t)^.. 'H. 
 
 ;.\v^ 
 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Th?eological Seminary, 
 
 -^QTxrnRTON, N.J. 
 
 Week'^ ^- 1829-1895 
 6v,e//. week-day sermons 
 
 ■Boot, ,j„^__ 
 
WEEK-DJT SERMONS 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS 
 
 . / 
 
 By R. W. t)ALE, m.a. 
 
 ALEXANDER STRAHAN AND CO. 
 
 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 
 
 1867 
 
 [All right J reserved.'] 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, 
 
 MILFORD LANE, STRAND, W.C, 
 
A PREMONITION. 
 
 " Reader : 
 
 " JJ thou do but read or like these, J have spent 
 •good hours ill: but if thou shali hence abjure those vices 
 ' which before thou thoughtest not ill-favored, or fall in love 
 ' with any of these goodly faces of virtue; or shalt hence find 
 'where thou hast any little touch of these evils to clear 
 ' thyself, or -where any defect in these graces to supply it : 
 ' 77either oj us shall need to repent of our labor." 
 
 Bishop ITai.i,; 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 preliminary 
 
 t. the use of the understanding in keeping 
 
 god's law 
 
 II. THE KINDLY TREATMENT OF OTHER MEN's 
 
 IMPERFECTIONS 
 III. — TALEBEARING 
 
 IV. UNWHOLESOME WORDS . 
 
 V. — ANGER .... 
 
 VI. CHEERFULNESS 
 
 VII. THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY 
 
 Vm. PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING 
 
 IX. THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN 
 
 X. AMUSEMENTS .... 
 
 XI. SUMMER HOLIDAYS 
 
 XII. CHRISTMAS PARTIES 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 38 
 
 60 
 
 89 
 115 
 132^ 
 154 ♦ 
 173 
 193 
 218^ 
 260 
 284 
 
PRELBIINARY. 
 
 rpHERE is no reason why these Week-dat Seemoxs 
 should not be read on Sundays. They are about 
 every- day life, and some readers may think them 
 " nnspiritnal ; " but is it quite safe to divorce the 
 hours we consecrate to devotion from the hours 
 we spend in the family, the counting-house, and the 
 shop ? If Week-days are never thought about on 
 Sundays, will not Sundays be forgotten on Week- 
 days? Would it not be well for every man to spend 
 an hour on the first day of the week thinking 
 over — not the business affairs — but the morality 
 of the other six ? God forbid that I should depre- 
 ciate those lofty acts of the soul, in which it holds 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 communion with tlie Father of spirits, meditates on 
 the infinite love of Christ, strives to penetrate 
 more deeply into the mysterious glory of His atone- 
 ment for sin, and lays open every channel through 
 which those streams of spiritual life and power can 
 flow which have then* springs in the living God. 
 Let those who are content with morality and up- 
 rightness of conduct, and are indifferent to religious 
 duty, be assured that there is an unearthly peace, 
 a heavenly joy, a blessedness like that of the angels, 
 for every one who has learnt the happy secret of 
 dwelling in the light of the Di^dne presence. When 
 the heart glows with devout affection, and the spirit 
 sinks in prostrate worship, and the eye gazes on 
 the glory of Christ, Heaven comes down to earth, 
 and the promise of immortal bliss begins to be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 But in the sense in which some good people 
 use the word " spiritual," the Bible is in many 
 parts extremely unspiritual. They say themselves 
 
PRELIMINARY. 
 
 that tliey must " spiritualize " many passages in tlie 
 Old Testament, and some in the New, to find any 
 such instruction and pi'ofit as they are always asking 
 for. They forget that the words of inspired men 
 were not written to be thought of only on Sundays ; 
 that they were not written for persons who have 
 nothing to do but to pray. The first lesson that 
 Holy Scripture teaches is unlearnt, if we have not 
 discovered that God is interested in all the aSairs 
 of our daily life, and judges us not merely by our 
 prayers and religious affections, but by our w^orks. 
 
 There is no occupation in which man can be law- 
 fully engaged, in which he may not see God. The 
 tens of thousands of rough fellows who are working 
 under OTOund in South Stafibrdshire, are o'ettins^ out 
 of the earth the iron God Himself put there. The 
 tens of thousands of men, women, and children in 
 the workshops of Birmingham are melting, mould- 
 ing, hammering, and stamping the metals God Him- 
 self made. It was God who created the cotton-plant 
 
 B 2 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 out of wliicli tlie Lancashire people mannfactiire 
 their calicoes. It was Grod who created the silk- 
 worm which spins the cocoon for all workers in silk. 
 The first part of the process in every form of 
 manufacturing industry is done by God. He always 
 finds the material; and that material has been pro- 
 duced by most complicated methods, and by methods 
 which in many cases have taken thousands of years 
 to complete and perfect their results. It is plain 
 that He meant us to employ our hands in honest 
 labour, as well as our lips in thankful praise ; that 
 He meant our brains to be active in planning, in- 
 venting, and scheming, in relation to this world, 
 as well as our hearts in longing and hoping for 
 the next. He made our bodies of the dust w^hich 
 belongs to the earth, though He breathed into us 
 a higher life, which unites us to Himself. And so 
 the Bible has very much in it about common w^ork, 
 as well as about religious duty. In the "book of 
 remembrance," there are pages not only for our 
 
PRELIMINARY. 
 
 Sundays, but for every day in the "week besides. 
 " The prayer of the wicked is an abomination to 
 the Lord;" "a false balance" is an abomination 
 to Him too. That religion is worthless which has 
 to do only with books of devotion, and not with 
 day-books . and ledgers ; with pews and churches, 
 and not with counting-houses and workshops; with 
 prayers and sermons, and not with " amusements," 
 "summer holidays," and "Christmas parties;" "the 
 kindly treatment of other men's imperfections " and 
 "the discipline of the body," that we may master 
 our own sins. 
 
 In the Ten Commandments there are only four 
 which refer to duties we owe directly to God ; there 
 are six which refer to duties we owe to our fellow- 
 men. All through the Bible we are repeatedly 
 reminded that God has His eye upon us at all 
 times ; and that to please Him we must " do 
 justly," as well as " love mercy, and walk humbly 
 with our God." 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 There are some persons wlio plead, in excuse for 
 their own irreligion, that in secular affairs religious 
 men are no better than other people. If they are 
 not J they ought to be. I believe that, as a rule, 
 they are. If not, how is it that when a religious 
 banker has been guilty of using securities entrusted 
 to his keeping, the whole country rings with his 
 crime, and there is so much sneering and triumph 
 at the exjDcnse of religion itself? We do not make 
 such a stir when a man who makes no profession 
 of faith in Christ is guilty of the same thing. We 
 do not put article's in our religious newspapers, 
 headed in large capitals, " Doings of an Irreligious 
 Banker." How is it that if a minister is betrayed 
 into grievous sin, the scandal of his fjill is kept 
 alive for years? If another man commits the same 
 offence it is soon forgotten. 
 
 Hundreds of men were hung for forgery in the last 
 century ; I doubt whether ten of my readers could tell 
 me the name of any one of them except Dr. Dodd. 
 
PRELIMINARY, 
 
 Of the people that fill om^ gaols, that are sent 
 to our penal colonies, that are brought up before 
 the magistrates for drunkenness and disorder, I 
 wonder whether one in a thousand is a com- 
 municant in any Christian church. 
 
 However this may be, it is plain that if people 
 who profess to be Christians give short weight and 
 short measure, it is not the fault of the Bible. If a 
 shopman who robs the till on Saturday night goes 
 to church on Sunday morning, he hears nothing at 
 church to make him think that his crime against 
 man is no sin against God. If a father who pro- 
 fesses to be religious gives way to a bad temper, 
 and "provokes his children to wi-ath," it is not 
 from the Bible he learns to do it ; if he read his 
 Bible properly he would know better. If a master 
 professes to be a Christian, and is guilty of using 
 harsh and violent language to the people he employs, 
 do not blame his Christian faith: that teaches him 
 to " forbear threatening," reminds him that he has 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 "a Master in heaven," and that "there is no respect 
 of persons with Him." 
 
 It is the shallowest and weakest reasoning in the 
 world to argue against religion because some religions 
 people do wrong; their religion condemns their 
 wrong-doing as heavily as human censure can con- 
 demn it. If they are earnestly religious, they will 
 gradually become better. 
 
 I cannot close these preliminary words without 
 recalling the solemn truth, that God's laws for 
 our conduct to each other are a revelation of His 
 own character, and are in strict analogy to the 
 laws which determine His own action towards His 
 creatures. He is merciful as well as just; but now 
 is the time for mercy. The time is coming when 
 He will judge every man ; and when He judges He 
 will judge righteously. 
 
 We might well tremble in the anticipation of the 
 hour when, one by one, we shall wait for the Divine 
 sentence on our deeds ; but we know that the critical 
 
PRELIMINARY. 
 
 act of the soul, in God's sight, is its acceptance or 
 rejection of the mercy of the Lord Jesus; and that 
 if we trust in Him we shall not only be justified by 
 faith in this world, but shall be so strengthened for 
 all good works that God Himself, when He looks at 
 our deeds, will be able to say, ""Well done, good 
 and faithful servants ; enter ye into the joy of your 
 Lord." But to no man, whatever his faith, who has 
 not done well, will God say " Well done." 
 
I. 
 
 THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING IN 
 KEEPING GOD'S LAW. 
 
 T T is a very common impression that wliat men 
 require to keep God's commandments is riglit- 
 heartedness, and nothing more ; that the Understand- 
 ing has very little to do with it. This is a grave 
 mistake, and a very mischievous one. Doing right, 
 in a world like this, is a science, or at any rate an 
 art ; mere instinct is not enough to guide us. Men 
 do not paint beautiful pictui'es or carve noble statues 
 without learning how to do it ; they must have genius 
 to begin with; but they have to tlilnlc about their 
 work, to study great models, to observe how other 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. II 
 
 artists liave succeeded, to investigate tlie causes of 
 their own failures ; and it is an advantage to tliem 
 to read what has been written about the principles 
 Avhich every painter and every sculptor must prac- 
 tically remember, if the creations of his hand are 
 to be a lasting treasure to the world. 
 
 To cover human life with beauty, to carve it into 
 nobleness, requires thought as truly as to cover 
 canvas with lovely forms, or to make the hard and 
 unwilling marble assume a shape of majesty and 
 grace. We all have to learn to do icell. Eight 
 thought has very much to do with right conduct. 
 
 When the Psalmist prayed, " Give me understand- 
 ing, and I shall keep Thy precepts," he did not mean, 
 — Make me feel how awful a thing it is to provoke 
 Thine anger, or how lovely goodness is, or what 
 ingratitude and shame there would be in breaking 
 Thy law, but " give me understanding'' that I may 
 know how to keep it ; then " I will observe it with my 
 w^hole heart." His purpose, his desii-e, his resolution 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 was right ; but lie wanted to learn what tlie will of 
 God really was. The head must assist the heart, if 
 we are to live a good life. 
 
 When our circumstances are simple and uncompli- 
 cated, there is no great danger of ouy mistaking the 
 right for the wrong, if we have ordinary intelligence 
 and have lived among people of tolerably good 
 character. But there are many moral questions 
 which . are extremely difficult to settle ; there are 
 many others which men in certain conditions are 
 very likely to settle inaccurately. 
 
 Take, for instance, the dreadful system of slavery, 
 which seems to us so black and terrible and appall- 
 ing a wickedness, that few Englishmen can speak of 
 it calmly or without indignation. There is no doubt 
 that hundreds and thousands of just and kind- 
 hearted people in America have believed till very 
 lately, and many believe still, that slavery is the 
 natural and the happiest condition of the negro. 
 Statesmen and theologians, men of business and 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 13 
 
 scliolars, men who read the New Testament as tlie 
 record of a Divine revelation and men who reject 
 it, men who differ about a thousand other things, 
 have been agreed about this. They were horrified at 
 what they called the abuses of the system — the cruel 
 floggings, the brutal licentiousness, the separation of 
 husband and wife, which were common in the slave 
 states — but the system itself seemed a very right 
 thing. Lord Brougham justly called it "a wild and 
 guilty phantasy that man could hold property of 
 man; " but people who have gTOwn up in the presence 
 of this institution have not only taken for granted 
 that it was built on wisdom and justice, but, after 
 considering the question, have deliberately come to 
 this conclusion. It is not very long ago that English- 
 men thought the same. We have only just passed 
 the thirty- third anniversary of negro emancipation in 
 the British colonies. There are still some men 
 living who had to fight in the British House of 
 Commons for the freedom of the African race, and 
 
14 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 to wliose relentless logic and fiery eloquence and 
 undaunted courage, we owe it that our own flag- 
 does not still protect this enormous crime. There 
 were English manufacturers (some of them have not 
 long been dead, others may be living still) whose 
 trade it was to make handcuffs and chains for the 
 West Indian market ; their business was, no doubt, 
 an unpleasant one, but they were not regarded as 
 we regard men whose trade it is to make tools 
 for burglars or to promote prostitution. English 
 gentlemen whose estates were cultivated by slave 
 labour were received into the best English society; 
 English law protected their property ; and their sons, 
 their nephews, and great charitable institutions were 
 very glad to be remembered in their w^ills. The 
 intellect of this country had to be morally in- 
 structed before it learnt how dark and villanous a 
 thing slavery really is ; and the intellect must be 
 used about our own personal conduct, or we shall be 
 certain to go wrong. 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 15 
 
 Every man sliould use his understanding to discover 
 the true character of his actual course of life. If, 
 when a tradesman finds his way into the Bankruptcy 
 Coui't, it conies out that for years he has never taken 
 stock, or has taken it carelessly, he is very severely 
 censured, and most justly. Every sensible man of 
 business spends several days every year in learning 
 his financial position, and the result of the trade of 
 the previous twelvemonth. He weighs, he measures 
 all his goods. He allows for the deterioration of 
 stock and for the wear and tear of his premises. 
 He reckons up his bad debts, he forms a rough 
 estimate of the debts likely to prove bad. He works 
 night and day. He is restlessly anxious to see how 
 the balance-sheet will show. He uses his under- 
 standing to learn whether his business is working 
 profitahly. Would it not be possible, is it not 
 necessary, to have an examination equally rigorous 
 into the moral character of all his transactions ? If 
 he is an honest man — above all, if he is a Christian 
 
t6 week-day sermons. 
 
 man — lie will tliink tliat by far the most important 
 tiling. 
 
 But is tliere any necessity for sucli a serious and 
 elaborate inquiry ? There is. If a tradesman does 
 not get out an accurate balance-sheet every year, he 
 may be going wrong financially without knowing it : 
 his trade expenses may be eating up all his profits ; 
 he may be paying too heavy a rent ; spending too 
 much on his premises ; employing too many hands ; 
 people he trusts may be robbing him ; he may seem 
 to have a flourishing business, and yet may be 
 getting into a worse condition every Christmas. I 
 believe that many men, from never investigating 
 the moral character of what they are doing, get 
 "^ wrong morally, without knowing it. They are no 
 worse than their neighbours. They accept, as they 
 think, the common standard of morality, and they 
 suppose that this is quite enough. That is just how 
 men might have argued who were accustomed to 
 buy and sell women and children, and to keep 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 17 
 
 bloodhounds to liunt do^Ti fugitives, and to have 
 their slaves flogged and sometimes shot by reckless 
 overseers. The real question is, whether what a 
 man is doing is right in itself, not whether he is as 
 good as other people. 
 
 Take, for instance, the arrangements a draper 
 makes with the young men in his employment. He 
 may follow the custom of his trade, and yet be 
 doing them great injury. It is the " custom " in 
 many houses, doing a particular kind of business, 
 to make arrangements with the people they employ, 
 which are an almost irresistible temptation to 
 trickery, misrepresentation, and dishonesty of every 
 kind. To dispose of the goods of last season, of 
 stock which has been slightly injured, or has been 
 bought cheap from an inferior manufacturer, — it is 
 very common to stimulate the young men who have 
 to sell by giving them a premium on the amount 
 they contrive to " push off." The master does not 
 tell them to lie about the goods ; perhaps he is very 
 
 C 
 
l8 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 particular in telling them to avoid lying ; but lie 
 may be very sure tliat some of them will sail very 
 near the wind, and that some will get reckless of 
 truth altogether. He may say, " that is their 
 concern, not mine," — but it is his concern as well 
 as theirs. He pushes them into the water where 
 the current is running strong, and where only good 
 swimmers can struggle against it, and then tells 
 them not to get drowned. 
 
 Again, there are many ways of raising money 
 — winked at while a man is successful — which 
 are not only unsound in themselves, but are 
 severely condemned if a man happens to fail ; 
 and there are some of them which are sejDarated 
 by very thin and almost invisible lines from acts 
 which are positively criminal, and bring men under 
 the lash of the law. A man is tempted, when 
 things are going bad with him, to do something 
 which he knows to be illegal, but he thinks he 
 can put everything right before there is any chance 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 19 
 
 of being discovered ; and lie cannot see tliat there 
 is any great difference, morally, between this par- 
 ticular act and what is done constantly by very 
 respectable people. Now, the true method of 
 looking at the case is to ask if both are not 
 wrong. One line may seem hardly more crooked 
 than another, but perhaps neither line is straight. 
 In common stock-taking, a tradesman is anxious, 
 not to know whether he is only a little worse than 
 his neighbours, but whether the balance is clearly 
 on the right side : in his moral stock-taking he 
 should make a similar inquiry. It is very easy for 
 men to go step by step out of the straight path, 
 and to think that they are not wandering at all ; 
 but if they would only look at their life as a 
 whole, they would discover that, while they think 
 they have been keeping tolerably near to their 
 neighbours, only going a little farther to the right 
 or the left now and then, they have gone a very 
 long distance astray. 
 
 c 2 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 It is also very necessary for a man to use his 
 ■understanding to determine what it is morally right 
 for him to attempt. In how many failures, which 
 bring ruin upon scores of innocent people, it turns 
 out that the bankrupt knew little or nothing of 
 the business he was conducting. He meant nothing 
 wrong, but got involved in hopeless diJ0B.culties 
 through sheer incompetency. This does not absolve 
 him from moral blame. If any one ventured to 
 drive a train who understood hardly anything of 
 the construction and working of a locomotive, and 
 there came an accident in which life was lost, the 
 most merciful jury in the kingdom would convict 
 him of manslaughter. He had no right to imperil 
 human life by his ignorance and presumption ; — nor 
 has any one the right to imperil the money of other 
 people by venturing to engage in a trade which he 
 does not understand. If a man enters upon a new- 
 business, he ought to have enough capital to cover 
 all the losses he is certain to incur while he is 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 21 
 
 learning how to condnct it. He is sure to make 
 mistakes ; lie will trust people lie ouglit not to 
 trust ; he will buy at a disadvantage, lie will sell 
 at a disadvantage ; liis working expenses will be 
 unnecessarily heavy ; he will blunder in a thousand 
 ways. If he has sufficient money of his own to 
 meet the inevitable losses which will result from 
 his want of special knowledge, he may have a 
 right to run the risk ; but he has no right to risk 
 the property of other people, and if he half ruins 
 them and ruins himself altogether, he must not be 
 surprised if instead of pitying him they are very 
 indignant. 
 
 The same principle plainly holds with regard to 
 taking situations with the duties of which men are 
 unfamiliar. A master is generally able to find out 
 at once whether the people he is employing are up 
 to their work ; but there are cases in which this is 
 not easy ; even if the inefficiency is soon discovered, 
 there is loss and inconvenience, and there is reason 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 for anger and blame. Servants get tlieir situations 
 and tlieir salaries under false pretences if they 
 cannot serve tlieir employer well. They cheat him 
 by giving him a worse article than he paid for. 
 
 There is one direction in which these suggestions 
 have received during the last three or four years 
 most melancholy confirmation. Many people appear 
 to have been perfectly intoxicated by the success 
 of certain Joint-Stock Companies, founded on the 
 principle of limited liability. I am very far from 
 saying anything against the principle on which 
 these Companies are established ; it seems to me 
 thoroughly sound, and it must give profitable 
 employment to a considerable amount of the 
 capital of the country which has been invested till 
 now in a very unproductive manner. 
 
 The whole nation will be the richer if the 
 system is worked fairly and honestly ; but what 
 do country clergymen, widows, and spinsters, know 
 of the real character of some of the schemes in 
 
THK USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 23 
 
 which tliey take shares ? It may be perfectly 
 safe, perhaps, for men who live among merchants, 
 railway people, and stock-brokers, and who find 
 the Economist newspaper light and pleasant reading, 
 to invest in Welsh coal mines and Devonshire slate 
 quarries, in ironworks np in Durham, in London 
 land schemes which are to pay twenty-five per 
 cent., and in Companies for running steamboats on 
 the Danube ; but what right have most of us to 
 touch things of this kind ? We know no more 
 about these matters than we know about the 
 pohtical condition of the moon ; for us to have to 
 do with them is mere gambling, and nothing else. 
 We might just as well stake our money at rouge- 
 et-noir in a saloon at Baden Baden, or bet on a 
 game of billiards in a London gambling- house. 
 
 It is also very plain that some people who live 
 a quiet life — safe, respectable people — have been 
 running most unjustifiable risks, by the extent of 
 the responsibilities they have incurred in connection 
 
24 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 with Companies wliicb. they had good reason to 
 believe perfectly sound. They are responsible only 
 up to a definite amount ; but how far beyond their 
 actual resources does that amount stand ? It -svill 
 not do to reckon that when the worst happens, half 
 at least of their favourite Companies will stand, 
 and that by realizing their shares in these they 
 can meet all possible pressure. Storms blow some- 
 times in which the best ships seem in danger of 
 sinking ; the best investments are almost valueless 
 till confidence is restored. The railway panic twenty 
 years ago failed to teach men wisdom ; and many 
 Christian people have to learn that they ought to 
 use their understanding — not merely to learn where 
 money can be made most rapidly, but to learn 
 whether they are honest in assuming the responsi- 
 bilities of investment. 
 
 The understanding should be used to keep lis out 
 of the reach of strong teinptation. Our first and 
 supreme concern should be — to keep God's law. 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 25 
 
 This is the work to which every Christian man has 
 consecrated his life. Whatever else he may be 
 successful in, if he fail in this, he knows that his 
 strength and his very life are wasted. 
 
 That in certain positions grave moral dangers 
 are inevitable, is plain to every man who will use 
 common sense ; and however earnestly we may pray 
 to God to keep us right, we are guilty of presump- 
 tion if we voluntarily expose ourselves to perils 
 which we know it will be very hard to escape. 
 
 The prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," comes 
 first; then follows, "Deliver us from evil." Angels 
 may hold us up if we slip when we are walking 
 carefally in the right path, but if we cast ourselves 
 needlessly from the pinnacle of the temple, we 
 cannot rely on the Divine protection. To those of 
 my readers whose trade or profession is already 
 fixed for life, I have only to say, that if in itself 
 it is an honest one, you have no choice but to 
 continue in it ; but when you have to determine 
 
26 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 your cliildren's occupation for them, remember tliat 
 you have to keep them right, not by your prayers 
 merely, but by the use of your " understanding." 
 You ought to know what their moral weaknesses 
 are ; on what side they are most open to temptation ; 
 and you are bound to do what you can to shelter 
 them. You are careful enough to warn them against 
 choosing a business for which they have not the 
 necessary physical strength, or which is likely to 
 aggravate some physical disease : there ought surely 
 to be equal anxiety to persuade them to avoid occu- 
 pations which are likely to prove their moral and 
 religious ruin. For yourselves, too, there may be 
 left the power of choice between circumstances 
 which are perilous and circumstances which are 
 favourable to integrity and devoutness. I am con- 
 -» founded when I see the anxiety of some religious 
 people to creep or to climb into society which is 
 utterly irreligious, and to surround their children 
 with associations which are almost certain to destroy 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 2/ 
 
 all Christian earnestness, and to plunge them into 
 frivolity and folly. 
 
 Nor can I understand how it is that, under the 
 natural influence of a love for the country, and by 
 the aid of our modern facilities for travelling, persons 
 whose desire to do God's law is real and honest, 
 choose to live miles away from any church where 
 they can heartily worship God. " Our Sundays," 
 they say, "are very unsatisfactory; we cannot get 
 to worship more than once a day; if the weather 
 is unfavoui^able, we are obliged to remain at home 
 altogether ; when we do go, it is so different from 
 what we have been used to, that we are thoroughly 
 dissatisfied ; and as for the children, we are very 
 anxious about them." If these good people are 
 absolutely obliged to live where they do, they are 
 to be pitied ; but if not, their conduct is unintelli- 
 gible. If the water in their house were bad, they 
 would leave it directly, spite of the pleasant garden 
 and the attractions of a country life ; if it were 
 
28 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 impossible for tlieni to get tlie children educated 
 there, they would leave it ; if it seemed to disagree 
 with the health of one member of the family, they 
 would leave it; and yet they voluntarily remain 
 where, by their own confession, their religious life 
 is in danger of stagnating through their "unsatis- 
 factory Sundays," and where their children are in 
 danger of growing up without any religion at all. 
 It is no use for them to hope that by special and 
 extraordinary spiritual help, God will compensate 
 for the want of the common aids to holy living. 
 If they go out into the desert of their own will, 
 they must not expect to be fed with manna from 
 heaven. These peojDle have great need to offer 
 the prayer : " Give me understanding , that I may 
 keep Thy law." 
 
 Finally, there are circumstances in the lives of 
 many, perhaps of most of us, which test with the 
 utmost severity our loyalty to God and righteous- 
 ness : — in these the understanding must be used 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 29 
 
 vigorously if we are to stand firm. "WTien we see 
 tlie sky darkening with, moral tempests, our first 
 duty is to resolve, at all hazards, to keep God's 
 Law, and to endure the heaviest sufiering rather 
 than commit the lightest sin. The heart must be 
 braced up to meet the danger. We must determine 
 that nothing shall ever be done by us under any 
 stress of temptation that would make us blush if 
 it were printed in the newspaper next morning, or 
 that would bring a cloud upon the brow of the 
 recording angel as he wrote it down in the book 
 of God. "We must determine that if in any moment 
 of weakness we are betrayed into sin, we will never 
 sin again to cover the first offence, whatever shame 
 and loss detection may bring upon us. If, when 
 Peter had denied Christ once, he had immediately 
 recovered himself; if he had confronted even the 
 mockery and contempt of the men in the High 
 Priest's house, who would have laughed at him for 
 his cowardice and scorned him for his lying; he 
 
30 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 •would surely have seen a Divine benignity in tlie 
 face of Christ wlien the Lord "looked" upon him, 
 and the one act of denial, though it would not 
 have passed unreproved, would have been almost 
 forgotten in the Master's approbation of the prompt 
 and courageous repentance. The same Christ is with 
 us now — watching us w^ith infinite love, watching 
 us not to see whether we fall, but to help us to 
 stand erect. If at this moment any Christian man 
 w^ho reads these pages is under strong temptations, 
 let me remind him that the greatest of earthly 
 calamities cannot throw the faintest shadow upon 
 the immortal brightness of his future destiny, that 
 only sin can cast a cloud beyond the grave; that 
 all that is dearest to him even now is beyond the 
 reach of the trouble he dreads ; the storm may waste 
 and destroy the harvest of years of honest and 
 laborious industry, may leave him with his home in 
 ruins and surrounded w^th utter desolation, — but 
 the eternal stars are beyond its reach; they are 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 31 
 
 sliining wlien its rage is most fui'ious, and wlien it 
 is spent tliey will be sliining still. The stars belong 
 to tlie man wliose supreme desii'e is to serve God. 
 
 But it is not enough, in such circumstances, to 
 determine we will do right; we must take pains to 
 understand exactly what the right is. It is my 
 habit to read the reports of bankruptcy cases 
 and of the winding-up of public companies ; and 
 the inner pages of a daily paper seem to me much 
 better reading generally than the articles in large 
 tj'pe. The more I read, the more plain it seems to 
 me that people go wrong almost as much from 
 want of sense as from want of honesty ; it is very 
 often hard to say whether the men who have done 
 the very worst things have been more deficient in 
 integrity or in understanding. They were short of 
 money ; and they raised it on terms which would 
 soon have beggared a duke. They were in diflS.- 
 culties ; and they relied on the help and advice of 
 men whose cleverness had ruined themselves, and 
 
32 
 
 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 wlio were known to be swindlers. They found it 
 hard to make their own business pay, which they 
 knew something about ; and they went into schemes 
 for working mines in South America, or specu- 
 lated in cotton or opium. They had a heavy 
 balance on the wrong side one Christmas, and 
 they went on a little more recklessly for twelve 
 months, hoping that by some miracle it would get 
 right ; but they thought when the next Christmas 
 came it would be better to have no balance-sheet 
 at all. What have they done with their under- 
 standing all this time? How was it possible that 
 they could think, if they thought at all, that it was 
 either honest or expedient to follow a course like 
 this? 
 
 Men need to have their brain cool, if they are to 
 escape without stain when the evil days come. 
 They may fall over the precipice through keeping 
 their eyes shut, whether they mean to commit 
 suicide or not. Strange and terrible is the blind- 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 33 
 
 ness which seems to be inflicted on some at the 
 very time they most need the clearest vision. It 
 may be that their hearts have gone astray first, and 
 they are given over to strong delusion that they 
 may believe a lie. 
 
 We know not in what form or at what time the 
 fiery trial may come to ns in this world, to tiy our 
 work, of what sort it is. It comes to some men 
 early, and if they fail, there is often nothing for 
 them but a life of obscure misery and shame ; it 
 comes to others when grey hairs are beginning to 
 show on their heads, and, after years of honour 
 and blameless integrity, they have a miserable end. 
 Thank God that every day's well-doing makes us 
 stronger for the struggle, as the silent peaceful 
 days of summer during which the oak is stretch- 
 ing its knotted roots deeper and deeper into the 
 soil, prepares it to meet the fury of wintry storms. 
 
 Is there any nobler use of the intellect of man 
 than this, to serve the conscience and the heart 
 
34 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 with faithful loyalty, to master the moral laws 
 by which life should be ruled, and the motives 
 which may assist the vacillating will in keeping 
 them? Is not a pure and devout life one of the 
 fairest and most beautiful things which the intellect 
 can assist in creating? This endures when every- 
 thing besides vanishes and passes away ; this 
 secures a true immortality. 
 
 There is something sad in considering how much 
 thought there is in the world about inferior things, 
 and how very little about this. Look round a 
 great library ; the men whose names we see there 
 gave their days and nights through many years to 
 thinking out what is printed in their books, and 
 it is certain that half of them could have seldom 
 or never thought at all about the morality of their 
 own lives. Artists, fired with passionate enthu- 
 siasm for their lofty calling, spent their health and 
 strength in coveriug their canvas with noble forms 
 and beaut'ful colouring, but left their own character 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 35 
 
 shapeless and repulsive. In tlie souls of famous 
 musicians there has been harsh discord ; and the 
 imagination of famous poets has shed no splendour 
 on their personal history. 
 
 Among common men, what restless, incessant 
 thought there is about how they may extend their 
 trade and increase theu' profits, come to live in a 
 larger house and keep a better table, and how little 
 thought about the eternal law of righteousness and 
 their obligation to keep and honour it. Do Chris- 
 tian men believe that He who gave them their 
 intellect meant them to think incessantly of the 
 price of iron, the rate of wages, the condition of 
 the money market, the furniture of their houses, 
 the fruit in their gardens — never, or only sluggishly, 
 about His own awfal majesty, His glorious perfec- 
 tions, His Idea of what human life ought to be ? 
 Do they think that Christ will say, " Well done, 
 good and faithful servant," merely because having 
 been born poor, they have got money in the 
 
 D 2 
 
36 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 savings' bank, or, liaving begun life as jonrneymen, 
 have struggled up until tbey bave become tbeir 
 own masters ? Do tbey think that wealth, like 
 charity, covers a multitude of sins, that they may 
 do many questionable things if they can escape 
 being found out, and that God is more anxious that 
 they should die rich, than that they should live 
 an honest and devout life ? Do they think that 
 " the man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel," 
 is sure to sit in a good place in the kingdom of 
 heaven, and that if there come " a poor man in 
 vile raiment," he will be thrust into a corner ? 
 The divine judgment will not proceed on such 
 principles as these. When driven to the very 
 verge of sin by fear of poverty or by a feverish 
 thirst for wealth, we should remember that He who 
 is enthroned in the very centre of all the splendours 
 of the city of God was once a poor man, and had 
 not where to lay His head; that His elect and most 
 illustrious servants who sit as princes near their 
 
THE USE OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 37 
 
 King were almost as poor as Himself; that suffer- 
 ing and destitution and shame in this world, so 
 far from diminishing our future glory, will make it 
 shine the brighter, if only they are borne with 
 devout patience and courageous faith ; that sin is 
 the only enduring evil, and holiness the only 
 eternal good. 
 
II. 
 
 THE KINDLY TREATMENT OF OTHER MEN'S 
 IMPERFECTIONS. 
 
 ^^HE world is not altogether wliat we slionld like 
 it to be, and tlie life of man is a constant 
 struggle to remedy and overcome its imperfections. 
 The wind is almost always on our beam, and we 
 have to tack and shift our sails incessantly, to 
 make any headway. In our conflict with material 
 difficulties, we have learnt how to achieve great 
 results by very imperfect instruments. The farmer 
 asks science to supply the deficiencies of the soil. 
 The sailor makes careful allowances for the varia- 
 tions of the needle. The artist in the precious 
 
OTHER MEN S IMPERFECTIONS. 
 
 metals, when lie discovers that pure gold is too 
 soft for his work, does not throw it aside, but 
 hardens it with alloy. 
 
 To accept men for what they are, and to make 
 the best of them, is not so easy. We get impatient 
 and irritable when their tempers, their prejudices, 
 their follies disturb our plans, and give us what 
 we think unnecessary trouble. 
 
 We should remember, however, that sin may 
 remain in the most devout and saintly souls. "We 
 acknowledge this in church, but in practical life 
 are apt to forget it. Human nature is so complex 
 a thing, that as in the worst men there is generally 
 left some trace of goodness, so in the best there 
 is generally left some stain of evil. To our sur- 
 prise and joy we now and then " gather grapes 
 of thorns ; " and now and then our hands are 
 scratched and torn when we are expecting to pluck 
 the ripe clusters of the vine. Both charity and 
 justice require us to recognize the necessary limits 
 
40 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 and exceptions to the general trutli, that " a good 
 tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a 
 corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." 
 
 It does not follow that because a man has some 
 grave faults therefore he has not great virtues. 
 Even in the most highly cultivated countries there 
 are tracts of land which have never been brought 
 under the plough ; it is just so with the characters 
 of some men — perhaps of most men ; there are 
 patches of waste ground lying here and there 
 utterly useless — offensive to the eye, and covered not 
 with wholesome corn, but with briars and nettles, 
 and weeds of poisonous quality. And there may be 
 real and most resolute righteousness in men who are 
 most ungracious in their manner and speech ; just 
 as there is sometimes sturdy vigour in a tree which 
 is so crooked and perverse in its growth,' as to be 
 quite destitute of grace and nobleness ; an unhappy 
 twist which it received when young, a certain hard- 
 ness in the soil, or constant exposure to the stress 
 
OTHER men's imperfections. 4I 
 
 of an unkindly wind, has fatally injured the beauty 
 of its form, though it has fought a brave and. suc- 
 cessful fight for life. Then there are people whose 
 moral character is neither unlovely nor seriously 
 defective, but whose innocent " infirmities " are most 
 vexatious and annoying. 
 
 We ourselves are in all probability very much like 
 the rest of mankind. When we have learned what 
 out' own imperfections are, there is no great difficulty 
 in knowing how to treat them ; but how are we to 
 treat the imperfections — moral and intellectual — of 
 our wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, parents 
 and children ; of our neighbours, of the men with 
 whom we act on the committees of hospitals, of 
 clerks and workmen, of the ministers of religion, of 
 the people with whom we worship ? The question 
 is not altogether an easy one, and the answer must, 
 of course, be varied and modified by the very various 
 relations in which we stand to them by their age, 
 
42 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 rank, and official position. But even in tlie case of 
 onr equals it is not always clear wliat we should 
 do. There is sometimes a conflict of duties. If it 
 is a duty to be patient with the dull and the stupid, 
 it is often necessary, if public work is to be done, 
 and if the men themselves are to be saved from 
 absurdity and mischief, to give them sharp words 
 and lay upon them a heavy hand. Gentleness and 
 forbearance must sometimes give place to firmness, 
 and to the authority which rightfully belongs to a 
 clear brain and a resolute will. If it is a duty to 
 be merciful to the sins of men, and to forgive them 
 " as Grod for Christ's sake has forgiven us," it is 
 also a duty to be just, and to call good and evil by 
 their right names. We can be under no obligation 
 to form a false judgment of the character and 
 conduct even of those we love best ; the utmost 
 that reverence for age, and for the prerogatives 
 which belong to those who have natural claims on 
 our affectionate loyalty, can require is, that we 
 
OTHER MEN S IMPERFECTIONS. 43 
 
 should form no judgment at all. If people about 
 us are doing wrong, it cannot be our duty to tbink 
 that they are doing right. If they are covetous, 
 cowardly, and untruthful, we cannot be required to 
 think them liberal, courageous, and honest. We 
 must think of them as they are ; and if we speak at 
 all, we must speak of them as we think. 
 
 There is a degenerate charity which corrupts the 
 integrity of conscience and destroys all her vigour. 
 To excuse, to palliate, to explain away the offences 
 of other men, is often the first step towards think- 
 ing lightly of our own : it is a kind of atonement 
 for tolerating imperfections in ourselves ; we shrink 
 from condemning the sins of others, because we 
 know that we judge our own sins too leniently. And 
 to treat wrong-doing lightly is to spare an indi- 
 vidual at the cost of impairing the moral spirit of 
 a whole community. Ci^dl and criminal laws derive 
 their chief force, not from the physical power of 
 the legislature or the severity of the threatened 
 
44 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 penalties, but from the strong and universal consent 
 of the people : when the mind of the nation 
 changes, laws become obsolete and ineffective with- 
 out being formally repealed ; and moral obligations 
 are practically suppressed or sustained by the com- 
 mon opinion and feeling of society. A hearty 
 hatred and stern condemnation of evil is the best 
 earthly ally of conscience ; a general tolerance of 
 it is her worst and most insidious foe. To keep 
 the moral tone of society healthy and vigorous, 
 there must be the expression, in words and deeds, 
 of an intense disgust and contempt for selfishness, 
 meanness, and falsehood ; purity must be honoured, 
 and impurity followed with certain disgrace. 
 
 And yet charity " endureth all things ; " we are 
 to " give place unto wrath ; " when we " do well 
 and suffer for it," we are to " take it patiently ; " 
 we are to " judge not, that we be not judged." 
 
 The lines which separate rival duties are not 
 
OTHER men's imperfections. 
 
 45 
 
 sliarp and straight like the boundaries of American 
 states and territories in the West, which run alono- 
 a parallel of latitude, and may be drawn on a map 
 with a ruler and compasses ; they are like the 
 boundaries between European kingdoms, which follow 
 the irregular course of a river and the vagrant 
 windings of a brook, stretch along the sky-line of 
 a mountain range, or bend to the shores of a lake. 
 All that can be given for practical guidance is a 
 statement of general principles ; and these must be 
 intelligently applied by the conscience and judgment 
 to cases as they arise. 
 
 The imperfections of men which require kindly 
 treatment may be divided into three classes : those 
 which are not sins at all, and are yet very 
 troublesome and often exceedingly hard to bear ; 
 those which lie on the border-line between innocent 
 infirmities and moral faults ; those which are 
 positively sinful, and yet consistent with general 
 
46 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 integrity and excellence of character. About men 
 wlio are altogether bad, I do not propose to say 
 anything in this paper. 
 
 Perhaps it is most easy to treat generously the 
 imperfections which involve most guilt, and most 
 difficult to tolerate the imperfections which involve 
 no guilt at all. How hard it is, for instance, to be 
 kindly or even just to men who are intellectually 
 obtuse and dull. The reality and seriousness of the 
 trouble they give it is impossible to deny and diffi- 
 cult to exaggerate. There are men who are always 
 misunderstanding what they have to do, or the way 
 in which they have to do it. They are very slow 
 in comprehending what we say to them, and when, 
 as the result of tedious and repeated explanations, 
 they haVe caught a glimpse of our meaning, they 
 seem quite unable to retain it. They weary and 
 exhaust the patience of the most gentle and endur- 
 ing of their friends, by relapsing into mistakes which 
 have been a hundred times corrected. They are 
 
OTHER men's imperfections. 47 
 
 often good-hearted and devout, but so deficient in 
 clearness and quickness of vision, tliat they irritate 
 more active-minded people almost beyond endurance. 
 The only true wisdom is to accept the inevitable ; 
 and, if we wish to " fulfil the law of Christ," we 
 shall bear it as cheerfully as we can. No keen 
 shafts of angry contempt will make these unfor- 
 tunate men a whit more rational. You cannot 
 sting them into cleverness. You may annoy them 
 by showing your impatience, and making them feel 
 it, but you cannot change them. You should 
 remember that your quickness is as great a 
 trouble to them as their slowness to you. If 
 you and they have to live and work together, 
 the sooner you accept them for what they are, 
 the better it will be for both parties. It may 
 be almost unendurable to you, who commonly 
 travel express, to be doomed for fifty miles to 
 the misery of a " parliamentary ; " but when this 
 is your fate, it is of no use stamping your feet 
 
48 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 and knitting your brows and getting out of 
 temper. You must take w^eak men as you find 
 tliem, and jDlace your strength at tke service of 
 their weakness. If they are bhnd, it is for you 
 to see for them, and to keep them out of harm's 
 way ; if they are lame, it is for you to let them 
 lean on your arm and to moderate your own speed 
 to theirs. 
 
 There is nothing else to be done ; no fuming 
 and fretting will make any difference ; by gentle- 
 ness and patience you will serve yourself best as 
 well as them. Sometimes, too, these heavy dull-eyed 
 people have real solid sense to which our conceit 
 blinds us. The leaden casket sometimes contains 
 the jewel. By self-restraint and forbearance, we 
 can sometimes get substantial service from men 
 whom in our haste we thought hopelessly stupid. 
 
 There is another class of persons who severely 
 try the temper, but who have the strongest 
 claims to kindliness — persons who are very far 
 
OTHER MENS IMPERFECTIONS. 
 
 49 
 
 from being deficient in intellectual force, but 
 who licave picked up odd crotchets, or have 
 caught a positive craze about something that 
 seems important to no mortal on earth except 
 themselves. The most beautiful marble some- 
 times has a " fault " in it ; and the most 
 vigorous minds are sometimes the victims, on a 
 solitaiy point, of grotesque and absui^d delusions. 
 We show a great want of discernment if we do 
 not recognize the general soundness of their 
 judgment, and their right to consideration and 
 respect, spite of their peculiarities ; and we show 
 an inordinate self-confidence if we are always 
 endeavouring to put them riglit. A little humour- 
 ing of their folly when we come across it, and 
 habitual vigilance to keep as far out of its way 
 as possible, will make our life with these people 
 run smoothly. If you are obliged to drive a horse 
 which always shies when passing a particular gate, 
 you will try, if you can, not to pass it; or if 
 
 E 
 
50 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 you have no choice, you will try to " occupy his 
 mind " with something else when it is in sight. 
 If men always treated their friends as wisely and 
 considerately as they treat their horses, the world 
 would be saved very much needless ill-temper and 
 irritation. 
 
 Forbearance still gentler is due to those whose 
 consciences are morbidly sensitive, or who have 
 come under the tyranny of severe conceptions of 
 the divine law and of the Christian life, which to 
 a man of robust and magnanimous faith are inex- 
 plicable. No doubt there are limits beyond which 
 St. Paul's principle, that " we who are strong 
 ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and 
 not to please ourselves," should not be pressed. 
 But we violate the obligations of Christian charity 
 if we treat the "weak" contemptuously. We may 
 try to win them away from their intense self- 
 consciousness by the healthy contagion of a more 
 vigorous life. We may try to lead them away 
 
OTHER MENS IMPERFECTIONS. £1 
 
 from their formalism to profonnder and larger 
 views of the true idea of Christian perfection. 
 We may try to reason them out of their ignoble 
 and ungenerous thoughts of God. But if we know 
 anything of the compassion of Christ, we shall 
 never taunt them or fling out easy sarcasms at 
 their scrupulosity and narrowness. There are people 
 whose reHgious conceit and hardness of heart may 
 be most legitimately and effectively attacked by 
 weapons like these ; they deserve no respect, and 
 should have none ; they need to be taught that 
 their pretensions do not impose upon us. But God 
 forbid that sincere and humble men, in whom 
 self-distrust and self-reproach have darkened all joy 
 and ruined all peace, should be treated thus con- 
 temptuously. Their needless fears and scruples may 
 be a cause of annoyance to us, as well as of 
 misery to themselves ; but their weakness appeals 
 to our pity, and we must bear with it, and do 
 what we can to strengthen, not to crush it. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 The forms of imperfection wliicli have been 
 abeady noticed are morally blameless ; there are 
 others which lie on the border land between 
 innocent weakness and positive guilt. These, 
 for the most part, we are not likely to treat 
 harshly. 
 
 When, for instance, protracted sickness brings 
 weariness and discontent and repining, and the 
 kindest heart seems sometimes embittered, and 
 nothing can give pleasure or allay discontent, 
 most of us, it is to be hoped, find it easy to 
 be gentle and patient. l^o doubt there may be 
 sin in this inability to endure the monotonous days 
 and nights of the sick-room with quiet cheerful- 
 ness ; but the suffering and weakness charm our 
 severer thoughts away. Though strict moralists 
 might, perhaps, impeach the validity of our ex- 
 cuses, we say — and it is right for us to say 
 it — that our friend is not himself ; that in 
 his physical prostration he is not responsible 
 
OTHER men's imperfections. S3 
 
 for liis restlessness and irritability ; tliat wlien 
 health and strength come back all will be well 
 again. 
 
 The same kindliness and forbearance are some- 
 times due to men who ought perhaps to be in 
 the sick-room, or, better still, far away from home, 
 among the mountains or on the sea ; but who are 
 obliged to remain in their counting-house or their 
 " works," maintaining a desperate struggle against 
 serious disasters. Night after night they come 
 home exhausted with anxiety ; day after day the 
 fever is kindling on their brain, and only the 
 most resolute self-control keeps it down ; they are 
 haunted with incessant fears ; for weeks they never 
 know what it is to have a single hour's healthy 
 rest. How can they help being sometimes sharp 
 and reckless in their words ? What leisure and 
 freedom of soul have they for the courtesies and 
 charities of life ? Even in such circumstances, 
 some men seem to remain perfect masters of 
 
54 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 themselves. They are not altogether absorbed in 
 their cares. They can still be courteous, con- 
 siderate, and even genial. But it is almost too 
 much to expect that the preternatural peace, 
 " which the vrorld cannot give and cannot take 
 away," though it may dwell in the heart, will 
 always be revealed in the words and actions 
 of excited and harassed men. They deserve at 
 least as much forbearance as though they were 
 passing through a painful and perilous illness. 
 They resent as unjust, spite of themselves, the 
 sensitiveness which people who know nothing of 
 their troubles manifest at their occasional petu- 
 lance ; but that petulance is not only soothed, 
 it is condemned by their own consciences, when 
 it is patiently borne with and magnanimously 
 oyetlooked. 
 
 The transition is easy to the infirmities which 
 come from old age. Nothing is sadder than to see 
 a vigorous mind gradually sinking into feebleness 
 
OTHER MENS IMPERFECTIONS. 55 
 
 and a noble nature yielding to selfishness, sus- 
 picion, and little meannesses, under the pressure 
 of accumulating years. Remember what the old 
 man was in the ardour of his youth and the 
 energy of his middle life ; forget what he seems 
 to be now. Treat him reverently, as you would 
 the ruins of a cathedral. Here and there, though 
 the walls are shattered and the arches broken, 
 you may see the fragments of massive columns ; 
 and even the exquisite tracery, where it has been 
 sheltered from wind and rain, has not altogether 
 disappeared. You believe that though the temple 
 is destroyed, Christ will " raise it again " in more 
 than its former stateliness and splendour. " Walk 
 by faith" and by memory, "not by sight." Believe 
 that the abounding and fruitful life you saw 
 last summer and autumn will reappear when 
 the spring returns, and in the " winter " of his 
 *' discontent " let the old man be still honoured 
 and loved. 
 
56 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Or if sorrow and misfortune have strangely 
 altered tliose who were charming and bright in 
 other years, the imperfections which you cannot 
 help recognizing should not repel your kindliness 
 or provoke impatience. Delicacy and refinement of 
 character are hard to keep in sordid circumstances. 
 Poverty, if it continues long, will often embitter 
 the sweetest temper and make the most generous 
 cynical. The bereaved and the lonely are in 
 danger of having all their thoughts concentrated 
 in their own grief and desolation, and of making 
 unreasonable and exorbitant claims on the time and 
 sympathy of those they love. They become moody 
 in their solitude. They are quick to catch the 
 faintest signs of neglect. They morbidly exag- 
 gerate and often interpret most unjustly words 
 spoken inconsiderately, but with no evil intent. 
 We must not expect all who suffer to become 
 saints ; we must think of the weakness of human 
 nature ; we must not be surprised that imperfections 
 
OTHER MENS IMPERFECTIONS. 57 
 
 of character are revealed by fiery trial, of whicli 
 notliiiig was known or suspected before ; and we 
 must not forget how mucb. that is good and lov- 
 able is still left. The infirmities of the unfortunate 
 may pass the line which separates innocent weak- 
 nesses from a temper and spirit which deserve 
 rebuke and condemnation ; but we must not 
 draw the line too rigidly — with tliem it is safest 
 to err on the side of charity. 
 
 Then, again, there are real faults which lie so 
 near kindred excellencies that a generous man will 
 sometimes almost forget that they are faults at 
 alL "jS'oble natures," as Lord Lytton says, "are 
 liable to be led astray by their favourite virtues ; 
 for it is the proverbial tendency of a virtue to 
 fuse itself into its neighbouring vice." Self-will 
 is often only the exaggeration of moral and 
 intellectual vigour ; often, too, there are traces 
 of this vice in a man's bearing and modes of 
 speech long after the vice itself has been com- 
 
58 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 pletely subdued. Recklessness is tlie exaggera- 
 tion of ardour and courage. Coldness often 
 conies from humility and self- distrust. Egotism 
 and vanity are often the mere spray thrown 
 up by frankness, candour, and a child-like con- 
 fidence in the goodness of heart of all man- 
 kind. 
 
 N^o doubt it would be better if we could have 
 the good without the evil which seems to be 
 almost inseparable from it ; but when the evil 
 which is in a man is really the exaggeration of 
 his special type of goodness, it is neither rational, 
 nor just, nor charitable to censure him without 
 reserve and qualification. There are faults of 
 which some men have not virtue enough to be 
 capable. 
 
 The treatment of those graver offences, which 
 sometimes mar the character of really good 
 people, involves few ethical difficulties; if our 
 
OTHER MENS IMPERFECTIONS. 59 
 
 hearts are right we shall not seriously fail. That 
 even good men will often be betrayed into sin, 
 is implied in all our prayers and in all our 
 dogmatic teaching. If we are not prepared to 
 acknowledge that there may be a deep and 
 fervent love of God and yet frequent transgres- 
 sion of His law, we should cease to confess sin 
 in the pubhc devotions of the Church, and should 
 invoke God's pardon only for those who are 
 altogether irreligious. There are precepts scat- 
 tered throughout the New Testament which would 
 have had no place there, if as soon as men 
 accepted the authority of Christ they were sure 
 to keep all His commandments. Not merely 
 to those who have no Christian life, but to 
 those who have received " power to become 
 the sons of God," and who, in the highest 
 meaning of the words, are " our brethren in 
 Christ," we have to show long-suffering and 
 forbearance. "We are to forgive them their tres- 
 
6o WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 passes ; but where tliere is no sin, forgiveness is 
 impossible. 
 
 The estrangement whicli separates Christian men 
 from each other for years, because one of them 
 has been guilty of wrong towards the other, or, 
 as frequently happens, because there has been 
 mutual injury, and both have been greatly at 
 fault, is altogether indefensible : it cannot even 
 be palliated or excused. The refusal to pardon is 
 almost as grave a sin as the original offence ; 
 sometimes it is a still darker and more ominous 
 sign of the absence of the spirit of Christ. Nor 
 is the mere cessation of positive enmity an 
 adequate fulfilment of Christian law. What mag- 
 nanimity there is in God's forgiveness ! He retains 
 no trace of anger. He forgets our sin and casts 
 it behind His back. It vanishes like a cloud 
 from the summer sky, and leaves the brightness 
 of heaven without a shadow or a stain. He trusts 
 us again with all His former confidence. He 
 
OTHER men's imperfections. 6i 
 
 never upbraids. And we, in the very matter of 
 mutual forgiveness, are charged to " be followers 
 of God." 
 
 We have not forgiven a man merely because our 
 ill-feeling towards him has died out. What has 
 been done by the mere lapse of time and by the 
 fading away from the imagination of a vivid aj)pre- 
 hension of the wrong we suffered, is not to be 
 set to the credit of oui' Christian charity. We 
 trust God to forgive us when the offence is still 
 fresh, to pardon at night the sin which has been 
 committed since the morning; and His prompt 
 and eager mercy is to be a law to us. 
 
 Some men, oddly enough, think that they show 
 a very generous spirit when they are willing to 
 " receive explanations " of an injuiy which has 
 provoked their anger. But this is to be barely 
 just. If what seemed a wrong can be explained, 
 it requires no forgiveness. What would be our 
 condition if God's mercy went no fui'ther than 
 
62 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 tliis — " a willingness to receive explanations ? " 
 It is only where a grave offence lias been really 
 committed, an offence whicli cannot be shown to 
 have been only apparent or accidental, that there 
 is any occasion for pardon. 
 
 Is it necessary to protest against the wickedness 
 of making the very form of Christian forgiveness 
 the vehicle of revenge ? There is an ostentatious 
 display of magnanimity, a parade of generosity, a 
 loud profession of freedom from all angry and 
 hostile feelings, which is as alien as possible from 
 the spirit with which we ought to show mercy, 
 even to those who have incurred serious blame 
 and inflicted upon us serious injury. The cere- 
 monial of pardon is sometimes nothing more than 
 the last and most cruel punishment for the wrong. 
 It is a re-proclamation of the offence with all the 
 circumstances which aggravated it. It is only 
 another way of pronouncing sentence on the 
 crime. It is an assertion of the transcendent 
 
OTHER men's imperfections. 63 
 
 moral superiority of the injured person, and an 
 invitation to tlie wrong- doer to confess, not Ms 
 own faults merely, but the immaculate and shining 
 virtues of the saint who pardons it. Surely, when 
 " we forgive men that trespass against us," we 
 should remember our own trespasses, which need 
 forgiveness both from man and God ; it is not the 
 time for the insulting assertion of our superior 
 goodness. There are some men whose revenge 
 is less bitter and more tolerable than their 
 pardon. 
 
 To reach the perfection of that spirit of mercy 
 which the example and precepts of Christ alike 
 inculcate, may seem quite beyond our mortal 
 strength, and we may sometimes be ready to say 
 that this is an attainment which is possible only 
 to those who have escaped from the necessary 
 infirmities of our present condition, and been 
 transformed into the image of God by the open 
 
64 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 vision of His glory. But we should remember 
 that we shall have no opportunity for the forgive- 
 ness of injuries in heaven ; and it may be an 
 additional motive to the cultivation of this form 
 of Christian charity, that the mercy which we 
 sometimes speak of as the brightest of the Divine 
 perfections can never be manifested by us at all, 
 if we do not manifest it here. Many other 
 elements of holiness are destined to immortal 
 development and activity ; if they are dwarfed 
 and imperfect in this life, they will have eternity 
 in which to unfold their strength and beauty. 
 But in a world where there will be no sin, mutual 
 forbearance and forgiveness can have no place. 
 Charity " abideth " for ever ; but this particular 
 fruit of the noblest of Christian graces can 
 blossom and ripen only amidst the fitful sunshine 
 and the clouds and storms of this inferior state. 
 There are many of the loftiest virtues of the 
 Christian character — and this is one of them — 
 
OTHER men's imperfections. 65 
 
 wliicli in some of their fairest and noblest forms 
 must be revealed in tlie brief and troubled years 
 of our earthly life, or tliey will be for ever beyond 
 our reacli. 
 
III. 
 
 TALEBEARIN'a. 
 
 A GAINST tlie grosser sins of the tongue it is 
 hardly necessary to warn Christian people. They 
 are not likely to be gnilty either of blasphemy 
 or of cruel and malignant lying. Abstinence from 
 the worst and most aggravated sins of speech is 
 for most men a very easy virtue, and can give no 
 claim to appropriate the very remarkable saying 
 of St. James, that " If any man offend not in 
 word, the same is a perfect man, and able also 
 to bridle the whole body." But some of the lighter 
 offences of the tongue, as they are the most 
 common, are also, perhaps, the most annoying and 
 mischievous in their consequences. 
 
TALEBEARING. d-j 
 
 Talebearing is a sin wliicli very many people 
 are committing constantly : tlieir consciences never 
 condemn them for it ; they never ask God to' 
 forgive it ; they take no trouble to resist the 
 temptations to it ; and even when they discover 
 the pain, the misunderstanding, the strife, it some- 
 times produces, they are " sorry it should have so 
 happened," they " meant no harm," but they are 
 very inadequately impressed with their responsibility 
 and guilt. 
 
 There are indeed some kinds of talebearing about 
 the wickedness of which there can be no misap- 
 prehension. Ezekiel speaks of "men that carry tales 
 to shed blood." Without investigating the truth 
 of reports which reach them, without carefully 
 considering whether what has been said or done 
 admits of any explanation which would remove the 
 apparent guilt, there are some persons who de- 
 liberately blast the characters of their acquaintances, 
 poison the love and confidence of old friends, or add 
 
 F 2 
 
68 WEEK-DAY SERMONS, 
 
 fuel to the hatred of men who are enemies already. 
 Such talebearing as this is the proof of horrible 
 malice ; every upright and generous man will loathe 
 and execrate it. 
 
 But the talebearer may be innocent of bad inten- 
 tion, and yet do incalculable mischief. The man 
 who fires at random may inflict a mortal wound as 
 well as the man who takes a deliberate aim. The 
 dagger may not be poisoned, and yet it may kill. 
 The Hebrew word in Prov. xxvi. 20, which has 
 been well translated a " talebearer," meant originally 
 nothing more than a chatterer, a garrulous person, 
 one that talks fast. We all know people of that 
 kind, people that gossip incessantly, whose tongue 
 never wearies, whose talk for one single day would 
 fill the columns of the Times with domestic acci- 
 dents, petty offences, the sayings of their friends, 
 the habits and customs of all their neighbours. 
 They know, or they guess, who was invited to dinner 
 next door last week, and why it was that two or 
 
TALEBEARING. 69 
 
 three who were invited did not come : they can tell 
 yon the reason why one young lady has gone from 
 home, and why another looks pale and ill : they 
 know how it is that one of their acquaintances has 
 moved into a smaller house, and the exact amount 
 of the legacy which has enabled another to set up 
 a brougham instead of a phaeton : they know the 
 sins and shortcomings of the cook and the housemaid 
 in every family they visit, and how it is some of their 
 dear friends change their servants so often : they 
 can tell you, or think they can, all about the fortunate 
 investments of one gentleman, and the business 
 losses of another: they create and they explain 
 innumerable mysteries : they have found out how it 
 happened that two fast friends met each other in 
 the street without speaking: and why it was that 
 somebody passed the plate at the last collection. 
 They have no bad designs. They mean to wrong 
 no man's character, to hurt no man's feelings. But 
 they have an insatiable curiosity, and a tongue 
 
70 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 whicli nothing can restrain. They forget the Apos- 
 tolic precept, " Study to be quiet, and to do your 
 own business." Without meaning it, they betray 
 every man's privacy ; they tell every man's secrets, 
 and generally tell them incorrectly ; they stir 
 up strife, and their " words are wounds." (Prov. 
 xviii. 8.) 
 
 "What are the causes of this unhappy and most 
 mischievous habit? 
 
 It is often, perhaps generally, the result of in- 
 tellectual poverty. I infer that the man who is 
 always talking to me about the small affairs of his 
 friends and acquaintances, has nothing better to talk 
 about-. He plainly confesses his destitute condition. 
 If there were in him any shrewdness, any humour, 
 any wisdom, any knowledge of a worthy kind, he 
 w^ould not insult me by attempting to entertain 
 me with such miserable fare. No doubt he brings 
 out his best. It is a pity that he does not know 
 
TALEBEARING. 71 
 
 tliat his silence would be more instructive and more 
 amusing than his speech. 
 
 It is very commonly, too, the result of the absence 
 of intelligent interest in great affairs, and of devotion 
 to noble and elevated pursuits. The man who has 
 a love for literature and the arts, or who watches 
 with solicitude the fortunes of nations, or who is 
 keenly interested in tbe triumph of great principles 
 in politics or religion, or who is zealously engaged 
 in endeavours to diminish the sufferings of mankind, 
 and to recover from their sin those who have for- 
 gotten God, will seldom be a talebearer himself, 
 or waste time in listening to one. 
 
 Again, this habit is generally the sign of a very 
 weak judgment. There are many persons who show 
 the most amazing incapacity of appreciating the 
 impression their words are sure to produce. They 
 will tell you in the most innocent way tales about 
 people you know, which, if they cannot be contra- 
 dicted or modified by explanatory circumstances, must 
 
72 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 destroy all confidence in their commercial stability, 
 their personal honour, or their religious sincerity. 
 They have no sense of the care they should have 
 taken before believing the report themselves, much 
 less of the gravity of the reasons which alone could 
 justify their repeating it, even if true. And, when the 
 matter is less serious, it is still surprising with what 
 lightness and unconcern they will sow the seeds 
 of distrust, of suspicion, of dislike. They are often 
 so kindly that if they could form any estimate of the 
 practical effect of what they say, they would cut out 
 their tongues rather than be talebearers any more. 
 The mischief they produce is not to be attributed to 
 malice, but to feebleness of judgment ; for which, 
 however, they are often to be blamed as well as 
 pitied. 
 
 Talebearing with some people is a means of assert- 
 ing their self-importance. It is cui'ious to watch the 
 indications of their anxiety to show the confidential 
 relations in which they stand to every one who is 
 
TALEBEARING. 
 
 73 
 
 supposed to be worth knowing for his wealth, position, 
 or intellectual power. They do not seem to perceive 
 that if they are trusted by the persons of whom they 
 speak so freely, they are proving by their imprudent 
 speech how unworthy they are of confidence. A still 
 more serious and injurious form which this vanity 
 assumes is, when the talebearer, in order to produce 
 an impression of his own consequence, betrays infor- 
 mation which has come to him in his professional 
 or official capacity. But to some men the tempta- 
 tions of vanity are so strong as to overcome all con- 
 siderations of prudence, justice, and honour. 
 
 Some people are talebearers through the love of 
 being listened to and producing a sensation. They 
 delight to see the amazement which follows the 
 revelation of their last discovery. They know that 
 nothing which their own brains have produced will 
 interest any mortal under the sun ; but they have a 
 craving to be the centre of attentive listeners ; and 
 so instead of wit they talk scandal ; they can't say 
 
74 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 anything very wise, but they can speak about the 
 unexpected misfortunes or the ludicrous follies of 
 their neighbours. Talebearers of this kind are always 
 delighted when they happen to hear anything very 
 piquant; they are restless till they have told it. 
 They know exactly how to throw light and shade 
 into their story, and how to dress every feature of 
 it to the best advantage. They are not satisfied, 
 like some inferior followers of the trade, with gossip 
 of any kind ; they have an artistic instinct for what 
 will be efiective. They are not quite without sympathy 
 if they happen to see a neighbour overtaken by 
 an accident, but it is a real consolation to them 
 that they can tell how it occurred. If they only 
 reflected for a moment, they would discover to 
 their shame, that very often the saddest circum- 
 stances of human life have been to them only 
 fresh material for satisfying the miserable desire 
 to touch the hearts and awaken the curiosity of 
 their friends. 
 
TALEBEARING. 75 
 
 There is reason enough, for avoiding the habit of 
 talebearing in what we have seen of its ignoble 
 origin ; whoever indulges in it shows himself desti- 
 tute of sense or of judgment, or of right feeling. 
 But there are other reasons which deserve our con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Talebearing is a waste, and worse than a waste, 
 of the faculty of speech. No one supposes that we 
 ought never to speak except when we have something 
 remarkably wise to say. To tell the truth, most of 
 us find it very wearying to listen to ^people who 
 always " talk like a book." Conversation may be very 
 harmless and yet not instructive; pleasant, amusing 
 talk is one of the healthiest of recreations. I am 
 very thankful that there are flowers in the world 
 as well as fruit-trees, singing-birds as well as birds 
 that look well on the table, pictures and music as 
 well as cotton goods and hardware. I am very 
 thankful, too, that there are people whose conversa- 
 tion is picturesque and entertaining, as well as people 
 
76 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Tvlio can talk science and philosopliy. As change of 
 air and sleep are necessary for tlie body, so some 
 freedom and rest are necessary for the mind. But 
 our recreation is neither harmless nor healthful, when 
 it is derived from invading the privacy of other 
 men's homes, or from tearing to pieces, however 
 justly, other men's rei3utations. This is a pernicious, 
 not an innocent use of the tongue. And those who 
 are habitually guilty of it, not only employ their 
 own faculty of speech badly, — they hinder their 
 friends fronj talking to better purpose. When once 
 you discover that a man is a talebearer, you are 
 very little inclined to speak before him with perfect 
 freedom, and shrink from telling the thoughts which 
 lie dee2:)est in your heart, remembering the precept, 
 " Cast not your pearls before swine." 
 
 Talebearing appeals to and strengthens a mean 
 and vulgar curiosity, and so does harm to those who 
 listen to it. They become accomplices in the sin ; 
 they are almost sure to catch the infection and to 
 
TALEBEARING. 77 
 
 crown every story by another. One talebearer makes 
 many. 
 
 It destroys tlie freedom of life and tlie un- 
 reserve of friendship. It lias been said by some 
 one, Always live with your friend as though he 
 might some day become your enemy, and with your 
 enemy as though he might some day become your 
 friend. Friendsliip is not worth having on such terms ; 
 and all the life and joy of kindly intercourse perish 
 in the presence of the talebearer. Open-hearted 
 men hke to think aloud, trusting to the good sense 
 of their friends to supply the necessary limitations 
 to all they say. You may repeat their exact words 
 and yet misrepresent them most injuriously ; for you 
 cannot repeat the circumstances in which they were 
 uttered, nor the tone of the speaker, nor his look ; 
 nor can you explain what he knew would be the 
 impression produced by his language on those 
 who heard it. You must have seen sometimes how 
 the entrance of a talebearer puts an end to all free 
 
78 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 talk. Men know that tke warm expression of higli 
 religious feeling will look like Pharisaical preten- 
 tiousness if it is repeated, tliat their kindly fun will 
 look like sarcasm, that their jesting will look like 
 earnest, that their merriment will look like childish 
 nonsense. It would not be hard to find people who 
 have lost all openness and freedom, through their 
 observation or through their bitter experience of the 
 mischief done by talebearers. It is an intolerable 
 bondage which this wretched habit imposes upon 
 many ; they feel obliged never to say anything that 
 might not be printed, just as they said it, in next 
 day's paper, and read by all the world. Talebearing 
 has made them stiff and cold, nervously cautious, 
 and hopelessly reserved. 
 
 It is impossible that the talebearer should be 
 always free from the guilt of circulating false- 
 hood. There are very few things of which we can 
 be quite sure ; very few of us have ever heard 
 anything about ourselves which was not more or 
 
TALEBEARING. 79 
 
 less inaccurate. The chances are that the man 
 who is -iinder the power of this habit is incapable 
 of receiving a jnst and accurate impression even 
 of what he sees and hears himself, and in the 
 perpetual repetition of his story he is certain to give 
 it a great variety of shapes. The power of telling 
 a tale just as it happened is almost as rare as the 
 power of sketching a true portrait. Words are 
 perhaps harder to use well than lines and colours. 
 And if you tell the story yourself with tolerable 
 correctness, you can never be sure that it will be 
 told correctly by any one person that hears it from 
 you. Some circumstances will be dropped which 
 will change the whole look of it ; something will 
 be unconsciously added that will give it altogether a 
 different colour ; the sketch, as it leaves your hand, 
 may be tolerably correct, but it will require a clever 
 artist exactly to reproduce it. Ton are not respon- 
 sible, you think, for what other people make of 
 your story: but you are — for it is almost certain, 
 
8o WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 and you know it — tliat it will come out of tlieir 
 lips witli omissions or misappreliensions whicli will 
 make it quite untrue. While you said nothing, no 
 harm could be done : as soon as you have told the 
 tale, you have no control over it. You may have 
 been careful to put in all the qualifications and 
 explanations which would prevent any mischief, 
 but it requires very little knowledge of life to 
 be aware that these are likely to disappear after 
 one or two repetitions. 
 
 Of all the foolish pretences by which talebearers 
 justify themselves for telling what should never 
 be told, surely this is the most ridiculous, that 
 they spoke " in confidence." If they found it so 
 hard to hold their tongue, what right have they 
 to subject a friend to the inconvenience which 
 they could not bear themselves ? If they are 
 guilty of betraying trust, what right have they 
 to expect that their own trust will not be be- 
 trayed ? They ask their friend " not to teU," but 
 
TALEBEARING. 8l 
 
 tlieir example is likely to be more effective tlian 
 tlieir precept. 
 
 There is one curious device by wliicb some people 
 seek to indulge tlieir prevailing vice, and yet to 
 avoid, as they think, telling secrets, which is worth 
 noticing. They give the story, but cancel the 
 names. Sometimes they begin on this plan, but 
 unintentionally a single name slips out, and every- 
 thing is plain at once ; or they find it so tedious 
 and tiresome to keep up the mystery, that with 
 great protestations of not having meant to name 
 anybody, they tell you who it is. Very often, if 
 no accident of this kind happens, the veil is easil}' 
 seen through ; and even if you are careful to omit 
 half the story, to throw your hearer off the scent, 
 it sometimes happens that he has heard from some 
 one else what you omit to tell, and then, like the 
 pieces of a broken tally, the two parts curiously fit 
 into each other, and you have made him much 
 wiser than you intended. 
 
 G 
 
82 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Again, it is hardly possible for a talebearer not 
 to get into the habit of talking more about the 
 faults of others than about their excellencies. Most 
 novelists feel that if there is no wickedness in their 
 book, it is almost sure to be dull ; and most tale- 
 bearers find that there is something much more 
 effective in a story about the weaknesses, mistakes, 
 or follies of others than in a story about their 
 wisdom and virtue. You may speak of the good 
 deeds of your fi'iends incessantly, and never earn 
 the name. The very word " talebearer " has come 
 to mean one who tells tales to other people's dis- 
 credit ; and we have not a word in the language 
 which denotes one who habitually speaks of other 
 men's excellencies. 
 
 Finally, talebearing is the fruitful cause of mis- 
 understanding, and embitters and perpetuates un- 
 kindliness and enmity. " Where no wood is, there 
 the fire goeth out ; so where there is no talebearer, 
 the strife ceaseth." "The tongue of a busybody," 
 
TALEBEARING. 83 
 
 says Bishop Hall, " is like the tail of Samson's 
 foxes : carries firebrands, and is enough to set the 
 whole field of the world in a flame." More than 
 half the quarrels in families, more than half the 
 estrangements among friends, are the result of this 
 most common yet most sinful practice. Words 
 spoken carelessly or in haste, reported seriously ; 
 words spoken without any ill meaning, interpreted 
 injuriously by a suspicious hearer, and carried to a 
 thii'd party with notes and comments ; words spoken 
 in a connection which deprived them of their sting, 
 separated from all that preceded and all that followed 
 them, and told with an air of sympathy to the last 
 man who should have heard of them ; — how often 
 these have estranged hearts that loved each other 
 well, and been followed by life-long enmity ! 
 
 Acts which were harmless, and perhaps praise- 
 worthy, but which are unintelligible to those who 
 are not familiar with all their circumstances, — how 
 often have these been narrated and regretted and 
 
 G 2 
 
84 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 mourned over, until tlie reputation of a good man 
 has cruelly suffered, and old friends been made to 
 distrust him ! 
 
 Without malice, apparently without motive, through 
 mere carelessness and love of gossip, tales have been 
 often told which have darkened the sunlight of 
 many a home, cut to the quick many a sensitive 
 soul, destroyed the confidence and affection which 
 had silently grown up through years of kindly 
 intercourse and happy friendship. 
 
 That a tale is true is no reason for telling it. 
 Many a man utters words in haste and . irritation 
 which he would gladly recall by almost any 
 sacrifice. To repeat them is to be guilty of 
 heartless cruelty. Intentionally to use a merely 
 accidental slip, to rob a man of the love of 
 those who are dear to him, is the act of a 
 fiend; and to do it carelessly deserves severe 
 condemnation. 
 
 And now what counsel should be given to those 
 
TALEBEARING. 
 
 who are so unfortunate as to have talebearers among 
 their acquaintances ? 
 
 Never listen to them, if you can help it. " The 
 receiver is as bad as the thief." If you are deaf, 
 they will soon be dumb. When they come to tell 
 you something you " ought to know," tell them 
 that very often the old line is true, that "Where 
 ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." You may 
 indeed sometimes think that it is better the tale 
 should be told to you than to anybody else, and 
 that when once you have heard it, it will not be 
 told again ; this may, perhaps, be a reason for 
 tolerating the talebearer, especially if you are quite 
 sure that not the slightest impression will be pro- 
 duced on your own mind to the injury of any 
 one involved in the story. By listening you may, 
 perhaps, prevent further mischief. But even this 
 is a doubtful justification ; and you ought not to 
 be satisfied without attempting to make the tale- 
 bearer sensible of his folly and sin. 
 
86 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Never give Jhim the chance of reporting any- 
 thing about yourself. Shroud yourself in impene- 
 trable reserve. Make him feel that his habit 
 excludes him from all the pleasures of confidence 
 and intimacy with wise men. Talk to him about 
 the weather and the crops, the news from America 
 and the price of the Funds. Never say anything 
 that may not be safely twisted into any con- 
 ceivable shape, reported by a hundred foolish 
 tongues, without doing any harm. Never tell him 
 anything that you would not trust him to say 
 over again in any words he might like to use, 
 and with every possible misapprehension of your 
 meaning, on the platform of Exeter Hall, before 
 three thousand people. Be especially afraid of 
 him when he is particularly obsequious, when he 
 praises your business tact, and admires the taste 
 with which you have laid out your garden. Under 
 the warmth of his good opinion, your reserve is 
 likely to relax. Remember the words of Solomon: 
 
TALEBEARING. 87 
 
 " He that goeth about as a talebearer revealeth 
 secrets, therefore meddle not with him that flattereth 
 with his lips." 
 
 See that you create in your own house and among 
 all yom' friends a spirit of intolerance for the offence, 
 and a moral judgment that shall repel and condemn 
 the offender. Let talebearing never be regarded as 
 a weakness, but as a vice. Let no cleverness palliate 
 it. Make it despised as a meanness, censured as a 
 sin. 
 
 There are, indeed, " Tales " which ought to be 
 told and listened to — " Tales " of cheerful patience 
 in suffering, of energy and self-denial in well-doing, 
 of open-handed generosity, of incorruptible integrity. 
 Sucli " Tales " have elevated the moral aims of 
 many of us, inspired our sinking hearts with courage 
 and constancy, given force and fire to our noblest 
 passions. The Gospel itself is a " Tale ; " — and 
 the Apostles " turned the world upside down," not 
 by a moral or religious theory, but by the story of 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 how the Lord Jesus loved mankind. Yes, the story 
 of His poverty and homelessness, temptation and 
 agony, His miracles of mercy and His words of 
 love, His shame and death, is the spell by which 
 even the hardest and most profligate of men have 
 been softened, and recovered to a holy and blessed 
 life. Tell that story, and little children will feel 
 its charm, and aged men and women, bowed down 
 under the cares and sorrows of a lifetime, will con- 
 fess its power. Would to God that every Christian 
 tongue, which is now too often used in reporting 
 and discussing the failings of good men and the 
 sins of the ungodly, could learn to tell the tale of 
 Christ's infinite compassion ! " Life and death are 
 in the powder of the tongue." " By thy words shalt 
 thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be 
 condemned." 
 
IV. 
 
 UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 
 
 'THOMAS CARLYLE'S theory tliat speecli is 
 silvern but silence golden, wonld have perplexed 
 onr English Chrjsostom. " Though silence," says 
 Jeremy Taylor, " be harmless as a rose's breath to 
 a distant passenger, yet it is rather the state of 
 death than life ; " and then taking fire, according to 
 his manner, he exclaims, " By voices and homilies, 
 by questions and answers, by narratives and invec- 
 tives, by counsel and reproof, by praises and hymns, 
 by prayers and glorifications, we serve God's glory 
 and the necessities of men ; and by the tongue, our 
 tables are made to differ from mangers, oui' cities 
 
90 WEEK-DAY SERMONS, 
 
 from deserts, our churclies from herds of beasts and 
 flocks of slieep." Could we bring the fervid and 
 eloquent bisbop from his grave again, Avhat a 
 glorious night he and our living philosopher might 
 make of it ! And who could tell, for the first three 
 or four hours, which of them was likely to have the 
 best of the controversy? The philosoj)her, quoting 
 Hooker, might growl that the present age is "full 
 of tongue and weak of brain," and remind the 
 bishop that he himself had admitted that " the per- 
 petual unavoidable necessity of sinning by much 
 talking hath given great advantages to silence, and 
 made it to be esteemed an act of discipline and 
 great religion." But the bishop, though he would 
 confess that he remembered that many saints had 
 dreaded the perils of speech — that " St. Romualdus 
 upon the Syrian mountain severely kept a seven 
 years' silence," and that " Thomas Cantepatrientis 
 tells of a religious person in a monastery at Brabant, 
 that spake not one word in sixteen years," and that 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 91 
 
 "Ammona lived witli three thousand brethren in so 
 great silence as if lie were an anchoret," and that 
 "Theona was silent for thirty years together; and 
 Johannes, snrnamed Silentiarius, was silent for forty- 
 seven years" — would go on to maintain that this 
 morosity and sullenness "must certainly draw with 
 it, or be itself an infinite omission of duty;" 
 and I am inclined to think that before morning 
 came, he would make the philosopher admit that 
 silence is not always the proof of wisdom, nor 
 eloquent speech of folly; and with a gracious 
 argument ad liominem — for the apostle of silence 
 himself is one of the best of talkers — as the dark- 
 ness began to melt into the dawn, the bishop's 
 ghost would say Farewell. 
 
 But though it is possible for men to sin by 
 talking too little as well as by talking too much — 
 as when silence is the result of sheer indolence, or 
 of coldness, and an incapacity to sympathize with 
 the common thoughts and cares and pleasures of 
 
92 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 otliers — it is less necessary to insist on the duty of 
 speaking, than to insist on the duty of speaking 
 wisely and well. 
 
 St. Paul, in waraing the Christians at Ephesus 
 against certain sins of the tongue, uses a word 
 which, if we may take it in the sense it very com- 
 monly bears, affords a most expressive description 
 of many forms of mischievous talk. He charges 
 them not to let any " corrupt communication " pro- 
 ceed out of their mouth. Perhaps the image which 
 the word calls up was not distinctly present to his 
 mind; but it might have been, for it is a very 
 just one. The epithet is used to describe vegetables, 
 meat, and fish which are beginning to go bad; and 
 there are some people whose conversation is quite 
 as unwholesome as food which is not quite fresh. 
 Unsound itself, it injures the moral health and 
 vigour of those who listen to it. 
 
 There are some words which are positively •poison- 
 ous. St. Paul was not thinking of these. Falsehood 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 93 
 
 lie had akeady forbidden. Violent speech comes 
 under the general precept, "Be ye angry, and sin 
 not." "Filthiness and foolish talking" he condemns 
 in the next chapter. Words may be neither false, 
 nor fierce, nor foul, and yet may be " corrupt " and 
 unwholesome. 
 
 Among the kinds of speech which answer the 
 Apostle's description, flattery is one of the worst. 
 Perhaps this is not very common among English- 
 men — certainly not among Englishmen of the lower 
 and middle classes ; of the rest I know nothing. 
 Our language seems hardly ductile enough to 
 assume the graceful forms which flattery requires. 
 Its idiom has been fixed by the common people, 
 not by courtiers. Those pleasant phrases which 
 glide so naturally from a Frenchman's tongue, and 
 in which kindly falsehood "loses half its evil by 
 losing all its grossness," refuse to grow on English 
 soil. Our speech has too much blood and heat in 
 
94 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 it for US ever to be able to rival our neighbours. 
 And 3^et we, too, can flatter, thougli with, less 
 refinement and delicacy. 
 
 The most fatal kind of flattery is that in which 
 there is truth enough to sweeten the bitter taste of 
 positive falsehood. Praise the scholarship of a dunce 
 who has been thrice "plucked," the munificence of 
 a miser, the eloquence of an orator to whom no 
 mortal will listen except at his own dinner-table, 
 the courage of a coward who turns pale at a 
 thunder-storm and has never crossed the Channel 
 through his fear of being drowned, and you will do 
 no great harm. It is when you dwell upon and 
 heighten the advantages upon which a man plumes 
 himself that you nurse his vanity. It is when you 
 expatiate on his real excellencies and powers that 
 you inflict upon him the worst injury. The perfect 
 charm of generosity is when it thinks of nothing 
 except the misery it relieves, the ignorance it in- 
 structs, the vice it reclaims ; if you insist upon 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 95 
 
 making benevolence conscious of itself, by fawningly 
 contrasting the niggardliness of a man's friends and 
 neighbours with his own free-handed bonntifulness, 
 you help to impair its simplicity and degrade its 
 nobleness. Talk to a man. of real genius as though 
 he were already crowned with amaranth and en- 
 throned among the stars, and you cherish a conceit 
 which may imperil his future triumphs. Talk 
 habitually about the defalcations and the scarcely 
 disguised dishonesties of rival merchants and manu- 
 facturers to a man who is proud of his integrity, 
 and you encourage a self-satisfaction which may 
 issue in his moral ruin. 
 
 I am very far from thinking that we should look 
 upon noble deeds and great powers with cold in- 
 difference. To admire what is admirable is as much 
 a duty as to despise what is worthless. There are 
 children and men who need praise as much as 
 flowers need sunshine. They have no faith in them- 
 selves, and only learn what they can do at second- 
 
96 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 hand ; tlie confidence and approbation of others give 
 tlieni courage and hope. With some men the fear 
 of failure makes failure certain, and their strength 
 is gone when men do not recognize it. Lord 
 Lytton, in his charming essay on the Efficacy of 
 Praise, tells a story of Mr. Kean, who, when per- 
 forming in some city of the United States, came to 
 the manager when the play was half over and said, 
 " I can't go on the stage again, sir, if the pit keeps 
 its hands in its pockets. Such an audience would 
 extinguish ^tna." Upon this the manager told the 
 audience that Mr. Kean, not being accustomed to 
 the severe intelligence of American citizens, mistook 
 their silent attention for courteous disappointment, 
 and that if they did not applaud Mr. Kean as he 
 was accustomed to be applauded, they could not see 
 Mr. Kean act as he was accustomed to act. Of 
 course the audience took the hint; and as their fer- 
 vour rose, so rose the genius of the actor, and their 
 applause contributed to the triumphs it rewarded. 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 97 
 
 We live more than lialf our life in the sympathy 
 of others, and their good opinion is a wholesome 
 stimulant to well-doing. It sustains our own best 
 purposes. It may help to keep our ideal of life 
 from sinking. With many a lad, hearty praise of 
 a well-written copy of verses would he far more 
 certain to keep him from careless blunders in his 
 next exercise than the fear of a sound flogging ; 
 and many a man who would resent censure for his 
 habitual stinginess will give freely if his occasional 
 liberality is cordially appreciated. 
 
 Nearly everything depends upon the intention of 
 the speaker. Honest approbation seldom inflates 
 vanity. It is when vre praise a man in order to 
 win his good opinion for ourselves, that we are 
 likely to give him too good an opinion of himself. 
 The selfishness of the motive will somehow corrupt 
 even the most truthful words, and make them as 
 rotten and unwholesome as the falsehoods of an 
 imscrapiilous sycophant. 
 
98 ■ WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Habitual disparagement of tlie cliaracter, tlie 
 powers, the acquirements, or tlie doings of men in 
 general, is not less pernicious than flattery of those 
 whom we desii^e to please. Cynicism is the temper 
 of our times. We are becoming incapable of en- 
 thusiasm. We are always implying that not only 
 "the age of chivalry," but the age of greatness 
 and goodness of every kind is gone. We are not 
 sure that it ever existed. We are nothing if not 
 critical. We carry the wretched spirit of deprecia- 
 tion into private life. It ■ taints our estimate of 
 public men. 
 
 There are people who have a preternatural faculty 
 for detecting evil, or the appearance of evil, in 
 every man's cliaracter. They have a fatal scent for 
 carrion. Their memory is like a museum I once 
 saw at a medical college, and illustrates all the 
 hideous distortions and monstrous growths and re- 
 volting diseases by wdiich humanity can be troubled 
 and afflicted. They think they have a wonderful 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 
 
 99 
 
 knowledge of linman nature ; I prefer to study it in 
 tlie beautiful and majestic forms of heroes and gods. 
 It is a blunder to mistake the " Xewgate Calendar " 
 for a biographical dictionary. 
 
 A less offensive type of the same tendency leads 
 some people to find apparent satisfaction in the dis- 
 covery and proclamation of slighter defects in the 
 habits of good men and the conduct of public in- 
 stitutions. They cannot talk about the benefits 
 conferred by a great hospital without lamenting 
 some insignificant blot in its laws, and some trifling 
 want of prudence in its management. Speak to 
 them about a man whose good works everybody is 
 admiring, and they cool your ardour by regretting 
 that he is so rough in his manner, or so smooth, 
 that his temper is so hasty, or that he is so fond 
 of aj^plause. They seem to hold a brief requiring 
 them to prove the impossibility of human perfection. 
 They detect the slightest alloy in the pure gold of 
 human goodness. That there are spots in the sun is 
 
 H 2 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 with them something more than an observed fact, 
 it takes rank with a prm^i and necessary truths. 
 
 If native kindness or Christian charity has taught 
 men to think generously of the character of others, 
 it is still possible for this miserable cynicism to 
 find its prey in infirmities or imperfections which 
 involve no guilt. This is a comparatively innocent 
 amusement, but it betrays a certain intellectual vul- 
 garity, and is morally mischievous, as all real vul- 
 garity must be. There are people who, if they hear 
 an organ, find out at once which are the poorest 
 stops. If they listen to a great speaker, they re- 
 member nothing but some slip in the construction 
 of a sentence, the consistency of a metaphor, or the 
 evolution of an argument. While their friends are 
 admiring the wealth and beauty of a tree whose 
 branches are weighed down with fruit, they ha\'e 
 discovered a solitary bough, lost in the golden 
 affluence, on which nothing is hanging. In the gun 
 trade there are men w^hose occupation it is to si^Jit 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 
 
 tlie baiTels and detect any fault in the bore ; it is 
 said that a good eye will discover a deflection 
 measuring very much less than a thousandth part 
 of an inch. Not less keen in the detection of small 
 flaws in every work of genius — poem, oration, 
 building, statue, or painting — are certain critics, 
 some of whom air theii' powers in drawing-rooms 
 and at dinner-tables, and some of whom find their 
 way, now and then, into print. Poor Hazlitt was 
 sorely troubled wdth them in his time. "Littleness," 
 he said, " is their element, and they give a character 
 of meanness to whatever they touch. They creep, 
 buzz, and fly-blow. It is much easier to crush than 
 to catch these troublesome insects ; and when they 
 are in your power, your self-respect spares them." 
 
 Suppose that this habitual depreciation of character 
 never sinks into actual falsehood and slander, and 
 that every fault alleged, or hinted, or suspected, can 
 be proved ; suppose that this ignoble criticism is 
 not ignorant blundering, and that every imagined 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 imperfection is real; — is a carping, cynical temper 
 much less censurable, or are the words it prompts 
 much less injurious ? The influence of talk of this 
 kind is gradually to lead people to believe that 
 there is nothing in this world which it is safe to 
 trust, honourable to love, or discriminating to ad- 
 mire. Reverence for saintly goodness vanishes ; grati- 
 tude for kindness is chilled ; and that enthusiastic 
 admiration of great genius, which communicates to 
 common men something of the strength, and in- 
 spires them with something of the dignity, belonging 
 to genius itself, is ignominiously quenched. 
 
 It is a Christian grace to have pleasant and affec- 
 tionate thoughts about men, to rejoice in their 
 excellencies, and charitably to forget, as far as may 
 be, their shortcomings. It is the attribute of a pure 
 and beautiful nature to have an eye quick to dis- 
 cern, and a heart warm to honour, all that is fair 
 and bright and generous in human nature. The 
 words ^vhich discourage the charity that " thinketh 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 103 
 
 no evil," and give keenness, if not malignity, to 
 the cliscoYeiy of imperfection, are "corrupt" and 
 unwholesome ; they are not to be spoken by our- 
 selves, and are not to be listened to w^hen spoken 
 by others. 
 
 The habit of depreciation makes us think ill of 
 men ; the habit of complaint makes us think ill of 
 God. It is at least as bad to disparage God's good- 
 ness as to disparage human worth. No doubt every 
 man has his troubles. It requii^es little ingenuity 
 to find them out. The greenest pastures are not 
 always fresh ; the stillest waters are not always 
 clear. Until we reach the land where God wiU 
 wipe away all tears from all eyes, and where "there 
 shall be no more death, neither soitow, nor ciying, 
 neither shall there be any more pain," it is in vain 
 to expect perfect freedom from small anxieties and 
 vexations, or any lengthened exemption from great 
 troubles. The sun shines and the storm darkens 
 
I04 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 on tlie evil and the good ; the rain falls in kindly 
 showers and in destructive torrents on the just and 
 on the unjust ; and there are times when every man 
 is ready to hate life, and to exclaim that all is 
 vanity and vexation of spirit. But to be perpetually 
 moaning and uttering w^ords of complaint, is to 
 permit a canker-worm to eat away the heart of 
 gratitude, and to ruin all our joy. The cheerful 
 acknowledgment of God's bounty is an element of 
 holiness, and the spirit of thankfulness confirms faith, 
 and makes the fires of love burn more brightly. 
 But there are some people with w^hom it is 
 almost impossible to live without being infected 
 with discontent. Their words are sighs; they look 
 despair. Their calamities are "new every morning." 
 Their disease is contagious, and only a vigorous 
 constitution can escape unharmed. If it is an 
 evil thing to forget God's mercies, and to have 
 our joy in His love repressed, those who are 
 habitually complaining are guilty of speaking 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 105 
 
 " unw^liolesome " words. "Is any afflicted? Let him 
 pray." 
 
 Then there are words which are properly called 
 icorldJi/, and which are most " corrupt " and mis- 
 chievous. By " worldly " conversation, I do not 
 mean what some good people mean when they con- 
 demn it. Talk about music, and art, and politics, 
 and literature, is in itself not a whit more worldly 
 than talk about cotton and hardware, duties and 
 discounts. There may be as much " worldliness " 
 in conversation about ecclesiastical affau's as in con- 
 versation about dress, or about a flower-show, or an 
 archery meeting. It is the spirit, not the subject of 
 our words which determines their moral character. 
 
 Of course, if a man has never looked on the face 
 of God, and does not live under the control of the 
 realities of the invisible world, his conversation will 
 show no trace of faith in the Divine and the Eternal. 
 Where the faith does not exist in the heart, it cannot 
 be revealed in the words. But some men are hypo- 
 
Io6 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 crites to their own hurt and disparagement. With 
 a deep and vigorous religious life, they affect the 
 manner of those who have no religious life at all. 
 They like to travel incognito, and it cannot be said 
 that their " speech bewrayeth them." They really 
 care very little about the vanity of splendid furni- 
 ture ; but they sometimes talk as though human life 
 had no higher end than to patronize upholsterers. 
 They seldom think of their wine except when it 
 is on the table ; but they affect to be as absorbed in 
 the discussion of houquets and vintages as though 
 they thought that to keep a good cellar is the 
 supreme felicity of man. They have nothing of the 
 epicure about them ; but they pretend to an infinite 
 interest in the science of cookery. In ethics they 
 catch the tone of " society." Scrupulously honour- 
 able themselves, with a pure heart and an intense 
 abhorrence of trickery and fraud, they half profess 
 to accept a conventional morality which they in- 
 wardly despise. They are ashamed of their native 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. IO7 
 
 dialect, and speak tlie language of the Philistines. 
 Instead of letting their real life live in their words, 
 they disguise the "good fruit" which is natural to 
 them, under habits of speech of a meaner growth. 
 They too — so it woidd appear — believe there is 
 nothing sacred in human nature, and nothing awful 
 in human destiny. 
 
 They are guilty of speaking " unwholesome " 
 words. All words which are not true to the whole 
 nature of the man who uses them are " corrupt ; " 
 and words like these are, as the old writers would 
 say, imiwrtinenthj bad. Few of us, I am afraid, are 
 so good that it is at all necessary for us to conceal 
 our goodness. We may let what faith we have 
 colour and shape our speech without claiming tran- 
 scendent saintliness. This "voluntary humility" 
 has pride at the bottom of it. It gratifies om^ self- 
 conceit to feel that we are better than we seem. 
 
 The harm which the affectation of worldliness 
 inflicts on others is obvious. Men are in sufficient 
 
Io8 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 danger of forgetting God for it to be needless for 
 those who remember Him to enter into a conspiracy 
 to exclude all recognition of Him from their common 
 speech. When, in the words of those who profess 
 to be devout, there is no reflected light from heaven, 
 unbelievers will be likely to maintain that faith in 
 heaven is all a dream. It is not necessary to ask 
 every man we meet to lay his hand on our breast 
 that he may feel the beatings of om^ heart and know 
 that we are alive unto God ; but to affect the ap- 
 pearance of death, not to suffer the life which is in us 
 to give colour to the face and animation to the eye — 
 this is to do our best to persuade the world that 
 spiritual death is the universal condition, and that 
 " the gift of God " of which we s^Dcak is unreal. 
 Just now, one of the most prevalent forms which 
 this ignoble affectation assumes is habitual flippancy 
 and frivolity. Men do not care to seem too much 
 in earnest about anything. Politics and religion — 
 the social condition of the people — the morality of 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS, 109 
 
 business — are all treated as tliongli they were 
 materials for jesting. Get at tlie heart of the 
 very men who are gniilty of this trifling, and you 
 will often find that they have strong conyictions, 
 and that when there is need of hard work and 
 self-sacrifice in a good cause, they are ready for 
 both. The "curled darlings" of the clubs fought 
 like heroes at Inkermann and Balaclava. But it 
 is the manner of the world to speak of nothing 
 seriously, and so men invest even their firmest 
 convictions with fantastic and grotesque absurdities. 
 We have had a " Comic History of England" in our 
 time, — a frightful indication of the extent to which 
 the very idea of the sacredness of our national life 
 has perished ; and there are some men — not quite 
 destitute of religious earnestness — who talk so lightly 
 about religion when they talk of it at all, that they 
 seem to have never felt the awfulness of the objects 
 of religious faith. This incessant jesting must, in the 
 long run, lessen a man's own sense of the gravity of 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 human life, and it is certain to impair the strength 
 and authority of the moral convictions of those who 
 are always listening to it. It is as absurd as it is 
 injurious. Barrow, who himself might have out- 
 shone, had he chosen to do it, all the wits of 
 Charles's Court, and beaten them with weapons like 
 their own, but of a more dazzling blade, a keener 
 edge, and finer temper, treated this folly with the 
 severity and contempt it deserves. He says that 
 "to affect, admire, or highly to value this way of 
 speaking (either absolutely in itself, or in com- 
 parison to the serious and plain way of speech), and 
 thence to be drawn into an immoderate use thereof, 
 is blamable. A man of ripe age and sound judg- 
 ment, for refreshment to himself, or in compliance 
 to others, may sometimes condescend to play in this 
 or in any harmless way. But to be fond of it, to 
 prosecute it with a careful and painful eagerness, to 
 dote and dwell upon it, to reckon it a brave or a 
 fine thing, a singular matter of commendation, a 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. 
 
 transcendent accomplisliment anywise preferable to 
 rational endowments, or comparable to the moral 
 excellencies of the mind (to solid knowledge or 
 Sound wisdom, or true virtue and goodness), this 
 is extremely childish or brutish, and far below a 
 man. What can be more absurd than to make a 
 business of i^lay, to be studious and laborious in 
 toys, to make a profession or drive a trade of im- 
 ^Dertinency ? What more plain nonsense can there 
 be than to be earnest in jest, to be continual in 
 divertisement or constant in pastime, to make ex- 
 travagance all our way and sauce all our diet? Is 
 not this plainly the life of a child, that is ever 
 busy yet never hath anything to do ? or the life 
 of that mimical brute, which is always active in 
 playing uncouth and unlucky ti^icks, which, could 
 it sioeak, might surely pass well for a professed 
 wit?" 
 
 But very religious words may also be " corrupt." 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 They are worse than corrupt, if they are spoken 
 with conscious insincerity ; but where there is no 
 deliberate hypocrisy, they may be so exaggerated 
 and unreal as to do more harm than the grossest 
 worldliness. When good men, who have no great 
 religious fervour, use fervent language, which they 
 have caught from others, or which was the natural 
 expression of what they felt in other and better 
 years, they cannot tell what a disastrous impression 
 they produce upon keen and discriminating minds. 
 The cheat is at once detected, and the hasty in- 
 ference is drawn that all expressions of religious 
 earnestness are affected and artificial. The honest 
 and irrepressible utterance of strong conviction and 
 deep emotion commands respect ; but intense words 
 should never be used when the religious life is not 
 intense. Borrowed rhetoric and remembered passion 
 impose on no one. The language of lofty and 
 earnest feeling must be " fresh ; " when it is 
 " corrupt," a healthy taste nauseates it as repulsive 
 
UNWHOLESOME WORDS. II3 
 
 and unwholesome, and is in danger of regarding 
 witli disgust wliatever looks at all lik it in all 
 time to come. 
 
 Happy are the friends of those whose conversation 
 " ministers grace to the hearers." It may not be 
 always serious and grave, it may dance and sparkle 
 like a mountain stream, but it is always pure and 
 innocent ; it may not be always soft and gentle, but 
 when it is roughest it is as bracing as the north 
 wind ; it may not always be very " instructive," but 
 it is as healthy as the scent of the heather, bright 
 and cheerful as the morning sun, musical as the 
 song of birds and the rustling of pines and the 
 sound of running waters. And when it touches 
 on the deeper subjects of human thought, it is as 
 natm-al as a mother's talk to her child ; every 
 word is sweet and honest and true. Next to the 
 interior consolation of the Holy Ghost, it is the 
 
 best solace in times of trouble ; and next to the 
 
 I 
 
114 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 words of Him who spake as never man spake, 
 it is the most subtle and yet the most effective 
 stimulus to well-doing. No measured eloquence 
 from the pulpit, no elaborated pleading in a book, 
 ever penetrates so deeply as the wise and earnest 
 words of a living man talking alone to the man he 
 loves. Most of us need to be better and wiser than 
 we are, to speak after this manner to the people 
 about us, but we may all watch against " corrupt 
 communications ; " and when we cannot speak "whole- 
 some words," we may at least be silent. 
 
Y. 
 
 ANaEPv. 
 
 TT is to be feared that many good people have 
 very bad tempers. It is to be feared, too, that 
 a bad temper is very often regarded as a misfortune 
 rather than a sin. Men think that they are bom 
 to it; that it is no fault of theirs; that their 
 temper deserves the sympathy of their friends rather 
 than their censm^e. They seem to regard it very 
 much as they would regard a heavy mortgage on an 
 inherited estate, or any other evil which had come 
 upon them from accident or from the wrong- doing 
 of other people. 
 
 And yet there are terrible sentences in the New 
 
 I 2 
 
Il6 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Testament about unjustifiable and uncontrollable 
 anger. To yield to ungoverned passion is to " give 
 place to the devil." To be " angry witbout a 
 cause" is to be "in danger of tlie judgment." 
 
 No doubt there are occasions when it is a duty 
 to be angry ; and whoever is not angry with his 
 brother when there is a cause, neglects a duty. 
 The constitution of our nature shows that anger 
 is not always a transgression of the Divine law. 
 We are so made that pity is not more naturally 
 awakened by the sight of suffering, fear by the 
 approach of danger, delight by the vision of beauty, 
 gratitude by deeds of generous kindness, than anger 
 by many kinds of wrong-doing. Bishop Butler says, 
 "that auger, in its impulsive form, is intended to 
 be a sudden defence against sudden injury, and to 
 be a standing menace, in the form of settled re- 
 sentment, against deliberate injustice ; " but it has 
 far higher ends to answer than mere self-defence. 
 
 The calm, passionless nature which is with some 
 
117 
 
 men the highest type of goodness, is not the Chris- 
 tian ideal either of human or divine perfection. It 
 was never yet associated either with saintliness or 
 heroism. The men whose hearts never glow with 
 enthusiasm at witnessing lofty self-sacrifice, never 
 burn with indignation against cowardice, falsehood, 
 and profligacy, — the men whose eyes never flash, 
 whose pulse never quickens, whose words move on 
 in an unbroken flow, and never rush along tumul- 
 tuously, like a cataract, either in praise or blame, — 
 never yet did any work worth doing either for God 
 or man. They are mere machines, not living souls. 
 They would be hardly the worse if they had no 
 hearts at all. They may talk of principle being 
 better than passion; ''both are best;" both are 
 necessary to a perfect life. It may be a less serious 
 misfortune for the flesh to fall away, than for the 
 bones to be broken or diseased; but the hard 
 angular skeleton, scarcely concealed by the skin, is 
 an ungracious and ghastly object ; and unless the 
 
Il8 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 solid framework of principle is well covered with 
 the warm flesh and blood of kindly and generous 
 passion, a man's character has neither health nor 
 beauty. 
 
 The people who do us most good are those whose 
 affections are as true to God and righteousness as 
 their judgments and their consciences. Right prin- 
 ciple is the logic of human character; right feeling 
 is its rhetoric ; it is the rhetoric by which we are 
 strongly moved. If my friend's heart throbs faster 
 when he speaks to me of the love of Christ, I not 
 only see that I ought to love Christ, but my own 
 heart begins to glow ; if he quivers with indignation 
 when he speaks of meanness, treachery, selfishness, 
 I not only see that these things are evil, but I 
 begin to abhor them. 
 
 Righteous anger, restrained but not quenched, 
 has wonderful power in it. Adam Smith has 
 accurately observed that " the proper expression of 
 just indignation composes many of the most splen- 
 
ANGER, 119 
 
 did and admired passages both of ancient and 
 modem eloquence." But we have higher examples 
 of it than the Philippics of Demosthenes or the 
 Orations of Cicero against Catiline. The ancient 
 prophets did not discuss the sins of the Hebrew 
 people with philosophical serenity, nor condemn 
 them with judicial calmness ; some of their dis- 
 courses are tempestuous with passion. The words 
 of Christ Himself are often terrible from the indig- 
 nation they express ; gentle as He was, there was 
 no weakness in Him. He looked upon hypocrites 
 with " anger, being gi'ieved because of the hard- 
 ness of their hearts." His denunciations sometimes 
 burn with a white heat. And the eternal God has 
 not trusted to the calm appeal which His law 
 makes to the conscience of man — " His torath is 
 revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness ; '* 
 "He is angry with the wicked every day." 
 Perhaps one reason why modern preaching is less 
 powerful than it might be, is because it does not 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 dwell sufficiently upon the depth and intensity 
 of God's deliglit in man's well - doing, and the 
 fierceness of His indignation at sin. 
 
 It is possible, then, to "be angry" and to "sin 
 not." Jonah was mistaken when he said that he 
 did well to be angry; but there are times when we 
 do exceedingly ill if we feel no anger. To quote 
 again from Bishop Butler, who has a far better 
 claim to the epithet "judicious " than Bichard 
 Hooker : " The indignation raised by cruelty and 
 injustice, and the desire of having it punished, 
 w^hich persons unconcerned would feel, is by no 
 means malice. No, it is resentment against vice 
 and wickedness, it is one of the common bonds 
 by which society is held together, a fellow-feeling 
 which each individual has in behalf of the whole 
 species as "well as of himself. And it does not 
 afpear tJiat tliis, generally s^ealang^ is at all too 
 liigli amongst manlcind.^^ 
 
 If we are like Christ, and bear the Divine 
 
ANGER. 
 
 image, there are times when we shall be angry. 
 'Nov do I see any reason why we should never 
 speak until our anger is over. Anger is meant 
 to make the condemnation of sin more effec- 
 tive ; to wait till it has cooled down is to forget 
 that fire is sometimes wanted to subdue stubborn 
 material as well as force. It is a great calamity to 
 a child if its parents act on the foolish theory that 
 they should never reprove or punish except in cold 
 blood; some parents, indeed, have so little control 
 over their passion, that to wait till their anger is 
 over may be a humiliating necessity ; but still the 
 child suffers. There is nothing more intolerable 
 than a cold censure for grave faults. It is infinitely 
 worse to bear than indignation, and it is less effec- 
 tive. It looks like cruelty. It provokes resentment. 
 The remembrance of it is like a cancer in the soul. 
 Parental love must be strongly moved — moved with 
 anger as well as sorrow — when a child has com- 
 mitted sin ; if a parent waits until all the emotion 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 lias gone, the reproof and the punishment have all 
 the harshness of authority unalleviated by the tender- 
 ness of affection. 
 
 But anger, like every other active principle of 
 oui' nature, may escape from the control of reason 
 and conscience, and then it is most mischievous 
 both to ourselves and others. 
 
 Fire mastered by man's skill, working even fiercely 
 under his command, is one of his most efiicient ser- 
 vants ; but fire, in revolt against man's authority, 
 is one of his most terrible foes. " Pride," says an 
 ancient author, " robs me of God, envy of my neigh- 
 bour, anger of myself;" he might have said, Anger 
 makes me the slave of the devil, the curse of my 
 neighbour, and my own worst torment. 
 
 Some people seem to live in a perpetual storm ; 
 calm weather can never be reckoned upon in their 
 company. Suddenly, when you least expect it, with- 
 out any adequate reason, and almost without any reason 
 at all, the sky becomes black and the wind rises, 
 
123 
 
 and there is growling thunder and pelting rain. You 
 can hardly tell where the tempest came from. An 
 accident for which no one could be rightly blamed; 
 a misunderstanding which a moment's calm thought 
 would have terminated, a chance word which meant 
 no evil, a trifling difficulty which good sense mio-ht 
 have removed at once, a slight disappointment which 
 a cheerful heart would have borne with a smile, 
 brings on earthquakes and hurricanes. People of 
 this kind say they bear no malice ; that their 
 passion is soon over ; that they do not " let the 
 sun go down on their wrath ; " but the mischief 
 is that if one storm ends at nightfall, another is 
 sure to begin at sunrise. This is hardly fulfilling 
 the apostolic precept. As anger is sinful when it 
 is without a cause, it is also sinful when too pro- 
 longed. God never meant us to "nurse our wrath." 
 Severe remedies become dangerous when their 
 action is not almost instantaneous. Prolonged 
 anger is a torment instead of a chastisement to 
 
124 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 those who have to endure it; however just in its 
 origin, it is resented as a wrong; and hinders 
 instead of encouraging penitence. 
 
 An angry man little knows the misery and injury 
 he inflicts on those whom, perhaps, he truly loves. 
 His wife and children are in continual fear. His 
 violent language is not forgotten by others as easily 
 as he forgets it himself. No bursts of "good-nature," 
 no lavish gifts, atone for it. Very often his temper 
 leads to habits of concealment and deceit on the part 
 of those with whom he lives. For this he is largely 
 responsible. If he has to do with public business, 
 he drives away from every institution with which he 
 is connected the quiet men who hate strife, and he 
 makes the work of those who remain, a constant 
 source of irritation and disgust. If the charity 
 which "beareth all things" is the queen of the 
 christian graces, the passion that bears nothing is 
 one of the worst of unchristian vices. 
 
125 
 
 Moralists have suggested many considerations 
 w^hicli should help those who are guilty of this 
 sin to check and master it. Perhaps one of the 
 wisest and most charming passages which Arch- 
 deacon Paley ever wrote, is that in which he 
 enumerates the reflections by which an angry 
 man may subdue the rising storm. He says : — 
 
 "Reflections proper for this purpose, and which 
 may be called the sedatives of anger, are the 
 following : The possibility of mistaking the motives 
 from which the conduct that offends us proceeds ; 
 how often our ofiences have been the effect of inad- 
 vertency, when they were constructed into indica- 
 tions of our mahce ; the inducement which prompted 
 our adversaiy to act as he did, and how powerfully 
 the same inducement has, at one time or other, 
 operated upon ourselves ; that he is suffering per- 
 haps under a contrition, which he is ashamed, or 
 wants opportunity, to confess; and how ungenerous 
 it is to triumph by coldness or insult over a spirit 
 
126 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 already humbled in secret ; tliat the retm^ns of kind- 
 ness are sweet, and that there is neither honour, 
 nor virtue, nor use, in resisting them : — for some 
 persons think themselves bound to cherish and keep 
 alive their indignation when they find it dying away 
 of itself. We may remember that others have their 
 passions, their prejudices, their favourite aims, their 
 fears, their cautions, their interests, their sudden 
 impulses, their variety of apprehension, as well as 
 we : we may recollect what hath sometimes passed 
 in our minds when we have gotten on the wrong 
 side of a quarrel, and imagine the same to be pass- 
 ing in our adversary's mind now ; when we become 
 sensible of our misbehaviour, what palliations we 
 perceived in it, and expected others to perceive ; 
 how we were affected by the kindness, and felt the 
 superiority, of a generous reception and a ready 
 forgiveness ; how persecution revived our spirits with 
 our enmity, and seemed to justify the conduct in 
 ourselves which we before blamed. Add to this the 
 
ANGER. 127 
 
 indecency of extravagant anger; liow it renders ns, 
 whilst it lasts, tlie scorn and sport of all about us, 
 of which it leaves us, when it ceases, sensible and 
 ashamed ; the inconveniences and irretrievable mis- 
 conduct into which our irascibility has sometimes 
 betrayed us ; the friendships it has lost us ; the 
 distresses and embarrassments in which we have 
 been involved by it; and the sore repentance which, 
 on one account or other, it always costs us." 
 
 But bad temper will never be conquered till it is 
 felt to be a sin — a sin which every Christian man is 
 bound to repent of and to forsake. It is not difficult 
 to persuade people to acknowledge this in general 
 terms, but the acknowledgment is vitiated by ex- 
 cuses which show that the guilt is not honestly 
 recognized. No man ever thinks of defending him- 
 self against the charge of dishonesty or falsehood, 
 by pleading that his proneness to the sin diminishes 
 his responsibility ; but proneness to violent and un- 
 governable anger is constantly urged as a palliation 
 
128 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 of tlie offence. It is one of the most miscliievous 
 cliaracteristics of this sin, that it ahnost always 
 claims to be the necessary result of peculiarity of 
 temperament. I have not unfrequently heard men 
 speak of it as though it were a mere physical 
 infirmity ; and as though we had no more right to 
 blame a man for his temper than for the colour of 
 his eyes, his complexion, or his hair. So long as 
 this excuse is admitted, conscience is silenced, and 
 there can be no vigorous attempt to reform. 
 
 N'o doubt a man's physical constitution has very 
 much to do with his temper. There are people to 
 whom it is no great credit to be gentle and kindly. 
 They are kept from violent passion, not by the 
 strength of right principle, but by the sluggishness 
 and weakness of their pulse. But it is the business 
 of man's reason and conscience to tame the way- 
 wardness of animal impulses, and to compel them to 
 serve the soul. If temperament is to be an excuse 
 for causeless and excessive anger, the glutton and 
 
129 
 
 the di'unkarcl may appeal to tlieir physical consti- 
 tution as an alleviation of their guilt, and many of 
 the foulest offences may take shelter nncler the same 
 convenient plea. Even the moralist refuses to admit 
 that the soiil has any right to excuse its wrong- 
 doing by alleging the strength of the lower passions ; 
 it is the souFs darkest crime, as well as its deepest 
 desTradation, to be unable to control them. The 
 Christian who supposes that there are sins which 
 the Holy Ghost cannot enable him to subdue, dis- 
 honours " the exceeding greatness of that power," 
 wliich worketh in all that believe. There is no sin 
 for wliich Christ atoned from which He cannot 
 deliver us. There is no sin that He can pardon 
 which He cannot give us strength to overcome. If 
 there were fetters He could not break, diseases He 
 could not heal, our trust in Him as our Saviour 
 would be gone. 
 
 Let men consider what they are saying when they 
 imply that a bad temper cannot be overcome. It is 
 
 E 
 
130 
 
 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 not an isolated evil, a mere local affection which, 
 leaves the rest of the soul uninjured. By it we are 
 often betrayed into words and deeds most cruel and 
 unjust ; it causes us to inflict undeserved misery ; 
 it violates the laws of charity ; it hinders commu- 
 nion with God ; it often mars if it does not destroy 
 our religious usefulness. 
 
 Nor should the angry man forget that the very 
 " temperament " which occasions his sin, and which 
 he sometimes pleads in alleviation of his guilt, 
 renders possible forms of excellence which are un- 
 attainable by men whose blood is sluggish, and in 
 whose souls no fire burns. Many of the very noblest 
 men that ever lived had slumbering volcanoes in 
 them. The heat and impulse and vehemence which, 
 when unrestrained, hurry us into harsh and un- 
 measured and violent language, become, when con- 
 trolled, an element of invaluable power. Rapture in 
 worship, zeal in Christian work, ardoui' in friendship. 
 
131 
 
 enthusiastic loyalty to a just and righteous cause — 
 these are all possible to men whose passions are 
 impetuous. There is hardly any other sin which lies 
 so near to great virtues. Let anger be mastered, 
 and there is not only a great evil escaped, but the 
 same force which wrought the former mischief gives 
 inspiration and nobleness to the whole moral life. 
 
VI. 
 
 CHEERFULlSrESS. 
 
 ^^HE only crown that Clirist ever wore on earth 
 was a crown of thorns ; and in ancient 
 prophecy He was spoken of as " a man of sorrows 
 and acquainted with grief ; " as if, in this world 
 of pain and disease and disappointment and death, 
 none would ever know, before He came, the real 
 heart of suffering or the last depths of woe. When 
 He was here, the sick and the wretched gathered 
 about Him ; and ever since He left the world, 
 His name has been on the lips of men far oftener 
 in their trouble than in their joy. And as it is the 
 sorrowful rather than the happy who come to Christ, 
 
CHEERFULNESS. I35 
 
 sorrow is also a universal element of the Christian's 
 life, — soiTOW for tlie sufferings of Christ, sorrow 
 for our own sins which made those sufferings 
 necessary, sorrow for the sins of other men whose 
 hearts the love of Christ has not yet touched to 
 penitence or inspired with a passion for holiness. 
 The Christian faith has revealed unexpected depths 
 of pathos in the human soul ; and in Clu"istian 
 literature there is so much of sadness, and Christian 
 art, as it has been recently said, has so " deep a 
 moaning in it," that in the judgment of Augustus 
 Schlegel, while the poetry of the ancients is the 
 poetry of enjoyment, that of the moderns is the 
 expression of unsatisfied desii'e. Christianity has 
 been called the religion of sorrow. 
 
 But surely too much has been made of the more 
 pathetic elements of the Christian faith and life. 
 Instead of defining the religion of Christ as the 
 religion of sorrow, I should prefer defining it as 
 the relio:ion of consolation. 
 
134 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 It is quite true fhat Christendom has encouraged 
 what a Catholic writer calls " a holy melancholy." 
 For myself, I find nothing holy in it, and the means 
 which have encouraged it appear to me flagrantly 
 unchristian. What right have we, for instance, to 
 make a crucifix the centre of Christian worship ? 
 Could the angels of the sepulchre revisit the world 
 again, and appear in their own shining forms in 
 the cathedrals and churches of Continental Europe, 
 they would point with gestures of amazement and 
 grief at the images of Christ's last agony, around 
 which the millions of the Catholic Church con- 
 tinually gather ; they would repeat the words which 
 they uttered eighteen centuries ago to the sorrow- 
 ing women who had come in the early morning 
 to render to the dead body of Christ the last 
 offices of despairing love. They would exclaim 
 again, " He is not liere " — not in the sepulchre — 
 not on the cross — " He is risen." If the death of 
 Christ, while still holding the supreme place in the 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 135 
 
 memory of the Clim^clij no longer concealed from 
 us His present power and glory, mucli of the 
 " holy melancholy " which has been mistaken for 
 devontness would disappear. 
 
 There is a tradition that our Lord, though He 
 often wept, never smiled. I should like to know 
 on what that tradition rests. I know that instead 
 of affecting a rigorous and austere life. He was 
 found at the tables of all sorts of men, so that 
 His enemies called Him a glutton and a wine- 
 bibber ; and instead of discouraging the harmless 
 festi\-ities of life, He turned water into wine, that 
 the rejoicings at the marriage of His friend might 
 not be abruptly closed. 
 
 The ideal saint is not to be found in the N"ew 
 Testament ; — I mean the saint with the pale 
 countenance, the wasted form, the hands clasped 
 in continual prayer, the lips closed in continual 
 silence, the rough garment, the austerities, the self- 
 inflicted chastisements, which are necessary to the 
 
136 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 popular conception of tlie chai^acter. Peter was not 
 a man of that kind, nor Paul, nor John, It is said 
 that James the Just lived a severe life, and that 
 he knelt so constantly, that his knees were like 
 the knees of a camel ; it may have been so, but 
 tradition on such points is not very trustworthy ; 
 and, anyhow, no prophecy or epistle in the Old 
 Testament or the New exhibits such a represen- 
 tation of the ideal Christian life for us to honour 
 and imitate. The writer to whom I referred just 
 now, as admiring " holy melancholy," appeals to 
 John the Baptist as an example of severe saintly 
 virtues ; but it is enough to say that our Lord 
 Himself not only spoke emphatically of the very 
 great contrast between His own manner of life and 
 John's, but said, " the least in the kingdom of 
 heaven is greater than he." 
 
 I have known some eminent saints — people who 
 loved God with a great love, trusted Him wdth a 
 perfect faith, kept His commandments, and lived and 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 137 
 
 moved and liad their being in the light of the 
 Divine presence — but they were not at all of 
 the sort that artists delight to paint and poets 
 to celebrate. They were not melancholy, ghastly, 
 sorrow- stricken persons at all. They were brave 
 and hopeful ; they heartily enjoyed the pleasant 
 things of life, and made light of its sorrows. Some 
 of them had humour and wit, an eye that twinkled 
 merrily, and a laugh that rang like a peal of bells. 
 In health and strength, they were the kind of 
 people that take sunlight with them wherever 
 they go ; and in sickness they preserved an in- 
 domitable cheerfulness. I do not say that all very 
 good people are always happy ; but my impression 
 is, that the very best people I have ever known, 
 the people who have had least sin and selfishness 
 in them, and most of the Spirit of God, instead of 
 being characterized by a " holy melancholy," had 
 " a merry heart," which Solomon says, " doeth good 
 like a medicine." 
 
138 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 The melancholy, wasted saint is not the true 
 Protestant ideal of saintliness. Luther himself 
 would never have done his gigantic work as a 
 great popular reformer but for his physical robust- 
 ness ; and his habits were as far as possible from 
 asceticism. The Puritans were, no doubt, inclined 
 to sternness and severity ; and Lord Macaulay says 
 that they objected to bear-baiting, not because it 
 gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure 
 to the spectators ; but my impression is, that many 
 of them were very far from being grim and gloomy. 
 John Owen — who may be taken as a very fair 
 example of the Independents of the Commonwealth 
 — was as graceful and accomplished a gentleman, 
 as polished, as courteous, and as free from artificial 
 and conventional restraints, as can well be imagined. 
 When he was a student he delighted in manly ex- 
 ercises — in leaping, throwing the bar, bell-ringing, 
 and similar amusements ; he learnt to play the 
 flute, the fashionable instrument for gentlemen in 
 
CHEERFULNESS. I39 
 
 those days, from the most celebrated performer of 
 the time, who was also tutor to Charles I. ; — and 
 when Owen became Vice- Chancellor of Oxford, he 
 made his old music-master professor of music in the 
 university. He was a very different kind of person, 
 even when he became Vice- Chancellor, from what 
 those of us would imagine, who sujopose that the 
 saints who reigned under Cromwell were a mortified 
 race of men. The historian of the University of 
 Oxford is very severe upon the great Independent 
 for not being sufficiently dignified and solemn in his 
 dress. "Instead," says Anthony Wood, "of being 
 a grave example to the university, he scorned all 
 formality, undervalued his office by going in quirpo " 
 (wTiatever that may be) "like a young scholar with 
 powdered hair, snake-bone band-strings " — that is, 
 band-strings with very large tassels — "lawn bands, 
 a very large set of ribbons pointed at his knees, and 
 Spanish leather boots, with large lawn tops, and his 
 hat mostly cocked ; " all of which means that John 
 
I40 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Owen was too mucli of a dandy for Anthony Wood, 
 
 who hated the Puritans and all their doings. 
 
 John Milton taught that there was a time to laugh 
 
 as well as to weep, and in one of his sonnets invites 
 
 his friend Cyriac Skinner " deep thoughts to drench 
 
 in mirth that after no repenting draws," and, having 
 
 said, — 
 
 *' To measure life, learn thou betimes, and know, 
 Towards solid good, what leads the nearest way," 
 
 he adds, — 
 
 For other things, mild Heaven a time ordains, 
 And disapproves that care, though wise in show, 
 That with superfluous burden loads the day. 
 And when God sends a cheerful hour refrains." 
 
 There are, no doubt, times w^hen joy is impossible. 
 When the heart is broken it cannot be " merry." 
 But it is necessary for some people to remember 
 that cheerfulness, good spirits, light-heartedness, 
 merriment, are not unchristian nor unsaintly. 
 
 We do not please God more by eating bitter aloes 
 than by eating honey. A cloudy, foggy, rainy day 
 
CHEERFULNESS, 141 
 
 is not more heavenly tlian a clay of sunshine. A 
 funeral inarch is not so much like the music of 
 angels as the songs of birds on a May morning. 
 There is no more religion in the gaunt naked forest 
 in winter, than in the laughing blossoms of the 
 spring, and the rich ripe fruits of autumn. It was 
 not the pleasant things in the world that came 
 from the Devil, and the dreary things from God; 
 it was " sin brought death into the world and all 
 our woe ; " as the sin vanishes, the woe will vanish 
 too. God Himself is the ever-blessed God. He 
 dwells in the light of joy as well as of pm^ity, 
 and instead of becoming more like Him as we 
 become more miserable, and as all the brightness 
 and glory of life are extinguished, w^e become more 
 like God as our blessedness becomes more complete. 
 The great Christian graces are radiant with happi- 
 ness. Faith, hope, charity — there is no sadness in 
 them: — and if penitence makes the heart sad, peni- 
 tence belono^s to the sinner, not to the saint ; as we 
 
142 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 become more saintly, we liave less sin to sorrow 
 over. 
 
 No, tlie religion of Christ is not a religion of 
 sorrow. It consoles wretchedness and brightens 
 with a divine glory the lustre of every inferior joy. 
 It attracts to itself the broken-hearted, the lonely, 
 the weary, the despairing, but it is to give them 
 rest, comfort, and peace. It rekindles hope ; it 
 inspires strength, courage, and joy. It checks the 
 merriment of the thoughtless who have never 
 considered the graver and more awful realities of 
 man's life and destiny, bat it is to lead them 
 through transient sorrow to deeper and more 
 perfect blessedness, even in this world, than they 
 had ever felt before the sorrow came. 
 
 Take the representations of the Christian faith 
 which are given in the New Testament, and you 
 will see that, though it may be a religion for the 
 sorrowful, it is not a sorrowful religion. To 
 hearts oppressed with guilt, it offers the pardon of 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 143 
 
 God ; to those who dread the Divine displeasure, it 
 reveals God's infinite love ; to those who are tor- 
 mented with the consciousness of moral evil, and 
 penetrated with shame and self-contempt by the 
 habitual failure of every purpose and endeavour to 
 live a pure and perfect life, it offers the inspiration 
 of the Holy Ghost. If, at the commencement of the 
 Chi'istian life, it relies on the purif}ang power of 
 penitence, and if to the very end it encourages 
 devout and reverential fear, it also teaches that the 
 joy of God is our strength ; and it is an apostolic 
 precept that we should Rejoice evermore. As for 
 the chief troubles which annoy and distress man- 
 kind, it possesses the only secret which can make 
 them felt less keenly, and borne without that 
 bitterness of spirit which poisons grief and trans- 
 forms a calamity, morally harmless, into a curse 
 and a sin. It tells the anxious to cast all their 
 care upon God, and to " take no thought for 
 the morrow;" the poor, that they may be heirs of 
 
144 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 a divine glory ; tliose wlio have liad heavy losses, 
 of riches which never take to themselves wings, and 
 treasures of which they can never be robbed ; it 
 tells those who have suffered from injustice and 
 calumny, of a righteous Judge and an equitable 
 judgment- seat ; it reveals to the sick a life of 
 immortal health ; and to those whose hopes are 
 wrecked in this world, a world beyond death, in 
 which they may have a career brighter and more 
 triumphant than their happiest imaginations can 
 conceive. Nor is it silent and helpless when those 
 we love pass from us and are laid in the dust. It 
 was not Christ who brought death into the world ; 
 nor by rejecting Christ can we or our friends 
 become immortal. The brain burned with the 
 fires of fever, the limbs were struck with paralysis, 
 the harmonious movements of the heart were 
 troubled with fatal disease, before Christ came ; 
 and these evils would continue in the world if all 
 memory of the Christian faith perished. But to the 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 
 
 145 
 
 dying, and those who mourn for the dead, Christ 
 reveals glory and immortality as the certain destiny 
 of all who love and fear Grod. It does not become 
 a Christian to be " melancholy." 
 
 It was the fashion thirty years ago to think 
 that habitual melancholy made people interesting. 
 When Lord Byron's poetry was most popular, it 
 was a mark of distinction to be consumed by a 
 hidden grief, to talk of a desolate life, to have a 
 countenance pale with unutterable misery. There 
 are still some very young persons w^hose health is 
 not very good, and whose brain is not very sound, 
 who affect this poetical gloom. Let me assure them 
 that, instead of making them interesting, it makes 
 them extremely unpleasant, and that all sensible 
 people regard this affectation with contempt. 
 
 There are other persons who have a most sur- 
 prising genius for making the most of all the 
 prosaic troubles of life. You never see them but 
 
 L 
 
146 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 they have some new calamity to talk of. At first, 
 and until you come to understand them, you think 
 them the most afflicted of mankind, and your 
 sympathy is touched by the look of distress which 
 has become habitual to their countenance, and by 
 the tone of despair which is hardly ever absent 
 from their voice. But you discover by-and-by that 
 they are not worse off than other people. They 
 have no severe sickness in their house ; they are 
 not in danger of bankruptcy ; they eat well and 
 sleep well ; their children are not idiots or cripples . 
 — why should they be always miserable? They 
 have somehow got into the habit of being so. They 
 carry about a moral microscope, which makes reve- 
 lations to them of which other people are happily 
 ignorant ; no matter how clear the water is, they 
 can always see in it disgusting creeping things. 
 Every ache in their limbs is a threatening of 
 horrible agony ; every odd feeling the symptom of 
 latent and, perhaps, mortal disease ; if a chance 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 147 
 
 dimness comes over their eyes, they are certain they 
 Tvill soon be blind ; if they strain a tendon, they 
 make sui^e of being lame for life. They see the 
 dark shadows of dreadful vices in the slight follies 
 of their children. They see impending ruin if their 
 income falls five per cent. They think of the affairs 
 of the world much in the same way, and make 
 ready for the battle of Armageddon if the French 
 emperor adds a few thousand men to his army. 
 It is hard to say how this unfortunate habit is to 
 be cured, when once it is formed. It is not of 
 much use telling these people to mix in cheerfal 
 society; it is only a rare cheerfulness which can 
 last very long in their presence. It is not of much 
 use telling them to visit the sick and the poor, 
 to learn what real trouble is, and so escape from 
 imaginary evils ; for however much good such visits 
 might do to themselves, the unhappy victims of 
 their sympathy, instead of being consoled and 
 strengthened by their kindness, would only discover, 
 
 L 2 
 
148 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 after they had left, that their troubles, which 
 seemed bad enough to bear before, have somehow 
 been magnified and made more intolerable than ever. 
 People of this sort are to be pitied, and all about 
 them are to be pitied too. The only use, perhaps, 
 that can be made of them is to take warning 
 from them not to indulge too freely in the luxury 
 of woe ; it becomes a species of moral dram- 
 drinking or opium-eating, from which, when once 
 yielded to, it is almost impossible to escape. 
 
 Solomon was right — "A merry heart doeth good 
 like a medicine." The Hebrew is rather more 
 expressive than the English, and also more just. 
 For medicine, though it may do us good, often 
 does it in a very unpleasant way, making us 
 miserable and disconsolate at first, though we are 
 brighter and better for it afterwards. Cheerfulness, 
 if a medicine at all, is medicine of a very 
 agreeable kind. The Hebrew might read, trans- 
 lating it freely, " A merry heart keeps the body 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 149 
 
 healtLy and sound, makes a wound heal quickly, so 
 that the handage may soon be removed^ What a 
 relief it is, after a limb has been long bound, to 
 have the bandage taken off! How welcome the 
 freedom from restraint ! How welcome the sense 
 of recovered soundness ! That is the kind of 
 feeling which the proverb says comes from a 
 cheerful heart ; it keeps the body wholesome, so 
 that if a wound comes it is soon cured. A moody 
 spirit, like an unhealthy physical condition, makes 
 slight wounds dangerous, and the cure very pro- 
 tracted and wearisome. 
 
 If it be a part of Christian charity to alleviate 
 the miseries of mankind, then the cultivation of a 
 cheerful spirit is a Christian duty. AYhy should 
 you lighten the sorrows of the poor by your alms, 
 and make your own house miserable by your 
 habitual gloom ? And if you have learnt anything 
 of human nature, you will know that among the 
 
ISO WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 pleasantest things fcliat can find their way into a 
 house where there is anxiety and want, are the 
 music of a happy voice and the sunshine of a happy 
 face. The best person to visit the aged and the 
 poor — other things of course being equal — is the 
 one whose step is the lightest, whose heart is the 
 merriest, and who comes into a dull and solitary 
 home lihe a fresh mountain breeze, or like a burst 
 of sunlight on a cloudy day. No one can make a 
 greater mistake than to suppose that he is too 
 cheerful to be a good visitor of the sick and the 
 wretched. Cheerfulness is one of the most precious 
 gifts for those who desire to lessen the sorrows of 
 the world. It can do that which wealth cannot do. 
 Money may diminish external miseries ; a naerry 
 heart can, for the time at least, drive the interior 
 grief away. 
 
 It is possible to cherish and encourage this spirit 
 of joyousness, even where it is not the result of 
 natural temperament. Consider what it is that de- 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 151 
 
 presses you and makes you gloomy. If it is the 
 consciousness of sin, often confessed, never heartily 
 forsaken, appeal to Him who can purify as well as 
 pardon ; master for a single week the temptation to 
 which you habitually yield, and you will find your- 
 self in a new world, breathing clearer air, and with 
 a cloudless heaven above you. If it is incessant 
 thought about your own personal afiairs, escape from 
 the contracted limits of your personal life by care 
 for the wants of others. Determine, too, to think 
 more of what is fair and generous and noble in 
 human nature than of what is contemptible and 
 selfish. Those who distrust the world and think 
 meanly of it can never be hapjDy. There is sin 
 enough, no doubt, both in ourselves and others ; 
 but there is more of heroic goodness, more of saintly 
 self-sacrifice, more of geniality and kindness than 
 some of us seem to suppose. It makes my heart 
 " merry " to think of the patience and courage with 
 which many whom I know are bearing heavy troubles ; 
 
152 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 the generosity with which some of the poor relieve 
 the distresses of those who are more wretched 
 than themselves ; the firmness which some are 
 showing in the presence of great temptations to 
 wrong-doing ; the energetic devotion of others to the 
 highest welfare of all whom their influence can 
 reach ; and I believe that a hearty faith in the 
 real goodness which adorns and ennobles mankind, 
 is one of the best aids to that cheerfulness of spirit 
 which will enable us to add to the general sum, at 
 once of the happiness and virtue of our race. 
 Christ has not come into the world for nothing. 
 His work has not been a failure. We may recognize 
 in multitudes the bright image of His own perfec- 
 tions. The invisible Spirit is revealed in the visible 
 excellences of innumerable Christian people, who 
 "add" to their "faith, virtue . . . knowledge . . . 
 temperance . . . patience . . . godliness . . . brotherly 
 kindness . . . charity." The morbid anatomy of 
 human souls is not a pleasant study ; I doubt 
 
CHEERFULNESS. 153 
 
 whether it is very profitable ; I am sure it is very 
 depressing. I prefer to thank God for the spiritual 
 health and strength of those in whom I see His 
 promises translated into facts ; and if sometimes it 
 is necessary to dwell upon the moral evil which 
 clings even to good men, and upon the terrible 
 depravity of the outcasts of Christian society, I find 
 in Him a "refuge" from the sore "trouble" which 
 the vision of sin brings with it. He is ready to 
 pardon the guiltiest, and to bring home to Himself 
 those who have gone farthest astray. 
 
 Why should those who have seen God's face be 
 sad? "In His presence," both on earth and in 
 
 heaven, there is " fulness of joy." 
 
 " Hence loathed Melancholy, 
 
 Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, 
 
 In Stygian cave forlorn, 
 
 "Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy ; 
 
 Find out some uncouth cell, 
 
 Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, 
 
 And the night-raven sings ; 
 
 There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, 
 
 As ragged as thy locks. 
 
 In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell." 
 
VII. 
 
 THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. 
 
 T^UHING the last fifteen years, quite enougli has 
 been said about the sanctity of the body; 
 and the protest against the strange fancy that we 
 honour and please God by impoverishing, torturing, 
 and marring the beauty of what He "curiously 
 wrought," has run into extravagance. A few 
 sensible men proclaimed war against the saint- 
 liness of physical weakness, filth, and sufiering ; 
 and before long their wholesome doctrine was 
 incessantly reiterated with all the passion of 
 fanaticism in every part of the country; the new 
 gospel found its way into innumerable sermons 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. 
 
 and lectures, into the columns of every newspaper 
 and tlie pages of every popular magazine. " Great 
 was tlie company of the preachers." The "tub" 
 became a means of grace ; and a clean skin the 
 sure means of getting a clean heart. Volunteer 
 regiments were addressed as though they were 
 religious orders, destined to regenerate the moral 
 life of the nation. Cricket, rowing, running and 
 jumping, were to do men more good than 
 praying; and the "trainer" was to accomplish 
 the work which the preacher and the philosopher 
 had attempted in vain. 
 
 No doubt it is a very fine thing for a man to 
 be able to walk forty miles a day, but that does 
 not make him a saint. There is no virtue in being 
 sickly ; but neither, so far as I can see, is it the 
 highest attribute of piety to have the digestion of 
 an ostrich, or the lungs of a racehorse. Many a 
 fool has had muscles of iron and nerves of steel ; 
 and I imagine that it is even possible to be a 
 
156 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 member of tlie Alpine Club, and yet to break all 
 tbe Commandnients. 
 
 Still it is true tliat both tbe Jewish and the 
 Christian Scriptures speak of our physical nature 
 with honour. They never represent the body as the 
 work of some inferior and perhaps malignant deity, 
 who so contrived it that we should be constantly 
 tempted to sin. It is God's own handiwork — 
 " fearfully and wonderfully made." It is the visible 
 temple of the Holy Ghost — the only ^-isible temple 
 in which God has dwelt since the glory passed 
 away from the inner sanctuary at Jerusalem. Death 
 is not to destroy it. Sown in corrujDtion, it is to 
 be raised in incorruption ; sown in weakness, it is 
 to be raised in power. The Incarnation and the 
 prophecy of the Resurrection have finally redeemed 
 it from contempt. That God was manifest in the 
 flesh is the fundamental article of the Christian 
 creed; and when we listen to the desolate words, 
 " dust to dust, ashes to ashes," we confidently 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. 157 
 
 believe that tlie time is coming wlien "all that are 
 ift the graves " shall hear the voice of the Son of 
 God "and shall come forth;" that the gracious 
 form and the kindly face have not vanished for 
 e"^'er; that the body, not the same flesh and blood 
 indeed, but still the body which it has been pleasant 
 for us to look upon on earth, will reappear among 
 the shining splendours of heaven. 
 
 The body, therefore, with its instincts and wants, 
 is not to be treated as the enemy of the soul, but 
 as its friend — a friend of inferior rank, but still a 
 friend. It asks for warmth and clothing, food and 
 shelter, and for ease and rest after labour; and it 
 should have them all. Let men say what they will 
 in praise of the celestial influence of hunger, whether 
 voluntary or involuntary, it is difficult to see that 
 hunger encourages an}^ human virtue, or any Chris- 
 tian grace. As for a hard and severe life, as a rule, 
 it is probably as injurious to the intellect and the 
 heart as it certainly is to physical health and 
 
158 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 beauty. When tlie Apostles warned men against 
 " fleshly lusts," there is no reason to suppose that 
 they meant to require Christian people to live a life 
 of discomfort and privation. 
 
 But that it is necessary, if we are to live a 
 pure and devout life, that we should firmly control 
 our inferior instincts and passions, has been the 
 common faith of all saints ; and carelessness in the 
 discipline of the body is, perhaps, the real cause 
 of the miserably ignoble life of many Christian 
 men. They have no strong and clear vision of God, 
 no vivid anticipation of everlasting blessedness and 
 purity. Their love for Christ smoulders like a half- 
 extinguished fire — without heat, without brightness, 
 without intensity. "Fleshly lusts" unsubdued are 
 the true explanation of their moral weakness and 
 spiritual sluggishness. If a man is conscious that 
 his spiritual nature has no elasticity, that his re- 
 ligious life is dull and heavy, that his prayers have 
 no heart in them, and his thanksgivings no rapture, 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. 159 
 
 tliat liis Christian work is feeble and meclianical, a 
 burden to himself and no blessing to others, let him 
 ask whether the flesh has not mastered the spirit, 
 and set himself vigorously to assert his freedom. 
 
 Let him ask himself, for instance, whether he 
 would not be a better man if he drank less. It is 
 not merely men who drink till they are drunk who 
 are guilty of intemperance ; there are many people 
 who do what is perhaps worse than that. I have 
 heard able medical men give it as their deliberate 
 opinion that a man who gets drunk once a month 
 receives less physical injury than a man who never 
 loses self-command, but drinks habitually more than 
 he ought. Which suffers most morally, it may be 
 hard to determine. Unhappily, drinking which does 
 not end in positive intoxication is regarded as inno- 
 cent. The men who are guilty of it would resent 
 even an implied censure on their excesses. They 
 think they "live freely," but that they are blame- 
 
l6o WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 less. Their friends become used to tlieir habits ; 
 mere acquaintances say that they never seem very 
 bright or active, but charge them with no sin ; 
 their own consciences are drugged into silence ; but 
 all moral nobleness and all lofty devotion inevitably 
 disappear from their character. It will not do to 
 speak of excessive drinking as a vice of which only 
 the poor are guilty. No rank or culture exempts 
 us from danger. Medical men have assured me 
 again and again that in houses where no one would 
 suspect it, actual drunkenness is the real cause of 
 apparently inexplicable illness. Now and then I 
 have been shocked at finding that women, educated 
 women of good family, and occupying a good social 
 position, are guilty of it. There are circumstances 
 which make the temptation to this vice specially 
 perilous to women whose circumstances exempt them 
 from the necessity of earning their own bread. 
 Take the case of a young girl whose home before 
 marriage was a very bright and merry one ; she 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. l6l 
 
 was surrounded with brothers and sisters and troops 
 of friends ; her mind was occupied with her music, 
 her drawing, and her books ; two or three times a 
 year she made long visits to relatives at a distance ; 
 she was as free from care as the lilies that neither 
 sow nor spin, or as the birds of the air that make 
 the spring-time merry with their songs; her whole 
 life was joyous, varied, and animated. After mar- 
 riage she has to spend the greater part of nearly 
 every day at home and alone. Her husband leaves 
 her directly after breakfast, and does not return 
 till nisrht. She has her home and servants to attend 
 to ; but to a bright clever girl the management of 
 household affairs is apt to become depressing. She 
 has children by-and-by, perhaps, but the society of 
 children does not give her the intellectual stimulus 
 and excitement to which she has been accustomed. 
 Her heart dies down. She gets weary of the grey 
 dull sky under which she lives, and the habit steals 
 upon her almost insensibly of taking stimulants to 
 
l62 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 make her pnlse beat faster and her spmts move 
 more lightly. If she does not break it off at once, 
 she is lost. Let her do anything that is at all inno- 
 cent to escape from her doom. Let her get to her 
 music again, or, to her drawing ; let her spend her 
 time in dressing herself daintily, or in manufacturing 
 the gossip which is common at morning calls ; better 
 still — if she can — let her give herself vigorously to 
 some kindly, womanly. Christian work for the jDOor, 
 in which she can find a real interest. Anyhow, let 
 her get some colour, some animation into her life 
 from harmless sources, or else she will soon be 
 ruined ; unless she can find healthy excitement some- 
 where, the dulness, stillness, and sameness of her 
 life will be her destruction. 
 
 There is another vice to which we Englishmen 
 are specially prone. Our climate makes a large 
 amount of solid food necessary to us, and for want 
 of genius to do better we eat grossly. We have no 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. 163 
 
 scruples about it. We are ravenous and voracious, 
 and feel no self-reproach. I am inclined to think 
 that good cookery might do at least as much for 
 the morals of the country as gymnastics. Dine in 
 Paris on fourteen courses, and you feel lighter and 
 brighter when you have finished than when you 
 began; "do justice," as the phrase is, to an English 
 dinner of the old-fashioned sort, and, without the 
 liberal assistance of sherry and champagne, you are 
 too stupid to talk of anything except local politics 
 and the state of the crojDS. French wines will 
 never become popular in this country till we get 
 French cooks. The ethics of dining is a neglected 
 branch of the science of morals which urgently 
 requires investigation. Meantime, let men remember 
 that excessive eating is a foul and disgusting vice ; 
 its evil effects may be less obvious than those of 
 excessive drinking, but they are not less real, per- 
 haps they are not less serious. All the finer sen- 
 sibilities of the soul, all moral grace and beauty, 
 
 M 2 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 are perhaps more certain to perish in the glutton 
 than even in the drunkard. 
 
 The moral degradation which comes from another 
 "fleshly lust" — physical indolence — it is less easy 
 to define. Most of us may thank God that the 
 very circumstances of our life keep us safe from 
 this sin. Few men can help working; most men 
 have to work hard. But sluggishness, an indisposi- 
 tion to make any exertion unless compelled to make 
 it, is sometimes to be met with even in this restless 
 and active age, and in every social condition. I 
 mean that there are people who can never be in- 
 duced to put out their strength, and who never do 
 anything with their "might." We all know men 
 who continue to the end of their days " unfulfilled 
 prophecies ; " who have shown in their youth the 
 promise of high achievement, and perhaps the sign 
 of genius, but who leave the world with their for- 
 tunes unmade,^ or their poems unwritten, or their 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. 165 
 
 schemes of philosophy unorganized, or their social 
 and political reforms unattempted. Such men are 
 often illustrations of the failure that is the inevitable 
 penalty of indolence. Its moral effects are not less 
 disastrous. 
 
 As for some of the tests of sluggishness which 
 are often to be found in good books written for 
 young people, it is difficult to see their value. I 
 cannot perceive, for instance, what virtue there can 
 be in getting up several hours before daylight in the 
 month of January. To make early rising, for its 
 own saJce^ one of the cardinal virtues, has always 
 seemed to me utterly preposterous. Why should we 
 not wait, as Charles Lamb puts it, till the world is 
 "aired" before we venture out? If a man can do 
 more work in the day when he lies till half-past 
 seven, than when he gets up at half-past five, if he 
 is better tempered at breakfast-time, if his mind is 
 fresher and his heart kindlier, for the rest of the 
 day, it passes my comprehension why he should turn 
 
l66 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 out at tlie earlier hour. Some people tliink: he 
 ought ; and I have honestly tried to discover some 
 intelligible explanation of what seems to me this 
 singular article of faith, but I cannot. If, through 
 rising late on week-days, a man has to hurry away 
 to business without family prayer, if his temper is 
 ruffled morning after morning by the haste and 
 disorder in which it involves him; if he gets up so 
 late on Sunday that he has to make a violent effort 
 to reach his place of worship in tolerable time, and 
 gradually comes to think that he is quite early 
 enough if he is in his seat five minutes after ser- 
 vice has begun, then of course he is to be blamed ; 
 but though I have a real respect for traditional 
 wisdom, I have never been able to understand why 
 a man should get up at unseemly hours in the night 
 for the mere sake of doing it. 
 
 There is a sluggishness, however, which is fatal 
 to manly energy and Christian earnestness. Some 
 men fall into such physical habits that they never 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. 167 
 
 Beem to be fairly awake. Hard work of every kind, 
 whether of muscle or brain, they systematically 
 evade. They "take things easy." They "do not 
 excite themselves." They think they are very harm- 
 less, and even very praiseworthy people ; and do 
 not see that indolence has grown upon them till 
 the soul is no longer master of itself, or of the 
 body which ought to serve it. The immorality of 
 their life it may perhaps be impossible to make clear 
 to them ; but they may be made to perceive that 
 habits which destroy all intensity and depth and 
 vehemence of religious feeling must involve them in 
 guilt. Every spmtual impulse is enfeebled, every 
 devout affection is deadened, every act of worship 
 is made a weariness, by the sluggishness into which 
 they have permitted themselves to sink. The fiery 
 chariot in which the soul should rise triumphantly 
 to heaven in exulting praise and rapturous adoration 
 has had all its splendours quenched ; now and then 
 they may be feebly stirred by the fervour and 
 
l68 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 passion of men of nobler temper, but it is only for 
 a moment ; "of the earth, earth j," they have be- 
 come incapable of the diviner movements and joys 
 of the spiritual life. 
 
 Yery wonderful is the intimate connection, the 
 subtle interaction, between the forces of our physical 
 and moral nature. It is one of the chief mysteries 
 of our mysterious being. But it is not a mystery 
 merely ; it is a fact of infinite practical significance 
 which cannot be ignored without grave peril. The 
 intelligent recognition of it would save many good 
 people from much sorrow, as it would save others 
 from grievous sin. I should like to have the 
 *' Diaries " which record the spiritual experience of 
 certain excellent persons, illustrated with notes by 
 wise physicians who had known them intimately. 
 Periods of spiritual desertion, when " the light of 
 God's countenance " was hidden from them, appa- 
 rently without any reason, might receive a very 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. 169 
 
 instructive explanation. It might be found tliat God 
 had been less arbitrary, or as they would say less 
 sovereign, in His treatment of them than they sup- 
 posed. I once tried whether the strange vicissitudes 
 of glory and gloom which occurred in the interior 
 life of an eminently good man could be accounted 
 for by the physical causes which his own diary 
 suggested ; and though the materials at my command 
 were, of course, very imperfect, as I had never 
 known him, and could only infer what his physical 
 history was from accidental and fragmentary hints 
 occurring here and there among the record of his 
 labours, his thanksgivings, his confessions, and his 
 bitter cries to God for the restoration of spiritual 
 joy, the attempt was not altogether unsuccessful. A 
 wise discipline of the body would free many a 
 devout soul from the evil thoughts with which it 
 is haunted, and which are supposed to come from 
 evil spirits, from the gloomy fears which are in- 
 terpreted as signs of a deep-rooted unbelief, and 
 
I70 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 from the despondency wlilcli is regarded as tlie 
 result of the Divine displeasure. 
 
 Let no one suppose that I ascribe to merely 
 physical causes all the unspeakable joy and all the 
 unspeakable agony which find a place in the spiritual 
 history of every man who is endeavouring to live, 
 and move, and have his being in God. This 
 material universe may be an illusion ; its stars and 
 suns, its mountains and oceans, may all be a mere 
 fleeting show, projected by the action of the powers 
 of my own inexplicable nature, and without any 
 solid and substantial being ; but that my soul is 
 saddened and blessed by its failures and triumphs, 
 by the eclipse of the Divine glory, and by the re- 
 covery of the beatific vision — this I cannot doubt. 
 It is, however, equally certain that body and soul, 
 flesh and spirit, are so strangely blended, that the 
 lights and shadows which chase each other across 
 our interior life, do not all come from the upper 
 heavens. By honouring the laws of our physical 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY. I7I 
 
 nature, some of us miglit come to live a more 
 equable spiritual life. 
 
 As for " fleslily lusts " wMcli betray us into 
 positive sin, the line of duty is simple and definite — 
 we must "abstain" from tliem. Every man must 
 leam for himself vrhere his own danger - lies, and 
 then must resolve, at whatever cost, to escape it. 
 Our choice lies between yielding to the degrading 
 bondage which has made us despise ourselves, and 
 a life inspired with the Holy Ghost, — a life of 
 strength, joy, and blessedness. It is of no use to 
 tiy to pray, unless we "abstain" from that which 
 makes prayer dull and heartless, and renders us 
 incapable of receiving the very blessings we ask for. 
 It is of no use to try to meditate on the majesty 
 and goodness of God, unless we "abstain" from 
 that which almost incapacitates us for lofty medita- 
 tion, and which, if for a moment we are swept 
 upwards among the harps and songs of angels, sinks 
 
172 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 US down at once into our earthly dust again. For 
 some men to rise to a nobler life it may be quite 
 as necessary to eat less as to pray more ; to spend 
 less time over tlieir wine as to spend more time 
 over tlieir Bible ; to ride, to walk, to run, to batbe, 
 as to engage in regular and earnest Christian work. 
 We wait for the redemption of our body ; but we 
 must not wait for the Resurrection to liberate us 
 from "fleshly lusts:" these "war against the soul;" 
 and unless they are resolutely resisted and subdued, 
 the soul may be in peril of final destruction. 
 
YIII. 
 
 PEACEABLE]^ESS Al^-D PEACEMAKING. 
 
 TTALF the quarrels in tlie world are occasioned 
 by men who think themselves great lovers of 
 Peace. But " by peace," said Richard Baxter, who 
 was a keen observer of human life, as well as the 
 keenest logician that has appeared in Europe for the 
 last three centuries — "by peace, some men mean the 
 quiet undisturbed enjoyment of their homes, wealth, 
 and pleasures . . . and the conditions on which 
 they would have it are, the compliance of all others 
 with their opinions and wills, and humble submission 
 to their domination, passions, or desires." Such 
 men often think that if other people would only 
 
174 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 be as reasonable as tbemselves, and exercise as 
 mucli self-control, quarrels would for ever cease. 
 Tliey bave no malignant deligbt in strife. Tbey 
 are annoyed and sbocked by tbe display of angry 
 passion. Tbey wonder at tbe selfisbness of man- 
 kind. Tbey believe tbemselves to be among tbe 
 most peaceable of tbe buman race, and cannot un- 
 derstand wby tbey cannot get tbrougb tbe world 
 witbout quarrelling. 
 
 Tbere are otber men, not of tbis tyrannical kind, 
 wbo never pass a day witbout driving quiet, ami- 
 able people almost wild, but are quite unconscious 
 of tbeir guilt. Because tbey never give way to 
 violence of temper, tbey imagine tbat, wboever else 
 may be responsible for tbe angry passions wbicb 
 do so mucb to mar tbe bappiness of life, tbey are 
 free fi'om blame. Tbey do not seem to know tbat 
 tbey manifest, in tbeir wbole spirit and bearing, a 
 cynical indifference to tbe tastes, convictions, and 
 opinions of tbose about tbem, a cool assumption 
 
PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING. 175 
 
 of infallibility, an oifensive disrespect for every one's 
 judgment but tlieir own, to -wliicli it is not in 
 liuman nature tamely to submit. 
 
 Then there are people who secretly cherish the 
 conviction that their relatives do not regard them 
 with sufficient affection, that their opinions never 
 receive sufficient deference, or that their services to 
 their friends or to the public are not sufiiciently 
 recognized. However this conviction may be sup- 
 pressed or disguised, it gives a certain acrid flavour 
 to everything they say, and influences the very 
 tone of their voice and the very expression of 
 their countenance. There is always something about 
 them which shows that they believe themselves to 
 be ill-used men. Meet them accidentally in a rail- 
 way-carriage or a coffee-room, and you feel that they 
 and the world are not good friends. They are 
 plamtiffs in a suit to w^hich all the rest of man- 
 kind are defendants. Even if they are ashamed of 
 what they feel, and try to wrestle it down, the 
 
176 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 inward struggle and discomfort interfere witli repose, 
 simplicity, and kindliness of manner ; spite of them- 
 selves, tlieir wounded self-esteem gives tliem an air 
 of discontent whicli is sure to disturb tlie temper 
 of every one wlio comes within tlieir reach. 
 
 If a man has come to believe that most people 
 are disposed to take oiFence when no offence is 
 intended ; if he thinks that nearly all his friends 
 are hasty and irritable ; if he finds that in his 
 of&ce, or his warehouse, or the committees to which 
 he belongs, there seems to be a constant tendency 
 to misunderstandings and petty quarrels ; — he should 
 ask whether it is not his own fault. For it is 
 quite certain that really quarrelsome people are not 
 very common. Most of us dislike wrangling ; mere 
 indolence makes us dislike it. Nine people out of 
 ten will give way on small points rather than 
 have the trouble of fighting for them ; and a great 
 part of the business of the world is got through 
 pleasantly and amicably. Till our pride is ofiended 
 
PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING. 177 
 
 by some man's superciliousness, or our temper 
 irritated bj the perverseness, or vanit}-, or indo- 
 lence, with which perhaps the guilty individual may 
 never reproach himself, most of us are disposed to 
 be quiet and good-humoured. As soon as any one 
 discovers that the atmosphere about him is nearly 
 always stormy, he should ask whether, without 
 knowing it, he does not carry the elements of the 
 storm with him. It is tolerably certain to my 
 mind that whoever believes that most men are 
 quarrelsome, is not only not a peacemaker — he is 
 not even peaceable. 
 
 Peaceableness is not to be confounded Tvith 
 cowardice. Men who always run away when there 
 is danger of a fight, no matter how necessary the 
 fight may be to resist injustice or to expose en-or 
 are not to mistake their want of courage for the 
 spirit of charity. Nothing would be easier than 
 to live a quiet life, if we were at liberty to throw 
 ofi" God's uniform, and leave other men to defend 
 
178 WEEK-DAY SERMONS 
 
 the cause of rigliteousness and trutli. To evade all 
 unpleasant duties, to refuse all public offices in 
 whicli we are likely to be brouglit into collision 
 witb rough and selfisb and ignorant men, never 
 to toucb political contests or "religious controversies, 
 because we do not like to risk losing tlie kindly- 
 feeling of our neiglibours and friends — this is neither 
 a human virtue nor a Christian grace. Deserters 
 must be flogged, even if they plead that their 
 hearts are too tender to fight. 
 
 In this soft and unheroic age it is very neces- 
 sary to remind good men that "the wisdom which 
 cometh from above is first pure — then peaceable." 
 It is not our supreme duty to live in "inglorious 
 ease." ISTeither the State nor the Church will be 
 saved by men who shrink from conflict and let 
 things take their course, through an ignoble sensi- 
 tiveness and moral effeminacy. We want more iron 
 in our blood, and more courage in our hearts, to 
 do the work which these agitated and perilous times 
 
PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING. 179 
 
 require. We are no longer called to tlie old romantic 
 forms of martp'dom, but tliose to whom God lias 
 revealed a truth are bound at any cost to bear 
 witness to it. And the penalties of fidelity are, 
 perhaps, sometimes as hard to bear in our day 
 as they were in the days of our fathers. To 
 incur the open and violent hostility of bad and 
 cruel men, is in some respects a less severe test of 
 loyalty to conscience and to God, than to endure 
 the suspicion, the censure, the misconception, the 
 hard words of men whom we honom* and love, and 
 whose kindly feeling and confidence it would be a 
 happiness to preserve. But the cause of charity as 
 well as of truth, sometimes requires us to subject 
 ourselves to the charge of uncharitableness ; and, 
 however it may be in politics, it is certainly very 
 often true in other provinces of human activity and 
 thought, that an honourable and lasting peace can 
 be secured only by war. 
 
 But it is possible to have a peaceable spirit even 
 
 N 2 
 
l8o WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 •when engaged in a sharp struggle for what we 
 believe to be right and good. In contending for 
 great princij^les, it is not necessary to give way to 
 bad passions. I am half afraid that Paul and 
 Barnabas had a downright quarrel about Mark, 
 though they became good friends again afterwards ; 
 but when Peter diplomatized at Antioch, and Paul 
 " withstood him to the face, because he was to be 
 blamed," we have no reason to suppose that any 
 harm came of it. And it is perfectly easy to remain 
 on good terms with some people, though you and 
 they differ on very grave questions ; while it is very 
 hard to keep right with others from whom your 
 differences are comparatively insignificant. Every- 
 thing depends on the spirit in which truth is 
 maintained. A peaceable man will avoid w^hatever 
 can justly provoke personal hostility. He will not 
 seize accidental advantages which have no real 
 connection with the principles at issue. He will 
 take all the care he can to understand the real 
 
PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING. l8l 
 
 position of liis opponents, that he may not, even 
 unintentionally, misrepresent them. He may appeal 
 to passion — for passion is sometimes the best ally 
 of truth and justice — but he will never appeal to 
 prejudice, nor to any passion that is not noble and 
 generous. He will never wish to humble, ridicule, 
 irritate, and pain the conscientious advocates of 
 error; the firmest hostility to false opinions is per- 
 fectly consistent with hearty esteem for the men 
 who profess them. Even if they seem to him unfair 
 and ungenerous in the weapons they use, he will 
 not judge them too severely ; he will be more ready 
 to suspect himself than to censure them ; he will 
 be more anxious to keep himself free from blame 
 than to brand their faults. Famous soldiers have 
 been chivalrously generous; and, with a courage 
 that no storm of battle could shake, have had a 
 heart as kindly and soft as the south wind ; and 
 some of the most " peaceable " men I have ever 
 known are men whose allegiance to truth has forced 
 
l82 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 them to engage in severe and protracted contro- 
 versies. 
 
 As mere cowardice is sometimes mistaken for 
 peaceableness, sometimes mere inoffensiveness and 
 weakness of character are mistaken for it. What 
 Pope said in his sharp cynical way ahout *' most 
 women " is certainly true about many men — they 
 "have no characters at all." It is impossible they 
 should ever quarrel. They cannot. They have no 
 opinions which they can call their own ; no pre- 
 ferences, no dislikes. They are not strong enough 
 to keep even a prejudice. They have nothing to 
 quarrel for. In the course of an hour they will 
 passively agree to a long succession of opinions, no 
 two of which can possibly be held by the same 
 man at the same time. The hare is not peaceable 
 because it runs away from the hounds ; it is simply 
 frightened. And men who have no intellectual 
 
 o 
 
 vigour to grasp a principle firmly, or no moral 
 vigour to maintain it — men who cannot define for 
 
PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING. 183 
 
 themselves a distinct line of action, or who, if they 
 can, are incapable of resisting the persuasion of 
 the first friend who asks them to change it, may 
 have other virtues, but they have no right to claim 
 respect for their weakness, and to expect the 
 honours which are to reward those who " seek 
 peace and ensue it." 
 
 Peaceableness is something much better and 
 nobler than this. It is a form of that charity 
 which " sufiereth long and is kind . . . envieth not 
 . . . vaunteth not itself ; is not puffed up ; doth 
 not behave itself unseemly ; seeketh not her own ; 
 is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil; rejoiceth 
 not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth 
 all things ; believeth all things ; hopeth all things ; 
 endureth all things." And when this spii^it reaches 
 its highest development, a man becomes, not peace- 
 able merely, but the author and giver of peace 
 to others. 
 
 Without this, let no one suppose that he can 
 
184 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 liave any success in reconciling enemies, or restoring 
 the mutual confidence of friends whom misappre- 
 hensions, conflicting interests, hot temper, and hasty- 
 words have temporarily estranged. Solomon said 
 long ago that " he that passeth by, and meddleth 
 with strife belonging not to him, is like one that 
 taketh a dog by the ears," and those who are 
 always interfering in other people's quarrels " with 
 the best intentions," but with the worst results, 
 deserve to have their hands bitten and torn, and 
 to be laughed at by the bystanders for their pains. 
 
 These would - be peacemakers are sometimes 
 prompted by a fussy liking for managing the affairs 
 of their neighbours ; they are the " busybodies " 
 for whose benefit St. Paul wrote the very practical 
 precept, " that with quietness they work, and eat 
 their own bread " — a precept in w^hich there is a 
 touch of impatience and a trace of contempt ; he 
 could hardly help contrasting his own deep and 
 intense concern about " the things of others " with 
 
PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING. 185 
 
 the miserable and miscliievous imitation of it. 
 Sometimes tlieir meddling comes from slieer conceit; 
 tliey believe that tliey have great diplomatic power. 
 They mistake a smooth insinuating manner, and an 
 unfailing stream of weak and watery commonplaces, 
 for eloquence ; and are confident that the stormy 
 waves of passion will become smooth as soon as 
 the sweet oil of their tedious and soporific talk 
 begins to flow. Sometimes they are attracted by 
 the moral dignity which belongs to any man who 
 is accepted as arbitrator in a dispute. They like to 
 feel the contrast between their judicial calmness and 
 the gusty temper of the disputants. In imagination 
 they sit on the bench, clothed in spotless ermine, 
 and surrounded with an atmosphere of untroubled 
 serenity. The consciousness of their moral supe- 
 riority to the plaintiff and defendant wrangling at 
 the bar, is very soothing ; and if they could only 
 get their sentence accepted as the settlement of 
 tlie suit, their bliss would be perfect. Such peace- 
 
l86 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 makers as these embitter and prolong the quarrels 
 they mean to terminate, just as men who think 
 they can quiet a noisy meeting by shouts of 
 " order " and " chair," and by dignified and benig- 
 nant gestures addressed to the excited crowd, only 
 make the confusion worse confounded. 
 
 Success in this delicate and difficult task requires 
 what may be called a very lofty kind of moral 
 genius, such as few of us possess. There must be 
 a hearty hatred of the evil passions which strife 
 provokes, and not merely a dislike of the discomfort 
 and annoyance which quarrelsome people inflict on 
 all their friends and acquaintances. There must be 
 a generous afiection for those who are at variance. 
 I have no faith in your cool judicious men as 
 mediators. It is not false reasoning which makes 
 people quarrel ; and sound reasoning about their 
 mutual misunderstanding will not make them friends 
 again. When they are ready to discuss their differ- 
 ences calmly and quietly, the quarrel is over ; and 
 
PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING. 187 
 
 if they cannot disiDose of remaining difficulties tlieni- 
 selves, tlie arbitrator they call in is a mere pair of 
 scales or yard measure — a simple meclianical con- 
 trivance for insuring meclianical accuracy. "WTiat 
 two men want whose ill-temper and mutual distrust 
 are daily becoming worse, is a common friend whose 
 hearty affection for both of them will utterly di^ive 
 away their evil thoughts, as the rush of the north- 
 west wind sweeps the clouds before it, and as the 
 victorious sunlight scatters the darkness of night. 
 There are people of that kind. Their face, their 
 voice, their tones, their gestures, are all " con- 
 ductors " of a mysterious but most divine force, 
 which is not to be resisted. It is not an open 
 question with them whether the estranged friends 
 they mean to reconcile are to forget their estrange- 
 ment. They do not diplomatize. They act like the 
 forces of nature. Their success is not always imme- 
 diate; but to themselves it is never doubtful. The 
 sun does not lose heart when the blossoms of spring 
 
l88 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 are a fortniglit later tlian usual; time may be lost 
 through the east wind and cold rains ; but the 
 blossoms will come at last, as a matter of course; 
 in the struggle with old winter he was never beaten 
 yet. It is just so with those genial people who are 
 born to be peacemakers. They have received their 
 " gift from God," and a wonderful gift it is. 
 Happily, not evil diseases alone are contagious : the 
 most generous moral affections are contagious too. 
 
 Men and women of this kind — and perhaps there 
 are as many women as men in whom this glowing 
 and intense generosity colours, suffuses, and pene- 
 trates the whole character and life — have an instinc- 
 tive faculty for recognizing the genuine goodness 
 which is concealed from the sight of most of us by 
 follies of manner, and perhaps by some annoying 
 peculiarities of temper and habit. There are very 
 few people in whom there is not something to ad- 
 mire and love, and, as some one has said, when 
 great sorrows cause all the masks and disguises of 
 
PEACE ABLE NESS AND PEACEMAKING. 1S9 
 
 tlie inner life to fall away, and tlie true sonl is 
 revealed, Ave often discover an ideal beauty and 
 nobleness where we bad seen nothing but what was 
 commonplace and mean. But this was discovered 
 long before, by those who are endowed with the 
 keen and quick eye for all that is fairest in the 
 nature of those about them, which seems to me in- 
 dispensable to a true peacemaker. I cannot trust 
 the man who sees only my faults. There is often 
 more of moral energy in my baffled efforts to break 
 a bad habit than in the "good works" which win 
 me most honour ; my defeats are often more heroic 
 and glorious than my victories. The bright vision 
 of a perfect goodness which haunts me night and 
 day, and towards which I am slowly and painfully 
 struggling, more truly belongs to me, though as yet 
 beyond my reach, than any of the stains and defor- 
 mities which men censure in my outward conduct ; 
 what I love and strive for — that is part of my true 
 life ; what I hate and recoil from, even though I 
 
190 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 am sometimes betrayed into it — tliat I repudiate ; 
 tlie guilt of it is mine, but it has no lasting root in 
 my moral being; "it is not I tliat do it, but sin 
 that dwelleth in me." When my friend really judges 
 me thus, and does not pay me mere compliments 
 on my honest intentions, — compliments intended to 
 soothe my vanity for the moment, but which have 
 no real sincerity and value, — I can leave myself in 
 his hands. All distrust vanishes. He sees me as 
 I am. If he would have me acknowledge a fault, 
 I acknowledge it. Somehow I feel that he not only 
 sees my true interior life himself, he has revealed 
 it to my enemy, and I can retract my own hasty 
 words, or forget the words by which I have been 
 wronged, without losing my self-respect. He reveals 
 my enemy to me, and in the man with whom I had 
 quarrelled, I now see a worth, integrity, and kind- 
 liness to which my passion had blinded me. A 
 hearty and honest reconciliation is effected. 
 
 Some intellectual tact and discrimination may 
 
PEACEABLENESS AND PEACEMAKING. 191 
 
 perhaps be necessary now and then, to disentangle 
 the differences which have created bad blood ; but 
 in most cases the moral element is of supreme 
 importance. It is this which brings a dead friend- 
 ship out of the grave in which it was fast corrupting ; 
 the intellect onlj unbinds the grave-clothes, that 
 the movements of the recovered life may be free. 
 
 " Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be 
 called the children of God." To "the poor in 
 spirit," and to those who are "persecuted for 
 righteousness' sake," Christ promises mere citizenship 
 in " the kingdom of heaven ; " the peacemakers 
 are to receive more distinguished honour. Christ 
 came to make peace between man and God, and 
 to make peace between men themselves ; those who 
 had been trying to do the same work, though in 
 an inferior form, He is prepared to recognize at 
 once as His brethren, and as the true childi-en of 
 His Father. Even before they acknowledge His 
 
192 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 authority they have the rudiments of His own 
 character, and are influenced by a sjoirit corres- 
 ]3onding to His own. When those who have 
 known how to reconcile enemies are themselves 
 reconciled to God, their natural virtues develop 
 at once into the purest and fairest graces of the 
 divine life. They are capable of the nearest access 
 to God's presence, and the most intimate fellowship 
 with His bliss. 
 
TX. 
 
 THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN". 
 
 " ' 'l^HE Perils of Ricli Men ! ' Well, whatever 
 the perils may be, I am safe enough from every 
 one of them for many a long year to come. If 
 some one who knows all about it would only tell 
 me how to get rich — how to get rich soon, honestly, 
 and without too much trouble — I should feel in- 
 finitely obliged to him ; but this Week-day Sermon 
 on ' The Perils and Uses of Rich Men ' is about 
 as Avorthless to me as a paper on the Dangers of 
 Alpine Ascents to a gouty old gentleman of seventy, 
 or as Mr. Jeavons' book on our Coal Supply to 
 an inhabitant of the planet Mercury." 
 
 
 
194 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 But let not tlie indignant reader, wlio is abont to 
 pass over this liomily in disgust, be too hasty. It 
 is not merely the man with half a million, or a 
 hundred thousand pounds, or even twenty thousand, 
 who ought to think seriously of the Perils which 
 threaten rich men. "Wealth is a relative term. 
 When a working man has become a small manu- 
 facturer on his own account, or a clerk has got 
 a share in his former master's business, and is 
 receiving four or five times the income he used to 
 live upon a few years ago ; when his earnings are 
 gradually creeping up from a couple of hundred 
 pounds to three hundred, and from three to five, 
 and from five to a thousand, he may be in quite 
 as much danger from his prosperity as the great 
 capitalist whose speculations afiect the stock-market 
 of every European capital, or the peer whose 
 revenues and splendour fill the princes of many a 
 small kingdom with envy. Every one who is what 
 we call " well-to-do," be he merchant, manufacturer, 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 195 
 
 professional man or tradesman, every one whose 
 income gives liim a broad margin beyond bis neces- 
 sary expenditure, every one wbo is free from tbe 
 pressure of anxiety, and has something laid by for 
 years to come, is exposed more or less to the kind 
 of dangers against which the " rich " have to guard. 
 One of the principal perils of rich men arises 
 from their very exemption from many temptations 
 to gi'oss sin. They have no occasion to steal to 
 satisfy their hunger. They are not driven to any 
 of the very doubtful financial schemes and tricks 
 and shifts to which a man who is hard pressed is 
 likely to resort. They are not tempted to " grind 
 the face of the poor " and to deal ungenerously or 
 unjustly with their dependents, in order to keep 
 their income and their expenditure on good terms 
 with each other. Hence they are apt to think too 
 well of themselves. They are not tempted " as 
 other men," and they think that they are stronger 
 and better than other men. The young man having 
 
 2 
 
196 WEEK-DAV SERMONS. 
 
 " great possessions " wlio came to Christ had never 
 been sharply and severely tried. Had he been poor, 
 he might have been betrayed into many sins, but 
 being rich, he had kept all the commandments 
 " from his youth up." People in easy circumstances 
 cannot tell what grievous offences they might have 
 committed had they not been sheltered by their 
 position, almost from the very possibility of com- 
 mitting them. 
 
 Nor is this all. The rich man finds it very easy 
 to do many kindly acts. He can cause the widow's 
 heart to " sing for joy " without depriving himself 
 of a single comfort or even a single luxury. "With- 
 out any self-denial his ears may be filled with the 
 blessings of those who were " ready to perish." 
 Other men speak well of him, approach him with 
 i-espect, address him courteously, compliment him 
 on his generosity. If he has faults, he is not likely 
 to hear them roughly rebuked ; and if he has virtues, 
 many tongues will celebrate them. 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. I97 
 
 It is very natural, therefore, that lie should 
 regard his own character and life complacently', and 
 that he should think severely of the sins and 
 selfishness of those who are less fortunate than 
 himself. But this self-complacency and these hard 
 thoughts of others are very unfriendly to the spirit 
 and temper without which no man can " enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven." They make him forget 
 his need of God's mercy and the renewal of the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 Again, the rich man's Bible, with its morocco 
 binding and gilt edges, has very much less in it 
 than the poor man's Bible, bound in sheep, which 
 cost him tenpence, or at most half-a-crown. Whole 
 pages are absent from the more costly copy. Pages 
 which are read and re-read, which are marked and 
 scored and thumbed in the one, are virtually mere 
 blank paper in the other. " Behold the fowls of 
 the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap ; yet 
 your Heavenly Father feedeth them." " He will 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 regard tlie prayer of the destitute, and not despise 
 their prayer." " He giveth food to the hungry." 
 " Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither 
 shall fruit be in the vines ; the labour of the 
 olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; 
 the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there 
 shall be no herd in the stalls ; yet I will rejoice in 
 the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." 
 These texts and fifty more may, perhaps, be on the 
 printed page over which the eye of a rich man 
 runs, but to him they are almost unmeaning : to 
 the poor they are like angels' music ; he dwells 
 upon syllable after syllable ; they live in his heart ; 
 they are his strength and his solace in the rough 
 hard life which has fallen to him ; when he reads 
 them it is as thouo-h God Himself were at his 
 
 o 
 
 side. 
 
 As the rich man loses many of the revelations of 
 God's sympathy, compassion, and care, which inspire 
 the poor with intense and passionate gratitude, so he 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 199 
 
 loses some of tlie most urgent motives to communion 
 witli God, which often make the poor man devout. 
 There are some who cannot understand how it is that 
 rich people, even if they are really religious, seldom 
 attend public worship on week evenings ; while the 
 poor, who have had a hard day's work, contrive to 
 be present. I see no cause for surprise or perplexity. 
 When the anxieties of life are exhausting the heart, 
 it is a gTcat relief to lose them, even for an hour, 
 in the eternal rest and calm of the Divine presence. 
 The poor man, if he is a Chi^stian at all, longs to 
 catch the inspiration and stimulus of common prayer 
 and common thanksgiving in the middle of the week 
 as well as on Sunday. His troubles drive him to 
 church, and the habit of frequent attendance at 
 worship often remains when the original and urgent 
 reason for it has passed by. 
 
 The prosperity of the rich provides them with 
 refreshment, recreation, and amusement. They have 
 a thousand som^ces of happiness within their reach. 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Tliey have agreeable excitements of whicli the poor 
 know nothing. To the poor, religious work and re- 
 ligious thought often take the place of the pleasures 
 of the w^ealthy. Excluded from the comforts, the 
 luxuries, and the entertainments which money alone 
 can procure, they throw their strength into humble 
 forms of Christian service, and find in that an ex- 
 citement -which breaks the monotony of life and a 
 most animating joy. When a man's circumstances 
 become brighter, we too often find that he gradually 
 withdraws himself from the good works of his less 
 prosperous days. He gives more, but he leaves the 
 labour to others. He has new interests, and the old 
 zeal dies down. He was an industrious Sunday- 
 school teacher when his home was lonely ; and almost 
 the only pleasant society he had was among those 
 who were engaged in the same work as himself; the 
 esprit de corps was strong uj^on him ; he delighted in 
 the good he was doing, and all his enthusiasm and 
 strensrth were absorbed in it. But when wife and 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 20I 
 
 cMldreii come, and when he has a pleasant garden 
 to Tvalk in on Sunday afternoon in summer, and can 
 roll his easy chair in front of a comfortable fire on 
 Sunday afternoon in winter, his work is given up — 
 given up very often under the plea that it is his 
 duty to teach his own family. If he does teach 
 them, that may be a very good reason for staying 
 away from the Sunday-school ; but the mere fact 
 that it is his duty to teach them is no reason at 
 all. He visited the sick and the poor when his 
 own rooms were small and meanly furnished ; but 
 Avhen he moves into a handsome house and can 
 keep a good table, he begins to like to have his 
 friends about him and to spend his evenings at 
 home. Wliat pictures and music supply to prosper- 
 ous people who have taste, what eating good dinners 
 and drinking good ^vine, and popular entertain- 
 ments, supply to prosperous people of another 
 sort, those who have not these enjoyments within 
 their reach find in attendance at worship and 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 in Christian work, — recreation, refreshment, and 
 change. 
 
 I remember to have seen the question very 
 sharply and clearly put by a shrewd Roman Catholic 
 writer — though his answer to it did not satisfy me 
 • — " Why are there any rich 'people at all ? and what 
 does God mean by them? . . . They are not made 
 rich," he says, " for their own good, that is quite 
 plain. A man's good consists in the saving of his 
 soul ; but it is plain that riches do not help him 
 to save his soul, rather the contrary." And he solves 
 the difficulty by saying they were meant "to be the 
 prey of the poor." ..." The poor are God's eagles 
 to beset, infest, and strip the rich. . . . Are the poor 
 wearisome, grasping, unseasonable, insatiable, un- 
 reasonable, unbearable ? It is more unreasonable in 
 thee to complain ; they were meant to prey upon 
 thee." The answer does not satisfy me; but the 
 question deserves looking at. Why is it, since riches 
 are so perilous to men, that God permits men to 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 
 
 203 
 
 become ricli ? The very vii^tues of a man's cliaracter 
 create the riches which make salvation difficult. 
 Why is it that the laws of God's providence reward 
 industry, skill, uprightness, with temporal prosperity, 
 if temporal prosperity makes it harder for a man to 
 *' lay hold on eternal life ? " 
 
 The answer to this question ought to teach us 
 the " Uses of Rich Men." The writer I have just 
 quoted' has missed his way through forgetting that 
 men are not born into this world simply to "save 
 their souls." To escape eternal death is not the 
 solitary object of human life. Our supreme glory 
 is that we can know and love and serve God ; but 
 God has given us faculties and affections which are 
 not exclusively rehgious. 
 
 The perfection of man's nature is derived from 
 the development of a great variety of powers. God 
 has made man capable not only of religious duty 
 and joy, but of many beautiful and noble things 
 besides. The genius of the artist, the sculptor, the 
 
204 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 poet, is a divine gift, and illustrates tlie divine 
 greatness more wonderfully tlian all the majesty 
 and splendour of the material universe. If "the 
 heavens declare God's glory and the firmament 
 show^eth His handiwork," the intellectual faculties 
 which He has conferred upon our race, and which 
 find their development in literature and art and 
 science, reflect upon the Creator a glory still more 
 sublime ; and it is not generally among the poor 
 that the resources of genius can be fully revealed. 
 The gift and faculty divine may be conferred upon 
 those who are destitute of external advantages, but 
 there are a thousand forms of intellectual power, 
 the results of which can have little attraction for 
 the vast majority of those whose days are spent in 
 exhausting and anxious toil ; so that if genius is 
 given to the poor, as it often has been, it is among 
 those to whom wealth afibrds leisure and the means 
 of intellectual culture, that the creations of genius 
 are most fully appreciated. But for the existence 
 
THK PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 205 
 
 of a large class of people, free from the harassing 
 cares of an incessant struggle for bread, the higher 
 forms of civilization would decline and perish. One 
 reason, then, for which men are born to wealth, and 
 for which they are able to accumulate wealth, is 
 this, not that they may spend it in vulgar and 
 offensive ostentation or self-indulgence, but that 
 they may have the opportunity of cultivating their 
 own intellectual nature, and that, by doing this, 
 they may assist in elevating the general culture of 
 their countrymen ; for tlie refinement and intelli- 
 gence which ought to accompany riches will not 
 be. confined to the rich; they will find their way, 
 sooner or later, to the humblest ranks of the State. 
 
 Again, the very means which enable some men 
 to accumulate wealth improve the condition and 
 multiply the comforts of the poor. The amazing- 
 progress of our manufacturing and commercial in- 
 dustry during the last fifty or sixty years has no 
 doubt augmented the luxuiy and splendoui' of 
 
2o6 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 living of those wlio enjoy hereditary wealth, as 
 well as made our mercliants princes ; but its 
 effect upon the circumstances of the poor has 
 been still more remarkable. Wretched as the con- 
 dition of vast numbers of our people is at this 
 moment, what would have been the misery of the 
 whole of our working population but for that com- 
 mercial prosperity which has given to many of our 
 m.anufacturers and merchants great fortunes ? Some 
 of the necessaries of life are harder to get now than 
 they were a century ago, but this is the natural 
 result of the great increase of population within 
 the narrow limits of this small island — an increase 
 attributable only in part to the development of our 
 industrial activity. It is impossible not to see that 
 the natural tendency of every new application of 
 scientific discovery to the arts is to improve the con- 
 dition of the poor. A century ago the princes, the 
 nobles, the great merchants, had at theii' command 
 all the elements of a luxurious life ; but the inven- 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 207 
 
 tions of tlie intervening years liave brought within 
 the reach of the comparatively poor what were then 
 the exclusive privileges of the wealthy. 
 
 It is one of the incidents, then, of the increase of 
 the general prosperity of the country that some 
 become enormously wealthy. Nor is this all. Ac- 
 cumulated wealth is not all spent in what the 
 economists call "unproductive expenditure." It is 
 invested in gTeat undertakings, which would never 
 have been attempted had there not been a large 
 class of persons whose income was considerably in 
 excess of their actual wants. ISTew processes of 
 manufacture requiring costly and untried machinery, 
 railways, ocean telegraphs, mines, — these find em- 
 ployment for the surplus income of the rich, and 
 they ultimately benefit the poorest in the land. 
 The great capitalist, if a Chi^stian man, does not 
 " live for himself," even when he is investing his 
 money with the hope of earning twenty per cent. 
 If he is using it honestly and carefully, if he is 
 
208 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 engaged in geuuiiie transactions, and not in mere 
 gambling, lie is increasing, not his own wealth, 
 merely, but the wealth of the whole nation. 
 
 Another end for which rich and prosperous men 
 exist is that they may attend to public business. 
 A good man to whom God has given the capacity 
 for understanding and vindicating the laws on 
 which our national security, freedom, and progress 
 depend, and who is born to high social rank, 
 need be in no great difficulty to find the reason 
 why he occupies his exalted position. He is there 
 that he may use his intellect, his education, and the 
 influence of his position to improve the laws of 
 his country, and to do whatever can be done by 
 political means to advance the highest interests of 
 the nation. He is there, not to be '.' the preij of 
 the poor,'" — but to study how their true interests 
 may be j^i'o^^oted by legislation, and to help in 
 conducting the business of the State on behalf of 
 those of his countrymen who have no time or no 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 209 
 
 qualifications for duties of that order. Prosperous 
 men belono^ino: to the middle classes have their 
 public functions too. They ought to feel " called 
 of God " to act as " Guardians of the Poor." They 
 ought to work on the Committees of Hospitals. 
 They ought to be Aldermen and Town Councillors. 
 They ought to give their time as well as their 
 money to whatever improvements are intended to 
 develop the intelligence of the community. They 
 ought to be reformers of local abuses. They ought 
 to see to it that the towns and parishes in which 
 they live are well drained, well lighted, and well 
 paved ; that there are good schools for every class 
 of the population ; that there are harmless public 
 amusements ; that all parochial and municipal affaii's 
 are conducted honourably and equitably. In nearly 
 every part of the country I hear that prosperous 
 manufacturers and merchants are leaving public 
 duties in the hands of men of lower position and 
 culture than themselves. They slmnk from the 
 
 P 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 roiigliness of local elections, and from tlie alleged 
 coarseness of language and manners of tlie actual 
 leaders of local parties. But this is to forget tliat 
 self-denial must be endured in tlie discharge of 
 nearly every duty. And if they were more active 
 and energetic, the power which is now in inferior 
 hands would be their own. Even the mob prefer a 
 gentleman to a blackguard, in the long run. When 
 the prosperous people of a free nation cease to 
 take an active interest in the pubHc life of the 
 towns and cities in which they live, the political 
 greatness and stability of their country are exposed 
 to the most seriou.s dangers. 
 
 Again, there are rich people in the world in 
 order that the varieties of moral and spiritual 
 excellence among men may be increased. The 
 circumstances in which a good man lives are like 
 the soil and the climate in which a plant grows. 
 There is every variety of zone in the moral as 
 well as the material world, that the moral life 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 211 
 
 may assume an infinite yarietj of leaf and blossom 
 and fruit. If — almost impossible hypothesis — you 
 are disposed to complain that God has made you 
 rich because riches make it much harder for you 
 to serve Him, remember that He wants to have 
 in Heaven some whose affections clung to Himself 
 on earth, though the earth was very bright and 
 fair to them ; that He wants to have some living 
 in close and blessed communion with Him now, to 
 whom He is not a refuge in times of trouble, but 
 the chosen home and palace of their souls. Mul- 
 titudes will be honoured at the last day, because 
 they endured the hardships of this life without 
 impatience ; but God wants some to receive His 
 praise, because their love for Himself and their 
 faith in things unseen were too strong to be 
 mastered by all the pleasures and delights which 
 this world can give. I know — for Christ has said 
 it, and observation confirms it — that "it is hard 
 for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of 
 
 P 2 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Heaven," but if, spite of tlie difiiculty, lie does 
 serve God, he shall have the nobler reward. 
 
 Another reason why God has made some men 
 rich and prosperous is, that they may be able to do 
 much by contributions of money, as w^ell as by 
 personal service, to maintain and diffuse the truth 
 of God among mankind, and to alleviate the 
 wretchedness and diminish the crimes which en- 
 danger and disgrace this Christian nation. The 
 command which our Lord gave to the young man, 
 to " sell all that he had and give to the poor," was 
 not intended to have a universal application. He 
 came to Christ as to a prophet, and he came with 
 an uneasy consciousness that though he believed he 
 had kept the commandments, there was still some- 
 thing wanting, and he wanted Christ to tell him 
 what it was. His sorrow, when he was commanded 
 to sell his goods and give to the poor, showed 
 him that he was not prepared to do w^hatever 
 the prophet required — that much as he desired 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 213 
 
 eternal life, he loved his riches better still. It 
 was a command intended to reveal to the young 
 man himself what he had not suspected, that he 
 cared more for his wealth than for the favour 
 of God. It was not meant to be a law for all 
 mankind. 
 
 But that it is the duty of the prosperous to 
 give their money largely for the honour of God 
 and the welfare of mankind, needs no demonstra- 
 tion. The duty is acknowledged even by those 
 who neglect it. It is not the judgment which 
 needs convincing, but the heart that needs to be 
 fired with devotion and charity, and the conscience 
 that needs to be strengthened in her condemnation 
 of selfishness. 
 
 In what ways rich men can use the harvest of 
 their industry, or their hereditary wealth, for the 
 most noble ends, it is unnecessary to explain. 
 They know that nearly every great rehgious society 
 is cramped in its operations by deficiency of 
 
214 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 income ; that new missions might be established in 
 heathen countries, if only the money could be had ; 
 that new churches are necessary in the colonies ; 
 that half Europe is open to Protestant evangelical 
 work, but that the work cannot be done because 
 there are no funds to do it with; that there is not 
 a large manufacturing town in the country where 
 thousands might not be spent wisely in the 
 erection of schools ; that Bible women and city 
 missionaries might be multiplied by the score, if 
 there were only the means of supporting them at 
 our command. 
 
 But not merely in forms like these may those of 
 my readers who are rich be " rich in good works, 
 ready to distribute, willing to communicate," In 
 the streets along which some of you go every day 
 to your business, in the courts which surround 
 your shops and warehouses and manufactories, 
 there are sufferings which the public provision for 
 the poor cannot remove. Among the poor them- 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 215 
 
 selves there is constantly manifested tlie noblest 
 and most practical sympathy for each other in their 
 sorrows, but it is for yon to give effectual relief. 
 You may find sickness aggravated by destitution. 
 You may find families which once lived in abun- 
 dance dragged down by irresistible misfortime to 
 beggary, and shrinking with a natural instinct from 
 applying to the law for relief. You may find 
 widows and orphans struggling for a livelihood, and 
 barely keeping themselves from starvation. You may 
 find little children growing up untaught because 
 of the poverty of their parents, who would gladly 
 see them at school. You may find girls beginning 
 a life of infamy to provide an aged mother with 
 bread. 
 
 There are many grounds on which men come 
 to be remembered after the grave has closed upon 
 their coffins and their souls have returned to God. 
 A great picture, a noble poem, a righteous law, 
 these have perpetuated through centuries the name 
 
2l6 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 of artist, poet, or statesman ; but fame of tliis kind 
 is beyond the reacli of most men. I can tell 
 jou of honours wbicli shine with a still brighter 
 and more enduring lustre, and which will lose none 
 of their splendour when the art and literature of 
 the world have perished, and when constitutions 
 and laws, with the nations they blessed, shall 
 have been dissolved for ever. You may write 
 your names on tablets more lasting than marble — 
 on the grateful memory of human hearts, which 
 shall bless you through eternity for the consolation 
 you brought them when, in their despair, they 
 were ready to curse God and die, for the timely 
 help which saved them not only from suffering, 
 but from sin. It is " hard for a rich man to 
 enter into the Kingdom of Heaven," but it is easy 
 for him to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to 
 provide instruction for the ignorant, to send the 
 gospel to the homes and hearts of men. And by 
 doing this he will become safe from the dangers 
 
THE PERILS AND USES OF RICH MEN. 217 
 
 whicli riches bring with them, for " Blessed is 
 he that considereth the poor," — his "secret" alms 
 shall be "rewarded openly," — his "righteousness 
 endureth for ever." 
 
X. 
 
 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 CrN"CE Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter, Eng- 
 lish Protestantism has had no great casuists. 
 ]N"or is this to be regretted. Simplicity, robustness 
 and manliness of character, are seriously imperilled 
 whenever the conscience is perplexed by the refine- 
 ments and intricacies in which casuistry delights. 
 It is safer to leave men to the guidance of those 
 great and obvious moral laws whose authority every 
 pure and honest heart acknowledges. The maxim, 
 " Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take 
 care of themselves," may convey sound advice to a 
 man who wants to build up a fortune, but it is 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 219 
 
 utterly false when applied to the culture of character. 
 Not the minor details of conduct, but the supreme 
 objects of human life and the broad principles of 
 integrity and honour, should receive our chief 
 thought. To be more anxious to avoid little sins 
 than to develop great virtues, will produce an 
 effeminate moral delicacy, instead of an heroic 
 vigour; and people who are very scrupulous about 
 small matters, are often miserably weak in the 
 presence of great temptations. There is a moral 
 and religious valetudinarianism which is ruinous to 
 moral and religious health. If a man's physical 
 constitution is sound, a few general principles will 
 guide him better than a whole encyclopaedia of 
 minute regulations about "what to eat, drink, and 
 avoid." A healthy appetite, vigorous exercise, 
 pure air, temperance in all things, and adequate 
 rest, will do far more to keep him in good health 
 than taking incessant drugs and measuring his 
 bread and meat by ounces. And let a man have 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 * 
 
 a fervent love for what is pure and just and 
 honourable : let him have a cordial abhorrence of 
 what is sensual, mean, tricky, and ungenerous, and 
 he will not go far wrong. 
 
 It may be said that casuistry is necessary for spi- 
 ritual "directors," just as medical science is neces- 
 sary for doctors. But Protestantism has, very wisely, 
 made no provision for placing sick souls under the 
 care of spiritual physicians. Casuistry and the Con- 
 fessional go together, and we have renounced them 
 both. Our principle is, that the soul is safest in 
 God's hands ; that no man, whatever his sanctity 
 or knowledge of human nature, or skill in ethical 
 analysis, is competent to " direct " another man's 
 moral and spiritual life. The diseases to be reme- 
 died are too subtle, the symptoms, for the most 
 part, too vague and indefinite, to make an accurate 
 diagnosis possible; and the "treatment" is beyond 
 the resources of all human wisdom. The only 
 sound method of training men to purity, integrity. 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 and honour, is to let them know tlie broad outlines 
 of God's law, and then to trust them to the light 
 of conscience and the teaching of the Holy Ghost. 
 ]\Ioreover, most of the moral evils from which men 
 suffer will not disappear under direct remedies ; what 
 is necessary is, the development of positive loyalty 
 to God, and goodness. 
 
 Practical questions may sometimes actually arise 
 about which an honest man may be in doubt, and 
 practical questions may be imagined which only 
 an expert could answer ; but Jeremy Ta^dor says, 
 very admirably, that " the preachers may retrench 
 infinite number of cases of conscience, if they will 
 more earnestly preach and exhort to simplicity 
 and love; for the want of these is the great 
 multiplier of cases. Men do not serve God with 
 honesty and heartiness, and they do not love 
 Him greatly, but stand upon terms with Him, 
 and study how much is lawful, how far they may 
 go, and which is their utmost stretch of lawful, 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 being afraid to do more for God and for their 
 souls than is simply and indispensably neces- 
 sary : and oftentimes they tie religion and their 
 own lusts together, and the one entangles the 
 other, and both are made less discernible and 
 less practicable. But the good man understands 
 the things of God ; not only because God's 
 Spirit, by secret emissions of light, does properly 
 instruct him, but because he has a way of deter- 
 mining his cases of conscience which will never 
 fail him. For, if the question be put to him 
 whether it be fit for him to give a shilling to 
 the poor, he answers that it is not only fit, but 
 necessary, to do so much, at least, and to make 
 it sure, he will give two ; and in matter of duty 
 he takes to himself the greater share ; in privileges 
 and divisions of right, he is content with the least ; 
 and in questions of priority and dignity he always 
 prevails by cession, and ever is superior by sitting 
 lowest, and gets his will, first, by choosing what 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 223 
 
 God wills, and then what his neighbour imposes 
 and desires." * 
 
 As for such questions as good Richard Baxter 
 raises in his " Christian Directory," many of them 
 are so easily solved by plain common sense, others 
 are so frivolous, and others arise from such ex- 
 ceptional conditions of human life, that it was 
 hardly necessary to discuss them. Who, for in- 
 stance, need make it a matter of solemn inquiry 
 whether or not it is lawful "for a person that 
 is deformed to hide their deformity by their 
 clothing ? and for any persons to make themselves 
 (by clothing, or spots, or painting) to seem to 
 others as comely and beautiful as they can ? " It 
 is to be hoped, too, that husbands and wives are 
 very seldom perplexed with the question "what 
 to do in case of known intention of one to murder 
 the other ? " Nor were the men of the Common- 
 wealth at all what I take them to have been, if 
 * Ductor Dubitantum, "Works, vol. xi. 366. 
 
224 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 they needed to be told what must be done "if a 
 gentleman have a great estate, by which he may do 
 much good, and his wife be so proud, prodigal, and 
 peevish, that if she may not waste it all in house- 
 keeping and pride, she will die, or go mad, or give 
 him 710 quietness " — poor gentleman ! What a man's 
 duty would be " in so sad a case," most husbands 
 would determine without Richard Baxter's assist- 
 ance, by the help of a certain rough instinct, 
 teaching them that when 
 
 " Adam, the goodliest man of men since born 
 His sons; the fairest of her daughters, Eve," 
 
 were created, they appeared to the angels, whether 
 good or bad, 
 
 "Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed ; 
 For contemplation he and valour formed, 
 For softness she and sweet attractive grace ; 
 He for God only, she for God and him. 
 His fair large front and eye sublime declared 
 Absolute rule." 
 
 And if a text was needed, the unhappy " gentle- 
 man " would be likely to remember what St. Paul 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 said about the husband being the " head of the 
 wife," even as Christ is the Head of the Church. 
 
 But if, in oui' days, and among English evan- 
 gelical Christians, a casuist happened to appear, I 
 do not know that he could, in any way, more 
 usefully or more pleasantly emplo}- the resources of 
 his science than in discussing the subject of this 
 paper. What amusements are lawful to persons 
 who wish to live a religious life, is one of the 
 questions by which many good people are sorely 
 perplexed. The stricter habits of our fathers are 
 being everywhere relaxed, and there are very many 
 who wish to do right, who know not what to think 
 of the change ; they yield to the current of the 
 times, but yield with hesitation, discomfort, and 
 apprehension. 
 
 At first sight, some of the distinctions which 
 have been drawn between amusements which are 
 permitted and amusements which are forbidden, 
 
226 A\- E K K - n A Y S K R M O X S. 
 
 appear to be altogetlier arbitraiy, Tliey seem to 
 originate in no moral principle ■ — in no spiritual 
 instinct. Why, for instance, sliould bagatelle be 
 played on winter evenings in very strict families 
 and billiards be sternly condemned ? Why slionld 
 wliist stamp a man as " worldly " and chess be 
 perfectly consistent with devontness ? Why shonld 
 draughts be allowed and backgammon abjured ? 
 Why sliould fishing be permitted even to clerg3aneny 
 and shooting be regarded by many as a sign of 
 unregeneracy ? Why should people take their 
 children to a circus who would be horrified at 
 their seeing a pantomime ? 
 
 The things allowed are so like the things abjured ^ 
 that the distinction Vvhich has been drawn between 
 them will probably be pronounced by many persons 
 to be altogether irrational. No sensible man, 
 however, will ever suppose that strong convictions 
 which extend through large communities are alto- 
 gether without foundation in reason or experience. 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 227 
 
 If lie cannot nnderstand tliem, he will a^cknowleclge 
 that it may perhaps be his own fanlt. Nothing 
 lives without a real root somewhere ; if not in 
 the natm^e of things, yet in the accidental history 
 of the people among whom it has sprung up. 
 jMany of the broad moral distinctions which evan- 
 gelical Christians make between amusements vrhich 
 are very much alike, receive an easy explanation 
 when we consider the very different accessories with 
 which, either in our own days or in former days, 
 they have been associated. 
 
 For instance, it is no doubt quite as easy to 
 play at chess for money as to play at whist for 
 money ; but people who want the excitement of u 
 gambling are impatient of the tedious length to 
 which the one game often extends, and prefer the 
 more rapid movement of the other. The two 
 games are equally games of skill, and require an 
 equal amount, though a different kind, of intellectual 
 effort ; but by the one a clever player may win 
 
223 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 a good number of sixpences or lialf- crowns in an 
 evening, while tlie otlier is too solemn and slow to 
 be made subordinate to tlie pecuniary profits of 
 success. Professionals may play for a heavy stake, 
 and heavy bets may be laid on the rival players 
 as the fortunes of the game ebb and flow ; but 
 under ordinary circumstances chess is not a con- 
 venient disguise for gambling. This is probably 
 the reason that a chess-board may be found in 
 hundreds of houses wdiere the difference between 
 spades and diamonds is quite unknown. There 
 can be no more harm in playing with pieces of 
 coloured pasteboard than with pieces of carved 
 ivory ; but cards have been always associated with 
 gambling and chess has not. 
 
 Nor is it difficult to explain why bagatelle is 
 allowed and billiards are forbidden. A billiard- 
 table is a large and costty piece of furniture. It 
 needs a room for itself, and a room such as few 
 families belonging to the middle classes have ever 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 229 
 
 been able to spare for tlie purpose. It must be 
 treated as tenderly as a new-born infant — kept in 
 an unvarying temperature, if it is to be of any 
 real use. To play at billiards, therefore, people 
 liave bad to go to a jDublic table, and generally 
 to an liotel. The game lias come to be associated 
 with late hours and brandy-and-water. Public 
 playing has brought gambling with it. But baga- 
 telle-boards, sufficiently accurate to afford consi- 
 derable amusement, are cheap enough to be within 
 the reach of persons of very moderate means ; 
 and they have been made of a form and size 
 which render a special room unnecessary. Baga- 
 telle, therefore, has been dissociated from the evils 
 which have given an evil name to billiards ; it 
 has made home pleasant ; the girls and the boys 
 have played with then' father. "WTiile the nobler 
 game has lost its reputation from bad company, 
 the inferior game has kept its honour almost 
 stainless. 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Again, there are large nunibers of good people 
 Avlio look kindly upon tlie rod and the line, 
 tliougli they regard a man that carries a gun 
 (unless he happens to be an African missionary 
 or a Western settler) as belonging to the devil's 
 regiment. How is this ? Has Izaak Walton made 
 all the difference ? Would shooting have been as 
 innocent as fishing if its praises had been sung 
 by a spirit as pure and simple as that of the 
 l3iographer of the saintly Greorge Herbert ? Hardly. 
 Perhaps the root of the distinction lies in this — 
 that men commonly go alone to the river and in 
 parties to the stubble. The angler is generally a 
 quiet, meditative man ; he is silent, solitary, and 
 gentle ; he " handles his worm tenderly ; " half 
 his enjojmient lies in penetrating into the secret 
 places of nature, in surprising her shy and hidden 
 beauties, in w^atching the pleasant wooing which 
 is always going on in shady places in summer 
 time between the murmuring rippling waters and 
 
AMUSHMEXTS. 231 
 
 the ash, the beech, and the Avillow, ^vhlch bend 
 to kiss them as thej pass. He loves stillness and 
 ]3eace. The country parson may think oyer his 
 text 'while his float drifts lazily with the current, 
 or while he wanders by the stream watching for 
 the silver flashes which tempt him to throw his 
 fly. The men that delight to hear the wliirr of 
 the partridge are generally cf another sort. Any- 
 how, September brings shooting dinners as well as 
 birds ; and with many people heavy drinking is 
 inseparably associated vrith heavy bags of game. 
 They do not object to eat the partridges when 
 they are shot, but they have the impression that 
 the men who shoot them are a roystering, rollicking 
 set, with whom it is undesirable that then' sons 
 should be too intimate. All this is rapidly 
 changing ; in many parts of the country it has 
 quite disappeared ; but I am inclined to think — 
 speaking of those whom I know best — that though 
 XI xS^onconformist minister, with a cast of flies on 
 
232 ^V E E K - D A Y SERMONS. 
 
 his liat and a rod on liis slioiilder, would feel no 
 shyness at meeting accidentally the very gravest 
 of his deacons, he would rather be on the other 
 side of the hedge if he happened to have on his 
 gaiters and to be carrying his gun. 
 
 "The traditions which have come down to us are 
 explicable ; and if we are men of sense we shall 
 ask whether the same circumstances which made 
 certain amusements objectionable a hundred years 
 ago, or fifty years ago, make them objectionable 
 now. I believe in reverence for the deliberate 
 judgments of good men ; what they have generally 
 shrunk from and condemned must have had some 
 evil in it. Their spiritual experience, not merely 
 their theoretical opinions, is embodied in the habits 
 of life which they have transmitted to their descen- 
 dants and followers. But we brinq; them into 
 oontempt if we do not try to understand what it 
 was they really objected to. If they censured 
 particular amusements because of the accessories 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 233 
 
 with wliicli, in tlieir clays, tliose anmsements wei-e 
 associated, and not because of any evil in the 
 amusements themselves, we are actually imperilling 
 their reputation for moral discernment and good 
 sense, by appealing to their authority in condem- 
 nation of what is plainly harmless, when the evil 
 accessories have disappeared. 
 
 In some instances, the very things which they 
 condemned have changed, and yet their condem- 
 nation remains uncancelled. Novel reading may, 
 perhaps, be legitimately considered an am-usement. 
 A hundred years ago devout people were, I suppose, 
 almost unanimous in excluding novels from their 
 houses. Nothing, they thought, could be more 
 ruinous to their children than this captivating, 
 ensnaring, and exciting literature. But wlmt kind 
 of novels did they condemn ? "Would the meu 
 who would as soon have seen their girls drinking 
 poison as have seen them reading Mrs. Belin, have 
 
234 WEEK-DAY SERMON; 
 
 had the same objection to Miss Muloch ? Would 
 the traditional veto on works of fiction, which 
 drove some of us when we were boys to read 
 *'Ivanhoe" and the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" on 
 the sly, have ever been uttered if George Mac- 
 Donald had been writing " David Elginbrod " 
 and "Alec Forbes" a hundred and fifty years 
 ago ? There are curious corners of English society 
 where tlie pleasant fact has not yet been discovered 
 that Sir Walter Scott regenerated fiction; and 
 some of the brightest and noblest creations of 
 modern genius are regarded with distrust, on the 
 ground of what was said "by them of old time," 
 about books which every good man would thrust 
 into the fire with disgust at their impurity, or fling 
 into his waste-paper basket with contempt for their 
 frivolity. 
 
 We are bound to understand the judgments of 
 our fathers before we appeal to their authority ; 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 235 
 
 and -w-liile we slioulcl be guiltj of presumptuous 
 folly if we did not honour tlie cautions suggested 
 by the experiences of ^Yise and devout men who 
 have lived before us, we must take care to ask 
 what that experience really was. 
 
 Profanity, impurity, and cruelty are always evil,, 
 whether connected with our amusements or with 
 the common business and habits of life. ^Yhat- 
 ever tends to these things is evil too. If any 
 recreation, however pleasant, involves a clear breach 
 of moral laws, it must be bad for all men and 
 under all circumstances. Or if, though harmless 
 in itself, immorality has become inseparably 
 connected with it, every good man will avoid 
 and condemn it. 
 
 Prize-fighting, cock-fighting, and bull-baiting are 
 plainly inhuman sports. It is utterly disgusting 
 that men should be able to find any pleasure in 
 them ; and the right feeling of English society has 
 
236 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 made them all utterly disreputable. As for liorse- 
 racing, there can be no intrinsic harm, I suppose, 
 in the ma2:nificent contest for the St. Leo^er or the 
 Derby ; cruelty to the horses is not necessary to 
 the sport. But horse-racing has become a mere 
 pretext for gambling ; and if a tithe of what is 
 reported of Doncaster and Epsom during the race- 
 week is to be believed, om' " Isthmian games " are 
 disgraced by drunkenness and abominable profligacy. 
 A well-known member of Parliament, a man of 
 the world, making no pretensions to religion, told 
 me, that on being applied to immediately after his 
 election for the usual subscription to the " Mem- 
 bers' Plate," he wrote at once to say that in his 
 judgment there was no institution Avhich inflicted 
 greater moral injury on the community than horse- 
 racing, and that sooner than subscribe a single 
 guinea to encourage it he would forfeit his seat. 
 You cannot see the horses run without becoming a 
 party to the gambling, and to the vices worse than 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 237 
 
 gambling, "uliicli races everywhere encourage ; if, 
 so long as the sport remains, the wickedness 
 associated with it remain too, no refinements of 
 casuistry are necessary to show that the sport is 
 unlawful. 
 
 But there are amusements Vv'hich cannot be 
 called immoral either in them^selves or their acces- 
 sories, about which a good man will have serious 
 doubts. The object of all recreation is to increase 
 our capacity for work, to keep the blood pure, and 
 the brain bright, and the temper kindly, and sweet. 
 If any recreation exhausts our strength instead of 
 restoring it, or so absorbs our time as to interfere 
 with the graver duties of human life, it must be 
 condemned. How does this principle afiect the 
 great English field sport ? There are many men 
 to whom hunting is the best possible exercise ; 
 one day out of seven after the hounds doubles their 
 energy during the remaining six. Putting aside 
 questions which belong to Economy rather than to 
 
AVEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 ethics — questions about the injury that hunting- 
 inflicts on the land — there seems to be no good 
 reason why such men should not hunt. The horses 
 like the sport ; the dogs like it ; and as for the 
 fox, he lives such a roguish life that I think he 
 may be sacrificed with an easy conscience for the 
 general good. But if a man must hunt three 
 days a week all through the season, instead of 
 one ; if half of his waking life during a great 
 part of the year must be spent on horseback in 
 the field, he is sui^ely forgetting the very object of 
 recreation. l^ow it is hardly possible to maintain 
 a great hunting establishment, like the famous one 
 at Tcdwortli, for instance, without making hunting 
 one of the supreme objects of existence; and, 
 with all respect for enthusiasm, whatever grotesque 
 form it may assume, it is rather hard to accept 
 the faith of one of the late Mr. Assheton Smith's 
 dependents, that " the noblest of 7«all //occupations 
 is keeping dogs." If any one can hunt a single 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 239 
 
 day a week, and so keep liimself in better con- 
 dition for liis work in the House of Commons, the . 
 manufactory, tlie counting-kouse, or the study, no 
 one has a riodit to blame kim ; but wken a man 
 begins to keep kunters, it seems kard to practise 
 moderation. N^or skoukl Rickard Baxter's sixteentk 
 test to determine tke lawfulness of an amusement 
 be forgotten in connection witk tkis recreation — 
 " Too costly recreation also is unlawful : wken you 
 are but God's stewards, and must be accountable 
 to Him for all you kave, it is sinful to expend it 
 needlessly on sport." 
 
 Amusements are objectionable wkick interfere witk 
 regular and orderly liabits of life, and wkick, in- 
 stead of increasing kealtli and vigour, produce 
 w^cariness and exkaustion. Wkat time do young 
 ladies breakfast tke day after a ball ? How do 
 young gentlemen feel at eigkt or nine o'clock on 
 Friday morning wko wcrg dancing till a coujdIo 
 of kours after midnigkt on Tkursday ? Dancing 
 
OjO WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 itself need not be wrong; and the sweeping moral 
 objections to it wliicli have sometimes been m^ged 
 from the pulpit are unpardonable insults to 
 ihonsands of women wdio are as pure-minded as 
 any in the country. There may be some dances 
 whicli good taste and delicate moral feeling dis- 
 approTG, but so long as high-minded English 
 ladies find pleasure in the ball-room, no one shall 
 persuade me that the offensive and indiscriminate 
 cliarges Tvhich have been recklessly flung out 
 against dancing have any truth in them. But 
 these charges may be all false and yet there may 
 he TCTj adequate grounds for discouraging balls. 
 It is very pleasant to see a dozen or a score of 
 grswjeM children, daintily dressed, dancing on a 
 lawn in summer time, or, with the bright red 
 berries and rich green leaves of the holly and the 
 pale-white mistletoe about them, on Twelfth Night. 
 Children were made to dance as birds were made 
 to sing. They sleep sounder for it and w^ake up 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 241 
 
 all the freslier tlie next morning. And if young 
 men and women find themselves getting chilly on 
 a snowy winter's day, or if their spirits are very 
 exuberant, I cannot see why they may not push 
 the tables aside and ask some one to sit down at 
 the piano and play the Lancers. But for people 
 to leave home deliberately at ten o'clock at night, 
 with the intention of dancing for three or four 
 hours, appears to me to be a violation of all the 
 laws and principles which should determine the 
 choice of our pleasui^s. There is something, too, 
 absolutely grotesque in it. At six o'clock in the 
 evening a grown-up woman goes to her dressing- 
 room, spends three or four hours in arraying 
 herself in gorgeous or beautiful raiment, in clouds 
 of lace or in shining silk ; at nine or ten, perhaps 
 at eleven, her carriage comes to the door and she 
 is driven off, it may be through hail or snow or 
 rain, to a room which soon becomes intolerably 
 hot : and there, in the middle of the night, with 
 
242 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 four or five score, or four or five hundred people, 
 she spends her time in graceful gymnastics. Gym- 
 nastics at midnight ! Gymnastics in a crowd ! 
 Gymnastics in tarletan ! Gymnastics for matrons 
 of five-and-forty and solemn, serious-looking gentle- 
 men of fifty. 
 
 But it is not the gymnastics for which the 
 throng assembles. It is for social intercourse. 
 Well, are the conditions and circumstances favour- 
 able to social intercourse of a really pleasant and 
 healthy kind ? If we must meet our neighbours, 
 is this a rational way of meeting with them? If 
 young gentlemen and young ladies must come to 
 know each other, is a ball-room, with its heat 
 and excitement, and flirtation, the most desirable 
 place for bringing them together? If we were 
 savages still, dancing with each other might 
 probably be the best possible way of spending 
 our time together; but to say that civilized 
 educated peoi-)le are not able to do something 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 243 
 
 better tlianHliis, is a grim ii'ony on the last and 
 liigliest results of our national culture. 
 
 I liave spoken only of balls wliich are free 
 from obvious moral objection. It is bardly neces- 
 sary to remind my readers that in all our large 
 commercial and manufacturing towns there are 
 public rooms for dancing, much frequented by 
 assistants in shops, both yoimg men and women, 
 by clerks, by milliners, by girls employed in fac- 
 tories, which have been the moral ruin of thousands. 
 
 Perhaps of all amusements, the theatre involves 
 the most intricate and perplexing questions 
 for any one who wishes to do right. That for 
 the last two hundred years there should have 
 been a stern and deep antagonism to dramatic 
 representations among earnestly religious people 
 need excite no surprise. The plays which were 
 acted before Charles II. and the aristocracy of the 
 Restoration, and w^hich retained their popularity for 
 
 E 2 
 
244 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 many a long year after the last of tlie Stuarts had 
 become an exile, are a sufficient explanation of the 
 horror with which, ' at least in evangelical families, 
 the stage has been universally regarded. 
 
 But it is urged that all plays are not immoral. 
 Dramatic genius — the very highest form of genius, 
 perhaps, belonging to the province of pure literature 
 — need not stain its glory by pandering to the 
 most corrupt passions of corrupt men. Well, let 
 the play be unexceptionable ; purify the theatre 
 from all the evil accessories which cling to it in 
 this country and in the great cities of Continental 
 Europe, but from which, if I mistake not, it is 
 perfectly free in the smaller cities in Germany ; 
 what shall we say then ? Would it still be a sin 
 to laugh at Lord Dundreary? Would it still be 
 a crime to weep over the sorrows of Ophelia ? 
 and to be moved more deeply still by the deso- 
 lation which comes upon the pride and splendour 
 of Wolsey ? To sedentaiy, careworn men, a bril- 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 24: 
 
 liant light comedy is almost as refresliing as a day 
 on Snowdon or Hclvellyn ; must conscience forbid 
 them the most exhilarating recreation within their 
 reach ? 
 
 The question is not so simple as it looks. 
 There are people of quick moral sensibility and 
 vigorous good sense, who argue that original dra- 
 matic genius is a divine gift, and that dramas, 
 from their very nature, should be seen, not read ; 
 that the powers necessary to a great actor are 
 divine gifts too, and that it cannot be w^rong to 
 derive enjoyment from, witnessing their exercise ; 
 that the craving for the kind of excitement which 
 is produced by seeing a good play well acted is as 
 natural, and therefore as innocent, as hunger and 
 thirst ; that for good people to condemn amuse- 
 ments which satisfy a universal and harmless in- 
 stinct, is to engage in a perilous contest with the 
 very constitution of human nature, and must issue 
 iii most lamentable results ; that the accidental evils 
 
246 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 now connected with the theatre would never have 
 existed, or woukl long ago have disappeared, had 
 religions jieople not given np all control of the 
 stage, so that their alleged mistake has actually 
 created, or at least perpetuated, all that is morally 
 perilous in the actual condition of the institution ; 
 that the real alternative presented to the practical 
 wisdom of those who are anxious to promote the 
 morality of the community, is not, whether thea- 
 trical representations shall continue to exist or not 
 — for while men continue to be what God made 
 them, the passion for the drama will be inex- 
 tinguishable — but whether theatrical representations 
 shall be separated and cleansed from the associa- 
 tions which now make the theatre the haunt of 
 vice and the very centre of all the corruption 
 that curses and disgraces great cities. 
 
 But, after all, wo have to take things as they 
 stand. It is not our duty to send our sons and 
 daughters into a region of moral evil, with the 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 247 
 
 liope tliat in tlie course of a generation or two 
 tlieii' presence will canse the evil to disappear. For 
 themselves, indeed, there may be no serious danger. 
 Our presence with them may shield them from all 
 contact with what would harm them. They may 
 be as safe in their box from the men and women, 
 from whose lightest touch we should wish them 
 to recoil, as when they are in our own drawing- 
 rooms. But if they go, hundreds and thousands 
 more will go who have no parental shelter, and 
 whose purse keeps them in the gallery or the pit. 
 Are those young men and women exposed to 
 no perils? Moreover, if report does not greatly 
 deceive me, there are still plays acted on the 
 English stage whose moral tendencies can hardly 
 be approved by a sensitive conscience. Such plays, 
 it is alleged, would disappear if the better class 
 of society attended the theatre in large numbers. 
 Perhaps they would ; meanwhile, I do not choose 
 to recommend my friends to sit down to a table 
 
2^8 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Tvliere they are likely to find poisoned dislies, with 
 the hope that by-and-by their influence will lead 
 to the production of better fare. 
 
 There is another consideration which appears 
 to deserve great weight, though it would take 
 too much space fully to develop it. How does 
 it happen that actors and actresses have so often 
 been persons of questionable character ? I am 
 infinitely far from thinking that there have not 
 been, that there are not now, men and women on 
 the stage of whom it would be an atrocious slander 
 to whisper or to insinuate an injurious suspicion. 
 Not merely the distinguished names of Kemble, 
 Macready, Young, Siddons, Faucit, refute the libels 
 which are sometimes uttered against their pro- 
 fession ; there are many less illustrious instances 
 of honour unstained and virtue untainted by the 
 perils and excitements which beset the actor's life. 
 But are not those perils very serious and grave ? 
 They may defy analysis, but do they not exist ? 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 249 
 
 Should we liononr with such warmth of admiration 
 those who do not fall, if experience had not proved 
 how hard it is to stand ? We do injustice to 
 those whose lives are blameless, if we think that 
 their blamelessness is no proof of exceptional 
 moral strength. Now, if any amusement involves 
 grave moral danger to those who provide it, a 
 good man ^\dll shrink from it ; just as a gentle, 
 kindly man shrinks from witnessing feats of skill 
 which imperil the lives or the limbs of the per- 
 formers. 
 
 What the theatre may be in the next century, 
 or the century after that, we cannot tell. It is 
 hard to think that the genius of great dramatists 
 will disappear when the moral condition of society 
 shall have been regenerated by the influence of the 
 Christian faith, or that the noble physical gifts and 
 intellectual susceptibilities of great actors will then 
 have a place only in the history of the darker 
 times of the human race. It may then be found 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 that a profession wliicli appears to be singularly 
 perilous to tliose wlio enter it, lias been perilous 
 only from tbe circumstances witli wliicli it lias been 
 accidentally connected, and tliat tlie neigbbour- 
 bood of a tbeatre may be as decent and respect- 
 able as tbe neigbbourliood of a cburcb. Mean- 
 while, it is at least safer to deny ourselves the 
 pleasant excitement which the stage, and the stage 
 alone, can give, rather than incur the responsibility 
 of encouraging the evils which have so long been 
 associated with its fascinations. 
 
 I have discussed the questions raised in this 
 paper solely on moral grounds ; and I have done 
 this intentionally. The common reason alleged 
 for condemning certain amusements in which no 
 moral evil can be shown to exist, is that they are 
 " worldly." But there is no word in our language 
 which is more abused than this. The sin of 
 worldliness is a very grave one ; but thousands and 
 tens of thousands of people are gnilty of it, who 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 251 
 
 are most vigorous in maintaining the narrowest 
 traditions tliey have received from tlieir fathers. 
 One "svoukl imagine, from the habits of speech 
 common in some sections of religious society, that 
 worldliness has to do only with our pleasures, 
 while in truth it has to do with the whole sph-it 
 and temper of our life. To be " worldly " is to 
 permit the higher laws to which we owe allegiance, 
 the glories and terrors of that invisible universe 
 which is revealed to faith, our transcendent rela- 
 tions to the Father of spiiits through Christ Jesus 
 our Lord, to be overborne by inferior interests, 
 and by the opinions and practices of those in 
 whom the Hfe of God does not dwell. There is 
 a worldliness of the countino;-house as fatal to the 
 true health and energy of the soul as the world- 
 liness of the ball-room; and there are more people 
 whose loyalty to Clirist is ruined by covetousness 
 than by love of pleasui-e. There is a worldliness 
 in the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs quite as 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 likely to extinguish the divine fire which should 
 burn in the church, as the worldliness which 
 reveals itself in the frivolity of those unhappy 
 people whose existence is spent in one ceaseless 
 round of gaiety. There is a worldliness in politics 
 — an oblivion of what God has revealed concerning 
 the brotherhood of mankind, and the social and 
 national duties w^hich arise from the common rela- 
 tionship of all men and all nations to Him — quite 
 as hostile to the manifestation of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven in human society, as the worldliness 
 which openly defies the real or conventional dis- 
 tinctions which churches have drawn between lawful 
 and forbidden amusements. Let no man think 
 that he ceases to be worldly — ceases, that is, to 
 belong to that darker and inferior region of life 
 from which Christ came to deliver us — merely 
 by abstaining from half a dozen of his old 
 recreations. Not thus easily is the great victory 
 won which is possible only to a vigorous and 
 
AMUSEMENTS, 253 
 
 invincible Faitli. Not thus artificial are tlie boun- 
 daries between the heavenly commonwealth, of which 
 the spiritual man is a citizen, and the kingdom of 
 evil from which he has escaped. 
 
 But let it be granted that certain amusements 
 are really "worldly," and it is still important to 
 remind sincerely religious persons that they have no 
 right to condemn as morally wrong, amusements 
 which are simply distasteful to the higher instincts 
 of their own natm^e ; nor must they translate into 
 moral precepts, for the guidance of their families 
 and dependants, the higher laws of their spiritual 
 life. A very devout man will find himself ill at 
 ease in many circumstances in which the purest 
 and most upright of his friends, who is destitute 
 of religious earnestness, will be conscious of no 
 discomfort. Excitements and pleasures may be 
 morally harmless, and may yet be discovered by 
 experience to be unfavourable to spiritual "recol- 
 lections" and unbroken communion with God. 
 
254 
 
 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Saintly men do not impose as duties on otliers tlie 
 exercises wliicli tliey know are essential to tlie 
 intensity and depth of tlieii' own devotional life ; 
 nor slioald they impose as a duty on otliers 
 abstinence from certain pleasures wliicli have be- 
 come distasteful to their own spiritual instincts, or 
 which s|)iritual prudence leads them to avoid. 
 Let it be granted that a man who is trying to 
 be earnestly religious will shrink from some of the 
 amusements in which no one can discover any 
 moral evil, does it follow that he is at liberty to 
 require his children to avoid these amusements too ? 
 By no means. He rightly thinks it to be his own 
 duty to spend a couple of hours every morning 
 in reading the Holy Scriptures and meditating on 
 the glory of God, but he does not insist upon 
 all his children doing the same. He knows that 
 the protracted religious solitude which to him, 
 with his religious intensity, is blessedness and 
 strength, would be to them an injurious formality. 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Can lie not see that the very same principle should 
 restrain liim from enforcing on them abstinence 
 from pleasures which, not his moral sense, but the 
 sympathies and exigencies of his spiritual life alone, 
 have led him to renounce ? 
 
 It does not follow that those who desh-e to lead 
 a devout life should disregard the wisdom which 
 has come from the experience of past generations, 
 and avoid no j^leasures from which their own spiiitual 
 taste does not lead them to shrink, impose ujoon 
 themselves no discipline, the uses of which they have 
 not personally verified. There is no doubt a true 
 spiritual philosophy underlying the advice which 
 I am told is sometimes given by a very spiritual 
 man to his friends — " Become Christians first, and 
 then consider what your habits and amusements 
 should be ; " but like all broad statements of great 
 principles, it requires to be taken with some limi- 
 tations. 
 
256 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 If a man wlio liad become religiously earnest 
 happened to be in a position wbich was morally 
 indefensible — if lie were the manager, for instance, of 
 a Joint- Stock Company wbicli was being cunningly 
 worked for the profit of its promoters, but to tbe 
 certain ruin of innocent sliareliolders — it might be 
 perfectly right, in a certain sense, to say to him — 
 Trust to the Divine Mercy revealed through our 
 Lord Jesus Clirist for the pardon of sin and the 
 gift of a new and higher life, and then think what 
 changes you must make in your business affairs, if 
 you are to be loyal to Christ's authority. And yet 
 it is very certain that his religious life would be 
 extinguished if he did not at once become an honest 
 man. The moral conditions under which he would 
 be living so long as he remained a rogue, would be 
 absolutely fatal to religious sincerity and earnest- 
 ness. 
 
 Now it is only a just deference to the experience 
 of those who have tried, before ourselves, to live in 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 257 
 
 God, to believe that there are certain conditions 
 under which this is impossible, and that there is 
 such a thing as " worldliness," the evil of which 
 may not be discerned while the religious life has 
 not passed beyond its inferior and elementary de- 
 velopments, but which will certainly prevent its 
 reaching perfect strength and beauty. It is perilous 
 to adopt a "rule" which is far beyond us. But 
 it appears to be the simplest and most obvious 
 dictate of practical wisdom, to take some things 
 on trust for a time, and always to set the line 
 over which we will not pass a little farther than 
 our spiritual instincts at the moment actually re- 
 quire. This seems to be the natural condition of 
 growth. 
 
 Incomplete as this discussion of a very wide 
 subject must necessarily be, it would be unpar- 
 donably defective if I did not, in closing, remind 
 my readers that our Lord's precept, " Judge not," 
 
 8 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 has peculiar autliority in relation to such questions 
 as have been treated in this paper. There are 
 amusements which are ruinous to some people, 
 which others can enjoy without danger. When 
 the infallible guidance of great moral laws fails 
 us, and we have to trust to the suggestions of 
 expediency, we should be very cautious how we 
 condemn the habits of our neighbours. That 
 may be safe to them which is perilous to us. If 
 it is not intrinsically wrong, we have no right to 
 censure them. It may be a sin to me to eat 
 roast veal, because it injures my health and unfits 
 me for duty; but all men are not to avoid the 
 luscious dish because one man suffers from it. 
 Are the weak always to give laws to the strong ? 
 Must Professor Tyndall never ascend Monte Eosa 
 because my head is weak and my footing uncertain ? 
 No doubt the strong will sometimes avoid what 
 they know to be lawful for themselves, that 
 their weaker brethren may not be betrayed into 
 
AMUSEMENTS, 259 
 
 sin ; but there are limits to this self-abnegation. 
 "Weakness is a bad thing ; and if a constant 
 homage to it tends to make me and others weak 
 too, I may think it right, for the sake of my 
 own moral vigour, and for the sake of the moral 
 vigour of those who are in danger of becoming 
 morbidly scrupulous, to live the bolder and freer 
 life, which my own conscience approves. The 
 sick-room is good for the sick man, but it will 
 make the strong man sick if he always lives 
 there. Habits of caution, in which some men find 
 safety, may be to other men, of a diiferent tem- 
 perament and character, positively injurious. 
 
 We must learn, especially in a time like this, to 
 trust each other. " Who art thou that judgest 
 another man's servant ? " It is possible that what 
 I condemn in my brother's life may be as ^vrong to 
 him as it would be to me ; but it is also possible 
 that in condemning him for " worldliness " I may 
 be violating the royal law of charity. 
 
 S 2 
 
XT. 
 SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 
 
 TT was not left to tliis restless and fevered 
 century to discover the healthy and purifying 
 influence of loneliness and rest. When the Apostles 
 returned to Christ, excited and weary, after theii' 
 first great evangelistic journey, " He took them 
 and went aside privately into a desert place ; " 
 and after Elijah's tragic and stormy conflict with 
 the priests of Baal, the prophet went away into 
 the wilderness, and spent six weeks among the 
 solitudes of Horeb. 
 
 The physical benefits which come from a month 
 among the mountains or by the sea, are obvious; 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 261 
 
 but summer holidays may have otlier uses wliicli, 
 perhaps, are not so often thought of. Apart alto- 
 gether from any direct intention to employ the 
 pleasant leisure for the highest ends, most men 
 are the better for it. A precocious child, after 
 reading the inscriptions in a churchyard, which 
 recorded the incomparable virtues of the dead 
 lying beneath, wondered where they buried all 
 the bad people ; and I have often wondered, when 
 away from home, where the ill-tempered and 
 irritable people go for theii' holiday. How genial 
 every one seems to be on a Rhine steamer! Who 
 was ever known to be out of temper on Loch 
 Katrine ? Meet a man at the Furca, and walk 
 with him to the Grimsel, and you are sure to find 
 him one of the most kindly of the human race. 
 Share a carriage to Inverary with people you 
 chance to meet at Oban, and you think it would 
 be charming to travel with them for a month. 
 Extortionate bills and rainy weather may ruffle 
 
262 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 the temper for a moment, but so far as I have 
 observed, if a " tourist ticket " is ever issued to 
 a cantankerous man (of which I have serious 
 doubts), he no sooner gets it into his waistcoat- 
 pocket than it acts like a charm. If we could 
 only keep some of our acquaintances always on 
 the top of a Highland coach, or crossing Swiss 
 passes, or climbing Welsh hills, what a happy 
 thing it would be for them — and for us ! No 
 theological reading does them half as much good 
 as "Murray" or " Baedecker," and a volume of 
 ' ' Black ' ' is more useful to them than a score of 
 sermons. 
 
 From the very beginning of the world man 
 needed rest, as much for his intellect and heart 
 as for his body. Among the Jews the weekly 
 Sabbath was literally a weekly rest, in commemo- 
 ration of the rest of God after the creation of the 
 world. In the fourth commandment there is 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 263 
 
 notliing about worship either public or private, 
 and the keeping holy of the Sabbath day consisted 
 originally in mere absence from work. No doubt 
 part of the day was always spent by devout men 
 in meditation on the greatness of Jehovah and on 
 the wonderful history and glorious hopes of the 
 descendants of Abraham ; and part of it in talking 
 to children about the dark times in Egypt, and 
 about the giving of the law, and about famous 
 warriors and prophets, " of whom the world was 
 not worthy ; " but till synagogues were established 
 in every part of the country after the captivity, 
 there were no regular weekly assemblies for listening 
 to the reading and exposition of the Scriptures 
 and for uniting in common prayer. When the 
 people were rebuked for breaking the fourth 
 commandment, they were rebuked not because 
 they kept away from " church," but because 
 they did their ordinary work on the Sabbath 
 of the Lord. The moral uses of the day were 
 
264 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 largely secured by keeping it simply as a day of 
 rest. 
 
 Among ourselves, week by week, a nobler event 
 is commemorated, and commemorated in a nobler 
 way. The Jewisb Sabbath celebrated the final 
 victory of the Divine wisdom and power over the 
 ancient chaos, and the Divine joy over the perfected 
 beauty and order of the material world ; the 
 Christian Sunday celebrates the commencement of 
 the great struggle of the risen Christ with the 
 evil and misery of the human race. The Jewish 
 Sabbath was the last day of the week, and was 
 a rest from past work ; the Christian Sunday is 
 the first day of the week, and is a rest in 
 anticipation of coming toil. The one looked back 
 to the consummation of accomplished labours ; the 
 other looks forward and gives strength for labours 
 yet to come. But the instinct of the Church in 
 fencing the Sunday from common work and com- 
 mon care is true and just. The day should be. 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 265 
 
 as far as possible, a day of quietness and peace. 
 Attendance on public worship, thougb the chief 
 duty of the Sunday, is not its sole use ; and 
 when the excitement and labour of the week 
 are cootinued, though in a different form, on 
 the day of rest, some of its most precious benefits 
 are altogether missed. 
 
 Years ago I remember hearing an excellent 
 minister, not distinguished for intellectual vigour, 
 pray on Sunday morning that on that day his 
 congregation might have " intellectual repose." 
 I mockingly thought that, so far as the good 
 man's own sermons were concerned, there was no 
 danger of the repose being distui^bed, and that it 
 would have been better if he had prayed for 
 intellectual activity. I have grown wiser since 
 then, and have come to believe that what many 
 men really want on Sunday, if the Sunday is to 
 make them better and stronger for the week, is 
 for the brain and heart to have rest. For the 
 
266 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 young, the strong, and the speculative, preaching 
 cannot have too much of vigorous and stimulating 
 thought in it ; but there are many weary, sor- 
 rowful people to whom a preacher renders the 
 most efficient service by causing them to " lie 
 down in green pastures," and leading them "beside 
 the still waters." Perhaps the power to win the 
 thoughts of the anxious away from their troubles, 
 and to soothe the irritated and the fretful, is 
 quite as rare as the power of strenuous argument 
 or vehement appeal. 
 
 Our summer holidays, like our Sundays, should 
 give us rest. The month away from home should 
 be the Sabbatic month of the year. The hurrying, 
 eager, unquiet way in which many people spend 
 their holiday, the passion to see everything that 
 is praised in the Guide-book, and to "do" every- 
 thing that ought to be " done," the long weary 
 journeys in close railway carriages, the evenings 
 in crowded coffee-rooms, are very remote from 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 267 
 
 tliat ideal peace and tranquillity wliicli most of 
 US need quite as mucli as eliange of scene and 
 physical exercise. In our common life " tlie world 
 is too much with us." Wisdom 
 
 " Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, 
 Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation, 
 She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, 
 That, in the various bustle of resort. 
 Were all too-ruffled, and sometimes impaired." 
 
 But what do most of us, in these times, know 
 of solitude ? How many hours have we in the 
 week for "contemplation?" The "wings" of our 
 souls are not only "ruffled" and "impaired," they 
 are almost useless, and refuse their proper func- 
 tions. Our intellectual faculties and our spiritual 
 affections both suffer from the incessant turmoil 
 and anxiety in which we are obliged to hve ; and 
 both the intellect and the heart might be, and 
 ought to be, the better for the quiet days 
 which are within our reach when the summer and 
 autumn come. 
 
268 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 Not that I tliink it would be at all a profitable 
 way of spending a holiday to determine to master 
 the elements of a new science, or to devote three 
 or four hours every day to the declensions, con- 
 jugations, and vocabulary of a new language. 
 But every man who was a student in his youth 
 is conscious, I suppose, of the difiiculty, when the 
 strain of active life is fully upon him, of securing 
 time for that deliberate and thoughtful reading 
 of a great book, which often constitutes an epoch 
 in the history of our intellectual development. 
 The fragmentary and interrupted reading, which 
 is all that is possible to nine men out of ten 
 when they are at home, does very little for them ; 
 and the more serious and vigorous studies, which 
 a few men attempt to carry on when their brains 
 are wearied with the work of the day, are not 
 much more fruitful. There are fastidious books, 
 which ask for a mind perfectly fresh, and sensitive 
 to every subtlety of thought and every grace of 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 269 
 
 expression ; there are jealous books, wliicli are 
 impatient of every rival, and reject our homage 
 altogether if we cannot bring them an undivided 
 soul. It is useless for a physician to try to read 
 " Comus " in his carriage, or for a clerk in the 
 City to take " In Memoriam " with him on the 
 top of an omnibus. De TocqueviUe's " Democracy 
 in America " might as well not be read at all as 
 read at night, with a mind continually turning 
 aside to the day's vexations and annoyances. But 
 let any one of these books be put into the port- 
 manteau when starting for Scotland or the Lakes, 
 and, if there must be lighter reading too, one of Sir 
 "Walter Scott's best novels, or one of George Mac- 
 donald's ; and, if the traveller knows how to read, 
 he will return home not only with vivid memories 
 of rugged mountains and peaceful waters, but 
 conscious that his whole intellectual life has been 
 wonderfully quickened and stimulated. He has 
 travelled with Milton, with Tennyson, or with 
 
270 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 the profoTindest of political pMosopliers, and, in 
 his lighter moods, has listened to the wisest and 
 most charming of modern story-tellers. We cannot, 
 when we are at home, live with a book for a 
 whole month — we can do it when we are away; 
 and what took a great author months or years 
 to write, can hardly reveal to common men all 
 its wisdom and all its beanty in a hasty reading 
 which is over in a few hours. 
 
 There is, however, a still higher use to which 
 a month's holiday may be well applied : we may 
 play the part of Socrates to our own minds. Since 
 the beginning of the sixteenth century, I suppose 
 there was never a time when the intellect of 
 Europe was agitated by so many fierce and con- 
 flicting influences as at the present moment, and 
 there has certainly never been a time since then 
 when men of active intelligence were so likely to 
 be swept away by currents of speculation, without 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 27I 
 
 knowing either their original source or their 
 direction and ultimate issue. Our popular literature 
 is penetrated through and through \Yith the prin- 
 ciples of hostile philosophies and creeds. Mill and 
 Hamilton, Comte and Hegel, the gross materialism 
 of the enfant s ])erdus of Positivism, and a vague 
 dreamy spiritualism — you come across them all, 
 under the strangest disguises and in most unex- 
 pected places. 
 
 A keen, clever man, without much time for 
 systematic thought, is struck with an article in 
 the columns of a newspaper or the pages of a 
 review; he thinks over it at odd moments, talks 
 about it at a friend's dinner-table, and gradually 
 makes it his own. He does not inquii-e on what 
 ultimate theory of the universe the speculations 
 which have fascinated him must rest, or with 
 what parts of that system of truth which seems 
 to him most certain they are altogether irrecon- 
 cilable. He is charmed by the beauty or ingenuity 
 
272 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 or grandeur of the new ideas, or they seem to 
 solve difficulties which, have troubled him, or to 
 afford useful and available aids to an upright 
 and noble life ; and therefore, without inquiring 
 where they came from and what kind of a 
 " character " they bear, and whether they have 
 disreputable and vicious connections, he receives 
 them at once. They have a pleasant look, a gra- 
 cious manner, a musical voice, a dignified bearing, 
 and he never dreams of suspecting them. But, 
 once securely lodged, they soon gather their friends 
 and confederates about them ; the whole clan 
 gradually assembles. The man finds that some- 
 how — he does not know how — his whole way of 
 looking at the world has been changed, or else he 
 is living in a new universe. The " everlasting 
 liills " themselves, with whose majestic outlines he 
 was so familiar, have melted away, and the old 
 constellations have vanished from the sky. The 
 change may be for the better ; perhaps he has 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 273 
 
 parted only witli delusions, and has risen into the 
 region of realities : but such vast revolutions ought 
 not to be the work of accident and chance. 
 
 Would it not be well for those who are con- 
 scious that they are intellectually alive, and that 
 they are powerfully influenced by the speculations 
 and controversies by which they are surrounded, to 
 try and find out, during their summer holidays, 
 to what quarter of the troubled ocean of human 
 thought they are drifting? They resolutely believe, 
 as yet, in the eternal and infinite difference between 
 right and wrong : are they insensibly yielding to 
 a philosophy in which that difference virtually 
 disappears? They think that nothing could per- 
 suade them to abandon their faith in moral 
 responsibility, and to contradict the clear testi- 
 mony of consciousness to the freedom of the will : 
 are they sure that the silent but inevitable de- 
 velopment of theories by which they have been 
 greatly charmed, ^vill not necessitate the denial of 
 
274 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 both ? Is tlieir faith in a personal Grod quite 
 safe ? If the ideas which have come to us from 
 books, from conversation, from sermons, from soli- 
 tary meditation, are all true, they will be the 
 better for being thoroughly organized, and considered 
 in their mutual relations, their original grounds, 
 and their final results. If they are false, if they 
 are destructive of truths and laws to which our 
 own consciousness and the history of the human 
 race bear irresistible witness, the sooner they are 
 expelled from the mind the safer for ourselves 
 and for all with whom we have anything to do. 
 
 The highest end of all to which protracted leisure 
 can be applied remains to be illustrated. For a 
 month, for six weeks, we cease to be merchants or 
 lawyers, manufacturers or tradesmen, preachers or 
 physicians, and become men. We cast off the 
 occupations and cares which limit and restrain tLe 
 free action of our nature through the greater part 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 27$ 
 
 of the year, and may, if we please, rise beyond the 
 control of " things seen and temporal," and live 
 for a time in untroubled and uninterrupted fellow- 
 ship with " things unseen and eternal," Our sum- 
 mer holiday, or part of it, may be a kind of 
 "spiritual retreat." 
 
 There are many people, no doubt, who only be- 
 come more restless when they are obliged to be 
 still. They cannot escape from their counting-houses, 
 their banks, their conflicts with trades' unions, their 
 legal troubles, except by violent physical exertion 
 or the strongest stimulant which they can get from 
 travel in strange countries and sight-seeing in 
 strange cities. Unless they are climbing mountains 
 or grinding over glaciers, or stirred by the pleasant 
 excitements which come from listening to a foreign 
 tongue and watching the unfamiliar manners of a 
 foreign people, they might as well be at home. 
 Every man must judge for himself, and find out 
 how he can best get his brain quiet and run the 
 
 T 2 
 
276 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 whole current of Ms thoughts out of its accus- 
 tomed channel. But even those persons who would 
 not be able to shake themselves free from their 
 common cares, if they spent all their holiday in a 
 quiet country inn, among the elms and oaks and 
 corn-fields of their own country, or in a lone farm- 
 house among the silent hills, might be able to 
 devote a few days or a week to tranquil religious 
 thought, when they have fairly got away from the 
 steam and the stir and the tumult which followed 
 them till they were five hundred miles distant from 
 home. 
 
 It is to be feared that some Christian men return 
 to their ordinary life with less devoutness and spi- 
 ritual intensity than when they left it. While they 
 were away, public worship was not regularly at- 
 tended, private prayer was offered hurriedly, and 
 Holy Scripture was read carelessly or not at all. 
 Their temper is better, and they are more kindly 
 and generous, from the brief interruption of common 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 277 
 
 duties ; but their vision of God is none the clearer. 
 They have not escaped from the entanglements 
 which, even in their devontest moments, keep them 
 among the lowest ranks of the hierarchy of wor- 
 shippers around the eternal throne. 
 
 And yet, when they are hurried and pressed by 
 the incessant claims of their profession or trade, 
 they often sigh for days of solitary thought and 
 unbroken communion with Christ. They sometimes 
 think that if they could only contemplate more 
 steadily and continuously the august and majestic 
 realities of the invisible world, they might be able 
 to live a nobler and more saintly life. They feel 
 that " the mighty hopes that make us men " must 
 be firmly grasped by sustained and undistracted 
 thought, if they are to have power to subdue the 
 inferior but vehement excitements by which day 
 after day they are swept helplessly along. But 
 they have no time or strength or stillness for lofty 
 meditation. They wish they had. They envy the 
 
278 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 people who have more quietness and leisure, and, 
 conscious of the difficulty of mastering the world 
 while engaged in its conflicts and surrounded with 
 its tumult, half suspect that ideal saintliness is 
 possible only in monastic seclusion. 
 
 Why do not such men spend a few of the bright 
 calm hours of their yearly rest in that prolonged 
 spiritual meditation and in those acts of more 
 intense devotion, in which they cannot engage at 
 other times ? Their feet are free to wander now 
 along the remoter and less familiar paths of religious 
 thought. The noise of the distant world of care 
 and toil is hushed, and they may listen to the voice 
 of God. They have time for the steadfast contem- 
 plation of the burning splendours of the divine 
 nature, and may catch the fervour and inspiration 
 of cherubim and seraphim, who have nearest access 
 to the infinite glory. They may invite by patient 
 expectation, and by the penitent and humble con- 
 fession of weakness, the baptism of the Holy Spirit 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 279 
 
 and of fire. They may anticipate the final judg- 
 ment. They may see afar off the palaces of heaven, 
 and the nations of the saved walking in white 
 raiment and crowned with immortal honour and 
 blessedness. They may find that even here, there 
 is "fulness of joy" in the presence of God, and 
 that the light of His countenance can surround 
 the devout soul with celestial glory. 
 
 No Christian man need find it difficult to make 
 this lofty use of summer leisure. It is not the 
 faculty for creating striking and original lines of 
 thought that is necessary. We may all " wait upon 
 God ; " and it is by waiting on Him, not by elabo- 
 rating grand and splendid conceptions of Him, that 
 we "renew" our "strength." If spiritual impulse 
 and power were derived from the reflex action 
 on the heart, of our own intellectual activity 
 in the regions of divine truth, the measure of our 
 religious earnestness would be determined by the 
 vigour and brilliance of our intellectual faculties, 
 
28o WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 and persons unexercised in abstract thought would 
 be placed at a grievous disadvantage. But the 
 simplest truths, when they lead us direct to God, 
 answer all the practical purposes of the most pro- 
 found thoughts of theologians. A single parable 
 of our Lord's, a well-known promise of mercy and 
 strength, any one of the divine attributes considered 
 in its most obvious aspects and revelations, is 
 enough to open our whole nature to the tides of 
 divine life and joy. The cry of the heart after 
 God will surely be answered; and, allowing for 
 rare and abnormal conditions of the spiritual nature, 
 the Christian man who longs to live and move and 
 have his being in God, has only to separate himself 
 for a time from the agitations and pursuits of his 
 secular life, and he will find himself surrounded 
 with the innumerable company of angels and in 
 the very presence of the Highest. 
 
 Would not the pleasure as well as the lasting 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 281 
 
 profit of a summer holiday be almost infinitely aug- 
 mented, if part of it at least were set apart and 
 consecrated to this tranquil yet intense contempla- 
 tion of God and of the heaven where God dwells ? 
 There are some men, I am told, who, when they 
 come home after a month's absence, seem to have 
 forgotten everything about it except the bills they 
 have paid, the dinners they have eaten, the wines 
 they have drunk, and, if they have been abroad, 
 the strange customs of the countries they have 
 visited. There are others whose memory is eni'iched 
 for all coming years. They can recall the state- 
 liness and majesty of ancient cathedrals, the splen- 
 dour of imperial palaces, the look of streets and 
 houses which have become famous in the histoiy of 
 Europe, the awfal grandeur and chaotic waste of 
 mountains they have climbed, the dazzling glory of 
 wonderful sunsets, the changing lights which have 
 made river or lake look like a dream of fairy-land. 
 Happier still are those who in addition to such 
 
282 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 memories as these, can recall how in mountain 
 solitudes it seemed as if the heavens opened and 
 they talked to God face to face ; or how when alone 
 by the sea-shore, mists and clouds which had sur- 
 rounded them for years suddenly broke and melted 
 away, and the divine goodness or the divine justice 
 stood visibly revealed. Pleasant glens and lonely 
 paths among the hills will henceforth have ever- 
 lasting associations, and will be vividly recalled 
 when the solid earth has melted with fervent heat ; 
 for when eternity comes we shall remember most 
 distinctly and most gratefully, not the places where 
 we accumulated our wealth or won our transient 
 social triumphs, but those where we resolved to live 
 a holier life and received strength to do it. 
 
 Used wisely and earnestly, every successive sum- 
 mer holiday might leave us with larger and nobler 
 thoughts of God, with a loftier ideal of character, 
 with every devout affection more fervent, and every 
 right purpose invigorated and confirmed. If to 
 
SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 
 
 secure sucli results as these it is necessary to keep 
 within the four seas instead of rushing hurriedly 
 over Germany, Switzerland, and France, if it is 
 necessary for those who are taking their holiday 
 in England to leave some famous places in the 
 neighbourhood unseen and some customary excur- 
 sions unaccomplished, will not the sacrifice receive 
 abounding compensation ? 
 
XII. 
 
 CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 
 
 X7"EAR after year, in one generation after another, 
 through century after century. Christian hearts 
 in every land seem to hear once more the song of 
 the angels who announced to the shepherds of Beth- 
 lehem the birth of our Lord. The celestial chorus 
 is caught up by new nations, sung on new shores, 
 and in strange tongues : — 
 
 " Like circles widening round, 
 
 Upon a clear blue river ; 
 Orb after orb, — the wond'rous sound 
 
 Is echoed on for ever : 
 Glory to God on high, on earth be peace 
 And love towards men of love, salvation and release." 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 285 
 
 Here in England we all keep Christmas — 
 Romanists and Protestants, Churclimen and Dis- 
 senters, Wesleyans and Baptists. I have a strong 
 suspicion that even the members of the Society of 
 Friends eat roast-beef and set fire to their plum- 
 pnddings on the twenty-fifth of December. The 
 pleasant season brings joy to all sorts and conditions 
 of men ; to rich and poor ; to old and yonng ; to 
 boys and girls, who have just escaped from Greek 
 paradigms and Czemy's exercises ; and to tired 
 men of business, who hardly get another holiday 
 all the year through. The workhouse, the lunatic 
 asylum, and the prison are bright with the red 
 berries and rich dark green of the holly, and 
 savoury with the steam of sumptuous fare. 
 
 There are some people who are not quite sure 
 whether this feasting and gaiety are altogether right 
 and Christian. Perhaps they are not the more 
 likely to spend Christmas quietly because of their 
 scruples ; but they go to the houses of their 
 
286 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 friends and receive tlieir friends at their own table, 
 witli a secret discomfort, of wHcli they are only 
 just conscious themselves, and which they never 
 think of acknowledging to others. If any man sus- 
 pects that his religious life is injured by Christmas 
 entertainments, he should give them up altogether. 
 " Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." I think that, 
 so far from their being " unspiritual " and "worldly," 
 these meetings of relatives and friends are among 
 the most legitimate sources of recreation and hap- 
 piness ; that a pleasant dinner, cheerful conversation, 
 a Christmas Carol and an old English Madrigal, 
 are far less likely to make a man selfish and 
 irreligious, than a day behind the counter or on 
 the Exchange. But whoever thinks otherwise should 
 be careful not to outrage his moral convictions. 
 Whatever else is right or wrong, a weak yielding 
 to common customs, with an uneasy suspicion that 
 they are not quite innocent, must be mischievous. 
 The people to whom Christmas does most injury — 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 287 
 
 I say nothing of those who are guilty of gluttony 
 and excess — are those who comply with the usual 
 habits of society, and are doubtful, all the time, 
 whether these habits are consistent with the grave 
 earnestness which should distinguish the Christian 
 chai'acter. 
 
 But most of my readers are free from scruples 
 of this kind, and entertain their friends with 
 a clear and healthy conviction that they are not 
 on doubtful or perilous ground. There are some 
 follies and sins, however, committed at Christ- 
 mas-time, which every good man will wish to 
 avoid. 
 
 One of the worst is the folly and sin of ostenta- 
 tion. People belonging to every class of society 
 may be guilty of it. A duke may be ostentatious 
 as well as a rising manufacturer; a clerk living in 
 a house, for which he pays twenty pounds a year, as 
 well as a successful tradesman who has spent three 
 or four thousand pounds in building and furnishing 
 
288 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 his new villa. The desire of making a show, of 
 pretending to unreal wealth, or displaying wealth 
 which has been honestly won, the folly of assuming 
 the manners and habits which mark a social rank 
 higher than our own, vanity in one form or another, 
 is a sin which all sorts of men may commit, and 
 a sin to which this time of the year brings many 
 and strong temptations. 
 
 By giving an ostentatious entertainment you do 
 not deal fairly with your guests. It is supposed 
 that you invite them to your house to give pleasure 
 to them — not to display your own grandeur. They 
 come to be entertained, not to be dazzled, oppressed, 
 and humbled by your magnificence. The happiest 
 and merriest parties on Christmas Day are at 
 those houses where the dinner is not very 
 much better than that which is served at other 
 times, and where the host and hostess have no 
 anxiety lest any special and unusual arrangements 
 should break down. There are really very few 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 289 
 
 inflictions more irritating than to have to sit at 
 table, vnth the consciousness that the master of the 
 house and the mistress are too much occupied with 
 thinking about how their entertainment is to be 
 safely carried through, to enjoy it themselves, or to 
 have much thought about the enjoyment of theii- 
 friends. Their nervousness is infectious. You ex- 
 pect every moment some unfortunate accident ; you 
 feel that their temper is being chafed by one 
 mistake and mishap after another, and you wonder 
 what will happen next. If they had only tried to 
 do half as much they would have given twice the 
 pleasure. 
 
 This ostentation is a sin as well as a folly. It is 
 one of the signs and results of that restlessness and 
 petty ambition which is sure to be driven out of 
 the soul by habitual communion with God, and a 
 viWd faith in things unseen. It belongs to the 
 very essence of what the New Testament writers 
 call " worldliness." It is inconsistent with sim- 
 
 u 
 
290 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 plicity of heart, with humihty, with thorough 
 sincerity. It is the effect of a bad moral condi- 
 tion, and, if indulged in, will be the cause of 
 further deterioration. It is a thing not to be 
 laughed at merely, but to be repented of, confessed, 
 and forsaken. 
 
 Closely connected with the sin of ostentation is 
 the sin of extravagance. It is perfectly right for a 
 man with a good income to entertain his friends 
 bountifully. It is an expression of his kindliness, 
 and is intended to promote their enjoyment. The 
 ointment which might have been sold for three hun- 
 dred pence and given to the poor was not wasted, 
 for it was consecrated to the highest use ; it ex- 
 pressed the homage of Mary's heart for her Lord. 
 Many a dinner which is given on Christmas Day 
 to a dozen people costs as much as good whole- 
 some food that would satisfy the appetite of a 
 hundred hungry men ; but I am not disposed to find 
 fault. If it be a duty to care for the poor, it is a 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 29I 
 
 duty also to give liappiness to onr cMldren and 
 friends. 
 
 But it is possible to lavish money in ways that 
 bring no enjoyment — to double the expense of a 
 dinner party with no corresponding increase of its 
 pleasantness ; and this is mere extravagance and 
 waste. 
 
 Extravagance is specially blamable — it becomes a 
 positive crime — when men are doubtful whether the 
 luxuries on their table will not have to be paid for 
 with other people's money. 
 
 " It's of no use saving cheese-parings ; the differ- 
 ence between ten pounds and twenty, for a dinner 
 party, can make no difference to my creditors if a 
 crash must come ; we may as well be happy as 
 long as we can." This is how some people 
 reason at Christmas time, and very miserable 
 reasoning it is. They will find, if they fail, that 
 however much pity they may win for unfortunate 
 speculations, very small extravagances will provoke 
 
 n 2 
 
292 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 great bitterness. They may be pardoned for want 
 of caution in tlieir business ; they will be mercilessly 
 condemned for luxurious self-indulgence at their 
 table. The instinctive indignation against an extra- 
 vagant bankrupt is sound and healthy; by his want 
 of judgment, or by the misfortunes w^hich brought 
 great losses, he suffered himself more heavily than 
 any one else ; by the extravagance, which, perhaps, 
 can make no appreciable difference in his balance- 
 sheet and dividend, his creditors are the only 
 sufferers. 
 
 There should be some proportion between the cost 
 of our entertainments and the amount we give 
 away, as well as between the cost of our entertain- 
 ments and the amount of our income. Not a few 
 people who " profess and call themselves Christians," 
 spend as much on their Christmas parties as 
 they have contributed all the year through, for the 
 relief of human suffering, the instruction of the 
 ignorant, and the diffusion of the GosidcI. Fifteen 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 293 
 
 pounds for a single dinner, and one guinea a year 
 for foreign missions ; wine on your table at seventy 
 shillings a dozen, and half a sovereign against your 
 name in the list of contributions to a hospital ; 
 twenty people feeding at your table on Christmas 
 Day, and no poor children better taught or better 
 clothed through your charity ; your health drunk in 
 champagne or sparkling hock, and no blessings in- 
 voked on your head by the orphan or the widow ; — 
 these things are not very consistent with the pro- 
 fession that Christ is the example of holy living as 
 well as the sacrifice for sin. Men strain their 
 resources to give their friends a pleasant evening, 
 and are wonderfully cautious when their benevolence 
 is appealed to. It is a curious question, how it is 
 that bad times have so much effect on charitable 
 gifts, and so slight an effect on Christmas dinners. 
 If men can afford to give so little away, they 
 cannot afford to treat their guests so lavishly. 
 
 It is worth while, too, to consider how much 
 
294 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 mischief expensive entertainments may inflict npon 
 your friends. Tlie people you invite to your table 
 think tliat tliey must give you as good as you give 
 them, — they do not like to be outdone. The style 
 of your hospitality determines theirs. Expenses 
 which you can hardly afford, some of them may 
 find it still harder to bear; or, at least, what is out 
 of proportion to your income and to your charity, 
 will be still more out of proportion to theirs. 
 
 It is one of the duties which we owe to society 
 in these days to avoid all complicity with the 
 perilous folly of constantly augmenting the cost of 
 living. The grotesque doctrine that it is good for 
 trade, and promotes the wealth of the country, to eat 
 and drink as much as we can, to wear fine clothes 
 and lay down costly carpets, is an error which it 
 belongs to the political economist to refute. No 
 one will ever advance it as an apology for extrava- 
 gance who wishes to have credit for even the most 
 elementary acquaintance with economical science. 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 
 
 295 
 
 To deny the law of gravitation, or to maintain that 
 the earth is the centre of the solar system, is not 
 a plainer proof of ignorance than to affirm that we 
 increase the riches of the community by consuming 
 them. But the moral influence of these habits is 
 worse than the economical. " Plain living and high 
 thinking," — this is what, in these times, every man 
 who respects the dignity of his nature ought to care 
 for. 
 
 " High thinking : " there is not much of this at 
 Christmas parties, but might not the talk be a little 
 less weak and worthless ? How to get twenty 
 people to spend an evening together pleasantly is 
 a sore difficulty with many good Christians. Con- 
 versation is not an art in which we English excel ; 
 our very language, when compared with that of 
 our neighbours across the Channel, is a sign of our 
 inferiority. Men that speak well in public are often 
 incapable of conversing with any ease. Men with 
 large information are often unable to convey it to 
 
296 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 others except in a formal lecture, and we liave no 
 desire to listen to lectures when we meet our 
 friends. Just as many of us, wdth our stiif limbs 
 and unequally developed muscles, are incapable of the 
 free exercises of the gymnasium, many of us are in- 
 capable of that relaxation and play of mind which 
 are the charm of conversation. "The flow of soul" 
 is what the middle- class Englishman knows very 
 little about ; our " souls " are more like sluggish 
 canals than sparkling trout-streams. Medical stu- 
 dents and solicitors under forty can talk. Here and 
 there a clever, well-read woman can fill a room with 
 pleasant music, talking herself and making other 
 people talk too. But a party of well-to-do English 
 people is generally rather a dreary affair. Scotchmen 
 are keen at logic. Irishmen are good at fun, but 
 Englishmen of the prosperous respectable class are 
 seldom lively. Coleridge, indeed, said that he found 
 more serious and intelligent conversation among 
 tradesmen and manufacturers than among professed 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 297 
 
 literary men. But Coleridge is hardly an authority 
 on this subject. What he wanted was good listeners ; 
 he prefen^ed having all the talking to himself; and I 
 can quite believe that cultivated and thoughtful men 
 of business were more inclined to listen to him 
 patiently than men whose constant occupation was 
 to think and write, and who, therefore, required in 
 society rest rather than instruction. Anyhow, there 
 are few parts of this country in which people do 
 not complain that very sensible and well-informed 
 men are miserably helpless in conversation. 
 
 It would not be difficult to anticipate nine-tenths 
 of the talk which is likely to be heard at most of 
 the dinner-tables of my English readers next Christ- 
 mas. The best and most refreshing of all, perhaps, 
 will be among brothers and sisters and old school- 
 mates, who will talk of the years which are fast 
 drifting out of sight and out of memory — of boyish 
 pranks and girlish vanities — of old schoolmasters and 
 old games — of the successes and failures of those 
 
298 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 whose lives began together, but who are now scat- 
 tered tlirough remote lands, and separated still more 
 widely by differences of creed, of character, and of 
 fortune ; sad thoughts and happy thoughts will 
 mingle pathetically in the review, some having done 
 so well who it was feared would do so ill, some 
 having gone so grievously wrong with whom life 
 began so brightly: the solemn memory of the dead 
 will check the light-heartedness of the living. Young 
 mothers will talk of their babies, maidens will be 
 " chaffed " about their absent lovers, the prosperous 
 uncle will be congratulated on his horses, and will 
 tell in return how many pounds of grapes he has 
 got off his favourite vine. Then there will be 
 the price of meat, and the fluctuations of Railway 
 Stock, and Lord Derby's prospects, and Mr. Bright's 
 alleged violence, and the embroidered dresses and 
 sweet perfumes which have filled all the nursemaids 
 with admiration in some neighbouring Ritualistic 
 church. 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 299 
 
 Of religious conversation, properly so called, there 
 will be very little. There is an impression, indeed, 
 among those who know very little of evangelical 
 Christians, that, wlienever we spend an evening to- 
 gether, the Bible is brought out as soon as coffee 
 has been served, and that the rest of the time is 
 spent in reading an epistle and in prayer. Not long- 
 ago a very intelligent and excellent Mend of mine 
 was telling me that in his judgment this practice, 
 which he supposed was universal, both among evan- 
 gelical Churchmen and evangelical Nonconformists, 
 was one of the injurious results of an exaggerated, 
 pietism. I was obliged to tell him that, so far as I 
 knew, evenings of this kind were very rare. To 
 inquire how it is that free talk about religion has 
 become so unfrequent among us, might suggest lines 
 of thought which would caiTy us into the very heart 
 of some of the most important questions in relation 
 to the religious life of modern evangelical Christians, 
 and the history out of which it has sprung. 
 
30O WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 For my part, I decline to accept the coinraon 
 excuse, that religion is too sacred a thing to be 
 spoken of. I do not think that we have any deeper 
 sense of the sacredness of divine things than our 
 fathers had, many of whom were quite unconscious 
 of the difficulty which closes our mouths and 
 condemns us to silence, on subjects which we profess 
 to believe are of the greatest importance to us. 
 Our sense of their sacredness is not at all deeper 
 than that of Continental Christians, whose religious 
 conversation is generally very frank and easy. As 
 a rule, it is not true that those among us who say 
 least are more devout and earnest than those whose 
 hearts are nearer to their lips. There is a pleasant 
 self-complacency in this explanation of the matter, 
 and it becomes all of us who have been accustomed 
 to use it, to ask whether we cannot find a less 
 creditable cause for our silence. 
 
 "Would it not be possible to try whether the 
 conversation at our Christmas parties might not 
 
CHRISTMAS PARTIES. 3OI 
 
 be clieerful, playful, and even merry, and yet not 
 altogether frivolous and useless ? There would be 
 this advantage, at least, in giving religious people 
 a chance of talking about religion — the conversation 
 would assume a higher intellectual character. They 
 know more, and think more, about religion than 
 about most other subjects, except their families and 
 their business. They are more interested in religious 
 truth than in any other truth. If once they could 
 speak about it freely, they would speak their best. 
 Anyhow, might not certain forms of Christian work 
 be talked of when Christian men meet together ? 
 Are not the difficulties of town missions at least as 
 interesting as the blunders of town councils ? Is 
 not a ragged-school as good a subject of conver- 
 sation as a new system of drainage ? Would not 
 the prospects of Christianity in India be as pleasant 
 a topic of speculation as the futui-e of the Italian 
 kingdom ? May not the condition of the poor of 
 the ncighboui'hood suggest a more manly as well 
 
WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 as a more Christian discussion than the movements 
 of the Prince of Wales ? Is not the annual report 
 of a great hospital a better thing to talk about 
 than the gossip of the Court Journal ? Might not 
 the ethics of common business be as interesting a 
 subject as the history of a financial panic and the 
 chances of improvement in the shares of Joint- 
 Stock Companies {Limited) ? 
 
 My conviction is, that nine-tenths of religious 
 people would say that an evening was all the 
 pleasanter and more refreshing for the free dis- 
 cussion of questions like these. It is about these 
 things, after all, that they really care ; about half 
 the topics on which dreary commonplaces are labor- 
 iously exchanged when a dozen men and women, 
 not of the same family, have to spend four hours 
 together, they care nothing. 
 
 But Christmas parties should never be given 
 without thinking of those to whom the luxuries 
 of life and its comforts are denied, and to whom 
 
CHRISTMAS P iV K T I E S. 303 
 
 even the necessities of life are sparingly given. 
 He whose birth we celebrate was bom in a stable 
 and cradled in a manger. In after years, He had 
 not where to lay His head. It is in the life 
 of the poor and the sorrowful that we see the 
 external conditions of His history most nearly re- 
 peated. Literally to bring the lame, the halt, the 
 blind, and the homeless to our tables, might be 
 a very um^eal mode of obeying His precept about 
 the people whom we are to invite when we give 
 a feast ; but to forget them altogether must be 
 directly against the spirit both of that particular 
 command and of His uniform teaching and example. 
 Ko acts of charity can make any Christmas Day, 
 to some whom we all know, what the previous 
 Christmas was. Commercial disasters, loss of work, 
 prolonged sickness, cruel sorrows, death, have dark- 
 ened and made desolate many a home which was 
 bright as the brightest twelve months before. These 
 should be remembered ; and we should regard it 
 
304 WEEK-DAY SERMONS. 
 
 as the best and noblest celebration of the Christmas 
 festival, to attempt to alleviate theii' gloom. Nor 
 should those whose whole life has been mean, 
 wretched, and miserable be forgotten. Even tran- 
 sient acts of mercy to the outcast and the aban- 
 doned may, in some happy instances, prove to be 
 like the passing gleam of that angelic glory which 
 came upon the shepherds eighteen centui'ies ago, 
 and may seem to speak to them, in accents of 
 irresistible tenderness, of that infinite goodness 
 which found its supreme manifestation in the Life 
 which began at Bethlehem in the obscurest poverty, 
 and ended on Calvary in public shame. The 
 best " blessing " for a Christmas dinner is tha 
 invoked by the aged, the lonely, and the destitute 
 on those who have tried to make one day, at least, 
 in the three hundred and sixty- five a festival, not 
 for themselves alone, but for their less fortunate 
 neighbours. 
 
 Woydfall and Kiiidtr rriiiters, JMilTur 1 L:i:ie, Strand, Lundou, W.C. 
 
Princeton Theological , Semna Lib'j|'i« 
 
 1 1012 01245 1664 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 QQii'^mi- 
 
 
 
 
 ; , '■■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A.