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TWELVE 
 
 SERMONS 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, 
 
 AND 
 
 Before the University of Oxford, 
 
 BY THE REV. 
 
 HENRY PARRY LIDDON, 
 
 I>.D.. TJ.C.L., 
 
 Canon of St. Paul's, and Professor of Exegesis, Oxford. 
 
 ;Reprinted from Church Sermons by Eminent Clergymen.) 
 
 .f PEIITOETOH ^^ 
 
 
 bonbon : 
 PUBLISHED BY REEVES, SON & CO., PLAYHOUSE YARD, 
 
 LUDGATK HILL, E.G. 
 
CSn^rg ^>i^mong 
 
 % Sermon 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Z?^«« Ireland's Professor of Exegesis^ 
 
 Utiiversiiy ,vf QxfprO^ I D HI G '^ ^'^ 
 
 PREACHED AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 
 On Sunday Afternoon, DECeMgER 3^ .1871. ^^^^^ ^^^ 
 
 •i** 
 
 "^w<f ^y/iew Tie, was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, 
 saying, Who is this ? " — St. Matthew xxi., 10. 
 
 It seems very natural to us, my brethren, to ask, why the 
 account of Christ's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday should 
 be read as the Gospel for Advent Sunday ? At first sight it 
 looks very like a displacement of the Gospel history, for on 
 Advent Sunday we are thinking of the two extreme points, if we 
 may so term them, of the relationship which the Lord Jesus bears 
 to us, the one of His coming to take our nature upon Him 
 eighteen centuries and a half ago, and the other when He shaU 
 come to judge us hereafter ; when lo ! we suddenly find ourselves 
 in the very midst of His earthly life, at nothing less than its 
 crisis, when He has just wrought His greatest recorded jniracle, 
 and is consciously on His way to die. What, then, we feel 
 inclined to ask, is the connection between this entry into 
 Jerusalem and Christ's advent, whether on the occasion of His 
 taking our nature upon Himself, or His still future advent, in the 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 clouds of heaven as Judge of the quick and the dead ? Might it 
 not have been better, we may ask, as is the case in some of the 
 Churches of Christendom, to have chosen the Gospel for to-day 
 from some passage in which our Lord describes His second 
 coming, such for instance, as the Gospel for Sunday next ? This, 
 brethren, is what some of tts may think, but these old Liturgical 
 arrangements were made by people who knew very well what 
 they were about. They have been continued to our day because 
 they have been found by the experience of some thirteen or 
 fourteen centuries, to have a deep lesson for the human soul. 
 They are not often interfered with now without loss, and it may 
 be questioned whether we have in this generation the men to 
 touch up the works of the great masters of the Christian life ; 
 whether we can make the attempt even on the small scale of 
 our new Lectionaries and Eevised Prayer Book, without 
 stumbling into some crude mistakes, which another age will 
 criticise, more or less sharply and justly, by the light of a deeper 
 mastery of spiritual truth. 
 
 This Gospel is chosen because it brings before us two great 
 truths ; not only that of the first coming of our Divine Saviour 
 into the world, but of His coming to the judgment. Passages of 
 Scripture describing either of these momentous events woidd be 
 obviously appropriate, but to do justice to the solemn time upon 
 which we enter to-day, we require to keep these two truths 
 clearly before the eye of the soul. Therefore it is that we have 
 a portion of Gospel history in which these two truths meet ; the 
 repetition, as it were, of our Lord's first coming to His own, when 
 His own received Him not ; and an anticipation of His coming 
 at the judgment, when ever}^ eye shall see Him. For His entry 
 into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was certainly an act of grace. 
 It was giving those who had previously rejected Him a last 
 opportunity of embracing His Gospel, of learning who and what 
 He was and what He had to teach, and what He, and He alone 
 could do for those who would listen to Him to any real purpose. 
 The offering He made for His own countrymen at large, by 
 consenting to be born of a Jewish mother and under the 'Law, 
 and for the sake of us and all mankind, by taking our nature 
 upon Himself and coming among us as one of ourselves. He 
 repeats on a smaller scale, but, if we may so put it, in an intenser 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 way, by this entry into Jerusalem. His entry was, indeed, a day 
 of grace to the doomed City, it was the supreme opportunity upon 
 which previous errors and perversities might be redeemed once 
 for all by the free acceptance of His pardon. It was to Jerusa- 
 lem, what the da^vn of the Nativity had been to the world at laro-e, 
 a day of grace upon which God's blessed Son shewed the light of 
 His countenance, and was merciful yet once more to the people 
 of His ancient choice. 
 
 But if it was a day of grace, it was also a day of judgment. 
 Now "judgment" means, in the sacred language of the Bible, 
 separation. Separation is the first step in the formation of a 
 judgment. It is so in the things of this world. To judge of the 
 various degrees of merit of two things, is to separate this from 
 that ; to criticise any production in art and literature — to say 
 that this or that statue, or painting, or book belongs to the class 
 having this or that degree of excellence, is to separate them. To 
 criticise is to separate. To award prizes in a school, is to separate 
 those who gain from those who lose. To deliver a verdict in a 
 court of Justice, is to separate the guilty from the innocent. To 
 separate is the first step in any process of judgment, and separa- 
 tion was the order of the day when our Lord entered Jerusalem 
 on Palm Sunday ; and, when He seemed at least, about to be put 
 upon His trial. He was in reality fidfilling the office of the Judge, 
 and His seeming judges, were in fact in the dock before His 
 tribunal. They it was, who were of their own free will and 
 motion separating themselves instinctively at His approach into 
 their different classes ; taking their sides almost involuntarily ; 
 writing themselves down upon the eternal record as His enemies 
 or His worshippers. It was, if ever there was one, a day of 
 judgment ; only the Judge was not in His robes, and the parties 
 before Him had for the moment scrambled on to the material 
 seat of judgment, and were apparently those who ought to speak. 
 
 The point, however, upon which St. Matthew insists is that 
 when Christ entered Jerusalem, "All the city was moved." 
 Observe that he says " all the city." It would, I submit, be no 
 ordinary cause which produced that effect. It is comparatively 
 easy to interest a single class, a coterie of thinkers, or a political 
 party. Local interests will move those who live in particular 
 districts ; mercantile interests, those who are engaged in particular 
 
 A 2 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 lines of business ; literary interests, tliose who are devoted to 
 special departments of study ; political interests, those who are 
 eno-ao-ed in public life, or who have devoted time and thought to 
 the study of public questions. But what is the sort of interest 
 that can move all ages, all classes, all characters, in a great and 
 varied community ? Certainly we may have seen something of 
 the kind, when a great sorrow, such as the death of a popular 
 prince, or minister, or a great national loss, such as a defeat in 
 war, or a deadly pestilence, or a famine, or some outbreak of 
 revolutionary violence, or some vast conflagration falls upon the 
 capital, or the country. Yet even in these rare cases, the interest 
 is distributed unequally. The loss, or at least the sense of loss, 
 falls with a very varying weight of incidence upoii different 
 classes of persons. There are always some, who have not much to 
 lose, or who cannot feel much, and who are at least tranquil 
 amid the prevailing agitation. 
 
 That which moves the whole community to its very depths is 
 that which touches man as man. ISot man as the capitalist ; 
 not man as the citizen, or the subject ; not man as belonging to 
 this profession or to that ; not as one of this class or that ; but 
 Man as a being who has a,, conscience, and a consciousness of his 
 mighty destiny ; who knows that he is here but for a few years at 
 most, and that during those few j^ears he is here upon his trial ; 
 who feels the solemnity of his position press on his very soul ; 
 who has a perpetual presentiment of coming death and of the 
 world which lies beyond it. When Jesus entered Jerusalem 
 " all the city was moved," because Jesus, by His very presence 
 and bearing, spoke to the souls of all ; the power of His presence 
 was felt in different ways, but it was felt universally. The 
 movement which it created was very far from being always a 
 a movement in the right direction. Truth is too strong to be 
 without effect of some kind ; but then truth repels where it does 
 not attract ; it exacts either the homage of love, or it will, at 
 least, gain the negative homage of animosity, Tiie remarkable 
 circumstance at Jerusalem, according to St. Matthew, is that 
 there was no class of persons who professed to be altogether 
 indifferent. We know how large a class of persons in different 
 stations of society in this city of London make this melancholy 
 sort of profession. They profess really — they tell you so^ 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 not to care about Eeligion. They stand outside it with folded 
 arms, occupying themselves with other matters and leaving 
 as they say, all such things to those who have a taste for 
 Eeligion, and who choose to follow it out as they please. 
 Whether at bottom they are really indifferent ; whether, 
 in fact, such a thing as londfide indifference on the part of any 
 intelligent human being towards religion is possible, may be 
 very fairly questioned. It is, of course, possible enough to be 
 unconcerned about a subject the claims of which have never yet, 
 in their breadth and height, been fairly brought before you ; but 
 when this has been once done, the profession of indifference is 
 generally a veil for a thinly disguised opposition. Jerusalem, at 
 any rate, was small enough in point of population for everybody 
 living in it to know something of the significance of Christ's 
 entry, and we may without difficulty catalogue briefly the elements 
 of which the movement, which that entry created, was made up. 
 We may take it for granted, first of all, that the main element 
 in the general excitement would be curiosity. Crowds of pilgrims 
 were arriving by their caravans day by day to the great Festival, 
 bringing with them, from Galilee, reports of the miracles which 
 Jesus had performed in the north of Palestine ; of the startling 
 nature of His teaching; of the vast influence which He had 
 exerted amongst the straightforward people of the northern 
 provinces. " Jesus Christ, the prophet of Galilee," was already 
 a name known more or less to every inhabitant of Syria who 
 took any interest whatever in the questions of the day ; and 
 there were, as was to be expected, wild stories handed about, such 
 as gather round every distinguished name ; stories which are pro- 
 duced by and which stimulate the general excitement. Nor was 
 Jesus unknown in Jerusalem itself. Only in the preceding 
 September, at the Feast of Tabernacles, He had worked a miracle 
 upon the man who was born blind, which had been the subject 
 of special and searching investigation before the Committee of 
 the Great Council, the Sanhedrim. That inquiry had notoriously 
 failed to shake the evidence of the person who had been its 
 subject. After a short journey into Galilee, Clnist had again 
 appeared in Jerusalem, at the end of December, during the Feast 
 of the Dedication of the Temple, when an attempt had been been 
 made upon His life in consequence of His clear assertion of a 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 claim to be Divine ; and since that date an event liad occurred 
 whicli had roused the feelings of the capital to the highest pitch. 
 At the village of Bethany, not quite three quarters-of-an-hour's 
 walk from the City gate, and only just beyond the brow of the 
 hill known as the Mount of Olives, He had raised from the dead, 
 nay — from the very putrefaction of the tomb— the body of 
 Lazarus, a member of a well-known family in Bethany. This 
 miracle had excited the greatest attention, the greatest hostility, 
 and when, three days before the Passover, on His return to 
 Bethany, Jesus was, as it would seem by way of acknowledg- 
 ment, entertained by the villagers at the house of Simon 
 the Leper, St. John says that a large number of Jews came 
 out of the City expressly to see Lazarus, who was present 
 at the entertainment, as one who had returned to his family, not 
 from a distant colony, but from that mysterious world, of which, 
 and from which, we can learn so little, while we yearn to know 
 so much. "Much people of the Jews, therefore, knew that He 
 was there, and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they 
 might see Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead." 
 
 Much of the interest which is felt on the subject of Eeligion 
 in all ages belongs, in one way or other to the interest of curiosity. 
 A man of moderate intelligence, if he is alive to the nature and 
 strength of the influences which, whether rightly or wrongly, do 
 as a matter of fact govern numbers of human lives, must feel 
 that Eeligion is a subject well worth his careful attention. He 
 may himself know, practically at least, very little, or nothing, about 
 its blessedness and its powder ; he may be wanting in the moral, the 
 spiritual sympathies which alone enable us to understand what it 
 is, and to know it as at once the purest passion and the highest 
 virtue of which man is capable ; and yet if in ever so slight a 
 degree, he has the eye of a statesman, he must see that Eeligion 
 is a mighty power swaymg the minds, purifying the affections 
 and invigorating the wills of millions of men, and as such at 
 least, it is a most worthy subject for careful enquiry. At this 
 very day, read the newspapers or listen to the ordinary current 
 of conversation, and consider how much of the interest which 
 is displayed on the subject of religion is the interest of curiosity. 
 Why religious people act as they do act ? What in the world 
 can it be that induces them ? How did they ever come to have 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 such convictions ? Who are the persons, and what are the books, 
 and wliat the states of feeling which inliuence them now ? All 
 this moves the curiosity of the intelligent world. The world 
 stands outside the sacred Temple, but it strains its eyesight veiy 
 hard indeed in order to see as much of the interior as it possibly 
 can, through the windows or the half-opened doors. If indeed, 
 Eeligion is dormant ; if the Church is weighed down by a spirit 
 of deadly lethargy, public curiosity takes little heed of it, except 
 in the way of an occasional expression of languid and half kindly 
 contempt. But when life and activity retvirn there is a change. 
 In George the Third's time, the public prints of this coimtry 
 scarcely alluded to religion in any way, e-xcept as a sort of 
 decoration of the body politic whieli came out into view on state 
 occasions. We have but to read the newspapers of our own day, 
 whatever be their politics or their principles, to appreciate the 
 vastness of the change. Jesus has come into the city indeed, in 
 the two gTeat religious movements which have taken place in this 
 century ; and, for good or for evil, from one motive or another, 
 but very largely indeed from a curious wish to know what it is 
 all about — " all the city is moved." 
 
 Now the second element in the excitement referred to at 
 Jerusalem was assuredly, fear. 
 
 The ruling sect of the Pharisees, which largely, although by no 
 means entirely, influenced the conduct and opinions of the 
 priesthood, was alarmed at the moral influence of Jesus. The 
 Pharisees felt that between them and Jesus there could be 
 nothing less than a %ndamental opposition. They instinctively 
 felt that in the long run He must be stronger than they, therefore 
 they were prepared to persecute Him to the death. They had 
 actually issued a public notice that information might be given 
 as to His residence, with a view of arresting Him, and the Hero- 
 dians who viewed the successes of Jesus as likely to interfere with 
 their political plans, did in one thing agree altogether with the 
 Pharisees, namely, that there was good reason for their being 
 alarmed. Fear, my brethren, is a form of envy. Fear tends to 
 be very practical indeed. Irrational fear soon becomes cruel if 
 only it has arms in its hands. Persecution is., more frequently 
 the resource of the timid than the counsel of the wise and tlie 
 stroiig. To persecute is to make a public confession of weakness. 
 
CHUECH SERMONS. 
 
 In rare cases persecution may succeed, — but only upon one 
 condition — that condition being that it utterly exterminates its 
 victims. « But still you must take an extraordinary interest in a 
 Eeligion, to persecute it, and the Pharisees, who hated the religious 
 teaching of Jesus, and the Herodians, who thought it would 
 injure their cherished schemes of politics, eyed His entry into 
 Jerusalem with sincere interest ; the interest of sincere anxiety. 
 In all ages this has been the case. Is not much of the interest 
 that is taken in religion at the present day dictated in some 
 respects by fear ? Men who are not religious themselves, but 
 who have seen the vast power of Religion upon the minds of those 
 around them fear religion, just as savages are said to suspect 
 witchcraft in any new apparatus or scientific discovery. Thus it 
 was that the Jews said that our Lord had a devil. Thus it was 
 that St. Paul was accused in Galatia of a want of straight- 
 forwardness. When men do not understand the real secret of 
 the power which Eeligion exerts over sincere and purified hearts, 
 they go about to invent an imaginary one. In truth, they are 
 frightened, and the violence of their language when they have 
 no power, and of their acts when they have, is the measure of 
 their alarm. 
 
 The third element in the general excitement alluded to in the 
 text is the imitative habit which influences so many, in all ages 
 and countries. There are always many people who are most 
 anxious to keep pace with the modern enthusiasm, not because it 
 is the best, but because it is the most modern. They keep a 
 stock of sympathy always on hand, ready to be lavished ujDon 
 any promising eccentricity that may present itself, or that may 
 be sufficiently recognized by persons to whose opinions they 
 attribute weight. They seem always sensitively afraid of being 
 behind the Age ; behind its very latest phase of fashionable 
 opinion. They do not originate these novelties themselves, but 
 they are always at the disposal of those who do. Jerusalem would 
 have contained many such ; indeed, that it must have contained 
 them is plain, if we compare the scene of the great entry into 
 the City, with that other scene at the foot of the Cross. Many 
 a man must have called out " Crucify J " on the Friday, wiio 
 had cried " Hosanna ! " on the previous Sunday, and in each 
 case only because the majority of people whom he saw about 
 
CHURCH SEllMONS, 
 
 liim on those two days respectively did tlie like. There is no 
 doubt, however, that imitative religion is capable of doing a great 
 deal of work. It is far better than no interest m religion at all. It 
 may always by God's grace lead on to something much deeper and 
 more solid than itself. But do not let us mistake it. That sort 
 of interest is only skin deep ; it has no sort of root in the soul. 
 It belongs altogether to the ephemeral creations of the social 
 atmosphere. It will not stand a strain or a shock ; it dies when 
 the occasion or the influence which provoked it is gone. Like 
 other fashions, it rises, it has its day, it wanes, it expires, and 
 then the men who have gone through it imagine they have made 
 a real trial of Eeligion ; have discovered its weakness, and as they 
 say, "seen through it " for themselves^ and that now they are really 
 in a position to speak upon the subject frjm theii" personal 
 exjierience. But alas ! they have been after all merely swept 
 away by a cm^-ent that was too strong for them. They have 
 been using religious language, and going through religious acts, 
 and trying hard to fan themselves up into a certain phase of 
 religious fervour, whereas they have all the time in stern reality 
 merely been carried down by a strong social tide of Opinion which 
 has swept them helplessly before it. They have allowed them- 
 selves to be drifted away by it from day to day, and from horn- 
 to hour, because they did not wish to appear wanting in the 
 supposed proprieties of the position. The wonder would have 
 been that their interest had lasted longer ; still while it did last 
 it was a lond fide interest. It contributed, perhaps, some real 
 ingredients to this or that movement of the day. What would 
 it be worth on their death-beds — what would it be worth 
 beyond — ^is another question. 
 
 These, then, were the three principal elements of the agitation 
 at Jerusalem on the day of Christ's entry into the city — 
 Curiosity, Fear, and Imitativeness. But curiosity is only aroused 
 when religion has exercised some power, at least over the persons 
 who experience it. Hostility to religion is only possible when 
 it is felt to be a real influence, in at least some quarters ; shaping 
 the principles, moulding the habits, and determining the lines of 
 a man's conduct. 
 
 Nor do the imitative care to follow any who are not themselves 
 really moved. So it would be, no doubt, on the day -of the great 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 entry into the City. There was an inner circle around our Lord 
 consisting of disciples from Galilee, and some of the inhabitants 
 of Jerusalem, who had witnessed His wondrous deeds and spoken 
 of what they had seen and heard, they had opened their under- 
 standings to the force and range of Christ's teaching, and their 
 hearts to the contemplation of the beauty of His human character ; 
 and putting all these things together — ^the impression made upon 
 them by His faultless life; by a teaching that carried with it its own 
 internal evidence of superhuman origin ; by a series of miracles 
 which ratified the anticipations alike of the understanding and the 
 heart — they believed Him. "Whether their faith was as yet as 
 clear and definite as St. John's, when he wrote his gospel half a 
 century later, or as St. Paul's, when, at an earlier period, he wrote 
 his great epistles, may very well be questioned. It was faith 
 in process of growth, but, though it was not yet a faith strong 
 enough to move social mountains, it was sufficiently developed 
 to excite curiosity, apprehension, and imitation in the masses 
 around. These men, though in point of numbers by far the 
 weakest, were, by their moral force, much the strongest of the 
 various elements which contributed to the movement of that 
 eventfu.1 day. 
 
 Moral and spiritual strength has no more necessary relation to 
 numbers, than our mental and intellectual power has to the size 
 of our bodies. It belongs to a different order of being, in fact it 
 often seems that mental energy is in an inverse ratio to 
 physical power. This little company then, was the very heart 
 and centre of all the multitude which gathered there on that 
 d ly ; the one permanent element in it. The curious would soon 
 sate their curiosity when Jesus had declared Himself frankly in 
 the Temple. The hostile would postpone their vengeance in 
 presence of the conviction that, to attempt its gratification, would 
 ensure immediate defeat. The imitative would cease to imitate 
 when imitation became dangerous. And, indeed, during the 
 dark hours of His Passion, a cloud would, no doubt, pass over 
 the faith of the small and devoted band who had united them- 
 selves to Jesus. But this would be but temporary. On the 
 morning of the Eesurrection, their faith would shine forth more 
 brightly than before. They were the real moving power of 
 that day; there stood, in fact, the secret germ of the future 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 Church. So it was then, my brethren, and so it ha-; been 
 since. 
 
 It is, I know, the fashion to treat this sort of language as a 
 kind of conventional rhapsody, in which clergymen, from what- 
 ever motive, are apt to indulge in the pulpit ; but in which, it 
 is not to be supposed that they will command the assent of the 
 laity, for the simple reason that there is nothing to correspond 
 to their ecstasies in the world of fact. And yet. I ask, IS 
 there nothing ? Who has not heard, within the last week of 
 the death of one of the greatest and noblest of contemporary 
 Englishmen, Bishop Coleridge Patteson, who perished lately, by 
 murderous hands, in one of the islands of the Pacific ? Well, 
 indeed, do I remember him — and there are others in this cathedral 
 who share that memory — when, two-and-twenty years ago, he was 
 in the full flush of his youthful manhood, commanding the admira- 
 tion of his friends by those qualities which, in a young man, win 
 our love most readily : by activity of body, as well as activity of 
 mind ; by geniality and large-heartedness ; by all that is included 
 in that most inclusive of qualities— generosity. Well do I 
 remember how it was believed, even then, that beneath that 
 simple, unaffected, iinpretending exterior, there were deeper 
 and nobler schemes of life in contemplation than those which 
 are cherished by ordinary men, although, indeed, he was the 
 very last man to make any unnecessary display of his religious 
 convictions— of those still waters which ever run deepest in great 
 souls. He went on, apparently, for years just like other people, 
 but one day he astonished the world by leaving his home, his 
 college, and his great university prospects, for a mission to the 
 South Sea Islanders. Few men of our generation possess such a 
 gift as his of mastering languages,— and, especially, of mastering 
 the various shades and dialects of cognate languages. It is said 
 that he knew perfectly, no less than thirty of those spoken by the 
 different islanders, to whom he brought the glad tidings of the 
 Gospel. These languages, too, were not fixed by any written 
 literature, consequently they were in a perpetual state of change, 
 numbers of words and expressions being varied with inconceivable 
 caprice and rapidity at very short intervals of time. Bishop 
 Patteson could follow could note these frequent variations. He 
 not merely learned these strange tongues, but he kept pace with 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 their wayward eccentricities, and he did all this not to gain the 
 applause of men, but for the sake of the higher work beyond it. 
 He might, indeed, have aspired, with so rare a capacity, to almost 
 any philological chair in the universities of Europe ; and as it 
 was the greatest living masters of the science of language — 
 such as Professor Max Miiller, for instance — were frequently in 
 communication with him, and were not a little indebted to him 
 for some of the fruits of his wonderful industry and researches. 
 But he looked beyond any such renown as could be won at the 
 seats of learning. He had higher aims in view. His fine philo- 
 logical tact was strewn, like the garments of the Disciples of old, 
 in the pathway of the advancing Eedeemer. He certainly did not 
 fall away from that high companionship when it became perilous. 
 He preserved his fidelity to his Master at the hall of judgment^ 
 and to the foot of the cross. And he has now reached his 
 Jerusalem in true earnest. At the report of the dark deed of blood 
 whereby so early an entrance has been opened for him into the 
 Divine presence, a thrill runs through the hearts of his fellow- 
 churchmen and fellow-countrym.en, and even all — excepting our 
 languid, easy, indifferent society — all that are capable of any moral 
 interest at all are, in some sense moved. As of old, so now, " the 
 blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," and as we bend in 
 tears over his early grave, we are lifted into a higher atmosphere, 
 where the meaning of Life, and the meaning of Death as at most 
 an incident which shall usher in some new phase of life, are read 
 in other characters than those of our ordinary thoughts. 
 
 The beginning of a new period of time, dear brethren, is a 
 natural one for asking ourselves solemn questions. On Advent 
 Sunday we are face to face with the two comings of Christ. His 
 first coming is a matter of history. He has been here in 
 person, by His, spirit and His representatives, for nearly 
 nineteen centuries. His second coming, so far as tlie date is 
 concerned, is as much a matter of uncertainty now, as it was in 
 the days of His Apostles. We cannot say, " Lo ! here," or " Lo .' 
 there ; " " It will be to-day," or " It will be a thousand years 
 hence." We only know this — that He whose word shall not pass 
 away, has said that He will come, and though He tarry, it is our 
 business to wait for the appointed time, knowing full well that 
 He will surely come. The question for us, then, is : When He does 
 
CHUKCH SERMONS. 
 
 come, whether it be in oiu lifetime, or whether it he at the last 
 Judgment, will He find us among the curious, the hostile, the imi- 
 tative, or the faithful ? What is our personal relation towards His 
 first Advent, and its momentous consequences now ? During the 
 few remaining years, or months, or weeks of our lives, do we hope to 
 be interested^in Eeligion only as we are interested in any political 
 or popular question of the day ? Are we secretly jealous of it ? 
 Is it merely a matter of fashion with us, in which we follow the 
 guidance of others without any personal convictions of our own ? 
 Or have we, indeed, found that Jesus Christ is to us what no 
 other is, or ever can be — our only real instructor in the highest 
 Truth ; our lawful and most indulgent Master, who has a right 
 to the control of our secret wills, as well as to the homage of our 
 outward actions ; our Priest, as well as our Teacher and King, 
 whose death — blessed be His mercy for it — was a sacrifice of 
 unending efficacy and power ; whose blood to the end of time, 
 cleanses from all sin ? They who know this, live, as it were, 
 between the two Advents, rejoicing in the graces and the blessings 
 of the first, — looking forward, if not without awe, yet certainly 
 Avithout terror, to the approach of the second. They it is who 
 are to accompany Christ in His procession across the Ages, with 
 their festal songs, strewing His path with the best offerings they 
 can make, waving on high, amid a world which is curious, 
 or angry, or imitative in turns, their palms of victory ? In one 
 or other of these classes we, too, must be, if we have seen some- 
 thing of Jesus even to-day. And we know that upon His entry 
 into any soul all its faculties are moved. At the approach of 
 this blessed and awful visitation — this advent for good or for 
 evil, for our salvation or our perdition — the understanding, the 
 will, the affections, the imagination, are all aroused. They must, 
 perforce, in the last resort, blaspheme, if they have not the grace 
 to adore. The religion of Curiosity, the religion of Imitation, soon 
 resolve themselves into one of the two permanent attitudes of 
 the soul towards its highest Object — love or aversion. Once 
 more, dear brethren, how is it with us ? 
 
 God grant that we may each of us answer that question 
 honestly between this and Christmas ; having our minds always 
 fixed upon that first wondrous Advent, when the everlasting Son 
 of God condescended, for our sakes, to be laid in the lowly manger 
 of Bethlehem, and the eye of our faith constantly directed to that 
 other and awful Advent, when the once-crucified Son of ]\Ian 
 shall come again in His majesty and glory to judge the world 
 
CfiHprfi ^gpmong 
 
 
 % Sermon 
 
 EEV. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Bean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis, 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 PREACHED AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 On Sunday, December 24, 1871. 
 
 Without controversy great ■zs the mystery of goclUmss ; God 
 ■was manifest in the flesh." — 1 Timothy iii, 16. 
 
 At length, my brethren, the Advent season has reached iis 
 close, and we are at Christmas eve. The period of expectation 
 is over, and we are almost entering uj)on the early hours of that 
 gTeat and blessed festival on which the Christian Church keeps 
 the birthday of her Founder ; the day upon which He whom 
 Christendom names the Saviour of the world was born of a 
 human mother and entered this world to take His place among 
 the things and scenes of Time. The Apostle's words to Timothy 
 put before us forcibly and concisely the great master-truth which 
 gives Christmas its meaning ; " Without controversy great is the 
 mystery of godliness ; God was manifest in the flesh." It is not 
 the birthday of a mere Sage and Philanthropist, which we 
 celebrate to-morrow. That might be in itself reasonable and 
 natural enough ; but Christmas means much more than that. 
 Christmas means the entrance into tlie human world of One who 
 was at once its Architect and its Judge, under conditions which 
 made Him the peer of the poorest and yoimgest amongst us. 
 It is the introduction of a new principle of life into humanity 
 which we thus commemorate. It is in fact nothing less than a 
 new starting point in the world's history. It is the opening of 
 a new fountain of salvation for man, unlvuown to him befora 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 No"w, the words " Gccl was manifest in the flesh," are translated 
 from a sentence the exact meaning of which is doubtful, and there- 
 fore this reading in the English version has been made the subject 
 of some criticism. For in the original Greek manuscripts, the 
 presence or absence of a single bar across the centre of a single 
 letter, makes all the difference between reading the sentence 
 " God was manifest in the flesh," or " Who was manifest in the 
 flesh." It is clearly impossible here and now to enter upon 
 a full and earnest discussion of the purely critical question, 
 "What, according to the evidence of the ancient system of 
 notation supplied by existing manuscripts, are the probabilities 
 with regard to the insertion or excision of that particular bar 
 across that particular letter ? " Perhaps I ought not to conceal 
 from you the conviction that there is not sufticient reason for 
 changing the received version of the text so as to alter the 
 rendering of our English Bible. "Rut even if the reading ''God " 
 should be given up, and the reading " Who " be substituted for 
 it, the change in the real drift and meaning of the sentence is 
 not so great as is sometimes supposed. Foi- it seems quite clear 
 that whether this word be " God," or " AVho," the Apostle is 
 beginning a quotation, probably from some Christian hymn of 
 the Apostolical period. Now, "if the quotation begins with the 
 word " God," it is obviously suihciently complete in itself If it 
 begins with " Who," or even with " He who," it is evidently an 
 incomplete fragment which refers to some person named in a 
 preceding part of the hymn which is not quoted. To whom 
 then does— to whom can— this " ^Yllo " refer ? Here the word 
 translated " manifest " will assist us. If the person spoken of in 
 the text had no existence before his birth it would not have been 
 natural to speak of him at his birth as being made " manifest in 
 the flesh." When an infant is born in any of our families we 
 do nob say it is "made manifest in the flesh." Why not? 
 Because though that infant has an immortal soul, distinct from 
 its body, although linked with it, and in a certain very real sense, 
 manifested through it, yet that soul had no existence before the 
 formation and birth of the body of the infant ; and we do not 
 speak pf a thing being "manifested" at the moment of its 
 beginning to exist. Tlie meaning of " manifestation," in all the 
 languages of the world is not opposed to the idea of non-exist- 
 ence, but pre-supposes the idea of a hidden existence. Nay more 
 " inamfestation " obviously implies a previously unmanifested 
 existence; and therefore the phrase "manifest in the flesh," 
 would be inappropriate and absurd as applied to an ordinary human 
 infant at its birth. We might as well speak of a house being 
 " manifested " in stone or brick when it was built ; or a railway 
 embankment as being " manifested " when it was thrown up. 
 Manifestation, observe,— at the risk of repetition let me be quite 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 clear — manifestation clearly implies tlie previous existence of 
 the person or thing manifested. It marks a point in the history 
 of that person or thing ; the point at which he, or it, passes out of 
 hidden into pubHc and visible life. If then tlie text speaks of 
 a " manifestation in the flesh;" whether it terms the person so 
 manifested " God," or whether it does not so name Him, it must, 
 at least, be speaking of one who existed before this manifestation 
 took place ; or in other words before his birth. Apart then from 
 all that follows in the later clauses of the quotation, — all that at 
 every step rivets and intensifies the argument, this expression 
 can be true only of that One Being who alone of aU the persons 
 named in Holy Scripture can be said to have existed before 
 His birth into the world. The Hebrew and the Christian 
 scriptures know nothing of any Indian theory of the transmigra- 
 tion of souls ; and the true meaning of the words of the text is, 
 that He who was before John the Baptist, and therefore greater 
 than the Baptist ; He whose glory Isaiah saw, not merely by 
 prophetic anticipation, but in actual vision ; He who was already 
 existing eternally ere Abraham was ; He who was with God 
 before aU tilings were made that were made ; He, who was 
 with God in tjfie beginning ; did at length, by being born of a 
 woman, made under the law, make Himself manifest to the senses 
 of men. 
 
 " In the beginning was the Word, and the "Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning 
 with God ; aU things were made by Him ; without Him was not 
 anything made that was made." "And the Word was made flesh 
 and dwelt among us." 
 
 God therefore"" was manifest in the flesh. What, let us 
 reverently ask, were the limits — and what was the nature — of 
 His manifestation ? It is true for instance to say that God is 
 manifested in nature ; in the physical world ; that His attributes 
 shine forth through all His works around us. " Tlie invisible 
 things of Him, says the Apostle, are clearly seen, being understood 
 by things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." 
 Still more strikingly is God manifested in the human conscience ; 
 in that unchanguig law of right and wrong which every man 
 finds within himself, whether his sense of right and wrong be 
 well informed and educated or not; and which speaks to 
 him in the language, which cannot be misunderstood, of its 
 Author. Who is He then who has thus lodged in the inmost 
 sanctuary of every soul, an everpresent witness of Hi^ existence, 
 a witness to His claims ? That which may be known of God, 
 in a state of nature, says St. Paul, is manifest to the Gentiles, for 
 God hath shewed Himself unto them. 
 
 Once more, God is manifested in the coiu'se of "events, or, as 
 we should say in history. The play of His attributes may be 
 
CHUECH SERMONS. 
 
 traced in its slow transitions and developments from one polity 
 to another — from one ascendancy to another — from one civiliza- 
 tion to another •, and at its great crisis, when men dream that God 
 is asleep, and that He is letting thmgs take their course, 
 and that all things continue as they were from the beginning o 
 Creation, He, as the psahnist puts it, suddenly awakes as one 
 out of sleep, and like a giant refreshed with wine. And His 
 presence, His power, His justice, His love are felt to be pene- 
 trating and irradiating great contemporary events, and men cry 
 out witn the prophet^' ni the ecstasy of their sense of nearness, 
 '' Thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by Thy 
 name. Leave us not, Lord, our God." 
 
 But the manifestation spoken of m the text is clearly distinct 
 from God's self manifestation in nature, in conscience, or in 
 history It is His manifestation in the flesh. That expression, 
 mark you, ties it down to human nature as the medium of 
 the manifestation, and identifies it not merely with the spiritual, 
 but with the bodily part of man's composite being It is a 
 question here, not of a voice in conscience ; still less of inferences, 
 however legitimate and however irresistable, that may be drawn 
 from nature and from history. It is a question of a revelation 
 clothed in flesh and blood, and addressed to sense. The text 
 does not say that this manifestation was made visible in a 
 single life — the life of Jesus of Nazareth — and yet the rest of 
 tlie passage makes it certain that this was the writer's meaning. 
 Unless the whole race of man was "justified in the Spirit and 
 ree-eived up into glory," it is impossible to avoid restricting this 
 manifestation m the flesh, to the hitman nature, the body and 
 soul, of Jesus of Nazareth The Apostle means that God was 
 manifested (we may fairly say), in this one member of the human 
 family a& He was never in any other. Other men had embodied 
 and reflected some one or more rays of the character of God — 
 this man. His loving-kindness , that, His justice; another, His 
 veracity. In Jesus, God's whole moral life was manifested. It 
 was not manifested partially or in piecemeal, but in its integrity 
 and completeness Nay more, the whole range of the Divine 
 a.itributes was there , and when our Lord acted and spoke, God, 
 in His perfect nature became manifest to those who witnessed 
 Him. Accordingly, instead of saying that in Christ the intelli- 
 gence, or the thought of God was pre-eminently embodied, it 
 being implied that other elements of the Divine life were not 
 equally so, St. Paul says " in Christ dwells all the fulness of 
 the Godhead." Instead of saying " He that hath seen J\Ie, hath 
 learned something ot what God s mercy is ,- or something about 
 His truth. ;" Jesus Christ says, absolutely and without any limi- 
 tation or reserve. " lie that iiath seen Me hath seen ku Father." 
 
 It has been felt to be a ditliculty by a certain school of- 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 modern thinkers that this self-manifestation of God should he 
 represented by Christian history to have taken place in a sin^rle 
 human life. God, they contend, if manifested in humanity\t 
 all, must be manifested in the whole human race. As they 
 would have It, His manifestation is distributed throndiout all 
 the races of men, throughout all the course of human genera- 
 tions ; and they contend, that the Christian doctrine of the 
 Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, involves 
 an unphilosophical limitation to a single life, of that which is 
 properly the attribute and glory of humanity as a whole. This 
 view_ was forcibly put forth by the German writer Schelling, 
 and it has since been repeated in various forms. It really is 
 connected with the pantheistic notion that God is not merely 
 the Author of the universe and as such seen through His works ; 
 l3ut that He is the Universe, and that the human race, being the 
 highest form of life— the highest form of which we have any 
 knowledge or experience, manifests in its various complications 
 ot character, aU the different attributes of God Himself Now, if 
 God were not a moral being,— if God were only the highest 
 Inteiligcnce of which we have any conception, but not necessarily 
 also perfect wisdom, perfect veracity, perfect justice, and perfect 
 love, then there would be more to be said for this notion than there 
 IS. It might then have been pleaded that the boundless resources 
 and versatUity of the Infinite Mind would be best exhibited 
 through the powers and the activities of many minds. And no 
 doubt this IS true so far, that aU intellectual powers are the gift 
 ot God ; rays, so to speak from the Divine intelligence, though 
 tliey be applied to purposes which do Him wrong. But then 
 God IS essentially a moral being. Our fundamental notion about 
 God is not that which He has lodged in our inteUiirence, as the 
 J^irst cause, or Author of the Universe; but that which He has 
 lodged m our conscience as the Author of that law of right and 
 wrong, which we have within us, and which is a ray of His 
 eternal nature. We can, without doing any sort of violence to 
 our intelligence, conceive that God need never have made this 
 Universe at all. He would not have been less Himself, had He 
 chosen to have lived on in the solitary Eternity (as we must 
 phrase it when we speak of these mysteries from a human point of 
 view) winch preceded creation, hnt we cannot conceive that God 
 could ever he untruthful or unjust. Why not ? Because we can- 
 not conceive that injustice and untruthfulness can, under any 
 circumstances, be right. We cannot, without tearing up our 
 moral nature by the very roots, suppose that the moral laws 
 which as applied to relations between intelligent beings, we 
 term laws of justice and truthfulness; can ever -have been 
 other than they are. Were thev, then, eternal as they are 
 —were they m their eternity a something independent of God ? 
 
 b2 
 
CHURCH SERMONS, 
 
 That cannot be ; because in that case God -wonld not be the 
 one Eternal self-existent Being. These laws must, as being eternal, 
 be laws of the Life of the One, self-existent. Eternal Being. 
 
 It is no objection to this to say, that it must equally be 
 always true, that things equal to the same are equal to one 
 another, because there is no sort of difficulty in granting that 
 the laws of pure mathematics being, as they are, unanswerable 
 truths, so must also be the laws of the Eternal life of God not 
 less than are the first principles of morals. 
 
 Now observe, if this be so, God could not have manifested 
 Himself in the human race as a whole without doing 
 violence to His most essential nature. He could not have done 
 this — humanity being what it is — without mingling His self- 
 manifestation with all the impurity and falsehood, all the high- 
 handed unrighteousness, all the degrading meanness, which, alas ! 
 make up the history of our race. Clearly then, human nature 
 being wliat it is ; a manifestation of God in the flesh which is to 
 render Him His due — which is really to enlighten and to save 
 us — must have been in some sinless individual, in one whose 
 life should not degrade the high sanctity of the manifested God, 
 The Christian faith teaches us that once only has such an 
 individual been found in human history — Jesus of Nazareth, 
 In Him the one sinless man, was revealed the perfection 
 of the indwelling God. His supernatural birth of a virgin 
 mother was quite in keeping with this high, this unique, office 
 of His manhood to be the temple of the Deity, and inseparably 
 united to it. And it is this which makes the record of His 
 life contained in the four gospels, inspire us with an interest, 
 unlike that caused by any other narrative on which we can set 
 our eyes. It is a history not merely of a perfect human 
 character, but of our God manifested in the flesh. 
 
 Why was God thus manifested ? Many answers in detail may 
 bo given. To instruct us ; to sanctify us ; to redeem us. But 
 the general answer is, to bring God nearer to the tlioughts and 
 hearts of His intelligent moral creatures. Certainly He is 
 already, in virtue of His omnipresence very near to each one of 
 us. He is the atmosphere in which we live. " In Him we live, 
 and move, and have our being." But though thus near in fact. 
 He is remote from thought. When we try to think constantly 
 of an Infinite Being, whose power has no limits, whose knowledge 
 has no limits, whose love has no limits, and whose justice has no 
 limits, we very soon find, — if we are endeavouring to attach any 
 meaning to words,— that we are straining our minds more 
 and more painfully and desperately upwards towards that which 
 ever remains far beyond them, remote, inaccessible. Moreover 
 in doing this, such is the weakness of human thought; 
 as being that of finite minds endeavouring to take the measure 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 of the Infinite ; from the very nature of the case we are con- 
 stantly tempted to discard the idea of ctcrnitu as something 
 altogether beyond our grasp, in the hope, forsooth, of one day 
 reaching a somethmg higher up which will be within it. That 
 application of Locke's maxim, (however legitimate it may appear 
 in a vulgar sense) " that nothing ivas to he hdieved that ivas not 
 intelligible" is one which cannot be taken into the region of 
 religious thought Avithout grave consequences. 
 
 These are especially observable in the history of Deism. In 
 the last century the Deists were engaged in a continuous 
 endeavour to spii'itualize, as they would term it, their idea 
 of God. The only proper course, as some of them maintained, 
 was to eliminate from theu' thoughts of God, all that they could 
 not bring within the compass and control of human reason. 
 They coiild not really so dilate then- finite minds, as to embrace 
 the idea of the Infinite, they therefore only repeated the 
 experiences of some abstract thinkers in the ancient pagan 
 world. Continually sublimating — spiritualizmg — their- little 
 stock of residuary truth ; continually distilling, and repeatmg 
 the process of distillation, upon their abeady meagre idea 
 of God, that idea became at last a mere apex of thought, so 
 wholly without outline, without substance, so rare, so faint, as to 
 finally fade away, and die into a sublime nonentity beyond, which 
 did not admit of being brought home by words to any human 
 understanding. And here it is to be observed that the greatest 
 stumbling blocks to the comprehension of the idea of God which 
 deistic reason has discovered for itself, have turned, not so much 
 upon His omnipotence, His majesty. His awfulness, as upon His 
 benevolence. His love, and His condescension. Those who have 
 believed in God at all, have felt that to say He was The 
 Almighty, was the very least they could say about Him; but 
 they have been impatient of admitting a single trace of His real, 
 active love. They have been ready indeed to put up with the 
 idea of a passive, unproductive Benevolence, smiling from some 
 remote corner of the Universe, over the tears and sorrows of a 
 creation which it was too impotent or too sublime to reach ; but 
 an active, helping' interfering, praetieal love — a love studying 
 human sorrow in detail,- and in detail assuaging it — a love 
 makmg sorrow a discipline, if men would only have it so — a love 
 which man had only to sue for, and he was certain to obtain 
 consolation here, and perfect happiness hereafter ; that was an 
 idea of the character of God they could neither entertain nor 
 comprehend. There is no one truth in the whole range of attri- 
 butes of the Divine Character, that has been more persistently 
 assailed by deistic ^vriters than God's special providence, — 
 I would rather say of QroiiiB providence, because if it be not 
 special, it is practically no providence at aU. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 These writers have had in view as the Ideal to which they 
 would shape their thought of God, the image of some earthly- 
 potentate so occupied with the administration of great affairs of 
 state, as to be unable to give thought and time to the wants of his 
 individual subjects. In the case of a great earthly monarch, this 
 idea of governing capacity might be true enough, simply because 
 man's faculties are limited. With most of us, the mind is ordi- 
 narily more absorbed in the contemplation of general laws and prin- 
 ciples, than in the study of particular details and circumstances. 
 But then the higher we ascend in the scale of human intelligence, 
 the more clearly do we discern the power of combining attention 
 to general laws, with a careful regard for particulars and details. 
 It is in this combination, and not apart from it, that we find 
 among our fellow-men, the most remarkable instances of true 
 genius and ability ; and can we doubt that in that Mind which 
 is above 9,11 minds, there is a complete and consummate union of 
 these different powers, so that He who is the Author of the 
 mighty and comprehensive laws which govern the movements 
 whether of heavenly bodies or of the moral world, does also really, 
 not merely without derogating from His exalted dignity, but in 
 very virtue of His Divine perfection, number every hair of our 
 heads, and take note of every sparrow that falls to the ground ? 
 
 Reason, I say — reason alone will carry us thus far. Reason 
 resists the notion that it is any part of God's majesty to be like 
 an Eastern Sultan powerful to make laws which others only can 
 administer, and to effect on a great scale and by general measures, 
 the happiness or misery of his subjects, but incapable from the 
 nature of the case, and not merely from considerations of his 
 personal dignity, of entering into the particular trials, hopes, and 
 fears of the millions of subjects, who live around and beneath 
 his throne. Still, although right reason does so resist ; our 
 feeble thought when it is not upon the strain finds it difficult to 
 dwell upon this special providence as an actual fact. Say, my 
 brethren, is it not so? Especially when under the stress of 
 great sorrows, great calamities, or great disappointments, so long 
 as aU is invisible and abstract — so long as Providence seems 
 to have no embodiment, no expression, — so long as nothing 
 constantly meets the soul's eye which so summarizes all that 
 we can cry out with the Apostle in this afternoon's lesson, 
 " Herein is love ; not that we loved God but that He loved us." 
 
 It would indeed have been strange, if God — a really living 
 and loving God — had implanted in us these yearnings, for close 
 and constant contact with Himself, and had not satisfied them. 
 It would have been wonderful indeed, if He had not reinforced 
 these anticipations of reason, if He had not elevated them into 
 certainties by some sort of special interference or revelation. And 
 we Christians believa that He has done so, by becoming manifest; 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 in the flesh. He has not clisappomtecl that instinct of yearning 
 love which lie has given us. He has placed Himself within 
 our reach. He has presented Himself to ns imder a form that 
 takes onr hearts captive, and which stays, without suppressing, 
 the thought that seeks Him. Nothing in human life, as we all 
 know, makes us so much at home, or svuTounds us with all that 
 is most intelligible, most tender in the life of our common 
 humanity, as a babe in its cradle ; and the Christmas message, 
 " Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying 
 in a manger," was the Divine answer to the cry of the human 
 heart seeking a God whom it could really love, amid the 
 ultimate abstractions of speculation. Henceforth, God while 
 in His essential majesty. He is necessarily inaccessible to the 
 human understanding — (we can indeed, apprehend, we cannot 
 comjyrcJicnd Him) ; is nevertheless, in His Incarnate Life, the 
 possession of every individual human heart that wills to have 
 Him, so that we may each of us have the privilege of crying 
 " Unto us a child is born ; unto us a son is given." This is our 
 God ; we have waited for Him ; He will come and save us. 
 And here let me note two points. 
 
 Christianity has been from the first what it was in the manger 
 of Bethlehem. It has ever had two sides, one meeting the bodily 
 eye, another the eye of faith. The visible earthly side of 
 Christianity has seemed to those who have failed to understand 
 its Divine character to be its all. Throughout the ages of 
 Christendom the eye of flesh has gazed exclusively, if I may so 
 speak, upon the Babe lying in the manger ; while faith has sat 
 by, watching the angels chanting " Glory to God in the highest ! " 
 Look at biu' Christian literature for instance. Look at the Bible. 
 To sight it is a beautiful collection of history, of poetry, and of 
 moral precepts, coming down to us from far off ages, and 
 entitled on literary grounds to our homage and admiration. / do 
 vot say that it is exempt from error, or that it is above critieism. 
 To faith it is the Word of God ; it is the unveiling of His mind 
 towards us His creatures continued, through a series of organs of 
 His will, through many ages, until at last it reaches a climax in 
 His blessed Son — in His words, and in the writings of His 
 apostles. 
 
 Look at Christian worship. The natural sight sees in it only 
 the employment of such and such words ; the observance of such 
 and such forms ; the following of certain rules wdiich have come 
 down from past ages ; the partaking publicly of a little bread 
 and wine ; the sprinkling a little water on an infant's brow. 
 But to the eye of faith all this is lighted up by a sense of His 
 presence to Wliom the worship is ofJered, and apart from whom 
 the ceremonials observed are altogether unmeaning. The words 
 are felt to be addressed to a Living Being ; the baptismal water 
 
is the channel of the grace of a new life ; the bread and wme the 
 veil of a Saviour present to bless and save His people. Look at 
 the Christian life. To sight it is a fussy unintelligible round of 
 little duties, little charities, little observances, little self restraints, 
 now and then perhaps rising to the heroic, but generally trivial, 
 petty, unpretending. To faith all this detail is seen to be the 
 harmonious language of an illuminated soul expressing instinct- 
 ively and loyally its devotion to the Perfect Moral Being, who 
 by creating and redeeming it has laid it under an obligation — not 
 to return an equivalent (that indeed is impossible), but to render 
 the homage of continuous uninterrupted love. 
 
 By God's manifestation of Himself in the flesh, the chasm 
 between earth and heaven has been bridged over, and a real 
 communication with God, through His blessed Son and through 
 Him only, is open to man. This is the real character of the 
 great festival we are now about to celebrate. This it is that 
 makes Christ's birthday so unlike any other birthday in the 
 world's history. It is not merely an anniversary in human affairs 
 of the highest order ; it marks a change in the relations between 
 earth and heaven. The two natures which m the person of 
 Jesus are inseparably joined, touch two spheres of being, — there 
 the uncreated and the Divine, here the created, the dependent, 
 the human. And in virtue of His having these two natures 
 He is the one Mediator between God and man, He, the man 
 Christ Jesus. We lay hold of His pure and sacred manhood, 
 and we come into real communion with the Deity. 
 
 We crowd by faith around His cradle ; we accompany Him 
 through His active life ; we listen to His parables and discourses ; 
 we witness over again His miracles ; and then we follow Him to 
 His cross and kneel there praying in spirit, that on us, too, in 
 all our Aveakness and in all our sin, there may fall some drops of 
 that cleansing blood; we are in truth, throughout, holding 
 communion with the Deity. It is God's perfection; God's 
 example ; God's teaching ; God's pardoning love with which 
 we are thus placed in contact. Each word and each act of 
 His human life brings before us some new truth about God's 
 character, and of God's dealing with us as His creatures. God in 
 fact — as St. Paul put it — God is in Christ, reconciling the world 
 unto Himself, and not imputing unto us our trespasses. God 
 grant, my friends, that a deep sense of these most essential truths 
 may accompany us throughout the happy festival of to-morrow. 
 That blessed day, like the infant in the manger, has a human 
 side as well as a divine, n It is an occasion for family greetings, 
 for kindly intercourse, and for friendly courtesies which in very 
 many cases will not occur again throughout the year. It has 
 also a joy and brightness, all its own, some rays of which fall 
 even upon those who know nothing of its higher claims upon 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 the Christian's conscience. Let us not, however, despise this side 
 of the day because it is not all ; because it is unspeakably less 
 than all ; but let us not over-estimate it. Christmas has its true 
 meaning, only for those who are leading new lives ; for those to 
 whom God's manifestation in the flesh is always foremost in their 
 thoughts, and to whom the importance of that event, is such that 
 nothing else can possibly compare with it. It is well if we 
 know anything of the happiness of Christmas, to turn our 
 knowledge to some practical account. Upon this day of the 
 manifestation of the love of God, we may each of us do some act 
 of kindness in His honour to some one of our poorer and suffer- 
 ing brethren. There must be many, only too many, natural 
 recipients of such bounty known to many of us. There must be 
 some known to all of us. There must be some service which 
 each one of us can do for the honour of Jesus, even though he 
 be the youngest or the poorest amongst us. If we cannot give 
 our time, we may perhaps give food, if we cannot give food, we 
 may give a little money ; if not money, clothes. We can pay 
 a welcome visit ; we can offer some of that sympathy which is 
 so much needed by those who get very little sympathy in this 
 world. Only let each one in this vast congregation make up 
 his or her mind to do some one such thing to-morrow, in honour 
 of Jesus Christ our Lord, and think how much happiness would 
 thereby be diffused. The more we can each of us do, the better ; 
 the more heartily and cheerfidly we do what little we do, the 
 better. Above all, the more unostentatiously — if it may be 
 without any mention whatever of what we do to any one human 
 being — the more humbly we do, what we do in honour of Him 
 who veiled His Divine glory beneath a human form, once 
 more I say, the better. 
 

 
 % ^txmaxx 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L. 
 
 Ireland Professor of Exegesis. 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 In the heginning God created the heaven and the earth." — 
 Genesis i, 1. 
 
 Why we should begin to read the first chapter of Genesis on 
 Sej)tuagesima Sunday, when the Christian year has abeady run 
 some nine or ten weeks, is a question which has probably 
 occurred to more than one of us ; and the answer to the ques- 
 tion is not to be found in any personal tastes or predilections of 
 the compilers of the English Prayer Book. The first chapter of 
 Genesis has been for centuries the lesson for Matins, in the 
 Services of the Western Church, long before it occupied that 
 place in the English Prayer Book. When we proceed to 
 enquire why, in the earlier ages of the Church, the truths of the 
 Christian Creed were laid out, as they have come down to us for 
 consecutive contemplation, for rather more than one half of the 
 solar year, we find it impossible to give a simple answer to that 
 question. That which in later ages has been accomplished by a 
 congregation of writers, or a mission of divines, was in the 
 earlier periods the word of some prominent Bishop, whose 
 reputation for wisdom or sanctity governed the convictions of 
 his contemporaries ; while in the yet more primitive ages it 
 would seem to have been arrived at instinctively by the 
 Church's spiritual cognizance of what was due to the Church. 
 It is indeed this which imparts so high an interest to the study 
 of certain dogmas ; it is in fact the study of the fresh soul of 
 early Christendom, of the currents and impulses which swayed 
 its deepest collective life, of not merely the truths which we 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 hold of the Christian Church, but the successive moods and 
 characteristics of the passion with which she pressed them to 
 her heart. 
 
 The sudden change from Isaiah to Genesis is probably to be 
 explained by the consideration, that on Septuagesima Sunday 
 we pass a great dividing line of the Christian Year, and, as the 
 name of the day implies, everything is relative to, preparatory 
 for, the Easter Festival. Before looking once more in our lives 
 fully in the face those stupendous acts which constitute the very 
 chord and centre of the Christian Creed, the Passion and the 
 Eesurrection from the dead of the Incarnate Son of God, we 
 are led to take our measure, the measure of our true place in 
 the Universe, and our relation to the Being who created it. 
 We fall back upon these elementary truths for a moment, that 
 we may the better do justice to the real significance of those 
 central doctrines of the Christian Creed, since they fill up the 
 outline, and afford a relief from difficulties which natural 
 religion or elementary primitive traditions cannot -fail to suggest. 
 A serious theism, a reverend study of God or nature is the true 
 instructor. To know what God is, and what we are, is to have 
 found the schoolmaster, who, unless we are become inattentive 
 in reading his directions, will sooner or later, like the Jewish 
 law of old, lead us down to Christ. 
 
 When Man looks out from himself upon the wonderful home 
 in which he is placed, upon the various orders of living things 
 around him, upon the solid earth upon which he treads, upon 
 the heavens into which he gazes with such ever varying impres- 
 sions by day and by night ; when he looks to the mechanism of 
 his own bodily frame especially endowed with these particular 
 faculties, these limbs and no other ; when he turns his thought 
 as he alone among the creatures can turn it, and when he takes 
 to pieces by subtle analysis the beautiful instrument which 
 places him in conscious relationship to the universe around him, 
 his first and last anxiety is to account for the origin of all this, 
 to answer the Question of questions, " How and Why he came to 
 be." Nor is the anxiety diminished, much less destroyed, 'when 
 he has become comparatively familiar with the wonders before 
 him, when he has multiplied his opportunities for observing 
 them, and has collated his observations; when he has generalised, 
 and tested his generalisations by experience, and feels himself 
 at home in the universe u,nder the leadership of science. 
 Certainly theology, if she understands her own interest, can have 
 no wish to disparage or discountenance physical science. 
 She may indeed decline to revise her Bible in deference to this 
 or that tentative hypothesis which the imagination, rather than 
 the positive knowledge of this or that eminent person, may 
 suggest, but from the mei t 1 discipline which physical science 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 creates she has ever gained. Whatever be the conquests of 
 physical science iu detail, whatever amount of light it may 
 hring to bear upon the reading and structure of the universe 
 around us, all this does not dis])0se of the question which 
 dominates all else, " How and Why did all this come to be ?" 
 Science may unveil regular modes of work, she may know that 
 the defects, supposed in one age of the world to be due to some 
 direct interference from above, are referable to ascertained 
 agencies below. She may substitute, and that to a degree 
 beyond all our past or even present conceived ideas, the Doctrines 
 of Developments in life, of distinction between living species ; 
 but the Question of questions still remains, Wlio furnished the 
 original material ? Who gave it the first impulse ? Who has 
 conducted this presumed development, or in what do we exist 
 at all ? And this question it is, which is answered by the first 
 verse of the Bible, " In the beginning God created the heaven 
 and the earth ;" and that answer is accepted by every Christian 
 in his creed — " I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker 
 of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible." 
 What do we mean iDy " Creation ?" Nothing less than giving 
 being to tliat which before w^as not. The Hebrew word Barah, 
 wdiich means to cut out or hew, means also to create, and it 
 relates only to Divine Creation, to the giving existence to that 
 which did not exist before; the word itself does not indeed 
 exclude the idea of pre-existent material, or pre-existent force, 
 since it is used in the book of Genesis for the creation of man, 
 and in the book of Numbers for an earthquake, and in the fifty- 
 first Psalm for a purified heart — the product of the grace of God 
 acting on the natural heart. But the context at the beginning 
 of Genesis precludes the idea of its being used in the modifica- 
 tion of any previously existing force or matter, since the 
 expression, " the heaven and the earth," is the most comprehen- 
 sive phrase the Hebrews could employ to mean the Universe, the 
 universe being here regarded as a twofold whole of very unequal 
 parts. 
 
 The word " heaven " includes not merely the material bodies 
 which astronomy has in view, but those immaterial essences 
 whose existence is a matter of subsequent revelation, and which 
 are much more ancient than man. The work of the fourth 
 'period or day pre-supposes this act, since the Hebrew word 
 properly translated "light bearers" show that the work of this 
 period was merely, by the removal of some perceptible 
 atmosphere or otherwise, to place the already existing heavenly 
 bodies into such a relation to this planet — which was to be the 
 abode of man — as to influence its development. 
 
 That the Jews understood the real significance of the first 
 verse of Genesis is sufficiently endorsed. Thus says one writer, 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 " Those who believed in the laws of their master Moses, held 
 that the whole world, which comprehended everything except 
 the Creator, itself having been in a state of non-existence, 
 received its existence from God, being called into existence out 
 of nothing — it is the fundamental principle of our law" he 
 continues, "that God created the world from nothing." 
 
 The mother of the Maccabean Martyrs, vdien she strengthens 
 her youngest boy for his last agony, before the presence of the 
 tyrant, bids him look upon the heaven, upon the earth, upon 
 all that is therein, and then consider that God had made them 
 out of things that were not. In the Mosaic account of the 
 creation the statement which towers above all else, and compared 
 with which all else is subordinate detail, is this opening 
 announcement " In the beginning God created the heaven and 
 the earth ;" it governs the whole theology of the Old and New 
 Testament, it stands in the sharpest contrast to the current 
 doctrines of Heathenism, which regarded the Universe and 
 ascribed all light and life to a mere imaccountable modification 
 of primeval matter, or took refuge in some grotesque legend 
 wliich traced Man's origin to an egg or a creation of chaos. 
 
 At the present moment then, in Europe, this great question 
 is met with an avowed materialism, sometimes with systematic 
 atheism, much more frequently, in England at least, with a habit 
 of mipd which declines the question altogether as being 
 analogical, as being metaphysical, as lying beyond the range of 
 our experience, as bearing on the region of speculation. Who 
 has not read books of late Avhich, to an earnest Christian or an 
 earnest Deist, suggest irresistibly this — the problem of problems — 
 but in which again and again, most inextricably as it seems, the 
 problem is studiously, significantly, passed by, till it can be 
 declined no longer, and then at last we find ourselves before it 
 in phrases of studied and profound reverence ; phrases in which 
 the writer bends before something we know not, perhaps he 
 knows not what, a something which is not named. It may be 
 to make all right in case a Theism should turn out to be true 
 after all ; it may be, by way of traditional propriety, to satisfy 
 large existing bodies of faith and opinion. But as Christians, 
 "through faith we understand that the worlds were framed 
 by the word of God." Creation is a mystery, satisfactory 
 to reason, but strictly beyond it. Nothing loithin the range 
 of OUT experience enaUes us to imderstand the process of 
 calling a being into existence out of nothing. We may do 
 much in the way of modifying and controlling existing 
 matter and force, but we can create, properly speaking not the 
 minutest particle of the one or of the other. The initial act by 
 which God summoned them into being is a matter of faith which 
 we believe on His authority, but which we never could verify. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 If, as is proLable, the Mosaic Cosmogony is much older than 
 Aloses, and was a xirimeval revelation, still it must have been 
 strictly a revelation ; no created sense could have witnessed the 
 act by which the Creator ended the solitariness of His eternity, 
 and surrounded Himself with forms of life : and what I would 
 now briefly insist on is the practical value of belief in creation, 
 its value in thought, its value as to conduct. 
 
 It is, then, this creation of the world out of nothing which is 
 the only account of its origin compatible with belief in a 
 Personal and Moral God, for there can be but foiir possible forms 
 of belief on the subject : either God is a product of the world, or 
 God is really identical with the world, or God and the world are 
 distinct in their existence, or God created the world. To say 
 that God is a product of the world, that He is produced by it 
 and exists only in it, to the thought or rather the imagination of 
 thinking beings, is in fact but saying that He does not exist at all. 
 You may pay high compliments to a creation of the hu.man 
 mind, or you may denounce it as pernicious or mischievious, 
 but in either case, whatever may be its comparative power for 
 good or evil, you do not yourself take it, as though it were a 
 living thing, into your calculations of thinking or acting ; and 
 your loyalty to truth and the fact, would only lead you to dis- 
 miss it somewhat impatiently as a phantom which might well 
 have haunted the childliood of our race, but which has no 
 business to flit about the brain of its manhood. To say that 
 God is a product of the thinking world, as distinct from a real 
 objective being apprehended by its thought, is to assert, in 
 other terms, that the universe only exists. 
 
 If, again, God and the World are two names for the same thing ; 
 if the universe is only the self-development of the infinite, and 
 man only that point in wliich the infinite attains a conscience, 
 then it is clear that we are still playing with words. God, I 
 wiU not say in the sense of the Bible, but God in the sense of the 
 human heart, is nowhere ; the name is retained, the belief has 
 vanished, just as easily as in the blankest atheism. For such a 
 God is neither Personal nor Moral, He is not personal since He 
 lacks the very elements of personality. He is only that force, 
 which it is difficult to saywhy He ultimately becomes. And, apart 
 from the difficulty of suj)posing morality in an impersonal subject. 
 He is not moral because he is by hypothesis identified with all the 
 creative activities of the universe. The real believer in the 
 Divine Omnipresence, who sees God everywhere, seeing His 
 upholding hand, even in the forces of evil turned against him- 
 self, is yet careful to distinguish between the perverted will, in 
 whose activity evil only is resident, and the activity of the All 
 Holy Creator. 
 
 And if, to avoid this difficulty, we suppose God and the 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 ■world to he distinct, but, comparatively co-existent, do we 
 really secure a moral and personal God ? Surely not ; for 
 this last hy]Dothesis involves the sacrifice of all that lies at the 
 root of any idea of God in our minds at all — His solitary self- 
 existence. 
 
 If the universe has from eternity co-existed along vnth 
 Him, though it be only in form and matter, as yet unshaped by 
 eternal force, so that its gradual elaboration into form and life 
 is reserved to Him, as being, within His element an all controlling 
 agent ; still, if we think steadily He has really disappeared. This 
 consequent semi-existence is a supposition which annihilates 
 Him. He has ceased to be. The supposition belongs in fact and 
 strictly to a transitional stage of thought, when men are attempting 
 unlikely compromises which cannot hold in the long run. It 
 throws us back upon an universe without an objective God, or, 
 upon an universe which is itself God, upon «!!7iezs/?i or pantheism, 
 and upon the possibilities, avowed or disguised, of no serious 
 religious belief at all. Thus our faith in the creation of the 
 universe out of nothing is alone consistent with a belief in God 
 as a personal and moral life ; but let us observe, as I have 
 already implied, that such belief in an initial creative act, is 
 quite consistent with belief in subsequent modifications of this 
 creation through progressive development, guided by a more or 
 less ascertainable law. The narrative of Moses includes a 
 subsequent development as well as an initial creative act ; he 
 recognizes God's continuous working in nature in the form and 
 according to the methods of law. In the remarkable passage 
 where he is describing the forms which may be assumed by the 
 creative activity of God, Peter Lombard uses words which, if I 
 rightly understand them, and it, read like an anticipation of 
 Mr. Darwin's doctrine as to the origin of species, though I am 
 far from saying that the master of sentences, with his eye upon 
 the text of Genesis, would have quoted this hypothesis as far 
 as the modern writer would have pressed the theory. But, if we 
 could justly and reasonably carry the theory of development so 
 far as to trace all living beings to some one germ, the real ques- 
 tion of questions would still confront us, how did that develop- 
 ment which we can, as we think, trace within limits more or 
 less considerable, come itself originally into being at all ? And 
 upon the answer to this question depends nothing less than a 
 man's belief in the Being, who, if He exists at all, has infinitely 
 more important claims on our most earnest homage and attention 
 than anything which He has made. 
 
 But belief in the creation of the universe by God out of 
 nothing, naturally leads us on to a belief in God's providence, 
 and to a belief in the consummate manifestation of providence 
 in human history — to the \i€\M.va. redemption. No such anticipa- 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 tions would have been reasonable if we could suppose tbat the 
 world had emanated from a passive God, or had existed along 
 side of Him. But if He created, the question will, at any rate 
 be asked, whj did he create ? Could it add anything to His 
 blessedness and His glory ? Could it make Him more powerful, 
 more wise ? Eevelation answers this question by ascribing the 
 creation to that quality in God which leads H im to communicate 
 His love, that quality in Him which is goodness, if considered in 
 its relation to personal beings. " I have loved thee with an 
 everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn 
 thee." But if love or goodness was the true motive of the crea- 
 tion it at least implies a continuous and deep interest in created 
 life. If it urged Him at first to reveal Himself in His work under 
 finite conditions (and both David and St. Paul insist upon the 
 supreme significance of creation as unfolding the hidden love of 
 God), it might urge Him to reveal Himself personally also, under 
 finite conditions. 
 
 If it is not beneath God's dignity to create a finite world, 
 it is not beneath His dignity to accept the consequences 
 of His own work; to take part by His presence in the 
 development of His creatures, to subject Himself in some sense 
 to the conditions of His own creation. If, in His knowledge, He 
 necessarily anticipates such development of His work, so that to 
 Him a thousand years are as one day, yet, by His love on the 
 other hand which led Him to move out of Himself in creation at 
 first, He travels with the slow onward movement of nature and 
 humanity, and His Incarnation in time, when demanded by the 
 supreme needs of the creatures of His hand, is in a line with the 
 first and most mysterious act of all. His deigning to create. 
 " God having created the world, so (it is natural it should be so) 
 loved it, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
 believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." 
 Of this profound love of God there is, indeed, on earth one of 
 the most beautiful and instructive shadows, the love of a parent 
 for his child. Such love is the most disinterested, the purest, 
 the strongest, of human passions. The parent hopes for nothing 
 from his child, yet he wOl work for it, he will suffer for it, he 
 will die for it. If you ask him why, it is if he gives his deepest 
 reason, because he has been the means of bringing it into exist- 
 ence. If it lives it may indeed, in years to come, support and 
 comfort him in his old age, but that is not the motive of his 
 anxious care. He feels at once the glory and the responsibility 
 of his fatherhood, and this leads him to do what he can for the 
 helpless infant that depends upon him. Our Lord appeals to 
 this profound instinct Avhen he teaches us the efficacy of prayer. 
 If men, steeped in evil as they are, yet know how to give good 
 gifts to their children, how much more shall a spiritual God, 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 your heavenly Father, give the best of gifts — His Holy Spirit, to 
 them that ask him. And in truth this principle is obviously of 
 wider application ; it informs us how it was, as the apostle puts 
 it, " that after the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards 
 man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have 
 done, but according to His mercy He saved us." 
 
 The creation is indeed a consideration which governs the 
 religious thought of a sincere believer ; it precludes numberless 
 a 'priori difticulties as to the existence of miracles ; the one 
 supreme miracle of all, which governs all, is already admitted 
 by Deism. It precludes difficulties on the score of the 
 condescension of God, in the incarnation, in the crucifixion, in 
 the sacraments ; the great condescension of all was the act which 
 summoned creatures into being at first. As the prophetic 
 references to creation so constantly imply, creation prepares us 
 to see a purpose, whether fully or partially discernible or not, 
 running through human history. And it removes any difficulty, 
 even from the belief that any single human soul as it glides in 
 the awful course of its history, and the complexity of its move- 
 ment, and will, and passion, before the cdl-sccing eye, is to Him 
 a matter of the deepest, most individualising concern, so deep, 
 so tender, it might well be that no other being existed to share 
 His love. Each who knows anything really about Him may 
 exclaim with the apostle " He loved me and gave himself for me." 
 
 And, lastly, belief in creation is practically of the highest 
 possible value. The disinclination to be under a felt obligation, is 
 always more or less natural to us men,and it is particularly natural 
 to those who are in rude health and high spirits, and who have 
 never yet known what real sorrow is, or what acute disease. It 
 goes with the sentiment of personal independence, it goes along 
 with advanced forms of civilization, and if it is distinctly allied 
 to one or two of the better elements of human character, it is 
 more closely allied with the base and unworthy ones. The 
 Eastern Emperor who executed his courtier, who, by saving his 
 life, had done a service which could never be forgotten, is an 
 extreme illustration of what exists in every day life, in this state 
 of feeling. 
 
 A darker example of the same tendency is seen in the case of 
 men who have wished a father in his grave, not on account of any 
 misunderstanding between parent and child, not with the gross 
 desire of succeeding to the family property, but because in the 
 father the son saw — could not but see — one to whom he owed 
 not education merely, but his birth into the world ; and felt that 
 so vast a debt as this made him morally insolvent so long as his 
 creditor lived. And if men are capable of such feeling towards 
 each other, we can understand much which characterises man's 
 conduct to his Parent of parents — God. By His very existence 
 
CHUECH SERMONS. 
 
 He seems to inflict upon tliem a perpetual humiilnilon. To 
 feel day by day, hour by hour, that there is at any rate. One 
 Being in existence before Whom they, great as they may 
 be, are as nothing ; from Whom they hold originally, and 
 moment by moment, all that they are and all that they 
 have; One who holds them in His hand, holds them so 
 absolutely at His disposal that no human parallel can possibly 
 convey the sense of the reality of their dependence on 
 His good pleasure. And yet if God exists, this, nothing less 
 than this, is strictly, is literally true ; and its truth, brethren, is 
 not diminished by any one of the unlikely expedients whereby 
 men endeavour to lessen their sense of obligation by dwelling on 
 the long (they may be very true) series of developments, and 
 the thick net- works of physical law around tliem ; expedients by 
 which they would fain place at a distance from themselves, or 
 would hide out of sight the mighty, the all-including activity of 
 the Great Creator. 
 
 After all, it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. 
 Not we ourselves ; of course we never should say that we were 
 our own creators in so many words, but we may morally assume 
 this position, we may forget the One Being who made us and all 
 besides, and who will judge us ; we may forget Him so entirely 
 as to live as if he did not exist at all. Thousands — it is a 
 simple matter of experience — do so forget him. You see in 
 their very faces that they have no notion that they have a 
 Creator to think about and to live for ; and yet, apart from all 
 question of consequences, it is true, true to the real law of this 
 universe in which we live, true to a truth which alone can keep 
 us in our proper place of humble, submissive, resigned, obedient, 
 yet withal a hopeful, a thankful, a diligent service. Yes, hope- 
 ful and thankful, for, as I said at first. Creation leads us up to 
 Eedemption. 
 
 A traveller in Cornwall, when gazing on the masses of granite 
 rock which at the Lands' End defy, and look as if they could 
 defy for ever, the continuous assault of the Atlantic, has 
 described what all of us, I suppose, have felt at some time in 
 our lives, when face to face with the magnificence of nature, 
 his oppressive sense of the relative insignificance of man. A 
 few yearsj hence and we should be beneath the sod ; but these 
 rocks would still stand where they were, still lashed by the 
 waves, still immovable, while other eyes would gaze on them 
 for their brief day of life, and then they, too, would close. 
 
 Yes, man is at first sight insignificant when face to face with 
 nature; but we Imow, brethren, that he is not really so. In reality 
 the rocks are less enduring than man. Man's real personal self 
 will survive for weal or woe when another catastrophe shall have 
 changed the surface of this planet, when the elements shall have 
 
 c 2 
 
CHURCH SERMONS 
 
 melted with fervent lieat, when the earth and all things therein 
 shall have been burnt up. 
 
 Let us think of that day, warranted by His word who made 
 all things we see ; it may be deferred for ages, it wUl surely 
 come at last, it will not tarry, when the predestined time has 
 come. Practically speaking, there are two supreme realities, 
 and only two for each one of ns — God, and man's inmost 
 self, his soul. The heavens and the earth are transitional, 
 they will pass away but the word of the Creator, His word 
 of mercy as well as His word of justice, belongs to the 
 imperishable, the moral essence of His being, and therefore it will 
 not pass away. Nothing can with impunity defy His justice, so 
 most assuredly His mercy, manifested as it is in His blessed Son, 
 endureth for ever ; and none will plead with the Creator in vain 
 that he would not despise the work which His Hand hath made. 
 
% Sermon 
 
 REV. OAFON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Ireland Professor of Exegesis. 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 " By faith Noah, heing warned of God of things not seen as yet, 
 moved, ivith fear, prepa.rcd an ark to the saving of his house ; by 
 the which he condcrtmed the laorld and became heir of the righteous- 
 ness tvhich is hy faith." — Hebrews xi, 7. 
 
 The great servants of God, my brethren, as a rule, share in a 
 common stock of thoughts, feelings, resolves, efforts, sacrifices, 
 which lift them, as a class, above the ordinary level of men, and 
 make them what tliey are. They live in the world without 
 being of it ; they look beyond these narrow^ frontiers for their 
 ruling interests and their deepest motives. In some shape or other, 
 they give up what they see, for what they do not see ; they feel 
 beforehand that Life is a thing at once blessed and awful ; blessed 
 in its opportunities, awful in its possibilities. They act as 
 men who are in possession of the clue to its real meaning. They 
 know and feel why they are here, and whither they are going ; 
 and in communion with the Author and End of their existence, 
 and in doing His will, so far as they know it, by themselves and 
 among their fellow-creatures, they realize the true scope and 
 dignity of their being, and they fertilize the lives of all around 
 them. " Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel 
 of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, and hath not sat 
 in the seat of the scornful. For his delight is in the law of the 
 Lord, and in His law will he exercise himself day and night. 
 And he shall be like a tree planted by the waterside, that will 
 bring forth his fruit in due season. His leaf also shall not 
 Avither, and look whatsoever he doeth it shall prosper." But 
 over and above that which is common to them as a body, each 
 among the servants of God has some distinguishing characteristic. 
 As in Nature, no two flowers, no two animals, no two human 
 Countenances are exactly alike ; so in Grace, this reflection of 
 God's exhaustless resources is even more apparent, and each who 
 has a part, still more each who is eminent in the kingdom of 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 grace, has in it a distinct place, and form, and working, which 
 belongs to no other. His character, or circumstances, confer 
 upon him a speciality, which makes him, at least in some 
 respects unlike any who have preceded him, unlike, we may 
 dare to add, any who will follow him. 
 
 The great patriarchal figures who move before us in the 
 earliest pages of the Bible are, as a class, naturally clouded in the 
 dimness of a remote antiquity. Of the seven names which are 
 contemporary with Noah, one only attracts a specific moral and 
 religious influence. We pause at the holy life, at the glorious 
 translation, of Enoch. With this exception, there is little to 
 arrest the attention beyond the length of years which Avas 
 granted to these earliest generations of men. Strange, almost 
 inconceivable, as such longevity may appear, when we contrast 
 it with the existing limits of human life, it is in harmony, 
 nevertheless, with the general scale of gigantic power, which, 
 according to the most reliable evidence relating to the old 
 World, was characteristic of it. Life in that earliest age was 
 comparatively simple, regular, and free from the social mischief 
 and wickedness which came along with amore organised society. 
 The climate, the weather, and the natural conditions under 
 which mankind moved, were probably very different from tliose 
 which succeeded, and Paradise itself was still recent. So that 
 although in the exercise of his great prerogative, Man had 
 forfeited the endov/ments with which he had been originally 
 blest ; yet some of these, such as Immortality, would abate but 
 gradually, and thus it was that Enoch was translated into 
 eternal life with God, without passing through disease and 
 death. Five generations of ancestors, at least, must still have 
 been living — Jared, Mahalaleel, Canaan, Enos, and even Seth ; 
 while Enoch's son, Methuselah, and his grandson, Lamech, had 
 attained an age far be3"ond that of modern men. Of all the 
 antediluvian life, from the time of the Creation, only Adam had 
 been taken to his rest, only Noah was not yet born. Sixty-five 
 years elapsed between the translation of Enoch and the birth of 
 Noah, and during that interval the moral atmosphere of human 
 history had very rapidly darkened. 
 
 This result appears to he due to two main causes, beyond 
 and above the constantly self-aggravating effects of the Fall. In 
 the fourth and fifth chapters of Genesis, the development of the 
 liuman race is traced through two entirely different lines — that 
 of Cain and that of Seth. It would seem that notwithstanding 
 the general sense of the phrase elsewhere iu Scripture, the Sethites, 
 and not any beings of a higher world, are on this occasion meant 
 by tlie august title, " Sons of God ;" and an inter-marriage 
 between the Sethites, avIio had preserved the higher and better 
 forms of religion, with Edom and the Canaanites, who had 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 entireVf lost them, issued in the rapid moral degradation of the 
 posterity of Seth. . 
 
 Distinct from this, but contemporaneous with it, was the 
 appearance of the Giants ; they were tyrants, it would seem, 
 physical natural monsters — men who made the law of Might 
 to be the governing force in that primitive society. The corrup- 
 tion of the old world was therefore traceable to two causes, 
 each in its way fatal to the moral well-being of man. It was 
 traceable on the one hand to social oppression and cruelty ; on 
 the other hand to a reckless sensuality. Laniech felt the evils 
 of his time ; it all seemed to him to aow, as it did flow, from the 
 Sin which had been brought about, and from the curse which 
 had been pronounced in Eden. He felt the burden of his 
 labour upon the ungrateful soil ; and when his son was born, 
 we read of the father's melancholy, together with a profound 
 presentiment of some brighter future, in the name of the 
 infant, " and he called his name Noah, saying, this same shall 
 comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because 
 of the ground which the Lord hatli cursed." Noah's general 
 and lofty piety is described by the same phrase as Enoch's 
 —"He walked with God." This expression denotes more 
 than that which was used in a Divine manner of Abraham. 
 Abraham was to walk, and did walk before God. Still more 
 carefully should it be distinguished from walking after God,_ the 
 phrase by which Moses enjoins obedience to the commands given 
 in the Divine law. To walk before God is to be ever conscious 
 of His over-shadowing and searching presence; but to walk 
 with God, is something higher and more blessed even than this ; 
 it is to be, as it were, constantly at His side, and admitted to 
 His confidence; it is to be admitted to a close and intimate 
 communion with Him as a dear personal friend. It is to be m 
 spirit what the Apostles were in flesh, when they shared clay 
 by day in the streets and lanes of Galilee, the Divine companion- 
 ship of the Incarnate Son. It is St. John's " fellowship with 
 the Father and His Son Jesus Christ." It is St. Paul's " being 
 quickened and made to sit together in heavenly places with 
 Jesus Christ." Once only besides, does the phrase occur m the 
 Old Testament, where the Prophet Malachi apitlies it, not to 
 the Israelites generally, but specifically and distinctly to tiie 
 conduct of the Priests, considering that they stood in a closer 
 relation to God than the rest of the ancient people, and could 
 enter the Holy of Holies, and have intercourse with the Sacked 
 Presence which was there veiled from the public eye. 
 
 Noah's piety, then, was of an exceptionably lofty kind ; he is 
 said to have been a religious man, and perfect in his generation, 
 and in the midst of the" general corruption he found favour m 
 the eyes o.' the Lord. Of this temper his thankfulness after 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 his deliverance is a sample ; in order to express it he sacrifices 
 some of the little store which he had saved from the general 
 wreck, and a sentence in the Prophet Ezekiel implies that he 
 had special power as an intercessor with God. Yet his inter- 
 cession is classed with that of Job and Daniel, and his 
 thankfulness was both in form and the spirit of its manifestation, 
 an anticipation of what is shown in other instances as that of 
 Moses; and Holy Scripture, with its wonted simplicity and 
 truthfulness, describing his falling in his old age into an error, 
 does not place him in tins respect above the level of other 
 servants of God. We have, then, still to ask, what it was wherein 
 Noah's excellence more particularly shows itself. And this 
 question is answered in the passage we are considering, in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, which, omitting all else — and there is 
 much, which the history of this great patriarch suggests — bids 
 us observe, that " By faith Noah, being warned of God of things 
 not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving 
 of his house ; by the which he condemned the w^orld, and became 
 heir of righteousness which is by faith." 
 
 Indeed, it is to this period in the life of Noah, that all the 
 allusions to him in the New Testament, with the one exception 
 of that of our Lord in St. Luke's Gospel, consistently refer. 
 In the mind not only of St. Peter, but of our Lord himself, the 
 " days of Noah " were specially that most critical period of 125 
 years whicli preceded the deluge. It is possible that the social 
 or political interests of his life may have been greater at an 
 earlier or at later periods, it is certain that the intensity of its 
 moral interest centred in this. 
 
 In Noah's building the ark at the command of God, there are 
 three main points to be crnsidered. It implies, first of all, that 
 he had an earnest conviction of the sanctity and greatness of 
 moral truth — a conviction which, more than any other, is the 
 basis of religious character. He was surrounded by a populace 
 which had broken altogether away from the laws of God. 
 Impiety, impurity and licentiousness, were the order of the day. 
 Every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only 
 evil continually ; the corruption was universal and profound. 
 To numbers of men, this surrounding atmosphere of evil would 
 be simply destructive to the moral sight. Those of us who 
 know anything of our own hearts and characters must know 
 this, how easily we get accustomed to the sight of what is 
 wrong — how soon we feel complacency, or something like com- 
 placency, towards it — how it undermines our sense of its own 
 malignity, and makes us, if not exactly its captives, yet its 
 tolerant apologists. '•' Neither did they abhor anything that is 
 evil," is a severe and exceptional condemnation of the Psalmist. 
 It is not that evil triumphant, as in Babylon, crushes" out the 
 
CHURCH SERMONS, 
 
 remaining righteousness in tlie land ; tliere it is, and we take it 
 for granted in ourselves and others ; it is part of the actual sum 
 of human life and activity — nay, it is a very large part ; in our 
 hearts, too, it finds something like countenance and sympathy. 
 What is the good, we say to ourselves, of finding fault with the 
 weather, or with an epidemic ? We may wish that things were 
 otherwise ; we cannot but resign ourselves to take them as tliey 
 are, and this acquiescence in evil, as inevitable, involves a some- 
 thing beyond ; it leads us to shut our eyes to what the deepest 
 and truest of all human presentiment, apart from the revelation 
 of God, points to as its certain consequences. It blinds us to 
 the fact that it must be followed, at some time or other, by 
 punishment. Could it be otherwise, God would not be God, a 
 necessarily and intrinsically Moral Being. Could it be otherwise, 
 the first and most earnest forms of belief in conscience would be 
 untrustworthy. And yet we may by familiarity with this indo- 
 lent sympathy of evil, learn first to forget that evil leads to 
 punishment, and next, and not improbably, even to deny it. It 
 is mconceivable, vre say, that a world-embracing mass of evil 
 should be punished : its very universality is its safe-guard and its 
 protection; it might he punished if it were an txception, it 
 must esca2Je simply because it is the rule. This is what we 
 secretly say to ourselves. We shut our eyes to a first truth of 
 morals, and we flutter^ ourselves that we naturally escape the 
 effects. 
 
 It was against this tacit and fatal influence of a corrupt moral 
 atmosphere that Noah's life was a protest of resistance. " He 
 was," the Bible says, " perfect in " or among " his generations," 
 and these generations were corrupt." He was a preacher of 
 righteousness when righteousness was at a discount and 
 peculiarly unpopular. He walked with God when mankind at 
 large had forgotten Him. lie did not think the better of evil, 
 of its real nature or of its future prospects, merely because it was 
 practised on a large scale and with considerable apparent 
 impunity. To Noah, the eternal truths were more certain than 
 the surface appearances of life ; he was certain that evil was evil, 
 and that it could not but be followed by chastisement, because 
 God was God. 
 
 Such a moral conviction it must have been which fitted Noah 
 to receive the Divine prediction of a coming deluge. God 
 does not take the morally deaf and blind into His confidence. 
 The words of Jesus Christ sound through all the ages of human 
 history as the voice of a Divine and presiding Providence : " He 
 that hath ears to hear let him hear," he whose moral senses are 
 really alive, let him listen to the proclamations of God's truth. 
 To those only it will be made known. " He that willeth to do 
 the will of God. shall know of the doctrine whether it be of 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 God." . , . Noah was warned of God of things not seen as 
 yet, he was the subject in some way — it were folly to attempt to 
 determine in what way — of supernatural communications ; it may 
 have been some sensible voice from without, it may have been 
 an unmistakably Divine operation, when God said unto Noah, 
 " The end of all flesh is come before INIe, for the earth is filled 
 with violence through them, behold I will destroy them with the 
 earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood. Behold I, even I, do 
 bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh 
 wherein is the breath of life under heaven, and every thing that 
 is in the earth shall die, but with thee will I establish My 
 covenant." Why should Noah believe this prediction sufficiently 
 to act upon that command ? Because God had spoken ; that was 
 his reason, that was his conviction, it was enough for him, he 
 needed no more. But then his conviction of the unchangeable- 
 ness of that truth, and of the moral laws of God, would have 
 rendered such an announcement, under the circumstances, to 
 him at least morally intelligible. It was true that what was 
 foretold, was to come unprovided by any past experience. In 
 the burning plains of central Asia, the idea of an universal deluge 
 may well have seemed the wildest of imaginations. A thousand 
 years, at least, had already passed, and there had been nothing 
 like it. Nature seemed to be unvarying in her movements, the 
 sun rose and set, the seasons succeeded each other, the genera- 
 tions of living beings apj)eared and passed away ; there was a 
 limit, so to call it, a regular period traversing this in a discern- 
 ible and provided order, but as yet there was nothing that met 
 the sense to warrant the expectation of a vast or overwhelming 
 shock or catastrophe. Why should it be otherwise hereafter ? 
 why should this accumulated experience go for nothing ? why 
 should this sense of security, so amply warranted, be succeeded 
 by apprehensions and distrust, for which, as yet, the annals of the 
 world afforded no parallel ? The answer was, that God had 
 spoken. Who that believes in a real living God can plead 
 observation in the divinity of nature against the avowed will of 
 the Author of nature. After all, this invariability, so to call it, 
 appeals rather to the Imagination than to the Pieason ; the ima- 
 gination becomes so accustomed to it, so moulded by it, that it 
 imdergoes a certain distress at the very thought of its violent 
 interruption ; but reason, true reason, is ever mindful of the limits 
 which must bound even our widest observations. Because we 
 observe a continuous sequence of similar effects, it does not 
 follow as an absolute certainty ; it at most amounts to a very 
 strong presumption, strong in proportion to the range of our 
 observation, that these effects will continue. We are not really 
 in possession of knowledge respecting any great necessity rooted 
 in the nature of things, which makes it certain they must con. 
 
CHURCH SERMO"-'^.. 
 
 tinue, and if we believe that the Almighty Author of nature ia 
 really alive, and that He is a IVIoral Being — and not merely an 
 Intelligence, still less merely a Force — and that as a moral being 
 He may have grave reasons for disturbing altogether this physi- 
 cal and social sympathy which encircles us, we shall not then 
 distrust Him if He tells us that He means to do so. And so it 
 was that Noah was moved, as the Apostle says, with fear, with 
 a fear most reasonable, as it was judicious ; he did not treat the 
 warning he had received as if it had been only some evil omen, 
 appealing at best to his superstition, but he prepared an Ark to 
 the saving of his house. 
 
 This event, in which Noah believed before it came, was 
 appealed to in a later age by St. Peter, as furnishing a reason for 
 believing in a still, to us, future and greater catastrophe. St. 
 Peter is writing at the very close of his life, and already a sufii- 
 cient time had elapsed since the Ascension of our Lord to allow 
 for the foundation of systematic doubts respecting His second 
 coming to judgment ; doubts which were based upon the apparent 
 endurability of the world and of the laws of life. Where is the 
 promise of God's coming ? men asked in that generation, too ; all 
 things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 
 The Apostle reminds those who argue thus, that Time has no 
 meaning for the eternal God, and that to apply our notions of 
 the difference between greater and lesser portions of it to His 
 Majestic providences, is to forget that there is simply no such 
 thing as succession in His unbegun, unending life. " Beloved, be 
 not ignorant of this one thing — that one day is with the Lord as 
 a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." 
 
 But if Christ's delay meant nothing but His long-suffering, 
 the unchanging order of the world could not be urged as a reason 
 for this unbelief in the catastrophe of a future judgment, because 
 the past history of the world contained at least one eminent 
 example of such a catastrophe. " By the word of the Lord the 
 heavens were opened, the earth standing out of the water and in 
 the water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed 
 with water, perished." In other words, water had been the 
 instrument by which the surface of the earth was moulded; 
 water had been one of the constituent elements of its well-being 
 and productiveness, yet at the creative word of God, from being 
 a servant and blessing, it became an over- mastering force and 
 scourge ; and what had been, might yet, would yet, be. Another 
 element had yet a work to do in God's Providence, and neither 
 the lapse of years nor yet the observed regularity of Nature were 
 any real reasons for presuming that a final catastrophe would 
 not come at last. " The heavens and the earth, which are now " 
 says the Apostle, " by the same word are kept in store, reserved 
 unto fire against the judgment and perdition of ungodly men." 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 Nay, it is very possible that with a higher knowledge than that 
 which we at present possess, we might be able to extend the 
 argument by additional illustrations. 
 
 Some years ago it was usual to refer wholly to the time of 
 the Deluge the more ancient animal remains which had been 
 discovered in caverns or beneath the surface of the earth, but 
 more recent Science urges that these remains simply imply, at 
 least generally, a higher antiquity, and are found under circum- 
 stances for which no universal flood would sufficiently account. 
 It may be so. But is there anything in the text of the Bible 
 which obliges us to narrow down to 6,000 years, or in any way 
 whatever distinguish the measure of the earth's antiquity, short of 
 admitting its absolute eternity ? On the contrary, between the 
 original creative Act and the description of that gradual pro- 
 cess, by which through successive periods {days they are called 
 in the Eastern idiom) this world was brought into its present 
 state, there is room for a measureless interval, I should ratlier 
 say for a series of intervals ; and if this be so, who shall say that 
 many of the animal, it may be some of the apparently human 
 remains, which are now pointed at as hostile to, or at least as 
 damaging to the faith of Christians, are after all only relics and 
 records of by-gone catastrophes of which, previous to the 
 Creation and present order of things, this globe has been the 
 scene, and by which the ages of probation accredited to moral 
 beings who have preceded us here, were by the judgment of the 
 great Moral Euler violently closed. 
 
 It is true that we are here altogether in a region of hypothesis, 
 but I submit that there is at least nothing in Bevelation wliich 
 necessarily contradicts it ; while if it be true, it yields support to 
 the argument of the Apostle, it justifies the generous faith of 
 the Patriarch. Not that Noah's faith had anything to do with 
 such speculations ; religious men may be glad to harmonize their 
 convictions with tlie advancing and often inconsistent conclusions 
 of human knowledge, but the foundation of their faith is one 
 and invariable ; they believe that He who made the world can 
 control it, and when His purpose is clear to them they do not 
 allow themselves to lose sight of it simply because their imagina- 
 tions are powerfully impressed by the spectacle of a settled and 
 common order of continuance or execution. They are, therefore, 
 in their deepest sympathies indejjendent of scientific arguments, 
 without being at all indifferent to them ; they walk by faith, and 
 not by sight; they are certain that whatever difficulties 
 may be urged against God's declared Will at the moment, God 
 will, in the long run, justify Himself to men, and will vindicate 
 the wisdom of those who in days of trial or darkness have taken 
 Him at His word. 
 
 To be concluded. 
 
^mmmm%amm& 
 
 tJxK ■mimmi^mm: mi,^umM^i:&iiHi 
 
 CfiHFrfi gFPmong 
 
 mWii ^,'^t;u'^r ^4>.*Vi-i?.^V ^^'tiiV^^'Ri^*i ^^^ 
 
 % Btxmon 
 
 f^ REY. CANON LIDDON, D.D, D.CL, 
 
 Ireland Professor of Exegesis. 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 *' By faith Noah, Icing ivarnecl of God of things not seen as yet, 
 moved ivith fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; hy 
 the which he condctnned the tvorld and became heir of the righteous- 
 ness which is by faith." — Hebrews xi, 7. 
 
 {Coitinued fro7n last page.) 
 
 A third point to be observed in Noah is his perseverance 
 under ditriculties. His faith was a practical principle, and it 
 upheld him in the face of serious discouragements. He might 
 have easily persuaded himself that there could be no real 
 necessity for his personally exerting himself; that the threatened 
 disorder would scarcely touch one who was already 480 years of 
 age, that it would be enough to warn his cbiklren of what was 
 coming, when he himself would probably have been laid in his 
 rest. Why should he arouse himself in such advanced life to so 
 great an ehbrt as that required of him, instead of leaving it to be 
 undertaken by younger hands? The answer in his conscience 
 was, that it had been said to him, " Build thee an ark of gopher 
 wood." 
 
 Again, he might naturally have dwelt upon the great 
 mechanical and constructive difficulties of such an undertaking. 
 It is not to be supposed that these were left to be found out for 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 the first time by Modern criticism. How could sucli an ark be built 
 so as to secure at once sufficient space and safety ? How could 
 it be provisioned, lighted, and worked ? How cou.ld the several 
 representatives of the animal races be so gathered as to enter it ? 
 How would it be possible to preserve them under conditions of 
 weather and temperature so unlike their own ? And when the 
 scourge had passed, how would it be possible to enter again 
 upon the earth as solitary colonists, amid traces of so gigantic a 
 desolation ? Well may Noah's heart have sunk within him 
 when God said to him, " Build thee an ark of gopher wood," yet 
 he only lived to obey. Moreover, Noah had to begin his work 
 and to continue it, not merely without active support and 
 sympathy, but under the eye of Public Opinion which was not so 
 much hostile, as contemptuously cynical. 
 
 What was this extraordinary outlay of labour and skill for ? 
 what was its purpose and meaning ? How was it other than the 
 crotchet of a mere visionary fanatic ? Did he really think that 
 his fancies would become true, and that the settled order of 
 nature, as well as the civilization and progress of human life, 
 were going to be buried beneath the flood which he dreamt of ? 
 Was every one else ^vrong, while he was right ? Was his private 
 opinion to be weighed against the collective experience and 
 judgment of mankind ? How they must have mocked at the 
 entire undertaking, how they must in their aversion to the awful 
 idea have revenged themselves upon its form and details ? What 
 airy criticism must have been lavished upon it, and on each detail 
 supplied to it, and on its complete structure what bitter 
 comments must have been passed. Its uselessness, its ugliness, 
 its utter opposition to the whole current of contemporary thought 
 and feeling. How, too, to some of the more liberal critics 
 would it have occurred to endeavour, as if in scornful and 
 condescending pity, to enter, although only remotely and for a 
 moment, into the strange hallucination that could have 
 produced it, as if surveying from afar some mental curiosity, 
 which only did not move anger because it ministered so largely 
 to amusement. And then with what satisfaction, compla- 
 cence and confidence would they have betaken themselves anew 
 to the life against which this Ark was a protest and a warning, 
 as to that which was warranted by the common sense and judg- 
 ment of the time, and by a force of custom and of sentiment, 
 which, as the world grew older, was daily gaining new strength. 
 
 Our Lord Himself has said that what took place then is an 
 anticipation of what wiU be, on the eve of the last judgment. 
 " As it was in the days of Noe so shall it be in the days of the 
 Son of Man, they did eat, they drank, they married and were 
 given in marriage, until the day came wlien Noe entered into 
 the Ark and the flood came and destroyed them all." Yet, there 
 
CHURCH" SERMONS. 
 
 was delay, a delay of 120 years, but the threatened judgment 
 caine at last, " the flood came and destroyed them all." 
 Whether it was a strictly universal or something less than a 
 literally universal deluge ; whether it covered Ararat without 
 covering, for instance, the Himalayas ; whether it cav) he 
 possibly explained by any combination of known causes or only 
 by simply natural ones — these are most important question % but 
 they do not touch the broad limits of the general fact, still less 
 the moral interests of the narrative ; they would only lead us 
 away from it. What is important is, that the judgment came 
 — it came to vindicate the morality and sovereignty of God ; it 
 came to justify Noah, and to contend with the generations which 
 rejected him ; it came to demonstrate the folly and wickedness 
 of the ancient civilization, the imcertainty of that Nature which 
 seemed at the time so well founded and so strong. There must 
 have been upon that day a murmur — an outbvrst of surprise 
 and alarm — a struggle — an agony — a despair — when this was 
 realized. Poets and painters have endeavoured to pourtray it, 
 but as the mind dwells on any such vast picture of human agony, 
 the heart grows sick and the head giddy. In that very multi- 
 tude, no doubt, there were degrees of responsibility and guilt, 
 known, too, and weighed by the Eternal Justice. The Apostle 
 hints as much, in the significant expression which apparently 
 implies, that on the descent of our Lord's human soul into the 
 place of the departed, tliere was a preaching, at least, to some 
 of the repentant spirits of the antediluvian world. But the 
 general result is a contrast between an overwhelming judgment 
 and a signal mercy — a judgment provoked by forgetlulness of 
 the given law and knowledge of God — a mercy awarded to faith 
 in His word — a faith which was not sacrificed to false and narrow 
 views of dut}'-, or to base misgiving'', or to the current and cor- 
 rupting opinions of tlie time. What Noah's work real! 7- and 
 mainly foreshadov/ed, would have been obscured in his day, i it 
 we Christians look back upon it from a vantage ground, wliiCii 
 enables us to do it justice. We see that in the labour a'ld 
 temporal salvation of Noah, there is already the shadow of a 
 greater toil and a more complete deliverance. Looking to our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, may we not, in its wretchedness and yet in ils 
 hope, use in a true sense the words of Lamech, " This same shall 
 comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands." Like 
 Noah, Jesus Christ was a preacher of righteousness — the Preacher 
 of a higher and brighter righteousness than man knew before. 
 And as Noah built an ark for the saving of his house, so did 
 oar Lord build His Church to be the home of His followers, with 
 the promise that against it the gates of hell should not prevail. 
 His teaching, His example. His works of mercy, His bitter 
 death. His resurrection from the tomb, and His glorious ascension 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 into heaven, all are steps in this mighty work. The Divine 
 Architect shed His very life-hloocl in the labour of construction, 
 and at length Pentecost came, and the Eternal Spirit welded 
 all into a consistent and enduring wliole ; and as the races and 
 sexes and degrees of men passed witliin it, one after another, 
 at the Heavenly call, lo ! there was to the eyes of Faith neither 
 Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, circumcision nor un- 
 circumcision, barbarian nor Scytliian, bond nor free, but Christ 
 was all and in all. And although since those earlier days the 
 passions and the errors of men have raised walls and partitions 
 over and above the Divinely-ordained stories within the Divine 
 fabric, yet this most assuredly will not always last, they are 
 but human while the Ark itself is Divine. Even now, too, it 
 floats upon the waters, upon the vast ocean of human opinion 
 and society, and we, without any merit of our own, but by His 
 free grace and mercy, have been permitted to enter it. Over us, 
 too, once was uttered the prayer that the everlasting God, who 
 by His great mercy did save Noah and his family in the ark 
 from perishing by water, would look upon and sanctify us, that, 
 being delivered from His wrath, we might be received into the 
 ark of Christ's Church, and being stedfast in faith, joyful through 
 hope, and rooted in charity, might so pass through the waves of 
 this troublesome world, that in the end we might come to the 
 land of everlasting life. 
 
 It would be useful to insist, before we end, upon one or two 
 practical conclusions which are suggested by the life and work 
 of Noah. It suggests, first of all, a particular form of duty 
 which at certain times of the world's history may press very 
 heavily on the consciences of j)ublic men, whether in Church or 
 State, and at certain terms in life upon all of us, however retired 
 and private our place and work may be — I mean, the duty 
 which may arise on our seeing, or believing that we see, more or 
 less clearly into the Future, which has to be provided for or 
 provided against. Indeed, to endeavour to look forward, or to 
 provide in this way, is a part of the work of those who are 
 charged with the maintenance and support of large public 
 interests ; it is their business to observe the direction in which 
 things are moving, the forces which are coming to the front, the 
 combination or separation of force which may fairly be antici- 
 pated, the general result that will apparently emerge from and 
 succeed the state of things with which they are actually con- 
 versant. Here, as elsewhere, to seek knowledge is more or less 
 to learn ; and God teaches us through our natural powers of 
 observation and reflection, as well as in other and higher way?,. 
 The prayer to know enough to be able to do His will 
 in our day and generation is answered. And it may be wo 
 have to deliberately anticipate very much, to which we would 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 be willingly blind. Such a habit of looking forward, if its 
 motive is something higher than mere speculative curiosity, will 
 not interfere with the duties of the present hour, nor will it 
 militate agaiast that general temper of trustful resignation, 
 which those who see furthest and deepest feel, and which is 
 ever ready to leave its hopes and fears in the hands of God. 
 
 In private and worldly concerns, such foresightedness is not 
 often undervalued. No man, for instance, continues to invest 
 his money in an undertaking, recommended though it be by an 
 imposing prospectus and an influential Board of Directors, if 
 beneath its fair promises and apparent prosperity, he can clearly 
 see at work the causes of a coming bankruptcy. But where the 
 interests of others ftre only or chiefly concerned, it may be 
 probable that the man himself will have passed away before his 
 anticipations are realized ; it is possible for him to find himself 
 in Noah's moral position, to tliis extent, that he foresees a 
 catastrophe which is hidden from the eyes of his contemporaries, 
 and which imposes on him the plain duty of preparing to meet 
 it. And then comes the trial ; will he bestir himself to obey the 
 behest of his conviction, or will he indolently fold his hands 
 and let things take their course ? Will he say to himself, " After 
 all, this is no particular concern of mine, it is the concern of 
 everybody, why should I in particular be compelled to put 
 myself out of my way in a matter which interests hundreds of 
 other people quite as much as it interests me ? Why should I be 
 taxed, — heavily taxed, — on the score of my far-sightedness, while 
 others can go on easily and quietly, with a perfectly good 
 conscience, only because they are too unobservant to see or to 
 try to see, beyond the next turn in the road of life ? I wUl let 
 things take their course ; there is no necessity on my part for an 
 interference which will be mocked at till it is justified, and 
 then even when it is justified will soon enough be forgotten." 
 Will he reason thus, or will he reflect that knowledge, insight, 
 far-sightedness, if they really exist, and are known to exist, 
 constitute responsibility ; that he who as a man sees further and 
 knows more than others, cannot merely be as others before his 
 fellow-men or before God ; that together with knowledge, at least 
 of this kind, there comes to a certain extent, the forfeiture of 
 that particular species of liberty which is the moral bound of 
 ignorance ? Will he reason thus, and act upon his reason ? 
 
 My brethren, tliis is a most critical question — possibly for the 
 generation, for the country, for the Church to which he belongs, 
 but certainly, under any circumstances, for himself. Can any 
 one who has a heart at all, think without true sorrow of that 
 King of France whose reign covers the greater part of the last 
 century, who spans the interval which connects the great 
 Monarch with the Bourbon who died upon the scaffold. Few 
 
CHUECH SERMONS. 
 
 things in history are more piteous than the contrast of the 
 youth of much interest and promise, and the advanced life of 
 abject dissipation. Yet Louis XV. was not wanting in penetra- 
 tion. Even the gay revelries of Versailles did not wholly blind 
 him to sights and sounds which might have convinced a less 
 observant ruler, that the foundations of the great depth of 
 national life were surely breaking up, and that a new order of 
 things was imminent. Allowing for the difficulties of a tra- 
 ditional position such as his, may we not believe that an earnest 
 and well-considered effort, to improve the condition, and to assert 
 the rights of the lower classes of the French people in the 
 middle of the century, might have saved France from the torrents 
 of blood in which the inevitable revolution was baptized. Yet 
 Louis the Fifteenth passed away his time morally and physically 
 in pleasures, which ministered only to the satisfaction of the hour, 
 while the mutterings of the apjproaching storm were falling 
 thick upon his dying ear, and his last and deepest conviction 
 found expression in words, which were too surely to be fulfilled : 
 " After us the deluge," 
 
 Nor can we walk the streets of Oxford, and know anything of 
 the history of the buildings which meet our eyes, without 
 encountering another illustration of the matter before us. During 
 the two centuries which preceded the Eeformation, there were 
 men in England who felt that a change of some kind was surely 
 coming, and that it was their duty to prepare for it. They could 
 not, indeed, read history with our eyes ; they could not look 
 forward into the future as we look back upon the past, they 
 knew not whether reformation or revolution was before them ; 
 but at least, come what might, it could not but be well to 
 gather together and to cultivate the higher learning of the time, 
 under the guidance and stimulus of religion, and it was to this 
 Christianity of theirs, that we owe the foundation of some of the 
 noblest colleges in Oxford. It may be that the highest aim of 
 their great legacy will not be handed on in its completeness to 
 the generations that will follow us, and yet it may be the duty 
 and the privilege of our day, under other and yet not altogether 
 unlike circumstances, and on a humbler scale, to leave at least 
 • one Institution in Oxford where human learning will, centuries 
 hence, we trust, be blest by Christianity when we in this city 
 shall have passed to our account. 
 
 And from the State and Education, it is natural to pass to the 
 Church. Nearly forty years have elapsed since some of the 
 purest and loftiest Spirits that ever breathed the air of this place, 
 saw in the suppression of some of the Irish Sees a call to prepare 
 for more serious emergencies. They, too, might have said, and, 
 as cleroymen, might well have said, let things take their course,' 
 we will leave the work, and struggle and protest to those who are 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 in tlie high places of the Church, But this insight into the future, 
 such as it was, was their own, and they could not, if they would, 
 transfer to others the responsibilities attending it. They saw 
 that the real cause of the present disorders, lay not in any 
 exceptional irreligion on the part of the State, but, in the fact, 
 that Churchmen were at best half-hearted in professing their 
 creed. Samson's locks had been shorn, and who cordd wonder 
 that the Philistines were upon him ? If the Church was to be 
 loved and worked for in the years to come, it must be by men 
 who saw in her something nobler and Diviner than the mere 
 plaything and creation of Parliament and Statesmen ; something 
 more than one of the many human organizations designed to 
 promote co-operation among believers in Christ, These men 
 saw that the Church, to be upheld, must be really renewed. 
 Yet they would have failed observantly, if they had endeavoured 
 to re-invigorate a faith which they knew to be untrue. In their 
 stirring belief, that whatever came of it, they must go forward 
 in their simple severity, lay the secret of their strength. Out of 
 the old materials which were ready to their hand they set 
 themselves to buHd an Ark of fresh and strong convictions to a 
 younger generation, they laboured by all the avenues to public 
 thought and feeling that they could possibly command, to 
 persuade their contemporaries to tman the Creed which daily 
 passed their lips, and meaning, to ad upon it. 
 
 It may be true that that great movement has been pushed to 
 unwarranted and lamentable consequences. It may be true that 
 its original principle has been in some cases even corrupted and 
 perverted, that it has indirectly created not a little distrust and 
 confusion. What is this, but saying, that its originators and 
 projectors were human, and that they enjoyed no guaranteed 
 exemption from human liability to error. But look at it 
 generously, look at it as a whole, look at it, as its opponents 
 themselves, I dare to say, will look at it, when in the clear day- 
 light of history it can be viewed without any disturbing 
 influences, and it will be said — it must be said — to have simply 
 saved the Christians of England from an impending death, 
 whether of spiritual atrophy, or spiritual hysteria. It has borne 
 a tide of life, the life of earnest conviction, through all the 
 arteries and veins of the Church of this land. Aye ! and thank 
 God ! beyond it. It is, year by year, at this moment, feeding that 
 life which alone can enable serious Christians to combat with 
 the speculative and political anxieties of the future. He who 
 exclaimed at the sight of Oxford, from Bagley, forty years ago, 
 " The flood is around, but the towers as yet are safe," saw clearly 
 what was coming, and now that he has gone to his blessed rest, 
 it is not too much to say that he has done more perhaps than 
 any other one man in these latter times, to enable us to look 
 
 D 2 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 forward to the prospects of this rising flood, if not -without fear, 
 on the score of our own possible disloyalty, yet certainly 
 without one moment of misgiving as to the general and final 
 issue to the Kingdom of Christ in England. 
 
 It is easy to exaggerate the importance of the Age we 
 live in — it is the settled inclination of self-love which moves 
 us to do so — yet after allowing for this propensity or weak- 
 ness, we can scarcely doubt that the present is a period 
 of exceptional importance, whether to the State or to Eeligion, 
 whether in England or in Europe. Scarcely a year passes but 
 we hear the crash of some time-honoured throne or institution^; 
 and around us are taking place silently, but with astonishing 
 rapidity, vast political and social changes which cannot but lead 
 to much loss in the year to come. 
 
 To be entering on the full powers of life at such a time may 
 be a high privilege or an unutterable misery; it all depends 
 upon whether a man has the heart to feel its moral solemnity. 
 Alas, for those who at such a time can expose noble names and 
 ancient orders to an unjust public condemnation, which will 
 make it at least difficult to link the Past surely with the Future. 
 Alas, for those who can see clearly, and far into that which ia 
 patent to most of us, yet who treat this far-sightedness of theirs, 
 if not with a reckless levity, at least without feeling one true 
 thrill of desire, to lend a hand towards making an ark of safety 
 for truth and goodness in the future. For each Christian soul 
 there will be, — there is, — some share in the work of Noah to be 
 taken, and they who work most in silence, and most 
 unobservantly, may have at last the largest share with the 
 blessed Patriarch. 
 
 And, leaving public interests and duties, there is one sense in 
 which each one of us must buiLd his ark, and that quickly. To 
 every man Death is the deluge, and Life is the time given him 
 wherein to prepare to meet it. If we would not sink, then, 
 beneath the waters, we must bidld the ark note, and we have 
 much less than the one hundred and twenty years of Noah in 
 which to build it. What if this brief, this blessed period, is 
 passing fast while we stand aside watching the toil of others, 
 either with indifference or in scorn ? What if, as St. Augustino 
 said of some Christians in his day, who outwardly worked for 
 Christ's kingdom, while their hearts were not really enlisted in 
 His service — what if our heart is only with the mercenary 
 Canaanites whose services the Patriarch enlisted to build the 
 Ark, ill which, when the day of trouble came, they were not 
 allowed to enter ? 
 
 Let us look into this matter, if it be for the very first 
 time, this Lent. Let us lose no more dayp. no not one, ia 
 setting to work, and let us take heed how we set to work. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 "The work of salvation/' says St. Augustine again, "must be 
 built by Christianity out of the wood of Christ's Cross." We 
 cannot ourselves furnish either the design or the material, and if 
 God will not save us by ourselves. He certainly will not save us 
 without ourselves, without our corresponding, that is to say, 
 with His purposes of bliss and mercy. Yet if He is with us, it 
 matters little although the clouds are sensibly darkening, and 
 although the foundations of the great deep already are breaking 
 up ; it matters little though aU. be submerged before our eyes, 
 beneath the rising tide; if on the strength of His Word we know 
 and are sure, that with a brief voyage across the troubled waters, 
 our feet will rest upon the Eternal Moiuitain, and we shall take 
 our part in that song of thanksgiving which will have no end. 
 

 @ 
 
 % ^zxman 
 
 MY. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Ireland Professor of Exegesis in the University 
 of Oxford. 
 
 PREACHED AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 
 On Sunday Afternoon, April 7, 1S72. 
 
 " Blessed he, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 which, according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us agaAn 
 unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
 dead." — 1 Peter i, 3. 
 
 St. Peter addresses his Epistle, not as St. Paul's manner is, to 
 some particular Church, but to Christians scattered over a wide 
 extent of territory — " throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, 
 Asia — that is Asia Minor — and Bithynia." It is true that these 
 districts join on to each other ; that they are all confined 
 between the Black Sea and the Gulf of Cyprus ; and that at the 
 present day it is probable that the cruel yoke of the Turk has, 
 in the course of four centuries and a half, reduced them to a 
 dead level of barbarism, which has buried beneath its ruins the 
 sharp provincial distinctions which existed in antiquity. But 
 when St. Peter wrote, the Eoman rule was estabhslied through- 
 out all those districts ; yet the Eoman Empire was still young 
 and the Eoman rule was imiversally tolerant of provincial 
 characteristics ; and the people to whom he wrote differed not 
 less widely, to say the least, than do the inhabitants of the 
 various States of Europe, in the present day. Doubtless, the 
 strangers who were estalDlished among them were mainly con- 
 verts from Judaism, since it was of these that St. Peter had 
 the particular care, after the division of labour, which St. Paul 
 mentions in his Epistle to the Galatiaus. They would all have 
 the blood of Abraham in their veins : but notwithstandiup; tliis 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 sense of a common descent, which, since their conversion, had 
 lost its specific advantageous value, they would have shared 
 in many respects the diverse provincial sympathies of the 
 populations ^around them — they w^ould have been parted from 
 one another by different customs, different characteristics of 
 life, different commercial interests, and in not a few cases by 
 differences of dialect and even of language; by different relations 
 with the various local governments, by very different ideas upon 
 a great many subjects which form the staple of interest in 
 ordmary life. But as St. Peter thought over these scattered 
 strangers— thought of then- diversities from each other, he felt 
 that they had one thing in common. They were sanctified 
 by the Spirit unto obedience, and the sprinkling of the blood of 
 Jesus Christ. And this implied much beyond. It meant that 
 the horizon of their various lives was enormously enlarged, and 
 in one direction ; that they were, amid all their differences, 
 living, not for this world merely, but for a world beyond. And 
 so St. Peter burst forth into a hymn of praise— for such it is— 
 a hymn, which the fertile and pathetic genius of a great 
 musician has made familiar to the worshippers at this Cathedral, 
 and at many other of the Christian Churches of this land 
 — " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 who, according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again 
 unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
 the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and 
 that fadeth not away ; reserved in heaven for you." 
 
 To the question— What has the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
 from the dead, done for us Christians ?— a gi^eat many answers 
 may be given. 
 
 Of these, the answer which is perhaps, of the first importance 
 —the answer which Christ's own Apostles would have given 
 —IS ^s : That by rising from the dead, Jesus Christ proved 
 that He had a right to speak about God, a right to speak about 
 the old religion of His countrymen, a right to speak about the 
 religious conduct of the most influential classes among His 
 countrymen; above aU, that He had a right to speak about 
 Himself, as He had spoken. When He was asked to give a 
 sign that IS, a something which might be accepted as evidence, 
 of the commission which He had from heaven. He gave this ; 
 He said that, just as the old Prophet, Jonah, had been buried 
 out of sight m the whale, and yet had been restored to his 
 mimstry and to his countrymen, so He, Himself, though he 
 should be stricken beneath the pangs and convulsions of death, 
 though laid m the darkness of the tomb in the very heart of the 
 earth, yet would at a given time burst the fetters of the grave, 
 and would rise again. Accordingly, when this prediction had 
 been actually reaHzed, the fact was appealed to, as we see from 
 tlie Acts of the Apostles, by the earliest i^reachers of Christianity, 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 almost in every single sermon. It was the fact which evidently 
 did tlieir work, in compelling men to listen to what they had to 
 say, about their risen Lord, and in making faith in Him at least 
 easy, better than any other topic ; and St. Paul puts it forward 
 when he begins his great Epistle to the Romans, by simply 
 saying that Jesus had been " declared to be the Son of God 
 with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection 
 from the dead." 
 
 But the Eesurrection has done other things for us besides this, 
 its great evidential achievement ; and upon one of these I desire 
 to dwell this afternoon. It has endowed Christians, who treat 
 it as a serious matter of fact, with the grace, the great grace of 
 Hope. St. Peter feels the preciousness of this when he exclaims 
 that God, the Father of our Lord, is blessed, if only because, 
 from His abundant mercy. He has begotten us again unto a 
 lively hope by His Son's resurrection from the dead. 
 
 It is a truism to say it — but, as truisms are apt to be more lost 
 sight of than paradoxes, from their very obviousness, it will bear 
 repeating — it is a truism, that we cannot get on without Hope. 
 Hope is not, as the proverb has said, merely the salt, but it is 
 the very sinew of man's life. There is no doubt about the fact, 
 explain it as we may, that the human mind must, to a great 
 extent, live in and for the future. The brute, indeed, is content 
 with the present. He feeds, he fights, he gambols, he sleeps, he 
 makes the most of each successive sensation ; because his atten- 
 tion is not diverted by any forecasts about a coming time ; he 
 apprehends nothing until the experience of his senses — appealing 
 to the faint faculty of association which he undoubtedly pos- 
 sesses, forces the apprehended danger, or pleasure, right in 
 upon him. He has no view or theory of his life, of his 
 place in creation, of his relation to other living creatures about 
 him, of his capacity for and title to a coming destiny of any 
 kmd. And herein the brute differs from man ; because man is 
 so little content with, and occupied or exhausted by the 
 thoughts, the sensations, the interests of the present moment, 
 that he cannot but look forward, whether to a nearer or a more 
 remote future. His capacity for excellence is exactly pro- 
 portioned to his power of throwing himself onward into the 
 future, which is yet beyond his reach, and which may be 
 always beyond it. 
 
 _ This truth holds good, whether we look on man as an indi- 
 vidual, or as a member of society. What is the real object — the 
 highest effort— of any real Education ? Is it merely teaching 
 a boy so much reading and arithmetic, so much history and 
 geogi-aphy, so much natural science and humane literature, so 
 much political and mathematical truth ? No. It is much more 
 than this. The great object of the wise educator is to set before 
 the boy some future to which he may aspii-e ; some future which 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 may fire his best enthusiasms ; some future which may supply 
 him with a strong motive for making the most of his present 
 opportunities, some future upon which, during the drudgery and 
 toil of his earlier tasks, his eye may rest, and which may be 
 the object of his hope. It is, of course, a difiicult and a very 
 delicate thing to do this, without developing in the boy, the 
 vice of a purely selfish ambition. But the thing can be done ; 
 and, if education is to be vigorous and thorough, it must be 
 done. What becomes of the boy whose every lesson, and exer- 
 cise, every effort to remember, to understand, to tliink, to compose, 
 is strictly without an object — is only an isolated and sterile 
 labour ; having no end beyond itself, or, at best, none beyond the 
 consequences of neglecting it? And does not the same rule 
 hold good in later life ? The boy in time becomes a man ; he is 
 the father of a family, and he transfers to his children some of 
 the hope he cherished once for himself. He thinks less of what 
 they are, than of what it is probable they will be a few years 
 hence. He thinks over their characters, their tastes, their 
 dispositions, the evidence they have shown of fitness for a par- 
 ticular work in life. He enters into a calculation of probabilities, 
 he tries to picture their various positions and occupations in 
 later years. So strong, so penetrating, is his sympathy some- 
 times, that in them, as men have said, he lives his own boyhood 
 over again ; only, as it must be, with the larger experience and 
 the wider horizon of his manhood. He may — God only knows 
 — he may be destined to terrible disappointment ; but then, and 
 this is his strength, he lives in hope. It is this hojje which 
 enables him to work hard for his children, to deny himself 
 lawful enjoyments, to put up with ingratitude, with worrying, 
 with dulness, with perversity, in these, the objects of his 
 strongest affections, in a manner which, in any other case, 
 would be impossible. 
 
 Nor is this less true of men's specific work in life. Hope is 
 ever the motive principle of the exertions which command 
 success. The statesman, the artist, the man of letters, the great 
 chemist, the great engineer, all as a matter of course look 
 forward. Minds of the lower type look forward to the repu- 
 tation which will be won by success. Minds of the higher 
 order look forward to the happiness of doing some work, some 
 little work for God, by domgsome real service to their generation, 
 or to posterity. Ajid it is this hope which sustains them under 
 all the discouragements of weak health, of unfriendly criticism, 
 unfruitful efforts to mould intractable materials, of conscious 
 present inability to compass and express in fact the ideal 
 excellence which floated before their mind's eye, and originally 
 aroused them to exertion. 
 
 Nor is hope less essential to associations of men, than to man 
 in his individual capacity. The institution, the society, the 
 
CHURCH SERMONS 
 
 nationj which hag no future in its eye is already doomed. It 
 may fetill fexist 5 but its life — its moral life — is a thing of the 
 past. An army is never thoronghly demoralised until the hope 
 of victory is quite gone. A nation is not ruined untO. it has 
 reached the point at which it remarks that it can make out no 
 prospect of expansion, of development, or of progress ; the point 
 at which it turns regretfully in upon itself, confessing it has 
 exhausted its destmy and has only to await the onset from 
 without, or the collapse from within, which shall seal the doom 
 of which it has already felt the terrible presentiment. 
 
 And, as hope is thus necessary to the temporal well-being of 
 associations of men, and of individual men, so is it, above all 
 things, essential to the highest well-being of man — as man. The 
 hope upon which states, institutions, artists, painters, military 
 men, politicians rest, is directed to objects within the sphere of 
 sense and time. But man, as man — man in Ms deepest self, 
 must look beyond sense and time ; for man is confronted every- 
 where with the barrier which arrests or dissolves all human 
 hopes : he is confronted with death. Does all really end with 
 death ? Death is the question of questions. It is the first 
 and greatest question which confronts man when he sets himself 
 to think seriously about his place in the universe, about his real 
 being — about what we call his destiny. It is impossible to put 
 off permanently the consideration of this question. It rises up 
 to life whenever there is a resurrection in any man's niind of 
 serious thought. It is as fresh, as interesting, as full of unspeak- 
 able and unparalleled importance for this generation as it was 
 for the last. It will be just as much so for the next generation 
 as for this. Science does not solve that question. A materialist 
 civilisation cannot ; it would bury it out of sight. Time does 
 not tell upon it. There it is ; that question of questions for 
 eacb and for all of us : — " Wliither am I going ?" 
 
 " What are you going to do ?" said an elderly friend to a young 
 man just entering upon life. " I hope," was the answer, " to 
 complete my education at the University." " And what then ?" 
 " I shall learn a profession and I shaU devote myself to it." 
 " And what then ?" " I shall marry as soon as I can afford it." 
 " And what then ?" "No doubt, then I shall have enough to do 
 in educating and providing for my family." " And what then ?" 
 " Well, of course, in time, I shall get to be an old man." '' And 
 what then 1" asked his persevering questioner. " In time, I 
 suppose — well, I suppose I shall die." " And what then ?" There 
 was silence. The young man had never looked so far ahead as 
 that. 
 
 My brethren, man needs an answer to that question, if the 
 deepest springs of his being are to be really reached. And if we 
 cast our eyes upon the forms of opinion which lie outside the 
 Christiaa Church, what do we find ? There is of course the 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 materialist answer, that all does end with death — that man's 
 higher being is but the vitality of his animal frame and perishes 
 with it, perishes utterly and for ever. But this answer does not 
 really satisfy man. It does not satisfy any man in his best and 
 most thoughtful moods. Why should men be haunted and pos- 
 sessed as they are by the idea, the instinct of some coming 
 immortality ? Why should this idea be so general, or so im- 
 portunate, as upon the whole it undoubtedly is ? If the 
 philosopher Descartes was right in arguing that the world-wide 
 idea of God in the soul of man could only be explained by the 
 fact of His existence, is it not equally reasonable to argue that 
 the idea of immortality, which is so general, arises equally from 
 the fact of our immortality as human beings ? Because, how 
 else are we to explain the prevalence of this idea ? Why should 
 such a hope, such an apprehension, such a presentiment — call it 
 what you will — of an existence after death be as deep, and almost 
 universal as it is ? A superstition, which has no basis in fact, 
 has its limits in time and territorial sway. But, wherever man 
 has risen above the lower stages of an animalised life, the idea 
 of a future in some instinctive way at least has dawned upon 
 him, if only as the correlative to the idea of God. As our own 
 Addison makes Cato say in his soliloquy : 
 
 " It must be so — Plato, thou reason'st well — 
 
 Else, whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
 
 This longing after immortahty ? 
 
 Or, wlience this secret dread, and inward horror 
 
 Of falling into nought ? Why shrinks the soul 
 
 Back on herself, and startles at destruction ? 
 
 'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us ; 
 
 'Tis heaven itself that points out an laereafter, 
 
 And intimates eternity to man." 
 
 Now this general impression or instinct of immortality has 
 been taken to pieces. It has been traced, sometimes, to the 
 idea that the soul is of itself indestructible, as being a simple or 
 uncompounded essence. Sometimes, as by the great German 
 poet, Goethe, to the profound conviction that the mental and 
 moral activity which has lasted up to the very moment of 
 dissolution cannot be arrested by the death of man's outward 
 husk, and must continue in some other form and sphere beyond 
 it. Sometimes, it has been traced to the sense of justice which 
 refuses to believe that the moral Governor of the world will not 
 provide a future in which to redress the terrible inequalities of 
 our present state of being. But so long as these convictions do 
 not rest upon some fact which is independent of our minds 
 and of all our varying and shifting moods of thought and feeling, 
 whatever may be their intellectual value — and I would not for 
 one instant be understood to disparage it — they are not, as a 
 matter of fact, strong enough to govern conduct, to restrain 
 passion, to invigorate the sense of duty, to make men embark in 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 serious ventures on the strength of them. And for this reason, 
 they are only found in the old Pagan and the modern non- 
 Christian world, in any tolerable degree of distinctness among 
 the cultivated classes. They never have influenced the great 
 masses of persons ; or, when they have done so, they have, upon 
 the whole, produced that depressed view of life of which we 
 find traces in the literature which abounded in parts of Europe 
 simultaneously with the great outbreak of infidel opinion in 
 the closing years of the last century. Life, it was thought 
 a failure. To have lived was upon the whole a misfortune. 
 Moral apathy was in reality common sense. Moral or spiritual 
 enthusiasm was abject fanaticism. Over such a generation the 
 Psalmist's sentence might, indeed be written : " They lie in hell 
 like sheep, death gnaweth upon them, and the righteous shall 
 have dominion over them in the morning : their beauty shall 
 consume in the sepulchre out of their dwelling." 
 
 No man, who has not a clear belief in a future life can have 
 permanently a strong sense of duty. A man may, indeed, per- 
 suade himself during various periods of his existence that this 
 sense of duty is the better and purer from not being bribed 
 by the promise of future reward, or stimulated as he would 
 perhaps say unhealthily, by the dread of future punishment. 
 But, for all that, his moral life, if he has not an eternal future 
 before him, is, depend upon it, feeble and impoverished. It is not 
 merely that he has fewer and feebler motives to right action ; 
 it is that he has a false estimate, because an under-estimate, of his 
 real place in the universe. He has forfeited, in the legitimate 
 sense of the term, his true title to self-respect. He has divested 
 himself of the bearing, the instincts, and the sense of noble 
 birth and lofty destiny which properly belong to him. He is 
 like the heir to a great name or a throne, who is bent on 
 forgetting his lineage and responsibilities in a self-sought degrada- 
 tion. Man cannot, even if he would, live with impunity, only 
 as a more accomplished kind of animal than are the creatures 
 around him. Man is by the terms of his existence a being of 
 eternity, and he cannot unmake himself ; he cannot take up a 
 position which abdicates his higher prerogatives, without, sooner 
 or later, sinking into degradations which are in themselves a 
 punishment. He needs a hope resting on something beyond the 
 sphere of sense and time. And God has given him one, by the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our Lord, indeed, in 
 the plainest language, taught the doctrine of the future life — 
 " In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not so 
 I would have told you ; I go to prepare a place for you." 
 — " Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither 
 moth nor rust doth corrupt." " And these shall go away into 
 everlasting punishment ; but the righteous into life eternal." " God 
 is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him." 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 Passages of tins kind, from among the very words of Christ, 
 might be multiplied. In teaching that man docs live after 
 death, our Lord was teaching what with various degTees of dis- 
 tinctness, Pagans and Jews had taught before Him. He con- 
 tributed to the establishment of this truth in the deepest 
 convictions of men, not merely by lessons taught in words, but 
 by a fact palpable to the senses, when He rose, after saying that 
 He would rise from the grave. He broke up the spell of the 
 laiv of death ! He made it plain within the precincts of this 
 visible world that a world unseen and eternal, but most 
 actual, awaits us hereafter. He converted hopes, surmises, 
 speculations, trains of inference, into strongest certainties. 
 " Because I live, ye shall live also." This was the motto which 
 henceforth Faith, under the guidance of Keason, descried as the 
 legend traced over the doorway of His empty sepulchre. For 
 that He had risen was not a secret whispered to the few ; it was 
 a fact verified by the senses of more than five hundred witnesses. 
 It was established in the face of the jealous, implacable criticism 
 which endeavoured to silence by violence its eloquent protesta- 
 tion, that there is indeed a world beyond the grave. 
 
 Not that the fact of Christ's resurrection could force itself upon 
 reluctant minds, or, I would rather say, upon reluctant wills. In 
 the earliest ages, as now, there were expedients enough at hand 
 to evade its force : it was a trick of the disciples ; or a phantom 
 apparition ; or the product of an excited woman's imagination ; 
 or it was a prosaic transfer to the history of an individual of that 
 which was true, but only true of the deatliless idea which He 
 had taught to man. The evangelical narrative, the conviction 
 of the earliest Church, the moral strength of the Church, 
 advancing through blood, advancing through imtold sufferings, 
 to the heights of a world-wide empire, resists these expedients. 
 It resists them as inconsistent with reason and with fact. St. 
 Paul's argument — " If Christ be not risen our labour is vain," is 
 really an appeal to common sense. Is it probable the Apostle 
 suggests, that we. Apostles, should have forfeited everything^ 
 surrendered everything, should be prepared to endure everything, 
 for the sake of a transcendental faith, without having been care- 
 ful to assure ourselves of the literal truth of the fact on which 
 that faith rests ? 
 
 There are three forms of interest which must be accorded to 
 such a fact as the Eesurrection. The first is the interest of 
 curiosity in a wonder which is altogether at variance with the 
 course of nature. This interest may exist in a high degree, 
 observing and registering the fact, yet never for a moment 
 getting beyond the fact. Then there is the interest of active 
 reason which is satisfied that such a fact must have conse- 
 quences, and is anxious to trace them ; an interest which may lead 
 a man to say that the liesurrection does, intellectually speaking, 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 prove the truth of the mission of Christ, although the man 
 may know nothing of the power of Christ's blood and of His 
 spirit. The third kind of interest is practical, moral, spiritual. 
 It is an effort to answer the question — What does Christ's 
 Eesurrection say to me ? what does it mean to me ? If it is 
 true — if Christianity through it is true — what ought to be the 
 efiect on my thoughts, my feelings, my life ? And St. Peter 
 would answer all these questions. Thought, feeling, life, should 
 be in\dgorated by the force of that living hope. But, then, this 
 absorbing moral interest does not come of any ordinary process 
 of observation and reason, like these two earlier forms. St. Peter 
 says, using a remarkable exj)ression, "We are begotten into 
 a lively hope." It is not the outcome of our natural mind, or of 
 common-sense; though it does not contradict it. It is the 
 product of the Divine breath playing upon the soul, and giving 
 it the new birth — the hew capacity for life. Of this birth, the 
 Father is the author ; the Eternal Spirit is the instrument ; union 
 with Jesus Christ, the perfect Man, the essence and the effect. 
 
 It does much else for us, this new birth ; but this not least 
 among them — it endows us with a living hope. Looking to the 
 risen Christ, we Christians live even more in the future than in 
 the present. It is part of our new nature to do so, just as 
 surely as it is natural to the Pagan to be engrossed with the 
 things of sense and time. St. Peter calls this hope a " lively " or 
 a living one. What does he mean ? There are within many a 
 soul traces of powers, of ideas, of feelings, which once 
 lived, but now have died away. We investigate them, it may 
 be, from time to time, as we should investigate the dead ruin of 
 a mental Pompeii or a moral Herculaneum. Every man, in 
 later life, finds this to be increasingly the case. He finds that 
 the soil of his mind is more and more strewed with the husks of 
 hopes which have ceased to live. Time and disappointment do 
 their work, and we bury away our early enthusiasms as quietly 
 as we can, as one after another they cease to burn within us. 
 
 But the hoj)e of the Christian lives. Earthly disappointments 
 do but force him to make the most of it. The lapse of time 
 brings him nearer to its great object. It is not a hope, subject 
 to the laws of decay, which tell upon the strength and vitality 
 of a merely human hope. His enthusiasm, and the vigour of his 
 life grow in exactly an inverse proportion to that of the decaying 
 frame upon which years have done, or are doing, their work, and 
 which is drawing onwards in its course towards the portals of 
 the grave. 
 
 We can ask ourselves few questions so important as, Have I 
 tliis hope ? and, if not, what is the real value of any other hopes 
 that I may have ? They do not talve me beyond the frontiers of 
 time. They must fail and perish sooner or later — when the end 
 draws near. They must be buried utterly and for ever in the 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 grave; for man shall carry notliing away with him when he 
 dies, neither shall his hope follow him, A hope worth having 
 is, as the Apostle says, " an anchor of the soul both sure and 
 stedfast," and " entereth within the veil." Its object is thrown 
 beyond the narrow frontiers of this life, beyond this kingdom of 
 change and 'death. Not to have this hope is to be living at 
 random. It is to be drifting on towards eternity without a chart 
 in hand, or a harbour in view. No cry for help can be too earnest 
 or too piercing if such be our case. Nor shall we cry in vain. 
 
 And if we have this hope, what are the tests of our possessing 
 it ? One is that earthly things sit easily upon us. We are not 
 iminterested in them ; but we are not enslaved by them. To 
 have caught a real glimpse of the Eternal, is to have lost heart 
 and relish for the things of time. To have the imperishable 
 clearly in view, is to perceive the insignificance of all which 
 passes away. A living hope of an inheritance which is 
 incorruptible, enables the Christian to understand the real 
 proportions of things. Another test is a willingness to make 
 sacrifices for this hope. We do not really cherish it till we 
 have asked ourselves the question — What difference do my hopes 
 of another world make in my daily life ? What do I do or 
 leave undone, which I should not do or leave undone, if I 
 believed that all really ended at death ? What changes would 
 be made in my habits, my occupations, my modes of thought 
 and feeling if — to put a horrible supposition — I were aware 
 to-morrow, that Christ's conquest of the eternal world for me was 
 a fable ? Depend upon it, the sincerity of our hopes may be 
 measured by the sacrifices we have made, or are prepared to make 
 on behalf of them. He who ventures little, hopes for little. He 
 who has the hope of the heaven where neither moth nor rust 
 doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal, 
 lays up treasure in it ; and, that he may do so, surrenders all that 
 need be surrendered here. The last test is inward peace, and its 
 accompaniment — habitual cheerfulness. Though the Christian 
 may have plenty of a,nxiety, he is habitually light-hearted. His 
 soul has found its anchorage in Jesus Christ crucified, Christ 
 risen, Christ glorified, Christ interceding. He wants no more. 
 The events of life may bear hardly upon him ; they do not touch 
 his real self, any more than the storm which ruffles the surface 
 of the ocean, can agitate the depths below. " Thou writ keep 
 him in perfect peace," whose mind is stayed on Thee, because 
 he trusteth in Thee. 
 
 Eternal Jesus ! Who, when Thou hadst overcome the sharpness 
 of death, didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers, 
 fix oiu- eyes on that, our heavenly inheritance ; that, washed 
 in Thy blood, sanctified by Thy Spirit, we may live indeed, 
 for that world from which we shall look back upon death 
 as the gate of an existence which is really life ! 
 
immtiu ttTOfi^tmm ro mmtaa^^ggamiidiM t^ 
 
 Cgoprg gFpmottK 
 
 mKms^jHmjsmmmmmmm? 
 
 % Stxman 
 
 By THE 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Beau Ireland's Professor of Exegesis, 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 PREACHED AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 On Sunday Afternoon, April 14, 1872. 
 
 "Jesus said, I am the Good Slicjyhcrd. — Jolm x, 11. 
 
 Few Gospels, if any, which are appointed during the whole of the 
 Church year speak to us more dii-ectly, more persuasively than 
 tins. The Sunday of the Good Shepherd, as in many of the 
 nations of Christendom this day has been called, has or ought 
 to have a charm for the sheep of His pasture almost, if not 
 altogether imrivalled. Now, if you look at your New Testa- 
 ment, you will find that in the first eighteen verses of the tenth 
 chapter of St. John there are three distinct allegories. First comes 
 the allegory of the Shepherd ; next the allegory of the Door ; 
 lastly, the allegory of the Good or, as it may be rendered, tlie 
 Beautiful or the Ideal Shepherd. These are allegories, rather 
 than parables. The allegory differs from the parable just as a 
 transparency differs from a painting on canvas. In the parable 
 the narrative has a substance independent of its interpretation, 
 and often lends itself to more interpretations than one. In the 
 allegory the narrative suggests one obvious interpretation, stej) 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 by step ; the narrative and the interpretation being inseparable. 
 It is impossible to look steadily at the picture without perceiving 
 the real persons and events which it refers to moving almost 
 without disguise or mistake behind. This might have been 
 observed in the allegory of Sarah and Hagar, which He has 
 been interpreting for us in the second lesson ; and it will appear 
 in the present instance as we proceed. In order to understand 
 these three allegories, we must remind ourselves that in the East 
 the sheepfold is not a covered building, but a simple enclosure 
 of some considerable extent, surrounded by a wall or pallisade. 
 Within it, many flocks of sheep, which have wandered far and 
 wide during the day under the care of the shepherd, are collected 
 at nightfall ; and during the night a single shepherd (here called a 
 porter) keeps the gate and guarantees their safety. In the 
 morning the various shepherds return to the fold, and claim 
 their flocks at his hand. They knock at the gate of the 
 euclosure, and he lets them in; and /.len, they separate their 
 own flocks from the others, and each shepherd leads his sheep 
 forth to the day's pasturage. If the robber wishes to enter 
 the fold, he does not attempt to do so by the door, where he 
 will be recognized and detected ; but climbs over some other 
 part of the enclosure, for he comes to kill and to destroy. 
 
 The three allegories place us face to face with the pastoral life 
 of the East at three different periods of the Eastern day. Id 
 the first— the allegory of the Shepherd— it is still the freshness 
 of the early morning, the dew on the ground, the shepherds 
 returnmg to claim their flocks ; and if the' robber is endeavouring 
 to lead away some of the sheep, he must find his way into the 
 fold through some dishonourable track. The porter will only 
 open the gate to the shepherd, who calls his sheep by name ; 
 and they hear his voice. Then he leads them forth. They 
 foUow him, because they know and trust him. The second 
 allegory— that of the Door— places us in the full noontide of the 
 Eastern day. The fold here implied is not the same in which 
 the' sheep were collected during the night. It is the day 
 enclosure, to which, during the hours of the burning sunshine, 
 the sheep may retire for rest and shade, and from which they 
 may wander at will to seek pasture. In this allegory there is 
 no mention of the shepherd at all. He has for the moment 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 disappeared. The most important feature is the door. The 
 door is the guarantee of safety and of liberty to the sheep. " I 
 am the door/' says the Divine Speaker, " by Me if any man 
 enter, he shall be saved, and go in and out and find pasture," 
 In the third allegory — that of the Good Shepherd — we have 
 reached the evening-tide. Already the shades are lengthening 
 on the hills, and the shepherds have collected their flocks to lead 
 them back to the night-enclosure. As darkness gathers, the 
 flock is attacked by wolves that lie in ambush on the way. The 
 Good Shepherd, who loves them with personal affection, throws 
 Himself between them and their cruel enemy ; and in doing so 
 sacrifices Himself — He " giveth his life for the sheep." 
 
 Now, this allegory of the Good, or Beautiful, or Ideal 
 Shepherd, is no mere repetition of the first allegory, although 
 they both refer to one person only ; for the shepherd who knocks 
 at the door in the early morning is contrasted with the thief 
 and the robber who enter by another way, and the good 
 shepherd is contrasted with the hirling or mercenary who flies 
 from the wolf and sacrifices his flock to his personal safety. 
 We ask ourselves the question, what would our Lord's hearers, 
 if they understood what the two meant in the first instance, 
 understand by this language. We must look for the answer in 
 what was actually going on at the time in Judea before the 
 eye of the Speaker. Wlien He spoke of the fold, every religious 
 Jew would think of the conimonwealth or Church or nation of 
 Israel. The old theocratic nation was the fold of Jehovah. 
 And when He spoke of the shepherd, every religious Jew would 
 think of the expected Messiah. In the twenty-third Psalm, 
 David applies the figure to the Lord Jehovah : — " The Lord is 
 my Shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing." And Jehovah is 
 — in both Ezekiel and Zechariah — announced as destined to appear 
 once more to His people as the " Shepherd of Israel." In the 
 latter especially. He is represented as making one last effort to 
 rescue His flock from slaughter. He only attaches Himself to 
 the poorest of the flock, and receives thirty pieces of silver — 
 the wages of the lowest staff — as He leaves them to the bad 
 shepherds. The whole of this picture was especially before the 
 mind of our Divine Lord when He was presenting these 
 allegories. He was Himself in His own thought, the very 
 
CHUBCH SERMONS. 
 
 Shepherd of prophecy, who had come to the gate of the Jewish 
 commonwealth to find out His sheep and lead them forth. 
 
 But who was the porter ? Among various explanations, one 
 answer would have occurred at once to those who heard our Lord 
 speak — to those who knew the history of the time — which cannot 
 but occur to any one of us who has carefully studied St. John's 
 Gospel. It was to John the Baptist the last of the Prophets, 
 keeping the gates of the ancient fold, that Christ came as the 
 morning was breaking on the earth. From his followers He 
 received His earliest disciples. John the Baptist bore Him 
 witness. 
 
 And who were the thieves who had not come into the fold by 
 the gate? We cannot doubt that they were the Pharisees who 
 had established among the Jewish people their great authority 
 by much hypocrisy and violence. They had not entered by the 
 gate. Their influence was not based on the old law of Moses, 
 but on bad traditions which had grown up around that law, and 
 which they had fostered, and the Baptist, when he encountered 
 them, had not kept any sort of terms with them. " They were," 
 he said, "a generation of vipers, whom he warned to flee from the 
 wrath to come, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance." 
 The whole scene of the first allegory is laid at the commence- 
 ment of Christ's ministry. In the second. He has led out His 
 own from the old Jewish fold, into the pastures of the new 
 kingdom. No shepherd is mentioned here. Christ is the Door. 
 The new fold is the Gospel enclosure, in which He is 
 everything. Through Him the sheep go forth for pasture, and 
 retire within for safety. Here again He contrasts Himself with 
 the Pharisees. The image of the Door melts away into His own 
 actual person. And in the third allegory, the last days of His 
 ministry, which weie actually passing, were before Him. The 
 evening of His earthly life is upon Him. He is near His Passion. 
 The wolf is already lying in ambush for the flock. The hireling 
 sliepherd flees — true to his nature. The Good Shepherd gives 
 His life. Who is the wolf here ? As always — the Pharisee party. 
 Who is the hireling ? Certainly not the Pharisee, against whom 
 the hireling is the only defender. Our Lord would have under- 
 stood by the hireling the Jewish priesthood. It is a mistake to 
 suppose that the religious errors of the two were identical. The 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 Pharisees to a great extent were a lay sect ; and tliey had obtamed 
 influence over the religious life of the people and corrupted it. 
 The priesthood ought to have held them in check. They were not 
 indisposed to believe in our Lord. Before the Passion " many of 
 the chief priests also believed in Him." But they did not daro 
 to face the Pharisees ; and Jesus was the victim of Pharisaic 
 hidignation. It was plain what would follow. Our Lord knew. 
 But even an ordinary observer of the forces then governing the 
 political life of Judea must have understood the words — " I 
 am the Good Shepherd : the Good Shepherd giveth His life 
 for the sheep." 
 
 Wlien our Lord calls Himself the Good Shepherd, is He usmg 
 a title that has lost its value since He has ceased to live visibly 
 on the earth ? Or has the title a true meaning for us now ? Here, 
 we cannot but observe that, writing some forty years after the 
 Ascension, St. Peter, calls Him a Shepherd, and St. Paul calls 
 Him " the Great Shepherd of the sheep." And in the first ages 
 of the Christian Church, when persecution drove the faithful 
 from the streets and public places of Ptome, down into the 
 catacombs, burrowed out beneath the busy life of the Pagan 
 city ; one figure more than all others they delighted to draw in 
 the vaults in which they prayed — the figure of the Good 
 Shepherd. Sometimes the Apostles were ranged alongside of 
 Him. Sometimes the sheep were standing around, with 
 upturned faces, dependent upon their Deliverer and Guide. 
 Sometimes He was carrying the wanderer on His shoulder, or 
 holding the lamb to His bosom, or leading the weak of the 
 flock, all expressing the tenderness and the active love of 
 the Saviour, moving among His flock to bless them. And ever 
 since those early days, when Christ has been asked to bless from 
 His throne some work of mercy, to relieve the suffering, to teach 
 the ignorant, to deliver the captive, it has been as the Good 
 Shepherd of humanity. The title has an attractive power for 
 the Christian heart which is all its own. Not that it is easy to 
 enter into the full force of this beautiful image. To do so, we must 
 know something really about ourselves — something really about 
 the person of our Saviour. We must feel first all our weakness, 
 all our dependence, and all our need of a heavenly Guide and 
 Friend. We must sincerely feel that, face to face with the Eternal 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 world and its awful Monarch, self-reliance and self-siifficiency are 
 a great mistake. The old pagan Eoman did not, could not feel 
 this ; and therefore in his unconverted state he spurned the idea 
 of a Good Shepherd, whom it was his business to love and 
 worship. It was humiliating to him. It was intolerable that 
 one, who had the blood of the Caesars and the Scipios in his 
 veins, should speak of himself as a sheep. To him, the 
 Christians who could do so, appeared poor-spirited, degraded, 
 contemptible people, who had never known the majesty of the 
 Eoman name. Wliat did he want with a shepherd ? He 
 depended upon and trusted himself ; and if life became 
 intolerable to him, and he was one of the sect of the Stoics, he 
 meant to put an end to himself. That he should be led, 
 pastured, guarded, delivered, was out of the question. He 
 did not want to be placed under a sense of obligation to 
 anyone — least of all an obligation so immense and utterly 
 beyond discharge as this. He might have reflected that he 
 owed the gift of existence to some higher Being, however little 
 he knew of this Being, and that he could not repay it. 
 
 But how many of us go through our lives, without ever, or often, 
 thinking seriously of what it is to be created Beings, and what it is 
 to have a Being whom we name our Creator — a Being to whose 
 free bounty all we are, and all we have, is literally due ! "What 
 wonder then, if the old Pagan Eoman did not enter — what 
 wonder if some of us do not enter — into the blessedness of 
 devotion to the Good Shepherd ? Until a man's heart is broken 
 by the sense of personal sin, and by the love of God revealed to 
 the soul in all His beauty and all His justice, the figure of the 
 Good Shepherd must be repulsive ; because it reflects upon the 
 man, the sense of an immeasurable personal humiliation. 
 Besides, we must know and believe something about the person 
 of Jesus. If Jesus 'Christ was merely a man, how could He, in 
 any rational sense, be the Good Shepherd to you and to me ? 
 It is now eighteen centuries and a half since He left this 
 planet ; and if we only think of Him as a departed Saint, some- 
 where in the bosom of God, we have no reason whatever to 
 attribute to Him a pastoral interest in the number of Christians 
 who look up for help and guidance to Him day by day, as 
 He sits upon His throne. Can we suppose that any merely 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 created Being could be thus a superintending Providence, an 
 all-contemplating, all-embracing providence to Christians ? Yet, 
 when He says, " I am the Good Shepherd." He disengages Him- 
 self from the historical and political circumstances which sur- 
 rounded Him. He will be to all the Jews what He is already 
 to the faithful few in and about Jerusalem. When He says, " I 
 am the Life," "I am the Way, the T'^uth, and the Life," or, 
 " I am the Eesurrection and the Life," or " I am the true Vine," 
 we feel that all this language, in the mouth of a merely 
 human teacher would be pretentious, inflated, insufferable. We 
 cannot conceive the best man we have known in life permitting 
 himself to speak of himself as the Good Shepherd of men. He 
 would forfeit his claims to our love, our reverence and our 
 respect. Why is it not so when our Lord speaks ? Because 
 there is that in Him, beyond and yet inseparable from, His 
 perfect manhood, which makes it not pretentious, inflated, or 
 blasphemous in Him, but perfectly natural and obvious. Wo 
 feel that He is Divine ; and such sayings as " before Abraham 
 was, I am," " he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," " I 
 and the Father are one," are in the background of His thought, 
 and explain and justify what He says about Himself as being 
 the Shepherd of human souls. But it is because He is also Man 
 that such a title especially befits Him ; because He is no abstract 
 Providence, but a Divine Person, who has taken part in our 
 nature, communes* with and blesses us. 
 
 Let us, very briefly reflect what this truth involves, as to our 
 relations with our Kedeemer, as the Good Shepherd who knows 
 His sheep. He knows us individually, and He knows all about 
 us, not merely as we seem to be, but as we are. Others look us 
 in the face day by day, and we them. . They touch the surface 
 of our real life ; perha,ps they see a little way below the surface, 
 but " what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of 
 man which is in him ?" What do they know of what passes in 
 the inmost sanctuary of the reason, of the conscience, of the 
 heart ? Nor do they know much of our outward circumstances, 
 our trials, our struggles, our difficulties, or what we deem such. 
 Citizens of this vast metropolis, we live amid a multitude, yet 
 in solitude ; but there is one Being who knows all, upon Whom 
 nothing that passes is lost, to Whom nothing that affects us is 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 matter of indifference. To Him " all hearts are open, all desires 
 known ;" from Him " no secrets are bid." All the warps of om* 
 self-love, all the depth and corruption of our hearts, all we 
 might have been and all we are, are spread out before His eyes 
 like a map, to which each moment adds something He has 
 anticipated, adds in the way of extent, without diminishing 
 its clearness. Because of this He is able to help, to guide, to 
 feed, us, if we will to save us, aye, to the uttermost. And 
 He has a perfect sympathy with each of us. He is not a hard 
 guardian who sets Himself to keep us in order without feeling 
 for our individual difficulties. " He is touched with the feeling 
 of our infirmities." His warrant is His perfect human sympathy, 
 to which the image of the Shepherd, taken alone, does less than 
 perfect justice. 
 
 IsTothing which affects us is a matter of indifference to 
 His tender heart. He is not interested in the noble, the 
 wealthy, the intellectual, or the celebrated, alone. ^Wherever 
 there is a human soul seeking the Truth, a human heart longing 
 to lavish its affection upon the Eternal Beauty, there He is at hand; 
 unseen, yet energetic, entering with a perfect sympathy into 
 every trial, anticipating in ways we little dream of, every danger. 
 Not suspending our probation by putting us out of the reach of 
 temptation, but making a way of escape, that we may be able to 
 bear it. But this — guided by perfect prudence and the highest 
 reason in the days of His earthly ministry — ^this was especially 
 observable — He dealt with men according to their characters 
 and capacities. He did not put the new cloth on the old 
 garments, or the new wine into the old bottles. He did not ask 
 His disciples to imitate the austere life of the Baptist. He 
 knew them too well. He said, that would come to them by and 
 by. He did not tell them all He had to teU at once, about 
 Himself, about His living and the means of living the Divine 
 life. This would have been too much for them, if it had been told at 
 once. " I have yet many things," He said, " to say unto you ; but 
 ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth, 
 is come. He will guide you into all truth : for He shall not speak 
 of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear that shall He speak, 
 and He will show you thmgs to come." Those who were yet 
 in the infancy of the Christian life, He would feed with milk. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 He reserved strong meat for those who knew and conld bear 
 more. So it has been smce. If we have enjoyed or been denied, 
 this has not been by chance. The Good Shepherd who knows 
 us has ordered it. He has proportioned our duties, our trials, 
 our advantages, our drawbacks, to our real natures, capacities and 
 inmost characters. Certainly the characteristic of His govern- 
 ment is " As thy days thy strength shall be." So runs His most 
 gracious promise. 
 
 Above all, He is disinterested. He gains nothing by watching 
 and guarding such as we are. He gains nothing by seeking 
 us. We contribute nothing to His majestic glory. He seeks 
 us for our own sakes. He spent His life among the villages 
 and hamlets of a remote province, when He might have illumi- 
 nated the inl,ellectual centres of the world. He spared Himself 
 no toil, He had no leisure ; persecutions, humiliations, rebuffs, 
 sufferings, could not diminish the ardour of His sacred and 
 consuming zeal, and He crowned All, by embracing with the 
 utmost freedom — when He might have avoided it — an agonizing 
 death, in order to save His flock. He gave His life for the 
 sheep once for all. Eighteen centuries have gone by, but His 
 death is as powerful to deliver now as then. Self-sacrifice 
 like that on Calvary, does not lose its virtue in the lapse of 
 years. The precious Blood does not fail us now, more than 
 then. For it is the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant, and 
 the Great Shepherd of the sheep has been raised from the dead, 
 that He may plead for us perpetually on earth and in the courts 
 of Heaven. 
 
 Ah ! we look up to Him on His throne, and here in His 
 courts we sing — "We are His people and the sheep of His 
 pasture." Do we mean that ? We kneel day by day and 
 confess that we have erred and strayed from His ways — and 
 the Eternal Father's ways — like lost sheep. Do we mean that ? 
 If we do, have we returned with anything like sincerity to the 
 Shepherd and Bishop of our souls ? If we do, are we endeavour- 
 ing to know Him as. He certainly knows us ? We need a 
 guide through the uncertainties of life. Do we recognise one 
 in Him ? We need a physician for our moral wounds ; we 
 need a source of strength in temptation, a rule and standard 
 of holiness ; an arm — a strong: arm — to lean upon when we shall 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 pass through the valley of the shadow of Death, AH these 
 He is. All this He can give us and much more. But have 
 we any practical knowledge of Him, which enables us to claim 
 these blessings at His hand. When He has fixed His eye upon 
 us at some turning point of life — when He has reached out 
 His pastoral crook and beckoned us up the heavenly way, have 
 we followed ? Has He done so much for us, and shall we do 
 nothing for Him ? Are we associating ourselves in any sense 
 with His work in the world ? As we may all join in His inter- 
 cessions, so may we all work under the mantle of the Good 
 Shepherd. How many a word of mercy in the Church of God 
 has that gracious, tender figure inspired, which else had been 
 denied to suffering human beings ! By our individual exertions, 
 strengthening the hands and hearts of the ministers of Christ, by 
 entering with sympathy and humility into cases of suffering and 
 ignorance, which, but for His grace, might have been our own, 
 we can all — laymen as well as clergy, women as well as men — 
 simple and unlearned, as well as intellectual — have a part in 
 promoting that great work of ministration and care for fallen 
 man which is the glory of our Divine Master, as the Good 
 Shepherd of humanity, and which is our own only ground of 
 hope, in Time and for Eternity. 
 

 S^sH^w^j^jmw^SfT^wwwmwmwf 
 
 §. Strm0n 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dfiau Ire/aud's Professor of Exegesis, 
 University of Oxford, 
 
 PREACHED AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 
 On Sunday Afternoon, April 21, 1872, 
 
 BEFOEE HEE MAJESTY'S JUDGES 
 
 AND 
 
 THE COEPOEATION OF THE CITY OF LOKDON". 
 
 " As free, and not using your lilirty for a cloTce of malicious- 
 ness, hut as the servants of God." — 1 Peter ii, 16. 
 
 St. Peter touches a note which appeals to human interests 
 in all ages and everywhere. Freedom is one of those words 
 which need no recommendation. It belongs to the same 
 category as light, order, progress, truth, law. It is one of the 
 ideas which, in some sense or other, mankind accepts as an 
 axiom — as a landmark or principle of healthful life beyond 
 discussion. What do we mean by freedom ? We mean the 
 power of a living being to act without hindrance according to 
 the true law of its life. A mineral, therefore, is in no sense 
 capable of freedom. It neither grows nor moves — it does not 
 live. A tree, in a metaphorical or attenuated sense, is capable 
 of freedom. It contaias witliin itself the mystery of a vital 
 principle which requires certain conditions for its necessary 
 development ; and in this sense we may speak of a tree hav- 
 ing freedom to grow. The lower animals in various degrees are 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 enpable of sonieohing wiiicli may, with "better reason, be called 
 freedom. They are capable of it in degrees which vary 
 proportionately to their approach to the frontier of self-conscious, 
 self-determining lite as manifested in human beings. The brute 
 does not merely gTOW, he moves from place to place. He does 
 not move by any fatal necessity but can take this direction or 
 that as instinct prompts him, without interfering with his move- 
 ment, so as to trammel his freedom. Still, it is instinct he obeys. 
 He does not reflect about his movement. He does not choose, 
 while comprehending his power of choice. He is really from 
 moment to moment governed by that which is for the time being 
 the strongest instinct or passion that is upon him. If he is free 
 to run about, free to eat what he likes, to sleep and rest when 
 he likes, he has all that he wants, and his instinct will probably 
 guide him to sleep, eat and take exercise in such proportions and 
 at such times as the law of his life requires. With man, it is 
 otherwise ; for he is a moral being. He reflects, and knows 
 what he is doing when he reflects. He chooses, and knows 
 what he is doing in this exercise of choice. Much of man's life 
 is vegetative, no doubt, like that of the tree. Much of it is 
 sentient, and under the government of instinct, as that of the 
 animal. We go through thousands of movements and acts 
 every day of our lives, as we say " without thinking about them." 
 We obey instinct, or habit, or some governing inclination, with- 
 out throwing any conscious deliberate energy into the act of 
 obedience. But our true life as human beings is something 
 higher than this. Man lives and acts as man. He asserts that 
 which is properly his human liberty when he obeys a law 
 which he is free to disobey. For he is a moral being, and in 
 this his greatness consists. It is not uncommon now-a-days to 
 hear the insignificance of man insisted on as compared with the 
 planets, with the suns and stars that roll over our heads. 
 Certainly, my brethren, if the greatness of created beings is to 
 be determined by their material bulk, man is insignificant 
 enough. He is, in this particular very much below many 
 other animals around him on this his own planet. But man 
 can do that which no planet can do — he can obey or refuse to 
 obey the highest law of his life. The planet cannot leave its 
 appointed orbit. It circles on, age after age, in obedience to 
 the mathematical law which governs it. God has given it a 
 law which shall not be broken. Man can disobey the highest 
 law of his life ; and this liberty is at once his prerogative and 
 his danger. The highest law of man's life, is to know, love and 
 serve the Being who gave it to him — the Being whose very 
 existence has not dawned upon the most intelligent of any of 
 the creatures below man. God wills that man should obey Him 
 freely — that is, that he should be al)le to refuse obedience, and 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 yet should obey. And this, which is man's consummate 
 prerogative, is necessarily linked to a fearful responsibility for 
 declining to exercise it. If man obeyed God only as a planet 
 revolves in its orbit — only as a brute eats his food — he would 
 not be man. 
 
 Man's freedom is exercised in three main departments of his 
 life — in his life as a social being, which we term his political 
 life ; in his life as a thinking being, or his intellectual life ; and 
 in his life as a moral being — his personal spiritual life. In each 
 of these departments of human activity, Christ our Great 
 Deliverer has made man free. 
 
 Christ our Lord has given to man, iSrst of all, political or 
 social freedom. He has not, indeed, drawn out a scheme of 
 government, and stamped it with His Divine authority as 
 guaranteeing freedom. We Englishmen rightly prize a 
 constitutional Monarchy as the best form of government; 
 especially when it is recommended by the character of such a 
 Sovereign as our present Queen. But while we cannot even 
 entertain the thought of abandoning our own Constitution for any 
 other, we must frankly admit that a citizen of the United States, 
 for instance, may feel himself as much at home amid the political 
 doctrines of the New Testament as any subject of her Majesty. 
 For the New Testament asserts nothing but two necessary 
 elements of man's life as a political or social being. The first is 
 the existence of some government which it is his conscientious 
 duty to obey ; whether it be an Assembly, a President, a King, 
 or an Emperor — some " higher power " to which every soul is to 
 be subject, because there is no power but of God, and the 
 " powers that be " are ordained of God. Secondly, it asserts the 
 fact of the freedom — the inalienable, indestructiljle freedom of 
 the individual Christian under any form of Government. 
 
 There had been something like freedom in the ancient heathen 
 world for particular classes, particular races, for the masters of 
 conquered provinces, and the owners of thousands of slaves. 
 The ruling races or classes acted much as they liked. They 
 jealously noted any attempt on the part of any aspiring tyrant 
 to destroy liberty. This was an external, rather than an internal, 
 a political rather than a moral liberty. The liberty of the few 
 it was, and yet the enslavement of the many. As it had no 
 moral and internal basis it was the accident, rather than the 
 spirit, of the ancient world ; and as political constitutions wore 
 out it died away, by an invariable law, into a tyranny. When 
 our Lord came on earthy all that could be called civilization 
 was under the sway of the Eoman Caesar. Yet with Him 
 also there came the germs of political liberty ; for when the 
 individual man had learned to feel the greatness and the 
 interest of life — the real horizon which stretches before the 
 
CHFRCH SERMONS. 
 
 eye of the soul, as it looks into eternity beyond the grave — the 
 depths of being within each soul, its inexhaustible capacity for 
 pleasure and for suffering, the reality and nearness of the great 
 God — and of His Divine Son — of our unseen fellow-citizens, 
 the blessed angels — the awful distinction of being ransomed by 
 the blood of the Most Holy and sanctified by the Eternal Spirit, 
 it was impossible not to feel also that in the highest sense each 
 man had rights to assert, and a bearing to maintain. And thus 
 from the first the Christian was a free man simply because he 
 was a Christian. The political or social accidents of his position 
 could not touch that unimpeded movement of his highest life in 
 which true freedom consists. 
 
 It has indeed been alleged — it will have occurred to you — that 
 as a matter of fact our Lord left the great despotism of the 
 ancient world untouched. Christ taught; He was crucified; 
 He was buried ; He rose ; He ascended ; but the C^sar Tiberius 
 still sat on the throne of the world. There never was a more 
 odious system of personal government than that of the Eoman 
 Emperors. The surviving forms of the extinct Eepublic only 
 serving to make the actual tyranny harder to bear. Yet, 
 even under such an Emperor as Nero St. Paul wrote — "Let 
 every soul be subject unto the higher powers ;" and St. Peter 
 — " Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the 
 Lord's sake; whether it be to the emperor as supreme, 
 or unto governors;" meaning the consuls and pro-consuls 
 established under the Eoman rule in Judea ; " as unto them 
 that are sent for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise 
 of them that do well." In the same way, the Apostles advised 
 Christian slaves to give obedience to their masters, as if to the 
 Lord Christ Himself — to obey, not with eye-service, as if they 
 had only to do just so much as might be insisted upon by a 
 jealous taskmaster, but with singleness of heart, as throwing 
 every energy into a conscientious "work. 
 
 It may be asked. How are such precepts compatible with the 
 assertion that Christ gave man political freedom ? The answer is 
 that He gave us a moral force which did two things : First, as I 
 have_ noted, it made every Christian, in virtue of the law of his 
 life, independent of outward political circumstances ; and next, 
 it made the creation of new civil institutions only a question of 
 time. The slave, who could not whisper to his fellow-slave 
 except when he was at rest — the slave who could not control a 
 single movement of his person throughout the long, weary day 
 —the slave whose every gesture was regulated by an implacable 
 etiquette — the slave whose life was, at least during particular 
 periods of Eoman history, literally at the disposal of liis owner — 
 he, too, if a Christian, was inwardly free. He had a sense of 
 freedom, a power of living according to the highest law of his 
 
CHUilC'H SERMONS. 
 
 being, whicli the Cixssar on his throne dreamt not of. That 
 was enough for him, at least for the present, if he knew the 
 conditions of his own happiness, and if he had divined the 
 will of his Lord. By-and-by the moral seed which had been 
 sown would bear fruit, in the emancipation of such as himself ; 
 it would bear fruit in new public institutions ; and it would 
 change the face of the world. It was not, indeed, our Lord's 
 part, like that of some agitators of the time, to promote a rising 
 among the slaves, to arouse provinces into rebellion against 
 their rulers, to issue programmes for a political or social revolu- 
 tion. That would have been at issue with the lessons of love, 
 tenderness, charity, longsuffering, which He came to teach. But 
 His one doctrine of the worth and dignity of redeemed man was 
 like leaven deposited in the corrupt mass of human society, and 
 in time the world could not but be leavened politically, as in 
 other ways. The process has been advancing for centuries ; 
 and it is still going on. We Englishmen owe much to it, 
 more, perhaps, than any nation in the world. 
 
 It has been said, I know, that if despotism ceased in this 
 country with the Stuarts, liberty is still confronted by the Statute 
 Book. Of course it is. How in the world could it be otherwise ? 
 The objection assumes that between Law and Liberty there is 
 some sort of necessary antagonism. We know, unhappily, that 
 in some foreign countries this opposition is taken for granted ; 
 that there are countries near our own in which Law and Liberty 
 are treated as implacable enemies, in which order is secured only 
 by the confiscation of all personal liberty, in which Liberty raises 
 its head only amidst the ruins of Order and of Law. We may well 
 thank God, that He has spared us such trials. When your 
 lordships come down to this Temple of Jesus Christ, you 
 represent two principles, and not merely one: you represent 
 the sacred interests of Liberty, not less than the sacred interests 
 of Law. For, Law is the guarantee of Liberty — not its enemy ; 
 and Liberty, if it knows its own interests, is ever the enthusi- 
 astic friend of Law. Each of them rests upon an ultimate fact 
 which is Divine : Liberty, upon the fact of the greatness, the 
 majesty of individual human life ; Law, upon the fact of our 
 divinely implanted social instincts, and, as a consequence, on 
 the Divine origin of society and the inevitable necessity of 
 upholding and protecting society against individual selfish 
 passion. To crush this Liberty in the name of Law is to sow 
 the seed sooner or later of social insurrection. To depreciate or 
 insult Law in tlie name of Liberty is to make of Liberty a cloke 
 of maliciousness, and to ensure its ruin. Nothing can be more 
 deplorable than a conflict betwen these sacred principles. An 
 old Psalmist, reviewing the tyrannical administration of law 
 by the Judges of Israel, says, " all the foundations of the earth 
 
CHUECH SERMONS. 
 
 were out of course." The whole social fahric literally totters to 
 its base when there is a struggle between human law and the 
 Divine law of conscience ; between law and the highest liberty. 
 To avoid this must be the end of every wise legislator, to 
 deprecate it, the heartfelt prayer of every good citizen. 
 
 Christ our Lord has given man also intellectual freedom. 
 He has enfranchised man by the gift of truth — truth in its ful- 
 ness — truth not merely relative and provisional, but absolute and 
 final. As He said Himself, " Ye shall know the truth, and the 
 truth shall make you free." Until He came, the human in- 
 tellect was, in different degrees enslaved. It was enslaved either 
 to some degrading superstition, or to some false and one-sided 
 philosophy. Man must think about himself — about his place in 
 the universe, about his destiny, about his relation to a Higher 
 Being, and if he has no reliable truth at hand "he makes the 
 best he can of attainable error. He may " change the glory of 
 the Incorruptible God into an image, made like unto corruptible 
 man : " still that he feels is better than nothing. He may listen 
 to a teacher who, while promising him liberty, is himself the 
 servant of corruption : still that is more endurable than utter 
 silence. Man's interest in the great problems which haunt him 
 betrays him to his intellectual foes ; unless he have embraced 
 the truth — unless the truth in aU its greatness and tenderness 
 has made him free. 
 
 It is undeniable, as a matter of fact, that the religion of 
 Christ gave a great impulse to human thought. It made men 
 think as they had never thought before. It made men feel what 
 it is to have within this puny body a spirit which can take the 
 measure of the spheres. When Christ, in all the glory of His 
 Godhead and His Manhood had enthroned Himself in the soul. 
 He taught man by His very presence to think worthily of the 
 greatness of God, and — despite his weakness and corruption — 
 of the greatness of man. He freed man from the narrowing 
 cramping influence of local philosophers and teachers of petty 
 schemes and theories, in the interest of classes and races. He 
 led men out into the great highways of thought, where, if they 
 would, they might know the universal Father, manifested in His 
 Blessed Son, — as the Author of aU Existence, as its one legiti- 
 mate End. 
 
 You ask me whether, as a matter of fact, Christianity does 
 not cramp intellectual liberty, by insisting upon the necessity of 
 believing Christian doctrine — whether the creeds for instance, are 
 not hostile to, as being limitations of, mental liberty. Certainly, 
 my brethren, our Lord has given us a body of truth which we 
 can, if we like, reject — which it is our happiness to believe. 
 What He has done for man in this way is embodied in His own 
 recorded teaching, in the writings of the Apostles, and finally 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 in tlie creeds of the universal Church. These documents are to 
 true intellectual liberty, just what law is to social liberty. They 
 protect : they do not cramp it. They afford a fixed point from 
 which thought may take wing. They do not enchain thought. 
 If man would think steadily and fruitfully, he must begin 
 with fixed ascertained truth. You cannot survey the surface 
 of the ocean while you yourself are tossing upon its waves. 
 You must plant your foot upon a rock in order to do so, from a 
 basis which is fixed, while all around you is perpetually shifting ; 
 and to plunge voluntarily off the rock into the waves is 
 deliberately to surrender this vantage ground. It is with creeds 
 as with law. If you repudiate law you may become the slaves 
 of every individual will. If you repudiate the creeds of 
 Christianity you may become the slaves of any petty intellectual 
 dogmatizer. In repudiating the creeds you leave the broad 
 public highways of the Christian faith, you leave the many-sided 
 and comprehensive thought of the universal Church for the 
 cramped and morbid speculations of individual thinkers ; you 
 abandon yourself to all the petty tyi-annies, to all the insolent 
 usurpations of private thought, to all the formulas of individual 
 human masters, from which Christ our Lord has set you free. 
 If it would be a mistake to tear up Magna Charta in the sup- 
 posed interests of Freedom, because Magna Charta certainly 
 recognizes the obligations of Law, it is also a mistake to 
 mutilate or disuse a great creed of the Universal Church — such 
 for instance, as the Athanasian Creed — under the idea of securing 
 mental liberty. The creed does but state that which every weU- 
 iufonned and faithful Christian wishes — must wisli — to believe. 
 Christian doctrine, is to man's very highest life of thought, just 
 what law is to his social life. To reject the one in the interests 
 of the other is to turn mental liberty into a cloke of malicious- 
 ness. 
 
 Lastly, Christ our Lord has made us morally free. He has 
 broken the chains which fettered the human wiU. He has re- 
 stored to the wiU its buoyancy and its power. Man was 
 morally free in Paradise ; but he became enslaved in conse- 
 quence of an act of disobedience which we name the Fall. Man 
 then forfeited the grace which had secured the balance and 
 proportions of his nature in its earlier and purer stage ; and he 
 could not transmit to his descendants the gift which he had 
 lost himself Man's will lost its spring — lost its superiority to cir- 
 cumstances, lost its independence of passion, lost its lofty unlike- 
 ness to mere brute instinct. Man fell, more and more fatally 
 under the dominion of surrounding nature — of his own lower 
 nature — under the dominion of his senses enslaved by nature. 
 He became by degrees what St. Paul describes him as being at 
 the beginning of the Epistle to the Eomans. He was, in the 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 sternest sense of the term a slave, because the sovereign pov,'er 
 within him — his will — had lost the secret of its freedom and 
 was enslaved. How was he to he enfranchised ? There came 
 One to him and said — " If the Son shall make you free, ye shall 
 be free indeed." What was lost to man was to be more than 
 regained by Christ. ISTot merely was the penalty of the old 
 transgressions to be paid, so that man was to be relieved from 
 captivity, but his will was to be re-invigorated by a heaven-sent 
 force, or Grace, placing it once more in harmony with the law 
 of his highest life. St. Paul speaks of this, when he says that 
 those whom Christ makes free Ijecome the servants, or slaves, 
 of righteousness. There is no Oregon territory in the moral 
 world — no tract of luioccupied neutral ground which runs 
 between the frontier of the empire of Christ and the frontier of 
 the empire of evil. They are conterminous to each other ; and 
 to be rescued from the one is to be at once a subject of the 
 other. 
 
 It is objected here that moral freredom is not worth having, 
 if it be but a service after all. " You -talk to us of freedom," 
 men say, " but what you really mean is restrictions — restrictions 
 upon action, upon inclination, upon speech : You mean obligations 
 — obligations to work, to self-discipline, to sacrifice one's self and 
 others to all the details of the code of Christian duty." My 
 brethren, you are right. Certainly we do mean that. The 
 Christian does live under a system of restrictions and obligations. 
 These prescribe for him just what his own heaven-sent nature 
 would wish him to be — would wish him to do. No doubt they 
 would be very irritating to the old nature which he has sloughed 
 off — " the old Adam, which is corrupt according to the deceitful 
 lusts." But they are entirely acceptable to, and eagerly demanded 
 by, the new man in him, "which, after God, is created in 
 righteous]iess, and true holiness." Therefore, whatever the 
 Christian may be outwardly, he is inwardly an emancipated 
 man. In obeying Christ's law he acts just as he likes to act ; 
 he acts according to that which he recognizes as the highest law 
 of his life. He obeys Law, true — the law of his God ; but then 
 he has no inclination to disobey it. Obedience is not to him a 
 yoke : disobedience would be to him a torture. His inclinations 
 are in accordance with his highest dutj^, and that wliich frees 
 him is itself a law. " The law of the spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus," says St. Paul, " hath made me free from, the law of sin 
 and death." The Christian is, as St. Peter tells us to-day, the 
 servant — in the original it is the slave — of God. But then, as 
 he would not, for all that the world can give, be anything else, 
 this service is perfect freedom. 
 
 The Antinomian x)lea that the rules and laws of the Christian 
 life are enfringements upon liberty, is another way of making 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 liberty a cloke of maliciousness. Conscientiousness, regular 
 habits of devotion, accuracy and painstaking in doing good to 
 others and for others, and in the disposal of time, and in what 
 we say in conversation, the avoidance not merely of sin, but of 
 temptation to sin and bad company, are re]3resented as incon- 
 sistent with freedom. Inconsistent they are with mere human 
 impetuosity, with mere animal impatience of restraint — with 
 that low notion of liberty which places it in the indulgence of 
 our lower instincts at the cost of our higher ones. True free- 
 dom, is the power of acting without hindrance according to the 
 higher law of our being. To do wrong, therefore, does not really 
 assert our liberty; it degrades, it enslaves us. It may have 
 been necessary — it was necessary — that we should have this 
 power of doing wrong, in order to do right freely ; but we forfeit 
 our own freedom none the less if we do aught but right. A 
 man is not really free — he is not really more free — because he 
 steals, because he swears, because he commits murder. This 
 false notion of liberty is the worst enemy of true liberty. Our 
 highest liberty, depend upon it, is secured by our free and 
 complete obedience to every detail of the Eternal Law.. 
 
 Let us look up to our great Emancipator, Who was crucified 
 and is throned in the heavens. After all, our freedom is His 
 gift. But He has left us the power, the perilous power of 
 forfeiting it, in order that we may, if we will retain it for His 
 glory. Let us see tliat we do not forfeit it, by cloaking under it 
 the maliciousness which rej^udiates Law. The laws of the land 
 protect our social liberty. The laws of the faith — the laws of 
 natural and revealed truth — protect our mental liberty. The 
 moral laws of God protect our personal spiritual liberty. All 
 true law meets in, and radiates from, the Divine Person of the 
 Everlasting Christ, the Heir of the Eather, the Eternal Legis- 
 lator, our Deliverer from all political, intellectual and moral 
 slavery. If we repudiate Law, we turn His gift of freedom 
 against Himself If through our willing obedience, we find in 
 Law the countersign of our Freedom, we are — and in this way 
 only can we' be — "free indeed." 
 

 
 ^ ^erw0tt 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L 
 
 Demi Irclaiid^s Professor of Exegesis^ 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 PREACHED AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 
 On Sunday Afternoon, April 28, 1872. 
 
 " / Imvc yet many things to say unto you, hit ye cannot hear 
 them now. Hoivbeit tvlien Be, the Spirit of truth, is come. He will 
 guide you into all truth : for He shall not spcah of Himself ; hut 
 whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak : and He will sheto 
 you things to come.'' — St. John xvi, 12, 13. 
 
 All the Gospels appointed for the Sundays after Easter arc 
 taken from that according to St. John. One only— that for the 
 first Sunday — belongs to the period which we are still 
 commemorating, the forty days which passed Ijetwcen the 
 Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ. The other four are 
 from discourses of Christ pronounced before His crucifixion; the 
 last three are from the one discourse pronoimced in the supper 
 room. 
 
 Historically speaking, then, these Gospels seem to be at 
 first sight out of ]i];ice, and in reading them we go back from 
 Easter time to a time from which we are presumal)ly separated 
 by the Crucifixion and Kesurrection ; yet looking carefully at 
 the contents of these Gospels we must see that they are strictly 
 
CHURCH SERMONB. 
 
 in place. They are preparations for the real departure, and for 
 that which shall follow it. They might have been spoken, so 
 far as the matter goes — I am, of course, saying nothing of their 
 immediate purpose — they might have been spoken d\iring the 
 great forty days just as well as on the eve of the Crucifixion. Our 
 Lord has just referred to His approaching departure, and, as was 
 natural, sorrow has filled the hearts of His disciples. In order 
 to relieve their distress He proceeds to explain to them that His 
 departure was not merely to be glorious for Himself but 
 expedient for them. If He remained upon earth, the Holy 
 Spirit the Comforter would not come to them. If He Himself 
 remained among them continuously He could not even be the 
 object of a purely spiritual apprehension, for where the sight is 
 satisfied there is not sufficient room for faith ; and so far there 
 would be no reason for the aid of that Divine and invisible 
 Friend who is the Author of all real faith in the soul of man. 
 But if Christ departed, then faith would becomic necessary, as 
 it would be possible ; and our Lord promised to send Him who 
 should be the author and giver of this faith. " If I depart 
 I will send Him unto you." 
 
 When He comes, what will He do ? First, He will achieve a 
 moral victory over the world, and thus make the task of the 
 Apostles easier. He wiU reprove the world of sin. He will 
 convince it gradually but surely of the mistake, of the crime, 
 of rejecting Jesus. Next He will reprove tlie world of righteous- 
 ness. He will teach it that there does exist a higher ideal of 
 righteousness than it had yet known ; that the precepts of Christ 
 are higher than any Pagan or Pharisaic idea which had yet come 
 before it, because the Ascension will have demonstrated, even 
 to sense, the righteousness of the ascended Christ. " Because I 
 go to the Father." Lastly, He shall reprove the world of judg- 
 ment. He will teach the world that the Crucifixion which 
 seemed to be the very victory of the Evil One, was really his 
 day of humiliation and of judgment; that, "the prince of this 
 world is judged." 
 
 But what win He teach the Church ? What will He say to 
 those Apostles who believed in Him, and who followed Him, 
 and who in losing Him appeared to be losing their all ? This is 
 the question more immediately before us. 
 
 Now, this question is partly answered by our Lord in the 
 words of the text, " I have many things to say unto you, but ye 
 cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is 
 come, He wiU guide you into all truth." And these wordc.,. 
 mark you, have a double — that is to say, a doctrinal and a 
 practical — significancx'. They teach us a great truth about 
 Christian doctrine and they teach us one or more serious duties 
 
CHUBCH SERMONS. 
 
 of the Christian life. They shew us first of all that our Lord's 
 own teaching during His sojourn upon the earth, did not em- 
 brace all necessary Christian doctrine. 
 
 Now, this is a point of great importance. It is not unusual 
 to hear persons say in the present day " I am a Christian, but 
 then I am a Christian in this sense : I accept, I believe, I obey, 
 the very words of Christ. The words of Christ are enough for 
 me; I want no more. The Apostles — St. Paul especially — 
 taught certain doctrines Avhicli Christ Himself did not teach. I 
 do not wish to be bound by those super-added doctrines. The 
 Church in her Creeds, as elsewhere, has used language which I 
 do not find in the words of Christ. I feel myself at liberty to 
 reject that language. It is enough for me to read, to admire, to 
 feel the beauty — the incomparable beauty — of the Sermon on 
 the Mount. This is genuine ; this is essential ; this is real ; 
 this is the true and imperishable Christianity ; the rest I con- 
 sider, in different degrees, superfluous. It may be very well 
 in its way, but it stands on a totally different footing. There 
 can be no serious harm in rejecting it." 
 
 Now this language, in substance at least, has been used by 
 one writer of recent notoriety, and it commends itself because 
 it sounds at first so very loyal to our Lord. It seems to give 
 implicit credit to His words ; and all the more so, because it 
 appears to refuse such credit to the words of all others ; just as 
 politeness from a particular individual to another is more 
 remarked and remarkable, when the person who shews it is 
 habitually uncivil to all the rest of the world. By using such 
 language as this, men flatter themselves that they can do two 
 things at once ; that they can cut down the Christian creed 
 to the very narrowest dimensions, and at the same time be 
 all the better and more emphatically Christian for keeping 
 strictly and exclusively to the teaching of Christ. It is, you 
 see, a raid upon the claims of Faith, conducted in the name 
 of an extraordinary reverence for tlie very Object of faith. 
 And yet here to-day, as we listen to our Lord speaking in the 
 Gospel, we find Him saying as plainly as He can, in this His last 
 discourse, that He Himself did not undertake to teach in person 
 all that was necessary for His disciples as Christians to know 
 and to believe to their souls' health. He says clearly, that He 
 had many things to tell His disciples which they could not bear 
 at the time, and which He meant to tell them not at present in 
 person but hereafter by the agency of another, the tmseen Com- 
 forter, the Holy Spirit. After He had left the world, so far as 
 t[is visible presence was concerned, He would still from His 
 invisible home speak to man. By His Spirit He would speak in 
 and through His Apostles. What the Apostles taught would be 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 His teaching, even though it should go beyond anything which 
 He had actually said Himself. For He had not said all He meant 
 to say His work of teaching was to be finished by others. To 
 the Apostles He said, " He that heareth you heareth Me ; he that 
 rejecteth you rejecteth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth 
 Him that sent Me." The man therefore who should think him- 
 self a greater Christian for keeping only to the words of 
 Christ, would — let us say it plainly — deceive himself He can- 
 not keep only to the words of Christ, if he keeps really to all 
 the words of Christ, because among the words of Christ is the 
 saying in the text, which states as clearly as possible that over 
 and above Christ's own actual teaching, there were truths to be 
 taught in His name and by His direct authority — truths which 
 as coming from Him although by the mouth of the Apostles, 
 other Christians were to receive and believe. 
 
 There are, indeed, other words of our Saviour in this very 
 discourse which at first sight seem to be at variance with the 
 statement that He had many things to say to His disciples 
 which they could not bear at the time. " Henceforth," He said, 
 "I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what 
 his lord doeth ; but I call you friends and for this reason ; 
 all things that I have heard of the Father, I have made known 
 unto you." Here, I say, there seems to be a contradiction of the 
 statement in the text, that Christ had still many things to say to 
 His disciples which they could not bear at the time, but there is 
 no contradiction in reality. So far as confidence on His side 
 went, our Lord trusted His disciples unreservedly. They were 
 admitted to His most intimate councils. But on their side 
 there was a want of spiritual comprehension. They were not 
 yet able to receive all He had to tell them, and therefore He 
 reserved till a later time what He was not willing to com- 
 municate at once. We understand this distinction in every day 
 life. Many a man has a wife, a sister, a child, from whom he 
 has literally no secrets whatever, but who is not, on that account, 
 able to share all his practical or intellectual interests. He may 
 be willing to confide everything, but he may know that to enter 
 into an account of all his thoughts at once would be a sheer 
 waste of time ; he therefore imparts a portion but defers the 
 further disclosure until a time when it is likely to be appreciated. 
 He has already made it in spirit ; He has made it in intention. 
 He does not trust the less because He does not communicate 
 secrets which would be unintelligible. The time will come — 
 it will come soon enough — when what is now unintelligible 
 will be understood. 
 
 Our Lord's teaching, then, v/as completed by that of the Holy 
 Spirit. To see how this was done, we need not to-day go beyond 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 the limits of the New Testament. " He shall take of Mine," said 
 our Lord, " and shall shew it unto you." Our Lord gave the 
 germ which the Apostles, as the mouth-pieces of the Holy 
 Spirit, expanded into doctrines. Our Lord spoke, for instance, 
 of the necessity which lay upon the Messiah that He should die, 
 in order to correspond with the words of prophecy. " The Son of 
 Man goeth as it is written of Him." He spoke of the blood of 
 the Messiah as the blood of the New Testament, Avhich was to 
 be shed for the disciples. In the Apostolic writings this is 
 expanded into the Doctrine of the Atonement. By Christ's 
 death men are represented as being brought back from the 
 captivity of sin and death. A propitiation for our sins, and 
 the sins of the whole moral world, is represented as being 
 offered by the free self-sacrifice of the Perfect Christ ; and 
 thus between God and man a peace, or reconciliation, is really 
 effected. We are accepted if we believe. 
 
 Our Lord had hinted at a new ground of acceptance with God 
 in His parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, in His eulogy 
 upon the Publican, who went down to his home justified rather 
 than the Pharisee — in His precept " When ye have done all that 
 is required of you, say we are unprofitable servants." But in 
 St. Paid's writings we find set forth and elaborated in full, the 
 doctrine of Salvation through Christ, as contrasted with the 
 previously existing notion of Salvation through strict and literal 
 obedience to the Jewish Law. " By the works of the Law 
 shall no flesh be justified." That is one side of the doctrine. 
 " By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of your- 
 selves : it is the gift of God." That is the other side of the 
 doctrine. 
 
 Again, in the visit of the Eastern Sages to the Manger of 
 Bethlehem ; in the account of the Syro-Phoenician woman ; in 
 the interview with the Greeks at the Passover ; in the statement 
 that the Good Shepherd had other sheep that were not of the fold 
 of Israel, but which He must bring in, and make one fold, under 
 one Shepherd ; we have hints that the Pagan nations were to 
 have their part, somehow, in the Divine Saviour. In St. Paul's 
 writings we find the express assertion that a spiritual revelation 
 had been made to him to the effect that the Gentiles should l)e 
 fellow-heirs, and of the same body and partakers of the promises 
 in Christ by the Gospel. The entire equality of Pagan and 
 Jewish converts withinthe Church of the New Testament ^yas 
 thus based- upon hints in our Lord's own language and practice, 
 l)ut only drawn out into a sharply defined doctrine by His great 
 Apostle 
 
 Once more Our Lord spoke about Himself, about His sinless- 
 ness, about His claims on human thouglit and human affection, 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 - about His power of enligliteniug and saving human beings, about 
 His future coming to judge all human beings — in a way which 
 we should think very extraordinary in any good man now-a- 
 days, and, indeed, fatal to his claim to goodness, because incon- 
 sistent with presumable sober fact. Yet there is no denying the 
 tremendous self-assertion of Christ our Lord, so varied as it is, so 
 persistent, so unflmching. He does not — He will not present 
 Himself as the prophets had done, only to teach men truths 
 about God and duty, and then to withdraw Himself from then* 
 hearing and sight as quietly as possible — He came to proclaim 
 Himself, to exhibit Himself, to draw all hearts, all eyes towards 
 Himself, as the AYay, the Truth and the Life to man ; as the 
 Light of the world, as He who should come to be the King and 
 Judge of all. He teaches that. He is Himself, m the last 
 resort — the subject of His own doctrines. He reveals that He 
 Himself is His principal revelation. " All men," He says, " are 
 to honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." " He who 
 hath seen Me," again He says, " hath seen the Father." What 
 could such language mean ? How was it to be explained ? If 
 it was considered unjustifiable, what claim could the speaker 
 have uj)on the love and trust of men ? If it was considered as 
 really justifiable, literally justifiable in the person of Christ, it 
 could clearly only have been upon the ground that He was 
 more than man ; and if He was more than man, then 
 what was He ? Were such claims as these to be admitted 
 on behalf of any created being ; any angel or archangel ; 
 seraph or cherub ? Or, was He, indeed of that uncreated and 
 Eternal Essence which all creatures should adore as the source 
 and end of all derived existence ? Here it was that the Holy 
 Spirit took up the words of Christ and shewed the truth to tlie 
 Apostles. These words admitted, in the last analysis, only of 
 one explanation. The speaker, if he was to be received at all, 
 was in deed and truth Divine. And accordingly the Colossians 
 were taught that " He created all things, that He was before 
 all things, and that by Him all things consist," as we have 
 heard in this afternoon's lesson ; and the Eomans, that He was 
 " God over all blessed for ever ; " and the Philippians, that to 
 Him " men, and angels, and all beneath should bow in reverence; " 
 the Hebrew-s, that He was "the brightness of His Father's 
 glory and the express image of His Person, and upholding all 
 tilings by the word of His power." And St. John, "in the 
 Spirit, on the Lord's day," sees Him enthroned as the Lamb 
 indeed, slain, and yet glorified, while all the highest intelligences 
 of heaven prostrate themselves before Him and join in the 
 ''new song " of adoration around His throne. 
 The disciples could i jt have borne the fuU splendour of these 
 
CHUECH SERMONS. 
 
 truths when tliey listened to the Sermon on the Mount, or for 
 a long time afterwards. And yet these truths were the only 
 real justification for the Sermon on the Mount. To assume a 
 power to revise the law given from Sinai, or even to approve 
 and ratify that law, implied that the speaker was one who 
 claimed to be equal in authority with Him who gave that law 
 to Moses. These things understood not the disciples at first ; 
 but after Jesus had been glorified, and the Spirit had been 
 given, it became clear what was really meant. In the human 
 sense of the words, no man could say that Jesus was the Lord ; 
 but when the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth came, He guided 
 men into all truth. 
 
 So in many other instances, these illustrations of the Divine 
 person of Jesus Christ, might be immensely extended, but 
 enough has been said to shew that if the New Testament is to 
 be believed as a whole, our Lord's teaching was incomplete ; and 
 further, that He Himself knew it, and meant it to be so. 
 
 And this brings me to the second and concluding part of 
 the subject, Why was our Lord's teaching thus incomplete ; 
 incomplete according to His own will and announcement ? 
 Why did He not Himself teach all that could be properly called 
 Christian doctrine ? Why did He content Himself with laying 
 the foundation of His religion, leaving the building to be finished 
 according to His own express design and appointment by other 
 hands ? 
 
 The answer is that the same motives which led Him to teach 
 men at all, led Him also to impose these limits, and restraints, 
 and delays upon His process of teaching. He taught men to 
 emerge from their ignorance because He loved them too well to 
 leave them in it. He taught men gradually, and as they were 
 able to bear the strong light of truth, because He loved men too 
 well to shock or to blind them by the sudden blaze of that 
 truth, for which in its fulness they were as yet unprepared. He 
 did not expect that if the Christian revelation was placed before 
 men at the first in its completeness they could receive it; 
 because He knew what was in man. He knew the deep-rooted 
 prejudices of education ; He knew the power of fixed mental habit ; 
 He knew the force of the associations of yoimger days ; He knew 
 what the traditions of a great religion can do to destroy all the re- 
 ceptive power the flexibility in the soul of man, and therefore He 
 was too wise and too considerate to expect so much of him. Just 
 as the Sun does not flash forth in a moment out of the darkness 
 of night, but gives warning of his approach, and then rises 
 gradually and diffuses a vast body of light before we see him 
 rise in all his glory above the line of the horizon ; so it was 
 with our Saviour. The full understanding of who He was, and 
 
_ 1 
 
 CHTTRCH SERMONS. 
 
 what He came to do, was preceded by a kind of twilight. 
 That twilight was itself His own work, and it brightened more 
 and more, moment by moment, towards the day. He rose amid 
 the mists of imperfect apprehensions — and misapprehensions 
 — as to who and what He was ; and not until He was high in 
 the heavens did He permit the full truth to break upon the 
 intelligence of the world. In this He was true to God's provi- 
 dential action throughout human history. All along the course 
 of the ages, God has taught men gradually. The heathen nations 
 were taught, what little truth they knew amongst their mass of 
 errors, by a succession of great minds raised up each one of 
 them, in the providence of God, to advance them a single step 
 towards the light, as men who had so long lived in darkness 
 could bear it. 
 
 The Jewish Scriptures consisted of a long series of revelations, 
 comprising first the Patriarchal, then the Mosaic, and then the 
 Prophetical, each an adva,nce upon its predecessor, and all 
 leading up to the final and complete revelation of God in 
 Christ. When He who had in divers ways spoken to the fathers 
 by the prophets, in the last days of the world's history, as they 
 seemed to the writer, spake by His Son. 
 
 This gradual unfolding of the mind of God throughout all 
 the ages, to the last great revelation that He made, is based 
 throughout, at every step of it upon His tender and loving con- 
 sideration for human weakness. " I have yet many things to 
 say unto you but ye cannot bear them now," is written over 
 every earlier and imperfect revelation; not to depreciate its 
 value, but to explain why it is not fuller than it is ; to shew 
 why God, who has thus spoken, is silent until He speaks again. 
 
 And now observe the practical lessons which follow from this. 
 
 What should be the true principle of the religious education 
 of children and uninstructed persons ? To be solid, all such 
 education should be gradual It should be given only as the 
 learner's mind becomes acclimatized to the atmosphere of 
 religious truth. Our Lord's tenderness in teaching religious truth 
 only as men could bear it, was copied by the Apostles. We 
 find distinctions drawn between the various grades. First, we 
 have the " babes in Christ," those who were just beginning to 
 learn the first lessons of Christian truth and duty. Then we 
 come to the strong and perfect men who have completed, or 
 ought to have completed their Christian education. To the first 
 was given that elementary form of Christian instruction which 
 frou] its easiness of reception the Apostle terms "milk." To tlie 
 second was imparted a much more comprehensive instruction in 
 the mysteries of the Christian Creed and in the range of Christian 
 
CHURCH SERMONS 
 
 duty; and this the Apostle, keeping up the metaphor, terms 
 " strong meat." 
 
 This double order of teaching so instituted by the Apostles, 
 passed at once into tlte practice of the Christian Church, and 
 the catechumens, that is the early converts, were treated differ- 
 ently from the faithful who after Baptism and Communion were 
 in full fellowship with the whole life and thought of the Christian 
 Church. The catechumens it was judged, could only bear one 
 form of spiritual nourishment, but the faithful would be satisfied 
 with nothing less than an altogether different diet. Tins principle, 
 this prudent principle, holds good of secular education. It is 
 too much lost sight of in some of the modern methods. In 
 these days the old and deeper idea of education as a means of 
 training and exercising the faculties of the mind so as to enable 
 the educated boy or man, to deal with any subject that might 
 come before him in the way of duty has been abandoned, only 
 too largely for that modern idea of education, which simply loads 
 the pupil's mind with huge quantities of unmastered and un- 
 manageable learning, and not seldom becomes the fruitful cause 
 of severe cases of intellectual indigestion. Boys are expected 
 to know something about everything. In the effort to achieve 
 universal knowledge, they arrive at knowing nothing thoroughly. 
 And the consequence is that, while they can talk with striking 
 and Unnatural facility on a great many more subjects than boys 
 did forty or fifty years ago, their mental faculties are really less 
 braced and sharpened, and their actual capacity, it is to be 
 feared, for meeting the requirements of life, is considerably less 
 than that of their predecessors. 
 
 So in teaching religious truth, parents are not unfrequently 
 apt to fall into the same mistake. They want to teach every- 
 thing at once : they end by teaching nothing. They manage to 
 forget the primary and necessary duty of every teacher, that of 
 placing himself l^y an act of sympathy and imagination as nearly 
 as he possibly can, in the mental position of the pupil or child. 
 They think chiefly, or only of what interests themselves in 
 religion; not of what might he interesting or intelligible to minds 
 just opening into life, and catching, with no little difficulty, the 
 liorizons of truth and duty which first meet its gaze. They are 
 interested in this or that controversy of the day, and thoy 
 expect their children to be interested also. They are 
 accustomed to express themselves on religious subjects in such 
 and such abstract phraseology and they expect their children to 
 understand it. They have arrived at this or that idea or im- 
 pression most precious in itself as to the hemousness of Sin — 
 as to the value of our Lord's ^work — as to the signs of God's 
 favour bestowed upon more or less holy souls, and they expect 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 their children to do so too. But what is the consequence ? 
 Either the children are alienated from all real religion when 
 they grow uj^, owing to the thoughtless hut well-meant eagerness 
 with which, without anything to make it intelligible — without 
 any adequate interpretation — it has been thrust on them in 
 their earliest years; or else these children learn that most 
 fatal of all the lessons that can be learnt in connection with 
 religion, to talk about it easily, without thinking what they 
 say. They learn to allow religious i^lirases, to outrun religious 
 thoughts, religious conviction and purposes, and so they create 
 a habit of insincerity in dealing with the most serious of all 
 subjects ; which is only too certain in the long run, depend upon 
 it, to sap the springs of real faith and life. 
 
 One practical lesson from this is to bear in mind that up to 
 our very last day, God is teaching each one of us through the 
 action of other mmds, — through all the events of life. Each 
 successive stage of life up to the very last, leaves some 
 truth untaught. Down to the end of the very longest life, 
 some truth may be learnt that was untaught before. . We 
 are daily adding to our experience. We never till we draw our 
 last breath complete our education. As in the first flush of 
 youth we exult in a sense of animal vivacity or of mental 
 buoyancy, Christ from His throne of justice and truth looks 
 down and says, " I have many things to say to thee young man, 
 or young woman, but thou canst not bear them now." If He 
 were to teach us all at once, compressing into one awful and 
 overwhelming lesson all the stern and varied experiences of 
 the future, it would be too much for us to bear ; too much for 
 our weakness ; too much for our proneness to despair. What 
 life is and means as the very threshold of Eternity, What are 
 the high and sacred uses of its disappointments and its sufferings ? 
 Why it is better to suffer for doing what is right than to succeed 
 by doing what is wrong. What the events, the persons, and the 
 things of Time are worth' when compared with the Eternal reali- 
 ties ? These, the deepest lessons of life ; lessons which can only be 
 learned gradually, and in most cases painfully. Friends die ; 
 health Isecomes weak ; life loses year by year, its early promise ; 
 the brilliant spring-tide issues in a hot and arid summer, 
 in a prosaic and darkening autumn ; and thus at each step the 
 soul is thrown back from the outward and the passing, upon 
 the inward and the Eternal. Gradually and imperceptibly 
 one truth leads the way in the mind to another ; one difficulty 
 surmounted or interpreted, shews the way to explain and over- 
 master another. It would have seemed impossible beforehand ; 
 so we think, as we look back ; but as a fact, God has taught us 
 all the more surely because He did not teach us all this at once; — 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 because He is so tender, so deliberate, as we have often thought, 
 so hesitating in giving us His successive lessons. We think, 
 it may be of the right hand and of the left in our early day 
 dreams, but He waits for us by the way to tender to us at His 
 own time, the cup of which He drank Himself, to admin i-^ter the 
 baptism with which He was baptized. What can the soul do 
 but breathe the prayer ; — 
 
 *' Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom 
 Lead Thou me on. 
 Keep Thou my feet. I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene. One step's enough for me." 
 
 He has many things to say to us which we cannot bear as 
 yet ; but He knows best when life's deepest lessons will be most 
 needed by us. AVe have only to do two tilings ; to listen for His 
 voice, and to obey it. 
 

 Cfiarrfi ^Fpmotis 
 
 @ 
 
 % ^zxman 
 
 CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.O.L., 
 
 Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis^ 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. PHILIP'S CHURCH, BATTERSEA PARK, 
 
 On Sunday, May 26, 1872. 
 
 (At the General Ordination of the Lord Bishop of Winchester. ) 
 
 For I will not see you noio hy the ivay ; hut I trust to tarry 
 awhile with you, if the Lord permit. But I will tarry at Ephesus 
 until Pentecost. For a great door and effectual is opened unto 
 me, and there are many adversaries." 1 Corinthians xvi, 7-9. 
 
 It is from incidental passages like these in the Apostle's 
 writings that we obtain the deepest and most vivid insight 
 into the writer's mind and character. Amongst uninspired 
 writings it is not in formal depositions or official documents that 
 that which constitutes personal character and life makes itself felt. 
 Few persons, I apprehend, would be found disposed to endorse the 
 paradox of a modern historian who tells us, that the character of 
 King Henry the Eighth is to be studied most advantageously in 
 the preambles to his Acts of Parliament. The great charm of 
 private correspondence, and the one reason which can in many 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 cases justify or explain its publication is, that it is a revela- 
 tion of human character. In their public capacities, two men 
 of profoundly different character will say exactly the same thing, 
 and in the same way, the truth being, that for the time, all 
 personal characteristics are dropped. It is the office, or the 
 circumstances, or the necessities of the case that really speaks. It 
 is not the man. In private correspondence however you see a man 
 as he is. He writes what he thinks, and what he feels from moment 
 to moment. His enthusiasm, his impulses, his hopes, his fears, his 
 attractions and repulsions are all represented by turns. They are 
 uttered without design, or, more correctly perhaps, they escape from 
 him in spite of himself, and as you read you feel that you are 
 in contact, not with a formal and systematic composition, but 
 with the soul of the writer ; the soul in all its strength, or in 
 all its weakness, in all its thoroughness, or all its inconsis- 
 tency, in all its inertness, or all its energy and resolution. 
 
 Now, it is one of the gTcatest attractions of St. Paul's epistles, 
 that while they embody the great and essential doctrines of 
 Christianity, they also abound in those incidental passages or 
 elements which keep the character and figure of the writer con- 
 tinually before us. It is this which enables us all, but especially 
 those of us who have succeeded in whatever measure or degree 
 in furthering the Apostle's work, to feel towards him as a per- 
 sonal friend, just as if eighteen centuries did not divide him 
 from us ; just as though we had him now here with us in London 
 or Southwark, or we were back with him in one of the ancient 
 cities of the Levant. 
 
 The passage before us weU illustrates this observation. The 
 Apostle reveals his intention to remain in Ephesus until the 
 Pentecost, and thus shows to us a feature of his character, well 
 worthy of our consideration upon an occasion like the present. 
 "But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great 
 door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many ad- 
 versaries." 
 
 Now here we have first of all, an announcement of the deci- 
 sion the Apostle had come too, and secondly, the reasons upon 
 which that decision is based. In the determination of the 
 Apostle to remain at Ephesus till Pentecost, let us recognize 
 first, the Apostle's power or faculty of making up his mind in 
 the face of strong counter-balancing motives. There was enough 
 in the nature and circumstances of his life at this time to have 
 made him desirous to leave Ephesus at a moment's notice when 
 he wrote these lines. It would have been easy to frame a long 
 catalogue of reasons, each of which would have exercised over 
 the mind of any man, but such as the Apostle Paul, an 
 almost commanding power, St. Paul, as has been pointed out 
 
CHrnCH SERMONS. 
 
 by a recent critic, liad come back to Ephesus from a visit to 
 Coriiitli, and he had arrived in low spirits. He had gone on 
 account of the state of the Corinthian Chnrch, of which he 
 had heard a bad account, bnt had fonnd matters \\'orse than he 
 expected. In an Epistle, which has been lost to us, he had 
 ordered that certain members whose conduct had been the 
 cause of great public scandal should be excluded from the 
 Church. The Church, too, was divided by the bitterest party 
 spirit. That portion of the Christian community which desired 
 to retain as much as possible of the old law of the Jews was 
 attempting to undermine the teaching of St. Paul, whom they 
 considered too enthusiastic. Others, although he was a pupil 
 of Gamaliel, could discover nothing interesting in his teaching. 
 Another party refused allegiance in several matters of Church 
 Government, while a fourth section denied all connection with 
 his party, and applied to a higher name for a head, tlius show- 
 ing that they had carried party spirit to a greater pitch of 
 narrowness than the rest. There was also a party — whether 
 known to the Apostle or not it is impossible to say — which 
 denied the resurrection of the dead, and regarded the Gospel 
 teaching as a kind of refined Epicureanism. This party though 
 professing to be connected with the Church lived in open 
 opposition to her teachings. The Law Courts again were con- 
 stantly occupied with suits brought against one another by 
 litigious members of the community ; the gifts of the Holy 
 Spirit were made into occasions for the exhibition of the 
 pettiest of personal disputes ; and Christian women, forgetting 
 their higher instincts, and the customs of their country which 
 embodied those instincts, came forward unveiled to make public 
 speeches in the assemblies of the Church. It seemed as if the 
 Greek character and nature, brilliant but paradoxical, had 
 carried all their resources of finesse and intrigue, all their genius 
 for controversy, and aU their profound distaste for personal im- 
 provement, into the heart of the Church at Corinth. The Apostle 
 may well have felt that he ought to be on the spot where there 
 was so much mischief to prevent, and to cure. It must have 
 cost him much pain, with all his burning sympathy for his 
 Master's cause, to have set aside the claims of Corinth even for 
 six weeks. But still he did, though he must have known that 
 there was one voice to which all the Church there would 
 listen ; one heart to which aU would sooner or later respond ; 
 one will to which all would bend. His presence at Corinth was 
 of the first necessity, but there was a higher necessity for him 
 to be elsewhere, so he struck the balance at once. Indecision 
 may be a characteristic of a weak mind, but in this case the 
 Apostle looked at the matter in the practical way every one 
 
 G 2 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 who lias a mission for advancing the religion of Christ must 
 do. For we have to work for a canse which can never be 
 universally popular and in the presence of an enemy who 
 never sleeps, and liy whom any errors we may commit are 
 certainly and innnediately taken advantage of. 
 
 There is no doubt that prompt decision as to the right course 
 is at times a matter of the greatest difficulty, but we who serve 
 Christ Jesus our Lord in a sense different from other men, dare 
 not abdicate the duty — the great duty — of decision. If rash 
 resolution be wrong, the absence of all resolution is not right. 
 The man asserts his innate manhood, the Christian puts forth 
 the power of the indwelling Christ, when feeling that God's 
 eiye is upon him, and that he shall one day stand before 
 the great Judgment Seat, he makes up his mind upon this 
 matter of great importance ; when taking all his passions, feel- 
 ings, hopes, fears, ambitions, and enthusiasms well in hand, 
 he proclaims from amidst the very chaos of tumult within 
 him, the sentence of that sovereign faculty of his race, the 
 sentence of his will — of a will placed under the guidance 
 of a well instructed conscience. St. Paul has told us in one 
 place, " I find a law, that when I would do good evil is present 
 with me ; for I delight in the law of God after the inward 
 man ; but I see another law in my members warring against 
 the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the 
 law of Sin which is in my members," but here we see him, 
 not hesitating, not irresolutely parleying with countervailing 
 motives, still less resistlessly yielding the mastery to impulse, but 
 forming his purpose calmly. His resolution is formed, but 
 yet he has it well in hand. He knows how far to let the 
 reins go and when to draw them in, and he says, * I will tarry 
 at Ephesus until Pentecost." 
 
 Now, upon what reasons was this decision founded ? Upon 
 two ; and of these the first is the greatness of the opportunity 
 afforded by the approaching festival o- Pentecost at Ephesus. 
 St. Paul in his vivid and expressive way calls the opportunity a 
 *door," by which he hoped might enter all those who were 
 nearest and dearest to his heart. Nay he intensifies his 
 metaphor almost at the risk of destroying it, for he tells us 
 it is not only a " great door " but that it is " effectual," as if the 
 whole act were instinct with its motive, as though it were im- 
 possible for the Apostle notto endeavour to make the most of every 
 opportunity. ' Tt had not always been thus at Ephesus. St. Paul 
 must have heard much about the fervid teaching of the eloquent 
 ApoUos, following upon the labours of Aquila and Priscilla,but yet 
 it must have cheered his heart to have the prospect of baptizing 
 more converts to the influence of the Holy Ghost. Accordingly 
 
CHURCH SERMONS 
 
 he resolved to stay at Epliesus, and lie made the Jewish Syna- 
 gogue in that city the starting point of his activity. Saturday after 
 Saturday for three months, lie went there preaching and arguing 
 — holding what in these times we should call a series of " Con- 
 ferences." — upon the religion of God, and salvation through Jesus 
 Christ. As a pupil of Gamaliel he well knew the way to approach 
 the hearts of his countrymen. He knew that the kingdom of the 
 Messiah, as shadowed forth in the sacred writings, was a very dif- 
 ferent thing from the hard, dry, political institution, the idea of 
 which was then popular among the Jewp 
 
 But though St. Paul preached to ears which did not mean to 
 be convinced, and though the Ephesians would not do justice to 
 the preacher, they could not afford to treat him with contempt. 
 Accordingly his preaching was denounced with insult. It was 
 then that he determined to separate himself from the main body 
 of the Jews, and thenceforth he taught his disciples in one of 
 those side wings or buildings usually attached to the public baths 
 and gymnasiums, and which was frequented by Tyrannus, who 
 was probably a teacher of rhetoric. There he was day by day, 
 sometimes speaking to Pagans, and sometimes to his own 
 countrymen, upon the nature and claims of the Gospel. There 
 would be found men from all parts of Asia to which the news of 
 St. Paul's teaching had penetrated, and there would be discussed 
 the miracles and remarkable events that we read of in the Acts 
 of the Apostles ; the public discomfiture of the seven sons of 
 the priest Sceva, who attempted to make use of the sacred name 
 of Jesus in their incantations ; and the burning of the costly 
 books filled -with, the recipes of the magicians. It was felt in 
 fact that a new moral force had gone forth from that spot, and 
 society was fermenting all round. No one would have felt this 
 more than St. Paul. " A great door and effectual (he says) is 
 opened unto me." The whole mass of Jewish thought was 
 heaving with agitation before his mind's eye. Men were asking 
 all round him. What was really truth ; what was worth living for ; 
 what was worth dying for — if there were any such thing at all ? — 
 There was a wish to base life, if it could be done, upon a moral 
 rock of some kind. There was an impatience of all that was not 
 real. These effects were not the Gospel itself, but they were pre- 
 paratory for the Gospel. The soil had to be broken up by theso 
 means before the heavenly seed could be sown with any proba- 
 bility of growth. It m no slight part ot our responsibility to 
 make the most of every opportunity for doing our Master's work. 
 It is not too much to say that every one of us has some such 
 opportunities sooner or later. We may have perhaps to worl^ at 
 first without encouragement in the synagogue, but a school of 
 Tyrannus comes to all of us at last. To fail to make the most of 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 our opportunity wlien it does come is possible enough from our 
 human weakness ; but to fail to try ; to make no effort to com- 
 prehend that the opportunity has arrived, to be content to glide 
 down the stream of life as though there was nothing particular in 
 it, nothing that would have any bearing upon our highest good or 
 that of others, implies some grave disease in our moral and 
 spiritual constitution, if not indeed that deadly apathy for which 
 the stern realities of spiritual life and death have no meaning. 
 St. Paul, according to all testimony, was constantly saying or 
 doing something, and that he was constantly succeeding was for 
 this among other reasons, that he was always alive to opportu- 
 nities of success. 
 
 The second reason given by the Apostle for remaining 
 at Ephesus until the Pentecost was the difficulty of the situation, 
 "There, said he, are many adversaries." To begin with, 
 there were of course the Jews of the synagogue, who would 
 not have forgotten the circumstances which had led to the seces- 
 sion of the school of Tyrannus. Then there would be the mass 
 of turbulent spirits reduced to something like decorum by 
 military force but always ready to break out again, and who 
 could command the services of some powerful adherents. Already 
 the Apostle discerned the coming storm. He did not suppose for 
 a moment that the religion of the Crucified One could make 
 itself a home with that joyous, pleasure-seeking, easy-tempered, 
 and superstitious population without a struggle. Sooner or later 
 it must come into conflict with the classes who were deeply 
 concerned in abasing it even to the death. There were at this 
 time a large number of skilled workmen who lived by making- 
 miniature copies of the inner shrine of the Temple of Diana, 
 These copies were purchased by visitors and placed as ornaments 
 upon the tables or elsewhere in the interior of the houses of the 
 wealthy All these men were of course interested in preventing 
 the triumph of Christianity, They were bound to the worship 
 of Diana by the double tie of old association and commercial 
 enterprise, and such a combination in favour of any very good 
 or very bad system is, as a matter of experience, always exceed- 
 ingly strong Then, again the working men throughout Asia 
 Minor as shown by some inscriptions that have been only lately 
 discovered, were almost universally enrolled in guilds or trades 
 unions, so that when the interests of any particular trade were 
 assailed, nothing was easier than to arouse opposition of a very 
 serious kind. St. Paul well knowing of the existence of frater- 
 nities of men like Demetrius, must have had reason to anticipate 
 such scenes as the riot at the theatre being at least very probable. 
 But the thought of coming difficulties acted only as a stimulus to 
 him to take advantage of tliis opportunity for Christian work and 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 Christian virtue. For what does virtue mean hut manly moral 
 force put forward under difficulties, in accordance with the rule 
 of right, and put forward more frequently when surrounded l>y 
 such difficulties. In fact difficulty is necessary to the full 
 development of virtue, just as the soft atmosphere of unimpeded 
 success fosters slowly, yet surely, moral effeminacy and moral 
 decay. Therefore it was that St. Paul looked at these " many 
 adversaries " not only as being no drawback, but as a positive 
 attraction. They raised v^^ithin him not any mere spirit of 
 natural brute combativeness, but that spiritualized military 
 temper which he tells us in his Epistle to the Ephesians is one 
 great characteristic of the true Christian. He was a soldier by 
 profession and had become a good soldier of Jesus Christ. He 
 therefore felt that it was a good thing to be on the field of battle 
 and taking note of the strength of the enemy. For every 
 opponent there was a possible convert ; every opponent there, was 
 at any rate in the last resort but an impotent antagonist. " Who 
 shall separate us, he cries at last, from the love of Christ ? 
 Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or naked- 
 ness, or peril, or sword ? Nay, in all these things we are more 
 than conquerors through Him that loved us ; for I am persuaded 
 that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
 powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor 
 cLpth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from 
 the love of God which is in Christ Jesus onr Lord." 
 
 But, my brethren, this solemn occasion speaks for itself. "Words 
 are often out of place when men's hearts are full ; when there is 
 much that flits before the eye of the soul which words cannot 
 compass. Those of us who are here this morning as candidates for 
 orcli.xcition will understand something of that which St. Paul 
 speaks of in the text. Like him we have arrived at a conclusion. 
 We have made up our minds upon a matter that binds us for life, 
 just as he made up his mind to remain six weeks longer in his 
 Master's service at Ephesus. God help us now and hereafter to 
 say " I have paid Thee my vows which I promised with my lips 
 and spake with my heart." 
 
 There may be much to plead for our following other lines of 
 life. We do not deny that there are ways of serving God in 
 secular employments, and that secular employments may be 
 hallowed by religious motives. But Ave have chosen our Ephesus. 
 We have put our hands to the plough, and by God's grace we 
 will not look back. We want no " Clerical Disabilities' Act ■"* 
 to relieve us from what is a voluntary and most welcome service. 
 We have put on the uniform of the Captain of our Salvation, the 
 sacrificed Saviour, and we will wear no other for all the world 
 can give. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 But " there are many adversaries." Certain]y tliere are. The 
 man who takes Holy Orders in the present day does so under 
 very different circumstances from those who did so forty, twenty, 
 or even ten years ago. It is undeniably more difficult to meet 
 a clergyman's responsibilites now than formerly. More is 
 expected in personal exertion and in ministerial efficiency and 
 ability. The air, too, is filled with controversies which may be 
 apj)roached in many ways, but which can only be handled in the 
 eye of eternal truth in one way. The Eomish Church has never 
 confronted the English Church upon so serious a scale as now 
 in every rank of society, Nonconformity and Infidelity have 
 never before so united theu^ forces against all our efforts to give 
 education to the people. The future is pregnant with possibili- 
 ties. Who will attempt to say what will be the outward status 
 of the Church of England twenty or even ten years hence ? Who 
 can look forward now as our forefathers may be assumed to 
 have done, to a settled order of events which shall outlast our 
 time, which shall subsist almost unimpaired when we shall 
 have gone to our account ? Out of those days of tranquil and 
 assured repose, we have — it is God's will and providence — passed 
 into this very different period when aU around us betrays a 
 foolish impatience of what has been, and what is ; when change, 
 as change, is spoken of as if it had an inherent, I had almost 
 said a sacramental, virtue ; when blasts of destructive infidel 
 thought sweep though the intellectual atmosphere, paralyzing in 
 numbers of simple souls — even of most devout members — some 
 of the most venerable memories and affections of our Church ; 
 when men are accustomed to look at favourably, to think of 
 patiently, and even in some cases to welcome, the pulDlic abandon- 
 ment and repudiation of some of the most authoritative and sacred 
 landmarks of our Faith. 
 
 This is a time, too, when moral and social ideas are not 
 less challenged than higher and eternal truths ; when Society, 
 if it speak its mind, is profoundly troubled and haunted by a 
 terrible suspicion that it may yet have to reckon with foes 
 ,more serious than any it has encountered since it rose a 
 thousand years ago out of the chaos of barbarous life. And 
 yet beyond any other class of men who deal, or ought to 
 deal, with the gravest problem of the world of thought, — 
 who are or ought to be more directly or intimately 
 interested than any other class of men in the material as weU as 
 the spiritual well-being ©f the people, the Clergy must be 
 instinctively alive to these grave questions. As a matter of 
 fact, I can say from experience, they do deter many men who in 
 other days would have taken Holy Orders, from doing so now. 
 Do not let us forget this. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 But it is better thus. The strength of the Church does not 
 consist in the number of pages of its " Clerical Directory," but in 
 the sum total of moral and spiritual force which she has at com- 
 mand. It is well that we should look upon the difficulties of 
 our time as far as we can, as did St. Paul in his. 
 
 They are, I dare to say, as nothing to the man who has an honest 
 heart and a good positive belief For after all, my brethren, why 
 is it that we do take Orders ? Is it not because we believe and 
 are assured that eighteen centuries ago, an event, or a series of 
 events occured, compared with which all that has since occurred, 
 all that can possibly happen even in our eventful days, must be 
 utterly insignificant ? Is it not that like St. Paul at Ephesus, 
 we believe and are sure that the Everlasting Son of God really 
 entered this world under the ordinary conditions of space and 
 time, and died upon the Cross for the sins of all men ? That He 
 arose from the grave where they had laid Him when He was 
 really dead ? That He ascended to the heavenly throne and 
 has been there pleading for us ever since, and is doing so at this 
 moment ? That God has given us His Spirit and His Sacra- 
 ments ? Is it not because we are convinced that out of the 
 infinite treasury of His love He has done this for us — for each of 
 us, — and that the very least we can do is to yield Him our most 
 free and cheerful services under such circumstances as He may 
 will, in storm or in sunshine, in battle or in repose, in the times 
 of hopefulness, or in the days of despondency ? To say that it 
 matters little when or where, is surely but to say that when seen 
 with a nearer horizon, the tangled web of Ecclesiastical and 
 Political change dwarfs down to its true proportions, and that we 
 shall see nothing before us but Christ crucified, and souls perish- 
 ing all around from lack of knowledge, or lack of grace ; that it 
 must be our duty, ais it was the duty of our predecessors, the 
 duty of the great Apostle himself, the grand duty of each one of 
 us, to bring them within our reach by whatever moral or intel- 
 lectual instruments we can command ; to lead them to the foot 
 of the atoning Cross ; to get them a share in the sprinkling of the 
 cleansing blood ; to make them know something of that power 
 and wisdom of God which wiU be to the end of time a stumbling 
 block to the self-righteous, and foolishness to the self-opiniated. 
 
 For this blessed work, blessed in its usefulness to others, 
 blessed in its reflex effects upon those who undertake it earnestly, 
 and in humble dependence upon God's grace, we have now, I 
 dare to say, great opportunities. The difficulties of our time will 
 not stop us ; they will rather stimulate and assist us. The evils 
 attending this great work, if we must call them so, are not so 
 formidable after all. Eome has recently by her own act con- 
 demned herself to the task of advocating the infallibility of a 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 long list of conflicting and self-contradictory facts and things, 
 ruritanism — to regard our work in all its phases — while it still 
 clutches the jjietest formulas of its earlier and better times with 
 convulsive eagerness, is more and more surely forfeiting its own 
 vitality as it sinks down year by year into that pit of scepticism 
 winch" its stern refusal of the sacramental uses, graces, and 
 doctrines of the Church has already undeniably prepared for it. 
 And so of those other forms of thought which arc the implacable 
 enemies of all belief in the name of God and a divine Christ ; I 
 they cannot in the long run satisfy a being like Man, who has j 
 within himself the instinctive presentiment, and the ineffaceable ! 
 evidence of his own. immortality ; INIan for whom the ideas of ! 
 moral light, and coming judgment, ideas which God, revealed in \ 
 Christ, can alone adequately explain and satisfy, can never be j 
 resolved into " a mere sentiment." j 
 
 The state of things around us now, therefore, is in ouj favour. | 
 We have a better chance of gaining a hearing for our Divine 
 Master than our predecessors of former days, when thought was 
 stagnant, and habits and manners fixed ; when men frequently 
 were what they were for no other reason but a traditional one ; 
 when critics and theorists had not exercised themselves upon the 
 problems which to-day agitate the human mind, without affording 
 the Truth even an opportunity of speaking for itself, and then of 
 triumphing. Those who are farthest from the Truth have often 
 profound, though yet undeveloped and unrecognized sympathies 
 with it. The King of the intellectual world, Jesus Christ, is 
 ever ruler, even in the midst of His enemies, and the conditions 
 of human life do not alter. Men live, and suffer, and die just as 
 they did 1800 years ago. The real significance of this short and 
 mysterious passage which we call Life is not obliterated by 
 material civilization, or by the mental theories of our day. 
 
 God grant, my brethren, that be the scene of your labours what 
 and where it may, you may teach and act, — that we may all 
 teach and act, — as men who know that they are ministering as 
 dying men to dying men ; and so that your lives' anxieties and 
 your light afilictions which are but for a moment — should such 
 in God's providence await you — may work out for you a far more 
 exceeding and eternal weight of glory through the boundless 
 grace and mercy of Christ Jesus our Lord. 
 

 
 % S t r m It 
 
 m^ Um. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Deafi IrelancVs Professo?- of Exegesis, 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 
 On Sunday Afternoon, August 4, 1872. 
 
 " Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I wo2iIcl not 7wve 
 you ignorant." — 1 Corintliians xii, 1, 
 
 Like the world at large, tlie Church of Christ has had in every 
 age of its existence a certain number of what would now 1 e 
 called " questions of the day " under discussion. Some points 
 as to the nature of its worlc amongst human souls, or as to its 
 constitution, or as to its doctrines, or as to its formularies, or as to 
 its relations to human society at large, or as to its relations to 
 the public thouglit of the time, have been raised and brought 
 prominently before the minds of men — have been discussed 
 with more or less warmth until at length a settlement has been 
 arrived at. 
 
 When St. Paul wrote this Epistle there were several questions 
 of this kind in the Church at Corinth. There was one as to how 
 to deal with a gross criminal case ; anotlier as to the dress and 
 behaviour of Christian women; another respecting ihe adminis- 
 tration of the ordinance i 1 the Holy Communion ; a fourth as to 
 the advisability of marriage under certain circumstances ; and 
 this question respecting what were then termed the " Spiritual 
 gifts." When St. Paul says "that he would not have the 
 Corinthians ignorant concerning spiritual gifts," he certainly does 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 not mean tliat he would not have them ignorant of the whole 
 matter. There was, for them at least, very little danger or 
 probability of that, because at least within the Church at 
 Corinth, it is clear enough that this question of the spiritual 
 gifts would be daily discussed, and with no little eagerness. 
 But St. Paul's expression (which occurs also elsewhere) is an 
 intentionally reserved one. It expresses something less than 
 the writer's whole meaning, while yet it suggests that meaning 
 most fully to his readers. St. Paul means that he is very 
 anxious indeed that the Corinthians should have an accurate and 
 complete knowledge about these gifts, about their origin, about 
 their purpose, about their importance. 
 
 Now the particular gifts to which St. Paul was referring at 
 Corinth, were not exactly, as a whole, like anything that 
 is to be witnessed in the Church of Christ at the present 
 day. They were not, mdeed, mere miracles, because, strictly 
 speaking, nothing can be more miraculous than any act 
 whereby the Divine and Eternal Spirit infuses into the 
 created soul some quality or grace which it did not before 
 possess — such, for instance, as love or peace — but looked 
 at from without, they were much more striking. They pro- 
 duced effects which challenged the attention of the eye and 
 the ear, and were calculated to fire the imagination. St. Paul 
 mentions nine of these gifts in his letters to the Corinthians. Of 
 these the "word of knowledge," the " word of wisdom to prophecy," 
 were such as might be found, to no inconsiderable extent, diffused 
 through the Church of Christ at the present day. The " word 
 of wisdom " would seem to mean an eminent power of appre- 
 hending revealed truth in its relation towards the general field of 
 human thought and human knowledge, or, — as we should say, — 
 of apprehending it philosophically. The " word of knowledge " 
 implies an insight, more or less profound, into the several depart- 
 ments of revealed truth, and into their mutual relations towards 
 each other ; while " prophecy " means not simply the power of 
 predicting the future (though it does mean that), but especially 
 the power of stating truth and duty clearly and forcibly to others. 
 And the " gift of "faith " here mentioned would be, probably, 
 something distinct from the faith of ordinary believers, a kind of 
 extraordinary illumination of the believing soul, making God and 
 the world unseen so vividly present to it, that all obstacles to 
 duty seem for the time straightway to vanish; for as our Lord says, 
 " such a faith removes mountains." This, too, is to be found 
 in some gifted Christians in all ages of the Church. 
 
 The five other gifts are at least less ordinary. There were 
 Christians at Corinth who had the gift of healing, and others, the 
 more extraordinary gift of working mirades. These were plainly 
 cases in which the fire of the Holy Ghost, possessing, enlighten- 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 iny-, and warming the believing soul, made itself felt through 
 the soul and body of the believer, and produced effects for 
 which no known natural causes could account. 
 
 Others, had the gift of discerning spirits — something deeper, 
 tluit is than a mere insight into character — although analagous 
 to this, great and not uncommon gift ; a power they had of seeing 
 in other souls the exact endowment with which the Holy Spirit 
 had furnished them, — what in them was really the work of 
 grace, — what only the counterfeit of nature. 
 
 Others were given to speak with unknown tongues, probably, 
 as at the Pentecost, in foreign languages, sometimes, with a 
 view to missionary work among the strangers who were to 
 be found about the port and in the streets of Corinth ; probably 
 also, and more frequently still, in a mystic language, to which no 
 known human tongue would correspond, yet one in which the 
 illuminated and entranced soul might alone at times be able 
 to express itself. Others, again, had the gift of interpreting 
 tongues — it may be foreign languages — more probably it was the 
 mystic language of devotion, which but for the gifted interpreter 
 would have died away upon the ear of the audience without 
 leaving even an idea behind. 
 
 It was natural that the exercise of such endowments as these 
 should have led to much discussion at Cormth, where the subject 
 was practically and frequently brought before the eyes and ears of 
 Christians. Questions were eagerly asked; they were often 
 hastily and erroneously answered ; they were at last referred to 
 the Apostle. They were such as these, " Did all these gifts come 
 from the same source, or were some of them from below and some 
 from above ? Were they all equally important, and if not, which 
 were the most important ? Was not the striking and extraordi- 
 nary gift of tongues, at least, entitled to greater admiration than 
 the comparatively commonplace gift of preaching and prophecy- 
 ing ; and if so, was it not hard that some Christians shouM have 
 gifts of the higher order, and others only those of the lower order ; 
 that some should be the eyes and hands of the Church, others 
 its feet or less honourable members ? Would not, it was asked 
 — M'ould not the possessors of the great gifts of speculative and 
 administrative power in the Church, be eyed with a certain amount 
 of unavoidable jealousy by the possessors of humbler if not less 
 useful endowments ? And, if so, were not those gifts after all, of 
 very doubtful advantage to the Church ? Was it not perhaps a 
 mistake to think so much of them ? Might they not, conceivably, 
 some of them have belonged even to heathen necromancers, who 
 while they appeared to think and act miraculously, yet in 
 private called Jesus Christ accursed? And if so, was it not 
 prudent, at the least, to treat them as matters of inconsiderable 
 importance ? " 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 Now St. Paul answers these questions, and in doing so lie lays 
 down principles of vital and permanent importance. 
 
 First, he tells us that every good gift even the very least is 
 important, because they all come from a single source, the Divine 
 and Eternal Spirit living and working in the Church of Christ. 
 There are diversities of gifts, but they are from the same Spirit. 
 There are diversities of administration, but it is the same Lord. 
 'There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God, who 
 worketh all in all. 
 
 Secondly, he rules that the gifts do differ in importance, and 
 that each must be valued by its practical value to the soul, and to 
 the Church of Christ. On this account he decides that the gift of 
 tongues, which excited such extraordinary enthusiasm at Corinth, 
 is really a less important gift than the comparatively quiet and 
 tame gift of preaching and prophecy, simply because the latter 
 is of greater service to others — of greater service to the Church. 
 
 Thirdly, he w^ill not allow that the possession of any gift what- 
 ever ought to make the possessor an object of jealousy. Being 
 a gift, it implies no sort of merit in the possessor at all, but only 
 in the Giver. It is given, too, not for the advantage, not for the 
 credit of the possessor, but simply for the good of the Church 
 at large. No gift accordmgly could be possessed by the heathen, 
 outside the Church, who cursed the blessed name of Jesus ; 
 and no gift rendered its possessors independent of others in 
 the holy body of the Church, nor could be wholly monopolized 
 for the advantage of the possessor. The eye could not possibly 
 say to the foot " I have no need of thee." 
 
 And, lastly, all these gifts were inferior to those which were 
 shared by all Christians — even the very humblest in a state of 
 grace — such as love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, good- 
 ness, faith, meekness, temperance ; especially the graces of faith, 
 hope, and charity. Especially were they inferior to the last and 
 greatest of these, the grace of charity ; the love of God for His 
 own blessed sake, because He is what He is ; the love of man in 
 and for God. 
 
 This, briefly, is the knowledge which St, Paul was so anxious 
 that the Corinthians should have ; first, the sanctity of these 
 endowments as coming, every one of them, from the Holy Ghost ; 
 next, the difference in value between these several endowments 
 proportionate to theu^ varying serviceableness to the souls of men ; 
 thirdly, the fact that no endowment or gift, however great, added 
 any importance to its possessor, or made him rightfully an object 
 af jealousy, seeing that he only held his gift in trust for the 
 good of others ; and lastly, the subordination of aU these gifts 
 to the great grace of charity. 
 
 The importance of this knowledge, my brethren, to us at the 
 present day, appears to me to be undeniable ; for we live at a 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 time when men seem disposed to ignore the very existence of the 
 Spirit in the world — the presence and action of the holy Comforter 
 upon the sonls of men. This is, perhaps, partly the re-action from 
 some mistaken and fanatical ideas aliout His work which were 
 to be found here and there in a past generation ; but it is much 
 more largely due, I apprehend, to the immense place which the 
 material universe occupies in the thoughts, and especially in the 
 imagination, of the present generation. We have explored the 
 realm of matter; we have subjugated it ; we have made it at 
 once our friend and our slave, in ways undreamt of by our fore- 
 fathers. Our telescopes report to us even the geography of distant 
 planets ; our practical science utilizes the immense forces of 
 steam and electricity, and brings them under contribution to our 
 daily and most ordinary needs ; and we, the men of to-day, 
 occupy, as compared with our ancestors — it is not too much to 
 say it — quite a new position as regards space and time. 
 
 We converse hourly with the inhabitants of other continents ; 
 we pass from point to point with a rapidity which makes us in fact 
 masters of the world, in quite a new sense from that in which 
 former generations of men were its masters. Hence too, the 
 sources for the creation of capital have been reached and laid open 
 to us as they never were before ; and the loan of last week in Paris 
 which astonished all Europe, is but an illustration of what may 
 be the enormous resources of even a single country in the modern 
 world. And all which enhances and sets forth the outward 
 visible, material side of human life has made within the last 
 twenty years unprecedented progress ; and yet the wealth of our 
 generation vast as it is, is not the measure of its luxury. In 
 short, this world of matter with all its vastness, with all its 
 undeniable mystery, with all its attractiveness and resource 
 presses around each human soul as it never did before, and makes 
 the realization of an immaterial world, at least for large classes 
 among us, increasmgiy difficult. It is, I say, not so much a 
 difficulty for the reason as a difficulty for the imagination. As the 
 eye rests upon the streets of this metropolis which year by year 
 become wider and more spacious and magnificent ; as it rests upon 
 the gigantic and increasing proportions of the traffic which crowds 
 and crushes around and along these thoroughfares through the 
 weary hours of a long summer day; as it rests upon the 
 immense emporiums and structures of every kind which rise 
 almost month by month in every quarter of the metropolis, we 
 insensibly accustom ourselves, I will not say to the conviction, 
 but at least, to the impression, that this great kingdom of matter 
 which we are so successfully cultivating is indeed, everything — 
 and that there is nothing beyond it but a realm of fancy, 
 for which the pressing demands of our practical every-day life 
 leave us less and less of time and incLinatiou. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 Of course wlien we reflect, we know that the great problems 
 of Life and of the Universe have not really been thus 
 fundamentally changed. We know that man is, amid all 
 his triumphs, only what his forefathers were before him ; 
 that he is merely a stranger hurrying across a scene which will 
 soon have closed upon him for ever. What said the wise 
 Teacher of the Old Testament — King Solomon — as we find it in 
 the lesson for yesterday afternoon, de?cribing, indeed, as he 
 does, a different stage and phase of material civilization, but, as 
 legards the whole question, anticipating and summing up the 
 collective experience of the race. " I made me great works ; I 
 builded me houses ; I planted me vineyards ; I made me 
 gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind 
 of fruits ; I made me pools of water ; I gat me servants and 
 maidens, and had servants born in my house ; also I had 
 great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in 
 Jerusalem before me : I gathered me also silver and gold, and 
 the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces : I gat me 
 men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of 
 men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was 
 great, and increased more than all that were before me in 
 Jerusalem : also my wisdom remained with me. And whatso- 
 ever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not 
 my heart from any joy, Then I looked on all the works 
 that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had 
 laboured to do : and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of 
 spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." Yes, beneath all 
 material splendour, even the greatest, there is at bottom an 
 aching void, because man was made for something higher and 
 nobler than matter — because he cannot find his real satisfaction 
 in matter. He was made for God, and all that reminds him 
 of his real destiny — ^yes, I will say it, of his true nobility — ^has a 
 claim upon his ear, and upon his heart that cannot be 
 permanently ignored. When the Apostle cries " Concerning 
 spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant," 
 he touches a chord to which every man's heart must soonen 
 or later respond, because in his deepest self, man is, and 
 knows himself to be, a spirit. His real self is not affected by 
 the money which he holds in his hand, or by the robe which he 
 wears on his person, or by the servants who surround him that 
 they may do his pleasure, or by the titles by which his fellow 
 creatures approach him, or by the home in which he dwells, or by 
 the position which he fills in the public eye. These things p.^e 
 far from being unimportant; they are, every one of them, gifts 
 from God ; and they enter into man's responsibility. Every- 
 thing, indeed, hereafter may depend upon his way of dealing 
 with any one of them ; but they leave his real self unaggran- 
 
CHURCH SEEMONS. 
 
 dized, because liis real self is a something independent of all of 
 them. It is a deeper and more central thing than can he touclied 
 by these merely outward surroundings and therefore man, even 
 in this very metropolis of the world's material civilization, 
 cannot permanently forget that higher gifts than any which 
 matter can furnish him with, are really within his grasp, and 
 that he does not well to be ignorant of them. 
 
 But there are some who aliliough they know that there is 
 something higher than matter for their true aim and portion, do 
 not always tix their eye upon the really spiritual. They mistake 
 intellect for spirit. They imagine that by great mental 
 accomplishments they are really raising themselves well out of 
 the slough of matter, up into the true sphere of their highest life. 
 They do not distinguish between the contents of a good library, 
 or the proceedings of a literary or scientific association, and the 
 results of the day of Pentecost. But man's reason and thought 
 are but the instruments of his deeper self, ot his indestructible 
 personal being. His thought is not himself, any more than are 
 his arms or his legs, and to make "spiritual," mean merely 
 intellectual or mental gifts is to misuse language and to introduce 
 confusion into thought. Certainly, I admit, the word "spiritual" is 
 sometimes used in modern literary English for quick-witted or 
 refined thought ; but this debauched use of the word we owe to 
 the French, and our own older usage distinguishes broadly and 
 rightly between the life of the spirit which believes and hopes, 
 and loves, and the life of the intellect which only reasons and 
 thinks. The spiritual gifts are higher far than the merely intel- 
 lectual gifts. The latter imply nothing as to the moral excellence 
 of the inmost being itself. Voltaire's brilliancy was undeniable, 
 but who would exchange the solid peace of the soul, for the power 
 of making the epigrams which delighted Paris, but which 
 could not bring one hour of true rest or happiness to their gifted 
 author ? 
 
 Do I say that material or intellectual gifts are worthless ? 
 God forbid ! They, too, have come from Him. Every good 
 gift whether in nature or by grace, is from above, and cometh 
 down from the Father of Life. His gifts to the old heathen 
 world — its astonishing cultivation of reason, of fancy, of language, 
 its vast and varied efforts in the way of constructive enterprise, 
 its burning passion, its abundant genius for art, its vigorous 
 talent for administration and for government were and are still 
 worthy of admiration as coming from Him. Even although 
 these gifts were frequently or rather, almost as a matter of 
 course, misused, debased and sullied by the pervading 
 presence of sin, they were, in themselves, admirable, and 
 we do well to honour and admire them if only because of 
 their Author. And all that He has given in addition (and 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 what has He not given ?) to the modern world ontside the 
 kingdom of His Son, and independently of it — our material 
 and° intellectual progress in all its departments — is matter 
 not for depreciation, still less for secret fear, but for thank- 
 ful and generous acknowledgment, if only we remember that 
 there are higher gifts beyond; and that when our architects, 
 our merchants, our engineers, our historians, our poets and 
 our metaphysicians have done their best, there still remains a 
 sublimer sphere from which an Apostle whispers " Concerning 
 spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant." 
 
 Doubtless we here touch, as so often in the kingdom of Jesus 
 Christ, upon mystery, that is to say, upon a truth of the reality 
 of which we are convinced, but the full account and reason of 
 which, is in our present state of being and knowledge, beyond 
 us. Like the mystery of Life itself, like the mystery of growth, 
 whether animal or vegetable, in the realm of nature, like tlie 
 mystery of the Sacraments, our chief means of grace in the 
 Kingdom of Christ, so the daily, hourly action of the Eternal 
 Spirit upon the regenerate Christian soul is a thing certain to 
 us, yet altogether beyond us. Who shall attempt to picture, 
 much less to describe, the process whereby He, the Eternal 
 and Uncreated Spirit overshadows, enwraps, penetrates, moulds, 
 changes and turns our finite and created spirits bathing them, 
 if we will, through and through with His heavenly light 
 and warmth, endowing tliem with powers which, according to 
 the original forms of their natural structure, are altogether 
 strange°to them, fitting them by anticipation here, amid the 
 scenes of sense and time, for a higher and a better world ? Who 
 indeed, shall say, for who knows enough of the nature and 
 intrinsic capacities of spirit to attempt the description ? We 
 can but recognize the fact as a most real, although invisible 
 miracle, daily, hourly taking place amongst us wherever the 
 Divine Comforter breathes and works in the soul, rendered cer- 
 tain to faith by the unfailing promises of the Divine Clnist ; 
 rendered certain to experience by the observed changes in those 
 around us in disj)Osition, in character, in spiritual insight, in the 
 whole direction of thought and feeling ; changes for which 
 nothing natural will adequately account, and of which none can 
 in reason deny the high significance. Erom age to age the gifts 
 of the Sphit may vary in their form : substantially they are 
 the same to the very end of time ; and, next to the atoning 
 death of Jesus Christ, and the power of His blood to cleanse 
 our sins, there is no fact of equal importance to human beings 
 who are living and have to die. 
 
 In conclusii.n, let us take the words of the Apostle in their 
 broadest sense, and draw from them one or two practical 
 considerations 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 NoT^, these words furnish us with a guide to the true idea of 
 Education — with a test and criterion for certain current educa- 
 tional theories. AVe live in an age when education occupies a 
 greater place in the mind of the country than perhaps ever it 
 did before. It has as we all know been quite recently the 
 subject of imperial legislation, and there can be no doubt that 
 for some time to come it will be amongst the foremost questions 
 of the day. On many accounts we may well rejoice that this 
 is so, and that attention has at length been generally awakened 
 to a sense of the great duty which each passing generation — 
 which our own generation, owes to that which shall succeed it. 
 
 But then what do we mean by " Education V Do we mean 
 merely instruction in what is called with a singular and perverse 
 narrowness of meaning "useful knowledge;" so much knowledge, 
 that is to say, as will be useful to a human being during his 
 passage through this present life and only in relation to it — 
 reading, writing and arithmetic, a littl.e knowledge of history, 
 geography, of the material laws of the universe, of the 
 laws of life and death, knowledge of languages, and 
 the course of human thought, or rather of human guesses 
 at the secret and meaning of human destiny. Is there, then, 
 nothing beyond ? Is man really destined for a hereafter, and 
 is there a body of knowledge within our reach which bears 
 closely upon that hereafter ? Is it not a matter of common 
 sense to make this knowledge, too, a part of the instruction 
 which we administer to our children for their highest good ? 
 Is a child, after all, only a mind, which, like a carpet bag, 
 is to be crammed with as many facts huddled together as 
 it can possibly hold ? Is not a child rather a living soul, a 
 character to be trained, to be developed, to be exercised, to be 
 strengchened, to be chastened, to be encouraged ; and is not some 
 assistance from above, some special gifts, some sacraments, some 
 graces, and some sources of life and of strength needful as a 
 matter of fact for this great work ? Ah ! when I hear of 
 " schemes of education," which are only schemes for packing 
 the mind full of facts, and which include amongst those facts 
 almost everything except what bears upon that one subject 
 which it is most important for human beings to know, a voice 
 from above sounds in my ears " Concerning spiritual gifts, 
 brethren of this generation, I would not have you ignorant." 
 
 Brethren, what will it profit ? Even a heathen poet asked the 
 question, What will it profit to have measured and weighed out 
 the whole realm of matter — to have explored and studied all the 
 achievements of human thought, if after all, God's gift to the 
 soul — His gifts of a new birth, of a real redemption, of a new 
 insight into truth, of a robe wherein ons day the soul may 
 appear even before Him in His sanctity and in His justice 
 
CHUECH SERMONS. 
 
 without tremlDling and without confusion — if these are altogether 
 ignored ? / 
 
 So, too, in this sentence of the Apostle I see a rule for forming 
 friendships. The importance of friendship as exercising a decisive 
 influence upon a man's character and life was, perhaps, as well 
 understood in the ancient world, to say the least, as now. - The 
 ancients made friendships and kept them up in a more formal 
 and regulated way than we do ; and, like Cicero and others, they 
 wrote elaborate treatises upon the subject, and reduced it as far 
 as they coijld. to a matter of method and rule. Perhaps before 
 the idea of a universal brotherhood in Christ had dawned upon 
 the conscience of the world, a single sincere attachment between 
 two human beings, had a significance which we to-day can 
 with difficulty appreciate. But, at any rate, the ancients were 
 right in estimating very highly the moral importance of friend- 
 ship ; for a friend — and there is scarcely a truth which a young 
 man ought more carefully to lay to heart — a friend at once 
 reflects and moulds character. His iniluence penetrates in o. 
 thousand ways into the recesses of thought and feeling. He 
 leaves his mark there, most assuredly. He is always either a 
 help or a hindrance, a blessing or a curse, as the case may be. 
 In choosing a friend, therefore, or to speak more truly with a view 
 to what is generally the fact, in allowing oneself to glide into a 
 friendship, it is most important to ask ourselves what it 
 is precisely that attracts us in the proposed friend ? Is 
 it his income? His great possessions? Or his splendid 
 home ? These are not the man who is to be our friend ; 
 they are but the accidents of his life, they are not its 
 essence. Is it his fertile imagination, his vigorous reason 
 and sparkling wit ? These, alas ! are compatible — and who does 
 not know it ? — with the worst degradation of the man himself. 
 What is his real character ? What are the quaUties of his heart ? 
 What, properly speaking, are his spiritual endowments ? What 
 is his amount of faith in the Unseen ? Of his hope in an 
 eternal future, and his hope in the eternal love of God to man ? 
 These are the questions which should be answered concerning 
 these spiritual gifts. In a matter of such vital importance do 
 not let us willingly be ignorant. 
 
 And, lastly, here is a rule for all steady and systematic efforts 
 at self-improvement. It is common but it is perilous, to get 
 older without getting better; and improvement in outward 
 circumstances, improvement in mental accomplishments, are not 
 here, and now in question. Of the first it is written, " He shall 
 carry nothing away with him when he dieth, neither shall his 
 pomp follow him." Of the second " We know in part, and we 
 prophecy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then 
 that which is in part shall be done away." Improvement in 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 spiritual endowments is the real point, if not in the present 
 counterparts of those public gifts of illumination and utterance, 
 of works of power, and works of mercy which St. Paul had in 
 his eye when addressing the Church at Corinth, and especially 
 in those personal and higher graces which the Apostle estimates 
 so highly, and which as they are offered to all Christians by the 
 Divine Spirit, so all Christians should know how to possess 
 them, — love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
 faith, meekness, temperance. These gifts of the Spirit do not 
 pass away, they become incorporated with the Christian's life and 
 character. They give it force and beauty here, and we do not 
 take leave of them as we take leave of all else, when we reach 
 the Gate of Death. We carry them with us into the Eternal 
 Presence chamber. 
 
 Let us therefore, make the most of the means of grace, as 
 they are termed, while we may. Of the certificated channels 
 through which these gifts must reach us — of prayer, first of all, 
 of the Divine Scriptures and the Holy Sacraments. Life is too 
 short, my brethren, to allow any man to know, or to do, everything. 
 There is much of which we may safely and even profitably 
 be ignorant in this world ; but as immortal beings we dare not 
 ignore, we dare not neglect, the gifts which the Eternal Spirit 
 bestows upon us hp.re, that hereafter they may robe us in a 
 Iiapp)- immortality. 
 
Fftamm^ffim^t-mm^mjiiff 
 
 CSuprg gFpmong 
 
 ^r^^^"^' 
 
 % 3txman 
 
 BY THE 
 
 ?t:^-' rev. canon LTDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean IrelauiVs Professor of Exegesis^ 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 
 On Sunday Afternoon, August ii, 1872. 
 
 "So Tic departed thence, and found ElisJia the son of Shaphat, 
 who ivas ploivmg ivith tioelve yoke of oxen hefore him, and he 
 with the twelfth: and Elijah passed ly him, and cast his mantle 
 upon him. And he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said. 
 Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I 
 will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go lack again : for 
 lohat have I done to thee ? And he returned hack from him, and 
 took ct yoke of oxe7i, and slew them, a.nd boiled their flesh loith the 
 instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people, and they did 
 eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and ministered unto 
 Mm." — 1 Kings xix, 19-21. 
 
 Here, my bretliren, we see one of the methods by which the 
 prophetical ministry was propagated and maintained in Israel. 
 It was not, you may have remarked, like the Jewish priesthood 
 a matter of hereditary descent. The son did not become a 
 prophet because his father had been a prophet before him. Like 
 Jeremiah each prophet was the subject of a special predestina- 
 tion to his work. " Before I formed thee in the belly I knew 
 thee ; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified 
 thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." But 
 each prophet was called to his work by some especial token or 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 influence, and then, either as a student in one of the colleges or 
 schools of the prophets, as they were called, or as an attendant 
 upon a great teacher, he received a kind of education for his 
 future life. 
 
 Elisha appears to have been a man of substance. He was 
 ploughing in the field with twelve yoke of oxen, at Abel- 
 meholah in the valley of the Jordan, when Elijah passed 
 on his way back from the great vision which he had received in 
 Horeb. Elijah does not seem to have spoken ; he merely cast 
 his mantle on Elisha, and then passed on. This act, indeed, 
 Avas symbolical. It had, like many of the former acts of the 
 prophets, such as rending the dress, or putting ashes on the head, 
 an ascertained and recognized meaning. The prophet's mantle 
 was a visible sign of the robe of spiritual power which encompassed 
 him, and to cast the mantle on another was to call him to share 
 the labour, the glory the difficulty, the responsibility, the 
 danger of the prophetic office. Although Elijah had not spoken, 
 this significant action was perfectly understood. Elisha obeyed 
 its purpose, and he ran after the silent prophet who was already 
 vanishing from his sight. He had one, only one condition, he 
 would just take leave of his parents and receive their blessing, 
 and then he would follow the prophet. Elijah assents. But 
 Elisha must return soon considering the greatness of the destiny 
 before him. The original would be here better rendered " Go, 
 return, for how great a thing have I done unto thee !" Elisha 
 is bent upon showing the undivided allegiance which he owes 
 to the prophet — the completeness of his self-surrender. Up to 
 that moment his farm on the banks of the Jordan had been his 
 all, as in a later age their boats and nets had been everything to 
 those fishermen on the sea of Galilee who were also predestined 
 to the apostolate of the world. Elisha does not linger to drop 
 regrets over a cherished past, from which he is parting for ever ; 
 he forthwith slays the oxen with which he had just been 
 ploughing, and he takes even the plough tackling for fuel, by 
 which he may burn their flesh, and he gives one parting 
 entertainment to his acquaintances in the neighbourhood, that 
 they may have no doubt either about his goodwill towards 
 themselves, or of his fixed determination and lofty resolution, 
 and then he leaves the scene of his labours, he leaves his fields, 
 his home, his all, to become the servant of Elijah. Is this, think 
 you, to be looked upon as only and strictly an incident in the 
 life of an ancient prophet. Has it no permanent, no higher 
 application ? Has it no human significance ? 
 
 There is some risk, my brethren, of blinding ourselves to 
 the real meaning of the Old Testament, of its urgent and striking 
 appeals to the human conscience, to the Christian life, by 
 saying of this and that thing, it is only Oriental and has, therefore 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 no relevancy for a modern European. Certainly, there is a super- 
 ficial element of custom and of ceremony in the life described 
 in the Old Testament, which does belong to the ancient East and 
 which is untransferable to the circumstances of our own day 
 and country. But human nature on the one side, and the 
 great laws of God's providential dealings on the other, were in 
 the East two thousand eight hundred years ago, exactly what 
 they are now, and what occurred then, was, as an Apostle says, 
 " written for our learning that we through patience and comfort 
 of the ancient Scriptures might have hope " — hope as well as 
 other virtues which are to be won from their perusal. 
 
 The call of Elisha has its place not merely in the history of 
 his order, not merely in the history of his country, but in the 
 history of humanity, and as such it must be regarded as an 
 astonishing instance of the power of religious influence. The 
 silent prophet passes ; he drops his mantle, and the life of 
 another fellow man is agitated to its centre, to its inmost depths ; 
 its whole current and direction is from that moment changed ; 
 he yields to an attraction; he does not analyze it, he obeys. 
 And it may be well to ask ourselves. in what — putting aside for 
 to-day, but by no means ignoring it, the great question of God's 
 supernatural grace — in what did this influence, viewed on its 
 human side, in what did this attraction consist ? For it is not 
 to be supposed that the obedience of Elisha had nothing to do 
 with those motives and laws of conduct which govern the 
 actions of thoughtful and conscientious men now. It is not to 
 be supposed that Elijah put forth some force which was literally 
 magical — magical in such a sense, that it exerted upon Elisha's 
 will an influence for which no account could be given in reason, 
 a magnetic influence which coidd not but be obeyed. Had, 
 indeed, this been the case, the interest of this history would 
 have been shifted from the department of spiritual and moral 
 life to the department of physical life and it would be perhaps 
 more properly investigated in some lecture-room at St. 
 Bartholomew's Hospital, than from the pulpit of this Cathedral. 
 No ! mighty as was the influence of Elijah, Elisha's liberty was 
 not restrained, still less destroyed by it. He was perfectly free 
 to have resisted it. If he did not do so, if he yielded at once, if 
 he decided instantaneously on an obedience which, as we may 
 for the moment think, ought to have been preceded and justified 
 by an exhaustive discussion, this was because there must have 
 been a preparatory educational process going on for some time 
 within him. He must have had his thoughts, affections, aspira- 
 tions which only waited the occasion to be combined, to be 
 expressed in action ; and so when the great prophet passed by him 
 all tlie scattered reasons for being drawn towards him coalesced 
 into a single ray of moral light and moral warmth, and 
 
CHCTRCH SERMONS. 
 
 determined his future disciple's course, — impelled him to an 
 act of such unreserved obedience. 
 
 It is, then, material to ask what must have been at least 
 some of the motives which led Elisha thus to obey. 
 
 And, first, Elijah would have represented in Elisha's eyes a great 
 cause, a great or imperious idea, or truth, which had lain for cen- 
 turies inthe soul of every Israelite ; that idea was the existence, 
 the manifestation of the one living and true God who had revealed 
 Himself to Israel. Eor while the surrounding nations were in 
 different degrees of heathen darkness and degradation, Israel by 
 a singular exercise of God's favour, had been, indeed, chosen to 
 know His will, and in that knowledge to know much — though 
 by no means with all the fulness which we Christians now 
 have the means of knowing Him— of His character, of His 
 nature, of His attributes. To treasure that knowledge, to hand 
 it on from generation to generation, to make it the inspiring 
 principle of national as well as of individual thought and life, — 
 this was the appointed task of the sacred people, again and 
 again prescribed in their law, again and again enforced by the 
 exhortations of theu^ prophets, again and again illustrated by 
 the lives and by the works of their most representative saints 
 and leaders. In quiet times not merely every prophet, every 
 member of the priesthood, and of the Levitical tribe, but even 
 every Israelite in some sense represented this great truth, for 
 every Israelite was admitted by cu-cumcision into a covenant 
 with God, which bound him to loyalty to God's revelation of 
 Himself, just as every baptized Christian in this Cathedral bears 
 the sacred sign, as our baptismal service expresses it, " in token 
 that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of 
 Christ Crucified, but manfully fight under His banner against 
 sin, the world and the devil, and to continue like a loyal and 
 faithful soldier to serve Him to his life's end." In quiet times 
 this representative duty of every believer in a revelation, 
 towards the revelation which he "believes, is accepted, at least 
 in terms, without difficulty. It is only, as our Lord said, " when 
 persecution or tribulation arises, because of the world," tliat 
 certain classes of character are, as a matter of course, offended. 
 
 When Elijah appeared upon the scene of history it 
 seemed as if the revelations committed to Israel, were on the 
 point of being trodden out by a young and vigorous idolatry. 
 The marriage of Ahab, the king of Israel, with Jezebel tiiC 
 daughter of Ethbaal, the king of Sidon, had led to the propaga- 
 tion of the Queen's religion, the worship of the Phoenician Baal, 
 one of those seductive varieties of worship of the vital forms 
 of nature in a personified shape which exercised so extraordinary 
 a sway over the imagination and reason of the ancient world ; 
 and wliich, although in modern times they have adopted a more 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 refined guise, are by no means strange or unwelcome to the 
 modern world. ' So seductive was that superstition, and so 
 commanding the influence of the court, so vigorous, so tren- 
 chant the policy of the Queen that seven thousand was the 
 total number of Israelites who had escaped the taint, — who 
 had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. And at great 
 trial times like these, great causes become almost necessarily 
 identified with the names of individuals. Truths are, for a time 
 impersonated in a single man. And Elijah was to the revela- 
 tion of the one God, INIaker of heaven and earth, what at a later 
 age St. Paul was to the truth of man's justification, through 
 Christ's merits without legal obedience — at least in certain 
 portions of the Church — what St. Athanasius was, during the 
 great Arian struggle to the true Godhead of Jesus Christ, as it 
 had been taught by the Apostles. 
 
 As men looked on Elijah moving rapidly from one scene of 
 danger to another, in those troublous times, the whole history of 
 the 'earlier, the old Mosaic revelation seemed to live again, 
 seemed to speak in him ; behind his individual voice and 
 gesture there was the felt presence of a great and living cause, — 
 of a mighty and eternal Truth ; and as a consequence he exercised 
 an influence greatly out of proportion to his personal position. 
 It was not the man himself, it was the Divine cause, it was the 
 heaven-sent revelation which he represented, which won, which 
 enchained to him the hearts of those who stiU believed in it. 
 Elisha bent before the truth of which his master was himself 
 the servant. 
 
 My brethren, the first condition of a deep religious in- 
 fluence, proceeding whether from individuals or from Churches, 
 is a clear, positive creed — clear and positive whether it be large 
 or small. A man must know, at least, what he does believe. 
 Elijah would have been altogether powerless, had he only 
 insisted on the falsehoods and superstitions of Jezebel and her 
 prophets. He would have been powerless had he merely 
 surrounded the revelation of Sinai with a garnitm^e of the finest 
 sentiment and poetry, leaving it doubtful whether he himself 
 believed it to be God's truth or not. He was powerful because 
 men knew that he had no sort of doubt about his creed, about its 
 exact frontier, about its absolute certainty ; and Elisha felt the 
 passage, not of a mere man, but of a mighty cause or truth 
 represented in the man, and he obeyed it. 
 
 But then secondly, in representing a great cause, a mere 
 official representation is not enough. For religious influence 
 personal qualities are wanted, — qualities in harmony with the 
 requirements of the cause, or truth represented. Eli and his 
 sons represented the Mosaic revelation to Israel in their day, 
 but they only made the Lord's people to transgress. Alexander 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 the Sixth, and Leo the Tenth, represented Christianity in an official 
 sense of the term to Western Christendom, but they certainly 
 did not recommend it to the consciences of men. The ordinary 
 Hanoverian Bishops, of a century ago, were by their office repre- 
 sentatives of Christianity in the Church of England, but, with 
 a few splendid exceptions, their representation, too, was strictly 
 heartless, official, and powerless where it was not, as in Hoadley's 
 case, utterly repulsive. In order to reach human hearts and 
 mould the affections, some sort of personal conformity to the 
 ideal represented is needed, as well as the official right to represent. 
 And Elijah would have been felt by Elisha to have this personal 
 title to represent this cause of God superadded to the official 
 one. Every Israelite we may be assured, whether friend or foe, 
 whether in open league with the apostate court of Jezebel, 
 or in secret correspondence with the scattered schools of the 
 prophets, every Israelite had heard of the stern mien and lofty 
 proportions of a character which seemed to its contemplators 
 to belong to another world. They knew that if anywhere, here 
 was a perfect simplicity of purpose ; here was a determina- 
 tion to live and to die for the sake of the God of the Patriarchs 
 who had brought Israel out of Egypt, who had spoken from 
 Sinai. They knew that here was an unflinching courage 
 which shrank not from encounter with the cruel, the wily 
 idolatress who ruled the policy of Israel. They must have 
 been well aware that the ties of flesh and blood did not fetter the 
 great prophet's liberty ; for like John the Baptist, nine centuries 
 later, he had prepared for his ministry in the solitude of the 
 desert ; and he then had suddenly appeared in the very palace 
 of the weak and apostate monarch, to denounce his sin, and 
 foretell the judgment which awaited him. In an age of 
 decaying faith, in an age of progressive moral deterioration, 
 in an age of general apostasy, Elijah stood forth from among 
 the mass of men in almost solitary grandeur. He must have 
 been felt to be the typical saint and hero of the old Theocracy ; 
 he must have been recognized as embodying in the highest 
 degree the moral power which belonged to a life so shaped 
 and so led as to express before men's eyes his strong and 
 firm conviction of the Sinaitic revelation. True it was, as 
 we have heard in this afternoon's lesson, that Elijah too was 
 at times subject even to the deepest sense of discouragement. 
 When, after his great victory over the assembled prophets of Baal 
 upon Carmel, it seemed for a moment as if the tide of public 
 feeling in Israel had really turned — men cried in their enthu- 
 siasm, "The Lord, He is the God ! the Lord, He is the God "— 
 but the triumphant change was but of short duration. The day of 
 Carmel was soon forgotten; Ahab was still Ahab,and Jezebel 
 had not ceased to be Jezebel; and the multitude, which, for a 
 
CHURCH SERMOy 
 
 moment, had obeyed with fervour the authority of the prophet, 
 toon fell back into the practice of the ensnaring and voluptuous 
 rites of the Phoenician God with a new enthusiasm. 
 
 And then Elijah felt that despondency of which great and 
 ardent souls alone are capable. God seemed to be hiding His 
 face ; the prophet's faith was almost slipping from him, the 
 whole order of the moral world was, in his eyes, for the moment 
 confused, dark, incomprehensible, out of course. Jezebell 
 was again in power. She was menacing his life, and he, in 
 truth, is weary of his life, — weary of the apparently hopeless 
 struggle in which he is engaged, and he returns to the southern 
 desert in which he had learned his earliest lessons, where 
 he is well out of the way of the levity of the frivolity of his 
 apostate countrymen ; where he is face to face with the savage 
 desolation of nature in a scene that seems to correspond to 
 the blank of his own inward misery. He longed to die, and 
 when a voice from above reaches his conscience in his retreat — 
 "What doest thou here Elijah?" he can only reply by a bitter 
 complaint that God has abandoned His cause, that He has left 
 His prophet to struggle undefended, alone, vanquished. Does 
 this forfeit the prophet's influence ? Is it fatal to the command- 
 ing, to the unique greatness of his character ? Certainly, we 
 must admit it would have been a more perfect course to have 
 trusted God throughout — to have trusted Him in failure, not 
 less than amid success ; but Elijah, great as he was, was not the 
 all perfect ; and his failure was itself one of those forms of 
 failure which are only possible to faith and devotion. They 
 to whom life seems worthless because God's cause, not theirs, 
 but God's, is imperilled or defeated for the time, are, in all 
 generations among the few. To the many, the whole question 
 is of no great concern. Whether the Church of Christ is 
 winning her way among human souls, or losing it ; whether 
 she is extending the frontiers of the Eedeemer's kingdom, 
 or barely maintaining them ; whether her ministers are 
 speaking boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, or are 
 pandering weakly to the popular unbelief — all this troubles 
 them not. They eat, they drink, they walk, they sleep as if 
 all were well, just as did their fathers in the olden days 
 before them. The anguish, the discontent, the fierce desperation 
 of Elijah are the products — it may be they are the unregu- 
 lated and diseased products — but they are the products of a 
 noble passion, whereof the many know nothing ; it is the noble, 
 the generous passion which is careful only for the honour of 
 God, — which is uncontrollable when He seems to be defeated 
 or dishonom-ed. No! If Elisha did know of Elijah's retreat 
 in profound discouragement, almost in despair, to the rocks 
 of Horeb, he would not have been — I dare say it — less open to 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 the great prophet's influence. The poignant despondency of a 
 great faith is almost its virtue. Elisha would have felt not 
 the less drawn to the solitary at Horeb than to the conqueror 
 at Carmel. 
 
 There is a third element of influence yet, heyond ; — the 
 influence which belongs to a soul often in communion with 
 God. This is less easy to seize, to describe or to measure, 
 than the weight which belongs either to the representation 
 of a great cause, or truth, or to personal elevation of character. 
 This cannot be mapped out in words or in actions. It is 
 nothing exactly tangible; it is an atmosphere which hovers around 
 a life and which we are conscious of breathing but that is all. 
 When we approach it, it is not a matter of manner or gesture, of 
 expressive words and studied silence. It is not to be resolved 
 into any outward form ; it is too volatile, if you like, it is 
 too strictly super-sensuous — it is too altogether appertaining to 
 the region of spirit, to be registered by any definite tests and marks 
 in the sphere of matter. Yet wlio has not sometimes felt 
 this indescribable influence, this sure certificate of nearness to 
 God, which the few privileged souls of both sexes in all 
 stations of society, unconsciously to themselves, but most 
 surely exert ? It is something beyond character: it is tone. 
 It is a something beyond goodness : it is holiness. It needs 
 no language to express it: it is felt instinctively. Elisha 
 may well have felt it — as we read the narrative we know 
 it — as Elijah passed along the field of Abel-meholah. 
 
 Alii this history suggests two sets of considerations — one 
 for those who exert religious influence, the other for those 
 who yield to it. 
 
 And first for those who exert it. All wise and thought- 
 ful people may well shrink, my brethren, from the great 
 but unavoidable responsibility of doing so ; the responsibility of 
 saying, whether in words or by acts, to others — it little matters 
 — " EoUow me ! Follow me upwards through this path in the 
 light of this or that creed, towards the Throne of Light." 
 Many men j^rofess altogether to decline any such responsi- 
 bility, and yet it is certain, that do what we will, we cannot, 
 any one of us, but exert some religious influence. Every man 
 is assuredly the Apostle of something, of evil if not of good. 
 Our very presence is of itself the propagation of some faith. 
 Whether we will or not, we are leading men : we are leading 
 those around us in some direction. 
 
 " We scatter seeds with careless hand; 
 
 And dream we ne'er shall see them more ; 
 But, for a thousand years 
 
 Their fruit appears • 
 
 In weeds that mar the land, 
 Or healthful store. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 The deeds we do, the -words we say, 
 Into still air they seem to fleet, 
 
 We count them ever past. 
 
 But they shall last 
 In the dread Judgment Day ; 
 And we shall meet." 
 It is lietter, then, to make a virtue of what is already a neces- 
 sity, — to wield and exert usefully, a talent of which we cannot 
 dispossess ourselves altogether, if we would. Some of us are 
 teachers : what is the influence we are exerting on our pupils ? 
 Many of us are masters or mistresses : what is the influence 
 we are bringing to bear upon our servants ? Others are parents. 
 How are you influencing — in some important way you must be 
 influencing — the future of your children ? Ah ! but you say — "we 
 wish we could be of use in this way, but then it is an affair 
 of temperament ; some people seem to understand it, others do not ; 
 and we are among the number." No, bretliren, the explanation 
 is simpler, it is more just than this. If when Elijah cast his 
 mantle upon Elisha — the mantle of his creed, of his conduct, 
 of his life,- — Elisha does not respond, there may be another 
 explanation of the failure than that which you are thinking 
 of. Success is impossible, if Elijah represents nothing clear 
 and certain. If he does not know his own mind, if he is 
 only trying to win converts to a few private guesses or 
 crochets of his own, instead of for a creed which has come 
 from heaven. Success is improbable, again, if Elijah's life is 
 quite out of keeping with his creed, if he is felt to be incapable 
 of that which he recommends, if he has done and ventured 
 nothing for the cause he advocates. It is improbable, too, if he 
 has nothing about him of the air and bearing of an envoy of 
 God, if he is obviously devoted to this world, and only 
 alludes to the next in an official or formal way, and 
 without the accent of a man to whom it is a serious reality. 
 Doubtless God may make His truth do its own work, through 
 His grace in human hearts, in spite of the inconsistencies of 
 its representatives. But then I am speaking of what is pro- 
 bable, and, as a rule, God works through instruments. As a 
 rule Elisha is won by the decision, by the consistency of the 
 unworldliness of Elijah as much as by the apparent intrinsic 
 claims of that which he represents. 
 
 And, lastly, there is instruction here for those who yield to 
 rcjligious influence. Some of us, I suppose, at least have known in 
 life something like the passage of an Elijah in our past lives. 
 A religious influence has swept across our path, placing truth, 
 placing duty more clearly before us than we ever knew them 
 .before, recommending them by an example of high-minded 
 devotion, — of simple, of disinterested life. We have felt its power ; 
 have we obeyed it ? — It may be after a legitimate, a wise 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 hesitation such as was Elisha's, but still, have we obeyed it ? 
 Had Elisha refused to acknowledge what was meant by the 
 casting of Elijah's mantle, who can know how vast would 
 have been the difference to the kingdom of Israel, to the 
 kingdom of Judah, to the kingdom of Syria, to the kingdom 
 of God in each, and to himself above all. He was no longer 
 in the same moral position after the Divine call had reached 
 him ; he could no longer survey, if he would, his twelve 
 yoke of oxen with a perfectly easy conscience as if he had 
 really no duty, no destiny, excepting that of ploughing the field 
 in Abel-meholah. A spell from heaven had crossed his path, 
 and he must decide, either deliberately to acknowledge, or 
 deliberately to ignore it. So it may be, or has been with us 
 The history of this afternoon's lesson will have recalled to 
 those of us who know our Bible, at least two passages in the 
 life of our blessed Redeemer — the call of the disciples, and 
 the call of the man who wished first to bury his father. 
 In our Lord's case it is observable that the call to 
 instant obedience is much more peremptory than in Elijah's. 
 He commands in terms: "Follow me." Elijah only suggests 
 by a symbolical action. Our Lord will allow of no delay even 
 to perform the last duties to a parent's memory. Elijah has 
 no hesitation in allowing Elisha to take leave of his father 
 and mother before entering on the prophetic life. The difference 
 is to be explained by the intrinsic difference between the person 
 of the prophet and the person of the Eedeemer. Elijah did but 
 represent the cause of God. In Jesus, as His Apostle said, there 
 dwelt "the whole fulness of the Godhead bodily." Elijah's 
 conduct although that of a saint and hero, was not absolutely 
 perfect. In the life of Jesus, no trace of shortcoming could 
 possibly be detected by the most cynical criticism. They 
 who came near to Elijah came near to one who was irradiated 
 by constant communion with God ; they who came near to 
 Jesus, were as the seraphim and cherubim round the throne, 
 whether they knew it or not, close to the very form which the 
 All Holy had assumed on earth. The greater urgency of our Lord 
 is proportioned to His unspeakably higher and more impera- 
 tive claim. And it is with Him — and not with His prophets, 
 Qot with any of His instruments or agents — that we have to do. 
 Amid our most trivial duties in this life, on days which are 
 passing by us in the usual round of uneventful routine. He may 
 speak to us as never before. A quiet word may be dropped by a 
 friend — a sentence read in a book — a thought lodged we know not 
 why, or how, in the mind, and we are laid under obligations to a 
 new and more imperious view of life and duty. Not Elijah, but 
 Elijah's Lord has passed and cast His mantle on us. 
 There is of course, abundant room for self-delusion of many 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 kinds in the supposed visit of a heavenly call. We may read our 
 fancies in the skies. If we do not take care we may transfigure 
 our own wishes into a Divine voice by a process so subtle as to 
 impose upon ourselves. But we are tolerably safe if two con- 
 ditions are observed. If, first, the duty or line of life 
 prescribed is unwelcome to our natural inclinations ; and if, 
 secondly, it does not contradict what we know God has 
 taught us hitherto — if it is an extension of His earlier teaching, 
 not its condemnation. No one who believes that our Lord 
 Jesus Christ is present by His spirit in His church can 
 doubt that He will, from time to time, speak thus to souls in 
 virtue of His own promises. No one who knows anything 
 practically of the lives of earnest Christians will question the 
 fact of His having done so. And to listen for the footsteps 
 of the Divine Eedeemer passing by us in the ordinary conditions 
 of life is a most important part of the probation of every 
 man. How much may depend on following when He beckons 
 us to some higher duty, to some more perfect service, we 
 shall only know when we see all things as they really are, in 
 the light of His Eternity, 
 
<l8upr8 
 
 
 ^'Eminent 
 
 % Btxman 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis, 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 
 On Sunday Afternoon, August i8, 1872. 
 
 @ 
 
 " Then the king of Israel gathered the proijhets together, alout 
 four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall I go against Bamoth- 
 gilead to battle, or shall I forbear ? And they said Go tqy ; for 
 the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king. And 
 Jehoshajphat said. Is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides, 
 that vje might enquire of him? And the king of Israel said tmto 
 Jehoshaphai, There is yet one man, Mieaiah the son of Imlah, by 
 whom we majj enquire of the Lord : hut I hate hi^ii ; for he doth 
 not prophesy good concerning me, hot evil. And Jehoshaphat said, 
 Let not the king say so."— 1 Kings xxii, 6-8. 
 
 Last Sunday, my brethren, we were face to face with Elijah 
 and more remotely with Ahab, king of Israel, while each was 
 still in the midst of his career ; the king obeying the behests 
 of his idolatrous wife, and persecuting the servants of God ; — 
 the prophet encountering the Idol system in all its streniith. 
 
CHTTROH SERMONS. 
 
 vanquishing it, seeing the fruits of his victory fade away 
 "before his very eyes, retiring in deep despondency into the 
 desert, and yet pledging himself to the future by the call of 
 his great successor, Elisha. But all human careers, even those 
 which seem the greatest, are quickly spent ; and to-day, in both 
 cases, we have reached the close. In the first Lesson of this 
 afternoon you have listened to the account of the great prophet's 
 triumphant ascent by a whirlwind into heaven. In this morn- 
 ing's Lesson, the weak and wicked monarch has encountered his 
 predestined doom ; and it is to the circumstances which imme- 
 diately preceded the tragedy at Eamoth-gilead, that I invite 
 your attention. 
 
 Nov/, in order to thoroughly understand the historical setting of 
 this conversation between Ahab and Jehoshaphat, which is given 
 in the text, it is necessary to recall events that had occurred 
 three years before this fatal expedition to take Eamoth-gilead. 
 The power of Ben-hadad, king of Syria — at that period in 
 the history of the kingdom of Israel, by far its most formidable 
 enemy, for as yet Asspia, and still more Babylon, had not 
 appeared upon the Mediterranean — the power of Ben-hadad had 
 been broken by a double, and, in the last case, by a decisive de- 
 feat. At the head of an army commanded by thirty-two vassal 
 kings, Ben-hadad had insolently demanded the surrender of 
 Ahab's wealth, and possessions, even of his wives and 
 children ; and when this demand was pressed a second time in 
 wiore peremptory terms, Ahab, in his weakness, resisted. 
 Ben-hadad threatened that he would reduce the city of Samaria 
 to ashes by so numerous an army that its very rubbish should 
 scarcely suffice for each one of his soldiers to fill his hand ; and 
 to prove his contempt for the power of the Israelites, he gave 
 orders for the attack to be made upon the city, whilst he himself 
 was engaged in a mid-day carousal in his pavilion with his subject 
 kings and his leading officers. The whole body of fighting 
 Israelites was but seven thousand men, — the exact number 
 observe, of those who had not bowed the knee to Baal. But 
 the victory over Ben-hadad — and to this the sacred writer 
 calls special attention — was reaUy won by only two hundred and 
 thirty -two servants of the provincial governors, men comparatively 
 unarmed and without military training, who had come to 
 seek shelter and safety in those troublous times within the 
 walls of Samaria. Ben-hadad fled on horseback, while the 
 king of Israel at the head of his troops, completely defeated 
 the besieging army. «S» But hoping to retrieve his fortunes, 
 and to recover his lost ascendancy, Ben-liadad entered on a 
 fresh campaign with the new year. His advisers had assured 
 him that the God of Israel was only " a hill God," whose 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 power did not really extend to the plains, and that, therefore, 
 a new campaign in the valley of Esdraelon might have a very 
 different result to the last. They also recommended Ben- 
 hadad to raise his army to its former numbers, and to remove 
 the vassal kings and his chief officers, Avho were suspected of 
 not having done their duty, from their positions of command. 
 After taking these measures, Ben-hadad advanced to the siege of 
 Aphek, in the vale of Esdraelon. The army of Israel, says 
 the sacred writer, looked like two miserable flocks of goats, 
 in contrast to the Syrian host which filled the land with its 
 vast levies; and yet a second time, Ahab was victorious. One 
 hundred thousand fighting men fell in one day, twenty-seven 
 thousand were destroyed by the fall of the walls of Aphek, 
 and Ben-hadad, now a captive and trembling for his life, 
 faithfully and thankfully promised, if his life only might be 
 spared, to allow the Israelites a quarter for their bazaars in 
 the streets of Damascus, and to restore all the cities which 
 had been won from Israel in the campaigns against Ahab's 
 father, Omri. Upon the faith of these terms Ben-hadad was 
 released, and a peace of three years followed. 
 
 Now, it was in reference to this treaty, at the expiration of the 
 three years, that Ahab proposed to Jehoshaphat their making a 
 jomt expedition with a view of taking the city of Eamoth-gilead, 
 which ought to have been surrendered with the rest, but which 
 had been persistently held by the Syrians, notwithstanding 
 the promise of Ben-hadad. Ahab had married his daughter 
 to Jehoshaphat's son, and Jehoshaphat was on a visit at the 
 Court of Samaria, so that everything was favourable — putting 
 religious interests out of the question — for the two kings 
 to co-operate against Ramoth-gilead. Certainly, too, Ahab 
 appeared to have natural justice on his side in his wish to 
 recover Eamoth-gilead; Ben-hadad having promised to sur- 
 render it, and by that promise having saved his life. Jehosha- 
 phat had, at first, no hesitation in placmg the whole force 
 of the kingdom of Judah at the king of Israel's disposal for 
 such an object, " I am," he said, " as thou art ; my people as 
 thy people ; my horses as thy horses." 
 
 As against Ben-hadad, then, Ahab w^as in the right when he 
 sought to recover Eamoth-gilead. But, there was another with 
 whom he had to reckon, he had to reckon with God. Face to face 
 with God, Ahab's real position was, at this period of his life, that 
 of a condemned criminal; and he, therefore, was not in a moral , 
 position to represent and to act on behalf of the rights of Israel, . 
 Not to speak of the misery which he had brought upon his 
 country by his encouragement of the Phoenician idolatry, he had 
 placed himself under a ban by sparing, from a purely selfish 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 motive, the life of Ben-hadad, which, like that of Agag, the Amale- 
 kite in an earlier age, could not be spared without injury to the 
 Theocracy. As he returned from his great victory, he met the 
 prophet of the Lord, who, after attracting his attention by a 
 symbolical action characteristic of the time, had announced 
 his sentence : — " Thus saith the Lord, because thou hast let go 
 out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruc- 
 tion, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for 
 his people." Then came, not long after, the more serious 
 matter of Naboth's vineyard, in which, at the instigation, and 
 with the assistance of his wicked wife, Ahab had committed 
 a judicial murder of singular atrocity, in order that he might 
 improve his property. Then for the last time, in the garden of 
 the murdered man, Elijah had met Ahab, — had foretold the ex- 
 tinction of his house, and the circumstances of his end. It was in 
 the character of a herald of the Divine justice, — placed, like 
 Jeremiah whom the Lord set over the nations and over the king- 
 doms, "to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw 
 down, as well as to build and to plant," — that Elijah thus passed 
 sentence of death upon the king of Israel. Ahab's blood was 
 to be licked up by the hungry dogs in the public square, where 
 they had just licked up the blood of Naboth. Ahab's subse- 
 quent sorrow, led, indeed, to a modification of his sentence ; his 
 house was not to be extinguished absolutely with himself; but 
 on himself, at the time of which we are speaking, the sentence 
 of God's wrath, uttered by His prophet lay in all its awful power. 
 These dreadful predictions must, from time to time, have 
 rung, we should think, in the ears of Ahab. Tliey would have 
 been a matter of common conversation in Judah and Benjamin, 
 not less than in Israel. They must have been also familiar 
 to Jehoshaphat. Eor a while, indeed, Ahab's life passed quietly 
 in the midst of a numerous family, and surrounded by a iDrilliant 
 court. Strengthened, moreover, in the good opinion of his sub- 
 jects by his recent military successes, and by his alliance with 
 the powerful and enterprising king of Judah, Ahab would, no 
 doubt, have succeeded in escaping, at least, to a great extent, 
 from his legitimate fears. But if, when after the la]3se of time, 
 Ahab proposed the joint expedition to Eamoth-gilead, his own 
 faith in the words of the prophet did not suggest some reason 
 for hesitation, Jehoshaphat, at least, was too prudent not to 
 insist upon enquuy, at the hands of some accredited organ of 
 the Mind of God, into the Avisdom of the expedition, Jehosha- 
 phat, it is true, had consented to co-operate vith Ahab, but 
 before he set out he wished to know what God was thinking, 
 what God was willing, about the proposed course, if he possibly 
 could. 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 Let us pause, my brethren, for a moment, if only to note here 
 a great duty in all men who really believe in God's providential 
 care and love — the duty of ascertaining, so far as we can, what 
 He would wish, what He would approve and disapprove, before 
 we undertake any considerable work, or enter upon any new 
 course in life. For it is certain that whatever we undertake 
 in things great or small, in things spiritual, or temporal. He is 
 watcliing us ; He is passing judgment of some sort upon us ; 
 and He will one day call us to account for our actions. It 
 is, at least, practical for us to think of this now. AVe may 
 not, indeed, have prophets at hand who see visions in the 
 heavens, unveiling as did the vision of Micaiah the inmost 
 machinery of the Divine Government. God deals with His 
 people in one way at one period, — in another at a later 
 one. But, by way of compensation, we do know more of the 
 principles of His government than did the Israelites in the days 
 of Ahab. We know more of His power, much more of His love, 
 and more of His will, as they bear upon the details of human 
 life. We can, therefore, in the great majority of cases decide 
 for ourselves the question of going up to Eamoth-gilead. We 
 can always, and should always apply to God in prayer for 
 enlightenment and guidance by His Holy Spirit within the 
 soul through the course of events without it. Our prayer 
 should be "Lead me forth in Thy truth, and learn me, for 
 Thou art the God of my salvation." For, most assuredly, 
 God will take His own way of teaching us His Will, and not 
 seldom, now. as of old, is that Will best learnt from some friend 
 whose moral and religious character, whose balanced judgment, 
 whose ready sympathies, we can really trust ; who will look at 
 our case in a spirit of perfect goodwill, and yet with the high 
 impartiality of perfect independence. Everything depends in a 
 case of this kind, on this question, — Who is to be consulted ? 
 The gravest issues, as in Ahab's case, may hang upon the answer 
 to that question. Ahab actually applied to four hundred 
 prophets who were likely, he thought, by their numbers and 
 position, to satisfy the scruples of Jehoshaphat, and to fortify the 
 resolution at which he had himself arrived. But who were those 
 jDrophets ? Prophets of whom ? The question has been eagerly 
 debated among Biblical scholars. The opinion that they were 
 the prophets of the Phoenician deities, Ashraal or Baal, — 
 prophets who had not appeared ripon Carmel and who had, 
 therefore, escaped the doom of their colleagues, — is inconsistent 
 with the statement that Ahab was seeking to know the word 
 of Jehovah at their hands. On the other hand, it is 
 plain from Jehoshaphat's second demand that they were not 
 legitimate prophets of the Lord, in the sense in which Elijah and 
 
CHUKCH SEKMONS. 
 
 ilie pupils of the prophetical schools were. Tlicy -would, there- 
 fore, seem to have been prophets of Jehovah, whom they wor- 
 shipped, illegally imder the symbol of a calf ; an order of men 
 who had arisen in the reign of Jeroboam, and Avho practised 
 prnpliec3dng as a profession, without any positive call from God, 
 and who, at the present time, when the Phoenician idolatry had 
 I'allen into something like discredit, were in the pay, or at least 
 under the influence, of the court of Samaria. 
 
 It must have been an extraordinary sight which was witnessed 
 outside the principal gate of Samaria on that eventful day. 
 Upon a platform erected a little in advance of the gate, were 
 raised two thrones, upon which in full regal splendour, sat the now 
 intimately allied monarchs of Judah and of Israel, while the four 
 hundred prophets, one after another, prophesied before them. In 
 the dress, and with much of the manner of modern Eastern 
 Dervishes, one after another, each took up his parable, but the 
 refrain of each was ever the same — " Go up to Eamoth-gilead and 
 prosper : for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king." 
 One prophet there was, indeed, more intrepid and enterprising 
 tlian the rest, Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, who particularly 
 distinguished himself among the four hundred. He practically, 
 illustrated his proj)liecy by a dramatic or symbolic action to render 
 it more imjDressive. He made horns of iron, that is to say 
 spikes, in allusion to the figure employed by Moses in the 
 vision of Joseph, which was intended to convey to the tribe of 
 Ephraim a promise of perpetual favour ; and then advancing 
 from 'among the rest, towards the foot of the ' throne, he 
 brandished his iron horns and cried to Ahab * With these shalt 
 thou push the Syrians, until thou hast destroyed them." 
 
 The demonstration, as a whole, was all that Ahab wanted. It 
 was of value as a means of moulding public opinion in favour of the 
 proposed expedition ; and though he did not attach much weight 
 to such things, it was in its way, satisfactory to him. But 
 Jehoshaphat was not satisfied. Indeed Ahab and Jehoshaphat 
 were not_ really aiming at the same thing. Ahab merely wanted 
 the sanction of Eeligion, if he could possibly get it, upon a project 
 as to which he had already made up his mind. Jehoshapliat 
 really wished, if he could, to know what God's Will was about 
 Ahab's project. Jehoshaphat surveyed the four hundred 
 prophets, their numbers, their picturesqueness, their peculiar 
 position and influence ; he listened to their loud, reiterated 
 cry — " Go up to Eamoth-gilead and prosper " — reiterated, as if 
 victory could be already assured by all this exuberance of ofiicial 
 enthusiasm. But he was not content, and he turned to ask 
 Ahab whether there was not" a prophet of the Lord besides, that 
 he might enquire of him V Ahab was annoyed at the question : 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 although on the part of Jehoshaphat it was strictly legitimate and 
 inevitable. Jehoshaphat naturally conld not trust the prophets of 
 Jeroboam's schism — the prophets of the calves. Ahab sullenly 
 replied " There is yet one man, jNIicaiah, the son of Imlah," but 
 added that he hated JNIicaiah because of his never prophesying 
 good of him, but evil. Still, a chamberlain was sent to 
 fetch Micaiah, and on the way back this courtier expressed 
 a hope that Micaiah would feel himself at liberty to pro- 
 phesy in the same sense and terms as the four hundred 
 had done. To this Micaiah replied that his message was 
 not a plaything which he could mould at will, — that he 
 was instructed from heaven, and that he must speak accord- 
 ing to the terms of his instructions — "What the Lord saith 
 unto me, that will I speak." On reaching the Eoyal presence 
 Micaiah was asked, as had been the others, the formal question': 
 " Shall we go up against Eamoth-gilead to battle, or shall we 
 forbear ?" And he answered, at first in the very words of the 
 four hundred — " Go up, and prosper : for the Lord shall deliver 
 it into the hand of the king." There must have been something 
 in the propliet's tone which betrayed his real mind to the heart 
 of Ahab — something which suggested that this was not the real 
 judgment of the prophet, but only an ironical echo of the 
 language of the courtiers, who weve guided in their pretended 
 inspiration by purely selfish and personal considerations. 
 Ahab's suspicions were aroused, and angry and frightened, he 
 adjured IMicaiah to speak only the truth in the name of Jehovah ; 
 and then it was that IMicaiah told how he had seen in visions 
 Israel scattered upon the mountains of Gilead, " as sheep without 
 a shepherd," and how he had heard the voice of the true King 
 of the nations sounding from the heavens — " These have no 
 master : let them return every one to his home in peace " — 
 implying that Ahali would have fallen in the contemplated 
 attack upon Eamoth-gilead. And when Ahab attributed liis 
 prophecy to Micaiah 's personal hostility to himself IMicaiah 
 replied, by showing how the Lord had determined that Ahab, 
 being led astray by the predictions of teachers who were 
 inspired by the spirit of falsehood, would be lured on to the 
 war in which he would meet his doom. 
 
 This second vision has a bearing upon a great question — upon 
 the permission and control of Evil by a good God — which is of tlie 
 utmost importance. It is not within our present purpose to 
 consider it. We can only just glance at what followed — at the 
 indignation of Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, at JMicainli's 
 depreciatory account of the origin of his inspirations — at llic 
 altercation which ensued between him and 31icaiali — nt the 
 king's sentence upon the intrepid prophet, upon whose life and 
 
CHURCH SERMONS, 
 
 history, as the prison doors of the house of the governor oi 
 Samaria close upon him, the Bible record throws no further 
 light. 
 
 Now, here let us carefully note the fact that Ahab's tragical 
 fate was the immediate consequence of preferring his own 
 will, backed up by the advice of the four hundred, to the 
 revelations of Micaiah. Why Jehoshaphat, after Micaiah's 
 prophecy, still consented to join in the expedition we do not 
 certainly know. It was, probably an additional illustration 
 of that element of weakness in his character which had led 
 him to consent originally to a marriage alliance with the 
 house of Ahab. But Ahab, although he took his own way, 
 was haunted by a suspicion that the imprisoned and injured 
 Micaiah might, after all, be right. Accordingly he entered 
 the battle in disguise that he might not attract the notice of 
 the Syrian archers ; and Jehoshaphat, who was the only 
 soldier with royal decorations on his person, being mistaken for 
 the king of Israel was in consequence exposed to a charge 
 of unusual violence, from which he was with difficulty rescued 
 by his body-guard. But Ahab's precautions were all in vain. 
 No human contrivance can avert the execution of the Divine 
 decrees. A Syrian archer drew his bow, as the Hebrew expresses 
 it, in his simplicity ; that is to say without aiming at any one 
 man in particular, and he struck the king of Israel at the point 
 where his iron breastplate joined the hanging skirt, which 
 covered the lower part of his' body. Ahab knew at once that 
 the wound was mortal, but, that he might not dishearten his 
 soldiers, he, with the help of his armour-bearer, stiffened him- 
 self into an upright posture before the advancing Syrians, while 
 his ebbing-life blood gradually filled the hollow of the chariot in 
 which he rode. Towards sunset the truth became known through- 
 out the army of Israel; then the cry went forth — the solemn cry — 
 " Every man to his city, and every man to his land." The royal 
 chariot returned to Samaria, but the king whom it bore had ceased 
 to breathe, and it was noted liow, when they washed the chariot 
 in the public pool or conduit at Samaria, the dogs licked up the 
 blood of the murderer of Nabotli, at the scene and under the 
 circumstances foretold by Elijah. 
 
 The character of Ahab's mind at this, the last crisis of 
 his sad and eventful life is seen in two respects ; — in his 
 willingness to consult the ])rophets of the calves — in his 
 prejudice against Micaiah. They are the two sides of a dis- 
 position towards Eeligion, which, in its principle, is fundamentally 
 one and the same — a disposition which was exhibited in all its 
 main features by Saul, the first king of the chosen people. It 
 is not downright contemptuous, bitter opposition ; stiU less is it 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 the loyalty of faith and love. It is a willingness to welcome 
 Religion, if Religion will only sanction the projects, the views, 
 the x^assions, the characters, of its patrons. Ahab anticipated, 
 to a certain extent, the ideas of writers such as Hobbes and 
 ]\Ialmesbury ; writers who have been convinced that Religion is 
 a great power in human life and history — that it can be made 
 useful in Avinning the minds of men to the political measures 
 which are resolved upon by earthly governments — in making the 
 process of government easier by reinforcing it with something like 
 a supernatural lustre in the eyes of the multitude. Ahab had 
 no notion of seeking the Will of God for himself, with the simple 
 intention of obeying it. He welcomed the four hundred, because 
 he knew beforehand exactly what the four hundred would say. 
 He knew that they were his creatures ; he knew that they were 
 not in a position to give him honestly independent advice at 
 this most critical juncture — that in fact they would simply echo in 
 religious language, a conclusion at which he himself had before 
 arrived on grounds of political expediency. He followed not them, 
 but himself. He disobeyed a voice which he could not silence — 
 which, willingly, he would not have heard. He knew that 
 Micaiah was an independent adviser, but he did not want to be 
 told unwelcome truths, even in a matter of life and death. He 
 took his own way, and his tragical end was the consequence of 
 his doing so. 
 
 Let us learn, hence, two lessons ; and first, an important prin- 
 ciple of Church polity — the importance of making religious 
 teachers, if you can, independent of those whom they have to 
 teach. The question, my brethren, is a very practical one. When 
 a new parochial district, for instance, is being laid out, and an 
 income has to be provided for the proposed incumbent. Why, 
 it is asked, should there be any endowment ? Why cannot a 
 modern clergyman subsist upon the voluntary offerings of his flock, 
 as the Apostles did before Mm ? My brethren, I do not deny that 
 many men can do so ; that, in all ages of the Church, you will 
 find those who inherit, along with the apostolic commission the 
 apostolic spirit in all its fulness — men who, in St. Paul's exact 
 sense have learnt m whatsoever state they are therewith to be 
 content. But these are, generally speaking, men who, for the 
 better doing of their Master's work, refuse to embarrass them- 
 selves with the cares of a family, and have no one's support to 
 provide for as a matter of strict duty but their own. But if you 
 my brethren I the laity, resolve — and there are grave reasons to 
 justify your resolution — if you resolve that the mass of your 
 clergy shall be married men, you must make up your minds 
 either to make them independent, or to surround yourselves too 
 often, and too certainly, with the echoes of your own inclinations 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 and wishes with the four hundred prophets of the calves. The 
 clergyman, who with a number of cliildren depending upon 
 him, has to think from the first day of the year, about the 
 collection which will be made for him at the end of it, must be 
 heroic indeed if he never yields to the temptation of softening 
 clown a truth which is unwelcome to his paymasters, or extenuat- 
 ing a fault which is notoriously popular among them. There 
 are, of course, some of the laity in every generation who would 
 rather have it so. They do not, they say, like too much indepen- 
 dence on the part of clergy. They do not want prophets of God, 
 but exponents of their own tastes and opinions. They prefer 
 Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, with his magnificient com- 
 pliments — with his horns of iron — to Micaiah the son of Imlah, 
 with his simple capacity saying notliing but the truth. 
 They fear that an independent clergy will abuse their indepen- 
 dence ; and it is, of course, impossible to deny, that at 
 particular periods of church history and in particular countries, 
 this has been the case on a considerable scale. The clergy, 
 are of course not perfect — not infallible. They are not exempt 
 from the temptation to abuse their trust ; but a man goes 
 much more against the instincts of a healthy conscience, if he 
 abuses it in the interests of a professional, or of a class ambition, 
 than if he abuses it that he may feed and clothe those v/lio are 
 nearest and dearest to him. It is the laity Avho suffer most — 
 much more by a dependent clergy, than do the clergy themselves. 
 The wounds which may be left in a clerical conscience, when 
 Truth has been concealed, or sin palliated for the sake of daily 
 bread, are terribly avenged by the self-inflicted moral and 
 spiritual degradation of a Christian community, which volun- 
 tarily can seek in its religious teachers — not the best that it can 
 learn the Will of the All Holy, uttered in all its integrity with 
 a fearless independence — but the mere reflection in religious lan- 
 guage, of its own shortsightedness, of its own worldliness, — in a 
 word, — of its own resolution to go up, come what may, to 
 Eamoth-gilead. 
 
 See too, here, a lesson of religious practice. They who 
 do not seek false teachers may yet take only so much of the 
 true teaching as falls in with their own lower inclinations. And 
 this is another form of the error of Ahab. They do not go so 
 far as to consult the prophets of the calves, but they have no 
 inclination to listen to all that Micaiah, the son of Imlah, has to 
 say to them. This may be seen in the way in which many men 
 read the Bible. It is not merely that they have, as the phrase 
 is, their "favourite books" and their "favourite chapters." 
 That is intelligible, because God may most assuredly attract 
 one soul through this part of His revelation, and another 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 soul tliroiigli auotlier. But it is that they take no heed of 
 the rest, while it is probable that the very portions Avhicli 
 they never read, or which they are imprudent enough to 
 deem of inferior, or of no importance, may he the very 
 portions of the I>ihle which their j)^i'ticular characters need 
 the most. They study the Sermon on the Mount ; they have 
 nothing to say to the Epistles of St. Paul. Or they study a few 
 chapters in the Eomans and Galatians ; they never read, and 
 do not like St. James. Or they do not see the use of the 
 historical books of the Old Testament, or the enthusiasms of the 
 Psalter, or the visions of Ezekiel, and the Apocalypse. It seems a 
 slavery to them to follow, day by day, the settled order of the 
 Church Lessons; and yet, if they would do this, they would be in a 
 fair way to get at the whole counsel of God, as set before tliem 
 in His Holy Word, as they would almost go through the wliole 
 of the Old Testament once, and the New Testament twice, in the 
 cour.^e of a year, and would not 1)G in danger of omitting those 
 parts of the Sacred Volume, which, though not quite so agreeable 
 are not on that account the less useful to themselves. In the 
 same way, men have their favourite duties, the performance of 
 which as they think without saying so relieves them from the 
 performance of the rest. They would on no account break 
 the eighth commandment or the sixth : they are less careful 
 about the -seventh and the ninth. They are alive to the 
 importance of charity : they do not attach much value to 
 daily prayer. They practise the social virtues : they care 
 little about the personal virtues. They are careful to be 
 kindly and generous in small matters : they see no harm in 
 being grasping, even to the very verge of dishonesty, in great 
 ones. They pay their debts regularly, but they neglect the 
 Holy Comnuuiion. They have books, they have prophets of 
 their own which put the Divine Will before them in a manner 
 v.diich consults their predilections. And in the same way 
 men have their favourite doctrines. Micaiah may preach of the 
 Divine benevolence, but he must say very little about Divine 
 justice. He may show the social advantages of Clnistianity ; he 
 had better say but little of its mysteries. He may enlarge on the 
 blessings of accepting Ptedemption : he must say nothing of 
 the consequence of rejecting it. If God, in short, will only say 
 ■what His creature approves of. His creature will be content. 
 Put if the Gosj)el or Creed, like Micaiah 's message of old, has its 
 '•' warning clauses," so much the worse for Creed or Gospel, 
 when Ahab is sitting on his throne at the gate of Samaria, and 
 has made up his mind, come what may, to go up to Eamoth- 
 gilead. 
 
 Brethren, our first work in oau souls — the work upon which 
 
CHURCH SERMONS. 
 
 everything else depends — is to be true. To seek to know our- 
 selves, indeed, as we are, and God, so far we can, as He is. To. 
 distrust all that, as we think, merely reflects our own wishes, 
 to make the most of all that speaks fearlessly of and for 
 God, about God, about ourselves. To determine that we will 
 not less prize a knowledge of this kind because it humbles, 
 because it disappoints, because it pains and checks us in a 
 thousand ways, for this knowledge is the very first step in the 
 road to Calvary, which is the road to Paradise. To stifle, to 
 mutilate, to debauch if we could do so, the accents of the Divine 
 Voice, is but to seal our own death-warrant. We have nothing 
 to fear from the humiliations that the true standard of the 
 Gospel may — nay, must — inflict upon our guilty consciences, 
 because we may rise out of, and by, these very humiliations, up 
 to that Cross which saves us from them. 
 
 In the last contest with Death, which is before each one of us, 
 like the dying Ahab sinking down into his chariot, we shall 
 think cheaply enough of the four hundred prophets who have 
 charmed us here through life by a thousand organs of Opinion : 
 we shall know that after all, He who spoke by Micaiah was 
 surely right. May He grant that in those solemn moments this 
 knowledge may not have come too. late, — that we may be stayed 
 on the Hands that were pierced for our salvation, — that we may 
 know Him Whom we have, at whatever cost, believed, as the 
 Eternal reward of a faith which will then be melting into sight ! 
 
'"'o^ 'ipil^l' 
 
 
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