LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ffljpip. . iu^rJ^frr. ... Shelf " o4 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ■ 4 , . >> ■ ■ ■ ■ &■">*"■ ^r ■ i . 1 £&;> SERMONS TO STUDENTS Sermons to Students THOUGHTFUL PERSONS LLEWELYN D. BEVAN, LL.B., D.D. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON 7 c 7 «*- NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 743 and 745 Broadway 1881 9h COPYRIGHT BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1881 Trow's Printing and Bookbinding Company 201-213 East \-ztk Street NF.W YORK TWO CONGREGATIONS SEPARATED BY LONG LEAGUES OF STORMY OCEAN BUT UNITED IN THE AFFECTION OF THE PREACHER CONTENTS. I. Religion and the Cultivation of the Intellect. «' For the Lord giveth wisdom : out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." (Proverbs ii., 6.). II. The Study of Science. *' Skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and un- derstanding science. (Daniel i., 4.). . . . .29 III. Religion and Law. " The law is good if a man use it lawfully." (I. Timothy, i.,8.) 59 IV. The Art of Healing. " Physician, heal thyself." (Luke iv., 23.) . 87 V. Religion and Art. " And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the Lord . hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah : and he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship ; and to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in the cutting of stones, to set them, and in carv- ing of wood, to make any manner of cunning work. And CONTENTS. he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he and Aholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work. (Exodus xxxv., 30-35.) US VI. Religious and Irreligious Theology. "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen." (I. Timothy, i., 17.) 151 VII. Religion and Life — The Supreme Study. " For what is your life ? " (James iv., 14.) . . .181 RELIGION AND THE CULTIVATION OF THE INTELLECT. Proverbs II., 6.— " For the Lord giveth wisdom : out of His mouth cometh knowledge and under- standing." I. RELIGION AND THE CULTIVATION OF THE INTELLECT. It fell to the lot of the congregation, to which I ministered in London, to include with- in it a large number of students, whose pecu- liar position naturally demanded from the preacher a special regard. Related to some of them by intimate ties, and feeling a deep and sympathetic interest in all students, it be- came almost a paramount duty to address them in some mode more direct and immedi- ate than that presented by the usual service. And now the time seems to have come when the delivery of these discourses may not be inappropriate in this pulpit This might have been done by lectures to students pure and simple, to which students alone were invited. But one of the dangers of the present day, which consists in too sharply 4 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. separating men in classes, and thinking of them only in some professional form, would have been thus incurred. The subdivision of labor, and the vast increase of possible activities, which so mark our time, and com- pel men to become specialists, tend to ren- der even the intellect narrow although in- tense, and to destroy the wider culture which makes us truly human. I have no sympathy with class gatherings of any kind, and least of all in relation to worship and religious thought. Whilst, therefore, addressing students, I have rather invited them to join in the common congregation, so that on the one hand the student may not forget his relation to all so- ciety, and that, on the other hand the more promiscuous crowd may come into sympathy with the special learner, and by God's bless- ing, all may find advantage in the development of a reverent spirit, a pure heart, and a truly Divine life. I propose to address various classes of students, but before doing this severally, it will be well to consider the general bearings RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 5 of religion upon any and all forms of mental discipline. The subject of the first address is, therefore, Religion in its relation to the cul- tivation of the mind. That those, whose sphere in life requires a more exact and extensive mental training than the majority of people, should entertain right views upon religion, and should, perhaps more than any, possess the religious spirit, needs only to be stated. For their own sakes, reli- gion is the chief concern, and in respect to others, over whom they will some day exer- cise a very deep and lasting influence, it is a serious evil if the best trained minds of the community are either hostile or indifferent to the claims of God. Then again, students are placed in peculiar peril in regard to religion. There is a prev- alent notion amongst half-educated people that the highest culture of the mind tends to the destruction of the religious spirit. Reli- gion having to do with things that are above reason, is supposed by some to be unreason- able, and when a youth commences to use his 6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. reasoning faculties with much freedom and enjoyment he sometimes supposes that reli- gion is to be suddenly and rashly condemned because it is irrational, and not unfrequently shipwreck is made of reason and faith at once. There is, moreover, at the present day a spe- cial antagonism between the school which prides itself upon its rationalism and the school which is equally intrenched in its strong faith. Bigots on both sides hurl scorn and anathema, and rush into dusty war. Ignorance of each others real character and aims combines with intense self-confidence and assurance, and when all this takes place in the hurry and thoroughlessness of our times it is not a strange thing if the faith of many waxes feeble, and the best interests, especially of the young, are lost altogether in the general hubbub. The habits of student life moreover, are not always helpful to the preservation of a re- ligious character. The studies, the compani- ons, the work on the one side and the recrea- tion on the other, often operate injuriously upon the spiritual tone. There is nothing to RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 7 give a start to religion ; there is little to sus- tain it. Many are they who, in the course of study, have wholly lost their faith. Religion may be properly considered in re- lation to the ends of study, and to the spirit in which these ends are to be pursued. What, in the first place, are the proper ob- jects of a man's study ? There are, of course, specific subjects with which the student must make himself familiar. The lawyer must know the principles and be familiar with the practice of law. The physician must under- stand the constitution of the human frame, and the various marks and signs of disease. The man of science must unlock the secrets of nature, explore her facts, and educe her laws ; and all these attainments must be sought by special attention to that line of knowledge along which each has to journey. A student must, for the most part, master his profession, unless he is to be distanced in the race — a sorry failure in the world. But, things to be known, do not by any means embrace all with which the student must in- 8 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. termeddle. To make the brain a mere store- house of facts and laws, however beautiful, recondite, and vital they may be, is not enough ; and although too often, students re- gard the acquisition of knowledge in their special branch as the sole matter of impor- tance to them, it is quite certain that he who has only acquired even a very extensive array of facts, has not profited in the highest degree by his studies. This is rendered all the more evil by the fashion of examination which now so largely prevails. Everybody must undergo an examination, generally com- petitive, before he can enter into his place in life, and do the duty of a man. If you would become an adviser of men in perplexity, you must be examined. If you would seek to lessen disease and to minister to the unfor- tunate, you must be examined. Public offices have examinations at their portal ; and I sometimes think that men will some day have to undergo a competitive examination be-- fore they enter into life itself. The result of all this is the temptation to pursue only such RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. Q study as will enable a man to pass the exami- nation. It needs much ability in the exami- ner, and more variety of dealing with cases than can be generally secured by colleges, institutions, and the like, to discover what a man really is, rather than what he knows ; and hence study becomes the mere exercise of the memory, with all the attendant temp- tations and perils of what is known in student parlance as " cram." But education ought to discipline and to strengthen the powers of the mind. This is the real object of all study. Men are to be prepared for their work. Indeed, the study which is intended to increase knowledge and to gather facts, often begins only when stu- dent life ceases. In our earlier years we have to learn how to learn, to be taught and prac- tised in the best way of observing, thinking, comparing, judging. The best student is the man who is most, not the man who has learned most. The mere bookworm, however learned, is of little use in life. That alone is worthy of the name of preparation for pro- 10 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. fessional or any other form of life which tends to bring out and perfect the mental faculties. Such education makes ready, capable, trust- worthy men. Such education alone fits us for citizenship, for highest service to our fel- lows, for the discharge of our duty in that place and that office to which it has pleased God to call us. The highest ideal of study, therefore, must be that which secures, or at least aims at securing, thoroughness of discipline and wholeness of view. Ignorance consists in the inability to see the many aspects which be- long to all. objects of man's attention. The difference between the man of culture and the boor is, that the latter has only a few ways in which he can regard things. It is the asso- ciations which gather round every object, the many relations which all things bear to each other — these make, up the fulness of life. In proportion as a man merely sees things in themselves, and is only sensible of the sensa- tions which they produce upon him, in that proportion he is only an animal, without the RELIGION— CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. II exercise of that Divine reason which makes him different from the brute, and raises him to the kinship of the immortals. It is the glory of man that to him the "primrose on the river's brim" is something else than a primrose. Man can " look before and after," and it is in order to cultivate this ability, that men are called to study and to learn. The well-educated mind is able to see all these sides of life and things, to perceive the har- monious blending of the diverse, and to mark how all the universe is bound up within itself into one grand and perfect whole. Hence the good student will leave no side of his mind undisciplined and untaught. Per- fection must be the goal to which he tends, completeness the final end of all his endeav- ors. Perfection is nothing but the harmoni- ous and free working of all parts, nothing disproportionate, nothing uncared for, noth- ing monstrous or neglected. In one word, the perfect student should be the perfect man. But I shall be at once told that such an 12 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. ideal of " student" life is impossible. At one time, perhaps, it might have been competent for a single mind in the space generally allot- ted to, life, to have gained an almost ade- quate acquaintance with everything that could then be known ; but now such univer- sality of acquirement is quite unattainable. So numerous are the . lines of investigation, and so extensive the field, even in single divisions of single sciences, that, were a man to be as capable as Solomon and as long- lived as Methuselah, it would be impossible for him to hope to compass even one of these divisions. This is true, but it must be re- membered that I am speaking not of acquire- ments, but powers. To learn everything is not given to man, but to be his best self in everything which he can be — this is his privi- lege, this, indeed, his divine destiny. There is no power of the mind which may not be trained, and that for which I contend, is that all the powers and faculties should be dili- gently and proportionately exercised. No good student will neglect any side of his be- RELIGION— CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 1 3 ing. He must have fulness of nature, wide- ness of capacity ; at least, all that God has given him, must receive its due regard. Now, it is properly here, that the subject of religion comes to be considered by the stu- dent. The nature which he possesses is distinctly religious — that is to say, he has capacities and powers which have relation to the Supreme Being, and which require train- ing and discipline equally with all the others. Man is naturally formed for God, and if a man does not attend to that faculty whereby he regards God and can apprehend llim, he neglects that part of himself which is most important and most influential. It is quite certain that no man of intelli- gence will ignore the part which religion has to take in our individual and social life ; no man can afford to pass lightly by the claims upon him which are put forth by religion. I know it is very easy to lay aside every idea of God, and to dismiss the subject of our duty to Him carelessly and without a thought. But this only evinces a shallow nature and a 14 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. very unthinking mind. It is true that many men famous for their learning, and of vast intellectual influence, have not hesitated to avow themselves or to allow themselves to be considered as absolutely denying the be- ing of God, and, consequently, the foundation of all religion of any kind whatever ; but these have been exceptional, and by their action in this respect have placed themselves utterly outside of some of the most pressing questions of our life ; and, certainly, are con- fronted by a much greater number, and, I venture even to affirm, a number made up of men of vaster mental powers and more wide- ly spread influence than themselves, who strenuously, and without a moment's failing, have affirmed their belief in God, their recog- nition of the supreme relation which man bears to his Creator. Into the question of the existence of this religious side of our nature, however, I am not going to enter. I presume it will be acknowledged by the majority of those who hear me to-day. My point is, that accepting RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. I 5 the religious nature as a fact, that nature must be trained and disciplined, and must become a subject of culture, if we are to lay any claim to the wholeness of being to which I have already referred. The importance of this may be further seen by considering the influence which religion has exerted upon all human life and history. Suppose it were possible to eliminate religion from the story of the world, what would you have left? No matter among what people you examine it, no matter at what epoch ; from the lowest savage to the highest sag-e, from o o o ' the darkest barbarism to the brightest civili- zation, everywhere and at all times, we find religion summoning men's deepest regard, and most profoundly influencing their doings. To-day, every profession is brought into con- tact with its practical working, and no man can rightly interpret the past, no man can rightly treat the present, unless he has a pro- found acquaintance with the force and opera- tion of this spiritual sphere. This, remember, is only fully attained by the study and culture 1 6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. of religion in the retirement and experiences of our own souls. The part which religion has taken in the education of the race demands attention, as giving further illustration to my argument. Not infrequently in the judgment of the superficial critic, religion is charged with having been a hindrance to human progress, with having stifled the advance of the mind, and, oftentimes indeed, with having sought to destroy its liberty. This is the common logical fallacy of putting the universal in the place of the particular. Certain forms of religious polity have been chargeable with such conspiracy against human light and progress, but even these have not always hindered culture, and then, only, when they have ceased to be religious. I claim for reli- gion in all its forms, notwithstanding the su- perstitions by which it has been corrupted, the honor of having more than aught else aided man in his long and weary pilgrimage ; and for religion in her purer forms, the simple sense of a Divine presence, and the relation RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 1 7 which man bears to his God — the absolutely sole honor of raising mankind, freeing the enslaved, and instructing the ignorant. What has been the force which stood between man and the basest and most destructive animal- isms of his nature, now centred in the tyran- nical conqueror, and now more terribly dis- seminated throughout a nation or a race ? What has been the prime mover of every war of liberty, of every philanthropic project which has tended to freedom, to knowledge, to hap- piness ? What has been at one time the sole custodian of knowledge, and the sole guar- dian of the wisdom of the ages ? There can be only one answer, and that is, Religion ; and it being so, no man dares call himself a student, a seeker for knowledge, a learner and a disciple, who neglects to study the religious instincts and sentiments of our na- ture, and again I affirm, these can only be properly studied in our own consciousness and experience. Before leaving this portion of my subject I should like to call your attention to another 1 8 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. point of consideration, which seems to pos- sess great force. Every study, in the present day, furnishes the proof that religion cannot be easily set aside by those who are engaged in the cultivation of the mind. Have you never observed how all men are dealing with religious topics ? The most striking instance is to be found in the modern teachers of science. One of the principles of the scientific investigator is to have nothing whatever to do with theological or religious subjects. He boldly declares that metaphysi- cal and ontological questions are not for him to discuss. He must observe, describe, clas- sify, educe laws, but all questions which deal with the origin of the universe, by the very principles of his science, are even not to be approached. Nay, psychical and mental speculations are almost tabooed. But what is the fact ? Scarcely a single man of science of any repute but deals with these all-absorb- ing points of human thought, and, indeed, cannot help himself. His very negations, his denials of the appositeness of such subjects RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 1 9 are themselves the doors by which they enter. One of the late utterances of a well- known Society for the promotion of science, rings with an echo of religion which gave it its importance, and caused the world to stay its gross activities of business or pleasure to hear what the wise could tell. The last work of one of the most admired teachers of our agfe, notwithstanding that he had been brought up in an atmosphere of absolute in- difference to all and every religion, was his latest thoughts upon this all-absorbing topic of human regard. Believe me, fellow-stu- dents, man has a religious nature. It was the breath of God inbreathed into him on his natal morn, and forget it, despise it, cast it from him as he may, it will come up and as- sert itself — either as a gracious messenger of mercy, to comfort and console the poor heart, that lost its blessedness when it turned away from the true centre of its being, or as an avenging spirit to confound, to alarm, to overwhelm, in the disastrous and the dreary chaos, which the soul has created around it- 20 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. self, when it refused to recognize Him who alone is order and light. I have somewhere read a German story of a man who sold his shadow to the devil, in re- turn for some special power with which the devil could endow him. It was a strange and eerie record of the wonderful adventures through which the man passed. But how ter- rible became the life which had ceased to bear with it the natural attendant of shade ! Ter- ror and loneliness, the flight of companions, and the outcasting by mankind — these were the horrible results of the shadowlessness of his life. This seems to me to be the fate of some who regard religion as a shadow, and sell it to the devil of self-trust, of arrogant, in- tellectual pride. They call religion a shadow, unsubstantial, and yet gloomy and dark. They forget that shadow is only the conse- quence of light, that there is shadow only when the sunlight shines upon the other side. So they, as the shadowless man in the fantastic story, become monsters, miserable and inhuman, who must leave the sunshine RELIGION— CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 21 and find only in night their happiness and rest. Religion is human. It is that which differ- entiates us from the brute. You cannot, you dare not, neglect it, or you cease to be all your manhood or womanhood may be. Well has a recent sweet-voiced poet sung — " My soul is like some cage-born bird, that hath A restless prescience, howsoever won, Of a broad pathway leading to the sun, With promptings of an oft-reproved faith " In sunward yearnings. Stricken though her breast, And faint her wings with beating at the bars Of sense, she looks beyond outlying stars, And only in the infinite sees rest. " Sad soul, if ever thy desire be bent Or broken to thy doom, and made to share The ruminant's beatitude, content, Chewing the cud of knowledge with no care, In germs of life within ; then will I say Thou art not caged, but fitly stalled in clay." But religion is not only to be regarded as itself an object of study, never to be forgot- ten ; it is also an influence of deep and far- reaching power over the rest of the nature. 22 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. This has been implied in what has been al- ready said. Let us now proceed to give this thought a more distinct and definite shape. The student cannot do his work as a com- mon man. It is not intended by this to decry the labor of the hand, for this must be done in a certain high spirit, if it is to be any other than the drudgery of the slave ; but there is special need, in the cultivation of the mind, for the man to set before himself noble models, and to pursue his work on no low level of selfishness, with base sensual ends. Intellec- tual cultivation is, as a rule, associated with moral, refinement. There is nothing so dis- gusting as the corruptions of a finely-trained mind. Indeed, if there be anything like a wide field of mental culture, united with moral degradation, the result is generally diabolic. Satan is only the concrete of abstract intellect divorced from conscience. When sensual cor- ruption is added, the result is not diabolic so much as brutal. The gross sensual nature overcomes the intellectual powers, and sinks them utterly in its own foul mire. For the sup- RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 23 port of morality under the influence of great intellectual advance, the religious nature is needful. No more striking instance can be appealed to, than the decay of the French na- tion under the influence of the intellectual athe- ism taught by Voltaire. In every department of human life, other than the economic (and this has been conserved in those classes of French society least affected by atheistic thought), France has retrograded in relation to the other nations of the world, and she can never recover her proper prestige, her due in- fluence, until she has recovered a deep religi- ous spirit, wide-spread and prevalent through- out the whole nation. What is true of the nation is still more true of the individual. The destruction of the entire character may be seen, alas, often among students. This will be generally found to be preceded by neglect of the religious side of their nature — faith undermined either by the operations of intel- lectual doubt, or else still more seriously as- sailed by the numbing influences of sinful habits, but all proceeding in the first instance 24 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. from the neglect of practical religion, the duties of prayer and communion with the Unseen. There are, however, still more specific in- fluences which religion exerts upon the stu- dent. In the first place, it renders him reverent. Nothing is so unsuitable to the man who de- sires a cultivated mind as arrogance and self- esteem. All wisdom is humble. Those, who have known most, have been most conscious of the vast stores of knowledge which lie un- touched, of the mighty spheres of being into which man may never enter. But it is note- worthy that the converse is also true, that those who are most diffident of themselves are those to whom the greatest revelations are made. Men have to become as little children if they would enter the kingdom of knowledge and wisdom, even as if they would enter the kingdom of Heaven. Simplicity of mind, humbleness, self-restraint, all the beautiful vir- tues of the soul that we gather up in the term reverent, which means so much on the nega- tive as well as on the positive side — these RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 2$ must belong to him who would be thoroughly furnished in mind for the great battles of life, and the outcomes into the universe. Rever- es o ence has been the mark of the profound and patient investigators of nature in all ages. Reverence is the glory of the philosopher ; it is the clear light of heaven which shines around the poet who " sits by the side of Jove." Now, religion and its duties produce rever- ence. The religious man recognizes the con- stant presence of God. The world to him becomes a temple, and every duty is a sacri- fice. He is a priest, and his priestly garments must not be defiled ; he is a prophet, and his utterances must be true. His soul must love truth, and know truth alone as its food and medicine. All objects of study with such a man, ascend towards God, and shine in the light of the Divine throne. His life is conse- cration, and for him all things are filled with the Divine. This reacts upon his intellectual nature, strengthening and disciplining it. The greatest painters of the world were accustomed 26 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. to prepare for their labors by prayer and fast- ing. The annals of study bear upon their brightest pages the records of the most devout and reverent of earth's sons. Another element of the studious nature is the harmony which subsists between the different powers of the soul. Man cannot gain intel- lectual vigor when his whole being is torn asunder by conflicting forces. Outward phy- sical quietness is the usually necessary condi- tion of study. Inward spiritual peace is as needful. Religion will give this. Nothing in our nature so tends to preserve the balance and equipoise of the whole. Right views and right practice here, will tone down all that is excessive, stimulate all that is weak. Coming into proper relation to God, we find every- thing else in its place. Man's original state was one of harmony and concord. Sin against God introduced the terrible anarchy and con- fusion which everywhere reign. To return to God is to return to the balance of our life. All things, then, drop into due proportion, and the all-dominant force of religion obeyed and RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 2J cherished, will at once strengthen and yet dis- cipline the whole. A man thus ordered can pursue his mental training without distraction. The senses cannot draw him into sensuality and sloth. The mental powers themselves cannot assert too great an authority. Con- science sits happily enthroned. And he can well say, " My mind to me a kingdom is," a kingdom, indeed, where there is rank and or- der, due subordination, true authority, prompt obedience, and over which there ever shines the approving countenance of God, at once the stay, the defence, and the glory of this noble realm. And how is this religious life sustained, ex- cept by the knowledge of Him who is the ex- press image of the Father, and the shining ray of the central light of God ? To the stu- dent especially does Christ appeal. His re- ligion is the religion of intelligence. He is the Word. We are to know Him, and through Him to know God. The rule of His greatest apostle is to " prove all things, and hold fast what is good." He asks no alle- 28 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. glance from a mind obscured by superstition, and bound down by unmeaning rites. If it be the student's highest aim to seek to know things as they are, and to rise above the mere seeming of sense into the world of pure ideas and right reason, then, indeed, he cannot find a better Teacher, a more trusty Saviour, than in that incarnate Word of God, whose utter- ance upon religion, the profoundest which has ever been given to man, was this — " God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must wor- ship Him in spirit and in truth." THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. Daniel L, 4. — " Skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science." II. THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. There is nothing in the history of the human mind so remarkable as the progress which physical science has made in modern times. It is true that there have been physi- cal investigators in every age, and two thou- sand years ago some of the problems of science, still unsolved, were discussed with peculiar clearness of vision and suggestive- ness ; nevertheless, we may almost fix upon the present century as being emphatically the age of natural science, in the course of which, geology, chemistry, and physics, at least, have been most industriously pursued and marvel- lously developed. In former days the man of science was a kind of exception to the general run of even cultured people. A dabbling of the shallowest kind in a few principles and a few experiments was considered sufficient to 32 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. establish a reputation for scientific knowledge, while the study of natural science was left altogether to the members of the learned so- cieties, whose deliberations were considered by the general public to be a jargon of tech- nicalities and difficult words of little interest, and certainly of no worth. But a change has come over the relation of science to general life within even our own time. Some, now departed, whose memories are our constant pride and inspiration, and some who still breathe, and stir us with their genius and elo- quence, have made science popular and its study wide-spread. Governments in all na- tions recognize it in the schools which they aid to found. The universities give it a place in their curriculum. The addresses of its leaders are reported in daily papers, and become the chief topics of conversation in every thoughtful circle. Science has thus won almost the chief place in the intellectual pursuits of the age, and promises to assert her sway over every sphere of human life. In the outset, I deprecate the unsatisfactory THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 33 relationship which has too often existed be- tween the expounders of religion and the teachers of science ; and I desire distinctly to warn students that there need not be any unworthy jealousy or prejudice in respect of either position. That there are some forms of religious belief which can never be squared with some forms of scientific belief must be freely admitted. But this only mili- tates against that special form of so-called religion on the one hand, and that special form of so-called science on the other. But this does not imply that science and reli- gion are finally and necessarily antagonistic ; that there cannot be even in the fulness of knowledge, and in the perfectness of faith, any point, where science and religion run together, and are found indeed but one ; neither does it compel the man who is travelling along the scientific line which leads to this perfect knowledge, and his fellow-man who is travel- ling along the religious line which leads to perfect faith, to be enemies rather than bro- thers, to attack each other's work, and to 2* 34 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. despise each other's aim. The fact is, the dogmatism of some religious men, like the dogmatism of some scientific men, is neither scientific nor religious. It wants the grace which should belong to the truth, wherever that truth is found, whithersoever that truth may be leading. I am quite willing to ac- knowledge that many religious teachers have spoken even irreligiously in this respect ; but then, is it quite certain that the scientific teacher on the other side has been always true to the principles of the science which he upholds ? The first care, therefore, that the student must have, is not to mistake the bigotry of religious persons for the voice of true religion, and at the same time not to accept as the conclusions of an undoubted science, the merely hypothetical assumptions even of the profoundest physicists. From one point of view, religion and science are altogether separate spheres, with differ- ent objects, and with differing methods. Of course science may be pursued, and indeed is only properly pursued, in a profoundly THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 35 religious spirit, and with deeply religious aims, while religion may be studied in a scientific manner and dealt with as any other subject of human thought and meditation. But as the terms are generally used, the sep- aration between them is clear and distinct. Physical science consists in the observation, description, and classification of the pheno- mena of the material universe, with the dis- covery of the laws which govern all material changes ; and although the energies of the physicist sometimes carry him into other regions of knowledge, he goes generally at the peril of the principles which have governed him as a scientific man, and, on the whole, I think, with serious injury to his reputation, and with little, if any, gain in those spheres which lie beyond his own immediate province. As an expounder of the laws of the material forces, I recognize his authority, and gladly seat myself at his feet ; but when he applies the same principles of investigation to the phenomena of the human mind, and especially to theological and cosmogonical questions, 36 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. he appears to me to be untrue to himself, and to exhibit himself as one of the great blunderers of the world. It is precisely the same with him who ventures out of the re- gion of philosophy and theology into that of science, without donning the garments of the scientist — using only the principles which have hitherto guided him. You cannot learn the laws of matter from the necessary con- ditions of the operations of mind. You can- not teach science by the exposition of the Bible. And He who has revealed Himself in all ages to mankind so that they may know Him, and love Him, and serve Him, has yet left man to use his own reason and the powers with which God has endowed him, in the observation of nature and the determination of her laws. This will, undoubtedly, present to the sci- ence student, some of the greatest difficulties of his course. Where so many great and wise men have stumbled, how can he expect to walk without tripping ? But, at least, he can learn to avoid the errors into which they THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 37 have fallen. If he must leave the secure way of science and wander into the tempting paths of speculation, let him do it at his own risk, and after clear warning. Do not expect that men will listen with deference to your utter- ances when you have abandoned your prin- ciples, and speak with all the certainty of science, in the midst of the doubtfulness of pure speculation. Indeed, the charge of flippancy and shallowness may be hurled against you, if you meddle without experi- ence and skill in those branches in which sci- ence has no record, and where she leaves you without her law. So, also, your success in scientific study will depend upon your strict- est adherence to the principles which govern it. You must be the patient watcher for the changes of nature. For you, not a single step is safe unless it pass along the sure highway of observation and experience. You must test your laws by experiment, and although the wonderful insight, which seems almost creative in its force and action, may take you from a single example to a wide generaliza- 38 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. tion, be certain always that you have the fact, and are not merely dealing with the creation of your restless fancy. And yet in all this you may be profoundly religious. A certain enthusiasm of heart, and a deep moral purpose are as needful for true advance in science as the clear light of the understanding itself. One of the most elo- quent of modern physicists has freely recog- nized, (and I think gross injustice has been done him in the fact that this recognition on his part has not received from us its proper estimate) that over and above man's under- standing " there are many other things appertaining to man whose prescriptive rights are quite as strong as that of the understand- ing itself," and these have their place and exercise their influence. Awe, Reverence, and Wonder, Poetry and Art, the Beautiful and the Good and the Religious, all belong to this manifold human nature, and must have their freedom and do their work. The un- derstanding, without these, would die of inani- tion, as these, without reason, would consume THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 39 themselves and be destroyed. Hence must you preserve a due measure and balance of your being, giving to all your powers their fullest scope, and recognizing the laws which must govern each and all. The question here naturally occurs, May the study of science afford illustrations, en- forcements, helps to a religious life ? I boldly answer, Yes ! In the first place, both re- ligion and science rest upon truth. Science deals with truth, and with nothing else, and is only the human knowledge of truth, gained by the exercise of the human understanding and reason. But religion, at least any re- ligion worthy of the name, is also dependent upon truth. Some men appear to teach a religion and to rejoice in one that may chance to be altogether founded upon false- hood — the religion of pretence, chicanery, and mere seeming. But of such religion I do not speak to-day. Such religion is not that of Christ. Such religion cannot be gained by the wise and fair student of the Word of God. The Bible is one long testi- 40 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. mony to truth and righteousness. It is the record of God's leading men to what is right, and doubtless through much that is perplexing, oftentimes in their failure and mistake ; but everywhere the witness for truth is clear and distinct. God is ever seen, restoring the err- ing, teaching the ignorant, even overruling, and, if need be, striking down the base, the wicked, and the liar. What is the psalm, but the holy breathing after goodness and truth ? In the wildest utterance of ecstacy, in the sometimes burning hatred of individually or nationally felt wrong, still the all-triumphant faith in God is, that He is the True one and the Good one, and will establish truth and justify the good. The prophets only point to this all-dominant law of righteousness, and appeal from earth to heaven, and declare their faith in Him who will establish His kingdom and rule in equity and justice. And what is the grandest revelation of all but the Way, the Truth, and the Life? Truth was the constant theme of His discourses. He was the witness to the truth, and died in His THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 41 great testimony. And on that grave, empty through His victory, there has been built the glorious edifice of the truth of God. In- deed, some of the builders that have labored there, may have sought to lay the lines of its masonry in falsehood and deception ; but God Himself has sent the trial and the proof, and ever burns out from His growing temple the hay and stubble with which men would have set up a lie. It is truth, then, which re. ligion recognizes. It is truth which science seeks. They cannot be irreconcilable, and finally they must be one. There is another consideration which will greatly help in the good understanding to which the scientific student may come with the religious man, and which, indeed, shall enable the devout to be scientific, and the scientific to be devout. It is the recognition of the fact, that no finality of conception has been reached in either sphere. So rapidly do we pass from discovery to discovery, that we are unable to see how imperfect our con- ceptions really are, and how much one great 42 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. law is a development from that which pre- ceded it, and more or less renders the former to be in a sense incorrect, or at least incom- plete. The very principles of some of our sciences have been reversed within a few years. No man will undertake to maintain that his scientific conception of the universe may not receive — indeed, will not receive — great modifications, as the ever-extending glory of the world opens before the human mind. Dogmatism is, therefore, impertinent as well as unphilosophical. " Thus we see it, " is the language of the wise, the humble man. " Thus it is, " is only the vain boast of the empty fool. And so is it in religion. Men's conceptions are ever changing, growing in their sweet- ness, in their scope. The finality of Revela- tion can be held only by that Church which itself has come to the end of all intellectual and moral life. So long as God has loving souls upon the earth to worship and to love Him, so long will He ever open before them wider displays of His nature and His work. THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 43 In the one subject of criticism of the Book, we have only begun to study and to learn. The interpretation of the Bible is itself, a mat- ter for each age, and grows in fulness and depth as each age brings its learning, its piety, its devotion. That great truth of the Divine Fatherhood, the very centre of the religion of Jesus Christ, is now only, begin- ning to take hold of the mind and heart of the Christian Church, and who can tell what rich truths of the Divine nature and the work of our Lord, the future will not yet reveal ? It was the glorious utterance of the pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers that God had "yet much light to flash forth from His Word." And what are we, brethren, that we should sup- pose ourselves to have learned all, and to have exhausted the fulness of that Eternal Spirit ? Oh, then, ye wrangling theologians and physicists, stay your contentions ! You are men, toiling up the same great mountain height, but on different sides. " A preci- pice," cries the one party. " Nay," answers back in angry tones the other, " 'tis a pleas- 44 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. ant slope and a fertile valley." A " river," shout these in return, " and over it a bright sunshine." Back comes the reply with rude and scornful laughter, " 'Tis a mountain tarn, dark and cold, and deep, and over it are resting only the skirts of the storm, now and then perhaps lifted for an instant by the driv- ing wind.'' " Peace, ye mountain climbers," seems to speak a Voice from the summit. " Ye are on different sides ; but with pa- tience, and quiet toil, and rather cheerful encouragement to each other, at last, per- chance in the far distant ages, perhaps even in that other condition to be attained only by the transfiguring of death, ye shall all stand upon the mountain, and with Me gaze at the whole scene beneath you, and know with perfect knowledge, and see with the vision of the immortals." But, it may be asked whether the study of science is to be pursued without any religious thoughts being associated with it ? Cer- tainly not. If the religious man devotes him- self to the pursuit of nature he will, assuredly, THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 45 find therein opportunities for the exercise of his religious faculties, and illustrations of the goodness and glory of God. To search into physics by means of theological or moral principles is the method of a past and ignor- ant age. But to search into physics with only atheism as the spirit of the search, is to rush into a superstition as gross and as deadly as before. The review of causes may not include the first or the final cause, but he will be indeed purblind who cannot recognize a God in nature, and control all his study of her various ways by the sense of the obliga- tion which he owes to Him. If this were not so, he who utterly denies the being of God would be the best student of the natural world, and this has by no means been illus- trated in experience and history. Some of the most earnest, the most gifted physicists, have been most religious men ; and even those who, ceasing to be strictly scientific, are yet doubtful as to the issue of the philoso- phy which they apply to the problem of ex- istence and life, are still unwilling to relin- 46 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. quish the quest for a personal all-governing" God, and in their best moments when reason is clearest, and their powers most vigorous, cheerfully acknowledge that the system which absolutely excludes the Eternal One has little claim upon their understanding, their imagi- nation, their conscience, and their heart. This aspect of the question may be illustra- trated by a reference to some other of those spheres of human nature which are not alto- gether covered by the understanding. There is, for example, the sense of the beautiful. Now this in pure science can have no place, and in the investigation of the physicist must be utterly and rigorously excluded. But it would be a lame science which destroyed the feeling of the beautiful, although this may be- long specially to the artist and the poet. No men, perhaps, have a keener sense of the beauty of natural objects than those who gaze upon them with the insight of true knowledge — understanding their causes and seeing the one grand law which embraces all within its certainty. Shall the physicist shut his eye THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 47 to these beauties of the world? Shall lie know nothing of form and color, of sweep of outline, perfection of figure, balance, harmony and grace ? Must he close his ears to the mighty music of the worlds ? Can he never allow the soft sense of nature's fulness to rest upon his spirit like the touch of the caressing mother upon the head of the child she bears, and will no soft light from her unutterable sweetness shine upon his heart and make him glad with the gladness that is all her own ? Surely not. There is a rapture in some of the communions which the physicist holds with nature that passeth the highest delight of feast and mirthful bravery. Morals, too, may find some place in the recognition of our student. It is not for him to seek facts and their relations, in order that he may find the law of right illustrated, that he may gather some new sanction for the eternal verities of goodness, purity, and jus- tice. But I mistake much the spirit of mod- ern science if it has no regard for conscience, and for the environment of righteousness 48 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. which the wise man everywhere joyfully ac- cepts. The very order and harmony, the " adjustment of internal and external rela- tions," which the subtler minds of the day are perceiving in all things — these must bring with them the sense of that higher order and harmony, by which all natures have been bound, that law which gathers into its safe keeping the lowly monad, which rolls its thunder of condemnation, or sings its song of approval in the human heart, and finds its highest seat in the bosom of God Himself So is it with the principle of religion. The man of science will not gain his highest pur- pose if he seek in the subject of his learning to find the supreme God ; but we are sadly out in our estimate of the best expounders of nature if they have not, even on the merely scientific ground, an undefined, perhaps a hidden sense, that Some One has moved along the lines of life and being, and has left, if indeed the faintest footprints, yet the foot- prints of His going. And surely he who has the sense of God's presence within his soul, THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. - 49 who has heard His voice in conscience, and has seen Him in the face of Jesus Christ, may go along the pathways of his study, now, not only with understanding, not only with a troop of laws of causation, conse- quence, and evolution, but with another atten- dant — fair-robed Faith ; and she will point to all the scenes, once only scenes of order, state- ly edifices of material building, and lo ! in every passage, hall, and chamber, the devout man will find a presence, will hear a tender voice, will feel a touch of love, and recognize a Father. Now, the world is a home, and he a child, heir of its glory and joyous in its bless- edness. Now, between the lines of the great formulae which describe the sweep of star and sun, he can read also written, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His Handiwork." The flowers may open their petals and disclose the wonderful selections which nature has made, fitting them for their place, for the visiting of the insect, and the distribution of their seed. But he will also hear the words which their 3 50 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. odor seems to breathe : " Consider the lilies of the field how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin, yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. God so clothed the grass of the field." The birds will still reveal to him the steps of being and the care- ful adjustment of element and life, but he will see inscribed in golden letters round the pages of the very record of the wise and careful observer, the tender utterance for the humble sparrow : " And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father." Then gathering all his knowledge he will raise it into a glorious song, and cry as he remembers God's love for himself: " When I consider the heavens the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? O Lord our Lord, how excellent is Thy Name in all the earth." Some persons of religious nature and habits, view with considerable alarm, the ad- THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 5 1 vance of science in our day. They seem to think that the throne of God is being under- mined, and that the end of this progress will be to " bow the Supreme Being out of His universe." There is somewhere a foolish say- ing that Newton, by his discovery of the law of gravitation, " had banished God from the solar system," and there are religious people equally foolish who have a kind of half dread that this irreverent sentiment has some truth in it. The first and prime necessity for a religion worth holding is that it should be true ; and if science help to purge away the untruths which have gathered around even the true faith, we need only rejoice and re- cognize in her a trusty handmaid of God. But, it seems to me, that the results of science have altogether tended to the establishment of religion more firmly in the heart of every wise and good man ; and even the specula- tions which in some cases issue in the wildest hypotheses, only more clearly bring out the existence and the attributes of God. What science may do with ecclesiastical religion I 52 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. have no very great care, and even the rela- tion of science to theology appears only to promise the purification of the latter study from the dominance of the schools, and the mere tyranny of custom. But to religion, the religion of Jesus Christ, science brings only welcome aid. The order of nature, which has been so strikingly exhibited in the ever- widening range which is discovered for law, and the economy of nature, which in the con- servation of forces has been illustrated of late on every side, furnish remarkable analogies for the great truths of the unity of the God- head, and the atonement of Jesus Christ, which form the leading principles of the Christian verity. What does science teach us in ever new and ever widening spheres ? Simply the persistence of law, the inflexibility of causation, the unchangeableness of result in the given unchangeableness of conditions. Interpret this in respect of moral and spiritual things, and what have we — (here we enter upon the domain of the metaphysician and the theologian) — but the one eternal omni- THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 53 present intelligence and will — (will, I say, necessarily, for to stop at force, is to read the enigma of the universe one step behind that at which we have arrived in reading the enigma of the world of consciousness) — ever the same, ever, therefore, true, right, highest, utterly to be trusted, never deceiving, never failing, never changeable. I rejoice, as I be- hold the magnificent order of the universe rise before me at the bidding of some almost magician of this late-born child of reason ; wonder yields to delight, and delight swells into completest confidence. Did I ever in evil hour, doubt the power, and the wisdom, and the love ? In hideous dreams, have I ever seen vile phantoms of evil, who seemed to thwart the course of goodness, and to mock at right and truth ? Have I ever listened to the base promptings of my lower soul, and for an instant, thought that life was only the battle-scene of an eternal evil contending with eternal good ? Have I ever conceived of chance and fortune, of hazard, or even devil- crossings of the will of God ? Then, may I 54 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. for an hour, quit the companionship of holy- men of old when they have spoken some sad, desponding words, and learning that there is an eternal order, come back to understand better their broken cries and their mysterious musings, and to find that knowledge, learnt to-day, has joined with faith that triumphed ages back, and still proclaims that God rules in the heavens and governs upon earth, taking perhaps a still sweeter echo in the words, " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." And what shall we say of that grand force of redemptive grace which has set going a new spiritual life to act and react until the universe is filled with the fulness of God ? " Nothing is lost," science tells me. Nature conserves all, will not, cannot allow aught to slip away and pass into nothingness. Is it mere poetry, my friends, when I read these words, and follow with an almost bursting heart the exhibition of this great conserving law, that I am irresistibly reminded of Him who " came to seek and to save what was THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 55 lost, "of Him who "willeth not the death of the sinner, but rather that he should turn from his error and live " ; of Him to whom all things shall be subdued, " when the Son Himself shall be subject unto Him that put all under Him, that God may be all in all." There are two points to which I desire to refer as I close. The first relates to the care, which the scientific student must observe, when he transfers his attention from the objects of his proper pursuit to other occupations. It has not been helpful to the psychology of this generation, that so many of those who have endeavored to expound it, have approached it with the spirit and almost with the method with which they conducted their researches into nature. It is very doubtful whether the physiological study of mind has been really helpful to mental science. Though fully grant- ing- the concomitance of the brain in all men- tal operations, we have yet to learn that the fullest knowledge of brain-conditions even suggests the mode of discussing phenomena 56 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. of consciousness. Indeed, in the moral scien- ces, generally, the physicist seems to me to be sadly at fault. He seizes an opinion as readily as the most fanciful philosopher, and adds to the merely hypothetical character of his opinion, the more serious evil of dealing with it as if it were a physical law, seen in many instances, the result of careful induc- tion, tested by proved experiment. As an acute writer has lately observed, " Living in and breathing the pure atmosphere of physi- cal science is by no means a good school of discipline in the estimate of moral probabili- ties. Physical science has superstitions of its own, just as much as wonder or fear." How much these remarks will apply to the discussion of religion I may leave each of you to deter- mine for yourselves. When you have entered into this sphere of research your subject-mat- ter and your methods have alike changed. Finally, be careful that you do not forget in science that you have human duties ; that knowledge is, after all, not the supreme object of man's life ; that, indeed, all knowledge is THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 57 but the means to that nobility of living which we gather up in the word service. It is the fashion to spurn and contemn the practical applications of scientific discovery ; but the best souls will always regard the issue of all they know in the welfare of their fellow-men. It is, perhaps, to be feared that of late the tendency of science has been to go off into speculations upon problems that are, fot the most part, insoluble. Natural science de- spises the inanities, the verbal frivolities of the middle-age schoolmen. Without defend- ing the schoolmen, let me warn students of science against the schoolmen's fault. The fine-drawn theories of life and its origin, the speculations concerning atoms, their move- ments, their size, their nature, may or may not be good exercises for reason, and perhaps still more noble subjects for fancy and im- agination. But science may have humbler spheres for her energy, and yet lose nothing of her worth and nobleness. The greatest hero of the ages, His very enemies being the wit- ness, was He, Who, His followers say, bowed 3* 58 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. down from the heaven, and humbled Himself to human life. And so will it be for science ; yes, for all knowledges of man and all exer- cises of his understanding. Their glory will be their lowly service, their surest honor the good which they do to an ill-conditioned world. A hungering humanity is calling for bread ; give it not a stone. It asketh for an egg y do not offer it a scorpion. Prometheus stole fire from the heavens, and gave it to mankind. The jealous gods bound him to the rock, and set the vulture to tear out his ever-renewed vitals. There is no such fate for him who now brings down the highest heavenly possession, and grants it to man for his blessing and his good. Such an one is rather taken up to the seat of God, and shines in the glory of Him who became flesh and dwelt among men. Seek, then, by most exalted, ardent, sweeping thought, to include all things within your ever extending knowledge of na- ture's laws ; but come back again and down to needy men. There, raise the fallen, teach the ignorant,, heal the sick, and save the lost. RELIGION AND LAW. I. Timothy I., 8. — " The law is good if a man use it lawfully." III. RELIGION AND LAW. Of all the studies which present themselves for our notice there is not one that is of really greater importance than that of law, and yet it is probably the subject which will be sup- posed most technical and least interesting". The common opinion concerning law is that it is a dry, jejune pursuit, sombre as those London squares in which its votaries live, and dusty as the windows through which they look out upon the world around them. The common man is repelled by the mere appear- ance of a legal document. The unwieldy phrases, the archaic expressions, the circum- locution, the very material on which it is writ- ten, and the form of letter in which it is in- scribed — all combine to give an air of weari- someness which offends, almost disgusts, the busy mind and direct habits of the present 62 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. day. Law, it is said, belongs entirely to the lawyer, and had better be left to professional persons ; it is only to be dealt with by such outsiders as may possess sufficient money to meet its expenses, or are furnished with small wisdom enough not to avoid its perils. Still, how important a place does the law occupy ! Every member of the State has re- lation to it, is subject to its operation, and is amenable to its sanction. We must all obey the laws. How necessary, then, that we should know, at least, the principles upon which they are based. Every occupation is environed by laws that govern it. All our intercourse with each other is defined and controlled by law. He who would live in- telligently, ought surely to know something of those rules under which he must spend his life, and by which he must direct his conduct. In free countries, moreover, almost every man has some voice in the making of laws. He is summoned to choose his representatives in Parliament and Congress, and to these are confided the highest functions of law making. RELIGION AND LAW. 63 Many men are compelled, themselves, to dis- charge offices which involve the administra- tion of law. In ten thousand ways, in per- sonal, social, and public relationships, the citizens of a free State must deal with law. It is, therefore, a scandal in the present day that men are careless about the laws under which they live, and which they are called to administer. Without some knowledge of the principles of legislation, a man has not com- pletely furnished himself for his place in the great social order. By " law " we understand that collection of principles and rules which are to govern the conduct of men in relation to each other, and in the enforcement of which the State may proceed to inflict punishment. The law of the land does not necessarily embrace ev- ery sphere of life, and control every possible action. There are many things which a man ought to do ; but if he does not do them, the State would not do right by inflicting punish- ment. There are many things which a man ought not to do, but the law does not pro- 64 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. ceed to prevent him from doing them. These are the actions, the principles of conduct in relation to which, must be found in what we call ethics, and upon these, religion may very properly exercise an important influence. The proper limits of law and morality must therefore be decided upon. Where must the State pronounce judgment? Where must the State be silent? When are the sanctions of public law to be set in force ? When may men be left to those other forces which oper- ate upon them — the sense of duty, the gener- al approval or disapproval of their fellows, the consciousness of obligation towards God ? It is of prime importance that we should de- cide upon the limits which mark law, moral- ity, and religion. Religion often comes into our life as an ef- ficient practical power. It may be doubted that there is any force which so moves men as religious conviction or excitement. Men do things from religious motives. Men abstain from doing things upon religious grounds. The history of the world is largely a history RELIGION AND LAW. 65 of the operation of these religious instincts and sensibilities. Now, it becomes essential for the student of law to know how these things affect human life. Character and con- duct are moulded by the power of religion, and to deal with this effectually, whether as the maker or the administrator of law, a man ought to know something of the nature and power of the religious sentiment. This aspect of the question is of so much importance, that we recur to it again, al- though we referred to it in the sermon on the general relation of the student to religion. Then, as one of the forces of life, one of the operative powers of history, we saw that re- ligion required to be studied, and could be studied satisfactorily only when it was pos- sessed by the man himself. Now this may be specially applied to the lawyer. Many of the cases to which he must give attention, many of the points upon which he must pro- nounce judgment, and furnish counsel and ad- vice, include, or, in some way, are related to religion. Religion is precisely one of those 66 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. things which a man, without it, cannot under- stand. He does not appreciate its working ; he is unable to gauge its power. What he calls fanaticism is wisdom, higher than the wisest ; what he may set down to error and folly is the supremest virtue, the divinest grace. Such a man is worse than useless in dealing with legal questions, which involve religious considerations. He sees only the definitions of the law ; he can estimate only by the rough, coarse rules of legislation. The finer shades of moral life he is unable to appreciate ; and whilst he is appointed to fur- ther justice and maintain the right, he be- comes often only the ally of the wrong doer, and the oppressor of the righteous. This may take a peculiar form of distinct- ness when we turn for a moment to one im- portant relation of religion to law, which in the future seems to promise issues of consid- able and far-reaching significance. Law in- deed, in some cases formally recognizes relig- ion. It has placed the State into peculiar relations with the different bodies of religious RELIGION AND LAW. 67 persons — certainly, in countries where there is an establishment, and, to some extent, even in a land like ours, where all religions are equal in the eyes of the State. In a certain sense all sects and churches are recognized by the State and established, some in a very specific sense. The moment that any commu- nity of persons based upon religious grounds proceeds to hold property, the law takes cog- nizance of that fact, and the very conditions of their communion are subjects of contract and trust, and as such, often, come to be con- sidered in courts of justice. In some countries the State has assumed complete authority over these churches, laying down the rules of government, appointing the ministers, directing the ritual, even controlling the creed. Now, in view of such a condition of things, does it not become the duty of every lawyer, at least of such as may be called to deal with ecclesiastical law, to make himself acquainted with the principles of religion? And this cannot be done properly unless there is 68 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. knowledge of religion in personal experience. Think of the blunders of the State in the past with respect to religion ; think of the difficul- ties which seem to be threatening in the pos- sible changes which appear imminent ; think of the acts of injustice which persecution, bigotry, superstition, have inflicted in the days gone by. And remember how many of these have arisen from the absolute ignorance of the true principles of religion displayed by the makers and administrators of law. Our mistakes in the future may not be so gross and not so evident as those in the past, but they may be as real, as offensive to men of fine spirit and true religious sensibility, as hostile to the best interests of mankind, as opposed to the truest progress of the race. I might almost lay the plea for religion upon the necessities of the profession, to which you will be devoted. At least it should not be dismissed by you as a matter worthy of no attention, claiming no regard. But there is not only this definite relation of religion to law which we have now dis- RELIGION AND LAW. 69 cussed ; there is an indefinite place which religion may occupy, and this is worthy of attention. The function of law is concerned with the determination of duties, the ascertain- ment of cases in which the laws have been broken, and the appointment of penalty. Now, in all of these, religion may play an im- portant part. Indeed, roughly, the founders of law have always recognized this. In early systems of law the religious and legal sanc- tions have gone together, and the priest and the lawyer have been one and the same. One of the noblest bodies of law which the world can boast, from which men are still constantly drawing principles of legislation, and even some particular precepts, towards harmony with which modern enlightenment in many cases seems to tend, was associated intimately with a great religious system. Moses, who appointed the Levitical service, was also the legislator of the Jewish people, and intertwined with all his laws there are the Divine obligations, which change law into religion, which make disobedience not only a 70 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. crime but a sin, stamping disloyalty with the still more degrading mark of the idolater. And all systems borrowing somewhat from , the Mosaic, and moreover, finding deep in human nature this relation of religion and law, have more or less associated religious obligations with the claims of the legislator. A notable example of this remains with us to- day in one of the commonest legal acts — viz., that of taking an oath. Here the truthfulness of the testimony is assured by the solemn sanction of an appeal to God. Some legal practices even retain the cumbrous and al- most stupid rule of refusing the testimony of a man who professes not to believe in God, and I suppose many persons are found who Avill shrink from a statement on oath, who would willingly venture to make it when they supposed themselves free from perjury. But this only suffices to show how the history of law involves in itself religious sanctions, and indeed, expresses in a rude way that common sense of humanity by which religion is held to occupy so important a place in our nature RELIGION AND LAW. 7 1 and life, that the legislator cannot afford to disregard it. The lawyer, then, will have to deal with men over whom religion has more or less control. It is a power of such importance that it would be the part of a wise man to deal with it wisely. I know it is very easy to dismiss it altogether, to say in respect of this, " Oh, that belongs to another sphere. It is mere refining to talk of such a relation or to suppose it of any avail ; " but such a spirit only proves a narrow mind, and can fit its possessor for nothing better than the merest pettifogging, or the lowest legal stations. Wise men, who understand human nature, will regard it in a different light, and so find many an opportunity for the proper and suc- cessful use of the religious motives. In what delicate positions lawyers are sometimes placed ! The interpretation of contracts, the fulfilment of trusts, the adjust- ment of family difficulties, the settlement of property, the reconciliation of enemies, the determination of guilt— numberless other 72 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. things which call for the skill of the lawyer, furnish abundant opportunities for the exer- cise of other and far higher gifts than legal acumen, nobler acquirements than the fullest acquaintance with principles and cases, a finer faculty than that which will conduct a cause to completest triumph. Even for the lawyer, what is legal is not always what is right. What may be just in the eyes of the law, may not always be kindest, wisest, nor at last, even most useful for the individual or for the State. A Christian lawyer, in the true sense of that term, is a man of immense value, not only to his client, but also to society. We do not mean by that, the man who figures as a philanthropist, or takes a leading place in the religious world; but that man who guides those who entrust their affairs in his hands, not only with a lawyer's judgment, but with the wider, nobler conscience of one who is seeking the right and the good — what is best for one, best for all. He will not, perhaps, always gain a trial, but often he will prevent the legal action altogether. He may not only RELIGION AND LAW. 73 get a criminal off, but he may be the means of setting right the wrong, and restoring the erring. Such men may be rare, though I am not quite sure that they are as rare as the common opinion sometimes would have us think. At least, young men, it rests with you to swell the number ; and thus not only to establish law, but to spread abroad righte- ousness. One of the most natural prospects for the lawyer is that of being called to administer law in the position of magistrate or judge. And here again religion will be an important ministrant. How many are the cases to deal with which there is required an instinct of justice ! The criminal is not merely a kind of beast that needs to be hunted down by the processes of law. Given the crime, then set the officers of justice upon its trail, let them track the wretch who committed it, drag him to the light, gather evidence which may over- whelm him with its conclusiveness, and then leave to the judge nothing but the barest duty of pronouncing sentence ! In some of the ex- 74 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. treme cases of crime, perhaps, little more than this can be done ; but in how different a spirit may we not pursue our criminal classes ? There is a certain sacredness about justice administered by a man who recognizes some- thing other than the mere criminality of the evil deed — a light which shines in upon the prisoner, and indeed upon all men, helping to show the beauty of virtue and the hideous- ness of crime. Indeed, it seems to me that the whole of criminal law ought to be ren- dered more and more morally instructive than appears to be its character in our day. Law and crime now are as enemies. The breaker of the law seems to regard the law simply as a foe against which he is in constant and even natural hostility. Law should be rather the expression of the will of the State — almost like a mother's, with love and sorrow for the child who disobeys. The real evil is in the wrong spirit of its study. It is, I know, for scientific purposes, conveniently separated from morality and religion ; but it cannot be rightly understood, it cannot be rightly ad- RELIGION AND LAW. 75 ministered, except by him who feels that in his awful character as judge, he to some ex- tent is sharing in the very dignity of God, and is invested with that sorrowful power which only seeks to repress evil that it may save the evil-doer. Closely allied with this is the character which it is becoming that the occupant of the bench, and indeed all who deal with law, should possess. There is nothing which so impresses the people of a country as the ex- pression of noble sentiments and the promul- gation of wise and good laws by men who themselves are animated by these sentiments, and whose lives are the best illustrations of the law which they proclaim. And, on the other hand, few things so tend to bring justice into contempt, and to spread far and wide a spirit of rebellion and criminal dis- obedience, as the bad character of those who are appointed to make and execute the laws. One of the first essentials to a well-ordered State is the incorruptibility of the bench, and this, we believe, we may proudly boast to 76 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. have been gained in our country in this gen- eration. But this is by no means the only quality which he who deals in justice should possess. This may ensure confidence in de- cisions upon civil suits ; but we are now insist- ing upon the character and life which shall be a shining example in every relationship. The court of justice is assembled to establish righteousness, to punish fraud. What if the conduct of those who carry on its affairs will not bear the light of day ! The magistrate sits to punish the disorderly, the openly vicious, the violent, and the wrong doer. What if counsel and court, bench and bar, are themselves well known as breakers of the laws of morality, decency, and good order ! It is a scandal and a shame, an outrage upon public morals, a mockery of true justice, and leads the criminal only to calculate the chances of escape of punishment, and never to consider the wrong of which he may be guilty. The words of the apostle should sink deep into your hearts — " Thou appro vest the things that are more excellent, being in- RELIGION AND LAW. JJ structed out of the law, and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the power of knowledge and of the truth in the law. Thou, therefore, which teachest another, teachest thou thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal ? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery ? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacri- lege ? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law, dishonorest thou God?" Remembering ever, that civil law is only a part of the higher and wider law of right with which religion in every point deals, we shall find these words searching into the very depths of the soul, and into the most hidden secrets of our life. This must suffice for our consideration of the general relation of religion to law, and the need which there is for those who wish to be- come lawyers not to forget religion. I shall now refer briefly to some of those dangers 78 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. which attend your special study, and safety from which can be found in attention to the religious side of your nature. In the first place, the student of law has to deal very much with mere words and the definitions of the meaning of words. Laws express in words certain requirements of con- duct. The legislator must, therefore, use words so as to include the actions to which he refers, and the student is bound to study carefully the scope of the words used in the practical work of the law. Much of his busi- ness will be the endeavor, on the one hand, to include a certain action within the meaning of a word, or, on the other hand, to exclude it from that meaning. Thus it is that the lawyer comes to be a man of words. He is ever dealing with them, and thus contracts a twofold habit — that of running everything into the form of words, and that of dealing with words in some artificial and strained way. The moral effect of this is very evil. It begets a disposition of criticism generally on RELIGION AND LAW. 79 the verbal side. Man, and nature, and life, even God and His relationships, come to be locked up in the merely legal definitions of words, and the result is something like that which fell upon the Scribes and Pharisees in the time of our Lord. Words become the dominants of character and life, and the pro- found principles of morals and religion are broken up and destroyed in the multiplication of little rules and verbal niceties ; the laws of conscience and of God dwindle into the cap- tious criticisms of mere legal precepts. Against this danger the moral and spiritual laws of Jesus Christ will effectually guard. They are broad and general. They are care- less of legal niceties, and depend, not upon the mere logic of the understanding, but upon the more direct and immediate logic of the heart. Life, under their influence, will be a growth, and not an argument. It will have nature and not artifice. In the free spirit of the life of Christ, the lawyer will become a man, eman- cipated from the shackles of maxims and pre- cepts, with heart and conscience operating 80 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. rightly, not because of rule, but from the force of an indwelling inspiration. Another peril closely allied to the former, and indeed growing out of it, is the loss of a profound sense of moral obligation in respect of the conduct of life. For legal purposes the lawyer must always ask the question, What is the law ? and acts must be done or refrained from because of the injunction of the Legislature. The ultimate appeal in cases of legal import must be to what is com- manded, and not to what is right. In this respect the province of the legislator is dis- tinct from that of the administrator. In making the law, the former must consider what is dictated by the principles of morality, for what is morally bad cannot be politically good. But, in applying the law, the lawyer can only inquire what is the law, and by this he is bound in the very letter. Even in such extension of the law as is supplied by equity or the interpretation of the court, still the spirit of the law must be observed, and de- parture from its strictness must be ever RELIGION AND LAW. 8 1 jealously watched. Now, the habits of mind produced by such duties necessarily tend to lead the lawyer away from the consideration of the absolute law of right, by which alone the highest development of human life can be attained. He judges by the law of the land, and not by the law of conscience. Re- ligion will supply the force counteracting this. Religious truth, and the moral principles dependent upon it, ever lift the soul into communion with eternal right. Communion with God will purify the heart from the local and temporary devices of municipal law, and raise the spirit far above its narrowing and depressing influence. Jesus Christ was en- tirely free from all such limited views of life and its duties, and he who knows Christ, who obeys his laws, who has come into commun- nion with the sufferings of Jesus, and looks to Christ as his Master and Lord, will find that He ever regards life and its duties in its relation to what is rio-ht, without regard to circumstance or person, except as these may modify the application of principle. In a 4* 82 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. word, principle becomes such a man's guide and stay. It will be a light for dark ways, a strength and support in the hour of uncer- tainty, conflict, and dismay. The man is no longer lost in the lawyer ; the lawyer is glorified in the man. One of the customs of the profession of the law, by which a man is concerned with the interests of one side only in a legal cause, may produce an ill effect which it is important to observe. It is commonly argued, and probably with truth, that the real state of affairs is best discovered, and justice most completely done in any particular case, by the parties on either side doing all they can to establish their own view. It is, of course, the business of the judge to hold the "balance evenly, and to direct proceedings in their legitimate course. The jury is appointed to seek out and inquire into the truth ; but the. professional lawyer is obliged to do the best he can for his party, and on the other hand to damage his opponent's case as much as is possible. All this, I believe, can be done in a RELIGION AND LAW. 83 perfectly honorable and straightforward way. But none the less it is a fact that the tendency of such professional duty is to develop in the mind the disposition of the mere partisan. Religion supplies the corrective of this. It extends its gracious countenance to every one. Religion has only one suit, and that has been long since given up by the incarna- tion of the Son of God, who has reconciled all men to His Father. There is no separa- tion, no contention, in Christ's true life. " All men are one in Jesus," and " He is our peace." Christ Himself refused to be a partisan. When appealed to, to speak to the brother who was injuriously depriving the other of his inheritance, He declined to be a judge and divider, but took occasion to teach men a noble lesson against covetousness, and pointed out wherein consisted a man's real wealth. The narrower spheres of legal strife can thus be changed for the more generous sympathies of the Gospel. Here we may learn not to be for an individual, not for a party, but for all men and for God. 84 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. The practical workings of the legal pro- fession furnish one other danger against which a Christian man needs to be upon his guard. In the law men are not introduced to the better sides of human life. It is true that suitors are supposed to be seeking for justice ; but men of the world need hardly to be told that the sense of justice is somewhat lost in the sense of personal claims for advantage and gain. " I will have justice/' is often only the mask for " I will be revenged ; " and the lawyer has many a revelation of the worst sides of our poor, frail, sinful humanity. In criminal law this is specially the case. The opening up of the details of crime is often offensive and shocking. Now, familiarity with such scenes, and such manifestings of human wickedness, may blunt the finer sides of the lawyer's own heart. Justice takes on an inexorable sternness ; the skilful counsel becomes only a special pleader; he who aims at conviction questions the existence of all goodness ; he who defends the criminal avails himself of some point of legal distinction, RELIGION AND LAW. 85 probably only too doubtful of the prisoner's innocence. From such influences a man must have a unique nature if he can himself escape moral deterioration. In some positions, such as that of the court and counsel in our police administration, men can avoid the evil only by special grace. Hence must the lawyer have some region of retirement and refreshment, where an al- together pure life may be experienced and a perfect companionship attained. The busy toiler in the overcrowded city must, on occa- sions, escape from the pollutions, the fetid air, the confined habits, to the pure climate of the seaside, to fresh country life, to the fine, heavenlike region of the mountain top. Here he is recreated, braced, and able to withstand the ill-conditions of his home, and occupation in town. So must the man, whose dealings are with the immoral sides of human nature, find safety from the corrupting associations of his common life, in contemplation of the heavenly realities, and in communion with the unseen ; in the inspiration which is obtained S6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. from the presence of God and Christ, in retreat from the destructive habits of his common career. From the struggle of revengeful men he retires to the calm of the loving God; from the sad view of man in his worst hours, a slave to passion, a ready servant of the devil, he turns to behold the All-pure, the All- true, the All-good. If there be a vision of sin, it is sin conquered by patient and tender virtue ; if even the spectacle of the horrible crime of Calvary, it is that very crime changed by the pure heart of the Sufferer, by the all-righteous purpose of God, into the beneficent, healing, saving power of redeem- ing grace, with its dark shadow lost in the blaze of the triumphant light of love. THE ART OF HEALING. LukE IV., 23. — "Physician, heal thyself.' IV. THE ART OF HEALING. Our Lord's choice of this proverb in refer- ence to Himself was peculiarly appropriate, when we remember how large a portion of His work was the healing of the sick. It is probable that already His fame had gone abroad, not only as a teacher, but as a healer, and that the wonderful cures which He had effected caused His name to be in all men's mouths, and led to the expectation in Naza- reth, to which He referred, that He would do in His own home what He had already been doing in Capernaum. All through His career He presents Him- self as the Great Physician. He gives eye- sight to the blind, He cleanses the leper, He bids fevers depart, He restores the lunatic to their sound mind. Everywhere He shows Himself as the Son of God, who has His fin- 90 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. gers upon the springs of being, and can give life, and ward off death, and drive away dis- ease. Christ has thus established a peculiar relation between His religion and the sick, which the history of Christianity and the ten- dency of civilization have developed to a remarkable degree. Very intimate has been the connection between religion and the phy- sician's art. To no one ought religion to appeal more strongly than to the medical stu- dent. Religion has always a peculiar claim upon a man when he has been cut down by sick- ness. We have no sympathy with that spirit which puts off all thought of religion until the time of disease. Common, alas, though this is, it combines in itself the base conduct of the knave and the fool. If religion be the service of God, it seems to be very like cheating Him of His service if we turn to Him only when we are sick. When the pow- ers are fresh and strong, when, indeed, ser- vice might have some worth in it, we neglect God, and only regard Him and pay Him our THE ART OF HEALING. Ql duty when we are stricken down, feeble and useless. Besides this, it is folly, for the pro- bability is that the time of sickness will be the very worst time for seeking after the Eternal One. Then the soul is wrapped in the clouds of night. Then, shadows overwhelm, and the poor spirit, worn by pain, cowering, in terror, shrinking from the thought of death, knows not how to seek, how to find its only resting-place. And yet the mercy of God in Jesus Christ will accept even such an one. " He hath anointed me," said the pro- phet, speaking of our Lord, " to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bound ; " and although the lamp be lighted late, and only flickers with a feeble flame, yet "the smoking flax " we know, Christ will never quench. When all have turned away from the wretched, sick, and dying spirit, it may receive the consolation of the religion of Cal- vary, and therein will be found the mercy 92 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. which saves unto the uttermost. How often, therefore, the physicians of the body and the ministers of the soul are found together ! The laws of health may have been broken, but that is only the greater reason why the healer of the sick should attend. The laws of spiritual life may have been still more neg- lected ; that only renders more urgent the presence of one who may seek, by the com- forts of religion, to bind up a broken heart and heal a wounded spirit. Another aspect of the intimate connection which religion has with medicine may be seen in the important part which the former has taken in the development of the latter. At one time religious ministers were almost the only physicians, and I am not sure that the opposition with which some of the earlier ad- vances in the art of healing were met by the Church, may not have arisen quite as much on professional grounds as for supposed reli- gious or superstitious reasons. But in later times religion has always aided and fostered the healer's profession. To regard the sick THE ART OF HEALING. 93 at all, to minister to their needs, to treat them in any other fashion than that of the beast, which separates the wounded member of the herd from the rest and drives it away to perish and to die — this has become the spirit of modern civilization, and has been quickened, if not altogether produced, by the influence of Christianity. Rome and Greece had no hospitals. Philanthropy, which deals tenderly with the ills and sorrows of the hu- man race, is the child of religion ; and it will be a sad day for the weak, the diseased, the lunatic, and the afflicted, if the world were to give up its faith in Christ, and to turn to a scientific or philosophic atheism as the ulti- mate teaching of a progressive age. These schools of physic, these hospitals where young men are engaged in studying, and without which there would be little progress in the science and art of the physician, would at once be closed were it not for the sanction of religion and the generosity of the Christian Church. You may sometimes in your heed- lessness, in your thoughtless pride, laugh at 94 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. the claims of religion. Remember, at least, that you owe to it your instruction, and the very opportunities of study, whereby you are enabled to attain the place which your am- bition may desire. But these are merely external and, as we may say, accidental relations of religion to your profession. Let us see if there are not more intimate grounds upon which I may ap- peal to you to yield yourselves to the claims of Christ. Consider, in the first place, the nature of disease itself. What is it ? It is the dis- organization of the human body, the improp- er action of some of the "functions of the physical nature, often arising from disregard of the laws of natural well-being. All disease is not connected with wrong, but a vast amount of the disease from which men are to- day suffering, is the direct and immediate result of immoral life ; in some cases that of the sufferer, in other cases that of those by whom the sufferer has been influenced. It is quite needless to give detailed examples of THE ART OF HEALING. 95 this. My statement is a mere commonplace. , In this regard what is the true office of the physician in relation to disease ? Is it simply to arrest the mischief, to restore the body to its healthful action, to help nature in that effort which it will make to throw off the alien and destructive presence — in a word, merely to cure? Certainly not. A far-reaching and philosophical physician will aim not only at the recovery of the body, but at the destruc- tion of those very actions, that state of life, those habits of conduct which have caused the disease. The physician is a moral re- former as well as a physical healer. He must take his part too, in the preven- tion of those evil conditions which may render a man diseased without any fault of his own. Inheritance, companionship, neigh- borhood, all these develop and extend dis- ease. The uncleanness of the man who lives next door to me, the sanitary ignorance or neglect of the manager of my district, the greed of gain of the people whose works are situated near my home — these, and such g6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. things, may bring the most terrible infliction to my house, may spread a pestilence to which I shall fall a victim. Must the doctor wait for the evil to be present and operate, before he takes action ? Quite otherwise. The " profession " must be the guides of opin- ion here ; they must raise the alarm, give the instruction, direct, even create a public senti- ment. Unless they do this, they altogether fail of their high calling, and open themselves to the charge of being traders upon the sick- nesses, the death of their fellow-men — vul- tures that fatten upon the bodies of the dead. But who can tell the mighty power of reli- gion as an engine for the amelioration of man- kind, and for the improvement of the morals, alike of the individual and society? The vir- tues that spring from a faith in God are the virtues that lead to healthfulness and the enjoyment of life. He who serves God and follows righteousness has the promise of old age, with health and happiness. The courses that lead to disease, to the sudden cutting off of life, to the sun going down when it is yet THE ART OF HEALING. 97 day — these are often best traversed, even reversed, by the power of religion. The sentiments that destroy selfishness, and com- pel men to regard each other, are nowhere found but in the light of the cross of Christ. The powers absorbed by the strife and struggle of the age, the passion for wealth, the ambition of renown, a place, and a name, these are only moderated and governed by the knowledge of Divine things, and the ex- perience of a life above the present, which yet refines and sublimes the lower. There is a wide sense in which our Lord is called a Physician, and the Gospel is spoken of as Gilead's balm. The minister of religion only acts under this great Healer ; and what are you, my friends, but the under-physicians in the Divine labor of lessening ill, and bringing back the world to its perfect wholeness ? The character of some diseases gives a still more specific character to the relation borne by religion to medicine. There are the dis- eases of the mind, where the body is only dis- organized, because its companion, friend, and 98 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. mistress has first become deranged. How- many are the cases of ill health, where the doctor is called in, and consulted by anxious friends, even by the patient himself, and where he yet can give no adequate explana- tion of the too evident lack of health ! No active disease can be discovered, there is no functional derangement, every part of the body appears vigorous, orderly, healthful, and yet the poor sufferer is weak, sick, and weary. Physician after physician is appealed to. Medicine is tried. Honest men brave- ly say they can do nothing. Dishonest men practise and experiment upon the poor body. Hopes are raised, deferred, disappointed, and the art of healing is proved to be ineffectual to deal with all the ills to which our flesh is heir. Probably after a while disease presents itself; the veriest tyro in physic can observe it, but by that time it is too late, and another victim is added to the countless multitude who have either slipped out of life altogether, or have been relegated to the wearinesses of invalidism, because no one knew what was THE ART OF HEALING. 99 the matter, and the hurt has only been slight- ly healed. When Lady Macbeth walks in her sleep, watched by the doctor and the attendant, she heaves a deep sigh, whereupon the kindly doctor says — " What a sigh is there ! The heart is sorely charged." And then confesses — "This disease is beyond my practice." And farther on — " More needs she the divine than the physician." In conversation with Macbeth himself, who asks — " How does your patient, doctor ?" He replies — ■ " Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, That keep her from her rest." To this Macbeth answers — " Cure her of that. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff 'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart ? " 100 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. Is this, indeed, the only answer ? — " Therein the patient must minister to himself." Is that all that any doctor can say? No won- der that the impatient king exclaimed con- temptuously — ■ " Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it." If that were the only reply the doctor could give, then, truly, in such diseases the scorn of Macbeth is well deserved. But there is another ministry for such. He is the wise physician who can combine, with his knowledge of the body, the more subtle knowledge of the soul. It is not medicine these patients need, but gentle searching into heart and conscience. The spirit wants the vigor, not the body. The conscience requires rest, and not the frame. He who would per- fectly heal should know this physic. If his own sorrows have been comforted, his own needs supplied, if the restless yearnings of his own spirit have been made content, if his own conscience has been satisfied — in a word, if he has found the true source of spiritual healthfulness, then may he, indeed, minister THE ART OF HEALING. IOI to the mind diseased, and be not only the physician, but also the divine. Believe me, friends, there is no art in this. It is not taught in any school, nor is the wondrous knowledge given by any professor. It is not written in the wisdom of the books, nor can it be learned except in the experience of your own heart and life. Thus you will gain the eye quick to see the spiritual evil, as now you can detect the bodily ill. The pathology of the soul can be studied only in the recesses of self-knowledge. Yourselves the healed, the strengthened, and the com- forted of God, it will be an easy matter to heal, and strengthen, and comfort others. Many are there, like the woman of the Gospel whom no physician can cure, but who, only touching the hem of Christ's garment, will feel themselves whole at once. Happy the physician who, conscious of his inability, can yet take the poor sick soul to that Healer who never fails ! We have thus spoken of the art of healing in some of those general aspects in which 102 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. religion may be said to be very closely, bound up with it Let me now draw your attention to the effect which religion will produce upon the character of the physician. This is per- haps, as a practical matter, of supreme im- portance. Few men depend for effective work, more upon their character, than doctors. Perhaps the only class of persons whose labor be- comes useless when character has departed, in a more marked degree than that of physi- cians, is that of ministers of religion. With- out good reputation, these had better make no effort to gain a hearing and minister to Christ's Church. Of course, there have been cases well known and of public fame, of phy- sicians failing utterly on the moral side of their nature, and yet, by reason of a peculiar genius and indomitable energy, still gaining a name, and becoming wealthy and influen- tial. But such persons are rather the marks and beacons whereby we must direct our way, and avoid the dangerous places where we may become utterly wrecked. As a gen- THE ART OF HEALING. 103 eral, almost universal, rule, the reputation of the physician must be spotless. Like the ancient knight, he must know no fear, and be subject to no reproach. Where can be found a better strength and inspiration for such noble life than in the religion of Jesus Christ ? The peasant of Nazareth was the politest, the most urbane man that ever lived. He adorned the social gathering, and shed a radiance most bene- ficent He knew the true secret of greatness — sympathy with the greatest number, and revealed and practised this, that you and I and all men might seek the same, and attain to the same perfect view of manners and habits of life. To this end, nothing is more helpful than the perfect purity and innocence which a powerfully religious spirit will ever conserve. There is danger lest this be lost by the physician. He comes into certain pecu- liar relationships with patients, especially those of the opposite sex, and some of that mystery, even that ignorance which helps to innocency, is forfeited. That all may have 104 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. confidence in him, that he may be secure in the midst of temptations, that there may be no pruriency, no unholy irreverence, the physi- cian needs that character, the strength and grace of which religion supplies. Familiarity with us fallen creatures and our most private affairs is not helpful to the preservation of a high moral tone. This religion will furnish. It is itself a courtesy — a culture. It gives a light and a beauty to thought, and word, and deed, that are altogether its own. It will ren- der the healer the friend, the confidant, the wise helper of the family. Husband and wife, parents and children alike, will lean upon his Avisdom and his skill. His work will be as tenderly performed as a woman's, his pres- ence will be the purity of an angel of God. Another of the qualifications of a physi- cian is tenderness of heart and sympathy with the suffering. How much healing power is to be found in that complete trust which a patient comes to feel in his medical attendant, so that it is not always the most able and most learned men that are the best physi- THE ART OF HEALING. 105 cians. We forgive a great deal to skill and ex- perience, but how much more welcome in the chamber of sickness is he who can respond to the sorrows of the hour, and in the family often plunged into deepest affliction, can be something more than the merely able com- batant with disease, even the friend, the adviser, the bringer of comfort ! It is a wise old saying that " the physician needs the eye of a hawk, the heart of a lion, and the hand of a lady " ; but how much are the softness and the delicacy of touch enhanced, when the courage is the courage of the really strong man, who is strong enough to feel pity, and brave enough to be gentle I Now, some sides of the training of the doctor are likely to numb the softer emotions of the heart. It is quite certain that a mere sentimentality — a condition of emotion easily aroused — is fatal to the physician's success. For diagnosis of disease, and still more in surgery, the mind must be altogether undis- turbed by any of the affections ; and in many cases, with severe will the healer must nerve 5* 106 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. himself to the task, and steel his heart against the distractions of sympathy and compassion. The scientific training of the medical pro-, fession still further operates in this direction. Disease has its laws as well as health. Pain is as much a factor in the great physical se- ries of antecedent and consequent as the fir- ing of the gun which propels the ball, and the gravitation which ever drags the ball down to the surface of the earth. The healer is, there- fore, compelled to note with care the physical antecedents, concomitants, and consequents of the functions of life. Indeed, these are his chief study, and he, in common with all physicists, is in peril of forgetting life's moral aspects. If there be no other difference, than the more or less of complexity, between the interactions of two substances in the test tube and the development of some vital fluid in an organ of the body, although the latter may be associated with the keenest pain, and, in some form or other, terminate in death, why should the medical practitioner experience, in the one case, a single thrill of emotion more THE ART OF HEALING. 107 than is felt by the chemist in the other ? If absolute physicism is the ultimate resolution of the phenomena of all life, then varieties of emotion, so far as the will can control them, are impertinent and unscientific. To lose hu- manity in this way, would be one of the most serious drawbacks to the progress of the healing art, and yet this is the danger with which it is threatened in our day. This tenderness of heart is further imper- iled by the physician's familiarity with suffer- ing. Human nature is healthfully capable of only certain measures of activity in any of its spheres. All excitement, all action beyond this, is sure to operate to the destruction of the faculty or capacity which is excessively used. The overwrought mind becomes stu- pid and powerless, the too much excited sense is numbed, the emotion excited beyond measure grows languid and irresponsive. Hence the incessant sight of suffering renders the heart at last more callous and indifferent. Just as, at first, the young student shrinks from the sickening scenes of the operation theatre, 108 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. or the dissecting room, but after a while grows shockingly indifferent to every exhibi- tion of horror, so the heart, at first sympa- thetic with every pain, becomes at length torpid, not to be touched by the saddest ex- hibition of human ill. The wise physician knows how injurious such a result is, not only upon his personal and moral temper, but even upon his professional prospects. Hence the offensive manner of some doctors, so unnat- ural in their tenderness, so mechanical in the commonest courtesies of life. Better the rude eccentricities of the would-be Abernethy, than these polished heart-falsehoods of the fashionable apothecary. Against all these influences a deeply re- ligious spirit is the best defence. Christianity is always the truest courtesy. He who ever lives in sympathetic communion with the spir- it of Jesus Christ, will have a constant supply of real emotion — not due to external impulses, but depending upon the deep principles of an inner life. Humanity will take upon itself a new and beautiful form. The meanest, the THE ART OF HEALING. 109 most pitiable object of the physician's care will have a sacred worth about it, as being part of the family of mankind, of which God is the Father, and Christ the Elder Bro- ther. The healing- art will be no longer a profession, but a calling, and the voice of God will ever be heard, giving dignity to all effort, and summoning to noblest endeavor. This will impart a glow to the emotions, and preserve the nature from the chill of mere intellectualism. The fundamental dual- ity of man in his material and his spiritual na- ture will not be forgotten. He who has found God the Great Spirit, is not likely to regard God's human child as a mere machine. The moral aspects of health and disease will be properly adjusted, and never ignored. Religion will render the man sympathetic, but real. It will give the genuine coin of po- liteness and good behavior, of which fashion, professional etiquette, worldly wisdom issue only the counterfeit. That purity of life of which we spoke, and the tenderness of heart of which we are speaking, when derived 110 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. from true religion, will emerge in a gentleness of demeanor and a sweetness of manner that shall themselves be as medicine of wondrous potency. Many a man has been cured of his disease, who yet almost died of his physician. The roughness of manner which was natural to some great healers, and became a sort of fashion among their would-be imitators, would be needless when skill and insight, ex- perience and devotion rested upon the firm basis of religious conviction. And not a little of highest spiritual service could be wrought by him who, summoned to relieve man's suf- ferings in an hour of need, was able to seize upon the opportunities, then so often afford- ed, of a ministration, the issues of which are not merely in the health of the body and the enjoyment of this world, but in the vigor of the soul and the glorious felicities of the eter- nal life. There is one consideration of great practi- cal importance with which I close. It is, per- haps, not the best method to find the sanc- tions of the religion of Jesus Christ in the THE ART OF HEALING. Ill hopes or fears of a future world. The direct and spiritual claims of Christianity seem to be at once more elevated and more forcible than mere considerations of self-interest, even though they relate to the stupendous realities of eternity. Nevertheless, no sane man would dream of neglecting these; and the powers of the world to come, at times, im- press and overwhelm us with their awfulness. These thoughts may well affect a class of men who are placed in positions of constant peril. It is a well-known fact that the statis- tics of life and death among doctors bear out what common sense would suggest — that they are open to the insidious approach of diseases that are mortal, and that the ardu- ous duties of the profession make their life to be somewhat hazardous. As I review my contemporaries among med- ical men in college, at the university, and in professional life, how many of them have been cut down in the flower of their manhood just as life was opening up before them ! A slight accident at an operation or at a ' post- 112 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. mortem/ a sudden call to an infectious disease, in some unguarded condition of the body, too great strain of professional labor, the pestilen- tial atmosphere in which a frail constitution was summoned to toil — these and other such circumstances in cases which, I dare say, many of you can now recall, all remind us of life's uncertainty and the peculiar dangers in which you are placed. " If a man die shall he live again ? " was the question which the Aramaean patriarch asked with solemn signif- icance thirty-five centuries ago. The ques- tion has lost none of its import for you to- day, though it may be answered in a fuller light. If there be a life beyond the grave — and who amongst you will dare to say in his best and wisest hours there is not ? — it is a strange journey upon which the soul must go. A visit to a patient, to-morrow, may start you upon it. Whither will it lead ? What is the road that you must travel ? Have you made preparation ? Is there a map of the country through which you pass ? Have you a guide, a companion? Will there be a hostelry, or THE ART OF HEALING. 1 13 perchance a home ? Some of us think, and indeed, there are profound experiences of the inner soul whereby we say we know, that we have found those things which make all the prospect assured, the future without careful- ness, because in the present we have the ear- nest, the pledge for all that now may be un- known. It was a Physician who gave us the cheering knowledge. He is the Healer of all human woes, Healer of yours if you but seek His skill, and trust Him utterly ; and having made whole, then He teaches, guides, and saves. RELIGION AND ART. Exodus XXXV., 30-35. — And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the Lord hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah : and he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of work- manship ; and to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in the cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work. And he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he and Aholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that de- vise cunning work. RELIGION AND ART. The subject which demands our attention this morning, is perhaps of more general in- terest than any of those which have entered into our present course. In a certain sense it is not so technical, or at least there is a wider and more popular interest taken in the subject, and accordingly no man feels that he is quite a layman in relation to questions of art. Few persons will abstain from express- ing an opinion upon the artist's labor. Everyone can hear a piece of music, every- one can see a statue or a painting. The work of the architect is manifest, public. The passer by, though a fool, conceives himself able to judge whether a building be propor- tionate or monstrous, vast or mean, beautiful or shapeless — and perhaps this popular opin- ion has some truth in it, for while other stud- Il8 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. ies are more or less technical or professional, this is human, world-wide, universal. At the present time, too, there is what we may call a " rage for art." It has become a fashion. The development of wealth, and the extension of knowledge, together with the application of the results of scientific discov- eries to some of the arts, have combined to scatter widely the creations of the artist's ge- nius. Music is made popular, and even sculpture, the rarest of the arts, by the in- creased power of working in plastic methods, has been placed, in some of its forms, within the reach of persons of the narrowest means. Hence, a demand for objects of art has sprung up, and the supply of art-workers has accom- panied and responded to the demand. Proba- bly at no period in the world's history were there so many artists. Studios, academies, institutes, schools, rise on every hand. To- day it is not the patrician who patronizes art, but the people ; and the sense of art, the un- derstanding of art, is supposed at least to be as widespread as the market. RELIGION AND ART. 119 In some quarters, especially where wealth has much accumulated, this taste for the pro- duction of art is a kind of fashion. It is taken up like any other fashion. Some make it a pursuit, a hobby, but the majority are drawn into it only as the straws in the river, because they always go with the stream. From this cause, we find ourselves in a whirlpool, we might almost say a chaos of ar- tistic opinions. A thousand schools contend for mastery, and with a sublime catholicity, the thousand schools are admitted by the art- devotee ; each one is accepted, each one is petted ; pieces, illustrative of each, are careful- ly bought and highly prized, until our homes come to be almost like museums, or still more like those strange collections of curiosity shops, whither gravitate all objects of human interest, and where they are heaped, without plan or method, or arrangement — grotesque, unutterable, ludicrous. In some cases, individual artists are able to make themselves of such note as to dominate the rage for a little, and even to stand out, 120 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. prominent and observed. They may create a school of art, and for a short while impress their manner upon the social fashion, but gen- erally the democratic tendency of the times is too strong, even for the greatest genius, and he must drop into the crowd, or wait for that posterity, which will preserve his memory and name, and let the multitude go down into their proper and eternal oblivion. We have schools of criticism too. The ex- igencies of a reading public react upon the writers of the day, and the passing publica- tions of the hour must, of course, judge the performance of the artist and direct the taste of the people. Here and there a skilful au- thor makes himself heard. If an honest and strong man, he may indeed add to the stock of human knowledge in the sphere of criti- cism, but for the most part the roar and bab- blement of the day are too noisy, and men are too hurried to care for study. They want something bright and short, and appo- site ; and so the patchwork of our instruction keeps continually growing. Principles are RELIGION AND ART. 121 ignored. The great laws of philosophy are known only by the few. Profound investiga- tion is at a discount, and the chaos of art-pro- ductions is only equalled by the formless void of criticisms upon them. To this must be added the whims and fan- cies of the buyers and patrons of art. Power to purchase does not by any means imply power to judge. The necessities of uphols- tery will sometimes determine the forma- tion of a gallery. Some men judge pictures by the prices which they have realized, and it needs a rare moral heroism for an artist, or even for a whole race of artists, to stand up against the influence of the picture-dealer and the picture-buyer. Thus the lower becomes the lord of the higher, arid a slav- ery is introduced as degrading as that which belonged to the old days of the Roman Empire, when oftentimes the scholars, the teachers, and the artists of the age, were be- neath the yoke of servitude in some patrician family. In such a condition of things it may well 122 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. seem hopeless to discover any relation be- tween religion and art. I suppose, the men- tion of such relation will suggest to many what seems in our time the only link which connects these two spheres of human activity — namely, the use of art for the purposes of decorating the outer aspects of religious ser- vices. Of course, it will be said, art comes in very properly to aid religion, when we build fine churches or cathedrals ; when we set up our painted windows, through which the sun- light streams, charged by the tints of saints and confessors, and angels with the dim re- ligious light that fitly belongs to the solemn scenes of human devotion. Let the sculptor hew out our altars, or carve into the stony foliage the chapiters of columns, the bosses of the leaping arch. Summon the painter to place upon the walls the records of the an- cient days of faith, or even the lineaments of Him whom we adore, or the " mother of God " and " Queen of Heaven." Have we not priests who minister ? Clothe them, then, in beautiful garments, and give to the very rai- RELIGION AND ART. 1 23 ment of the minister the significance of the office he discharges. And though this may belong rather to some sections of the church, who is there that will object to the services of the musician, that with the strains of beauty we may worship, or better still, hear other people worship God? Let the pealing organ blow To the full-voic'd quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As they, with sweetness thro' mine car, Dissolve me into ecstacics And bring all heaven before mine eyes. Yes ! these are the services which art may render to religion. But let me at the outset declare that this is not the relation which I propose to consider. I am not altogether assured that such service to religion rendered by art has been well for either art or religion. I know how much religion in all ages has inspired art, but it is doubtful, whether that inspiration has not served to cramp and to narrow the energies of the artist, while the purity of religion has been sullied, and often, 124 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. its spirituality lost, by the ministration of art *to the services and forms of the church. Far other than this, far deeper, is that relation which I propose to discuss. And at the risk of appearing very tedious, I must ask you to accompany me in that analysis by which I think we shall find that the ultimate resolution of art brings us to religion, and upon which unity of ultimate cause I base my appeal to the artist on behalf of religion ; and even more than this, I shall claim from him in his fidelity to his own sphere, that service which is only truly rendered when it is rendered to God alone. When man begins to find himself in rela- tion to the outer world, and endeavors to in- terrogate his own consciousness as to the effect produced upon him by the influence of those external circumstances, he first recog- nizes sensations, each having its own peculiar quality, and generally associated with another feeling, that of pleasure or of pain ; in the one case tending to make him cease from that mode of sensation, in the other tending RELIGION AND ART. 12 5 to make him" continue or repeat it. Upon these sensations the human understanding operates. We remember, we compare, we abstract, we combine, and in process of time there is stored within the mind a number of ideas, judgments, convictions, together with certain habitudes and facilities which may be set in action by the operation of outward things, and even by the volition of the man himself. At length, in the experience of these conditions of consciousness, we come upon certain states to which we give peculiar titles. They are generally complex and may be produced by a variety of different external conditions. For example, we look out upon the sea. It is a clear, sunshiny day. A gentle breeze is blowing towards the land ; waves, not high nor tempestuous, break upon the shingly beach. As they roll in, they curl over and change into lines of crested foam, and then run up the shore like coursers with their white manes flying in the wind, while the rattle of the peb- bles where they break, falls upon the ear like 126 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. the sound of far-off voices. A few clouds lie idly in the sky, and cast their broad shadows to deepen the sapphire hue of ocean. Sea- birds wheel their flight, and ever and anon sweep downward and touch the waters, and gleam, for an instant, as they turn their wings towards us in the sun. A few sails dot the horizon here and there, while close beneath us sails by a lordly ship, with all her canvas spread, speeding to the haven which is concealed by yonder jutting point of land. We gaze upon the scene. Color, and form, and motion, and sound, all arrest us. We dis- tinguish, we compare, we discern, we remem- ber, we judge. But now through all this, there steals upon our mind a sentiment en- tirely its own — peculiar, imperial, delightful, and we say, It is beautiful. Or perhaps, we look out upon a crowd of human beings. They are gathered for business or pleasure, peace or war. Some we recog- nize, but the majority are strangers. We see them aged, young, rich, poor, men, women. Suddenly, our eyes fall upon one face, and we RELIGION AND ART. 127 are riveted as by a spell. The sweep of the lines is so clear and free ; the brow is white and polished as marble, the eyes full, lus- trous, deep with hidden meaning, and flash- ing with pleasurable emotion. The colors of the skin are soft and delicate, with a bloom like that of the peach. Now, the whole lights up with a smile that reveals the brilliancy of the teeth, anon, the brows knit and the face grows dark like the sky before a storm. Separating from the crowd, we see the per- son walk, lightly, firm. The figure, com- pact and agile, moves with ease and har- mony. Strength seems to be gathered into restfulness, yet in the repose of its well-bal- anced form the eye finds satisfaction and delight. For a moment, perhaps, we are drawn away from the special business of that scene, and we say, How beautiful ! It is not needful to cite. any other ex- amples. A score will recur to you — the tree full of foliage, the garden of flowers, the sunrise on the mountains, the spreading landscape, the snow covered plain. These 128 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. and many other conditions of the outer world will give to us that sense of the beautiful, and if it be connected with what is infinite, and out of proportion to our powers, or even to our imagination, then we give to it another term, the sublime. This is related to the beautiful, and differs only in that which we have indi- cated, the difference of proportion which the object bears to the human mind. Now it is hardly needful to show that this sense of the beautiful or the sublime is not the same as the conviction of truth which be- longs to the judgment of the understanding. To say a thing is true is not the same as to say that it is beautiful. To be sure, the beau- tiful and the true will always be found to be concurrent and in harmony; but things may be true Avhich are not beautiful, whether the converse can be affirmed or not. Similarly, the beautiful is not the good. That approba- tion, that judgment of the moral sense which we affirm when we say that a thing is right, does not imply, does not necessarily involve its beauty. Indeed the judgment of the good RELIGION AND ART. 1 29 may be affirmed where there is no sentiment of the beautiful, however the truly beautiful may always belong to the sphere of the good. These are different sentiments of our nature, and nothing is gained by confounding what are essentially diverse. Some have said that the useful is the beautiful. An appeal to ex- perience is only needed to convince the can- did mind that though it is quite possible to associate use and beauty, still in many cases an object may be useful enough while its beauty is far to seek. I need hardly assert the distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable. The latter is a condition of sen- sation, and only differs in different persons. There is no law of the agreeable. " Tastes cannot be disputed," is not only a proverb of human experience, it is a principle of correct psychology. But the beautiful is de- terminable. It has its law definite, fixed. You may say you do not find such a thing agreeable, and you speak out the truth of your own sensation ; but to say that you find something to be not beautiful, only proves 130 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. your ignorance and lack of cultivation. Beau- ty is an absolute judgment. It is really as independent of us as is the true or the good. It can be resolved by no appeal to the senses ; it is given us only by the affirma- tions, the perceptions of the higher reason. Whilst thus, there is the perception of the beautiful by the reason, there is also a delight, a sentiment of joy, which this perception oc- casions. It is pleasure or admiration. It is the beginning of love. It is one of the pure, serene delights of the soul. It is not desire. It springs from no sense of need, no longing to possess. It is a pure enjoyment. As says the great French philosopher, " Admiration is in its nature respectful, whilst desire tends to profane its object.'' In the presence of beauty this sentiment knows no longing. In the contemplation of the sublime it experi- ences no fear. Such is a very brief analysis of the sentiment of the beautiful and sublime ■ — the sentiment special, and the idea simple. We need not pursue the analysis any fur- ther ; though there is one point which is of RELIGION AND ART. 131 importance that we reserve, however, for a later consideration. Let us return to our consideration of human consciousness and endeavor to discover what is the next step in the mind of him who has been impressed with this sense of the beauti- ful and the sublime. Remember man is not simply passive. He is more than a mere recipient of impressions. There is within him a spring of action. He has powers, faculties, and these require, nay, these sug- gest and compel endeavor on his part. There is, then, a prompting towards imitation. Man sees an action — he will try to perform it. He hears a sound — he will endeavor to imitate it. He beholds a scene — he tries to recall it, not merely in the pages of his memory and within the halls of the repre- sentative faculties of his mind, but he seeks to make the thing itself, or at least such figures of it as shall suffice to call up again in the mind of the observer, sentiments simi- lar to those which he experienced when he first looked upon it in the external world. 13-3 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. Man is thus imitative. He must be himself a maker, a creator ; and as he speaks, or draws figures, or lays out land, or moulds forms, or heaps together masses, or blends colors — what he has seen or heard, he wishes to see and hear again, content, however, if the forms of his own fashioning shall suggest the ideas and compel the sentiments which the natural objects had produced. But here it must be observed that man does not merely imitate. He has no power to create again the forms and scenes which nature presented. The landscape, for example, was beautiful, sublime, but man cannot make a landscape. He cannot lift a mountain, de- press a valley, cut out a river, pour out a lake, or bid an ocean flow and ebb. Nay, not even the smallest thing in nature can man absolutely reproduce. A single flower, a sim- ple leaf, a tiny insect, are all beyond the reach of human faculties, and for that matter, man cares not to produce them. Even if he could make a leaf, what would be the use of it ? what the pleasure of it ? It is only one amid the RELIGION AND ART. 1 33 million leaves that nature forms each spring- time, probably, at best, not one of the most beautiful, the most perfect. What, if man could even reproduce himself, bringing to- gether all the bones, and tissues, the muscles, nerves and tendons, covering the frame with blooming skin and vitalizing all with the breath of life — what after all has he accom- plished, but to make another man? , This were not art, but only nature unnatural — God's place and work, occupied and interfered with by one who at best could only use the merest 'prentice hand at making. It is quite clear that man does not aim at imitation. The faculty which the beautiful wakens is some- thing other than that which desires to repeat the processes and obtain the results of na- ture's workings. It is the presence of that other element, of which we spoke above, which really gives the differentiating character to the mimetic ten- dency and direction of human endeavor, and here let us for a moment seek to discover it. We gaze upon a beautiful scene of nature, 134 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. a beautiful object of art, a beautiful face or figure. What is this beauty which we dis- cover ? What is the real object of that senti- ment which we experience ? Let us resolve all the forms and colors which are thus blend- ed, all the sights and sounds which combine to make up this circumstance of beauty, and will any of these, or all of them, viewed merely as sensible objects, supply us with that element which we seek ? Surely not. Does it not seem to vanish as we approach it ? Does it not elude our grasp even at the moment when we extend our hand to hold it ? In the physical world we have physical beauty, in the intellect- ual world we have intellectual beauty, in the moral world moral beauty, and yet the beauty is not the sensible, nor the intellectual, nor the moral. If then beauty is not given by these things in themselves, must we not conclude that the relation which the onlooker bears to that which he observes must, in some way, supply the element which we seek. In a word, must there not be the percipient mind before there can be beauty, and is it not some- RELIGION AND ART. 135 thing suggested to the mind over and above the mere congeries of external objects, which is the final element of the beautiful that the mind perceives ? Is it only the landscape ? is it only the fair face and graceful figure ? is it only the glistening sea, and the shining sky? or does there not break through these forms and aspects of external things something that is not sensible, not intellectual, not merely moral ? Is there not indeed, suggested, some- thing nobler than the landscape, something purer than the face of perfect beauty, some- thing higher even than the action of noblest virtue ? In a word, does not the beautiful con- tain or at least involve the ideal ? The scene of nature invests a presence, the face of man bespeaks a soul, the deed of goodness sug- gests a God. None of these things fully con- tent us. Their very beauty suggests to us something towards which they rise even though they do not attain unto it, and at the very moment when the real seems to be touching the ideal, then the latter escapes and is lost to us above the upper air. 136 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. Now I. think you will see the necessity and the law of art. In the first place, man en- deavors to gain this ideal, himself to enform it. He loves it, and though it is suggested to him in nature around him, he would fain himself create that which should express this ideal. He imitates nature, and it must be by form or color, by sound or sight, that he must effect this. To imitate nature exactly, with copy and counterpart that should only be the repetition of nature, would be certainly to fail of the realization of the ideal ; for na- ture herself has failed before him, and how can he expect to succeed where the great artist has not attained ? He frees himself from nature, wherever she has added to her works what is not needed for the ideal, and then giving freedom to imagination, he en- deavors to express in such methods as he chooses from amongst nature's own workings, that ideal with which nature's own finished scenes at first supplied him. And this becomes, as we have said, the law of the activity of the artist. He endeav- RELIGION AND ART. 137 ors to express the ideal by such imitations of nature as are sufficient to suggest the beauti- ful. To try to do more than this is to fly Icarus-like too near the sun, and to fall dis- honored and destroyed in some deep sea. To do less than this is to be a mere artificer, a workman, a laborer, perhaps an artiste, but not an artist. These, sublimest of all human kind, know only perpetual endeavor, perpet- ual failure. Their triumph, their perfect real- ization, is only when they, as all, shall gaze upon the face of God, and for this, none can be made fit, except by passing from this nature through the low portal of all-revealing death. We are now prepared for a definition of art, and with that, our analysis of the objects of art, for the present, will be sufficient. Art is that free energy of man, whereby he seeks to express his sense of the ideal, and to pro- duce in others the sentiment of the beautiful and the sublime. This is our natural passage to the showing of that relation between religion and art, which we are now, I think, able to perceive. I38 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. For what is this ideal ? Surely it is not dif- ficult to see that nothing less than God, can be the ideal of beauty. For the ideal must be the highest ; we cannot permit any rest for the mind that is seeking in the beautiful the ever more beautiful, and the highest must be God. The ideal also must be infinite, for in all conceptions of the sublime, anything that is finite, even the greatest conceivable, is still in relation to our faculties, and is therefore no longer the sublime. The infinite, then, can only be God. The ideal, moreover, must be unity, for a comparison of ideals must issue in the preference of one to the other — equals being impossible by the very terms of the problem, and the only One is God. The ideal, too, must finally be perfect, for the imperfect is realizable, and as such becomes only the object which suggests the ideal, and is not the ideal itself — and the perfect assuredly is God. God is then the ideal beautiful. Towards Him all forms of grace and beauty point. They are naught but the garments which he wears, naught but the beam of His RELIGION AND ART. 1 39 celestial light. The beauty of intellectual objects is only the suggested truth of God's own nature. They speak His words, they reveal His mind. And what is goodness but the showing of His eternal purity and per- fectness ? He is strong in all strong things, virtuous in all the virtues, gracious in the graces, holy in the holiness of each. Thou art, O God, the life and light Of all this wondrous world we see, Its glow by day, its smile by night, Are but reflections caught from Thee ; Where'er we turn Thy glories shine, And all things fair and bright are Thine. When day with farewell beam delays Among the opening clouds of even, And we can almost think we gaze Through golden vistas into heaven, Those hues that make the sun's decline So soft, so radiant, Lord, are Thine. When night with wings of starry gloom O'ershadows all the earth and skies, Like some dark beauteous bird, whose plume Is sparkling with unnumbered eyes, That sacred gloom, those fires divine, So grand, so countless, Lord, are Thine. 140 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. When youthful spring around us breathes, Thy spirit warms her fragrant sigh, And every flower the summer wreathes, Is born beneath that kindling eye ; Where'er we turn Thy glories shine, And all things fair and bright are Thine. —Thomas Moore, 1816. It will be hardly needful for me to illustrate my argument by some example, but those of you who are familiar with the noblest achieve- ments of the ancient artists (who continue for ever the teachers of art to the whole world) can easily read between my lines the interpre- tations of some of their great works which have remained to us until this time. I once took a child through the gallery and hall devoted to ancient sculpture in the British Museum. When I asked her, at the close of our visit, what she thought of the various statues she had seen, she replied : " They seemed to be all on tip-toe — as if they were reaching up to something." There could not be in child-language a better description of the true significance of the highest art. It is the endeavor to express that ideal after which RELIGION AND ART. 141 the mind ever seeks, even though in the at- tempt our highest effort is frustrated and falls short of what we would accomplish. An art that absolutely succeeds is impossible. An art that is content is self-condemned. I shall never forget the effect which was produced upon my mind when I first saw the Apollo Belvedere. Is it indeed the Apollo ? the Sun-God, the swift divinity of splendor, beauty, life ? Seek to catch the prevailing tone of that countenance, and it will elude you. Is it scorn or anger? Is it a noble in- dignation touched by some soft lines that I fain would distinguish. But all the char- acters of face, and head, and limb, and body only breathe that uplifting, that soaring spirit which the highest art must ever express. When the Ephesian had finished his work, did he weep, I wonder, or did he worship ? Tears for the power that failed to express all the divine — adoration for the divine that is in the ideal of the work ? The sphere of art is a lower heaven, midway between the earth in which we dwell and the highest glory wherein 142 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. hidden, even by the light unapproachable, is the everlasting God. It may be, perhaps, well to enforce my views by the authority of one of the greatest art-critics. Winckelmann says : " Among all the works of antiquity that have es- caped destruction the statue of Apollo is the highest ideal of art. The artist has constructed this work entirely on the ideal, and has employed in its struc- ture just so much only of the material as was neces- sary to carry out his design and render it visible. This Apollo excels all other figures of him as much as the Apollo of Homer excels him whom later poets paint. His stature is loftier than that of man, and his attitude speaks of the greatness with which he is filled. An eternal spring, as in the happy fields of Elysium, clothes with the charm of youth the grace- ful manliness of ripened years, and plays with soft- ness and tenderness about the proud shape of his limbs. Let thy spirit penetrate into the kingdom of corporeal beauties, and strive to become a creator of a heavenly nature, in order that thy mind may be filled with beauties that are elevated above nature, for there is nothing mortal here which human necessities re- quire. Neither bloodvessels nor sinews heat and stir the body, but a heavenly essence, diffusing itself like RELIGION AND ART. 143 a gentle stream, seems to fill the whole contour of the figure. He has pursued the Python against which he uses his bow for the first time ; with vigorous step he has overtaken the monster and slain it. His lofty- look, filled with a consciousness of power, seems to rise far above his victory and to gaze into infinity. Scorn sits upon his lips, and his nostrils are swelling with suppressed anger which mounts even to the proud forehead ; but the peace which floats upon it in blissful calm remains undisturbed, and his eye is full of sweetness, as when the Muses gathered round him seeking to embrace him. The father of the gods, in all the images of him which we have remaining and which art venerates, does not approach so nearly the grandeur in which he manifested himself to the understanding of the divine poet as he does here in the countenance of his son, and the individual beau- ties of the other deities are here as in the person of Pandora assembled together ; a forehead of Jupiter, pregnant with the goddess of wisdom, and eyebrows the contractions of which express their will, the grandly arched eyes of the queen of the gods, and a mouth shaped like that whose touch stirred with de- light the loved Branchus. The soft hair plays about the divine head as if agitated by a gentle breeze, like the slender waving tendrils of the noble vine ; it seems to be anointed with the oil of the gods, and tied by the Graces with pleasing display on the crown 144 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. of his head. In the presence of this miracle of art I forget all else, and I myself take a lofty position, for the purpose of looking upon it in a worthy manner. My breast seems to enlarge and swell with reverence, like the breasts of those who were filled with the spirit of prophecy, and I feel myself transported to Delos and into the iEgean groves, places which Apollo honored by his presence, for my image seems to receive life and motion like the beautiful creation of Pygmalion. How is it possible to paint and de- scribe it ! Art itself must counsel me, and guide my hand in filling up hereafter the first outlines which I have here sketched. As they who were unable to reach the heads of the divinities which they wished to crown deposited the garlands at the feet of them, so I place at the feet of this image the conception which I have presented of it." * What then are the practical results which we adduce from the analysis ? In the first place, it is clear that religion and art can never be opposed!' There is something of a tendency in our time to suppose that art must be freed * Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art, Lodge's translation, Book XL, Chap. III., Sect. II. See this passage, also quoted in Cousin's Lectures on " The True, The Beautiful, The Good," to which very suggestive work I acknowledge great indebtedness, and to the careful study of which I would direct the student. RELIGION AND ART. 145 from the shackles of religion, even from the re- straints of morality. Nay, in some quarters this is pushed into the extreme of making art almost a protest against good morals and religion. The painter, the poet, must be pagan, in that sense of pagan which is actually atheistic. .They must only express what is sensual, insphering the simply material in the glory and life of music and color. Against this, his- tory is so directly counter, that I need hardly appeal to the principles of. philosophy, but I am bold to affirm that never was there a theory which, if adopted by the artist, would prove more poisonous and deadly than this. Art would soon become only the minion of human grossness and shame. Genius would sink into the mire of sensuality, and the dis- honor of the artist would be complete, when his greatest triumphs should be reserved for the decorations, suitable only to the debauches of harlotry, and the strains of heavenly music should be discorded down to the incoherent utterances of the orgies of a beast. But art and religion are never opposed. 14-6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. The ends of each are one. The ideal of the former is sought by genius, and is found only in God. Worship is the expression of the faith of the latter, and that too seeks for the Eternal One. The ancient masters were almost priests. Not without significance were they inspired for their mightiest en- deavors by the solemn acts of an earnest devotion. The spirit which has sought and found its God in prayer, should not any the less worthily yearn for the ideal of beauty which nature suggests and art endeavors to unfold. To believe in God, to seek Him, will at least, forever conserve the soul in the re- cognition that there is an ideal, and he who once forgets that, or ceases to aim at it, must take off his artist dress and fall back among the common herd. Schiller sang truly that for the poet, Jove's invitation was ever given : " Poet, wilt thou with me dwell in my heaven ? Oft as thou comest, open it shall be." Silence may well fall upon the singer if once he holds that there is no heaven, and RELIGION AND ART. 147 that there is no God by whose side he may proudly sit, his dearest earthly son. I shall not here enter into the vexed ques- tion whether the artist must obey any laws but those that govern his art. I will simply affirm my conviction, that true art is self-sufficient, and to aim at anything else than what art de- mands, will be to cripple and harass the artist and spoil his work. But, while it is true that the artist must not be a moralist, it is also true that he must not be immoral. This is the same error, only committed against morality instead of for it — an error which, were it not so fatal in its results, would be amusing as ex- emplified by the licentious poets and painters of this age. It is enough surely for me, to warn the careful student against both mis- takes. They illustrate the old proverb of the meeting of extremes, in a most noteworthy way. And then, finally, it naturally arises from all that has been said, that the religious habit of life must be of important practical avail to the worker in art. Success depends much on 148 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. temper — that condition of character which is found in moral equipoise and self-control. Beauty is a delicate and evanescent thing. It withdraws from the coarse and the contentious, the unlovely and the violent. Very much, as we have seen, is brought by the eye which contemplates, the mind which observes. And what shall so purge the nature of the motes and beams wherewith no man can clearly see, as a faith in God and a humble worship of the divine King? This gives tenderness and zeal, and the artist must be tender and his nature must be aflame with a pure ardor. Art is a vain pursuit if there be not honesty and singleness of purpose, and he who knows God and serves Him can alone be simple, true, and virtuous. Art must be free, and the freeman is none other than he, whom the truth has made free. Over such a soul, low ends, imperfect endeavors, the gross passions, which physical beauties unidealized easily summon, will have no control. On his canvases nat- ure herself will pour her inspiration ; in his sculpture, the divine life itself will breathe ; RELIGION AND ART. 149 while the music that he sings will be the echoes — not faint and distant, but full and un- broken — of the celestial strains that forever resound about the throne of God. An artist once painted a picture of the last supper. He had bent all his power upon the central figure, and especially upon the head of the Christ. It was his habit to mingle with the crowd that surrounded his works in the ex- hibition, and listen to the remarks which fell from the lips of the observers. When the pic- ture was uncovered, and the people pressed to look, according to his custom, he placed himself among them, and listened. Many things were said, but at last he heard one man exclaim in wonder and admiration at the execution of the cup which was held in the hand of our Lord. It was indeed a marvel- lous piece of painting, but the artist went home disappointed, lamenting his failure, " for," said he, " I wanted no one to see any- thing but the face of the Christ." Ah my friends ! is there no profound lesson here for you, for us all ? That is the ideal of life ISO SERMONS TO STUDENTS. and beauty. The old artists knew it, and they painted and adored. Let that be the supreme object of your devotion. As artists, you will find nothing nobler than the Christ ; as men, you will find nothing diviner than that Divine Man. In Him, your art has its noblest subject ; in Him, your life can find its only true end and glory. RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. I. Timothy I., 17. — "Now unto the King eternal, im- mortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen. " VI. RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. Among the subjects which have occupied our attention in these sermons to students, there is not one that is so specific, and yet so general in its aspects, as that which we con- sider to-day. The theological student, almost in every case preparing for the profession of a Christian minister, is supposed to be the most professional among students, and is looking forward to entering a class which is most marked. Indeed, the clerical order alone, retains any distinguishing garb, and generally prosecutes its studies in seminaries set apart for its own special use. Other pro- fessions merge in the general run of mankind, but the ministry cannot divest itself of its notions of exclusiveness, cannot be free from the old ideas of caste. 7* 154 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. Notwithstanding this, the marked character of the profession, the secluded method of their study, the subject which is emphatically theirs — namely, theology — is perhaps more widely treated, and enters more deeply into the thoughts and pursuits of all cultured per- sons, than any of its sisters. Theology is properly the science which is conversant with the nature and actions of God and His rela- tions to men, and these are the ultimate questions of all human thought. Every study runs up to this ; every thinker, speaker, writer, treats more or less distinctly of the being and the laws of God. All of you who hear me are students of theology. The sub- ject of our discourse, therefore, is of universal interest and importance. We have said that theology is a science. It is sometimes held, nowadays, that a science of theology is impossible. In former times, this branch of human knowledge was recog- nized as the very queen of all the sciences ; but now her claims are disputed, and by some she is even cast out of the sacred circle alto- RELTGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 55 gether. Of course, if we limit the term science to mere objects of sense, if we deny altogether the possibility of the knowledge of spiritual things, if space and time are the only modes of existence, and matter and motion the only objects of human thought — then, indeed, theology may well cease to be a science, although, when it is thus abol- ished, its twin sisters, philosophy and meta- physics, must be in like manner destroyed. The discussion, however, of this topic does not fall within our province now. We need only remark that, necessarily, the power of verifying our results in theological investiga- tion is limited altogether to the sphere of ex- perience. We cannot experiment, and are precluded from adopting some of the methods of scientific procedure which are applicable in the physical sciences. However, we are able to test our theology by careful observation of that practical life which is the result of theological knowledge, or the theory of which is found by theological investigation. If the- ology is the knowledge of facts upon which 156 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. religion depends, or if theology is the science of religion, then we have in the phenomena of religion the materials of theology, and in the same phenomena the tests of our theolo- gical correctness. What, then, is the relation of religion to theology? They are not to be confounded for a moment. A knowledge of theology is by no means a proof of religious character, and many men are religious who are quite desti- tute of any scientific theology. Theology and religion are related to each other as science and art, theory and practice, knowl- edge and life. Religion is character and conduct, inspiration, conviction, obedience to law, fulfilment of duty, worship, prayer, praise, a holy living, a triumphant dying. Theology sets forth those principles upon which such life depends. It arranges in order the truths which are seen in such conduct, and considers the laws which govern it. Al- though it must not be supposed that theology is the science of religion simply, yet it em- braces this as one of its important divisions. RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 157 Theology deals with the nature of God, and His relation to man. As every science is dependent upon facts, theology has its facts, which to arrange, classify, and explain, are the functions of this noble pursuit. The sources of it are found in the objects around us — in nature, and the works of nature ; in consciousness, that world within, equal, even superior, to the wondrous world without. Theology finds also its material in the history of mankind, and finally and chiefly, in the revelation which God has made of Himself to the human family. As we have said, it is, in the very nature of the thing, unverifiable by experiment ; but its results may be tested by the illustrations of its truths, afforded in the practice of religion. The student of theology, indeed, every thoughtful man, will apply these tests to his thinkings upon the most moment- ous themes which can occupy human intelli- gence. To some of these I desire to direct your attention. They will be guides to our way, often rugged, steep, and in a shad- owy twilight. It will be well ever to ask 158 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. ourselves, whether the theology which we profess and teach be religious or irreligious. Will it deepen conviction of duty towards God ? will it draw us nearer to the Eternal ? will it fill our hearts with a profounder con- sciousness of His presence, His strength, His grace ? Then, indeed, we may be sure that our knowledge is true knowledge, for it has its blossom, flower, and fruit in the holi- ness and perfection of a Divine life. Our limits of time will allow of a reference to only three tests of theological truth. In the first place, it will be an irreligious theology if it furnishes its with such an idea of God as will not lead to a service of Him that is universal. It is quite certain that if there be a God at all, and if He comes into any relationship to man, He must be a God who is the God of all men, who demands the service of all, who is willing to receive all, and acts in relation to all. No conception of humanity is possible which excludes any portion of the race from equal rights and equal duties in the sight of RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 59 the Creator and Governor of all men. A God related to some, and not to all, is surely no God — no God who can demand allegiance, require obedience, and ask for worship. The polytheism of the ancient world is thus a theology which cannot be accepted for an instant. Its partiality, its circumscribed spheres of operation, its inhumanity, stamp it with untruthfulness, and the history of its development is the best proof of its falsehood. Its rites degenerate into orgies without the possibility of reformation, its corruptions at last issue in complete decay, and it vanishes before the truth as the shadow of night before the advancing sunshine. But monotheistic theology may be quite as irreligious as polytheism, and as little truth- ful (except in its declaration of the oneness of God), as the errors which it has supplanted, at least, in the civilized world. A theology which represents God in His relation to man as partial, as choosing some and rejecting others, giving ordinances which necessarily determine the eternal absence of some of His l6o SERMONS TO STUDENTS. creatures from His grace and favor — in a word, which presents the natural relation of some to God as different from that of others, so that some can worship Hirn but others cannot, in any real sense of that term, — such a theology is irreligious, and certainly untrue. Here, perhaps, a cautionary word upon what is called anthropomorphism may be of use. Anthropomorphic views of the Divine nature are such as conceive of the attributes of God as being like those of men ; so that we speak of God's love, justice, and power, as we speak of the love, justice, and power which men may display. According to some, this is incorrect — indeed, verges upon idola- try — and leads us to think of God as nothing more that a magnified man. But it is clear that if we think of God at all, we must think of Him in relation to us, and in some sort anthropomorphic views of God are necessary. Indeed, they are also true, for on the moral side of our nature we are like God ; we are the sons of God and possess the Divine life. But while anthropomorphism is necessary RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. l6l and philosophic, it may be seriously abused. We must ever guard against supposing that any of our conceptions of the attributes of God are complete and adequate to His essen- tial nature. They are still only sides of the Divine Being viewed in their relation to us, and therefore, anything which partakes of the nature of what has been called a " conflict among the attributes," is alien, even horrible, to the thought of Him who is ever holy, blessed, calm, serene. We must be careful, therefore, not to set forth any view of God so that we shall come to unworthy views of other aspects of His being. In the Divine nature there is an absolute unity, whereby, in fact, the various attributes are one. We may conceive of Him as thus varied, with diverse powers, but the Eternal God is for ever one in nature, absolutely one in the harmony and unity of His being. From this it follows that God must ever act towards men with benevolence and justice. The Creator of the ends of the earth will do right, and His loving kindness will ever be l62 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. over all His works. Anything partial, any- thing which is like favoritism, the neglect of any, the furtherance of some, is irreligious, not to say immoral, and theology must be jealously guarded against the approach to such an error and confusion. It may be here objected that such a limita- tion of the revelation of God's will to man has marked the teaching of the Scripture. There we find that He spoke only to certain persons, and through them to a small and insignificant nation ; that His revelation was not made to all men, and that in the final manifestation of Himself through Jesus Christ to His Church it is still with limits, and, as a matter of fact, only a very small portion of mankind have been made to know the grace of God. This, indeed, is a form of objection which is some- times taken by the infidel against the whole scheme of revelation, which is said to be par- tial and limited, while it ought to be universal. But the error of both objectors is the con- clusion that revelation has been partial. In the first place, there is nothing which RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 63 excludes any one from the grace of God. Even Judaism was able to receive, and did receive, persons from every nation within it- self, and to the enjoyment of its privileges ; while running side by side with the specific system of the Mosaic order, we find that God was operating upon people among the Gen- tiles, teaching, guiding, and blessing them. And who shall define the precise lines at which the Divine treatment of man, as man, begins and ends ? In Christianity we have a religion which claims the whole world, and is specially declared to rest upon the truth that " God so loved the world . . . that whosoever be- lieveth should not perish but have everlasting life." The mode by which God intends to in- clude all men within His grace we cannot dis- cuss. Moral forces work ever according to laws of development, and that a little one should become a thousand, and that a small stone hewed out of the rock should fill the earth — these are ways in which God has chosen to work, and yet we know that the 164 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. religion itself which is thus made to pass through processes of growth is absolutely universal, and must extend to every man. It is an interesting subject of research to find out how far, even now, while Christianity seems to be only partial, the work and influ- ence of Jesus Christ are yet powerful among those who have not known Him by name, and do not at all recognize that, in and through Him, God is operating even upon them. Of this at least we may be sure: God's grace, the scientific knowledge of which is Scriptural theology, is as universal as man- kind, and leaves out no place, no time, no people, in the sweep of its effectiveness. 2. The second test which we may apply to our theology is, that it will be irreligious if it is not in harmony with the other spheres of human thought and life in which we obtain knowledge of truth. Truth is dis- covered in other fields of activity than merely those of religion and theology. We find it in the Scriptures, but we gain it also from the works of God. It may be gathered from the RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 165 development of religion amongst mankind, but it is also derived from a study of the social and political life of men. But of this we may be quite sure, that whencesoever truth may come, it will be always consistent, always in harmony with all other truth. Truth is everywhere Divine, and among things that are true, there can only be con- currence, correspondence, and the most per- fect blending of all the particulars into the one universal whole. Perhaps the chief sources of truth outside of revelation have been physical science and moral science. In both of these, men have learned something of the nature and attri- butes of God, and there discovered the neces- sary and eternal laws whereby He governs the world, and in accordance with which He ever acts towards men. Now, it is clear that a theology which con- tains principles contradictory to those which are certainly given in science or in morals cannot be true, and from it, therefore, no real religious life can flow. In this respect many l66 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. of those propositions which have been ac- cepted as true upon the supposed testimony of Scripture have been found, when further light has been gained upon the subject, to be errors needing the rectification which is found in the harmony of truth. Here, especially, we miorht note the teaching which at one time was accepted as of distinctly Divine authority concerning the creation of the world and the formation of men and animals. To have denied that the work of creation occupied only six of our days, or to have believed that death existed before the presence of man upon the earth, would have drawn down upon the devoted holder of such views the anathema of nearly the whole Church ; but to- day there is not an intelligent man amongst us to whom these points are anything but the merest commonplace. Geology has given a new aspect to all our knowledge of creation and the genesis of things, and we have been compelled to re-examine the theological dog- mas which have not squared with the result of modern research. The fact is, that men are RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 167 beginning to recognize, that they have been often taking their own inferences for Scrip- ture, and holding these to be fundamental theological truths. Happy is that man whose mind is ever open to the light which God pours upon us from every side, and is still " proving all things," though "holding fast that which is good ! " This warning will apply to the mere literal- ist, as the former test which we have con- sidered, referred rather to the theologian of the schools. In a certain sense, we must be freed from the dominion of the Book, or rather from the sovereignty of certain forms of interpretation. Believing, as I do, that the Book is Divine, I have complete confidence that the Book will prove its consistency and harmony with everything else that is Divine. But we have not yet discovered the Divine interpreter of the Book, whose words must be final, whose authority none can impugn, ex- cept that ever indwelling grace and power of the Holy Ghost, whereby men may still grow and develop in the knowledge of the truth — l68 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. a grace vital and life-giving in the midst of all the stirring progress of our age. Some men and some churches have refused to allow their old theories to be changed in accord with the light of modern times. The result is that they have been left high and dry by the mighty, passing flood-tide of thought and life. They stand to-day without a moment's influence among their fellow-men. They repeat words which are empty, and reiterate beliefs which are distinctly contrary to the truth of God. 3. In the discussion of these two tests of a theology, it may be thought that we are moving in a direction which will lead at last to complete departure from all the old forms of faith. In a certain sense the modern devel- opments of Theism and Unitarianism may seem to satisfy our conditions. The univer- sality of religion, and the harmony of its truths with the spheres of science and morals, might seem to be fully recognized in some of the movements of religious thought, with which we are familiar in our times, that yet RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 69 can be called Christian only by a very vague and indefinite use of that term. Some of my hearers may be inclined to ask, what then, will furnish us with a guiding principle, such as shall secure us from a too great latitudi- narianism, while yet we are running on lines somewhat different from those once accepted by the church ? Are we to throw away the distinctive features of Christian Evangeli- calism which have proved the solace of so many, and have been the really dominant powers of the last two millenniums ? Our answer can only be — most assuredly not. The test which will now be proposed, and which is as necessary as those that have pre- ceded it, preserves for us the precious herit- age of our faith in the atonement and sacri- fice of Jesus Christ. We may advance it in the following terms : A theology can only be regarded as religious when it teaches, as one of its primary truths, a Divine action in respect of human sin. If religion includes the approach to God in our worship, and the constant recognition of 170 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. God's grace and mercy in our life, then the theology upon which it depends must deal, in some way or other, with the stupendous fact of human sinfulness. A consciousness of sin is one of the primary facts of human nature. Personal experience and universal history proclaim man's knowledge that he is under a shadow, that he has broken the law of God, and fallen from some condition of innocence towards which he ever looks with longing eyes, but from which he is ever driven by some resistless power. The history of all re- ligions bears testimony to this. No rites have ever been celebrated which do not include within them a confession of human sin, and in some way endeavor to expiate, atone for, and remove it. Every system of thought, every culture, which has ignored this sinful condition, has been only a passing phase of speculation, dying by its own inherent weak- ness and utter disagreement with the solemn facts of human consciousness. Pure natural- ism is itself unnatural, and humanity turns away weary, disgusted, because it has failed RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. Ijl to find consolation for its greatest sorrow, healing for its worst disease. I It is when man seeks to approach God, that he becomes most aware of his sinfulness. When the prophet beheld in the temple the vision of God, whose train filled the sacred edifice, and around whom the seraphs ever burned and blazed in the glory of their ser- vice of praise, he became profoundly con- scious of his sin, and of the sin of his people, and he cried out, " Woe is me, for I am un- done. I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips." W T hen the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ burst upon the astonished gaze of Peter, and His control over the natural world was seen in the miracle, the Apostle fell down before the Saviour exclaiming, " Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man." What are these instances, but examples of the common experience of mankind ? A sudden and overwhelming apprehension of God throws man back upon the profounder sense of his moral nature ; and in the light 172 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. which shines from the face of God, man sees and recognizes the peril, the hateful nature of his sinfulness. It is clear, therefore, that any system of doctrine concerning God and God's relation to man must include the fact of sin, must in some way point out a method of dealing with it, and such a mode as shall relieve the hu- man heart from its pressure, and take away its stains from the soul. Let us, then, apply this test in our theo- logical studies. It will save time and temper. It will guard us from wanderings in direc- tions where there can be no prospect of find- ing atonement or sanctification. It will help us to conserve what otherwise we might be induced to throw away, and thus the soul will never be left upon a sea the dangers of which are laid down in no chart, and over which it might be tempted to sail without rudder or compass. It is clear, then, that our theology must recognize human sin, and the deep convic- tions of guilt which all men feel. Following RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 73 this is the sense that our sin must be — I think I may add, the strong expectation that it will be — removed. But then comes the question, how is this to be accomplished ? The soul hears the thunder of the law which it has broken. Who shall turn the awful sound into the sweet music of approval ? The law is external to man, away from him, though decending upon him with its terrible sanctions. Suppose he ceases from his sin ; this does not undo the past. Sin remains an eternal fact, so far as man is concerned, and not all the tears of all the sorrowing ones can wash out the stain of a single sin. Besides which, sin is not only an objective fact in a broken law, it is also a condition of the soul, and it clings to man as the poisoned garment to the ancient hero, not even to be torn away by death. Man is powerless. This is clear. Where can he look for help, for deliverance ? The source of judgment must be also the spring of mercy. God Himself must supply the means of expia- tion, if the guilt is to be removed; must 174 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. Himself give the succor, if the soul is to be renewed. These are the mere commonplaces of per- sonal experience and conviction. But they are the profound, all-searching principles which must govern any system of adjustment between God and man. It is not our intention to criticise or defend any special theology in this discourse. But it needs hardly to be said that, if these tests are true (and we need not appeal for testi- mony beyond your own consciences), many of the systems of theology and religion which are now endeavoring to make way amongst us are decisively condemned. So necessary is this, that its recognition on the part of some of the ecclesiastical and scholastic theologies which have been and are still in vogue, gave to them their profound hold upon the church, and their success amongst mankind. Spite of their narrowness, of their verbal controversies, of their untruthfulness in many respects, men have found in them those truths which deal with the intense RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 75 needs of the human conscience. The ma- jority of people have not stopped to consider them as a whole, but have leaped with joy to their blessed teaching concerning sin and its removal, and have rejoiced in the strength and comfort which they have thus gained. This is emphatically the truth which the New Testament reveals to man. The sacri- fice and atonement of Jesus Christ is, there- fore, the gospel of humanity. Being this, it claims to be universal and eternal. Being this, it has been welcomed everywhere, and promises to win the world to its allegiance, and gather all men into its cheer. Apply these three tests to the doctrines of Jesus Christ. The most unpractised mind will not require that I should point out how completely they are satisfied. Is it strange then that we find the religion of Jesus emerge from corruptions, free itself from superstitions, disentangle itself from the ecclesiastical ming- ling with it of the absurdities of paganism, and evermore hasten to fulfil the promises made to the early believers, that He should become 176 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. the light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of His people Israel ? What the Scriptures have already revealed to the children of faith, the event is rapidly showing to every man, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. My closing words shall be few and practi- cal, and, first, to students. Remember that theological research is not necessarily religi- ous. A man may study even the sacred themes of God, and God's character and works, without any sense of reverence, with- out any consciousness of a life that is ob- tained from God Himself. Indeed, without special care, the pursuits of theology may harden the heart, and, by familiarity, render the spirit unimpressible to religion itself. The habits, therefore, of devotion, personal watchfulness, meditation, prayer, especially the active endeavor of a Christian life, are needed to accompany and freshen and vitalize theological knowledge. Be very careful of RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 77 dealing with the facts and truths of your study, as if they were the mere symbols of mathematics, scarcely better than the pawns and counters of an intellectual game. Thus dealt with, theology becomes diabolic, the mere mockery of God, and perhaps the most immoral influence to which the human soul is exposed. But when the intellectual study is accompanied by a truly devout life, then will this science give elevation to the soul, raising the mind, disciplining all its powers, and ever shining about the inner character and the outer conduct, as a light from the throne of God. To the general audience, also, I have one counsel. We have been speaking about the importance of a true theology in relation to a religious life. To some of you, doubtless, the very terms and methods of theological science are utterly unknown. Perhaps much that is said by a theologian is obscure, difficult to be understood ; and you may have felt that if re- ligion is so dependent upon theology, and theology is almost an impossibility to you, it 178 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. is hopeless for you to endeavor after devo- tion ; the service of God can only be for those who understand, or at least can with some in- telligence deal with the high mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Not so. The little child has its little plot of garden ground. In the extent of but a few square yards, there may go on processes which, in their investi- gation, all the learned men of all the learned societies in the world might spend their life- time, and yet only stand upon the threshold of the truth which the small patch of garden may reveal. The sun will shine upon it, and his shining shall call for all the astronomer's skill to explain ; the winds shall blow upon it and the rain fall, and what can the meteorolo- gist, even yet, tell us of these mysterious forces ? The chemist and the physiologist have wondrous books to open and to read, in the powers of the soil, and the bursting of the seed, and the blooming of the tiny flower. What does the child know of all these scien- ces ? Their very names it cannot spell ; and yet the little one may plant the seed, and RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 79 watch the opening bud, and gather a fair nosegay, and bring it as its offering of affec- tion to a loving parent. So, simple-hearted child of God, thou mayest tend thy plot of life in God's great garden ! The mysteries of the science of God and His life, His dealings with thyself, thou canst not fathom ; but thou mayest bring thine offerings of prayer and praise ; thou canst grow the flowers of piety and sweet service. Understanding little, thou mayest yet love much, and find at last that prophecies shall fail, and tongues shall cease, and knowledge shall vanish away ; but that love never faileth ; that love, indeed, is life, the very life of God, for God is love. To thee the mysteries of knowing shall all be re- solved and made clear in the holy sacrifice of the devout and loving heart. RELIGION AND LIFE— THE SUPREME STUDY. James IV., 14. — For what is your life ? VII. RELIGION AND LIFE— THE SUPREME STUDY. In the midst of the course of sermons ad- dressed to different classes of students, I have thought it well to interpolate a discourse of a more general character, partly to meet the needs of the average congregation, and partly because it seemed unbecoming to al- low the significance of the first service of the new year to pass by without notice. We are not observers of days and seasons. Ours is not the faith which believes that Heaven's relation to earth depends upon any time or any recurrence of the anniversary of even the most important event. God is always our God, and Jesus Christ by coming into time, and taking upon Himself the conditions of our temporal life, has made all time sacred, and every day a day of the Son of Man. 1 84 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. And yet, inevitably, certain seasons will evoke becoming sentiment and make the human heart more ready to receive certain impres- sions. It is, therefore, wise of the preacher to seize these occasions, and endeavor by their aid to fasten more securely the nails of conviction, resolution, and reform, which the masters of assemblies ever seek to drive. The new year is one of these times. Xew Year's day has in itself nothing different from any other day of all the year. It is an arbi- trary, customary thing only, and yet no one lives through it, no one spends the days which are near to it, without some solemn thought on life and character, on duty and destiny. My hearers are prepared by the mere fashion of the season to ponder more deeply, perhaps, than is their wont, those dread possibilities of our life, those con- ditions, cares and woes, upon which depend so much a present welfare and an eternal hap- piness. I therefore propose to speak, to-day, of that supreme study — not technical or pro- fessional, not the study of a class or school, RELIGION AND LIFE. 1 85 but universal, human, Every man here is a learner. In this pursuit all must share. In this school all must graduate or fail. I still address " students and thoughtful persons/' but, directly and personally, I claim the attention of every one to whom God has given the awful responsibility of living, and before whom there lies an everlasting career whose portal is death, and whose end comes never. My subject is, therefore, Religion and Life, or the Supreme Study. And in the first place, let us consider the object of study — Life. What is it ? What is its scope ? How wide are its limits ? It would not seem to be a very difficult matter of definition, for it is so common, so well known. Every man lives, every man knows in a moment what we mean when we use the term. It is the immediate consciousness of each living being, and yet there is perhaps nothing which so escapes us when we endeavor to lay hold of it, to perceive its essential qualities, and to ex- 1 86 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. press them in some terms of clear and pre- cise meaning. You all know how difficult it is to define life in its restricted sense, to point out the limit which separates the purely material and mechanical, from the organic and vital ; how the difficulty increases when our term in- cludes the vegetative and the animal, and finally rises to the intellectual, the moral, the volitional, and the spiritual. What is life? we ask, and the chemist and the physiologist, the physicist and the metaphysician have not yet settled the bounds of vitality, and agreed upon the terms of the answer which they will give us. But we are to-day, not men of science, nor even men of metaphysical philosophy. We are moralists and preachers, and our concern is with the phenomena and activities which may be seen in the manifoldness of human exis- tence, in the play of human passions, desires, energies, in the regulative laws of conduct, in the growth of character, in the universal development of the society and race of man. RELIGION AND LIFE. 1 87 Suppose we take our stand at a street corner in the crowded city, and look forth upon the crowd which drives past us like the stream of some swiftly-flowing river. The buildings of the town tower above us on every side. There stretches a plot of ground where sleep the dead of the past generations, but our concern is not now with them. Across the way rise the tall marts of com- merce. Exchanges, banks, offices, and stores receive and pour out again a busy troop of toiling men and women. Up the street yon- der, we catch sight of the corner of a build- ing where the varying claims of conflicting desires are adjusted, where justice is dis- pensed, where crime is punished, and inno- cence, wrongfully accused, is cleared. An opening in the street lets through a shim- mer of light from the river or the sea, where the stately masted ships or smoking steamers give us a suggested outlook to the far-off lands. Men, and women and children, on foot, or in coach or car or wagon, press along in their respective purposes of pleasure, pro- 1 88 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. fit, toil or recreation. The streets are full of roar and rattle. Above our heads trains go thundering by. The shuffle of footsteps, the confused sounds of busy trade, the murmur of conversation, the ten thousand voices of city life blend in a strange music, like the voice of many waters. The nation's flags flap in the flying wind from roof and turret. Mul- titudinous wires cross and recross the streets, upon which breezes, as they pass, play fantas- tic melodies, and along which there fly, swift with the lightning's flash, the messages of trade, of joy, of affection, the tidings of a world's life, the dismal details of our human story. High over all these there springs to heaven the church tower, from which ever and anon ring out the chimes or toll the hours, telling of the flight of time, presage of the eternal ocean whither ever flows this stream of life. Bewildered, dazed, with senses by turns arrested, startled, quickened, now in medita- tion,, and now rudely reminded to give regard to the external scene, we stand and gaze and wonder, and we say, " This is the life of man ! " RELIGION AND LIFE. 1 89 The scene is changed. In the seclusion and retirement of our own chamber, we peruse the history of our human life. Perhaps the page we read is the brilliant, and picturesque story of the Roman annalist, or mayhap the deep and philosophic tale of him who told how Athens having fought and gained the security of Europe's people, was herself over- whelmed and broken by her sister states. The gorgeous gallery of a Gibbon may be our study, and we watch with breathless interest great Rome toppling to her fall, while on her ruins rise the greater marvels of our modern life. The horrors of Revolution may enthral us in the flashing lines of a Carlyle, or the severer movement of a nearer writer may tell of the foundation, and the growth, the fortunes, and the glory of the Western World. Perhaps we peruse the columns of a modern daily paper. Damp from the press, the crowded page, that only a few short hours ago was swiftly grow- ing 'neath the printer's fingers, tells the story of the world's doings no later than from yester morn to yester eve. Here, we read how, five 190 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. thousand miles away, the armies are met in battle-shock, and strew the ground with dead or dying, and build up an empire or over- throw a dynasty that has ruled for half a thousand years. Here, a murder spreads its ghastly details ; there, a marriage rings its merry bells ; there, a lingering death lays low a teacher, a ruler, a master of the nation. Then come joke and pun, the speech of demagogues, the lispings of " fair girl grad- uates," the debates of senates, the rise and fall of stocks, the inflow of gold, the temperature of chilly frost or sweltering heat, a fire, a flood, a discovery, the long catalogue of Satan's devices, victories, the longer line of God's great doings in lifting the world to Himself, and bringing, one day nearer, the final victory of everlasting good. We finish our paper, we throw it into the waste-basket, or fold it up and start it off upon a voyage round the world, to let our friends know how things are with us, and we muse an instant and cry, " Such is life ! " Or, maybe we find the object of our study RELIGION AND LIFE. 191 still elsewhere. Not in the history of the past, not in the story of the world from day to day, but in ourselves. Locking out all the ex- ternal activities, forgetting all the past history of men, "far from the madding crowd," where not even the echo of life's cries can reach us, we explore the hidden secrets of our heart, we recall our own way, we interrogate our own consciousness. Which is more wonder- ful, the macrocosm of the great world, or the microcosm of ourselves ? Verily I know not. Passions sw r eep up from the deep caverns of the soul, and on the smaller stage of our own experience, there are the possibilities of dramas as eventful as were ever presented, when we . . . . "let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptred pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebe's or Pelop's line Or the Tale of Troy Divine." We too might sing epics that shall tell the tale of encounters, long wars, and direful sieges within the region of our own heart's beating. 192 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. Device and pride and envy and courage, greed and revenge, with pity, truth, and grace and love, are all within us. all alive, active, expressive of themselves, forming a world, varied and grotesque, pathetic, triumphant or disastrous, and all-absorbing as the great world about us. Within us, empires rise and fall. Within us there are battles, bruits, the quiet growth of laws, loved and loyally obeyed, the mighty insurrections and revolutions which make or forever mar a soul. And then memory takes up the duty and recalls the past. The frolics of childhood, the songs of youth, the resolutions of the opening life, the dogged perseverances, the ambitious quests, the helps, the antagonisms, the loves, the hatreds, the riot, the order, the obedience, the duty, the holy service of our lives, all troop before us, and we review the story, whereof we are at once the actors, the re- citers, the perusers, of these years that have brought us to the present hour, and with sobered spirit and chastened heart, per- haps with tearful eye (though happy if that RELIGION AND LIFE. 193 peace which the world gives not possesses our soul with a pledge of divine mercy), we rise to the common duty of our place, our service, and we say, " This too is life." This then is our problem, this is the su- preme object of study, this the study in which every one is called to engage, where each one becomes at once subject and object of the pursuit. How important is the study of this life — quite apart from its interest, although this is not slight ! A man has only to give himself up to the observation of it, and he will find that it ever draws upon him with increasing power. It is so varied ; it has scenes of so much beauty and delight; its least lovely forms are still absorbing. It appeals to the curiosity of our nature. All men ask, What is it ? and some men ask that question with an in- tensity, an iteration that belong to nothing else. But, I repeat, it is important that we under- stand it, for it is a practical object of study. We are part of it, we are related to it. It is ourselves ; and the modern poet who sings that 194 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. "the proper study of mankind is man" only echoes the answer of the ancient oracle, which declared that "the highest knowledge" pos- sible for man was " to know himself." We cannot do our work, we cannot enjoy life, we cannot be our best selves, we cannot " serve our generation by the will of God," unless we know this life, whose manifold forms and var- ied activities we have reviewed. Of course, in a certain sense we can live without under- standing much of life. But when we live thus, we are not much better than the animal, nay, we are no higher than the flower or the tree. This lives, obeys the law of its being, grows and puts forth its leaves, is colored, graceful, odorous, drops its rich fruit, scatters its seed, and dies when it has fulfilled its des- tiny in being perfected itself and securing the perpetuation of its kind. The patient ox that browses in the meadow or tramples with its slow strength among the corn it threshes, or before the groaning wain it draws ; the bird that flutters in the sunshine, or swings upon the branches of the tree, or nestles RELIGION AND LIFE. 195 'neath the eaves ; the fish that darts through the stream and shows its speckled back above the mountain brook or leaps at the fly- that skims the surface of the wave — all these live, and according to their law of life, live perfectly and fully. But we are neither beasts, nor birds, nor fishes ; we are men, who can, nay, who must look in and through. We have the divine gift of asking, what is this ? and why ? and whither ? and, at our peril, do we neglect to find the answer and then shape our life according to the answer that we find. Sometimes perhaps we may with the singer simply feel the joy of being ; we may say; " O gift of God ! O perfect day ! Whereon shall no man work, but play ; Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be." And yet the chief business of life must be working or playing ; we must ' do,' and for ' doing ' we must understand and therefore we must study this life. And the importance of it is only equalled by 196 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. its difficulty. Some of you know how com- plex is the problem of motion even of a single body in space. The complexity is increased when we would determine the law which con- trols the relative movement of two bodies, while to add a third is to find ourselves launched into the most intricate calculations of the highest mathematics. A fourth body renders the problem almost insoluble. And if this be true of the mere mechanical laws which control the movement of bodies, what shall we say of that vexed question of our many-sided life ! That crowd we saw down town, that multitudinous scene of human history, that press and strife of our own in- ternal condition — what solution shall we apply to this ? The man who can weigh the heaven- ly bodies has no scale which can hold even the spirit of a new-born babe. The alembic which shall resolve the most complex of chemical substances, loosening the subtle affinities which work out the beautiful forms that gleam in the flashing facets of the crystal, has no solvent which may evolve the hidden RELIGION AND LIFE. 19/ forces that play within the soul of the simplest peasant who does his hireling toil upon the harvest field. And then, added to these are all the difficulties which arise in the study of ourselves. Who can know knowledge, who can feel feeling, who can perceive perception ? Explain the human will ; begin its definition ; search its workings. It eludes you, and the very effort to look in upon yourself, causes the very self to vanish, or to hide itself be- neath the attempt to find it. The meanest, the lowest, the least taught can live, but the mightiest mind that ever sought to know what is this living, will at last con- fess that having known all, he only knows he cannot know, and finding most, finds last of all that most of life lies far beyond his finding. This, then, is our life, and this the import- ance, this the difficulty of the study upon which however, we affirm again, every one must be set. But what shall we say is the life ? for we have not yet attempted to define it. And 198 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. how shall we approach the study ? what are the aids which we may seek for it ? It may not be amiss here, if we ask what have been some of the definitions given by students, or indeed by masters — perhaps would-be masters, or accepted masters ; by no means in all cases true masters of the study ? Not a few, and notably in our day, con- sider that they have spoken the last word con- cerning life when they have resolved it all to matter and to material force. In all life the most evident presentation is body, and the expression of the life is always in some bodily form. Men are running to and fro. Men eat and drink, men breathe, and look, and speak. Air, and water, and blood, and muscles, and nerves — these are the elements out of which the structure of our life is built. We can draw lines and measure distances, we can sum up additions, and we show how all is only motion ; and it matters not whether the motion be of the one first atom of some living tissue, or the combined move- ments of organized molecules so numerous RELIGION AND LIFE. 1 99 that human calculation fails to count them, or so minute that the keenest eye, the finest in- strument, fails to catch them. Still all is mat- ter, all is motion, and besides, there is naught. But is this so ? we ask. Can you thus ex- plain life ? Have you not in the very process of your calculation, in the very steps of your minutest search, stopped the activity, de- stroyed the life, and lost the fine and subtle power which makes the human congeries of being just what it is, different from your heap of mineral specimens, something wholly alien and foreign to your gathered stores of physi- cal atoms, your calculated measures of time, and space, and weight ? The labored efforts to compel us to accept this solution are only the proofs, too plain and unmistakable, that the common sense of mankind, the consciousness of each man, is right when it rejects the ma- terialist's definition, and still asks with earnest impatience, But what is life ? And we find no better answer in the ab- stract teachings of philosophy. To have rounded life in a conception, to gain a clear 20O SERMONS TO STUDENTS. idea, to have sought the unity which shall have embraced the diversity of life, to express this perfectly in language — in a word, to find life solved in knowing, is no better conclusion to the study. One wise man called it vanity, and some have supposed him inspired in such an impotent conclusion — impotent, for men will live and struggle to live, though surely if all be vanity, we had better make no fur- ther fuss of living, but quietly and decently give it up. The old saying concerning phil- osophy was, that it was a " Meditation of Death/' as if knowing should only bring us to the end, the close, the nothingness of all. But each new philosopher has gone again to the problem — plain proof that he, at least, was not content with his predecessor's solution — and the common man has paid no heed to the conflicts of the schools, holding them but as babblings, and assured by some divine voice within him, that death was certainly not the end, the perfectness of life. What is life ? still asks the student. What is life ? still queries every man who lives. RELIGION AND LIFE. 201 And it is here that religion steps in and gives us her aid to the solution, and not only interprets the mystery, but adds the terrible sanction of woe to him who refuses to be taught by her. Life is not all you see, she first of all declares. Life is not body, not merely bodily activity. It is the outflowing of some inner, some higher, some altogether unbodily force. Life is the energy of spirit, and spirit can never be expressed in terms of matter or of force. It is more subtle than the subtlest power you can detect in nature, swifter than light, more impalpable than the ether, abiding, even when what you call the vital forces have worn themselves out and have ceased to act. Life is a beam of another sun than that which sustains our system, and gives strength and activity to all things therein. Life is a voice not heard in the rustling leaves, or where the sea-waves break upon the tawny sand. Com- pared to this life, even in the meanest, all the powers and energies, all the vast regions of the material universe, though it lie beyond the 202 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. furthest star that glistens on the bosom of the night, are less than the tiniest cell which your microscope reveals, more swiftly passing than the ephemera, which dances its short hour in the summer sun, and dies. See, yonder stands a grave and serious man. His hand is on the breast of that prostrate form. Slowly the throbbings of that heart have grown still, and now he tells us life has ceased. What is life, we ask, and he unfolds the awful secrets of that human body. He shows the heart, the avenues of flowing blood; he opens the mys- teries of tissue, gland, and nerve. He bids us mark the changes which food and air undergo in the living chemistry of that body. See how the carbon is burnt and supplies the heat, how the nitrogen builds up the tissues, how of the earthy salts each finds its place and discharges its office. Look at the fibres of the muscles, the wondrous complexity of nerves along which feeling and volition fly in swift and certain execution. The external emotions impel the internal activities, and the environment of force produces the individual- RELIGION AND LIFE. 203 ity of organization with all its manifold forms of life. And now all is over — the work is done, the fire is burned out, the engine is worn, the life is flown, or rather has ceased, and that is all. All, most learned man ? Go ask yonder weeping woman if that is all. If that is what she loved and trusted and over which perhaps she has broken her heart, and wasted her being. Go ask those friends who grasped the hand, and sought in the light of those eyes their inspiration, and to whom the now silenced voice was as a trumpet-call to duty and to endeavor. That is all ? Go ask the men who read the lines he wrote, who will a thousand years hence recite his sayings and sing his songs. That is all ? Go ask the crowds whose nobler instincts he summoned into being, whose life he conducted, and whom he has preceded — at least so they believe — into some eternal world where the broken lines of life shall be taken up again, and woven once more into a garment that wears out never, and whose beauty and per- fectness shall never be spotted or made less. 204 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. Life is spirit, undying*, divine — the very breath of God, eternal as His being, of the immortal essence of the everlasting Lord, O, what is man, great Maker of mankind, That Thou to him so great respect dost bear, That Thou adorn'st him with so bright a mind, Mak'st him a king, and e'en an angel's peer. O, what a lively life, what heavenly power, What spreading virtue, what a sparkling fire, How great, how plentiful, how rich a dower, Dost Thou within this dying flesh inspire ! Thou leav'st Thy print in other works of Thine, But Thy whole image in his soul hast writ, There cannot be a creature more divine, Except, like Thee, it should be infinite. Nor hath He given these blessings for a day, Nor made them on the body's life depend ; The soul, though made in time, survives for aye, And though it hath beginning, sees no end. Sir John Da vies, 1599. And religion has not only the answer to our question, but it affirms also a law which governs the life ; for only half the problem of being is solved when we have defined it and discovered its essence. The life, as we have RELIGION AND LIFE. 205 said, is manifold and divine. It is fluent, its energies are limitless, it seems wayward, al- most wanton. There is no chaos, no dis- order in the material world, but in the vital universe it would seem that this very liberty which gives it its difference, gives it also its misrule and its riot. But, as religion declares that life is the activity of spirit, and is there- fore free from the surroundings of the physi- cal, so also it affirms that there are spiritual limits, and these are the manifestations of the Supreme and the Absolute Spirit, by which our natures are to be governed, and (if not self-controlled,) must necessarily be subordina- ted and bound. Man is free, religion de- clares — absolutely free of sense, and matter, and force ; but man is conditioned, law-given, law-governed by the intelligence, and purpose, and will of the Almighty, the infinite God. God is thus the rule of life. He stands at its beginning and sets it going. He watches and guards and directs it. Every step we take is a step beneath His eye, and with His hand on either side of us, to keep us in the way 206 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. that He would have us walk, or at least to compel us from that path wherein we must not travel. And what is for each of us, is for all. God is the law of man's general life. The course of kingdoms, peoples, the move- ment of the race, the progress of the ages — all these are by God's will and according to the predetermined purposes of his sovereign rule. If you please, you can beat against this will as the bird against the cage wherein it is confined, and find that your struggle only wounds, only destroys you. You may obey it, rest upon it, as that same bird, when he spreads his pinions upon the driving wind, and it shall bear you up and send you on your course, and lift you to heaven in a glad flight of the soaring soul. " Promise and Potency" indeed! Is this all you can make out of life ? Religion, which shows you your- self and God, in the blessed communion of spiritual freedom and obedience, turns the promise into ecstatic bliss, and makes the potency an assured possession, a certain achievement. RELIGION AND LIFE. 207 And religoin takes one other step in this lesson to the student of life. It does not merely tell him what is life, not merely utter for him its law. It shows him the highest life, it brings the law down from the awful altitude of the divine Being, and gives it the form of action with which he is familiar, bind- ing it to his own soul in such an one as him- self, leads him on in a companionship of life transfigured by love which at once instructs, inspires, and saves him. Thus, after all, life, as we have said, is not only a study, but it is a practice. There is an art of living as well as a science. Men must know life, but they must also live. And this is man's chief need, and in meeting this, religion has given man her highest blessing. To know what he is and to know his law, and then without a teacher to perceive the awful gulf between him and his law — this were to curse man with that last and most awful curse of knowing only his despair, his ruin. But there is One who bridges the gulf, there is One who speaks, indeed, the language of the law, but 208 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. with such tones of love, taking, meanwhile, the hand of man and leading him, that man begins to hope, and hoping, steps onward and rejoices in the way of God. At last then, religion brings men to Jesus Christ. There is life, such life as God re- quires, but there too is grace, and love, and help, God's own, God's given, God's assured, and so love transfigures life, and lifts it to the bosom of the Eternal, and in Him who is God with us, we find that we may be with God; for He that hath the Son hath the Father, and that blessed Son of God is not only the Life and the Truth, but also the very Way to God Himself. So, brethren, my task is done. What is our life? I asked at the commencement — an all-important, all-engaging question, an- swered only, but then fully, in Jesus Christ. It remains only for me to ask you, What is your life? Is it still a query ? naught but a careless wonder ? perhaps a curious half- mocking doubt, perhaps an anxious, despair- ing cry? The wise man studies from the RELIGION AND LIFE. 209 best masters. Will you not seek the answer where only it can be fully given to you ? O Thou great Friend to all the sons of men, Who once appeared in humblest guise below, Sin to rebuke, to break the captive's chain, And call Thy brethren forth from want and woe : We look to Thee ; Thy truth is still the light Which guides the nations groping on their way — Stumbling and falling in disastrous night, Yet hoping ever for the perfect day. Yes ! Thou art still the Life ; Thou art the Way The holiest know ; — Light, Life, and Way of heaven, And they who dearest hope and deepest pray, Toil by the light, life, way, which Thou hast given. Theodore Parker, 1846. THE END. THE LIFE OF CHARLES HODGE, D.D., LL.D. By his Son, A. A. HODGE, D.D. With two Portraits Engraved on Steel by A. H. Ritchie. One vol,, 8vo., cloth, gilt top, - - - $3.00 The Life of Dr. Charles Hodge, by his son and successor, Dr. A. A. Hodge, is the worthy record of an almost ideally perfect career. The subject of this memoir occupied the most prominent position of any man of his time in this country as a guide and leader of religious thought, and this by no means wholly within the bounds of his own denomination. The influence he exerted was great, because of his consummate ability and the conscientious use and improvement of his natural gifts, but also, and chiefly because of his noble christian character. It was the heart even more than the intellect that made Dr. Hodge what he was, and it is this side of the man that is brought most prominently forward in the memoir now published, consisting as it does largely of his letters to intimate friends in this country and abroad. In his great work, Systematic Theology, and in his numerous contributions to the Princeton Review, it is the professor of Theology who speaks, but in his frequent and affectionate correspondence with his class-mate and life- long friend Bishop Johns, and with other intimates, is revealed his sweetness of character', humility, supreme devotion to the truth, and his holy life. The biographer has done his part well in sifting and choosing, and in laying before the reader the record of his father's literary and professional career, and the narrative of his home life. To the many hundreds of ministers of different denominations, who have sat at his feet, the book will have a very precious significance, but it will also have a universal interest and value. Two portraits of Dr. Hodge have been engraved for the work by A. H. Ritchie, one a likeness at the age of forty-nine, and the other from a painting by Ritchie at the close of his life. There is also a picture of his study. *** The above book for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent, uJ>oti receipt oj frice by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 743 and 745 Broadway, New York. The Origin and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated br THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. By P. LE PAGE RENOUF. (The Hibbert Lectures for iBjg.J One volume, 12mo, ------- $1.30 M. Le Page Renouf s great reputation as an Egyptologist led to his selection to deliver the second course of the already celebrated Hibbert series. His lectures are the fit companions of Professor Muller's, both in learning and in interest. The glimpses laboriously gained by the aid of long undeciphered hieroglyphics into one of the most mystical and profound of all the ancient beliefs, have always had a special fascination ; and the time has now come when it is possible to join their results into a fairly complete picture. Done as this is by M. Renouf, with a certain French vividness and clearness, it has a very unusual, and, indeed, unique interest. CRITICAL. NOTICES. " The narrative is so well put together, the chain of reasoning and inference so obvious, and the illustration so apt, that the general reader can go through it with unabated interest." — Hartford Post. " No one can rise from reading this book, in which, by the way, the author is careful about drawing his conclusions, without having increased respect for the religion of ancient Egypt, and hardly less than admiration for its ethical system." — The Churchman. " These lectures are invaluable to students of Egyptology, and as the religion of ancient Egypt stands alone and unconnected with other religions, except those which have been modified by it, itself being apparently original and underived, they should be highly interesting to all students of religious history. . . . It is impossible in a brief notice to convey an adequate idea of Professor Renouf s admirable lectures." — A r . Y. World. "The present work forms a remarkably intelligent and acutely critical contribution to the history of the origin and growth of religion, as illustrated by the religion of ancient Egypt. As a specialist, Professor Renouf is able to bring forth much information not ordinarily accessible to the general reader, and this he does in such a carefully digested form as to make the work entertaining and instructive in the highest degree." — Boston Courier. *%* For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of price, by CHARLES SCRJBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 743 and 745 Broadway, New York. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: May 2006 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 ^Mm ■ IH