have contributed to the formation of his character, and perhaps encouraged his acts ; and that indeed the whole atmosphere and tradition of a city, which 368 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES has bred a criminal, must have been pernicious and perverting. Such codes of punishment repel us not so much because they are inequitable in the abstract, but because the measure of one man's influence over another is too fine a problem to be settled before a fallible tribunal. If we could put infinite wisdom upon the judgment throne we should feel that a missing element in the righteous treatment of trans- gression had been supplied. The Old Testament records for us these examples of collective responsibility and group-punishment not merely as fragments of history full of interest, but to foreshadow one of the delicate equities of the final judgment which no balances of earth can test and determine. These judicial methods of the primitive days were crude in form, and the Jew at least asked in the lot for a Divine mandate to justify the act to his conscience ; but we must all feel that something is lacking in human courts. When an ill-paid clerk, a victim of the bookmaker, stands charged with embezzlement and receives six months' hard labour, one feels that the bookmaker ought to have twelve months, and the master who has given him less than a living wage and helped his temptation ought not to go quite free. When some poor man has com- mitted forgery and receives five years' penal servitude, you hear much pity expressed by those who know him, and the hint is given that a dressy wife and extravagant daughters, who have goaded a weak man into a felony, and whose names have not been men- tioned, get off too lightly. The social set that makes demands upon a man's purse he cannot meet and brings about his downfall, has an indirect share of guilt, not less terrible because difficult to formulate. INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 369 The bad temper of one member of a family may- infect the circle, and when a husband is driven to his club, and growing sons to scenes of dissipation, or the housewife is driven to soothe her nerves by sinister orders from the licensed grocers, it is not just to blame one only, however difficult it may be to weigh out the amount of blame due to each. This principle of mutual responsibility, although carried out by primitive societies in blind and brutal ways, contains a core of impartial truth and reaches further than any man can trace it. It may be that we shall reassert it on a wide scale, although the tribunal before which it is applied must always be that of the man's own conscience. The glory of human life is in its influence, and if there is a moral law in the universe and a supreme Judge to enforce it, responsibility must be co-exten- sive with influence. For every man set in a circle of social, family, or civic relationships, the confession, " We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge," means that we shall be declared partakers in other men's sins or crowned in their salvation to a greater extent than we take trouble to perceive and under- stand. Many facts remind us how we may affect, more profoundly than we have been accustomed to imagine, not only the interests of our own immediate circle but the fortunes of the world. We hold in our hands the lives of our neighbours. Long before the scattered races of mankind were on speaking terms with each other the health of one district of the world determined that of another. Every kind of disease acclimatises itself most impartially upon all four continents. Plagues travelled then, as now, from 25 370 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES Egypt, along the swamps of South Philistia into Palestine, and from the shores of the Caspian to Western Asia, and through every part of Europe. The carnage of war bred epidemics which wrought havoc thousands of miles away. And in these days of international trade and commerce, the power of one part of the world over the destinies of another seems to increase. The diseases of an unhallowed civilisation are carried to the remotest islands of the sea. The telegrams posted in your clubs and news- rooms are so many barometers on which are marked the influence of foreign events over the finance of the city, and indirectly upon the comfort and pros- perity of your homes. A drought occurs in India and the cotton operatives of Lancashire are put on half-time. Princes disagree, a foreign newspaper foams in a fit of distempered patriotism, banks in New York, Chicago, Berlin, Vienna fail, and securities become so depressed that half your sub- stance melts away in a few brief hours. Earthquake and fire in San Francisco and Valparaiso cause financial stress and insolvency in London and Glas- gow. In the course of time, nations, strange to each other at the outset, show the idiosyncrasies of twins, who take the same ailments at the same periods and pass through the same physiological ups and downs. One part of a town reacts upon another, and the fortunes of one country are the subject of vital con- cern to its neighbours. We are all the poorer for the destitution which lies a few miles from our doors, whether we are in the same parish or not. The West End has no effectual quarantine against the troubles of the East End. The chances against the health and life of our children are increased by outbreaks of small- INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 371 pox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid in districts packed with tenement houses. Out of these facts new obh'gations arise, which, however difficult to formulate, must one day enter into the ultimate judg- ment of conduct. And what applies to natural applies also to moral health. Some years ago the Emperor of Germany had arranged to meet the Tsar of Russia whilst cruising in the North Sea. At such ceremonial interviews it is usual for monarchs to wear the uniforms of any regiment of the neighbouring country of which they are honorary officers. The Tsar's valet forgot to take his master's proper uniforms, and the inter- view had to be delayed two or three days. As the interview did not come off at the appointed date, rumours of friction between the two countries arose and spread to the Stock Exchanges of the leading European capitals, with the result that certain securities were depreciated, and men who had speculated in them were half-ruined. Such a circumstance shows the responsibility which may sometimes attach to the duties of a valet. Perhaps the blame of these commercial disasters should be equally distributed between the stockbrokers who had been betting on political changes, the imbecile etiquette of monarchs who could not meet without their uniforms, and the poor, blundering, muddle- headed valet. Such an incident illustrates the subtle threads of interdependence which are woven into all modern life. This law of interdependence has its moral applica- tions. The infections of vice and crime travel by swifter and more insidious channels than decimating epidemics. The newspaper description of an outra;je, 372 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES robbery, murder a thousand miles away, may strain numbers of diseased imaginations in our midst to explosion-point. By a curious and irrepressible tendency to imitation in human nature, types of both good and evil are reproduced. In a Chinese city where I was once living, a Chinaman went and hung himself on the outstretched arm of the idol in a public temple. No one could explain the strange and fantastic motive which led him to choose that particular form of suicide. Perhaps he had been disappointed of his hopes in the idol's help, or he wished to invoke its wrath against an adversary. Curious to say, within two or three days, a second man went and copied in the same temple that picturesque form of suicide. Every wrong act, sensational or otherwise, breeds imitators. The police magistrate is reminded again and again that cheap literature, which puts the glamour of romance upon crime, sets up a ferment in the juvenile brain and produces the amateur pirate and highwayman. A huge mass of undecided people in our midst wait for a lead, and they may be turned either to the right or the left almost at the will of the operator. Weak men venture upon certain acts when they think they have found some kind of authority to rally their courage for that which they faintly wish to do. A careless or a worldly precedent we have set up, without thinking, may be quoted by some distant acquaintance, to sanction the first step he takes in a career of cor- ruption and death. We are all more or less centres of ethical telepathy. It may surprise us in the after- days to find that we have been partakers of other men's sins. It is sheer political sophistry to allow INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 373 the doctrine of human liberty to be extended into the fatal heresy that a man's besetting sin is no one's concern but his own. It is the concern of all. It brings loss to every man in the community. We are less delicate in our moral tastes, and our children are less securely guarded against the temptations which may turn them into heart-breaking failures, because of the public-house in the next street with its spawn of betting-men and blasphemers upon the doorstep, the palace of prurient varieties half a mile away, and every unwholesome book that is intro- duced into our literature. We may leaven other •nations with our virtues ; or, what is far easier, infect them with our vices ; and they can return the compliment. The world is a joint-stock company in which we all have important holdings and directing votes. The exact distribution of the burdens of responsi- bility, in a family or in a community, is a delicate problem, the solution of which in practical life baffles us. The account we render must bring into the reckoning the privileges we have enjoyed, and such fine adjustments belong only to the province of the Most High. In his severe counsel to Timothy the apostle would doubtless call to mind the young man's godly ancestry, his training in the Scriptures, his wholesome upbringing, besides the charge com- mitted to him as a minister of the gospel. Politic acts, to be passed over with a milder censure in one less privileged and instructed, might involve a par- ticipation in other men's sins. The distribution of responsibility between two or more persons, whose conduct is influenced by a reciprocal relationship, varies from day to day. A 374 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES judgment at one stage of the history may need to be revised in part at a later stage, because the centres to which praise or blame may gravitate shift and diverge. It may need infinite knowledge to apportion all the ingredients in an act of com- posite evil and discriminate in condemnation between the leader and the accessory. It is said that some crimes have been a result of hypnotic suggestion. If such things have occurred the operator is under the ban of a hotter condemnation than the subject who has been put into a state of semi-consciousness and made subservient to his wiles. Without trespassing upon the half-explored ground of morbid occultism, we are all familiar with events in which one man has been so artful in his sophistry, so plausible in his arguments, so dogged and pertinacious in his domination, that he may really be guiltier than the weak-minded tools who have followed him and accepted the active parts he assigned. There is a stage in the development of the child when the parent is more responsible for the acts of the child than the child himself But when the child has matured into reason, knowledge, and self-control, the centre of preponderant responsi- bility has transferred itself to the personality of the child, although in the sight of God the parent's responsibility for early influence and direction never entirely ceases. There is a time when the man who becomes a drunkard is entirely blameworthy for his own downfall and for every separate act of intemperance which led him to the precipice. But when the will has been weakened, the power of self-control INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 375 destroyed, every fibre of the moral life rotted, and the poor wretch feels he would stake his soul for a drink, the friend who sits at the same table, the publican who plies him with the temptation, and the politicians and magistrates behind the publican, are more flagrant delinquents than he. The burden of guilt has travelled unseen to other shoulders, and the man who caters for his weaknesses is the leader, whilst the victim himself is a poor, servile accessory. When an enlightened Christian nation plies non- Christian races with gin, poppy, or hemp-drugs, although it may be pleaded black man, brown man, yellow man is free to resist the seductive luxury, yet surely the more enlightened race is covered with a foul guilt and a deadly shame from which the others are comparatively free. Is not this principle of collective responsibility reflected in the words of the Great Teacher Himself? At the Last Supper Jesus said to the Twelve, who were reclining around Him, " One of you shall betray Me." Was it not harsh, undiscriminating, inconsonant with the ideal equity He always preached, to put the reproach of this evil deed upon the corporate dis- cipleship, without specifying the particular offender ? Had the honour of the others no claim to be vindi- cated, and that at once ? The words seem more open to criticism than the denunciations hurled against the scribes in the Temple courts a few days before. Such a speech almost savours of the Eastern method of incriminating the innocent till they have cleared themselves by a dread ordeal, or punishing an entire community for the misdemeanour of one. In the distressful words, which left Judas for the moment 376 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES unnamed, and treated his crime as though it threw a shadow of reproach over the Twelve, Jesus was sug- gesting those finer fibres of ramifying influence which so often escape our blunted vision, but which are none the less sure and certain tracks along which the solemn law of reciprocal responsibility works itself out. For many months past they had been helping to make the psychic atmosphere which stimulated into such repulsive growths the poison-germs in the veins of Iscariot. James and John, Peter and Thomas had been disappointed in Jesus, as was the betrayer, although they stopped short at treachery. But they kept step with Iscariot to the border-line and travelled in His company. When Jesus referred to His appointed sufferings, they had always been against Him and on the side of those political illusions, into which the exaggerated patriotism of the Jew had turned the Messianic hope. They also were sullen and mortified at the idea of having to follow their Master into scenes of shame. Had they been less worldly, Judas might have felt compelled to part company with the Twelve at an earlier stage. He did not find them altogether incompatible. By the hospitality they showed to his worldly schemes, he may have been held in the bonds of a formal dis- cipleship, which in due time made treachery possible. Up to the point at which sin formulated itself into a crime, they were at one with him. Of course they were incapable of deceit, malicious intrigue, final desertion ; but they lacked fidelity to purely spiritual ideals, and the crime of one became the reproach of all. A member of the Church rarely falls into scandalous sin without others being also in some undefined way accessories to his lapse. Courage, INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 377 self-denial, resolute character, tearful solicitude, un- sleeping watchfulness over ourselves are needful, if we are to be without blame before Jesus the Judge. This admonition to Timothy shows the severity with which Paul interpreted the law of mutual responsi- bility. The godly young man, left behind to watch over the Church at Ephesus, was not likely to identify himself in any way with flagrant and prevalent forms of sin. It is inconceivable that he would have joined in festivities likely to beget in some of the weaker creatures taking part in them habits of intemperance, sensuality, gambling. He was incapable of support- ing a faction in the city set upon aggrandising tavern- keepers and honouring men enriched through the corruption of their neighbours. With such a training, he would be in no danger of buying favour for the helpless little groups of believers, by paying court to dissolute aristocrats and accepting the patronage of evil-doers in high places, in the tone of Archbishop Laud, who often records his gratitude to Almighty God for the friendship of George Villiers. He had the kind of conscience which would have made it impossible for him to serve for five years as domestic chaplain to a nobleman living in open adultery, as did the famous ecclesiastic of the Stuart days, whom certain Anglicans still delight to honour. The danger of which Paul bids him take heed is that of restoring insincere penitents to Church fellowship, or admitting unworthy men to office. By a worldly-wise selection of men to bear rule in the household of God, by politic blindness, by ignoble silence in presence of grave moral inconsistencies, by popular- ising the gospel and relaxing its requirements, he might lend the sanction of his position to wrong- 378 INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES doing and lower the standard of Church life for generations. A body of disciples can suffer no per- manent discredit through patience with weakness and infirmity, for they are bound to copy the Master, who fostered the faintest beginnings of goodness. But when a Christian community connives at continuous, deliberate sin in any of its members, it becomes an ally of the Evil One and forfeits all right to bear Christ's name. In this indulgent, happy-go-lucky age, when Christian denominations sometimes compete in a commercial temper for public support, men are tempted to set up the ideal of a Church without discipline. Let men judge for themselves whether they are fit for the sacrament, and do not impose tests. Such pleas are suicidal. The members of the Church share a common life and are bound to look to the health of a body, of which they are constituent parts. Mortifying limbs do not drop off by them- selves and leave the Church to renew its life, unharmed by the painless loss. Many of us would like the law of influence and mutual sponsorship to work in one way only. We want the prospect of unlimited recompense, without being exposed to any risk of shame and loss on account of others. The moral government of the world should surely run on parallel lines to the method of the stockbroker, who advertises handsome profits without any risk of loss. We ought to have the opportunity of furthering the well-being of our contemporaries, and so participating in their final reward, without incurring the penalties threatened against those who abet the downward steps of their fellows. We should be left free upon an unlimited scale to do good and earn Divine plaudits by the INTERWOVEN RESPONSIBILITIES 370 service of our brethren, but should be so tethered by restrictions, founded in the nature of things, that we cannot be held blameworthy for the mischiefs of our day and generation. The possibilities of honour and immortal renown should be made as large as the possibilities of service in the world, but there should be no risk of privation in the final judgment, on account of some evil turn we may have given, by word or example, to a neighbour's conduct. The idea vaguely cherished by some of us is a con- tradiction of terms. A one-sided theory of responsi- bility is like the specification for a sphere with only one pole. It is the cry of a half-witted school boy for a world in which he can climb trees, without the risk of a fall. If responsibility does exist at all, and goes beyond the mere actions which concern a man's own body, it must hold for evil as well as for good. If you stimulate the virtues of your friends and find the glory of their salvation reflected back into your own coming life, you may at the same time accelerate their deterioration and in some degree share the pain and shame of their doom. If Paul may receive eternal satisfactions through the fidelity and gracious endurance of his converts, Timothy may also be abased and humiliated in the day of God through conniving at the defects of those whom he brings into ill-judged association with the Church. The crown of joy and honour accorded for help rendered to men's moral and spiritual uplifting, implies also the risk of the millstone about the neck and a descent into abysses of darkness, if we cause a little one to be offended. XIX THE ENDLESS ETHIC " I have seen an end of all perfection ; but thy command- ment is exceeding broad." — Psa. cxix. 96. This longest of the Psalms was written by a victim of persecution who had been much vexed by injustice and disappointed hope. The laboured and redundant treatment of his theme, it has been suggested, perhaps arises from the fact that it was one of the pastimes of his captivity in a foreign land to put his thoughts into the framework of an acrostic. Like the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes, he was sick at heart, but sick through the soul-bruising frustrations which had come to him in a noble struggle rather than through the repletions of prosperity and the lavish voluptuous- ness of an unbridled life. He had cherished high anticipations — anticipations, perhaps, of the better times to be inaugurated by a return from the captivity in which he pined and by re-established temple rites. His sanguine forecasts had not yet been justified. He had seen an end of all perfection in the polities and institutions to which he had looked. And yet moral obligations did not cease THE ENDLESS ETHIC 381 with the dispersion of his dreams. Divine law was in no sense discredited, for its scope was still enlarg- ing before his view, and its sanctions continued to gather fresh force and solemnity through all the vicissitudes of his lot. Perhaps the set of his thought anticipates the religious development of the approach- ing generations of his race, which made the law itself the centre of the elect life rather than the temple at Jerusalem. He had come abreast of those earthly horizons to which he had looked with wistfulness, and found little or nothing within their range that was adequate, contenting, indisputably Divine. He was now fixing his view upon more spiritual hori- zons, for God's commandment seemed significant of interests stretching beyond the scenes explored by the senses and measured by the span of human life. The fabric of early dreams had collapsed, but an outlook of infinite moral progress was unveiling itself Growth in the obligations of righteousness gave no sign of finality. Perhaps the disillusion which depressed the Psalmist, and for which he had found an antidote in the permanence and magnitude of the Divine law, was not limited to the religious aspect of life only. By his own simple pathway he had reached the conclusion, familiar to modern thinkers, that the present world is not of unimpeachable perfection, but a chaos of knotted problems, amazing anomalies clashing interests, contending principles. He set out with other views, but the world has tended to deteriorate at each stage through which he has passed and at length he finds himself more or less broken in spirit. The dreams of youth give place to the scanty, ill-favoured fulfilments of manhood, and 382 THE ENDLESS ETHIC before a worthy fruitage of his hopes is in view signs of the end appear. But he reminds himself moral processes go on working themselves out upon a scale of immeasurable greatness, when the secular move- ments which once promised amelioration are threatened with arrest and defeat. God's inward law, larger than the designs appearing in the history of contemporary nations, makes the centre round which his baffled and faltering faith rallies. It is a poor, stunted, parochial code of precepts which is inherent in the system of nature and reflects itself in the expediencies of human society ; but within there is a secret, mystic, expansive law which is ever thrusting the soul forward to nobler things. Spiritual ends are continued in that larger kingdom of the unseen, which rounds in those fugitive and visible kingdoms of earth, where natural forces soon reach their term and encounter a final arrest. God's change- less and ever-enlarging law of right, a spring of new optimisms in the thwarted reformer, and an earnest of fresh possibilities in the life it is set to regulate, satisfies that sense of moral greatness which the course of secular events so often seems to mock. In these words may we not see a soul from whose religion the note of a harsh provincialism is begin- ning to pass away? The Psalmist is perhaps being broadened by the discovery that the Divine com- mandment has mysteriously promulgated itself in the unsuspected places of the earth. In spite of the ill-usage to which he had been exposed in a strange land, he has acquired cosmopolitan sympathies and been brought to see that in the reverence of other races besides his own a sacred law, akin to that given by Moses, had firmly established itself Some of his THE ENDLESS ETHIC 383 fellow-captives had discovered that these ruthless con- querors were not one and all bad, but now and again showed a better and more kindly side. The virtues of humanity asserted themselves outside the limits of the chosen race. The moral law, he was finding out, was not a mere string of recipes, for a small theocracy. Perhaps the Psalmist had learned in exile of ancient codes like that of Amurabi, which corresponds at so many points with the legislation of Moses, and prov^es the close ethical affinities of the Semitic, and perhaps also of the Turanian races. God had long been binding upon neighbouring nations the obligations of virtue and righteousness, although they had never gathered before Sinai to listen to His voice. The commandment was broader than the little race which had hitherto esteemed itself the solitary guardian of its sanctities. And herein, perhaps, the Psalmist may have seen a forecast of the future uplifting of the Gentiles. He was learning that the realm through which God's law ran was larger than the land which had been divided amongst twelve tribes. The theocratic state of his early dreams was built on narrow and insufficient founda- tions. He had cherished the picture of a single race devoted to God and possessing a monopoly of His favour ; but recent history had belied the imagina- tion. And yet the commandment was Divine — Diviner perhaps than he had thought in the past — because it was broad as mankind. Authoritative precepts from on high had gone forth into unsus- pected places to sanctify those whom he had reckoned outcast. Through this growing law the assembled nations might yet realise a degree of moral elevation not heretofore reached in the chequered history of the 384 THE ENDLESS ETHIC Jew. Just as the fan of light from the cloud-rift which gilds a tree or a farmstead widens into a flood of glory overspreading the land, so the command- ment, which had once seemed to touch one angle of humanity only, gave signs of broadening itself out so as, in due time, to transfigure the world. It had already gone forth to bind, discipline, and mollify the asperities of men of a strange speech. Forces, large as the human soul, and co-extensive with the presence of man upon the earth, were concentrated in this sacred and authoritative ethic. At the root of the exceeding broad commandment the promise of a new perfection waited, which was to replace that which had passed away. In these words the Psalmist expresses the sense he has of the ever-enlarging province of the law in the regulation of his own personal life. In spite of the changed views forced upon him, he sees in the law an instrument for furthering his own moral growth under new conditions. With that finer and more complex power of interpretation, which comes from an expanding intellectual outlook, the calls of duty must obviously multiply. There has always been a tendency to look upon the decalogue as concerning itself with specific groups of action, which do not cover the entire groundwork of life. Certain offences are inhibited to which human nature is prone, and finality is ascribed to the classification. But as men begin to know themselves and to comprehend the social systems to which they belong, and especially as they rise into more adequate views of God's character, they are led to see that the Ten Commandments are types to be amplified into parallel applications and not exhaustive categories. Even THE ENDLESS ETHIC 385 in primitive times the law had to be epitomised into two pregnant principles of love towards God and man to facilitate its application to a wider series of questions. It was inevitable that undisclosed dimensions of the law should loom into view, when the moral training of the individual, with his many- sided temperament and his diverse environments, had to be faced. At the opening of each new chapter in the religious history obligation expands. In elementary stages of culture obligations were necessarily more restricted and engrossed with fewer problems. The tasks of a child multiply with years, and, as he grows in wisdom and knowledge towards full maturity, the scope of his duties must be measured in larger terms. With every new land- mark passed in the providential training, the dominion of duty over the conscience extends itself, and the simple commandments of the Most High begin to apply themselves to subtle and difficult questions of conduct. The Jew had been accustomed to look upon the first half of the law as relevant chiefly to the temple and its ordinances. But when the Psalmist found himself in a strange land, bereft of the symbols and institutions with which his worship had been identified from the days of his forefathers, he began to feel that these primary commandments must be satisfied by new methods. He could not find access to the Temple, and it was in some more spiritual sense that he must obey them. And thus he got at the finer essence of the law, and in Jewish colonies wherever planted there sprang up a worship without altar or sacrifice. The commandment covered fields of spiritual activity, of which he had been scarcely aware in the past, and thus one of its hidden 26 386 THE ENDLESS ETHIC dimensions was brought into view. And the second half of the law had to be obeyed in the same larger sense, and included an inward spirit as well as outward acts. The doctrine of a progressive revelation is implied in the Psalmist's words — a doctrine peculiarly perti- nent to present-day problems of faith and the key to difficulties which the intelligent believer is bound sooner or later to face. Some good people resent the idea that any subsequent enlargement of a Divine revelation can take place. It is assumed, to begin with, that a Divine revelation must be complete and exhaustive, immune in its very nature from every element of infirmity and limitation. In the abstract such an assumption is sound and just, if no account be taken of the human instrument. On the other hand a revelation, coming through a holy prophet or lawgiver, cannot greatly transcend his power of spiritual vision ; and that power must necessarily be circumscribed by the age in which he lives, the training he has received, and his in- heritance by natural descent. The light that enters a house is determined not by the mighty volume which comes from the sun, but by the size and number of the windows in the house, and with any increase in the size and number of the windows the scope of the household duties broadens, for a higher standard of taste and cleanliness becomes possible. An explorer huddled up in his hut through the long darkness of an Arctic winter cannot be expected to maintain the same standard of taste and domestic refinement as dwellers in a house into which the sunlight can come in tides. The illumination of a landscape is determined by the reflecting surfaces THE KNDLESS ETHIC 387 it presents, and not by the resources of the gigantic orb from which the illumination flows. There are sound-waves beyond the compass of the human ear as well as light-waves beyond the visible spectrum. The moral revelation has outlying margins which at first escape our notice. God was compelled to proclaim those parts of the commandment which human nature, on its best and most developed side, could easily receive. It was necessary that a series of economies should succeed each other, the last enlarging that by which it was preceded. Divine dispensations are progressive, and no weary circles of tautological pragmatisms ; and this is the sign that the forces working within religious history have their birth in the infinite. God could not deal other- wise with growing children. The dependence of the conscience upon the intel- lectual faculties, through which it operates in practical life, is a sufficient proof of the fact that a primitive revelation, however pure, cannot possibly be ex- haustive. Every enlargement of man's knowledge and power to judge incites that moral sense, which vibrates in unison with the Divine law, to widen the field of its functions. New spheres of duty must there- fore open themselves up, like unfolding continents, with each advancing stage of education and develop- ment. The whole duty of man did not press itself upon the forefathers of the race, as they looked across the frontiers of their garden-home into the unexplored spaces of the earth. With the lifting of the veil from the surroundings in which a human being is cradled, the commandment stretches itself out to cover more complex issues. Its range of accommodation is un- limited. Conscience cannot do the full measure of 388 THE ENDLESS ETHIC its appointed work without enlisting in its service the senses, the reason, and the judgment ; and till these faculties are duly trained the Divine voice, in the central essence of the man, must speak through imprisoning crudities and limitations. The ethical truth produced within the conscience is like the seed of a new flora which is dependent for its dis- tribution through many zones upon winds, currents, and tides. The intellectual movements of the race are tracks and highways, along which man's moral potentialities pass into wider spheres of activity and fruitfulness. The conscience may be compared to a piece of fine and accurately adjusted machinery which has been put down amongst uncivilised people. The perfect machinery cannot do its work, and send forth its fabrics through the areas of a new territory, till trained hands have been taught to use its capacities and co-operate with its actions. Our moral dis- criminations can only make their force and their correctness adequately felt with the widest training of the intellectual life. The tasks of the conscience in defining, expounding, and driving home the pre- cepts of social and religious law are limited by the line up to which knowledge has been attained and the judgment cultivated, and not by any frailty inherent in this Divine faculty itself In rude stages of mental development men cannot apply the moral maxims authenticated by the conscience to subtle and complicated problems nor harmonise into unison contending issues. Commerce, educa- tion, literature, social intercourse amplify the sense we have of God's claim upon conduct and invalidate the restricted definitions of the past. If this is so, is it not clear that the Divine commandment must THE ENDLESS ETHIC 3^9 annex for itself new spheres of application with the widening faculties of mankind ? A lap-dog may be as docile as a shepherd's collie, but the collie, in virtue of its trained intelligence, responds to calls the dog of the hearthrug passes by. The Bible narratives, covering as they do long epochs of religious development, afford striking illustrations of this principle. The first test of obedience, imposed upon the ancestors of the race as they crossed the threshold into a ne.v life of reason and moral responsibility, was simple to the point of childishness. When their conscious rela- tions with the Creator began, loyalty was to be shown by abstention from a fruit alluring to the senses ; and this in face of whatever temptation might arise to take and eat. According to the teaching of the sacred allegory the mandate was simple, positive in accent, suited to the unsophisti- cated understanding. It was such a first lesson as might be used in training an animal to obedience. Though possessed of instinctive virtues, and wholly innocent so far as the life they enjoyed had unfolded itself, the parents of the race were yet in their intellectual infancy, with no complex capacities, enabling them to appreciate the many aspects of obligation upfolded within the perfect law of God. After the lapse of centuries the law broadened itself out into those first principles of natural justice, which were set forth in the Covenant with Noah. The ethic of the dawn was further amplified by Moses and by those who collected and codified the traditions of his work, spiritualised by successive schools of prophets, and at last changed from a veto upon profane and vicious acts into a high injunction 390 THE ENDLESS ETHIC of whatever presented itself to the affections as lovely and of good report. Like a river which pours forth its shining tides upon the right hand and the left before merging itself in the sea, the Divine law spread its sanctions over wider and yet wider fields. The zeal for Jehovah, which had been en- kindled within the tribes, impelled them into wars of extermination against the Canaanites, and no doubt the chosen people were conscious instru- ments of Divine justice. They obeyed a principle, but a principle found after due time to be radically associated with other principles, which tended to modify its form of expression. The law of humanity implicit in the earlier sense of duty, at length gained utterance by the lips of the prophet who commanded the King of Israel to set bread and meat before the invading Syrians, so strangely put within his power. After the Cap- tivity there arose a new sense of obligation to the world, which struggled with a bitter nationalism, but at last found its grandest expression in the parable of the Good Samaritan — a parable which makes the law of mutual love and service wide as the world. It is true that side by side with this expanding process a counterfeit enlargement was in progress, for rites and ceremonies were elaborated into harsh and tormenting complexities. But the prophets were ever reminding the people and their rulers that Divine law must not be formalised into exacting routines alien to the Divine character itself When the Spirit of God comes to dwell within men, fulfilling the word of the prophets. He enlarges the bounds of duty. His personal instruction and TH?: ENDLESS ETHIC 391 leading would be needless, if every phase of obliga- tion had become articulate in the common law of the nation. By fine and diversified adjustments to privilege, capacity, and vocation He specialises the moral claims resting upon men. In early ages the Divine Spirit, acting according to the traditions of existing societies, selected duly accredited leaders to be the heralds and interpreters of law to the multitude. In the name and by the authority of the Most High, these chosen messengers promul- gated a common code of behaviour, suited to the strength and average intelligence of the people. Under special guidance, and marked out for their work by many signs, they found a mean term of obligation, and announced it with solemnity and faithfulness. But in the last times God Himself, without the intervention of seers, prophets, and lawmakers, was to speak in diverse and manifold spiritual ways to the entire community, and, accord- ing to the promise of the better Covenant, men of all classes found precepts from on high strangely written within their hearts. And the law thus conveyed was no servile transcript of the tables of stone, but an enlargement into perfect fulness. If no distinctive personal element was to be brought into the new disclosures of duty, there was no reason why God should not still continue to make known His will through representative men. " All my people shall be taught of God." Yes, but if the law had already proved itself an exhaustive message there would have been little or nothing left to be dealt with by the new method. In the dispensation under which we are all directly taught by the Spirit and brought under law, men's in- 392 THE ENDLESS ETHIC dividual privileges, capacities, and aptitudes are measured and the commandment enunciated upon this new basis ramifies into finer forms. It acquires a power of enforcing itself in new directions. Adam and Eve were mere babes in the wood, and though surpassing us in their fair and stainless innocence, we at least are more subtle and discerning, and capable of complexities of spiritual obedience which scarcely entered into their dreams. The gifts of the Spirit bring precepts which enlarge the earlier codes. The law of a theocracy, laying stress as it does upon the collective obligations of the nation, must necessarily leave some phases of individual duty implied rather than expressed. An inspired Statute Book records a minimum demand which is made upon the elect community, and in the cases, where personal duty goes beyond this minimum demand, a special ministry of interpretation must be established. The Spirit who is enthroned over the conscience comes with the prerogatives of a new lawgiver, and brings in factors of righteousness necessary to con- summate the character of the individual. Under these conditions the first commandment gives out a series of offshoots which take account of the endow- ments and varying responsibilities in each separate member of the holy commonwealth. Many things may prove necessary to salvation in the after-times, which were not promulgated by the founders of the theocratic state. When the young ruler approached Jesus with his question, he was not sure the decalogue was an exhaustive inventory of the things necessary to eternal life. Whilst inclining to a cheerful self- complacency he had, at the same time, a lurking THE ENDLESS ETHIC 393 sense of incompleteness. Jesus showed the breadth of the law, proving that perfection meant far more than respect to a series of prohibitions. The voice which urged Paul to preach the gospel was as Divine as the voice which called from the cloud to the trembling apostles, "Hear ye Him"; and he could not disobey, unless to his own shame and eternal peril. In the experience of many besides the Apostle of the Gentiles perhaps the commandment widens itself out to include a call to preach in foreign lands, or a crusade at home against betting, impurity, drunkenness, and the poverty which degrades men. Many things, not expressly laid down in the begin- ning for all, are pressed home by the Spirit who in- scribes the inward parts of a man with his mystic mandate. To make a sacrifice, to forego an unwhole- some pleasure, to take up a rude cross, to wrestle with an urgent social or intellectual problem, may be a step to which we are constrained by Him who is the inward lawgiver of the New Covenant. The Divine commandment is broad as the Spirit's suggestions within the heart, and vast as his leadings through the length and breadth of the untrodden world. The whisper heard in the watches of the night, when the heart is alone with the impressions which arise within it, as within a strangely stirred Bethesda, is not the phantasy of caprice or the muttering of some spirit of the air, but solemn and majestic as the thunder- voice which rolled from the crags of Horeb. The wider knowledge of God which comes with the processes of spiritual growth cannot fail to add some- thing to the sum-total of our duties. The short- comings of the earlier law correspond to the inadequate degree in which the Divine character was made known 394 THE ENDLESS ETHIC to men. A commandment, going beyond the ascer- tained and recognised character of the Lawgiver him- self, is more or less invalidated from the beginning. It presents itself as a strained and arbitrary enact- ment, and as such tends to provoke opposition rather than win compliance. Coming without the living, resistless sanction of a supreme example, it must make for hypocrisy. A mandate having no deep root in the consistent example of him from whom it issues lacks the motive-force which enables for obedience, and is self-condemned as an impractic- able counsel and an instrument of sanctimonious for- mality. The law acquires new potencies when it is seen to arise from the changeless attributes of a Divine nature. As God unveils Himself in the providences of history and the new economies of redemption, the obligations devolving upon those who wait before Him widen in their scope and ramify into new spheres of relationship. The law which the God of righteous- ness, and the Father of all the families of the earth, may impose upon the children of men is obviously larger in its range of applications than the law con- gruous to the sovereignty of one known chiefly as the Lord of Hosts, and the Defender of an isolated group of clans. The precepts, breathed into the conscience by One who has come into immediate converse with His worshippers, exceed in scope and surpass in fine discriminations the precepts enjoined by a Divine King who dwells apart and is adored from afar by a people smitten with fear because of His majesty. To know the length and breadth, the depth and height of the love which surpasseth knowledge means that the soul is brought face to face with ranges of the commandment hitherto unexplored by THE ENDLESS ETHIC 395 human thought. The law cannot possibly be the same for an Israelite who stands before the flame- girt Horeb, and the believer who bows wondering before the Cross where the Man of Sorrows bears the burdens of mankind. The commandment is broad as the spreading effulgence of the Divine attributes before the vision of the man, to whom all life is becoming a theophany. With the slow ripening of the soul into a finer spiritual consciousness the new duties implicit in the commandment are seen at last to cover the whole field of our spiritual relationships. When we become endowed with the power of discerning the unseen, we feel at once the commandment must regulate a domain which lies beyond the cognisance of the senses. The conviction fixes itself within us that there are supersensuous duties and obligations which outvie in import the precepts which regulate the life of the flesh. A symmetrical law must take account of this stupendous evolution which brings us into ultimate contact with invisible realms. Many men and women have a faint, defective sense of the spiritual relationships in which human life is set, and look upon the entire duty of man as contained in the Ten Commandments, the first table of course in- cluding the outward and formal recognition of an orthodox God. The inner life, and all the phases through which it moves, is as unreal to them as the mist phantoms which hover before the gaze of a superstitious Highlander. If there is any substance corresponding to these subtle, shifting visions, it is impossible to order our attitude towards it by a code of intelligible precepts. But as the eyes of the understanding open and acquire their proper focus. 396 THE ENDLESS ETHIC we begin to find that the spiritual is more solemn and far-reaching than the material and must be con- trolled by a holy law of which the duties set forth in the decalogue are representative types. There are precepts invested with Divine sanctions, by which the subtle movements of our higher consciousness must be harmonised and regulated, and the tides of spiritual affection are as much subject to control and may be as truly guided in their proper channels as the affections which arise within us by force of natural instinct. There must be a daily enlargement of the province of the law, and a widening of the interests to which it is applied, or no advance towards the infinite is possible ; and it is in this unbroken advance that human excellence consists. The standard of perfection lifts itself on new heights with the march of each new day and month. The perfection of yesterday ceases to be the perfection of to-day, because the commandment is ever adding increments to the demands it makes upon us, and binding the conscience with fresh sanctions. As men are emancipated from the senses and ushered into more delicate spheres of perception and ex- perience, they find themselves face to face with new laws that have to be kept, new decalogues that must be reverently obeyed, new obligations that must be strenuously fulfilled. A broadening knowledge of social and inter- national interests and the problems they involve, compels us to give an extended range of application to the principles of primeval law. New vices some- times appear in modern communities against which the forces of new precepts must be marshalled. The romance of inventions and discoveries is often inter- THE ENDLESS ETHIC z^7 leaved with chapters in new arts of self-indulgence, piquant sensualities, vices without tears ; and new commandments must be promulgated to arrest the march of these insidious invaders. Men profess to find in the Bible maxims which will cover all the possibilities of human conduct, and feel built up and comforted if there are no positive enactments which condemn their new-fangled besetments and in- firmities. Such an attitude of mind is foolish and ignorant. New researches may open up to men new sensations, for which the present age craves, and which may prove fatal to the highest side of human character. New drugs, which have the highest value in medicine, are sometimes perverted into new debaucheries. Businesses, once just and reput- able become honeycombed with betting or minister to sottish squalor, and at last call for the anathemas of an undivided Christendom. With our g-rowinsf knowledge acts which were once looked upon as purely indifferent take on a complexion of hurt- fulness and need a strong mandate to suppress them. A century ago our forefathers held that their drains were nobody's concern but their own, and with an air of innocence dumped down insanitary refuse, little dreaming they were sowing the seeds of disease and death in the homes of their neighbours. The telegraph that summons the doctor in time to save a life carries the devastating messages of the bookmaker. The ocean cable which brings news of distant earth- quakes, fires, famines, and so lays upon us duties of help unknown to our ancestors, lends itself also to these tactics of garble used b\' tiie man who wants to breed bad blood and make gains out of a war. The unfair treatment of a Chinaman in Australia or 398 THE ENDLESS ETHIC the United States provokes a boycott upon foreign trade in the Far East, and perhaps costs some soHtary missionary on a station, to which no pro- tecting gunboat can go, his Hfe. Modern morahty becomes curiously complex and far-reaching in its sio^nificance so that broader commandments are often needed to meet the emergencies which arise. But where is the Moses of our day and generation ? Who is to promulgate the precepts demanded by the crisis of the hour ? The Church ? Would to God it were sufficiently wise and strong ! A generation ago it might have proscribed alcohol on ethical and altruistic grounds and made the Cross as free from reproach as the Crescent. But it missed its opportunity. In the course of another century science will promulgate the broader com- mandment demanded by the social disease of our day, but upon purely hygienic grounds. A man will be an anti-alcoholist not from ethical or religious motives, but as a counsel of selfishness. He will deny himself strong drink for precisely the same reason that he declines to live in a house with bad drains. The future generation will be driven to take up a position the Church did not dare to affirm upon religious grounds. The Ten Commandments were converted back into two that they might be multiplied into ten thousand. The fact that there were only ten — and ten was considered the number of secular perfection — conveyed the impression that the last word of the law had been spoken, and that all coming genera- tions might make their tabernacles at the foot of Mount Sinai. New types of obligation grow up out of the hopes THE ENDLP:sS ethic 399 God inspires within His servants, for to solicit a distant goal is to will the means by which the goal is reached. The prophet who sees the vision of a new heaven and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness is bound to promulgate the rules of life by which the change may be brought to pass. He who depicts a holy mountain, in which the very beasts of the field shall no longer hurt or destroy, is bound to a new standard of kindness and humanity in his personal temper and habit. The prophet who depicts the end of war is bound to take part in fulfilling his own prophecy and must denounce the politics of the sword and the spear. He who enters into the Divine mind and paints a commonwealth from which want, sickness, and discontent have passed away is sworn to set himself against the drinking-bar, the turf, the waste and extravagance of the rich, the occasions of unemployment, and to preach a law against all that retards the Divine consummation. If the world is to become a scene of sobriety and self-restraint the inspiration which creates the ideal, creates sanctions also for the rules and methods by which such a condition of society is to be reached. The preachers of a redemptive epoch in Israel pre- pared the way for that fuller ethic of Jesus in which law and prophets alike were to be fulfilled. Every inspired forecast of the after-days carries within it a mandate no less fully inspired for the methods by which society is to be bettered ; and thus our growing and enlarging hopes give birth to a broader commandment. XX THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. — I Thess. v. 23. The root-word "holy" from which the verb *' sanc- tify " is derived, means that which belongs to God. The primitive uses of the term describe the field reserved for the growth of sacrificial grains and fruits, the ground marked off for God's habitation and for the religious acts of His worshippers, the shrines and altars subsequently placed there, the sacrifices pre- sented, the vessels of the altar ; and last of all the priests who ministered in sacred things. The first significance of the word was ritual, but with that clearer perception of God which came through the progress of revelation, the ritual colour of the word disappeared, and it became essentially ethical. Perhaps ritual associations still cling to the word in one or two debatable passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but from the days of the Sermon on the Mount, nay, even from the times of the prophets, 400 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 401 it became obvious that whatever belonged to a pure and righteous God must correspond with His nature, and be responsive to the uses of a spiritual service. In the sanctification of Jesus Christ to the Father's redemptive service of inankind, a process by which He passed from unspotted personal perfection into the new perfection of a vicarious Mediatorship, two methods of operation merge into each other. Our Lord speaks of Himself as " Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world." The life re- ceived from the everlasting springs brought with it inspirations of love, which determined His office and moved Him to an act of supreme self-dedication for the race. Side by side with the effusion of sanctif}'- ing life from the Father there came the voluntary consecration of the Son to His sacred and benicrn tasks. '* And for their sakes I sanctify myself" And in the sanctification of the redeemed Church two similar acts must be co-ordinated — sanctification by the act and operation of God Himself, and also a sanctification in the free, practical, self-determined acts of the daily life, responding to the will and work of God. These two factors are recognised in the chapter before us, one factor represented by the group of preceding exhortations, and the other expressed in the apostle's prayer. The prayer follows a series of detailed exhorta- tions which cover the entire ground of Chris- tian duty. The first group defines the believer's relation to the elect community with which he is incorporated. " Admonish the disorderly, encourage the faint-hearted, be longsuffering toward all." The next group ranges over the believer's relations to the outside world. *' l^Lver follow that which is good one 27 402 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES toward another, and toward all." Other groups of precepts deal with the attitude of the secret soul to its unseen God and Helper. " Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks." There are also counsels which define the disciple's attitude to the truth and to the unseen Spirit of truth in his inward ministrations. " Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good." And this is followed by the all-inclusive behest, " Abstain from every form of evil." These urgent words make ready for a prayer which, whilst looking to present duties, finds its goal at the judgment-seat of Christ, and covers all that lies between the two extremes. It is from the Divine Presence that grace comes down through which these many exhortations are fulfilled ; and the struggle to attain such standards of excellence in the common life is the sign of an unseen power already working to hallow the disciple. Our best endeavours to be holy through these concentric spheres of obligation are vain, apart from the gift which is in God's keeping. But on the other hand, till the mind bends itself to this broad category of duties, praying for this high gift, which was the subject of the apostle's thought, is useless. The terms are not established under which the gift can be received. One might as well pray for the sanctification of Lucifer into blameless humility as pray that the gift of holiness may come to a man who does not sub- mit himself to all the precepts of a holy God. It is sometimes said that sanctification is the goal reached after years spent in practising the laws of the Christian life. Blameless habits of thought and character must be slowly built up ; for practical THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIP^IES 403 holiness has nothing in common with those rapid renewals which often mark a first conversion. It is not a sudden gift of the Spirit. And on the other hand, we are told that sanctification is a state which follows from the direct forthputting of Divine power in response to faith. If this is so, it surely tends to be as sharp in its demarcations as the revolution in the jailor's soul at Thilippi. Is it not clear that the change may be either protracted or instantaneous, as one or the other element predominates ? Our perplexing contro- versies arise from forgetting this distinction. The exhortations, which preface the apostle's prayer, show that God's sanctifying work can scarcely be thought of as taking place in natures not yet stirred into struggle. It is the weak point in some move- ments which aim at teaching the fuller Christian life, that sanctification is viewed as possible through a sovereign demonstration of power, irrespective of the conditions in which the soul has placed itself. These groups of precepts assume that the believer has his own part to play, and that he may be slow to find out what that part is. Superficial pro- fessions of a higher life are sometimes made. Men and women hurry themselves into an undefined trust, and take vague and unweighed words into their lips, without first coming to adequate self- knowledge and testing their wills through the whole gamut of obligation. But the law of holiness applied in practical life may mean pay a debt, admit and repair a wrong, end an estrangement, undertake an irksome service, put God before either country or king, and make His fellowship the ruling aim. The blessing hovering before the imagi- 404 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES nation does not always seem to consist in such concrete acts. A fine tide of religious sentiment comes surging through the soul, and there may even be a solemn sense of God, and yet the will has not bent itself to these practical issues. And thus it is that unsound and premature confessions of a deepened religious life are made which repel con- scientious observers. It is against the Divine order that this great gift should be bestowed till the will is ready to obey through the whole area of daily activity and relationship. And the range of duty, moreover, tends to be always broadening itself out. The sanctity which is without reproach at one epoch of the experience may be partial and im- perfect when the larger knowledge has come. The will must be ever bending itself to new obligations as fast as they are disclosed. And yet there is another side to the subject. It is an irrelevancy to speak of restraints of time when God uplifts Himself to deal with the souls waiting at His feet. If self-knowledge is deep, the judgment duly informed, and the will submissive to the full measure of the light received, the work enters upon a stage which is purely Divine. By an inward movement upon the secret springs of the life, through which God takes possession of the believer for His own peculiar use and service, the hallowing processes may be of surprising swiftness. God's work is no longer paced to human reckonings when the soul is passive in His hands. The grace which calls out sanctities, free from spot or flaw, is God's gift, His response to fervent and unceasing prayer ; and God's gifts do not descend upon slow or wavering wings. THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 405 The effectual power, the wide range, and the unbroken perpetuity of this great blessing are the three aspects of the subject on which stress is put in the apostle's prayer. The interests, affections, and activities of man's complex nature must be hallowed by a grace from God — hallowed in their undivided integrity, and hallowed for all coming time. This work is linked with the sense of inward peace. "The God of peace Himself sanctify you." The grace completes the reconciling work of the Cross. It is the soul which God has effectually tranquillised that becomes possessed for His own daily uses. The gift which stills the inward tumult is a step in the method by which God perfects His people. The breath of God creates within the soul realms of Sabbath calm, which enwrap its move- ments. The temper of sanctity must be fed from this sweet and mystic spring. When deep inward contentment comes to the mind and establishes itself in the character, the human and Divine wills blend, and the nature is made holy in all its parts and properties. The specious pleasures of the world and the flesh no longer allure man from his true centre. Is this peace the cause or the product of a sanctified habit of mind and life? It may be both. The healing forces of nature cannot assert them- selves, whilst restless fevers still burn in the blood and brain, and the parallel holds in the kingdom of grace. Before our moral errors and shortcomings can disappear, God must abate the disquiets of in- ward passion and allay the unsleeping discontents of the soul. And this He can do, for He is the 4o6 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES God of peace, and His hallowing presence begets inward, sacred, inviolable calm. This peace, the twin grace to sanctity, should prove itself inexhaustible, for it flows from the unchangeable and soul-reconciling God. An ingenious man once tried a scheme for making his bees gather honey all the year through. He placed the hives upon a raft, which moved up and down the Mississippi River, with the changes of the seasons. By following the steps of the Spring through the latitudes traversed by that great waterway, he was able to bring the bees within reach of the flowers from which they drew their stores of sweetness. Through the long round of the months they were moving in the sunshine and collecting nectar from the fragrant blooms. And the man whose spirit is kept near to God finds sources of contentment which enable him, under all changes, to continue in acceptable work and service. Because tribulations are many, this is impossible in the world, but by making his home in God he may find access to that which is denied him in the scenes of the senses. The souls responsive to His presence, and obeying His daily calls, are encircled with mystic Edens of beauty and delight. Strange flowers bloom at every stage of the pilgrim journeyings. The currents of common life need not take the believer beyond the everlasting Spring. In changing scenes he may find a faithful God, and may rest in the promises of a word which never fades. It is true the roots of bitterness, whence trouble and moral failure arise, are still in the flesh, but if God endures, the serenity which has its sources in His presence continues ; and through this abiding peace a sanctity is possible which need not be sullied into dimness or thp: gift which sanctifif:s 407 withered into failure. But is not this a dream ? It is a dream only because the soul refuses to find its springs in God. Fertile plains spread themselves out along the banks of the river flowing from His throne, and if we fail to prove the peace and the sweetness awaiting us there, it is because our desires turn again to the world. A God who cannot satisfy our thirsts and tranquillise our inward tumults cannot fully hallow us to His service. Let this solemn calm, this mystic effusion, this unspeakable gift, shed itself abroad within the soul and the quest for alien satisfactions will cease. It is only thus men attain that centre of spiritual perfection after which the noblest in all ages have aspired. If we faint with discouragement, and despair of the high standard set before us, it is because we have failed to know God as the God of peace. This prayer implies that sanctity is produced in the character by a direct act of Divine power. That which is offered to God becomes holy, not by the intention of the worshipper only, but in virtue of God's effectual acceptance of it for His own posses- sion. To make a frail, weak, fallen creatui;^ a pattern of sanctity is as much a creative work as to call forth the first pulse of light from the primeval darkness. It is true there must be the willing mind in the subject of the process. Through the far-ranging duties set forth in the New Testament, and in all those practical issues of the daily life which seem to be covered by no specific law, a man must be prepared to surrender himself to God. ]^ut when even this point is reached there is something a man cannot do, and for which he must pra)' in utter helplessness. He might as well try to command 4o8 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES the uprising of the dawn as to make himself into a child of the spotless light. God must enter into open possession of the nature, and it is not enough that its powers should be placed at the Divine disposal. An incomparably sacred touch can alone put this unearthly imprint upon the spirit and life. The old distractions, seducing the soul into meaner paths, will prevail once more, unless the Divine indwelling make the soul into a sanctuary of en- during rest. When the sign of this presence passed from the ancient temple, annulling the guarantees set up at its dedication, the serenity of long solemn centuries was broken and the profane intruder rushed in. The living contact of God's personality makes the unspotted consecration and its attendant peace. The things of the first tabernacle lacked consum- mate sacredness till the symbolic fire, the token of God's presence, touched every thread of the fabric and made the burnished vessels to glow with mystic llumination. This was the pledge that God accepted for His possession the gifts which had been tendered. The works of Bezaleel and his fellow-craftsmen were the best ihat age could produce. An art-critic of the wilderness might have found it hard to point out errors of design or inaccuracies of execution. The tapestries were of carefully selected material and well balanced in form and colour. The bowls, dishes, lamps, and the plates of the golden altar, were of metals from which the dross had been taken by repeated refinings. No scratch disfigured the shining surfaces. From both the inner and outer courts of the tabernacle the Levites had carried away every broken stick and splinter. The house had been made faultlessly clean, and no defiling THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 409 footstep was allowed to cross the threshold. Vigilant and jealous e\'es watched every part of the fabric. But when man had done his uttermost he could not make the tabernacle holy. It became so in the hour when Divine power and glory descended as in a cloud of fire and God thus marked it out for His dwelling-place. This was the hallowing element in gold and temple and after-offering. The setting up of devout habits, virtuous rules of life, the disciplines of the flesh and self-restraint, outward conformity to the dictates of religion, right attitudes of mind, attempts to build up the character in righteous- ness, all make ready for the state of sanctification ; but such things, however urgent, do not constitute the essence of this beatific experience. It is the contact of the unseen God which enables and energises the consecration of the soul to unspotted service. He Himself must come into the nature, taking for His own possession whatever it may have to offer, and shining there till the whole manhood becomes refulgent. If God reign within us the halo of un- blemished goodness will encircle those activities upon which the world is looking, as well as beautify the inner shrines of thought which are veiled from eyes of flesh. But the act that fully hallows God's people is re- plete with a deeper virtue than the cloud of symbolic splendour which hovered over the sanctuary. That put the mark of Divine adoption and acceptance upon workmanship carried to the utmost limit of the crafts- man's art, thus sealing it for God's separate uses. But this hallowing act, to which the apostle was looking, enters into the inmost substance of the being. It transmutes the component parts of the life, and to 4IO THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES natures once coarse conveys a touch of supreme transfiguration. When we have done our best to make ready and dedicate these human temples, with all they contain, many a mark of imperfection appears. There are ugly threads running through the tapestries, spots of stubborn dimness upon the vessels, rents in the holy garments, discords and unsightly failures in the ministries. The spirit is willing, but we are help- less to carry our delicate self-rectifications to more excellent levels. Attempts to remove these spiritual disfigurements leave legacies of schism, patchwork, and confusion in their train. But the act of God brings with it a mystery of creative power before which all unseemly things disappear into oblivion. A transmutation passes through every texture of the character. If He work not we are undone, and our lives must always continue unspiritual. The work is His alone. Let us lie at His feet and await the touch which sanctifies. Who knows when the cloud may descend and our lives, with all they comprehend, may be made holy ? The sanctification here asked is complete — free from defect, blemish, or after-degeneration. The prayer is daring beyond our dreams, but it is no mere form of words, for it is apostolic, and to ask less than this would, in Paul's view, have been to pay stinted homage to God's grace and power. The word repre- sented by the adverb "wholly" of our translation, is made up of two Greek adjectives which are fused together. The first means the sum-total without omission of a single part ; and the second that which is consummated, in contrast to that which is inceptive only. Sanctification must deal with all the spheres of THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 411 which man's nature consists. St. Paul divides human personality into three constituent parts. This is largely an open question of philosophy. In this classification of the faculties Paul probably followed the current teaching of his age, or the method of the school in which he had been trained. But whether we analyse man's nature into three, thirty, or three hundred parts, mapping out the functions of the con- sciousness with the minute precision of an ordnance survey, every part must be sanctified to God. No human power or faculty lies outside the range of this consecrating grace. And not only must God possess each particular part of the man for His own uses, but an appointed goal must be reached, and God's purposes at each succeeding stage of our life must be triumphantly attained. Wherever a genuine conversion occurs, the process at once sets in which tends, sooner or later, to make the man holy. All united to Christ, whether at Rome, Corinth, or Colossae are saints. But this initial work makes the postulant rather than the ripe master. Although God sanctifies upon the very threshold every son He receives, as far as the work is possible, for the contrite man may only half know himself and desire grace without realising the full measure he needs ; yet with the discipline, experience, and temptation of life new discernments arise, and the sphere through which the sanctifying grace of Ciod can take effect enlarges itself Both these ideas are suggested by the adverb " wholly." In the next clause the apostle gives us the threefold category under which he has been accustomed to think of human personality, *' spirit, soul, and body." Under the term " spirit " he describes the life of 412 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES intelligence, will, moral sensibility which we share in common with God himself. By the "soul " he indi- cates that life of desire, appetite, natural passion which we possess in common with the animal kingdom. By the *' body " he, of course, refers to that part of our being which links us with the external world, the organ through which we take our part in the active social life and cosmic order around us. In the life of thought, in all the currents of passion and sensibility, in the practical movements forced upon us as members of visible communities, God must so possess and command us for His uses, that we shall be without blame before Him. The sanctification of human nature in its several parts may be illtistrated by three temperaments, in one or other of which certain elements seem to dominate the rest. In the mystic, whose life gathers itself up into contemplation, and who is sometimes described as an impracticable dreamer, we may see how God possesses for His own uses the spirit and its finer faculties. Perhaps the man's constitution is such that the passions are tame and few, at any rate they tend to disappear from the daily life in their most innocent forms and manifestations. This type of Christian, whose nature inclines to focuss itself in spiritual meditations and employments, shrinks from the rough world-problems which lie outside, although no practical duty, once endorsed by the conscience, is shirked. Aggressive enterprises do not enlist his immediate interests, and he desires to dwell alone with God, that the Spirit may inform and permeate his thoughts. There is a mild animal soul somewhere in the man, and he has a more or less attenuated body of flesh, which at one time or other THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 413 needed f^race ; but the chief note of the life is that of spiritual absorption. Sometimes, perhaps, he declares that the soul, with its tides of passion, has no place in the king^dom of God, and that the less made of the body and its coarse senses the better. Another man becomes genuinely holy, the groundwork of whose temperament is animal, and who to the very end is noted for his physical virility. Perhaps he repels the mystic of fine spiritual perceptions, who can scarcely believe that the psychic energies may be sanctified and that God may have His own ends to serve through these transmuted passion-forces. But in spite of this lack of high spiritual aptitudes, the grosser nature, which once obtruded itself and set its broad mark upon the disposition, has been chastened and sanctified, and God can find uses for it in His economies. Some one has spoken of *' the Divine brutality of Martin Luther," and there is shrewd truth in the descriptive phrase. Human passion was in him to the end. It had its providential uses but did not break out into lawlessness or detract from the genuine sanctity of his character. The men who do not muse upon the subtler mysteries of religion, or feel vehemently, but who are always trying to do good, illustrate the sanctification of the body and its powers. There are strict Christian moralists in the marts of commercial struggle, grand philan- thropists in the Board-rooms of Committees, men true to a high Christian ethic in public life and ruling over homes into which no meanness or duplicity ever comes, who are saints, although the spiritual apocalypse within them is little more than a faint flutter. For the higher reaches of religious thought they have little or no aptitude, the wave 414 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES of revival emotion, which gathers up into itself whatever can be utilised from the passion of the blood, passes them by ; but they are always doing good. Their inability to sit down in a quiet retreat or a convention is a constitutional infirmity, but their restlessness to help the poor and the forlorn illus- trates the sanctification of the body for God's ends of compassion. Soul and spirit of course become holy, but in the less noteworthy degrees which fit their belated unfoldings. Whilst these several factors of the personality are blended together in different proportions in various men, all parts of the life must be sanctified, according to the stage of development attained. The holiness that has any claim to be called complete must be both inward and outward. If there is a corrupt deposit in the dark, unswept niches of the inner courts, well-swept outward courts will count for little. Sanctity includes motive as well as external obedience. God does not possess for His own uses and hallow with tokens of His presence that temple the outward portals of which have been cleansed. His processes must go from top to bottom and end to side of the complete personality. The spirit stands first in this enumeration be- cause the work within its unseen recesses deter- mines the surrender of the rest of a man's powers to God's uses. This is the point at which we touch the Eternal. Just as fire came first to the altar and from that central point spread in mystic and broadening illumination to the outer courts, with their lamps, vessels, and sacred treasures, so in the later dispensation, the process by which God claims men for His will and hallows their powers, begins THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 415 with the spirit. Here is the golden altar, and God descends into soul and body by first stirring into movement those higher affinities which link our natures immediately with His own. The strict and unhalting preparation of the outward life is imperative, but the mystery through which we become God's dawns at the inmost centre of our being. We can never level ourselves up to this state by bodily acts and exercises, however intense the emotion which pervades them. Here lie the sources of character, and in sweetening these God makes the life a fragrant sacrifice. The spirit was designed for sovereignty over soul and body, and when God's fiat restores its withered powers and puts within its grasp the sceptre of royalty, all other parts of man's nature fall into due subordination and attain that faultless co-adaptation of movement in which per- fection consists. The sanctification of the soul, which is the earthen vessel containing the lower passions and appetites, follows that of the spirit. When God possesses us for His own uses all natural instincts fulfil a Divine purpose, and fulfil it in harmony with providential plans. The forces of the nervous life may lend virility to a man's service. And thus the body, which fulfils the behests of the spirit, is raised into a temple, and the part of man's nature which seems at the op- posite pole to God's Eternal Spirit enshrines the sacred presence, and is so made free from stain. This mention of the body in the apostle's prayer implies that a gracious answer to the petition begins while we are yet in the flesh. The body cannot be sanctified and kept from evil after it has passed into the grave. When the spirit has 4i6 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES fled from the earthly form in which it once dwelt, neither good nor evil can be predicated of the body. It is no longer an index of character, and it would be foolish to describe it as either blameless or blame- worthy. To speak of the time-keeping qualities of the clock after the works have been removed and the case only is left behind is absurd. " Your body be preserved blameless." The resurrection of the body and the Lord's second coming to judgment are viewed by the New Testament writers as coincident events, and if full sanctification cannot take place here and now, the apostle's prayer that the body and its powers may be kept blameless is like asking for an inheritance in a vacuum. A German, who was accustomed to scathe the weaknesses of the country to which he belonged by birth rather than sympathy, once said, " When the Cossacks and the snow had destroyed the army of Napoleon, the Germans bestirred themselves and began to dream of liberty and independence." In our attitude towards the noblest possibilities of the Christian life are we not open to a like reproach ? Do we look for immediate release from the bondage of sin at the hands of our great Captain and Deliverer? or do we not assume that Nature must first weaken the force of the temptations which beset us before the yoke of our spiritual oppression can be broken ? When old age has tamed the hot impulses of youth and chilled the passion in our blood, when the Cossacks and the snow have done their providential work, or perhaps not even till death releases us from the flesh, may we wake up and dream of spiritual victory. Such views are an unconscious satire on God. Can God indeed join hands with wintry Death THE GIFT WHICH SANXTIFIES 417 and make it His ally in consummating our triumph over evil ? He is most honoured in delivering us from sin, and possessing us for His own uses, whilst we are in mid-life and our temptations are at the height of their power. It is a misuse of words to call that process sanctification, to which natural decay contributes just as much as the consecrating touch of God, It is no grace of a disembodied holiness for which the apostle prays. This sanctification is continuous in its range. It comprehends not only that disclosure of the Divine presence through which God takes possession of human nature and hallows it to Himself, but a guardianship of unfailing power. " Preserved blame- less." Here we meet the crucial difficulty of the subject. The test of grace is not so much can it make us holy for a moment, but can it keep us in unspotted integrity till all temptations are over- past ? In a world, the atmosphere of which teems with ever-present incitements to evil, is it possible for this matchless gift to be secured against loss? Many earnest and godly men can recall stages of their religious history when the soul was strangely uplifted and it seemed for a time that they were immune against insidious temptations to fall back to lower levels. Days and perhaps weeks were luminous with the glory of a complete and passionate dedication to God ; and those days still stand out, like illuminated peaks, above all the memories of the past. But men cannot always live under these high tensions, and the glory of the religious day-dawn lost its virgin splendour. The clouds gathered and the life became once- more struggling and depressed. Why did we fall back to 28 4i8 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES meaner levels and look upon it as God's will that we should be content to dwell there? Some error, surely, must have come in to cramp our views and to sap our habits, for if God imparts this noble gift it cannot be His will to withdraw it. The grace which sanctifies must be continued into living guardianship, because at the later stages of the believer's history, with his expanding intelligence and his deeper sense of obligation to God, new duties arise. It is possible for a man to keep the command- ments with fastidious exactness, without proving all that is involved in the answer to the apostle's prayer. The measure of grace which sanctifies a half- developed child will not, apart from daily increase, keep him holy as his powers grow and he acquires a fuller knowledge of the world. The act which made the child Samuel holy would not, without an accele- ration of its initial force, produce the same result in Paul, with his trained mind and his diverse experi- ences amongst many peoples. Grace must operate over a much larger area when the powers have grown through discipline, and the interests of life have multiplied a hundredfold. By its progressive and cumulative qualities the gift which sanctifies becomes continuous guardianship. It needed wider manifes- tations of the Divine presence to sanctify Solomon's temple with its ample spaces and its rich embellish- ments, and to separate it from common uses, than to raise into sacredness the stone on the uplands at Bethel, which Jacob had used as a pillow. At the later stages of our life there is far more within us for God to take possession of, than when we stand upon the threshold. In man, as he should be, knowledge, power, experience and responsibility increase to the thp: gift which sanctifies 419 very end of his days. Through the countless mercies of a life-time he feels himself brought unto more urgent and comprehensive obligations. His un- wearied study of the problems of the world suggests new interpretations of duty, and the Master's two commandments ramify into a thousand. If he is to be kept blameless, the power which sanctifies must enlarge the scope of its activities. When mature life is reached, there is more within us for God to appropriate to his own uses than could be found there in childhood and in youth. New circles of activity open before us and new motives press and constrain. The sanctifications of the Spirit never cease, and we are kept blameless, because these Divine forces act through ever-expanding fields. This process must be continuous, because new groups of temptations arise through each succeed- ing stage of life. The sudden incitement to evil which, sooner or later, is sure to come, must be met by unfailing grace, or the state in which God possesses us for His own uses may suffer grievous interruption. In the power which hallows us there is a force which never falls into abeyance. We must not think of this mystic grace as though it could withdraw itself after its first manifestations of ac- tivity. When red-hot steel is being rolled into rails and armour-plating in the iron mills, a stream of water is directed upon the strips of glowing metal as they are shaped for their future uses. The jet of water causes the outside scale to fall away. But for this unceasing stream the scale might be pressed into the body of the iron and vitiate its quality. And is there not something like this in God's method of dealing with the people whom He is moulding to His 420 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES purposes ? Of course temptation will never cease in this world, but if compensating grace is continuous in its inflow, the temptation may fall away before it has had time to harden itself into sin. Such gifts of help flow down from His presence that the outside scale has little chance to enter into the habit and spoil the character. By the abiding gift which en- ables us to throw off an evil imagination before it has passed into disobedience, not only soul and spirit^ but even body may be kept blameless. The work of imprinting the Divine image upon our life is not a passing act, like that of instantaneous photography, but resembles rather the method of the astronomer^ who gives his gelatine plates a long exposure so that they may receive the pictures of invisible stars. The power that comes to receptive natures is meant to stay and to outlast the summers that vivify the world. Of course we may lose this, and the more elementary degrees of grace, by our own act, just as the man who has received a sum of money may squander it, if he is so minded, before the threshold of his home is reached. But we are not left to the will of the adversary, and no violence can snatch the gift from our hands. The grace will be indefectible if we surrender ourselves at all times to the indefectible guardianship. The sanctity which God creates proves its own safeguard. The deeper the process the more in- violable its qualities. A true work of grace may yet be superficial, not because defect cleaves to the operations of the Spirit, but because the Spirit is not admitted into all the complex recesses of the life. Of course, we do not teach that the highest earthly sanctity cannot be lost, or that, once lost, it cannot THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 421 be regained. Both of these views have been held. But as a matter of experience it will be found that the richer and more complete degrees of sanctifying grace have a permanence lacking to rudimentary degrees. In his book on Japan, Dr. Dresser tells us of a rare bit of lacquer he had acquired in the course of his travels. When he was preparing to return to Europe he entrusted his packing to a native car- penter. Feeling some little concern for the chief prize of his collection, he went to see if the workman had packed it securely. To his chagrin he found this precious curio had been stuffed with scraps of rusty iron and thrown alongside rougher articles which might mar its superb artistry. He thought his little gem was hopelessly spoiled, pulled out the rude odds and ends mixed up with it, and scolded the native with the emphasis of a vexed and angry foreigner. Strange to say the carpenter persisted in his mistake, calmly observing it would not do to put cheap and inferior lacquers in such risky places, for they would be ruined, but the best lacquers could suffer no harm. The English traveller says the native workman was perfectly right, for when his little treasure reached home and was taken out of its rough resting-place no scar or scratch was to be seen upon it. It is a special characteristic of the fine lacquers made in the feudal courts of old Japan that it is impossible to scratch or score them with a nail. And in spiritual things the perfection of the work is to some extent its own security. The touch of the Divine artist, as He achieves His masterpiece of grace within us, will include the conditions and 422 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES securities of a faultless preservation. The skill of the supreme Sanctifier lifts men above the risks of disfigurement and disaster in a profane world. When marks of the old Adam reappear in us, it is because we have shrunk from the deeper and more effectual touches of God's hand. Fretfulness, mortification, disappointment in the home, the church, and the world mar our spiritual beauty and obstruct the grace which seeks to hallow us. This preservation includes a discovery to the spiritual consciousness of the value of the gift be- stowed when God accepts us for His own possession. There is a tendency amongst some religious teachers to deny that there can be any true knowledge in those inward assurances by which believers are com- forted. A man may, perhaps, be one of God's true children, but he cannot have a clear, trustworthy per- suasion of the fact. He may be sanctified, and yet of the grace which has set him apart for God's uses he has no authoritative consciousness. But if we do not define the significance of the gifts we have received, it is not at all likely we shall retain possession of them. It is one of God's ways of keeping to make us realise how incalculably pre- cious are the blessings with which He has en- riched us, so that we may be stirred to watchfulness. Sometimes we cannot at once attain the spiritual power we seek because we have an inadequate sense of its worth. We are so careless and esteem the gift so lightly that we should quickly lose it, if it were reached out to us, and God has to keep us waiting in meditation and protracted prayer, so that we may learn beforehand the preciousness of the enduement we seek and be guarded in its possession for the rest THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 423 of our clays. There is more risk of a marine-store dealer in Whitechapel having his shop robbed of oleographs and rusted cutlery than of Christie's Auction Rooms being looted, where old folios of Shakespeare, canvases by the great masters, and rubies and diamonds are stored ready for some great sale. The one man knows his stock is comparatively value- less and does not take the trouble to insure it or to engage watchmen. The other man knows the value of that which has been placed there and has many eyes watching over the treasures and many hands ready to guard them. Some Christians are un- watchful because they do not know the high worth of the treasure with which they have been put in trust. If we justly esteem the grace which sanctifies we shall not be likely to forfeit it when once it has come into our possession. It is by an inward revela- tion of these high spiritual values that God makes us alert and brings us into co-operation with His own mighty guardianship. And thus is it that we are kept blameless till the day of Jesus Christ. This prayer is not the unwarranted aspiration of an enthusiast. The apostle is convinced that the fulness and continuity of sanctifying grace are pledged in the call of the gospel and in the character of God. " Faithful is He that calleth you who also will do it." There are two principles in this assured conviction. We have been summoned into a vital relationship with the Holy One of Israel, which implies as its very basis a God-like holiness. Our call in the gospel is unmeaning if it stop short of this issue. And God will be true to the relationship He assumes as the author of our vocation. The call is no dream from which there is to be a vexatious 424 THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES awakening. It does not come to mock us with sug- gestions of an impossible excellence. His faithful- ness surpasses that of the best of men in their most sacred and tender relationships. Our faith is some- times weakened and our hooe discouras^ed and re- J. o pelled. We find the loudest and loftiest professions of grace discredited by captiousness, flagrant egoism, mixed morality, the politics of selfishness and pride ; and we are ready to turn from the subject with despair and contempt. Let it not be forgotten, how- ever, that God is true, and that it is His call which determines the standard after which we reach. We have no right to membership in Christ's Church unless it be our aim to reach, here upon earth, and now in this day of grace, a blamelessness which will bear the searching judgment-light. The apostle's prayer is in unison with the Master's call and reveals the law of the believer's life. We are ready to ask. If these things are so, how is it that the Church of Christ so often lacks the note of inward and outward sanctity, and is untrue to the great example it reveres ? Where are the people amongst whom this inspired prayer is beginning to be answered ? Where, we may venture to ask, is the individual disciple? The fact is that men do not greatly desire that the prayer should be answered — not, at least, till the Lord's coming to judgment is somewhat nearer. We play with our privileges and divert ourselves with the ennobling promises preached to us. Whilst we are frittering away our lives on worldly levels and in half achievements. He who still calls us is unalterably faithful. Who dare pray this prayer for himself with the expectation that it will be answered ? We go back from God's house with THE GIFT WHICH SANCTIFIES 425 just as much grace as we are willing to carry into the world. If we want the gift contemplated in the apostle's prayer, the prayer may be answered while we yet call. Our discontents are Divine, for the Spirit of God does not suffer us to rest in our short- comings. " If in anything ye are otherwise minded, even this shall God reveal unto you." XLhc (Bvcsbam press, UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITKD WOKING AND LONDON.