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LITURGY AND WORSHIP OF THE 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
Cambridge: 
 
TWELVE DISCOURSES 
 
 >N SUIiJECTS CONNECTED WITH THE 
 
 LITURGY AND WORSHIP 
 
 Cljurclj of (ffttjgknir. 
 
 C. J. *VAUGHAN, D.D. 
 
 MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, 
 CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEE? 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Hon&on : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1873. 
 
 [All Rights restive,/.] 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Tone of the Liturgy 
 
 II. Regeneration 
 
 III. Confession 49 
 
 IV. Absolution 
 
 V. Praise , 0 
 
 VI. The Athanasian Creed .... 13 
 
 VII. Intercession ^ 
 
 VIII. Baptism l8 
 
 IX. Communion 2l 
 
 X. Ordination 
 
 XI. The Burial Service 
 
 XII. Free and Open Churches 
 
 2/3 
 3i r 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 On Subscription and Scruples 
 
 • 347 
 
 II. On the Rubric of the Burial Service . 3 fi 2 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Of the following Discourses four were 
 published in i860 in a work entitled Re- 
 vision of the Liturgy, of which a second 
 Edition is now just exhausted. Four 
 others have appeared in the form of sepa- 
 rate Sermons, delivered on various occa- 
 sions, and published at the time by request. 
 Four are new. All will be found to fall 
 strictly under the present title, Discourses 
 on Subjects connected with the Liturgy and 
 Worship of the Church of England. 
 
 I have placed in an Appendix a short 
 Essay On Subscription and Scrup/es, which 
 
viii 
 
 Preface. 
 
 formed the Introduction to a publication 
 mentioned above. It was written in i860, 
 shortly after a Debate in the House of 
 Lords on Liturgical Revision, and under 
 the influence of feelings which later events 
 have tended somewhat to modify. The 
 suggestions of the Royal Commission on 
 Clerical Subscriptions in 1865; followed by 
 prompt and unanimous legislation, have 
 simplified and disembarrassed the whole 
 subject in a manner scarcely less surprising 
 than it is satisfactory. The long series of 
 loose and cumbrous Subscriptions described 
 in the Essay here reprinted, has now given 
 place to one grave and uniform Declara- 
 tion, I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles 
 of Religion, and to the Book of Common 
 Prayer, and of Ordering of Bishops, Priests, 
 and Deacons: I believe the doctrine of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland, 
 
Preface. 
 
 IX 
 
 as therein set forth, to be agreeable to the 
 Word of God: and in Public Prayer and 
 Administration of the Sacraments I will 
 use the form in the said Book prescribed, 
 and none other, except so far as shall be 
 ordered by lawful autliority. Such an as- 
 surance is no more than may reasonably 
 be asked of those who are to minister in 
 the Congregation : its adoption is in per- 
 fect harmony with the principles advocated 
 in this Essay at a time when it was easier 
 to desire than to hope. 
 
 The mind of the Church being thus 
 tranquillized on a topic of perpetual per- 
 sonal irritation, we may trust that another 
 Commission, now sitting on Rubric and 
 Ritual, will prosecute its labours in the 
 same general direction with like tenderness 
 and with equal success. Much may be 
 effected, in the cause of future comprehen- 
 
x Preface. 
 
 sion and present charity, by a Rubrical 
 modification without any Liturgical change. 
 
 In republishing in this Volume a Dis- 
 course on the Athanasian Creed, I do not 
 wish to be understood as expressing a 
 very strong opinion as to the necessity of 
 enforcing its use in the public Services of 
 the Church. One great branch of the An- 
 glican Communion, the Episcopal Church 
 of America, has removed the Athanasian 
 Creed from her Service Book, without im- 
 pairing her reputation for orthodoxy. For 
 myself, I should regret its disuse on the 
 three great Festivals (at least) of our 
 Christian Year. Yet I had rather that it 
 were retained in the Prayer-Book, like the 
 Articles themselves, as a perpetual, if silent, 
 record of the definitive conclusions of Ca- 
 tholic Theology, than that it should be 
 pared down into a tame and conventional 
 
Preface. 
 
 xi 
 
 utterance of the popular creed of the nine- 
 teenth century. If in some few of its clauses 
 it may seem to trespass upon the debatable 
 ground between candour and courtesy, or to 
 speak the truth not quite in love 1 ; in many 
 more it is a salutary witness against our 
 prevalent vagueness of thought, laxity of 
 belief, and indifference of feeling. Still it 
 must be allowed that a Church reading the 
 Nicene Creed is no renegade if she silences 
 the Athanasian : the express words of the 
 8th Article will still claim for the Confes- 
 sion of our Christian Faith, commonly 
 called The Creed of Saint Athanasius, 
 the thorough reception and belief of Eng- 
 lish Churchmen : and it may be at least 
 worthy of consideration, whether, if the 
 reading be no longer enforced, an option 
 at least might not be given to the offi- 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 15. 
 
xii 
 
 Preface. 
 
 dating Minister — by the simple substitu- 
 tion of may for shall in its Rubric — as to 
 its use on certain occasions in the Public 
 Worship of the Church. 
 
 In reference to another Discourse, now 
 republished, that on the Burial Service, 
 I have thought it right to add, in a second 
 Appendix, some later thoughts on the same 
 difficult and troublesome question. No 
 real variance, I think, will be discovered 
 between the one and the other. The sup- 
 plement suggests the addition of some new 
 exceptions to those already recognized in 
 the Rubric ; thus meeting a practical diffi- 
 culty without departing from a fundamental 
 principle. But I am bound to confess that 
 I feel an increasing doubt whether indeed 
 this is a subject on which any change can 
 be introduced without stirring more trou- 
 bles than it could settle. 
 
Preface. x iii 
 
 I earnestly desire that nothing- con- 
 tained in this Volume may minister to 
 any strife or controversy, but only to 
 that godly edifying which is in faith and 
 love. 
 
 DONCASTER, 
 
 December 4, 1867. 
 
DISCOURSE I. 
 TONE OF THE LITURGY. 
 
 V.L. 
 
 I 
 
TONE OF THE LITURGY. 
 
 Isaiah xxx. 15. 
 In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. 
 
 Quietness is the opposite of excitement ; and 
 confidence is the opposite of mistrust. 
 
 The text tells in which of these two pairs of 
 qualities the strength of the Church, and the true 
 tone of the Church's worship, is in all ages and 
 under all circumstances to be found. The words 
 have a peculiar pathos in many ears, as having 
 furnished at once the motto and the keynote of 
 a work which has done more to influence the 
 religion of our generation than any other com- 
 position of uninspired man. 
 
 • Thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of 
 Israel: In returning and rest shall ye be saved ; 
 
 1 — 2 
 
4 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. 
 In returning, not in wandering ; in rest, not in 
 unsettlement ; in quietness, not in excitement ; 
 in confidence, not in mistrust. 
 
 Quietness, not excitement ; confidence, not 
 mistrust. 
 
 I. There is no doubt that excitement has 
 its place in the economy of God. That arous- 
 ing, that stirring up, that quickening from le- 
 thargy, which makes activity a necessity, and 
 existence a delight ; that state of conscious 
 vitality, which makes a boy love his game and 
 a man his sport ; which varies the monotony of 
 life, and sends forth a whole population to catch 
 a sight of royalty or to gaze with breathless 
 intensity on a contest of strength or a feat of 
 skill ; this same thing has its place even in 
 religion. Without excitement there can be no 
 revival ; no rising of a dead Church into a living 
 and moving one. Wherever there has been tor- 
 por, wherever there has been sleep, wherever 
 there has been indifference, there must be ex- 
 citement before there can be energy. The day 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 5 
 
 of Pentecost was a scene of great excitement : 
 mocking bystanders even said, These men are 
 full of new wine 1 . And St Paul seems to recog- 
 nize the parallel between the excitement of in- 
 temperance and the quickened pulsation of grace, 
 when he says in his exhortation to the Ephesians, 
 Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess ; but 
 be filled with the Spirit"'. Or St James : Is any 
 merry ? let him sing psalms 3 . 
 
 We presume not to say how much of even 
 physical excitement may be an accompaniment 
 of the work of grace. When we hear of fainting, 
 of palsy, or catalepsy — of a loss of power of 
 motion, of hysterical utterances, or a suspension 
 of the heart's action — as having attended in any 
 instance upon the work of conviction and con- 
 version, we do not scoff at these things ; we do 
 hot infer either fraud or falsehood ; we do not 
 say, How can the body and the spirit thus mutu- 
 ally act and react? there must be fancy, there 
 must be imposture, there will certainly be disap- 
 pointment and exposure: wc rather say, These 
 
 1 Acts ii. 13. 8 Eph. v. 18. 
 
 3 James v. 13. 
 
6 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 signs are not grace : they may possibly herald or 
 betoken it: let us wait — let its see — let us hope: 
 through these ambiguous symptoms may be wrought 
 out — God grant it— a spiritual resuscitation too 
 much needed. We would pray, for ourselves, to 
 be led by quieter paths: we would desire, for 
 our own Parish and our own Congregation, to 
 be spared these anxious, these obtrusive demon- 
 strations of a power which may be God's, but 
 which may be something widely different: we 
 only say that in quietness, not in excitement, is 
 the strength of the Christian and the strength of 
 the Church ; and we read in all which interrupts 
 that quietness, far, far more of reproof than of 
 satisfaction. 
 
 And when we are asked to hail as signs of 
 extraordinary hopefulness, agencies, on this side 
 and that, of powerful excitement ; when we are 
 taught that no Church is so honoured, and no 
 Town so favoured, and no Ministry so blessed, 
 as that in which excitement is everything ; when 
 we find the whole activity of a generation turned 
 upon the discovery of novel places for a very 
 novel worship, or upon the introduction of an 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 7 
 
 odd and incongruous phraseology into Sermons, 
 for the chance of its arresting some careless or 
 wayside hearer ; when in these and a thousand 
 other ways we see the deification of excitement, 
 as though a wayward and scoffing age could be 
 tricked into religion by mere singularity, irre- 
 verence, and bad taste ; then we are compelled at 
 least to suspend our judgment ; to make enor- 
 mous deductions for motives of idle curiosity, 
 before we can count as gains all the apparent 
 additions to our listeners ; to remember who has 
 said, as though to correct vain expectations and 
 to reassure needless misgivings, In quietness as 
 ice// as in confidence shall be your strength. The 
 normal state of a Church is a state of quietness : 
 the most effective of a Church's agencies will 
 ever be the most tranquil. 
 
 It is impossible, in the light of this revela- 
 tion, to view without some misgiving the ten- 
 dency of our times to an increasingly outward 
 growth of religious principle. 
 
 Every one must be struck with the change 
 which has taken place, within one generation, in 
 the sort of persons claiming to speak and to be 
 
8 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 heard on religious questions. Subjects which 
 once interested only the truly devout, subjects 
 which were the meditation of the few in the 
 study and in the closet, are now topics of dis- 
 cussion at every table, of dissection in every 
 newspaper. Mysteries the most profound, and 
 names the most sacred, are bandied about hither 
 and thither wheresoever men congregate for 
 business or amusement. And some persons see 
 in this profanation — it is something, perhaps, to 
 say for it — a diffusion of public interest in the 
 things of revelation. Let us hope that the in- 
 ference is just. The fact itself must strike some- 
 times with a painful jar upon the ear and heart 
 of the faithful. 
 
 We notice, in particular, a growing desire on 
 the part of the Church itself for opportunities of 
 discussion and debate. Convocation first of all, 
 with its defective organization and its impotence 
 for action, its representation of a small section of 
 the Clergy and none of the Laity, its manacled 
 limbs though not gagged mouth ; and then, as 
 if one such debating society were insufficient, a 
 multiplication of Church Congresses, revealing 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 9 
 
 without healing our divisions, and ingenious in 
 the discovery of grievances which there is no 
 power and no agreement to remedy; these 
 things — I desire not to speak of them presump- 
 tuously, but I would venture to speak plainly — 
 seem to me to be calculated rather to distract 
 than to concentrate the real strength of the 
 Church ; rather to call off attention from the 
 realities of her need than to fix it upon the 
 urgencies of her duty. In quietness, rather than 
 in excitement, shall be your strength. 
 
 And then, as the natural consequence of 
 these fallacious hopes of activity, we observe 
 an increasing number of Christian men, and 
 even of Christian Clergymen, devoting time and 
 strength to questions of Liturgical Revision, in- 
 stead of calmly and quietly plying the practical 
 tasks to which they have devoted themselves. 
 It is of the very nature of this sort of enquiry, * 
 of this application of the microscope to the sup- 
 posed defects or incoherences of our formularies, 
 to become more and more fruitful in dissatisfac- 
 tion, and more and more exhaustive of those 
 energies of which the proper field is action. I 
 
io Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 will venture to say that a Liturgical Reform is 
 one of the practical impossibilities of our time. 
 Rubrical changes there may be ; altered terms 
 of subscription there may be : but not, I believe, 
 and I rejoice to believe, in our time, anything 
 to be called Liturgical Reform. There is no 
 body in existence to which any other body 
 would confide it. Each reformer has his own 
 likings and dislikings, his own impatiences and 
 his own tenacities. Not because the Church 
 is unsound or sickly, but because differences of 
 opinion are strong, and mutual concessions re- 
 luctant, and comprehensiveness of view rare, and 
 profoundness of learning in this age seldom 
 combined with largeness of human knowledge 
 and human dealing — on this account do we give 
 up as unattainable any change which would 
 be certain improvement, or any reconstruction 
 which would indeed make for peace*. 
 
 And believing, as I most firmly believe, 
 that Christ's promise to be with His Church 
 always has not failed nor been disappointed, I 
 see in this very difficulty of Church action a 
 
 1 Rom. xiv. 19. 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. II 
 
 sign of His hand and an indication of His will. 
 I believe Him when He says, Lo, I am with you 
 alway, even unto the end of the world 1 . I believe 
 that that everlasting Presence is to be looked 
 for as much in the prohibitions of His Provi- 
 dence as in the impulses of His Spirit. If He, 
 overruling all events, has so ordered the course 
 of this world as to hem in the legislative activity 
 of His Church in any land by a thousand lets 
 and hindrances which it is not hers, to put aside, 
 I hear Him saying in imperative tones to that 
 Church, Set thyself to thy proper business: do 
 the work of an Evangelist", do the work of a 
 Pastor and Teacher : look to thy people at 
 home, look to thy Missions abroad : leave the 
 fancy work of liturgical perfection to a more 
 convenient season : not in the excitement of 
 debate, but in the quietness of vigorous labour, 
 shall be thy strength, and thy blessing, and thy 
 reward. 
 
 The backbone of the Church of England is 
 its Presbytery; and the work of its Presbytery 
 lies in its Parishes. Every day taken for the 
 1 Matt, xxviii. 20. 3 2 Tim. iv. 5. 
 
12 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 discussion of questions which cannot be settled, 
 and of changes which cannot be effected, is a 
 day lost to the care of souls, and therefore to 
 the true work of the Church. Leave to others, 
 less deeply responsible, less heavily burdened, 
 the perpetual suggestion of fancied improve- 
 ments, or the thankless ostentation of imagined 
 blemishes. Go thou, and prcacli the Kingdom 
 of God 1 . It is not meet that we should leave 
 the Word of God and serve tables' 1 ; and if not 
 the tables of a charitable distribution, still less 
 surely the tables of a theoretical council-room. 
 Appoint others, who have time for it, over this 
 business : but we will give ourselves continually to 
 prayer and to the ministry of the word 3 . Happy 
 that Church whose ministers are inclined and 
 permitted to carry out that resolution ! have 
 taken the measure of conflicting employments, 
 and have deliberately chosen the essential and 
 left the optional! 
 
 Already have we seen reason, in one lifetime, 
 to rejoice that the wheels of Church Legislation 
 are heavily clogged and cumbered. We our- 
 
 1 Luke ix. Co. 3 Acts vi. i. 3 Acts vi. 3, 4. 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 13 
 
 selves can point to matters in which ready or 
 even possible action would have been an evil 
 and not a good. Times change, and circum- 
 stances, and opinions and feelings too : and 
 oftentimes that which would certainly have been 
 altered by one generation, had opportunity been 
 given, is seen by the next generation to be far 
 better, far more safely, and far more wisely 
 retained. These experiences are the corrections 
 of our impatience : they should all be read in 
 the light of the inspired saying before us, In 
 quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. 
 
 And as for the Church and the Church's 
 ministry, so also for each individual soul, would 
 we seek tranquillity and not excitement. We 
 would press upon the remembrance of all — 
 ourselves first of all — the danger of mistaking a 
 delight in hearing, a multiplied attendance on 
 ordinances of worship, or a quickened interest in 
 Christian society and fellowship, for a true, 
 stedfast, earnest walking in the narrow path of 
 eternal life. Everything which brings a man 
 into contact with God Himself, every five mi- 
 nutes of deep heartfelt prayer, every thorough 
 
14 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 conviction of personal sin, every secret self- 
 denying effort after greater grace and more 
 entire devotion, is worth hours and days and 
 months and years of a mere flocking after the 
 multitude to hear eloquent Sermons, or to add 
 one voice to many in the praises of a popular 
 Theology. Deep, deep within, in that secret 
 place of the heart which no stranger enters, is 
 the true work of God done; he who is never 
 there, he who seldom visits that shrine, he who 
 is a foreigner at home, scarcely knowing the 
 affairs of his own most intimate, most real being, 
 can make no amends for this ignorance by a 
 familiarity with all besides, by any frequency of 
 outward devotion or any multiplication of osten- 
 sible exertion. /;/ quietness, not in excitement, 
 shall be your strength. 
 
 2. In quietness, not in excitement ; in con- 
 fidence, not in mistrust. 
 
 I use the word mistrust, rather than doubt, 
 as the opposite of that confidence which is 
 spoken of in the text. For my purpose now is 
 not to touch upon any of those distressing topics 
 of religious speculation which have been the. 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 15 
 
 anxiety and the torment of these latter days. I 
 would rather speak of that spirit of repose and 
 comfort which our Church Liturgy breathes so 
 persuasively, and which a work already referred 
 to has described as the soothing tendency of the 
 Prayer-Book 1 . In confidence, not in mistrust. 
 
 The whole life of many persons, so far as it 
 has any religious aspect, is spent in the enquiry, 
 How do I know that I am accepted ? What 
 assurance have I in trying to worship ? What 
 right have I to lead a Christian life ? Must 
 there not be some preliminary experience, some 
 conscious transaction within me, before I can 
 call God my Father, or presume to approach 
 Him through the Son ? And thus it comes to 
 pass that the first step is never decisively taken, 
 through a long lifetime, into the region of faith 
 and promise ; into the comfort of hope, or into 
 the power of service. 
 
 And I venture to think that this hesitation 
 has, in some cases, been the result of a misstate- 
 ment, or rather a misapplication, of Evangelical 
 doctrine. At a time when long torpor had 
 
 1 Preface to The Christian Year. 
 
1 6 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 turned the Church itself into something most 
 unlike its Divine original, and the Christianity of 
 most Christians was a mere form of godliness 1 , 
 it was natural that holy men of God, roused by 
 His grace into heralds of a soul-stirring Gospel, 
 should address their Congregations on the pre- 
 sumption of a practical heathenism, and apply 
 without limitation or correction to the nominally 
 Christian Community the very words of an 
 inspired Apostle to the philosophers of Athens 
 or the idolaters of Lystra. That was no time, 
 they felt, for drawing careful distinctions between 
 conditions practically identical. Here, as there, 
 were souls sunk in sin, and lives steeped in 
 worldliness. Here, as there, the proclamation of 
 the Cross was the one, the only remedy ; and 
 the theoretical position of the baptized must be 
 overlooked for the time in the actual position of 
 the godless and the sinful. God Himself set His 
 seal to their testimony. That was the pressing 
 want of the time then present. A loud, a solemn, 
 a stirring call to repent and believe the Gospel, 
 was the necessity of the generation : and Theo- 
 
 1 i Tim. iii. 5. 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 17 
 
 logy might wait till Religion was listened to. A 
 large revival and a large extension of the Church 
 of Christ has been the fruit of that truly Evan- 
 gelical Ministry. 
 
 But how was it to be with the children of 
 these converts ? What was the state of a son 
 or a daughter nurtured from infancy in one of 
 these awakened and evangelized homes ? Were 
 they to look forward to a time, not yet come, of 
 conversion and transformation ? Were they 
 to regard themselves, were they to be dealt 
 with, as standing precisely where the Parent 
 stood before his vital change? The question 
 was evaded — was vaguely answered — was met 
 one way in doctrine, and the other way in 
 practice. A marked period of conversion was 
 spoken of as the necessity of every heir of sal- 
 vation. Till that time came, there might be 
 hopeful indications ; but there could be no reality 
 of safety, and no acceptableness of service. 
 Here and there was found a Parent who sa- 
 crificed even the instincts of nature to the logical 
 exigencies of his doctrine. If God was pleased 
 to work, none could let: if God had not so 
 V. L. 2 
 
1 8 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 willed, it was idle to influence. God could call 
 here as well as there ; in the theatre or the ball- 
 room, as well as in the congregation. This fear- 
 ful recklessness was to be found, thank God, 
 seldom ; and only in those who had embraced 
 with a terrible greediness the worst perversions 
 and distortions of a degenerate and debased 
 Calvinism. Far more often, instinct was too 
 strong for Theology ; and a Parent who could 
 not in theory dispense with a tangible conver- 
 sion, was found in practice to regard his child 
 as already within the pale of the Kingdom. 
 The nursery contradicted the pulpit. The child 
 was taught in the nursery that God was his 
 Father, even while he was taught from the 
 pulpit that God was the Father only of the con- 
 verted. 
 
 This vacillation, this conflict between practice 
 and doctrine, could not fail to produce an effect 
 upon minds thus trained. It was the common 
 feeling of the young, that their place within 
 Christ's Church was an ambiguous, if not a 
 usurped one. They never knew how to work, 
 and they never knew how to worship. The 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 19 
 
 stnugth of confidence was denied them. Whether 
 they were accepted, or could only hope to be 
 so — whether they were Christians, when they 
 felt that they were not converts — were questions 
 which they fruitlessly pondered, and were left 
 to themselves to decide. 
 
 It was scarcely wonderful that to minds in 
 this state of suspense a new doctrine (for such it 
 was to them) of Church membership and in- 
 herited privilege came with attractive power. 
 Children of Evangelical Parents— sons in some 
 instances, and daughters too, of Clergymen who 
 had held a foremost place in the maintenance 
 of a purely Gospel doctrine — were swept into 
 the vortex of an excessive ritualism, and at last, 
 too often, into the open communion of an un- 
 iformed and deeply corrupted Church. This 
 was because they found in the one, and still 
 more decisively in the other, an answer to the 
 long-pondered, the agitating enquiry, Am I any- 
 thing to God ? May I worship Him with affi- 
 ance ? Can I work for Him without presump- 
 tion ? That question ought to have been an- 
 swered earlier, answered within our Communion, 
 
20 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 answered from the Church's Catechism, answered 
 from the open Gospels, answered most positively 
 from the Lord's Prayer. You are a child of God 
 by right of a world-wide Redemption : you are a 
 child of God by right of an individual Baptism. 
 Everything which God did in Christ, He did 
 for you : everything which belongs to the sons 
 of God, whether in Atonement or in Grace, 
 whether through Christ's Sacrifice, or through 
 Christ's Spirit, is yours, yours also, yours of 
 right, because you are born into a world which 
 Christ redeemed, because you are incorporated 
 personally into a Church in which the Spirit 
 dwells. 
 
 Now therefore in confidence, not in mistrust, 
 shall be your strength. Doubt not God's act, 
 and doubt not God's promise. You are His 
 son, and He is your Father. When ye pray, 
 say, Our Father 1 . Not by your free-will, but by 
 His, you are admitted already into the blessed 
 company of His people. Believe in Christ's 
 sacrifice : believe, through it, in the forgiveness 
 of your sins. Believe in the Holy Ghost ; and 
 
 1 Luke xi. 2. 
 
Tone of the Liturgy, 21 
 
 claim for yourself that Divine Presence which 
 is the blessing of all who ask it. Live as a 
 forgiven man from your youth up. Live from 
 your youth up as one in whom the Holy Spirit 
 has His temple. Work for God, in a calling 
 worldly or sacred, in daily purity and in daily 
 charity, in special acts of devotion and in the 
 devotion of a life-long consecration ; and doubt 
 not that He, your Father, recognizes and will 
 bless you. Kneel before Him in filial confidence, 
 and commit to Him the keeping of life and soul 
 as unto a faithful Creator and an all-merciful 
 God 1 . In confidence shall be your strength. If 
 you have wandered, return : if you need a radi- 
 cal change, seek and you shall have it: if all is 
 wrong with you, if you are in the far country> 
 come to yourself, retrace your steps with all 
 humility and with all earnestness : even in the 
 far country, remember that you are a son, and 
 in preparing for a return say, / will arise and 
 go to my Father"! These are the rights of the 
 baptized ; and whether saved yet or no, at least 
 you are redeemed. 
 
 1 1 Pet. iv. 19. 2 Luke xv. 1 8. 
 
22 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 Thus the very Church itself, in which we 
 worship, with its proper appurtenances of sacred 
 Font and holy Table, shall be to young and old 
 the sign and sacrament of a fundamental truth. 
 It shall say to us, The redemption is world- 
 wide. It shall say to us, God seals in Baptism 
 upon each one the blessings of that Redemption 
 which He has wrought for all ; God prepares 
 a table in the wilderness 1 for the perpetual 
 refreshment and quickening of all whom He 
 has thus taken to Himself to be His people. 
 That Font, that Table, shall reprove all mis- 
 trust, and inspire all confidence. It shall not 
 teach us — God forbid — to rely upon a sacra- 
 ment for salvation : it shall not say, You have 
 Abraham to your father 2 , and therefore it 
 matters not how you live, you must be ac- 
 cepted : but it shall say, Mistrust not God's 
 will that you should be saved : wait not for 
 a new sign : tarry not for changes within, or 
 interventions from without : start at once, start 
 without fear, in the work of worship and in 
 the work of obedience : waste not precious time 
 
 1 Fsalm lxxviii. 19. 3 Matt. iii. 9. 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 23 
 
 in asking who called or who sent you, but be 
 assured of that love which prevented you with 
 blessing 1 , that love which shall further and 
 crown with grace. In confidence shall be your 
 strength. 
 
 In the firm maintenance of this principle lies 
 the vigour, the consistency, and the peace of a 
 Church. Every man who has once entered it 
 through the appointed door of Christ's Baptism, 
 shall remain in it until he abjures it by apostasy 
 or is expelled from it by an actual or a virtual 
 excommunication. And if in any age Church 
 censures, in the form of penal inflictions, shall 
 have worn out or become impossible; if, con- 
 sequently, many an unworthy son contaminates 
 the home, a Demas loving the world, a Diotre- 
 phes coveting preeminence, or a Simon buying 
 the Holy Ghost with money 2 , still the Church 
 shall suffer it; shall not attempt in this world, 
 by any unauthorized or private judgments, to 
 sever tares from wheat in the growing corn-field, 
 or bad from good in the contents* of the still 
 
 1 Psalm xxi. 3. 
 2 Acts viii. 20. 2 Tim, iv.1'0. 3 John 9. 
 
24 Tone of the Liturgy. 
 
 outspread net 1 . Still, like Apostles of old, she 
 shall take men on their profession, treat as true 
 those who so pronounce themselves, and not 
 hanker after that gift of discerning spirits which 
 God in wisdom (we doubt not) has seen fit to 
 withdraw from the earth. Whosoever lives, ad- 
 mitted and unexpelled, shall worship with the 
 Church: and whosoever dies in this state shall 
 be buried with the Church's burial. She will 
 not pare down, to suit such cases, the words of 
 personal hope in which she consigns to their 
 original earth the bodies of the departed. What 
 a Christian hopes shall be hoped for them: if 
 they belie the hope, theirs the blame. The 
 Church can no more have a Funeral than she 
 can have a Liturgy for the wicked. The wor- 
 ship of the Church in life, the thanksgiving of 
 the Church in death, must be framed on a sup- 
 position of sincerity. In confidence shall be your 
 strength. 
 
 We have touched upon many grave topics : but 
 far above all applications stand the words them- 
 
 1 Matt. xiii. 39, 4-. 
 
Tone of the Liturgy. 25 
 
 selves, which have formed our text. Let your re- 
 ligion be one of quietness: let your religion be one 
 of confidence. Calm, lest it be the creature of cir- 
 cumstance: trustful, lest it be the sport of doubt. 
 Let it look well to its foundation, with a view to 
 the coming flood: let it look well to its anchor, 
 in preparation for the approaching storm. A 
 soul trusting God's faithfulness, and a soul per- 
 sonally dealing with God Himself; a soul that 
 believes because God has spoken, and a soul 
 that has intercourse with God who lives ; is safe 
 in life and in death, safe for time, and safe for 
 eternity. The house of that hope falls not, for 
 it is founded upon a rock 1 . In returning and rest 
 shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence 
 shall be your strength. 
 
 1 Matt. vii. 25. 
 
DISCOURSE II. 
 REGENERATION. 
 
REGENERATION. 
 
 i Peter i. 23. 
 Being born again. 
 
 There is one subject, which has caused much 
 perplexity to the serious, and given a great 
 handle to the scoffer: it is the term now to be 
 examined ; the word Regeneration. 
 
 The word itself occurs but twice in the Scrip- 
 tures. But kindred expressions are found there, 
 which must be taken into account along with it, 
 if we would comprehend the subject. 
 
 Regeneration is a metaphor. And like other 
 metaphors it is capable of more than one appli- 
 cation. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, in this one brief 
 and obvious remark is contained the key to all 
 
30 Regeneration. 
 
 the difficulties of the subject, and the correction 
 of its chief perversions. 
 
 Regeneration is a metaphor. It expresses 
 by a strong figure a great change ; a change so 
 great that it may be compared to that which an 
 infant undergoes when it is born, when it is 
 brought out of darkness and silence and inac- 
 tivity into a world of light and sound and 
 energy. 
 
 Any change important enough to bear the 
 stress of such a comparison, any change that 
 is from evil and towards good, any change by 
 which a living being is transferred from a con- 
 dition of disadvantage or suffering into one of 
 benefit and of happiness, may be designated by 
 the title of Regeneration. 
 
 The writers of the ancient world were not 
 unacquainted with the term before us. When 
 the great Roman orator alludes, in a private 
 letter, to his recent restoration from exile to the 
 comforts and interests of his social and politi- 
 cal life at Rome, he calls that restoration his 
 TraXiyyeveo-ta, his regeneration. And when this 
 same expression was adopted by our Lord and 
 
Regeneration. 3 1 
 
 His Apostles into the vocabulary of the Chris- 
 tian Faith, did it therefore cease to be a me- 
 taphor? Or did it become so restricted in its 
 possible or legitimate uses as to have henceforth 
 but one definite meaning, but one single idea to 
 which it could be applied -without error, or but 
 one shade and degree of that idea to which hence- 
 forth it must be rigidly tied down? Such has 
 been too often the tacit assumption : and out of 
 that assumption has arisen an interminable war 
 of words, in which if there may have been some- 
 thing of real and essential difference between the 
 combatants, there has been far more of mis- 
 understanding and mistake, which would have 
 been instantly cleared away, in many instances, 
 by the repetition of the few words already em- 
 ployed, Regeneration is a metaphor, and, as such, 
 is capable of many applications. One may have 
 applied that metaphor, and another may have 
 refused it, to Christian Baptism: and yet he who 
 applied and he who denied it may have meant 
 all the time, if not precisely the same thing, yet 
 at least two things so slightly differing from 
 each other as to be reducible, by mutual expla- 
 
32 
 
 Regeneration, 
 
 nation and by tranquil consultation, to a har- 
 mony sufficient for practical purposes and high- 
 ly serviceable to the common interests (for they 
 are never really at variance) of charity and of 
 truth. 
 
 I will refer to two or three passages of Scrip- 
 ture, by way of illustration of the remark just 
 made. We will notice first the two places (there 
 are but two) in which the substantive rendered 
 Regeneration is found in the volume of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 St Peter, having just witnessed the departure 
 of the young man who could not be persuaded 
 to give up his riches for Christ, said to our Lord, 
 in a spirit not perhaps wholly free from self- 
 congratulation and self-confidence, Behold, we 
 have forsaken all, and follozved Thee; we have 
 made the sacrifice which the rich young man 
 found to be impossible; what shall we have 
 tJicrcfore x ? what shall be our reward? And 
 Jesus said unto them, Verify I say ten to you, tJiat 
 ye which have followed vie, in the regeneration 
 when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of 
 1 Matt. xix. «7. 
 
Regeneration . 3 3 
 
 His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel^. 
 
 The regeneration when the S071 of Man shall 
 sit in the throne of His glory. Here therefore 
 the term is applied, neither to Baptism, nor to 
 conversion; to nothing past, or capable of be- 
 coming so in this life ; but to a totally different 
 subject, that great renovation and reconstitution 
 of the whole of man's being, which shall accom- 
 pany the second coming of Christ, when the 
 dead shall be raised incorruptible, and God, as 
 never before, shall dwell with us and in us for 
 ever. The Regeneration here spoken of is that 
 glorious change which is described elsewhere by 
 St Peter, as tJte times of restitution of all things, 
 as the times of refreshing which are to come from 
 the presence of the Lord 2 ; by St Paul, as a de- 
 liverance from the bondage of corruption into the 
 glorious liberty of the children of God, for which 
 he says that the whole creation, not the Chris- 
 tian Church only, is, consciously or unconsciously, 
 yet with infallible signs of anxious desire, waiting 
 and watching 3 ; by St John, as the result of the 
 
 1 Matt. xix. ■27, -28. 2 Acts iii. 19, 11. 3 Rom. viii. 19 — 23. 
 V. L. 3 
 
34 Regeneration. 
 
 word of Him that sat upon the throne, Behold, I 
 make all tilings new... Behold, the tabernacle of 
 God is with men, and He will dwell with them, 
 and they shall be His people, and God Himself 
 shall be with them, and be their God; and God 
 shall wipe away all tears from tJieir eyes ; and 
 there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor 
 crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; for 
 the former things are passed away 1 . 
 
 We must never forget that the first applica- 
 tion in Scripture of the word Regeneration is 
 to this great and momentous change which is 
 as yet all future. That remembrance will be 
 enough, of itself, to prevent our ever narrowing 
 the sense of Regeneration to any one definite 
 and exclusive application. 
 
 The word itself is found but once again in 
 Scripture, in the Epistle of St Paul to Titus. 
 Not by works of rigliteonsness which we have 
 done, but according to His mercy He saved us by 
 the washing of regeneration and renewing of the 
 Holy Ghost 2 . The word translated washing 
 should unquestionably be rendered by the term 
 
 1 Rev. xxi. 3—s. s Tit. iii. 5. 
 
Regeneration. 3 5 
 
 laver. By the laver (or bath) of regeneration. 
 Nor can there be much doubt that the reference 
 of the expression there is to the ordinance of 
 Baptism. As our Lord said, He that bclieveth 
 and is baptized shall be saved 1 , so St Paul, ex- 
 panding His words, says, God saved us by these 
 two things ; the laver of regeneration which is 
 Baptism, and the inward renewing of the Holy 
 Ghost. According, to the parallel passage in 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, Having our hearts 
 sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies 
 washed with pure water 1 . According, once more, 
 to the saying of St Peter, Baptism doth also now 
 save us; not the putting away of the filth of the 
 flesh, not the mere outward rite, the sprinkling 
 with water, but the answer (or interrogation) of a 
 good conscience toward God 3 ; the question, Dost 
 tlwu believe in the Son of God? addressed in Bap- 
 tism to one who can answer it from the soul ; the 
 profession of faith accompanying the outward 
 rite, and springing out of the convictions of a 
 changed heart. 
 
 1 Mark xvi. 16. 2 Heb. x. 22. p 
 
 3 1 Pet. iii. 21. 
 
 3-2 
 
3*3 
 
 Regeneration. 
 
 So widely different are the two applications 
 in Scripture itself of a term which controver- 
 sialists assume to be incapable of more than one. 
 
 It will be desirable to add yet two other 
 illustrations of the meaning of Regeneration in 
 Scripture, though the uses of the very word itself 
 are already exhausted. 
 
 In the opening of the first Epistle of St Peter 
 we have this expression : Blessed be tJie God atid 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according 
 to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again (or 
 rather, begat us again, regenerated us) unto a liv- 
 ing hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
 the dead 1 . Here the Resurrection of Christ is 
 described as the Regeneration of Christians to a 
 living hope. No individual feelings, and no in- 
 dividual change, are here brought into view : but 
 Christians are said to have been once for all 
 regenerated by the actual Resurrection of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. That event was the repro- 
 duction, as into a new life, of all who shall be 
 interested in it. As the Regeneration spoken of 
 in St Matthew is all future, so the Regeneration 
 1 i P.et. i. 3. 
 
Regeneration. 37 
 
 spoken of by St Peter is all past. The Resur- 
 rection of Jesus Christ was the Regeneration of 
 the whole Church. It is in virtue of that one 
 event, that all that we have and all that we hope 
 for from God is communicated to us. The event 
 itself was our Regeneration. What can more 
 clearly express to us the freedom of the Scrip- 
 ture phraseology in its application even of this 
 one term ? 
 
 But the subject can in no sense be completed 
 without a distinct, though it be a brief, reference 
 to that great discourse of our Lord with Nico- 
 demus, which alone brings fully into view the 
 most important part of the truth involved in it. 
 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be 
 born (or begotten) again (or from above), lie cannot 
 sec the kingdom of God. Verily, verily, I say 
 unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of 
 the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
 God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and 
 tliat which is bom of the Spirit is spirit 1 . 
 
 He who came to our Lord as Nicodemus 
 did, by night indeed as though ashamed of 
 
 1 John iii. 3, 5, 6. 
 
38 
 
 Regeneration. 
 
 being seen to come, yet with an evident desire 
 to learn of Him, must first be taught how deep 
 a work is needed to make a man a Christian ; 
 no less a work than that of Regeneration itself, 
 of being introduced, as by a second birth, into 
 a new world of thought, feeling, and action. 
 This Regeneration is described as effected by 
 water and by the Spirit. Even as elsewhere the 
 work of Christ on the human soul is described 
 as a Baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire 1 , 
 that is, with the Holy Ghost in the character of 
 fire, burning up corruption, and kindling the 
 soul with a new energy of life and light ; so 
 here the same work is described as a Regenera- 
 tion with water and with the Spirit, with the 
 Holy Spirit in the character of cleansing and 
 purifying water, washing the soul from its de- 
 filements, and renewing it as with a refreshing 
 and invigorating stream. With the Holy Ghost 
 and with fire is the one figure ; with zvater and 
 with the Spirit is the other. And I know not 
 that we need see in the original address to 
 Nicodemus anything of a more formal or ritual 
 
 1 Matt. iii. it. 
 
Regeneration. 39 
 
 character. I know not that the words would 
 convey to his mind more than this idea of an 
 impressive and appropriate figure. If so, the 
 expression there employed, and the appointed 
 sign of water in Baptism, will become two co- 
 ordinate testimonies, the one by word, the other 
 by act, of the same great necessity of an inward 
 and spiritual cleansing. Just as the memorable 
 discourse upon the living bread from heaven 1 , and 
 the broken bread in the ordinance of the Lord's 
 Supper, express, the one in word and the other 
 in act, the same spiritual truth, the necessity that 
 our souls should be sustained in life by receiving 
 into them daily by faith the very presence of 
 their Saviour Christ. 
 
 It may be, however, that in the discourse 
 with Nicodemus we are designed to see (though 
 he could not see it) the twofold condition 
 already referred to, of a Christian's salvation ; 
 the outward ordinance and the inward grace. 
 He who said elsewhere, He that believcth and is 
 baptized shall be saved 1 , may have intended thus 
 early to intimate, and to leave for ever on 
 
 1 John vi. 32—58. 2 Mark xvi. 16. 
 
4 o 
 
 Regeneration. 
 
 record, that Baptism and the Divine Spirit are 
 the joint requirement for admission into His 
 kingdom. Not by the outward sign alone ; for 
 Baptism, like circumcision, to avail anything, 
 must be that of the heart, in the spirit and ?iot 
 in the letter^ : yet not without the outward sign ; 
 for that was Christ's institution, and he who de- 
 spises it trifles with the command of Christ. By 
 one Spirit were we all baptized into one body* : 
 neither the Baptism nor the Spirit can be dis- 
 pensed with : for the two together constitute the 
 Christian's regeneration, and what God has joined 
 man must not sever. Repent, and be baptized 
 every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for 
 the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift 
 of the Holy Ghost 3 . 
 
 We have thus seen the term Regeneration, 
 or its equivalent, employed in four different 
 modes in as many passages of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. Denoting in itself nothing more than a 
 great and radical change, it is applied in Scrip- 
 ture once to the universal effect upon the Church 
 
 1 Rom. ii. 29. a 1 Cor. xii. 13. 
 
 3 Acts ii. 38. 
 
Regeneration. 41 
 
 of Christ's Resurrection, once to the universal 
 effect upon the Church of Christ's second Ad- 
 vent, once to the individual effect of the ordi- 
 nance of Baptism as distinguished from the re- 
 newing of the Spirit, and once to the individual 
 effect upon the soul, either of the Holy Spirit 
 alone in His character of the cleansing water, or 
 else of the conjoint operation upon the soul of 
 the outward baptismal water and the inward 
 cleansing of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 It is not to perplex still further a question 
 already sufficiently intricate, but rather to throw 
 the light of Christian wisdom and love upon a 
 scene of dark and bitter conflict, that I have 
 pointed out these varieties in the Scriptural use 
 of the figure involved in the term Regeneration. 
 The Christian world is divided into two parties 
 of eager and often acrimonious disputants upon 
 the question which they designate as that of 
 Baptismal Regeneration. Assuming that they 
 all mean the same thing by the term thus em- 
 ployed, they are at issue only upon this, whether 
 Scripture and the Church of England represent 
 Regeneration as invariably accompanying Bap- 
 
42 Regeneration. 
 
 tism. And while the impugners of that doctrine 
 are often driven into subtle and disingenuous 
 shifts to explain away terms employed by our 
 Church with sufficient distinctness to preclude 
 reasonable doubt, its champions, with equally 
 or perhaps more injurious consequences, in- 
 terpret the Church's words in a manner which 
 certainly that Church never intended. When 
 the Church, on every completion of the rite of 
 Infant Baptism, addresses the Congregation in 
 the words, Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, 
 that this child is regenerate ; the one party will 
 regard this as at best a charitable hope, destitute 
 of all certainty, and conveying therefore no 
 comfort and involving no practical result ; and 
 the other gives such a sense to the word regene- 
 rate as all must recoil from who remember that 
 the Holy Spirit is not a thing but a Person ; not 
 a material gift which may lie dormant in a dor- 
 mant soul to germinate perhaps years afterwards 
 in a period of consciousness and awakening 
 reason, but a living Agent exercising a myste- 
 rious but real influence upon living agents, 
 present, as to any Scriptural use of that term, 
 
Regeneration. 43 
 
 only where He is operative, felt in His comfort 
 or visible in His fruits. 
 
 If you should ever be taught to put forced 
 constructions upon the words of your Church's 
 Services or Articles, refuse, steadily refuse, to 
 do so. If you do not understand them, confess 
 that : if you do not see their consistency with 
 other Church utterances or with Scripture, sus- 
 pend your judgment until the time comes when 
 you must either declare, or refuse to declare, that 
 you give your heart's assent to the doctrine and 
 ritual of the Book of Common Prayer. But 
 refuse to trifle with yourselves and with your 
 convictions by saying that, when the Church 
 says that a child is regenerate, she means that 
 perhaps, by a separate act of which she knows 
 nothing, he may be or may hereafter be regene- 
 rate ; or that, when taught in her Catechism to 
 declare yourself to be a child of God, a member 
 of Christ, and an inheritor of the kingdom of 
 heaven, you only express your faith in a possi- 
 bility that at some remote day you may become 
 so. 
 
 On the other hand, if you are bidden to be- 
 
44 Regeneration. 
 
 lieve that a change of heart has taken place in a 
 heart which is at present insusceptible of spiri- 
 tual impressions ; in a little infant which has as 
 yet in exercise no affections, passions, principles, 
 or powers of judgment ; refuse there also, refuse 
 resolutely, to be imposed upon by names and 
 forms ; adhere firmly to those dictates alike of 
 conscience and of Scripture which teach you 
 that the Holy Spirit is a living Person, and that, 
 like the wind to which our Lord compares His 
 operation, though thou canst not tell whence it 
 cometh nor whither it goeth, yet at least thmi 
 hearest the sound tlicreof 1 , and judgest of its 
 presence or absence by certain intelligible and 
 infallible signs. 
 
 What shall we say then? Say, as our Church 
 teaches us to say, I believe that every baptized 
 child is regenerate ; is, as the following words 
 explain the meaning, grafted into the body of 
 Christ's Church. Regeneration is a figure, and 
 a figure capable, as we have seen in Scripture, 
 of various applications. It may be applied 
 wherever a real and important change takes 
 
 1 John iii. 8. 
 
Regeneration. 45 
 
 place in a man's moral or spiritual condition. 
 It might be applied — if there were no risk of 
 confusion in such an application — it might be 
 applied with perfect propriety to that greatest 
 of all moral and spiritual changes, by which a 
 sinner returns from the error of his ways and 
 finds forgiveness and rest in Christ. But it may 
 be applied with perfect propriety also — and it is 
 thus that we apply it in the Service for Infant 
 Baptism — to that change by which a new-born 
 infant is taken out of the world of nature and 
 transferred by an ordinance of Christ's appoint- 
 ment into the world of grace ; that change by 
 which the promises made generally to mankind 
 are sealed personally upon him ; by which God 
 in Christ takes him, as it were, aside by himself 
 and sets His mark upon him, promising to do 
 for him all that he needs to keep and to save 
 him, promising to be his Father and to own him 
 as His son. 
 
 Is this a change too trifling to be designated 
 by a term so emphatic ? Little do we know of 
 our own privileges, little do we honour as we 
 ought God's greatest gifts to us, to little purpose 
 
46 Regeneration. 
 
 have we studied the records either of heathen 
 experience or of Christian Revelation, if we 
 allow ourselves thus to judge. Is it nothing to 
 be the subjects of an ordinance instituted by 
 Christ Himself and preserved to us by a Provi- 
 dence eloquent of Divine love? that we have not 
 been left even with a Bible only, to make out 
 what we could of God's purposes towards us and 
 dealings with us, to frame for ourselves our con- 
 ceptions of Him and to settle for ourselves the 
 relation in which we will place ourselves towards 
 Him, but have been, as it were, prevented with 
 the blessings of goodness 1 ; brought, when we 
 were yet unconscious, within the fold of Christ's 
 Church ; shielded and nurtured there during 
 years of incapacity and inexperience ; taught, as 
 we were able to bear it, what it most concerned 
 us to know ; preoccupied in mind and heart for 
 Christ; above all, so placed and so circumstanced 
 that we might be told with truth and with confi- 
 dence from the earliest dawn of reason, that we 
 were already the children of God — made so by 
 Him ; already members of Christ — made so by 
 
 1 Psalm xxi. 3. 
 
Regeneration. 47 
 
 Him ; already inheritors, by right and title, of 
 the very kingdom of Heaven? Place yourselves, 
 but for one moment, in imagination, out of the 
 pale of these blessings ; imagine yourselves de- 
 stitute up to this time of the knowledge of God, 
 of Christ, and of Heaveri ; left to grope your 
 way amongst natural instincts, guesses, and 
 sentiments ; left to find out God by searching 
 for Him, or rather to live utterly without Him 
 in the world ; and then surely, if you compare 
 this condition with that which is yours, with 
 what you are at the worst, you will see that 
 indeed the figure is no exaggeration ; that, in 
 comparison with heathenism, it is no fiction to 
 speak of Christianity itself as Regeneration ; 
 that, much as may yet have to be wrought in 
 you before you can enter into the kingdom ; 
 great as may be your need of increased faith 
 and hope and love ; nay, if even you need that 
 second Regeneration which is the conversion of 
 the baptized sinner to his God ; still it is some- 
 thing, something which prophets and righteous 
 men of old would have sold all they had to 
 purchase, to have been once brought within the 
 
48 Regeneration. 
 
 pale of the covenant, when, in days of earliest 
 childhood, Christ, as it is written, called you to 
 Himself, took yon up in His arms, put His hands 
 upon y 'on, and blessed you 1 . 
 
 1 Mark x. 16. 
 
DISCOURSE III. 
 
 CONFESSION. 
 
CONFESSION. 
 
 Joshua vii. 19. 
 
 My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of 
 Israel, and make confession unto Him ; and tell me 
 mm what thou hast done; hide it not from me. 
 
 ISRAEL was come out of Egypt, had ended his. 
 desert-sojourn, had crossed the Jordan, had 
 taken Jericho. Thus far well. How is it that 
 a comparatively insignificant enterprise now 
 baffles him? that Ai, a city represented as not 
 requiring all his strength, proves now more than 
 a match for him ? The answer is found in the 
 history here open. 
 
 A stern charge had been laid upon the in- 
 vading army, not to touch the spoil of Jericho 1 . 
 One part of the spoil was to be brought into the 
 1 Joshua vi. 18, 19, 24. 
 
 4—2 
 
5 2 Confession. 
 
 treasury : the rest was to be burnt with fire. A 
 nation which had been taken from the midst of 
 anotlier nation 1 by a strong hand not its own, 
 and which now was to be brought into the inhe- 
 ritance of another nation by the outstretched 
 arm of God, must be reminded, at the very 
 outset, of its dependence and of its responsi- 
 bility : there must be no forgetfulness of the 
 source of its strength, of the condition of its 
 success, of the high purposes of its mission : 
 there must be no selfish grasping, and no mean 
 lust of getting, to interfere with the grandeur 
 and the sanctity of its election : on this first oc- 
 casion of all, a lesson was to be taught for all 
 time, as to the awfulness of privilege ; as to the 
 dreadful consequences of being brought very 
 near to God, as His Church and His people, and 
 forgetting or trifling with Him ; as to the in- 
 separable connection between knowledge and 
 duty, between light and accountability, between 
 trust and reckoning. 
 
 But there was one man who determined to 
 risk all consequences. To us, reading of his 
 1 Deut. iv. 34. 
 
Confession. 53 
 
 crime in the Bible, with that half-unrealizing 
 and half-exaggerating spirit which we commonly 
 bring to its study, the offence may seem great 
 and heinous : to him, probably, as is the case 
 with all sinners at the moment of sinning, it 
 looked small enough: what was it, he might ask, 
 but just rescuing from a wanton wilful waste one 
 little fragment of a conquered city's treasure ? 
 who would be the poorer for his subtraction of 
 this goodly Babylonish garment, these few she- 
 kels of silver, this paltry wedge of gold ? and as 
 for the edict of prohibition, O surely among the 
 many thousands of Israel he shall pass un- 
 noticed ; unobserved of man, perhaps overlooked 
 by God ! 
 
 And so he risks it. Hear his own account 
 of the steps of his transgression. How exactly 
 are they the steps of all transgression, from the 
 earliest sin of all even to our own! / saiv...I 
 coveted... I took them... and, behold, they arc hid 1 / 
 Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of 
 his own hist, and enticed: then, when hist hath 
 conceived, it bringeth forth sin ; and sin, when it 
 1 Joshua vii. 31, 
 
5 4 Confession. 
 
 is finished, bringeth forth — first disguise, con- 
 cealment, falsehood — the thing taken must be 
 hidden— covered up by evasion, by denial, by 
 hypocrisy — at last, all the same, it bringeth forth 
 death 1 . 
 
 See how it was with Achan. 
 
 All seemed calm enough with him. There 
 was no change in the face of the earth or of the 
 sky : the guilty secret was safe : the stolen trea- 
 sure was hidden in the earth beneath his tent : 
 he himself laid him down and slept and rose up 
 again : he buckled on his armour as aforetime, 
 and went forth unchallenged among the most 
 innocent and the most unsuspected of his coun- 
 trymen. Did his heart at all misgive him, when 
 he saw that unexpected sight — the three thou- 
 sand warriors of Israel turning their backs before 
 the men of Ai ? The hearts of the people, says the 
 sacred record, melted, and became as water*: not, 
 perhaps, at all more than others, the heart of 
 the sinner! What was there to connect his 
 particular act with the misfortune of his coun- 
 trymen? O, the secret was safe: surely there 
 1 James i. 14, 15. s Joshua vii. 5. 
 
Confession. 
 
 55 
 
 was no treachery : there had been no eye upon 
 him in the privacy of his tent : all may be well 
 yet! 
 
 Perhaps he too, among the elders of Israel, 
 may have even rent his clothes, and fallen in 
 solemn supplication before the ark of the Lord, 
 expostulating with the unseen Ruler concerning 
 the calamity which He had brought upon Is- 
 rael 1 . Even this goes not beyond our experi- 
 ence of the deccitf ulncss of sin 2 . 
 
 But now comes the answer : and with it the 
 beginning of the end. 
 
 Israel had sinned ; transgressed God's cove- 
 nant ; taken of the accursed thing ; stolen, and 
 dissembled also, and put it even among their own 
 stuff. Therefore they were weak: therefore they 
 had turned their backs in the fight : there was 
 an accursed thing in the midst of them, and till 
 that is put away, they cannot stand before their 
 enemies. Israel must pass in awful procession 
 before God's presence : the lot, which is of His 
 disposing, must fall upon tribe and family and 
 household and man : and the man whom God 
 
 1 Joshua vii. 6—9. 3 Heb. iii. 13. 
 
56 Confession. 
 
 thus detects shall perish for the folly which he 
 has wrought in Israel 1 . 
 
 Morning dawns, that terrible morning, upon 
 the expectant host : Joshua rises early, and 
 brings Israel, first of all, by its tribes. What 
 were the thoughts of the sinner as he sees the 
 lot fall, and his own tribe, Judah, is the one 
 taken ? Can he hope for impunity now ? The 
 families, the subdivisions of the tribe, pass next 
 in review : again the lot falls, and again it is his, 
 it is the family of Zerah, which is taken. Still 
 there is a chance for him: the all-seeing Eye 
 may yet be baffled : — or it may not be his crime 
 which is in question : let us play the game out — 
 we may win yet ! 
 
 The family of the Zarhites comes, and Zabdi 
 is taken : nearer and nearer yet, shines the light 
 which shall make manifest : Zabdi comes, and 
 his household : the household, man by man : and 
 at last Achan, the son of Carmi — yes, the pedi- 
 gree is written in full — Achan, the son of Carmi, 
 the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe 
 of Judah, is taken 1 . 
 
 1 Joshua vii. n — 15. 5 Joshua vii. 16—18. 
 
Confession. 5 7 
 
 There then he stands, in the sight of all 
 Israel, the man whose sin has found him out. 
 By slower and less direct processes the thing 
 happens every day. We see it in our courts of 
 justice. Stone by stone, and tier by tier, the 
 fabric of proof rises : one witness has seen this, 
 and another has seen that, and a third furnishes 
 the connecting link which ties the two together : 
 and so at last, after a long day of questioning 
 and cross-questioning, the judge has summed 
 up, and the fatal Guilty is the verdict. Lust, 
 long weeks ago, brought forth sin ; and now the 
 sin finished shall bring forth death. These are 
 human processes. But God saw the thing in 
 itself; marked in its first rising the bad desire ; 
 saw in plan and purpose, saw then in execution, 
 the deed of wrong ; and could, if He saw fit, 
 bring it to light by the lot or by the thunder- 
 bolt. If He does not this, it is not for lack of 
 insight, nor for lack of power ; not because He 
 thinks less now of sin, and not because He has 
 withdrawn Himself further from the earth ; but 
 because He is longsuffering to usward, and be- 
 cause He works by means as sure if less speedy. 
 
5 8 Confession. 
 
 But now see what follows. 
 The words of the text come in here ; after 
 detection, after conviction. 
 And this is our subject. 
 
 Jos/ma said unto AcJian, My son, give, I pray 
 thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make 
 confession unto Him ; and tell me now what thou 
 hast done ; hide it not from me. 
 
 There is a strong feeling that a condemned 
 criminal should confess. Not that the confes- 
 sion is wanted to justify the sentence : that rests 
 upon proof, and needs not the avowal of the 
 sinner. But we all feel it dreadful that a man 
 should go into God's presence with a lie in his 
 right hand. If he have been false all his life, let 
 him at least be true in his death. 
 
 But we must widen our view a little, if we 
 would draw from the subject its real lesson. We 
 are not speaking to-night of convicted mur- 
 derers, of condemned cells. We are speaking of 
 that which concerns all of us — yes, in various 
 degrees, all of us — for where is the man who has 
 not sinned ? 
 
 The word Confession is on many lips. From- 
 
Confession. 
 
 59 
 
 time to time it obtains a wide celebrity through 
 some story or some correspondence in which the 
 Romish or semi-Romish confessional is mixed 
 up : and at such times, in the sweeping judg- 
 ments of men, there is a risk of the true and 
 real thing suffering by reason of the untrue and 
 the unreal perversion of it ; so that the voice of 
 reason, and the voice of Scripture too, shall be 
 unheard or even silenced on a topic of the 
 most vital importance to the life and to the 
 soul. 
 
 Let us look into the matter seriously. 
 
 Confession has two aspects. An aspect to- 
 wards God ; an aspect also towards man. The 
 text tells us so. Make confession, Joshua says, 
 unto Him — that is, to God — and tell me now what 
 thou hast done ; hide it not from me. He calls 
 upon Achan for a twofold acknowledgment : 
 or rather, for one acknowledgment under two 
 aspects ; towards God and towards man. 
 
 I. Now I suppose that no one pretends to 
 set aside the duty of confession to God. It is 
 one of the chief grounds on which a Protestant 
 rests his objection to the Romish system of the 
 
6o 
 
 Confession. 
 
 confessional, that it seems to substitute the con- 
 fession of sins to man for the acknowledged duty 
 of confessing them to God. 
 
 And yet I believe that it is never superfluous 
 to enforce even this obvious duty. 
 
 Confession is of two kinds ; general, and par- 
 ticular. 
 
 That which we use in the Congregation is of 
 necessity general. 
 
 And this not only because it is used by all ; 
 which is probably the meaning of the expression 
 in our Rubric, A general Confession, to be said of 
 the whole Congregation after the Minister, all 
 kneeling ; but also because, being used by all, it 
 cannot enter into the particulars of individual 
 sin : it can only express, in strong terms, and 
 in broad lines of description, that which is the 
 true character of all hearts and lives, when the 
 light of God's presence and of God's holiness is 
 thrown upon them. We have erred and strayed 
 ...We have followed our own devices... We have 
 offended... We have left undone the right... We 
 have done the wrong... There is no health in us. 
 This is an instance of general confession. 
 
Confession. 61 
 
 Now confession of this kind is not to be de- 
 spised. Though general, it is not necessarily 
 vague. I know that it may be made vague by 
 any of us. But where there is a serious desire 
 to take a true view of our condition as fallen 
 creatures, and as actually sinful and sinning 
 creatures, in the sight of a pure and holy God, 
 there is great force and great benefit in this out- 
 pouring of a general self-lamentation in the all- 
 hearing ear: there is something deeply real in 
 this plunging of the universal being into the 
 fountain open for sin and for uncleanness 1 ; this 
 gathering of the whole experience, as the course 
 of life has brought it to us, into one sweeping 
 act of self-condemnation and self-renunciation, 
 constraining us to throw ourselves absolutely 
 and without exception upon the mere mercy 
 and compassion of a pitying, a longsuffering, 
 and a redeeming God. Let no man despise it. 
 
 But then this general confession must be 
 made real, and kept real, by that which is 
 minute, individual, particular. 
 
 Even in the Congregation, under the veil 
 
 1 Zech. xiii. I. 
 
 I 
 
62 Confession. 
 
 of this general language, there is time and place 
 for something with which no stranger can inter- 
 meddle. These hearts which are unfolding them- 
 selves at the mercy-seat of God, do not lose 
 their individuality by the presence of other 
 hearts around them. Even the general confes- 
 sion is the sum of a thousand particular confes- 
 sions, and then only rises with full meaning into 
 the ear of God when it is prompted by the 
 personal experiences of a multitude of persons, 
 each one of whom is grieved and wearied by the 
 burden of his own separate sins. 
 
 But the confession of which we now speak 
 must be chiefly made in secret. The public con- 
 fession may be the result of the private ; may 
 even cover, may even convey, the private : but it 
 requires that, it presupposes that, to make it real 
 and to make it significant. 
 
 Now we can imagine some person asking 
 this question : What can be the necessity for 
 particular confession, if God knows all before 
 I speak ? Why should it be important for me 
 to go back into the recesses of memory, and 
 draw thence the special deeds, words, and 
 
Confession. 
 
 63 
 
 thoughts, by which I have provoked God's dis- 
 pleasure, when, if He be God, He knows all 
 better than I, and cannot need my words ? 
 
 Such thoughts cause many men to deal only 
 in vague generalities even in private devotion. 
 As they argue concerning past sins, so they 
 argue concerning duties to be done and tempta- 
 tions to be encountered. God knows all : why 
 should I so speak, in my prayers, as though I 
 were informing Him ? Enough if I pray, in the 
 most general terms, for pardon and grace, pre- 
 supposing His knowledge alike of the past and 
 of the future, and just asking Him to do for 
 me what He sees to be necessary as to each and 
 both. • - 
 
 God Himself says by the Prophet Ezekiel, 
 after giving some exceeding great and precious 
 promises, / will yet for this be enquired of by the 
 house of Israel, to do it for them 1 . Promise does 
 not preclude prayer; neither does Omniscience 
 make it needless for the finite to spread its 
 wants in detail before the Infinite. Especially 
 is this needful in the case of Confession. A 
 
 1 Ezek. xxxvi. 37. 
 
64 Confession. 
 
 general sense of sinfulness is compatible — we 
 have all found it so — with a total self-ignorance 
 and consequent self-complacency. It is only by 
 going into details, that any man really sees 
 himself to be a sinner. When he begins to say, 
 like Achan, Thus and thus have I done ; then 
 and then only can he use with full meaning the 
 other clause of Achan's confession, Indeed I have 
 sinned against the Lord God of Israel. It is by 
 taking fully into account the circumstances, an- 
 tecedent and concomitant, of each transgression ; 
 saying, This was my warning, this was my 
 mercy, this was my light, this was my opportu- 
 nity ; and yet, just thus and thus, I set each aside, 
 and went by this path to this end ; it is thus that 
 we arrive at a distinct conviction of sin, wholly 
 different from that blurred and confused image 
 of it which makes up the general idea, / am a 
 sinner. We need this kind of retrospect, to fix 
 in our minds the just impression of our culpa- 
 bility. We need this kind of retrospect, to fix 
 upon our minds the due warning of danger in 
 the future. It is thus that we become mindful 
 of the insidious advances of the tempter, and 
 
Confession. 65 
 
 become forearmed because forewarned. It is 
 thus, above all, that we learn, as the text bids 
 us, to make confession itself minister to God's 
 glory ; even by acknowledging how He has dealt 
 with us and we with Him — the one how merciful, 
 the other how ungrateful ! 
 
 It is wonderful how blind we all are to our 
 own special infirmities. Few men probably con- 
 fess their own faults, their own peculiar, their 
 own besetting sins. They confess something; 
 something which is true, something which is a 
 part of the truth; but seldom the chief thing, 
 the real thing, the crying sin, the deepest inner- 
 most root of evil. Not only because it is so 
 natural to keep back the thing which we do not 
 mean to part with; to hide in the tent the 
 wedge of gold or the Babylonish garment which 
 is our own special idol: not only because there 
 is an obliquity in so many, which would serve 
 God by halves, and keep back from His obser- 
 vation the thing which in reality is dividing or 
 engrossing the heart : but also because this true 
 introspection is so difficult ; needs such an eagle 
 eye to perform it accurately ; and is so easily 
 v.l. 5 
 
66 Confession. 
 
 diverted from the primary to the secondary, 
 from the idol of the heart to the image of the 
 fancy. Nothing but long practice, watchful self- 
 discipline, earnest study of God's Word, and 
 diligent communing with God Himself, will 
 enable us truly to confess, even to Him, the 
 true evil, or turn our conflict with sin to good 
 account by knowing with whom and on what 
 field that warfare must be waged. Search me, 
 O God, and know my heart ; try vie, and know 
 my thoughts : and see if tJiere be any wicked way 
 in me, and lead me in the way everlasting 1 . 
 
 2. But there is such a thing also as con- 
 fession to man. Joshua says, not only, Make 
 confession to God, but also, And tell me now 
 zvhat thou hast done. And St James says, Con- 
 fess your faults one to another". It is not Scrip- 
 tural then, it is not Christian teaching, which 
 discards or denounces altogether the duty of a 
 human confession. 
 
 Few would deny that there are cases in 
 which without confession, confession to man, 
 there can be no repentance. Cases in which an 
 
 1 Psalm exxxix. 23, 24. 2 James v. 16. 
 
Confession. 67 
 
 injury has been done, or an unkindness shown, 
 to a neighbour or a brother, which absolutely 
 demand the only reparation which is now pos- 
 sible, the reparation of a frank and regretful 
 acknowledgment. Difficult as it may be, the 
 effort is necessary, is a condition of forgiveness, 
 is a criterion of repentance. 
 
 On the other hand, we will venture to say 
 that neither Scripture, nor our Church's teaching, 
 gives the slightest encouragement to that sort 
 of systematic and habitual confession, the 
 periodical carrying to a priest of the secrets 
 of the conscience and of the life, which had its 
 natural place amongst the many errors of Ro- 
 manism, and which some would bring back in 
 these days into the bosom of a Reformed and 
 Protestant Church. 
 
 Great, no doubt, would be the relief, to some 
 minds, of the practice of this Auricular Confes- 
 sion. To be able to throw off upon another the 
 difficulties and the uncertainties of the spiritual 
 being ; to be allowed to repose upon another's 
 judgment as to the thoughts they shall think 
 and the road they shall travel ; to feel, when 
 
 5—2 
 
68 Confession. 
 
 the painful confession is once got through, that 
 the burden is rolled off and the wound healed 
 and the breach repaired, so that now they may 
 start afresh, with entire absolution for the past 
 and express direction for the future ; this, to 
 some minds, would be exquisitely delightful, 
 reconciling them to the pain of the most dis- 
 tressing confidences, and to the shame of the 
 most humiliating self-exposures. 
 
 But is it thus that God has provided in His 
 Gospel for the great journey of human life ? 
 Has it pleased Him thus to set one man in 
 charge of thousands, with the key of grace in his 
 hand, and the balm of health in his keeping? 
 
 There are two cases, two only, in which this 
 Church of England has bidden her ministers to 
 ask for the intimate confidences of her children. 
 One of these is in reference to the Sacrament of 
 Holy Communion. If there be any one, per- 
 plexed and distressed as to his fitness on some 
 particular occasion to communicate; some one 
 who, after taking all possible counsel with him- 
 self, cannot quiet his own conscience therein; afraid 
 to come, because of his unworthiness, and yet 
 
Confession. 69 
 
 unwilling to absent himself from that which he 
 knows to be the ordinance of Christ ; let him, 
 our Church says, come to his Minister for 
 advice; let him open his grief, ask comfort and 
 counsel, seek guidance in his perplexity, and 
 avoid the misery of scruple and doubtfulness. 
 
 The other is in reference to great sickness. 
 If a man, lying on what may probably be his 
 deathbed, feels his conscience troubled with any 
 weighty matter, he is moved to make a special 
 confession of the sins which press upon him. It 
 is the call of humanity as much as of religion. 
 At such a moment, in the near prospect of eter- 
 nity, it is well that a man should have his con- 
 science clean and disburdened: let him confide 
 his trouble to the minister of Christ, assured of 
 his sympathy, hopeful of his experience and of 
 his discretion. 
 
 But the very exceptions prove the rule. The 
 Church which in these two special cases advises 
 and encourages, by her silence in other cases 
 seems rather to dissuade. 
 
 In fact, the dangers of perpetual confession 
 are greater than its benefits. 
 
yo Confession. 
 
 A constant application for advice and com- 
 fort, to one who, whatever be his office, is a man 
 still, has in it some perils arising out of human 
 frailty on the side of the counsellor, and even 
 more, if it be possible, on the side of the appli- 
 cant himself. This walking under human guid- 
 ance is a poor imperfect Christianity. It was 
 not this to which Christ called us. It was not 
 for this that He gave His Holy Spirit to abide 
 for ever with His redeemed. Rather would He 
 have us, in common times, go straight and only 
 to Himself; ask His help in earnest prayer; 
 read His Word till it grows as it were into us ; 
 seek His Spirit with confiding, with patient, 
 with minute and personal supplication ; and then 
 go forth to our work and to our labour, not 
 without many mistakes (it may be) both of 
 opinion and practice, yet still not as children 
 but as grown men, responsible to One only, 
 leaning upon One only, bought with a price, and 
 refusing therefore to be servants of men 1 . Be 
 not ye called Rabbi, He said even to His Apo- 
 stles, for One is your Master, even Christ, and all 
 
 1 i Cor. vii. 23. 
 
Confession. 7 1 
 
 ye arc brethren 1 . If in certain emergencies you 
 want the support of human counsel ; if, for 
 example, you have fallen into a snare, and are 
 overtaken in a fault* ox sin; if conscience cries 
 aloud for confession, not to God only, but (in 
 the extremity of the distress) to man also; then 
 look around you for your best and wisest : it 
 may be, God grant it may often be, that that 
 chosen friend is your minister ; but remember, 
 it is no prerogative of his at common times to 
 be your confessor : if you confide to him your 
 secret, you lay upon him a heavy burden : it 
 may be, in the case of the young it will often 
 be, that a parent, an elder brother, an elder 
 sister, is a far better and more suitable coun- 
 sellor: whoever it is, it is not as a spiritual 
 authority, but as a wise and kind friend, that 
 you turn to him : you are to choose, for yours 
 is the want, and yours the gain or the loss. 
 There is such a thing as human confession : 
 many is the aching heart that has been soothed 
 by it and healed : but no human confession can 
 ever be a substitute for the Divine ; and there 
 
 1 Matt. xxiiL 8. Gal. vi. t. 
 
72 Confession. 
 
 is a danger, be not ignorant of it, lest you should 
 try to make it so. 
 
 Finally, and in one word, mark the singular 
 combination here presented to us. Give glory to 
 God, and make confession. To confess is to give 
 God the glory. To make confession is to do 
 homage to the Omniscience of God ; to renounce 
 solemnly the sinner's vain confidence, The Lord 
 shall not see, neither shall tlie God of Jacob regard 
 it 1 ! To make confession is to say, Surely thou 
 hast seen it 2 . To make confession is to declare 
 myself to be what God says I am, a sinner, 
 deserving only in myself condemnation and 
 wrath. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, 
 and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou 
 mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be 
 clear when Thou judgest 3 . To make confession 
 is to throw myself upon God's mercy, and to 
 declare myself a believer in it. I confess because 
 I know that He is the Father of mercies and the 
 God of all comfort. While I hold my peace 
 before Him, I treat Him as a hard and cruel 
 
 1 Psalm xciv. 7. 2 Psalm x. 15. 
 
 3 Psalm li. 4. 
 
Confession. 73 
 
 taskmaster, watching for my fall, obdurate to- 
 wards my sorrow. When I make confession, I 
 treat Him as the Saviour of sinners, the God 
 and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; given 
 once for the world's sins, raised again for us, for 
 us exalted, to be the Life of all who believe, and 
 the Resurrection of the dead. 
 
DISCOURSE IV. 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 Mark h. 5. 
 Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. 
 
 The subject of Absolution, or release from 
 committed sins, is at all times the most solemn 
 and anxious question that can occupy an im- 
 mortal soul. It is generally the one question 
 which occupies that soul's latest energies when 
 it is quitting earth and anticipating eternity. In 
 that day, however severe the bodily conflict, 
 there is generally found time also and strength 
 for this one enquiry, Who can forgive my sins ? 
 
 On a subject thus important, and which will 
 one day be seen to be so by all, it is well that 
 the mind should be thoroughly and early inform- 
 ed, that it may at least be able to suggest the 
 
78 Absolution. 
 
 right answer when eternal life or death may be 
 felt to hang upon it. 
 
 Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? 
 was the question of the Scribes in the Gospel 
 History: %vho can forgive sins but God only 1 ? 
 And it was a true and just question, though it 
 came from scoffing lips. On the supposition 
 that Christ was a mere man, it would have been 
 blasphemy, that is, the assumption by a creature 
 of the Creator's properties, to say, as He had 
 said, to the sick man before Him, Son, thy sins 
 be forgiven thee. It was not the inference, but 
 the supposition, which was wrong ; not the con- 
 clusion, but the premises : if Christ was a mere 
 man, it would have been blasphemy to claim 
 the power of forgiving sins. 
 
 Now, although every one who calls himself a 
 Christian would shrink with horror from ascribing 
 to any created being the independent right to 
 forgive sins, yet we all know that, in some pro- 
 fessedly Christian communities, and by some 
 persons even in our own, a derived right of that 
 nature has been both claimed and granted : the 
 
 1 Mark ii. 7. 
 
Absolution. 79 
 
 power of Absolution has been held to reside in a 
 Christian Priesthood, with many inferences which, 
 if true, are full of importance, and, if untrue, 
 must greatly endanger the spiritual state of 
 those who rely upon them. 
 
 It is in no controversial spirit that I approach 
 this subject. It is obviously a matter of the 
 greatest practical importance. It lies at the 
 root of our whole conception of the Gospel. It 
 is one which must present itself, sooner or later, 
 to every thoughtful mind. And it is one which 
 is so intertwined with some portions both of the 
 Scriptures and of the formularies of our Church, 
 that a few words may not unfitly be devoted to 
 it before we turn to that more positive side of 
 the truth of which no one can dispute the vital 
 importance. 
 
 Is the power of forgiving sins, in the name 
 and by the authority of Christ, committed to 
 any human mind or voice? Did Jesus Christ 
 commit to His first Apostles, or to any who 
 should come after them in the ministerial office, 
 the power to absolve men from their sins or to 
 refuse to do so? 
 
8o 
 
 A bsolution. 
 
 There are two passages in the Gospels which 
 have been so understood. The former of these 
 is that well-known verse in which our Lord, 
 addressing the Apostle Peter, says, / will give 
 unto tlicc the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and 
 wliat soever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound 
 in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
 earth shall be loosed in heaven 1 . 
 
 It has been taken for granted that the keys 
 here spoken of are, if I might so express it, the 
 keys of the outer gate of the kingdom of heaven, 
 those by which admission into the heavenly 
 kingdom is given to men ; and consequently 
 that the gift of these keys to the Apostle im- 
 plied the power to admit men into or to exclude 
 them from the blessings of forgiveness and sal- 
 vation, according to the dictates of an infallible 
 insight into their spiritual condition, motives and 
 character. According to this interpretation, the 
 power spoken of was exercised by St Peter, on 
 the one hand when he admitted the three thou- 
 sand souls into the Christian Church on the day 
 of Pentecost 2 , or subsequently the first Gentile 
 
 1 Matt. xvi. 19. 8 Acts ii. 41, 
 
Absolution. 
 
 Si 
 
 converts in the house of the centurion Cornelius 1 ; 
 and on the other when he detected the fraud and 
 sealed the destiny of the hypocritical Ananias 2 . 
 In the one case he used the keys of the kingdom 
 to admit, in the other to exclude. 
 
 But how instantly is the whole of this fabric 
 overthrown by a reference to the Scriptural use, 
 in other places, of the figure of the keys of the 
 kingdom ! The origin of it is clearly seen in a 
 remarkable paragraph of the Book of the Prophet 
 Isaiah. The immediate subject of that passage 
 is the deposition of a treasurer in the household 
 of a king of Judah, and the substitution of 
 another in his place. Go, get thee unto this 
 treasurer, even unto Shcbna, which is over- the 
 house, and say. . .Behold, the Lord will carry thee 
 away with a mighty captivity... and I will drive 
 thee from thy station... And it shall come to pass 
 in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim 
 the son of Hilkiah...and I will commit thy govern- 
 ment into his hand. ..and the key of the house of 
 David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall 
 open, and none shall shut ; and he shall shut, and 
 1 Acts x. 48. 5 Acts v. 1— 10. 
 
 V. L. 6 
 
82 
 
 A bsohttion. 
 
 none shall open 1 . This passage is employed in 
 the Revelation of St John to furnish one of the 
 descriptions of our Lord Himself in His relation 
 to the Churches. These things saith He that is 
 holy, He that is true, He that hath the key of 
 David, He that opcnctli and no man shuttcth, and 
 shuttcth and no man openeth 2 ; He, in other words, 
 who is the supreme Treasurer of God's household, 
 and whose authority is absolute to issue or to 
 withhold its stores. 
 
 Thus the keys of the kingdom of heaven 
 committed to St Peter become not the keys of 
 the gate of entrance, but the keys of the several 
 chambers in which its stores are deposited. The 
 office is the very same with that designated by 
 St Paul as belonging to all the Apostles. Let a 
 man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, 
 and stewards of the mysteries, the secrets, the 
 communicated secrets, the revealed secrets, of 
 God 3 . It is the office described by our Lord 
 Himself to the same Apostle St Peter, when He 
 said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, 
 
 1 Isaiah xxii. >s— 22. * Rev. iii. 7. 
 
 3 1 Cor. iv. 1. 
 
Absolution. 83 
 
 whom his Lord shall make ruler over His house- 
 hold, to give them their portion of meat in due 
 season 1 ? It is the same figure substantially with 
 that which is employed on the same subject in 
 St Matthew's Gospel, Therefore every scribe zvhich 
 is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like 
 unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth 
 forth out of his treasure things new and old 2 . 
 And thus, / will give unto thee the keys of the 
 kingdom of heaven, is, in other words, / will 
 make thee a stcivard of my treasures, that thou 
 mayest dispense them to others, in the exercise of a 
 judgment enlightened from above as to the nature 
 of those treasures and the wants of those to whom 
 they are to be conveyed. 
 
 Again, the authority to bind and to loose, 
 conveyed in the same verse to St Peter, has 
 been sometimes conceived to refer to the reten- 
 tion or remission of sins ; to the setting men 
 loose from, or retaining upon them, the guilt 
 of their past transgressions. How strange a 
 perversion of the simple meaning of the original! 
 To bind and to loose are, in Jewish language, 
 1 Luke xii. 42. 2 Matt. xiii. 52. 
 
 6—2 
 
A bsolution. 
 
 to forbid and to permit. The promise that 
 what the Apostles bound or loosed on earth 
 should be bound or loosed in Heaven, is the 
 promise that what they forbade as contrary 
 to their Master's will, should be forbidden with 
 the authority of God, and what they permitted 
 or sanctioned as according to their Masters will, 
 should be permitted or sanctioned with the 
 authority of God. It constituted the Apostles 
 infallible interpreters of the mind and will of 
 Christ. Whatever they said or wrote, in special 
 cases or in general, should carry with it the 
 decisive authority of Christ and of God. 
 
 There is one other passage, and but one, 
 which could cause any difficulty in connection 
 with this subject. We read in one of the closing 
 chapters of St John's Gospel, that, on our Lord's 
 first appearance to the assembled disciples after 
 His resurrection, He used these remarkable 
 words. Receive ye the Holy Ghost : Whosesoever 
 sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and 
 wlwsesoever sins ye retain, they are retained' 1 . 
 
 Now whatever variety there may have been 
 1 John xx. 2i, 33. 
 
Absolution. 85 
 
 in the interpretation of these words, no one will 
 suppose them to mean that the Apostles or any- 
 other men were to have the power of forgiving 
 sins, or refusing forgiveness, arbitrarily, by rules 
 of their own, or by no rules. No human being 
 could have authority to do more than declare 
 forgiveness, and that by God's sentence, not his 
 own. Whosesoever sins ye remit or retain can 
 only mean, Whosesoever sins ye dcclar-e to be 
 remitted, or declare to be retained, that is, to be 
 still upon them. And when it is added, they 
 are remitted, or else, they are retained, this must 
 express that God in Heaven would ratify that 
 declaration or that denial of forgiveness which 
 the Apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, an- 
 nounced upon earth. 
 
 In the case of the Apostles, the remitting 
 or retaining of sins had two modes of exercise. 
 It might, in their case, be individual. They had 
 the gift, for certain purposes at least, of discern- 
 ing spirits. They were enabled, that is, at least 
 in certain cases, to judge infallibly whether a 
 particular person was sincere or insincere. Thy 
 heart is not right iti the sight of God — I perceive 
 
86 
 
 Absolution. 
 
 that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the 
 bond of iniquity — such expressions, on the lips 
 of an Apostle, were sometimes more than mere 
 inferences from conduct : they seem to have indi- 
 cated an intuition and a certainty which cannot 
 exist without direct inspiration. Thus then the 
 Apostles might, in such instances, be said to 
 remit or retain (that is, authoritatively to declare 
 the remission or retention of) individual sins. 
 They might say to one, Thy sins are forgiven, 
 and to another, Thou art yet in thy sins ; and 
 God above, in either case, would confirm and 
 ratify their sentence. 
 
 But far more often, even in the case of the 
 Apostles, the remitting or retaining of sins was 
 general. They declared to their hearers the 
 remission of sins on the conditions of repentance 
 and faith, the retention of sins in the absence of 
 this mind. Without exercising an individual 
 insight which would have been commonly un- 
 profitable or injurious, they proclaimed the 
 terms of forgiveness, and urged men to fulfil 
 them. Thus, as in the other passage it was pro- 
 1 Acts viii. 2i, 23. 
 
Absolution. 87 
 
 mised to them that whatever they bound or 
 loosed (that is, forbade or sanctioned) should 
 be ratified in Heaven ; so here, with reference 
 to a particular subject, the most important of 
 all, it is promised that the Holy Spirit should so 
 guide them into all truth that they should be 
 able to declare with infallible certainty whose 
 sins should be forgiven and whose retained, and 
 by what marks the presence or the absence of 
 forgiveness might be discerned by the individual 
 soul. 
 
 It is doubtless in this latter sense, the general 
 declaration, rather than the individual appropria- 
 tion, of the Divine promise of forgiveness, that 
 these words are still used in our Service for the 
 Ordination of Priests. Whose sins thou dost for- 
 give, they are forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost 
 retain, they are retained. That insight into souls 
 which was possessed by Apostles is denied to 
 us : but the commission which makes us minis- 
 ters of the Church of Christ in this land autho- 
 rizes us to declare the remission or retention of 
 sins, with an authority which Christ in Heaven 
 will ratify, so long as it is regulated by His 
 
83 
 
 A bsolution. 
 
 Word and exercised under the teaching of His 
 Spirit. 
 
 And thus too it is that in various Services 
 of our Church a form of Absolution, varying in 
 its terms, but constant in its principle, is ap- 
 pointed to be read by those who are in possession 
 of the full Orders of a Presbyter 1 . There are 
 three such forms. One, used in the celebration 
 of the Holy Communion, is precatory in its 
 terms ; differing from a prayer only in being 
 addressed to the congregation instead of being 
 offered, like other prayers, in their name. Al- 
 mighty God, our heavenly Father, who of His 
 great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to 
 all them that with hearty repentance and true 
 
 1 It may be asked, Why not also by a Deacon ? The answer 
 is to be found in the theory of that office, as it is expressed in 
 the Service for the Ordering of Deacons. It appertaineth to the 
 Office of a Deacon... to assist the Priest in Din'ne Service... to read 
 Holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church. ..in the absence of the 
 Priest to baptize infants. ..to search for the sick. ..to intimate their 
 estates, names, and places where they dwell, unto the Curate, &c. 
 The present exigencies of the Church have almost obliterated the 
 distinction ; but it is clearly enough marked in her intention, to 
 account for the most solemn announcements of Divine worship 
 being appropriated to the higher office alone. 
 
Absolution. 
 
 89 
 
 faith turn unto Him; have mercy upon you; 
 pardon and deliver you from all your sins. The 
 second, familiar to all of us in the Daily Service, 
 is authoritative but general. Almighty God... 
 who desireth not the death of a sinner... and 
 hath given power and commandment to His mi- 
 nisters to declare and pronounce to His people, 
 being penitent, the Absolution and Remission of 
 their sins ; He pardonetJi and absolveth all them 
 that truly repent and tmfeignedly believe His 
 Holy Gospel: Wherefore let us beseech Him to 
 grant us true repentance and His Holy Spirit*. 
 The third, authoritative, like the last, but also, 
 unlike that, personal in its form, is contained 
 in the Service for the Visitation of the Sick ; 
 where, after every sign of real penitence has 
 been manifested — confession, restitution, forgive- 
 ness of injuries, hearty desire for God's forgive- 
 ness — the Minister is directed to apply, in that 
 extremity, to the individual soul demanding it, 
 
 1 It is not unimportant to notice that this form of Absolution 
 is spoken of in the Rubric which follows it, as itself a Prayer. 
 The people shall aimvcr here, and at the end of all other prayers. 
 Amen. 
 
9 o 
 
 A bsolution. 
 
 the assurance of actual pardon, in terms ex- 
 pressly rehearsing the conditions on which alone 
 it is given. Oicr Lord Jesus Christ, who hath 
 left power to His Church to absolve all sinners, 
 who truly repent and believe in Him, of His 
 great mercy forgive thee thine offences: and by 
 His authority committed to me, I absolve thee 
 front all thy sins, In the Name of the Father, 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Lan- 
 guage so definite and so positive may be open 
 to misunderstanding or abuse ; but at least we 
 see how carefully it is guarded, and how entirely 
 the comfort of the individual absolution is made 
 dependent upon the individual repentance. If the 
 repentance be insincere or shallow, the individual 
 absolution passes back again into the general. 
 
 Such explanations of the language of the 
 Scriptures and of the Prayer-book can never be 
 unseasonable : partly because some of those to 
 whom they are addressed may eventually be 
 called to become ministers of the Word in our 
 National Church, liable therefore to many per- 
 plexing scruples, or else some serious errors, 
 on this very subject ; and partly because, even 
 
Absolution. 
 
 9i 
 
 as laymen, you will participate, I trust, through- 
 out life in that Church's ordinances, and ought 
 to be its intelligent and earnest champions in 
 a world of captious men ever ready to mistake 
 and to misrepresent it. Be well assured that, 
 in the judgment of calm and dispassionate 
 enquirers, it is not the Church of England which 
 is superstitious, but only some of those who 
 use its name falsely. The Church of England 
 knows of no Priesthood to interpose between 
 the soul of man and God : the Church of Eng- 
 land knows but of one Priest, and He is our 
 great High Priest passed already through the 
 heavens 1 . The priests of the Church of Eng- 
 land profess no authority but that which Jesus 
 Christ expressly committed to His Church ; the 
 authority to repeat to later generations the terms 
 of salvation declared once for all by His Apo- 
 stles and by Himself; to proclaim the tidings 
 of a free forgiveness, and an open access for 
 the soul of man through the blood of Jesus into 
 the very sanctuary and presence of God 2 . 
 
 1 Heb. iv. 14. 
 
 2 Heb. x. 19—22. The terms there applied to all Christians 
 
9 2 
 
 Absolution. 
 
 Where does our Church seek forgiveness ? 
 Where does our Church place the real power of 
 Absolution ? We possess in one of the Collects 
 — and it is but a sample of the rest — a definite 
 exposition of doctrine upon this great subject, 
 and an application of that doctrine to the deep- 
 est wants of man. 
 
 0 Lord, wc beseech Thee, absolve TJiy people 
 from their offences ; that through Thy bountiful 
 goodness we may all be delivered from the bands 
 of those sins which by our frailty we have com- 
 mitted: Grant this, 0 heavenly Father, for Jesus 
 Christ's sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour 1 . 
 
 Is not a Church which thus speaks, not in 
 one place only, but in every line of its Articles 
 and its formularies, fulfilling indeed its vocation 
 upon earth as a witness and a keeper of Holy 
 Writ, not decreeing anything against the same, 
 
 are evidently derived from the rites prescribed in the Law for the 
 consecration of the Levitical priests ; the washing with water, 
 and the sprinkling with blood. And the access to which all 
 Christians are invited is evidently that typified by the annual 
 entrance of the High Priest into the Holy of Holies in the Taber- 
 nacle. 
 
 1 Collect for the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. 
 
A bsolution. 93 
 
 nor enforcing any tiling besides the same to be be- 
 lieved for necessity of salvation 1 ? 
 
 Thy people. Our Church never suffers us to 
 forget our standing-place. We are already God's 
 people. Made so by creation. Made so for the 
 second time, when the first claim was sorely 
 vitiated, by Redemption. Made so for the third 
 time, when the second claim might have seemed 
 somewhat too vague and general, by individual 
 Baptism into the very body and Spirit of Christ. 
 For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one 
 body... and zv ere all made to drink into one Spirit" 1 . 
 Unthankful we may have been, careless we may 
 have been : we may have thought scorn of His 
 pleasant land, and given no credence unto His 
 word'; but His people we are still: till death 
 comes, we are His people, and the sheep of His 
 pasture*. 
 
 But His people have sinned — O how much 
 and how often! and the chains of sin are galling, 
 and we struggle in them, and fret against them, 
 and weary ourselves, and find no release: O 
 
 1 Article xx. * r Cor. xii. 13. 
 
 3 Psalm cvi. 24. 4 Psalm c. 3. 
 
94 Absolution. 
 
 wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death 1 ? O Lord, zue beseech 
 Thee, absolve Thou Thy people from their offences. 
 There is strength there, in the Almighty, for 
 any work, however difficult : grace there, in the 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for any gift, 
 however unspeakable : turn thither thy weary 
 steps ; direct thither thy failing eye : He will 
 help, He will deliver thee : He desires not the 
 death of any sinner. 1 
 
 A bsolvc Thy people from their offences. What 
 offences ? future offences ? temptations which 
 may come upon us ? sins into which we may 
 fall ? No : sins already committed ; sins that 
 are past. 
 
 But are not past sins past ? Are not offences, 
 once committed, committed and done with ? 
 Why should we ask to be absolved from past 
 sins ? 
 
 We all know — we have all found for our- 
 selves — that sins done are never done with. No 
 sin ever perishes : the most that we can look for 
 is that our sins should be, as the Psalmist says, 
 1 Rom. vii. 24. 
 
A bsohition. 95 
 
 covered}, so that the eye of God may not rest 
 upon them, nor the enemy fasten upon them 
 to drag them back into judgment. But in how 
 many more cases are they not even covered ; 
 or covered only by ourselves 2 , by our own 
 refusal to see or to acknowledge them ; and 
 then they are indeed a drag and a burden to us, 
 drawing our eyes downwards and clogging our 
 onward steps, forbidding us to hope because we 
 are guilty, forbidding us to work because we are 
 sinful. Guilt, and sin, are the two fetters of man. 
 
 Lord, absolve us. By Thy act of free forgive- 
 ness, let the fetter of guilt fall off from us. By 
 the gift of Thy free Spirit let the fetter of sin 
 fall off from us. The one is done; the other is 
 promised. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son 
 cleanse tk us from all sin 3 . TJic law of the Spirit 
 of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from 
 the law of sin and death*. 
 
 O how soon might this prayer be answered, 
 if any soul out of this multitude were aroused to 
 utter it heartily ! 
 
 1 Psalm xxxii. I. 2 Prov. xxviii. 13. 
 
 3 I John i. 7. 1 Rom, viiL 1. 
 
96 Absolution. 
 
 Why should there be any delay in breathing 
 it ? Shall we be fitter to use it, worthier sup- 
 pliants, to-morrow, or next month, or next year, 
 than to-day ? Shall we not rather have incurred 
 an added load of accumulated transgression ? 
 
 And does God ask whether we are worthy 
 suppliants ? Does He give only to those who 
 need nothing ? Does He cleanse only the pure, 
 does He absolve none but the free ? Nay, it is 
 the urgency of our want that qualifies us to be 
 suppliants : it is the Viery weight of our burden 
 that makes us need to be set free. 
 
 O how soon might freedom come to any one 
 of us, if we only asked earnestly for the Absolu- 
 tion of God ! This day, even in this night, might 
 come the first sense of the loosening chain ; that 
 sense which in comparison with the full thraldom 
 is itself lightness and liberty and life ; that sense 
 of relief which brings with it hope, and draws us 
 powerfully onward towards the fulness of its 
 accomplishment. 
 
 That through Thy bountiful goodness we may 
 all be delivered from the bands of those sins which 
 by our frailty we have committed. 
 
Absolution. 
 
 97 
 
 By our frailty. I know not that any distinc- 
 tion is here meant between sins of frailty and 
 w ilful sins. Rather may wc feel that all sin is 
 the outgrowth of frailty. Nor is that any excuse 
 for sin : our frailty is in great part our own 
 doing : our frailty, if it be let alone, will lead 
 us into all sin ; and sin, wherever it reigns, reigns 
 unto death 1 . Nor yet does it need that we 
 should find excuses for our sins : the blood of 
 Christ is all-availing: if only we feel our want 
 of it, it will not fail us in power. 
 
 Every one of the sins which by our frailty 
 wc have committed is a band, a chain, a fetter, 
 upon our souls. It is of the nature of sin to 
 repeat itself: we cannot sin once, and cease: if 
 we yield to sin once, the next time it comes it 
 claims us as pledged to it : it reminds us, as it 
 were, of a tacit promise, and it takes for granted 
 our acquiescence. Terrible yet just recompcncc! 
 The wages of sin are not all future. Sin has 
 its earnest, as well as its wages. If its wages 
 are death 2 , its earnest is the facility of sinning. 
 
 And despair too — and its shadows cast bc- 
 1 Rom. v. II, s Rom, vi. 
 
 V.L. 7 
 
98 A bsolution. 
 
 fore, in the fadings and diminutions of hope ; 
 the growing consciousness of its being improba- 
 ble that we shall resist temptation, of its being 
 more likely than not (judging from the past) 
 that we shall sin, and sin still, and sin yet more 1 , 
 against God — these things are amongst the bands 
 of sin : from these too we need to be delivered. 
 
 And the prospect of deliverance lies in 
 prayer, in prayer to God through Christ. Grant 
 this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, 
 our blessed Lord and Saviour. Every scattered 
 element of hope is here drawn together. He to 
 whom we pray is already our Father: He for 
 whose sake we ask is already our Lord and our 
 Saviour. 
 
 Unless then the whole of the Gospel be a 
 fable, or unless we know of some special term 
 which excludes us from the compass of a free, a 
 universal Redemption, there must be on the part 
 of God a willingness to absolve, proportioned to 
 the greatness of our need, proportioned to the 
 simplicity of our faith, proportioned to the 
 earnestness of our desire. 
 
 1 Psalm lxwiii. 32. 
 
A bsolution. 
 
 99 
 
 Let not these great and precious promises 
 pass by us like the idle wind ! A day is coming 
 when we shall greatly want them, when with 
 bitter unavailing tears we may bewail our dis- 
 regard of them. Let the prayer for forgiveness 
 ascend this night from all our hearts ! You little 
 know the comfort of that prayer. You have 
 known perhaps, in days when the heart was 
 tender 1 , what it was to turn again to a father 
 or a mother, saying, / have sinned: you have 
 known the sweet calm that was diffused through 
 the whole soul by sorrow for having done wrong 
 followed by the assurance of a human forgive- 
 ness : will you not believe that He who ordained 
 every part of man's being, designed to shew us 
 by this example the blessedness of His own 
 forgiveness, and the readiness with which it lies 
 ever open for the soul that unfeignedly longs 
 for it ? It is one of those happinesses which 
 require no time, no delay certainly, for their 
 realization. He who really asks God's forgive- 
 ness through Christ may have it at once: and 
 he who has once tasted it will certainly come 
 
 1 2 Kings xxii. ig. 
 
 7-2 
 
IO0 
 
 Absolution. 
 
 for it again. If so be ye liavc tasted that the Lord 
 is gracious x , is the availing motive with us all 
 for seeking Him yet again. And be well assured 
 that whatever really draws us towards God 
 draws us towards holiness : there is nothing in 
 mercy favourable to sin : there is nothing in the 
 doctrine of a perfect Absolution but the per- 
 suasive summons to a lifelong sanctification. 
 
DISCOURSE 
 PRAISE. 
 
PRAISE. 
 
 Psalm xxii. 3, 4. 
 
 But Thou art holy, 0 Thou that inhabitest the praises 
 of Israel. 
 
 Our fathers trusted in Tfiee: they trusted, and Thou 
 didst deliver them. 
 
 We do not forget the consecration of this Psalm 
 to the special personal utterance of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the Man of Sorrows 1 , Himself, in 
 bearing our griefs and making Atonement for 
 our sins. The opening clause, Eli, Eli, lama 
 sabachthani? My God, my God, why hast Thou 
 forsaken mo? was made His own expostulation 
 as He hung upon the cross bearing the heavy 
 weight of a world's sin and a world's curse. 
 
 But that consecration neither took away the 
 
 1 Isaiah liii. 3. 
 
Praise. 
 
 Psalm from its human author, nor prohibited its 
 future use by human worshippers. Rather did 
 it form a new link between the Redeemer and 
 His redeemed : even as it is written, Both He 
 that sanctifieth, our Lord Jesus Christ, and they 
 who are sanctified, are all of One — His Father 
 is their Father, and His God their God 1 — for 
 which cause He is not ashamed to call t/tem 
 brethren, saying, in a later verse of this very 
 Psalm now before us, / will declare Thy name 
 unto my brethren ; in the midst of the Church 
 zuill I sing praise unto Thee" 1 . Yes, He, the 
 Lord of the Churches, is also the Leader of 
 the Church's worship, and the chief Psalmist 
 of the Church's praise. He goes before in all — 
 and we, in so far as wc are accepted worship- 
 pers, we follow after. 
 
 Now therefore let us fearlessly take to 
 ourselves the powerful topics of hope and en- 
 couragement for the depressed and desponding 
 in worship, which lie, in their majestic simplicity, 
 in the few lines here before us. 
 
 God seems to be silent to us. We have 
 
 1 Jo'.in xx. 17. 5 Ikb. ii. [I, 12. 
 
Praise. ] 05 
 
 sought Him in the secret chamber, and there 
 comes no answer. We have sought Him in the 
 great congregation, and still there is no re- 
 sponse. We are not silent, but He is silent. 
 What shall we say to these things ? By what 
 arguments shall we reassure our failing spirit ? 
 
 1. Thou, 0 God, art holy. 
 
 But is that reflection any comfort to us ? 
 When we think what we are, is it any encourage- 
 ment to know that God is holy ? Must we not 
 rather feel what the Prophet felt of old in his 
 vision in the Temple, Woe is me! for I am 
 undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, and 
 I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : 
 for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of 
 hosts 1 ? 
 
 The thought is natural, but it is only a half- 
 truth. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 
 O Lord' 1 , is the first cry, but it is not the second 
 nor the last cry, of one who is brought into near 
 contact with the holiness of God. As he still 
 lies before the mercy-seat, trembling at the reve- 
 lation of that light unapproachable in which God 
 1 Isaiah vi. 5. s Luke v. 8. 
 
io6 
 
 Praise. 
 
 dwells 1 , there comes One to him out of the excel- 
 lent glory* — One greater, and more merciful too, 
 than the Seraph of Isaiah's vision — bringing 
 from the altar a live coal, the baptism of the 
 Holy Ghost and of fire, and saying, Lo, this 
 hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken 
 away, and thy sin purged*. The holiness of God 
 is no terror, because it is of the very essence of 
 that holiness to communicate itself to the sinful. 
 
 It is written of the Lord Jesus Christ Him- 
 self, Such an High Priest became us, suited our 
 need, as poor, sinful, defiled beings — such an 
 High Priest — what ? One who was, like our- 
 selves, faulty and sinful ? One who could in- 
 dulge human frailty by reason of a weak com- 
 plicity with it ? not so — One who is holy, harmless, 
 undefilcd, separate from sinners, and made higher 
 than the heavens*; One who, being Himself per- 
 fectly pure from all spot and stain of sin, can be 
 relied upon for a Divine help, even as His 
 personal experience of temptation secures our 
 finding in Him a human sympathy. 
 
 1 i Tim. vl 16. * 2 Pet. i. 17. 
 
 3 Isaiah vi. 6, 7. 4 Heb. vii. 26. 
 
Praise. 107 
 
 Just such is the argument now before us. 
 
 Why hast Thou forsaken me, O my God, 
 when Thou, all the time, art holy? 
 
 It is of the very nature of holiness to feel, 
 to compassionate, and to help. 
 
 If God were not holy, we could not depend 
 upon His compassion. 
 
 It is an error to think that even a man is made 
 more merciful by having himself touched the 
 unclean thing. 
 
 Just in proportion as a man is himself de- 
 filed, is he disqualified for sympathy and inca- 
 pacitated for love. Sin is selfishness. Only the 
 holy can love — when we understand by love 
 what we ought to mean by it, the impulse of a 
 spontaneous beneficence, and the permanence of 
 a disinterested affection. 
 
 We have not an High Priest who cannot be 
 touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but 
 One who has in all points been tempted like as we- 
 are, yet without sin 1 . If our Lord Jesus Christ 
 had but once, but in thought, yielded to tempta- 
 tion, He would not have become better able to 
 1 Heb. iv. 15. 
 
1 08 
 
 Praise. 
 
 feel for us, but He would have lost altogether 
 that one characteristic of the Saviour of sinners, 
 that His love is a pure love, and His sympathy 
 the sympathy of the sinless. 
 
 Why hast Thou forsaken me, when Thou, all 
 the time, art holy? 
 
 Let us learn to associate the thought of 
 God's holiness not with ideas of distance and 
 terror, but with feelings of affection, confidence, 
 and brightest hope. When we draw nigh to 
 Him, let us take with us the remembrance of 
 His holiness : and if He seems to be silent to us, 
 let us plead with Him for a hearing on this 
 ground most chiefly, / am a sinful man, and 
 Thou, O my God, art holy! He must desire to 
 help, not though but because He is holy, and 
 because the holy loves to make holy, to infect 
 all who draw nigh to it with the contagion of its 
 consecration. 
 
 2. The character of God is the first plea. 
 The second plea is the abode of God. 
 
 Where does God dwell ? 
 
 / diuell, He says, in the high and holy place 1 . 
 
 1 Isaiah lvii. 15. 
 
Praise. log 
 
 All ihc whole heavens are tlie Lord's: ike earth 
 hath He given to the children of men 1 . Oar 
 Father, He bids us say, which art in heaven' 1 . 
 God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore 
 let thy words be fczu". 
 
 No doubt these definitions are given to assist 
 us in remembering that God is not as one of us ; 
 that He is not, as the Pantheist dreams, con- 
 fused and commingled with the creature ; that 
 He is equally near to, and equally distant from, 
 all individuals of His rational and moral crea- 
 tion ; that we must approach Him with reve- 
 rence, and conceive of Him with a godly fear. 
 
 But even the Old Testament, and much more 
 the New, cautions men against localizing the 
 habitation of God. 
 
 Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens can- 
 not contain Thee: hozv much less, said King Solo- 
 mon, this house that I have builded i ! 
 
 Sometimes therefore a totally different turn 
 is given to the figure (for such it must ever be) 
 of God's dwellingplace. 
 
 1 Tsalm cxv. 16. 
 3 Ecclcs. v. 
 
 ! Matt. vi. 9. 
 
 4 1 Kings viii. 17. 
 
I to 
 
 Praise. 
 
 One such is found in the Book of the Prophet 
 Isaiah. Thus saith the high and lofty One that 
 inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy 1 . A mag- 
 nificent image ! Eternity is God's habitation. 
 His temple is not here or there on earth's sur- 
 face ; not the sanctuary on mount Zion ; not the 
 bright sun-lit or star-spangled sky; not the 
 mysterious inscrutable heaven beyond and above 
 the reach of mortal vision ; not the universe of 
 space, stretching right and left into illimitable 
 regions where the Sun of this sphere is himself 
 shrunk into the dimensions of a single, remote, 
 half-distinguished star : none of these things : 
 God's temple is the boundless age : He inhabits, 
 not space, but time ; and even time not as men 
 measure it, by days and years, but as it exists 
 in the aspect of the Self-existent One ; century 
 heaped upon century, millennium upon millen- 
 nium ; and this not in the form of vicissitude or 
 of progression, but rather in the aspect of an 
 everlasting Present, an unchanged, unchanging, 
 unchangeable Today ! The high and lofty One 
 that inhabiteth Eternity. 
 
 1 Isaiah lvii. 15. 
 
Praise. 
 
 And another such image is given us in dark 
 hints of the Levitical Law, upon which the 
 bright light of Gospel day is thrown by the 
 Apostle Paul. Ye, he says, are the temple of the 
 living God ; as God hath said, I will dwell in 
 them a?id walk in them \ The temple of God is 
 holy: which temple ye arc" 2 -. Know ye not that 
 your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is 
 in you, which ye have of God 1 ? Again how 
 magnificent, how stupendous a thought ! The 
 Infinite Eternal One dwelling in man — fallen, 
 sinful, redeemed, forgiven man — as His temple ! 
 Dwelling in the Church — that is one application: 
 dwelling in the soul — that is the other. What 
 an idea of condescension, what an idea of eleva- 
 tion — what a motive for love, what a motive for 
 reverence — what an argument for temperance, 
 for purity, for watchfulness, for self-mastery and 
 self-devotion ! The dwelling-place of God is 
 Man. 
 
 But the text introduces yet a third and (if 
 possible) more remarkable use of the same 
 
 1 2 Cor. vi. 1 6. Lev. xxvi. n, ii. 
 3 I Cor. iii. 17. 1 1 Cor. vi. 19. 
 
Praise. 
 
 figure. It speaks of God inhabiting the praises 
 of Israel. And it makes this inhabitation a 
 second plea against God's silence. As though 
 he had said, IVhy hast TJwu forsaken me, seeing 
 that Tlwu inliabitcst the praises of Israel f 
 
 I know that a poor prosaic gloss may be put 
 upon the words. Commentators will tell you 
 that God inhabits the Temple, where Israel's 
 praises resound. And thus we shall have before 
 us a far less noble view of God's habitation than 
 either of the two others which have been men- 
 tioned — the temple of Eternity and the temple 
 of Man. 
 
 Let us take rather the words. Thou inlia- 
 bitcst the praises of Israel. God's abode is His 
 Church's praise. God dwells in the adorations 
 of His people. A glorious thought, and not 
 more glorious than profound! The Church, in 
 one view, is God's Temple : Praise, the Church's 
 Praise, is, in another view, God's Temple. 
 
 When the hymn swells forth from a thousand 
 sympathetic hearts, each one severally impressed 
 with the sense of His majesty and truth, His 
 holiness and love, and all together telling forth 
 
Praise. 1 1 3 
 
 these things in the hearing of men and Angels — 
 for a witness to the world which joins not yet 
 the chorus, and for the edification (as an Apo- 
 stle teaches us) even of the principalities and 
 powers in heavenly places, who thus learn through 
 the Church more than they knew before of the 
 manifold wisdom of God 1 — then God is there: 
 God inhabits these praises : God deigns to pos- 
 sess and occupy them, to enthrone Himself (as 
 it were) upon them, and in them to magnify 
 Himself in the quickening and comforting and 
 edifying of those who believe. 
 
 If we had looked all through the pages of 
 Holy Writ for a word of serious admonition to 
 those who come together here in the character 
 of the Church's choristers, the utterers and con- 
 ductors of the Church's voice of praise, could 
 we have found one more forcible or more au- 
 gust ? If these praises of Israel are God's habi- 
 tation, then you who take part in them are 
 drawing very nigh to God : you are entering 
 the very shrine where God's honour dwelleth 2 : 
 I speak not now of the building ; I speak of the 
 
 1 Eph. iii. 10. 3 Psalm xxvi. 8. 
 
 V.L. 8 
 
1 14 Praise. 
 
 words : I speak of your chants and anthems and 
 hymns : and I pray you to consider how dread- 
 ful an act yours is if it be not a serious and a 
 solemn act ; an act done with great self-recollec- 
 tion, lowly self-humiliation, and deep awe-struck 
 reverence. 
 
 But I would rather follow more exactly the 
 Psalmist's guidance, and show how the thought 
 of God's abode in Israel's praises should en- 
 courage hope. Why, he says, hast Thou for- 
 saken me — crying to Thee in the day time, in 
 the night season too not silent — seeing that 
 Thou inhabitest the praises of Israel ? It is an 
 expostulation, founded on the remembrance of 
 God's abode. God would not dwell in Israel's 
 praises, if He did not approve, if He did not 
 love them. Praise is God's habitation, because 
 praise is God's delight. Here will I dwell, for 
 I have a delight therein 1 . We can appeal to 
 Him on the ground of what He has taught us 
 as to His acceptance of His Church's praise. 
 
 The praise of God is the very highest of 
 all the employments in which the faculties of 
 1 Psalm exxxii. 15. 
 
Praise. 115 
 
 man can be exercised. It stands above prayer. 
 It stands above thanksgiving. It stands above 
 even intercession. Prayer is asking for the 
 supply of wants. Thanksgiving is the acknow- 
 ledgment of wants satisfied. Intercession is 
 asking for the supply of others' wants. All 
 these things therefore, even when least selfish, 
 have their home and their bound in the present. 
 We might say of them, as St Paul says of the 
 gift of prophecy, and of the gift of knowledge, 
 and of the gift of tongues, They shall fail... they 
 shall cease... they shall vanish azuay 1 . In a world 
 where there is no want, prayer and intercession 
 and thanksgiving will rest, being fulfilled. But 
 praise is different from all these. Praise never 
 faileth. Praise is the telling forth, not of what 
 God has done, but of what God is. Praise is 
 the losing myself in God. Praise is the absorp- 
 tion of every faculty in the thought, in the 
 contemplation, in the investigation, in the ad- 
 miration, of the fulness of grace and glory which 
 is in God Himself. Praise is the last and best, 
 the most difficult and the most exalted, the 
 
 1 1 Cor. xiii. 8. 
 
 8—2 
 
n6 
 
 Praise. 
 
 most self-abasing and the most self-forgetting, 
 of all possible exercises of the human faculties 
 in the service of the Divine Father and Re- 
 deemer and Sanctifier. He who can praise is 
 as one in a thousand amongst those who can 
 pray, and even amongst those who stay to give 
 thanks. Prayer is human : intercession is hu- 
 man : thanksgiving is human : praise is Divine. 
 
 Let us diligently cultivate this greatest of 
 powers, this greatest of gifts. That is the very 
 object of our gathering together. We meet to 
 practise for heaven. We meet to assist ourselves 
 and to assist one another in acquiring that new 
 song which no man can learn but the hundred 
 and forty and four thousand which were redeemed 
 from the earth 1 . If we can only learn that, we 
 shall be able to expostulate with God, even as 
 the Psalmist and One greater than he did ex- 
 postulate, in hours of depression and despond- 
 ency, on the ground that He who seems to be 
 silent to us is yet He that inhabiteth the praises 
 of Israel. 
 
 3. There is a third point to be noticed. It 
 
 1 Rev. xiv. 3. 
 
Praise. 
 
 117 
 
 is an expostulation founded (if we might hazard 
 the expression) on the antecedents of God. My 
 God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me, seeing 
 that our fatliers trusted in Thee, and Thou didst 
 deliver tliem? That God should be silent to one 
 of His creatures, calling upon Him day and 
 night, is inconsistent with what He has done, in 
 all ages, for those who trusted in Him. 
 
 Faith in God is in one sense — and it is a very 
 high sense — an hereditary thing. 
 
 God Himself encouraged this view of faith, 
 when He said to the future Lawgiver of Israel on 
 His first appearing to him in the burning bush 
 of Horeb, / am the God of thy father 1 . 
 
 Yes, the ancestry of Redemption is a great 
 matter. 
 
 To be able to appeal to God as having 
 through many generations done thus and thus 
 for those who trusted in Him ; to be able to 
 recall, like the faithful Timothy, a mother and a 
 grandmother who had had the unfeigned faith 
 dwelling in them, and who had shown that faith 
 by teaching him from a child those Holy Scrip- 
 
 1 Exod. iii. 6. 
 
1 1 s 
 
 Praise. 
 
 tures which are able to make men wise unto 
 salvation 1 / to be able to recall the beloved 
 image of a father, long since laid on sleep, who 
 walked through the wilderness of this world 
 looking for a city which hath foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God 2 ; to be able, with 
 personal application, to say, in the language of 
 our Litany (itself borrowed from this sacred 
 Book of Psalms), 0 God, we have Jieard with our 
 ears, and our fathers have declared unto us, the 
 noble works that Thou didst in their days, and in 
 the old time before them 3 ; this gives great weight 
 and great cogency to our arguments against 
 depression and despondency in the things of 
 God : it bases our hopes upon that which God 
 has done, and enables us to say, in the language 
 of a tried and assured conviction, Look at the 
 generations of old, and see: did ever any trust in 
 the Lord, and was confounded? or whom did He 
 ever despise that called upon Him*f 
 
 And this is one of God's compensations for 
 us who live in the latter days of His Church. 
 
 1 i Tim. i. 5. iii. 15. * Heb. xi. 10. 
 
 3 Psalm xliv. 1. 4 Ecclus. ii. 10. 
 
Praise. 
 
 119 
 
 In some respects, we are at a disadvantage 
 in comparison with earlier generations. If we 
 could but have stood where Peter stood, or John, 
 or James ; have seen the touch of Christ cleanse 
 the leper, give sight to the blind, or raise the 
 dead ; have been present in that upper room 
 where the disciples were assembled, seen that 
 unexpected presence, heard that grave yet 
 tender greeting, and witnessed the satisfaction 
 of a doubting Apostle in the actual sight of the 
 pierced hand and the riven side 1 ; no doubt we 
 should have possessed helps to believing, yea a 
 compulsion of faith, which now we have not. 
 On the other hand, He who hath done all things 
 well 2 has given us just one argument which they 
 had not and could not have. He has left on 
 record for us the experience of many ages, as to 
 the healing virtue which goes forth from Jesus ; 
 the assurance of faith, and brightness of hope, 
 and comfort of love, which has been the portion 
 of all those who in the individuality of their own 
 being — amidst temptations common to all, or 
 infirmities peculiar to themselves — have fled for 
 
 1 John xx. 26, 27. 3 Mark vii. 37. 
 
120 
 
 Praise. 
 
 refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before them 1 , 
 and have been enabled through Almighty grace 
 to hold the beginning of their confdence stedfast 
 unto the end 1 . We can say, in moments of sad- 
 ness, as the first disciples could not say, with 
 reference to the distinctive hopes and promises 
 of the Gospel, Why art Thou so far from helping 
 me, when oitr fathers trusted in Thee, and Thou 
 didst deliver them ? 
 
 In this respect there is a peculiar comfort for 
 us members of the Church of England, in the 
 perpetual use of those very words and forms of 
 worship which have expressed the wants and 
 guided the utterances of the faithful through 
 many centuries of past conflict and trial. It 
 can never be unseasouable to remember and 
 give thanks for that Providence of God which 
 has taken care that this generation of wor- 
 shippers should not have to grope its way, 
 amongst many diverse forms and many opposite 
 opinions, to a system of doctrine and ritual 
 which it must make out fresh for itself from the 
 holy Book of Inspiration ; but has permitted it 
 1 Heb. vi. 18. a Heb. iii. 14. 
 
Praise. 
 
 121 
 
 to enter upon an inheritance of calm wisdom 
 and pious utterance, in which many have gone 
 before it, and in which (God willing) many also 
 shall follow after. When I enter this House of 
 Prayer on the Lord's Day, and take into my 
 hand the familiar Book of Common Prayer, out 
 of which I am to lead or else to accompany the 
 devotions of the Congregation ; I feel a comfort 
 and confidence in the recollection that out of 
 this same Book men whose names are now 
 canonized as those of fathers in Israel read of 
 old to their people ; that out of this same Book 
 my father and my mother uttered the selfsame 
 words which are now my responses and my 
 songs of praise ; insomuch that, when I find 
 myself left without an answer in this place from 
 the mercy-seat which is above, I can take upon 
 my lips with fulness of meaning the expostu- 
 lation of the Psalmist, and say, Why, O my 
 God, art Thou silent to me, when my fathers 
 of old time spake to Thee in these words and 
 Thou answeredst them, trusted in Thee, and 
 thus told their trust, and Thou didst deliver 
 them ? 
 
122 
 
 Praise. 
 
 I have thought that a few commonplace 
 truths, such as were in all your hearts before I 
 uttered them, might not come amiss to you this 
 day 1 ; a day which is destined, I trust, by God's 
 mercy, to bear fruit in days after it, when, re- 
 turning to our several homes, we set ourselves 
 earnestly, for another year, to the work which 
 we all have in hand ; that of rendering God's 
 worship, in the several Parishes, town and coun- 
 try, of this neighbourhood, more worthy (if it 
 might be so) of Him, and more dear and lovely 
 in the minds of His people below. 
 
 Let it never be forgotten that this, and 
 nothing else or less than this, is the real object 
 of our Association. 
 
 This day's gathering is but a means to an 
 end. What we 'desire, what we seek, what 
 (under God) we expect to realise, is, such an 
 improvement of Church Music in the several 
 Parishes which give us their cooperation, as 
 shall make it, not more showy — God forbid — 
 not more complicated, not more ornate, not 
 
 1 This Discourse was prepared for delivery at a Church 
 Choral Festival. 
 
Praise. 
 
 I2j 
 
 more artistic — none of these things — just more 
 congregational, more united, more hearty, more 
 devotional ; more like that primitive model of 
 all Public Worship of which the Book of the 
 Acts of the Apostles tells us, that they who 
 were present lifted np their voice to God with 
 one accord, and that the result of it was, by His 
 grace, that they were all filled with the Holy 
 Ghost, and spake the word of God with boldness 1 . 
 That is what we desire : God, in His mercy and 
 goodness, grant it more and more to His 
 Churches ! 
 
 I know that there are those who still think — 
 I say, still, because I believe that the thought is 
 rapidly wearing out in our congregations — that 
 the Service of God cannot possibly be too bare 
 and plain ; that music is the natural enemy of 
 devotion ; that the spirituality of worship may 
 be measured by its destitution of all adjuncts 
 and of all accompaniments. Let not such 
 reasoners suppose that they have Scripture with 
 them ! They will scarcely doubt that the 
 Psalms of David were handed over by him to 
 
 1 Acts iv. 24, 31. 
 
1 24 Praise. 
 
 the Chief Musician to be set to music, and that 
 they were sung by the sons of Korah amidst all 
 the pomp of a most elaborate and costly ritual. 
 They can scarcely forget those repeated calls 
 contained in them, not to the voice only, which 
 is man's glory, but to psaltery and harp and 
 organ too, to awake and utter God's praise 1 . 
 They must remember that, on the most solemn 
 night which earth ever saw, the Saviour of sin- 
 ners Himself, heading His little band of fol- 
 lowers towards the garden of gloom and anguish, 
 first sang an hymn before He set forth to His 
 Passion 2 . Nor can they deny that the permission 
 at least of song is given in our Church's ritual 
 alike to Psalm and Response, to Litany and 
 Creed ; all appointed to be said or sting, sung or 
 said, as the wish of the people, the judgment of 
 the Minister, or the circumstances of the place, 
 may in each instance direct. 
 
 And what is the alternative ? Answer from 
 your own observation of Churches in which 
 music is silent ! Is it a warm and hearty re- 
 sponse from the assembled People to every 
 
 1 Psalm cviii. 1, 2. cL 3, 4. 1 Matt. xxvi. 30. 
 
Praise. 125 
 
 verse uttered by the Minister ? Is it a sound 
 like the voice of many waters, telling of hearts 
 deeply engaged and affections keenly interested? 
 Is that what we hear in Services in which the 
 Organ is disused and all is left to the Congrega- 
 tion ? O, if it were so- — if it were indeed so — 
 we should think twice, we should long pause 
 and hesitate, before we exchanged that most 
 solemn of utterances for one possibly less uni- 
 versal and more studied ! But you know that 
 it is not so. You know that the alternative is 
 not between the natural voice and the voice 
 of song, but between the voice of song and — 
 silence ! 
 
 And more and more is the judgment of our 
 Congregations, all over England, declaring itself 
 in favour of a Musical Service. I hear it myself, 
 from the lips of pious and Evangelical Clergy- 
 men, that they find it absolutely necessary, if 
 they would not see their Congregations week by 
 week dwindle and melt away from before them, 
 to add the attraction of a Musical Service to 
 what they trust is still the attraction of a sound 
 Gospel. There is a feeling abroad amongst us, 
 
126 
 
 Praise. 
 
 not in one place only, but through the length 
 and breadth of England, that nothing can be 
 too good for God's worship ; and that the voice 
 of man, which He has so marvellously endowed 
 with sweet and thrilling music, must be em- 
 ployed, not at its worst but at its best, in setting 
 forth His praise. The fiat has gone forth : it is 
 left to us to use it or to abuse. 
 
 And I will say this, now that the fact is so, 
 without fear of offence and without fear of con- 
 tradiction, that it becomes a sacred duty, on the 
 part of all persons, to prepare themselves to 
 take a share, as God has enabled them, in this 
 musical devotion. Few indeed are they who 
 are incapacitated by nature, or who might not 
 easily qualify themselves by practice, for some 
 of the humbler parts (at least) of this work and 
 office of Divine Praise. Most grievous is it — a 
 terrible sign of coldness and deadness in the life 
 of God — to see persons, who can charm others in 
 a private room by the exhibition of musical 
 taste and skill, standing mute and dumb in the 
 Church of God. Great cause have they to 
 humble themselves for their past negligence, and 
 
Praise. 127 
 
 to set themselves in good earnest to help by 
 every power of theirs the Church's song ! 
 
 To others, not gifted with any natural or 
 acquired skill in music, we would still say, Be 
 not afraid to use, in the plainer portions at least 
 of the Service, such voice and ear as God has 
 given you. If any discord should ever mar 
 your music, the proof of your will and of your 
 effort will far, far more than atone for it. The 
 voice of the Congregation will drown your im- 
 perfect melody: and God who sees the heart will 
 count its faultiness a virtue. 
 
 With regard to those few — I believe them to 
 be few indeed — who are truly incompetent to 
 swell, even thus imperfectly, the voice of praise ; 
 and with regard also to certain parts of the 
 Musical Service (where it is used in its com- 
 pleteness) which absolutely require both ear and 
 voice, skill and practice, for their full and per- 
 fect use ; I will say but this — very seriously and 
 very honestly — that it is no small profit, to a 
 devout worshipper, to have the words of praise 
 amplified as it were and augmented in the 
 utterance ; to be able to stand, with the Book of 
 
128 
 
 Praise. 
 
 Prayer or Praise in his hand, while the verses of 
 the Canticle or the Anthem even repeat and 
 reiterate themselves in his hearing ; and thus to 
 be allowed to enter, with a deeper meditation 
 and a more intelligent pondering, into phrases 
 which are apt otherwise to skim the surface of 
 the mind without entering it ; and thus to have 
 the opportunity of communing with Him, the 
 Lord of the Churches, concerning revelations 
 which are full of Him, in words breathed of old 
 time by His Spirit. He who inhabiteth the 
 praises of Israel will not count that worship 
 meaningless, or reject that praise because it is 
 silent. Nay, we read in the Book of Psalms 
 itself, that all praise waiteth — yea, as to its 
 profoundest utterances, is silent— for God in 
 Zion x . 
 
 When the services of this day reach their 
 end, pray that something of them may remain ! 
 Pray that their blessing fade not and die not 
 with them ! Pray for God's benediction upon 
 the work which we of this Congregation have in 
 hand ; upon the praises, in some twenty sur- 
 
 1 Psalm lxv. i. 
 
Praise. 1 29 
 
 rounding Churches, of a coming year! Pray 
 that He will evermore assist with His grace the 
 hearts of His choristers and the hearts of His 
 musicians ! Pray that no spirit of trifling or 
 levity, no spirit of vanity or self-display, no 
 spirit of unkindness, jealousy, or ill suspicion, 
 may intrude itself amongst us into services 
 which should be all love ! Pray that His name 
 may be made known upon earth by the help of 
 praises inhabited by Himself! 
 
 And may He Himself, whose we are, and 
 whom in all things we seek to serve, grant to us 
 and to all His Congregations, far off and near, 
 an increase of light and hope, of peace and joy, 
 till we all come, in the unity of the faith and of 
 the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
 man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ 1 ! 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 13. 
 
 V. L. 
 
 9 
 
DISCOURSE VI. 
 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 2 John io. 
 
 If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, 
 receive him not into your house, neither bid him 
 God speed. 
 
 There is one portion of the Services of our 
 Church, so full of deeply important matter, yet 
 at the same time so often misused and miscon- 
 strued, that I have thought it well deserving of 
 special and separate consideration. And yet if 
 I were to say that the subject of this discourse 
 will be the Athanasian Creed, I almost fear 
 that it would be regarded as the announcement 
 of an unpractical, an uninteresting, an almost 
 repulsive subject. 
 
 We are all aware of the treatment which 
 this Creed has received at the hands of many 
 worshippers and some ministers of our Church. 
 
134 The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 Dislike and contempt for it have been some- 
 times openly exhibited where such exhibitions 
 are most wrong and indecent. Persons have 
 been seen to seat themselves, with an air almost 
 of defiance, when the first sound of the Quictm- 
 que viclt fell upon their ear in the house of God. 
 Some Christian ministers never read it, and 
 many members of the congregation never join 
 in it. Particular expressions in it have furnished 
 the scoffer with his readiest weapons of attack, 
 and (which is much more to be lamented) have 
 caused to certain minds, in the prospect more 
 especially of entering the ministry of the 
 Church, seasons of deep disquietude, resulting, 
 it may be, in the discarding of that armour 
 which they were just girding on for the life-long 
 combat of the ordained soldier of Christ. 
 
 Now on all these accounts it is most impor- 
 tant that the mind should be early prepared to 
 estimate aright this portion of our Church's 
 worship. It is not in the tone of excuse or 
 apology, but rather in all the confidence of 
 sincerity and truth, that we would approach 
 the consideration of the Athanasian Creed. If 
 
TJie Athanasian Creed. 135 
 
 apology were needed for any phrase or any 
 sentiment contained in it, it would be amply 
 found in the ancient date of its origin and in 
 the historical circumstances which attended its 
 composition. 
 
 You can never expect to find in a very 
 ancient document an exactness of adaptation 
 to the taste or the feeling of a later age. Ex- 
 pressions which were perfectly intelligible to the 
 writer and to the first readers, may become 
 difficult of explanation when the clue to their 
 meaning is lost by time. Other expressions, 
 which were justified at the time by a recent 
 experience of the serious consequences of error, 
 may sound harsh beyond what is necessary 
 when the errors to which they refer have passed 
 into the dim back-ground of a remote antiquity. 
 Or it may be, again, that a form of speech which 
 was usual and natural in dealing with opponents 
 in a distant age, is stronger and more condem- 
 natory than the polished ear or (let us believe) 
 the charitable judgment of our own time can 
 hear or use with entire approbation. All these 
 things may be : and yet the composition which 
 
136 The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 contains these drawbacks to its hearty accept- 
 ance with us may be, all the time, true and 
 valuable ; a needed protest against errors pos- 
 sible because once prevalent ; a sound summary 
 of a faith once delivered to the saints, or a 
 Solemn warning against corruptions by which 
 that faith may be, because it has been, disfigured 
 or mutilated. 
 
 Or it might happen, once again, that great 
 practical difficulties may beset the modification 
 or alteration of a Church's formularies, either 
 from the absence of an authority qualified to 
 undertake it, or from the risk — always a serious 
 consideration — of the rashness with which change 
 might be attempted, and the impossibility of 
 fixing definitely beforehand to what objects it 
 shall be restricted or at what point limited. 
 All these things may leave for long, perhaps 
 for ever, on the pages of a Common Prayer- 
 Book, defects and blemishes, to be acknow- 
 ledged with candour, yet acquiesced in with 
 patience, by whose who still estimate too highly 
 the work of the Church, and sympathize too 
 deeply with its principles, to allow themselves 
 
The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 137 
 
 to entertain the question of deserting its ranks 
 or seeking- elsewhere a freedom of judgment 
 which the Church itself is ever ready to concede 
 to them so long as it stops short of wilfulness 
 and of licence. 
 
 When a few such admissions have been 
 made with reference to the Athanasian Creed, 
 we shall have said enough to prepare ourselves 
 for its serious study, and, as I believe, for its 
 devout and thankful use. 
 
 We can little appreciate in this late age 
 of the world the magnitude of those dangers 
 through which the Providence of God, and (let 
 us add) the promised presence of Christ by His 
 Spirit, once steered the storm-tossed ark of His 
 Church. We read now, with an indifference not 
 unmingled with impatience, of the heresies of 
 Nestorius, Apollinaris, and Eutyches, perhaps 
 of Arius himself, and we marvel at the import- 
 ance attached to them by men who were re- 
 garded as wise and learned in their generation, 
 and who saw in these subtleties matter for ap- 
 prehension which we regard as fanciful, or a 
 justification of censures which we listen to as 
 
138 The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 unchristian. Yet it was by means of these re- 
 peated protests against error on the right hand 
 and on the left, that the truth of Revelation 
 was preserved to us unsullied. And a closer 
 examination of these several so-called heresies 
 would probably detect in each the germ at least 
 of a disastrous and fatal misconception of the 
 character, office, or doctrine of Him in whom 
 our one hope centres. As these successive roots 
 of bitterness were cleared away, the faith of 
 Christ was gradually shaped into a form some- 
 what more set and systematic than we might 
 have desired, but yet one more distinctly ex- 
 pressed and more easily to be recognized ; a 
 form less beautiful perhaps than in its first 
 heavenly freshness, but on the other hand better 
 qualified to do battle with the countless hosts, 
 open and secret, of its earthly enemies. 
 
 Nor was the one form in reality exchanged 
 for the other. If the Articles of Faith, and some 
 forms of worship, had become more rigidly sys- 
 tematic than when the Gospel first came from 
 the hands of its Divine Author, yet the Church 
 still possessed the record of that Divine Origi- 
 
The Atlianasian Creed. 139 
 
 nal, and might read in the Holy Scriptures the 
 very words of Christ Himself, the account of 
 the very life which He lived for us, and the 
 very death which He died. In the one, she 
 had those definitions and deductions which the 
 perverse ingenuity of man had rendered ne- 
 cessary, to guard the simple from being misled, 
 and to inform the enquirer as to her rules and 
 doctrines : in the other, the Scriptures of truth, 
 she had the living words by which souls are 
 nourished, and through which the spirit of man 
 holds communion with the Spirit of God. Each 
 of these two had and has its use: we doubt not 
 which is the more precious, but we believe that 
 both are indispensable. 
 
 Read then the Creed before us as the record 
 of those feelings of confidence and of thankful- 
 ness with which the Church of the fifth century 
 reviewed the way by which God had led her 
 through the labyrinth of human error into the 
 clear light of a formed faith and an established 
 doctrine. Each one of its doctrinal clauses is, 
 not so much the statement of a truth, as the 
 repudiation of an existing and dangerous error : 
 
140 The Athcmasian Creed. 
 
 each one tells of a peril through which the 
 Faith had passed and from which God had 
 given it a good deliverance : each one must 
 have thrilled the hearts of those who first sang 
 it, with the sense as of a shipwreck escaped, 
 with the comfort and joy of a Divine interven- 
 tion and rescue. And if we cannot now enter, 
 as of course we cannot, into the very feelings 
 of those who wrote and read it as a hymn of 
 triumphal praise, let us not forget to thank God 
 for that quietness and calm which He has given 
 to His Church on earth, so far at least as the 
 substance of its faith is concerned, and let us 
 not rashly throw away those bulwarks of sound 
 doctrine which testify to His past mercies, if 
 they be not still needed as instruments of pro- 
 tection and defence. 
 
 The subjects embodied in the Athanasian 
 Creed are beyond all question the most impor- 
 tant that can occupy the thoughts of a Christian 
 worshipper. There is a wide difference between 
 it and any other. Between it and the Apostles' 
 Creed there is a difference so wide that, even 
 apart from external evidence, we could tell 
 
The Athanasian Creed. 141 
 
 from their contents that whole centuries of strife 
 and trouble had rolled between them. Thankful 
 might we be, if the simplicity of the Apostles' 
 Creed had continued to be, as once doubtless 
 it had been, sufficient to express all that Chris- 
 tians need utter as the symbol of their common 
 faith and the condition of their united worship- 
 It better represents, no doubt, the Gospel as 
 it came from Heaven : but it does not therefore 
 follow that a more elaborate and in some re- 
 spects less attractive summary of belief may 
 not have been rendered necessary by the ex- 
 perienced exigencies of the Gospel as it abode 
 on earth. When the ingenuity of Eastern spe- 
 culation had once begun to busy itself with the 
 formation of theories as to the great Object of 
 worship and the Person of the Incarnate Word, 
 it was needful that, negatively at least if not 
 positively, the truth upon these subjects should 
 be expressed, so as to banish errors which had 
 already crept in, and preclude, as far as might 
 be, the rise of others, in a region where all error 
 is vital and all variety is at once discord. 
 
 The Church wearied with conflict is in a 
 
142 The AtJianasian Creed. 
 
 different position from the Church just founded. 
 It must reflect upon past perils : it must rehearse 
 its experience in words heretofore unuttered. 
 The Church which was once satisfied to speak 
 of an Almighty Father, Maker of Heaven and 
 earth, of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and 
 of the Holy Ghost, must now combine into a 
 more connected whole these distinct elements 
 of faith and worship ; must use terms, imperfect 
 indeed but not therefore inexpressive, to assert 
 the union in one Godhead of these three Divine 
 Persons ; declaring that to each one by Himself 
 are ascribed in the Holy Scriptures, all the in- 
 communicable properties of a perfect Divinity — 
 self-existence, eternity, immensity, omnipotence, 
 dominion, Deity — and yet on the other hand 
 maintaining as the one foundation of all true 
 religion, that there is but One God, and One 
 Lord ; that the Object of all faith is, not Three, 
 but One ; that, while we worship one God in 
 Trinity, that Trinity itself must be worshipped 
 in Unity". What is there in this but the 
 expression, with such distinctness as human 
 thought and human language can supply, of 
 
The Athanasiati Creed. 143 
 
 a truth implicitly if not explicitly taught in every 
 page of Scripture, and with regard to which no 
 expression but that of Scripture itself would 
 have been needful, had not erroneous expres- 
 sions of it made it necessary, as time advanced, 
 to elaborate the true ? 
 
 Thus is it also with regard to the second 
 great subject of the Athanasian Creed, the 
 Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. It might have 
 been enough, as in the earliest age of all it was 
 enough, to take for granted with reference to our 
 Saviour that double character which the first 
 view of the New Testament evidently gives 
 Him, of Divinity and Humanity, God and Man, 
 without attempting to define the limits of either 
 element, or the method of their coexistence and 
 combination. It was better so : that was the 
 form in which God sent, in which Christ brought, 
 to us the Gospel. We saw there that Christ was 
 Man ; we saw also there that Christ was God : 
 we were not told how He could be the one and 
 yet also the other: we only saw that He was 
 this, and that He was that, and yet that but 
 One Person was spoken of — God in power and 
 
144 The Afhanasian Creed. 
 
 wisdom, Man in sympathy and in circumstance : 
 this was the Gospel as it came, and we mourn 
 over that necessity which drove men to define 
 what God had given. But that necessity which 
 was to be lamented was not therefore to be 
 evaded: man had defined erroneously, and there- 
 fore the Church must define correctly. Man had 
 said, Christ is one, and therefore He is only 
 God, or else, therefore He is only Man : the 
 Church must express, however imperfectly, that 
 He is both ; not only perfect God, with one half 
 of man's nature, His body, appended to Him, so 
 that the Divinity was the soul to the human 
 body ; but perfect Man also, of a reasonable soul 
 as well as human flesh subsisting, yet with both 
 these parts of a perfect humanity so taken into 
 the perfect Divinity, as that, though the Natures 
 were two, the Person was one. Man had said, 
 The nature of Christ is twofold, and therefore 
 what happened to Him who had the one part of 
 that nature did not necessarily happen also to 
 Him who had the other: the Man was born, the 
 Man suffered, the Man died, but not so the 
 Divine Man, the God and Man : and in this the 
 
The Athanasian Creed. 145 
 
 Church saw that which was perilous to the unity 
 of Christ's Person, that which had been the root 
 of a thousand fanciful notions as to the method 
 of the incorporation of the Godhead in the Man- 
 hood, and found it needful to assert, beyond the 
 possibility of any evasion of her meaning, that 
 our Saviour is not two but one Christ, one not 
 indeed by any conversion of the Godhead into 
 flesh, but yet by a taking of the Manhood into 
 God, so that henceforth God and Man should be 
 one Christ. 
 
 And then, when these deeper mysteries have 
 been thus premised, how majestic and how 
 touching is that brief summary of the events 
 which befell the Saviour, and the events in 
 which we all have so deep, so awful, a concern ! 
 How grave the application thus made of matters 
 which perhaps seemed till then to bear but 
 slightly upon human duty or destiny ! At wliose 
 coming all men shall rise again with their bodies: 
 and shall give account for their own works. A nd 
 tliey that have done good shall go into life ever- 
 lasting; and they that have done evil into ever' 
 lasting fire. 
 
 V. L. 10 
 
146 The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 I have reserved for latest mention those 
 expressions in the Creed now before us, which 
 have in fact caused far greater difficulty to 
 scrupulous persons than the parts on which I 
 have dwelt. With respect to the doctrinal 
 statements of the Creed, they are contented 
 with saying that they do not fully understand 
 them ; that there are amongst them expressions 
 with which they cannot sympathize, as well as 
 many in which they heartily concur. But there 
 are also expressions which they at once con- 
 demn as presumptuous and uncharitable ; those 
 which seem to speak of agreement with every 
 part of this Creed as the necessary condition of 
 salvation. Which Faith except every one do keep 
 wliole and undcfiled : without doubt he shall perish 
 everlastingly... He therefore that will be saved 
 must thus think of tlie Trinity ... This is the 
 Catholic Faith : which except a man believe fait/i- 
 fully, he cannot be saved. 
 
 I suppose there is no one on whose ear these 
 expressions have not fallen somewhat harshly. 
 We cannot be satisfied with the explanation, 
 that they are a charitable warning; that, the 
 
The Athanasian Creed. 147 
 
 truths contained in the Creed being the truths of 
 God's Revelation, it is an act of brotherly kind- 
 ness to testify to men the peril of disbelieving 
 them. We all feel that the words themselves 
 bear rather the aspect of threatening than of 
 warning ; that they breathe the spirit of the 
 Law rather than of the Gospel ; that they would 
 neither have been written if the Creed were of 
 a later age, nor retained if the Church could 
 readily and safely have removed the part with- 
 out discarding the whole. All men agree to 
 understand these clauses in a modified and 
 limited sense. There does not exist the man 
 who would apply them quite literally to the 
 person, at all events, of him who doubts or 
 differs from some of the details of doctrine to 
 which they are appended. We all agree that at 
 least they must be applied only to wilful un- 
 belief; to the repudiation of the whole or a part 
 of the truth by one who has had every oppor- 
 tunity of receiving it, and has deliberately, from 
 wrong motives, refused and rejected it. And as 
 we never can know for certain the motives which 
 may have prompted such a rejection, we should 
 
 IO—2 
 
148 The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 be afraid to apply the awful words thus used ti) 
 any individual, almost to any class of opinion, of 
 whom or of which we have ourselves had ex- 
 perience. Further than this, we observe that 
 the words themselves, in their strictest original 
 meaning, can scarcely have been designed to 
 apply to every minute detail into which the 
 Creed enters, but rather to the great fundamental 
 doctrines of the Trinity in Unity, of the union of 
 God and Man in Christ, and of the more prac- 
 tical revelations which form its conclusion ; in 
 other words, to the general revelation of the 
 great Object of our worship, and of the purposes 
 of mercy and judgment which He has made 
 known to us in Christ's Gospel. 
 
 Let me remark, before I pass on, that there 
 is such a thing as a tacit repeal of words which 
 may still be retained in our formularies of faith ; 
 certainly that there is such a thing as an autho- 
 ritative construction put upon such words by an 
 almost universal consent ; and that this tacit 
 repeal, or authoritative construction, applies in 
 the strongest manner to the words before us, so 
 far as regards their apparent condemnation, 
 
The Athanasian Creed. 149 
 
 without regard to circumstances, opportunities, 
 or motives, of all those who differ in one iota 
 from any one particular of the abstruse and 
 mysterious doctrines here enunciated. No can- 
 didate for the holy office of the ministry ought 
 to have his conscience hampered or his peace 
 disturbed by the inability to accept literally 
 phrases which every wise ruler of the Church 
 and every thoughtful minister for several centu- 
 ries has interpreted with a wide latitude. 
 
 But, wide as is the latitude which we must 
 allow and claim in the interpretation of these 
 words of solemn threatening, we must never 
 forget that that latitude has limits, and that 
 there are classes of men, and that there are 
 individual men, though we dare not and would 
 not define them, to whom terms such as these 
 are strictly appropriate. 
 
 It is with faith as with practice. No Chris- 
 tian would scruple to say with St Paul, Be not 
 deceived: neither idolaters, nor adulterers, nor 
 thieves, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extor- 
 tioners, sluxll inherit the kingdom of God*. We 
 
 1 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10. 
 
150 The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 speak thus in general : and yet we should nei- 
 ther point out the persons to whom such denun- 
 ciations are applicable, nor forget the possibility 
 of a repentance which may transfer the indi- 
 vidual transgressor into a most opposite class of 
 men. It is with minds as with lives. Our 
 Saviour Himself says, He that believeth and is 
 baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not 
 shall be damned 1 . And it has sometimes been 
 suggested that that verse might well be substi- 
 tuted in the Athanasian Creed for the some- 
 what more definite and at all events human 
 words in which a denunciation similar in its 
 general import is expressed. That awful saying 
 of our Lord shows us that there is an unbelief 
 which is fatal to man's salvation : we presume 
 not to fix its limits or to guide its application : 
 we know that He who uttered it is Himself 
 alone the Judge of either, and that He will 
 know how to estimate aright the degree of light 
 which has been neglected, the circumstances and 
 the opportunities which have palliated or aggra- 
 vated the guilt. 
 
 1 Mark xvi. 16. 
 
The Athanasian Creed. 131 
 
 But with ourselves is our concern. And the 
 Athanasian Creed, in what are called its con- 
 demnatory clauses, echoes the language of our 
 Lord Himself in reminding us that every man 
 is responsible, not for Ids conduct only, but for 
 his belief. If it were only for this testimony, 
 it would be well worthy of its place amongst 
 the documents of the Christian Faith. 
 
 A man is responsible for his faith as well as 
 for his conduct ; for what he believes as well as 
 for what he does. 
 
 Too often we judge differently. We say, A 
 man cannot make himself believe. Belief is an 
 involuntary act : if it is forced, it is nugatory. 
 This is true, and not true. A man cannot sud- 
 denly say, I will believe this : but every man 
 may, and every man does, influence his belief 
 by forming or refusing to form certain habits 
 of mind and life. 
 
 There are habits of mind which bear directly 
 upon this result, of faith or unbelief. Early in 
 life we begin to form them. There is a vanity 
 which shows itself in cavilling at what is most 
 surely believed by others. There is a wilfulness 
 
152 The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 which plays with truth ; a waywardness which 
 will rather go wrong than follow. There is an 
 indolence which will not grapple with a diffi- 
 culty; and there is a disingenuousness which 
 is blind to the most convincing argument if it 
 points toward the sacrifice of a pleasure or 
 the exertion of an effort. These evil habits of 
 mind are often formed early : and they lead, 
 one and all, straight towards unbelief; such an 
 unbelief as is certainly not venial but deeply 
 culpable. 
 
 If the Gospel be true, these are faults which 
 must tell upon our ability to accept it. The 
 Gospel demands of us, first and last, candour ; 
 a readiness to weigh evidence, to consider de- 
 mands of duty, to ponder consequences, with 
 the simple desire to know what is true that we 
 may do what is right. If this quality be want- 
 ing, in any one of its parts, the Gospel, if it 
 be true, has no chance with us : its call is that 
 for which we have no ear, its evidences are 
 those for which we have no judgment. 
 
 This is one of the most serious statements 
 that can be addressed to the young. They are 
 
The Atlianasian Creed. 153 
 
 forming habits of mind ; and upon their habits 
 of mind will depend their faith. 
 
 What a solemn import does this give to mat- 
 ters which at the time may be regarded as al- 
 most indifferent,! Vanity, wilfulness, indolence, 
 perverseness, these things, if they be suffered 
 in us early — and no one but we ourselves by 
 God's help can eradicate or counteract them — 
 these things may cost us our faith, and if our 
 faith, then our salvation. He that believeth not 
 tlie Son shall not see life : but the wrath of God 
 abidcth on him 1 . 
 
 This is one of the two reasons why a man 
 is responsible to God, answerable at the cost of 
 his soul, for that soul's belief. Unbelief is the 
 result of habits of mind, in the formation of 
 which he has been, throughout, and alone, the 
 agent. 
 
 The other reason is, that habits of life, as 
 well as of mind, tell directly and powerfully 
 upon the belief. And these may be of two 
 kinds ; habits of act, and habits of neglect ; sins 
 of omission, and sins of commission. 
 
 1 John iii. 36. 
 
154 The Athanasian Creed. 
 
 Every time that we omit our morning or our 
 evening prayer, we are contributing towards the 
 inability to believe. Every day that our Bible 
 remains closed, we are contributing towards the 
 inability to believe. Every day that we live 
 without God in our world, whatever that world 
 be, whether the world of youth or the world 
 of age, the world of business or of amusement, 
 of intellect or of society, we are contributing, 
 directly contributing, towards the future ina- 
 bility to believe. 
 
 Why so ? Because faith is the spiritual sight 
 of God ; and the eye that is unused to God's 
 presence becomes at last incapable of it. 
 
 But we cannot stop even here. We have 
 one word still to add. Every time that we sin, 
 we are counteracting the possibility of future 
 belief. Every word by which we dishonour 
 God, trifle with things holy, or blunt the rever- 
 ence of another, tends to prevent our ever be- 
 lieving. Every unkind and uncharitable and 
 violent word, is slowly but surely undermining 
 our belief of the truth. Every falsehood we 
 utter, every equivocation, every disguise of the 
 
Tlte Athanasian Creed. 155 
 
 fact, every misrepresentation and deception, is 
 forming in us the habit of infidelity. Still more, 
 far, far more, every impure thought, every un- 
 holy imagination, is creating in us the inability 
 ever to believe. 
 
 And again we ask, Why so ? Because these 
 things are making it our interest to disbelieve 
 the Gospel. Because the Gospel says, They 
 who do such things shall not enter heaven ; and 
 therefore they who do such things must hope 
 at last that the Gospel is a fable. 
 
 O the solemn, the tremendous issues of the 
 life that now is ! If in one sense each day we 
 live is a distinct unit, for the supply of the wants 
 of which we ask God and trust Him implicity 
 with the morrow ; in another sense the whole 
 life of man is a continuous, an unbroken chain, 
 each link of which is firmly riveted into the link 
 that follows. Now we are sowing: one day we 
 shall reap — nay, nay, we are reaping too ! Each 
 day we live is bearing fruit in the next, and that 
 in eternity. Thoughts are telling upon mind, 
 words upon character, acts upon life; and the 
 product of all these is the immortal man, hewn 
 
156 Tfie Athanasian Creed. 
 
 and shaped by his own workmanship into a 
 temple of the evil one, or else a habitation of 
 God. Lord, so teach us to number our days, that 
 we may apply our hearts unto wisdom 1 . 
 
 1 Psalm xc. 12. 
 
DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 INTER CESSION. 
 
INTERCESSION. 
 
 Exodus xxxii. 32. 
 
 Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin — and if not, 
 blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou 
 hast written. 
 
 Intercession is one of Nature's voices. We 
 should expect it to have its counterpart in the 
 things of God. 
 
 Let a mother have a son, or a wife a hus- 
 band, pressed for payment of a debt, or threat- 
 ened with prosecution for a crime, you will not 
 hear then of intellectual or moral difficulties 
 lying in the way of intercession ; you will not 
 hear then of the improbability of the appeal 
 being successful, or of the mischief of such inter- 
 ferences between fault and its consequences. It 
 is the natural thing then, above argument, out 
 
160 Intercession. 
 
 of the reach of logic, almost excluding calcula- 
 tions of possibility, for the yearning soul to go 
 forth in entreaty and expostulation. The tender 
 and delicate woman will walk the length of 
 England from the North to the South to beg a 
 sister's life, though the chances are a thousand 
 to one against her even seeing the sovereign, 
 and yet more overwhelming still against that 
 sovereign pardoning. Yes, because Intercession 
 is one of Nature's voices, not to be silenced 
 when the matter in question is one of earthly 
 life and bodily suffering. Smite the rock hard 
 enough, this stream will always flow : dig the 
 field deep enough, the field of sorrow and suffer- 
 ing, this treasure you will always get to : the 
 treasure of generous endeavour, the stream of 
 unselfish intercession. 
 
 And shall there be nothing corresponding to 
 this in the world of grace and of the Spirit ? 
 Shall the doctrine of the self-sacrificing One say 
 nothing but of selfish prayer, and sternly warn 
 off from supplication for another the soul which 
 a natural attraction had already, as by instinct, 
 drawn to it ? 
 
Intercession. 
 
 id 
 
 A dearly loved brother sails to-morrow for a 
 long exile of enterprise in Africa : does the sister 
 deal presumptuously when she not only bows 
 the knee herself to the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, but also writes to ask the prayers of 
 friends far off and near in behalf of this im- 
 perilled traveller by land and water ? 
 
 O not so ! Intercession is not an impulse 
 to be counteracted, but a grace to be fostered. 
 
 Where shall we begin in speaking of it ? Let 
 us throw ourselves into the subject anywhere. 
 We can scarcely touch it without benefit. May 
 God make it more and more the temper, the 
 instinct, the employment of our souls ! 
 
 What is Intercession ? 
 
 The word means properly intervention, the 
 going between ; as, for example, between a can- 
 didate and a patron, between a maligned man 
 and the calumny, between an oppressed man 
 and his tyrant, between a condemned man and 
 his death-warrant. Thus it might be extended, 
 without violence to the word, as far as the kin- 
 dred notions of Mediation or Atonement 
 
 But the usage of the term, and the proper 
 V. L. II 
 
1 62 
 
 Intercession. 
 
 sense of its Greek original, give to Intercession 
 a more limited and a more special meaning. 
 
 Intercession is the approaching or visiting 
 another in behalf of some one. It is application, 
 entreaty, supplication, not for myself, but for 
 another. 
 
 He whom we thus visit is, of course, God. 
 He for whom we entreat may be any one. It 
 may be a near friend, it may be a loved house- 
 hold, it may be a society, it may be a Church, it 
 may be a nation. And the subject and object 
 of the application is equally unconfined. It 
 may be a temporal blessing : continuance of 
 health or restoration from sickness ; the pros- 
 pering of a venture, or the averting of a sorrow ; 
 peace and love at home, or protection from 
 aggression or warfare abroad. It may be a 
 spiritual blessing : and herein, a soul's comfort, 
 or a soul's recovery ; the first turning, or the 
 later edifying ; the welfare of a congregation, or 
 the extension of God's kingdom. The only 
 restriction is that, to make it Intercession, it 
 must be unselfish ; it must be entreaty for 
 another, not for myself. 
 
Intercession. 
 
 165 
 
 Now is there any peculiar mystery, any 
 antecedent impossibility — let us ask the ques- 
 tion plainly — in this sort of prayer ? Certainly 
 not the latter ; not a fatal obstacle to it : for it is 
 a part of the Gospel. Nothing but gross, coarse, 
 utter infidelity can call it an impossibility that 
 Intercession should be availing. Thus much will 
 be evident as we proceed. 
 
 But is it something very mysterious, an idea 
 making an unusual demand upon Christian 
 faith, to conceive of blessings flowing into the 
 soul of a man, or— for it is just as difficult — 
 into a man's life, through the instrumentality of 
 another's prayers ? Is it not just thus in every 
 thing ? Are we not so made, and so placed, and 
 so circumstanced daily, as that we derive a 
 large part of our comfort, a large part of our 
 efficiency, a large part of our usefulness, not 
 directly from ourselves, but mediately through 
 the help and through the sympathy and 
 through the support of those around us? If 
 God is pleased to grant some of His own best 
 and highest gifts to us through another's prayers, 
 at least this is consistent and of a piece with 
 
 11 — 2 
 
Intercession. 
 
 what we see to be His dealing in lower and 
 commoner matters. 
 
 But we are not left to such reasonings. 
 The duty of Intercession is laid upon us : the 
 reward of Intercession is revealed. Scripture 
 abounds in precept of it and in example : expe- 
 rience attests its blessing : in Intercession we are 
 likest God. 
 
 By intercession we do not mean an endea- 
 vour by importunity to arouse indifference or to 
 overbear reluctance. God forbid that we should 
 so conceive of Him as that He is either indif- 
 ferent or reluctant ! God forbid that we should 
 so conceive of ourselves as to imagine that im- 
 portunity of ours either is or ought to be able to 
 alter His purpose or shake His resolve ! By 
 intercession — even when we speak of an inter- 
 cession above man's — we mean nothing of all 
 this. We mean the carrying into God's very 
 presence of real anxieties, real longings and 
 yearnings, concerning another; the carrying of 
 these things thither, and the spreading them out 
 there, and the pouring them into the Divine 
 ear and the Divine heart, as things which He 
 
Intercession. 165 
 
 (with reverence be It spoken) shares with us ; 
 things which we suffer or desire or groan under 
 according to His will, and because He in His 
 Gospel has bidden thus to do. That is Inter- 
 cession. 
 
 So understood, is it not indeed a large part 
 of the whole work and office, not of us poor 
 sinners only, so many as have a heart to feel 
 either for ourselves or for a brother, but even of 
 those at whose feet we are not worthy to sit — of 
 saints- already made perfect, of superhuman, 
 angelic intelligences — of Christ and of the Holy 
 Spirit — I will dare to say, in one aspect, of the 
 Father Himself? 
 
 I do not suppose there is one person in the 
 Christian Congregation who does not admit the 
 duty. / exhort, St Paul says, that first of all, as 
 a matter of primary obligation, supplications, 
 prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be 
 made for all men 1 . We cannot try to enumerate 
 all the special and personal exhortations scat- 
 tered through the New Testament upon this 
 subject : as, for instance, when the same Apostle 
 
 1 1 Tim. ii. 1. 
 
Intercession. 
 
 bids the Roman Christians for the sake of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, 
 to strive with him in their prayers to God for 
 him, first for deliverance from perils into which 
 he was just entering ; secondly, for the success 
 of a charitable mission which was just then 
 interesting him ; and thirdly, for a joyful and 
 profitable visit afterwards to themselves 1 : or as 
 when he tells the Corinthians that he regards 
 their prayers for him as actually helping his 
 daily safety, insomuch that the gift of continued 
 life and usefulness is bestowed upon him by 
 means of many persons, and demands the thanks- 
 giving of many as for a blessing granted to 
 themselves 2 : or as when, once again, he says to 
 the Philippians that his trying imprisonment shall 
 turn, he knows, to his salvation through their 
 prayer, which he sets (in so many words) side by 
 side in importance with the supply of the Spirit 
 of Jesus Christ*. And not to multiply these 
 references, which might almost fill a volume, let 
 us only add the express words of the Epistle of 
 
 1 Rom. xv. 30 — 32. 2 2 Cor. i. 11. 
 
 3 Phil. i. rg. 
 
Intercession. 
 
 16 7 
 
 St James, Confess your faults one to another, and 
 pray one for anot/i£r, that ye may be liealcd 1 . 
 Mutual confession and mutual intercession are 
 two prominent parts of the whole Christian life. 
 TJie effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man, 
 for others as for himself, availcth much. Breth- 
 ren, pray for us 2 . 
 
 How well our own Church of England has 
 caught the spirit of these exhortations, you will 
 all bear witness. How large a part of our public 
 worship is Intercession ! Pass it not lightly over, 
 as the manner of some is, counting no prayer 
 worth praying which has not in it some touch 
 or echo of selfishness. Rather count that part 
 of the Service most important, because most 
 Christ-like, which is the most self-forgetting ; 
 those parts which, as respects man, are Inter- 
 cession, and those parts which, as respects God, 
 are Praise. 
 
 In the hope of drawing your affection to- 
 wards this great work and duty, I have read 
 as the text an intercession made by that most 
 marvellous and most God-like of all the sons 
 1 James v. 16. 'i Thess. v. 25. 
 
i68 
 
 Intercession. 
 
 of men, the lawgiver and mediator of Israel, 
 himself the nearest type, in office and character, 
 of One who should come after him — of One 
 who is not Man only. 
 
 The whole life of that heroic saint was a 
 life of Intercession. It was exactly that which 
 we have tried to express as the very definition 
 of Intercession ; a bearing of others upon the 
 heart in God's presence. Towards Israel he was 
 God's Mediator : towards God he was Israel's 
 Intercessor. The two offices summed up his 
 life. Behold him, towards Israel, all authority, 
 all command — where need was, all severity. 
 No womanish impulses of tenderness neutralize 
 or soften down his sternness, when he stands 
 in the gate of the camp, with the people naked 
 in their wantonness before him, and cries, Who 
 is on the Lord's side? then put every man his 
 sword by his side, and slay every man his brother 
 —and there fell of the people that day about three 
 thousand men. What had he said, to nerve all 
 those arms for such terrible strength ? He had 
 said, Consecrate yourselves to-day to the Lord, even 
 every man upon his son, and upon his brother, 
 
Iutcrccssioji. i6g 
 
 that He may bestow upon you a blessing tins day 1 . 
 There spoke the Mediator ; the Man who knew 
 himself to be towards Israel the Lawgiver and 
 the Judge. But hear him when on the morrow 
 he returns into God's presence. Who can read 
 without emotion that most pathetic, that un- 
 precedented, that perhaps (if reviewed in cold 
 blood) excessive and scarce justifiable interces- 
 sion ? Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, 
 and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if 
 Thou wilt forgive their sin — what untold em- 
 phasis lies in that unfinished sentence, as if the 
 tongue refused to tell the heart's unuttered 
 groaning — and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out 
 of Thy book wliich Thou hast xvritten ! Heaven 
 itself will be no heaven to him without his 
 Israel ! Forgive them, or else forgive not me ! 
 And this is the man who yesterday was all 
 zeal for God against Israel. Ah ! there is no 
 change. It is not that with the morning cool 
 reflection came. It is only that the Mediator 
 of yesterday is the Intercessor of to-day : he 
 who strove yesterday for God, even unto blood, 
 
 1 Exod. xxxii. 25 — 29. 
 
1 70 Intercession. 
 
 with Israel, is pleading to-day, even unto blood, 
 for Israel with God. 
 
 I despair of adding force, by words of mine, 
 or even by multiplication of Scripture examples, 
 to the persuasiveness of this one pattern. See 
 in it how far Intercession may go, and yet in 
 God's sight — even if it need, like this, some cor- 
 rection — be blameless ! Read here the warrant 
 for every outpoured tear by which a Christian, 
 yearning over his brother, has wetted God's 
 mercy-seat! O, it is not this which offends! 
 Rather is it the cold indifference with which 
 we can look on upon lives spoilt and souls 
 ruined. Rather is it the selfish heartlessness 
 with which a man or a woman can go and 
 come between God above and earth below — 
 suing for self, asking pardon, asking grace, ask- 
 ing help and consolation, for self — not asking, 
 or asking slightly and negligently, any one of 
 these things for any one other. Where amongst 
 us is the Psalmist's cry, Rivers of waters run 
 down mine eyes, because men keep not Thy law. — 
 / bcJicld the transgressors, and was grieved 1 ? 
 
 1 Psalm cxix. 136, 158. 
 
Intercession. 171 
 
 Let these sorrows be on your soul when you 
 enter the Presence, and assuredly there will be 
 Intercession. Grief for another, carried before 
 God, is intercession ; the intercession of the 
 humble Christian, the intercession of the man 
 of God. 
 
 But we may rise higher than earth, and find 
 Intercession still. Saints and Angels are inter- 
 cessors. Not indeed such intercessors as we can 
 invoke. Holy Scripture rebukes those who 
 would intrude into things which they have not 
 seen, by a voluntary humility and worshipping 
 of Angels 1 . We have no warrant in Scripture 
 for asking, still less for trusting in, any inter- 
 cession save one. Not apostles or saints, not 
 the Mother of Christ, not the holy Angels, are 
 man's mediators with the Father. The link 
 is wanting between us and them ; the link of 
 access to them on our part, though not (we 
 believe) of interest in us on theirs. To look to 
 them is to be false to Another. One is our 
 Intercessor, as One is our Mediator, even Christ. 
 
 But it is no forgetfulness of that one Inter- 
 1 Col. ii. 18. 
 
1 72 Intercession. 
 
 cessor, to take comfort, or to find admonition, 
 in the thought, that earth and heaven also are 
 instinct everywhere and alive with intercession. 
 Can the cry, How long, O Lord x ? arise from 
 spirits of the just made perfect, and not be 
 a cry of Intercession for those who are still 
 battling and suffering, and sinning too, below? 
 That is the very keynote of the expostulation ! 
 The Church so far perfected that it has laid 
 aside the body — the Church expecting- and 
 longing for the clothing upon 2 of the Resurrec- 
 tion — is an intercessor with God in heaven for 
 a Church still militant, because still encumbered 
 and entangled with the besetting clogging vest- 
 ment of the body. 
 
 And those holy Angels who behold the face 
 of God 3 , and are yet His ministering servants 
 for the earthly heirs of salvation 4 , they too pour 
 out before Him their sinless souls in a ceaseless 
 work of self-forgetting Intercession. Can they, 
 as Scripture tells, desire to look into 5 the things 
 
 1 Rev. vi. io. a 2 Cor. v. 2. 
 
 3 Matt, xviii. 10. 4 Heb. i. 14. « 
 
 0 1 Pet. i. 12. 
 
Iutcrccssio?!. 
 
 173 
 
 of Christ and of man's Redemption, and not 
 remember before the throne of God souls re- 
 deemed and not redeemed ; redeemed inasmuch 
 as the atoning blood has purchased, not re- 
 deemed inasmuch as the crisis of the personal 
 being is yet hanging between death and life? 
 Can they, as Christ tells 1 , find joy in the re- 
 pentance of the penitent, and not travail in birth 
 till that repentance be realized ? Can they go 
 forth on their countless errands of protection 
 and ministration, and yet be indifferent how 
 many frustrate them by wilfulness of walking, 
 or defy them by obduracy of sinning ? Yes, 
 heaven itself, even (if we might say so) these 
 lower heavens, the home of saints and Angels, 
 are vocal and as it were alive with Intercession : 
 man alone, for whom that intercession arises, 
 man alone is dull, stupid, and silent : the Church 
 below sits or sleeps through her prayers, save 
 when the conscious exigencies of the individual 
 being galvanize one soul here and there into 
 a supplication which is all selfish ! 
 
 But shall we stop here — here on the very 
 1 Luke xv. 10. 
 
1 74 Intercession. 
 
 threshold of that great example, which is to all 
 of us at once the hope and the pattern ? 
 
 The Intercession of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Even of it men have spoken sometimes most 
 unguardedly, most unscripturally, most offen- 
 sively. 
 
 As they have made the Death of Christ a 
 sacrifice to the Divine wrath ; the substitution 
 of an innocent Victim for the guilty, as though 
 God must have blood, and cared not whose — 
 when they ought to have remembered how 
 Scripture always tells of the love of God in 
 giving, in not sparing, His own Son, but freely 
 surrendering Him for us all — even so they have 
 made the Intercession of Christ a perpetual 
 coming between the Destroyer and His con- 
 demned, a constant pleading of that blood which 
 alone appeased the anger, a daily and hourly 
 standing between the Hand that would smite 
 and the souls crouching beneath it. O terrible 
 perversion of the sweet and blessed reality ! I 
 and my Father are one 1 is as true of the Inter- 
 cessor as it was true of the Sacrifice. Christ 
 1 John x. 30. 
 
Intercession. 
 
 175 
 
 the Intercessor bears upon His heart in heaven 
 all the sufferings and all the sins of mankind, 
 not that He may restrain God from punishing, 
 but that He may evermore apply to them that 
 Divine love which first sent and gave Him. 
 That is the Intercession. It is the bearing upon 
 the soul of the Redeemer in His glory every 
 distress and every peril and every temptation 
 and every sin which may interfere with the 
 realization of His salvation in any the humblest 
 and most lost creature for whom He shed his 
 precious blood. It is not the violent extorting 
 for them from an unwilling God of an exemp- 
 tion from wrath : it is the representation of them, 
 in their woes and in their weaknesses, before 
 Him whose love for them is as strong and as 
 prompt and as self-sacrificing as His own. Some- 
 thing of this is in the words of St Paul, // is 
 God that jnstifietli : who is he that condemneth ? 
 It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen 
 again, wlio is even at the right hand of God, who 
 also maketh intercession for us 1 , 
 
 Nor is even this the last thought. As there 
 1 Rom. viii. 33, 34. 
 
176 Intercession. 
 
 is an Intercession of Christ, so also, the same 
 chapter tells, there is an Intercession of the 
 Spirit. Likewise the Spirit also Jiclpcth our in- 
 firmities : for we know not what we should pray 
 for as we ought ; but the Spirit itself maketh 
 intercession for us with groanings which cannot 
 be jittered' 1 -. When we kneel in prayer, and the 
 heart is full, and the soul athirst for God, and 
 yet the tongue can find no words, and the mind 
 itself fails to define into exactness the wish and 
 the aspiration which is struggling within ; then 
 He who searches the heart reads in this silence 
 the most eloquent of words, even the breathings 
 of the Holy Spirit Himself making intercession 
 for us. He has the case in hand: He, nearer 
 to us than our own consciousness, is entreating 
 in us below as Christ is entreating for us in 
 heaven : the Intercession, the Divine Interces- 
 sion is everywhere at work: neither earth nor 
 heaven is silent from it : God will have us to be 
 saved, and the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, are 
 all concerned, all interested, in the Intercession. 
 For I have ventured to describe even the 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 26. 
 
Intercession. 
 
 i/7 
 
 Father Himself as in one sense an Intercessor. 
 If the Son intercedes for man, if the Spirit 
 intercedes in man, so does God Himself, the 
 Father, intercede with man. It is St Paul's 
 account of the ministry ; as though God did 
 beseech you by us 1 . O, it is no careless, languid, 
 half-hearted interest which God takes in these 
 lives and in these souls of ours ! He pleads 
 with us, He intercedes with us, in our own 
 behalf. He remonstrates with us concerning 
 our sins, He expostulates with us concerning 
 our perversenesses, He overwhelms us day by 
 day with His goodness: yea, He is longsuffering 
 towards us still, not willing that any should 
 perish 2 , because He, our God, is our Intercessor 
 too. 
 
 The subject is boundless. We must end. 
 
 You have seen what Intercession is, and who 
 are engaged in it. All the good, all the holy, 
 in earth and in heaven. If we would share in 
 the work which occupies and which tasks the 
 noblest powers, we must give ourselves to this. 
 We must feel one for another — feel before God 
 
 1 i Cor. v. 20. 2 i Pet. iii. 9. 
 
 V. L. 12 
 
i 7 8 
 
 Intercession. 
 
 — and that is our intercession. That is, for us, 
 what Angels are doing ; what saints in rest are 
 doing ; what the Holy Ghost is doing in His 
 temple below ; what Christ is doing within the 
 veil above. It is the surest way of Christian 
 progress. The man who intercedes for men ; for 
 his family, for his friends, for his Church, for 
 his country ; for the suffering, by name ; for 
 the sinful, with understanding ; for the sick, the 
 solitary, the outcast, the wretched, the tempted, 
 the dying, with a minute thought of the con- 
 dition and circumstances of each ; that man will 
 get on, will make advance, in the life of God : 
 his prayer will not only fly to its mark, it will 
 return also into his bosom : his very work is the 
 Spirit's work, is Christ's work, is God's work — it 
 must be twice and thrice blessed. 
 
 Even on particular occasions, even in indi- 
 vidual instances, intercession will be his strength. 
 Sometimes, when he would pray, he cannot : 
 words will not come, thoughts will not come, 
 attention itself wanders, the life is dead within 
 him : let him intercede ! Let him think of 
 some dear person, whose life or whose soul is 
 
Intercession. 1 79 
 
 jeopardied : let him pray for that other : the foun- 
 tain of prayer is unsealed in that effort, and he 
 who began with praying for another shall rise 
 answered for himself. 
 
 Only see that your intercession be patient. 
 Of all prayers intercession the most needs pa- 
 tience. It seems sometimes through long years 
 as if there were none to hear nor any that re- 
 garded. The life for which you have prayed 
 continues wretched : the soul for which you have 
 prayed persists in being lost. It is in vain. No, 
 not in vain ! God's mercies are not thus limited : 
 no, nor His resources of operation: no, nor yet 
 the time of His answering. One day is with 
 Him as a thousand years — think of that — and 
 a thousand years as one day 1 . Learn something 
 from His long-suffering. Look upward, look on- 
 ward, and look upward still. He measures not 
 time as we measure. Pray still, still intercede : 
 the answer may be yet for an appointed time, 
 in spite of appearances : though it tarry, wait 
 for it 3 : come it will, if it be when you are in 
 dust. The husbandman waitcth for the precious 
 
 1 1 Pet. iii. 8. a Hab. ii. 3, 
 
 12—2 
 
i8o 
 
 Intercession. 
 
 fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, 
 until he receive the early and latter rain : be ye 
 also patient 1 ! In due time 2 is God's motto. He 
 has had patience with us : let us not be im- 
 patient with Him ! 
 
 3 James v. 7, 8. * Rom. v. 6. 
 
DISCOURSE VIII. 
 BAPTISM. 
 
BAPTISM. 
 
 Matthew xxviii. 19. 
 
 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing 
 them. 
 
 If we could place ourselves — but we cannot — in 
 the position of persons visiting for the first time 
 a Christian Church; if we could look on at home, 
 as we might do in a heathen or Mahometan 
 country, merely as observers and bystanders, 
 upon the particular forms and ceremonies used 
 in the national worship ; there would be two 
 scenes from time to time presented to us, which 
 would strike us, I imagine, with considerable 
 surprise. 
 
 We should notice that, on certain days, when 
 the bulk of the congregation dispersed to their 
 homes, a remnant, amounting sometimes to one 
 or two hundred persons, changed their places 
 
1 84 Baptism. 
 
 for the Eastern end of the sacred building, and 
 there, one by one, or in small companies, all 
 devoutly kneeling, proceeded to perform an act 
 which was to all appearance one of eating and 
 drinking : not indeed, as it would appear from 
 the quantity, for the satisfaction of the appetite ; 
 not certainly, as it would appear from the quality 
 of the food, for the gratification of the palate : 
 yet still an act of real corporeal eating, of real 
 literal drinking, to which, judging from the mien 
 and gesture of those concerned, something of 
 peculiar sanctity was supposed to belong. Any 
 foreigner, not of the Christian Faith, writing a 
 narrative of what he saw and heard of our reli- 
 gious tenets and practices, would certainly judge 
 this a fact worth recording, and would probably 
 add some speculations of his own upon a phe- 
 nomenon so simple at once and so mysterious. 
 
 On another occasion, entering the same or a 
 like consecrated place, we should see a small 
 group of persons surrounding a sort of elevated 
 bason in one of the side aisles or chapels of the 
 building; one of them holding in his arms an 
 infant child, upon whose face, after sundry prayers 
 
Baptism. 185 
 
 and exhortations, he pours or sprinkles a little 
 common water, uttering at the same time what 
 we find on enquiry to be a prescribed form of 
 words, to the exactness of which great importance 
 is attached ; after which ceremony, followed by 
 another prayer and exhortation, the bystanders 
 quit the Church, carrying the child with them. 
 This custom, like the other, would give rise, in 
 the mind of the spectator, to many curious ques- 
 tions. Have not these people, he might ask in 
 the former instance, houses to cat and to drink 
 in 1 ? Have they not, he might enquire in the 
 latter case, rooms at home for washing and 
 cleansing, that they come together into the 
 house of their God to perform such purifications? 
 And perhaps it would scarcely surprise him 
 to learn that some communities, professing in 
 general the same religion, had discarded these 
 rites, of literal eating and corporeal washing, as 
 inconsistent with that highly spiritual character 
 which belonged to every other part of their 
 faith. 
 
 Now these two ceremonies, in which alone 
 
 1 1 Cor. xi. 21. 
 
1 86 Baptism. 
 
 English Christians employ in their worship any 
 outward and visible symbols — water in the one 
 case, bread and wine in the other case — these 
 are the two Sacraments ; that is to say, Baptism, 
 and tJie Supper of the Lord. 
 
 Desiring to say a few plain words upon the 
 former of these ; and in doing so, to speak not for 
 controversy but for peace, not for curiosity but 
 for instruction ; I begin by bidding you to look 
 at the outward rite itself, believing that in that 
 contemplation lies the germ of all needful doc- 
 trine as to this Sacrament which none, I suppose, 
 will deny our Lord Jesus Christ to have practised 
 upon earth and to have instituted for His people. 
 
 The use of water, outwardly applied, is always 
 for cleansing. It is in this use that we have it 
 before us. The water here is not for drinking: 
 not therefore for the satisfying of thirst; in which 
 case it might have suggested another line of 
 thought and doctrine : the water here is for out- 
 ward application : in other words, it is for cleans- 
 ing; for that which St Peter calls plainly the 
 putting away of the filth of the flesh 1 . 
 
 1 i Pet. iii. 21. 
 
Baptism. 187 
 
 But now this cleansing of which the water 
 speaks, cannot be, under present circumstances, 
 a corporeal cleansing. This Church is not the 
 place for washing, if the body be the subject. It 
 must mean something. It must be symbolical. 
 The washing of the body must in this case be 
 typical of a spiritual washing. 
 
 Here then is the first doctrine of the Sacra- 
 ment of Holy Baptism. The soul of man needs 
 washing, needs cleansing from some foul defile- 
 ment which lies upon it by nature. Whatever 
 else this sacred sprinkling may mean, certainly it 
 bears public witness to the sin, to the fall, to the 
 spiritual ruin, of mankind. Christ will not have 
 it left to the Pulpit to teach man's corruption : 
 the Font has its Sermon too ; and that to which 
 the ear will not listen, the eye shall attest. That 
 water inside the Church — that washing with the 
 water from a font (or fountain) which no Church 
 shall be built without — is an eloquent witness to 
 the sin-stained, sin-weakened, sin-ruined condi- 
 tion of man's soul and of man's being. 
 
 But that little child — what has he to do with 
 sin ? It must be a mere dream of the theologian, 
 
1 88 Baptism. 
 
 to conceive of that beautiful, that perfect little 
 being, lying there asleep in the arms of its 
 mother, as tainted already with anything that 
 can want, or is indeed capable of, spiritual 
 cleansing ! 
 
 We can scarcely blame short-sighted man if 
 he speaks thus. It needs faith, doubtless — and 
 yet I will venture to say, something far short of 
 Christian faith; only just that foresight of a very 
 near future, which is given to every reflecting 
 person by experience of the past ; it needs that 
 we should just be able to imagine that little 
 infant developed into a child of four or five 
 years, into a boy of fourteen or fifteen, into a 
 man of forty or fifty years ; and then we shall 
 perceive that even in this new-born babe there 
 dwelt by nature no good thing 1 , nothing, that is, 
 which could be trusted, apart from inward and 
 outward influences not always to be reckoned 
 upon, to grow up into a maturity undefiled and 
 upright ; we shall perceive that, left to himself, not 
 good will spring forth from it but evil ; in a very 
 short time there will be tempers working there, 
 1 Rom. vii. 18. 
 
Baptism. 1 89 
 
 and dispositions, and desires too, self-willed, self- 
 indulgent, selfish continually ; let alone, these 
 will develope into faults, into sins, into vices, 
 into crimes ; let alone, that beautiful infancy will 
 become in a few years a hell of passion first, and 
 a hell of misery afterwards ; and what man can 
 only deplore in its fulness, God sees already in 
 its spring. There is something, call it what you 
 will — the Church calls it Original Sin — some 
 flaw, some taint, some evil bias, in all that are 
 born into this world of Adam's offspring ; some 
 influence, which, let alone, will work itself out 
 not in good but in evil ; not in holiness, not in 
 gentleness, not in love to God and love to man, 
 but in the opposite of these things : Christ knows 
 this, and has taught it to His Church : and 
 therefore it is that that little infant, ignorant as 
 yet of evil, innocent as yet of the very power of 
 sinning, is brought hither to be sprinkled with 
 that lustral water which is the symbol and the 
 type and the sacrament of cleansing. 
 
 But this water typifies something more, and 
 more cheering, than man's need of cleansing. 
 It is not brought into the Church, it is not 
 
190 Baptism. 
 
 exhibited in this Sacrament, to remind us, or to 
 testify to us, of its opposite. It is not presented 
 before us as if to say, See what you ought to be : 
 see what you want : see what you are not and 
 cannot be. On the contrary, the water is out- 
 poured in that font, the water is taken out in 
 the minister's hand, the water is sprinkled upon 
 that infant brow, as an emblem of purification. 
 It says to us, That which you want, that which 
 by nature you cannot have, is here, and here for 
 you. The blood which cleanses from guilt, the 
 Spirit which cleanses from sin, it is here, it is in 
 the Church, it is ours, it is yours. God sees that 
 guilt which condemns, God sees that sin which 
 paralyzes : God has provided for the one a Divine 
 Sacrifice, God has provided for the other a Divine 
 Life. See in this water the type of the cleansing 
 blood : see in this water the type of the sancti- 
 fying Spirit. 
 
 And is there then no further sense in that 
 actual immersion, pouring, or sprinkling, by 
 which the water is brought into contact with the 
 individual child? 
 
 This water, which typifies and represents to 
 
Baptism. 191 
 
 us purification, is here, by the command of 
 Christ, for present use. The service of Holy 
 Baptism is one of the two visible links between 
 the first century and our own. This Sacrament, 
 like the other, was instituted by Christ. He 
 vouchsafed to leave behind Him in His Church, 
 not the word only of His promise, but the sign 
 and seal also, to the very senses, of His presence. 
 Every time that a Baptism takes place in this 
 Church, it is a commemoration of His redeem- 
 ing work and a remembrance of His resurrec- 
 tion life. 
 
 It says to us, What Christ did for the world, 
 He did for the world of all time. His Redemp- 
 tion is not worn out : it has upon it still the very 
 dew of its youth 1 ; all the vigour and all the fresh- 
 ness and all the lustre of its original revelation 
 to be the light of the world. 
 
 And it says again, What Christ did for the 
 world, He did for the individual. This cleansing 
 from guilt, this cleansing from sin, is not to be 
 looked at, is not to be talked about ; it is to be 
 
 1 Psalm ex. 3. 
 
192 Baptism. 
 
 appropriated, to be grasped, to be lived by. 
 The fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness x 
 is not to be contemplated, admired, or adored ; 
 it is to be applied to, it is to be drawn from, it is 
 to be washed in. 
 
 And it says again, What Christ did for man- 
 kind, He did not only for all generations, and 
 not only for each individual, but for every age 
 of every man ; for the whole and each part of life ; 
 for the infant of days", no less than for the man 
 of ripe years or of hoar hairs. The openness of 
 this ordinance, it has been well said, to the uncon- 
 scious babe, who hath no righteousness, nor faculty 
 of any kind for receiving any ; who can work no 
 work, set forth no prayer, and act no faith... is the 
 clearest demonstration in the world of the frceness 
 of Divine grace, and the willingness of the Father 
 to bestow the Holy Spirit ttpon any age and upon 
 all ages of human life 3 . 
 
 Ill do they, in our Church's judgment, who 
 deny the Sacrament of Baptism to young 
 children. We will not say that they inten- 
 
 1 Zech. xiii. I. a Isaiah lxv. 70. 
 
 3 Collected Writings of Edward Irving, Vol. II. p. 377. 
 
Baptism. 193 
 
 tionally forbid the little children to come 1 to 
 Christ. They may design quite otherwise. 
 They would train them, it may be, for a more 
 intelligent confession, when reason shall be 
 matured, when faith shall be realized. They 
 would postpone this solemn service till it can be 
 one of intelligent self-dedication, following upon 
 conscious conversion, and warranting a conse- 
 crated life. If we had only human reasonings to 
 guide us, we might almost say even as they. 
 But they have against them all these things. 
 
 First, no inconsiderable weight of Scripture 
 testimony. 
 
 When we read there of the Baptism of whole 
 families; Lydia and her household 2 ; the Philip- 
 pian jailer, lie and all his 3 ; the household of Ste- 
 phanas*, baptized by St Paul at Corinth ; what 
 probability is there that in these whole families 
 there were no children ? 
 
 When we remember that it was the practice 
 of the Jews to baptize the children of proselytes 
 with their parents, was it likely that no caution 
 
 1 Matt. xix. 14. 1 Acts xvi. 15. 
 
 3 Acts xvi. 33. * 1 Cor. i. 16. 
 
 V.L. 13 
 
1 94 Baptism. 
 
 should be added (had such been Christ's pur- 
 pose) against continuing this practice under the 
 Gospel ? 
 
 When we remember that God's earlier sacra- 
 ment of Circumcision, by which admission was 
 given into the Church and commonwealth of 
 Israel, was administered, by solemn order, on 
 the eighth day from the birth l , could it be but 
 that Apostles, Israelites themselves, would so 
 understand and so minister the sacrament of 
 Christian incorporation, unless it were otherwise 
 positively ordered ? 
 
 And when St Paul speaks to the Corinthians, 
 of the children of even one Christian parent as 
 being themselves (in a certain sense) holy' 2 , can 
 we doubt that he did so interpret and so apply 
 the command to go and baptize all the nations, 
 as to make it embrace, not adults only, but 
 children, within its pale ? 
 
 And although we read, here and there, in the 
 writings of early Christian fathers, discussions as 
 to the exact age most proper for Baptism ; yet 
 even these will be found, on examination, first, 
 
 1 Gen. xvii. 12. * 1 Cor. vii. 14. 
 
Baptism. 
 
 195 
 
 to presuppose the practice of Infant Baptism as 
 the custom and rule of the Churches ; and 
 secondly, with scarcely an exception, to refer 
 not to the question between Adult and Infant 
 Baptism, but only to the precise point and 
 moment of infancy — between the eighth day 
 and the second or third year, for example, of 
 childhood — at which Baptism might be best 
 applied. In fact, it appears to have been almost 
 a thousand years from the beginning of the 
 Gospel, before one congregation of opponents of 
 Infant Baptism was avowedly formed in the 
 Church of Christ 1 . 
 
 Few points in Christian history are more 
 strongly attested than this, that the Baptism of 
 young- children was the primitive, the Apostolical 
 practice, and is most agreeable, as our 27th Article 
 expresses it, with the institution of Christ. 
 
 But now — for this is the great question — 
 what is Baptism ? Has it any effect at all — 
 and, if any, what effect — upon those who are 
 subjected to it, whether in youth or age ? 
 
 1 See a careful and candid statement of the whole question, 
 in Dr Hey's Lectures in Divinity, Book IV. Art. xxvii. Sect. 14. 
 
 13—2 
 
196 Baptism. 
 
 The Church has been torn with controversies 
 on this simple, this elementary subject. Often, 
 we think, for lack of a little mutual explanation : 
 the definition of one or two terms, the statement 
 of one or two principles, would have marvellously- 
 helped the settlement. 
 
 Does any one doubt that a Sacrament of 
 Christ's institution must have some meaning 
 and some efficacy ? If Christ said, He that 
 believeth and is baptized shall be saved 1 , can it be 
 right, is it even reverent, to treat Baptism as a 
 shadow, as a phantom, as a nullity ? 
 
 This on the one side. 
 
 Then, on the other, does any one seriously 
 suppose that the most earnest champion of the 
 highest view of Baptism intends to represent it 
 as absolutely securing salvation ? as warranting 
 a person for heaven, whatever be his life ? Can- 
 dour and charity alike forbid such an imputation. 
 The most eager Sacramentalist cannot mean 
 this : the most vehement Spiritualist cannot 
 mean the other. All Christians must ascribe 
 
 1 Mark xvi. 16. 
 
Baptism. 1 97 
 
 some value to Baptism : no Christian can make 
 it a guarantee of salvation. 
 
 Between these two uttermost limits there is 
 scope for variety : but need there be variance ? 
 
 Certainly Scripture warns us against all 
 exaggerations of the importance of ritual. We 
 are never to assign to outward forms a power 
 which belongs only to grace and to the Spirit. 
 This principle is of the very essence of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 On the other hand, language is used in Scrip- 
 ture concerning Baptism, which cannot be over- 
 looked, and which ought not to be disparaged. 
 Repent, and be baptized every one of yoic for the 
 remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of 
 tlie Holy Ghost 1 . Know ye not, that so many of 
 us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were bap- 
 tized into His death? Therefore we are hiried 
 with Him by baptism into death*. As many of 
 yon as have been baptized into Christ have put on 
 Christ 3 . The like figure whereunto, even baptism, 
 doth also now save us*. Having our hearts 
 
 1 Acts ii. 38. 2 Rom. vi. 3, 4. 
 
 3 Gal. iii. 27. 4 1 Pet. iii. 21, 
 
198 Baptism. 
 
 sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies 
 washed with pure water 1 . 
 
 Let us gather, if it be possible, one or two 
 certain inferences from the fact of the institution, 
 and from the Scripture doctrine, of Baptism. 
 
 First, and beyond all question, Baptism is 
 the appointed way of entrance into the Church 
 of Christ. An unbaptized person is not yet a 
 member, as Apostles understood that phrase, of 
 the Christian body. When, for example, Philip 
 the Evangelist was sent to teach the Ethiopian 
 stranger the true doctrine of Him who is our 
 Peace, it is quite plain that he instructed him in 
 the binding condition of this Sacrament ; inso- 
 much that the first question of the convinced 
 man was, What doth liinder me to be baptized? 
 And he waited to ask this question, until he 
 could say also, See, here is water 2 . He did not 
 consider Baptism to mean a merely spiritual 
 process : he waited till he came to a piece of 
 water, and then he stopped the chariot. In like 
 manner, when the company which Cornelius had 
 gathered in his house, to listen to the Divine 
 
 1 Heb. x. 12. 2 Acts viii. 36. 
 
Baptism. 199 
 
 Gospel of the Apostle Peter, had already re- 
 ceived the manifest communication of the Holy 
 Spirit, still the question of the Apostle was, Can 
 any man forbid water ? even the spiritual grace 
 did not supersede or set aside the outward visible 
 sign : and he commanded them to be baptized in 
 the name of the Lord 1 . Baptism is the way into 
 the Church, the gate of entrance, the door of the 
 Christian temple. Therefore, whatsoever there 
 is inside ; whatsoever there is, in the Christian 
 body, of privilege, of instruction, of ordinance, of 
 grace ; is reached in this way, and (speaking 
 generally) in none other. 
 
 This does not oblige us to answer the ques- 
 tion, what God may be pleased to do, of His 
 great and unpromised mercy, in exceptional 
 ways ; as where there is no opportunity of re- 
 ceiving this Sacrament — where (as our Church 
 bids us say) it cannot be had 2 ; or where there is 
 some such prejudice or prepossession against 
 the form of Baptism as amounts, for the child or 
 
 1 Acts x. 47, 48. 
 
 2 Exhortation in the Service for Adult Baptism : Jl7icreiy 
 ye may perceive the great necessity of this Sacrament, where it may 
 be had. 
 
200 
 
 Baptism. 
 
 the grown person, to a virtual prohibition : these 
 things do not much disturb us, because we have 
 an unbounded confidence in the Divine justice, 
 which lies so far above and so far beneath human 
 calculation : our business is with the positive, not 
 with the negative ; with the general, not with 
 the exceptional; with our own duty, not with 
 others' omissions or (if it be so) others' faults. 
 
 We say then with confidence, that through 
 this little wicket gate — this ordinance of washing 
 with water in the name of the Holy Trinity — 
 lies the ordinary entrance for a fallen being, in 
 youth or in age, into that Holy Catholic Church 
 which Christ established on earth, and in which, 
 though not personally in every single member 
 of which, the Spirit of Christ works and dwells. 
 
 The extreme simplicity and (if I may so say) 
 facility of the ordinance does not, in our eyes, 
 make it at all less indicative of the hand and of 
 the institution of Christ. If the Propliet had bid 
 thee do some great thing, woiddcst thou not Juive 
 done it ? how much rather then when he saith to 
 thee, Wash, and be clean 1 ! 
 
 1 2 Kings v. 13. 
 
Baptism. 
 
 201 
 
 There is this also. We desire to say only 
 such things as all believing- persons can assent 
 to. There may be more than this — there is 
 doubtless more — in the Sacrament, but we will 
 keep to that about which there can scarcely be 
 question. And therefore we say, secondly, Bap- 
 tism is the appropriation of Redemption to the 
 individual person. That which God has done 
 for the world, He here seals upon the soul. He 
 takes aside the little child, or (if it be so) the 
 grown man, presented in His House to receive 
 the Sacrament of inauguration, and says to him, 
 That which I have done in Christ for mankind, I 
 have done for tliee. I here seal thee and mark 
 thee for my own. Henceforth I bid thee believe 
 thyself to be called and adopted and forgiven and 
 justified. Henceforth I bid thee to regard thyself 
 as my son, and to call upon me day by day as thy 
 Father and thy God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 Will any one despise this ? any one who 
 knows himself? any one who has had any con- 
 verse or any commerce with human life and 
 human conscience ? Is it nothing that God 
 should have said to me individually, what He 
 
202 
 
 Baptism. 
 
 says (no doubt) sufficiently elsewhere to all 
 men ? Is it nothing that He Himself should 
 have come in where I was, and promised to 
 me separately that which I knew already that 
 He had promised collectively to all ? Is there 
 nothing in the appropriation, but what lay 
 already in the proclamation ? 
 
 Suppose — and here again I quote a few sen- 
 tences from a great man long fallen on sleep 1 — 
 that to the parents, zvhile yet the joy over their 
 new-born babe was fresh, and they had called their 
 friends to rejoice along with them, into the joyful 
 company the sovereign of the land should enter, 
 and, looking upon the child, declare towards it a 
 dear and tender attachment, should take it in his 
 arms and bless it : that of itself were an honour to 
 make the parents happy, and talk of zvhile they live. 
 But suppose, further, that the gracious sovereign 
 should declare that he would provide for their child 
 in royal style; that he would make for it a 
 mansion in his royal palace, and a seat beside his 
 royal person, and carefully watch over it, as if it 
 were his ozvn, during the years of its youth ; that, 
 
 1 Collected Writings of Ed-ward Irving,Xo\. II. pp. 266—268. 
 
Baptism. 
 
 203 
 
 when it arrived at maturity, he would take it to 
 himself, make for it a coronet of honour, and bestow 
 upon it a royal domain... say that, in proof of all 
 this, he should take from his bosom a writing 
 wherein it was all written, signed with his own 
 /land, sealed with the great seal of his kingdom, 
 and to make it doubly sacred, endorsed with 
 writing of Ids ozvn blood... suppose such a thing to 
 happen to the humblest family of the land... how 
 would the hearts of those parents be filled with 
 indescribable gladness, how would they call upon 
 their friends to rejoice with them, how would they 
 pray for long life to the honoured child, and care- 
 fully rear him up for his distinguished inherit- 
 ance ! They would tell him of the high intention : 
 they would stimulate him to be worthy of it: it 
 would be the one idea, the master-thought of his 
 mind, the pole-star of all his course. And yet the 
 fulfilment of the promise is crossed with many con- 
 ditions. The child may die in his youth . . . the child 
 may disobey the laws, and render himself incapable 
 of the honour: he may be banished to foreign 
 parts : he may be pirt to a violent death for his 
 crimes : he may, like Absalom, take arms, and 
 
204 
 
 B apt is vi. 
 
 rebel against Ins more tJian father: but none of 
 these conditions, I will venture to say, would ever 
 cross t/ie threshold of their fears, so as to trouble 
 the fulness of joy witli which they received so great, 
 so unexpected, so undeserved a boon from their 
 prince. They would not ask, that, besides going 
 to the extent of his royal prerogative, he should 
 abrogate the laws for the sake of their child ; that 
 he should not oily crown him, but, out of weak 
 favouritism, suspend the process of law, and allow 
 all tilings to run into disorder. Such presump- 
 tuous thoughts would never enter into the most un- 
 grateful mind on the reception of such a gift. 
 
 Such, he proceeds, such, parents, is the simili- 
 tude : and the interpretation is plain. Your child, 
 bom in the meanest, most abject condition in the 
 universe of God.. .the Son of God, the Saviour of 
 men, taketh, and with the waters of baptism wash- 
 cth. These waters are His own precious blood, as 
 of a Lamb without blemish and without spot. He 
 taketh your shipwrecked child from his nativity, 
 eleanseth him for heaven, prcpareth for him a 
 mansion, and a crown that fadeth not away. But 
 He doth not abrogate the law of holiness, by which 
 
Baptism. 205 
 
 heaven is kept blessed, and without which heaven 
 were like this earth, hardly worth the enjoying : the 
 blessing consistcth in making salvation possible; in 
 making it certain, through the obedience of faith 
 and the regeneration of the Spirit. So that a duty 
 is implicated with the gift, and the gift is the 
 st mucins to the duty. 
 
 Now to this personal admission into Christ's 
 Church, to this individual appropriation of 
 Christ's Redemption, our Church gives the 
 solemn name of Regeneration, or a new birth. 
 It was the name, I believe, by which Jews called 
 their baptism. It is a name expressive of some 
 great change ; some change great enough to jus- 
 tify its comparison with the first entrance of a 
 new-born babe into the world of sensation and 
 action. And is it not a great change, which 
 takes a man out of the world of heathenism, out 
 of the world of nature and of the fallen Adam, 
 and makes him an inmate of the world of grace 
 and the Gospel ? Is it not a great change — a 
 change great enough to justify the application to 
 it of so great a name ? Compare, if you have the 
 knowledge to make the comparison — compare 
 
206 Baptism. 
 
 the condition of man as he is in an idolatrous 
 country, with the condition of man as he is in an 
 evangelized and Christianized nation ; and you 
 will see why the transition should be called a 
 regeneration. It was the name given by a Jew 
 to the effect of the baptism of the proselyte. It 
 was the name given by the heathen himself to 
 any event of extraordinary joy and blessing 
 which befell him ; a deliverance from death, a 
 return from exile. May it not be given, as our 
 Church of England gives it, to the admission of 
 a new member into the body of Christ ? Seeing 
 now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is re- 
 generate, and grafted into the body of Christ's 
 Church, let us give thanks to Almighty God for 
 these benefits. Put in no conditions ; insert no 
 If where the Church and the Bible write none ; 
 believe only, and surely it shall not be in vain, 
 that the entrance of an Adam creature into 
 Christ's new creation, is indeed a birth into a 
 new being, is indeed a life from the dead. 
 
 And do we then make void by such language 
 the doctrine of Repentance, of Conversion, of a 
 spiritual change, of a renovation and revolution 
 
Baptism. 
 
 207 
 
 of life ? If this child, now admitted by Baptism 
 into the Church of Christ, shall afterwards prove 
 himself false to his high calling; if he goes astray 
 into the by-paths of sensuality, of irreligion, of 
 infidelity, of sin ; if he walks not with Christ, 
 but follows the vain traditions of a world still 
 lying in wickedness ; shall he need the less — 
 shall he not all the more need — that second 
 regeneration which is the conversion of the soul? 
 And does Baptism exclude this, or make it 
 needless, by taking beforehand its great name ? 
 Does it not rather contain in itself the pledge 
 and the promise of every such regeneration, even 
 by sealing upon the soul that assurance of grace, 
 of which every later manifestation is the fulfil- 
 ment and the verification ? 
 
 Christian parents! claim betimes for your 
 children a place and a home in God's family, in 
 Christ's Church, below ! Bring them early to 
 the font of holy Baptism ; dedicate them there 
 to your Saviour ; ask His blessing, expect His 
 grace for them : then take them back to your 
 homes, as children whom God has given you 1 ; 
 
 1 Isaiah viii. 18. 
 
208 Baptism. 
 
 as Christ's little ones, as partakers of the cove- 
 nant, as heirs of the kingdom. The Church says 
 to you — One greater than the Church says to 
 you — Take this child away, and nurse it for me, 
 and I will give thee thy wages 1 . Teach them the 
 laws of the kingdom: set before them its glories: 
 foster in them its powers. If they sin — and 
 there is no man that sinneth not 2 — restore them, 
 patient in hope, as those on whom there rests 
 still the seal and impress of the adoption. If 
 you follow them early to the grave, lay them to 
 that long sleep in hope. He who came after 
 them into this world — He who took them for 
 His own when they knew Him not, before they 
 asked after Him — will not fail them now. He 
 takes them to Himself from the evil to come 3 . 
 See that in all things you go before and follow 
 them, as patterns of holiness, as disciples of the 
 Holy One! 
 
 Christian worshippers ! sealed, all of you, in 
 days of unconscious infancy, or later, with the 
 mark and sign of regeneration, live your Baptism! 
 
 1 Exod. ii. 9. 5 1 Kings viii. 46. 
 
 3 Isaiah Ivii. 1. 
 
Baptism. 209 
 
 It represents to us our profession: it assures us of 
 our sonship : it witnesses to us of our glory. If 
 any of you" be baptized and yet not communi- 
 cants, see your shame and your sin ! The Sacra- 
 ment of the Life should lead on to the Sacrament 
 of the Sustentation. If you are not apostates 
 from Christ, you ought to be living in Him : you 
 ought to be seizing eagerly every means of 
 access, every opportunity of converse. The 
 Church bids you welcome : shut not out your- 
 selves ! Doubt ye not concerning yourselves, 
 but believe earnestly, that yours is every right, 
 every comfort, all the strength and all the bless- 
 edness, which is to be found in Christ Jesus. 
 Stir tip the gift of God which is in you 1 . The 
 redemption which Christ made in Death, He 
 appropriated to you in Baptism, and He will 
 consummate in you in Resurrection. His you 
 are, His twice and thrice : be ye His in will and 
 in affection ; His on earth, His in heaven ; His 
 in grace, and His in glory. Buried with Him in 
 Baptism*, with Him rise, with Him live, with 
 
 1 a Tim. i. 6. » Col. ii. 12. 
 
 V. L. I 4 
 
2IO 
 
 Baptism. 
 
 Him reign ! Christ, being raised from the dead, 
 dieth no more... Likewise reckon ye also yourselves 
 to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord 1 . 
 
 Rom. vi. 9 — n. 
 
DISCOURSE IX, 
 COMMUNION. 
 
COMMUNION. 
 
 Matthew xxvi. 26, 28. 
 This is my body. . . This is my blood. 
 
 THE Gospel is a spiritual religion. Its first 
 maxim is, God is a Spirit \ 
 
 And its second maxim is, They that worship 
 Him must worship Him in spirit 2 . 
 
 And its third maxim is, // is the spirit that 
 quickeneth : the flesh profitcth nothing 3 . 
 
 And so on, through the whole round of its 
 doctrines and its exhortations. 
 
 And yet, wheresoever this Gospel, this alto- 
 gether spiritual Religion, is preached throughout 
 the whole world, there are brought with it, and 
 
 1 John iv. 24. 1 Ibid. 3 John vi. 63. 
 
214 
 
 Communion. 
 
 regarded and treated as parts of it, two institu- 
 tions, at first sight of a most unspiritual, a most 
 sensuous character. 
 
 Of one of these two exceptions we have 
 spoken : of the laver of water, and the sacred 
 washing therein. Of the other we would speak 
 now. 
 
 On certain days there is the appearance in 
 the Church of a table spread with a white cloth, 
 as if for a meal. On that table, when the time 
 comes, are set a plate of bread and a flagon of 
 wine. And then, with many marks of peculiar 
 solemnity — the kneeling posture, the bent head, 
 the shaded face — the singular hush of silence, 
 broken only by the repetition, in the lowest 
 tones, to each person, of a particular form of 
 words — there follows an actual process of eating 
 and drinking : each worshipper receives and eats 
 a morsel of common bread ; each worshipper 
 receives and drinks a few drops of common 
 wine. 
 
 This is that act which we have now to in- 
 terpret. Let us begin with this simplest, most 
 obvious view of it. These persons have houses 
 
Communion. 
 
 215 
 
 elsewhere to eat and to drink in 1 ; and yet they 
 are here eating and drinking in the Congre- 
 gation, in the place of solemn assembly, as the 
 crown and consummation of their most earnest 
 worship. What mean ye by this service*? 
 
 Look first at that which the eye notices. 
 
 Bread, the Psalmist says, strengthens, and 
 wine makes glad, the heart of man % . To eat 
 bread and to drink wine is to strengthen and 
 refresh the body. But that eating and drinking 
 which is a part of the holy and spiritual Gospel ; 
 that eating and drinking which is done in the 
 Church, where everything is profane which is 
 not spiritual ; must have something to do with 
 benefit to the soul. It must be designed, first, 
 to show the soul's need of strengthening and 
 refreshing ; and secondly, to point out some 
 way of strengthening and refreshing the soul ; 
 and thirdly, to apply and make use of (here, 
 and now) that mode of strengthening and re- 
 freshing which it thus tells of and represents. 
 
 And two things besides, before we go deeper. 
 
 1 1 Cor. xi. 22. 2 Exod. xii. 26. 
 
 3 Psalm civ. 15. 
 
216 
 
 Communion. 
 
 This eating and drinking, which plainly has re- 
 spect to the soul, is not done by each person 
 independently of all others. There is evidently 
 something in it of society and of companion- 
 ship. They are not endeavouring to forget one 
 another: they are endeavouring to remember, 
 to remind themselves of, one another. This 
 meal is partaken of in common. Clearly there 
 is something in this soul's refreshment and 
 strengthening, which has to do, not with the 
 self-life, but with the common and corporate 
 life, of Christians. Keep that as the second 
 testimony of the eye to the meaning of this 
 service. 
 
 And the third is this. It is quite plain, from 
 their posture and demeanour, that these persons 
 believe themselves to be eating and drinking 
 with a Superior ; with One whom they greatly 
 reverence ; whom they approach with the ut- 
 most devotion, with every sign of submission, 
 adoration, and awe. There is a table : and it is 
 spread as for a meal : and the guests are many : 
 and they eat and they drink, every one, actually 
 and really: still it is not with the freedom of 
 
Communion. 2 1 7 
 
 equals, nor even with the respectful manner of 
 subjects dining with their sovereign : it is more 
 yet than this : there is some One present, at 
 whose hands even common food must be taken 
 kneeling. 
 
 Interest and enquiry being thus awakened ; 
 the eye having been examined and cross-ex- 
 amined, to the utmost limit of its knowledge, 
 as to the meaning of this exceptional act of 
 worship ; history is next questioned concerning 
 its antiquity and its origin. And on no point 
 does history return a plainer or more unequi- 
 vocal answer. 
 
 This ordinance, of the eating and the drink- 
 ing, is traced backwards, in an unbroken chain 
 of testimony, for at least eighteen hundred years. 
 The account given of it, go as far back as you 
 will — ask the friends, or ask the enemies, of the 
 Gospel — is always one and the same. It is the 
 perpetual observance of a scene witnessed once 
 in Jerusalem : it is the perpetual commemoration 
 of an event which founded Christianity : it is 
 the perpetual carrying out of a direction uttered 
 once by the living voice of a Man, who declared 
 
218 
 
 Communion. 
 
 Himself to be about to die for man's sin, to give 
 His life a ransom for many 1 . 
 
 And if we wish to interpret to ourselves the 
 symbols here before us ; if we desire to under- 
 stand the meaning of this ordinance, and to obey 
 with the mind as well as the heart the last re- 
 quest of a then dying but , now living Lord ; 
 we must transport ourselves, in memory and 
 thought, to that upper chamber in which this 
 Sacrament was instituted ; to the occasion on 
 which, and the circumstances amidst which, and 
 the very words in which, our Master and only 
 Saviour bade His disciples to do this through 
 all time in remembrance of Him. 
 
 He who came to fulfil all righteousness*, 
 to keep every part of God's Law both as our 
 Redeemer and as our Example, had shown par- 
 ticular anxiety, this last year of His life, about 
 the observance, with His disciples, of the Paschal 
 Supper. He who had no house of His own, 
 had yet hearts enough at His command to be 
 sure of His guestchamber. And you all know 
 how He found it ; and with what earnestness 
 
 1 Matt. xx. 28. Mark x. 45. * Matt. iii. 15. 
 
Communion. 219 
 
 of feeling, when evening arrived, He sat down 
 there with the Twelve. With desire have I 
 desired, He said to them, to eat this Passover 
 with you before I suffer*. It was evidently His 
 purpose — may we not say so ? to mark strongly 
 the connection between that Passover and His 
 Passion. Israel's redemption from Egypt, He 
 would say to them, was the intended type of 
 man's redemption, through a Saviour's sacrifice, 
 from his house of bondage, which is sin and 
 death. 
 
 Such was the occasion. It was at the 
 Paschal Supper that Christ instituted His own. 
 And He marked the two as type and antitype. 
 Whatever else may be the Sacrament of the 
 Supper, certainly it is the commemoration of 
 Redemption. 
 
 And now for the circumstances. It is the 
 last night of His life. The same night in which 
 He was betrayed. And He knows it. His every 
 tone, His every look, bespeaks it. There is a 
 tenderness, and a pathos, and a solemnity, and a 
 love, even beyond the common. The disciples 
 
 1 Luke xxii. 15. 
 
220 
 
 Communion. 
 
 feel, even without words, that something is im- 
 pending ; that He is going away ; that it is a 
 farewell meal. He tells them that He shall 
 never celebrate another Passover. He tells 
 them that He is going. He warns them of 
 some strong temptation into which all are enter- 
 ing. Satan has desired them — begged you, is 
 the exact expression — begged them of God, as 
 once in old time the Patriarch of patience 1 — that 
 he may sift them as wheat. Christ has prayed, 
 He says, in behalf of one of them, the weakest 
 because the most self-reliant, that .his faith fail 
 not finally : when he is converted — for a fall 
 there is to be — let him set himself, through life, 
 unto death, to strengthen his brethren 2 . 
 
 These are specimens — we have no time for 
 more — of what formed the conversation at that 
 momentous farewell meal. And just one thing 
 more. At that first Last Supper, as always 
 everywhere since, there was a false disciple 
 lurking among the true. Christ knew it, and it 
 troubled Him. It caused Him the first outburst, 
 at the table, of that exceeding grief, that sorrow 
 
 1 Job i. ii, is. ii.*5, 6. * Luke xxii. 31, 31. 
 
Communion. 
 
 221 
 
 unto death, which was to overwhelm Him after- 
 wards in the Garden and on the Cross. He was 
 troubled in spirit, and said, Verily, verily, I say 
 unto you, that one of you. shall betray me 1 ! 
 
 Such was the occasion, such were the circum- 
 stances : what were the words ? As they were 
 eating, He took the bread, the loaf lying before 
 Him, and after blessing it, after giving thanks 
 over it to Him who created bread for man's use, 
 and who was now about to turn it to a new, a 
 spiritual purpose, He brake it, broke the loaf into 
 fragments, and gave to the disciples, and said, 
 Take ye, eat ye: this is my body. St Luke adds, 
 which is being {on the point of being) given for 
 you. St Paul, which is being {on the point of 
 being) broken, like this bread, for you. Both St 
 Luke and St Paul, This do ye in remembrance of 
 me; literally, unto my recollection. 
 
 In like manner afterwards He took the cup, 
 and after giving thanks, as before over the bread, 
 He gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of 
 you: for this is my blood of the new 2 testament 
 
 1 John xiii. 31. 
 
 3 The word nnu is omitted, in Matt. xxvi. 28, by some chief 
 manuscripts. 
 
222 
 
 Communion. 
 
 (or dispensation), which is being {on the point of 
 being) poured out for many unto remission of sins. 
 St Luke and St Paul say, This cup is the new 
 testament (or dispensation) in my blood. And St 
 Paul's record adds further, This do ye, as often as 
 ye drink it, in remembrance of me 1 . 
 
 Garner up these sayings — reported, with 
 some little variety, in four places of Scripture — 
 and what do they amount to ? 
 
 Christ says of the bread in His hand, This 
 is my body. The body was there, holding 
 the bread. The two were distinct. The one 
 held, handled, and handed on, the other. There 
 was no transubstantiation there. The bread 
 was bread, bread still, when the hand passed it 
 on. That is one remark. There was no risk at 
 that time of the disciples deifying the bread. It 
 was not Christ. Christ was there in the body, 
 and the hand of Christ's body gave them the 
 bread. Strange that such superstitions should 
 ever have found lodgment ! They could not 
 have done so, had men gone back to the guest- 
 
 1 Matt. xxvi. 26 — 28. Markxiv. 22 — 24. Luke xxii. 19 — 21. 
 1 Cor. xi. 23 — 25. 
 
Communion. 
 
 223 
 
 chamber. But the temptation was too strong 
 for human nature. To be able to present to 
 themselves the actual human body, the body 
 which hung upon the Cross, the body which rose 
 again from death, this was delightful to the 
 imagination : this was found stimulative to piety : 
 this was productive, in some hearts, of reverence, 
 of self-control, of increased abhorrence and 
 avoidance of evil. To have Christ so near to 
 them, even in the flesh, this made up to them 
 for the loss (as they deemed it) of being severed 
 from Him by many centuries in the body. O 
 for some voice, not of man, to whisper in such 
 ears the very words of Christ Himself, The 
 jlesli, if it were the flesh of Jesus, profitctJi 
 nothing! To eat the very flesh, to drink the 
 very blood, of One so dear and so Divine, would 
 be worse than profitless : it would be shock- 
 ing, it would be horrible, it would be savage. 
 The flesh projiteth nothing: it is the spirit that 
 quickeneth. 
 
 The temptation was strong to human piety. 
 Many devout hearts have fallen into it ; and in- 
 asmuch as the heart was devout, the error was 
 
224 Communion. 
 
 more of the intellect than of the soul. From 
 early times language has been held concerning 
 this Sacrament, as our own Church's Homily- 
 testifies 1 , which (strictly interpreted) would al- 
 most favour such superstitions. But it was the 
 language of fervour, of devotion, of pious thank- 
 fulness ; not intended for the reasoning of logi- 
 cians, or the definition of theologians. As such, 
 if exaggerated, it was devout : if inaccurate, it 
 was harmless. 
 
 We cannot say this of all high doctrine (as it 
 is called) upon the subject of this Sacrament. 
 The temptation which was strong to piety was 
 stronger to sacerdotalism. That it should be 
 given to man, instrumentally, by hand and 
 tongue, to create God ; to turn common bread 
 and common wine, by a few movements of the 
 hand, and a few utterances of the lips, into the 
 
 1 Homily of the Worthy Receiving, &c. Part I. The ancient 
 
 Catholic Fathers were not afraid to call this Supper, some 
 
 of them, the salve of immortality and sovereign preservative against 
 death; other, a deifical communion ; other, the szveet dainties of 
 our Saviour, the pledge of eternal health, the defence of faith, the 
 hope of the resurrection ; other, the food of immortality, the health- 
 foil grace, and the conservatory to everlasting life. 
 
Communion. 
 
 225 
 
 very body and blood of Him who made the 
 worlds ; this was the keystone of that arch of 
 priestly domination which once bestrode the 
 world : it was this which made possible the pub- 
 lic sale of indulgences and the domestic tyranny 
 of the confessional : it was this which drew the 
 life-blood of our English martyrs, who felt that 
 its overthrow was worth the dying for : it is this 
 which English innovators, calling themselves 
 restorers, would now bring back upon us — from 
 whose errors, or follies, or impostures, call them 
 which you will, may God preserve evermore His 
 true, His faithful, His Apostolical Church of 
 England ! 
 
 The time seems to demand of us this protest. 
 But even as we utter it, we misgive ourselves, 
 lest we should be encouraging a forgetfulness, 
 or disparagement, or explaining away, of those 
 words which stand in all the records of the insti- 
 tution, This is my body. 
 
 Just as Christ said of Himself, / am the true 
 Vine 1 ; I am tlx Door" 1 ; I am the bright and 
 morning Star 3 ; just as He said of Himself, in 
 
 1 John xv. I. 2 John x. 9. 5 Rev. xxiL 16. 
 
 V. L. IS 
 
226 
 
 Communion. 
 
 terms more exactly analogous to those here 
 before us, / am the bread of life 1 ; so here He 
 says, This thing is my body... This cup is my 
 blood. 
 
 Not literally. If it were so meant, Christ 
 would not say, This cup, but, This wine. Still 
 less would He say, as St Luke and St Paul give 
 it, This cup is the new testament. If something 
 is to be literal, let all be literal. If the blood is 
 literal, let the cup be literal. If the blood is 
 literal, let the testament (dispensation) be literal. 
 We must not thus play fast and loose with 
 sacred words. But rather let us say this, with 
 solemn truth : It is not they who literalize who 
 really exalt. It is not they who transubstantiate 
 who really elevate. It is not they who make 
 the bread literal flesh, or the wine literal blood, 
 who really enhance the dignity of that holy 
 mystery. Anything spiritual ranks higher than 
 anything carnal. The very smallest influx of 
 grace into the soul is a far higher thing, essen- 
 tially, than the closest access to the most sacred 
 form of flesh. Pharisees saw upon earth, 
 1 John vi. 35. 
 
Communion. 227 
 
 Roman soldiers handled on earth, the literal 
 Body, and were nothing profited. Thus to deify 
 the sensible is to go back from the glory of 
 grace and of the Spirit. It is to degrade that 
 Sacrament which it professes to honour, and to 
 do despite to that Holy Spirit who is now 
 the only Representative, the very Presence, of 
 Christ our Lord below. 
 
 This is my body. . . This is my blood. So then 
 the first doctrine of the words is this : — 
 
 The bread represents to us Christ's body : the 
 wine represents to us Christ's blood. 
 
 When the Table is spread for Holy Com- 
 munion, that should be the first thought. He 
 who grasps this has done something. Not all, 
 but something. That bread, that wine, are to 
 remind me of Christ dying for me. Observe the 
 severance of the blood from the body. That 
 marks death. Observe the breaking of the 
 bread. That marks the torturing, the mangling, 
 the rending and tearing, of the body of Jesus 
 Christ on the Cross. Observe the pouring out 
 of the wine. That marks the shedding of the 
 blood ; the piercing of the hands and the side, 
 
 IS— 2 
 
228 
 
 Communion. 
 
 out of which flowed the very blood which is the 
 life. As I gaze upon the preparations for my 
 sacred feast, I gaze upon the representation of 
 my Saviour's dying love. And the very least 
 thing which I do, as I approach that Table, and 
 place myself before it as its humblest un- 
 worthiest guest, is, to express my faith in that 
 Death which is our Life ; my conviction that by 
 one offering of Himself once offered He made a 
 full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and 
 satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world. By 
 approaching that Table, I s/iow, as St Paul says 
 — more exactly, I announce — t/ie Lord's death 1 . 
 I say to myself, That body was given, that blood 
 was shed, for thee. I say to others, my com- 
 panions in that blessed feast, That body was 
 given, that blood was shed, for you. O doubt it 
 not ! If your faith is weak, if the flame of your 
 devotion is burning low, let the contagion of an- 
 other's strengthen and kindle it ! As often as ye 
 cat that bread, and drink that cup, ye do show 
 {announce) the Lords death. 
 
 But all this might be if we but gazed upon 
 1 i Cor. xi. 26. 
 
Communion. 229 
 
 that Table ; if it were but a lying in state of 
 those sacred emblems ; if it were but an exhi- 
 bition, and representation to the eye, of the 
 crucified body, of the outpoured blood. 
 
 That bread is for eating: that wine is for 
 drinking. 
 
 Here therefore there opens before us another 
 whole reach and region of the Divine mystery ; 
 one which tells of something beyond comme- 
 moration, beyond the mere Eucharistic offering 
 of faith and praise ; even the need of a personal 
 appropriation of those Divine realities, for the 
 strengthening and refreshing of the secret soul. 
 
 Thus the sixth Chapter of the Gospel ac- 
 cording to St John becomes the very Sermon 
 of the Sacrament : explaining its sacred symbols; 
 warning us against carnalizing and sensualizing 
 its divine doctrine ; bidding us rather to see in 
 this eating and drinking, a representation by 
 sign and symbol, as that Chapter represents in 
 word and language, how the life of man's soul 
 is maintained and reinvigorated ; namely, by 
 perpetual converse and communion with Christ 
 crucified and Christ risen, by the very present 
 
230 
 
 Communion. 
 
 help and influence of the Holy Spirit. That 
 bread is not to be gazed upon : it is to be 
 partaken of. That wine is not to be contem- 
 plated only: it is to be received, it is to be 
 drunk. Therefore it tells me that it is not 
 enough to believe at a distance in what Christ 
 did and suffered ; not enough to say, not enough 
 to feel, He died for me : I must draw near ; I 
 must come close to Him ; I must speak to Him, 
 and He to me^O, more, far more, than this ! 
 I must take Him into me : I must, as He says 
 Himself, eat Him and drink Him 1 ; receive Him 
 into my very being, as crucified for me and for 
 me risen, by a faith which not only contemplates 
 but apprehends, not only appropriates but assi- 
 milates, not only discerns but digests Him ! 
 
 Alas ! many believe, for one who draws nigh. 
 Many trust in His sacrifice at a distance, for 
 one who feasts upon it in the soul for healing, 
 for invigoration, for life. 
 
 There is this one thing more. The Sacra- 
 ment of the Supper is not only a commemora- 
 tion of Christ's Death, and not only an instruc- 
 
 1 John vi. 57. 
 
Communion. 231 
 
 tion as to the nature of the Christian life ; it 
 is also, in the strictest sense of the words, a 
 means of grace ; an opportunity, that is, of 
 actually exercising and fostering that life, the 
 nature of which it reveals. 
 
 What saith the Scripture ? 
 
 The cup of blessing which we bless — and St 
 Paul is speaking of the Sacrament of the Supper 
 — is it not the communion, an actual partaking, 
 of the blood of Christ? The bread which we 
 break, in that ordinance, is it not the communion, 
 an actual partaking, of the body of Christ 1 ? 
 Take, eat, Christ says, this is my body. Drink 
 ye all of it : for this is my blood. Feed on Him 
 in thy heart, such is the address to each wor- 
 shipper in the very moment of receiving, by 
 faith with thanksgiving. Yes, be assured of 
 this, that it is in the holy Sacrament of the last 
 Supper, if anywhere below, that the true Chris- 
 tian man draws near to Christ ; and not only 
 draws near to Him, as alone he can, spiritually 
 and by faith, but also receives Him into himself, 
 as the Bread of Life, for the strengthening and 
 1 1 Cor. x. 16. 
 
232 
 
 Communion. 
 
 edifying and comforting of his soul. It is not 
 only as a commemoration of the Sacrifice, and 
 it is not only as a revelation of the Life ; it is 
 also, and above all, for present actual com- 
 munion with the crucified and risen Saviour, 
 that all Christian people visit the Holy Table 
 in health, and call for it in sickness and in the 
 approach of death. It is because that which 
 Christ instituted, He instituted not for His sake 
 but for ours ; instituted to be a means of grace ; 
 instituted to be (in other words) a communica- 
 tion of help and strength to those whom first 
 He has redeemed by His Death and quickened 
 by His Resurrection. So seek, so use it — 
 desire this, ask this, expect this, and take no 
 denial — and you too shall find the true table 
 prepared for you again and again in this wilder- 
 ness 1 : you shall eat and drink of that which 
 is not carnal but spiritual, and go forward in 
 the strength of that meat towards the mount of 
 God 2 , towards the home of your rest and of 
 your inheritance. 
 
 In the early days of the Church this Sacra- 
 
 1 Psalm lxxviii. 19. 2 1 Kings xix. 8. 
 
Communion. 
 
 233 
 
 ment was the possession of all the baptized. 
 The question arose not then, Shall I commemo- 
 rate, shall I communicate, shall I eat of Christ's 
 bread, shall I drink of Christ's wine — or shall 
 I forbear ? The uncovering of that Table was 
 not then a signal for the dispersion of the Con- 
 gregation. It was one part of the daily office : 
 for very, very long it was one part of the 
 Sunday worship : and they who turned away 
 from it did so as a chastisement, as a punish- 
 ment: it was a mark of exclusion, of forfeited 
 privilege, of judicial excommunication. As Bap- 
 tism is the Sacrament of the Regeneration, so 
 is this the Sacrament of the Life. The one, of 
 the giving of the life ; the other, of its sustenta- 
 tion. As soon would a man have thought then 
 of giving hunger as a reason for not eating, as of 
 urging unworthiness as a plea why he should 
 not communicate. 
 
 Alas ! all this is gone by and done with. 
 You will say, Baptism and Christianity have 
 parted company : we must have a new test of 
 sincerity — and this shall be Communion. If 
 people will bring infants to Baptism as a form 
 
234 
 
 Communion. 
 
 without meaning ; if Christian parents (so called) 
 recognize no tie of duty in the education of 
 their baptized and Christened offspring ; if men 
 and women, careless, worldly, unbelieving, sinful, 
 will flock together to worship — or (more pro- 
 bably still) to hear Sermons — making all these 
 things a nullity and a mockery ; we must find 
 some other barrier to keep out the false — and 
 that shall be Communion. We will regard that, 
 we will represent that, as something very awful ; 
 something which it is profanation to touch, save 
 for the few : we will fling wide the gate of 
 Baptism, and the gate of preaching, and the 
 gate of worship ; we will lock and bar the gate 
 of Communion and of the Supper. Now I will 
 not deny that some benefit may have attended 
 this arbitrary distinction, this human expedient 
 of compensation. It was well, perhaps, that one 
 ordinance should be kept comparatively clean ; 
 should be treated with a reverence lost and 
 denied to others. It was well — and it was not 
 well. It was well, if it awakened anxiety : it 
 was well, if it led to great searchings of heart 1 ; 
 
 1 Judges v. 16. 
 
Communion. 235 
 
 it was well, when it made a man question him- 
 self as to his Christianity, and resolve to be no 
 longer a disciple of Christ by compromises and 
 by halves. It was not well, when it made the 
 few pride themselves upon admission, or when 
 it made the many acquiesce in exclusion. It 
 was not well when it calmed men's consciences 
 because they worshipped, and roused no fears 
 in them because they did not communicate. It 
 was not well, when it led to whole lives being 
 lived, decently and unreproached, in a glimmer- 
 ing twilight of Christianity, and ended, on a 
 tolerably tranquil deathbed, with a first (or 
 without even a first) application for that Sacra- 
 ment which Christ ordained as a perpetual 
 means of grace until His coming again 1 . 
 
 And still it is thus in every Congregation. 
 Still, year after year, worshippers come and go 
 — work and rest, enjoy and suffer, sicken and 
 die — who never become communicants. They 
 will admit it as a duty ; they read it in the New 
 Testament too plainly to deny that : they hear 
 Sermons upon it, they themselves sing Hymns 
 1 Prayer of Consecration. See i Cor. xi. 26, 
 
2 3 6 
 
 Communion. 
 
 concerning it — still they turn away. They are 
 not worthy — who is worthy? Communion is 
 not a profession of attainment : how often shall 
 we say it ? it is a means of grace. There is 
 something which they must do first : this anxiety 
 must be put away, that duty must be performed, 
 oftentimes some one else must be different, and 
 then they will come : O how foolish ! how igno- 
 rant ! how perverse ! How hopeless, too, is this 
 arguing ! We have heard it ten thousand times : 
 ten thousand times we think it is answered : but 
 no : when it comes to the point, it is too strong 
 for us still. Still, if life be prolonged ; still, as 
 during seven years, so during seventy times 
 seven, men will be seen, by those who come 
 after, worshipping regularly in the Church, yet 
 never communicating; or communicating once 
 or twice or thrice, in a year or in a lifetime, as 
 though the food of the soul could be eaten for 
 a year or for a lifetime in one meal, or as if 
 the Sacrament of the Sustentation were a mere 
 viaticum of the magician ! 
 
 May Almighty God direct some minds to a 
 deep pondering of the subject, and open some 
 
Communion. 237 
 
 hearts to its reception and to its decision ! May- 
 He keep us alike from the sin of coming hastily 
 and of refusing obstinately ! May He add in 
 every place, by any instrumentality which shall 
 please Him — whether the instrumentality of Or- 
 dinance or of Providence, of Word or Sacrament, 
 of blessing or chastening — to the number of those 
 who realize the description given of old of the 
 true Church of His saved ones — 
 
 No more strangers and foreigners, but fellow- 
 citizens with the saints, and of the household of 
 God. ..Built upon the foundation of the Apostles 
 and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being tJie 
 chief corner-stone : In whom all the building fitly 
 framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the 
 Lord: In whom ye also are buildcd together for 
 an Jiabitation of God through the Spirit V 
 
 1 Eph. ii. 19 — 22. 
 
DISCOURSE X. 
 
 ORDINATION. 
 
ORDINATION. 
 
 Luke xxiv. 49. 
 
 But tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued 
 with power from on high. 
 
 At one particular point in the Ordination Ser- 
 vice, the Congregation are desired, secretly tji 
 their prayers, to make their humble supplications 
 to God for the accomplishment of the good and 
 holy purposes avowed by the persons about to 
 be ordained : for tlie which prayers (it is added) 
 there shall be silence kept for a space. At the 
 close of it, that touching Hymn of the Church, 
 the Veni Creator, expresses in sound, what the 
 foregoing pause expressed in silence, and invokes 
 that help from above without which no one good 
 resolution is worth the effort which it demands. 
 
2 4 2 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 That pause is impressive in itself, and it is 
 significant of a great reality. 
 
 The mighty works of God, whether as re- 
 corded in Scripture, or as witnessed in the world, 
 are ever prefaced by pauses. Of all of them, as 
 of one, might the words be written, Wlien He 
 had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in 
 Heaven by the space of half an hour 1 . Man, 
 measuring t his brief time by years and days, is 
 impatient to be doing : God, with whom a thou- 
 sand years are as one day, can afford to prepare 
 for action. And they who have most nearly 
 approached God in their life on earth, have been 
 constrained to learn from Him this lesson. 
 
 Why should Moses have been detained in 
 the mount forty days and forty nights, when 
 nothing was to be brought thence but two tables 
 of stone and the pattern of a sanctuary 2 ? Why, 
 when the first tables had been broken, in the 
 grief and shame of the Lawgiver for the sin of 
 his people, was yet another period of equal 
 duration to be spent by him in the mount before 
 those first tables could be replaced by the 
 
 1 Rev. viii. i. Exod. xxiv. 18. 
 
Ordination. 243 
 
 second 1 ? Why, in later days of rebuke and 
 blasphemy, must the representative of the Pro- 
 phets consume an equal portion of the brief span 
 of life in seeking the presence of God afar off in 
 the wilderness 2 ? Surely, because God measures 
 not the waste of time as we do : because of all 
 His works the most glorious and the most per- 
 manent are wrought not suddenly but with 
 preparation: because there must be in all who 
 would serve Him a heart made ready as well as 
 a life devoted: because, though there is no time 
 for us to squander, there is time enough to 
 employ, and of all employments that is the most 
 useful which is the equipment for usefulness. 
 
 And when God Himself vouchsafed to come 
 in human form upon the earth, there was the 
 same experience over and over again realized. 
 Why that long season of silence and obscurity, 
 through which our Lord passed to a very short 
 season of speech and action ? Why those thirty 
 years 3 of childhood, of boyhood, of youth, of 
 early manhood, during which He was as others 
 
 1 Exod. xxxiv. 1?. * 1 Kings xix. 8. 
 
 3 Luke iii. 13. 
 
 l6—2 
 
244 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 are in all save sin — years of growth and of 
 ripening, mental and bodily, of duties common 
 to man, and of occupations humbler than our 
 own ? And when at last the hour of His mani- 
 festation approached, why, once again, those long 
 forty days in the wilderness, of company with 
 wild beasts and of conflict with the tempter 1 ? 
 What lessons, we might ask, still remained un- 
 learnt, whether of wisdom, of self-denial, or of 
 faith ? Yet it became Him thus to tarry, as 
 much for the fulfilment of His own mission, as 
 for the purpose of leaving us an example. Surely 
 He thus taught us that one who would work 
 for God must first be left alone with God ; that 
 one who would wear God's armour must first 
 prove it; that one who would instruct others 
 must first discipline himself; that one who would 
 tell how sin may be conquered must first learn 
 in himself that such doctrine is no fable. 
 
 Yet once more, when that brief yet all im- 
 portant ministry was fulfilled, and the testimony 
 of the Prophet sealed with the blood of the 
 Saviour ; when the cup of death had been drunk 
 
 1 Mark i. 1 3. 
 
Ordination. 
 
 ?45 
 
 to its dregs, and the grave itself both occupied 
 and deserted ; might we not have supposed that 
 then at all events there could be no further 
 room for delay, but that the Redeemer, victo- 
 rious over death, might pass at once to His 
 crown ? Yet again there is solemn pause in earth 
 and Hedven ; a pause again of forty days 1 ; a 
 pause sometimes, it should appear, even within 
 those forty days, of a whole week between two 
 occasions of His appearance 2 : no sign, even then, 
 of haste or precipitation: deliberately and slowly 
 He paves the way for His departure, removing 
 doubt, reproving unbelief, enlightening darkness, 
 opening Heaven to the earthly-minded, till at 
 last the set time is come, and amidst words and 
 signs of blessing He ascends in the sight of His 
 disciples from earth to Heaven. 
 
 It is of one of the last (if not the very last) 
 of those interviews that the text speaks : and 
 it speaks only to prepare us for yet one other 
 interval of suspense, the latest and not the least 
 remarkable. When their Lord had once de- 
 parted, why should the disciples still wait for 
 1 Acts i. 3. ' John xx. 26. 
 
2 4 6 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 the comfort which He had promised ? Why 
 must ten days yet intervene between the Ascen- 
 sion and the gift of Pentecost ? For the per- 
 fecting, we may humbly answer, of the grace 
 of patience : for the increase of their sense of 
 need, and consequently of their appreciation of 
 its supply: for the encouragement, finally, of 
 men in later times, who have to wait long for 
 God's gifts, and for the warning of such as would 
 rush forth without waiting. 
 
 Tarry ye, when I am departed, yet for a 
 little season : wait, not idly, but in expectation, 
 in prayer, in watching. And where ? where but 
 in the city of Jerusalem, the holy city, the place 
 of the sanctuary, the centre, for the whole earth, 
 of light and worship ? Tarry there, amidst its 
 glorious recollections, amidst its hallowed asso- 
 ciations, amidst its elevating hopes and promises, 
 amidst its now intelligible ceremonies and sacri- 
 fices : tarry yet awhile, in sure hope, in stedfast 
 faith. And for how long ? until when ? Until 
 ye be endued with power from on high : until the 
 Holy Spirit of promise shall descend upon you, 
 amidst signs and wonders such as shall testify 
 
Ordination. 247 
 
 even to the world without that God is in you 
 of a truth, and with accompanying gifts and 
 graces which shall transform the earthly into 
 the heavenly, and make my strength for ever 
 perfect in your weakness. 
 
 It is not without a definite purpose that I 
 have selected this text to-day 1 . There are in- 
 deed many great signs of good at this time, 
 both in the Church and in the world, for which 
 we would humbly give God thanks. Not only 
 are works of devoted charity, and institutions 
 of a wise beneficence, testifying on every side 
 to the faith and zeal of Christian women and 
 Christian men amongst us : but in our own 
 Church, more particularly, we may recognize 
 with thankfulness an increasing attention on the 
 part of the people to the ministrations of God's 
 worship, and an increasing earnestness on the 
 part of the Clergy in the discharge of all the 
 duties of their high and holy calling. It is no 
 true humility which disparages the gifts of God 
 to us : no man ever was made vain, and no 
 
 1 This Discourse was delivered at an Ordination. 
 
248 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 man was ever made indolent, by giving thanks. 
 Rather does the sense of what is given arouse 
 in every right and Christian mind the desire 
 to increase and go forward in the work of God, 
 until all remaining evil be put down, and all 
 lacking good realized, in that world which has 
 become nominally Christ's kingdom. 
 
 In some cases indeed it is the very abun- 
 dance of the gifts which constitutes the danger. 
 Opportunities of usefulness may themselves 
 become snares : diligence in using them has 
 brought with it to many a new occasion of 
 falling. The call of the text has been forgotten. 
 Men have not tarried till they were endued with 
 power from on high. They have gone forth as 
 they were, in the weakness of earth and of 
 nature, not in the strength of Heaven and of 
 the Spirit. There is a want of repose amongst 
 us, as dangerous, in its way, as the very want 
 of energy. There is an over-activity, a feverish 
 excitement, a restlessness of doing, as injurious 
 to real efficiency as to spiritual well-being. 
 There is a neglect of preparation which involves 
 a want of readiness, and which leaves a man 
 
Ordination. 249 
 
 weak for action in proportion to the multipli- 
 cation of his need of strength. 
 
 Well might the call, Tarry ye, sound in our 
 ears day by day. Tarry ye, before ye hasten 
 forth to this day's duties unsanctified and un- 
 blessed. Tarry ye, before ye take up this new 
 burden, before ye incur that additional respon- 
 sibility. Tarry ye, before ye multiply for 
 yourselves those demands upon your spiritual 
 strength which must crush if they do not edify. 
 But, chiefly and above all, tarry ye at the outset 
 of a new life, in the foreview of a whole career, 
 the only end of which is the grave, the comple- 
 tion of which shall be the signal, and its work 
 the material, of judgment. 
 
 And what if that career be the very greatest 
 that can be proposed to human choice ? What 
 if that life be one not secular but spiritual ; the 
 aim of which is to be to save souls, upon the 
 discharge of which shall depend (humanly, and 
 more than humanly, speaking) the health and 
 the destiny of immortal men ? Shall not the 
 call to tarry before such a life be entered upon 
 assume a tenfold emphasis, beyond what it 
 
250 Ordination. 
 
 would have in reference to any other human 
 profession or calling ? 
 
 Have we, who have for many years been 
 discharging, have you who are this day under- 
 taking, the office of a Priest or Deacon in the 
 Church of Christ — let me say, in terms still 
 plainer, of a Christian Clergyman in this Church 
 of England, and in this busy and populous 
 Diocese — have we, have you, ever tarried to 
 reflect upon the nature and demands of our 
 work ? have we ever taken the measure of those 
 things which we must have for this work — those 
 things which if we have not, our ministry must 
 be marred, if not ruined ? 
 
 The Apostles, after three years of daily con- 
 verse with their Lord and Master, were yet 
 bidden to tarry till they were specially endued 
 with the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit ; 
 those gifts and graces which in their combination 
 constituted what is here called poivcr from on high. 
 Do we, do you, less need than did they that 
 anointing ? Is our human nature stronger than 
 theirs in things spiritual ? Has our early and 
 youthful nurture, in a land of nominal Chris- 
 
Ordinatiofi. 251 
 
 tianity, been so thorough, and so free from 
 counteraction and contamination, that we can 
 dispense with that enabling strength for which 
 saints of old waited ? 
 
 And what if the distinctive gifts of those first 
 days of the Church are now withdrawn ? gifts 
 of tongues and of interpretation, of prophecy 
 and of healing, of miraculous faith as well as 
 infallible discernment ? These gifts, St Paul 
 himself being the witness, were never the qualifi- 
 cations either of Apostles or of their converts. 
 They might have all these, and yet be nothing, 
 and yet be castaways 1 . It was in the graces of 
 the Spirit that the real power lay, even then. 
 In comparison with them, St Paul was not 
 afraid to use disparaging words even of miracu- 
 lous gifts of God. The graces of the Spirit, 
 God be praised, are still within the reach of 
 every Christian, not least of every Christian 
 minister : and for the gifts, if in their original 
 form they have been withdrawn as having ful- 
 filled their purpose, yet has God, in His abiding 
 care for the Church, given us mighty and effec- 
 
 1 1 Cor. ix. 27. xiii. 1. 
 
2 5 2 
 
 Ordinatio7i. 
 
 tual substitutes, for which, if only they be seized 
 and used, we may well thank Him, and take 
 courage. 
 
 I profess not to make a stiff and formal dis- 
 tinction between the one class of Divine powers 
 and the other ; between the modified gifts, and 
 the unaltered graces, of the Holy Spirit. I will 
 speak of them both alike as powers ; as consti- 
 tuting in their completeness that one power 
 from on high for which every minister in these 
 days has need to pray ; for which, at the first 
 commencement, as in the daily exercise, of his 
 holy office, he may even be exhorted, in his 
 Master's name, to tarry. 
 
 Pass before your minds in brief review this 
 day some of those powers of the Spirit which 
 experience teaches us to be of most avail in 
 meeting the exigencies of a ministerial life in 
 this country and in these times. 
 
 I. First and foremost amongst them we 
 must place the power of holiness. A heart 
 conscious of sin, and washed from that sin in 
 the blood of Christ. A soul believing in God 
 as a Father, in Christ as a Saviour, in the Holy 
 
Ordination. 253 
 
 Spirit as a Sanctifier and Comforter. A life 
 consecrated to God's service, and carefully- 
 regulated and rectified, day by day, according 
 to the example and teaching of Jesus Christ. 
 This is indeed the first requisite. For the 
 absence of this nothing else can compensate ; no 
 propriety of demeanour, no ardour of zeal, no 
 ingenuity of argument, no persuasiveness of ex- 
 hortation. Our profession is a touchstone. It 
 tries us to the heart's core. If we are not 
 Christians ourselves, there is a hollowness, often 
 a perceptible hollowness, in our teaching, which 
 vitiates the whole. We cannot come into close 
 contact with consciences, we cannot prepare the 
 young for Confirmation, we cannot counsel the 
 sick, we cannot comfort the mourner, we cannot, 
 above all, guide the dying through the valley of 
 the dark shadow, we cannot perform any one of 
 these more private and personal functions effec- 
 tively, without having first felt for ourselves the 
 reality of the truth, the very powers of the world 
 to come 1 . We might have been respectable 
 merchants, successful lawyers, eminent states- 
 
 1 Heb. vi. 5. 
 
254 Ordination. 
 
 men : but ministers of Christ, stewards of God's 
 mysteries 1 , wise to win and to keep souls, we 
 cannot be, except we have first known for our- 
 selves Him whom we proclaim, and not only 
 sounded with our own line, but drawn zvater for 
 our own daily use out of the wells of salvation*. 
 
 And I call holiness a power. I believe that 
 there is none equal to it in the world ; none, 
 certainly, equal to it in the work of the Christian 
 ministry. It has a twofold aspect. 
 
 It is a sign to the unbelieving. Men may 
 scoff at religion ; but, depend upon it, they 
 dread it too. Herod feared John, knowing that 
 Jie was a just man, and an holy*. God leaves 
 not Himself without witness : there is an echo 
 even in the natural heart to the revelation, as 
 made in the lives of His servants, of His own 
 being, holiness, and truth. All else men can 
 trifle with : eloquent sermons, convincing argu- 
 ments, powerful denunciations : but they cannot 
 trifle, they cannot inwardly trifle, with the testi- 
 mony of a holy life. Let them see a man acting 
 
 1 i Cor. iv. i. 2 Isaiah xii. 3. 
 
 3 Mark »i. 10. 
 
Ordination. 
 
 -55 
 
 day by day upon the principles which he en- 
 forces on the Sunday ; really self-denying, really 
 unworldly, really charitable in word and act ; 
 they will not be insensible to that, though they 
 may be proof against the other. How solemn an 
 office ! to be God's witnesses ! to have to reprove 
 and to condemn by contrast ! to have to live, 
 rather than to speak, a testimony, and to be 
 ever watchful lest in some unguarded moment 
 we either intermit or contradict it ! 
 
 And holiness is a power also towards the 
 believing. There are many amongst our hearers 
 who not only listen, but do. Many, who cavil 
 not, but thirst for knowledge, hunger after 
 righteousness, hang upon the lips of their Pastor 
 for words of practical help, guidance, and com- 
 fort. How great a blessing for these, that it 
 should be plain that he who guides also follows, 
 that he who teaches others has first learnt 
 himself! Men do not always know their own 
 power : it comes upon a man sometimes by sur- 
 prise, when he finds his own words taken so 
 literally ; when he finds that what he says from 
 the pulpit is not only listened to, but carried 
 
2 5 6 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 home, deeply pondered, and actually put in 
 practice. Then it is that he feels the responsi- 
 bility of teaching. What ! he asks himself — 
 those crude thoughts, those feeble words, of 
 mine, that superficial, if not half-conjectural, state- 
 ment of the truth of God — was that regarded 
 as so weighty that a soul must live by it ? 
 Let me remember this when next I make my 
 preparations for preaching. Let me think more, 
 labour more, pray more, over that ministry, of 
 the importance of which the hearer has formed 
 a higher estimate than the preacher. But, above 
 all, let me take heed that my life be in accord- 
 ance with my teaching. Let me not despise, in 
 act at least, one of these little ones 1 who are look- 
 ing to me for guidance. Rather let it be an 
 added motive for personal holiness, that I may 
 encourage and help forward some who are bent 
 upon reaching Heaven. To them an example 
 of holiness is power indeed. It is as a cry from 
 above, to one ascending a steep mountain. The 
 summit is in sight, the sky is clear, and the path 
 is open : I am before you : all that I told you is 
 
 1 Matt, xviii. 10. 
 
Ordination. 257 
 
 true : the assurance of help is no fable : the 
 hope of progress is no delusion : the prospect 
 of heaven is no vision : follow, and you shall 
 attain ! 
 
 2. A second element is the power of know- 
 ledge. In comparison with holiness knowledge 
 is not much: but in subordination to it, as an 
 adjunct, nay, I will say more, as a help to holi- 
 ness, knowledge is a great gift. I will mention 
 two kinds of knowledge, while I disparage none. 
 
 The knowledge of the Scriptures. Apollos, 
 it is written, was mighty in the Scriptures^. He 
 found a power in his knowledge of them, though 
 those Scriptures were the Old Testament alone, 
 and though as yet he knew almost nothing of 
 Christ. But what do we mean when we speak 
 of the knowledge of the Scriptures as a power? 
 Do we mean the perpetual repetition of a few 
 isolated phrases, found indeed in the Scriptures, 
 perhaps amongst the most touching passages of 
 the Scriptures, but stripped, in the using, of all 
 that gave them either clothing or substance, and 
 made wearisome as well as lifeless by their peri- 
 
 1 Acts xviii. 34. 
 V.L. 17 
 
2 5 8 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 odical obtrusion? We mean the very opposite 
 of all this. We mean that deep entering, by- 
 long and loving use, into the soul and spirit of 
 the Bible; the being possessed, and, as it were, 
 impregnated, with its tone and principles; the 
 being able, under such experience, to weigh men 
 and things, the present and the future, as in the 
 very balances of the sanctuary; the having tJie 
 Word of Christ (as St Paul expresses it) to dwell 
 in us richly, in all wisdom^. Would that there 
 were more of this knowledge in us ministers of 
 the Gospel; freeing our Sermons as much from 
 the coldnesses of mere morality on the one hand, 
 as from the tediousness of vain repetitions on the 
 other! 
 
 But, along with the knowledge of the Scrip- 
 tures, there must be, in the true minister, a 
 knowledge of men also. It is a great thing if he 
 have mixed enough with others to have a large 
 field of vision: but it is a greater thing, in his 
 intercourse with men, few or many, to have used 
 his eyes well; to have s tudied deeply the work- 
 ings of character, and become what may well be 
 1 Col. iii. 1 6. 
 
Ordination. 259 
 
 designated as a master of the science of man. 
 Some men wander everywhere through a wide 
 world, and never acquire this knowledge: others 
 live in the narrowest circle, and possess it in 
 perfection. It is with the observation of man as 
 with that of nature: some have no eye for it, and 
 others, with the fewest opportunities, see it through 
 and through. Hence a vast difference between 
 one man's preaching and another's. One, with 
 all tenderness, with the very touch of a woman, 
 can dissect the soul of his hearer, reading him to 
 himself till he shall cry out, Whence knozvest thou 
 me 1 ? Still better, he can tell him his unrealized 
 wants, his instinctive but unconscious yearnings, 
 and supply him, even before he asks it, with the 
 very food, the very medicine, the very balm, for 
 want of which his soul is perishing. He can 
 discover to him his infirmities without offending, 
 his sins without paralyzing or daunting him. 
 And another, with the best intentions, preaches 
 to us as from a different world from ours: his 
 arrows of reproof have neither point nor aim ; his 
 exhortations fly above us; his consolations buzz 
 
 1 John i. 48. 
 
 17—2 
 
26o 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 in our ears with no meaning: evidently he does 
 not know us: either he is ignorant of man's 
 nature as it is, or he considers religion and 
 reality to be two things, different if not opposite. 
 And why is this? Because, in this respect at 
 least, he has not tarried till he was endued with 
 power from on high: he forgot that the first of 
 all departments of knowledge must be, as for a 
 physician of the body the anatomy of the human 
 frame, so for a physician of the soul the organi- 
 zation of the human heart. And therefore in 
 his enforcement of good he is vague and uncer- 
 tain, in his conflict with evil he beats the air. 
 
 There is one source, at all events, from whence 
 every minister may draw, if he will, the know- 
 ledge of man ; and that is from within, out of his 
 own heart. Let a man observe himself, and he 
 observes man. Let him judge of the sins and 
 failings, let him judge of the motives and affec- 
 tions, of other men, by his own: when he argues, 
 let him urge what has convinced himself; when 
 he remonstrates, when he expostulates, when he 
 soothes, when he arouses, let him deal in each 
 case as with one constituted like himself: and, 
 
Ordination. 
 
 261 
 
 depend upon it, his words will not fall to the 
 ground, but will touch, and move, and influence, 
 even because they are real words, and not 
 imagined. 
 
 3. A third great power is that which I may 
 characterize as the power of a single aim. With 
 what object are we becoming ministers of Christ 
 to-day? Has that office an end, or has it none? 
 Is it a mere occupation ? is it, still worse, a mere 
 livelihood? We all repudiate the supposition. 
 But what is it then? It is a work, with a definite 
 aim — that of benefiting, that of elevating, that 
 of rescuing and saving men. That I might by 
 all means save some* — that was St Paul's aim, in 
 discharging (substantially) the same office. Never 
 was its object more comprehensively stated, than 
 in those well-known words of this very Service: 
 To be messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the 
 Lord; to teach, and to premonisJi, to feed and 
 provide for the Lord's family ; to seek for Christ's 
 sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for His chil- 
 dren who are in the midst of this naughty world, 
 that they may be saved through Christ for eve?: 
 
 1 1 Cor. ix. 12. 
 
262 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 Let us propose to ourselves, day by day, in some 
 one or in all of its manifold departments of 
 action, that one object. Let us ask ourselves, 
 day by day, Is this thing in which I am en- 
 gaging likely to be conducive to my one end — 
 that of benefiting, helping, and saving men? It 
 may be remotely conducive, or it may be directly 
 conducive, to that end: but, if it is neither, it is 
 no fit work for me. 
 
 And this singleness of aim is a power. Who 
 has not observed, in other branches of human 
 life, the strength which it gives a man to have 
 an aim, an end in view, to which all else in him 
 is subordinated and subjugated? That is the 
 man who succeeds in life; the man who has one 
 object, and but one. The men who fail in life 
 are many. But they are generally marked by 
 this common characteristic, that they are persons 
 of many aims, not one. They shift from one 
 object to another. Or they give at the same 
 time a portion of their energies to one thing and 
 a portion to another. By their side, at the out- 
 set of the race, stood one, in other respects on a 
 level with them, in many respects (it may be) 
 
Ordination. 263 
 
 their inferior, yet in this at all events most 
 unlike them — that he was determined, not only 
 to run, but to reach the goal. This one thing 
 I do. He has kept the goal in view, he has 
 looked neither to the right hand nor to the left, 
 he has thought nothing of his competitors, he 
 has forgotten the things behind 1 , he has hastened 
 straight to the mark — who can point to the in- 
 stance in which such a man has not reached it? 
 
 But we, the ministers of Christ, too often are 
 men of desultory aims. We mean well, we wish 
 well, we purpose well: but the work of our high 
 calling is not enough for us. Alas that we 
 should say so! We must bring in other interests, 
 we must divide ourselves into parts and pieces, 
 we must supplement our one work with pursuits, 
 more or less commendable in themselves, but 
 having no reference whatever to the ministerial 
 object. And far be it from us to depreciate the 
 advantages, to ourselves and others, of our being 
 men of large information, enlightened views, and 
 keen interests. These things may all be helpful 
 to our work, and not hindering. It will be an 
 
 1 Phil. iii. 13. 
 
264 Ordination. 
 
 evil day for the Church of England, when her 
 ministers cease to be men of learning, men of 
 intellect, citizens and patriots as well as Church- 
 men. Without these things, in many positions 
 to which they may be called, they cannot under- 
 stand, and therefore they cannot teach, their 
 hearers. But a single aim there may be still: 
 there must be a single aim, if we would save our 
 own souls or theirs. 
 
 And out of this singleness of aim spring 
 many high qualities. It brings after it a unity of 
 character. The whole man moves together. He 
 is not a man of shreds and patches ; this of one 
 colour, and this of another. He is not speaking 
 for Christ to-day and to-morrow forgetting or 
 denying Him. He is not one thing in the 
 Church, and another thing in the house. He is 
 a consistent, not a prevaricating witness. He is 
 one with himself; and in that unity with himself 
 lies his strength with others. 
 
 Again, and for the same reason, he is always 
 natural. Natural, in this sense, is not the oppo- 
 site of spiritual. Why should a man, who is 
 true and real and one, assume a tone or a 
 
Ordination. 
 
 265 
 
 manner, of which the only use can be to disguise 
 and to conceal? When he can say with truth, / 
 believed, and therefore have I spoken 1 , he is that 
 which he would seem, and in naturalness lies 
 his strength. 
 
 Once more, the man with a single aim can 
 appreciate the comparative importance of things 
 essential and things indifferent. No slight thing 
 this in our day! He who is bent upon the one 
 work of benefiting and saving men has no heart 
 to give to the petty bickerings, and no energies 
 to bestow upon the little ornaments, of religion. 
 These things are alike beneath his feet, with the 
 earth out of which both spring. His test of 
 truth is St John's. Every spirit that confesseth 
 that Jesus Christ is come in the fiesh is of God 2 . 
 The compass of his sympathy, if not of his entire 
 approval, in matters of doctrine, is thus and not 
 less extensive. Decently and in order*, is, again, 
 a maxim of his religion. His one aim takes this 
 in. Beyond this, he may admire, as a matter of 
 taste, or, as a matter of taste, he may condemn: 
 
 1 1 Cor. iv. 13. 5 1 John iv. 2. 
 
 3 1 Cor. xiv. 40. 
 
266 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 he may tolerate, for the sake of peace, or, for the 
 sake of peace, he may discard : but he refuses 
 absolutely to attach importance to that which is, 
 in itself, external and not spiritual. 
 
 Yet once more, the man of a single aim is a 
 persevering man. He is not discouraged by 
 slow progress. He is not daunted by resolute 
 opposition. He knows that he is on the winning 
 side, and he will wait for victory though it 
 tarry. Look away from him for five years or 
 for ten years : then turn, and you will see him 
 still at his post ; still active, still determined, 
 only more patient, more charitable, and perhaps, 
 by God's grace, more hopeful. 
 
 4. I must add, in the fourth place, and very 
 briefly, the pozver of sympathy. The man thus 
 far described might possibly have been a cold 
 man. But the Christian minister is not a cold 
 man. He is a man of large and active sym- 
 pathy. Like his Master, he can have compassion 
 on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the 
 way, for that he himself also is compassed with 
 infirmity*. Sympathy, which is fellow-feeling, 
 
 1 Heb. v. 2. 
 
Ordination. 
 
 267 
 
 is the power which touches the very spring of 
 humanity. He who has not this may discourse 
 long and well upon the beauty of holiness, even 
 upon the love of God and the grace of Christ : 
 but he cannot affect, he cannot animate, he 
 cannot mould the heart of those who listen, 
 even because he has not with him that Holy 
 Spirit of love who alone can do all these things. 
 He must speak as one who feels, and feels with 
 them, or he cannot make them feel. Still less 
 can his private ministrations be of any avail 
 without sympathy. O how powerless a thing 
 is very much of that which passes for the visit- 
 ation of the poor and of the sick ? What a 
 dull and distant sound is that of the advice 
 and consolation oftentimes thus obtruded ! How 
 little of consideration is shown in the choice 
 of times ! how little of wisdom in the choice of 
 topics! How rash and hasty a judgment is 
 often passed upon the appearance of indifference, 
 to counsel how indifferent ! Who would be af- 
 fected — let the minister ask himself, Should I 
 be affected — by communications so unattractive, 
 so inappropriate, so unloving, so official ? It is 
 
268 
 
 Ordination. 
 
 a solemn responsibility which lies upon us in 
 this matter of the parochial visitation of the sick 
 and of the whole. O let us not count the hours 
 thus spent, as though there were in the act 
 itself a merit and a virtue ! Rather let us ask, 
 Into whose case did I throw myself to-day 
 with a loving and an intelligent sympathy ? 
 Into whose spiritual condition did I enter 
 with thoroughness, with prayer, with patience ? 
 Whom did I retain afterwards upon my me- 
 mory and upon my heart, even to carry them 
 with me to the mercy-seat from which grace 
 flows ? 
 
 Let ours, by God's grace, be that sympathy 
 which is at once quick and deep and genuine ; 
 not that affectation, that counterfeit, of sym- 
 pathy, which is ever seen through by the really 
 suffering, as well as disallowed by Him who 
 looks on the heart ! 
 
 5. I would have added to this enumeration, 
 did time permit, yet one last power — that for 
 which you have been tarrying till this day — 
 the power of the Divine commission. Often may 
 we be tempted to ask ourselves, amidst the 
 
Ordination. 269 
 
 many misgivings, discouragements, and disap- 
 pointments of our ministry, Why am I here ? 
 who gave me this authority ? by what right do 
 I, a sinful man, presume to carry warning or 
 comfort to the souls of sinners ? Then, in that 
 day, there is reassurance and strength for him, 
 who can answer himself in these words, Christ 
 sent me. In no superstitious sense do I utter 
 them, but in calm and sober earnestness ; be- 
 lieving that we are charged with the very min- 
 istry of Pastors and Evangelists, by One who, 
 having ascended tip on high, and led captivity 
 captive, gave this amongst other gifts unto men 1 . 
 Thus do I understand that first question in the 
 service for the Ordering of Priests, which else 
 falls somewhat coldly upon the ear, but which, 
 when taken as an enquiry into our own convic- 
 tion of the authority of our mission, becomes 
 instinct with life and interest, and may well 
 recur to our minds in many a cloudy and dark 
 day. 
 
 / took not this office upon myself, but was 
 invested with it by Christ's servant acting in 
 1 Eph. iv. 8. 
 
270 Ordination. 
 
 Christ's name. It is tJie will of God that all 
 men should be saved ; saved in one way ; saved by 
 one Saviour ; saved by the instrumentality of a 
 living message carried into 'all lands by living 
 men. Amongst those messengers, by His unde- 
 served mercy, am I enrolled: His commission is 
 given me, His strength is promised, His blessing 
 is sure. Let me only be faithful unto death, and 
 He will give me the crown of life 1 . 
 
 Well may those who have long borne, how- 
 ever unworthily, this high commission, welcome 
 to their ranks, as on this day, a large accession 
 of fellow-ministers and fellow-workmen. We 
 can all feel with you, for we have all felt before 
 you the anxieties, as well as the aspirations, of 
 this most important act of your whole lives. 
 Live as long as you may, you can never see 
 again an occasion quite like this. You may 
 have passed through many trials and troubles 
 in the way to it: you may have had many 
 struggles of mind and heart, some difficulties, 
 it may be, of a humbler but not less real kind, 
 in reaching the gate of access into the ministry 
 1 Rev. ii. 10. 
 
Ordination. 271 
 
 of Christ's Church. Now you have reached it. 
 Let all sorrows be forgotten to-day, in the 
 happiness of an end attained, in the hopefulness 
 of an end in prospect. Welcome to the work 
 which is above all other work, and to the satis- 
 factions, present and future, of the service of a 
 heavenly Master! Let all doubt and fear, all 
 misgiving of mind and all faintness of heart, be 
 put away for ever, in the brightness of that 
 radiance which streams upon you to-day from 
 the mercy-seat above, even from the presence 
 of the great High Priest, who is Himself at once 
 the Sender, and the Companion and Upholder 
 of the sent ! May your path henceforth be as 
 the shining light, that shineth more and more 
 unto the perfect day 1 . 
 
 To carry forth with you, from this place, the 
 stewardship of the Word of God ; to be its 
 heralds, its witnesses, its examples ; to have no 
 other ambition but that of serving Christ and 
 enlarging, if it be granted to you, His kingdom ; 
 to have no enemy but His, and to love all, how- 
 ever different from you in thought or practice, 
 Prov. iv. 18. 
 
272 Ordination. 
 
 who love Him ; to move everywhere amongst 
 men, as in the world but not of it, as having 
 One greater than the world in you and with 
 you ; to be occupied thus while life lasts, to be 
 found thus when Christ summons or comes for 
 you ; this is the office, as of old, so in our day, 
 of the Christian minister. A glorious calling ! 
 glorious above earth's glories, and destined to 
 survive all ! God give us grace to appreciate 
 it, to be faithful in it, to make full proof of it 1 / 
 And, in the end, in that world where there will 
 be no need of one to teach another, saying, 
 Know the Lord, for they shall all know IIim s — 
 where the Preacher will be lost in the Congre- 
 gation, and the minister silent in the worshipper 
 — may it be given to each of us to realize the 
 full blessedness of that brief, that crowning, 
 promise, that then, as never before — freed from 
 the burdens, and purified from the stains, of 
 earth — without weariness, without distraction, 
 without infirmity, without sin — then at last His 
 servants shall serve Him z ! 
 
 1 a Tim. iv. 5. 5 Jerem. xxxi. 34. 
 
 • Rev. xxji. 3. 
 
DISCOURSE XI. 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 V. L. 
 
 18 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 Matthew xiii. 30. 
 
 Let both grow together until the harvest. 
 
 We are taught in the Apostles' Creed to dis- 
 tinguish between the Holy Catholic Church and 
 tlie Communion of Saints. In one point of view 
 the distinction may be said to lie between a 
 community of living Christians and a commu- 
 nity of Christians whether living or dead. The 
 Holy Catholic Church may be regarded as com- 
 prising only the present generation of Christ's 
 earthly congregation ; the Communion of Saints 
 as including within its ampler bound the whole 
 assembly of the faithful both in earth and 
 Heaven. 
 
 But a more careful consideration will show 
 18—2 
 
276 The Burial Service. 
 
 a second point of difference between the two 
 expressions. If in one sense the Communion of 
 Saints is a larger body than the Holy Catholic 
 Church ; the latter embracing only the Church 
 Militant, the former the Church both Militant 
 and Triumphant ; in another sense, the proportion 
 will be inverted, and the Holy Catholic Church 
 will become the wider and more promiscuous, 
 the Communion of Saints the narrower and the 
 more exclusive, of the two. The Holy Catholic 
 Church is the Visible as opposed to the Invisible 
 Church ; the nominal and professing, as distin- 
 guished from the real and spiritual, body of 
 Christ. Catholic, because confined to no race of 
 men and to no form of Christianity, but including 
 all who in, every place call upon the name of Jesus 
 Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours 1 . Holy, 
 not by duty only or profession, but in a higher 
 and stricter sense; because amidst and within 
 that community, though not effectually in the 
 heart of each one of its members, the Holy and 
 Eternal Spirit dwells. Whereas the Communion 
 of Saints is that Church within the Church, that 
 1 1 Cor. i. 2. 
 
The Burial Service. 277 
 
 shrine (if we might so express it) within the 
 temple, that Holy of Holies beyond what itself 
 from the proximity of the Divine habitation is 
 all holy, which, visible only, in its distinctness, 
 to an all-seeing Eye, comprises none but the 
 true and the real amongst many nominal wor- 
 shippers, and will furnish hereafter the several 
 stones 1 of that new and spiritual fabric in which 
 the throne of God and of the Lamb is to be 
 erected as its final glory 2 . 
 
 Now this distinction, if consistent with God's 
 revelations, is full of important doctrine. 
 
 We say that it was the design of Christ that 
 there should exist in the world until His second 
 coming a body of men, united by the acknow- 
 ledgement of a common faith, by a participation 
 in common ordinances; a body constantly on 
 the increase, through the labours of Apostles 
 and Evangelists, of Pastors and Teachers, in all 
 parts of the earth; the members of which should 
 pass unquestioned and unchallenged by each 
 other, as by Him, through a life-time of uncer- 
 tain duration, and be subjected, at death or after 
 
 1 1 Pet. ii. 5. » Rev. xxii. 1. 
 
2 7 8 
 
 The Burial Service. 
 
 death, to a searching and sifting process which 
 should decide once for all upon the sincerity and 
 consequently upon the destiny of each. 
 
 The Gospels furnish ample illustration, ample 
 proof, of this statement. 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that 
 was east into the sea, and gathered of every kind : 
 which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and 
 sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but 
 cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of 
 this world : the angels shall come forth, and sever 
 the wicked from among the just, and shall cast 
 them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing 
 and gnashing of teeth x . 
 
 The kingdom of heaven : the state of things 
 under the Gospel. The call of the Gospel shall 
 have this effect. Not that the net cast into the 
 sea shall enfold some, and exclude others. Not 
 that the test of character in the good and the 
 bad shall be the entrance, or the refusal to enter, 
 into the fold of the Christian community. Doubt- 
 less in some senses this is true. But here it is 
 differently stated, differently viewed. Good and 
 
 1 Matt. xiii. 47—jO. 
 
The Burial Service. 279 
 
 bad enter alike. The net encloses both kinds. 
 It is left in the sea until it is full. Till then the 
 process is indiscriminate. Not till it is full — and 
 that time is not yet come, for the Gospel net is 
 still out in the wide waters, gathering of every 
 kind — not till it is full, and that is not till the 
 end of this world, will it be drawn in towards 
 the shore, that the work of distinguishing and 
 discriminating may succeed that of collecting 
 and of gathering. The net that encloses all, 
 both bad and good, is the Holy Catholic Church ; 
 the visible, the professing, the nominal Chris- 
 tendom : the vessels into which the good are 
 finally gathered may represent that smaller, that 
 more select, that as yet indistinguishable com- 
 munity, which, from its actual and personal 
 contact with the life-giving Spirit, is described 
 and shall one day be manifested as the true 
 Communion of Saints. 
 
 It is thus that in the Parable of the Marriage 
 of the King's Son, a distinction is drawn between 
 the promiscuous assemblage who throng the 
 palace of the royal host, and the guests who are 
 qualified, by the possession of a peculiar attire, 
 
280 The Burial Service. 
 
 to partake of a banquet which is not for all 1 . 
 If in that Parable the language of other passages 
 of Scripture may seem to be in one point re- 
 versed ; the accepted spoken of as the multitude, 
 the rejected but as one amongst many; we are 
 taught rather to infer from this the individual 
 penetration of that searching scrutiny, the im- 
 possibility of but one untrue member passing 
 unchallenged through that last ordeal, as well as 
 the certainty of the coexistence till then, within 
 the pale of an outward Christianity, of the Chris- 
 tian in name and the Christian in deed. 
 
 Now, not to multiply quotations upon a point 
 sufficiently obvious to a careful student of Scrip- 
 ture, let us pass on to view some of the conse- 
 quences of this truth ; the designed existence, 
 throughout all ages, of this distinction between a 
 Holy Catholic Church and a true Communion 
 of Saints. 
 
 But first we should notice that the toleration 
 of a nominal as well as a true Church of Christ 
 does not necessarily preclude the operation of 
 discipline. While our Lord forbids the attempt 
 
 1 Matt. xxii. i — 14. 
 
The Burial Service. 
 
 281 
 
 to pull up prematurely and forcibly the tares 
 which in the present Dispensation grow so abun- 
 dantly amidst the wheat ; the attempt, made by 
 so many, to prejudge human character, to ex- 
 clude from the sympathies and the chanties of a 
 common Christianity those who appear to the 
 self-constituted inspector to be Christians only 
 in name ; neither He, nor His Apostles after 
 Him, deny to His earthly Church the right to 
 banish from their company those who bring 
 scandal upon their name and His, or to pro- 
 nounce, on evidence duly weighed, that sentence 
 of excommunication which severs the link of 
 union between the soul of man and those par- 
 ticular blessings and aids of the Holy Spirit 
 which are pledged only to the Church of God. 
 
 Our Lord prescribes an appeal to the Church, 
 that is, to the assembled Christian congregation, 
 in cases of deliberate and obstinate injury done 
 to one of its members ; and sanctions by His 
 express authority the regarding as a heathen 
 man and a publican, that is, as one between 
 whom and us there exists no tie but that of a 
 common humanity, the man who neglects to 
 
282 The Burial Service. 
 
 hear, or in other words to recognize and to obey, 
 the decision of the Church upon the case brought 
 before them 1 . 
 
 And St Paul, in a well-known passage of his 
 first Epistle to the Corinthians, actually pro- 
 nounces upon an offender, by the authority of 
 Christ Himself, a sentence of exclusion and 
 banishment from the Christian body so abrupt 
 and so formidable that it is described as a 
 delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, 
 in the hope that, by the awakening of timely 
 fear and of deep repentance, the soul may be 
 saved in the day of the Lord Jesus' 2 . 
 
 Such acts of discipline were by no means un- 
 common during several centuries of the Church's 
 history. 
 
 In our own Church at the present time they 
 may be said to be virtually extinct. 
 
 In one place the language of regret is uttered 
 over the fact of their cessation. In the Com- 
 mination Service, with which we enter year by 
 year upon the season of Lent, after recording 
 the practice of the Primitive Church to put to 
 1 Matt, xviii. 15—17. 2 1 Cor. v. 3—5. 
 
The Burial Service. 283 
 
 open penance such persons as stood convicted of 
 notorious sin, it is added, Instead whereof, until 
 t/ie said discipline may be restored again, which 
 is much to be wished, it is thought good that the 
 general sentences of God's cursing against impeni- 
 tent sinners should be read at this time i?i the 
 presence of you all, &c. 
 
 Elsewhere a partial attempt is made to restore 
 this discipline. Thus in the Rubric at the open- 
 ing of the Communion Service, directions are 
 given for the exclusion from that ordinance of 
 any open and notorious evil liver, or of any per- 
 sons between wlwm malice and hatred is perceived 
 to reign, until, in the former case, an open avowal 
 shall be made of repentance and purposed refor- 
 mation, or, in the latter, assurances of forgiveness 
 be exchanged and wrongs mutually redressed. 
 The same feeling is indicated also in the direction 
 prefixed to the Burial Service, that those words 
 of hope and of blessing are not to be used over 
 any that die excommunicate, or have laid violent 
 /lands upon themselves. 
 
 It is needless to say, what all are aware of, 
 that these regrets in the first case, and these 
 
284 The Burial Service. 
 
 directions in the other two, have been equally 
 frustrated by the event. We continue to express, 
 Lent after Lent, a wish for the restoration of 
 Church discipline : but every year makes us feel 
 more and more strongly that the thing is impos- 
 sible: it is one of those past ideas which could 
 only be transplanted into the age in which we 
 live, by an effort as unnatural as it would cer- 
 tainly be short-lived. With regard to exclusions 
 from the Communion, we know how rarely a 
 Clergyman can possess that kind and amount of 
 proof, with reference to the misconduct or the 
 enmities of his Parishioners, which could alone 
 make it safe for him to proceed to an extremity 
 which the very same Rubric requires that he 
 should be prepared to establish to the satisfac- 
 tion of a legal tribunal. We know, in short, that 
 practically the direction is disregarded. Con- 
 science, or the dread of public opinion, may 
 suggest to an evil-doer the propriety of abstain- 
 ing from such an attendance : but, so far as the 
 Minister is concerned, he might with almost 
 absolute safety risk the chance of being repelled 
 from the Lord's Table : few Clergymen will 
 
The Burial Service. 285 
 
 hazard even a private remonstrance ; almost 
 none will take upon themselves the consequences 
 of a public prohibition. And with reference, 
 finally, to the threatened exclusion of the dead 
 from the ordinary form of Christian Burial, we 
 all know that penalties of a most serious kind 
 are attached to the refusal by a Minister to 
 utter any one of the prescribed words of hope 
 and of confidence over the most depraved of 
 human offenders : he must give thanks to God 
 for the sure and certain hope of another world 
 by the grave of the drunkard or the adulterer : 
 even he who has died by his own hand must be 
 interred with the same formality of benediction, 
 unless a judicial verdict — difficult and rare of 
 attainment, partly by reason of this very threat 
 of exclusion from the rites of Christian sepul- 
 ture — shall pronounce that the act which de- 
 stroyed life was done with the clearest exercise 
 of reason, and that no passing cloud obscured 
 for a moment the understanding which dictated 
 the sin. 
 
 Now there are those who look upon this 
 cessation of all ecclesiastical discipline, for such 
 
286 The Burial Service. 
 
 indeed it is, as not only a great loss but a great 
 crime. They think that a community which 
 has relinquished or been deprived of the power 
 to punish, has parted with one of the chief 
 characteristics of a true Church. They urge, 
 and not unreasonably, the scandal brought upon 
 a congregation by the immorality of one of its 
 worshippers or its communicants. And not stay- 
 ing to enquire whether the progress of events, 
 the change of circumstances, the overruling hand 
 of God's government, may possibly have created 
 some compensation, partial or complete, for the 
 loss which they deplore, they can only exhaust 
 themselves in fruitless efforts to reimpose upon 
 the Church of the nineteenth century every 
 institution of the fifth or of the tenth. 
 
 But may it not be worthy of a moment's 
 reflection, whether indeed the restoration of a 
 (so called) Church discipline is thus obviously 
 and necessarily desirable ? whether it might not 
 involve, not inconveniences only, but injuries 
 and evils? whether we may not still possess, 
 though in a different form, many of the greatest 
 advantages of the most rigid discipline? and 
 
The Burial Service. 
 
 287 
 
 whether those which are lost may not have been 
 taken from us by a vast combination of circum- 
 stances, bringing with them more than an equi- 
 valent for all that they have superseded ? 
 
 While the Christian body, whether in the 
 world generally, or in a particular city or district, 
 was a small and compact community, definitely 
 marked out from the heathenism or the Judaism 
 that surrounded it; while the Christian profession 
 of each member of it was a matter of special 
 and individual choice; while, moreover, the Gos- 
 pel had still, if I may so express it, its character 
 to earn, and incurred the greatest risk of being 
 slanderously and blasphemously defamed; it was 
 on the one hand possible, and on the other 
 necessary, that every one who openly belied his 
 faith by his life should be cut off from the 
 society which he contaminated. Just, perhaps, 
 this might be at all times: but in such times it 
 was also possible, and it was also expedient. 
 Great crime, or even great carelessness, was 
 then a thing patent and self-confessed. And a 
 disregard of such things on the part of the 
 Christian body would have argued an indiffer- 
 
288 The Burial Service. 
 
 ence or a timidity which might have injured 
 their Master's cause in the world. 
 
 How is it now ? now, when the world itself 
 has changed sides? now, when all alike are bound 
 by the responsibilities, and entitled to the privi- 
 leges, of a Christian profession ? Imagine for 
 one moment the consequences, in any Parish 
 with which we are acquainted, of an attempt on 
 the part of the Minister, whether acting alone or 
 with assessors, to bring to ecclesiastical punish- 
 ment all offenders against Christian morality. 
 How inextricable would be his perplexity, when 
 he sought to deal honestly with his own con- 
 science, as to the cases which it was his business 
 to investigate and to denounce! How terrible 
 the suspicion of connivance in every instance 
 that escaped his vigilance! How dreadful the 
 effects of having laid against any man an un- 
 proved or a half-proved charge! How exhaust- 
 ing, how secularizing, how demoralizing, the 
 influence upon his own heart and character, of 
 hours spent in the prosecution of such enquiries ! 
 How ruinous to the tone of his public and his 
 private ministrations ! How destructive to the 
 
The Burial Service. 289 
 
 whole estimation of his sacred office amongst 
 those to whom he ministers! How unequal, 
 how iniquitous, after all, must be the result of so 
 precarious, so accidental, so arbitrary a process! 
 How great the injury, even to those morals 
 which it is the object of all such endeavours to 
 protect, from the public exposure of the details 
 of secret offences; secret until the hand of the 
 Church is uplifted to strip off the disguise which 
 veils them! Would the result, on the whole, 
 be serviceable, or the contrary, to the cause of 
 holiness and of God? Would the punishment, 
 be it what it might, of such scandals be capable 
 of being made an equivalent for the mischief of 
 their publication? Would the removal of a few 
 such individual blemishes (even when notorious 
 and flagrant) from the Christian congregation, 
 the open expulsion of a handful of evil-doers 
 from the society of Christians and from the 
 ordinances of God's worship, at all compensate 
 for the enormous extension of the knowledge of 
 their existence, involved in the determination to 
 drag them to the light? Is it not far better that 
 they should be left, even as now, to the interpo- 
 V. L. 19 
 
290 The Burial Service. 
 
 sition, when they can no longer be concealed, of 
 a tribunal either avowedly or at least practically 
 secular? 
 
 But is it indeed true that discipline is now a 
 thing unknown ? 
 
 In the first days of the Gospel, as every one 
 even slightly acquainted with the literature and 
 history of those times is well aware, flagrant 
 immorality was, not the exception, but the rule, 
 of the society amidst which the Church of Christ 
 was planted. I do not say that there were none 
 whose lives were pure, or whose principles of 
 judgment were moral. I do not say that there 
 were none, amongst the orators, poets, and 
 historians of Rome, who felt deeply, and se- 
 verely stigmatized, the prevailing wickedness of 
 their countrymen. I do not say that then, any 
 more than in later ages, men paraded industri- 
 ously before the eyes of the world the vices 
 which they indulged and cherished. I suppose 
 that even then there was just enough of virtue 
 and of conscience to make it worth while for any 
 one who valued his character to cloke his profli- 
 gacy in hypocrisy. But, whether disguised or 
 
The Burial Service. 291 
 
 displayed, there can be no question that a 
 general corruption of morals marked the age in 
 which Christianity entered the world, and was 
 constantly on the increase during some centuries 
 which followed. The terrible accusations of the 
 Epistle to the Romans, the vehement exhorta- 
 tions of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, on 
 topics which we now regard as requiring neither 
 the one nor the other from a Christian teacher ; 
 some of which we read with a blush, or presume 
 to pass over, as matters on which the natural 
 conscience, apart from Revelation, is sufficiently 
 enlightened and informed ; show that not only 
 the world which surrounded the infant Church, 
 but that Church itself, was destitute to a great 
 extent of the restraints and aids of a strong 
 public opinion on points of moral conduct, and 
 needed, in the same proportion, a system of 
 severe discipline within the Christian body to 
 secure its conformity in any tolerable degree to 
 the standard of a Divine requirement. 
 
 But now, through God's blessing upon primi- 
 tive doctrine and primitive discipline within the 
 enclosure of His Church, a vast change has been 
 
 19 — 2 
 
292 The Burial Service. 
 
 wrought in the moral condition of the world". 
 The principles of Christian morals have impreg- 
 nated the atmosphere of human society. In 
 this one respect, if in no other, it has doubtless 
 been for good that Christianity should have be- 
 come the religion of kingdoms and empires as 
 well as of individuals. The effect of its adop- 
 tion as the nominal faith of the Western world 
 has at least been favourable to morality if not to 
 holiness. Men who acknowledged the Gospel 
 as their creed and called Christ their Master 
 could not any longer justify, though they might 
 be too weak to relinquish, practices which the 
 Gospel proscribed and against which Christ de- 
 nounced judgment. If the practice of the world 
 remained unaltered, at least its principles rose 
 with the profession of Christianity. There was 
 now a tribunal which could sit in judgment upon 
 the inventions of men, and pronounce authori- 
 tatively upon the orthodoxy of rival philo- 
 sophies. It would no longer be possible for a 
 man calling himself a Christian to avow the idea 
 that pleasure was the chief good, or that acts of 
 the body were immaterial in the estimate of the 
 
The Burial Service. 293 
 
 God and Judge of souls. And it was much 
 more than this. For beside and within this 
 juster scheme of morality there came into exist- 
 ence also a considerable and an ever increasing 
 amount of true devotion and of spiritual holiness. 
 There were many who held Christianity as a 
 form ; but there were some who felt its power. 
 There was not only a Holy Catholic Church, but 
 within, though by no means co-extensive with it, 
 a Communion also of Saints. And that which 
 was the creed of the one was the faith of the 
 other. That which was the profession of the one 
 was the life of the other. So that there was 
 always before the eyes of men who nominally 
 adopted and outwardly bound themselves by 
 the rules of Christian morality the spectacle of 
 men like themselves who loved and obeyed those 
 rules, exemplifying the possibility of their per- 
 formance, and shaming those who said and did 
 not. It was impossible that this obedience 
 should be witnessed from age to age without 
 results. It acted with real and persuasive power 
 upon the society within which it was displayed. 
 What might otherwise, under the influence of a 
 
2g4 77/i? Burial Service. 
 
 long course of inconsistent profession, have be- 
 come a merely nominal code of duty, was saved 
 from this fatal deterioration by the sight of its 
 living energy in some, and became more and 
 more established from generation to generation 
 as the rule of life and the standard of judgment, 
 even for those who too often, through infirmity 
 of purpose, or the power of evil habit, failed to 
 exemplify it in themselves. 
 
 Now the point to which I desire your atten- 
 tion is this : that, in proportion as public opinion 
 has become more and more Christian and more 
 and more influential; in proportion as the nomi- 
 nally Christian world has learned to judge more 
 correctly, and to express its judgment more 
 decidedly, upon questions of morality ; in pro- 
 portion, finally, as the advance of intelligence 
 has brought with it increased facilities for the 
 avowal and enforcement of the judgments of 
 this public opinion in the way of approbation or 
 censure ; in the same degree it has become less 
 necessary that the Church should exert itself to 
 discover and to punish cases of irregularity or of 
 sin. This is one of the innumerable instances in 
 
The Burial Service. 295 
 
 which the course of events, under the overruling 
 hand of God's Providence, has introduced a 
 change of means, without involving a loss in the 
 result. It is no longer necessary for the Church 
 to vindicate those principles of morality in which 
 even the world agrees with her. The Church 
 has been too long in existence to be under any 
 risk of misconstruction as to her Master's or 
 her own rules of judgment. She may, if circum- 
 stances so require, leave her own members to 
 the operation of the ordinary sentences of pub- 
 lic opinion, without any apprehension of the con- 
 sequences to her own character, or to the cause 
 of truth and holiness in the world. If he who 
 has openly sinned is no longer put to an open 
 penance before the Christian congregation, he is 
 not therefore left unpunished by a tribunal the 
 principles of which he can better appreciate, and 
 the operation of whose edicts no flight can 
 evade. 
 
 In maintaining that the necessity for Church 
 discipline, not indeed (for this is a different case) 
 over the ministers, but over the members, of the 
 Christian congregation, may have been super- 
 
296 The Burial Service. 
 
 seded by the general diffusion of an enlightened 
 public opinion, I shall not hesitate to take as an 
 example of my meaning that which has been to 
 so many conscientious persons one of the great- 
 est stumblingblocks, the Burial Service of our 
 Church. 
 
 In that Service, appointed for promiscuous 
 use in the case of all baptized persons — with the 
 two exceptions, which in fact are of the rarest 
 occurrence, that of persons legally excommuni- 
 cated, and that of those who are pronounced by 
 the verdict of a jury to have laid violent hands 
 on themselves without the excuse of insanity — 
 in that Service (amongst other expressions of 
 similar import) God is declared to have taken to 
 Himself, of His great mercy, the soul of our 
 departed brother, and his body is committed to 
 the ground in sure and certain hope of the resur- 
 rection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Now it is urged that of few comparatively 
 amongst the departing members of his congre- 
 gation could a Clergyman declare with confi- 
 dence that they died in sure and certain hope, 
 
The Burial Service. 297 
 
 that they rested in Christ, that they were de- 
 livered, in the sense obviously intended, out of 
 the miseries of a sinful world. Far more often, 
 alas ! is he called to lay in the grave persons 
 who have given no sign, in life, of faith or 
 devotion. Not unfrequently, those who have 
 been notoriously neglectful, through life, of the 
 appointed means of Christian improvement. 
 Occasionally, those whom no doubtful rumour 
 has accused of living in sin ; the dishonest, the 
 drunkard, or the adulterer. Rarely, but in the 
 experience of many Clergymen once or twice, a 
 man who has ended a life of reckless immorality 
 by a deliberately self-inflicted death, but whom, 
 nevertheless, the indulgent and not unamiable 
 weakness of those who sat in judgment upon the 
 circumstances of his decease has rescued from 
 the unavailing penalty of his crime by a verdict 
 of temporary derangement. 
 
 How, it has been asked, can an honest or 
 reverent man thank God in the presence of his 
 people for such a life and for such an end ? 
 What is this but a mockery of devotion, dis- 
 pleasing to God, perhaps injurious to man ? 
 
298 The Burial Service. 
 
 And two remedies have suggested them- 
 selves for a necessity so painful. 
 
 The one is, to give a Clergyman some dis- 
 cretion as to the use or omission of the strong 
 expressions referred to. Over a parishioner 
 whose faith and love have been beautifully ex- 
 pressed in life and in the closing scene of life, he 
 may still give thanks as now, and express the 
 sure and certain hope which his heart approves 
 and ratifies. Over another, the evidences of 
 whose piety have been less conclusive, he may 
 omit the language of certainty ; he may express 
 perhaps a hope, but refrain from adding to that 
 hope the disproportionately positive epithets: 
 while in a third case, where not only the life has 
 been careless or immoral, but the very death 
 has taken place under circumstances of clear and 
 notorious guilt, he may refrain altogether from 
 the utterance of one hopeful or encouraging 
 word, and register by his silence beside the open 
 grave a sentence of condemnation which he an- 
 ticipates but too surely as written in Heaven. 
 
 Doubtless there is something plausible in 
 this proposal. But are we indeed prepared to 
 
The Burial Service. 299 
 
 commit to the best of earthly pastors a decision, 
 for ourselves or for our kindred, so awfully re- 
 sponsible ? Here and there, it may be, a wise 
 and well-judging man will exercise aright the 
 power entrusted to him. He will allow no dif- 
 ferences of opinion, and no ambiguous rumours, 
 to influence him in the selection of those phrases 
 which are to give comfort or anguish to the sur- 
 rounding mourners. But how shall we protect 
 ourselves against the eccentricities of those min- 
 isters — and they are not unknown amongst us — 
 who regard the expression of a confident assur- 
 ance of safety, or even the assertion of a consci- 
 ousness of Divine election, as necessary condi- 
 tions of a Christian death-bed ? How are we to 
 secure ourselves or others from the effect of a 
 morbid scrupulosity or a narrow-minded sec- 
 tarianism, when once the use or the refusal of 
 certain expressions in the Service for Christian 
 Burial is connected with the opinion of the 
 officiating priest upon the state and prospect of 
 the departed soul ? 
 
 Another proposal has been, to mitigate, for 
 all, the strength of that language in which the 
 
300 The Burial Service. 
 
 congregation expresses its thanksgiving for the 
 dead. Let the words sure and certain be 
 omitted. Let some other expressions be mo- 
 derated and qualified. And let the Service thus 
 amended be used indiscriminately over all. 
 
 Thus, in order to make room for the un- 
 believer or the suicide, the sure word of promise, 
 which has comforted and quickened for so many- 
 generations the heart of the mourning Christian, 
 is to be exchanged for something tamer and 
 more general ! Long will it be before such an 
 alteration will cease to shock and to stagger 
 those who remember the Service in its older and 
 better version. Long will it be before the ear 
 ceases to expect and to miss the too well- 
 remembered form of sound words, Forasmuch 
 as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great 
 mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear 
 brother here departed, we therefore commit his 
 body to the ground ; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, 
 dust to dust ; in sure and certain hope of the resur- 
 rection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. And what, meanwhile, will have been 
 gained by it ? Shall we be better able to utter 
 
The Burial Service. 301 
 
 over the notorious sinner the words of modified 
 hope ? Shall we be able, any more than before, 
 to anticipate, with ever so faint a peradventure, 
 the entrance into God's kingdom of one of those 
 of whom an Apostle, in the name of his Master, 
 has warned us that they cannot enter it 1 ? Yet 
 by the very fact of the change we shall have 
 made ourselves responsible, in a far different 
 sense from the present, for the literal accuracy of 
 every word that we retain. 
 
 We may feel for the scruples, and admire 
 the courage, of those Clergymen of our Church 
 who have braved obloquy and borne penalties 
 rather than partake in an act which to them was 
 profane : if they so regard it, they have no choice, 
 cruel as we must deem the enforcement of the 
 law in such cases, but to refuse and to suffer : 
 and yet, while we respect their devotion, we can- 
 not applaud their judgment. The true remedy 
 for their difficulty is not to be sought either here 
 or there ; either in the permission to omit, or in 
 the endeavour to moderate, the terms of Chris- 
 tian hope in which we commit to the ground the 
 
 1 l Cor. vi. 9, 10. 
 
302 The Burial Service. 
 
 body of our departed brother ; but in a larger 
 and a truer view of the position of Christ's 
 Visible Church on earth, and of our own duty as 
 its members. Let us resolutely and fearlessly 
 contemplate all that is involved in it. There is 
 a great community gathered by Christ's com- 
 mand out of every part of the world, and con- 
 solidated by one rite of inauguration, the Sa- 
 crament of Christian Baptism. This community 
 is designed to be taken on its profession : each 
 member of it is to pass for what he calls him- 
 self: he is to enjoy all the privileges, and incur 
 all the responsibilities, of a Christian : he is not 
 to be met at every turn with the language of 
 suspicion or mistrust : when he is sick, he is to 
 be ministered to as one of the Christian body : 
 when he dies, he is to be laid in his grave with 
 the words which appertain to the condition of 
 a departed Christian. So long as the Church 
 maintains this principle, and refrains from arro- 
 gating to herself the power of discerning spirits ; 
 so long no harm is done by the recognition of 
 individual membership, even where it addresses 
 as a partaker of the Christian hope one whose 
 
The Burial Service. 303 
 
 life most plainly contradicts it. It is only when 
 the Church steps out of her proper province, and 
 ventures to pronounce upon the sincerity or in- 
 sincerity of her individual members ; it is only 
 when she avows, or acts as if she considered, 
 that the words of Christian charity used to one 
 of the baptized are words not of general but of 
 particular application, stamping as genuine a 
 faith which after all may be a counterfeit ; it is 
 then and then only that mischief can result from 
 her practice, and the protest must be entered, 
 not against the practice itself, but against an 
 erroneous and perverse inference from it. 
 
 I question indeed whether any omission or 
 modification of particular expressions in the 
 Burial Service to adapt it to the individual cha- 
 racter could convey a more awful lesson than 
 that which is involved in the promiscuous use of 
 the Service as it stands, and the contrast in 
 certain cases between the words employed 
 and the circumstances which contradict them. 
 There is, if I might venture so to express it, a 
 sort of solemn protest in the hopes and the 
 thanksgivings uttered over the grave of the sin- 
 
304 The Burial Service. 
 
 ner, which is far more thrilling in its testimony 
 against sin and for holiness than any omission 
 or any qualification that the ingenuity of man 
 could have devised. That is zvhat might to have 
 been trite of him : that is what ought to have been 
 his life and his death : that is what ought to have 
 been prognosticated and anticipated as to Ids eternal 
 prospect : that is what the Church shall still say of 
 him, for he wore to the last the veil and the form 
 of a believer, and the day of the final disclosure is 
 not yet. And at the same time, perhaps, it is the 
 suspicion, or the more than suspicion, of every 
 bystander that this man did wear a disguise 
 when he called himself a Christian ; that the 
 hopes of the Gospel were never his ; that his life 
 was not a Christian's life, nor his death a Chris- 
 tian's death. And therefore this is but the con- 
 sistent close of a long drama ; the last scene of 
 a life, it may be of hypocrisy, it may be of silent 
 negation ; the final exercise of the Church's 
 toleration ; the consignment of an unworthy, a 
 spurious son, to the judgment of One who is 
 greater than our heart, and knoweth all things 1 . 
 
 1 l John iii. so. 
 
The Burial Service. 305 
 
 True to her great principle, true to the law of 
 her very existence, the Church judges no man : it 
 is for her to believe, and, where she cannot 
 believe, to hope, all things of all men : to the 
 last, she must refrain from every effort to read 
 the heart, to interpret the life : what a man called 
 himself, that will she call him : and if he dies 
 professing himself a Christian, she will utter 
 over his lifeless remains the thanksgiving which 
 so regards him. 
 
 The subject which has now engaged us is full 
 of serious admonition and of solemn warning. 
 
 We must beware of that natural impatience 
 which is ever prompting the enquiry, Wilt Thou 
 then that zuc go and gather them up? It is a 
 natural enquiry ; because we can scarcely avoid 
 observing the conduct one of another, and judg- 
 ing as we observe. Nay, for certain purposes it 
 is not only natural, but necessary, thus to observe 
 and thus to judge. It is not required of us, but 
 forbidden, that we should cultivate indiscrimi- 
 nate friendships, or associate on terms of inti- 
 macy with all who call themselves Christians. 
 On this point we have the direction of Revela- 
 V. L. 20 
 
306 The Burial Service. 
 
 tion itself. I write unto you, St Paul says, not to 
 keep company with any man who, being called a 
 brother, that is, a Christian, is a fornicator or 
 covetous, or an idolater, or a railcr, or a drunkard, 
 or an extortioner : with such an one no not to eat \ 
 This is the rule for our own conduct. For our- 
 selves, we must beware of those evil communica- 
 tions, those associations with evil persons, which 
 may corrupt or lower the holiness of our own 
 lives. But this is yet a different thing from 
 judging another. That office is not ours. To 
 his own Master he standcth or falleth' 1 . Let us 
 rejoice, and not murmur, when we see any indi- 
 cation, in such a man, of adhesion or return to 
 the faith which he professes. Let us regard him 
 as still a brother, though undutiful, erring, or 
 fallen. Let us watch for his good rather than 
 his evil characteristics. Consider thyself, lest 
 thou also be tempted*. And if we hear of his 
 death, if we stand by his grave, let us still treat 
 him as a child of the covenant, and consign him, 
 if it be but with trembling awe, to the mercies of 
 the Saviour of sinners. 
 
 1 i Cor. v. ii. s Rom. xiv. 4. 3 Gal. vi. I. 
 
The Burial Service. 307 
 
 And for ourselves, how grave a warning does 
 the thought of a Visible Church suggest to us! 
 How does it remind us that there is such a thing 
 as having a name to live and being all the while 
 dead ! How does it caution us against trusting 
 in a position which by its very nature is am- 
 biguous, precarious, temporary ! What is it to 
 us, that we should for a few short years have 
 eaten and drunk in Christ's presence, and heard 
 Him teaching in our streets 1 ? What is it to 
 have called Him Lord, Lord, or sat before Him 
 to hear his Gospel ? This may show us to be 
 members of His Church on earth ; but does it 
 give us, of itself, any passport into His Church 
 in Heaven ? No, there is an Invisible as well as 
 Visible Community ; a Church of the first-born 
 enrolled in Heaven* \ as well as an earthly con- 
 gregation comprising peoples and nations. Do 
 Ave belong to both of these, or only to one ? 
 
 Finally, the existence of a Catholic Church 
 on earth, and the large toleration which it is 
 required to extend to its members in its estimate 
 of their condition in life and in death, is not only 
 
 1 Luke xiii. 26. 2 Heb. xii. 23. 
 
 20—2 
 
3o8 
 
 The Burial Service. 
 
 compatible with, but itself proclaims, the approach 
 of a day of final judgment which is to begin, as 
 an Apostle has written, at the house of God 1 . 
 Under the government of a just God, the present 
 mingled scene cannot be for ever. It cannot be 
 that the evil and the good should be permanently 
 intermixed ; the former as well as the latter going 
 in and out freely in the very sanctuary of God. 
 If the tares and the wheat are allowed thus to 
 grow together, it can be only for a time; there 
 must be a day of separation coming ; there must 
 be a time of rectification and readjustment which 
 shall correct the unequal issues of our earthly 
 existence. They who would clear the Temple 
 of God now of all things that offend, they who 
 would go apart by themselves into an inner 
 shrine of exclusive worship into which no un- 
 clean person shall enter, little know that they 
 are not only attempting an impossibility, they 
 are also endeavouring to remove from the earth 
 one of the clearest proofs of a coming judgment ; 
 they are seeking to set the thrones at once for 
 the great assize; they are presuming to seat 
 
 1 i Tet. iv. 17. 
 
The Burial Service. 309 
 
 themselves in the tribunal of the Omniscient, 
 and thus to defeat one chief portion of the 
 design of His appearing. It is the sight of 
 wide-spread confusion ; the observation of much 
 that defiles within His Temple ; the present 
 toleration of much false profession; the bene- 
 diction pronounced beside the grave of the un- 
 godly; it is this which most loudly heralds the 
 approach of the Refiner and the Purifier 1 : this, 
 which predicts, by necessitating, judgment; this, 
 which makes a man say, in the very bewilderment 
 of a hope long deferred, Verily there must be 
 elsewhere a reward for the righteous: doubtless 
 there is a God who shall hereafter jicdge the 
 earth 2 / 
 
 1 Mai. iii. 3. 
 
 2 See Psalm lviii. it. 
 
DISCOURSE XII. 
 
 FREE AND OPEN CHURCHES. 
 
FREE AND OPEN CHURCHES. 
 
 Jeremiah xiii. 20. 
 
 Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful 
 flock 1 
 
 The question would sound differently in different 
 ears. 
 
 At the present moment it would have for 
 some a literal significance, not without anxiety 
 in a national as well as individual aspect 1 . There 
 are many persons to whom it might be said this 
 day — not in the tone of reproach, but of lively 
 and serious sympathy — Where is thy flock, thy 
 beautiful flock ? When the hand of the Lord is 
 upon a nation's cattle, upon its oxen and upon 
 its sheep, in the form of a very grievous murrain ; 
 1 Written during the Cattle Plague. 
 
3 H Free and Open Churches. 
 
 when in some cases a loss of annual income, from 
 this one source, of thousands of pounds, has 
 fallen upon a man whose wealth, like that of 
 Patriarchs of old, was in his flocks and in his 
 herds ; and when, extending the view more 
 widely, the country itself begins to apprehend a 
 large diminution, if not a virtual deprivation, of 
 one chief support of human life ; then the ques- 
 tion of the text may be applied, without irreve- 
 rence, in a plain literal way, and a man, or a 
 nation, smarting under this one of God's sore 
 chastisements, may be addressed in the very 
 words of the plaintive expostulation, Where is 
 the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock ? 
 
 It was not, however, of a literal but a figu- 
 rative flock, that the words were first written. 
 The flock spoken of was a population. Judah, 
 that privileged but graceless nation, is asked, 
 what has become of her people ? She has 
 brought upon herself, by her sins, a cruel cap- 
 tivity : a conquering race, God's scourge and 
 sword, has entered from the north, and carried 
 away captive the soul and strength of the land : 
 
Free and Open Churches. 315 
 
 thou hast taught them, saith the Prophet, to be 
 captains, and as chief over thee; taught them, 
 that is, by thy carelessness, taught them by thy 
 neglect of warnings, taught them by thy luxurious 
 ease and thy disregard of national interests : for 
 the greatness of thine iniquity is the judgment 
 come upon thee, of widowhood and the loss of 
 children. And so in all times has the tale 
 repeated itself. One nation has come against 
 another nation, and taken from it its treasure 
 and its strength ; taken from it its land to be 
 another's possession, or its people to serve stran- 
 gers in a strange place. We have seen it our- 
 selves. We have seen the combination of stronger 
 powers against a weaker ; we have seen violence 
 and injustice prosper, and foreigners sitting down 
 to divide betwixt them at leisure the spoils of an 
 unprovoked and an ungenerous aggression. And 
 to the nation which has suffered such wrong the 
 language of inspired Prophecy might address, as 
 to Judah of old, but without any sting of reproach 
 or sarcasm, the very enquiry of the text, Where 
 is now the flock that ivas given thee, thy beautiful 
 flock ? 
 
316 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 The same words have their application to 
 things spiritual. We read in the Prophet Ezekiel, 
 of shepherds of Israel who forgat their duty ; 
 shepherds who fed themselves, but fed not their 
 flocks ; who ate the fat, and clothed them with 
 the wool, and killed the sheep in due season, but 
 who neither healed the sick, nor bound up the 
 broken, nor brought back the wandering, nor 
 sought the lost ; so that God's sheep wandered 
 upon every high hill, and were scattered over all 
 the face of the earth in the cloudy and dark day 1 . 
 Those shepherds of Israel were the type, and 
 should be the warning, cf all unfaithful pastors 
 in all ages of the Church. When a Minister, by 
 name and profession, of Jesus Christ has allowed 
 his charge to take injury by his own lethargy or 
 inconsistency; when he has sat loose to all duties 
 except such as were public and compulsory, and 
 sought his own ease or his own amusement 
 instead of the welfare and spiritual happiness of 
 his people ; and when, as the result of this, he 
 has seen the sheep of Christ scattered up and 
 down upon their pastures, with none to warn, 
 
 1 Ezek. xxxiv. i, &c. 
 
Free and Open Churches. 
 
 317 
 
 none to cheer, none to edify them in life, and 
 none to support them in death ; well might the 
 voice of Divine remonstrance address such a 
 man in the stillness of his indolent chamber or 
 amidst the merriment of his busy dissipation, 
 and say, Where is the flock that was given thee, 
 thy beautiful flock? . 
 
 Or, yet once more, the same remonstrance 
 might be addressed, under certain circumstances, 
 not to the individual Minister, but to the Church 
 itself. 
 
 God has given to our beloved Church of 
 England many unexampled gifts. Gifts, in one 
 aspect, of spiritual enjoyment : gifts, in another 
 aspect, of spiritual influence. 
 
 A National Church — however limited or how- 
 ever impaired may be its claims to that title — 
 has advantages, its adversaries themselves being 
 judges, of no common order, over any other 
 religious community. Granting, and making full 
 allowance for, all that may be urged on the other 
 side, as to the dangers of worldliness, of com- 
 promise, of lukewarmness and supineness, of 
 
3 1 8 Free and Open ChurcJies. 
 
 unworthy uses of patronage, and of concessions 
 demanded of it in a thousand ways by the 
 State ; we yet feel — we ought to feel far more — 
 that a Church like that which we call the pure 
 and reformed branch of the Catholic Church of 
 Christ established in this realm, has talents en- 
 trusted to it of extraordinary price, for the use 
 or abuse of which it must certainly give solemn 
 account. 
 
 And remember, the Church does not mean 
 the Clergy : it means the Congregation : the 
 Church of England means the sum total of all 
 members, whether lay or clerical, of that great 
 Christian society which is replenished, year by 
 year, and week by week, in the administration 
 of holy Baptism, and which avails itself, more or 
 less regularly, of the ordinances of prayer, of 
 preaching, and of communion, according to the 
 form prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. 
 When the Church is said to have talents of God 
 entrusted to it, it is not the Clergy alone, it is 
 the Congregation, it is the sum of the Church 
 Congregations of England, which holds that 
 sacred trust. And every word which is spoken 
 
Free and Open Churches. 319 
 
 in reference to this subject, applies not to the 
 ministers alone in each place, but to the body, 
 to the Congregation, to all Church-worshippers 
 and especially to all Church-communicants. And 
 speaking thus widely, thus universally, to Christ's 
 people here or elsewhere gathered together for 
 worship, I would say, in all plainness of speech, 
 and in all seriousness of spirit, You have a great 
 trust consigned to you — not only for enjoyment, 
 but also for influence — for the use or abuse of 
 which in your generation you are solemnly re- 
 sponsible in the sight of God. 
 
 Reflect for a moment or two upon some of 
 its particulars. 
 
 You have, then, first of all — I am speaking 
 now of advantages peculiar to what we still call 
 the National Church — a Parochial Organization. 
 What does that expression mean ? It means, 
 that the Gospel net is spread, as it were, all over 
 England ; that, without waiting for each place or 
 each person to choose his religion, or even his 
 form of worship, the Nation has preoccupied all 
 places and all persons for the Church: a man 
 
320 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 cannot help being born, not only into a Town 
 or a County, but into a Parish : he cannot help 
 it : he is born therefore, whether he will or no, 
 into something which has not only the mark of 
 Christ, but the mark of Christ's Church — and 
 not only the mark of Christ's Church, but of one 
 particular branch and section of Christ's Church — 
 upon it already : so that there is, in theory at 
 least, some one standing ready, at his birth, to 
 care for his soul ; some one, not of his own 
 family or household, but a stranger so far as 
 blood is concerned, whom the Providence of God 
 has set there, just because the Church is a 
 National Church, to see that he does not enter 
 upon life, and that he does not pass through 
 life — that he does not form any of the special 
 connections of life, nor undergo any of the special 
 trials and sorrows of life — nor yet pass out of 
 life — unvisited by the calls, or uncheered by the 
 hopes, of the Gospel ; that it shall be his own 
 fault if he know not at each turn his duty ; his 
 own fault if he feels not, at each epoch and 
 stopping-place of his being, the strength and the 
 consolation which is requisite and appropriate 
 
Free and Open Churches. 521 
 for each. This, I say, is the theory of the 
 Church's Parochial Organization: a theory which 
 belongs not, and cannot belong— for use or else 
 for neglect— to any other religious community, 
 but only and singly to the National Church. 
 
 Again, you have— alone of all bodies— a 
 really independent Ministry. In theory at least, 
 every Parochial Minister of the Church of 
 England has his maintenance provided already 
 by the law of the land, regulating and securing 
 to him, while he holds his office, the pious 
 munificence of a long departed age. And why 
 do I reckon this among the advantages, among 
 the talents, of the Church which is the Congre- 
 gation i ? Why do I mention an independent 
 Ministry among, the peculiar privileges of a 
 National Church ? Not chiefly because it relieves 
 you from an obligation which (according to 
 Holy Scripture) would otherwise lie upon you, 
 to maintain your Minister by your own free 
 offerings 1 : not for this reason chiefly— because 
 this might be so stated as to be no blessing; 
 
 1 Matt. x. 10. Luke x. i Cor. ix. 7—14. Gal. vL 6. 
 
322 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 if it made you less abundant givers, or if it 
 deprived you of the opportunity of testifying 
 your love. The independent Ministry of our 
 Parish Churches is a benefit to the Congrega- 
 tion, chiefly, on this ground — that it enables 
 your Minister to speak to you as a man who is 
 not dependent, either way, upon your smile or 
 upon your frown : a man who has not to trim his 
 course, either in his doctrine or in his conduct, 
 according to the wind of popular caprice : a man 
 who can stand up before you in public, or visit 
 you in private, with the freedom and the bold- 
 ness of one who seeks not yours but you 1 ; who 
 has God only for his Teacher, God only for his 
 Master, and God only for his Judge. This is 
 your advantage. You want not a man who shall 
 deceive you with a lying, or flatter you with a 
 timeserving Gospel : you want one who can 
 inform, instruct, admonish you — even when your 
 hearts are reluctant — with all longsuffcring* 
 indeed, but with all authority 3 too. No Con- 
 gregation is so much to be pitied as that which 
 
 1 i Cor. xii. 14. 5 2 Tim. iv. 7. 
 
 « Tit. ii. 15. 
 
Free and Open Churches. 323 
 
 can feed or starve, engage or dismiss, its own 
 Minister at its own pleasure. Sore is the temp- 
 tation then, for him, to speak only smooth tilings: 
 sore the judgment which shall befall a people 
 that has made its prophets propliesy deceits, and 
 say, Peace, Peace, to them when perhaps there 
 was no peace 1 . 
 
 To a Parochial Organization, and to an 
 Independent Ministry, I add just one other 
 talent entrusted to a National Church : and 
 that is, its Parish Churches ; the possession of 
 those actual buildings, oftentimes so fair and so 
 beautiful, in which generation after generation 
 has served God in worship, and which stand 
 with open doors, often as the office of devotion 
 is performed, inviting whosoever will to enter and 
 be at home. 
 
 I cannot indeed stand in this place 2 and say 
 that you entered upon the possession of your 
 Parish Church without cost or without self- 
 sacrifice. The Providence of God threw upon 
 you the task of rebuilding from its smouldering 
 
 1 Isaiah xxx. 10. Jerem. vi. 14. Ezek. xiii. 10. 
 
 2 The rarish Church of Doncaster. 
 
 21—2 
 
324 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 ruins your ancient House of Prayer, and nobly 
 and magnificently have you done it. But still I 
 can say this to you. Your Parish Church, when 
 rebuilt, was in a different position, as to its 
 dignity and its security, from any that it could 
 have occupied if England had not had a National 
 Church upon the inheritance of which you have 
 entered. You never would have built this Church, 
 if it was at last, however stately and beautiful, 
 to be but a private Chapel — the property of a 
 few trustees — the worshipping-place only of such 
 as would take shares in it, and buy themselves 
 here the privilege of prayer and praise. It is 
 still to the existence of a National Church in 
 England, that even this building owes much, 
 owes most, of its high standing. Even you, who 
 paid for its erection, are still debtors, I repeat it, 
 to a National Church, for the inheritance of all 
 that is distinctive in this Parish Church as in the 
 other Parish Churches of England. And how 
 great is this ! Who can overestimate the treasure 
 entrusted to our keeping in this institution of a 
 Parish Church ? You who shed tears of sorrow, 
 as over a lost parent, when you stood over this 
 
Free and Open Churches. 325 
 
 Church's ruins, can tell from actual experience 
 what it is to be even for a very few years 
 destitute of a Parish Church. What countless 
 memories does it enshrine ! What tender associa- 
 tions does it embody and transmit ! What 
 facilities does it give for seeking God ! What 
 encouragements to remember and to hallow 
 His day ! What a precious veil does it spread 
 over the secrets of the heart, as they pour them- 
 selves out in the ordinance of worship ! How 
 does it enable persons who dread to be thought 
 religious, nevertheless to be so, in the promis- 
 cuousness of a public concourse ! How many a 
 man, who would write himself a hypocrite if he 
 sought out a Meeting-house, or intruded himself 
 into a Prayer-meeting, has been able to come 
 hither without the reproach of ostentation, and 
 to shelter himself, in his own devotion, under the 
 welcome privacy of this publicity ! To tell of 
 the uses of a Parish Church is almost to write 
 the history of the spiritual life. The one is 
 mixed up with the other, beyond the power of 
 man — or of any save One alone — to disentangle 
 them. Commonplace as the words are, let it 
 
326 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 not be for nothing — God grant it — that they have 
 been spoken ! 
 
 Now therefore we have to see whether the 
 anxious question of the text can have any appli- 
 cation to this subject ; to the case of a Church ; 
 a Church like this our own National Church of 
 England. 
 
 Each person amongst us is, in one point 
 of view, a member of this Flock : but yet, 
 in another point of view, each is responsible, 
 in his place, for the condition of the Flock 
 collectively. 
 
 Does then — for this is the question — does the 
 Church of England at present fill its place, 
 adequately and faithfully, towards the people of 
 England ? And if not, why not ? 
 
 We can see but a fragment, any of us, of the 
 people of England : how is it with that fragment 
 which we do see ? Has the Church of England 
 a satisfactory hold upon what are called the 
 masses ? Are we satisfied with the hold of the 
 Church of this place upon its sixteen or seven- 
 teen thousand inhabitants ? It has probably 
 happened to many of us to pass through our 
 
Free and Open Churches. 327 
 
 streets, or to look from our windows, when for 
 some reason we have been ourselves kept at 
 home, during the hours of Divine Worship, 
 morning or evening, on the Lord's Day. If so, 
 we have noticed the multitude of persons, young 
 and old, who have manifestly no thought of the 
 day but as a day of leisure. Now dare we hope, 
 on the most flattering supposition, that any 
 assignable proportion, out of all those idlers, was 
 making any provision at all against the hour 
 of death, against the day of judgment, against 
 the ages of the boundless age ? Then multiply 
 our few scanty thousands by the tens and 
 hundreds of thousands which you might find 
 similarly occupied or similarly dissipated in the 
 streets and lanes even of a few Northern Towns ; 
 estimate, if you can, the extent or the tenacity 
 of the hold of the Church of England upon the 
 national population, even from these small data — ■ 
 and shall there be no room for the question, as 
 addressed to our own Church, Where is the flock 
 that was given thee — given thee by God's 
 Providence, given thee for God's stewardship ; 
 thy beautiful flock — beautiful in the capacities of 
 
328 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 souls made in God's image — beautiful in the 
 capabilities of souls redeemed by the all-precious 
 blood ? Where is it ? 
 
 To attempt to enumerate the causes of this 
 failure, would lead us into too wide a field. 
 
 Mere over-growth has had unquestionably 
 much to do with it. Our Parochial organization 
 was until lately — too much, even now— the organi- 
 zation of a remote and utterly diverse age. Farm- 
 houses grown into villages, villages into towns, 
 towns into cities, cities (it is scarcely an exagge- 
 ration) into nations of souls, had utterly changed 
 the face of the country ; and still the Parishes 
 were left undivided, and still the Pastors and 
 the Parish Churches were scarcely at all aug- 
 mented in number. To catch the annual in- 
 crease of population, in our provision for spiritual 
 wants, is more than can be done : and what of 
 the long and vast arrears ? What of the growth 
 of Parishes and of populations in the interval of 
 many centuries between the original organization 
 and the starting-point of the Church's revival in 
 this generation ? England's people have out- 
 grown England's Church : and the flock is of 
 
Free and Open Churches. 329 
 
 necessity scattered, for lack of shepherds to seek 
 and to reclaim. 
 
 And it would be wrong, because false, to 
 deny that not over-growth only, but neglect, has 
 much to answer for. A National Church is apt 
 to grow drowsy : it is in human nature to let secu- 
 rity breed carelessness : the greatness of the 
 privilege is too often the measure of the neglect. 
 A deep sleep did fall once upon the Pastors of 
 England : not without noble, glorious excep- 
 tions : in all times there have been shepherds 
 faithful among the faithless, and the lamp of 
 grace has never quite gone out upon the candle- 
 stick of the Church. But there was a long age 
 of no progress : and no progress, in these things, 
 is retrogression. Human nature is ever willing, 
 in holy things, to be left to slumber : if the 
 Pastors ceased to admonish, no marvel if the 
 people were glad to go astray. And then, alas ! 
 when revival did come — and it began first, re- 
 member, among the ordained Ministers of the 
 Church — even then it was depressed and dis- 
 couraged by the Church's authority, and men 
 were suffered to go forth into the by paths of 
 
330 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 Nonconformity and Dissent, who ought to have 
 been — and in these days, I trust, would have 
 been — earnestly retained and sedulously em- 
 ployed as the Church's Ministers ; suffered to 
 do, and urged to do, within the Church their 
 peculiar, their heaven-taught work, in quicken- 
 ing, arousing, and fostering the dying spark of 
 grace in the careless hearts of men. Instead of 
 this, by a strange mistaking of friend and foe, 
 the Church itself helped to force the plant of 
 Schism, and handed over, as it were, the flock 
 committed to her, to hands more rough and 
 tastes less refined, yet also to hearts more earnest 
 and spirits more devoted. 
 
 And yet even out of this scene of division 
 and disunion sprang, under God, results not all 
 evil. The Church had lost her opportunity : it 
 was too late now to prevent or to heal Noncon- 
 formity: but it was not too late for the Church 
 to learn a lesson from her own truant children, 
 and to relight the torch of her own zeal at the 
 fire which her own fault had kindled. Hence- 
 forward, even till now, Dissent has been a 
 powerful, perhaps a necessary, stimulus to the 
 
Free and Open Churches* 331 
 
 Church's life : and on the other hand it will 
 scarcely be gainsaid, that in every place where 
 the Church does her duty there is still found 
 deep down in the hearts of the people a sort of 
 half-instinctive loyalty to their ancient Mother, 
 causing them to listen in time to her pleading 
 voice, and to seek at her hands, in death if not 
 in life, the exercise of her comforting and re- 
 assuring offices as the minister of God to them for 
 good. 
 
 I have touched upon the overgrowth of 
 Parishes, and I have touched upon the Church's 
 past negligence, as two causes of her loss of that 
 flock given to her, which is the English people. 
 I have yet a third point to notice. I speak now 
 of the practical exclusion of the Poor in popu- 
 lous places from many of those Parish Churches 
 which, in theory and of right, are their spiritual 
 homes. 
 
 It is an old and obvious truth, but not there- 
 fore superfluous to be spoken, that the Church 
 of a Parish is the property of a Parish ; the 
 possession, not of a few, or of any number 
 whatever, of its wealthier inhabitants, but of all 
 
332 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 the people. It is as much theirs collectively, as 
 a man's private dwelling is his own particularly. 
 It is well if the Parish Church is always open ; 
 open during the week ; open for the poor man's 
 private prayer at night or morning, his refuge 
 from the noise and crowding of his home, that 
 he may commune undisturbed with his God, as 
 much as for the public and more solemn worship 
 of the Congregation at the larger gatherings of 
 the Sunday worship. And I do not believe in 
 danger arising from this perpetual openness of 
 the Lord's house. I do not believe that it would 
 be abused for purposes of desecration or pillage. 
 And certain it is, that, in many of the more 
 crowded houses and more populous towns of our 
 country, a poor man must either come hither 
 for his private prayer, or he can offer it in quiet- 
 ness nowhere. 
 
 But unquestionably when the House of God 
 is opened for Public Worship, it is opened, of 
 right, not for some, but for all the people. If 
 there must be a comparison, it should be open 
 even more to the poor man than to the rich. 
 The rich man has or may have his quiet cham- 
 
Free and Open Churches. 333 
 
 ber for prayer, his manual or manuals of devo- 
 tion, his religious books, his printed Sermons. 
 The poor man has nothing 1 save this one oppor- 
 tunity of hearing of God and of joining in God's 
 worship. If there must be a choice, let the 
 Poor have the foremost place and the readiest 
 welcome. 
 
 And how has it been in fact ? A system of 
 selfish grasping on the part of the rich — which 
 would be incredible if we had not witnessed it 
 in fact, and read of it beforehand in Scripture — 
 succeeded in monopolizing all the best places in 
 the majority of our Parish Churches, driving the 
 poor into distant corners where the voice of the 
 Minister was oftentimes inaudible, and repre- 
 senting over and over again that graphic picture 
 (just referred to) in the Epistle of St James, 
 If tliere come unto your assembly a man with a 
 gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in 
 also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye have 
 respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and 
 say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place ; and 
 say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under 
 
 1 2 Sam. xii. 3. 
 
334 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 my footstool ; arc ye not then partial in yourselves, 
 and are become judges of evil thoughts 1 ? Who 
 can deny that from Churches such as these the 
 poor were virtually banished ? that a sense of 
 discomfort, and a sense of unwelcomeness, to- 
 gether, kept them away ; and either hardened 
 the idleness and indifference of nature into a 
 total neglect of worship, or else drove them to 
 humbler and homelier Chapels, in which at least 
 they could both hear and see, claim and perhaps 
 pay for their sitting, and certainly not be made 
 to feel themseves despised ? The flock strayed 
 from its own pasture, because its right to the 
 pasture was offensively challenged. 
 
 Worse abuses crept in : and the seats — or 
 pews, as they were now called — in the Parish 
 Churches became transferable by lease and sale, 
 by gift and bequest ; in some cases assigned in 
 perpetuity to non-resident and remote proprie- 
 tors ; in some, forming the ground even of local 
 or parliamentary votes ; in all, utterly alienated 
 from their right and lawful purpose, with a bold 
 
 1 James ii. 2—4. 
 
Free and Open Churches. 335 
 
 and shameless assurance, which we will hope, 
 shall some day have become incredible. 
 
 And When the destitution of what is called 
 Church Accommodation began at last, even 
 among the wealthier classes, to make itself felt, 
 and men who desired or who felt it seemly to 
 worship must find for themselves elsewhere an 
 opportunity denied even to them in the Parish 
 Churches ; then the remedy was sought in ways 
 scarcely less exceptionable : Proprietary Chapels 
 sprang up, with scarcely a pretence of free and 
 unappropriated sittings ; and even the free sit- 
 tings themselves became occupied by persons 
 still of the richer orders, to the final and ab- 
 solute exclusion of the poor from the sacred 
 inheritance of their fathers. 
 
 This evil system was swept away, for us of 
 this place, by a judgment of fire, in that one 
 respect perhaps not altogether calamitous. The 
 buying and selling of pews was stopped — I trust, 
 for ever — by the total destruction of that mate- 
 rial in which an iniquitous tradition had begun 
 to sanction a claim of property. 
 
 I could wish — and I will speak my wish 
 
336 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 with all frankness — that the opportunity had 
 been seized for making every sitting in this 
 restored Parish Church free and unappropriated 
 for ever. 
 
 A middle course was taken — taken, I know, 
 with the highest sanction— and taken with a 
 condition, the strict observance of which could 
 alone render the arrangement tolerable for a 
 moment. The sittings were appropriated — 
 equitably, no doubt, and peaceably appro- 
 priated — and with the express proviso, that 
 every appropriated sitting not occupied at the 
 moment of the beginning (on each occasion) 
 of Divine Service, should be free for that Ser- 
 vice. A seat-rent was fixed, as the conven- 
 tional (though in name not compulsory) con- 
 dition of occupation ; small in amount, solely 
 designed for the maintenance of the Services, 
 yet still, in form at least, not unlike the cha- 
 racteristic feature of the pew-system, and in 
 some danger of degenerating, without perpetual 
 watchfulness, into a like though possibly less 
 glaring abuse. • 
 
 Seven years have passed : and can it be said 
 
Free and Open Churches, 337 
 
 that the experience of this system has been en- 
 tirely satisfactory ? 
 
 If indeed in any place the Parish Church is 
 exactly commensurate with the requirements of 
 the population, there can be no harm— there 
 may even be convenience — in assigning to each 
 particular family its portion of space therein for 
 Public Worship. The worship of the Congre- 
 gation is then (in form as well as in fact) the 
 worship of the aggregate of its families. But it 
 is idle to speak of this as a consideration appli- 
 cable here. A comparatively small number — 
 some two hundred out of (I suppose) fourteen 
 or fifteen hundred— householders of this Parish 
 are provided with a larger or smaller number 
 of appropriated sittings. Where are the rest ? 
 
 Can it be said that even the freedom of 
 unused sittings at the beginning of each Ser- 
 vice, is universally understood and cheerfully 
 acquiesced in? It is no uncommon thing to 
 see, from the place where I now stand, the stalls 
 near the Pulpit scantily filled, while the bulk of 
 a large Congregation is driven into the remoter 
 and less available parts of the building. There 
 V. L. 22 
 
338 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 is a natural dislike to standing in the Aisles, 
 till the Service begins, for the chance of vacan- 
 cies in the appropriated stalls : nor is there 
 always the Christian readiness that might be 
 desired, in admitting strangers voluntarily to 
 vacant sittings. Thus it comes to pass that 
 many persons are placed, Week by week, in 
 distant positions most unfavourable to easy and 
 pleasant hearing, while they see before them 
 unoccupied or half-occupied seats, in which, with 
 no inconvenience to others, they might have re- 
 ceived the fullest and readiest profit from every 
 part of the sacred Office of Preaching, Prayer, 
 and Praise. 
 
 And what shall we say of the Poor ? Who 
 can fail to regret the position here assigned to 
 them ? In the least advantageous part of the 
 building — with the back of the Preacher almost 
 turned upon them — and with a sense of dis- 
 paragement, almost of banishment — those are 
 set to listen and to worship who, from imperfect 
 education, and often from advanced age, require, 
 even more than others, every help that can be 
 afforded them, of nearness and directness, of 
 
Free and Open Churches. 339 
 
 sight and sound. Who can go forth among the 
 Poor of this place, and invite them to their 
 Parish Church ? The best we can do is to open 
 new places of worship for them, and bid them 
 go where they will be welcome, where they 
 will be considered first, and where they can 
 be honoured as God's Poor. But in this separa- 
 tion itself — this opening of one place of worship 
 for the rich and another for the poor — we see no 
 few evils both for them and you. 
 
 I would to God that the spirit were breathed 
 into the hearts of this Congregation to say, We 
 will try for one year a different system. We 
 will give up our appropriations: we will share, 
 alike and equally with our neighbours, the bless- 
 ings of worship : we will pay no rents for the 
 places which we occupy in God's service : we 
 will give cheerfully, Sunday by Sunday, as God 
 has prospered us, for the maintenance of His 
 offices, in voluntary offerings : we will make no 
 distinctions in His presence between rich and 
 poor : we will restore, in one Town at least, the 
 openness and the freedom of Divine worship : 
 we will try this for one year, and at the end of it 
 
340 Free a7id Opoi Churches. 
 
 we will say again whether the former or the new 
 plan is, on the whole, the more honourable to 
 God and the more convenient and beneficial to 
 man. 
 
 Doubt not that the habitual presence of one 
 person, or of one family, in a particular spot, will 
 always be respected. Common courtesy — it is 
 the uniform experience — will secure this. Fear 
 not rude pressure, unseemly forwardness, or 
 offensive self-obtrusion. Order, not confusion, 
 will mark our assemblies for worship, when each 
 passes, quietly and for himself, to the spot which 
 he prefers, and none can look unkindly upon 
 another for trespassing on a privilege or invad- 
 ing a right. Such fears are the fancies of 
 inexperience : they will disappear in a week on 
 trial. 
 
 How was it with you during your exclusion, 
 for five years, from your Parish Church? In 
 your temporary places of worship you had no 
 appropriations : and yet, I am informed, there 
 was not only perfect order and entire simplicity 
 of arrangement, but it was observed that the 
 habitual place of each regular worshipper was 
 
Free and Open Churches. 341 
 
 respected, and almost as carefully preserved to 
 him as though he possessed it by faculty or by 
 purchase. 
 
 You have seen it yourselves in our religious 
 meetings held of late in the Guildhall : four 
 hundred persons taking their places, rich and 
 poor, one with another, without distinction of 
 ranks, and yet without confusion or crowding. 
 
 You see it week by week in our Chancel 
 Services. I observe the same worshippers regu- 
 larly in the same positions : and yet each makes 
 his own choice, and there is none to hinder or to 
 complain. So would it be, I doubt not, on a 
 larger scale, in this Nave and in these Tran- 
 septs. 
 
 It is natural indeed that they who are already 
 possessed of the chief seats in our Congregation 
 should prefer to keep them. But think of those 
 who have not 1 ; look not every man on his own 
 things, but every man also on the things of others' 2 : 
 and where selfishness would prompt tenacity, let 
 the Spirit of God breathe into your hearts self- 
 forgetfulness and love ! 
 
 1 1 Cor. xi. 22. 8 Phil. ii. 4. 
 
342 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 I have slightly and roughly sketched before 
 you the plan which serious thought, careful 
 observation, and diligent enquiry, have impressed 
 upon me, as I believe, for your good. It is no 
 rash innovation. It is no new invention. It 
 rests upon acknowledged principles of law and 
 right. It is simply a return to the ancient and 
 time-honoured practice of Christ's Churches. It 
 is enforced by the avowed approbation of 
 Bishops and rulers, our own present Diocesan 
 foremost amongst them. It has been tried in 
 other Parishes, not unlike yours in population 
 and circumstances, tried with hearty good will, 
 and found safe and successful. There is one 
 Parish, long known and honoured for the great 
 and successful labours of its Pastor — a Parish, 
 like this, of about sixteen thousand souls, and a 
 Parish poor and depressed in point of outward 
 prosperity — in which the weekly collections, in 
 its three Churches, produce a steady and regular 
 income, for Church purposes, of nine hundred 
 pounds a year, out of which provision is made 
 for all the wants of Divine worship, and for the 
 support of charitable and religious works at 
 
Free and Open Churches. 343 
 
 home and abroad. Why may not a like reward 
 crown our own effort ? At present, the strangers 
 who visit this Church for worship contribute 
 nothing to the maintenance of its Services, 
 nothing (save on certain comparatively rare 
 occasions) even to its charities : hereafter they 
 will be found, I am persuaded, bountiful and 
 cheerful givers, when the Apostolical precept 
 is here literally obeyed, Upon the first day 
 of the week let every one lay by him in store, 
 for the Church's alms, as God has prospered 
 him 1 . 
 
 I deeply feel the responsibility, which lies 
 upon us of this generation, to take heed lest we 
 suffer this Church to slip back by degrees into 
 the position of one of those much-abused and in 
 the truest sense desecrated Churches in which 
 the whole idea of public property is lost and 
 trampled upon, and the scramble of individual 
 selfishness has seized for a fraction of the 
 population that which ought to be the perpetual 
 inheritance in common of all Christian people. 
 The stand must be made now : or it will be 
 
 1 1 Cor. xvi. 1. 
 
344 Free and Open Churches. 
 
 made too late hereafter. I have a good hope 
 that the stand will be made now : but, if made 
 it must be made by yourselves ; not more by 
 the spirit and energy of the excluded many, 
 than by the generosity and self-sacrifice of the 
 privileged few. 
 
 Let all your things be done with charity. 
 
 1 I Cor. xvi. 14. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
I. 
 
 On Subscription and Scruples*. 
 
 It has been the apparent result of all recent efforts 
 in Parliament for the Revision of our Liturgy, 
 to postpone rather than to advance the object 
 which they have had in view. It was so in 1840: 
 it has been so again in i860. The difficulties 
 of Revision are made more apparent, and its 
 advantages more problematical, by every such 
 discussion. 
 
 The Church of England has practically lost 
 its machinery for self-modification. To deal 
 conclusively with questions of doctrine or even 
 of ritual, Convocation has no power, and Parlia- 
 ment little fitness. The one represents but a 
 part of the Church — but a part even of the 
 Clergy — even of the Clergy of one Province 2 ; 
 
 1 Written in May i860, and published as an Introduction to 
 Revision of the Liturgy. See Preface. 
 
 2 In 1 860 the Convocation of the Province of York was still 
 dormant, and that of the Southern Province enjoyed in common 
 parlance a monopoly of the name. It is otherwise now. 
 
348 On Stibscription and Scruples. 
 
 the other includes many who are not of the 
 Church at all. If the demand for change could 
 be made as precise as it is now vague, and as 
 harmonious as it is now discordant, there would 
 still remain the questions, to whom is it to be 
 addressed, and where resides, if not the power, 
 yet the right, to grant it or to refuse ? 
 
 Nor is it only that the question is beset with 
 practical difficulties. The difficulties of the pro- 
 cess are great : but the dangers of the result, 
 whatever it be, would be far greater. 
 
 A Revision once effected must give a tenfold 
 stringency to Subscription. It could no longer 
 be pleaded then, as it may justly be pleaded 
 now, that ancient forms of Worship, and ancient 
 statements of Doctrine, must necessarily con- 
 tain expressions not wholly suitable to modern 
 feeling, and that the difficulty of alteration 
 may reasonably excuse some latitude of in- 
 dividual interpretation. Whatever remains after 
 Revision must be taken as it stands, and in- 
 terpreted, at least for a generation or two, 
 according to its grammatical sense. If this 
 be so, where, after a Revision made under 
 present circumstances, would be our National 
 Church ? 
 
 It is no small blessing, in the eyes of all 
 but party theologians, that there should be room 
 within the pale of a common worship for men of 
 
On Subscription and Scruples. 349 
 
 various opinions. It may even be regarded as 
 one instance of God's Providence over our Church 
 of England as at present constituted, that we 
 have Articles and Formularies drawn from very- 
 various sources, and incapable perhaps in some 
 points of a perfectly logical coherence. It is 
 thus that excellent men, of conflicting doctrinal 
 notions on many topics of secondary and on 
 some of primary importance, have been enabled 
 to worship together, and even to minister to- 
 gether, in a common Church and at a common 
 altar. It is thus too that reasonable men have 
 been practically warned against intolerance to- 
 wards each other, because each felt that, if he 
 had something with him, he had also something 
 against him ; if the Articles spoke his language, 
 the Liturgy here and there might seem to speak 
 the language of his opponent ; and he who 
 would claim indulgence in reference to the one, 
 must give that indulgence in reference to the 
 other. 
 
 It has been well said that there is a wide 
 difference between compromise and comprehen- 
 sion. The one might be effected by a general 
 vagueness of expression, by the omission of all 
 that is distinctive and pointed, and by such a 
 softening and lowering of the tone of doctrine as 
 should make it equally agreeable to the Cal- 
 vinist and the Arminian, to the Romanist and 
 
35o 
 
 On Subscription und Scruples. 
 
 the Socinian. The other is best attained, if not 
 in theory yet in practice, by embracing within 
 one Book of Prayer, as we believe it to be em- 
 braced within one Book of Revelation, the enun- 
 ciation of opposite parts and sides of the truth ; 
 of that truth which God sees in its real consist- 
 ency, but which man must be contented in this 
 life to see rather in its apparent conflict, and to 
 grasp for the present in its disjointed fragments, 
 waiting for the time when he shall be enabled 
 to piece back those fragments into the whole 
 from which they have been broken off for use. 
 If we were reconstructing our Church, the desire 
 of peace might drive us into compromise : God, 
 who has given it to our generation as it is, has 
 enabled us thereby to make it minister to com- 
 prehension. 
 
 To do this effectually, it is needful that plain 
 language should be employed both by the Rulers 
 of the Church towards its Ministers, and by the 
 Ministers of the Church towards their Congrega- 
 tions. Truthfulness, generosity, largeness of 
 mind and largeness of heart, were never more 
 required than in the interpretation of that posi- 
 tion which a minister, and even a worshipper, in 
 the Church of England occupies as such. 
 
 Every man ought to be able to respect those 
 scruples which have debarred some excellent 
 men from the Ministry of our Church, and have 
 
On Subscription and Scruples. 351 
 
 rendered the entrance of others upon that Minis- 
 try a matter of doubt, misgiving, and anxiety. 
 But I have the strongest conviction that in nine 
 cases out of every ten those scruples would have 
 been removed, and in the remaining case greatly 
 mitigated, if the Candidate for Ordination could 
 have depended upon hearing from his Bishop 
 such words of counsel and encouragement as 
 should authorize the maintenance of an honest 
 freedom, sanction the exercise of individual 
 thought, and warrant the expectation of a kind 
 construction. Let it be not timidly whispered 
 but boldly said, In declaring your acceptance of 
 the Book of Common Prayer, you do not profess 
 that there is nothing in that Book which 
 you might yourself have been glad to ex- 
 press somewhat differently. Viewing it his- 
 torically, as a compilation ; viewing it intelli- 
 gently, as an ancient document ; accepting 
 that construction which the common sense of 
 men puts upon it in practice, and which the 
 Rulers of the Church, to whom your profes- 
 sion of consent is to be made, understand to 
 be the meaning in which you accept it ; you 
 declare yourself willing to lead the worship 
 of the Congregation in the words of this 
 Book, and to take it as the directory of your 
 own teaching. Nothing is here asked of you 
 which you could only give by a disingenuous 
 
35 2 On Subscription and Scruples. 
 
 SQphistry. It is enough to justify your place 
 amongst the Ministers of a National Church, 
 if you can say from the heart, That, of the 
 various Christian communities known to you 
 in this country, this is the one which most com- 
 mends itself to your judgment and conscience; 
 that it is the Church of your choice and of your 
 affection ; that you are able with confidence and 
 comfort to worship in its words, to minister in its 
 offices, and to teach in its spirit. 
 
 I believe that such language, calmly and 
 firmly held by the Rulers of the Church of Eng- 
 land, would go further than any Liturgical Re- 
 vision to remove or allay conscientious scruples. 
 What is needed for the comfort of the scrupulous, 
 is rather construction than change ; rather inter- 
 pretation than alteration ; the authoritative as- 
 surance that there is no dishonesty in their 
 position, rather than such an adjustment of that 
 position as, in accommodating them, must ex- 
 clude others. 
 
 It may certainly be urged that, if this be all 
 which is to be understood by Clerical Subscrip- 
 tion, the terms of that Subscription ought to be 
 shaped accordingly. If no other change can be 
 made, at least let thus much be done, to remove 
 ambiguities and to relieve scruples. There are 
 at present in use various forms of declaration, 
 attached to various occasions in the Clerical life. 
 
On Subscription and Scruples. 353 
 
 There is, for example, that which is required as 
 a preliminary to Ordination ; when the Candi- 
 date declares that he willingly and from his 
 heart subscribes to the Thirty-nine Articles of 
 Religion, and to the three A rticles in the Thirty- 
 sixth Canon ; one of which is, That the Book of 
 Common Prayer contains in it nothing contrary 
 to the Word of God, and that it may lawfully so 
 be used; and that he himself will use the form in 
 the said Book prescribed, in public prayer and ad- 
 ministration of the Sacraments, and none other. 
 There is, again, that required as preliminary to 
 appointment to a Curacy ; when, in addition to 
 a renewal of the declaration made at his Ordina- 
 tion, the Curate has also to declare his confor- 
 mity to the Liturgy of the United Church of 
 England and Ireland. There is, once more, that 
 required on institution to a Benefice ; when, in 
 addition to the renewal of both the previous 
 declarations, the Incumbent has to declare, 
 openly before the Congregation, his unfeigned 
 assent and consent to all and every tiling contained 
 and prescribed in and by the Book of Common 
 Prayer, as well as to the Thirty-nine Articles of 
 Religion. No doubt the language of the last 
 (more particularly) of these three declarations is 
 needlessly stringent. Its very emphasis en- 
 feebles it. Common sense puts upon its terms a 
 construction which alone makes them tolerable, 
 V. L. 23 
 
354 On Subscription and Scruples. 
 
 but which at the same time leaves little save the 
 promise to conform, and the certainty that no 
 honest man will promise conformity to that with 
 which he does not in the main sympathize. 
 
 A clear distinction may be drawn between 
 alteration of the Prayer-Book and alteration of 
 the terms of Subscription. The one can scarcely 
 be separated from discussions of doctrine : the 
 other is a matter of simple legislation, to be 
 decided on the common grounds of reason and 
 experience. And while I believe that much may 
 be done, even under existing circumstances, for 
 the comfort of the scrupulous, by a bold asser- 
 tion and candid recognition of the practical 
 meaning of any such forms of declaration, how- 
 ever expressed ; I yet should rejoice to see those 
 forms reconsidered and revised, in the conviction 
 that those whom they distress or exclude are in 
 many cases amongst the very worthiest to be em- 
 ployed in the Church's service, and that no forms 
 can ever be devised which will really bar the en- 
 trance of the mercenary and the unscrupulous. 
 
 That a feeling of disappointment will be the 
 result, in many quarters, of the recent discussion 
 in the House of Lords, cannot, I fear, be doubted. 
 A regret may be permitted that no common 
 ground could be discovered on which the advo- 
 cates and opponents of change might have met 
 each other advantageously ; no clear distinction 
 
On Subscription and Scruples. 355 
 
 practically drawn between changes of arrange- 
 ment and changes of doctrine, between Revision 
 of Services and Revision of Subscription ; no 
 amendment moved, expressive of respect for 
 scruples of conscience, recognizing the impor- 
 tance of the subject, dividing it into its parts, 
 and providing an opportunity for the further 
 consideration of one of them. I know that there 
 are those among the complainants whom no such 
 tenderness of treatment would have satisfied. 
 There are those, on one side, on both sides, in 
 these controversies, whose real battle-field is 
 that of doctrine ; whose real object is not the 
 widening, but the narrowing, of the limits of our 
 communion. With such demands, from which- 
 ever side they may come — with such designs, on 
 whichever side they may be cherished — I can 
 feel no sympathy. The entrance upon this 
 ground, under present circumstances, would be 
 the signal for a disruption, not perhaps fatal to 
 the existence, but certainly disastrous to the 
 nationality, of the Established Church. 
 
 More and more necessary does it become, at 
 such a moment, to assert, clearly and strongly, 
 the reasonable as well as the comprehensive 
 character of the Church that is. Let it be seen 
 that there is room within its boundaries for all 
 who honestly hold the essentials of the Christian 
 Faith. Let it be seen that there is nothing irra- 
 
 23—2 
 
356 On Subscription and Scruples. 
 
 tional in that amount of acquiescence in its more 
 questionable Formularies which is involved in 
 Church-membership or in Clerical Subscription. 
 Let everything be done to soften, nothing to ag- 
 gravate, the disappointment of the conscientious. 
 Let them be invited to believe that even those 
 forms of faith or worship to which they have felt 
 most repugnance are capable of a less obnoxious 
 interpretation, and that, approaching their consi- 
 deration in a calm and quiet spirit, they may hope 
 to find at least a partial satisfaction of the scruples 
 by which they have formerly been disquieted. 
 
 The following Discourses 1 refer to some of 
 those questions which are connected by common 
 consent with that of the revision of our Liturgy. 
 
 Their publication at this time has two special 
 objects. 
 
 First, I desire to mitigate, if I cannot hope 
 to remove, the objections felt by many of the 
 Evangelical Clergy to certain expressions in our 
 Service-Book. I believe that the tranquil con- 
 sideration of some of those passages has been 
 disturbed by prepossessions or misapprehensions 
 which are capable of an almost easy correction. 
 And I would earnestly assert for every man the 
 right to apply that correction, without stopping 
 to enquire at each step whether it is leading him 
 
 1 The Five Discourses which formed the volume entitled 
 Revision of the Liturgy. 
 
On Subscription and Scruples. 357 
 
 to the precise sense designed for the particular 
 passage by its individual compiler. There has 
 been a Providence at work beside and above the 
 human authorship ; and the very loss of the 
 Church's machinery for change justifies us in 
 seeking the animus imponcntis rather in the 
 present than in the past. Only let us be sure 
 that we speak according to the Word of God ; 
 and the words of men, where they are fairly 
 capable of two constructions, may be interpreted 
 (if so it be) rather by truth than by intention. 
 
 Secondly, I have before my mind a case with 
 which my professional life has made me familiar, 
 and to which most of the following Discourses 
 more or less directly refer. I desire to minister 
 to the want of that young man who is turning 
 aside from the Ministry of the Church solely on 
 the ground of difficulties found in the Prayer- 
 Book. Such cases, we know, are of frequent 
 occurrence. Difficulties about the truth of 
 Revelation, about the doctrines of the Gospel, 
 are of a different order. I fear they too are on 
 the increase. And they impose a grave respon- 
 sibility upon all those who, in our Schools and 
 Universities, have undertaken to guide the 
 studies and to lead the thoughts of those who 
 must exercise hereafter a wide influence, and 
 whose own safety and happiness are matters of 
 deep concern. But with these I am not dealing 
 
3 5 8 On Subscription and Scruples. 
 
 here. I am contemplating a case in which the 
 difficulties experienced respect rather the Church 
 than the Gospel ; rather the consistency of our 
 Church's Articles and Formularies with Scrip- 
 ture, than the truth or authority of Scripture 
 itself. And often has a single scruple on this 
 which I must call by comparison a minor 
 question affected the whole work, if not the final 
 issue, of a valuable life. Often has it sufficed to 
 divert from the Profession of a Clergyman one 
 who had every desire for it and every qualifica- 
 tion. The following pages are designed to assist 
 in overcoming such scruples ; to show that the 
 words of our Church, even where most liable to 
 misconstruction, are yet consistent, when rightly 
 interpreted, with the teaching of the Word of 
 God. Deeply thankful shall I be, to Him who 
 alone can grant the blessing, if in any single 
 instance such should be the result. 
 
 But I would add yet one word upon the 
 subject of scruples in general. 
 
 It is a first principle of morality that a 
 scruple is to be respected. It is not to be over- 
 borne by others, it is not to be disregarded by 
 ourselves. Its existence is a fact, and as such it 
 must be recognized. But the encouragement of 
 scruples, the fostering of scruples, the multiplica- 
 tion of scruples, is no duty, but the very con- 
 trary. In themselves, scruples are a weakness, 
 
On Subscription and Scruples. 359 
 
 are an evil, are a disease. Where they fasten 
 upon things which good men have done con- 
 scientiously, and have enjoyed God's blessing in 
 doing, and have lived usefully and died peacefully 
 in doing, scruples are much to be suspected of 
 being temptations rather than virtues. It is a 
 first duty to obtain full information upon the 
 point on which a scruple has settled, and it is a 
 second duty to open the mind to the due 
 influence of that information and of the reason- 
 ings which spring out of it. It does not follow 
 that, because a scruple has arisen, therefore it 
 must be ratified. Nor does it follow that, because 
 a scruple exists, therefore it must be paramount. 
 A scruple may be one element in a deliberation, 
 but it must not be the whole of it. 
 
 In the choice of a Profession — to apply these 
 remarks to the case before us — a man may say 
 this to himself: God has given me certain gifts, 
 of disposition, of character, of education, of 
 ability, of attainment : these all point in one 
 direction, towards the Profession of a Clergy- 
 man : that is my choice : that I believe to be the 
 work in which I can best serve Him. I have 
 been a member of the Church of England from 
 my youth up. I prefer that form of worship to 
 any other. Nowhere else do I find the same 
 order, the same sobriety, the same soundness of 
 doctrine, the same reasonableness of belief, the 
 
360 On Subscription and Scruples. 
 
 same accordance with good sense, good taste, 
 and good example. In its Services I find calm- 
 ness without tameness, and fervour without 
 fanaticism. These things all concur in guiding 
 me towards its Ministry as my life's work. On 
 the other side, there is a scruple. I do not 
 understand, or I do not like, the use of certain 
 words in the Baptismal Service, or in the 
 Ordination Service, or in the Athanasian Creed, 
 or in the Burial Service. Some of these things 
 appear to me to be liable to the imputation of a 
 tendency towards Romanism, others towards 
 unreality, others towards uncharitableness. I 
 know that many good men have not so viewed 
 them. Perhaps I may hereafter view them 
 differently. In the meantime, let me take into 
 account my whole case. On the one side, there 
 is what I cannot but regard as a call from God 
 to do His work. On the other, there is a 
 scruple. I must weigh the one against the 
 other. Is the case such that the negative must 
 outweigh the positive ? Is the case such that 
 the Bishop to whom I apply for Ordination will 
 refuse me, or ought to refuse me, knowing all ? 
 Is the case such that my hands would be tied, 
 my mind fettered, or my lips sealed, in the 
 exercise of my ministry ? Or can I appeal to God 
 who knows my heart, that my desire is to do 
 Him service in any station of life to which He 
 
On Subscription and Scruples. 361 
 
 calls me, and can I, in choosing this— choosing it 
 with the knowledge of some difficulties and some 
 objections— throw myself upon the belief that it 
 is His will for me, and go forward in His Name? 
 
 In such a balancing of conflicting alternatives 
 lies the chief duty as well as the chief perplexity 
 of life : out of it, we may well believe, will issue 
 that which is right and good, that which would 
 not result from a more one-sided or a hastier 
 judgment. Happily it is the testimony of those 
 who have had experience in youth of painful 
 scruples, that a life of healthy activity is 
 generally rewarded by their eventual disap- 
 pearance. 
 
II. 
 
 On the Rubric of the Burial Service*. 
 
 TWO principles must be firmly maintained in 
 dealing with the great question before us. 
 
 1. A Christian Burial Service must express 
 the hopes of a Christian concerning the dead. It 
 must embody the language of our Lord and of 
 His Apostles ; it must breathe the comfort of 
 the nth Chapter of St John's Gospel, and of St 
 Paul's well-known words in his Epistles to the 
 Thessalonians and the Corinthians ; it must carry 
 forward the thoughts of the sorrowing to the 
 promised Resurrection to eternal life ; and it 
 must presume that the person over whom it is 
 used is interested, as a Christian, in the revela- 
 tion of this future. 
 
 2. Every man must be taken on his profes- 
 sion, whether in life or in death. Every member 
 
 1 Published in April, 1864, under the title of Rubrical Modi- 
 fication not Liturgical Change: A few Words on tilt Burial 
 Service. 
 
On the Rubric of the Burial Service. 363 
 
 of the Christian community must be treated, till 
 death and in death, as a partaker of the Chris- 
 tian hope, unless positive cause can be shown 
 why that hope should be denied him. The time 
 of judgment is not yet. Let both groiv together 
 until the harvest 1 . Judge nothing before the time: 
 and when that time comes, He that judgetli is 
 the Lord, not man 2 . The gift of discernment of 
 spirits is withdrawn from the Church : while it 
 was hers, it hindered not the baptism of Simon 
 the sorcerer, nor the continuance in Christian 
 communion of Diotrephes or of Demas. A 
 Christian profession, not sentenced as a false- 
 hood, entitles every man, as to Christian Com- 
 munion, so also to Christian Burial. 
 
 Nevertheless, a Church which has practically 
 lost, like our own, the use of Discipline, lies under 
 serious difficulties in the resolute maintenance of 
 these principles. 
 
 The experience of many Parochial Clergymen 
 records instances in which pain, and something 
 worse than pain, attended the reading of the 
 Burial Service over the body of a deceased 
 Parishioner. 
 
 It may be that, in some cases, a clearer view 
 of the meaning of a Church, or of the office of 
 its Ministers, would have mitigated this feeling. 
 
 1 Matt. xiii. 30. 
 
 * 1 Cor. iv. 4, 5. 
 
364 
 
 On the Rubric of 
 
 In such instances, a painful misgiving as to the 
 condition of the departed, arising from defective 
 proofs (in the life or on the deathbed) of Chris- 
 tian faith and consistency, may yet be com- 
 patible with the ministerial duty of reading 
 beside the open grave the words of hope and 
 consolation. 
 
 But it is otherwise when a life of notorious 
 vice has been terminated by a death without 
 repentance or in the very act of sin. With the 
 population of a Village gathered in the Church- 
 yard to see what the Minister will do, in the 
 interment of an habitual drunkard or adulterer, 
 a Clergyman has sometimes found himself in the 
 painful alternative of either breaking the Law, 
 «.>r giving great occasion to the enemy to blaspheme 1 . 
 The course frequently taken in these cases, of 
 asking the assistance of some neighbouring 
 Clergyman ignorant of the facts, is one which, 
 however natural as an escape from a miserable 
 dilemma, can scarcely commend itself to the 
 deliberate judgment as honourable to the system 
 which compels its adoption. 
 
 There is a strong and growing conviction that 
 some modification of that system is due not more 
 to the consciences of the Clergy than to the 
 interests of the Church itself. 
 
 Some modification : but what ? 
 
 1 2 Sam. xii. 14. 
 
the Burial Service. 
 
 365 
 
 1. Shall a Clergyman be left to his own dis- 
 cretion in the use or refusal of the authorized 
 Service ? 
 
 Few will be found willing to entrust to the 
 individual judgment of twenty thousand persons, 
 varying in every particular of feeling and doc- 
 trine, so anxious and delicate a decision. Least 
 of all would the Clergy themselves desire to be 
 charged with a duty transforming them at once 
 from ministers into judges, and rendering them 
 responsible alike for the authoritative approval 
 and for the absolute condemnation of the several 
 persons presented for a Christian burial. 
 
 2. Shall an attempt be made to restore Disci- 
 pline ? 
 
 (1) I am not aware that any competent 
 judgment regards such a revival of Discipline as 
 practically possible. That it would of necessity 
 be precarious, unequal, and capricious in its ad- 
 ministration, requires, I believe, no argument. 
 (2) He who promised to be with His Church 
 always 1 has fulfilled that promise by a diver- 
 sity of operations*, but with a similarity, if not 
 equality, of results. Just when the formal sen- 
 tences of the Church were silenced by changes 
 of time and circumstance, there grew up, under 
 the hand (shall we not say it ?) of Divine Provi- 
 dence, a new power of public opinion, just for 
 1 Matt, x.wiii. 20. 1 1 Cor. xii. 6. 
 
366 
 
 On the Rubric of 
 
 the most part in its moral judgments, and for- 
 midable beyond any Ecclesiastical censures to 
 open offenders against the law of right. The 
 Church itself acts upon and acts through this 
 less formal and less palpable tribunal, and sees 
 in it the substitution of a Providential agency 
 given for a Providential agency withdrawn. Dis- 
 cipline is replaced by Discipline ; the discipline 
 of Ecclesiastical censure by the discipline of 
 Christian opinion. To revive Excommunication, 
 as the remedy of present embarrassments, would 
 be as unwise and as short-sighted as we believe 
 it to be impossible. 
 
 3. Shall then the language of the Burial Ser- 
 vice be lowered for all? 
 
 Shall we, instead of thanking God for remov- 
 ing the departed out of the miseries of a sinful 
 world, express rather a dull acquiescence in the 
 ordinance of His Providence, and consign the 
 body to the grave in words which echo a natural 
 sorrow instead of suggesting a Christian consola- 
 tion ? This, surely, were to abdicate the Church's 
 office as the witness, amidst the changes and 
 chances of earth, to the realities of immortality 
 and of heaven. A Christian Burial Service, I 
 would repeat the words, must express the hopes of 
 a Christian. 
 
 4. Or shall the words of individual applica- 
 tion be omitted altogether f 
 
the Burial Service. 
 
 367 
 
 Our own Office for the Burial of the Dead at 
 Sea may seem to suggest a possible modification 
 (in one such particular) of the form with which 
 we are more familiar 1 . And the language of the 
 American Episcopalian Liturgy, in its Burial 
 Service, has been framed throughout upon the 
 principle now under notice. We will not say 
 that, if all were to be done anew, this might 
 not offer the readiest solution. Only (1) let it 
 be remembered, that the incongruity of rehears- 
 ing over the grave of a notorious sinner all the 
 hopes and consolations of the Christian Revela- 
 tion is less only in degree than that of expressly 
 applying those hopes and consolations to him- 
 self; that the very choice of the occasion for that 
 rehearsal implies, if it does not assert, such an 
 application ; and that the Church will still be 
 held to bury with the hopes of a Christian one 
 to whom yet her own doctrine must wellnigh 
 refuse them. (2) Nor can we be insensible to 
 the loss, for one generation at least, of those 
 cherished words of personal comfort which have 
 fallen sweetly for ages upon the ear of the Chris- 
 tian mourner in the first hours of his desolation. 
 Many years must elapse ere the words be forgot- 
 
 1 We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into 
 corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, (when the Sea 
 shall give up her dead,) and the life of the world to come, through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, &c. 
 
368 
 
 On the Rubric of 
 
 ten, ere the breach made by their omission be 
 healed. (3) But, in reality, there is an all but in- 
 superable obstacle in the way of Liturgical altera- 
 tion. The Revision of the Prayer-Book (as 
 alone it can be effected) by the intervention of 
 Parliament must be felt by all to be a difficult 
 and dangerous experiment. We may be for- 
 given if we rejoice that, in the presence of exist- 
 ing divisions, change — Liturgical change — is not 
 easy ; if, where the advantage of any particular 
 alteration is doubtful, and the probability of im- 
 provement far less than certain, we can even 
 call it a blessing that the machinery for change 
 is rusty, and the hand which alone could use 
 it not more unsuited than indisposed to the 
 work. 
 
 5. Shall the use of the existing- Service be 
 restricted to the case of Communicants f 
 
 Where the language of hope is strong, and 
 the modification of that language either un- 
 desirable or else impossible, it has been felt by 
 many that at least it should be employed only 
 where some positive profession of Christian faith 
 has been made in life, some effort to obey 
 Christ's commands, and to use the means of 
 grace which Christ has ordained. This has been 
 the remedy proposed by some whose judgment 
 is entitled to the respect of the Church. But 
 here also weighty objections suggest themselves. 
 
the Burial Service. 
 
 369 
 
 (1) Who are Communicants? What length or 
 what punctuality of communion shall be required 
 to satisfy the condition ? And if the Rubric, 
 which requires every Parishioner to communicate 
 at the least three times in the year, of which Easter 
 to be one, be held to contain the required defini- 
 tion, still how difficult, how uncertain, its 
 application ! (2) And, when ascertained, still 
 how unsatisfactory ! We dare not pronounce 
 even a regular attendance at the Communion to 
 be a security for Christian living. The humble 
 self-mistrusting believer may sometimes (through 
 imperfect instruction or lingering scruple) be 
 found among the non-communicants, and the 
 bolder but far less consistent professor of religion 
 be admitted through this test to a recognition 
 denied to the worthier. (3) Nor is the considera- 
 tion wholly to be disregarded, that an encourage- 
 ment will thus be given to a sort of spurious 
 communicating, to serve as a passport to 
 Christian Burial ; just as, in many cases, the 
 apprehension of a refusal of the funeral rites is 
 the chief motive, among the poor of our Towns, 
 for seeking for their children the Sacrament of 
 Baptism. 
 
 6. Is there then no escape from an existing 
 evil, free from the objections urged against those 
 above enumerated ? 
 
 We find in the Rubric prefixed to the Order 
 V. L. 24 
 
37Q 
 
 On the Rubric of 
 
 for the Burial of the Dead a specification of 
 three cases in which that Service is not to be 
 used : — 
 
 Here is to be noted, that the Office ensuing is 
 n ot to be used for any that die nnbaptized, or 
 excommunicate, or have laid violent hands upon 
 themselves. In the first case, there has been no 
 admission into the Christian body ; in the 
 second, there has been a judicial, in the third, a 
 virtual, ejection from it. And if in the third 
 case the indulgent verdict of a Jury generally 
 infers insanity from the act of suicide, and thus 
 grants Christian Burial to one to whom a severer 
 judgment would have refused it; still a legal 
 decision may well satisfy the conscience, as it 
 must control the conduct, of the Officiating 
 Minister, and ought to be accepted also by the 
 people as reasonably barring the operation of the 
 literal rule of the Church. 
 
 There is this peculiar importance in the 
 mention in this Rubric of the crime of suicide, 
 that it introduces the principle of a virtual 
 excommunication, where by the nature of the 
 case there can have been no formal sentence. 
 
 The Church itself therefore has already 
 opened the door to the further enquiry, Is suicide 
 the only just ground for the application of that 
 principle ? Are there no other cases in which 
 the Church, without pronouncing a judgment of 
 
the Burial Service. 
 
 37i 
 
 condemnation upon the individual, may yet feel 
 it to be untrue and deceptive to pronounce a 
 confident hope ? Nothing read or spoken over 
 the lifeless body can by possibility affect the 
 condition of the departed soul : on the other 
 hand, words may be uttered over the corpse 
 which will create a scandal among the living, 
 and encourage a perilous presumption in those 
 who require every warning to bring them to 
 repentance. 
 
 (1) Instances have been chronicled of a 
 death occurring in the actual commission of 
 crime, or even caused by the guilty act itself. 
 We say not how far, even in such cases, there 
 may be a process of instantaneous grace, or a 
 peradventure of uncovenanted mercy : these are 
 indeed among those secret things which belong 
 entirely to God. We only say, that the Order 
 for Christian Burial was not so drawn up as to 
 adapt itself to such possibilities ; and that as no 
 refusal of that Service can affect the state of the 
 departed offender, so its use in such an instance 
 is calculated both to encourage the impenitent, 
 and to wound the consciences of the faithful. 
 
 (2) There are cases also, more numerous 
 than would be anticipated, in which a dying man 
 has given utterance to so positive a repudiation of 
 the faith of the Gospel, so vehement and even 
 blasphemous an expression of indifference or 
 
372 
 
 On the Rubric of 
 
 hostility to the Saviour, that his burial with the 
 rites of the Church could be nothing better than 
 the proclamation over his remains of a hope not 
 only spurned by his life but abjured in his 
 death. 
 
 (3) The same remarks are applicable, in 
 their measure, to a commoner experience. 
 
 For one man who dies in the actual com- 
 mission of a crime, or in the open renuncia- 
 tion of the Gospel, many have lived to the end 
 a life of open and scandalous immorality. 
 
 One of the Rubrics of our Prayer-Book, 
 prefixed to the Order for the Holy Communion, 
 recognizes the case of an open and notorious evil 
 liver as one justifying exclusion from the Sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper. Now if it be right 
 to debar from access to the highest means of 
 grace one who has thus offended the congregation ; 
 much more reasonable is it to refuse, in a like 
 instance, the use of a form of words which 
 cannot benefit the individual, can scarcely com- 
 fort the friends, and will certainly scandalize the 
 bystanders. 
 
 Adopting therefore the Rubric for the Burial 
 Service, and supplementing it from the Rubric 
 for the Communion Office, we shall read this as 
 the rule of the Church in reference to exclusion 
 from her authorized form of Burial : 
 
 Here is to be noted, that the Office ensuing is 
 
the Burial Service. 
 
 373 
 
 not to be used for any that die unbaptized, or 
 excommunicate, or have laid violent hands upon 
 themselves, or have died in the commission of a 
 crime, or in the professed avowal of unbelief, 
 or have been open and notorious evil- livers dying 
 impenitent. 
 
 But is there then to be no check upon the 
 exercise of this new authority ? Is the individual 
 Clergyman to be the irresponsible judge ? Or is 
 he, on the other hand, to be exposed to a legal 
 process in order to make good in each instance 
 the reason for his refusal ? 
 
 The former would be a dangerous licence ; the 
 latter would be a virtual prohibition. 
 
 We turn back to the Rubric for the Holy 
 Communion, and seem to find there the very 
 security which we seek. 
 
 Provided that every Minister so repelling any, 
 as is specified in this or the next precedent para- 
 graph of this Rubric, shall be obliged to give an 
 account of the same to the Ordinary within four- 
 teen days after at the farthest. A nd the Ordinary 
 shall proceed against the offending person according 
 to the Canon. 
 
 It has been asserted indeed that the Ordi- 
 nary possesses already a protecting authority in 
 reference to Clergymen refusing to read the 
 Burial Service in cases of open scandal. It is 
 said that none but the Bishop can send the case 
 
374 
 
 On the Rubric of 
 
 into the Ecclesiastical Court ; and that the Bishop 
 would not sanction such a proceeding in a case 
 where the Clergyman had acted conscientiously 
 and with good reason. The assertion claims for 
 the Ordinary a dispensing power in reference to 
 that which is not more the law of the Church 
 than the law of the land. And the proposition, 
 that a power of this nature, denied to the Sove- 
 reign, is practically vested, in the Bishop, can 
 scarcely commend itself to common persons as 
 either safe in law or constitutional in principle. 
 It may be made both : but it must first be clearly 
 defined and expressly enacted. 
 
 The Clergyman needs protection, in this 
 matter, from the vindictiveness of surviving 
 friends ; the latter, in their turn, require to be 
 guarded against the caprice, suspicion, or credu- 
 lity of the Clergyman. Who so fit to mediate, 
 in the exercise of a sober judgment, upon a 
 subject peculiarly demanding it, as he who is at 
 once the superior of the Clergy, and the Chief 
 Pastor of the Congregations? The knowledge 
 that the case must be proved to the satisfaction 
 of the Bishop will render a Clergyman cautious 
 in acting without evidence : the knowledge that 
 the case will come under the cognizance of the 
 Bishop will render the friends of the deceased 
 cautious in invoking that cognizance, where they 
 are conscious that guilt was patent or proof at 
 
the Burial Service. 
 
 375 
 
 hand. If the Bishop declines to sanction the 
 conduct of the Minister, it will be in the power 
 of the friends (as formerly) to proceed by law : 
 if the Bishop expresses his approval of the 
 course taken by the Minister, it is right that the 
 latter should be protected from a costly and un- 
 reasonable litigation. 
 
 The proposed Rubric will eventually stand 
 thus. 
 
 Here is to be noted, that the Office ensuing is 
 not to be used for any that die unbaptized, or 
 excommunicate, or have laid violent hands upon 
 themselves, or have died in the commission of a 
 crime, or in the professed avowal of unbelief, or 
 have been open and notorious evil-livers dying 
 impenitent. Provided that every Minister so 
 refusing to use this Office, as is specified in any of 
 the three next precedent clauses of this Rubric, 
 shall be obliged to give an account of the same 
 to tJie Ordinary within fourteen days after at 
 the farthest. And the approval of the Ordinary 
 shall suffice to protect the Minister from any 
 proceeding by law in consequence of such refusal. 
 
 Such a modification of the existing Rubric 
 is recommended by some obvious considera- 
 tions. 
 
 (i) It involves the introduction of no new 
 
376 On the Rubric of t/ie Burial Service. 
 
 principle. It is but the application of an existing 
 rule of the Church to certain other cases of a like 
 character. 
 
 (2) It asks no interference of the Legis- 
 lature with the Articles or Formularies of the 
 Church. It only needs the sanction of Parlia- 
 ment to a matter extraneous to either. Rubrical 
 modification is not Liturgical change. 
 
 (3) A conscientious Clergyman will be 
 relieved from a painful alternative ; of an ac- 
 quiescence which he feels to be injurious, or a 
 disobedience which exposes him to penalties. 
 
 (4) On the other hand, no encouragement 
 will be given to hasty judgments, vague sus- 
 picions, or impertinent inquisitions. Reasons 
 for refusal must be such as rest upon proof ; such 
 as will commend themselves to the approval 
 of a remote, unprejudiced, and experienced 
 judge. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.