A 560794
doubt that……
SERMONS
AND
ADDRESSES
IN
AMERICA
FARRAR
BX
5133
F24
1886
E.P.DUTTON & C°
حد مدحة طبية والوع
منكم ليه ما
לי

ARTES
21837
SCIENTIA
VERITAS
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
TUEBOR
· QUÆKIS-PENINSULA HAMON
CIACUMSHICE
ан
な
​SERMONS AND ADDRESSES
DELIVERED IN AMERICA
BY
FREDERICK W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S.31-193,
ARCHDEACON AND CANON Of westmINSTER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
31 WEST 23D Street
1886
BX
5133
..
COPYRIGHT, 1885,
BY E. P. DUTTON & CO.
Press of J. J. Little & Co.,
Nos. 10 to 20 Astor Place, New York,
ΤΟ
MY FRIENDS AND HOSTS
AND THE MANY
FROM WHOM I HAVE RECEIVED ACTS. OF KINDNESS
THIS VOLUME
IS
GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
374215
->
PREFACE.
THESE Sermons and Addresses are published in accord-
ance with the wishes of many who, after hearing them,
expressed a desire to have them in a permanent form.
As it was necessary to pass them through the press be-
fore leaving America, I fear that they may suffer from
the lack of greater time and better opportunity to sub-
mit them to careful revision. But, if only they are
received with a tenth part of the kindness which has
everywhere been bestowed upon the author, I may rely
on the indulgent welcome of many readers. And so I
send them forth, with the earnest prayer that they
may be blessed by God to the furtherance of the cause
of truth and holiness.
CLEVELAND, OHIO, Nov. 20, 1885.
FREDERIC W. FARRAR.

1
INTRODUCTION.
THESE Sermons and Addresses of the Archdeacon of
Westminster have the same qualities which have so
long won for all that he has had to say an earnest and
sympathetic hearing. They are the utterances of him
whom we have known so well as the author of the Life
of Christ, the advocate of Temperance, and the preacher
of Eternal Hope. They will appeal to and inspire the
same love of God and Truth and Man, the same
thoughtful interest in the things of the Spirit to which
his other books have spoken.
cans;
But this volume will also possess a value and signif-
icance peculiarly its own. It is made up for the most
part of sermons preached by an Englishman to Ameri-
that fact cannot fail to be felt by those who read
it. Something of the feeling which was in the preacher's
soul, as he stood in our pulpits and looked our congrega-
tions in the face, must still linger in the words of the
discourses, now that they are printed.
The sense of likeness with the sense of difference-the
sense that, being Christian men of the same race, we are
living by the same standards and seeking the same ends;
and the sense that, under our different conditions, our
methods of life and ways of thought must of necessity
be different-it is the combination of these two which
viii
Introduction.
makes the peculiar interest of England for the American
visitor or of America for the visitor from England. If
they were entirely alike or if they were totally different,
the two countries could not be to one another what they
are now.
And perhaps there is no kind of writing which
more sensitively feels this double interest, of likeness
and unlikeness, and more vividly displays it, than
the sermon. The true sermon has always its general
and special character harmoniously united. It is at
once the most universal and the most personal of
all forms of address. It must speak eternal truths-
truths true for all men in all times-or it is too local
and narrow. It must also speak directly to the men
to whom it is addressed, or it becomes too vague.
Therefore, the utterances of a preacher who speaks
out of an earnest, sympathetic heart to Christians of
another nation which yet is of close kindred to his own,
will always have a value distinct from that which be-
longs to all his other writings. Such a preacher has
come to America this autumn, and this volume com-
prises the Sermons he has preached.
Dr. Farrar has been for years no stranger to Ameri-
cans. But they who have long counted him their friend
and teacher, and who have now enjoyed the privilege of
looking in his face and listening to his voice, will treasure
these words which he has spoken especially to them, and
will keep them as a valued memorial of his most wel-
come visit.
P. B.
BOSTON, November, 1885.
CONTENTS.
SERMON
I. CHRIST'S LESSON FROM THE LILIES AND
THE SPARROWS.
PAGE
"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your
life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor
yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not
the life more than meat, and the body more than
raiment ?"-Matt. vi. 25..
1
II.-AWAKENMENT.
"Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest.".
EPH. v. 14....
III.-NOT A SECTARIAN CHRIST.
"Is Christ divided ?"—1 Cor. i. 13
...
IV.—THE LION IN THE HEART.
• Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young
lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet."
-Ps. xci. 13...
V.-THE RETRIBUTION UPON SELFISH SOCIE-
TIES.
"And when He was come near, He beheld the city,
and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known,
even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which
belong unto thy peace!-But now they are hid from
thine eyes."-LUKE Xix. 41, 42....
15
29
43
60
X
Contents.
·་
SERMON
VI. THE BEATITUDE OF MEN'S REVILING.
Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and perse-
cute you, and shall say all manner of evil against
you falsely, for my sake."-Matt. v. 11.
PAGE
76
VII. THE LOST SHEEP.
"Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which
was lost."-LUKE XV. 6..
93
VIII. THE LOST COIN.
"Either what woman, having ten pieces of silver, if
she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and
sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find
it ?"-LUKE XV. 8.
8....
IX.-THINGS WHICH CANNOT BE SHAKEN.
66
'And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the remov-
ing of those things that are shaken, as of things
that are made, that those things which cannot be
shaken may remain."-HEB. xii. 27.
X.-KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS.
111
128
• •
"But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the command-
ments."-MATT. xix. 17.
146
XI.-IDOLS.
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”—1 JOHN
v. 21...
XII. THE EXAMPLE OF THE SAINTS.
ઃઃ
"All my delight is upon the saints that are in the
earth, and upon such as excel in virtue.”—Ps. xvi.
3. (Prayer Book Version.)...
164
185
XIII.-THE WORK OF THE FEW AND OF THE MANY.
"By faith."-Heb. xi. 4……
202
*.
Contents.
xi
SERMON
XIV.-IDEALS OF NATIONS.
ADDRESS
'Keep, therefore, and do them; for this is your wis-
dom and your understanding in the sight of the
nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say,
surely this great nation is a wise and understand-
ing people."-Deut. iv. 6
I.—MODERN EDUCATION: ITS SPHERE AND ITS
PAGE
219
AIMS....
236
II.—THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE-
MENT..
259
III. THE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNITY…………... 269
IV.—TEMPERANCE ADDRESS...
277
LECTURE
I.-DANTE.
295
II.-FAREWELL THOUGHTS ON AMERICA...... 328
2
1
SERMON I.
DELIVERED AT THE CATHEDRAL, QUEBEC, SEPT. 14, 1885.
Christ's Lesson from the Lilies and
the Sparrows.
“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life what
ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye
shall put on.
Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment ?"-MATT. vi. 25.
I HAVE chosen these words for my text, only because
they form part of the Gospel for the day.
1. You all know, I trust, almost by heart, that lovely
and rhythmic passage of the Sermon on the Mount.
You are also doubtless aware that the words, "take
no thought," did not, when the Bible was translated,
mean as they now mean "be wholly indifferent to,"
never cast a thought upon "—but that they meant, as
in our admirable Revised Version, "be not anxious,"
"be not over-careful about." To take no thought for
the morrow would, in the present sense of the phrase, be
at once impracticable and immoral; it would be as much
against the precepts of the Old as of the New Testa-
ment; it would be contrary to the clear practice both of
1
2
Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows.
*
i
our Lord and His Apostles. The passage in past ages
was often abused into an excuse for worthless idleness,
for slothful self-indulgence, for pernicious mendicancy.
The perversion was inexcusable. No man has any
right to live on the toil of his neighbors; no man has a
right to be a useless burden on others; no man, unless
he be utterly base, will sit down at the feast of life, and
meanly rise up and go away, without paying the reckon-
ing. I need hardly pause to correct this abuse. I trust
that all of us, of every rank, of every age, have learnt
the dignity of work, the innocence of work, the holiness
of work, the happiness of work. I trust that the very
poorest person here present has a healthy scorn for the
unworthy indolence of the drunkard, the idler, and the
tramp. I trust that the most ignorant has risen above
the wilful error of those who choose to think that these
words abrogated the primary law of Eden, "If a man
will not work, neither shall he eat;" or nullified the
richest promise of futurity, "Now that thy work is
over, enter into thy rest." The idler and the sluggard
have no right either to heaven or to earth.
2. But while we thus guard this passage from a
wrong meaning, let us be very careful that we do not
rob it of all meaning. There is perhaps no part of
Scripture which we are more tempted to praise, while
we scarcely even attempt to practise, than the Sermon
on the Mount. It is so transcendent; so ideally noble;
it is so unspeakably superior to the prudential ego-
tisms of worldly wisdom. It comes to us so completely
as a melody out of a better and purer world, that we
are too apt to admire and to forget it; to glorify it as a
picture instead of using it as a chart. After dwelling on
Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows. 3
1
I
its music and its poetry, we carefully proceed to explain
it all away.
"Take no thought," "Be not anxious:"
strange exhortation! How many nominal Christians
even pretend to follow it! Go forth into the roaring,
surging streets of any of our great cities, and how many
are there of these careworn myriads, except here and
there some happy boy or girl, who are not full of a rest-
less and devouring anxiety about the concerns of this
life of this brief day, which, in an hour or two, shall
plunge into irrevocable night? They know that, at the
best, they have but a few years to live, and those full of
sorrow; yet they are madly absorbed in the desire to
gain things which, even for this brief space, cannot sat-
isfy. They are all madly absorbed in chasing bubbles, in
weaving spiders' webs, hewing broken cisterns, giving
their labors to the caterpillar-bewildered by the very
intensity of their desire to win that which does not and
cannot profit, even for the brief span and ever-deepening
twilight of these our saddened days. Yes, and they
will maintain it to you, that so it ought to be; that in
this-to them-unintelligible world, they could not
possibly get on without dubious dealing; that (as they
phrase it) "business is business;" that the Sermon on
the Mount is too romantic, too angelical, for the ware-
house and the street; and that the heaven, which is so
near to us, since we all may enter it, is impossibly far
away, because so very few of us do. And thus the voice
-the human voice-the still small voice of Jesus on the
hill becomes to us but like the half-remembered echo
of music out of some heavenly dream. We visit the
scenes of the Saviour's earthly life. We stand, as I have
stood, on the very spot where the words were uttered.
4 Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows.
The fowls of the air still fly around us, as when He was
there; the roller-bird still flashes, like a living sapphire,
through the flowering oleanders; the kingfisher still
keenly watches the water from the plumed reeds beside
the stream; the white wings of the pelicans still ripple
the azure crystal of the lake; the eagle still soars overhead
in the transparent air; and underfoot the flowers, still
in their vernal bloom, surpass Solomon in all his glory;
the pastures are still brilliant with the golden amaryllis ;
the scarlet anemones still glow like flame amid the
springing corn; the lilies still breathe forth their deli-
cate incense; the anthers of the crocus still bloom with
vegetable gold. Ah, yes! the fair world is unaltered;
the sky is there, the hill is there, the lake is there, the
flowers are there, the birds are there, and Hermon still
upheaves his shining shoulder into the blue air, and the
farther snows of Lebanon are still crimson with the
setting sun;-but where is He? To many of you, my
brethren, if you will confess the truth, has not that aw-
ful, that gracious figure of the Son of man, seated upon
the mountain slope, faded away into a sea of darkness ?
Does not His voice sound to you like the dim-remem-
bered story out of half-legendary days?
3. Alas! my friends, and why is this? Why has Christ
seemed to vanish so far away? Why to so many is He a
dead Christ, not a living Christ? Is it not chiefly because
the world is ever with us? because it has got thoroughly
into our hearts? because "getting and spending we lay
waste our powers? Are we not ever, and almost ex-
clusively, thinking of this world? are we not mastered by
the scrambling selfishness, and eager greed of our mere
animal and earthly instincts? How many of us rise,
Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows. 5
and how often even for a single day, out of the little
shivering egotism of our personal opinions and personal
desires? Whence has this blight of unreality fallen so
densely over the fair fields of Gospel teaching? Is it not
from the sensual elements of artificial life which have
blackened the air of the heaven which we have suffered
it to obliterate? And this is partly due to the fact that
we are so dead to nature. For the voice of nature is
none other than the voice of God. Our Lord Himself
tried to teach us that God, of whom we speak as so far
and so silent, is very near, and is speaking to us all day
long. The word is very nigh thee-even in thy mouth
and in thy heart. We think ourselves very pious, if,
with narrow literalism and stupid superstition, we pro-
fess to worship the words of holy books written hun-
dreds of years ago, as though they were the only voice
in which God ever had spoken or could speak to us;
and these books we too often use to show the sins and
heresies of our neighbors; and all the while we lose the
whole significance of our Saviour's lessons from that
other book of God whose secret lies ever open to the eyes
which will read it. The reason why we understand great
parts of the Sermon on the Mount even worse than we
understand most parts of Scripture, is because they are
full of nature and natural images. Men of the world,
men who are earthly and sensual, men of vulgar and
corroded hearts, "men full of meat whom most God's
heart abhors," smile, with dull superiority, at lessons
drawn from such things as lilies and sparrows.
"A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him—
And it was nothing more.”
►
6 Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows.
And thus they realize the truth of the apprehension
that a land which practically becomes to men without
birds and without flowers, becomes also a land with-
out prayers, without angels, and without songs: a
crowd of huge, material, godless cities; a dull, dead
blank of business and of selfishness, of mammon and of
lust.
4. And yet, in that very book which we profess to be-
lieve, and by which we profess to be exclusively guided,
exactly in the two places where God is represented as
speaking most immediately to man, He rebukes this
stolid blindness and deafness to His message in nature.
When, in the Book of Job, "God answered Job out of
the whirlwind, and said," what spake He of? spake He
about scholastic definitions of religious dogmas? or
about the thousands of petty differences of opinion that
sow the seeds of hatred and of disunion in Christian
hearts ? or about any one of the isms and shibboleths
of self-righteous churches or struggling sects? Look for
yourselves, and see whether He spake not of far other
things. He pointed not only to lightning and the thun-
der; not only to the stars and sea; not only "to the arch
of the day-spring and the fountains of the dawn;" not
only even to behemoth trampling the forests, and levi-
athan tempesting the seas; but also to the goodly wings
of the peacock, and to the eagle on her mountain-crag.
And when, on the green hill by the lake, Jesus, the Son
of God, the Word of God, God made manifest in the
flesh, "opened his mouth and taught them, saying,'
what taught he them? Was it about theology? Was it
about the petty verbal distinctions or paltry outward
ceremonials which exacerbate the hearts and pander to
""
Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows. 7
the conceit and cleave asunder the sects of quarrelling
Christendom? or was it about the fowls of the air which
neither sow nor reap, and the lilies which toil not, neither
do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these? Turn to the Book of Job—
turn to the Gospel of St. Matthew-those at any rate are
facts which you can verify for yourselves; facts which
we may try to get rid of if we may, but which we shall
hardly venture to deny.
5. "Why take ye thought for raiment ? consider the
lilies." Very beautiful, you say! A hermit.might repeat
those words, living on herbs, in the desert of the The-
bais; but is it not (to express the real thought of many)
-is it not mere "pious extravagance," when addressed
to us hungry men, who are not in Eden, but toiling with
the sweat of our brow for our daily bread, struggling
and pushing each other about in toilsome cities? No,
my brethren, it is not pious extravagance, but, if you
will take it rightly, it is sweet, homely, practical truth.
We are not bidden (observe) to do nothing for ourselves;
but we are bidden, while doing what lies in ourselves,
to put our whole trust and confidence in God. We must
till the earth, and sow, and reap, and toil; yet, but for
God's gift, not one ear of corn would grow; and in giv-
ing us the corn, He would fain teach us, at the same
time, that the living is more than life, and the body
than raiment, and that man doth not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.
God makes us directly dependent on His mighty power;
but to show that His power is all love, He stamps the
gift with his own divine seal-He countersigns it with
His own immediate autograph-of Beauty. This mar-
•
8 Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows.
vellous coincidence of beauty and utility, so that "the
ornament of nature is but another aspect of her work;"
so that, by a divine pre-established harmony in our
minds, the sun, which gives us light and heat, gives us
also, in air and cloud, the glories of sapphire and amber,
of rainbow and of flame; so that the flower which gives
us fruit may give us also "thoughts that do often lie too
deep for tears;" so that the water, which is the proper
element to quench the thirst of man and beast, is always
lovely, whether it glimmer in the dew-drop, or gleam in
the rainbow, or hang in fleeces of fire and amethyst
amid the evening clouds ;-this identity, I say, of use
and beauty, of ministry and glory, is, whether as a veil
or as a revelation, the most striking sign of the im-
mediate presence and infinite love of God. And this
was the lesson-the love of God as shown in the loveli-
ness of his work-which the Lord meant to emphasize
when He pointed to the lilies of the field. In pointing
to them once He points to them forever-to the poppy,
robed in Solomonian purple, "livelier than Melibocan,
or the grain of Sarra worn by kings, and heroes old in
the times of truce;" to the spring hyacinths, sprinkled
like dust of sapphires, in the woodland walks; to the
daisy, dear type of humility, with its pure star of ruby
and white and gold; to the pink and fragrant snow of
the apple-blossom and the May; to the primroses, clus-
tering in their green firmament, like galaxies of stars;
to the stubborn thistles, bursting into voluptuous purple ;
to the moss with its lustrous jewelry; to the lichen with
its many-colored stains; to the rose of Sharon; to the
lily of the valley; to the soft green grass; to the roll-
ing billows of golden corn. These, in their humbleness,
Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows. 9
7
in their joyful serenity, in their unimaginable fantasies
of balm and bloom, say silently to us, We, like all
things else, are God's gift to you; and we tell you, in
multitudinous voices, that God is light; that God is
love; that God is very good; that He maketh His sun
to shine upon the evil and upon the good, and sendeth
His rain upon the just and upon the unjust.
And the only proper feeling as regards them, the only
true way of realizing the gift and the lesson of the lilies
of the field, is that which made the Swedish botanist,
as he gazed on the gorse and heather in their intertis-
sued glories of purple and gold, kneel down, then and
there, on the green turf under the open day, and thank
God in an ecstasy of tears and joy. And I do trust
that this feeling is not in all hearts wholly dead. Some-
thing of this feeling it must have been, which, at a
flower festival where the rich were heaping up their
splendid fruits and costly exotics, made one little timid
girl lay humbly on the altar-steps her poor sweet offering
of a single daisy. It must have been something of this
feeling which made a boy carry with him every morning
a flower to his place of business, and lay it beside him
on his desk, not telling even his own father that he did
so because the flower helped to keep him from evil
thoughts, and to remind him of the love of God. Nay,
even in the most degraded, the feeling is not always
wholly dead. Not long ago one of the most reckless
women in Millbank penitentiary was found upon her
knees sobbing, and clasping something to her breast,
touched to the heart, as she had never been touched
before, by some blossoms of the white flower which used
to blossom under her windows, when the now depraved
i
►
10 Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows.
*
and drunken woman had been a sweet and innocent
child. To these, at least, the flowers had carried the
lesson which they may have for us-"God is love;"
and "as thy day is, so shall thy strength be."
6. And again, "Be not anxious for your life; what ye
shall eat or what ye shall drink.” "Behold the fowls of
air, that they sow not, neither do they reap, and your
Heavenly Father feedeth them." Might not this exqui-
site illustration have furnished its own antidote against
misrepresentation? God feedeth them; but they do
nothing for themselves? Why, the whole joy of the life
of the birds of heaven is in its eager industry! When
you see the swallow, reflecting the sea-blue light from its
wings, do you think that its darting hither and thither is
but a "flashing sport ?" Have you ever watched the
kestrel, now soaring high in air, now wheeling round and
round in ever-narrowing circles, now facing the wind in
quivering poise with its paired half-moon wings, then
dashing with one swoop upon its prey? Have you not
all sometimes heard the sea-gulls uttering their plaintive
wail, as, with the slow waft of their white wings, they
hover above the surge? Or the gannet, hurling itself
down like a thunderbolt from its perpendicular height,
to strike some fish which its keen eye sees glittering deep
under the waves? Or, if you have not seen these fair
creatures of God, you may at least learn of the pigeons,
with the lustre as of amethyst embathed in emerald on
their shining necks, as they seek the food which man's
kindness gives them; or the numberless city spar-
rows, humblest and most despised of God's creatures, of
which yet not one falleth to the ground without our
Father's will? Did Jesus then point to the birds of
Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows. II
+
i
the air as though they set us an example of greedy de-
pendence, or of lazy sloth? Nay, not so. That which
He giveth them they gather; He openeth His hand,
and they, unanxious about the morrow, guided by un-
reflecting instinct, toiling for what God gives, are filled
with food. The simplicity of a beautiful and trustful
instinct looks not in vain to God. "That little fel-
low," said Luther, of a bird going to roost, "has
chosen his shelter, and is quietly rocking himself to
sleep without a care for to-morrow's lodging, calmly
holding on to his little twig, and leaving God to think
for him." And thus, what Christ would tell us is that
the flowers, by the divine hieroglyphics of their ephem-
eral beauty, teach us that God loves us; and the birds,
by their divinely implanted instinct of strenuous trust,
in every varying gleam upon their plumage, in every
beat of their quivering wings, in every warbled melody
of their natural joy, say to us, "Fear not; be not anx-
ious; your Heavenly Father feedeth us; and are not ye
of much more value than we are-of more value than
many sparrows ?"
Here, then, are the lessons of this passage; I don't
know whether you would call them the Gospel or not,
but Christ taught them, and He, I suppose, knew bet-
ter than modern Pharisees. Do your work in quiet-
ness and confidence; do your duty without anxiety;
and He who, even in the desert, spreads His table for
the birds, and He who clothes the flowers in a vesture
more gorgeous than the crimson robes of kings, will
feed and clothe you. That trust which unconsciously
* See Martineau, Hours of Thought.
2
12 Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows.
God's humbler creatures show, that do ye show reflect-
ingly and consciously. Trust in God for these lower
things, because there are higher things which he has
given and will give to you. Do not degrade and drag
down your life by the spirit of mean, selfish, grudging,
untrustful accumulation. If you seek first the king-
dom of God, all these other things shall be added unto
you. There is nothing wrong in your trade, and your
merchandise, and your daily work to earn your own
living; so far from being a rival business to these, the
seeking of the kingdom of heaven is a divine law,
which should regulate, a divine temper which should
pervade and transfigure them. Only for the sake of
your own souls, for the sake of all that makes life life,
for the sake alike of your temporal and eternal happi-
ness, do not seek the dross of earth more, and love it
better than the gold of heaven. Let conscience and
faith enter into every necessary act of daily life. Learn
to discriminate the transcendent. Learn to feel habitu-
ally that the life, the true life, the spiritual life is more
than food, and the body than raiment. Let justice,
goodness, kindness, purity be our aim, not the selfish
scramble of scheming competition, not the brutal appe-
tencies of sensual desire. Do not let your daily neces-
sities blunt the edge of your ideal aspirations. Do not
sink into mere money-making machines. Man lives,
indeed, by bread; but, oh! remember that he doth not
live by bread alone. Two classes of interests daily
appeal to us with intense persistence-the lower and the
higher; the earthly and the divine; those of the ani-
mal and those of the spiritual nature. On the one side
money, self-importance, power, comfort, pleasure, grasp

Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows. 13
us with the attraction of their nearness, and of their
coarse reality; on the other hand, calling to us as with
sweet, far voices from the invisible world, are grace,
contentment, trust, duty, thankfulness for undeserved
mercies, a desire to give rather than to receive, the holy
readiness to spend and be spent for the good of others,
not our own.
So shall we indeed have learned the meaning of
the Sermon on the Mount, the lesson which-that we
might learn it the better, that it might the more deeply
be graved upon our memory, that it might the more
constantly be brought to our recollection-the Lord of
our souls wrote in plainest letters on the Book of the
Universe, and attached to the commonest sights and
sounds of our daily life. He wrote the strong, neces-
sary, simple lesson, and he illuminated with letters of
light and loveliness the missal in which it was written
down. If we carry it with us, the very world we live
on, the very ground we tread, the very air we breathe
will be beautiful and vocal with heavenly messages, and
Every bird that sings,
And every flower that stars the elastic sod,
And every breath the radiant summer brings
To the pure spirit, be a word of God."
It will bid us thank God for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life; it will bid us thank
Him with yet more heartfelt gratitude for our redemp-
tion, for our immortality; for Him who said, “I am
the bread of life;" for Him who promised, "He that
cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth
on me shall never thirst." And that message will fur-
"
3
ર
14 Christ's Lesson from Lilies and Sparrows.
ther say to us, "To God, who gives us all, shall we give
nothing? To Him, the Lord of our life, shall we have
nothing to offer when death comes but 'the dust of our
mortal bodies and the shipwreck of immortal souls ?'”
Ah! let us strive more perfectly to learn this lesson,
which Christ taught from the lilies and the sparrows,
to those poor, suffering, hungry, thirsty multitudes, in
His first great sermon-His Sermon on the Mount. So
shall we rise above the fret and faithlessness of worldly
anxieties, and the meanness of all those aims which are
earthy, of earth alone. So shall we learn His sweet and
consoling lesson: "Be not anxious about your life,
what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for
your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more
than meat, and the body than raiment? Seek ye first
the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all
these things shall be added unto you."
SERMON II
DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S, MONTREAL, SEPT. 19, 1885.
Awakenment.
Wherefore he saith, "Awake thou that sleepest."-EPH. v. 14.
In the great medieval allegory, he who, having fallen
away from innocence into sin, desires, with all his
heart, to struggle back from sin to forgiveness, must
climb up a steep hill to a narrow wicket-gate. That
wicket-gate is approached by three steps:-a step of
whitest marble, a step of dark and riven purple, a step
of burning red. They are meant to shadow forth the
step of sincerity, the step of contrition, and the step of
love. Have any of us ever seriously tried to take our
stand upon that lowest step-the step of perfect sin-
cerity-the step so white that it mirrors the whole
man ?
No eye but a man's own can gaze, almost as with the
eye of God, on the unveiled human heart. But when
men's eyes are opened, and they have been brought to
look fairly and fully on themselves; when they have
entered that awful solitude in which the soul is alone
with God; when they have been forced, or have brought
16
Awakenment.
themselves, to connect their own personality with the
shame and guilt of sin; when the voluble spirit of excuse
is at last dumb;-what follows?
I know no word which will describe the result of self-
revelation so briefly as Awakenment.
The ordinary moral and spiritual condition of most
men, in their common life, can only be pictured by the
metaphor of sleep. There are many degrees and varie-
ties of this spiritual sleep. There is a sleep of human
feebleness, which is a venial, if not an inevitable imper-
fection, and of which our Lord said to those slumbering
Apostles, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh
is weak." Far deeper and worse is the sleep of those
who, though they are not guilty of glaring and flagrant
sin, are yet absorbed in the worldly life; given up to
dissipations and trivialities; losing, for the sake of liv-
ing, all that constitutes a true life. Deepest and dead-
liest of all-like the sleep of a man in a burning house-
is the slumber of those who have sold themselves to do
evil; who work all uncleanness with greediness; who
have steeped themselves up to the lips in the grossness
of sensualism; who have given themselves over to a life
of falsehood, or avarice, or drink, or crime.
But so
common is this sleep in one or other of its forms, that
the Scripture is constantly striving to arouse men from
its fatal torpor.
But, my brethren, the thought which I wish to leave
with your consciences this morning is, that, whether
we are waking or sleeping now, our sleep cannot and
will not last forever. In vain you fold your hands-in
vain you say a little more sleep, a little more slumber :
you must be awakened. Either in this world or the
Awakenment.
17
:'
next must come the awakenment which results from see-
ing ourselves as we are. It comes to those who, though
they are often drowsy, are yet waiting for their Lord.
It comes to those who are living the empty life of selfish
worldliness; it comes, worst of all, to the hardened,
reckless sinner, who in a moment, in the twinkling of
an eye, shall some day be forced to judge himself in the
light of God, and to see his heart as it is in the view of
heaven. Think of it;-to each one of us-either by
our repentance, or with penal retribution-either in
this world or in the world hereafter-awakenment will
come.
It comes in very different ways. The wind bloweth
where it listeth, and thou canst not tell whence it
cometh, nor whither it goeth. "There are those to
whom it comes in storms and tempests; there are those
whom it has summoned in hours of revelry and idle.
vanity; there are those who have heard its still small
voice in scenes of leisure and placid contentment;
there are others, again, to whom it has come during
seasons of sorrow and affliction, and to whom tears have
been the softening showers which caused the seed of
heaven to spring up and take root in the human heart.” *
But when it comes penally, and in the way of catas-
trophe, it is then an awful moment. It is as though
we had long wandered in the wintry darkness, and sud-
denly a flash of lightning reveals to us that chasms
yawn on every side of us; or the dim dawn comes, and
as we look back, we see that for the long hours of dark-
ness our footsteps have been along the very edge of an
abyss.
પે
* Sir Walter Scott.
2
18
Awakenment.
""
My friends, it is only with a shudder that even the
saint of God can look into the abysmal deeps of his own
personality. When a man's eyes are opened he recog-
nizes in his faithless and wilful heart a capacity for
every form of crime. See how that awakenment made
even David cry with anguish: "Behold! I was shapen
in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me;'
and Job: “Though I wash me with snow-water, and
make myself never so clean; yet thou shalt plunge me
in the ditch, so that my own clothes shall abhor me;
and Peter: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, oh
Lord!" and St. Paul: "Wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death?" and St.
Augustine: "Liberate me from a bad man-myself;"
and St. Theresa: "Seeing my own soul in a vision, it
looked to me as though it were covered with spots of
leprosy; and Luther: "Oh my sins, my sins!" It was
this that made the great and eloquent Chancellor of
Paris, Jean Gerson, gather the little children round
him and bid them pray: "Lord, have mercy on thy
poor servant, Jean Gerson." It made Bunyan-until,
as he says, "The number got beyond him"-envy even
the lowest of God's creatures, because they had not done
wrong. It was this which wrung from Cowper the cry:
.
"We perished each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he."
It was this which caused the holy martyr, Bradford, to
exclaim, pointing to a criminal being led to execution,
"There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.”
It was this dictated the words of Ed. Irving:
"When I
Awakenment.
19
imagine my poor soul, possessed with the memory of its
misdeeds, exposed to the scorching eye of my Maker, I
shriek and shiver with mortal apprehension. And when
I fancy the myriads of men, all standing there explored
and known, I seem to hear their shiverings like the
aspen leaves in the still evenings of autumn." Such are
the confessions of the holiest, and so ignorant is the
world of the depth of contrition with which the true
soul is broken when it sees its own sinfulness, that it has
utterly mistaken these confessions, and has chosen to
interpret them as though they were the proof of vileness
in comparison with other men, the shrinking and sen-
sitive self-reproach of souls that desired only to be pure
as He is pure who "chargeth even His angels with folly,
and in whose sight the very heavens are not clean."
But oh! if awakenment have its awfulness even for
those who know that their souls are reconciled-who
feel that, whatever they may once have been, they are
now washed, and cleansed, and justified, what must it be
to the man, who, in spite of the self-revelation, still
loves, still refuses to forsake his sins? It is a tremen-
dous moment which first reveals to a man that he too is
hitherto a lost soul. A swimmer has struck out far into
the summer wave, and, seeking to swim back to shore,
suddenly realizes that he is helpless in the grasp of the
irresistible tide; boys have rowed their boat down the
river, and suddenly the white breakers gleam round
them, and they perceive that they are being swept over
the harbor bar into the sea; the crew of a ship which is
sailing through dense fogs, suddenly hear the sound of
billows on an iron shore, and, in a moment's lifting of
the mist, see rising before them a precipice of rock—
1
20
Awakenment.
does not the blood of these curdle with fear, do not the
hearts of these throb with horror at the sudden, awful
peril? Hardly, I think, with such horror as when a
man is first startled into the awakening recognition of
his own moral catastrophe, and spiritual ruin; when,
amid the bitter mocking of the fiends who have lured.
him to his destruction, he sees at last that the laws
which he has been defying, act, as he has been always
warned that they would act, with mechanical certainty
and irretrievable precision; that he too is a wreck, a
castaway, flung on the weltering waves of time, or
stranded on the naked shore of eternity. What must be
the feelings of a man who for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty
years has been outwardly honest and moral, but who,
suddenly grasped by the accelerating impetus of sins
secretly cherished, suddenly forced to own to the bond
to which he has set his own seal, commits a crime, and
is forced to sit down amid the ruins of his life? With
what eye does he gaze on the conflagration of his hopes,
which, as it reduces his future to a blackened ruin,
flings a hideous glare of revelation upon his past? "In
the remarks which you addressed to the Court," said an
English judge in passing the sentence of penal servitude
on the young, able, popular member of Parliament who
stood before him as a cheat and a forger in the felon's
dock, "you said that your whole life had been one seri-
ous and fatal mistake. I can easily believe it. The
mistake" (hear it, young men !)"consisted in the
absence of that perfect rectitude of intention, and of
that well-regulated mind, which are the only safe guides
in human life. The man who first deviates from recti-
tude, takes the first step toward a precipice, and he
Awakenment.
21
soon finds that to stand still is impossible, that to retreat
would be ruin, and that to advance is destruction.”
if
Ah! my brethren, let no man say to himself super-
ciliously in his Pharisaic heart, "What has all this
to do with me? I am not an extortioner, unclean,
an adulterer, as other men are, or even as these
publicans." Ye who know yourselves, will know that,
but for the grace of God, continually sought, none of
us is safe at any time, none of us is safe from any thing.
If, indeed, you be a child of God the golden chain which
holds you is safe in His hand; but if your trust be
merely in honor and worldly expediency, your passions
are but bound with a chain of flowers which one tiger's
leap may burst. The examples I have given apply at
least to each one of you who is living a life of sin. If
you be growing fond of any one besetting sin; if you are
laying waste the inner sanctities of your moral nature;
you are only depending on "the unspiritual God circum-
stance;" if you are worshipping success or money, you
may yet experience that he that doeth sin is the servant
of sin, and that to become amenable to stern human
laws may be a thing unspeakably less terrible than to be
ground to powder by those divine laws, of which the
human are but an imperfect expression. When nothing
of the sin is left but the ruin it has wrought; when
"the Furies begin to take their seat upon the midnight
pillow;" when a man is forced to face the fact that he
too belongs to the awful failures and tremendous ex-
amples which point to the world's experience; when
he realizes that the life, the one, the beautiful life which
God gave him—with its innocent childhood and golden
youth, and priceless opportunities-has been lost and
22
Awakenment.
wasted; that he has been an utter and inexcusable fool;
that he has but added strength to the curse of evil in the
world; that it had been better for him, at this moment,
if, with a millstone round his neck, he were lying in the
depths of the sea; yea, better for him if he had not
been born; then, in that moment, whether it be on the
glaring stage of public detection, or in the secret sessions
of the heart, the man must know what Christ meant by
the outer darkness, by the worm that dieth not, and the
fire that is not quenched.
And yet it is a most blessed thing for any man if that
awakenment-so he neglect it not-comes during life;
yea, even if it comes, as it comes sometimes, in the
very hour of death. To trust, indeed, to this is to walk
over a chasm on a razor's edge. A great writer of fic-
tion, describing the death of a young nobleman who has
been shot in a duel after a life of silly dissipation, de-
scribes the agonizing reflection which came too late,
that he might have been dying happy with children's
faces round his bed. The great poet, seeing in Pur-
gatory the soul of Buonconti, hears from him that,
dying on the field of Campaldino, his last cry for mercy
was heard, and as the Angel of God took him, the spirit
of hell cried out, "O, thou from heaven, why dost rob
me? Dost thou carry away the eternal share of him—
per una lagrimetta-for one poor tear that delivers him
from me ?" And perhaps some of you may remember
a scene in a great modern work of genius where the
poor, fallen, deserted maiden dies in prison, and a deep
voice of the evil spirit, as he stands beside her and hears
the last fluttering breath, utters "She is judged !"—
Ist gerichtet—but even there, from the upper air, thrills
Awakenment.
23
""
the cry as of an angel, Ist gerettet !—" She is saved!
"One," said the Rabbi, "wins eternal life after years of
struggle; another obtains it in one hour." If it seems
unjust to us that a soul should be saved as by one flash
and spasm of repentance, our thought may only be due
to our own gross envy and ignorance. It is otherwise to
the larger eyes of Him to whom Time and Eternity are
but one great "now"-to Him who, on the cross, turn-
ing upon the dying malefactor the kingly eyes, which
were beginning already to be filmed by death, exclaimed,
"This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Even
in the hour of death, then, awakenment may come, and
come effectually. Only, my brethren, remember how
much more often death ends-not in contrition, there-
fore not in repentance, but in dull torpor or hard
defiance.
"Lord Cardinal, if thou thinkest on heaven's bliss,
Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope;-
He dies and makes no sign; O God, forgive him!
But even when the conviction of guilt comes before
the death-bed, if in some it produces penitence, there
are others in whom it produces only wretchedness, and
in others only an unfathomable despair.
Wretchedness, as of him who, in the blasphemy of
unclean defiance, said, "Knowing that I am predestined
to damnation, I will give diligence to make my election
sure." Despair, as of him who shrieked, "I have
sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood," and
hearing the brutal taunt of his priestly abettors, "What
is that to us? See thou to that!" departed and went
away and hanged himself. The history of the Refor-
*
24
Awakenment.
mation produced an awful example of such a man in
Francis Spiera. Converted to Protestantism, but mor-
ally unchanged, he turned the grace of God into lascivi-
ousness, and then, in fear of the Inquisition, recanted—
first privately, then publicly-the Gospel truths which
he had preached. But no sooner did he get home than
he was seized with fearful torments of conscience. He
seemed to hear a voice, which cried, "Wretch, thou
hast denied me, depart from me!" No comfort could
reach him; he ceased to believe in prayer; he died
remorseful, yet hopeless. They who saw his end de-
scribed it as horrenda desperatio, and one exclaimed,
"If all the students of Padua do not forsake all their
lectures to gaze on this tragedy, their sensibilities must
be exceedingly obtuse."
But some there are to whom, as to Dives, there
seems to come in this life no awakenment. Shall we
count them happy? Happy-how long? Happy-till
when? You can appreciate the trembling rapture of
the awakening in heaven;-that bursting glory, that
infinite exultation, that triumph of peace indescribable!
What must be that other awakening ?-the awakening
of those who, willingly to the end, have broken the law
of God? "Oh God, they have deceived me, and this is
Death!" said a bad English king, as he fell back and
died. Ah yes, it is an awful moment when the gold
must drop from the relaxing hand; when no jewelled
star can hide the mean heart any longer; when
pleasure, which has become as loathly as it is impos-
sible, shrivels like a withered garland; when the gains
of ambition look as mean as the rouge and tinsel of the
stage under the dawn! Shall it not be as a luxurious
Awakenment.
25
dream when a man waketh to gnawing hunger and
scorching thirst? You have read of the young som-
nambulist of the French village, who, in her sleep, got
out of her garret window upon the roof, and, in the
sight of a silent and trembling crowd, walked up and
down the giddy parapet, and dreaming of a coming
festival-sometimes approaching the edge, sometimes
leaving it, sometimes, while they held their breath for
very horror, leaning down toward the street below-
kept smiling and murmuring her gay songs. And they
were powerless to help her. And, of a sudden, a little
candle was lit in an opposite window; it flashed upon
her eyes; she woke; she screamed; her awakening
was a deadly fall. It had killed her. Alas! ye who
are without faith and without God,-ye to whom at
this moment the world is God,-what are ye but
sleepers who, in your slumber, walk to the edge of an
abyss, ye too, perhaps, singing and dreaming of festal
days? For what else is it than a dream to take
shadows for realities and realities for shadows? When
one ray of light-one clear ray out of God's eternity-
shall smite your dreaming eyes, do you not fear that
start, that tottering over the edge, that death? Is not
your godless life pregnant with suicide?
And oh, God, that awakening! Another, not I-
another, one of the most eminent of religious teachers-
shall describe what it may be the terrible moment
when the Judge speaks and consigns the soul to the
jailers till the debt is paid. "Impossible! I, a lost
soul? I, separated from hope and from peace forever?
It is not I of whom the Judge so spoke ! There is a
mistake! Christ! Saviour! hold my hand one minute
j
26
Awakenment.
to explain it: my name is Demar; I am but Demar,
not Judas! What! I a lost soul? Impossible! it shall
not be so! And the poor soul struggles and wrestles
in the grasp of the mighty demon who has hold of it,
and whose every touch is torment. Stop, horrible fiend!
Give over; I am a man, and not such as thou! I am
not food for thee, and sport for thee! I have been
taught religion; I have had a cultivated mind; I am
well versed in science and art; I am a philosopher, a
poet, a hero; nay, I have received the grace of redemp-
tion; I have attended the sacraments for years-
nothing, nothing which I have ever been, which I
have ever seen, bears any resemblance to thee. I defy
thee and abjure thee, enemy of man. Alas! poor soul!
and while it thus fights with that destiny which it has
brought upon itself, and those companions which it has
chosen, the man's name perhaps is solemnly chanted
forth on earth. Men appeal to his authority; quote
his words; write his history. So comprehensive, so
kind, so profound. Oh! vanity of vanities! what
profiteth it? His soul is lost, oh, ye children of men !"
My brethren, remember, I do not endorse the whole
of this passage as it stands on the pages of Cardinal
Newman in terrible details which I have omitted. To
me it seems medieval rather than Scriptural; the
“Tartarian drench" of a powerful imagination rather
than anything which has been so revealed. But yet
the dreadful imagery may serve to remind you of un-
speakable realities;-of the shame of that awakenment
when sinners call on the mountains to fall on them and
the rocks to cover them. Souls, which should have
entered into a world of light, clad in white robes,
Awakenment.
27
bright, rejoicing, glorified, as with a drift of angels'
wings-souls, for which all the golden trumpets should
have sounded on the other side, find, as they go to
their own place, that it is an outer darkness, into
which they must shiver forth as souls lost, degraded,
stained, ruined, the victims of the triumph of the
powers of evil. At the very best, it is for the bad man
a terrible thing "to die, and go we know not where."
To such a man,
"The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a Paradise
To what we dream of death."
My brethren, I love not the messages of terror and
of gloom. I have not, indeed, set the truths of life
and death before you as though they were mere dance-
music; a lullaby for baby spirits, a revelation among
the myrtle-trees by night. Be men! Face these realities!
You see what an awful thing life is for all who are alien-
ated from God; think you that death is less awful?
Think you that it is some extreme unction which will
mechanically set you free? If in life we hear so often
voices as of shipwreck on a shoreless ocean, what reason
have we to believe that those voices may not catch a
tone of yet more thrilling agony beyond the grave ?
But why need there be any such thought of terror for
any one of us? Has not Christ died for us? Is not
this the lesson of Christ's birth and death, that he lived
and died to save us, and all mankind? He offers us
peace here, and peace beyond the grave; and not to us
only, but to all who believe in His name.
All that we
<
28
Awakenment.
have to do is to trust in Him; to seek him now—now
in the accepted time; to love one another; love His
little ones; to work for Him; to obey His laws; to
spread His kingdom. If happily to us the awakenment
from the dream of sin have come not in terror and as
with the thunder-clap, but through still small voices, or
gently as the falling dew, let us try that those voices be
heard by others, and that their souls also be wet with
that gracious dew. He came to save sinners; He came
therefore to save us; and all whom He saves—all, all
the innumerable multitude who, whether their awaken-
ment came here, or in death, shall be gathered under the
span of that rainbow round about the throne in light
like unto an emerald; all, all of these when they awake
after His likeness shall be satisfied with it! And so,
my brethren, let us, while there is yet time, pray both
prayers for ourselves: "God, be merciful to me a sin-
ner;" and, "That it may please Thee to have mercy
upon all men, We beseech Thee to hear us good Lord."
SERMON III.
PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL, MONTREAL, SUNDAY EVENING,
SEPTEMBER 21.
Not a Sectarian Christ.
"Is Christ divided ?"-1 Cor. i. 13.
AMONG many perils which seem to lower like dark
clouds on the horizon, the one hope for our age and na-
tion lies in a faithful allegiance to the living Christ.
It was the lesson which He Himself inculcated again
and again. He said that all His people must share in
His divine life, as the branch lives by the sap of the
vine, as the members of the body live by the beating of
the heart.
1. The main lesson of the nineteen centuries of Christ's
history teaches us that all which mankind has ever
known of the best and greatest has been derived from
Him. I see no dangers to Christianity, save such as
arise from the errors and the ignobleness of professing
Christians. I feel no misgivings as to the future of
Christianity, if only Christ's sons abide in love, relying
on His strength. Then the waves of the sea may rage
30
Not a Sectarian Christ.
horribly, but they will only roar and strike and be shat-
tered into mist upon the winds, into scum upon the
shore. Then the heathen may rage, and the people
imagine vain things, but Christus regnat, Christus
vincit, Christus imperat; He sitteth above the water-
floods, and He shall remain a king for ever.
2. But though Christianity can never be finally over-
thrown, it may be, as in other ages, temporarily re-
jected. It may suffer an eclipse, disastrous, not indeed
to any who love the Lord in sincerity and truth, but
to the nations of a perplexed and groaning world. Can
one of your white river mists in any way affect the sun?
It cannot affect the sun, but it may grievously trouble
our vision. However dense the earthly fog, the sun is
still shining there in its unapproachable splendor,
though it may shed no warmth, no glory over a dark-
ened land. Even so "God is always in the meridian,"
though the faithless eye sees Him no longer. All the
atheism of all the world could not dethrone the Lord
of Glory, or silence the thrill of one harpstring among
the millions which warble their celestial music around
the presence of His love; but atheism may hide God
and His Christ from the hearts of men, and intercept
the blessing of His grace. Even this it would, I am
convinced, be powerless to do even for one brief and
miserable day, except through our perversities or our
faithlessness. Christianity can only be defeated by our-
selves. It will never be condemned by the world, ex-
cept because of our unworthiness, and of our shortcom-
ings. It can only lose its influence if we substitute for
Christ's teaching our own shibboleths. If we turn
Christianity into a religion such as Judaism was in the
Not a Sectarian Christ.
31
days of Christ-a religion of hatred, of suspicion, of
feeble heresy-hunting, of party spirit, of false witness—
depend upon it that the world will cease to care for it,
will judge it, and will despise it by its fruits. And
justly for this spirit is not the spirit of religion, but
the spirit of Pharisaism; and you may read for your-
selves, if you care to understand Christ at all, that He,
who was so infinitely tender to the weeping harlot, to
the repentant publican, to the returning prodigal,
blighted the Pharisee "with a flash of a terrible invec-
tive."
3. And bear in mind that it is quite possible to mistake
Christ, and to mistake Him grievously. Many Chris-
tians have mistaken His teaching in all ages, from the
earliest even until now. Sincerity will not prevent this.
Conviction will not prevent it. The Bible-especially
the New Testament-shows us that a man may be
utterly sincere, and overwhelmingly convinced, and yet
be wholly in the wrong. Christ's own apostles again
and again misunderstood his words. He spoke to them
in metaphor, as about leaven, and with strange obtuse-
ness they took Him literally. He spoke to them liter-
ally, as about His cross and His resurrection, and with
strange wilfulness they failed to accept His words at all.
They were constantly calling forth His loving, sad re-
buke. Now they tried to keep off the poor mothers
who brought their babes for His blessing; now they
rebuked one who was working miracles in His name;
now they quarrelled about precedence and physical near-
ness to His presence; now, in an Elijah spirit which is
all too common, they passionately wanted to call down
fire from heaven on those who received Him not; now
32
Not a Sectarian Christ.
they were selfishly dreaming of personal thrones and ex-
clusive crowns. They faithfully record for us their
own failures. As it is with us, so with them; Christ
was too large, too divine, too loving, too universal, too
eternal for men's selfish and finite souls.
4. But, my brethren, if even they misunderstood
Him; they who loved Him so dearly; they who saw
and heard, and their hands handled the word of life;
they who listened to His sermons in the synagogues and
wandered with Him in the cornfields of Galilee, and
sailed with Him upon the crystal lake; they who had
forsaken all and followed Him ;-do you think that there
is no danger lest we, Christians of routine and birth and
tradition; Christians who too often suffer so little with
Him, do so little for Him, listen so little in silence and
solitude to His still small voice; we who are so full of
self-inflation and jealousy and small motives-is there
no danger that we should misunderstand Him still more
utterly? Alas! yes, in many ways; and how dark and
terrible have been the issues of those errors, let the blood-
stained pages of Christian history declare. Of one such
error I wish to speak this evening. If, "cling not to
me ”—the words which the risen Jesus addressed to the
Magdalene-be a warning against the error of seeking
a dead rather than a living Christ, a Christ after the
flesh rather than a Christ in the spirit; so the indignant
question, "Is Christ divided ?" is the warning against
the attempts of men-attempts against which St. Paul
had to warn his converts again and again-to claim for
themselves an exclusive, a sectarian, a party Christ. If
the one be a warning against materializing superstition
and morbid sentimentality, the other is a warning
Not a Sectarian Christ.
33
against selfish individualism and religious faction. My
object, brethren, is to turn your thoughts to the truth,
glorious in itself, and never more essential than at this
moment, that the Lord Christ is the universal Christ;
the Christ, not of one party, but of all; not of one
church, but of all; not of one race, but of all; not of
one Christian, but of all. His propitiation was offered
for all the sins of the whole world. He died to draw
all men unto Him. It has been, and it is, a fatal
temptation of Christians to try to monopolize Christ;
to talk and to act as though Christ was divided; as
though they alone could speak of Him with infallible.
knowledge, or worship him with acceptable service. It
is a deadly error, the daughter of selfishness, the
mother of bigotry and persecution, the source of con-
tinual weakness, the disintegration of Christianity into
wrangling and squabbling sects. It springs from that
stronghold of Satan, disguising himself as an angel of
light, the eternal Pharisaism of the human heart.
When these Corinthians-the most conceited and self-
asserting of all Paul's converts-said, "I am of Christ,"
they meant to browbeat every other Christian with the
taunt, "You are not of Christ." And, oh! how often
do we hear Christians talk as though Christ was theirs,
and no one else's; as though all except themselves were
altogether wrong, and all wrong! Let me lay it down
as clearly, let me drive it home as forcibly as I can
through the gnarled obtuseness of these delusions, that
no man, and no sect, and no church even, has a right
thus to claim Christ, or His forgiveness, or the merits
of His redeeming love, as their special and peculiar,
still less as their exclusive, possession. "My Christ;'
99
|
3
34
Not a Sectarian Christ.
our Christ." What! has Christ then been parcelled
into fragments? Did Christ die for a pitiful few ?
Was there in the cross no meaning except for a handful
of the religionists who happen exactly to agree with you?
Your Christ? the Christ of your sect or party? Nay!
only yours as He is the Christ of all the world; not
yours in the least, or in any way, save as he is the uni-
versal brother in the great family of man; not yours
one whit more than He is, and for the very same reason
that He is, the Christ of him whom (it may be) you
regard as your deadliest enemy, as your bitterest oppo-
nent; not your Christ one tittle more than He is the
Christ of the man whom you most detest; and not the
Christ of your religious faction one iota more than He
is the Christ of the party or the church which may
be as near to Him, yea, even nearer to Him than you,
though you can be eloquent on what you delight to call
their soul-destroying errors. "Christ," said St. Jerome,
not so poor as to have a
Christ, we may say now, is
fifteen centuries ago, "is
Church only in Sardinia."
not so poor as to have no followers except at Rome, or
at Geneva, or at Oxford, or in Clapham; not so poor is
He, the Lord of the world; not so narrow He, the lover
of all mankind, as to have none to be faithful to Him
except in the subdichotomies of some petty schism.
You might as well try to make an inclosure in God's free
air, or claim an arrogant monopoly in God's common
heaven, as assert that Christ loves us one whit more for
our special opinions, or is one whit nearer to us because
of our special ceremonies, than He is to all who come to
Him, to all who love Him in sincerity and truth. There
are, and there always will be, many folds; there never
•
Not a Sectarian Christ.
35
has been, and there never will be, more than a single
flock. When we brand this man as superstitious, and
that man as latitudinarian; this man as a heretic, and
that man as a formalist; they whom we thus anathema-
tize with our petty bans are kneeling on their knees, it
may be, day by day, and, with many a streaming tear,
are asking of the Lord, who loves them very dearly, for
grace and for guidance, and for the beatitudes of the
meek in spirit and the pure in heart.
5. But, if disciples accepted the name of Christians
though it was given them in scorn, why was St. Paul so
indignant with those Corinthians who described them-
selves by saying, "I am of Christ?" Why does he
think them sufficiently rebuked by the impassioned
question, “Is Christ divided?" It was for this reason,
that, with all the selfishness and bitter cold-heartedness
of religious pride, they were trying to set up a Christ
party among Christians. They were turning orthodoxy
into that factiousness, which is the only meaning borne
in the New Testament by the word "heresy." They
were narrowing the divine universality of Christ, claim-
ing to be His only faithful representatives, as though
they were the oracles and orthodoxy would die with
them, and as though the angels had never sung "Peace
on earth, good-will toward men." My brethren, I am
not preaching to extortioners, unjust, adulterers, but to
Christians; and of what use is it if the churches where
Christians assemble are the only places where, out of
fear and faithlessness, the distinctive sins of Christians
are not to be rebuked? Two men went into the Tem-
ple to pray; the one a Pharisee, the other a publican ;-
which did Christ rebuke ?
**
*
i
1
36
Not a Sectarian Christ.
"Two went to pray-or, rather say,
One went to brag, the other to pray;
One stands up close, and treads on high,
Where the other dares not send his eye.
One nearer to the altar trod—
The other to the altar's God."
Whom did Christ warn most often, the religious
classes-scribes and Pharisees; or the irreligious classes
-publicans and sinners? Oh! when a Christian finds
in his own heart this hateful spirit of exclusiveness;
this defining of himself by negatives; this writing upon
his broad phylacteries "I am holier than thou;" let him
suspect his own Christianity. In true Christianity there
is none of this bitter pettiness or ignorant provincial-
ism. True Christianity is universal as our race, indi-
vidual as ourselves. And he who lives and talks or
writes as though it were other than this, whatever may
be his pretensions, however loudly he may reiterate
"Lord, Lord," has neither learnt the most elementary
of Christ's lessons, which is Christian love; nor acquired
the loveliest of the virtues which He inculcated, which
is humility; nor stooped to pluck the sweetest of all
the violets which grow only at the foot of His cross,
which is the violet of meekness shedding its perfume
in the childlike heart.
6. Therefore, my brethren, let our Christ not be a
Christ claimed exclusively for our sect, or claimed self-
ishly for ourselves. Let Him indeed be the Lord, the
Christ, the only Shepherd, the only Captain, the only
Master to us individually. If He is this to us what will
it matter what is said by contentious men? They say?
what say they? Let them say! If Christ be He to
Not a Sectarian Christ.
37
4
whom, through every varying hour of life's cloud or
sunshine, our souls turn, as the sunflower to the sun;
He who sways by ceaseless gravitation the centrifugal im-
pulses of our wayward hearts; He at whose feet we fain
would sit and listen, choosing the better part, amid the
noises and jostling of the world; if He be our one friend
when all are faithless; the one to forgive when all are
resentful; the one to commend when all the world and
all the church denounce-ah! happy are we beyond
all earthly happiness, if thus individually He belong to
us! But even then we only claim His love for our-
selves because we claim it for all the world. As he
taught us to say not "my Father" but "our Father,"
" but "the
Christ
so He would be to us not only my
Christ.' "If, when He says to us,
"Lovest thou me?"
we are able to answer with the remorseful Peter, "Lord,
Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love
Thee;" the test which He will offer to us of the sin-
cerity of our love will not be our creeds or our ceremo-
nies, but "tend my little lambs" and "feed my sheep."
To an expanded egotism, to an inflated religiosity, to a
party exclusiveness, he will say, "I never knew you.
The work of all such builders on the one foundation will
assuredly be burnt, though the workman be, by God's
mercy, saved. But to all who love God and love their
neighbor, and strive in love only to do the things which
He says-to them, whatever they have called themselves
on earth-to them He will say, "I was sick and ye visited
me, hungry and ye fed me, in prison and ye came to me.
Ye have loved your brethren-not hated and slandered
them. Come ye, blessed of my Father, enter into the king-
dom prepared for you from the foundation of the world!"
""
!
1:
38
Not a Sectarian Christ.
7. And so, my brethren, as the plain, practical con-
clusion, I would say, while humbly, while on bended
knees, while with contrite hearts and scarce-uplifted
eyes, we may in our own solitude whisper, "I trust, I
hope, that I am of Christ, if only He will pardon even
the best of all I am;" let us beware of saying in the
arrogant, exclusive sense, "I am of Christ, and you are
not." Let us beware of that miserable spirit which
dwarfs and degrades the grandeur of Christianity. Nay,
but O man, who art thou that judgest another? We
are not the only sound, or the only orthodox persons; all
from whom we differ are neither so benighted in dark-
ness nor so plunged in error as our conceit fancies.
We cannot ruin Christianity more effectually than by
stamping it with faction. We have no right to brand
as heresy every point of difference in which our brother
worships the God of his fathers. The deadliest of all
heresies, the only heresy which goes to the verge of
the unpardonable, is that petty sectarian bitterness in
which Christians have so often, and so fatally suffered
themselves to run riot. The revolting violences of the
Donatist schism; the disgraceful turbulence of many
church councils; the infamous cruelties of the Inqui-
sition; the mutual burnings and cursings of Catholics
and Protestants; the placing by Christians of other
Christians out of the pale of salvation; the furious
controversies of Calvinists and Arminians; the fierce
struggles of Jansenists with Jesuits, of Puritans with
Churchmen, of Churchmen with Methodists-all these
disgraceful and melancholy crimes in the church's his-
tory have sprung from the attempts to divide Christ, to
tear into fragments His seamless robe. And Christ is
Not a Sectarian Christ.
39
the exclusive Christ of none of these, and yet the
universal Christ of all who keep His commandments,
who do what He says, who love Him and love all
His children in sincerity and truth. He is the Christ
of none of these collectively in their sectarianism and
wrath; of all of these individually in their sincerity and
penitence.
It is not his sect or profession, not the S S on his col-
lar or the crucifix pressed to his heart which makes a
man in any way of Christ; it is not his crude dogma or his
denunciative negation; it is not his vain shibboleth or
fantastic service; it is not his personal pride or corporate
assumption; it is not anything upon which he relies as
separating him from others, in doctrine or in ritual,
which makes any one of us a Christian. These things
are but rubbish which shall shrivel into nothing, which
shall slip into white ashes in the revealing and consum-
ing flame; but the only thing which makes a man a Chris-
tian, the only thing which makes you or me a Christian, is
that which we have, I trust, in common with those who
hate us most, and whom we are most tempted to hate-
namely, our common Christianity: the silent hour when
we go sorrowing through the faultful past; the sincere
self-sacrifice; the humble effort to attain the elementary
Christian graces; the forgiveness of injuries; the love
for others; the tear of penitence; the heart at leisure
from itself. Christians of all sects, and of all parties,
and of all churches-Romanist, Anglican, Baptist,
Methodist, Independent, Ritualist, Evangelical, Broad
Churchman, whatever you are, whatever you call your-
self-you may go with Wesley in his dream to the gate
of hell, to the realm of the dead, wherever it be, wherein
|
40
Not a Sectarian Christ.
are all who are not yet admitted to the near presence of
their God, and ask: "Are there any Romanists, Angli-
cans, Baptists, Methodists, Ritualists, Evangelicals,
Broad Churchmen here?" and the answer in each case
shall come to you: "Yes, a great many.' And then
sadly you may go to the gate of Heaven and ask: "Are
there any Romanists, Anglicans, Dissenters, Ritualists,
Evangelicals, Broad Churchmen here ?" and the answer
shall come to you in prompt music: "None whatever."
And when you ask in surprise, "Who then are there
here?" the answer shall come to you: "Is Christ
divided? We do not know any of your schisms and your
factions and your subdichotomies here; we know no
name but that of Christians here." Constantine told
Acesius to go and find a ladder and get to heaven by him-
self. But that is what no man ever yet has done. Not
by any wretched ladder which he would fain charter
for himself, or for his sect, has any soul ever yet got
there; but only by that ladder of which the rounds
must be trod by us side by side with the supposed here-
tics whom (it may be) we most denounce, or the poor
publicans whom we most despise; and that ladder is the
universal love of God in Christ. Upon the shining
rungs of that ladder angels ever ascend and descend
upon the Son of man. Have we not read how Christ se-
lected as his model of love to our neighbor neither
Priest nor Levite, but the hated and heretical Samari-
tan? how he said of the Gentile soldier that he had not
found so great faith, no, not in Israel? how he never
drew a severer picture of angry religionism than that of
the elder brother of the prodigal, whose elder-brother-
liness of spirit has reproduced itself from age to age to
Not a Sectarian Christ.
41
dim the ardor of Christianity and cramp its efforts and
quench its joy? Learn then His own lesson. He is not
the Christ of the selfish worshipper. He is not the
Christ of the railing party. He is not the Christ of the
self-satisfied few. He is not the Christ of Papal Oratory;
or City Tabernacle; or Ebenezer Chapel; or Revivalist
Mission Hall; He is the Christ of none of these as such,
of all of these, and of you and me also, as in our better
moments we rise out of our own factions and separa-
tions and self-assertions, to breathe the large air, and
gaze on the illuminating light of truth and humility, of
purity and love.
Wouldst thou be a Christian? Then lay aside thy
rags of self-satisfaction, thy badges of party, thy envy
and bitterness and strife. Ceremonial observances are
not religion; multiplied functions are not religion;
long prayers are not religion; orthodoxy of creed is
not religion. Parts of religion, elements of religion,
aids to religious feeling to this or that man, they may
be-religion they are not. But to visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction, and to keep ourselves
unspotted from the world, that is religion; and right-
eousness and peace and joy in believing, that is re-
ligion; and to do the things which Christ says, that
is religion; and all the charities which bind man to
man, and which bless the family, the nation, and the
world, these are religion; and this is religion, to love
God with all our hearts, and our neighbor as ourselves;
and this is religion, to do justly, and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with our God.
It was no latitudinarian, it was no rationalist, but it
was a Romanist, a monk, a Dominican-it was the elo-
42
Not a Sectarian Christ.
quent and holy Père Lacordaire-who said, "Where
there is the love of God, there is Jesus Christ; and
where Jesus Christ is, there is the church with Him."
It was no saint, it was no schoolman, but it was the brave
and honest martyred President of the United States, who
said, “When a church inscribes on its portals the two
great commandments of the Law and Gospel, and makes
obedience to them its test of membership, to that church
will I belong." If you do not love your brother, how-
ever tremendous the truths which you utter with your
lips, your Christianity is heathendom, and the kingdom
of God is not within you. Read as much theology as
you like between the lines of what Christ said to the
young ruler, but if you are living in sin it will not avail
you; you will not have even begun to enter into life.
A religion which divorces belief from morality—a re-
ligion which thinks to please God either by orthodox
formulæ or ceremonial observances without charity-is
no better than a blasphemy. The throne of Christ can
only be set up in the heart of man, not in his actions
in the life of man, not upon his lips.
;
SERMON IV.
PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL AT TORONTO, WEDNESDAY, SEPT.
22, 1885.
The Lion in the Heart.
"THOU shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion
and dragon shalt thou trample under feet.”—Ps. xci. 13.
THERE are lions on the path of life which the sloth-
ful man will not encounter, but which the brave man
fights, and in the long run slays. There are perils
which come to us from the world, the flesh, and the
devil, perils from the lions of outward and public wick-
edness, which we have to face in our lives as citizens
and as men. In his struggle against the varied forms
of sin and vice which are without and around him, the
brave man may often be, or seem to be, defeated, though
in such cases his very defeat carries in it the germs of
future and of certain victory. When the good man
seems to be conquered, the powers of evil have still to
rue their short-lived triumph, and to say as Pyrrhus
said when he defeated the Romans: "Three such vic-
tories would utterly ruin me." To-day, however, we
have to speak of a different slaying of lions; of a con-
44
The Lion in the Heart.
..
test within us, not without us; of a contest in which, if
we would not be lost, we must, God helping us, win
the victory-the personal, the assured, if not in this
life, the absolute and final victory. It is a subject, my
friends, which we may make intensely practical; a sub-
ject which directly affects every one of us, whatever our
age or our circumstances; for upon the issue of this
contest the strength, and the majesty, and the blessed-
ness of every other contest depends. Oh! may the
Holy Spirit of God, who sendeth forth His seraphs with
the live coal from his altar to touch the lips of whom
He will, so help me to speak, so open your ears and
touch your hearts, to hear, that by His grace every one
of us may leave this church awakened, solemnized-
more resolute, more hopeful, more determined to make
his stand against the powers of evil, and to work out
his own salvation, with fear indeed and trembling, yet
with the indomitable energy and sternest concentration
of every power of his will!
1. We learn from Scripture and from experience, that a
picture, an allegory, especially if it be unhackneyed, may
sometimes bring a great truth, or a pressing duty, home
to the mind and conscience, when the mere unimagina-
tive inculcation of it may fail to furrow the trodden
ground of our familiarity. Such an allegory is involved
in the words of my text, and in other passages of Scrip-
ture. The divine promise, "Thou shalt tread upon the
lion and adder," refers not only to the reptiles and wild
beasts of outward evil, but also to evils in which the
deadliness of sin is concentrated against our individual
hearts; the evil thoughts and deeds and words and hab-
its which assault and hurt the soul. When the author
The Lion in the Heart.
45
66
66
of the Epistle to the Hebrews says of the olden saints
that they stopped the mouths of lions, he, too, doubtless
means his words to be understood metaphorically as well
as literally. So, too, does St. Paul, when he says he had
fought with beasts at Ephesus," and that God “deliv-
ered him out of the mouth of the lion." So, too, did
St. Ignatius, when he says that on his way to martyrdom
he was fighting with wild beasts" all the way to
Rome, and describes the Roman soldiers who conducted
him as "ten leopards" with whom he had to struggle.
So, too, when David prays to God, "Break the jawbones
of the lions, O Lord!" he is not thinking of actual lions,
but of human and of spiritual enemies. If therefore we
again adopt the metaphor, we are no more guilty than
these were of using language which is fantastic or sensa-
tional. And the naturalness of the metaphor is shown
by the fact that we find it also in heathen mythology.
Let us not follow the ignorant prejudice which would
regard the religious thoughts of the heathen as though
they were unworthy of our Christian notice. We have
been learning more and more in these days that there
was, thank God, an Ethnic as well as a Hebrew inspira-
tion. The noble study of Comparative Religion, which is
now opening our minds and widening the horizon of our
thoughts, has revealed to us that God spoke in old times
to the Greek and the Roman and the Persian and the
Hindoo as well as to the Jew. All wisdom is not hid in
Moses' Law. God had other sheep also, though they
were not of Israel's fold. Now, in the higher and uncor-
rupted springs of Greek mythology we find the purest
moral intuitions of that marvellously gifted race. If
there was one virtue which they admired above all
46
The Lion in the Heart.
others, it was the virtue of oppoσúvn, of sobermind-
edness, which is also earnestly impressed upon all, and
especially upon young men, by St. Paul and St. Peter.
Now, if St. Paul, even on the Scripture page, freely
quotes Callimachus and Aratus and Epimenides, may
not we refer also to pure lessons of Greek morality? And
the Greek type of this noble virtue, their ideal picture
of a life strong in its self-control, almost divine in its
self-sacrifice their type of a slayer of monsters and de-
liverer of the world-was the hero Hercules. Grossly
as that ideal was stained and dwarfed by the polluted im-
agination of later poets, the hero stands in old mythol-
ogy as the grand representative of toiling, suffering, per-
secuted, dauntless, victorious manhood; the embodied
conception of a life raised to immortality by mighty
toil for the good of others. And they saw, as we must
see, that he who would indeed conquer evil in the world,
must first conquer it in his own heart. To the Christian
it must never be said as to the Pharisaic Jew: "Thou,
therefore, that teachest another, teachest thou not thy-
self? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost
thou steal? Thou that sayest a man should not commit
adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Abhorrer of idols,
dost thou rob temples ?" This is the meaning of that
fine apologue, the choice of Hercules-in which the
young hero, just at the crisis of opening manhood-just
as the bud of life is bursting into flower-just as the
path of life is dividing into two, of which one leads to
holiness, and the other to the abyss-makes his choice.
for self-denying virtue, not for unlawful pleasure. But
the moral is yet more finely conveyed in that legend of his
conquest of the Nemean lion, which they placed first of
.
The Lion in the Heart.
47
his twelve great labors. You will observe that the Greek
hero is always represented in his adolescence as mantled
in the shaggy and invulnerable fell of this conquered
wild beast. Look at any of the spendid Greek coins.
which represent him, and you will always find his
But
head and back half-shrouded in that lion's skin.
you need not go far to see it. Among the allegorical
figures sculptured on the monuments of the great
Abbey of Westminster, from which I come, you may
see, at least twice, the mighty figure of Hercules in his
lion-robe.
Now, doubtless, to slay an actual lion is something.
Scripture deems it worthy of record that lions were
slain by the youthful David, and the youthful Samson;
but neither Samson nor David wore a lion's skin in
memory of their prowess all the rest of their lives. No!
but the skin of the Nemean lion which the Greek hero
slew had a special meaning. It was held to make him
invulnerable, and well-nigh invincible, thereafter. Let
me tell you the reason of this in the words of a great
living writer. It was because this lion was "not merely
a large specimen of Felis Leo ranging the fields of Ne-
This Nemean cub was one of a bad litter.
mea.
Born
of Typhon and Echidna, the whirlwind and the snake-
Cerberus his brother, the Hydra of Lerna his sister-it
must have been difficult to get his hide off him. He
had to be fought in darkness, and dealt upon without
weapons, by grip of the throat-arrows and club of no
avail against him. What is the meaning of all that?
It means that the Nemean lion is the first great adver-
sary of life, whatever that may be, to Hercules, or to
any one of us, then or now-the first monster we
48
The Lion in the Heart.
have to strangle or to be destroyed by, fighting in the
dark, and with none to help us. Every man's Ne-
mean lion lies in wait for him somewhere. It is the
first ugly and strong enemy that rises against us, all
future victory depending on victory over that. Kill
it, and through all the rest of your life what was once
dreadful is your armor, and you are clothed with
that conquest from every other, and helmed with its
crest of fortitude for evermore. Alas! we have most
of us to walk bareheaded; but that is the meaning
of the story, and surely it is worthy to be thought
and to be taken to heart." The lion's skin then was
meant only as an emblem of the lion-heart, proved and
strengthened by the overthrow of its earliest tempta-
tions
2. Now note first, my friends, that this lion of the
Greek allegory has to be fought in darkness, in the cav-
ern, with no earthly weapons. It is not the stout club,
it is not the keen arrows, which can slay it. You must
block up the exit of the cave, you must step boldly into
its entrance, you must plunge through its murky gloom,
and there, by the sheer force of arm, by the resolute
might of that will which God has given you, and which
is strengthened for you by the spirit of Christ, you must
fairly and pitilessly strangle this lion. The lion is that
inward sin, that special impulse and temptation which
has most power against you. It is the favorite vice
against which you are weakest. Oh! my brethren, let
none of us shirk the momentous question! Are you, or
are you not, wrestling with-have you, or have you not
conquered the sin, whatever it may be, which doth
most easily beset you ? Remember that God will have
The Lion in the Heart.
49
no reservations.
Remember that His law is that you
must keep all the commandments-not all but one.
Oh, do not deceive yourself with the fancy that there is
one sin which you may cherish for yourself-one law
which may be violated with impunity. On the Tree of
Death, as on the Tree of Life, there are twelve manner
of fruits; but God will not suffer you to pluck so much
as one of them, because into each one of them is in-
fused the utter deathfulness of all. There is not one of
them all which is not an apple of Sodom; not one which
is not full of ashes and poison, of dust and bitterness.
Millions of men would be saved, almost without an
effort, but for one sin: the miser but for his gold; the
drunkard but for his drink; the envious man but for
his malice; the unclean but for his guilty love or his
desecrating vice. Herod hears John gladly; does many
things because of him; but there is one thing he will
not do: he will not give up Herodias. Judas is Christ's
disciple; he is one of the twelve; but he cannot forego
his thirty pieces of silver. Lorenzo de Medici listens
earnestly on his deathbed to Savonarola, but there is
one thing he will not do: he only turns away his face
and remains silent when the Prior of San Marco bids
him to set Florence free. The guilty adulterous king in
the great tragedy can pray with passion, but because he
vainly fancies that he may be pardoned and retain the
offence; even on his knees there is one thing which he
feels he will not do-he will not give up "his crown,
his own ambition, and his queen." It is the state of
mind so pathetically portrayed by our great living poet
in his picture of Sir Lancelot, in his allegory of the
Idyls of the King :
4
4
7
50
The Lion in the Heart.
My own name shames me, seeming a reproach.
Alas! for Arthur's greatest knight, a man
Not after Arthur's heart! I needs must break
These bonds that so defame me :-not without
She wills it would I, if she willed it? Nay,
Who knows? But, if I would not, then may God
I pray Him send a sudden angel down,
To seize me by the hair, and bear me far,
And fling me deep in that forgotten mere,
Among the tumbled fragments of the hills.'
So prayed Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain,
Not knowing he would die a holy man.
And such a prayer is natural. When a man is sinning
against light and knowledge, when he has wilfully
given himself up, sold himself to do evil, when there is
but one sin against which he cannot make up his mind
honestly to struggle, he is but losing himself more and
more hopelessly in a pathless morass; he is sinking
deeper and deeper into an unfathomable sea; he is but
entangling himself, in more and more hopeless bondage,
with a heavier and ever heavier chain. Let a man but
give himself over to a besetting or unrepented sin, and
all else becomes in vain.
"Lord! with what care hast thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason; holy messengers;
Pulpits and Sundays; sorrow dogging sin ;
Afflictions sorted; anguish of all sizes;
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in !
Bibles laid open; millions of surprises ;
Blessings beforehand; ties of gratefulness;
The sound of glory ringing in our ears,
The Lion in the Heart.
5 I
Without our shame, within our conscience,
Angels and grace; eternal hopes and fears-
Yet all these fences, and their whole array,
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away!”
Therefore, my brethren, as you love your lives, enter
alone, and with awful resolution, the dark cavern of your
own hearts; face, once for all, the lion who lies lurking
there; lay aside utterly the fancy that he can remain
there without destroying you; give up the idle notion
that you can fence yourself around against him, by rea-
son, or philosophy, or prudential reserves, or vague
procrastinations of the struggle. Nothing, nothing will
save you but desperate wrestling with all the gathered
forces of your life, intensified by grace and prayer. Oh,
win that victory; slay that lion; give it but one fatal
wound, and though its filming eye may still glare, and
its relaxing claw still have strength to rend you, each
subsequent blow, each tightened grasp upon its throat,
shall find it weaker, shall see you growing from strength
to strength, until at last you shall fling out of its lair
the huge carcass, and turn the cavern into a holy temple,
and Christ shall enter there.
Christ shall enter there, for observe, my friends, the
infinite superiority of blessing which Christ has granted
to us in these last days. The Greeks had noble ideals,
but their conduct, nationally alike and individually, fell
far short of those ideals; and even their ideals were, as
in the conception of this their great demigod, soon
and grievously corrupted. It was as if their moral
teacher had meant to imply, by the legend of their hero,
the lesson which the Old Testament teaches us by the
examples of Samson, of David, and of Solomon, that
52
The Lion in the Heart.
human strength is at the best but perfect weakness.
But to us the mercy of God has given, in the life and
example of our Lord Jesus Christ, an ideal not human
but divine. In the most perfect conception of Christ
presented to us by medieval art, on the western front
of the Cathedral of Amiens-the Beau Dieu d'Amiens,
as it is affectionately called-He is represented between
vines and lilies, emblems of beneficence and purity;
and His feet rest upon the lion, which is the emblem
of furious passions, and on the cockatrice, which, lying
with one ear in the mud, and closing the other with
its tail, is the fit symbol of that vicious dulness and
venomous debasement over which every true man must
gain an utter and final victory. But the conquest of
Christ over all the elements of evil is a conquest in
which we may share; and the divine strength where-
with He triumphed is a strength which He gives to
them that seek it. In His strength, though by His
grace alone, it is possible for every one of us to "tread
upon the lion and the adder; and the young lion and
dragon to trample under foot."
3. But notice, my friends, that the more early this
battle is undertaken, the more surely is it won. Her-
cules, in the legend, while yet an infant in the cradle,
strangles the serpents sent to slay him. He who stran-
gles serpents in his youth, will slay monsters in his man-
hood. He of whom the grace of God has taken early
hold, and who has had early strength to conquer tempta-
tion, is not likely, later on, to lose his self-reverence
and self-control. If in the flush of youth he has sat at
the feet of law, he will be little likely to revolt after-
wards. And these were the truths which the Greeks
The Lion in the Heart.
53
succinctly expressed by representing their hero in the in-
vulnerable skin of the lion he has slain. It is in youth,
in early youth, that men can most effectually win their
victory—while yet they are uncontaminated by a corrupt
present, unhampered by an unfaithful past. The victory
is won more easily at fifteen than at twenty; and more
easily at twenty than at thirty; and ten thousand fold
more easily at thirty than at sixty. Samson, while he is
a youth, while he is a Nazarite, while yet the sunny
locks of his obedience to the moral law lie waving upon
his illustrious shoulders-in those pure days Samson can
rend the young lion which roars against him as easily as
if it were a kid :-ah! he could do so no longer after his
locks were shorn; after his life was sullied; after he has
lain in the harlot lap of Philistine Delilah. When his
heart had been corrupted, his will effeminated, his hab-
its depraved, you will see him rending lions no longer,
but toiling as a drudge of his enemies-
"Eyeless, at Gaza, in the mill, with slaves.”
And David, while he is still a bright and ruddy shep-
herd lad, his heart white as the lilies which he twined
round his harpstrings to protect them from the heat,
and his thoughts pure as the dew upon their leaves ;-
David the young boy, uncontaminated by pride and the
lust of cities, can fight for his lambs, and with unarmed
hand smite both the lion and the bear. He could not
have done it after that sin against Uriah, that sin with
Bathsheba, had laid waste his heart. Then the flutter
of a shaken leaf was enough to terrify him; then the
crown fell from his head; then he became weak as
water; then he fled before his own worthless son, bare-
54
The Lion in the Heart.
footed, sobbing, cursed by his enemies, up the hill of
Olivet; then the dark spirits of lust and blood began to
walk in his house, and in his heart. And alas! which
of us has not been in one way or other defeated? Which
of us can encounter that poison-breathing lion in the
dark cavern of his heart, and strangle it fearlessly as
once he might have done? How grandly has Milton
expressed this weakness of sin, when the mighty Fallen
Spirit is rebuked by one of the humblest of heaven's
angels-the young Ithuriel :
"So spake the cherub; and his grave rebuke,
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible: abashed the devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw and pined
His loss; but chiefly to find here observed
His lustre visibly impaired."
And again in the case of our first parents after their
sin, when they rose-
"As from unrest, and each the other viewing,
Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds
How darkened; innocence, that as a veil
Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone;
Just confidence, and native righteousness,
And honor from about them, naked left
To guilty shame.”
And how is that infinitely pathetic tragedy repeated day
after day, age after age, in the brief life of man! "The
first unequivocal act of wrong," says an American
writer, "that has left its trace in my memory was this:
refusing a small favor that was asked of me-nothing
The Lion in the Heart.
55
more than telling what had happened at school one
morning. No matter who asked it, but there were cir-
cumstances which saddened and awed me.
I had no
heart to speak. I faltered some miserable, perhaps
petulant excuse, and stole away, and the first battle of
my life was lost. What remorse followed I need not
tell. Then and there, to the best of my knowledge, I
first consciously took sin by the hand, and turned my
back on duty. Time has led me to look on my offence
more leniently. I do not believe it, or any other child-
ish wrong, is infinite, as some have pretended, but in-
finitely finite. Yet oh! if I had but won that battle!"
Ah! my brethren, you may be unable to recall the time
you made as it were your first agreement with hell, your
first covenant with death. The memory of your first
transgression may be clouded over by the white mists
of time; but is there any one among you all who does
not echo from his heart that sigh of vain regret, “Oh!
if I had but won that battle !"
4. But, my brethren, lest such thoughts should tempt
any of you to despair, let me add at once that it is never
too late to fight, never impossible to slay that lion of
evil within you, and to tread the young lion and the
dragon under foot. If the grace of God shows exqui-
sitely as a vernal rose in some soul, pure from its youth
upward, growing like the Lord Jesus in wisdom and
stature and favor with God and man, that grace shows
yet more mightily in the case of those who, having
fallen-having, as it were, lain prostrate in the bloody
dust-having felt the fierce teeth and the merciless
claws-spring up again, gather fresh strength, turn de-
feat into resistance, and resistance into victory.
56
The Lion in the Heart.
Be not you like the unhappy persecuting bishop, who
exclaimed upon his deathbed: "I have sinned with
Peter; alas! I have not repented with Peter!" Do
not say: "But my heart is so corrupt, it is so like a
volcano of evil passions that it cannot be subdued ;'
God can clothe even the sides of the volcano with corn-
field and vineyard, and fill its very crater with conse-
crated snow.
""
Who are the special trophies of the irresistible love of
Christ, of the irresistible power of the Cross of Christ?
In whose case does He on his Cross make an open show
of conquered principalities and powers? Not in Enoch
the immaculate; not in Abraham the friend of God;
not in John the Nazarite; not in John the Divine; not
in Stephen with his face like the face of an angel: nay,
but in the son who was dead, and is alive again, who
was lost and is found; in the prodigal rescued from rags
and the far land, and the husks and swine, into the
pure, rejoicing home; in the Magdalene, out of whom
he cast seven devils; in the harlot, who washed His
feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her
head; in the publican, whom He transformed into an
Apostle; in the demoniac, seated at His feet clothed
and in his right mind; in the adulteress, who, as she
sobbed on the Temple floor amid her tangled hair, heard
those healing words, "Neither do I condemn thee; go,
and sin no more;" in the leper cleansed; in the impotent
man at the pool of Bethesda; in the cursing, swearing,
denying Apostle, whose heart He broke with one tender
look. These are the trophies of the Cross; these are the
lost, torn sheep over whom the Good Shepherd rejoices;
these the repentant sinners over whom the angels strike
The Lion in the Heart.
57
their harps of gold. And, oh! will not you be one of
these—the redeemed, the ransomed of the Lord, coming
back from exile and from Babylon, coming back with
singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy upon your heads?
You may be a weak, you may be a bad, you may be a
corrupt, you may be a defeated man: all your life may
have been wasted; you may have sunk deeply into evil
habits and the mire of sin. Yet I would fain kindle
your courage; fain first waken to a spark, then into a
glow, then into clear and leaping flame, those dying
embers which lie cold under the white ashes of your
hopes. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be
white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they
shall be as wool. Do not let the devil make you neglect
those words as though to you they meant nothing.
Nay! they are God's voice to you, Christ's message to
you, the Spirit's appeal to you—even to you. Are you
a drunkard? Have you sunk by imperceptible grada-
tions through many years into that shameful vice?—
there is not one drunkard here who may not die a tem-
perate man. Are you dishonest? Have you for years
been making profits by fraud and lies? You can this
very day break your false balance, and melt your unjust
weights. Is your heart burning with bad passions? Are
you an adulterer, or a fornicator, or are you laying waste
by any unlawful indulgence the inner sanctities of your
being? Young men, there is not one of you—not even
the guiltiest-who may not become strong and pure.
Is some sin, unrevealed to man, known only to your-
selves, smouldering like Etnean lava, black by day,
lurid by night, in the dark places of your agonized con-
science? Well, now it is a part of you; but if you will
..
58
The Lion in the Heart.
repent, if you will put away from you the unclean thing,
if you will seek God on your knees, if even yet you will
summon the shamed, routed, scattered, weakened forces
of your being to the battle of God, He will so help you
that, far as the East is from the West, so far will He put
from you the sin which now burns your heart. My
brethren, because Satan knows that despair is fatal,
therefore he will try hard either to keep you indifferent,
or to drive you to despair, to sullenness, to obstinacy, to
defeat, and to self-abandonment. He will whisper to you,
"You are too far gone. These hopes, these possibilities,
these promises are for others, not for you." But oh, my
brother, they are for you, if you will not put them from
you. You, even you, weak and torn as you are, can
still strangle that full-grown, that full-fed lion whose
paw is on your heart. Was not King David a murderer,
an adulterer, and yet God gave him back the clean heart
and the free spirit? Was not King Manasseh an apos-
tate, a worshipper of Moloch, and yet did he not learn
to know that the Lord was God? Was not Saul of
Tarsus a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious, and
did he not become a very vessel of election? Was not
Augustine a heretic in religion, a debauchee in life, yet
did he not live to be a saint of God? Was not John
Bunyan once a godless tinker, and did he not grow up to
write the "Pilgrim's Progress?" If you have sinned
with these, can you not with these repent? Yes,
with these "thou shall tread upon the lion and the ad-
der; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample
under feet." If the archangel be beautiful in all the
grace and glory of youthful victory, who puts his foot on
the conquered dragon, and has no speck of dust, no stain
The Lion in the Heart.
59
of blood upon his gleaming, invulnerable panoply-more
pathetically beautiful it may be, in the sight of God, is
that angel who is victorious, though it have only been
after agonies and energies, only with sobbing breath and
hacked sword and battered shield and soiled glory and
trailing wing;-and such is the angel of redeemed hu-
manity. The best of us is scarcely saved.
Whom did Christ come to save?
bad? The pure or the impure?
The good or the
"This is a true
saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners." To save sinners,
and therefore to save you. To save the guilty, and
therefore to save you. To save the bad, and therefore to
save you.
And if you will take it in no words but His
very own, take it in these: "I am not sent," He said,
"but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." "I am
not come," he said, "to call the righteous, but sinners"
-not the righteous, but sinners-"I am not come to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
E
1
-
SERMON V.
PREACHED IN LONDON, ONTARIO, SEPT. 27, 1885.
The Retribution upon Selfish
Societies.
"And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept
over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this
thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!-But now they
are hid from thine eyes."-LUKE xix. 41, 42.
THE epochs in the life of Jesus are full of divine in-
structiveness. He had lived thirty years in the quiet
family, and humble labor of a despised provincial village.
He had one year of bright Galilean welcome; one year of
gathering and deepening antagonism; one year of flight
for his life among the heathen; and perhaps half a year
during which he was an excommunicated outcast with
a price upon his head. Those closing scenes which take
up almost a third of the gospel narrative, only occupied
the few days from Palm Sunday to Good Friday. Our
Lord had taken refuge from the rage of the spiritualty
in an obscure village named Ephraim; and it was not
until, from its conical mount, He saw the throngs of
Passover pilgrims streaming down the Jordan valley, that
#
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies. 61
پا
it became possible for Him, under the protection of His
Galilean followers, to venture Himself into the perilous
vortex of the Jewish religious world. He had slept the
Sabbath night at Bethany. On Palm Sunday morning
the enthusiasm of His disciples made Him the centre of
a rejoicing throng as He set out for the short distance
to Jerusalem. Some of you may, like myself, have
traversed that memorable ground. If so you will viv-
idly remember the spot, upon the Mount of Olives,
where paused those blessed feet
"Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our salvation to the bitter cross.
It is one of the few spots on which we can be absolutely
certain that the feet of our blessed Lord have stood, for
exactly at that spot the road sweeps round the shoulder of
the hill, and the domes and minarets of Jerusalem burst
suddenly upon the view. As we stand there we can
realize the passion and the naturalness of the emotions
which crowded the soul of the world's Redeemer. We
can realize why, at that particular place, in spite of the
joy of His followers and the glad throng which met Him
from Jerusalem with hosannas and branches of waving
palm, He stayed the course of His meek triumph to
weep aloud over the city, which gleamed beneath him,
unconscious of its doom. There, with its glorious sanct-
uary standing out against the blue sky like a mountain
of snow and gold; there, with its impregnable walls and
marble palaces and imperial diadem of towers, the City
of David flashed back the burning dawn,-and knew not
the day of her visitation. And, as though in perpetual
warning, on the other side of the hill on which He
62
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies.
stood, gloomed, far beneath Him, the sullen cobalt-col-
ored stagnancy of the accursed Lake which had ingulfed
the guilty Cities of the Plain. Like that Dead Sea the
city-the Holy, the Noble City, as it is still called-
"reflected Heaven upon her surface, while she hid
Gomorrah in her heart." Scrupulously orthodox, re-
ligiously self-satisfied, never more outwardly observant
of the utmost scrupulosities of legalism, slavishly exact
in tithes of mint and anise and cumin, fasting twice in
the week, rigidly adherent to every tradition of feast
and new moon and solemn assembly, heaping her altars
with thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of
oil, crowded to overflowing at that very moment with
multitudes of Easter worshippers,-but hollow at heart,
greedy of gain, taking for holiness a lip-profession of or-
thodoxy and an outward slavery to ceremonial; idolatrous
of a somnolent conventionality which cared for forms
and fringes, and cared not for mercy, righteousness, and
justice; self-deceived by the superficial gleam of her
own hypocrisy, drop by drop, wholly unsuspicious of
her peril, she was filling up to the brim the cup of her
iniquities. Four days were to pass, and then those self-
deceiving professors of religion, who had defiled the very
springs of true religion with pride, insincerity, and ha-
tred, were to commit the most awful of human crimes.
Was it wonderful, if, in a voice broken by sobs, with a
face which streamed with tears, Jesus gazed on the city
and wept over it, and said: "If thou hadst known,
even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which
belong unto thy peace!-But now they are hid from
thine eyes!"
In deadly peril unawares-that is the lesson of the
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies. 63
The
pathetic scene. It is a warning against the delusion of
false types of godliness. No doubt if there had been
any Levite, or hierarch, or Pharisee in that humble
crowd of Galileans, they would have laughed Him to
scorn. "What fanaticism! What exaggeration! What
intemperate language! What want of respect for the
religious authorities! What lack of theology and of
good churchmanship! What foolish invective of the
national progress! The times, on the contrary, were
never better. Religion was never more respected.
Temple courts were never more thronged with worship-
pers. The Sabbaths are kept in a way which would have
satisfied Shammai himself. All this denunciation of
guilt, all this menace of doom, is due only to the fumes
of a heated imagination." And much of what these Le-
vites said would have been very plausible. They and the
people whom they led were very sound as to the current
shibboleths. "Lord, Lord," was being repeated at Jeru-
salem with endless iteration and solemn unction. At the
Temple there were many services a day. The syna-
gogues were well attended; the prayer-houses were al-
ways open. And yet such was Christ's awful judg
ment-true religion was dead. The religiosity demurely
enthroned in its place was but a lying spirit which mim-
icked its saintly gestures and holy words. That was
what the Lord said, and that was what they contemptu-
ously refused to believe.
And, indeed, the words of Jesus on the hill-side,
that spring morning, seemed to make no sort of differ-
ence. The sunlight still poured its glowing splendor
over courts of cedar and gates of gold. The palms un-
folded their new green fronds. The lilies of the field
64 The Retribution upon Selfish Societies.
still embroidered the grass with blue and purple and
scarlet. The gazelle still bounded on Judah's hills.
The fig-trees still clothed themselves in the glossy leaves
which dissembled their barrenness of fruit. And, as the
spring passed on, the grapes began to purple and the
plains to roll their billows of golden corn, and the fresh
dates to be sprinkled with their rich, yellow dust.
And religion, as the Jewish mind understood it, con-
tinued to flourish unimpaired for forty years. The
altars smoked. The Pharisees put on their broad phylac-
teries. "The two kidneys and the fat" were burned
with most solemn scrupulosity. The white-robed Levites
sang their psalms on the Temple steps. Yes! but Christ
had died on the accursed tree. Yes! but they had
murdered the Lord of glory! And, unheard, the awful
fiat had gone forth against the city, which, red with the
blood of the Prophets, was too hypocritical even to re-
alize its own hypocrisy-the awful fiat: "Never fruit
grow upon thee more." Yes! and all the while the
decree was being accomplished. Soon the lightnings
began to flicker over the doomed nation as the Destroy-
ing Angels drew in the distance their swords of flame;
and when the children who, on Palm Sunday, had
shouted Hosanna, were still in the prime of manhood,
Jerusalem and her orthodoxies, and her ceremonialism,
and her religious cliques became a seething hell of every
furious passion, and collapsed in three years of siege
into a scene polluted and accursed-a heap of blood-
stained ashes, an unrecognizable desolation, a terrible
monument of the just judgment of God.
And so, once more, was enacted an old event-old,
yet constantly renewed, in the story of humanity; and
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies. 65
there was one of those many rehearsals of the Day of
Judgment and of the coming of the Lord which yet
have failed hitherto to convince guilty nations that for
avarice and idolatry, for malice and lust and fraud, for
Belial and Mammon and Moloch, for unbelief and for
hypocrisy, and for hatred of the truth there is but one
destiny. Evil may be long-lived, but doomsday comes
at last.
The comings of the Lord are ever thus-long in
their apparent delay, overwhelming in their sudden
accomplishment. Slowly the electric forces are gathered
and stored in the stifling air; suddenly is it rent by
the gleaming thunder-bolt! Man's judgment days are
partial, hasty, unjust, mechanical. God's assize is
silent. His retributions execute themselves. His thun-
der-bolts are slowly hammered by our own hands in the
furnace of our iniquities, when at last they gleam with
the white heat of Divine anger, and they rush down
with unerring aim on the head of him who has been
forging them. Meanwhile His handwritings are on
every wall. And though men and churches and nations
are blind to them, and go spinning round their circle of
custom and compromise after the giddy flag of their
popular falsehoods, they read at last by the unnatural
glare of ruin that "God is the only final public opin-
ion." Of all this our Lord had again and again warned
the civil and religious authorities of His day-the
Caiaphases and the Herods, the peering Levites, the
cold-hearted Priests, the formalizing Pharisees, the
heresy-hunting spies sent from Jerusalem, the unreal,
careless, religion-professing people. He had warned them
in vain. At first they only sneered; then they hated ;
5
66
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies.
at last they slew Him. “And as were the days of Noah,
so shall be the coming of the Son of Man. For as, in the
days which were before the Flood, they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the
day that Noah entered into the Ark, and the flood came
and destroyed them all, so shall be the coming of the
Son of Man." "Likewise also as it was in the days of
Lot; they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they
planted, they builded; but, in the day that Lot went
out from Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from
heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be
in the day when the Son of Man is revealed."
I ask, Have not these warnings of the Lord been re-
peated again and again, and all in vain, in the history
of the nations? There was a profound intuition in the
Greek legend of Cassandra and the Roman legend of the
Sibyl: the Greek legend of the Prophetess to whose
prophecies none listened, but which always came to
pass; the Roman story of the aged Sibyl who burnt her
Books of Fate if they were refused. The world of Noah
was not the only world in which God has drowned
crime, when least men dreamed of it, in floods of calam-
ity; the city of Sodom was not the only city on which,
hardly even in metaphor, God out of the clear sky
has rained down fire from heaven. In olden days look
at cruel, bloody, rapine-reeking, man-torturing Assyria,
and read her doom in cities of which the very ruins
have been calcined and ploughed into the dust. Look
at arrogant, corrupt, luxurious Babylon, and in that
mound of indistinguishable débris by the Euphrates,
read the fulfilment of the "Mene, mene, tekel” which
once glared before her king's eyes at the banquet of his
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies. 67
satraps. Look at Tyre, and see how God has spread the
fisher's net over her stately palaces. Look at Pagan
Rome, in the decline of her Empire, and in the lurid
pictures of the Apocalypse, read the judgments of
Heaven on her deep pollutions, and her wicked human
gods. What ruined her? Why did Goth, and Hun,
and Vandal thunder unresisted at her gates? Why did
her glories sink into ruin, and her Cæsars perish one
after another by murder or by suicide? Why did her
population become year by year a viler and loathlier
scum? I will tell you. It was because the hearts of
her sons were stained through and through with the
vilest passions. It was because her merchandise was not
only in gold, and silver, and crimson, and thyme wood,
but also in the bodies and souls of men. It was because
her cities were cities like those which the sulphur
choked, and the scoriæ buried, as though the very ele-
ments revolted against the flagrancy of their unblushing
depravities. The fate of Rome was the fate of a people
who, once frugal and temperate, had become æstheti-
cally corrupt, luxuriously effeminate.
"Rome shall perish! write that word
On the blood that she hath spilt,
Perish, hated and abhorred,
Deep in ruin as in guilt.”
Why did she perish? because of her too glaring con-
trasts between shivering pauperism and colossal wealth.
Because she found no men strong enough to rule, and
so flung the reins of government to the noisiest and the
worst. If society will lay aside its gossip, and youth its
follies to meditate upon the lessons of History they will
2
68
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies.
read there of the wealth, vice, and corruption which
ended in barbarism-of
“Their sumptuous gluttonies, and gorgeous feasts
On citron tables, or Atlantic stone;
Their wines of Letia, Cales, and Falerne,
Chios and Crete, and how they drank in gold,
Crystal and myrrhine cups, embossed with gems.”
History is a great Book of God, and in it I read, "These
are the things which bring nations to the grave, with
their pomp, and the noise of their viols; and it is be-
cause of these things that Hades from beneath is moved
to meet them at their coming, and the dead nations cry
to them, 'Art thou also become weak as we ? Art thou
become like unto us? How art thou fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut
down to the ground who didst weaken the nations!""
But it was not only in the Old World that God vis-
ited the nations; nor is Jerusalem the only city over
which Christ has to weep for the coming doom of hypo-
critic churches and corrupt societies.
Look at Christian History.
i. At one time Byzantium reigned supreme. Why
did she, to the lasting shame of Europe, fall into the
hands of the Turks, who were to be for so many centu-
ries a terror to her in their power, and a curse to her in
their decay? Because in the city of Constantine religion
had long shrivelled into a gross formalism; and craft,
and corruption, and midnight murder, and incessant
treachery had reduced her into weakness and shame.
ii. At another time Venice was supreme. Her doge
was among the princeliest potentates of Christendom.
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies. 69
Her gonfalon represented the power of the sea. Her art
was the pride and glory of Europe. Why did her glory
fade, suddenly as a rainbow, from the wings of her Lion
of St. Mark's? Those who have read her history with
the closest and deepest attention have told us that the
cause of her failure also was the collapse of faith in her
children, followed also by collapse of morals, of all
spiritual insight and of all nobleness of aim.
iii. Or look at Spain. Spain, like Jerusalem, was
eminently orthodox, eminently Catholic, eminently re-
ligious. The king was called "the Catholic," and he,
with the vilest of all the Popes, founded the Inquisi-
tion—that worst product of infernal ignorance animated
by infernal zeal. And Spain sank, partly through her
servile superstition and Moloch-worshipping intolerance,
and partly through her insatiate thirst for gold.
iv. Or look once more at the mediæval Papacy. In
the oft-repeated irony of heaven, she never seemed so
rich or so terrible as when, in the year of Jubilee, the
year 1300, her priests stood raking into her coffers the
gold of the pilgrims, which was too plentiful to count.
And yet a few years after, at Anagni, her Pope Boni-
face VIII.-a Pope who had gained his Papacy by
seniory and maintained it by craft-received from the
descendant of one whose ancestor a priestly tyranny had
burnt to death, that blow upon the cheek which first
disenchanted Europe, broke the sceptre of Romish
usurpation. But perhaps you may fancy that God's
judgments upon cities, and nations, and priestcrafts
ended in the Middle Ages, and are an anachronism in
modern times.
.
9. If you want yet nearer witnesses than these that
70 The Retribution upon Selfish Societies.
nations perish because they know not the day of their
visitation, has the nineteenth century, in its self-com-
placent materialism, forgotten the fearful lesson of the
eighteenth? Has the meaning of the French revolu-
tion of 1792 faded from our memories-that day of
visitation,
>
'When all men stood aghast and pale,
As if to see the azure sky
Come shattering down, and show beyond
The black and bare infinity ?"
Have we forgotten how a people without heart and
without hope, trampled into the dust by insolent op-
pression, living on grass and nettles, spoke at last in
the lion-roar of Danton? How a crushed multitude
sprang to its feet at last and smote the hoary head of
inveterate abuse? How men danced the Carmagnole in
the desecrated churches of a dead religion, and deluged
the guillotine alike with innocent and with guilty
blood? or has the year 1885 forgotten the political
overthrow of 1868 ? or how-when in 1871 the military
pride of France slipped into ashes like the body of some
exhumed king-men read the demon passions of godless
people by the light of Paris blazing with petroleum.
Why did this happen? Her own sons, alike a Renan
and a Dumas, each in his own style, gave the answer. It
was because her young men were shamefully demoralized.
It was because her public spirit was miserably dead. It
was because her traders were lying and cheating to get
gain in the very crisis of her agony. It was because
there prevailed in France an atheism, at once blasphe-
mous and feeble; a corruption at once naked and not
ashamed.
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies. 71
10. And might not the voice of Jesus have cried.
through the centuries, Oh Nineveh, oh Sodom, oh
Babylon, oh Tyre, oh Venice, oh Spain, oh Papal
Rome, oh France, and yet again oh France—if thou
hadst known, even thou, at least in thy day, the things
that belong to peace-but now they are hid from thine
eyes! And oh England, oh America, oh Canada,-
knowest thou the day of thy visitation? Hast thou no
fear of God's silent judgment days? Ah! if ye would
be indeed safe and indeed prosperous with an abiding
prosperity, take deeply to heart the lesson that "Right-
eousness exalteth a nation," and that "sin is the re-
proach of any people." See that the infidelity, which,
in many regions, grows daily more avowed and more
unblushing, cause no ravage in your folds. Beware lest
trade and commerce should become corroded with dis-
honesty and adulteration. See that the holy day of
rest and worship become not a day of idle pleasure. Be
on thy guard against that hasting to be rich which shall
not be innocent. Take heed that thy churches become
not dead in formalism, and that thy religion shrivel not
into a thing of parties, and opinions, and outward
forms. See that thy sons and daughters be not absorbed
in pleasure, or in worldliness, or in greed of gold. Then
shalt thou be safe under the shadow of the Almighty,
and His banner go before thee, and His glory be thy
reward. But if thou heed not these lessons, then art
thou not afraid? Is not thy religion a thing of parties,
and opinions, and outward forms? Art thou not afraid
lest God should say to thee as of old, by the voice of
Amos, to so many nations, "for three transgressions,
and for four I will not turn away the punishment
72 The Retribution upon Selfish Societies.
""
thereof; for the luxury which, with a coldness of
heart icy as the pool of Cacytus, has "too many claims "
to spare for the good of man and the glory of God more
than the paltriest driblets from its superfluity; for the
drink, against which, in spite of the revolting misery
and abysmal degradation which it causes, we fight in
vain; for the gossiping personality, which poisons the
whole air with its ignoble pettiness; for the love of
money, which sticks to the fingers and degrades the
soul; for three transgressions and for four will God
send upon sinful nations his sore punishments; for the
senseless betting and gambling which drives so many
young men into vice and crime; for the immorality
which fills the streets of Christian cities with the living
dead; for the spirit of malice and hatred which forces
its way into society, into senates, and into churches; for
the hollowness which praises God with the lips, while
the heart is far from Him.
We are proud of our science.
people from demoralization?
Will science save a
"If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars in rising,
If we wrapped the globe intently in one hot electric breath,
"Twere but power within our tether, no new spirit-power com-
prising,
And in life we are not greater men, nor bolder men in death.”
We talk about our philanthropy. Will our philan-
thropy save us? I take a different view of it. I look
on the vaunted charities not as the sign of our muni-
ficence, but as the demonstration of our meanness. We
boast of our civilization. I recall how often in history
civilization has proved itself to be but a film of irides-
cence over the corruption of a stagnant pool.
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies. 73
་
And, sometimes, thinking over all these things, hear-
ing no voice among the echoes, seeing no prophet amid
the waste, hoping for little deliverance from politi-
cians or from priests, it sometimes seems to me as if a
shadow were falling over us as over Sicily falls the dark
shadow of her volcano. Of this at any rate I feel very
sure, that periods of long prosperity are full of danger,
and that the attitude of moral watchfulness and the zeal
of a noble discontent are better and safer than the
vanity of self-congratulation, and the "ghastly smooth
life, dead at heart," of a merely formal and merely
nominal religion. "About the river of human life," it
has been said, "there is a wintry wind and a heavenly
sunshine. The rainbow colors its agitation, the frost
fixes on its repose. In the perils of nations, in their in-
fancy and in their afflictions, they have often higher
hopes and nobler aspirations; but when their troubles
have sunk to rest, there are evils which vex less but in-
jure more, which suck the blood though they do not
shed it, and ossify the heart though they do not torture
it; and there is danger lest enervation succeed to energy,
apathy to patience, and the noise of jesting words and
the foulness of dark thoughts to the earnest purity of
the girded loin and the burning lamp. Let us not
dwell too much on the thought how religious, how
orthodox, how progressive, how safe we are.
Let us
rather be very humble for our many sins and short-
comings. For if we be like Jerusalem, if we too fail to
know the day of our visitation, if we succumb to avarice
and immorality and unbelief, for us also a voice will cry
at last to the stern angels of avenging Justice, "Go scat-
ter the drunkards of our race, and those who tempt and
74
The Retribution upon Selfish Societies.
madden them; go smite the selfish hearts which are
content that there should be all around them a misery
which they ignore, and burdens which they will not lift
with one of their fingers; go and break like a spider's
web the hope of the hypocrite; go scatter the ignoble,
and the false, and those who sacrifice to their vilest pas-
sions the souls of the innocent and the wretched." And
when such a cry is heard, "I saw," says one, “I saw a
brand lifted in the sombre sky, which shone from east
to west like lightning, and from the abodes of men there
went up a cry, exceeding great and bitter, which thrilled
up to the stars, and made them throb and tremble as in
awe and fear. And then the earth was still."
And it is not yet too late. It is yet the day of our
happy visitation. Even at the eleventh hour repentance
for Jerusalem would have been possible. She might yet
have hushed upon her lips the fatal cry, "We have no
king but Cæsar." She might yet have paused before
she preferred her Barabbas to her Christ. The barren
tree might yet have blossomed into fruitage. The axe
was at its backmost poise, but even yet, ere it swept
whistling through the air, the watchers and the holy
ones might have been bidden to stay the stroke. And
our day has not yet come. It may yet be averted.
England, Canada, America-the English-speaking race
-are yet in the full flood of prosperity. We may yet
have before us a future splendid and beneficent, rich in
that righteousness which exalteth nations, because it is
a blessing to all mankind. May God grant it! And
that He may grant it, may it please Him to inspire us
betimes with the conviction that no nation can be great
or happy unless it choose the Lord for its God, and

The Retribution upon Selfish Societies. 75
make its prime care to obey His eternal moral laws. And
this is a lesson for each of us, as for us all. Nations
only become great and happy when the love of God
burns, like a pure flame upon an altar, in the hearts of
their individual sons. Ah! may the Lord Christ pour
forth His spirit upon us more and more, and make us
indeed worthy, or at least more worthy of the high name
of Christians. May He make us feel the immense pre-
rogative, and rise to the full height of the immense
responsibility that we are called the sons of God.
SERMON VI
PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S, LONDON, ONTARIO, SEPT. 27, 1885.
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
4
6.
"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you,
and say all manner of evil agåinst you falsely, for my sake.”—Matt.
v. 11.
THIS is one of the Beatitudes-so startling in their
divine originality-with which our Lord began His Ser-
mon on the Mount. It is as though He had deliberately
set Himself the task of reversing the world's judgments;
-of declaring those blessed whom men cursed, and those
enviable whom men pitied. The burden of the Beati-
tudes was-
Glory to God from those whom men oppress,
Honor from God to those whom men despise."
The world prides itself on its passion and its haughti-
ness;-Christ said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."
The world brands as coward him who will not resent
an insult;-Christ said, "Blessed are the meek." The
world uses the word "saint" as a sneer;-Christ said,
"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after right-
•
L
1
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling. 77
eousness."
The world shouts down unpopular names;
Christ said, "Blessed are ye when men shall reproach
you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil
against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceed-
ing glad for great is your reward in heaven: for so per-
secuted they the prophets which were before you,” aye,
and He might have added, the prophets who shall come
after you, as long as time shall be.
'He
1. There have been unceasing attempts to explain
away these Beatitudes, to treat them as the language of
exalted enthusiasm, to tame them out of their splendid
passion, to rob them of all practical significance, to re-
gard them only as paradoxes in the regions of the ideal.
For instance, men would set in array against this Beati-
tude of malediction such remarks as, "If a man is ill-
spoken of, he generally deserves to be ill-spoken of."
"Where there is smoke there is at least some fire."
must be more or less bad, or he would not be unpopular
among all parties alike." Again they say, "It is non-
sense to pretend indifference to the world's opinion. It
only proves a man's self-conceit. Nay, more, it may
come from the effrontery which dares to brazen out bad
deeds." Again, they argue, "Has not the world mostly
shown that its moral judgments are sound? Does it not
execrate great crimes? Has it not shown admiration
for unselfish heroism? What becomes, then, of the be-
atitude of revilement ? Is there not a far truer and
brighter beatitude in enjoying the praise of men?
2. Now there is a certain amount of superficial truth
in these observations. There are certain crimes which
are dangerous to the world, and, except in the case of
gorgeous criminals and successful villains, the world
78
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
does generally condemn such crimes. Again, the world
is often right in its posthumous judgments,--because
the dead do not stand in its way, awaken no envy, ex-
cite no jealousy, can stir up no personal enmities. The
world's judgment of the dead is, therefore, disentangled
from selfish interests. It can see things in their due
perspective, and in the slow history of their ripening.
And, once more, popularity is, to a very great extent,
an accidental thing, and, if some are popular who fully
deserve to be so, it is often not because of their real good-
ness, but because of qualities which they may share with
very bad men. Nothing is more certain than that some
of the most worthless men who have ever lived, by virtue
of a pleasant manner, a gay indifference, an easy good-
nature, if they occupy a high station, may excite, and
even in our days have kindled, a perfect frenzy of enthusi-
asm among shouting multitudes; and that, on the other
hand, some of the very best and noblest of God's chil-
dren who have ever lived may be, and, even in our own
days, have been
"The very butt of slander."
In Roman history we have one Emperor, Nero, the first
persecutor of Christianity, who stands on the topmost
pinnacle of immortal infamy, and was yet so popular
that, long after his death, his grave and his statues used
to be adorned with flowers, and emperor after emperor
who succeeded him strengthened himself by honoring
his memory and imitating his vices; and we have an-
other Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, perhaps the saintliest
character in all Pagan and in much of even Christian
history, who was so conscious that by the people around
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
79
him he was not beloved, that, in the little golden pas-
sional of his private diary, which breathes sadness in
every line, he writes: "I am going away from a life in
which even my associates, on behalf of whom I have
striven, and cared, and prayed so much, themselves wish
me to depart.
Why, then, should a man cling
to a longer stay here ?"
3. But you must not think that this Beatitude refers
only to conspicuous men, or to times of persecution.
Christ was speaking to the obscure and humble multi-
tudes. In their measure, His words apply to every one
of us.
Be we great or small, every one of us has our
little world, and in that we may have all manner of evil
said against us: happy if this be "falsely;" happier
still if it be "for Christ's sake." Our Lord said,
"Judge not, that ye be not judged." But we are all
judging, and being judged, daily, and all day long. If
we occupy a position which attracts the smallest notice,
we shall find it surrounded in these days by an immense
publicity, a base and empty babble of the thing which
calls itself society. But besides this, the poorest old
woman, the clerk in the office, the shopman behind the
counter, even the school-boy among his school-fellows,
as well as the great writer or the great statesman, may
know what it is to suffer from "all words that may do
hurt." Just as they may be popular because of their
lowest qualities, so too they may be hated simply be-
cause their standard and their language is more virtuous
and more pure than that of their fellows. Hatred is
the commonest tribute which Vice pays to Virtue.
Even the Pagan statesman, when the mob applauded
his speech, used to turn round and ask his friends,
I
C
!
80
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
"Have I said anything wrong, then?" And so com-
mon is this case that our Lord said, "Woe unto you
when all men shall speak well of you;
"“Blessed are ye
when men shall say all manner of evil against you
falsely, for my sake." He said "Blessed." He did not
say "Happy." The two things are very different,
though the world does not see the distinction. A man
can hardly be happy when those about him hate him,
and are unjust to him; but he may be very blessed.
Look at the martyrs. The martyrs shrank from suffer-
ing like other men, but such natural shrinking was in-
commensurable with apostasy. No intensity of torture
had any means of affecting what was a mental convic-
tion; and the sovereign thought in which they had
lived was their adequate support and consolation in
death. Yes, the martyrs were blessed, but hardly
happy; and their blessedness-the heritage of these
divine beatitudes, a thing higher and deeper and more
eternal than happiness-is open to us also in the meas-
ure that we tread the hard path of the Cross of Christ.
4. If you feel any doubt on the subject, look at the
life and the words of your Master, Christ. Did He not
say to some who were not His disciples, "The world
cannot hate you, because ye are not of the world, but
Me it hateth?" Did He not say, "Ye shall be treated
as the offscouring of all things for my name's sake?"
Is the world so changed-are all men now so Christ-like
—that the very things which the world hated in Christ,
it will love in Christians? Christ was not only good,
but the very self of goodness; not only truthfulness, but
truth. He went about doing good, and nothing but
good, in perfect sinlessness. What came thereof? On
4
A
1
1
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
81
the shining Gabbatha, the rich mosaic on which stood
the Procurator's gilded chair, stood two men. One is
the scowling murderer, whose name was Jesus Barabbas,
who had been imprisoned for sedition and for murder.
The other was the sinless Son of God. He had been
tortured by nine hours of trials, and derisions, and buf-
fetings, and sleeplessness; the purple robe of His mock-
ery hung heavily to the pavement, with blood from the
awful scourging which He had borne; twisted round
His brow was the wreath of agony, its leaves encrimsoned
with the rending of its bitter thorns. They stood before
the world-those two-the Murderer, and the Divine
Man-before the world assembled in myriads, in the city
which called itself the Holy City. There were Jews
there, and Romans, and women and children, and chief
priests. Both sexes; all ages; many nationalities;
men of every class were represented there. The choice
is given to them all: "Which will ye that I should de-
liver unto you ?" Did not every hand point to the
murderer? Did not every voice shout in applause the
murderer's name? "What will ye then that I should do
unto Jesus which is called Christ?" Then the air was
rent with the yell of "Crucify! Crucify the Saviour;
the Good Physician; the Good Shepherd; the Prince
of Peace. Away, away with Him! Crucify! Crucify!"
And they nailed Him to the cross; and even there the
chief priests and the Jewish mob, and the Roman sol-
diers, and the crucified robbers, all joined in taunts of
maledictions, and the stream which flowed before the
slowly-glazing eyes of the Redeemer of the world was the
muddy and the shallow stream of human ferocity and
human hate.
6
82
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
5. Has it ever been otherwise? Christ said the dis-
ciple shall be as his master, and He bade all of us His
disciples to take up our cross and follow Him. To fol-
low Him is to live virtuous, and true, and fearless, and
faithful lives. Have these lives have, or have they
not, inherited the beatitude of revilement? I will but
take one or two instances. As those planets shine the
brightest which are nearest to the sun, so no life, in all
the annals of Christianity, is more splendidly luminous
than that of St. Paul. Now, on the one hand, I know
no life in all the world which was so heroic, so noble, so
absolutely self-sacrificing as his; on the other, I know
no life which was so bitterly hated, so remorselessly per-
secuted. It was not only the world which hated him,
but, as has often been the case, the professedly religious,
the nominal Church. The Jews again and again
scourged him; hunted him from city to city; vowed
his assassination; plotted against his life. The Gen-
tiles scorned him, imprisoned him, beat him with rods;
at last murdered him. Even the infant Church, for
which he had poured out his life like water, in great
measure hated him. In his hour of need, when he faced
the lion, all they of Asia-they for whose sake he had
braved cold, and heat, and hunger, and agony—all they
of Asia forsook him. In his miserable cell, out of all
that Roman Church, he had but a single friend. To
this day we know not how or where he braved the mar-
tyr's death. As the world judges failure, no failure
could have been so pitiable and so absolute as that of
him who, of all men since Christ, has lived the most
Christ-like life. Even two centuries after his martyr-
dom he was basely slandered, in writings avowedly
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
83
Christian, under the thin pseudonym of Simon Magus.
Hatred, slander, abuse, perils of every kind, beatings,
scourgings, cold, hunger, nakedness, murder, the long
bitterness alike of contemporary and of posthumous
calumny-this was the world's reward for the man
who, next to his Lord, was the founder of Christianity.
Think you that this high saint of God, in the long
martyrdom of his life, was never comforted by Christ's
beatitude: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you
and persecute you for my sake ?”
6. We have seen how religious Jerusalem and how
Pagan Rome rewarded the saints of God. Let us leap
over two centuries, and come to philosophic and Christ-
ian Alexandria. If you were to ask who was the most
apostolic man since the Apostles? who was the most
learned and most holy of all the Fathers? who, since
St. John died, has rendered greater services than any
man who has ever lived to the cause of Scriptural knowl-
edge, any candid student of church history, if he knew
anything of his subject, would answer, "That man was
Origen." Now it is precisely this man-in spite of all
his holiness, in spite of a life of martyrdom begun in
early boyhood and continued till he succumbed to the
effects of hideous torture in the Decian persecution-it
is precisely this holy and most gifted saint of God who
most of all men experienced Christ's beatitude of male-
diction. The Christians persecuted him even more
shamefully and more bitterly than the heathen. The
Pharisaic viper was scotched, not killed.
Almost every
saint of God who has dared to think for himself has
heard its hiss. Origen, all his life long, was a victim of
religious malice. Nor did this his martyrdom end with
::
84
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
his death. Though the best Fathers spoke of him with
respectful gratitude, the cause of his enemies prevailed.
In the writings of all the emptiest and pettiest repeaters
of second-hand formulæ he is execrated as "the in-
sane,'
""the impious," "the heretical" Origen. Well
may even the secular historian say of him that, if in the
midst of saints and angels, and in the hands of their
Creator, such souls as his be conscious of what passes
here, "they must smile at the idle fury of the theologi-
cal insects who still crawl on the surface of the earth."
""
It is only after the lapse of fifteen centuries that due
justice is beginning to be done to that glorious name;
but he, we are very sure, has long ago experienced in all
its fulness the divine prediction: "Blessed are ye when
men shall revile you and persecute you, and say all
manner of evil against you falsely, for my name's sake."
7. But perhaps the world and the Church grow kind-
er and more just as the Christian centuries roll on?
Well, we will pass, at one beat of the wing, over some
twelve Christian centuries, and come this time to Ger-
many, and to one who died more than 450 years ago.
In a rude wooden carriage, still preserved, a poor
Bohemian preacher was brought, by the order of an
infamous Pope, to the great Council of Constance. His
name was John Huss. In spite of the pledged safe-
conduct of the Emperor Sigismund, he was thrust into
a miserable prison-cell, where you may still see the stone
to which he was chained, and the hole through which
food was passed to him. In vain, in the full council,
before all the spiritual and temporal lords, he made the
hot blush burn on the cheek of the Emperor Sigismund
by reminding him of his violated word. A hundred
;
*
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
85
".
years afterwards that blush saved the life of Luther, for
when Charles V. was urged to seize Luther in spite of
his safe-conduct, he replied, "I do not want to blush
like Sigismund." It saved Martin Luther a century
afterwards, but it did not save John Huss then. Like
Paul, in the misery of loneliness, tormented by cold and
wet, he waited to be led from cruel prison to agonizing
death. Princes, prelates, priests, visitors to the num-
ber of 100,000, had come to the council. From none of
them did he receive pity. Charged with opinions which
he had never maintained, his appeal, "How can I
adjure what I never held ?" was drowned in insolent
clamor. When the sentence of death was read to him,
he fell on his knees and prayed, "Lord Jesus, forgive
my enemies, and their false accusations." How was
that prayer received? Loud laughter rang from the
assembled bishops, as that prayer went up for them to
heaven! When he was degraded from the priesthood,
a cap painted with devils was put on his head.
Within a railing lies a huge boulder, overgrown with
ivy. On that stone, in his robe of infamy, with " Arch-
heretic" written in large letters on his devil-painted
cap, the martyr stood. Among those who crowded to
witness his death, a wretched old woman, thinking that
the act would secure her salvation, eagerly stooped
down to lay another fagot on the pile. The martyr
smiled at her ignorant ferocity and brutal religionism;
but, "O sancta simplicita," "Oh, holy simplicity,"
-that was all he said. "Jesus, Son of the living God,
have mercy on me," he cried, until the wind fanned the
flames into his face and so stifled his voice. Now why
did all the world combine to execrate him as a man,
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The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
and to burn him as a heretic? Partly because, being a
better man than any in his age, he had denounced the
wickedness and laxity alike of the clergy and the laity;
partly because, when men were still sunk in ignorance
and superstition, he held and maintained the very truths
which we in our church believe to be the dearest and
the best. And this incomparable martyr of the dawning
Reformation-this man whose conscience was so deli-
cately sensitive that the chief fault with which he had
to reproach himself was that, before he became a priest,
he used sometimes to get angry over the game of chess-
this man who "dared to be
In the right with two or three;"
who "dared to choose
Hatred, slander, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the thing he needs must think "
when put to death for this by bishops and princes, wrote
from his prison, "in chains, on the vigil of St. John,
who, because he rebuked wickedness, was beheaded in
prison," "Much consoles me that word of our Saviour,
Blessed be ye when men shall hate you, and separate
you from their company, and cast out your name as
evil, for the Son of Man's sake."
"When the wicked perish there is shouting," says
Solomon'; aye, but very often the good, too, have been
shouted out of the world. "I'll go curse," exclaims
the furious Duchess in one of our English tragedies;
"I could curse the stars." "Look you," answers one
who hears her, "the stars shine still." Aye, the stars
of God shine still, though the world curse and try to
The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
87
quench them; and the exhalations die away in mephitic
gleam, though the world shout its admiration at their
light!
8. I will take but one instance more. Again I pass
over two centuries, and this time I will take an instance,
not from the Church, but from the State. Not far
from Westminster Abbey, 250 years ago, in poverty and
loneliness, in blindness and persecution, lived one of the
greatest poets, and one of the noblest men whom the
world has ever seen-John Milton. All his life long he
had combated for the truth and the liberty which he
loved more than life itself. He had made his whole life
a poem. By pureness and by knowledge he had striven
to winnow his age from its gathered draff. Even in
youth not religion only, but a certain delicate and
fastidious nobleness had kept the crystal of his soul
unflawed and unsullied by every sensual or ignoble vice.
His years had been devoted, from his beautiful child-
hood upwards, to holy efforts and fruitful studies. All
had seemed to fail. His friends had died in exile or in
prison. He could not walk over Westminster Bridge
without seeing on a pike the ghastly head of the great
Lord Protector, whom he had loved and honored.
never man was so hated as he. You will remember
how, in Sir Walter Scott's fine tale of "Woodstock,"
where Everett has quoted to the old knight the beauti-
ful lines,
"Oh welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,
And thou, unblemished form of chastity "
And
and Charles II. tells him that the lines which he has ad-
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The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
- ני
mired so much are by John Milton, the old cavalier
bursts out into a torrent of imprecations, calling him the
blasphemous and bloody-minded, a whitened sepulchre,
the sophist Milton. The scene is most true to his-
tory. When on a statue of the now-forgotten poet,
John Phillips, was carved the line that he was "nearly
equal to Milton," it was obliterated by the order of the
then Dean, Bishop Sprat, because he considered the
name of Milton a pollution to the Abbey walls.
But blessed are ye when all men shall persecute you,
and speak all manner of evil against you falsely, for my
name's sake. "Fools accounted his life madness, and his
end to be without honor, how is he numbered among
the children of God, and his lot is among the saints."
Where there is a great soul uttering new and needed
truths, there for the most part is Calvary; and the prog-
ress of good and of good men in the world, has been
from scaffold to scaffold and from stake to stake.
9. And what shall I more say? for the time would
fail me to tell of St. Chrysostom, orator, and patriarch,
and saint, driven out of Constantinople to perish in
cruel exile; of Columbus, dying in obscurity, his room
hung with the chains in which he had been sent back
from the New World which he had discovered; of
Gregory the Great exclaiming, "I have loved righteous-
ness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile;"
of Campanella, seven times cruelly tortured for the love
of liberty, and tolerance, and truth; of the English
martyrs who perished in the flames which Bonner and
Mary lit; of Whitfield, who
"Stood pilloried on infamy's high stage,
And bore the pelting scorn of half an age;"
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89
of Priestly, whom "full of years from his loved native
land," statesmen bloodstained and priests idolatrous,
"With fierce lies maddening the blind multitude,
Drove with vain hate;"
of the men of yesterday who have sunk into their graves
weary, as Melancthon was, of "the rage of theologians,"
and of the strife of base tongues; of the men of to-day
for whom life is burdened with "the oppression of a per-
petual reviling." Strangers and pilgrims, the noblest of
earth, have been, and they have trodden the path of
their pilgrimage, like their Lord before them, with bare
feet and bleeding brow. Darkness has often been around
them with nothing but faith to brighten it. Destitute,
afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy,
they received not indeed on earth the promise, but they
did experience the divine beatitude: "Blessed are ye
when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say
all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Re-
joice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in
heaven."
10. Only let me point out, in one last word, that for
this beatitude there are two conditions. The abuses,
the reproach, the reviling must be false, not true; the
suffering and persecution must be borne for Christ's
sake, not for our own. And that implies that, from
the world's judgment, we have two tribunals to appeal
unto-ourselves, and God.
i. Ourselves. You are unpopular, you are not loved,
you are ill-spoken of? Well, but does this sea of en-
mity without, meet the sea of guilt from your heart
within? Does no awful inner voice confirm, as with
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The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
crash on crash of thunder, the angry verdict of the
world? Can you go up into the tribunal of your own
conscience, and setting yourself before yourself, say with
David, "I have washed my hands in innocency, and so
have I come to thine altar, oh Lord." Can you say
with Moses, "I have not taken one ass from them,
neither have I hurt one of them." Can you say with
Samuel, "Behold, here I am: witness against me before
the Lord, whom I have defrauded? whom have I op-
pressed?" Can you say with Job, "Thou knowest that
I am not wicked. My foot hath kept thy steps." Can
you say with Paul, "I know nothing against myself?
Ah! if you cannot--if, in your own secret heart, there
are deeds for which to blush-if in your own heart there
be not only the judge and jury, but also the prisoner at
the bar, ever condemned; then that will indeed drag
down your life. There is no consolation then against
the deserved scorn of the world. But, if you can stand
up and say, "I have injured none; I have slandered
none; I have corrupted none; I have defrauded none;
I have been honest in my dealings; I have been truth-
ful in my words; I have had clean hands, and I have
striven to have a pure heart, and I have cast no stum-
bling-block of my own guilty passion before any man,
or woman, or child for whom Christ died;" if you
can say, with a living writer, "I have been kind to
many; I have wished to be kind to all; I have never
willingly done the slightest wrong to any; I have loved
much, and not unselfishly, and therefore the light of
heaven is still bright for me on yonder hills;" if you
can say this, then acquitted at the bar of conscience,
be just and fear not; stand up, not only undaunted but
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91
superior before any amount of misconception, or any
multitude of lies.
'Tis not the babbling of an idle world,
Where praise and censure are at random hurled,
That can the meanest of my thoughts control,
Or shake one settled purpose of my soul;
Free and at large might their wild curses roam
If all, alas! if all were well at home!"
:
ii. And can you appeal fearlessly to the Judgment of
God? Can you say with David, "God, thou knowest
my sinfulness, and my thoughts are not hid from
thee?" When Savonarola was unfrocked before the
yelling mobs of Florence, the bishop said, "I degrade
you from the Church." "From the Church militant
you may," said the great preacher, "from the Church
triumphant you cannot it is not yours to do." When
Huss had the cap painted with demons placed upon his
head by the heads of the bishops of his day, they said,
"And
"We devote your soul to the infernal devils.”
I," replied the martyr, "I commend my redeemed soul
to Thee, oh Lord, my Christ." When Pascal was
fiercely condemned by the Jesuits for heresy, he wrote:
"If what I have here written be condemned at Rome,
what I there condemn is condemned in heaven.
tuum Dominie Jesu, tribunal appello. Among the
Marian martyrs was one poor boy named William
Brown. He was burnt at Brentwood. "Pray for me,"
he said to the bystanders. "I will pray no more for
thee," one of them replied, "than I will pray for a
dog." "Then," said William, "Son of God shine thou
upon me!" and lo! at once, on a dark and cloudy day,
the sunshine burst forth full upon him, and kindled a
Ad
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The Beatitude of Men's Reviling.
glory upon his youthful face, "whereat the people
mused because it was so dark a little time before."
Happy they on whom the Son of God shall thus smile,
not only in a flood of earthly sunshine amid the clouds
and storms of persecution, but as in that city which
hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon to lighten
it, for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is
the light thereof! Earthly friends may fail; wealth
may fail; health may fail; kindness may fail; fame
may vanish away; failure may attend our efforts; all
men may hate, and revile, and persecute us; there may
be none so poor to do us reverence. The world may
give to a saint the poison-cup when he has earned the
crown—but no good man needs the pity, but rather the
envy of the world whose sins he rebukes and thwarts.
"Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good, great man? Three treasures, life, and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,
Himself, his Maker, and the Angel Death.”
SERMON VII.
PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S, BALTIMORE, MD., Oct. 3, 1885.
The Lost Sheep.
"Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost."
-LUKE XV. 6.
I WISH this morning to speak to you a few simple
words on the lesson of the day. It imperatively claims
our attention because it reveals with the most absolute
and incisive plainness the love of God-the love of God
in Christ for lost and wandering souls.
1. In fulfilment of His high mission, which was to
the lost sheep of the House of Israel-to the sick, who
needed, and knew that they needed, a Physician-Jesus
had "received sinners and eaten with them." It was
His special characteristic to love those whom none had
loved, and to love them as none had ever loved before.
Those whom the Priests wholly failed to reach by their
officialism, He reached; those whom Scribes failed to
move by their learning, or Pharisees by their ortho-
doxy, He moved to the depths of their sad and guilty
souls. The chill wind may play about the Alpine
heights, but it only congeals them into a deadlier and
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The Lost Sheep.
XE

more frozen whiteness; but when they thrill to the
touch of the sunbeam and the breathing of the West-
ern wind, the snow is melted and loosed, till from the
burdened bosom of the mountain it slips away in ava-
lanche, and where yesterday the slopes were blank and
perilous, to-day there is green grass and purple flower.
So is it with the human heart. Coldness and fierceness
will not touch it; it will be only hardened by contempt
and anathema; it may be broken, not swayed, by au-
thority and domination; but there never yet was human
heart so hard as not to be thrilled and melted by sym-
pathy and love.
2. That was Christ's way; and the religious world of
Palestine did not understand it. They broke into loud
murmurs of disapprobation as they saw crowd after
crowd of publicans and sinners drawing near unto
Him to hear Him. They were jealously indignant
that these disreputable persons from whom they could
gain no hearing thronged to one whom they called "the
Son of the carpenter," who had not been to their schools,
who did not respect their traditions, who saw through
their conventionality, "who knew no letters," they said,
"having never learned." When they met these people
in the streets they drew in their ample robes lest, in
passing, they should touch them; they spoke of them
with angry hatred as "this multitude which knoweth
not the law, and are accursed." They could under-
stand John the Baptist's way with them; they could
not understand the secret of Jesus. To withdraw into
the desert-to shake off from saintly feet the dust of
common life-to say, "Stand aside, for I am holier
than thou "-the ascetic, the theological, the exclusive
•
The Lost Sheep.
95
way of regarding sinners-that they could approve;
and if John had not hurled his apocalyptic denuncia-
tions at them even more loudly than at the people, they
would have welcomed him with open arms as a prophet
and a saint. If they said that he had a devil," it was
only because-being too great and too true not to
despise the religious popularity which he might have
gained by floating down the stream of the prevalent
opinions-he exposed their externalism and opinion-
worship with unsparing vehemence. But they could
not understand Christ's way at all. For they were the
religious world-there could be no doubt about that—
and yet Christ looked coldly on them! They tithed even
their mint, anise, and cumin, and He did not praise
them; they used all the proper ablutions; they wore
all the bluest fringes and the broadest phylacteries,
and Christ thought nothing of them! As touching
the righteousness which is by the law, they were blame-
less, and lo! He had no single word of commendation for
their scrupulosities! Nay, after experiencing for a time
their treacherous friendship and subterranean hostili-
ties, turning His back upon them altogether, striving
no longer to remove their prejudices or to conciliate
their malice, the Saviour had gathered round Him the
outcast and the reprobate-the wretched women, the
sinners, and the masses at whom they spat and sneered.
"How mischievous," they said, "is this despiser of or-
thodoxy, this religious leveller and innovator!" His
ways were not their ways; nor His thoughts their
thoughts; nor His righteousness their righteousness.
Their religion was a religion of party, of opinion, of
observances, of hatred; His religion was love.
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The Lost Sheep.
3. Now it was to make quite clear to these murmur-
ing Scribes and Pharisees something of His desires and
of His method, that the Lord Jesus spake to them the
three parables which give to this chapter so inestimably
a preciousness-the parables of the Lost Sheep, of the
Lost Coin, of the Lost Son. They are rich with many
meanings, which, like the colors of the rainbow, melt
into each other. We could not pretend in many ser-
mons to exhaust or fathom their divine depth.
must be much uncertainty about many of their details;
but one truth is common to all three of them, and in
speaking of it we go straight to the heart of their cen-
tral significance;-and that is the infinite yearning of
redemptive love.
There
4. To illustrate this, Christ chooses three different
images to represent three different kinds of sinners:
i. The sheep wanders from its flock and from its fold;
it is lost in the pathless wilderness; it is endangered
by wild beasts; it is torn by briers; it is hungry and
thirsty. But alas! the way is lost. No help is near.
There is no one to lead it back again. It has chosen
the delusions of the mirage for the green pastures and
still waters, and they have but lured it, farther and
farther, over the sun-encrimsoned sands. The lost
sheep is the bewildered sinner-the soul which, in
ignorance and indifference, has wandered from its
Shepherd's care.
ii. Then there is the lost coin. It is of silver; it
bears the image of a king; but it lies defaced, down-
trodden, in the dust, in some dark lurking-place to
which it has rolled; useless, dishonored-but, like a
dead thing, unheeding of its loss. The lost coin is the
The Lost Sheep.
97
ignorant, the unconscious, the neglected sinner, who
must be diligently searched for, or he can never be re-
claimed.
iii. Then there is the lost son; the dear, dear son,
who has wilfully left his father's home; who has known
what love is, and despised its solicitude; he who, to
indulge in his spurious liberty, has cared nothing for
his mother's bitter tears, or his father's breaking heart;
he who has followed into the bad far country the phan-
toms of false pleasure and corrupt desires, there to
waste his substance in riotous living. The prodigal son
is the voluntary sinner; the worst sinner of all; the
sinner against light and knowledge; the sinner against
home and love. Here, then, are three different speci-
mens of lost souls. And yet so Jesus taught—not one
of these is beyond the love of God.
5. Doubtless among the poor groups who kept throng-
ing to Jesus were specimens of each class-men and
women, perplexed and wandering, or unconscious in
their misery, or wilful in their degradation. And that
was why when He saw them He had compassion on
them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd.
Scattered in the wilderness and on the barren hills, in
the cloudy and dark day, there were none to search for
them. In all that accurate orthodox Church-in that
squabbling, self-absorbed, religious world-there were
none really or wisely to pity them. Alas! were they
not like the swarming masses in many of our great
towns? Was it only in Palestine that there were
souls of men and women wandering in evil paths,
lost in their degradation, self-exiled from God and
home? And to all three classes, as the Lord wished
77
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The Lost Sheep.
-
them to know, and would also have the Pharisees
know, His one rule was the rule of love. He would
bring back the lost sheep from the wilderness. He
would find the lost coin. To the returning prodigal
He would open wide the arms of His mercy. He would
teach all self-righteous partisans that it is not the will
of our Father in Heaven that one of His little ones
should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
He was the kind owner of the flock who would find the
wandering sheep. He was the careful searcher who
would look for the lost coin. He was the loving Father
who, forgiving the lost, wilful youth, so miserable, so
disenchanted, so ragged, so hungry, and so changed,
would welcome him back with the fatted calf to the dear
home he had despised.
6. Let the first of these parables suffice to illustrate
to-day the one central idea of the three. It is a beauti-
ful sight to see the shepherd in Palestine sitting amid
his flock, or walking with his staff, while in long line
his sheep follow him. He loves his sheep, and lives
with them. He shares with them the burning of the
sun by day and the smiting of the moon by night. He
calls them by their names. He does not flee when he
seeth the wolf coming. David, when he was but a ruddy
shepherd lad, faces and slays, for the sake of his few
poor sheep in the wilderness, both the lion and the bear.
To leave the rest of the flock with others, while he goes
himself to seek but one that has gone astray, is the first
instinct of the true shepherd. You have heard the
story of Garibaldi, the simple hero of Italy, in his island
home; how he went with his shepherds to seek a lost
lamb in Caprera, but not finding it, dismissed them at
The Lost Sheep.
99
1:
nightfall. But he himself ceased not to search, and
through the lone, dreary night he searched on until he
had rescued it, and in the morning was found sleeping
for weariness with the lost lamb sleeping by his side.
How has the witchery of music added for us a fresh
charm to the tender words of prophecy, "He shall feed
His flock like a shepherd; He shall gather the lambs
in His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall
gently lead those that are with young!" And how
lovely is Christ's image here! He leaves the ninety and
nine for the perishing one. Ah, how will the mother's
heart understand that love! Her other boys are safe
and happy in the fold, but if she have one prodigal,
wherever he is her heart is there. The Good Shep-
herd's heart aches to think of the wretchedness and peril
of his lost sheep:
"There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold;
But one was on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold—
Away on the mountain, wild and bare,
Far off from the tender shepherd's care!
*
*
*
But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed,
Nor how dark was the night the Lord passed through
Ere He found His sheep that was lost!"
Yet however long the search, however weary the way,
He will not slumber nor sleep until He find it; and when
He hath found it, He layeth it on His own shoulders
rejoicing, and carries it home, and bids His friends re-
joice with Him, because He has found the sheep that was
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The Lost Sheep.
lost! And Christ's own words are the best comment on
His own parable-"I am the Good Shepherd, and I
know my sheep, and am known of mine; and I lay
down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have
which are not of this fold; them also I must bring
and they shall hear my voice, and they shall become
one flock, one shepherd." The early Christians, who
were happier and more loving than we, chose this image
as their symbol of their Lord. It was their instinct to
dwell not so much on His Death as on His Victory;
not so much on the brief anguish as on the triumphant
love. They carved Christ upon their gems, they painted
Him in their catacombs, they gave Him the central place
in the glittering mosaics of their basilicas-as the Good
Shepherd with the rescued sheep upon his shoulders.
Their one thought was, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I
shall not want. He leadeth me in the green pastures
and beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul, He
leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's
sake."
7. Let us never forget that the whole drama of Re-
demption-the Incarnation, the Ministry, the Cross,
the Resurrection, the Ascension-what was it all but
one long search for the lost sheep and carrying it home
rejoicing? The whole race of man was the lost sheep
until Christ found it. All we like sheep have gone
astray. We had gone out of the way, we had altogether
become abominable, and the Lord laid on Him the in-
iquity of us all. Yea,
"All the souls that are were forfeit once,
And He who might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy."
The Lost Sheep.
ΙΟΙ
Other sheep were His-millions of spiritual creatures
thronging the Heaven of Heavens-Cherubim and Ser-
aphim-the lucent spirits of knowledge and the burning
spirits of love, and an innumerable company of Angels
in all their
"Solemn choirs and sweet societies,
Which sing, and singing in their glory move."
But here was this atom-world floating on the infinite
bosom of the bright and boundless air, "a speck in the
faultless glory, a discord in the unimaginable music, a
flutter in the eternal calm." Yea! among all these
stars upon stars innumerable, was this atom-world, the
ruined habitation of a fallen race. And therefore to
this poor ruined atom-world He came down all those
steps of the infinite descent. Why? because God is
Love. And so the Father sent His Son into the world,
that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have
eternal life: and the Son emptied Himself of His Glory,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the like-
ness of men; and as the Father created, and the Son
redeemed us, so the Holy Spirit helpeth our infirmities
and maketh intercession for us with groanings which
cannot be uttered. Ah, let none of us deceive ourselves
that we are so good, so correct, so righteous, that we do
not need the Saviour. We all need Him, from the least
to the greatest, the religious no less than the irreligious,
the Pharisee no less than the Publican. We all need
Him, and He loves us all. Of the many paltry heresies
which have attempted to crush the Gospel under a
proud and self-satisfied theology, the poorest is that
which pretended that Christ died only for the elect.
{ ་
:
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The Lost Sheep.
He died for all-for all were dead. He gave Himself a
ransom for all; for all had been taken captive. God
delivered Him up for us all, because we all had sinned
and come short of the glory of God. He died not for
the elect only, but for sinners. I have not come to call
the righteous only, but sinners to repentance. This is a
true saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Herein is
manifested the love of God towards us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.
8. Such then is, as I said, the one central lesson of
all the three parables of this chapter-the Infinite
yearning of Redemptive Love. Let us from this brief
and simple survey learn, among others, three brief and
simple lessons.
1. The first is, Let us all be pitiful. How utterly un-
Christlike a spirit does it show, nay, how deadly a sin is
it, to be harsh, severe, unforgiving to sinners; to despise
and hate, instead of pitying and helping them! Christ's
spirit of love is utterly alien from this pitiless abhorrence
for the sinful and the fallen. As for sin, indeed, we
cannot hate it too much; it is the adder which is ever
stinging our race to death, and we ought, every one of
us, to do all we can to crush its head. But for the
sinner-the poor bitten, poisoned victim, if we be like
Christ we shall feel nothing but compassion. A poet
has written a legend of the Lost Pleiad, and it is this:
The Pleiades-so he sings-were seven sisters, and it was
a part of their sweet influence to listen for all the cries,
and watch for all the tears of God's earthly children,
and lift them to heaven. And one night among the
myriad cries there came one which had been wrung from
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103
the heart of a stained, sinful woman, "from lips that
night's nepenthe could not calm." It was a long wail
for mercy, as, meditating suicide, she knelt, with the
child of shame, by the rim of a black river, surging out
from a great city's glare into the gloom. And Merope,
the brightest of the Pleiades, knowing the woman's sin
and shame, cried, "The prayer shall not rise to God;
the woman's punishment is just;" and she struck the
prayer down to earth again. Then, instantly, the voice
of God rolled living thunder among the Planets, and
bade Merope descend from her star to earth-punished
and shamed because she had heard unmoved God's low-
est ask His love. And living on earth, as an Indian
maiden, she too sinned as that woman had sinned whose
prayer she had struck down; and as she too knelt medi-
tating suicide, by the rim of a black river, surging out
from a great city's glare into the gloom, she too cried
aloud to God, and her prayer was struck back to her as
she had spurned the prayer of the sinful woman; and
when the waves had washed out her foul earthly life, she
sat thenceforth dark on a darkling star, because she had
stood between God's lowest and His love.-Ah, let us be
pitiful! "Be ye kind to one another, tender-hearted,
forgiving one another, even as God in Christ hath for-
given you."
2. And the second lesson is, Let none despair. There
are two kinds of despair. The one is insolent and
defiant, a very deadly sin against the Holy Ghost.
It is related of the fierce and unhappy Henry II. that,
hurling his impotent curse at God because he had lost
the town of Le Mans, he exclaimed: "Since Thou hast
taken from me the town that I loved best I will have
104
The Lost Sheep.
. I
my revenge on Thee, too. I will rob thee of that thing
Thou lovest most in me-my soul." Let us trust that
such a sin against the Holy Ghost as this was but a rare
frenzy; but not rare is the dull misery which assumes
that it can have no hope, that it has sinned too deeply
to be forgiven. None have sinned too deeply to be for-
given. It is want of faith thus to set limits to the
efficacy of Christ's redemption. Often, indeed, it is
too late to avert the earthly consequences of misdoing.
They may last, on and on, through many a bitter year.
The boy's idleness shall be the man's poverty and shame.
The youth's vice shall be the man's agony of body and
stain of soul. On earth the sins of men and women do
find them out. It is too late when sin has been com-
mitted to avert its penal consequences. When we have
indulged ourselves in any wilful sin we may have done
with it, but it has by no means done with us. But it
is never too late to repent, never too late to heal sin's
moral ravage, and renew its spiritual loss. On earth
there may be no remission of punishment, but, thank
God, the Son of Man hath power, even on earth, to for-
give sins.
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart ?”
So asks the murderer in the great tragedy; and again-
“ Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green—one red.”
The Lost Sheep.
105
But whatever sin you have committed-however deep,
however dark, however damning, though there be no
physic for your misery, no oceans to wash out your
stain, if you will but repent of it, if you will but come
to Christ with the burden of it, all weary and heavy-
laden as you are, there is heavenly medicine, there is
lustral water at the wicket-gate. Yes! believe it!
There is a balm in Gilead which can heal your sick
conscience, and a good Physician there. On this side
the grave there may be for you no fields of amaranth
or asphodel, but there are beyond the grave, and
through them rolls a river of sweet forgetfulness, one
drop of which can soothe the haunted memory. There
is—oh, there is—a Pool of Siloam where you can receive
your sight; a Bethesda-wave for the impotent; waters
of Jordan wherein you can wash and be clean.
"There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I, as vile as he,
Wash all my sins away."
You err if you think we can only go to Christ when we
are good and pure. Nay, we may go to Him guilty and
helpless, and He will purify and heal. Peace, peace to
him that is afar off, as well as to him that is near.
Even over the waters of the deluge that drowns our
souls flies the dove, and lo! in her mouth an olive leaf
plucked off. It is Christ's office to save, and ours to look
to Him for help. "If evil tempers arise," said the ex-
106
The Lost Sheep.
cellent Berridge, "I go to Him as some demoniac. If
deadness creeps upon me, I go as a paralytic. If dark-
ness clouds my face, I go as a Bartimeus. And when I
pray I always go as a leper, crying, as Isaiah did, Un-
clean, unclean !""
6
3. And the third lesson, which we may surely learn, is
to think noble thoughts of God-even the thoughts
which again, and again, and again He has taught us
respecting Himself. Of what happens beyond the
grave we know but little. We know only that while
any man continues in sin unrepented of he cannot see
God; we know only that whatever else hell may be
it is, beyond all doubt, a temper and a condition, and
that where sin is, there is and must be hell. We know
only that until sin be forsaken, so long it must and will
bring its own curse and punishment, being itself its own
vilest curse and its own most terrific punishment. The
bad man, so long as it is his choice to remain a bad man,
must say with Milton's Satan :
"What matter where, if I be still the same."
But when men draw the abhorrent pictures, which they
often have drawn, of the torments of the lost, I think of
the legend of the martyr Carpus-how, passing to glory
on the fiery chariot of his martyrdom, he looked down
and saw the tormented souls of the heathen and cruel
persecutors, and raised his hand to curse them, when a
voice, sweet and terrible, thrilled through his soul the
question: "Carpus, dost thou curse these? I died to
save them." Read these parables in the light of the
relentless Pharisaism which, supporting its own ruth-
lessness by scraps of texts and shreds of metaphor, used
The Lost Sheep.
107
*?
to call itself orthodox theology, until men were almost
tempted to exclaim with the American poet that "a
natural man is better than an unnatural theologian."
Have you read the poet's vision?
“There came a soul to the gate of Heaven,
Gliding slow;
A soul that was ransomed and forgiven,
And white as snow-
And the angels all were silent.
"Now open the gate and let her in,
And fling it wide,
For she hath been cleansed from stain of sin,'
St. Peter cried-
And the angels all were silent.
“I come,' she said, 'to the pearly door
To see the throne,
Where sits the Lamb on the sapphire floor,
With God alone.
I come to hear the new song they sing
To Him that died,
And note where the healing waters spring,
From His pierced side.
"But I may not enter there,' she said,
For I must go
Across the gulf where the guilty dead
Lie in their woe'-
And the angels all were silent.
"I come where there is no night,' she said,
'To go away,
And help, if I yet may help, the dead
That have no day '-
And the angels all were silent.
108
The Lost Sheep.
"St. Peter, he turned the keys about,
And answered grim :
• Can you love the Lord and abide without,
Afar from from Him ?'
And the angels all were silent.
"❝Should I be nearer Christ,' she said,
'By pitying less
The sinful living and woful dead
In their helplessness ?
Should I be liker Christ, were I
To love no more
The loved, who in their anguish lie
Outside the door ?'
And the angels all were silent.
"The Lord himself stood by the gate
And heard her speak
Those tender words compassionate,
Gentle and meek :—
Now pity is the touch of God
In human hearts;
And from that way He ever trod
He ne'er departs—
And the angels all were silent.
"And He said, 'Now will I go with you,
Dear child of Love,
And I will leave this glory, too,
In Heaven above.'
"And He said, 'We will seek and save the lost,
If they will hear—
They who are worst, but need me most,
And all are dear'—
And the angels all were silent."
The angels all were silent! Nay, I think the poet is
wrong there! When there shall be no more sorrow
•
The Lost Sheep.
109
and no more sighing; when God shall have wiped all
tears from off all faces, in the restitution of all things;
when God shall be all in all; when the lost sheep is
brought home, the lost coin found, the lost son wel-
comed repentant to his Father's home; when the
whole meal is leavened; when the Son of Man, having
been lifted up, has drawn all men unto Him; when He
has destroyed the works of the devil; when He has had
mercy upon all; when He has become Lord of the dead
and of the living; when He hath gathered together
into one all things in Christ; when He has reconciled
all men to Himself—and remember that every one of
these sentences (whatever else there may be in Scripture.
which looks the other way) is a Scripture text and a
Scripture promise then, if there be joy in heaven
over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety
and nine just persons who need no repentance, what
shall there be over myriads and the multitude which no
man can number? What shall there be—if such a day
ever come in the day of the universal redemption of
mankind?
"And all through the mountains, thunder-riven,
And up from the rocky steep,
There rose a cry to the gate of heaven,
Rejoice! I have found my sheep!'
And the angels echoed around the throne:
'Rejoice! for the Lord brings back His own.'”
The angels all stood silent? Nay, the poet is wrong
there! but rather, when the Good Shepherd calls heaven
and earth together to witness His final and eternal
triumph, such a tumult of acclaim shall ring through
heaven, such a seven-fold chorus of harping symphonies,
IIO
The Lost Sheep.
t
"While all the roundes and arches blue
Resound and echo Hallelu—”
Such a whirlwind of multitudinous joy shall sweep the
perfect diapason of those innumerable harps,
"With saintly shout and solemn jubilee,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud, uplifted, angel-trumpets blow,
And the Cherubic Host in thousand choirs
Sound their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just Spirits that wear victorious palms
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly "-
Yea! There shall be such a song like the sound of
thunder, and the voice of many waters, that the uni-
verse of God shall never have heard such floods of unim-
aginable music-no! not when herald angels sang the
birth of the Saviour; no not when at creation's dawn!
the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of
God shouted for joy.
SERMON VIII.
PREACHED IN ST. PETER'S, BALTIMORE, ON SUNDAY EVENING,
Ост. 3, 1885.
The Lost Coin.
"EITHER What woman, having ten pieces of silver, if she lose
one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek
diligently till she find it?"-LUKE XV. 8.
I CHOOSE this subject, my friends, because it is sug-
gested by the second lesson of this morning's service,
and because it enables me to continue the line of
thought on which I dwelt this morning in another
church. Doubtless a passing curiosity to hear a stran-
ger from your kin beyond the sea has brought many of
you here to-night. My friends, you will hear no ora-
tory; nothing to please or tickle the itching ear; noth-
ing unusual to startle you. You will hear, I trust, a
simple statement of some truths which are not without
their own momentous import to your souls; but whether
those truths bear any fruit, or are carried away by idlė
remarks which, like birds of the air, remain in flocks at
every church door, that depends on you-on your own
seriousness and nobleness of spirit-on your own meek
I 12
The Lost Coin.
heart and due reverence for the eternal realities, and on
Him to whom we pray for aid, and who can send forth
His spirit, even as the wind bloweth where it listeth, and
thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whither
it goeth.
1. The word for the "piece of silver" in the original
is drachma; in Wyclif's version it is rendered bezant;
in Tyndale's, groat. It merely represents the current
Greek silver coin of the day; and therefore, to many,
the position of the parable, between that of the Lost
Sheep and the Lost Son, seems something of an anti-
climax. The lost sheep is a living thing, and might be
regarded with affection; the lost son is unspeakably
dear to the father's heart; but it might seem that the
lost coin, being at the best but a dead thing, is less in-
teresting and less estimable. Now, my friends, when-
ever there seems to us to be a defect of this kind in the
order of the Lord's teaching, we may be sure beforehand
that the defect is either in the narrator, or more proba-
bly in our apprehension; and I think that if we look a
little closer at this short, intervening parable, we shall
see that it contains some original, independent, and
deeply instructive truths.
2. The progress in the three parables has sometimes
been supposed to lie in the fact that the lost coin is one
of only ten, and the lost son is one of only two, whereas
the lost sheep is one of a hundred, and therefore less
valuable or less likely to be painfully missed. The true
explanation, I think, is different. It lies partly in new
conceptions about the state of sin and new conceptions
about the love of God; and if we can make these quite
clear, we may henceforth read the parable of the Lost
The Lost Coin.
113
Coin with no less interest than the other two by which
it is accompanied.
3. Why is the woman in the parable so exceedingly
anxious to recover her lost coin? Why is she so rejoiced
at finding it that, in a manner which surprises us, she
thinks it a fit occasion to call together her friends and
neighbors that they may share her joy?
I think for this reason, which is not present to our
minds, but would be so at once to Christ's hearers:
Women in the East do not often carry money about with
them, and even if they did, there might seem to be
something unworthy in such demonstrative gladness
over a found piece of money. But, on the other hand,
the commonest and most cherished ornament of women
of all classes is a fringe of gold or silver coins worn on
the summit of the forehead, and very frequently ten in
number. All travellers in the East, and especially at Naz-
areth, notice the frequency of this ornament, which is
called the semedi, and which, like all the other articles
of dress and ornament in the changeless East, is proba-
bly of extreme antiquity. Our Lord had doubtless seen
it-perhaps on the forehead of the Virgin of Naza-
reth, perhaps on the forehead of the bride of Cana, or
the sisters of Bethany. It is often the most valuable and
the most beautiful of all the young bride's jewels; and
it is additionally precious because, like the silver orna-
ments of the Swiss maidens, it is frequently an heir-
loom, handed down for generations from mother to
daughter. Now, imagine that some young bride, rejoic-
ing in the jewel with which on special occasions she
adorns herself for her husband, had, through careless-
ness or negligence, suffered one of the coins to drop from
8
114
The Lost Coin.
:
the circlet. Can we not see that the beauty and symme-
try of the whole ornament would be spoilt? The other
nine coins would lose their chief value; and there
would be such dissightliness in the gap where the lost
coin had been, that the semedi could be worn no longer
until the coin is found, and the neglect repaired.
Now, when we bear this in mind, does not the little
parable show us a new advance in the thought, a new
flash of insight into the will of God? The motive of
the Good Shepherd in searching for the lost sheep is love
and pity. He is a type of God's divine compassion for
human misery and sin. The woman's solicitude for the
lost silverling presents us with an entirely new image.
The coin is indeed a dead thing. It needs no pity.
Being inanimate it can feel no loss. It does not repre-
sent the sinner in his aspect of suffering, for it is uncon-
scious, but the sinner in his aspect of degradation which
he cannot himself realize; the sinner in his dull indif-
ference and deathful stupidity. The parable turns us
more entirely to the care of God, who loves lost souls not
only for their sakes-since small indeed is their intrin-
sic worth-but for His own. And here at once is a mar-
vellous lesson. Sometimes, when we read in history of
a black character, a stubborn character-childish, ani-
mal, counterfeit, scurrilous; sometimes, when we see in
daily life the pettiness and frivolity of some souls; the
sluggishness, the vanity, the malignity, the selfishness
of others; sometimes, when it is borne in upon us that
we men are indeed a little breed, that most of us,
even if not wholly bad, are yet desperately imperfect,
we are tempted, or half tempted, by our pride and
faithlessness, to think how small a loss it would be
The Lost Coin.
115
*
if another and final deluge of fire consumed forever
"these feeble. vassals of lust and anger and wine-
these little hearts who know not how to forgive." You
see some blighted wretch, a curse to himself, a curse to
his family, a curse to the parish in which he lives, a
curse to the nation whose name he disgraces, degraded
from what was once a man into sometimes a beast, and
sometimes a fiend :—and in our least Christlike moments
we might be tempted to say, unpityingly, It would be
small loss to the universe of God if such men or such
women—or what once were men and women-were
simply to cease to be; to forfeit forever, at death, the
life which they have so unspeakably degraded. We
see a child going astray, and speaking lies almost from
his cradle; we see an indolent, selfish youth, content
to be dependent on the toil of others not his own, sitting
down, a useless and unwelcome guest, at the feast of life,
and never meaning to do his appointed task; you see sav-
age races, unspeakably vicious and hopelessly squalid;
you
read the vain and vile literature of masses of men—
in the upper classes so empty and godless, in the lower
classes so violent and obscene; you watch the aims of
persons who pass for respectable, their pushing selfish-
ness, their reckless greed, their paltry hopes and mean
desires; and again, in our least faithful and hopeful
moments, we are half tempted to doubt whether the
indignity of death is not a sufficient ending for those
who have nothing to offer to the God who made them
except dust and ashes and moral degradation. Well,
now we may see the reason for the detail which might
otherwise have seemed surprising the fact that the
lost coin is intrinsically of such small value; a coin
116
The Lost Coin.
not of gold, but of silver; only a drachma, a shilling.
Why should the woman or any one else much care, if
it lay forever in some vile corner in the dust and dark-
ness? Ah! but God does not think so! His desire is
that nothing
"Should walk with aimless feet;
That not one life should be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish in the void,
When He has made the pile complete."
The value of the lost coin is not its intrinsic value;
not even the poor value of which it is itself uncon-
scious; but the value which it has in His eyes who
moulded it of metal inherently precious, and stamped
it bright from the mint of eternity. All but worth-
less in itself, it yet once formed part of a beloved
and precious ornament; it yet bears the image and
superscription of a king. Its value is simply infinite,
for it is the value which God sets upon it. The lost
coin of this wretched and paltry race of man-ah ! call
it not wretched and paltry, even when it lies useless
and darkling in the mire, for it belongs to God; and if
no one else cares for it, God cares. The lost coin of the
soul of the drunkard, and the gambler, and the unclean,
to man's eye so deplorable or so contemptible, it is right
precious in the sight of Him, our Father, without
whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground. The lost
coin-it may be of your soul or mine-how little man
pities it! How little man cares for it! Ah! but God
-the great God Himself in His Son Jesus Christ, is
searching diligently until he finds it! What is it that
keeps so many souls fast bound in misery and iron? Is
The Lost Coin.
117
it not on the one hand the utter loss of self-respect,
on the other hand the stupefaction of despair? Oh!
miserable and perishing sinner! Oh! slave of vice!
Oh! dead to shame! Oh!-lowest of all-lost woman,
doomed to know
•
"Nights of pollution, days of blasphemy,
Who, in loathed orgies with lewd wassailers,
Must gaily laugh, while thy remembered home
Gnaws like a viper at thy secret heart".
if God still cares for you, will you care nothing for
yourself? If in yourself you despair, is it nothing that
God has not abandoned, will not abandon, His hope
for you ? even for you? even for you?
3. In truth there lies in this parable, and in the rev-
elation it contains of God's care for man, the sole aspect
of human life which can support and inspire the sinking
soul; the sinking souls, whether of the lost and fallen
themselves, or of those who, saved themselves, yet share
for the souls of their brethren the yearning compassion
of Christ their Lord. Recall the occasion of these three
parables. It was the murmuring of the Pharisees, be-
cause Christ had received sinners and eaten with them.
See what a lesson is here taught to the indifference
alike of the world, which despises the wretched, and
of those religionists who, without a shudder, regard
them as little better than fuel for the everlasting flame.
The world! what does the world in general care for
the outcasts? It chatters its gossip, and squanders its
money on itself, or hoards it for itself, and sips its wine,
and makes its fortune, and would not let its little finger
ache for the present misery, much less for the eternal
118
The Lost Coin.
!
:
ruin of such as these. The cynic shrugs his shoulders,
and says:
"How can I help it?" and asks: "Am I
my brother's keeper?" The selfish man takes refuge in
his individual comforts, and ignores everything else.
The faint-hearted say it is quite useless to struggle
against all this vice and suffering. The sluggishly pit-
iful sentimentalize about it in their delicious solitude.
The unbeliever flings away the whole subject with a
curse. He says, with a poet of yesterday, half ironical,
half desparing, full of haughty and fastidious contempt:
“In dirt and sin ye all were born,
In sin and dirt ye all were bred;
Wallow until your lives be through,
Satan's godchildren take your due!
The devil whom your fathers served
Will bate no tittle of his wage ;
Deformed, enfeebled, and unnerved,
Ye totter to your early age.
"Around your life a wall is built,
In pain and toil ye plod apart ;
The livery of your soul is guilt,
And grief the girdle of your heart;
For he who held you at the first
Has cursed you, and ye shall be curst."
And then he adds: "Since you will take nothing
better that we offer you, take the money, which is the
only thing you ask, and the only thing we can give.
"Take it; disperse the rich man's store;
Take it, and satisfy your need;
Then misbeget some millions more
For our posterity to feed.
We cannot measure worlds by rule,
Nor put a continent to school.”
The Lost Coin.
119
Such is the despairing ban which this poet hurls upon
the wretched and the sinful; such the cold sponge of
vinegar which he pushes on a hyssop-stalk to their
parched lips; such the charity with which he tosses to
them his scornful alms. How utterly alien it is from
the mind of Christ! Yet hardly so alien, I think, as
that callous theology which, hugging its own plank
of supposed safety amid the weltering of the fiery
deluge, looks with perfect equanimity on the ruin of a
world, so its own selfish heaven is secure; and which
has sometimes told us, with all the imperiousness of
orthodox authority, that the anguish of the lost will be
a blissful spectacle for the increased delectation of the
elected few. Such is the sympathy of man, religious
and irreligious, for his fellow-man!
Thank God, God is not like men; and had it not
been for that immeasurable love which even sin could
not change into abhorrence, there would long ago have
been no hope, and we could only have trusted that this
life of rebellion and misery would be enough, and man
become-the sooner the better-a dim tradition linger-
ing amid the inhabitants of some happier universe
which yet may be.
4. I say that nothing save Christ's revelation of God's
love for wretched human souls can save us from despair.
For when we remember that men have bodies and are
spirits, how awful to a child of God does the aspect of
the world appear in its wreck and ruin of human souls!
The Greek poet describes a ravenous lion, leaping upon
a flock of defenceless sheep, and bathing his bloody jaws
in rivers of massacre. Alas! how long ago has there
leapt upon the flock of God a roaring lion, seeking
I 20
The Lost Coin.
:
whom he may devour! And what herds of raging
wolves leap in upon his track! the passions in their fury
-ambition, avarice, lust-how do these rend the help-
less flock! And how do bad men themselves—bad men,
who are man's worst enemies-do abundantly the devil's
work! And as there is hope to us when we think that
the Good Shepherd will yet deliver His flock, is there
no terror to those who help to rend it? The young
man thinks nothing of it, it may be, when with brutal,
unmanly selfishness, tempting the weak to their destruc-
tion, he sacrifices, or helps to sacrifice, for his own vilest
impulse, a soul which but for his execrable baseness
might have been innocent and fair. But does he think
that God does not see, that the Almighty does not regard
it? Ah! God has his eye on that torn sheep, on that
lost lamb. Men live upon, make their fortunes by, the
ruin, the temptation, and debasement of the helpless;
do they ever think that what is flowing into their coffers.
is not gold, but a rill from the crimson ooze of that in-
fernal river which is formed of tears and blood ? Ah!
but God sees it, and things are what they are, in spite of
all sophisms; aye, and their consequences will be what
they will be in spite of all excuse. Man looks on, callous,
apathetic, indifferent to the loss of souls. And the worst
men ruthlessly and indifferently destroy the souls of
their brother-men, and leave their own souls contentedly
lying in the mire of this world's sin and shame. But
the only ray of comfort, whether in the present or in the
future, lies in the thought that God cares. The coin
lies there-lost, unconscious, a dead thing, always of lit-
tle value, and now entirely useless, in the dust. Aye,
but God still values it! If He sees its present deteri-
7
The Lost Coin.
121
oration, He knows also its original brilliancy, and
its future preciousness when it shall be found once
more.
5. So far then we have seen that the value of every
soul, the value even of lost souls, lies in the fact which
we should never have known, have never dared to sur-
mise if the Son of God had not revealed it to us, that
they are right dear in the sight of God. And the parable
shows us further that they are dear not only for their
own sakes, to the God who made and the Saviour
who redeemed, and the Holy Spirit who intercedes for
them, but dear also because they form part of that great
universe of God, which now groaneth and travaileth in
pain, but which waits for the adoption, that is, the re-
demption of the body. Just as the dropped coin ruins
the symmetry and spoils the beauty of the bride's orna-
ment, so the lost souls mar the divine perfection of God's
ornament, of that Kosmos which means both ornament
and universe. It is with God's love as with ours.
condole with the father whose unworthy son is bringing
his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, and we point
him to his other sons, who are living pure and upright
and honorable lives. But ah no! it avails not; and he
will only turn aside to hide the noble tears which he
sheds for his lost boy. The sons and daughters grow up
around their mother, and you think that she is content
and happy, and that she has long forgotten that little
grave in the churchyard, where the grass is green over
the child she lost in other years. Yes, so it seems to
the world's indifferent eyes; but watch her in her soli-
tude, when, on her knees, before her God, she sheds pas-
sionate tears over the little curl of flaxen hair which she
We
:.
122
The Lost Coin.
cut from the white forehead of the sweet dead face. It
is not so easy even for true human love to fill up its
aching void; and the Lord teaches us here that it is
still more impossible for the love divine, which excels
all love. There are ninety sheep and nine in the safe
fold; there are nine coins unlost; one son is working
steadily at home-ah! but the one lost sheep, the one
lost coin, the one poor prodigal in the far land still
troubles the great heart of God! Without it His flock
is incomplete; His jewel is ruined; His home is desolate.
So Christ teaches us. And does it not cause us to recall
the song of your poet :
"Thou lovest all! Thy erring child may be
Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee.
"All souls are Thine; the wings of morning bear
None from that presence which is everywhere,
Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there.
66
Through sins of sense, perversities of will,
Through doubt and pain, through gilt, and shame, and ill,
Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still.
"Wilt thou not make, Eternal Source and goal,
In Thy long years life's broken circle whole,
And change to joy the cry of a lost soul?'
6. I think that these aspects of the truth deserve our
deepest contemplation. But Christ's parables are in-
exhaustible in richness, and I must glance for a mo-
ment at still other lessons. The woman who, having
lost the coin, lights the candle and sweeps the house,
and looks diligently till she finds it—who is she? She
is perhaps meant for the Church of God. The Sheep
ཐ
The Lost Coin.
123
wanders out of the fold; the Son goes into a far coun-
try; but the Coin is lost in the house itself. All that
the woman can do is to repair, to her utmost, the conse-
quences of her own neglect. It requires effort and
trouble; the furniture must be moved; the candle
must be held, high and low, in every corner; the dust
must fly about: but unless she neglect her duty alto-
gether she must go on searching diligently till she find
the coin. If she leaves it lying neglected till the tarnish
spoils it, and the dirt settles thickly over it, she has
ruined her loveliest adornment, and the unlost coins
which form it become useless too. Oh, what a lesson
for the Church of God! There in England, what are
whole masses of our godless population, high and low—
the drunkard, the atheist, the gambler, the criminal, the
liar, the debauchee-what are they but the lost coin of
our church? The Church of England lost them chiefly
amid the strifes, and the formalism, and the sloth of the
17th and 18th centuries, and she scoffed and stormed.
at John Wesley and George Whitefield when they went
to search for her lost coins. Happy for her if now
her tardy efforts be not too late altogether, and if her
candle be not quenched and removed out of its place.
May not the church in America take warning from her
history? Let her take warning. Let her beware lest
she "mistake instrumentals for fundamentals;" lest she
forget how few and broad and deep are the great essen-
tial truths of Christianity; lest she fall into the sins of
partisanship and intolerance; lest she be ever tempted
to teach for doctrines the commandments of men. And
when I say the Church, I mean the whole Church. I
mean the laity not only as much as the clergy, but more
L
124
The Lost Coin.
than the clergy, seeing that the laity no less than the
clergy are the Church of God. They are or ought to be
a royal priesthood of God, and therefore are even more
the Church of God than the clergy, seeing that they are
the more in number. Lay not to your souls the flatter-
ing unction that warnings addressed to the Church affect
only the clergy. Make not for any neglect or supine-
ness of yours that miserable excuse. Depend upon it,
and let me say it with the solemn emphasis of certain
prophecy-depend upon it, the masses of our nation will
sooner or later be lost to the church of their fathers, the
practical heathendom of our cities will not be evangel-
ized, the Augean stables of our streets will not be
cleansed, the curse of drink will not be mitigated, the
plague of impurity will not be stayed, the great social
reforms which are so infinitely necessary will never be
achieved, the national dishonor of vice and pauperism
and greed and uncleanness will never be wiped away,
until every Christian feels his own individual duty; till
every good man is so anxious to do his utmost that he
fears the battle will fail where he is not. Let not one
among you all be content unless his conscience tells him
that-apart from his mere selfish domesticity, and apart
from his mere professional duties-he is trying to do
something, he is doing something, by pen, by voice, by
personal effort, by the gift of his money, by the exertion
of his energy, by the self-sacrifice of something at least
of his own comfort and leisure, to search for, to recover,
to brighten, to restore to its due place in the ruined
symmetry, the lost coin-that coin which is the amalgam
of every lost, of every neglected soul-in the bridal or-
nament of the Church of God.
The Lost Coin.
125
7. But, ah! the work which the Church-the whole
Church, clergy and laity alike, all Christian men-must
do in the world, must be done also by each one of us in
our own lives. May not that lost coin be the lost eter-
nal jewel of our own soul? It is a frightful thing to
think that men may even gain the whole world and yet
lose their own souls!—that they may hoard and squan-
der, and earn, and possess, and love tens of thousands of
wretched gold and silver coins, which they can only use
for a few miserable years, and fling away, and leave lying
in the mire, the only one which they can really pos-
sess, and which will be as they make it for ever and
for evermore. And oh! when a man has flung away
this eternal part of himself—when he has become a dis-
ensouled body-a hunger, a thirst, a fever, an appetite-a
funnel for drink, not a human being-an incarnate lust,
not a Christian man-what search, what toil, what anx-
iety, yea, what anguish of struggle should he undergo ?
how should he relight the candle of his conscience?
how should he search the darkest corners of the house
of his life until, by the aid of the Holy Spirit of God,
he find it! For, if that be finally lost, all is lost. But
remember that in this life, at any rate, it cannot finally
be lost. While there is life, even in the most desperate
cases, there is hope. Some of you may remember the
dreadful conception of the medieval poet, that when a
man has proceeded, step by step, through a nameless
multitude of little sins to the one great, awful, final, ir-
revocable act of sin which is the practical outcome and
epitome of all his life, from that moment he is dead—
alive no longer. One of yourselves, even a poet of your
own, writes:
1
1
!
1
126
The Lost Coin.
"So fallen! So lost! The light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
For evermore!
All else is gone! From those great eyes
The light is fled;
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!"
But the medieval poet goes farther, and says, that
the moment when in some frightful crime the man has
brought his life of vice and sin to its natural consumma-
tion, from that moment his soul is plunged downward
into the abyss, and his body, animated not by his soul,
but by a demon, is but the phantasm and automaton of
a living man; so that there are men and women whom
we meet who are dead, while they live; and heaven and
hell are here and now; and some of us are here and now
in heaven; and some are here and now in hell. And
though, even in this, there is a grim and awful truth,
though, even in this place and at this moment, an in-
visible demon in the form of some overmastering sin
may be seated at your ear, moulding your very thoughts—
may have clutched you by the hair, claiming you as his
very own-yet the blessed practical truth remains, that,
while you live, repentance is possible; while you live
you may yet recover the lost coin of your eternal peace,
of your eternal self. Oh! let each one of us light the
candle of conscience, illuminate the darkest and most
hidden corners of our being, expel the demon from the
desecrated temple of our life, sweep diligently the dusty
and unclean house of our soul, and never cease the quest
till we can once more claim the lost coin of our very
selves as our own possession; as our own possession, to

The Lost Coin.
127
give back to God; as our own possession, no longer to
squander ruinously in the devil's service; as our own
possession, far better worth than to lie dishonored and
useless in the dust; as our own possession, to rebrighten
the original lustre ; as our own possession, to make clear
once more the regal image; as our own possession, but
far more as His who made us and to whom we belong;
dear to Him, because, if but one soul of His be lost, His
church has lost the beauty of her bridal ornament, and
the powers of evil have flawed and marred the glory of
His celestial work. All souls are His. He has mercy
upon all, for He can do all things, and is long-suffering
that men should repent; and He abhors nothing that
He has made or He would not have made it.
"But
thou sparest all, for they are Thine, O Lord, thou
lover of souls." "And they shall be mine, said the Lord
of Hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and
I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that
serveth him."
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SERMON IX.
PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, OCT. 11, 1885.
Things which cannot be Shaken.
"And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those
things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those
things which cannot be shaken may remain."-HEB. xii. 27.
In this remarkable verse the writer goes to the heart
of the philosophy of religion and of history. He de-
clares that through the ages runs one ever-increasing
purpose, and that this purpose is the will of God. He
tells us that, not by accident or by destiny, but by
Heaven's own Providence,
"The old order changeth, giving place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
1. It is said that when the King of Prussia visited the
playing-fields of our Eton College, he said, "Blessed is
the land in which the old is ever mingled with the new,
and the new ever mingled with the old." Yes! and
I add, Blessed is the Church also which, like the scribe
whom Christ blessed-instructed in the Kingdom of
Things which cannot be Shaken. 129
!
Heaven-brings out of its treasures things new and
old.
spirit of Christ, and they
The Gospel offered them
closer the yoke of bond-
2. To cling to the old when the new demands our at-
tention and our allegiance, has been a constant error and
indolence of mankind. They look back to the east when
the west is calling them. The noontide is approaching,
and they linger amid the shadows of the dawn. So it
was with the Jews in the days of Paul and Apollos.
Christ had come, and they could not get beyond Moses.
The Gospel taught them the
preferred the fires of Elijah.
freedom, and they hugged yet
age. Apostles were preaching, and they preferred Le-
viticus to St. Paul and St. John. They were still trust-
ing in the blood of bulls and goats, though Christ had
died. Now, of this we may be always sure.
An unpro-
gressive church is a dying church; a retrogressive
church is a dead church. Were I asked what consti-
I
tutes an extreme peril to any religious community,
should answer, "stagnating opinions rotting in a dead
theology;" the mere human formulæ of one age me-
chanically reproduced and mechanically repeated in ages
which have outlived their significance; the torpor of
careless assurance; the slumber of unreasoning acquies-
cence; the ghastly smooth life dead at heart of a self-
satisfied religionism; the "dropping buckets into empty
wells, and growing old in drawing nothing out." God
himself, as this text declares, is ever leading us onward,
upward, forward.
"The living sap of to-day outgrows
the dead rind of yesterday." Therefore, in every true
and living church there must be freedom and there
must be progress. Freedom and progress are the law of
9
130
Things which cannot be Shaken.
..
.
1
true life. When the great tide of truth is ever advanc-
ing, even children are not so foolish as to linger among
the dank seaweeds
upon the oozy shore.
3. Apollos-if he was the author of this Epistle to the
Hebrews-tells us that there are systems, doctrines, in-
stitutions, organizations, which God continually shakes
to the ground in the earthquakes of history. He does
so because they have had their day, and done their work;
because they have become obstructive and obselete; be-
cause men are beginning to make them into idols and
fetishes; because men thrust them between their souls
and Him; because they put their trust in them and not
in Him; because they are instrumentals not funda-
mentals, means not ends. These things are but shadows,
and men take them for the substance. These things are
quivering, unreal, evanescent as the reflection of the
bulrush upon the shimmering wave; but there are other
things which are unshakable and eternal as are the
cedars of Libanus, yea, as the very crags on which they
stand. In eras of change, such as this is, such as the
Reformation was, men need to be reminded that there
are some foundations which stand sure, having on them
the double seal of God ;-"the Lord knoweth them that
are His," and "let him that nameth the name of Christ
depart from iniquity." Those are foundations which no
earthquake can make to tremble, much less rock to the
ground. Such was the case in the days of Christ, and
of the great apostle St. Paul. The Jews thought that
their temple, and their sacrifices, and their ritual, and
their priesthood, and their Pentateuch-legislation were
perfect, eternal, and divine. Christ taught them that
they were imperfect and transitory, and vanishing away.
Things which cannot be Shaken. 131
The cross was the
That was why they crucified Him.
reward of Pharisaism to the Son of God. And as it was
with the Master so shall it be with the servants. Where-
ever any great human soul utters new truth there is
once more the shadow of Calvary. But God not only
gives, but gives back; and what He gives back is better
than what was taken away. The earthquake can rock no
sure foundation. It is upon one or two of those sure
foundations that I propose, briefly, to speak to you to-day.
4. In times like these, one often meets persons-
generally young men and young women-who, mistak
ing their ignorance for knowledge, and their cleverness
for genius, are fond of telling others, and half persuad-
ing themselves, that they have lost all faith in every-
thing. Clergymen in England not unfrequently receive
letters or calls from such persons, who, having very little
to do, come to them as though this eczema of disbelief
were some deep-seated malady, or as though others could
heal it, while they themselves have not even tried to heal
it by the appointed means which God has put in their
own power. Now, when doubt is sincere and agonizing,
as it sometimes is, it is our duty to sympathize with it.
We would spare no pains, no self-denial, if we could in
any way help those who are suffering from it. But a
good deal of this kind of scepticism is not genuine; it
springs from vanity and idleness; from the lack of
serious aims and serious occupations. It is the spurious
offspring of struggling self-conceit and self-disgust. And
when this is the case it is not worth wasting argument
upon. It needs a moral, not an intellectual cure, and it
would be altogether beneath contempt, if, out of this
mere Sadduceeism of lath and plaster, the devil did not
J
132 Things which cannot be Shaken.
J
sometimes construct the prison-house of human souls.
Happily, life in most cases cures this superficial disease.
Life sooner or later tries the nerves of these intellectual
young people. Life knocks the nonsense out of them.
Like the creature in the poem, they will philosophize at
ease till the thunder sends them terrified to the foot-
stool of His mercy, whom they have thought it a proof of
fine intellect to deny. It is said of one of the Cato Street
conspirators that he talked flippant atheism in a loud
and arrogant voice so long as visitors were present, but
the moment they were gone, the poor wretch flung him-
self on his knees in an agony of prayer.
5. When, however, disbelief is not the mere efflores-
cence of idle wantonness, but is real and terrible, I
think that the very first advice which we must give to
those who desire to recover a lost faith is that they
should most earnestly consider whether there be not,
in their own hearts and their own lives, some irresisti-
ble obstacle and impediment to the growth of faith.
The ice must be melted before the stream can flow, and
while "the air burns frore," the waters will be fixed and
motionless. The experience of the world has grasped
this truth. "The light of heaven," says the Chinese
proverb," cannot shine into an inverted bowl." "The
Rusty Shield," says the fable, "prayed to the Sun, and
said, 'Shine thou on me;' and the Sun answered it,
'First see that thou thyself art polished from thy
rust."" My friends, a mind that is not candid, a soul
that is given up to sin, cannot fail to sink into. a
real, if not into an avowed infidelity. There is too
often a secret disbelief of unspiritual middle life, caused
by worldliness and forgetfulness of God. It is the
Things which cannot be Shaken. 133
demon that walketh in the noonday. The story is
told-whether with truth or not, I cannot say that in
the eighteenth century, when atheism was almost uni-
versally professed in polished and fashionable circles, a
body of men who wished to be infidels-wished to give
themselves up to the unbridled indulgence of their
passions-confessed that they could not get rid of the
scruples of the religion which they had disavowed, or
of the stings of that conscience which testified to Him
whose minister it was. And there were some who
whispered to them the devil's counsel: "Go to the com-
munion, and take the sacrament of the Lord's Supper,
with the deliberate intention of going straight from it
to the commission of a deadly sin, and then you will
find that your scruples have vanished." They did so,
and the foretold result occurred. Their conscience
troubled them no more-for a time; they had seared
it, as with a hot iron; they had, as it were, stabbed it
to the heft; they had strangled it with deadly insult,
and for a time it did not stir. They had deliberately
quenched within them the influence of the spirit of
God. How could the issue be doubtful? When Antio-
chus Epiphanes wished to desecrate the Temple of
Jerusalem, the very first thing he did was to remove
from its shrine the golden candlestick. It is even so
with the soul. Quench the Light of God within it;
plunge it in that darkness which is indispensable to
deeds of evil; and soon no star of faith, however small,
will gleam upon its dolorous midnight. Let it then be
understood that all advice, that all argument, must
necessarily be thrown away upon that disbelief which,
whether it be silent or demonstrative, needs a moral,
!
134
Things which cannot be Shaken.
not an intellectual cure. To such a soul there is no
message, but that which spoke to Nicodemus: "Except
a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he can-
not enter into the kingdom of God." And that which
He spoke to the young, ruler: "If thou wouldst enter
into life, keep the commandments.”
66
6. When, however, there is not this fatal moral ob-
stacle-when the soul, though it grope in darkness, still
desires the light-when it has by no means uttered the
fatal choice, "Evil be thou my good," is there nothing
that we can then say to it? Yes, we can say this:
'Begin with what you do know; with what you do
believe; build yourself upon that; be true, be utterly
true to that." People sometimes worry themselves be-
cause they cannot believe this or that, when this or that
has in reality nothing to do with religion; ought never
to have been regarded as any essential part of it; has
never been insisted on by the Universal Church, or
required of any man as necessary to salvation. You
have doubts, it may be, about this or that form of
church organization; about this or that theory of the
sacraments; about this or that anathema of the domi-
nant popular opinion which may chance to arrogate to
itself the exclusive claim to be orthodox; about many
human dogmas which have been taught as infallible
gospel truth by this or that sect, and this or that party;
about views of God which seem to you more suitable to
views of Moloch, and which, though utterly foundation-
less, yet are taught with authority; about doctrines of
the future life which go far beyond the warrant of reve-
lation. Or, again, you feel uncertainties about parts of
the Old Testament; about Balaam's ass, or the sun
Things which cannot be Shaken.
135
standing still, or a dead man being raised to life by
touching Elisha's bones, or that Eden was an actual gar-
den, with an actual serpent in it; or a thousand other
things. Very well: study these questions humbly, rev-
erently, impartially; get the best account you can of
them; but if nothing satisfies you, why I say to you, as
"We
brave old Martin Luther said, then let them go.
cannot,” he said, "prevent the birds of the air from fly-
ing about our heads; but no man need suffer them to
build their nests in his beard." These questions have to
do with criticism, with archæology, with definitions of
authenticity and inspiration and Semitic metaphor, and
many other complex matters. To hold any particular
view about them will not make you, by the millionth
part of a scruple, a worse or a better man. They have,
therefore, nothing to do with religion. They are not
"generally necessary to salvation." There is not one
word about them in the Apostles' Creed. There is not
one word about them in the Nicene Creed. There is not
one word about them even in the much later and much
less authoritative Athanasian Creed. There is not one
word about them in the Thirty-nine Articles. And,
what is immensely more important, there is not one
word about them in the teaching of Christ. At the bar
of Judgment you will not be cross-examined about any
such questions, but the questions which will be put to
you are infinitely more searching and more significant.
They will be, Have you been pure or impure, holy or
unholy? Have you kept your body in temperance, sober-
ness, and chastity? Have you been inflexibly honest, or
had some conventional, professional standard only of
what is honest? Have you told the truth, or delighted
B
L
136
Things which cannot be Shaken.
in lies? Have your words been sweet and gentle, or
has the poison of asps been under your lips? Have you
loved God with all your heart? Have you loved your
neighbor as yourself? Did your life leave the moral
standard of the world a little better, or a little worse?
These-these-these things, and not abstract opinions,
or theories about which parties hate each other, and re-
vile each other, and intrigue against each other-these
are the things which affect salvation. The only real ques-
tion of religion for you is, Am I sincere? Do I love the
truth? Do I love the light? Am I striving ever more
and more to live in the spirit of the beatitudes ? Am I
doing justly and loving mercy, and walking humbly
with my God? Are not these questions searching
enough for you-terrible enough? Can you answer
them? If you can, happy are you! If you cannot, the
other questions are for you but as dust in the balance.
Turn from the non-essential things which can be
shaken, or which for you have been shaken, to the
things which cannot be shaken, and which remain.
Spiritually, as well as intellectually and morally, turn
from the shadow and face the sun.
7. Begin, above all, with God. You believe in God-
you believe that He is; and, believing that He is, I
hope that you go at least as far as the demons, who, as
St. James tells us, not only believe but tremble. I say
that you believe in a God; for apart from self-deception
and braggadocio, I do not believe that there is one per-
son in a million who does not. But if you meet such a
person-and just as there is no accounting for the ab-
normal depravity of some men's iniquity, so there is no
accounting for the astonishing aberrations of some men's
Things which cannot be Shaken. 137
intellects-if you do meet with an atheist, do not let him
entangle you in mere side-issues of Old Testament criti-
cism, which he will try to do. Never defend in the
name of religion anything which, in your conscience,
you feel to be indefensible except by casuistry and arti-
ficial hypotheses. God is a God of burning truth. Can
we, dare we, lie for Him? or go before Him with a lie
in our right hand? As to many points which infidel
lecturers attack in the Bible we must learn the wise
maxim of the Rabbis: "Learn to say, 'I do not know.'
But leaving all secondary, unessential, and uncertain
questions, ask how-if he does not believe in a God-the
infidel can solve these seven unanswerable questions, the
force of which you will see in proportion to your knowl-
edge of the laws of science, and with which science itself
has inexorably confronted him.
999
First. Where did matter come from? Can a dead
thing create its dead self?
Second. What is the origin of motion? Can a dead
thing move its dead self? Launch but one tiny planet
upon its orbit, nay, set one water-drop a-rolling, or let
there be a flutter no greater than the quivering of a
gnat's wing in the eternal calm, and you may account if
you will for all the rest. But who gave the first impulse
to moveless inertia? Whence came the first force?
life come from? Did life in dead
Third. Where did
matter create itself?
Given the first spark of life which
tingled in the brute mass, and you may account for
everything; but whence, save from the finger-tip of
Omnipotence, thrilled that creative flash of divine vi-
tality? Was the first bacillus or the first bacteria
omnipotent enough to create itself?
138 Things which cannot be Shaken.
F.
Fourth. Whence came the exquisite order and design
in nature? Will you ask us to believe that this infini-
tude of exquisite adaptations sprang from a congeries of
accidents, or a concourse of fortuitous atoms? If any
one were to tell us that nobody had ever made types, and
that no one called Dante or Shakespeare or Milton ever
existed, but that millions of printed letters accidentally
assumed their peculiar shapes and fortuitously shook
themselves together into the Divine Comedy of Dante,
the Plays of Shakespeare, and the Poems of Milton, you
would think that the man had utterly lost his reason.
Yet he would be less of a madman than he who tells us
that the feathers on the gorgeous wing of the butterfly,
and the iridescence on the dove's neck, and the crystalline
humor and nervous retina of the human eye, and the
delicately pencilled flowers, and the leaves of illimitable
forests, and the sands, and seas, and the exquisite rosy
shells upon the shore, and the lamellar crystals of the
snow, and the heavens, and the stars also-danced into
accidental symmetry, and from a mass of conflicting
atoms evolved alike their own dread magnificence, and
the sense of sublimity which they derive from the souls
of mortal men.
Fifth. Whence came consciousness ? Can blind
chance think? Can dead matter evolve a sense of its
own existence, and frame objects to an end?
Sixth. Who gave you free-will? Dead particles of
matter acting under the impulse of chance, which is
blind, and deaf, and dumb-brute forces which are
strong as fate, inexorable as tyranny, merciless as death
-could hardly have given themselves the power to
thwart and control themselves, as we do. We have
Things which cannot be Shaken.
139
bodies, but we are spirits. In other words, we have in
us something infinitely superior to matter, i. e., spirit;
and spirit is and can be nothing but the breath of a God.
and a pure effluence from the Spirit of the Almighty.
Even the heathen poet could say: "There is a God
within us."
"Est Deus in nobis agitante calescimus illo."
Seventh. Whence came Conscience? Did dead mat-
ter educe the divine sense of right and wrong? Did
a concourse of atoms create that primeval vicegerent of
God, "a prophet in its inspiration, a monarch in its
peremptoriness, a priest in its sanctions and anathe-
mas?"—he then who says that there is no God does
not solve even the most elementary difficulty of the
human mind, while he creates difficulties a million times
more numerous, and a million times more insoluble. He
talks simply stupendous nonsense and abysmal folly.
If there be one truth which more than another has come
home with immense conviction to the conscience of
mankind, it is the truth that there is a God. The faith
of mankind rests on facts of every description, and
drawn from every quarter. From the inward, men have
passed to the outward; from the outward to the divine;
and alike the choir of heaven and the furniture of earth,
alike the universe of stars and the world of life which
peoples with miracles a single water-drop, echo from
without the monitions breathed by the Spirit of God.
from within us, that this God is our God, and shall be
our guide unto death. This is forever one of the things
which cannot be shaken and which remain.
These proofs, then, are a linked chain of certainty:
140
Things which cannot be Shaken.
Lasting links
From highest heaven let down.
The flowers still faithful to their stem,
Their fellowship renew;
The stems are faithful to the root,
That worketh out of view;
And to the rock the root adheres
In every fibre true;
Close clings to earth the living rock,
Tho' threatening still to fall;
The earth is constant to her sphere,
And God upholds them all!"
I. Now to one who grasps what the word God means,
and believes that there is a God, what a tremendous
belief it is! How does it contain the very quintessence
of all religion, and with what certainty does it lead to
further truths of immeasurable grandeur, truths which
cannot be shaken and remain !
For with the belief in a God thus arrived at, follows at
once the belief in the divine Providence-that He made
us; that He is our Father; that we are the people of
His pasture and the sheep of His hand. And with this
consciousness of our relation to God, Conscience of
necessity awakens. The visible things of God reveal
the invisible. When Daniel Webster was asked what
thought overwhelmed him with the deepest sense of
sublimity, he instantly gave the answer: "The thought
of my immediate accountability to God." And that is
Duty. It is "the voice of God in the soul of man.
The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, and it is a
light which lighteth every man that is born into the
world. And by the light of this spirit we recognize at
once the law of duty. Grander than the starry heavens
Things which cannot be Shaken. 141
above becomes the moral law within. We bow before
its eternal majesty. Uplifting in our souls the naked
rule, "I ought," it at once commands our reverence,
if not always or at once our obedience, and before its
awful mandate the passions are dumb, however secretly
they may rebel. But when we fully accept that law
of duty as the law of our lives; when on reason we
build resolve; when we have learnt, in the strength of
the spirit which Christ has poured forth in our hearts,
to exclaim, "I ought," "I can," "I will," then life
is redeemed from its insignificance and its triviality,
and becomes a solemn and sacred thing.
II. God and Duty, then, are not these immense foun-
dations on which to build the superstructure of religion
and the happiness of holy and obedient lives. But,
once more, to him who builds on these foundations
there comes, and surely must come, the third, which
cannot be shaken and must remain in the simple Gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel of God is the
necessary correlative of the sin of man. God, who cre-
ated a frail race, would not be God if He had left to
their fate a fallen race. For centuries He spake in
times past unto the fathers by the prophets. In these
last days, in this final dispensation, He has spoken to
us by His Son. To the Gentiles He left not Himself
without witness, giving them rain from heaven and
fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and glad-
ness, until their own poets recognized that we are also
His offspring. To the chosen people He gave the Ten
Words of His law, and sent them prophet after prophet,
rising up early and sending them. It was all in vain.
Gentile and Jew alike rebelled. The Gentiles plunged
3
4
1
142 Things which cannot be Shaken.
:
themselves into the deadly fascinations of sensual wick-
edness; they corrupted themselves, like brute beasts
which have no understanding, in things which they nat-
urally knew, and perished in their own corruption.
The Jews preferred spurious forms of religion; they
broke God's law, despised His judgments, slew His
prophets. Adam sinned and was expelled from Para-
dise; Cain fell and was driven forth a murderer, with a
brand upon his brow. The whole world went astray,
and had barely been baptized in the lustral waters of the
flood when Noah fell into drunkenness, and his sons
apostatized into the rebellious insolence of their at-
tempted Babels. The chosen race was called in Abra-
ham, it went astray in Jacob, in Esau, in the Patriarchs,
and it was plunged into the burning fiery furnace of
Egyptian bondage. Then out of Egypt God called His
Son. He redeemed His people from bondage, led them
through the wilderness, taught His ways unto Moses,
His works unto the children of Israel. The long train-
ing of the people failed; another ruin, another exile was
necesary. But meanwhile there has been born in their
hearts the sure and certain hope of a Divine Deliverer
of mankind, and at last, in the fulness of the times,
God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under
the law, to redeem them that were under the law, and,
with them, to save mankind. The belief in Christ is
but a necessary corollary of the belief in God, and the
belief in Christ is the belief not only in a Father who
created, and in a Son who redeemed, but also in the
Spirit who sanctifieth us. It is a belief not only in Je-
hovah Nissi "the Lord our banner," and Jehovah Jireh
"the Lord will provide," and Jehovah Shammah "the
Things which cannot be Shaken. 143
Lord is there," but also in Jehovah Tsidkenu "the
Lord our righteousness." It is a belief in Immanuel,
God with us; it is a belief in Pentecost and God within
us. The belief in the primal miracles of creation-the
creation of matter, of life, of free-will-makes it easy,
makes it necessary to accept the supreme miracle of the
Incarnation and Resurrection of the Son of God.
"Yes! one unquestioned truth we read,
All doubt beyond, all fear above.
No crackling pile, no curious creed
Can burn or blot it-God is Love!"
And as in the belief in God and the realization of the
moral law we have the essence of the Old Covenant, so
too in the belief in Christ-the Incarnation of Christ,
the character of Christ, the example of Christ, the Cross
of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, the gift of the Holy
Spirit of Christ—we have the very essence of the New
Covenant. This, involving, as it does, the love of God
with all the heart, and the love of our neighbor as our-
selves, is indeed the law and the prophets. Do not, I
entreat you, confuse the truth of Christianity with
masses of disputed questions, or stake the existence of
Christianity on the commandments and traditions of
men, which this or that party, or this or that theolo-
gian may insist on as essential, whether they belong to
the Church of Rome or to the Church of England, or
to all the opinion-worship of a hundred petty schisms.
Do not confuse Christianity with the party theories or
party dogmas which the current arrogance or the cur-
rent ignorance of such and such schools or such and such
preachers may choose to identify with the perverted name
144 Things which cannot be Shaken.
of orthodoxy. Christianity does not in the smallest degree
depend on this or that particular view about dogmas, or
mysteries, or church organization, or sacramental effi-
cacy. Christianity is not what Augustine taught, or
Anselm taught, or Thomas Aquinas, or Bishop Pearson,
or Wesley-it is what Christ taught. The heart of
Christianity is Christ; the life of Christianity is Christ.
The Christian is a Christ-man. It has not pleased God
to give us the way of salvation either in dialectics or in
details. The Gospel is a very different thing from sys-
tems of theology, whether they were written by Peter
Lombard or Jonathan Edwards. Do you believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ? Do you love Christ? Do you
keep the commandments of Christ? Do you love your
brother as yourself for Christ's sake, and because for
him, as for you, Christ died? And, loving Christ, do
you keep His commandments? Are you pure in heart?
Are you kind and loving to all? Do you hate and
abhor all lies, whether they be society lies or religious
lies? If so, you are a Christian, and, as far as your sal-
vation is concerned, it matters less than nothing what
are the special intellectual or traditional views on
which you may happen to pride yourselves. In heaven
there are neither Catholics, nor Anglicans, nor Dissent-
ers, nor party men of any kind, whether High, Low,
or Broad; there are only saints, i. e., holy men-only
saints and forgiven sinners. The only distinction there
recognized is neither the Damnamus of Augsburg nor the
Anathema of Trent, but this only: Is he a true Christian
man? The meek, the just, the devout, the pious, the
loving, the holy-whatever priests or false prophets may
teach-are all of one religion. Priests may burn, and
Things which cannot be Shaken. 145
churches may excommunicate them, but in heaven they
shall all meet and recognize each other, when their
special masks and liveries are stripped away. So taught
William Penn, so taught the founder of this, your City
of Brotherly Love, the city which he founded as a holy
experiment, which it would rest with you to ruin or to
fulfil.
Time does not at all permit me to work out any of
these thoughts, but take, I beseech you, the central
thought: Clear the ruins, build on foundations. Some
things, in age after age, have been and they will be
shaken. God has said, "Yet once more I will shake
the heavens, and the earth, and all nations;" but there
are some things real, solid, eternal, which cannot be
shaken, and which for ever and ever will remain.
I have seen
A pine in Italy, that cast its shadow
Athwart a cataract; firm stood the pine,
The cataract shook the shadow."
Shadows of theory, shadows of opinion, shadows of
tradition, shadows of hierarchy and party may be
shaken. Christ remains.
and good men,
There be many
If we are Christians, if we are sincere
there is nothing that can terrify us.
which say, "Who will show us any good?" Lord, lift
Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. We
believe in the Father who created, in the Son who re-
deemed, in the Holy Ghost who sanctifieth us! That
faith is sufficient, is more than sufficient whereby to
live, wherein to die. In that belief, dear brethren,
"Arise and bless Him ere your worship cease,
Then lowly kneeling wait His word of Peace."
10
#
SERMON X.
PREACHED AT ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, WASHINGTON, OCT. 18, 1885.
"Keep the Commandments."
"But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."
MATT. xix. 17.
THERE is something inexpressibly touching in the
simple, natural, deep-reaching narrative of the young
ruler who came to Christ with hurried eagerness-run-
ning, kneeling, prostrating himself, because he knew that
Jesus was about to depart from Galilee, and panting
forth his passionate question, "Good Master, what shall
I do to inherit eternal life ?" Would to God that many
of us who are here present had but so much of the
young ruler's spirit as would lead us to desire with him
to know how we may inherit eternal life! Of all this
multitude, how many have come here with that one in-
tense and pure desire ?
What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Surely it
is a tremendous question! No human language can
formulate any question of more momentous import.
And perhaps some perplexed and weary soul among
you thinks, "What would I not give, if but for one
"Keep the Commandments."
147
hour-yea, but for a few moments only, I could see
Jesus; could hurry up to Him as that youth did;
could fling myself on my knees, yea, on my face, before
Him; could cling to the hem of His garment, and de-
tain His steps; could cry, Lord, Lord, I am sinful; I
am tired of myself, tired of the world; tired of its
shams and of its injustice; tired of its bread which is
not bread; tired of its cisterns-broken cisterns, which
will hold no water for my thirst; tired of the regret,
the struggle, the failing; tired of the years which the
locust hath eaten; oh, my Lord, this life is not life, it
is death; what must I do, oh! what must I do to in-
herit eternal life?" We have had so many years to live;
is there any one of us all who would not give up, say,
half of his remaining time on earth, if only, escaping
from the fret, the vulgarity, the littleness of life, he
might have one hour-one half-hour, with his Lord?
upon
So we say. My friends, is it true? Do we long for it?
do we yearn for it so much? Do you say, Oh, that I
could pour forth my burdened heart in tears His
feet! oh, that I could but see Him! oh, that I knew
where I might find Him! oh, that I could give Him.
something to show my love! Ah, but if we long for
it, we may have it-here, now. Would you weep at
His feet? You may weep like John upon His breast.
Do you long to give Him something? You may give
Him, if you like, everything that He cares for. Do
you want to ask of Him the question of questions?
Come with the eager, rich, young ruler now; you shall
ask it of Him for yourselves; yes, and you shall hear
His answer.
But, when you have heard it, will you
accept it? Will you obey it? If it be an answer accord-
3
3
:
1.
148
"Keep the Commandments."
ing to your idols, I know you will; but how if it be
against all your idols? Idols are things which people
worship. They are often very ugly fetiches. Churches
have plenty of them as well as individuals. When
Christ answers churches and men according to their
idols-nay, He never does that; but when they have
succeeded in making His sayings express their meanings
and so turned the words of life into idol-oracles, then
slothful churches and self-deceiving men are full of
delight. But how if Christ's answer bid you cast your
particular idol-your favorite sin, first of all, your
treasured pride, your besetting temptation-and then
also your pet delusions; your favorite falsehoods; your
"views;" your "school of thought"-all your fringes
and phylacteries; your idols, the thin, fleeting, shadowy
delusions of your heart-how if Christ's answer bid you
fling these to the moles and to the bats? Will you do
it then, or, as was the case with the young ruler, will
your countenance fall, and for all your longing to go
to Christ, will you turn away from Him, very sorrow-
ful, because, in these your numerous idols of sin, or of
opinion, or of self-righteousness, you fancy that you
have great possessions? Great possessions? nay, these
are but tinsel and dross, and fairy gold which turns.
to leaves; but Christ's answer will enable you to win
that life in Him, that eternal life which is more golden
than any gold of which you dream.
Well, at any rate come to Christ, and hear His answer.
"What good thing must I do that I may inherit
eternal life?" Very likely the question involved a mass
of confusions. The young man thought, perhaps, that
heaven was to be won by external observances, and quanti-
"Keep the Commandments."
149
tative merit. He did not understand that we must
enter into heaven by being, not by doing. He held
perhaps the vulgar notion that eternal only means "end-
less," so that eternity becomes the infinitude of time
instead of its antithesis. He very likely did not know
that every holy soul has entered already into eternal life ;
that, to all who are in Christ, it is now as the invisible
bright air they breathe. He certainly did not realize
that "This is life eternal: to know Thee, the only God,
and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." But yet, be-
cause the question was sincere and noble, and did not
spring from Pharisaism-the one thing which Christ the
Lord hated most-but from the divine dissatisfaction of
a struggling soul, which God alone can fill, Christ an-
swered it. It is a question which no man shall ask with
all his heart without being led, sooner or later, to under-
stand the answer.
"Why dost thou ask Me about the good?" That seems
to have been our Lord's answer: not "Why askest thou
Me?" as it is often read-for whom else should the young
man ask?—but "why dost thou ask Me about the good?
Has God left you in any doubt as to what is good?
Have you in your hearts no voice of conscience? Has
duty never uplifted within you that naked law of right,
so imperial in its majesty, so eternal in its origin, which
you know that you ought to follow even to death? If
not, and if Experience has had no lessons for you, and
History no teaching, was there no Sinai? Do not the
Cherubim of your temple veil with their golden wings
the tablets-alas! the shattered tablets-of your moral
law? And there Jesus might have stopped. But being
unlike us, being infinitely patient with man's irritating
[
150 "
'Keep the Commandments."
spiritual stupidity, not loving, as we do, to be cautious
and reticent, and "to steer through the channel of no
meaning between the Scylla and Charybdis of yes and
no," He added: "But, if thou wouldst enter into life,
keep the commandments."
Well, my friends, you have come to Christ; you have
asked Him the momentous question, about which you
expressed yourself so passionately in earnest; and there,
with perfect explicitness, transparent, unambiguous,
from Christ's own lips, you have Christ's own answer:
"But, if thou wouldst enter into life, keep the command-
ments."
The commandments! The young ruler, not being as
familiar as we are with the accumulated cobwebs of two
thousand years, which churches, and sects, and theorists,
and system-mongers, have spun over well-nigh every
simple word of Christ; the young ruler, whose natural
instincts were not crushed under hundreds of ponderous
folios of human doctrines and commandments of men,
which, with inconceivable arrogance and a bitterness
which has become universally proverbial, would fain
palm themselves off as infallible theology-the young
ruler, hearing the answer from the lips of Jesus, in all its
bare, naked, unqualified, unmistakable simplicity, was
quite frankly amazed. He was like the child Charoba in
the poem, who having been talked to about the majestic
glory of the sea, and being led to the shore, innocently
exclaims: "Is that the mighty ocean? Is that all ?"
Keep the commandments!" Is that all that Jesus has
to tell him? Surely there must be some mistake ?
It did not need a prophet to tell us that. This youth
had gone to Christ seeking for some great thing to do, or
66
151
Keep the Commandments."
}
secret thing to know. The great Teacher could not
surely mean anything so commonplace, so elementary, so
extremely ordinary, as those old Ten Words which he
had learned to lisp, ever so many years ago, when he
was a little child at his mother's knee?
Yes, but Christ did mean this, and made His meaning
still more unmistakable: "But, if thou wouldst enter
into life, keep the commandments." He saith unto Him,
"Which ?" Jesus saith unto him, "Thou shalt not
kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not
steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt
not covet ;" and that all-embracing, universally-violated
Eleventh Commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neigh-
bor as thyself." He does not even remind him of the
first table, but only of these most elementary of all laws
-laws which we might write on the palms of our hands,
and which, in spite of all our high-flown theology, we all
daily violate the law of kindness; the law of purity;
the law of honesty ; the law of truth; the law of con-
tentment; the law of love.
Well, if that was really all that Christ had to say to
him, the young ruler did not care to conceal his disap-
pointment. And he said unto Him, "All these have I
kept from my youth." Had he indeed? Poor young
Pharisee! But after all he was probably better by far than
most of us. At least he had tried to keep these command-
ments, as he understood them, in the letter; at least he
thought that he had done so. He was not a vulgar profli-
gate; he was not a disbelieving Epicurean; he was not a
sham religionist; he was not a conventional worldling;
he had not solved the easy and fashionable problem of fac-
ing both ways; the white embers of a life of compromise
152
Keep the Commandments."
""
had not settled thick upon his soul. And therefore,
Jesus, as He looked on him, loved him; and loving him,
He made the youth's conscience luminous by flashing into
it one supreme and simple test of sincerity. Poor youth,
dear youth, the simple commandments of God are not
enough for thee; thou aimest at something more high
and heroical in religion than this age affecteth. "But"-
and may we not imagine the tender, loving human smile
with which Jesus said it ?-the sad, pitying smile of an
irony that taught but did not wound-"But one thing
thou lackest. Go, and sell all thou hast, and give to the
poor; and come, follow me." When the young man
heard that, he became gloomy; and he went away
sorrowful, for he had great possessions. He got what
he had asked for, but he did not want it. It troubled
his conscience, it did not sway his will. With slow, re-
luctant steps, and bent head, he went away. He went
away, and the eye of the stern Poet followed him as
one who had made "the great refusal," and saw him
among the myriads hateful alike to God and to His ene-
mies; who, being neither one thing nor the other, are
whirled round and round the outer edge of the abyss,
following the sooty flag of Acheron. But not so! I will
not believe, with Dante, that Christ did not save the
youth whom, looking on, He loved. He went away, we
may be sure, to learn, in his sorrowing and humbled
heart, that he had not kept the commandments; that he
had never even understood the commandments in their
essential spirit; that he was very far from perfect; that
he lacked not one thing, but very many things; that
never having truly loved his brother whom he had seen,
he had not in the least learnt to love, with all his heart
Keep the Commandments.”
153
and all his strength, the God whom he had not seen.
He went away, we trust and believe, to learn all this,
and to enter at last into the joy of his Lord.
Now I have no time to consider this morning the ulti-
mate test which Jesus gave to the young ruler who
wanted, like the rest of us, to serve two masters-God and
Mammon. If that were my subject, I might show how
many have taken it quite literally in all ages, and, so tak-
ing it, have received, not the hundred but the thousand-
fold reward, and have been infinitely blessed. The Apos-
tles accepted that test, and St. Antony and St. Benedict,
and the greatest saints of God-Christ's glorious pau-
pers-and they have shown a sovereign command over
self, a supreme indifference to fame, a supreme con-
tempt for money, a supreme contempt for death. Who
cares—I mean, what does mankind care-for average
Epicureans like most of us? Who cares for the chat-
terers, and slanderers, and mammon-worshippers, and
self-indulgent Sadducees, of whom the world is full?
Who cares for the gilded youth, and commonplace
ecclesiastics, and self-seeking statesmen, and the whole
army of facing-both-ways, and churchmen with every
vice of worldlings, and worldlings with the thin veneer
of religion? Ah! but when a man is a man, the whole
world knows how to recognize him; and when a mod-
ern man, be he the humblest of laymen, escapes the
vulgar average of conventional compromise and becomes
a saint, the whole hierarchy may be proud to stand
bareheaded in his presence. But do not be afraid.
Neither to you nor to myself am I going to offer
Christ's test to-day. We may spare ourselves this morn-
ing the task of explaining away, at which we are all
154 66
Keep the Commandments."
I
such adepts.
Christ did not begin with the injunc-
tion, "Go, sell all that thou hast." He began very
much lower; He said, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep
the commandments." Let us learn to flutter as sparrows
before it is worth considering whether we ought also to
soar as eagles. Let us cease to be very guilty before we
can be righteous. Let us be righteous before we can at-
tain to the greatness of good men. Let us be but ordi-
narily good men before we ask Christ for His counsels of
perfection, or attempt to attain to the stature of His
saints. Christ knew this well. We come to Him—
those of us who are sincere in this church this morning,
if any one of you is sincere—and say, "Saviour, whom I
love, whom at least I desire to love, tell me, oh tell me,
what must I do to inherit eternal life?" And so long
as we are all standing ankle-deep, knee-deep, chin-deep
in the world's mire, would it be of any use for Him to
point to some shining cloud in the deep blue, and to say,
"You must stand there?" Ah, no! He says to you,
"If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."
Until you have learnt to plant firm feet on the green
lower slopes, how can you breathe the difficult and eager
air, or stand in the glory of the sunrise, on the splendor
of the snowy heights?
Let me pause again, one moment, to ask each one of
you why you are here this morning. Have some of you
come out of curiosity, in order that afterwards you may
laugh your laugh, and say your little say? Have some
of you only come that light remarks, clever jests, frivo-
lous criticisms, may instantly devour any chance good
seed which might otherwise have conceivably germi-
nated in some spot where the beaten road of your heart
"
155
Keep the Commandments."
is trodden least hard? Ah, my friends, if so, you will
hear nothing from me to gratify the itching ear; noth-
ing but the plainest truths of God in the simplest lan-
guage of men. The foolishness of preaching? Ah,
yes! but may there not be a yet more conspicuous, a
yet more consummate foolishness of hearing-the hear-
ing of the cynic, the hearing of the Pharisee, the hear-
ing of the partisan? How you hear matters nothing to
the preacher. To him-to every preacher who would be
true to his office, to every preacher who would
"Preach as one who ne'er should preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men,"
the praise or the censure of congregations and of news-
papers have long become of no more value than dust in
the midnight. But how ye hear matters much to you.
Take heed how ye hear! Have any of you, by any chance,
come with the rare endowment of a humble heart, the heart
as of a weaned child, desiring only to get some good for
your lives? Ah, then, if you have learned the truth,
that-be you" churchman" or "theologian," or man of
intellect, or man of the world, or whatever you be—you
can only enter into the kingdom of heaven as a little
child, then alone can this sermon, or any other, do you
any good.
And I say that to most of you, at present, to all per-
haps, but one or two here, Christ says, not, "Sell all
that thou hast," but He says only, "If thou wilt enter
into life, keep the commandments." You cannot keep
them perfectly. When you have done your little best
You will
to keep them, that alone will not save you.
never be able to put your trust in anything that you do.
156
"Keep the Commandments."
Eternal life is neither "isolated truth nor orphaned
deed,” but it is "to know God;" and you cannot ever
know God but by repentance and by faith; nor can
any other angels but those two lead you to Jesus Christ,
whom God hath sent. Nevertheless, if you have one
touch of repentance-if you have one gleam of faith-
both will make you see that "to keep the command-
ments" is to put your foot on the lowest round of that
golden stair which leads to God. "If thou wouldst
enter into life, keep the commandments." My friends,
have you begun with that? Have you begun to begin
with that?" Sell all that thou hast ?" No, not yet
To you who are still young-if you be true to your-
selves, if you escape the corruption which is in the
world through lust, if you shake off the quotidian ague
of its conventionality and the creeping paralysis of its
unbelief―to you even that message may yet peal forth
in thunder louder than of Sinai; and gladly welcom-
ing it with pride, not seeking to minimize and evac-
uate it of its meaning-gladly you will spring to the
front to obey it. Some day. Perhaps very soon. But
not yet. What then? Give a tenth, a twentieth, an
hundredth part of your possessions? Not yet—but
first, "Let the wicked forsake his way and the un-
righteous man his thoughts. "Wash you; make you
clean; put away the evil of your doings from before
Mine eyes.
Do you think that it is of any use to call
yourself a Christian, and not to be a Christian? to say,
"I go, sir," and not to go? Do you think that at the
solemn bar of judgment you will be examined about
your "party," or your "opinion?" Do you think that
your Father in heaven cares anything whatever about
"9
29
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157
"Keep the Commandments.'
your moral and religious speculations; your pet shibbo-
leth; or your favorite form of ritual; or your partic-
ular theory about the sacrament? Do you think that
if you are base and unclean, and false and envious, and
saturated with unfair prejudices-do you think it will
help you one iota to say, "Lord, Lord ?" If you do,
oh, tell me not that you believe in Christ. For what
Christ said was, "If ye love me, keep my command-
ments." "If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the com-
mandments." "Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not
the things that I say?" "He that heareth my words.
and doeth them not, is like a man that built his house
upon the sands." Perhaps you call this justification by
works. To whom then do you apply your party watch-
word? For I have been quoting only the words of
Christ; I have only to do with what Christ taught. And
what Christ taught was what Moses taught, "And now,
Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of Thee but
to walk in His ways?" and what Samuel taught, "Be-
hold obedience is better than sacrifice;" and what
David taught, "Keep innocency, and do the thing that
is right; for that shall bring a man peace at the last;"
and what Hosea taught, "I will have mercy, and
not sacrifice;" and what Jeremiah taught, "I spake
not unto your fathers concerning burnt-offerings, but
this I commanded them, Obey my voice;" and what
Amos taught, "I hate, I despise your feast days, but
let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness
as a mighty stream;" and what Isaiah taught, "Bring
no more oblations, cease to do evil, learn to do well;
and what John the Baptist taught, "Bring forth fruits
meet for repentance;" and what Micah taught, "He
""
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158
"Keep the Commandments."
hath shown thee, oh man, what is good, and what doth
the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God;" and what
John the Evangelist taught, "Blessed are all they that
do His commandments ;" and what James, the Lord's
brother, taught, "Be ye doers of the word and not hear-
ers, only deceiving your own selves." What others have
taught I know not, nor greatly care; but what God's
prophets have taught, and what He taught of whom all
the prophets witness, that I know. One good deed,
one holy deed, one noble, generous, self-denying, loving
deed, if ever you can prove yourself capable of it, will
be enough to clear your minds from the cobwebs and
delusions of an accumalated self-deceit. For of all the
sixty-six books of the Bible which you search because
ye think that in them ye have eternal life, while you
will not come unto Christ that ye may have life, there
is not one which tells you that either your opinions or
your outward observances will save you; but they all say,
as your Lord said, this, "Whatsoever ye would that men
should do unto you, even so do unto them, for this is
the Law and the Prophets;" and this, "But if thou
wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."
Ah, my friends, it is faith alone which can save us;
faith alone in God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, by which
we can be enabled to do those things which are good. But
we may talk of our faith till the world's end, and, if our
faith do not mean obedience, we talk delusion. There
is no way of entering on the path of salvation but one,
and that is by forsaking sin. Christ did not die that we
should continue to be drunkards, or cheats, or liars, or
unclean; or, which is just as bad, slanderers, and de-
Keep the Commandments."
159
frauders, and mammon-worshippers, and Pharisees. Ah,
no! He died that we might become His children. And
all good men are His children. All good men, I say,
are His children. Take the Roman Catholic with his
seven sacraments, the Quaker with his no sacraments at
all, the Anglican with his episcopacy, and the Baptist
with his elders, the Low Churchman with his distinctive
formulæ, and the High Churchman with his Real Pres-
ence if they do God's will, He Himself has promised
that they shall know of the doctrine, know of it enough
for the saving of their souls. Are they sincere and holy
men? Well, then, I say in Christ's name, who forgives
the feeble ignorances of our opinions about which we all
differ, but who shed His blood to save our human souls,
in His name I say that, "Not every one who saith unto
me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven,"
but he whether or not he follow after us-he who do-
eth the will of my Father in heaven.
If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the command-
ments. The heresy of all heresies of which churches
have been guilty has been the exaltation of religious
opinions and religious practices into higher prominence
than moral purity. But beliefs unexceptionally ortho-
dox are compatible with the life of devils, who believe
and tremble; and rituals consummately precise may be
performed by priests who
"Have turned atheists, as did Eli's sons, who filled
With lust and violence the house of God."
Ah, if any of you value yourselves for your opinions
and your ceremonies, cease to trust in that Pharisaism,
and try, rather, to keep the commandments. Did you
i
160
"Keep the Commandments."
ever hear the keen medieval story how once a great
preacher was expected at a monastic church, but a
stranger came in his place and preached a most eloquent
sermon about all sorts of theological dogmas, and while
all the rest listened and loudly applauded, the pure eye
of one holy brother saw that the preacher was no other
than the Lord of Hell, the Frater Diabolus; and when
with horror he challenged him for his infamous audacity,
the Spirit of Evil said to him, “Why are you so angry ?
I have in nowise injured my own cause. What I have
said will make no one of them the better, rather the
worse. It has pleased their orthodox intellects. It has
not touched their sinful hearts. Ask yourselves hon-
estly," said Satan, "whether I have ever deceived any
one of you? You have deceived yourselves. I do not
deceive. I tempt."
And to keep the commandments, what is it but to re-
sist temptation, to cut off the right hand, to pluck out
the right eye, to cast away the besetting sin? If you
would so much as enter into life, test yourself by what you
have now heard. There can be no mistake about it. A
child might understand it. Have you an enemy? Then
this very day seek him out, shake hands with him; for-
give him. Have you wronged another by word or by deed?
Undo the wrong, repair the wrong, beg his pardon, make
him the fullest, the amplest retribution. Are you a slan-
derer, delighting in lies? a critic revelling in malice and in
misrepresentation? Hush your vain words; be ashamed
of your miserable personalities; learn how much nobler
a thing it is to be true and loving; fling your wretched
pen into the fire and grasp the fact that you would be a
far worthier, a far less pernicious member of society, if
]]
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161
Keep the Commandments."
you were to earn your bread in preference by breaking
stones upon the roadside. Are you in debt? Vow to
rid yourself of that dishonesty now and forever, if neces-
sary by living even on bread and water. Are you idle?
Go home and determine that you will waste no more
this acceptable time of golden opportunities. Are you a
swearer? Determine on your knees to-night that you
will break off that coarse and pre-eminently senseless
habit. Are you a better and a gambler? Go home and
tear up your cards and your betting-book, and abandon
that brainless and degrading excitement. Are you a
drunkard or getting fond of drink, and so being dragged,
perhaps even unsuspected by yourself, over the edge of
the abyss by that devil's hand of flame? Then do right
and shame the devil. Give up the drink. Are you liv-
ing two lives? Do not rest this night until you have
learned to know something about your real self.
you impure in thought, word, or deed,
"plucking the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent shane,
To set a blister there?”
Ah! cleanse the temple-walls of your souls from that
polluted imagery, and come with that leprosy of evil to
Him, whose answer to the leper's cry, "Lord, if thou
wilt, thou canst cleanse," came like an echo, "I will!
Be clean!" Or are you none of these things, but only
an elder brother of the Prodigal, jealous and narrow-
hearted-only a Pharisee, wise in your conceit, slander-
ing and sneering at all who disagree with you, trusting
in yourself that you are righteous, and despising others?
Ah, if you are, it may be that the very publicans and
11
162
"Keep the Commandments."
2
€
harlots are nearer heaven than you; and you must yet
be taught to know that without love, and without
humility, ye shall not see the Kingdom of Heaven. Oh,
hide not your disbelief, and hide not any evil way in
the garb of idle form and sanctified phraseology, nor
think that by calling yourself by this and that religious
name you can be His disciple. Ah! have you ever
abandoned one base thought, one bad habit, one unfair
practice, one unkind word, one unjust gain, because
Christ bade you? Have you ever uttered one brave re-
monstrance for Christ's sake? Have you ever done one
single courageous thing in His battles? Have you ever
given so much as one cup of cold water to one of His
little ones? Have you ever spoken one kind word of
encouragement to one of His weary children for His
sake and in His name? If not, do so now. Christ
wants you not in church only, not on Sundays only,
but always and altogether; in your shop, in your office,
in your drawing-rooms, on the week days, in the streets,
in your chambers-alike when you are mingling with
the mighty multitude, and in that secret and awful
solitude of your individual being in which your souls
are alone with God. He wants you, and if you seek
Him, you must accept His words. You must go up
before the tribunal of your own consciences, and set
yourselves before yourselves. Try your own selves :-
for in truth every man
"Ever bears about
A silent court of justice in himself,
Himself the judge and jury, and himself
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned,
And that drags down his life."
"Keep the Commandments."
163
You must begin sometime; you must begin with
something. "A good habit can only be built up; but
an evil habit must be blown up ;" and to do you that
service, what moral dynamite can be too strong? So
only can you ever enter into life. Begin now; begin
here; begin this very hour; make your vow this very
moment, in this very church. So begin to enter into
life. For by this we know that we love the children
of God, when we love God, and keep His command-
ments." "And His commandments are not grievous."
"But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the command-
ments."
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4
•
SERMON XI.
PREACHED IN TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK, OCT. 25, 1885.
Idols.
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols."—1 JOHN v. 21.
WITH these terse and memorable words of warning,
St. John ends his first Epistle. You will feel, I think,
at once the solemnity of their emphasis. But they
acquire a still deeper interest, and a still more intense
significance if St. John's first Epistle be, as it probably
was, the latest book of the New Testament; if in these
words we hear the very last accents of revelation which
issued from the lips of any one of those who had known
the Lord, and whose brows had been mitred with Pen-
tecostal flame. St. John was the last survivor of the
Apostles. Ought not the last words of an Apostle, of
the Apostle whom Jesus loved, to be listened to with an
eagerness deep as that with which we listen to the last
articulate messages spoken by the dying lips of those
whom we revere ?
St. John calls his converts little children, not only as
a term of affectionate appeal, natural to an inspired
teacher who could look upon them from the snowy
Idols.
165
summits of ninety years, but also because he wished
ever to remind them of that great family of God in
which we all are children; and of that Heavenly
Father, the sense of whose loving fatherhood should
ever be the strongest preservative from temptations to
idolatry. And St. John says: "My little children,
guard yourselves from idols," because nothing but their
own watchful faith and love could keep them from that
tendency to idolatry to which they were prone, from
those temptations to idolatry by which they were on
every side beset.
The whole history of the Jews, of which the Bible
is the record, is one long warning and protest against
idolatry. Abraham became the father of the faithful
because he obeyed the call of God to abandon the idols
which his fathers had worshipped beyond the Euphrates.
Jacob made his family bury under the Terebinth of
Shechem their Syrian amulets and Syrian gods. But
Israel was constantly starting aside into idolatry like
a broken bow. Even in the wilderness they took up
the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of their god,
Remphan, idols which they had made to worship. Even
under the burning crags of Sinai, "they made a calf in
Horeb, and worshipped the graven image ;" and for
centuries afterwards the apostate kings of northern
Israel doubled that sin in Dan and Bethel.
The seven servitudes of the Book of Judges were
the appropriate retribution for seven apostasies. From
Solomon to Manasseh, king after king, even of Judah,
forsook the Lord Jehovah. Then came the crushing
blow of the Exile, the utter ruin of every hope of domi-
nation or of independence. The agony of being thus
;
!
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Idols.
torn from their temple, and their home, and the land
they loved, cured them forever of material idolatry;
but alas! they fell headlong into another and subtler
idolatry-the idolatry of forms and ceremonies-the
idolatry of the dead letter of their law. Pharisaism was
only a new idolatry, and it was, in some respects, more
dangerous than the old. It was more dangerous, be-
cause more self-satisfied, more hopelessly impenitent;
more dangerous because, being idolatry, it passed itself
off as the perfection of faithful worship. Hence it
plunged them into a yet deadlier iniquity. Baal wor-
shippers had murdered the Prophets; Pharisees cruci-
fied the Lord of Life.
All Scripture rings with denunciations against idola-
try. Its histories are chiefly designed to show the judg-
ments which idolatry evoked. Its poetry and its proph-
esy pursue idolatry with a burning storm of irony and
indignation. Why do we continue, weekly and yearly,
these strong denunciations, if they have no longer any
meaning for us?
and a secret idolatry.
My friends, one-half, at least, of the Bible would
have only retained an historic interest if idolatry were
an extinct temptation. It is not so. There is an open
There is an objective and a sub-
jective idolatry, which still are full of peril. Satan is
not likely to have abandoned, without a struggle, his
master-weapon of a thousand years.
Let us, then, glance at three forms of idolatry, against
which we must ever be on our guard.
First, there is the worship of other gods, of false gods,
the worship of Moloch, and Baalim, and Ashtaroth;
gods of gold and jewels, gods of lust and blood, into
Idols.
167
which the Jews were seduced by the fascination of
those
'Gay religions, full of pomp and gold,"
which flourished among their heathen neighbors. This
is a violation of the first commandment.
Secondly, there is the worship of the true God under
false and idolatrous symbols. Those who danced round
the golden calf in the wilderness, or went astray after
Gideon's gorgeous ephod, or bowed the knee in the
royal chapel at Bethel, did not regard themselves as
idolaters. They were only setting up a visible symbol
of God's unseen presence. Too gross for a pure spiritual
worship, they would yet have said, as image worshippers
have in all ages pleaded on their own behalf, this calf is
no "gilded beast;" we do not worship it; it is not a
mere "calf that eateth hay;" it is a cherubic emblem,
like those woven on the curtains of the Temple on Sion,
or those which stretch their wings over the mercy seat.
And yet calf-worship was idolatry. It was a violation
of the second commandment.
The third form of idolatry was the worship of the
true God under the guise of false notions, false con-
ditions. The Priests and Pharisees imagined God could
be adequately worshipped by accuracy in shibboleths
and scrupulosity in observances; that what He cared for
was sacrifice, not mercy; fasting, not charity; ortho-
doxy, not incense; instrumentals, not fundamentals;
bowing the head like a bulrush, burning in the most
approved method the two kidneys with the fat, not being
meek and merciful and just. This, too, was a violation
of the second commandment; for if the first says, thou
shalt worship the true God exclusively, the second, as
168
Idols.
Christ explains it, says thou shalt worship the true God
spiritually. "God is a spirit, and they that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."
But perhaps, my brethren, you are asking already,
How does all this concern us? We are not idolaters.
We have not the smallest temptation to idolatry. Are
we to hear nothing but pulpit conventionalities, lessons
which have no bearing on real life, warnings which are
purely obsolete? Ah, my brethren, do not be afraid. I
shall touch your consciences near enough before I have
done. The temptation to idolatry is no mere archaism.
It is a very subtle thing. It lies at the root of all
temptations; and men are often most in danger when
they least suspect it. "We be Abraham's seed, and
were never in bondage to any man," said the Jews to
Jesus, at the very time when they were showing them-
selves to be least of all Abraham's true seed, and when
they were in bondage of many kinds. "Are we blind
also ?" asked the Pharisees of Christ, in astonished in-
credulity, holding themselves to be the very hierophants
of all orthodoxy, the very illuminati of consummate
theology. "Ye say, 'we see, answered Jesus; "there-
fore your sin remaineth." I do not think that so large
a part of Scripture would be taken up with warnings
against idolatry, if idolatry were an exploded peril.
May it not be that some of us are idolaters and know it
not?
›”
Take, for instance, the first and grossest form of
idolatry, the worship of other gods. You will say, "We
have never worshipped other gods; we have barely so
much as seen other gods, except it were as idols in a
museum." Yes, but whence came, what was the source
•
Idols.
169
of the strange temptation of the Israelites to break their
first commandment? What could possibly induce them
to turn from
"Jehovah, thundering out of Zion, throned
Between the Cherubim,"
to worship the lopped tree-trunk which represented the
nature-goddess Asherah; or the sea monster, upward
man and downward fish, who was called Dagon; or a
hideous brazen image, with arms sloping down toward a
cistern of fire, which the Ammonites called Milcom,
"my King?" My brethren, the history of the human
heart in all ages shows that the force of the temptation
is not so very inconceivable. The Jews were tempted to
worship these idols, because they saw in the lives of the
nations around them that emancipation from shame,
from conscience, from restraint, from the stern and
awful laws of morality, for which all bad men sigh.
They longed for that slavery of sin which would be free-
dom from righteousness. These idols were the deifica-
tion of man's worst impulses; they were the patrons of
his basest desires; they consecrated, under the sanction
of religion, his deadliest passions. It was not the re-
volting image of Moloch which allured them, but it was
the spirit of hatred; the fierce delight of the natural wild
beast which lurks in the human heart. Moloch was but
the projection into the outward of ghastly fears born of
man's own guilt; the consequent impulse to look on God
as a wrathful, avenging Being, only to be propitiated
by human agony and human blood; and as One whom
(so whispered to them a terrified selfishness) it was
better to propitiate by passing one's children through
ן.
1
:
1
170
Idols.
the fire, than oneself to suffer from His rage. Again, it
was not any image of Mammon which allured them to
worship that abject spirit. It was the love of money,
which is a root of all evil;-it was covetousness, which
is idolatry. And why should they worship the degraded
Baal-Peor? Why but because he was degraded ? Why
but because of "those wanton rites which cost them
woe?" Why but because, under his loathly patronage,
they might, like natural brute beasts made to be taken
and destroyed, corrupt themselves in those things which
they naturally knew. And as for Belial, they did not
even profess to raise him images. He was only a sub-
jective idol. Milton, when, in the magnificent first
book of his Paradise Lost, he describes their deities,
says:
'Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd
Fell not from heaven, nor one more gross to love
Vice for itself; to him no temple stood,
No altar smoked; yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, where the priest
Turns Atheist, as did Eli's sons, and fills
With lust and violence the house of God?
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage; and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial flown with insolence and wine."
Ah! my brethren, have we no need, in these days, not
only for the gentle appeal, "Little children," but for
some voice like the woe of the Apocalypse which would
thunder to us, "Keep yourselves from idols ?" Do
none of you worship Moloch, or Mammon, or Baal-
Idols.
171
Peor? Have none of you in your hearts a secret niche
for Belial? When your heart is absorbed in a passion
of envy, hatred, and rage; when you desire, and are de-
termined, if you can, to wound by false words, by bitter
attacks, by open or secret injuries; when you display
"the eternal spirit of the populace " by giving yourself
up to a passion of reckless depreciation of social, politi-
cal, or religious opponents; when you invoke the very
name of God, that you may emphasize the curses against
your enemies, is God the God of your worship? Of
your lips, yes! of your life, no! What are you, then,
whatever you may call yourself, what are you but a
worshipper of Moloch ?
66
""
And when you talk of nothing, think of nothing,
scheme after nothing, care for nothing, I had almost
said pray for nothing but "money," money,'
"money," all day long; hasting to be rich, and so not
being innocent; ready, if not downright to forge or to
steal in order to get it, yet ready to adulterate goods, to
scamp work, to have false balances and unjust weights,
to defraud others of their rights and claims, to put your
whole trading, or commerce, or profession on a foot-
ing which, perhaps conventionally honest, yet goes to
the very verge of dishonesty ; toiling for money, valuing
it first among earthly goods, looking up to those who
have won it as though they were little gods; hoarding
it, dwelling on it, measuring the sole success of life by
it, marrying your sons and your daughters with main
reference to it—is God the God of your worship? Of
your lips, yes; of your life, no. What are you, then,
but an idolater-a worshipper of Mammon ?
And if you are a drunkard or impure; if the current
Σ
?
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172
Idols.
•
of your life is absorbed and swayed by unholy impulses;
if you have flung the reins upon the neck of your evil
passions; if your thoughts are incessantly going astray
after base desires; if as in the throb and counter-throb
of the beating heart, the corrupted soul is ever sending
its fever beats of diseased imagination to the polluted
body, and the polluted body returning the languid cur-
rents of its self-indulgence to the corrupted soul; if you
are living in constant and unresisted violation of God's
laws of temperance, soberness, and chastity; if the Tem-
ple of your mortal body be full of such chambers as
Ezekiel saw,
'When, by the vision led
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah-"
chambers in which wicked thoughts are ever bending
before the walls which glow with unhallowed imagery-
again is God the God of your worship? Of your lips,
yes; of your life, no! What are you then but an idol-
ater? In what respect are you, then, less guilty than
Zimri, the Prince of Simeon who worshipped Baal-
Peor ?
Not an idolater? alas! my brethren, every one of us
is an idolater who has not God in all his thoughts, and
who has cast away the laws of God from the govern-
ance of his life. I know not that it is a much worse
idolatry to deny God altogether, and openly to deify the
brute impulses of our lower nature, than it is in words
to confess God, yet not to do, not to intend to do, never
seriously to try to do what he commands, or to abandon
what He forbids. If those two sons in the parable were
Idols.
1
173
""
ours, I know not whether the smooth hypocrite, who,
bidden to go work in the vineyard, said, "I go, sir,” but
went not, would not awaken in us an even deeper indig-
nation than the insolent rebel who said, "I will not.'
Atheism? ah! there are two kinds of atheism. There
is the defiant, speculative atheism which thinks, or
thinks that it thinks, there is no God,-I do not deny
that is a perilous and shameful aberration. I am quite
sure that it brings every nation which falls into it to
infamy and ruin; but it is usually limited to very few
among mankind, and even in them the profession of it is
apt to break down at critical moments. The simple
question of Napoleon, when, on the deck of the frigate
which was carrying him to Egypt, the French men of
science were talking atheism under the starry sky, and he
rose and pointing to that sky which hung over them with
its myriad stars, said, "It is all very well, gentlemen,
but who made all those ?"-that question will, I say,
be alone sufficient to convince men of the truth of the
first verse of Scripture.: "In the beginning God made
the heaven and the earth." But practical atheism;
that atheism which, confessing God on the lips, denies
Him in the life; that atheism which, professing to care
much for the doctrines of Christianity, cares nothing
for its precepts; the regular utterance of "Lord,
Lord," by men who live in dishonesty, adultery, drunk-
enness, revellings, and all sorts of abominable idolatries,
or what is as bad, in the secret intrigues of selfishness, in
the quotidian ague of frivolity, in the seething hubbub
of slanderous worldliness, in the "ghastly smooth life
dead at heart" of religious insincerity-how many are the
atheists, then! And if the love of pleasure, and the love
à
Н
174
Idols.
of money, and the love of the world be idolatry, alas !
how few of us have truly kept even that first command-
ment, "Thou shalt have none other God but Me!"
And the reason why we have so imperfectly kept
the first commandment may be because neither have
we obeyed the spirit of the second. There are far other
idols besides those openly erected by the world, the
flesh, and the devil. The first meaning of the word idols
-ɛdwλa—is false, shadowy, fleeting images; subjec-
tive phantoms; unreal notions and conceptions of the
mind; wilful illusions; cherished fallacies. It is the
sense in which the word is used by our great English
philosopher, Lord Bacon. He speaks of idols of the
tribe, false notions which seem inherent in the nature
of man, which, like an unequal mirror, mingling its
own nature with that of the light, distorts and refracts
it. There are other idols of the cave. Every man has
in his heart some secret cavern in which an idol lurks,
reared there by his temperament or his training, and
fed with the incense of his passions, so that a man, not
seeking God in His word or works, but only in the
microcosm of his own heart, thinks of God not as He is,
but as He chooses to imagine Him to be. And there are
idols of the market-place, false conceptions of God.
which spring from men's intercourse with one another,
and from the fatal force of words. And there are idols
of the school, false notions which come from the spirit
of sect, and system, and party, and formal theology.
We do not make to ourselves graven images of God, like
the calves of Dan and Bethel, but do none of us break
the second commandment even more fatally by making
to ourselves these idols-false notions of God-which
Idols.
175
we accept in place of the true God? My brethren, it is
a grave and solemn question. It was false notions of
God of which St. John was mainly thinking in this
epistle. Have we no need of his warning-which was
addressed to Christians, remember, not to heathens-
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols.'
99
It was said, not long ago, by a great orator in the
House of Commons, that the working classes care as
little for the doctrines of Christianity as the upper
classes care for its precepts. If that charge be true
(and none, I imagine, will deny that there are some
grounds on which it may be substantiated), may it not
be that the God of the worldling is an idol, a false im-
age, a totally wrong conception of the Living God? Of
the thousands of men of the world, of the hundreds of
gilded youths, of all those in this great city whose God
is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind
earthly things, not one in a hundred but would be
shocked if charged with not believing in God.
might not some stern prophet use to him that tre-
mendous sarcasm of the Apostle James: "Thou be-
lievest that there is one God; thou doest well. The
devils also believe-and more, more than thou dost—
Dost thou believe that
they believe and tremble."
But
God is righteous, that He is of purer eyes than to be-
hold iniquity? that He visiteth iniquity, transgression,
and sin? Dost thou believe that the moral law which
thou art violating deliberately every day is God's law;
and that thy sin will find thee out; and that though
hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished?
Thousands either do not believe this, or live as if they
did not. Their lives give the lie to their lips. And
176
Idols.
'1
what can God say to them but this: "C Why dost thou
preach my laws, and takest my covenant in thy mouth;
whereas thou hatest to be reformed, and hast cast my
words behind thee? When thou sawest a thief thou
consentedst unto him, and hast been partaker with the
adulterers. Thou hast let thy mouth speak wickedness,
and with thy tongue thou hast set forth deceit. These
things hast thou done, and I held my peace, and thou
thoughtest wickedly that I was even such an one as
thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set before thee
the things that thou hast done." My brethren, all
history, all biography, all the voices of the conscience
of mankind bear witness that the God who is the idol of
the worldling's fancy, the God who is not righteous, the
God who does not punish sin, is not God. The bad
man knows not God. He alone who strives to do His
will can know His doctrine. To him that ordereth
his conversation aright will I show the salvation of
God.
And if you do not worship this public idol of the
market-place, have you no personal idol of the cave?
You fully admit, you definitely believe, that in general
God punishes sin; that He does not clear the guilty
in their guilt; that He did give the moral law; but,
turning God into your private idol, do not some of you
imagine that nevertheless you will get off? that
there is something special in your case? that God will
make an exception for you? that your temptations have
been so strong, your chances so small, your passions
so irresistible, your circumstances altogether so pecul-
iar, that somehow you may sin, aye, and continue in
sin, aye, and live in sin, aye, and die in sin, and yet
Idols.
177
1
somehow escape the consequences of sin? If so, my
brethren, that is not God whom you are worshipping.
It is an idol of the cavern. God is a God of laws, not
of exceptions. God is a God of justice, not of favor-
itism. Whatever charge of folly may justly attach to
the saying, "There is no God," that folly is prouder,
deeper, and less pardonable which says God will deal
differently with me than with others. Because you are
you, because you fancy that your temptations have been
exceptional, which is not true; because you think that
your passions have been strong, which means only that
your reason has been weak; because you think you
have so many virtues, and amiable qualities; because
you love and value yourself and your sins so much that
you think that God must look partially upon them too-
shall God, because of this self-love, because of these
filthy rags of your own righteousness, break, in your
case, and yours alone, the adamantine rivet that links
punishment to unrepented crime? So might your idol
of the cavern do; so will not God!
And yet, my brethren, if we fling to the moles and
bats, these idols of the market-place and of the cavern,
let not our God, "our Father in Heaven," "the God,
the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering,
abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for
thousands," let Him not become to us, as he has be-
come to many-as He has become to the Pharisees of
this as of all ages—a mere idol of the school. "God is
a spirit; not confined to temples; not bound up in
books; not coffined in ancient creeds." If it be true
that the mass of the working classes care nothing for the
doctrines of Christianity, may it not be, at least in part,
་
12
178
Idols.
because those doctrines have been grievously misrepre-
sented to them? The other day a young girl in a
London prison was asked, for what purpose she thought
Christ had ascended? Her answer was, "That He
might punish people." This was her notion; it is
probably the sole notion of thousands respecting Him,
who died that we might live, and who ever liveth to
make intercession for us! Oh, my brethren, how can
we expect the ignorant, how can we expect any to love
God, if it is an idol of the school like this that we de-
pict for them? "If their religion be night, where is
their day? If God is a bugbear, what is life ?" Is
there none to tell them that God punishes only because
He loves; because He would forgive; because He would
lead us away from the one thing, the only thing that
can be our ruin? That He punishes not one moment
longer when the work of punishment is done? "When
I was young," says Luther, "all at once the sight of
the Holy Sacrament, carried by Dr. Staupitz, so terrified
me that I perspired at every pore, and thought that I
should die with fright. When the procession was over,
I confessed to Dr. Staupitz, and told him what had
happened to me. Thy thoughts,' he answered, 'are
not according to Christ. Christ does not terrify; He
consoles.' Those words filled me with joy, and were a
great relief to my mind." Wise teacher! true father
of the Reformation. Christ does not terrify: He con-
soles.
The God of terrors; the God who is supposed to
elect a very small number to bliss, and to reprobate all
the rest to perdition and anguish, by eternal decrees,
for His own glory; the God who is supposed to be
Idols.
179
driven to avenging fury by a wrong opinion on some
point of theology; the God who, in dreary human
systems of the Atonement, which are wholly unlike
what the Bible says of it, is represented as so full of
wrath that, because He must have some victim, He
ruthlessly smites the Innocent; the awful Moloch
God of the Inquisition and of intolerance, who was
supposed to be appeased by bloodshed, and to look
favorably on those through whose fierceness the groans
of burning men arose to heaven, as they gasped out,
in the fires of Seville and Toledo, their agonizing souls;
the God of Smithfield and of the Armada; the God
of the gibbet, the thumbscrew, and the stake, and all
the hellish implements of torture and tyranny, used by
priests to deprave the heart of mankind; the God of
theological anathemas and religious hatreds; the God
of fierce sectarians, and ignorant revivalists,-—this God
is not our God; never could be our guide unto death.
"Your God," said Wesley to Whitefield, when he was
setting forth some hard system of revolting Calvinism,
But our God is He of
"Your God is my Devil."
whom it is said, "God is Love." If perfect love casteth
out fear, so no less certainly doth perfect fear cast out
love. Abject fear, selfish fear, palsied fear, degraded
fear may gash itself, or gash others with knives before
its Baalim, like a grovelling slave; but the son, even
in rags, even in hunger, even amid the swine—when
he comes to himself, says: "I will arise, and go to
my Father, and will say unto him, 'Father, I have
sinned.""
And if you ask how St. John, in his Epistle, helps
you to obey his exhortation to keep yourselves from
•
1

J
Idols.
180
idols, I answer briefly that he helps you in two ways—
one by telling you what God is; one by pointing you to
His likeness. He tells you what God is in three sen-
tences. "God is righteous," he says. "God is Light."
"God is Love." God is righteous, and therefore He
hates all unrighteousness in us, and can be guilty of no
unrighteousness in Himself. Idols which represent Him
as a God of arbitrary caprice, treating men as though
they were mere dead clay, to be dashed about and
shattered at His will-idols which represent His justice
as alien from ours, and those things as good in Him
which would be evil in us- are shattered on the rock of
truth that God is righteous.
Idols which represent Him as delighting in narrow
formalism, self-satisfied security, and bitter exclusive-
ness, making of dull and acrid dogmatists the sole elect,
and rejecting the brighter, bolder, larger natures, as
though he loved the jagged thistles, and the dwarfed
bents better than the rose of Sharon or the cedars of
Lebanon-idols of the sectarian, idols of the fanatic,
idols of the Pharisee, idols of those whose loveless ig-
norance would label themselves as the only Christians
and the only Gospellers, are shattered by the ringing
hammer-stroke of the truth that God is Light.
Idols which only represent Him as living a life turned
toward self, or folded within self, caring only for His
own "glory;" caring nothing for the endless agonies of
the creatures He has made; burning with implacable
wrath against little deviations of opinion; regarding
even the sins of children as deserving of infinite punish-
ment, because, though they are finite, He is infinite:-
idols of the zealot, idols of the ecclesiastic-idols of
Idols.
181
those who think that their puny wrath can work the
righteousness of God-are dashed to pieces by the sweep-
ing and illimitable force of the truth that God is love.
Yes, with these axes and hammers of the word, break
down the carved images of idol temples, whether they
be reared by systematizing theology or by ruthless syl-
logism, by religious hatred or by selfish guilt-and so
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols."
But, lastly, St. John will not merely leave you to
what is abstract. He will point you to One whom he
had seen and heard, and his hands had handled, even the
Word of Life; to One who was the brightness of God's
glory and the express image of His person.
66
This," he
says, "is the true God and eternal life." My brethren, if
you would know God, the only begotten, who is in the
bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. And
what do we learn of God from Him? How can I com-
press it into a few words? Ah, my brethren, read the
Four Gospels; read them for yourselves; read them with
eyes unblinded by the fogs of traditional exegesis; read
the revelation of God in the human life, in the spoken
words of your Saviour. Do not go to human systems of
Theology, do not seek human conceptions of Art in order
to understand him. If you trust even to Thomas
à Kempis, he will draw you a picture of Christ which
leaves out of sight altogether the most essential features
of His ministry-that "He went about doing good."
If you rely on religious teachers they may offer you a
dead Christ for the living Christ; an agonized Christ for
the ascended Christ; an ecclesiastical Christ for the spirit-
ual Christ; a Christ of the elect few for the Christ of the
sinful many; a petty, formalizing, sectarian Christ for
182
Idols.
the royal Lord of the great free heart of manhood;
a Christ of the fold for the Christ of the one
great flock; a Christ of Gerizim or of Jerusalem, of
Rome or of Geneva, of Oxford or of Clapham, for
the Christ of the Universal World.
If you turn to Art, if you would evoke even the genius
of a Michael Angelo to set forth Christ to you, he would
make the Sistine Chapel flame with tumultuous imagery,
in the midst of which a wrathful, pitiless, avenging
Christ turns away from the redeemed, turns away even
from His pitying, pleading human mother, to hurl from
His burning right hand ten thousand thunders on the
crushed, convulsed, demon-tortured, innumerable mul-
titude, for whom He died in vain. No! turn
from these shadows: face the sun. Look at Christ
Himself. See Him in His acts. Stern, indeed, to the
Pharisee and to the hypocrite, and dwelling on the
awful breadth, and grandeur, and searchingness of the
moral law. Yet ever tender to sorrow, with an infinite
tenderness releasing the demoniac, giving sight to the
blind, cleansing the leper, preaching to the poor, eating
with sinners, feeding the hungry multitude, welcoming
the outcast publican, suffering the weeping woman who
was a sinner to wash His feet with her tears, and wipe
them with the hairs of her head, praying for His very
murderers as they were driving the nails through His
hands upon the Cross. If you would know how God
loves even the guiltiest of His children, see Misery
left alone with Mercy on the Temple floor, and hear
the voice so awful in its warning, yet so solemn in
its tenderness, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and
sin no more." And he who thus represented God by
Idols.
183
66
His acts, how did He represent Him in His words?
Was it not solely, essentially, exclusively as a Father?
as our Father which art in Heaven;" as the God who
maketh the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust; as the God of
little children, whose angels behold His face in heaven;
as the God of the lilies and the ravens; the God of the
lost sheep; the God of the falling sparrow; the God of
the Prodigal Son; the God by whom the very hairs of
our head are all numbered; in one word, which com-
prises all, the God of love? Yes, this is the true God
and Eternal Life.
Dear God and Father of us all,
Forgive our faith in cruel lies,
Forgive the blindness that denies,
Forgive thy creature, when he takes
For the all-perfect love Thou art
Some grim creation of his heart.
Cast down our idols; overturn
Our bloody altars: let us see
Thyself in Thy humanity.
So long as we worship idols; so long as we take pleas-
ure in unrighteousness; so long as we love the darkness
rather than the light; so long as we mingle human
hatreds with our worship of Him; so long as we swear
(like those in Zephaniah) by Him and by Moloch, or like
the Samaritans of old, fear the Lord and serve our
own gods; so long we cannot see Him, neither know
Him. For Scripture itself teaches us that if with the
merciful He will show Himself merciful, and with the
upright, upright; and with the pure, pure; so with
the froward will he show Himself froward.
And be-
3

184
Idols.
i
cause to know Him is life, and eternal life, and because
there is no other life, since all other life is but a living
death, therefore St. John wrote, as the last word of his
epistle, as the last word of the whole revelation of the
New Testament, Little children, keep yourselves from
idols.
SERMON XII.
PREACHED IN TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON, Nov. 1, 1885.
The Example of the Saints.
"All my delight is upon the saints that are in the earth, and
upon such as excel in virtue."-Ps. xvi. 3.
SINCE the seventh century the first day of this month
has been dedicated to the memory of All Saints, and in
many religious communities, since the tenth century,
November 2 is set apart for the commemoration of All
Souls. This latter day has been dropped from our
calendar only because it was mixed up with Romish
views about Purgatory and masses for the dead. Other-
wise, a day devoted to meditation on All Souls-in the
strictest sense of the word—in connection with a day of
All Saints, suggests thoughts as solemn, and I trust as
profitable, as almost any on which our minds could
dwell.
1. The great procession of mankind, in its unnum-
bered millions, is ever sweeping across the narrow stage
of life, issuing from a darkness in which they were not,
passing into a darkness in which they are seen no more.
We watch that procession as it winds through the long
186 The Example of the Saints.
!!
centuries of history, and we note its most striking
figures. Some are kings, who built pyramids and sub-
dued nations, and held absolute sway over the destinies
of their fellow-men. Some are poets, with their gar-
lands and singing robes about them; some are great
discoverers, who enlarged the power of man over the
forces of nature; some are great philosophers, who
widened the limits of human thought; some are lovers
of their fellow-men, the reformers of abuses, the slayers
of dragons, the triumphers over long-continued tyranny;
some are men "who have uplifted their strong arms to
bring heaven a little nearer to the earth." My own life
places me under the shadow of that great Abbey where
I am surrounded on all sides by the tombs and ceno-
taphs of such famous men as these; but it is not of
such as these that the great procession of humanity is
mainly composed. The vast masses of it consist of a
nameless throng,-the poor, the ordinary, the average,
the undistinguished; men whose little lives gleamed for
a moment out of the eternities and disappeared; men
who did but write their names in water; men who
barely for one moment scratched their story on icy
pillars, which were melted by the next morning's sun;
men who lie in earth's millions of nameless graves, the
meaning, and even the bare fact of their existence
obliterated from all human memory and every human
record for evermore. To our eyes mankind is mainly
divided into the eminent and the obscure; the known
and the unknown; the great and the small; the rulers
and the ruled; the learned and the ignorant; and it is
to the latter classes-to those whom the world would
call the unimportant, the insignificant-that the great
The Example of the Saints.
187
multitude of every generation-the great multitude of
this, as of every assemblage of worshippers, have always
belonged. Savage and civilized, in every age, in every
region, the immense majority of men-some with lives
that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone—
have withered like the flower of grass, have vanished
like a bubble, have "sunk as lead in the mighty waters."
After a year or two they lie in the grave like sheep,
"there the wicked cease from troubling, and there the
weary be at rest. There the prisoners are at ease, they
hear not the driver's voice. The small and great are
there, and the servant is free from his master."
2. But to the eye of God-to the eyes, it may be, of
all good and evil spirits, the aspect of that procession is
very different.
To them the inch-high differences of
human rank have no existence; for them the thistles of
human loftiness have no elevation, and the molehills
cast no shadow. They, as they gaze on this marvellous
procession of human life, know only the difference be-
tween the good and the evil; between those who fear
God and those who reject Him; between those who
love and those who only hate and injure their neigh-
bors; between the holy and the unholy, the forgiven
and the impenitent, the saved and the unsaved souls.
Human wealth, human success, human greatness-the
wretched thing we are all tempted to honor more than
that which is pure and lovely-to covet more than God's
benediction and Heaven's own gold-what is it? how
"When I forget
long does it last? what is it worth?
my king, may my God forget me," said one who had risen
from obscurity to be Lord Chancellor of England.
is the best thing he could do for you," exclaimed Ed-
"It
188
The Example of the Saints.
mund Burke, who heard the apostrophe. Ah! how
infinitely better would it have been for many of earth's
successful men to have been unknown here, and to have
been failures here, not rich, not prosperous, not re-
nowned, and at the same time
"Not left in God's contempt apart,
With ghastly smooth life dead at heart."
3. In the fine gradations of human character and the
complex motives of human action, it is only in certain
marked instances that we can make any of the broad
distinctions which can be made by those spiritual beings
who see us with larger eyes than ours. We can see that
some men have dared to bè eminently good, and that
other men have been conspicuously and infamously bad.
But most men's lives and characters wear in our eyes a
very mixed aspect. They are not carved in marble,
they are woven in gossamer. They show interchanging
elements of good and evil, which run together like warp
and woof in the varying web. We see human sin and
weakness even in the good. We see here and there a
gleam of saintliness even in the unsaintly. Only the
balances of God are perfect. He alone, putting the just
weights into the even scales, can pronounce on the
whole life of most men-that they "did that which
was good," or "did that which was evil," in the sight
of the Lord. It is a significant fact that while the
Church of God has canonized and beatified so large a
number of her sons, there is scarcely one, if one-
scarcely even the soul of a Judas Iscariot-whom she
has ventured-and even that timidly, and even that
beyond her authority-to doom to everlasting woe.
The Example of the Saints.
189
1
!
But though we can never pronounce judgment on the
future of any man, we cannot help seeing that some
have been, according to all human judgment, bad men
and bad women, and that some few have been the
saints of God.
4. Bad men and bad women:-we think of them with
pain and shrinking sorrow; we think that for mankind,
at any rate, it had been better if they had never been.
All those who have lived only to gratify the mean and
sensual egotism of a hungry, shivering self; all those
whose lifelong example had deepened man's feverish
thirst for gold; all those who have heaped up for them-
selves riches as for a day of slaughter, by oppression,
robbery, or wrong; all who by the unlawful indulgence
of their lowest passions have contributed to poison the
life-blood of mankind; all whose words or writings have
infected the stream of life with the leprous distillment
of polluted thoughts; all those who by the shameful
perversion of art and literature-laying unhallowed
incense on the altar of genius, and mingling with
strange flames her vestal fire-have inflamed the fever-
ish passion of morbid imaginations; all who have
helped to degrade life from its sweet and serious sanc-
tity into vulgarism and frivolity; all who have been the
greedy and cruel disseminators of gossip, slander, and
lies; all whose example has rendered the actions of men
viler, and their thoughts more trivial; all who have
painted the gates of Hell with Paradise; all who have
striven to hand on and to perpetuate evil traditions; all
who have flourished by the causes of human misery and
ruin; all who have delighted to speak words that may
do hurt; all the idle cumberers of the ground whose
|
The Example of the Saints.
190
root has been as rottenness, and their blossom gone up
as dust; all whose god is their belly, whose glory is in
their shame, who mind earthly things. The world may
give them fortunes, or coronets, or loud applause, but
these are bad men and bad women. And if all mankind
had been as these have been and are--if there had been
no salt of the earth amid its corruption, no twinkling
stars amid its midnight; if, like the seething of the
grape-bundles in the uncleansed wine-vat, earth had been
nothing but a ferment of man's vileness, vanity, and
lust; if there had been none on earth but those four
classes whom God most hates-mockers, liars, hypo-
crites, and slanderers-then indeed Earth had been an
anticipated Hell. "Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and
whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and every
one that loveth and maketh a lie.”
5. And as for all these we judge them not. We know
nothing of their temptations. We take not heaven's
thunder into our puny grasp. We
"Avert our eyes, nor follow them
Into that dark, obscure, sequestered state
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul,
He else made first in vain; which must not be."
But oh! with what unspeakable relief do we turn from
these works of darkness, and them who delight therein,
to the saints of God! In them, in them, is the healing
of the world. Do not think of the mere title, "saints."
That is at the best an unwarranted and precarious title.
It has been given to some at least of the unworthy, and
denied to many of the good. On All Saints' Day we
may think not only of all whom the Church has called
The Example of the Saints.
191
t
"saints," but also of the long line who are not included
in that very partial and imperfect calendar. Think of
the heroes of faith in olden times; of the Patriarchs;
Enoch, the blameless; Noah, the faithful; Abraham,
the friend of God; of the sweet and meditative Isaac ;
of the afflicted and wrestling Jacob. Think of Moses,
the meekest of men; of the brave Judges; of glorious
Prophets; of patriot warriors; of toiling Apostles; of
the many confessors who would rather die than lie; of
martyrs uplifting radiant and enraptured faces from
the agonizing flames. We may think of the Hermits,
who, from the guilt and turmoil of life, fled into the
solitude of the wilderness; of the missionaries-St.
Paul, Columban, Boniface, Francis Xavier, John Eliot,
David Brainerd, Adoniram Judson, Henry Martyn,
Coleridge Pattison; of Reformers, who cleared the
world of lies, like Savonarola, Huss, Luther, Zwingli,
Wesley, Whitfield; of wise rulers, like Alfred, and St.
Louis, and Washington, and Lincoln, and Garfield; of
the writers of holy books, like Thomas à Kempis, and
Baxter, and Bunyan, and Jeremy Taylor; of those who,
like Howard, brought deliverance to the captive, who,
like Lloyd Garrison, unriveted the fetters of the slave;
of good Bishops, like Hugo of Avalon, and Fénélon,
and Berkeley; of good pastors, like Oberlin and Fletcher
of Madeley, and Adolphe Monod, and Felix Neff; of all
true Poets-whether sweet and holy like George Her-
bert, and Cowper, and Keble, and Longfellow; or grand
and mighty like Dante and Milton-what earthly mar-
ble is white enough to build the monument of these?
These are but a few of the many names of those who
have reflected the glory of their Master, Christ, and who
?

192
The Example of the Saints.
-
walk with Him in white robes, for they are worthy.
My brethren, if you would comfort your hearts, if you
would strengthen your good resolutions, if you would
retain that high estimate of human nature which so
often threatens to succumb when we look at the sicken-
ing exhibitions of moral revolt and disorder on every
side of us, most earnestly indeed would I urge you to
make yourselves acquainted with the story of Christians
such as these. Next to the Gospels and Epistles of the
New Testament it is the best antidote to the degeneracy
of worldly and evil days; from earth's mire and dark-
ness lift up your eyes to this galaxy of great examples.
When evil, and baseness, and triviality is being thrust
upon us on all sides—when men take it for a sign of
genius to degrade and depreciate, to impute and to pol-
lute-amid all this fuss, and chatter, and hurry, and
acrid ill-nature-amid reams of frivolous fiction, humili-
ating gossip, and unprofitable oratory-amid all the
place-hunting, and the gold-hunting-have we no time
to think of things eternal? have we no desire to possess
our souls in peace and nobleness? have we no need of
something to keep alive our faith in the dignity of
man ?
6. I for one find that something most of all in dwell-
ing on the life and sufferings of Christ, and next in
considering the blessed example of those who have fol-
lowed Him, bearing each his own cross. Let me point.
out two of the many ways in which it seems to me that
this contemplation of these our worthier and nobler
brothers in the great family of Christ may be most
blessed and useful to us.
i. In laying down the laws of observation, the great
น
The Example of the Saints.
*།
193
}
philosopher of the Novum Organum describes what he
calls "the prerogative of instances," and among them
he speaks of instances which he calls ostensivæ or
elucescentes-instances which show any quality in its
purest exaltation, in its fullest vigor. Now, the saints
of God furnish us with just such instantiæ elucescentes
of pure and possible human goodness. God has made
clear to us His will. In all His Bibles, in Scripture, in
Nature, in history, in experience, in conscience, He has
taught us that certain things are good and certain
things are evil. When God was made man, and dwelt
among us in the life of our Lord and Master Jesus
Christ, God translated for us His revelation into the
plainest of human language. So Christ was the Word
of God, and Christ's saints show us the acceptance of
His word, the reality of His power. They show us how,
through faith in Christ, and by the spirit of Christ, and
because of prayer to God through Christ, men weak as
we are, tempted as we are, yet did gloriously and con-
spicuously triumph over sin, the world, the flesh, and
the devil, and thereby made manifest to us that we can
do the same. They have proved to us that even in such
a world as this, and even for hearts so poor and weak as
ours, it is possible to be good and pure and true by the
help of God, because by the help of God they were so,
and that with no greater strength than we may obtain.
They refute the excuse of our feebleness; they cut away
the lie of our inability.
ii. It needs, for instance, but a short experience of
life to see that the mass of men are predominantly self-
ish. Self is the all but universal idol; selfishness is
for millions the sole law of existence. Men jostle each
13
4
The Example of the Saints.
194
other, and struggle in the press, and trample savagely
on fallen rivals, and show the poor spectacle of that
perverted life which lives and dies only for itself. And
yet it is possible for men to become-and thousands of
men have become perfectly, beautifully unselfish, car-
ing honestly for the happiness of others more than for
their own. St. Macarius, the hermit, lived in the desert
in a little community of solitaries. One day there was
brought to him that which, in the hot desert, is the
most tempting and exquisite of all luxuries-a bunch of
fresh purple grapes, with the bloom and mist of their
delicious ripeness upon them. Macarius hated the
thought of taking them himself; he preferred that
another should enjoy the boon, and handed it to one
of the brothers; but the same motive was strong in him,
and he gave it to another. But again this other pre-
ferred the enjoyment of a companion to his own; and
so, in the absolute unselfishness of that little community,
the untouched, tempting grapes, which would have been
so cool, so refreshing in the burning day, were handed
from one to another, none wishing to keep what would be
pleasant to his fellow, till at last they were handed back
to Macarius again. Unselfishness, you see, had become
as completely the law of that little brotherhood as
selfishness is the law of the common world.
Oh, how
infinitely lovelier is the spectacle presented by these
saints of God, and their love for one another, than is
daily presented in this hard, modern life. "The high
desire that others should be blest savors of heaven.
99
iii. Again, we need not look far to see the pride of
men. It is so common that it seems to be as strong in
the poorest and meanest as in the great. We see it-
The Example of the Saints.
195
and its weak satellites, conceit and vanity-in the look
of men; it is shown in their gait; we hear it in their
very accents. And never was the tendency stronger
than now to be self-assertive; to be vain; to say to
every one else, "I am just as good as you;" to resent
with fierce bitterness the notion that "they call this
man as good as me." Pride is the one Protean spirit
which takes many forms in envy, hatred, back-biting,
spurious liberty, false independence. And yet it is quite
possible even for man, proud man, to become resigned,
humble, submissive, meek; not to seek great things for
himself; to take the lowest place; to think others better
than himself; to pluck that violet of humility which
blossoms only at the foot of the cross. Again, let me
illustrate by an example. St. Thomas of Aquino was
by far the greatest man of his age; of noble birth, of
ancient lineage, of fine appearance, the most consum-
mate theologian, supreme in learning and goodness, the
friend of popes and kings. In position he was but a
humble monk. He chose that position by preference.
Voluntarily he took the lowest place. One day at
Bologna, a stranger arriving asked the Prior for some
one to help him to get provisions and carry his basket.
"Tell the first brother you meet," said the Prior. St.
Thomas was walking in meditation in the cloister, and,
not knowing him, the stranger said: "Your Prior bids
you to follow me." Without a word the great teacher
—the Angel of the Schools, as he was called by the affec-
tion of his admirers-bowed his head, took the basket,
and followed. But he was suffering from lameness,
and since he was unable to keep up, the stranger rated
him soundly as a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, who
196
The Example of the Saints.
=
ought to show more zeal in religious obedience. The
saint meekly bore the unjust reproaches, and answered
never a word. "Do you know whom you are treating
in this rude way?" said the indignant citizens, who
witnessed the scene. "That is Brother Thomas of
Aquino." "Brother Thomas of Aquino !" said the
stranger, in amazement; and immediately throwing
himself on his knees, with sobs and tears, he begged to
be forgiven. "Nay," said the angelic Doctor, "it is I
who should ask forgiveness, since I have not been so
active as I should have been." And this humility, so
rare in little men, was the chief characteristic of this
truly great man. Once, when he was reading aloud in
his monastery, the Prior thought he had made a false
quantity and corrected him. He instantly altered the
word. 'Why did you not tell the Prior that you were
right?" asked the monks afterwards.
"The quantity
66
of the word was no consequence," he answered; "but it
was of consequence that I should be obedient." Once,
again, when he was addressing a vast congregation in
one of the chief churches of Paris, an insolent intruder
beckoned to him to stop, and aimed at him an abusive
harangue. The saint waited till he had ended, and
then, without one word of anger or resentment, calmly
continued his discourse. From that disciplined and
noble spirit all pride had been expelled. "Give me, O
Lord," such was his daily prayer, "give me, O Lord,
a noble heart which no earthly affection can drag
down.'
7. Once again take the common temptation to sacri-
fice all to ambition. It is, perhaps, the least ignoble of
human weaknesses-
The Example of the Saints.
197
"Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise,
The last infirmity of noble minds."
The last infirmity, and yet a real infirmity. Even a
Cæsar, even a Cromwell, desired not power only, but
the glittering baubles which are its symbols. It is
said a stranger only touches on such a subject with
reserve and modesty-that many a fine career has been
ruined, many a noble nature shipwrecked among you,
upon the sunken reefs which strew the stormy sea of
political ambition; that there have been men who were
tempted to palter with eternal God for power; men
who have staked all, and lost, on the possibility of
attaining one mighty prize. The desire for such a prize
is only wrong when it tempts any man to deflect, were
it but so much as the division of a hair, from the
straight line of duty. Might not the example of the
saints help us here also? Is there no such thing as a
noble desire to descend? St. Gregory tells us, in his
life of St. Benedict, how "one night, just before the
hour of those holy hymns which exhale from the cloister
in the midst of silence and darkness, Benedict was gaz-
ing upon heaven from the window of his cell. A
mystical light shone round about him, and the whole
world was brought before him as if it had been gathered
up into one ray of sunlight. He saw it,' says the in-
scription which is read to this day in the tower in
which he dwelt on Monte Cassino, he saw it and he
scorned it."" Inspexit et despexit. Did not Christ, the
King of saints, do the same? Did He not turn His
back on all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of
them? Yes; and are there not better things within
our reach which neither time can tarnish nor death
*
198 The Example of the Saints.
I
destroy? Integrity; self-denial; self-possession; self-
conquest; disinterested labors for the happiness of
others; patient endurance; humble faith ;-are not
faith;—are
these happier, more eternal, more divine?
"Oh scene of fortune, that doth fair appear
Only to men who stand not near ;
Proud Poverty, that tinsel bravery wears,
And, like a rainbow, painted tears.
Be prudent, and the shore in prospect keep,
In a weak boat trust not the deep;
Placed beneath envy, above envying rise;
Pity great men, great things despise."
"Seeketh thou great things for thyself? Seek them
not, saith the Lord."
8. I might give you other instances, no less decisive,
of the attainment of other high virtues by weak mor-
tal men. I might, for instance, show you how the
saints of God have obtained a perfect purity, or a per-
fect contempt for all worldly ends. But let me rather
point a second great lesson. If it be an infinitely better
and greater thing to be a Christian than to be a king; if
the poorest Lazarus who ever lay at a rich man's gate
may be nobler and happier than the most gorgeous
Dives; then how far higher must it be than every
human distinction to be a saint of God? Yet if every
of all ambi-
And what a
other avenue be closed to us, the highest
tions is open to the humblest of us all.
true end and aim in life is this! If at any time we be
inclined to despair amid the waves of misfortune and
the malice of our fellow-men ;-if weary of injustice and
The Example of the Saints.
199
E
:
discouragement, we sometimes feel almost driven to say
with Elijah, "And now, O Lord, take away my life,
for I am not better than my fathers," is there no com-
fort in the thought that God is not unjust and con-
temptuous like man? Our earthly failure or lowliness;
the poverty of our intellectual gifts; our failing efforts;
our waning powers; our many feeblenesses and imper-
fections, so they be not stained with wilful sin-do not
make us any lower in the sight of God. In spite of all
such things we may have attained by His grace, the
highest and best that life has to offer. Even the Church
has given her title of "Saint," not only to great Popes
like Anastasius and Gregory; and great Kings like the
Confessor and St. Louis; and princely Bishops like St.
Ambrose or St. Carlo Borromeo ;-but to some of the
very humblest of the low. Can you imagine a lowlier
lot than that of a servant of all-work? Yet such, and
no more, was Santa Zita. At the age of twelve she left
her little mountain village to become a servant to a
family in Lucca, and in that poor service she continued
till, at the age of sixty, she died. Often reviled, often
beaten, often forced to hard menial duties, without one
murmur she served in singleness of heart, and out of her
poverty she fed the hungry and clothed the naked with
a garment. And yet, even in such a lot, men saw her
happiness and her sainthood; and thirty years after her
death, Dante, the greatest of Christian poets, speaks of
a burgher of the proud and warlike city of Lucca,
The warriors,
simply as one of Santa Zita's elders."
66
the bishops, the nobles, all the rich, the well-to-do, the
prosperous, the successful, are designated only as fellow-
citizens with the servant of all-work. What more would
200
The Example of the Saints.
we have, my brethren, if even through so deep a valley
of humiliation there still lies the path to heaven? Let
us set our affection on things above, not on things on
the earth; for, you see, a life spent in brushing clothes
and washing crockery and sweeping floors-a life which
the proud of earth would have treated as the dust under
their feet—a life spent at the clerk's desk, a life spent
in the narrow shop, a life spent in the laborer's hut-a
life of poverty, a life of struggle, a life of obscurity and
unsuccess-may yet be a life so ennobled by God's lov-
ing mercy, that for the sake of it a king might gladly
yield his crown. True kingliness may belong to any
one of us, and even a pauper may have it in his power
to say, 66
My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
not set with diamonds and Indian stones, nor to be seen;
my crown is called 'content;' a crown it is which sel-
dom kings enjoy."
9. And in conclusion, thank God there have been,
and are in the earth, tens of thousands, holy and faith-
ful, and therefore essentially happy and full of inward
peace, like that poor servant-girl. "After this I be-
held, and lo! a great multitude which no man could
number, of all nations, and kindred, and people, and
tongues, stood before the throne, arrayed with white
robes and palms in their hands." Oh! when you hear
those words set to mighty music, will you not think of
their solemn and glorious meaning? Will you be of
that great innumerable multitude of the redeemed?
Amid the great procession of humanity, will you make
up your minds that you will be poor or rich, low or high,
successful or unsuccessful, as God shall please; but that
you will not be of the bad men and bad women, who by
The Example of the Saints.
201
dwarfish aims, and mean passions, and vile lusts, and
acrid tempers, and lying words, have made the world
worse, and life darker, for their fellow-men? Are you
at this moment among those bad men and bad women,
those mean, selfish, and wicked natures? Are you so
utterly on the wrong side now? And if so, what will
ye do in the end thereof? If you do not care for your
soul, who will? If not now, when? Ah! leave even
now the baseness of the malicious, the greed of the
worldly, the shame of the unclean, and be blessed
for evermore. "And one of the elders answered, saying
unto me, 'What are these which are arrayed in white
robes ? and whence came they?' And I said unto him,
Sir, thou knowest.' And he said to me, 'These are
they which came out of great tribulation, and have
washed their robes, and made them white in the blood
of the Lamb; therefore are they before the throne of
God, and serve Him day and night, and He that sitteth
on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall
hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall
the sun light on them nor any heat, for the Lamb
which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and
shall lead them unto the living fountains of waters, and
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'
"
→
SERMON XIII
PREACHED IN APPLETON CHAPEL, HARVARD COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., Nov. 1, 1885.
The Work of the Few and of the
Many.
"By faith."-HEB. xi. 4.
THE history of mankind, whether secular or religious,
resolves itself ultimately into the history of a few indi-
viduals. It is not that all the rest do not live their own
lives or can shirk their own eternal responsibilities, but it
is that the march and movement of the many is as surely
influenced by the genius of the few, as is the swing of
the tide by the law of gravitation. There is, of course,
action and reaction. The thoughts of the many are the
spirit of the age; and the spirit of the age sways the in-
dividual, just as the individual directs and shapes the
spirit of the age. Meanwhile what we see is this. In
millions upon millions the races and generations of man-
kind are born and die; the hurrying feet of new millions
tread them down; their dust is blown about the desert,
or sealed in the iron hills. Before they have been dead
ten years the vast majority of mankind are totally for-
gotten. As surely as the moss and the lichen eat away
The Work of the Few and of the Many. 203
their names upon the church-yard stone, so surely does
the ever-rising tide of oblivion wash out our names upon
the sands of life. It is a law of our being that we should
belong-the vast majority of us—to the unknown, the
unrecorded masses, who, long before the very things we
own have perished, shall have passed away out of all re-
membrance, as utterly as though we had never been.
One epitaph would do for all of us, except two or three
out of every million.
"He suffered,-but his pangs are o'er;
Enjoyed,—but his delights are fled;
Had friends,-his friends are now no more,
And foes,-his foes are dead,
*
*
*
*
"The annals of the human race,
Their ruins, since the world began
Of him afford no other trace
Than this;-there lived a man!'
1. There, then, is one great fact of human life; an-
other, and a far sadder one, is that, by a sort of fatal
gravitation, the human race seems of itself to tend down-
ward. The old Greek proverb said-if in one aspect it
be false, in another (as our own hearts tell us) it is ter-
ribly true that "the majority are evil." We are creat-
ures of habit, of influence, of custom; our voices are for
the most part the merest echoes, our light is but the
dim remnant of multitudinous reflections. It is impulse,
passion, temptation, more than reason, that often sways
It
the heart of each man, and therefore of all men.
is the few only who are saints, the few only who are
heroes.
The persistent energy of selfishness, the unbridled
204 The Work of the Few and of the Many.
:
force of appetite, the craving for drink, the greed of
gain, the lust of power-these have been the mighty
engines in the hands of the world-rulers of this dark-
ness. What a sad spectacle does this world present!
How deep, heart-rending, is the sigh it utters! How
deep would be its corruption, how total its ruin, how
irremediable its woe, if God's love were not incessantly
at work,—healing the ravages of pride and sensuality,
saving His wandered sheep, welcoming back His weary
prodigals! "Half serpent, not yet extricated from the
clay-a lacertian brood of bitterness-the glory of it
emaciated with cruel hunger and blotted with venomous
stains, and the track of it on the leaf a glittering slime,
in the sand a useless furrow." Such would be the race
of man were there no Promised Seed to bruise the Ser-
pent's head.
2. And how does God carry out this work of continu-
ous redemption? It is by the energy of His chosen few.
Into their hearts He pours the power of His Spirit;
upon their heads He lays the hands of His consecration.
The history of mankind is like the history of Israel in
the days of the Judges. Again and again the people
sank into godlessness, and into consequent degradation;
again and again a Deborah, a Gideon, a Jephtha delivers
them. The deliverance of man has never been wrought
by the multitude; always by the individual. The hope
of the world is in those rarer souls which, becoming
themselves magnetic with knowledge or with nobleness,
flash into the deathful sloth or deep corruption of their
age and nation the force of their own convictions, the
passion of their own resolves.
3. Observe how completely this is the case, even in all
The Work of the Few and of the Many. 205
secular advance. All art, all knowledge, all discovery
has, as a rule, come from the few. A child, Homer, a
child, Alcæus, is born in the Isles of Greece, and lo!
epic and lyric poetry burst into flower. A child, Thales,
is born at Miletus, and the world sees the dawn of
Greek philosophy. A boy, Giotto, is seen drawing his
sheep on a blue slate on the hills of Florence, and lo!
Italian art springs into full life. A boy, Galileo, watches
the swinging of the great bronze lamp in the Cathedral
of Pisa, and lo! the heavens became luminous with un-
utterable secrets. A boy, Watt, watches the steam con-
densed on the bowl of a silver spoon, and lo! in a gen-
eration the world is ploughed with railroads and the
ocean gleams in the white wake of merchantmen and
iron-clads. The history of art and science and literature
is summed up, severally, in a score of names.
4. But art and science and literature would have led
only to a more splendid misery and a more refined de-
cay, if God did not also send His inspired children to
expand the thoughts, to purify the aims, to dilate
the aspirations of mankind. Of what use would be
these spangles on the funeral pall of a dying race if
death ended all? Your material civilization, your in-
dustrial greatness, your commercial prosperity, your
accumulating wealth-"labor, vocal on every hill-side,
and commerce, white on every sea "—of what value are
they to any race without righteousness? Without moral
nobleness how are they better than a jewel of gold in a
swine's snout, or a diamond on the forehead of a skull ?
It is not civilization, it is not knowledge, it is not even
intellect which has ever saved mankind. The true uplift-
ing and redeeming force has been the moral genius of
206 The Work of the Few and of the Many.
God's elect. Greece, for all her poetry, all her philosophy,
and all her charm; Rome, for all her imperial strength;
Italy, for all her intense sensibility and matchless art,
sank in turn into the abyss of degradation, and perished
by her own sins. So will England, so will America, so
will every nation perish if she refuse the messages of
God. The hope of the world lies in the recognition of,
in obedience to the Word of God as uttered by His
special messengers; and by so listening thereto as to re-
flect in myriads of gleams and reverberate in myriads of
echoes, the light and the voice of inspiration. "It is
not mere learning which teaches," says one of the
greatest of ancient philosophers, "but the Sibyl".
that is, the voice of heavenly inspiration-" uttering,
in rapt speech, things simple and unperfumed and un-
adorned, penetrates through myriads of years by the
help of God." The meaning is the same as that of a
poet of your own when he sings:
"One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world had never lost."
Now I fear that in this age we must say with the
Hebrew Psalmist: "We see not our tokens; there is not
one prophet more; "but since the echoes of the past are
not spent, it will be the fault of every one of us if we
have to add, "No, not one is there among us that
understandeth any more." For the past teaches us how
awful is the responsibility, how tremendous is the power
of faith; the need for faith is never more tremendous
than in conventional, unheroic, sensual days. What
then are we to do? Perhaps if you will take a swift
glance with me at the moral history of the world; if we
The Work of the Few and of the Many. 207
consider, for a moment or two, the days of old and the
years of ancient times, some light may dawn upon us,
some touch of shame may pass into vulgar, some sense
of duty into selfish, some spark of brighter arrows into
generous hearts.
5. Adam fell; his children sank deeper and deeper
into sin; lust and violence became universal; the world
groaned under colossal tyrannies; the warnings of Noah
were in vain; the waters of the deluge were needed for
the lustration of mankind. Scarcely had those waters
ebbed, when drunkenness and degradation, wrong and
robbery, resumed their sway. Then amid the gross
idolatry of the nations God called forth one chosen soul,
Abraham, the father of the faithful. His sons went
into Egypt. There, in the sluggish valley of the Nile,
among the fleshpots and the cucumbers, they sank into
a horde of sensual slaves. Then out of Egypt God called
His Son. He raised up a man among the quailing serfs.
Brought up in the palaces of Egypt, Moses, refusing to
be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, threw in his
lot with the oppressed. He recalled to them the for-
gotten God of their fathers; led them into the free air
of the wilderness; gave them at Sinai a moral law, on
which, as on the primeval granite, are built the eternal
rules of right and wrong. He died; his people went
a whoring after Chemosh, and Moloch, and Baal-Peor;
the Judges wrought no permanent deliverance; the
very priests filled the house of God with insolence and
shame. Then God called the boy Samuel, and he heard,
and founded the great order of the Prophets—the moral
teachers of Israel and of the race. For seven centuries,
among corrupt priests and apostate
kings, that order
208 The Work of the Few and of the Many.
2
was the main hope of the Hebrew people. Now an
Elijah, with flame and thunder, startled them out of
idolatrous abominations; now an Isaiah nerved the
palsied arms of their patriots; now an Ezekiel from
Chaldea, a Jeremiah from Anathoth, poured forth, as
in strophe and antistrophe, the truths of God. Then
came the Captivity. In ruin Israel learned righteous-
ness. Ezra revived the Law of Moses. But as the
generations passed, the Jews lapsed more and more from
the idolatry of the material to the fetish worship of the
external. Faith dwindled into Pharisaism, morality
into compromise, and all hope seemed dead, when,
in the blight of holiness and the triumph of ritual,
the popular orthodoxy was no better than a heresy, and
the popular religionism no more wholesome than a
vice.
6. But then, in the fulness of time, when the re-
generating impulses of the old dispensation seemed ut-
terly to have lost their force to bring home to mankind,
once more and forever, the knowledge and will of God;
to prove forever the nullity of the external; to reveal
forever that God is love; to show forever that the will
of God is not outward observances, but inward sanc-
tification; to open forever to every human soul imme-
diate access to God without any usurping intervention
of human sacerdotalism; to set forever the example of
how men ought to walk; and to please God, to take
away sin once for all by the offering of Himself, at
the mid-point of all human history, Christ came. He
came to be the Light of the world. From the sunlike
centrality of His incarnate Godhead He shed His rays
of illumination into all the past; to its most illimitable
The Work of the Few and of the Many. 209
marge He flooded all the future with the glory of His
effulgent fire.
Christ died
7. So the old ended; so began the new.
upon the cross; He rose again; He bade the Apostles
be His witnesses. Three centuries passed; in the
misery of decaying institutions, men were sinking into
moral death. Then St. Antony, forsaking all, made
his home in the lonely deserts, to convince his genera-
tion of the infinite value of every human soul. Two
more centuries passed, and about A.D. 500 St, Bene-
dict, amid the roar of political confusion, founded, on
the principles of toil and prayer, the noble monastic
order to which civilization owes so deep a debt. Five
centuries passed, and in 1073, in an age of pride and
violence, Gregory VII. maintained the supremacy of
the spiritual power over threats and arms. Another
century passed; the Church had everywhere triumphed,.
and in her triumph had lost the sacredness of her
simple sincerity. Then, about A.D. 1200, amid the
universal lust of power and gold, St. Francis of Assisi
made Poverty his bride, and St. Dominic revived the
dormant forces of the Christian pulpit. Again three
centuries passed, and soon after the year 1500, and amid
a Church steeped to the lips in sacerdotal greed and
moral pollution, the lion voice of Luther shook the
world.
8. There have been multitudes of other, and multi-
tudes of minor movements. I might have told how, in
the fourth century, Athanasius all but single-handed,
maintained the true faith against a persecuting impe-
rialism and an apostatizing world; how amid a dissolv-
ing empire, St. Augustine familiarized men with the
.
14
210 The Work of the Few and of the Many.
Apart from His
grand conception of the City of God; how amid furious
barbarians, St. Columban witnessed, and St. Boniface
preached. But such, in broad, vast outline has been
the religious history of the world. Apart from the Sun
of Righteousness, it is all darkness.
spirit, it is all death. In the names of Abraham, Moses,
Samuel, Ezra-all pointing to Christ; in the names
of Antony, Benedict, Gregory, Francis, Luther—all
charged with His divine magnetism, all radiating His
glory, all teaching some fragment of His truth, and
carrying out some element of His example-we may sum
up the mightiest of those religious forces which have
swept over the stagnation of mankind.
Have we
nothing to learn from this method of God's working,
from this sweeping summary of the Old Testament, and
of Christian history? I think that we may learn one or
two lessons of deep significance.
i. May we not learn first the secret, the sole secret,
of moral power? Who that reads the signs of these
times can fail to see how much this age needs to learn
that secret? What was it which thus, again and again,
overcame the world? Was it not faith, showing itself
in self-sacrifice? Is not that secret open to the knowl-
edge, feasible to the practice, of you and me, and all the
world?"Whoever," said St. Columban, "overcomes
himself, treads the world underfoot." By faith Abra-
ham left the home of his fathers. By faith Moses
preferred to suffer affliction with the people of God.
By faith Samuel founded the order of the Prophets.
By faith Elijah faced idolatrous priests and guilty
kings. By faith Ezra led back his people to barren
Judah from wealthy Babylon. By faith Antony forsook
The Work of the Few and of the Many. 211
the world. By faith Athanasius maintained the Chris-
tian verity. By faith Benedict, even yet a boy, rolled
his naked body in the briers to conquer sensual tempta-
tion. By faith Gregory cowed the brutality of feudal-
ism. By faith, on the wild hills of Umbria, Francis of
Assisi imitated the life of Christ. By faith Luther
burnt the Pope's bull at Wittenberg, and faced the
Emperor's council at Worms. And thus, their faith,
proving itself by absolute self-surrender, by unswerving
obedience, by unbounded activity, by dauntless courage,
by hatred of falsehood, by scorn of luxury, by pouring
silent contempt on the base idolatry of gold-each
in his age and order these saints of God delivered his
generation, inspired his successors, wrought righteous-
ness in a faithless world.
ii. And I think we may notice secondly that the work
of these saints of God, being always and necessarily
human, is never permanent in its special results. You
may place the lamp upon its stand; you may fill it with
fragrant oil; but, unless the oil be perpetually re-
newed, it will soon go out in sickening fume, and leave
the world in darkness. Why? Because God not only
requires man's effort, but also his continuous efforts.
In this rushing stream of time-the smoothness of the
rapid ere it leaps in cataract-humanity can never afford
for a moment to rest upon its oars. There is an infinite
pathos in the predestined failure of men and institutions
which leave no adequate heirs' to propagate their im-
pulse, to carry on their purposes. Abraham dies, and
in a century his descendants are slaves.
and his grandson, Jonathan, is the hireling Levite of
an idolatrous ephod. Samuel dies, and his very sons
Moses dies,
+
212 The Work of the Few and of the Many.
are greedy oppressors. Ezra dies, and Pharisaism be-
gins. The Lord of life and glory dies, and, before that
generation has passed away, His Church is full of
grievous wolves. The successors of St. Antony become
a herd of ignorant fanatics; the successors of St.
Benedict dwindle into luxurious hypocrites; the succes-
sors of St. Francis into idle mendicants; the successors
of St. Dominic into ruthless inquisitors; the successors
of Luther into sectarian dogmatists. When the influ-
ence of God's saints has spent its force, if the work
pauses for a moment, everything falls into ruin and
corruption. Christianity as a stereotyped system is
nothing; Christianity as a human theology is nothing;
only as a divine effort; only as an eternal progress;
only as a living force; only as an inspiring, passionate,
continuous energy can it regenerate the world.
iii. But yet notice, thirdly, that these apparent
failures were never absolute. No good man, no saint
of God, has ever lived or died in vain. They have died,
almost always, in loneliness, or disappointment, or at
the stake, or in the prison, or with hearts broken by
man's ingratitude-so often that something seems want-
ing to the holiest careers which have not ended, even
as Christ's did, each in its own Calvary; but they have
never ended in vain. No! for the seed is not quickened
except it dies. Even in its death, but only by its death,
comes the promise of the golden grain. St. Telemachus
was butchered in the arena, but because of his death
there was an end to gladiatorial games. "I have loved
righteousness," said Gregory VII., "and hated iniquity,
and therefore I die in exile;" yet his life has estab-
lished the supremacy of righteousness over brute force.
The Work of the Few and of the Many. 213
Huss was burnt, but Luther rose. Latimer and Ridley
were burnt; but they lit such a candle in England as
by God's grace is not yet put out. As for themselves,
what matters it?"Heaven is for those who have failed
on earth." The saintly life even when the world has
scoffed at it most bitterly and crushed it most utterly,
has still been the saintly life. "We fools accounted
their lives madness and their end to be without honor;
how are they set among the children of God, and their
lot among the saints!" And even when the effort
against drunkenness, and vice, and Pharisaism, and
wrong has failed, there has still been the effort, and the
world is better for it. The very best of us leaves his
tale half untold, his message imperfect; but if we have
but been faithful, then, because of us, some one who
follows us, with a happier heart and in happier times,
shall utter our message better and tell our tale more
perfectly. Some one shall run and not be faint; some
one shall fly with wings where we have walked with
weary feet!
iv. I think we may sum up in a few words the prac-
tical issue of these thoughts. Magnificent have been
man's victories over the material world. He has weighed
the stars; he has tunnelled the mountains; he has cleft
the seas; he has seized the lightnings by their wing of
fire, and bade them do his messages.
But when we
turn from the material to the spiritual world—to that
world in which love, and duty, and death are ruling
forces-there, as has been well said, all is changed.
There we have the mistakes of the good and the errors
of the wise. There we have indeed all that is noblest
and most beautiful in man, all that is brightest and

214 The Work of the Few and of the Many.
-
5
most pathetic in his fate; but we have also "his mul-
tiplied failures, his average moral poverty, his pro-
foundest moral ruin.” Are we then to sit with folded
hands, idle and helpless, because good men die and leave
no successors ? and because good institutions fail, or,
like the too long-gathered manna, begin at last to
corrupt the world? Are we to hide our talent in a
napkin, because it is but one talent, and all the world
combines to tell us how poor and small it is? Are
we to clutch what we can, with grasping self-indul-
gence in a greedy world? Ah! my brethren, that—the
life of worldly avarice, sleek comfort, sensual ease,
restless ambition-as it is the commonest, so it is the
worst of all failures. Nay! what we have to do is
simply to work; not to conquer, that we cannot do;
not to succeed,—that we cannot do any more than our
fathers; not to be happy,-that in the world's sense, no
true man has ever been; not to make our mark, or
leave our memory,-that is of no sort of consequence;
but simply to work between the narrow limits of life and
death; to work humbly, to work in faith. "Fear, and
indolence, and impatience, and despondency "-shall we
listen to these base and trembling counsellors? No; in
what seems to be the most irretrievable disaster, a vision
of the cross may show us that seeming failure is often
the necessary step to the most eternal triumph.
"It sounds so lovely what our fathers did,
*
*
*
*
And what we do is, as it was to them,
Toilsome and incomplete."
Toilsome! but faith can lighten; incomplete, but
7
The Work of the Few and of the Many. 215
God will finish it. Do not think that I have preached
some stormy gospel of hero-worship, as though the
few saints were everything, and we, the masses and
the multitudes, are nothing. God's work is carried on
by their work on us. They live, they work, they are
blessed by the effects they are permitted to achieve in
us. And remember there are, thank God, myriads of
saints which the world never heard of. Their names
are in no calendar; their graves are never visited; no
lamp is kindled at their shrines; yet, in the midst of all
this sin and sorrow, has God, in every society, pre-
served him His seven thousand who have not bowed the
knee to Baal, and every mouth that hath not kissed him.
Strive we to be of these, the faithful who were not.
famous; and then our lives, however insignificant, will
not have been in vain. Each grain of mica helps to
build the mountain bastions; each coral insect has had
his share in laying the bases of the continents; each
drop in the rain-shower helps to fertilize the soil; each
grain of sand upon the shore is taken up upon
the wings of the wind to do its part as a barrier
against the raging of the sea. If in life we can neither
be saints nor heroes, yet we can delight in these and help
them in carrying on God's work; the work of the very
humblest among us may be necessary to make it clearer
to all that come after us that " man was created for
holiness as the trees of the forest for light;" that good
and not evil is, and is to be, the law of our being; and
that, if the course of all mankind as it sweeps across the
universe from the great deep of nothing to the great
deep of death, be a course from mystery to mystery, it
is also a course from God to God.
216 The Work of the Few and of the Many.
And, therefore, to you, the students of Harvard, the
voice of a stranger would fain speak the words of hope, of
encouragement, of inspiration. Have you faith? Can
you, without a pang, sacrifice pleasure to duty, the
present to the future, the near to the distant, the world
and all its interests for the cross and the reward of
Christ? If you have such faith, were it but as a grain
of mustard seed, you shall remove mountains. So did
your fathers. It was faith which hung the lantern on
the prow of Columbus as he crossed the stormy, terrible,
unknown main. It was by faith that Captain John
Smith "made justice in all his proceedings his first
guide, and experience his second, combating baseness,
sloth, and pride more than all other dangers." By faith
Bishop Berkeley made his home in a strange land. By
faith a handful of outcasts planting their feet on Plym-
outh Rock, made it the corner-stone of a mighty king-
dom. By faith William Penn founded the City of
Brotherly Love. By faith John Eliot became the Apos-
tle of the Indians. By faith David Brainerd wrote that
he not only welcomed but desired a life of total renunci-
ation. By faith Washington confronted all the imperial
power of Britain. By faith Jefferson wrote the Declara-
tion of Independence. By faith Wesley and Whitefield
flashed, into this continent also, the electric thrill of
religious awakenment. By faith Channing showed alike
the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love. By faith
William Lloyd Garrison-disowned by intellect, cursed
by trade, searched by malignity with candles, frowned
on even by the nominal Church of God-rose up to
teach their neglected, their forgotten duty, to the cus-
tom-sophisticated minds of twenty millions of his fel-
The Work of the Few and of the Many. 217
low-countrymen. By faith Abraham Lincoln called for
a hundred thousand volunteers that there might never-
more be a slave in the country of the free. By faith
these wrought and fought and overcame; slaying dragons,
stopping the mouths of lions, quenching the violence of
fire. Your country needs a new enthusiasm. To whom
but to you, her young men, shall she look to give it her?
You are the trustees of posterity. On whom else shall
she call to wake the deep slumber of careless opinions; to
startle the torpor of an immoral acquiescence; to kindle
burning aspirations; to set noble examples; to cleanse
the Augean stables of politics and trade; to shame false
ideals of life; to deepen the lessening sense of the sacred-
ness of marriage; to make your Press nobler and less
frivolous; to make the aims of society more earnest; to
make homes pure; to make life simple; to defy the
petty and arrogant tyrannies of the thing which calls
itself public opinion; to trample on the base omnipo-
tence of gold? She calls to you! Will you hear her
voice, or will you, too, make, like the young ruler, the
great refusal? Which do you desire-purity or corrup-
tion ? wealth or nobleness? success or self-sacrifice ?
Which will you do ?-will you be vulgar, and comfort-
able, and rich, and only half honest; or will you be
men, God's chosen by election, God's servants by benefi-
cence? Will you escape the average? Will you rise
above the moral commonplace? Will you leave the
world a little nobler, a little wiser, a little purer, a little
better for your life? or will you, too, call evil good, and
good evil, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter?
Will you, too, adopt current standards? Will you try
to serve God and Mammon? Will you, trimming and
$

218 The Work of the Few and of the Many.
9
shuffling in the wake of popularity, follow the giddy and
fluttering rag of Acheron, and be of those multitudes
who die or ever they have truly lived?
If you take the nobler, the manlier choice, what shall
we promise, what shall we offer you? Wealth? No!
Success? No! The praise of men? No! But rather
persecutions, oppositions, the beatitude of malediction.
Yes! but with Christ's hundred-fold reward.
"Behold
I set before you this day life and death, blessing and
cursing: choose life." When Garibaldi wanted volun-
teers after his defeat at Rome, he made the proclama-
tion: "Soldiers, I have nothing to offer you but rags,
and hardship, and cold, and hunger. Let him that
loves his country follow me." He said it, and the youth
of Italy sprang to their feet to embrace his cause. Will
you linger when Christ calls? Will you decline be-
cause He asks hard service? Nay, in God's war slack-
ness is infamy. "Fight, fight, fight,”—they were the
dying words of the holy and eloquent Ravignan—" fight,
fight, fight in the battles of the Lord."
SERMON XIV.
PREACHED AT TRINITY CHURCH, CHICAGO, Nov. 15, 1885.
Ideals of Nations.
66
'Keep, therefore, and do them; for this is your wisdom and
your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear
all these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and
understanding people."-DEUT. iv. 6.
You will see from this verse that the fame and
wisdom of Israel are to be tested solely by her obedience
to the laws of God. For Israel, for England, for
America, for every nation under the sun there is no
other criterion. Mankind has many tests; God has
but one. If the ideal of the nation be righteous, she
will be great and strong. If the ideal of the nation be
base or evil, she will sooner or later perish in her iniq-
uity, and become a hissing and by-word. That lesson
you can learn very easily from Scripture, for, though
modern religion has sometimes dwindled into a feeble
rill of personal egotism, Scripture deals even more with
men in masses than with men as individuals.
And the reason of this is, that in the history of na-
Um
..
I
F
1
}
220
Ideals of Nations.
tions God writes more at large the meaning and the
secrets of His providence. In our individual lives they
are written in letters so much smaller that we cannot
always decipher them, and often we have not had time
to master their meaning until it has become too late
to profit by them. But the history of nations, though
it has less immediate interest for our selfishness, has
this twofold importance: one, that every one of us
individually contributes to the glory or the shame of
the nation to which we belong; the other, that if we
have no power to save our people from walking in evil
paths, we can at least do something to elevate and re-
strain them, and to preserve in the midst of them a
saved and saving remnant which is dear to God.
Let us, then, clearly and fully recognize that we
have duties, not only as men, but as citizens. These
duties require us to help our nation to the attainment
of a true ideal. Is the ideal of our people, as expressed
by its predominant aims and aspirations, a right or a
wrong—is it a noble or base ideal? So far as it is a
wrong ideal, can we help to amend it? So far as it is
a right ideal, can we promote and further it ?
war.
1. The ideal of many nations has been delight in
They have not cared to have any annals which
were not written in blood. Such a people were the
ancient Assyrians, of whom we read so much in Script-
ure. In the sculptures of their kings' palaces you may
see how they exulted to portray themselves. Pass the
huge portals, guarded by winged bulls, and lions with
human faces, and on every wall you will see delineated
people of frightful fierceness, defeating their enemies,
swimming rivers, shattering fortresses, dashing cities
•
Ideals of Nations.
221
·
into potsherds, torturing and slaughtering their pris-
oners, sweeping from land to land like a devouring fire,
while over their heads fly fierce spirits who protect and
foster these cruelties, and eagles who carry in their
claws the entrails of the slain. In the hall of Sargon
that king has had himself represented stabbing and
butchering his captives with his own hands. In the
one domestic scene found among these sculpturings of
horror and bloodshed (you may see it if you ever visit
the British Museum of London), the son of Sennacherib
is seated in a vine-clad arbor at a feast. Opposite to
him is his queen among her maidens, and close behind
the queen hangs from the branch of a palm tree a
ghastly human head with an iron ring drawn through
the lip. Such were the awful ornaments of queens'
chambers in days of old. Well, did it prosper, this
bloody city? Did it endure, this home of lions and of
young lions, where the lion fed its whelps and strangled
for his lioness, and filled his dens with raven? Read
the prophet Nahum for answer, and you will see how
soon it passed away in fire and sword amid the wrath
and hatred of the nations. And did war-loving Egypt
fare better? We see her triumphant dynasts sweeping
into battle amid the serried ranks of her numberless
archers; we read pompous enumeration of the victories
of her Ramises; but Egypt snapped like one of her own
river reeds before the might of Persia, and the fella-
heen scooped their millstones out of the face of Ram-
ises, the most colossal statue in the world. We ask,
then, is the ideal of England, is the ideal of America, a
war ideal? Thank God, the two nations, which are
one nation, may plead not guilty to that charge. War.
222
Ideals of Nations.
is not the ideal of England. We look back with no
vaunting, but yet with pride, to the names of Crecy
and Agincourt, of Blenheim, and Ramilles, of Talavera,
and Waterloo, of Alma and Inkerman; but enough of
such victorious names, and more than enough are bla-
zoned upon our flags. We do not drain our resources by
bloated armaments. There is no need that we should
be reminded of the horrors, the agonies, the crimes of
war. The nation will never draw her sword without
necessity; never without a deep reluctance which can-
not impeach a tried courage, but which will show a
just cause of awful responsibility. Nor is war the ideal
of America. You have shown to the world a striking
demonstration that mighty nations can be governed and
can be safe, and can be formidable without standing
armies. At the wave of the hand your host of a million
men sprang to its feet in the war of North and South.
At a wave of the hand, like the men of Roderick Dhu,
they sank out of sight. You seized the sword in the
cause of liberty. You laid it aside when that was won.
"The sword," after all, is but a hideous flash in the
darkness. Right is an eternal ray.”
2. But there has been another ideal of nations: not
war, but glory; not the tyranny and vengeance of
armies, but their pomp and fame. This, until she
learned wisdom by bitterly humiliating experience, was
the ideal of France. When Napoleon blasted the fields
of Europe, as with the blaze of some flaming heath, he
indulged freely in the empty vanity of dictating frivo-
lous orders about the opera at Paris, from the palaces of
Vienna and Berlin. To the impulses of a limitless am-
bition he sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Ideals of Nations.
223
"Tyrant," said an inscription on the famous column in
the Place Vendôme-that column which was deemed so
glorious that Louis Napoleon said it was worth to him
more than a hundred thousand votes-"Tyrant, if the
blood that you have shed should be collected in this
square, you might drink of it without stooping your
lips." And what came of that loud-echoing, flaming,
blood-stained path of the first Napoleon?
66
It left France poorer, feebler, more burdened, more
wretched than before. It sapped the very life-blood of
the people, which was poured forth like water to feed
the laurels of fruitless triumph, and yet France did not
learn the lesson. The scenes of the Franco-German
war are still in our recollection; the vain warning of
Mexico; the plain signs of a decrepitude and a disor-
ganization, which, by the confession of her own greatest
men, were the natural fruits of infidelity and corrup
tion; the braggart throngs who swaggered through the
streets of Paris à Berlin ;" the exploded statesman
who entered into the war with a light heart; the the-
atric, "not a stone of our fortresses; not an inch of our
territories;" the scenes at Strasburg and Metz; the im-
measurable humiliation of Sedan; the reduction of the
exiled emperor to a despised broken idol; the absolute
surrender of Alsace and Lorraine, all culminating the
other day in the ignominious steaming of the French
fleet out of the Bay of Alexandria. Alas! it was an in-
finite collapse of that inflated bubble of glory. Do we
say these things by way of boast over a fallen rival?
God forbid. It is not our temptation to say, "Aha!"
in any glad spirit when nations fall from high estate.
Nay, we pray with all our hearts, and with perfect
224
Ideals of Nations.
=
friendliness, that France may spring from her ashes on
wings of a better wisdom, a purer faith. But to this
false ideal again we in England and you in America may
boldly plead not guilty. That poor, delusive word,
glory, occurs again and again in the dispatches of Na-
poleon; I am not sure that it occurs so much as once in
the dispatches of Washington or of Wellington. And
this is what Wellington wrote on the eve of Waterloo:
"I cannot express the regret and sorrow with which I
contemplate the heavy loss I have sustained. Believe
me, nothing except a battle lost is so terrible as a battle
The glory arising from such actions is no conso-
lation to me, and I cannot suggest it has any consolation
to you." Yes, he sought but duty's iron crown,
won.
"And not once or twice in our fair island's story,
The path of duty was the way to glory."
A nation which follows glory follows a Will-o'-the-wisp,
which flutters over the marshes of death; the nation
which follows duty has its eye fixed on the Polar star.
3. Again many nations-in the East, from natural
selfishness and indolence of temperament; in the West
from preposterous letter worship of the Bible-have
cherished the grovelling idea of absolutism; the crawl-
ing at the foot of some royal house, the deification of
some human divinity. So it was under the cruel, blood-
poisoned despotism of Asia. So it was under the
wicked, deified Cæsars. So it was for whole cycles in
China. So it was, until quite recently, in Russia; and
so, at one time-one can only blush to say it-the clergy
tried to make it at the most calamitous period of our
history under the Stuarts in England. From this de-
Ideals of Nations.
225
based notion that mankind has no nobler destiny than
to be made the footstool for a few families; that kings
have a right divine to govern wrong; that nations ought
to deliver themselves bound hand and foot to the arbi-
trary caprice of autocrats; from this degraded misuse of
texts by an ignorant and time-serving clergy, thank
God, the blood, and the good sense, and the God-fearing
manhood, and the mighty passion for liberty in the
breasts of our fathers saved us. We have done forever
with that dismal and most degrading of epochs-the
day of servitude without loyalty, and sensualism with-
out love; when, as the historian says, the government
had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion
enough to persecute, and when the principles of liberty
were the scoff of every time-server and fool. Yes.
Thanks to the thought, and the courage which God had
put into the hearts of a Hampden, and a Cromwell;
thanks to
"The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington, Young, Vane,
And others who called Milton friend,”
that false ideal based on systems which would have
made the Bible the bulwark of an uncontrollable
tyranny is past. Cæsarism, autocracy, Napoleonism is,
for us and for you, impossible forever. When you
fought against us in the war of independence, you were
fighting us in the spirit which you drew from our own
English blood. You were reteaching us the lesson
which our fathers had taught to you. The blessing has
come to us both.
"Whatever harmonies of law
The growing world assume,
15
226
Ideals of Nations.
■*.
The work is ours; the single note
From that deep chord which Hampden smote
Will vibrate to the doom."
4. Other nations again, many of them, have had as their
ideal the gaining of wealth. For a nation is but the
aggregate of its sons, and the love of money, that mam-
mon-worship which, as Scripture again and again tells
us, cannot coincide with the service of God, has been the
snare of countless individuals. Of all false gods, the
lowest spirit that fell is Mammon, who, with the most
hypocritical meekness, assumes the air of injured in-
nocence and perfect respectability; even though he
transform himself into an angel of light, even though
he hide the heart of the demon under the ephod of the
saint, like all false gods, Mammon is the curse of all
who put their trust in him. He was the god of ancient
Babylon, of ancient Tyre, of declining Rome, and of
mediæval Spain. "If the King of Mexico has any
gold," said Cortes, "let him send it to us, for I and my
companions have a disease of the heart which is cured
by gold." Yes, and it was this disease of the heart
which drove the conquerors of Peru and Mexico to their
careers of shameless atrocity. But if our pleasant vices
are ever made the instrument to punish us, from the
deep-vaulted mine springs the pale fiend Avarice, with a
whip of scorpions in hand. It was the insatiable greed, as
well as the inquisitorial bigotry of the Spaniard, which,
most of all, moved the fury of England-the predes-
tined scourge of that haughty, cruel, and avaricious
power. The sun of Athens did not sink more surely in
the Bay of Syracuse, than the glory of Spain sank with
her Armada on the rocky shores of England. And that
Ideals of Nations.
227
God may save His world from endless corruption, so it
ever will and must be with every nation which takes to
the worship of "Covetousness, lady of ignoble competi-
tion and of deadly care, of ignoble victory, builder of
streets in the city of ignoble ease." What has this ma-
terial wealth, the only kind of wealth which we recog-
nize, the only kind of wealth which Scripture either
will not recognize at all, or only with intense warnings?
What has it ever done for man or for nations?
6. Was
ever any nation the better for having coffers full of
gold? Look into the history of any civilized nation,
analyzed with reference to this one cause of crime and
misery, the lives of thousands of their nobles, priests,
merchants, and men of luxurious life. Every other
temptation is concentrated into this. The sin of the
whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do
not disbelieve in Christ-they sell Him." Now, in the
common name of England and America, we have
pleaded not guilty to the other false idols. Can we
also plead not guilty to this? I fear not. I fear that
we are guilty of it in all ranks down to the poorest;
guilty of it as individuals, and guilty of it as nations.
The growth and habit of luxury, the multiplication
of things which are falsely deemed necessary for life,
the deepening cleft between capital and labor, the more
and more glaring contrast between the ever-breeding
thousands and boundless superfluities of the affluent
rich and the cramping misery and ingrained envy of
the poor; the toleration in great cities of infamous
streets full of rotting and fever-causing habitations;
the all but total absence of the conception that each one
is the steward, and not the owner, of what we have;
+
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Ideals of Nations.
2.
that wealth is a talent intrusted to us for God's service,
not a gift heaped on us for our own aggrandizement;
the hard clutch and grip of that selfishness which has
never so much as tasted the bliss of doing habitual
kindness to those that lack; the proofs everywhere of a
passion for amassing money, which gloats, like the rich
fool in the parable, over its much goods laid up for
many days. Ah, when we are content with all this, are
we never afraid of that awful doom which crashed upon
the confidence of sensual and self-congratulating case?
"Thou fool! this night-this night they shall require
of thee thy soul !" There is no sin in the winning of
wealth; no sin in the possession of wealth; but there is
sin-sin which benumbs all nobleness as with a torpedo-
touch-sin which envenoms all spirituality of soul as
with a serpent's sting, in the worship of wealth; in the
trusting in wealth; in the passionate desire for wealth ;
in the base idolatry of wealth; in unworthy means of
acquiring wealth; in the selfish accumulation of wealth;
in the selfish squandering of wealth; in the measuring
by wealth, whether in dollars or in pounds, of the
worth and success of life. "Despise the glare of
wealth," said Joseph Hancock in Boston a hundred
years ago. "Break asunder with noble disdain the
chains with which the Philistines have bound you."
Ah, if the life of England and of America become ever
real enough to be guided by the Lord, to whom we pro-
fess a lip allegiance, let us judge of these things not by
the smooth tongue of convention, but by the plain
words of Christ. Riches may increase and may be a
blessing if we employ them nobly; if we set not our
heart upon them; if we use them as the wise men used
Ideals of Nations.
229
them who gave to Christ their gold and frankincense
and myrrh; if we use them as Joanna, the wife of
Chuza, used them, to minister to Him and His; if we
bring them, as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea
brought them, to His cross; if we bestow them as
Barnabas bestowed them to help the needs of His strug-
gling church. We in England have had some instances
of a princely magnanimity in millionaires, and you in
America yet more. On the slab in Westminster Abbey,
whereunder lay for a time the mortal remains of George
Peabody, is carved his daily prayer to the Giver of all
wealth, that He would enable him before he died to
render some conspicuous service to his fellow-men.
Such examples are blessed; would that they were mul-
tiplied a hundred-fold. And blessed, too, in these days
is every example which illustrates how few and simple
are the real needs of life; every example, whether of the
rich or of the struggling, which pours silent contempt
on the divinity of gold. "For departed kings there
are appointed honors, and the wealthy have their gor-
geous obsequies; but it shall be the nobler lot of these
to clothe nations in spontaneous mourning, and to go to
the grave among the benedictions of the poor."
Let England then, and let America, learn that swollen
fortunes and material prosperity are no signs of a na-
tion's strength. Pagan Rome was never so strong as
when her dictators came from the ploughshare, never so
weak as when in her colossal wealth she had scarcely a
freeman left. In the Middle Ages, Papal Rome stood
raking into chests the countless gold of her jubilee, just
before she endured her most humiliating disgrace.
Spain was dropping to pieces in the rottenness of in-
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ward decay just when all the gold of the New World was
flowing like the tide of La Plata into the treasury of her
kings. Oh, let us learn that the country's wealth means
a country's weal, and that does not consist in gold, but
in the justice, the mercy, the temperance, in the strong,
pure hearts of her sons and daughters. Without these
wealth may be but a sign of inward weakness, just as the
gorgeous conflagration of your autumnal woods is but the
precursor of their barrenness and the proof of their decay.
5. Once more, as some nations have had a false idea
of absolutism, many, and especially modern nations,
have had a false idea of liberty. There is no ideal more
grand and inspiring than that of true freedom. But
what is freedom? It is the correlative of order. It is
the function of righteousness. Freedom is self-rever-
ence, self-knowledge, self-control.
<<
August obedience by the world denied
Is God's economy to make us free."
Liberty is not the liberty to do wrong unrebuked. It is
not to do as we wish, but as we ought. It is not to fol-
low impulses of appetite, but to listen to the dictates of
reason. It is not to rend, like the demoniac among the
tombs of Gadara, the beneficent features of just restraint,
but to sit at the Lord's feet clothed, and in our right
mind. To be free, for instance, is not synonymous with
infinite facilities for drunkenness, or robbery, or wrong.
To be free, as Milton said, is the same thing as to be
pious, to be temperate, and to be magnanimous.
"He is a freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves beside."
The description "everybody" did that which was right
Ideals of Nations.
231
in his own eyes, which is rapidly becoming a national
ideal, is a description not of heroic freedom, but of
modern anarchy. Man's liberty ends, and it ought to
end, when that liberty becomes the curse of his neigh-
bors. I look on nothing as more menacing in the whole
position of our race than the growth through all classes,
the growth which is most disastrous to all in our bar-
racks and schools and universities, of this base and igno-
rant notion that a man ought to be free to do what he
likes. It seems to me a drying up of the very spring of
national nobleness. It was in the days of the slave
trade, when, as we are told, the loudest yelps for liberty
"Would
always came from the drivers of the negroes.
you
interfere with the liberty of the subject?" sneers
the economist to the material reformer. No! But if
the liberty of one subject is to mean the slavery of
ten thousand I would trample the liberty of that subject
into the dust. I would trample every vested interest or
sham-vested interest into the dust which exists only for
the blight and ruin of mankind.
I would have no trees among us, which ought only to
grow in that thicket of the Inferno, where the trees are
the souls of self-destroyers, on whose grim branches the
Harpies build their nests. Let us not confuse liberty
with license; with demagogism; with the anarchy of
the socialist; with the undetected tyranny of rings;
with the wire-pulling of the interested; with the shout
of the noisiest; with the tyranny of the strongest; with
the violent silencing of the voices of the wise and reason-
able few; with that dead level of envious mediocrity in
which every molehill is a mountain and every thistle a
forest tree. We do not want the liberty of the Reign of
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Ideals of Nations.
Terror with its lullaby the Carmagnole, its toy the guillo-
tine, nor of the Parisian Commune, with cities shattered
with dynamite, or blazing with petroleum. "That a
good man to be free, as we call it," said Carlyle, "and
to be permitted to unfold himself in works of goodness
and nobleness, is surely a blessing to him and to those
about him, but that a man be free to be permitted to un-
fold himself in his particular way is contrariwise the fa-
talest curse you can inflict upon him, a curse and noth-
ing less to him and to all his neighbors. Him the very
heavens call upon you to persuade, to urge, to compel
him to something of well-doing, and if you absolutely
cannot, the only blessing left is the speediest gallows you
can lead him to." Liberty cannot be had but at the price
of eternal vigilance. The wise and the refined must not
shrink with cowardly fastidiousness from the effort to
keep it pure. Nations must have courage enough and
nerve enough to put down every form of crime, whether
respectable or disreputable, every crime whether plated
with gold or clothed in rags, with the infliction of stern,
swift, and wholesome penalties. Liberty is no true lib-
erty if she suffers the cheat, or the officer, or the treach-
erous invader of her own prerogatives to find inviolable
refuge under the shadow of her shield. She is false to
her mighty beneficence if she deal not with the unblush-
ing, multitudinous immorality of the states which spring
up under her shelter, if she does not trample out of ex-
istence the hot-beds of temptation. Woe to the nation
which is not fearlessly faithful enough to grapple with
its own vice and its own corruption. Woe to the nation
which has become too feebly timid to repress infamy, too
morally perplexed to scourge the back of crime. Let
Ideals of Nations.
233
the hands of every man who stands erect, every man and
woman in God's sacramental altar tear down from its
pedestal the brazen image of such a spurious freedom
and break it into pieces. Call it nehushtan, a thing of
brass, nor suffer men to exclaim in anger: "Oh Free-
dom, what crimes are committed in thy name !”
To conclude, then, what should be the one and only
true ideal of each nation, if it would indeed be a wise
and understanding people? Let the frivolous sneer and
the faithless deride, but there is only one such ideal. It
is duty. It is righteousness. It is the law of Sinai.
It is the law of Christ. It is purity of life. It is hon-
esty of trade. It is absolute allegiance to truth. It is
the inviolable sanctity of the marriage law. There is a
law above all the enactments of human gods, the same
in all times. It is the law written by the finger of God
upon the hearts of men, and by that law, unchangeable
and eternal, while men despise, fear, and loathe rapine,
and abhor blood, they will reject with indignation the
delusion that any iniquity and any idolatry can ever be
anything to man or to nations but a ruin and a curse.
If a nation be not the uplifter of this power of righteous-
ness, it is predestined to ultimate in an irretrievable
ruin. The heathen may rage and the people imagine
a vain thing, but where they strove to rear their Babels
in opposition to His eternal will, God shall send forth
His voice and the earth shall melt away. "For glory,"
said Oliver Cromwell to the men of England, "you
glory in the ditch which guards your shores; I tell you
that your ditch will not save you if you do not reform
yourselves." It is no less true of America, I have said
before; I say again, she may be the enlightener of the
234
Ideals of Nations.
nations, the beautiful pioneer in the vanguard of the
progress of the world, but should the day ever come
when she shall choose to spread a table to fortune,
or to enshrine Mammon upon her altars; should her
commerce become dishonest, her press debased, her
society frivolous, her religion a tradition and a sham,
then, though the double ocean sweep her illimitable
shores, their waves shall but flash to future generations
a more sad, a more desolate, and a more unending dirge.
The Bible is still the best hand-book of the worthy citi-
zen, for it teaches us many truths which make nations
strong and keep them so. It will teach us firmness
in the appointed, inscrutable law of human life, and in
the great race of mankind we must hand down to future
generations a brighter and ever brighter torch of knowl-
edge and of love. It will teach us to know man simply
as man, and to regard all men, from the highest to the
lowest, as absolutely equal before the bar of justice;
equally under the stroke of her sword, equally under the
shadow of her shield. It will teach us that always and
invariably the unjust and immoral practices of this class
must be put down in the interests of the community,
and that the interests of the community are subordinate
always to those of the entire people. And it will teach
us that the true glory of nations lies not in the splendid
misery of war, but in the dissemination of honorable
happiness and encouragement of greatness, and the sup-
pression of vice; and it will teach us that the true wealth
of a nation is not in gold and silver, but in the souls of
strong, contented, and self-respecting men; and it will
teach us that the true freedom of a nation lies not in the
anarchic right of licensed temptation and unrestricted
Ideals of Nations.
235
facilities for crime, but in the bonds of a material obedi-
ence deeply cherished by the good, but inexorably en-
forced on all the bad. When statesmen and nations
have learned these lessons they will not be long in learn-
ing others. Nations will aim at only such conditions of
life and government as shall make it easy to do right
and difficult to do wrong. They will see that politics,
no less than individual conduct, have no other rule than
the law of God. Statesmen will not toil for reward.
They will not count on praise. They will hold alle-
giance to the loftiest ideal of godliness to be far dearer
than claims of party and all the glories of place. Like
Edmund Burke, they will bring to polities a terror of
crime, a deep humanity, a keen sensibility, a singular
vivacity and sincerity of consciousness. Like Sir Robert
Peel, they will, amid all the fortunes of their career, be
able to turn from the storm without to the sunshine of
the approving heart within. Like Washington and Lin-
coln, they will be just and fear not, putting their trust
in God. They will not be afraid to cut against the
grain of godless prejudice. They will not be sophisti-
cated by the prudential maxims of an immoral acquies-
cence. They will sweeten with words of justice and
gentleness the conflicts of party. They will be quick to
the encouragement of virtue. They will be fixed and
fearless, and all the strong and God-fearing men and
women, and all the pure and noble, all the bright youth,
will help them to be inviolable, inexorable in the sup-
pression and extirpation, so far as the powers of govern-
ment can do it, of all apostacy from the eternal laws of
God. Happy are the people that are in such a cause.
Blessed are the people that have the Lord for their God.

ADDRESS I
OPENING ADDRESS AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE,
OCTOBER 1, 1885.
Modern Education: its Sphere and
its Aims.
Mr. President and Gentlemen :
I REGARD it as a high honor that I should have been
invited to deliver the opening address of this session at
the Johns Hopkins University. Your country is honor-
ably distinguished for great institutions founded by
private munificence, and none of these institutions is,
I am informed, more prosperous or more productive of
great results than the University whose members I have
the honor to address. It was founded in the interest
of that sound learning which may itself be made no
small element in religious education. May I not apply
to it the words of your great American orator: "If we
work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon
brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will
crumble to the dust; but if we work upon immortal
Modern Education.
237
minds, if we imbue them with high principles, with the
just fear of God and love of their fellow-men, we en-
grave on those tablets something which no time can
efface, but which will brighten and brighten to all
eternity."
1. No one can read the reports and programmes of
your University without being at once struck with the
fact that you, like Lord Bacon, take for your province
You do not
the whole range of human knowledge.
indeed formally teach the science of Theology. You
assume no religious name, you wear no ecclesiastical
badge; but I observe that even theology and church his-
tory have been included in your public lectures. You
are, as your President has observed, united in the search
for truth and the maintenance of faith.
generations of American youths are here taught
"To sit, self-governed, in the fiery prime
Of youth, obedient at the feet of law.”
Successive
And though free from sectarian bias, you have ever
desired this University to be pervaded by the spirit of
enlightened Christianity. God has many Bibles-
nature, law, history, the mind and thoughts of man.
You neglect none of them. Psychology reveals to you
the nature and the limitations of the thinking mind.
In the domain of History you examine the records of
all nations in all ages. In the domain of Law you
study the codes and the customs of every branch of
mankind. In Mathematics you do not shrink from
the most abstruse researches. You look on Art as a
revealer and interpreter of nature.
professors teach
In Science your

238
Modern Education.
1
I
•
(c
'Something of the frame, the rock,
The star, the bird, the shell, the fish, the flower.
Electric, chemic laws."
We may apply to your lecturers the words of Ovid :
Cumque animo et vigili perspexerat omnia cura,
In medium discenda dabat
•
Et rerum causas et quid Natura docebat,
Quid Deus."
They teach about the works of Nature; they lead
through Nature up to Nature's God.
2. We are apt to become so familiar with the
progress
of our own generation that we take its most distinctive
phenomena as the merest matter of course. And yet to
the elder among us the exhaustiveness which marks the
curriculum of your University is nothing less than a
memorable sign of the times. I do not suppose that,
fifty years ago, any such University existed in any coun-
try of the English-speaking race. In England, at any
rate, I can recall the by no means distant day when the
whole of a boy's education was practically confined to
that branch of education which was known as "the
Classics." English education at the public schools
consisted solely of the study of the Greek and Latin
tongues. It was a training which neglected some of the
powers of all minds, and, what was far worse, all the
powers of some minds. A multitude of boys, with
aptitudes for many noble acquirements, were suffered
to grow up in an ignorance which would have been
ludicrous if it had not been deplorable-an ignorance
limitless and unfathomable; an ocean without a bottom
and without a shore. It was a system under which boys
!
Modern Education.
239
like Samuel Parr grew up as little prodigies, but boys
like Humphry Davy and Walter Scott grew up as
little dunces. It was a system which tried to treat the
plastic clay like the unyielding marble, and to give the
It was a
same lustre to the diamond and to the chalk.
system under which bright English lads-human ma-
terial which was both intellectually and physically
among the finest in the world—grew up in ignorance of
all history, even of their own history, though it is a
history of ever-broadening freedom; and of all litera-
ture, even of their own, though it is without a parallel
in all the world; ignorant also of every modern lan-
guage, of every conceivable branch of science, of every
faculty and method of observation, and even of every-
thing best worth knowing in the two ancient languages
to which all things else were so ruthlessly sacrificed.
Within living memory the head master of a great Eng-
lish public school made it rather a subject of boast to
his head pupils that he had no conception where Elis
was. It is not the least exaggeration to say that seven
or eight of the brightest and most impressionable years
of life were spent over Greek and Latin by the majority
of boys, and ended in their not acquiring the inflections
of a single Greek verb, and in not attaining the power
to write even the most incorrect and impossible couplet
of elegiac verse; while many, on the other hand, who
were regarded as comparatively successful, could only
write Latin prose which-when it was not a mere mosaic
of borrowed phrases-would have made Quintilian stare
and gasp, and Greek iambics at which I will not
say a Theognis, but even an Athenian school-boy, would
have died of laughing. When I was first appointed one
240
Modern Education.
of the masters at Harrow School, some thirty years ago,
this system was still in full vogue, with but slight con-
cessions to mathematics and modern languages; and I
shall always remember with pride that, amid much
obloquy and opposition, I gave lectures at the London
Royal Institution, the Birmingham Institute, and other
places, which helped in their small measure to give it
its death-blow. At that time there was scarcely a single
public school in England in which many hours were not
devoted, every week, by every boy alike, to the fantastic
folly of writing verses in languages of which they had not
mastered the merest elements. Now there is scarcely a
single school at which this absurd system still continues
to linger on. Then there was scarcely a single school
which could boast of a master in science; now even the
humblest schools would be ashamed to be without one.
Even the Universities were but little better. At Cam-
bridge mathematics flourished, and the Classical Tripos
tested a knowledge of Greek and Latin almost exclu-
sively as languages; at Oxford mathematics were only
studied by a small minority, and the Schools tested a
knowledge of Greek and Latin almost exclusively as
literature. Happily, in the last thirty years, we have
changed all that. At present at our Universities, as at
yours, due honor is accorded to every branch of human
knowledge.
3. Let me say at once that I should stamp myself as
a barbarian-or, as Mr. Matthew Arnold prefers to
call it, a Philistine-if I felt any hostility or implied
any dislike toward the classical studies in which a
great part of my youth and manhood have been hap-
pily passed. All that I strove to do in past days was to
Modern Education.
241
I
"
break down the dominant tyranny, the absolute autoc-
racy of classical training; not by any means to dispar-
age it altogether. For many minds, at any rate,
"The proper study of mankind is man.”
+
If History and Literature must always rank among the
most indispensable instruments of education, then cer-
tainly we shall never be able to throw aside altogether
the study of those two languages which were spoken by
the two noblest of the ancient nations, because they en-
shrine a history and a literature which are of all others
the most instructive to mankind. Perhaps you will
think that, having once commented severely on classical
studies, I now turn round and eulogize them—like the
poet Stesichorus, who, after writing contumeliously
about Helen of Troy, was compelled by her wrathful
phantom to write a palinode. Such, however, is not
the case.
I should urge as strongly as I ever did, that
classical education should never be exclusive, but I
should always plead with equal earnestness that it
should never be excluded.
4. Nay more, the ancient languages are now studied
so thoroughly that I would deprecate the application
of the word "science" to none but physical inquiries.
There are two worlds-the world of nature and the
world of man; but man controls nature, and nature in-
cludes man. In other words, the comprehension of the
laws of nature involves a study not only of things and
their forces, but also of men and their ways; and if
man would be a worthy lord of creation he must not
only learn its laws, but also fashion his soul in har-
mony with their teaching. We cannot do without the
16
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242
66
Modern Education.
experience of the world as it has been enshrined for all
time in its noblest literature. We are the children of
the past. It lives and throbs through every fibre of our
present. 'Our finest hope is finest memory." There
is no error so dangerous to humanity as that of trying
to divorce and dissever ourselves from those who have
gone before us. The answer of the old Carthusian
monk to the trifler who asked him how he got through
his time was, as Arnold has reminded us, both beautiful
and wise: Cogitavi dies antiquos et annos aeternos in
mente habui-I have considered the days of old and
the years of ancient times.
5. The exclusive despotism of the Greek and Latin in
education was due, in fact, to their inherent powers.
It was a survival of the Renaissance. The glorious
literature of Hellas and of Rome shone like a new dawn,
burst like a new life, flowed in like a freshening and
vernal breeze upon minds long darkened by the dreari-
ness of scholasticism and cramped in the iron net-work
of the feudal system. You may estimate the force of
that Renaissance-of that new birth-by the impulse
which it gave to the genius of men like Bacon and
Shakespeare, and by the passion felt by scholars of that
day for classical learning. Mr. Browning's brilliant
poem, The Grammarian's Funeral, illustrates the force
and fervor of that passion. Erasmus studied by moon-
light, because he could not afford a penny to buy
a torch. Queen Elizabeth answered a learned deputa-
tion both in Latin and in Greek, and, as Roger Ascham
tells us, studied Socrates and Sophocles, no young stu-
dent at a University more daily or more duly. Lady
Jane Grey-
Modern Education.
243
Seventeen, a rose of grace,
Girl never breathed to rival such a rose,
Rose never blew that equalled such a bud"
knew eight languages, and preferred the pages of Pla-
to's Phado to the exhilaration of the chase. Gram-
mar schools, of which Harrow and Rugby and West-
minster are noble specimens, sprang up all over the
country, and presented two features of special interest.
One was the mixture of all classes; the other was the
devotion to the classic languages. The school at which
I was first taught as a little child illustrated both pecu-
liarities. It went by the long-disused name of "The
Latin School," and I recall with pleasure that in that
school I was taught on the same benches, and sat side
by side with boys taken from all, and even from the
humblest, grades of society.
6. It is, then, an additional distinction to your Uni-
versity that, among so many professors and instructors,
you also have eminent professors of Greek and Latin.
An immense and narrowing fallacy lay under the famous
remarks of Mr. Richard Cobden, that a single copy of
the Times was of more value to a modern Englishman
than the history of Thucydides, and that it was unim-
portant to know much about the river Ilyssus, because
he had seen the Athenian laundresses washing their
clothes in it. The Times newspaper has its own use-
ful function, but we do not hear in it that voice of the
Sibyl, which, as Herodotus says, "uttering things sim-
ple and unperfumed and unadorned reaches through in-
numerable years, because of God." The Ilyssus, after all,
is of more importance to civilized mankind than the
Yenisei or the Obi. Bigness is not greatness. Attica
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اکچھ
is greater than Warwickshire, though only the same
size; and "Abana and Pharpar lucent streams," the
rivers of Damascus are not better than all the waters
of Israel, though they are broader and more deep.
7. Consider, for instance, the unparalleled beauty and
grandeur of Greek and Latin merely as languages. It
is many years since I read the eulogium pronounced
upon them by H. N. Coleridge, but I still recall some
of his expressions. "Greek," he says, "the shrine of
the genius of the old world; as universal as our race; as
individual as ourselves; of infinite flexibility; of in-
defatigable strength; with words like pictures; with
words like the gossamer threads of the summer; to
which nothing was vulgar, from which nothing was
excluded; at once the sunlight and breadth of Homer,
the gloom and intensity of Eschylus; not fathomed to
the depth by Plato; not compressed to the utmost by
Thucydides; not lighted up with all its ardor, nor roll-
ing with all its thunder, even under the promethean
touch of Demosthenes. And Latin, the voice of em-
pire and of law, of war and of the state; stamped with
the impress of an imperious and despotizing republic;
rigid in its constructions, parsimonious in its synonyms;
the true language of history, instinct with the spirit of
natures, not with the passions of individuals; breathing
the maxims of the race and not the tenets of the schools;
tried to the utmost by Virgil, and by him found want-
ing; yielding reluctantly to the flowery yoke of Horace;
exhibiting glimpses of Greek-like splendor in the occa-
sional inspirations of Lucretius; but still one and the
same in character, whether handled by the genial and
discursive Livy, by the refined and haughty Sallust,
Modern Education.
245
1
by the reserved and thoughtful Tacitus." The eulogy
is not exaggerated. In their synthetic perfection
Greek and Latin are among the grandest languages
known to man; and though it is not necessary that
all should master them, no great system of education
can ever neglect this most priceless possession, which
Providence has preserved for the human race from the
wrecks of barbarism and decay.
8. It is needless to dwell on the obvious fact that
these perfect languages, enshrining magnificent litera-
tures, have been enriched by consummate artists with
some of the finest gems of thought-
"Which on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle forever."
It may be more to the purpose to observe that their
dominance was not a brief one. Each lasted in its
glory for more than a thousand years. Greek is not
only the language of Homer and Hesiod, of Eschylus
and Sophocles, of Plato and Aristotle, but also of the
late and noble Stoics, of the glorious slave Epictetus,
of the holy emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is the lan-
guage not only of Demosthenes in the Pnyx, but of St.
Paul on the Areopagus. It is the langauge also of
Revelation and of the Fathers. In it the New Testa-
ment was first written, and the Old Testament was
first translated. In it Philo as well as Heraclitus phil-
osophized. In it St. Chrysostom as well as Socrates
preached. And Latin is not only the language of
Ennius and Virgil, but also of Augustine and Jerome.
It was the medium of communication between scholars
for many generations. It is the language of legislators,

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י + י יךָ׃
from the Twelve Tables down to William the Conqueror;
of theology, from Tertullian to Thomas Aquinas. It
is the language of the Reformation-of Melanchthon's
Loci Communes, and of Calvin's Institutes. It is the
language of Freedom-alike of the Magna Charta and
of Milton's Defensio. It is even the language of
Science. In Latin were first written the De Orbium
Revolutionibus of Copernicus; and the Novum Orga-
num of Bacon; and the De Martis Stellá of Kepler;
and the Principia of Newton; and the Systema Natu-
rae of Linnæus; and the Exercitationes de Motu
Cordis et Sanguinis of Harvey. You will see, then,
the vast realms which these languages cover. Greek is
the key to the temples of religion, no less than to the
gardens of the Hesperides. And Latin will introduce
you not only to
"The forum where immortal actions glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes, burns of Cicero,"
but also to the laboratories of science and the courts of
law. Neither of them is in reality a dead language. If
you can read Thucydides, you can read Anna Comnena,
or Tricoupi, or a modern Greek newspaper. If you can
read Latin, it will cost you scarcely an effort to read
also Italian, Spanish, and French. It may be said then
of these languages, as truly as poetically, that "their
fruits are the fruits of nepenthe, and their flowers are
flowers of amaranth.”
9. An immense service has, however, been rendered
to the whole cause of education by that indefinite widen-
ing of the curriculum which recognizes that the best
Greek and Latin scholar who ever lived is but indif-
A
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247
ferently educated if amid the dread magnificence of the
unintelligent creation, and the deepening knowledge of
living organisms, and the exquisite inventions of ap-
plied science, which have multiplied a million-fold the
natural powers of man, he has been suffered to grow up
in ignorance of the laws of nature. He is but imper-
fectly educated if he knows nothing of the earth's orbit;
of the sun which rules our system; of the moon which
sways the tides; of the sea which, hour by hour, re-
freshes the world with its lustral ebb and flow; of the
Gulf-stream which warms our coasts; of the steady
trade-winds which swell our sails:-if he has heard
nothing of the melting fire, the rushing waters, the
variegated marble, the yielding clay; nothing of the
trees of the Lord which are full of sap, even the cedars
of Lebanon which He hath planted; nothing of thunder
and lightning, of rain and dew, of snow and hoar-frost,
of the rainbow and the mirage, of the pressure, the
buoyancy, and the elasticity of the invisible, bright air.
This is the very age of science and of progress. The
thirteenth century may boast the name of Roger Bacon,
the fifteenth that of Columbus, the sixteenth of Vesalius,
the seventeenth of Galileo, the eighteenth of Newton,
but assuredly the nineteenth has as yet been unsur-
passed. The whole of civilization has in this century
sped forward with amazing development. Groups of log
huts have grown into immense cities; savage islands of
cannibal chieftains have become emporiums of com-
merce; the most trackless depths of virgin forests have
heard the scream of the steam-engine; isthmuses have
been cut through; mountains have been tunnelled; vast
fens and barren moors, drained and cultivated, have
;
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Modern Education.
rolled with billows of golden corn. Was education alone
to be stationary? Was she alone to remain ignorant of
the precious secrets which nature had been forced to un-
clinch from her granite hand? Truly, as Dr. Arnold
said, "there is nothing so revolutionary, because there
is nothing so unnatural and convulsive, as this strain to
keep things fixed when all the world is, by the very law
of its creation, in eternal progress; and the course of all
the evils in the world can be traced to that natural but
most deadly error of human indolence and corruption,
that our business is to preserve and not to improve."
10. It is impossible, therefore, not to read with pecul-
iar satisfaction the long, the varied, the splendid list of
subjects which this University teaches-subjects each of
which is sufficient to inspire the devotion of a lifetime.
There can be no mind so peculiarly constituted as not
to find scope here for its capacities. The minds of men
radically differ. There are those who, like the late
Dean Stanley, find their main delight in studying the
history and the thoughts of men. There are others
who, like the late President of the Royal Society, breathe
most easily the empyrean of abstract conceptions, and
for whom the cold mountain-heights of reason have
sufficient charm, without one sunbeam of imagination
to brighten them. An Oxford scholar is said to have
remarked that he had glanced through the six books of
Euclid, and did not think that there was much in him.
A Cambridge Senior Wrangler is reported to have said
that he had read the Paradise Lost, and could not see
that it proved anything. But it is not necessary to quote
instances which are probably mythical. I once received
a letter from the late Charles Darwin, in which he told
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249
ક
St.
me that, as a boy, he was under a great scholar-Dr.
Butler, of Shrewsbury—but had never learned anything
at school, except what he taught himself, in private
chemical experiments; and when this came to the head
master's ears, instead of encouraging him, he was very
angry, and called him before the whole form a poco
curante, which, as he did not know what it meant,
must (he thought) be something very dreadful. Clearly,
minds which are so differently constituted and so dif-
ferently endowed ought not to be stretched on the
Procrustean bed of one unvarying curriculum.
Bernard was so unobservant, so full of mystic contem-
plation, that he rides all day along the Lake of Geneva,
and in the evening asks where the lake was. Linnæus,
on the other hand, was so keenly alive to the works of
nature, that he falls upon his knees under the open day
to thank God for a field ablaze with the glory of golden
gorse. Salmasius fills folio pages with dissertations
about the silks, half-silks, and linen garments of the
ancients, while he knows nothing of the commonest
trades of Dijon and of Lyons. His rival, Milton, writes
immortal verse, and helps to make England free. Alex-
ander Castrèn, a philologist of a noble order, though
in delicate health, travels alone in his sledge along the
coasts of the Polar Sea, and lives for months in the
greasy huts of the Samojeds to learn their dialects.
Conrad Sprengel lies all day long beside a single flower
to convince himself that its fertilization is solely effected
by the visits of insects. Bernard de Jussieu tracks the
fertilizing pollen of a pistachio over miles of streets and
gardens. Lord Monboddo in the preface to his Origin
of Language, being exclusively interested in that sub-
250
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ject, speaks with intense scorn of entomologists like
Réaumur, who had written in six quarto volumes the
history of flies with two wings and flies with four wings,
with a supplement to the history of flies with two wings,
and yet had not professed to produce a history of in-
sects, but only contributions to such a history. It would
be easy to collect passages from literature which thus
express the scorn of men's mutual ignorance; but man-
kind is now beginning to perceive that it is as danger-
ous to neglect the study of nature as to neglect the
study of mind. The fertility of continents, the food of
populations, even the health and happiness of man-
kind, may be dependent on the observations of natural-
ists who study flowers, and aphides, and entozoa, at least
as much as on the minutiae of those learned philologists
who trace
"A panting syllable through time and space,
Start it at home and hunt it in the dark,
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark.
19
11. Clearly, then, at every ideal University time
must be found for the study of the whole circle of the
sciences; and, as I have endeavored to point out the
educational value of philology, you will perhaps pardon
me if I venture to trespass a little longer upon your time,
and to show how transcendent are the claims of science
to occupy a large share in all schemes of human edu-
cation.
i. First, I would mention the delight of it. God has
placed us in a world where we can admire
“The beauty, and the wonder, and the power,
The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,
Changes, surprises, and God made it all.”
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251
i
i
From this world we can look up into the overarching
heaven, and see lucid openings into the pure, deep
empyrean. It is simply impossible to estimate the
difference in the degrees of happiness registered by the
mind of the one who goes through life with the seeing
eye and the hearing ear, and one who is deaf and blind
to the glories and melodies of the planet which God has
made his dwelling-place. There is no mistake more
irreparable in the training of the human soul for happi-
ness in the world around it than the permitting the pow-
ers of observation to atrophy from lack of use. The man
of science has as much right to say as the artist or the
poet,
"The world's no blank for me;
No blot ;-it means intensely, and means good."
ii. And secondly, this delight in observation is accom-
panied with the most direct usefulness. It is amazing
to think how much the world may gain from simply
noticing the most common facts, and endeavoring to
grasp their significance. Many of the world's great dis-
coveries are attributed to accident, but such accidents
happen only to the most trained and observant mind.
Nature may delight us all with her innocent enchant-
ments, but she only opens her richest treasures to the
followers of Hercules, the earnest and laborious searchers
after truth. It is only to a Newton that the fall of an
apple reveals that the parabola of a comet and the drop-
ping of a roseleaf are effects of one and the same causes,
and that
"The very law which moulds a tear,
And keeps it trickling in its source,
The same preserves the world its sphere,
And guides the planets in their course.
"
*
į
::
E.
252
Modern Education.
It is only to a Watts that the condensation of steam from
a kettle or the bowl of a teaspoon was the dawning in-
spiration of the steam-engine. It is only to a Galvani
that the twitching of a frog's leg, when touched by a
scalpel which had been in contact with an electrical ma-
chine, becomes the birth-throe of a new science. Galileo,
when but a boy, saw the bronze lamp swing in the
cathedral at Pisa, and measuring its rhythmic oscilla-
tion by the beating of his pulse, discovers the isochron-
ism of the pendulum, which leads to the most splendid
discoveries of a splendid life. The children of a spec-
tacle maker at Middleborough play with lenses, and we
soon get the telescope and the microscope. Huyghens
notices that a piece of Iceland spar divides a beam of
light so as to cause a double refraction, and we have a
new means for discovering the deepest secrets of the
stars. Malus develops some of the most brilliant facts
of polarization after amusing himself by looking through
a piece of spar at the reflection of a gorgeous sunset on
the windows of the Luxembourg. Hundreds of discov-
eries have been made in similar ways, and they might
perhaps have been anticipated by centuries if the powers
of observation had been rightly trained, as they have
been for many ages universally neglected.
iii. Thirdly, the incessant linear progress of science is
the immediate reward of its study. The ancients had
discovered that electricity was developed by rubbing
amber, and a hundred years ago Humboldt saw the naked
copper-colored children of the Indians on the banks of
the Orinoco, amusing themselves by attracting fibres of
cotton and bamboo with the electricity evolved by rub-
bing the shining seeds of the Nigretia.
How many
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253
millions have been awestricken by the lightning without
dreaming that they might brush it out of a cat's back or
out of their own hair. What an advance was made,
when on June 15, 1775, with no more exalted mechan-
ism than a boy's kite, a small key and a hempen string,
your own great Benjamin Franklin, he who,
6.6
'Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis,"
sent up the kite toward a dark cloud, suddenly saw
the hempen fibres bristling on the string, heard a
crackling noise, presented his knuckle to the key, and
received the electric spark. "I heaved," he said, "a
deep sigh, and conscious of an immortal name, felt
that I could have been content had that moment been
my last." What a stride was made beyond the dis-
covery of Franklin, when men learned to seize that
lightning by its wing of fire, and bid it flash their mes-
sages in one moment round the girdled globe. But once
more, what another stride, when the electric cable was
laid down the sides of marine volcanoes, under tempestu-
ous seas, and on the plateaus, formed during endless ages,
of delicate microscopic shells;-when, in the language
of your orator, "messages of friendship and love from
warm, loving bosoms burned over the cold, green bones
of men and women, whose hearts, once as warm as ours,
burst as the eternal gulfs closed and roared over them
centuries ago." What a stride of linear progress in our
knowledge of electricity beyond the most learned of the
earlier ages, when men were able at last to answer the
question in the Book of Job, "Canst thou send forth
the lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee,
Here we are?'
""
:
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254
=
iv. I fear to weary you, so I will add but one word on
the beneficence of science. Of all the mistakes of
ancient Greek poets and philosophers none was greater
than that of Socrates, when he endorsed the words of
Pindar: Τοὺς φυσιολογοῦντας ἔφη, ἀτελῆ σοφίας
δρέπεσθαι καρπόν.* It is not only that Nature has
revealed to us two infinities, one stretching infinitely
above, the other sinking infinitely beneath us ;-infinite
Space crowded with unnumbered worlds, infinite Time
peopled by unnumbered existences, infinite organisms,
hitherto invisible, but full of delicate and iridescent
loveliness. It is not only that Iris has been the daughter
of Thaumas-not only that Science has begun in
wonder, and ended in wonder, while admiration filled
up the interspace "--but also that she has been as a
great Archangel of Mercy devoting herself to the ser-
vice of mankind. Her votaries have labored not to
increase the power of despots, or add to the magnifi-
cence of courts, but to extend human happiness, to
economize human effort, to extinguish human pain.
In little things and in great she has alike striven to
serve us. She has enlisted the sunbeam in her service
to limn for us with absolute fidelity the faces of our
friends. She has enabled the miner to work in light
and safety in the heart of the earth, protected by so
delicate a medium as a wire gauze from a force as terrific
as the earthquake. Where of old, men toiled, half-
blinded and half-naked, in the mouth of the glowing
furnace to mix the white-hot iron, she now substitutes
* He said that the students of physics culled a valueless fruit of
wisdom.
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255
the mechanical action of the viewless air. She has by
her anæsthetics enabled the sufferer to lie hushed and
unconscious as an infant on the mother's breast, while
in the operation known as iridectomy, the fine lancet of
some skilled operator cuts a fragment from the nervous
circle of the unquivering eye. She points not to pyr-
amids built during weary centuries by the sweat of
miserable nations, but to the light-house and the steam-
ship, the railroad and the telegraph. She has restored
eyes to the blind and hearing to the deaf. She has
lengthened life, she has minimized danger, she has miti-
gated madness, she has trampled on disease. And on
all these grounds a University is to be congratulated
which provides such splendid opportunities for studies
which at once train the reason and fire the imagination,
which can fashion as well as forge, which can feed as
well as fill the mind. Such studies to all their faithful
votaries are
“Not harsh and rugged as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns."
12. But I must not conclude without saying that,
whether the education of our youth be an education in
Science or an education in Language, whether it be
mainly occupied with the secrets of nature or with the
soul of man, or-which is better still-with both, we
must ever bear steadily in mind what is the end and aim
of all education. “There are some," says St. Bernard,
"who seek to know only that they may know, and it is
base curiosity; and some who wish to know only that
they may be known, and it is base vanity; and some

256
Modern Education.
who wish to know only that they may sell their knowl-
edge, and it is base covetousness. But there are some
also who wish to know that they may edify, and it is
charity; and some who wish to know that they may
be edified, and it is heavenly prudence." In other
words, the object of education is neither for amuse-
ment, nor for bread, nor for fame, nor for controversy,
nor for profit, but that we may know God here and
glorify Him forever in Heaven hereafter. Our own
great Verulam has warned us that our studies are meant
neither as "a couch on which to rest, nor as a cloister in
which to promenade alone, nor as a tower from which to
look down on others, nor as a fortress whence we may
resist them, nor as a workshop for gain and merchandise,
but as a rich armory and treasure-house for the glory of
the Creator and the ennoblement of life.'
"" We learn
and study in order that we may be profitable members
of the Church and Commonwealth, and hereafter par-
takers of the immortal glory of the Resurrection; "that
after having toiled in God's work with the sweat of our
brow, we may at last become partakers of His Vision
and of His Sabbath. Behind the clerk, behind the
merchant, behind the scholar, behind the member of the
learned profession, stands the man-the man made in
God's image-the far-reaching intellect, the noble heart,
the eternal being-
'Mind that looks before and after,
Seeking for its home above,
Human tears and human laughter,
And the depth of human love.”
Above the mere needs of living towers the supreme
Modern Education.
257
When General Gar-
"what he meant to be,"
""
""
awfulness of life. Nothing is more fatal than propter
vitam vivendi perdere causas. "Whatever withdraws
us from the power of the senses, whatever makes the
past, the distant, and the future predominate over the
passing interests of the present, advances us in the
dignity of human beings," and to do this is the ob-
ject of education. That object, therefore, is to train
not the mind only, or the body, but also the spirit,
which is the noblest part of man.
field was asked, as a young boy,
he answered: "First of all I must make myself a man;
if I do not succeed in that, I can succeed in nothing."
"Before I go any further," says Frank Osbaldistone, in
Rob Roy, "I must know who you are. "I am a man,
is the answer, "and my purpose is friendly." "A man,"
he replied; "that is a brief description.' "It will
serve," answered Rob Roy, "for one who has no other
to give. He that is without name, without friends,
without coin, without country, is still at least a man;
and he that has all these is no more." What, then, is
the best education for a man? "That man," says one
of the most eminent leaders of modern science, "has
had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth
that his body is the ready servant of his will; whose in-
tellect is a clear, cold logic-engine, ready alike to spin
the gossamers and forge the anchors of the mind; whose
mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and funda-
mental truths of nature; one who, no stunted ascetic,
is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to
come to heel by a strong will the servant of a tender
conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether
of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect
17
7
Modern Education.
258
others as himself." But these blessed and glorious re-
sults are not attainable without a training of the spirit.
We have bodies, but we are spirits. "We live by ad-
miration, hope, love." "Man doth not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God." Nothing but Religion in one or other
of its great essential forms can make us through all our
lives faithful to the best we know-faithful to God,
faithful to our country, faithful to our fellow-men, and
to ourselves. Our education must be, like the ancient
temples, lighted at the top. That education will lead
us to the only true happiness, and to the only real and
permanent success.
"Take thou no thought for aught but truth and right,
Content, if such thy fate, to die obscure;
Youth fails and honors; fame may not endure;
And loftier souls soon weary of delight.
Keep innocence; be all a true man ought,
Let neither pleasure tempt nor pain appal :
Who hath this, he hath all things having naught;
Who hath it not, hath nothing having all."
ADDRESS II.
A PAPER READ AT THE CHURCH CONGRESS IN NEW HAVEN,
OCTOBER 20, 1885.
The Christian Doctrine of the
Atonement.
I SUPPOSE that the subject of this discussion has
purposely been left a little vague; but I will venture,
quite plainly and fearlessly, with no reserves, with no
subterfuges, to tell you my exact thoughts on the sub-
ject, thoughts which I have always freely stated, and
which, during a course of many years, have never seen
due cause to change.
Faith in the Atonement-the belief that Christ lived
and died for us, and that by his life and death we are
saved-is an essential part of our common Christianity.
It is the key of the evangelical position. In this faith
all who profess and call themselves Christians are
united; without this faith the Gospel is robbed of its
most central meaning and message.
1. Our faith in the Atonement is based on the revela-
tion contained in the Scriptures, and especially in the
New Testament, confirmed by the inward witness of
260 Christian Doctrine of the Atonement.
God's spirit in our hearts. If we desire fit words wherein
to express it, we look first and naturally to Holy Script-
ure. There, in many different phrases, we read that
"Christ died for our sins;" that "He suffered for our
sins, the just for the unjust; " that "He was sacrificed
for us;" that "He was made sin for us; " that "He
made his soul an offering for sin;" that "He put away
sin by the sacrifice of Himself;" that "by one offering
He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified;"
that "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for
ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world;"
that "He hath reconciled us to God by his blood;" that
"He gave his life a ransom for many;" that "He re-
deemed us to God by his own blood;" that "His blood
was shed for many for the remission of sins; " that "He
hath washed us from our sins in his own blood;
" and
that "His blood cleanseth from all sin." There are
three special passages in which St. Paul states our faith
in the Atonement. In Romans iii. 21-26, he says that,
being all guilty, "we are justified freely by God's grace
through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ," In
2 Cor. v. 19-21, he says that "God was in Christ rec-
onciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto
them their trespasses." In Gal. iii. 13, 14, he says that
"Christ purchased us from the curse of the Law, having
become a curse for us." And all these statements, which
declare the fact of the Atonement, and the reconciliation
of man to God, we steadfastly believe.
2. We turn to the Creeds of Christendom; and there,
too, we find the Atonement stated simply as a fact. In
the Apostles' Creed, after expressing our belief in the
Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, we add
Christian Doctrine of the Atonement. 261
our belief in "the forgiveness of sins." In the Nicene
Creed we say that the life and death of Christ were
"for us men and for our salvation." In the much later
Athanasian Creed, so full and so precise on the doctrines
of the Trinity and the Incarnation, we sum up the
Atonement in the single clause that Christ "suffered
for our salvation." And all this we steadfastly be-
lieve.
3. We turn to the Articles of our Church. In the
second we find that Christ died "to reconcile his Father
to us”—“ ut nobis reconciliaret Patrem" (an unscript-
ural phrase of the Augsburg Confession for "that He
might reconcile us to the Father")-and to be a sacri-
fice not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins
of men.
In the seventh article we confess that "He is
the only Mediator between God and man, being both
God and man.” In the fourteenth that "He came to
be the Lamb without spot, who, by sacrifice of Himself
once made, should take away the sin of the world."
In the eighteenth, that His is "the only name under
heaven whereby we must be saved." In all these pas-
sages the doctrine of the Atonement is the simple state-
ment, mostly in Scripture language, of the fact of the
Atonement. If we turn to the Tridentine Catechism,
we find exactly the same facts insisted on. The benefits
of the Atonement are clearly stated; of theory respect-
ing it, there is no trace. It is rather deliberately ex-
cluded in the words that its efficacy consisted in its
being "a full and entire satisfaction offered, after a
certain admirable manner, to the Father." And all this
we steadfastly believe.
4. This, then, is the Christian belief in the Atone-
262 Christian Doctrine of the Atonement.
ment, which is sometimes meant by the doctrine of the
Atonement. On the other hand, by "the doctrine of
the Atonement" is often meant some systematic theory
of the Atonement; some theological philosophy of the
Atonement; some scholastic theodicea of the Atone-
ment, summarized in the shibboleth of this or that sect
or section of the Christian Church; and, when we enter
on the consideration of these, we are no longer on the
solid shore of Christian unity, but are launched on the
stormy and open sea of controversy and difference.
5. I say at once, and without fear of contradiction,
that no theory of the Atonement ever formulated, no
scholastic explanation of the Atonement ever devised,
has been accepted by the Universal Church, or can put
forth the slightest claim to catholicity. I now only
state the facts; I will afterward glance at the reasons
why it is so.
I. The fact is sufficiently proved and admitted in
every history of doctrines ever written. The writings of
the Ante-Nicene Fathers on these subjects are entirely
unsystematic, and only quote the current Scriptural
phrases. The main exception is Irenæus. In him is
first found—for his language on the subject appears to
me wholly unambiguous—the disastrous theory that the
ransom which Christ paid was paid to Satan. This
unhappy theory, so dishonoring to God, so closely allied
to Gnosticism and dualism, can put forth a stronger
claim to universality than any other; for it lasted
almost unquestioned for nearly a thousand years.
was not only adopted by Origen, but by him, unhappily,
systematized and supplemented. He was the earliest
to suggest the still more baseless and God-dishonoring
It
Christian Doctrine of the Atonement. 263
!
fancy that Satan was tricked into acceptance of this
ransom by our Lord's Incarnation-a notion which,
though to us it seems little short of blasphemous, is re-
peated even by such writers as Ambrose, and down even
to the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which were the one
chief theological manual of the Middle Ages. The
genius of one man-of the great St. Anselm-destroyed
this deeply-rooted theory at a single blow, by showing
that it involved nothing short of pure Manicheeism. He
substituted for it the forensic theory of rigid equivalent
satisfaction. This theory, too, had its day, and has
fallen into a neglect so complete that not a trace of
it is to be found in thousands of modern sermons and
volumes of theology.
Then came the Reformation theories of "substitu-
tion," of "imputation," of "vicarious punishment."
Then came the juristic scheme of the legist, Grotius.
Now, though each of these schemes or theories counts
many nominal adherents-though each of them claims
to be a legitimate inference from some phrases or frag-
ment of Scripture-they are very rarely brought into
prominence, and not one of them has ever been accred-
ited or stamped with approval by the Church of God.
They have, at the utmost, been left as permissible opin-
ions or conjectures in the region of unfathomable mys-
teries. They all abound in terms which, at the best, are
but inferential and non-scriptural. Neither "vicari-
ous," nor "substitution," nor "satisfaction," nor "ex-
piation" occurs in the New Testament; nor is it any-
where said that Christ saved us from the punishment of
sin; or that His own death was a penalty. Even the
phrase "God for Christ's sake forgave" is a mistrans
264 Christian Doctrine of the Atonement.
lation of our Authorized Version, for the infinitely
deeper and diviner expression of St. Paul, "God in
Christ forgave." Even if the theories involved in these
phrases be regarded as tenable, or even inevitable, it is
certain that the popular expositions of them-by which
alone the mass of Christians can judge-are open to the
strongest objection, and are regarded by many as involv-
ing nothing less then a needless stumbling-block and a
shock to the moral sense. When we are told in hymns
by Dr. Watts,
“Rich were the drops of Jesu's blood
That calmed God's frowning face;
That sprinkled o'er the burning throne
And turned the wrath to grace;"
or, by Sir Henry Wotton, that
"One rosy drop from Jesu's heart
Was worlds of seas to quench God's ire;
ور
or, in sermons, by a well-known English preacher, that
Jesus "wiped away the red anger-spot from the brow of
God;" or, by an American Professor, that "God drew
this world upon Calvary and slew his only Son;" or, by
another popular divine, that "Christ at one tremendous
draught drank damnation dry;" when an American
criminal, at the foot of the gallows, trained in such
forms of dogma, talked to the crowd about "holding
up the blood of Christ between himself and the flaming
face of God"-such language not only sounds abhor-
rent to many, but is in flagrant disaccord with the num-
berless revelations which tell us that the Atonement was
due to the Father's love. In popular apprehension, at
any rate, all such theories are dangerously tainted with
Christian Doctrine of the Atonement. 265
the heresies of sheer Tritheism; of most unscripturally
contrasting the Son's love with the Father's wrath;
of implying a civil war, so to speak, between the at-
tributes of justice and mercy in the character of God;
of attributing to the All-just, the All-merciful, the All-
holy, the acceptance of mere legal fictions to appease
an implacable demand for vengeance; of imagining a
divergence of will in the Holy Trinity; of dishonoring
God by thinking that he is altogether such an one as
ourselves, by speaking of him ignobly as though he were
an Evil Demiurge, demanding sanguinary propitiation, or
a Pagan Deity controlled by some overruling necessity.
II. And the cause of all these errors is obvious. They
spring from ignoring the fact that it has not pleased
God to give us the plan of salvation in dialectics; from
the bad tendency to torture isolated expressions into the
ever-widening spiral ergo of unlimited consequences ;
from tessellating varied metaphors into formal systmes;
from trying to construct the whole, when God has only
given us knowledge of a part; from the bad rule of ec-
clesiastical opinionativeness and tyranny consequentiæ
æquipollent revelatis.
Now we should be secure from the temptation of fall-
ing into such errors, and of so placing the stumbling-
blocks of our subjective idols before the unsuspecting
childhood of the world, if we would but humbly learn
the force of that wise admonition of the Rabbis: "Learn
to say 'I do not know."" The Scripture speaks of the
Atonement almost exclusively in metaphors; and we
might at least admit the Church rule, Theologia para-
bolica non est demonstrativa. Apart from the figures
of purification by sprinkling, and the covering of filthy
266 Christian Doctrine of the Atonement.
a
robes, all the figures in which Holy Scripture speaks of
the Atonement are reducible under the four words,
ἱλασμός, “ an atoning sacrifce;” καταλλαγή, σε αν
reconciliation;" avriλurpov, "a ransom from slavery,"
ἀντίλυτρον,
and "satisfaction," or the discharge of a debt, for which
there is no single Greek word. But the analogy of all
Scripture language should teach us that these words are
only meant to describe the effects of the Atonement in
its relation to man. Theorizing on the word natal-
λayn led to the false conception of our Father as our
enemy; theorizing on the word avriλvrpov led to the
false conception of Irenæus, Origen, and hosts of Fathers
and Schoolmen about a compact, and even a fraudful
compact, between God and Satan; theorizing on the
word "satisfaction" led to the hard forensic schemes of
Anselm, and of Grotius; theorizing on the word iλaoµòs
led to all the false and revolting expressions which have
been ingrafted by popular ignorance on the teaching of
the Reformers. In the word iλasμos alone, there is
the same dimly-apprehended mystery which lies in the
Jewish system of sacrifice; but neither in that system-
about which Christian theologians have held the most
conflicting views-nor in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is
there any answer to the question of Episcopius about
the Atonement, "An circa Deum aliquid effecerit?"
Of that mystery-the effect of the Atonement as regards
God-we can only say that it is wholly beyond the com-
prehension of our finite faculties-Ignorando cognosci-
tur. Of the blessed effects of the Atonement in rela-
tion to man we know, or may know all; of the mys-
terious acts, of the operative cause, we know and can
know nothing. This is what the Church clearly teaches
Christian Doctrine of the Atonement. 267
us, alike by what she does say and by what she carefully
abstains from saying. It has been the ultimate conclu-
sion arrived at by many of the greatest modern theolo-
gians, both dead and living-by men, for instance, so
entirely different as Canon Mozley and Professor Mau-
rice; and it is also the direct teaching of the great
divine whom of all others the English Church has most
delighted to honor. "Scripture," says Bishop Butler,
"has left this matter of the satisfaction of Christ mys-
terious, left somewhat in it unrevealed," so that "all
conjecture about it must be, if not evidently absurd, at
least uncertain."
While, then, we humbly put our sole trust in Christ,
and look on His Atonement as the sole source of our
hope, we are not obliged to accept any of the theories
of men respecting it, whether those of Irenæus, or of
Origen, or of Anselm, or of Grotius, or of Calvin ;
whether they be formulated as naked substitution or vi-
carious punishment, or whatsoever else. We accept only
what the Scriptures have plainly said and what has been
stamped with the approval of the Universal Church.
We cannot construct compact and elaborate systems out
of transcendent and varying metaphors. Nothing but
failure can come, or has ever come, of the attempt to
fathom the depths of God with the finger of man-the
attempts to fly up into the secrets of the Deity on the
waxen wings of the understanding.
This, then, we say and earnestly believe that Christ's
death is the means of our life; that it is an atoning sac-
rifice for us; that in that act God was in Christ recon-
ciling the world unto himself, that it was the appointed
means of our deliverance, of our regeneration, of our
268 Christian Doctrine of the Atonement.
sanctification, of our hope of glory. And to all who
would frame elaborate systems beyond this, it seems to
me that the Church of God, alike by her teaching and
by her silence, addresses the wise rebuke of St. Chrys-
ostom, τἄλλα μὴ περιεργάζου. The infinitely blessed
results of Christ's redemption we know. They alone
concern us. They are the joy and the thanksgiving of
our life. Of the mystery as regards the mind of God
we can only say that "the supreme expression of God's
government of man is the consciousness of humanity;
nor have we any means of apprehending the reasons of
the Atonement apart from the work which it accom-
plishes in the spiritual consciousness of the race."
"The mysterious act," says the great Christian philoso-
pher to whom English theology is so deeply indebted,
"is transcendent, factum est; and, beyond the infor
mation contained in the enunciation of the fact, it can
only be characterized"-as Scripture characterizes it-
"by its consequences as regards ourselves."
ADDRESS III.
DELIVERED AT THE CHURCH CONGRESS IN NEW HAVEN, OCTOBER,
1885.
The Grounds of Christian Unity.
THE first ground of Christian unity-unity in heart
and soul amid divergences of opinion and variations
of practice is the many-sidedness of truth.
We must draw a deep distinction between unity and
uniformity. Unity is essential and obligatory; uni-
formity is impossible, and even, I will venture to say,
undesirable. Infinite truth has manifold aspects for
finite understandings. To use the splendid expression
of St. Paul, it is a noλvnоinilos σopia, a "many-
colored," a "richly variegated-wisdom." The Church, to
use the ancient phrase, is "circumamicta varietatibus,
clothed in raiment of divers colors; and the truth she
teaches does not shine in a single light only, but is like
a gem of which no eye can see at once the glories of
each separate facet. We see the separate colors of the
divine rainbow; we cannot see the seven-fold perfection
of its undivided light.
99
Truth, in theology, no less than in science, has been
revealed to us, as we are told in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως, “ fragmenta
270 The Grounds of Christian Unity.
1
rily and multifariously," "in many parts and in many
manners;” nor is it possible for us, with our human
limitations, to see it steadily and see it whole. And
this à priori certainty is confirmed by experience. As
an historic fact, there never has been, in the Christian
Church, a complete absence of different schools of
thought; there never has been an absolute uniformity
of belief and of practice. If it did not exist in the
Church of Jerusalem, why should we expect it to exist
in the churches of Europe? If in the first century
there were the schools of Jerusalem, of Antioch, and of
Alexandria, is it likely that there will be no wide differ-
ences of views and ritual amid the immense complexities
of modern Christendom?
If this fact had been duly apprehended, churches and
their rulers might have been saved from their disas-
trous attempts to secure what is impossible. Those at-
tempts in many an age have not only marred the beauty
and maimed the force of Christian life, but they have
led to the darkest and deadliest crimes which have ever
disgraced the corporate action of the Church of God;
to Albigensian Crusades, to Smithfield martyrdoms, to
the infamies of the Inquisition, to the desperate iniqui-
ties which have been committed by religious tyranny in
its endeavor to storm that conscience of man which
is the very citadel of Heaven. And this error of invin-
cible ignorance, so far from being successful even at
the hideous cost of Moloch-sacrifice, has only produced,
at the most, a nominal, a Laodicean, a stupid and
uninquiring uniformity-a uniformity which warred
against all freedom and all progress-a silence of terror,
a torpor of assurance, a drugged sleep of unnatural
The Grounds of Christian Unity. 271
acquiescence; the uniformity of stagnation, ignorance,
and death. If diversity without unity be discord, on
the other hand, unity without diversity is death. In
every living Church, in every living nation, there must
be freedom, and there must be progress.
"The old order changeth, giving place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
St. Cyprian was very wise when he formulated the
maxim, "Salvo jure communionis diversa sentire."
✓
Another ground of Christian unity is the com-
mand of Christ Christ's NEW commandment — the
commandment on which hang all the Law and the
Prophets; the commandment so often repeated on
the lips of Christians, so often belied in their actions
"Love one another." What has been the sphere
in which disunion has chiefly and most dangerously
worked? Has it not been in matters of organization,
in matters of ceremonial, and in matters of minor and
non-essential opinion? But the discoveries of every
year are demonstrating to us more decisively that on
these matters the widest latitude was left to the Apos-
tolic Church. As to ceremonial, St. Paul's one suffi-
cient rubric was: "Let all things be done decently and
in order." As to organization, our Lord said, Other
sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must
bring that there may be-not "one fold"-which, per-
haps, there never will be, or was meant to be-but that
there may be "one flock, one shepherd." As regards the
minor opinions which separate Christians into so many
petty schisms, we may conjecture how the great Apostle
272
The Grounds of Christian Unity.
of the Gentiles would have dealt with them when we read
how he dealt with so serious an error as a denial of the
Resurrection. He dealt with it not by anathema, not by
punishment, still less by excommunication, but only by
a solemn question and by a glorious argument. Sects
and parties have been fond of hurling at each other the
name of "heretic ; " but in the New Testament the
word aipɛois means not the aberration of opinion, but
the recklessness of faction. The word aiperiиós has no
other meaning than that of a vehement partisan. The
worst of all heresies in any Christian, and the heresy
which Christ holds as most inexcusable, however com-
monly and however bitterly it betray itself in our con-
troversies, is the heresy of hatred, is that odium which,
to the eternal shame of our apostacy from the tender
forbearance of our Lord, has acquired the distinctive.
name of "theologicum." If a man be animated by
that spirit-be he the most dreaded champion of his
shibboleth, the foremost fugleman of his party-if he
be guilty of that heresy, his Christianity is heathenism,
his orthodoxy a cloak for error. "If a man love not
his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God
whom he hath not seen ?”
A third ground of Christian unity is that faith which,
in its highest sense, had to St. Paul no other meaning
than oneness with Christ.
Theologians may write huge folios of interminable
dogmatics, they may enlarge to infinity their personal
inferences from single texts, and so may foist into our
temples their own idols of the forum, of the theatre, and
of the cave; nevertheless, it remains certain that the
great, eternal, essential truths of Christianity are few and
The Grounds of Christian Unity. 273
་་
simple, so few and so simple that they may be written
upon the palm of the hand. "They ask me for secrets.
of salvation," said St. Francis de Sales. "For myself I
know no secrets but this-to love God with all our hearts,
and our neighbor as ourselves.'
""
The terms of our fellowship of love should be Catho-
lic, as the Church of God. The railing restrictions.
which fence in as with razors and pitchforks the narrow
wicket of parties, and would fain make the portal of
the Church itself bristle with anathemas, are unevan-
gelic, unapostolic, unchristian.
The more we are
Christians the more will our faith "be broad with the
breadth of the charity of Almighty God, and narrow only
with the narrowness of his righteousness." To those who
tried at Corinth to foster party spirit, and draw party
distinctions, St. Paul addressed the indignant question,
μεμέρισται ὁ Χριστός; “ Has Christ been parcelled
into fragments?" Will you dare to inscribe his name
on the ignoble fluttering pennons of a party, and claim
them as the eternal semper eadem of the Church of God?
Wise was the answer of the old Christian Bishop, when
he was asked to what party he belonged, "Christianus
mihi nomen est Catholicus cognomen. Partisans are
ever ready to say with the Sons of Thunder, "We for-
bade him because he followeth not after us;" but Christ's
answer was, "Forbid him not." Fatal will it be to any
Church to prefer the Elijah spirit which calls down fire
from heaven to the Christ spirit which forbears and
forgives. The brother whom we are tempted to mis-
represent, to embitter, to dislike, and to denounce, is
he not one with us in the law of duty, one in the aim of
life, one in the earnestness of prayer, one in the grace
""
18
274
The Grounds of Christian Unity.
:
of the holy sacraments, one in the great ancient creeds
of the Gospel? Our differences are but the varying
ripples of the sea, our unity as the ocean's unseen bed.
It is the unity of one body and one Spirit, and one hope
of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one
God and Father of all, who is above all and through all
and in us all. In these lies the unity of Christian
love. The politician of the party, the Goliath of the
faction, the controversalist of the sect, delight to exacer-
bate minor differences; but the soul which is calm and
strong, and joyful in God,
"Remembering our dear Lord who died for all,
And musing on the little lives of men,
And how they mar that little by their feuds,"
will feel that a cup of cold water, a grasp of friendship,
a word of sympathy given in Christ's name to one of
Christ's disciples who followeth not after us, is better
than a barren assent to the whole Summa Theologiæ,
and that what the Lord requires of us is not sacrifice,
but mercy; that it is to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with our God.
The last ground of Christian unity on which I will
touch is that it is essential to the prosperity of the Church
of Christ. While we are disputing and wrangling-often
about the uncertain, often about the infinitely little-the
enemy is at our gates.
"What is a town of war
Yet wild, the people's hearts brimful appear,
To manage private and domestic quarrels?
'Tis monstrous.”
What injures the cause of Christ is not in the least
The Grounds of Christian Unity. 275
the existence of differences, whether in practice or in
opinion, respecting that which is imperfectly revealed,
but the mismanagement of those differences; not the
inevitable divergences in minor matters of opinion, but
(what Melanchthon was glad to die that he might
escape) "the rage of theologians" respecting them.
Our perils are from within. What neither Atheism
will ever achieve, nor Agnosticism, nor direct assault,
may be fatally accomplished by our internal dissensions
and want of mutual charity. They may subdue that
Quod neque Tydides, nec Larissæus Achilles,
Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinæ."
66
St. Paul warned us of this long ago. "But if ve bite
and devour one another, take heed that ye be not con-
sumed one of another."
The best and truest Christians have long ago learned,
at least in practice, the force of these truths. Within
those limits of eternal certainty
Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum,”
no human beings could have differed more widely than
the stern Governor Bradford, the saintly missionary
Eliot, and the saintly Jesuit, Druillettes; yet the Jesuit
was the honored guest of the Puritan governor, and the
saintly apostle of the Indians pressed him to spend a
whole winter in his humble home. When Dr. Channing
died the members of all religious denominations alike
mourned for him, and the bells of every place of wor-
ship were tolled for his funeral.
Let me end with one or two brief testimonies from men
whose religious views were wide as the poles asunder


276
The Grounds of Christian Unity.
"Summa nostræ religionis Pax est," said Erasmus.
"In necessariis Unitas, in dubiis Libertas, in omnibus
Caritas," said the obscure German divine of the seven-
teenth century, Rupertus Meldenius; and by that sen-
tence alone he lives. "The meek, the just, the pious,
the devout," said the founder of Pennsylvania, "are all
of one religion; and they shall meet and recognize each
other when their various masks and liveries are stripped
away." "When a Church inscribes on its portals,"
said Abraham Lincoln, "the two great commandments
of the Law and the Gospel, and makes obedience to them
the test of its membership, to that Church will I belong."
"Where there is the love of God," said the great and
eloquent Lacordaire, "there is Jesus Christ; and where
there is Jesus Christ, there is the Church with him."
"The true religion sprung from God above,
Is like its fountain, full of charity ;
Embracing all things with a tender love,
Full of good-will, and meek expectancy;
Full of true justice, and sure verity;
In voice and heart free, large, ev'n infinite ;
Not wedged in strait particularity,
But grasping all things in her free, active spirit.
Bright lamp of God! Oh! that all men could joy
In thy pure light!"
.1
ADDRESS IV.
DELIVERED AT THE TEMPERANCE RECEPTION, CHICKERING HALL,
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 29, 1885.
Ladies and Gentlemen :
I MUST, first of all, thank you from my heart for this
far too kind and generous recognition of such poor
efforts as I have been enabled to make in the cause of
Temperance. Your appreciation will be to me the
strongest outward incentive which I have yet received,
if, indeed, any incentive were needed to prevent my
But I will venture to
flagging in so sacred a cause.
hope that this reception is given to me because of what
I have done, or rather tried to do, in the past, and not
in the expectation that I can make to you any great
speech on the present occasion. I cannot do it, because
already in America, my time has been too much occu-
pied, and my physical power strained to the utmost by
the repeated necessity for addressing large audiences.
On this ground to-day, also, my remarks will be
general, and above all, they will be free from any
admixture of oratory, rhetoric, or eloquence-words of
· which the two first have always had for me an obscure

278
Temperance Address.
meaning, and of which the third expresses a magnificent
gift of God, to the possession of which I have never
had the smallest claim, or put forth the smallest pre-
tension.
1. Let me begin with telling you why I became a
total abstainer. Perhaps, at this point, some of my
non-abstaining friends will shudder and say to them-
selves, now we are going to have a specimen of that
intemperate language which a bad and stale epigram
has identified with temperance reformers.
Now we
shall have all kinds of interference with the liberty of
the subject on the plea of ending the slavery of the
abject. Now we shall hear dubious Scripture argu-
ments, and uncharitably Pharisaic judgments. Ladies
and gentlemen, in my hands I think that you ought to
feel secure.
I am a Vice-President of the Church of
England Temperance Society, and that great society is
on a double basis, and not only welcomes, but cordially
invites, the co-operation of its non-abstaining section.
I am ready to defend the principles of Total Absti-
nence when they are attacked, and even when they are
depreciated; but I am not ready, and never have been
ready, to say one word which should be construed into
the condemnation of my brethren. Let every man be
fully persuaded in his own mind. The statement of my
own reasons for having become, ten years ago, a total
abstainer, is not meant to involve the shadow of the
shade of a judgment upon others.
2. My reasons, then, for taking the pledge were
partly general and partly special. First, I became
convinced that the use of alcohol in any form was not
a necessity. I saw that whole nations have lived and
Temperance Address.
279
Men
flourished without it. I believed that the whole race
of man had existed for centuries previous to its discov-
ery. I was struck by the indisputable fact that in
England 20,000 inhabitants of our prisons, accustomed
to it all their lives, and the majority of them brought
into prison directly or indirectly by the abuse of it,
could be, and were, from the moment of their imprison-
ment, absolutely deprived of it, not only without loss,
but with entire gain to their personal health.
enter prison sickly and blighted, are deprived of drink,
and leave prison strong and hale; and women who,
when incarcerated, are hideous to look upon, after
being made compulsorily sober by Act of Parliament,
recover the bloom of health and almost of beauty.
Next I derived from the recorded testimony of some
of our most eminent physicians that the use of alcohol
is a subtle and manifold source of disease even to thou-
sands who use it in quantities conventionally deemed
moderate; and from the testimony even of many who
discountenanced total abstinence that all the young, and
all the healthy, and all who eat well and sleep well do
not require it, and are better without it. Then the
carefully drawn statistics of many insurance societies
convinced me that total abstinence, so far from short-
ening life, distinctly and indisputably conduced to lon-
gevity. Then I accumulated proof that drink is so far
from being requisite to physical strength or intellec-
tual force, that many of the greatest athletes, from the
days of Samson onwards, "whose drink was only of the
crystal brook," have achieved, without alcohol, mightier
feats than have ever been achieved with it; and many
of the world's wisest, even if they have not said with
280
Temperance Address.
:
Pindar, have yet drawn a better inspiration from other
sources than can be drawn chemically from the fumes
of wine. Seeing all which, and much more—seeing,
too, in the Holy Scripture God's own approval of His
Nazarites, who, as the Prophet Jeremiah tells us, were
"purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they
were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing
was of sapphires." I saw, or thought I saw, grounds
sufficient and superfluously sufficient to make me an
abstainer. And besides all this I knew that the life
of man always gains by the abolition of needless ex-
penses and artificial wants. Your own wise Ben-
jamin Franklin said a hundred years ago, "Temper-
ance puts wood on the fire, meat in the barrel, flour
in the tub, money in the purse, credit in the country,
clothes on the bairns, intelligence in the brain, and
spirit in the constitution."
Some of us then, perhaps, became abstainers on some
such grounds as these. We believed by evidence, and
we have found by experience, that our small self-denial,
if self-denial it could even be called, would conduce to
health, to clearness of mind, to strength of body, to
length of days and simplicity of life. Further than
this, we saw that life is full of temptations, and that
there was one fatal temptation, at any rate, from which
we should be absolutely and under all circumstances
exempt.
3. And yet these, I will venture to say, were not the
reasons which prevailed with most of us. We looked
into the field of history, and from the days of that hor-
rible scene in the tent of the Patriarch down to the
records of yesterday, we saw that from the flood down-
Temperance Address.
281
ward strong drink had been to the masses of mankind
a curse intolerable in its incidence and interminable in
its malignity. Even the most ancient writers, profane
as well as sacred, have, like Lucretius, described with
horror and indignation the agonies and the crimes caused
by drunkenness; and even the most ancient nations,
like the Spartans, have endeavored to repudiate its
seductions. It is sometimes hinted that total abstainers
are plebeian and ignorant persons; but plebeian and
ignorant as we may be, we can refer in support of our
views to books the most refined, to authors the most
fastidiously delicate, to statesmen the least wedded to
our favorite convictions. Read Mr. Trevelyan's chapter
on "The Age of Gout," in his life of Charles James
Fox; read Sir Henry Havelock's contrast of the siege of
Ghuzree by an army without drink, and of the siege
of Lucknow by an army with drink; read Sir John
Kaye's thrilling history of the Indian mutiny, and see
how the drunkenness of the troops on the day after our
first lodgment in Delhi was within an ace of causing to
us the total loss of our Indian Empire; read what Mr.
Kinglake says in his "History of the Crimean War,”
of British soldiers, gentle as women and brave as lions,
until, and only until, the drink came to demoralize and
degrade them; read the testimony of many eminent
generals that a sober army is an army almost without
crime; read Mr. Lecky's remarkable chapter in his
"History of European Morals," of the effects caused by
the introduction of gin among the lower classes in the
year 1724, a year which, on that account, he brands as
unapproachable in prolific calamity; read the testimony
of Bishop Benson, the friend and patron of Whitefield,
282
Temperance Address.
that gin was making the English people what they
never had been before-cruel and inhuman—and that
these "cursed spirituous liquors," as he calls them, had
changed the very nature of the people; read the pas-
sionate denunciation of the Gin Act by the most polished
gentleman of his day, the famous Lord Chesterfield, as
an act calculated for the propagation of diseases, the
suppression of industry, and the destruction of man-
kind." Shall I go farther back still, and tell you how,
350 years ago, Shakespeare wrote "Oh, thou invisible
spirit of wine, if there is no other name thou art known
by, let us call thee devil;" how, 250 years ago, Bishop
Hale said that "it needed a deluge of fire to purge
England from her drunkenness ;" how, 200 years ago,
the great Judge, Sir Matthew Hale, declared that
'four crimes out of five were the issue of excessive
drinking in taverns and ale-houses." Shall I come
down to the last generation, and quote to you the testi-
mony of such men as Charles Lamb, as Hartley Cole-
ridge, and Robert Burns; or shall I come down to the
present day, and quote to you (as I could do) words—
words which, if used by us, would have been denounced
as among the worst instances of the intemperate lan-
guage of temperance reformers-of men of letters like
John Morley, and John Ruskin, and Thomas Carlyle,
and of the Archhishop of York, and of the Bishop of
London, and of the Earl of Shaftesbury, and of Lord
Coleridge, and of nearly every judge who sits on the
bench of British Themis, and who knows, by daily and
dreadful experience, that drink is totidem literis the
very synonym of crime. Gentlemen, it is all nonsense
for the defenders of drink to try upon us either the con-
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283
spiracy of silence or the inquiry of contempt. As to
the first, we will make our own voices come back to us
in millions of echoes; as to the second, we know that
contempt is only powerful against that which is con-
temptible.
4. Or if we needed proof of our position-proof that
we abstainers are not the mere ignorant fanatics which
we are described to be-let us pass into an atmosphere
which is, I fear, singularly unsusceptible to the blind
passion for social reform-the atmosphere of the English
House of Commons. It is rarely that I have seen a
thrill of manifest emotion pass through that assem-
blage; but I saw and I felt the thrill, I saw it pass as a
breeze passes over the fields of summer corn, when, four
years ago Mr. Gladstone, standing at the table as Prime
Minister, said that drink had produced evils more.
deadly, because more continuous, than those caused to
mankind by the great historic scourges of war, famine,
and pestilence combined. The sentiment was not
original. It had first been said by a brewer of genius,
a Member of Parliament, Mr. Charles Buxton, who had
had amplest opportunities of knowing the truth of
what he said. But Mr. Gladstone quoted it; he ac-
cepted it; he indorsed it with all the weight of his
high position, of his immense experience, of his vast
knowledge of mankind. He indorsed it; he abides by
it he has never withdrawn it. He is not a total ab-
stainer. There are some temperance reformers who do
not think that his liquor-legislation has been suc-
cessful; there are many who believe that he might have
yielded more to us, might have done more for us, than
he has done. But at least he has done our cause the
;
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Temperance Address.
service of this tremendous sentence, so fatally true, so
awfully descriptive, so overwhelming a justification of
all we have done and said-nay, so smiting a reproof to
us that, after all, we have done and said so little. For,
if words have any meaning at all, only think what those
words mean. War-you know by no remote experience
what war is-its agonies, its horrors, its crimes ;—its
widowed homes, its orphaned children, its ghastly wounds
-youths with their lives prematurely cut off-brave men
with the life-blood slowly ebbing from their veins in the
chill moonlight, on the crimson turf. Famine, we know
that where that meagre spectre stalks in cities, it turns
men into wild beasts, and makes the mother's eye cruel
to her infant at the breast. Pestilence we have had of
late; it turns the inhabitants of cities into poltroons;
how men fly from it in thousands, in panic-stricken
cowardice; how it paralyzes industry; how it snatches
the last consolation from the living, and a hallowed
grave from the dead; and is there to be vice, a pre-
ventable vice, in the midst of us which causes evils
deadlier, because more continuous, than the three great
historic scourges, War, Famine, and Pestilence com-
bined? And are we to be cold, indifferent, so neutral,
so selfishly acquiescent, making no serious, no united
effort to put an end to this wide-wasting conflagra-
tion to this immeasurable catastrophe ? War, if
in time of war he deserves a civic crown who saves
the life of a single citizen; famine, if he be bene-
factor of the race who makes two corn-ears grow where
but one grew before; pestilence, if one of the noblest
acts of history is that of him who stood between the
living and the dead, and the plague was stayed ;—if in
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285
time of war, blessed are the peace-makers; if in days of
famine it be noble to feed the hungry; if in visitation
of plague it is divine to heal the sick; then surely, in
face of an evil more deadly in its effects, because more
continuous, than war, famine and pestilence combined,
we must be at the last gasp of national honor, in the
last paralysis of national selfishness, if there be not
among us enough salt of morality, enough fire of cour-
age, enough passion of enthusiasm, to grapple with this
intolerable curse.
5. But, gentlemen, I can tell you in four letters of one
motive for abstinence, which in my own mind was as
Aaron's serpent rod and prevailed over all the rest. It
was pity, sheer human pity. I will not stop to tell you
the horrible results of drunkenness which, in my own
parish, under the very shadows of the great Abbey, I
have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own
ears. If I did I could indeed say to you
"Come, sit you down,
And I will wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff
If damned custom have not brazed it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense."
But I may presume that I am speaking to those who
are familiar with the common facts-so common yet so
ghastly-which in England, at any rate, are enough to
make us blush with shame and burn with indignation.
I believed, and still believe, or rather I now not only
believe but know, that by becoming an abstainer, by
taking part in Temperance Reform, I could help others;
and if others could have known and seen all that I have
seen, I believed that in their case, too,
འ
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Temperance Address.
"Pity like a naked, new-born babe
Striding the blast, and heaven's cherubim horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air
Would blow these horrid deeds in every eye,
That tears could drown the wind."
I would then appeal to all for pity;-pity for the vast
multitudes who become the helpless victims of a dead
chemical product, potent to destroy the souls for which
Christ died; pity for the ravages wrought by this bitter
source of human woe; pity for the hundreds and thou-
sands of men, who, under this hideous fascination,
degrade their lives into the misery and pollution of a
long-continued death; pity for the youths who thus
"pour poison into the roses of their youth," so that its
root is as rottenness; pity for the hearts of mothers rent
by anguish for these their ruined prodigals; pity for the
wives and husbands on whose hearth burn the fires of
hell; pity for the unmotherly mothers and unwomanly
women who nigh turn motherhood to shame, womanli-
ness to loathing; pity for those lurid tragedies where
the vitriol maddens; or is there no voice strong enough
to plead like angels trumpet-tongued against the deep
damnation of their bodies; pity for the little children
who, in the awful language of South are, because of
drink, not so much born into the world as damned into
the world, born to lives of disease and degradation, or
in these Christian lands yearly pass through the fire to
this idol in far vaster multitudes than were ever sacri-
ficed of old in the Valley of Hinnom to Moloch the abom-
ination of the children of Ammon; pity for England,
which now, for fully two centuries, has been writhing
in these dragon-folds of licensed temptations; pity for
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287
the whole race of mankind, which sends up a cry from
every polluted continent, and which yet cherishes—aye,
and fondly-in its bosom this venomous and deadly asp.
Alone of human woes, dear heaven, it is a curse of
which the entail might be at once cut off; and yet
mankind, partly blinded by conceit, partly seduced by
pleasure, and partly rendered callous by greed, still suf
fers drink for year after year, in every continent, almost
in every city, to blast innumerable careers and to blight
innumerable homes-a folly, which almost drives us
to say with the despairing moralist that it seems as if
humanity were still half serpent and yet half extracted
from the clay, a lacertian brood of bitterness, whose trail
is on the leaf a guilty slime and in the land a useless
furrow.
6. Gentlemen, this cause of Temperance Reform,
which, in my own mind, and I believe in the minds of
millions, is mainly the child of pity, appeals to us as
Humanitarians; it appeals to us as Philanthropists; it
appeals to us with million-fold force as Christians; but
if I harrowed the ground quite indefinitely, might I not
assume that it should appeal to us with gigantic force
merely as patriots. "National crime," said Oliver
Cromwell, is a thing that God will reckon for; and I
wish it may not lie on the nation a day longer than you
have an opportunity to find a remedy." The drink sys-
tem is a national crime. "A prosperous iniquity," said
Jeremy Taylor, "is the most unprofitable condition in
the world." I so hold the drink system is a prosperous
iniquity. "I do not believe," said Burke, "that any
good constitution of government or freedom can find it
necessary to drive any part of their people to a perma-
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Temperance Address.
nent slavery." The drink system overcomes tens of
thousands. "If I thought," said your own great ora-
tor, Daniel Webster, "that there was a stain upon
the remotest hem of the garment of my country, I
would devote my utmost labors to wipe it off.” This is
the duty of every patriot. This is what, in my small
measure, according to my feeble capacity, I have striven
to do. For, whatever may be the case in America, it is
certainly the case in England that drunkenness, and the
licensed, the profitable, the wealth-producing monopoly
which causes drunkenness, is a stain not only upon
the hem but dyeing all the white robes of England, a
stain of the deepest dye-a stain deep and crimson
enough to incarnadine the multitudinous lives over
which she rules.
7. Yes, and I will confess that I am weary and dis-
heartened by the slowness of our progress. After so
many years of struggle, we are misunderstood, we are
misrepresented, we are incessantly made the object of
taunts and sneers. For this we care nothing, or less than
nothing. They say what say they ?-let them say.
Let echo repeat, if it will, the sounds that are emptiest.
Let men fling more stones at us than other men have
roses showered on them. We have counted the cost.
We have learnt the lesson which some of your own great
speakers have helped to teach us that God is the only
final public opinion; that one with God is always in a
majority. But what we do grieve at is, if not the com-
parative failure of our efforts, yet the painful slowness
of our success. We have seized the axe, we have thrown
it to its backmost poise. We have struck sturdy strokes,
but as yet we have hardly wounded the tough rind of
Temperance Address.
289
:
!
this upas tree. We have not split the gnarled obtusity
of the prejudices which are opposed to us. We have not
cleft the hoary head of inveterate abuses. We have
wrought no deliverance on the earth, and are not better
than our fathers. And yet
"We bate no jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear on, and steer
Up-hillward."
Cobbett wrote and spoke but for a few years, and then
he was helped to carry the Reform Bill. Cobden and
Bright harangued for ten years, and then, in the teeth
of antagonistic prejudice and ignorant selfishness they
procured the abolition of the corn-laws. It is fully a
hundred years since temperance efforts began in Eng-
land. It is more than fifty years since Joseph Livesey
and the seven men of Trenton, formed the first society
of Total Abstainers, and yet, in spite of an abstract reso-
lution in favor of local option, thrice passed by increas-
ing majorities in the House of Commons, we have scarce-
ly advanced one step nearer to effective legislation. So
strong is the might of callous selfishness, of interested
wealth! Yet we do not and we will not despair. I
have some hopes in the recent enormous extension of
the franchise. I shall see cause to despair, indeed, if
the more the power is given into the hands of the
people, the less it does not become in the tyrannous
hands of gin distillers and publicans. "Give me," said
Wendell Phillips, "anything that walks erect and can
read, and he shall count one in the millions of the
Lord's sacramental host, which is yet to come up and
trample all oppression into the dust." I know how
19

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dumb, how patient a people may be when it has suc-
cumbed for long years to the temptations so sedulously
prepared for it, when the minimum of resistance is
enringed as with a cordon of fire by the maximum of
seductive ruin, when it is baffled by sophistries, and
bewildered by epigrams, and deafened by the cries for
liberty which are often raised most loudly by oppres-
sors. But I know, also, that if we still try to educate
in the people the moral sense, if we awaken in drink-
besotted multitudes the dormant conscience, if we
kindle in slain souls the passion for deliverance, sooner
or later the people will speak in a voice of thunder; in
a voice whose mandates can no longer be resisted; in a
voice whose roar shall be as the sound of the advancing
chariot wheels of Retribution; in a voice which shall
thunder through senates and palaces, and be heard
at the Almighty throne. When the snow begins to
vanish from the crater of the volcano, the day may
not be distant when bellowing eruptions shall shatter
its rocky fastnesses, the burning lava shall flood its
slopes.
8. It is thus that every great moral, social, and re-
ligious reform has been achieved. Many spring from
the few, mostly from the individual, one man becomes.
impressed with a deep conviction. It haunts—it mas-
ters him. It becomes the ruling purpose and passion
of his life. While he is musing the fire burns, and
at last he speaks with his tongue. And no sooner has
he spoken, be it even with a tongue stammering like
that of Moses, than he finds that he has not been soli-
tary in his convictions. Others have already thought
as he has done. They rally round him; they catch
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291
fire with a common enthusiasm ; they flash into other
hearts the same nobleness, the same readiness to spend,
and to be spent, in a good cause.
This was the history of the abolition of gladiatorial
games. This was the history of the Reformation. This
was the history of the most lovely and righteous acts.
in the long annals of England-first the abolition of the
slave-trade, then the emancipation of the slave.
Whenever I walk through the aisles of Westminster
I see the record of the struggle there in the grave of
Wilberforce, the statue of Sir F. Buxton, the tombs of
Granville, Sharpe, and Zachary Macaulay, who rescued
their native country from the guilt of using the arm of
freedom to rivet the fetters of the slave. Such memo-
rials are the historic witnesses to great truths. They
remind us of the toil and the peril required for moral
reformation; the slow awakenment of the conscience
of mankind; the kindling of enthusiasm, first of all,
in the minds of the few, and then its reflection like
some beacon-light flashed from mountain peak to moun-
tain peak by the minds of the many.
Well, gentlemen, in this great crusade to deliver
mankind-at any rate to deliver, to the utmost of our
power, the English-speaking race, to whom are mani-
festly intrusted the future destinies of the world-from
this curse of intoxication, next to God, we must trust
to two things-one the life-long purpose of some intense
and absorbing enthusiasm, burning like the altar flame
in the heart of some single man, or of some few men;
and next, the rousing of some great people shaking
those invincible locks-the laws of the moral convic-
tions—which lie like the sunny locks of Samson, waving
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over its illustrious shoulders. Men-single men-must
rise first like Clarkson, or Lloyd Garrison; groups of
men, like the early Abolitionists, who shall not be afraid
to lift their strong arms to bring heaven a little nearer
to this earth. And if we cannot be of these glorious
few, we may help them in the moral world by some-
thing analogous to the physical law, which is known
as the superimposition of small impacts. Let the great
beam of iron hang in the air, dull, and heavy, and mo-
tionless; strike it again and again with but a little
pellet of pith or cork. At first your endeavor will look
utterly ridiculous. Every one will laugh at you. But,
however, it will not be long before the great mass begins
to thrill, then to shiver, then to tremble, then to move,
then to sway and oscillate, lastly to swing with vast, reg-
ular, and rhythmic swing. The thousands of tiny im-
pacts have had an aggregate or collective force, stronger
than would have been produced by a giant's arm. In
this way, at least, we all can give our help. In this
way each one of us may contribute his infinitesimal
quota to the amelioration of the world.
9. But you in America must help us in England
with all your might. You in this matter must lead the
way. You are doing it. I do not say it to flatter you.
I do not desire to flatter you. I say it in the dark. In
all matters of Temperance Legislation, in the education.
and enlightenment of the moral sense on the great
question, you are already far ahead of us. In this
field, more than any other, you can repay the debt of
gratitude you owe to us. You owe to us the debt of
your liberty of independence, for it was Hampden
and Cromwell, and young Vane who sowed the seed
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293
.
"9
which resulted for you also, after your civil war, in
the glorious decision that there should be slaves no
longer in the country of the free. "Only once in the
broad sweep of human history," said Mr. Wendell
Phillips, "only once was any nation lifted so high that
she could stretch her imperial hand across the Atlantic,
and lift by one peaceful word a million of slaves into
liberty. God granted that glory only to your mother
land.' Yes, but you can emulate that glory; you can
repay that debt of moral gratitude. We helped you to
bear the sentiment and the convictions which at last
obliterated for ever from your history the stains and
shame of slavery. Do you help us to wipe away from
our annals the plague spots of tolerated vice. You are
about to erect in the entrance of the harbor of this
mighty city your statue of Liberty, the enlightener of
the world. You have already erected the staff pedestal;
soon may the furled statue rear in the august surges her
boundless brow. See that her shield is stainless, see
that there be no rust upon it,—no splashes upon it in
the blood of souls, which shall prevent it from flashing
back the sun of God, the sun of the righteousness of
heaven. Behind the vast amplitude of that immortal
shield may the oppressed of all lands find an inviolable
refuge, but never let the tyrant or the oppressor hide
under its silver shadow to shoot them with deadly arrows
in Freedom's prostituted name. Then shall your Liberty
wear forever the crown of stars upon her head, and hold
fast the olive branch in her hand, and trample the chains
of every slave beneath her feet. So shall America
strengthen England as England has inspired America.
May both nations alike be animated by the strong con-

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་
viction of devoted faithfulness. May we alike feel that
"in God's war slackness is infamy." I would say to
you, to each of you, and to the whole of this great na-
tion, in the dying words of the holy and eloquent
Ravignan, "Fight, fight, fight the battles of the
Lord."
O
LECTURE I.
Dante.
I WISH this evening to speak to you about the life
and teachings of one of the greatest, perhaps I should
say the greatest, religious poet who ever lived. Of
the multitudes of poets who have in all ages been in-
spired to teach us the noble in conduct and the pure in
thought, few only have deserved the high Latin title
of Vates, a name which means not a poet only, but
also a bard and a seer. And of these there are still
fewer who impress us with the sense of something pe-
culiarly sublime in their personalty. Indeed, I hardly
know of more than three whom I should name as exer-
cising this magnetic effect on the imagination. Those
three are Eschylus, Dante, and Milton ;-and of these
three, neither of the others in so supreme a degree as
Dante.
Wordsworth, that pure and lofty poet whose soul
was akin to Milton's own, has expressed this aspect of
Milton's character.
"Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
296
Dante.
1
יין
•
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free;
So didst thou travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
And again, in his Prelude, he calls him,
Soul awful, if this world has ever held
An awful soul."
Now with all this eulogy, lofty as it is, I fully
agree; and if there be any other poet to whom it be-
longs, in even fuller measure, it is Dante Alighieri.
His very names sound like a prophetic intimation of
his greatness. Dante is said to be an abbreviation of
“Durante ”—the lasting, the permanent; Alighieri,
one (that is) of the "wing-bearers," of whom his coat
of arms—an eagle's wing in an azure field—is the most
fitting symbol.
Gray, in his ode on the "Progress of Poesy," spoke
of Milton as
" he who rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of ecstacy,
The secrets of the abyss to spy.
He passed the flaming bounds of time and space,
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze;
He saw, but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.”
The last lines are but a fanciful allusion to Milton's
blindness; but of Dante it may be said that he saw with
eagle's eye, undazzled. No poet's soul ever showed the
same heroic dauntlessness. He trod, with unseared
feet, the very depths of Hell, in all its agony and ghast-
*
!
Dante.
297
liness; he toiled up the mountain terraces of Purgatory;
he moved as unfalteringly over heaven's azure as over
the burning marble; he mingled on equal terms among
its living rubies and topazes; he saw the whole rose of
Paradise unfolded; he gazed on the mystic triumph of
Christ, and on the Beatific Light of the Triune God;
and in every scene, lurid or celestial, before every per-
sonage, demonic or divine, whether he be speaking to
lost souls, or giants, or coarse fiends, or beatified
spirits of the redeemed, or apostles, or "thrones, domi-
nations, virtues, princedoms, powers," he retains before
them all and everywhere the royal Priesthood, the im-
mortal dignity of a man-of a man made in the image
of God, and for whom Christ died.
It is because such a poet seems to me peculiarly
fitted to teach, and elevate this age, and to make it
blush for its favorite vices, that I have ventured to
speak of him. There is no function which poets can
fulfil comparable to their high posthumous privilege of
permanently enriching the blood of the world, and
raising humanity to higher levels. Nations that pos-
sess such poets as Dante and Milton ought never to
degenerate. But they belong not to nations only,
but to all the world. If any young men should
chance to be among my audience to-night, I would
earnestly invite them to hold high and perpetual
companionship with such souls as these. And if
there should be any here who have hitherto found
their chief delight in meaner things, which dwarf the
intellectual faculties and blunt the moral sense, I would
fain hope that, here and there, one of them may be
induced to turn away from such follies, to breathe the
298
Dante.
.
pure, difficult, eager air of severe and holy poems like
the "Divina Commedia," and the "Paradise Lost."
For, indeed, the "Divine Comedy" is, as has been
said, "one of the landmarks of history. More than a
magnificent poem, more than the beginning of a lan-
guage, and the opening of a national literature, more
than the inspirer of art, and the glory of a great people,
it is one of those rare and solemn monuments of the
mind's power which measure and test what it can reach
to; which rise up, ineffaceably and forever, as time
goes on, marking out its advance by grander divisions
than its centuries, and adopted as epochs by the con-
sent of all who come after. They who know it best
would wish others also to know the power of that won-
derful poem; its austere yet subduing beauty; what
force there is in its free and earnest and solemn
verse to strengthen, to tranquillize, to console. Its
seriousness has put to shame their trifling; its mag-
nanimity their faint-heartedness; its living energy their
indolence; its stern and sad grandeur has rebuked low
thoughts; its thrilling tenderness has overcome sullen-
ness, and assuaged distress; its strong faith quelled
despair and soothed perplexity; its vast grasp imparted
the sense of harmony to the view of clashing truths.
After holding converse with such grandeur, our lives
can never be so small again.
""*
He was born in Florence in 1265, and I shall not
now dwell upon his biography. Suffice it to say that
the outline of his life may be summed up under the four
words, Love, Philosophy, Politics, Exile.
* Dean Church.
Dante.
299
.:
1. First, Love. He was but a dreamy, poetic boy of
nine years old when he first saw and loved Beatrice, the
daughter of Folco Portinari. The story of his love is
told in his "Vita Nuova." Love was his earliest idol,
and God-whose hand is so visible in this poet's life-
early shattered it. Beatrice, at twenty, married another,
and at twenty-five she died.
"Death, the great monitor, oft comes to prove
'Tis dust we dote on when 'tis man we love."
And yet let us not say that Dante's love came to
nothing. It came to something far more divine than
could have been the disenchantment of any mere earthly
satisfaction. He might have said, with the modern poet:
"He who for love hath undergone
The worst that can befall,
Is happier, thousand-fold, than one
Who never loved at all.
A grace within his soul hath reigned
That nothing else can bring;-
Thank God for all that I have gained
By that high suffering.”
By that absolutely pure, noble, ideal, ethereal love
the youth's whole soul was elevated. The sweet child,
the lovely maid, the pure and noble woman, gave to
Dante's soul those wings of unselfish devotion by which
it was lifted up to God.
So, then, for his own good, and for the riches of the
world's ennoblement, was Dante's first idol broken-the
idol of earthly adoration; broken, or let us rather say,
transfigured into something heavenly. Nor was it other-
wise with his second idol, Philosophy. Of this we can-
#
Dante.
300
not say much, because Dante has only alluded to it
obscurely and in enigma. He says that philosophy
became his consolation, and he studied Boethius and
Cicero. But it is clear from the stern reproaches
addressed to him by Beatrice at the end of the
"Purgatorio," that during these years of his life he fell
away. His philosophy engrossed him. It led him to
offer strange fire upon the altar of his life. He forgot
the new life which an ideal love had breathed into him,
and "an intellectual and sensitive delight in good ran
parallel with a voluntary and actual indulgence in evil."
From this he represents himself as delivered by a vision
of Beatrice, now in glory, and now to him the emblem
of divine knowledge. But we can see this only-that
earthly knowledge was not suffered to absorb the soul
which could only be satisfied by heaven, and that the
second idol also was broken.
Then began the third phase of his life in Politics.
His public life was full and passionate. He loved his
native city with an intense devotion. He has crowned
her with an immortal shame and an immortal glory.
Florence was to him as all the world. Hell and Purga-
tory and Heaven ring with the name of Florence, and
are filled with Florentines. And nobly, and with stern
justice, did Dante serve and help to govern her. I shall
not follow him into the obscure and miserable imbroglio
of the struggles of his day-the parties of Guelph and
Ghibelline, the family feuds of Bianchi and Neri, which
only derive a touch of interest from their connection
with his intense and supreme personality. Suffice it to
say that, in the course of that divine education whereby
God trains us all, as the lover had become a student and
Dante.
301
a soldier, so the student became a politician. He fought
in the battle of Campaldino; he took part in no less.
than fourteen embassies. By the age of thirty-five he
had risen to be the first magistrate of Florence.
The struggle and passion of politics, forcing him
into collision with his fellow-men and with the hard
facts of life, made him something more than the soft
poetic boy, so sensitive and delicate, writing sonnets,
recording visions, painting angels, trembling at a touch;
more even than the student of letters, science, and phi-
losophy. It also decided the destiny of his remaining
years. Caught up in the whirlwinds of political strife,
he hurried back from an embassy at Rome to hear that
his house had been pillaged and burnt to the ground, and
himself infamously charged with malversation and em-
bezzlement. He was banished from Florence, the city of
his birth, the city of his manhood, the city of his love,
and hurled into exile under sentence of being burnt
alive, if he ever set foot again in the city for which, for a
short time, he had ruled. "Alas," he says, "I have
gone about like a mendicant, showing, against my will,
the wounds with which fortune has smitten me. I
have, indeed, been a vessel without sail and without
rudder, carried to divers shores by the dry wind that
springs out of poverty." It was long before he aban-
doned the hope that one day his fellow-citizens, repent-
ing of their base injustice, might recall him; and that
he might claim the poetic wreath standing by his own
baptismal font in his beloved church of San Giovanni,
the font which, to the horror of formalists, he had once
(it is said) unhesitatingly broken to save a drowning
child. He was offered, indeed, to return, but under con-
302
Dante.
ditions which he disdained. "The stars and the heaven,"
he said, "are everywhere; and in any region under
heaven I can ponder the sweetest truths; and if I can-
not return with perfect honor, I will not return at
all." Yet how hard was that path! how bitter that
lot to his intensely proud and pre-eminent spirit!
What the cage is to the mountain eagle, that was to
Dante the dangling as a dependant about the courts of
little men.
Is it wonderful that bitter words sometimes
escaped him? "How is it," said his magnificent pa-
tron, Can Grande, to him one day, "that a poor fool,
like my jester, amuses us all so much, while a wise man
like you, day after day, has nothing to amuse us with ?"
"It is not strange," said Dante bitterly. "Remember
the proverb, like to like." One day the Prior of Santa
Croce, struck with the far-off look in his yearning eyes,
asked him "what he was seeking." "Pace!" was the
answer. "Peace!" a peace which on earth, alas, he
never found. He went on an embassy to Venice for his
last patron, the Lord of Ravenna; and not being able
even to obtain an audience, he returned to Ravenna
overwhelmed with disappointment, and died at the age
of fifty-six of a broken heart. A century later remorse-
ful Florence begged that his remains might be restored
to her; but the request, though renewed still later by
Leo X. and Michael Angelo, was rightly refused; and
at Ravenna, on the bleak Adrian shore, and near the
blighted pine-woods, his dust sleeps until the Judgment
Day.
Those pine-woods were green then, though they are
blighted now; and Dante's life which was so blighted
for himself has put forth green leaves for us. His loss
Dante.
303
was our gain. But for that long exile, but for that un-
utterable despair and weariness of heart, he might have
been a graceful love-poet, or a scholastic philosopher,
but he never would have written for all time the Divine
Comedy. Like many other poets he was
"Nurtured into poetry by wrong,
And learnt in suffering what he taught in song."
If the myrrh gave forth its immortal fragrance, it was
because it was incensed and crushed. If the gold was
fine gold, it was because heaven had purged it in the
furnace and fretted it into forms of eternal loveliness.
The name, "Divine," was given to his poem after
his death, because it dealt with the most sacred topics.
He himself called it a "Comedy," partly because it had
a happy ending, partly because it was written in a simple
style and in the vernacular tongue. It sums up all that
was greatest in previous poetry and religious thought.
It is a vision; an ideal; an autobiography; a satire; an
allegory; a moral exhortation. There had been visions
of the unseen world in Homer and Virgil and in many
medieval works; there had been autobiographies like
the "Confessions" of St. Augustine; and bitter political
poems like the plays of Aristophanes and the satires of
Juvenal; and poems full of scientific and theological
knowledge like those of Lucretius; and ideals of perfect
conditions like St. Augustine's "City of God." But in
Dante's poem all these elements are fused by imagina-
tion into one intense whole, and made the vehicles of
the deepest religious thoughts which at that day were
known to man. Without a moment's hesitation Dante
claims his eternal place among the very greatest poets

304
Dante.
¿
who had gone before him, "as though some stranger
had appeared at the ancient games, and at once flung to
its farthest cast the quoit of the demi-gods." Nor
has the "Divine Comedy" ever been equalled since.
Wordsworth's "Excursion" is a philosophical and au-
tobiographic poem ; Goethe's "Faust" is a soul's his-
tory; Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" is a vision of
things unseen; Milton's "Paradise Lost" deals with God
and Satan and Heaven and Hell; but Dante's "Divina
Commedia " is a work incomparably greater than Words-
worth's or Bunyan's or Goethe's, great as those are; it
is greater even than the "Paradise Lost." Except,
perhaps, the plays of Shakespeare, which may be greater
in their oceanic and myriad-minded genius, it is perhaps
the supremest product which has come from the intel-
lect of man.
But in reading Dante we must not at all suppose
that we shall be able at once to grasp, and to admire
him. Great poems require a severe and noble tone and
temper of mind to understand them. The eminent
man who said that of its three parts, the "Inferno"
was revolting, the "Purgatorio" dull, and the “ Para-
diso" unreadable, condemned not Dante, but himself.
If men prefer to make their entrances and exits on
the stage of life with clowns and vices, they are not fit
companions for those "whose worth erects them and
their actions to a grave and tragic bearing." Dante
never desired more than fit audience, though few.
You will find much in his poem to scarify a feeble
conventionality. He himself warns off all base and
feeble readers. "Ye," he says, "who, in your little
boat, are eager to follow in the track of my bark,
Dante.
305
P
which speeds, singing on its way, turn back to see again
your own shores. Trust not yourselves to the deep,
lest haply, losing me, ye remain bewildered. Ye other
few, who look up betimes for the bread of the angels,
on which we can live here, but not enough to satisfy;
ye, ere the quickly closing wake is reunited,
"'Mid the deep ocean ye your course may take,
My track pursuing the pure waters through.
The vision narrated in Dante's "Divine Comedy "
is supposed to have happened in the year 1300. Dante
was then thirty-five. "In the middle of the journey of
our life,” so it begins, "I found myself astray in a dark
wood, for the straight way was lost. Ah! how hard a
thing it is to tell how wild, and rough, and stubborn
this wood was, which, in thinking of it, renews my fear,
bitter almost as death." And while he has thus lost his
way, and lost Him who is the way, in this erroneous
wood of confused aim and sinful wandering-the wood
in which most of us, alas! spend all our lives-he
reaches the foot of a hill whose summit was bathed in
sunshine. The hill is the high ground, the Delectable
Mountain of faith, of holiness, of moral order, of Chris-
tian life; aud from the pass that leads to death Dante
turns to, and makes a strenuous effort to climb the
hill. But he is instantly hindered by three wild beasts:
a bright and bounding leopard, with spotted skin, of
which he admires the beauty; a lion, which approaches
him with head erect and furious hunger; and a gaunt
she-wolf that looks full of all cravings in her leanness.
Terrified by these wild beasts, he sees a figure approach
him, to whom he appeals for help. This figure is the
20
306
Dante.
poet Virgil, who, after dwelling on his peril, tells him
that he must follow him. Now, the poem of Dante is
crowded by many meanings, but the chief of these, and
the only one which I shall touch upon, is the moral alle-
gory. Of the beasts that would fain drive Dante back
from the sunny hill to the dark wood, the leopard is
pleasure; the lion is anger; the wolf is the love of
money. "Behold a lion out of the forest shall slay
them, a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them,
a leopard shall watch over their cities."* Sen-
suality, passion, avarice these have to be con-
quered before a man can become a true follower of
Christ, or climb the mountain of His beatitudes. Virgil
is the personification of human wisdom-the spirit of
imagination and poetry-able to witness to duty, its
discipline, its hopes, and its vindications, but unable to
confer grace. And Virgil tells Dante that, at the bid-
ding of his Beatrice, who becomes henceforth the per-
sonification of Divine knowledge, he is commissioned
to lead him through Hell where sin is punished, and
through Purgatory where sins are cleansed. In order
to be delivered from the seductions and semblances of
life, Dante is to be led to see, with his own eyes, the
awful eternal realities. Thus the "Divine Comedy"
comprehends all time and all space. It represents the
life-history of a human soul, redeemed from sin, error,
from lust, and wrath, and mammon, and restored to
the right path by the reason and the grace which en-
able him to see the things that are, and to see them as
they are.
* See Jerem.
Dante.
307
Of the three great divisions of the poem, it is of course,
only possible to offer you the barest outlines, and that
solely for the sake of the remarks which I have to
make respecting them.
Together the two poets reach a gate, over whose sum-
mit runs, in dark letters, the inscription :
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here;"
and Dante weeps as he passes into a dolorous realm
where sighs, and lamentations, and voices deep and
hoarse, and the sounds of smitten hands re-echo through
the stained and startled air. Here, on the Vestibule of
Hell, are the fallen angels who were faithful neither to
God nor to Satan, but only to themselves; and with them
swept round and round the doleful circle, naked, stung
by hornets, with faces stained with tears and blood, fol-
lowing in countless multitudes the fluttering flag of
Acheron, are all the wretched caitiffs, displeasing alike
to God and to His enemies, who had died but never lived.
Mercy and judgment alike disdain them. Heaven chases
forth their ugliness; Hell spurns their selfish pusilla-
nimity. "Let us not speak of them," says Virgil, “but
look and pass."
Here you have Dante's central idea, that Hell is self-
ishness; the human will set up in defiance of the divine.
The "Inferno" throughout is the history of self-will in
its lower and lower stages of development. The soul in
Cocytus is utterly emptied of God, and wholly filled
with the loathly emptiness of self; in the "Purgatory"
the soul is gradually emptied of self; in the "Paradise"
the soul is wholly filled with God.
Then, after the sad, but not tormented, Limbo of
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Dante.
!:
unbaptized infants and the virtuous heathen, the Hell
of Dante is divided into three sections, according to the
three all-inclusive sins. Those sins are Lust, Hate,
Fraud. There is the Upper Hell, the Hell of Inconti-
nence; the Central Hell, the Hell of Malice; the
Nether Hell, the Hell of Fraud and Treachery, in the
lowest pit of which is Satan himself. The two poets,
seeing and conversing with many lost souls, traverse the
nine circles. They see the Impure, swept round and
round, without respite, by a hellish storm, in a circle of
darkness which bellows like the sea in a tempest beaten
by horrid winds. They see the Gluttons and Epicures,
their bellies cleaving to the dust, terrified by a barking
monster, and beaten by a foul, eternal, heavy rain in
the poisonous air. They see the Misers and the Spend-
thrifts, rolling huge stones undiscernibly in the howling
gloom. They see the Wrathful and the gloomy-sluggish
tearing each other in the slime of the Stygian marsh.
In the red-hot city of Dis, guarded by Fiends and
Furies, and reserved for Brutalism, that is, for besotted
intellectual folly, they see imprisoned in burning tombs
the souls of Heretics and Infidels. Then in the Central
Hell, the Hell of Malice, separated from the upper by a
chaos of shattered rocks, are those who have sinned by
violence-against themselves, against their neighbors,
and against God. Here are the Tyrants and Murderers,
immersed in the boiling, crimson waves of Phlegethon.
Here is the ghastly wood of the Suicides, haunted by
the obscene Harpies of Despair and Misery. Here the
blasphemers against God, and all who have violated the
law of nature, pace the scorchings and under a slow rain
of ceaseless fire. At this point the stream of Phlegethon
Dante.
309
plunges into the abyss in "a Niagara of blood," and the
serpent-monster Geryon carries them into the Nether
Hell-the Hell of Fraud. Here, in every variety of
shame, horror, and anguish, weltering in a lake of
pitch; or hanging, head downward, in tombs, while
from toe to heel a flame flickers unceasingly along the
soles of their quivering feet; or crushed under cloaks of
gilded lead; or hewn to pieces; or tettered with lep-
rosy; or wrapped in tongues of flame he sees the souls
of all who have sinned by Falsity-seducers, flatterers,
simonists, diviners, usurers, hypocrites, thieves, falsi-
fiers, breeders of evil discord, and all liars. Down one
more chasm they descend to the lowest Hell, the pool of
Cocytus, locked up in eternal frost by blasts from the
vampire wings of Lucifer-the blasts of Envy, Impo-
tence, and Rage. There, in those "thrilling regions of
thick-ribbed ice," frozen into that glassy lake in an agony
which makes their faces livid and dog-like, and congeals
their very tears, he finds the souls of those traitors who
have betrayed their friends, their country, or their bene-
factors. It is a Hell of Ice, not of Fire;-"to show,"
it has been said, that "the most dreadful thing in
treachery is not the fraud but the cold-heartedness of
it," and that is the reason why, "the eyes, once cruelly
tearless, are now blind with frozen tears." Lowest of
all, with three faces-one crimson with rage, one black
with ignorance, one yellow with envy-Dante sees the
Archtraitor, Satan himself; and, grasping the shaggy
fell of his frozen and bat-like wings, the poets climb up
through an opening in the solid earth, until catching a
glimpse of the beauteous things which heaven bears,
they issue forth to see once more the stars.
310
Dante.
Now I would ask you to remember that this is only the
crudest outline of the poem, undiversified by its human
elements, its constant pathos, its oft-recurring touches
of insight and nobleness. I have not attempted to give
you any conception either of its terrifically realistic
touches or of its numberless relieving elements. But
what we ought to learn from its intense moral purpose is
to see evil as Dante had seen it; to feel the same hatred
and fierce scorn of sin wherewith God had inspired him;
to feel, as he felt, that sin, whether it takes the forms of
malice, fraud, or lust, is foul and horrid. He sets sin
before us both in its nature and in its punishment; now
thrilling us with fear; now melting us with pity; now
freezing us with horror; now making us feel aflame with
indignation—but meaning always to set before us this
lesson more than any other, that sin is Hell, and that the
wilful, willing sinner is in Hell; and that so long as he
remains an alien from the love of God he must say, with
the evil spirit,
"What matter where, if I be still the same?"
The vulgar conception of punishment is that it is some-
thing external to and apart from sin. Dante's concep-
tion is that penalty is the same thing as sin: it is only
sin taken at a later stage of its history.
Let me try to show you, by one or two instances, how
full this poem is of tremendous lessons.
i. First, observe the fearful illustration which it fur-
nishes of St. Paul's words: "What fellowship has light
with darkness ?" Wishing to represent sin as awful and
ghastly, Dante beautifies his "Inferno" with no bright-
ening touch.
The name of Christ is never mentioned
F
Dante.
311
in the poem, as though its accents were too blessed to
be uttered in that polluted air., One Angel only appears
in it to drive back the demons who would oppose the
poet's entrance into the burning city. But how unlike he
is to the Divine birds-the radiant, tender, love-breath-
ing Angels of the "Purgatorio" and the "Paradiso !"
Through the gloom the poets see more than a thousand
ruined spirits flying, like frogs before the waterwake,
at the face of one who, with unwetted feet, is speeding
over the Stygian marsh. He perpetually moves his left
hand before him, as though he would wave off from his
countenance the gross air of the abyss. He speaks no
syllable to the Poets, as they bow to him in reverence,
but stands, disdainful, indignant, on the horrid thresh-
old, taunting the outcasts of Heaven; and when, with
one touch of his wand, he has burst open the burning
gates, he speaks no further syllable, but speeds back,
swift and disdainful, through the filthy gloom. There
can be no brightness, no beauty there; no Angel can
wave his purple wings in the atmosphere of Hell. Dante
anticipated by six centuries the scientific doctrine of
modification by environment. If they are forced to
enter Hell, even for a few moments, his very Angels.
become unangelic. And, in illustration of the same
truth, notice how revoltingly hideous, how horrible in
his loathliness, Dante has made his Lucifer. He is not
the haughty, splendid, defiant Satan of Milton, standing
"Like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved,"
and even in his fall seeming not "less than Archangel
ruined or excess of glory obscured." Nor is he the
mocking, gibing, flickering, philosophic, gentlemanly
312
Dante.
Mephistopheles of Goethe. No; but, with far deeper
moral insight, he is a hideous, foul, three-headed, shud-
der-causing monster-a portent at whose foulness the
solid earth recoils.
ii. Notice next the awful power with which Dante
illustrates the truth that men become what they desire;
that penalty bears most often a ghastly similitude to the
vice whereby it was caused; that "wherewithal a man
sinneth, by the same also shall he be punished." If in
Dante sensual sinners are swept along a whirling storm,
what is that storm but the unbridled passions of those
that lawless and uncertain thoughts imagine howling?
If yet worse carnal offenders are baked by slow-heating
flakes of fire, are not the thoughts of a corrupted heart
full of such unhallowed flames? If his gluttons lie
prostrate in the slush, tormented by Cerberus, what is
gluttony and drunkenness but "on thy belly shalt thou
go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life?"
If his hypocrites are like the monks of Cologne, with
their huge hoods, which display from afar their dazzling
falsity, what is hypocrisy, with its fringes and phylac-
teries, but such a cloak of gilded lead? If his misers.
are plunged in a lake of foul pitch, what is that lake
but money basely gained and sordidly spent and selfishly
amassed ?-money which sticks to the fingers and defiles
the mind and causes it to bubble up and down with
excitement and depression, and the sighing of souls
which cannot be satisfied? What is the frozen pool of
Cocytus but the heart benumbed with cruel and treach-
erous selfishness? Are there no living men, who, in
the truth of things, unless they repent, are doomed to
such places hereafter because such places are their own
Dante.
313
place? Nay, who are in such places now? Is vice dead,
or has it ceased to be in its inmost nature grotesque and
vile? Are there no living usurers, traitors, liars, furious,
sluggards, seducers, slanderers, evil counsellors in high
places and in low places, whom a Dante of this day—
were he brave enough or had enough of moral insight-
would doom to such scenes now as he did six centuries
ago? If so, Dante has some very stern and very need-
ful lessons for us as for the men in days in which he
lived. Do men in these days need no warning against
vulgar, meaningless, facing-both-ways lives? Are none
of us stung by the wasps of mean cares? Do none of
us trim and shuffle in the wake of popular opinion,
following it like some giddy and fluttering rag of Ach-
eron? Are none of us tempted, like these wretches, to
stand selfishly neutral in the great conflict between good
and evil? Have none of us made, like the young ruler,
the great refusal ?
iii. Next, I would ask you to consider the awful and
almost lurid light which Dante has flung on his own
meaning in the 33d canto. There, in the lowest circle,
frozen in the icy pool, the poets see a lost spirit who
entreats them to remove from his eyes the dreadful,
glassy congealment which, while permitting sight, in-
creases torment by rendering tears impossible. Dante
asks who he is, and finds that he is Friar Alberigo,
who, with horrible treachery, has murdered his own
guests at a banquet. But Dante knows that Alberigo is
alive, and asks with surprise how he comes to be here?
He receives the fearful answer, that when souls have
committed crimes so deadly as his, they instantly fall
rushing down to that lowest pit, leaving their bodies
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Dante.
upon earth. From that moment they are really dead.
Their body, indeed, all unknown to them, eats, drinks,
sleeps, seems to live on earth. But their soul is not in
it; it is but a mask of clay which a demon animates.
And he proceeds to mention others whom Dante has
seen in hell, which still seem to be alive on earth, hav-
ing a name to live though they are dead-being the
most awful kind of ghosts, not souls without bodies,
but bodies without souls. Is not the world full of such
ghosts of those who "have a name to live while they
are dead," of men and women who living in pleasure,
are "dead while they live "-not disembodied souls, but
disensouled bodies, flitting about their living tombs of
selfishness and vice? The fourteenth century, you see,
had not yet learned to legitimize vice by complacent
doctrines. To Dante sin was not a thing to make a
mock at. His Cerberus, and his horned demons, and
his red-hot cities, and his boiling blood of Phlegethon,
and his snow of scorching flames, are but the shadow
and reflex of men's vices, crimes, and sins.
iv. Again observe that in Dante's Hell each soul is
condemned for one sin, and mainly for one definite act
of sin; whereas you will say that sins are complex
and manifold, and enmeshed together by links subtle
and numberless. But Dante is awfully right here also.
It is true that no man is ever contented with a single
sin; yet it is always one sin, and that the favorite one,
which destroys souls. That conquered, all others fall
with it; that victorious, all others follow it. The lust
and anger of the flesh do not of necessity or finally de-
stroy; but when they become the lust and anger of the
heart, "these," says Mr. Ruskin, "are the furies of Phle-
1
1.
1
Dante.
315
gethon, wholly ruinous. Lord of these, on the shattered
rocks, lies couched the infamy of Crete. For when the
heart as well as the flesh desires what it should not, and
the heart as well as the flesh kindles to its wrath, the
whole man is corrupted, and his heart's blood is fed in
its veins from the lake of fire." The single consumma-
tions of sin which, with a glare of unnatural illumina-
tion, reveal to the man what he is, are never single
acts, but are the epitome of long years of sin, indulged
in thought and wish, and minor offences; just as the
crimson flower of the fabled aloe issues from the sap,
which has been circling in its leaves for a hundred years.
II. Time does not permit me to give you even an out-
line of the Purgatory. It is the mountain where sins.
which have been repented of before death, are washed
away. We have left behind us forever the horror and
the infamy, the noisome gloom, the agonizing frost, the
mephitic rivers of boiling blood. No sooner have the
Poets reached the upper light, than their eyes are glad-
dened with the sweet hue of the Eastern sapphire,
deepened to the far horizon in the pure serenity of air.
Overhead shine the four stars of the Southern Cross;
and bidden by Cato, the guardian of the ante-Purga-
tory, where those sinners are detained who have delayed
their repentance. Virgil and Dante come to a shady
place, where first they catch the tremulous shimmer of
the sea, and Virgil, placing his hands on the ground,
bathes in dew the cheeks of Dante, stained as they are
with tears, and with the mirk of the abyss, and girds
him with a rush, the emblem of humility. Round the
mountain of Purgatory run nine terraces, of which each
is devoted to the punishment of one of the seven deadly
..

316
Dante.
T
•
1
sins. The penance is, on each terrace, analogous to the
sin. The proud crawl along, bent under huge weights.
The once evil eyes of the envious are sewn together with
iron wire. The angry grope their way through a dense,
bitter, blinding fog. The slothful are hurried round
and round in incessant toil. The avaricious lie pros-
trate and weeping on the earth. The gluttons and
drunkards are punished by the emaciation of perpetual
hunger. The sensual expiate their carnal wickedness
in burning flame. Dante has to pass through each
terrace-yes, even through that burning flame. He
shrinks from it, indeed, with a death-like horror.
"When I was within it," he says, "I would have flung
myself into molten glass to cool me, so immeasurable
was the burning there." But thenceforth he is cleansed
from sin. He is crowned and mitred over himself.
He finds himself under the leaves of a forest, tremulous
with soft breezes, and resonant with the song of birds,
where, amid May blossoms, flows a stream of purest
crystal. A gleam flashes through the forest, a sweet
melody runs through the glowing air; and he sees a
glorious vision of the triumph of Christ and His
Church, and, in it, amid a cloud of flowers shed by the
hands of Angels, his blood thrills to recognize a lady
whose white veil is crowned with olive. It is Beatrice.
Virgil has vanished, for human wisdom can do no more.
And, as he weeps for Virgil's departure, Beatrice bids
him rather weep for his own past sins, and, towering over
him in imperious attitude, like a mother over a son who
is in fault, she reproaches him so sternly for the backslid-
ings of the past, that the Angels, as though indirectly
pleading for him with the beautiful, stern monitress, sud-
Dante.
317
denly begin the strain: "In thee, O Lord, hath been
my hope." Then his heart breaks like melting ice into
sighs and tears, and he stands mutely listening to her
reproaches, like a boy ashamed of guilt, with his eyes
upon the ground, and at last falls down in a swoon.
Then at last, truly, utterly penitent, he is plunged in
the waters of Lethe. He hears the angels sing "Thou
shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." The
four Virtues receive him. He is bidden to gaze on
Beatrice, and sees the light of Christ reflected in her
eyes. Then he is suffered to drink the waters of
Eunoe, which is sweeter than words can tell; and
refreshed like young plants which are reclad by spring
in tender leaves, he issues from the holy wave purified,
and ready to mount up to the stars.
The "Purgatory" of Dante represents a present real-
ity, not a future possibility. It is the history of a proc-
ess, not the description of a place. There is scarcely a
page of this magnificent poem which is not full of subtle
allegories and noble lessons. Gladly, had time per-
mitted, would I have endeavored to show the mighty
compression of imagination with which Dante conveys
a manifold instruction in passage after passage, and
how he sometimes condenses a supreme truth into a
single smiting line. As it is, I can only point out one
central lesson of the entire pɔem.
It is that just punishment, though hard to bear, is
yet very blessed. Into the theology of Dante we will
not enter, but at least he enforces on us the lesson that
forgiveness of sins is not the same thing as remission of
consequences. The spirits of Purgatory are all ready
to say with the modern poet,
318
Dante.
"Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,
Not daily labor's dull Lethean spring,
Oblivion in lost angels can infuse
Of the soiled glory or the trailing wing."
The spirits in Purgatory are happy, for they have
hope. They yearn for the presence of God, but do not
desire their punishment to be shortened. They do not
desire, they do not feel worthy to see God till the soft
plumes of angels have brushed from their foreheads all
trace of the seven deadly letters. The sense of shame,
the sense of justice prevail with them. The blush of
the carnal sinners in the seventh terrace of fire adds to
the flame a yet fiercer glow; and when they converse
with Dante, they will not lean so much as one inch out
of the healing fire, because they do not desire one mo-
ment's respite from the agony which is purging away
their sin. When the poet Guido has finished speaking
with Dante, he vanishes in the flames as a fish darts to
the bottom of the water. Surely there is a deep lesson
here. It is the lesson that
"Hearts which verily repent
Are burdened with impurity,
And comforted by chastisement.
That punishment's the best to bear
Which follows soonest on the sin,
And guilt's a game where losers fare
Better than those who seem to win."
I will make but one more remark about the "Purga-
torio" before I pass on to say very few words about the
"Paradiso." It is, as my friend Dean Plumptre has
well pointed out, that the poem is intensely autobio-
graphical. It contains the confessions of the man
Dante.
319
Dante Alighieri. We see in it the sins to which he had
been, and to which he had not been tempted. The
man so proud, so reserved, so reticent, so craving of
praise, so sensitive to blame, here like St. Augustine,
and like Rousseau, lays bare the secrets of his soul. In
the 31st canto, the words of Beatrice are the reproaches
of his own transfigured and illuminated conscience. And
we watch with deepest interest the gradual cleansing
and dilatation of his soul. In the "Inferno" the con-
tact with evil, and even with the Nemesis which falls
on evil, had not been without its own deadly perils.
He feels the taint of the vices on which he looks.
He becomes half base as he listens to the revilings of
the base; half false among the treacherous; savagely
relentless among the furious. In the "Purgatory" and
the "Paradise" he has to be cleansed from this blackness
of infection. And he is so, in part, by the outward
influences of all things sweet, lovely, and ennobling.
By the clear reminiscences of history and literature; by
the exquisite and consummate fidelity of Art, especially
of sculpture; by Poetry, especially sacred poetry; by
Music, of which not one note is heard in Hell, but
which rings round him constantly and exquisitely in the
Purgatory and the Paradise; above all, by Nature-by
the serene and stainless glory of the sky, by the pure-
ness of the dew, and by the glories of unequalled dawn.
Dante had felt, as it would be well for all of us to feel,
that beauty is the sacrament of goodness; that in the
sense of beauty, satisfied by the beauty of God's works,
we see and we recognize the very autograph of God.
And this beauty is reflected in the graciousness and
goodness of all God's creatures. The men, and the
320
Dante.
women, and the fiends of the abyss are, for the most
part, abhorrent and revolting; while the demonic creat-
ures, Cerberus and the Minotaur and Geryon, are
loathly; and the fiends of the Malebolge, Malacoda,
and Cagnazzo, and Graffiacane, and Cirialto are as
gross and as infamous as imagination can conceive.
Compare these with the fair, white-winged creatures
with faces like the quivering gleam of the morning star
-falcons and swans of God-who move through the
66
Purgatorio." Green are their plumes, green as the
fresh-born leaflets of spring; and green-the radiant
color of hope-are the robes fluttered by the beating of
their wings; and their fair, golden heads are visible,
though their faces dazzle the sight. And in the sixth
circle, the Angel, who obliterates one more fatal letter
from Dante's brow, is glorious as gold in the furnace,
and the touch of his plumes breathes fragrance like the
May breeze blown over grass and flowers at dawn, and
"sated with the innumerable rose. ""
III. I shall say scarcely anything of the "Paradise."
It is the least read of the three by the multitude, and
most dear of the three to the real student. Whatever
else it may be, it is emphatically and pre-eminently the
Poem of Light; of Light, lost at last in the blinding
intensity of that central lake of light and the dazzling
beatific vision of Him who is Light,
"And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from Eternity; dwelt then in Thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence uncreate,
Whose fountain who shall tell?"
If you would understand it-if you would feel its
magic influence, you must bathe yourselves in light;
Dante.
321
you must clothe yourselves in light; you must walk in
light; you must gaze on light with the eagle's undazzled
eyes. For here Dante leaves earth behind him. He
talks with no meaner beings than Virgins, and Saints,
-and Patriarchs, and Apostles. He talks with the Em-
peror Justinian about the Roman Empire; with St.
Thomas and St. Bonaventura about the Dominican and
Franciscan orders; with his crusading and knightly an-
cestor, Cacciaguida, about the beautiful simplicity which
contrasted with the deepening luxury of his own Flor-
ence; with St. Benedict about monastic corruption. He
sees Adam and Solomon. St. Peter questions him
about Faith; St. James, about Hope; St. John, about
Love; and the happy choirs of heaven sink into as-
tonished silence, and the happy lights of heaven flicker
into fiery indignation, while St. Peter fulminates his
more than Papal anathema against the blood-stained and
avaricious pontiffs who on earth usurp "my place, my
place, my place;" and St. Bernard of Clairvance,
shows him the queen of heaven herself, Mary, "who is
the centre of the eternal rose," with Eve sitting at her
feet; and at last he is suffered to gaze in vision ineffable
on the Supreme Triune. And everywhere, till the last,
Beatrice is with him, and in her eyes are the demon-
strations, and in her smiles the persuasions of wisdom.
And everywhere there is light; in every circle of the
planetary, and the starry, and the crystalline heavens;
and in the Empyrean, and in the mystical White Rose,
and in the Ladder of Gold, whose summit is invisible, and
in the River of Life, flaming with splendor, between
two banks bright with the flowers of spring, of which
he drinks; and in the central point of light itself, "so
21
322
Dante.
"
intense that no eye can gaze on it, so minute that thẹ
smallest star in the firmament would seem a moon
beside it." The very regions through which he passes
are like eternal pearls, and they glide through them as
rays of light enter into the water without disturbing the
unity of the wave, for they are lucid and white as sun-
struck diamonds. And in this brimming flood of light
move the beatified saints, in melody and glory, more
sweet even in voice than brilliant in aspect, circling
round Dante in vivid garlands of eternal roses, or swathed
in environments of ambient radiance, shooting from place
to place like fires in alabaster, happy fires, living topazes,
living rubies, flaming in ethereal sunshine, multitudes
of splendors flitting through the crystal gleam like
birds. And even after these unimaginable "varieties of
light, and combinations of stars, and rays, and jew-
elled reflections," there are fresh throngs of splendors-
cressets, and crowns, and circles, singing round the
Virgin in ineffable, indescribable glories, in blinding
and bewildering brilliances. And Paradise itself is one
great white rose, and its yellow centre is the Central
Light, whose circumference would outgird the sun;
and its petals upon petals are innumerable ranks of
spotless spirits, all gazing upon the Light of Light; and,
as bees flit among the flowers, so fluttering about the
petals of the Eternal Rose, "their wings of gold, their
robes white as snow, their face radiant as pure flame,"
enjoying and enjoyed, the multitude of the Angels de-
posit in the recesses of those happy petals, the peace
and glow brought down from the bosom of God. And
all these are happy, equally happy, for though, to mor-
tal apprehension, they seem to attain a lower or a
Dante.
323
:
higher sphere in the circles of beatitude, they are all
and equally the denizens of the mystic Rose, because the
will of each and all is exclusively and absolutely the
will of God, so that
"Each spot in heaven
Is Paradise, though with like gracious dew
The Supreme Virtue showers not over all."
And through all these scenes Dante passes, until at
last he is suffered to gaze, for one reason-annihilat-
ing instant, on the supernal glory of the Trinity in
Unity; seeing, as in one lightning-flash, which melts
his memory as the sunlight melts the snow, a triple orb
of three different colors, of which the one seems to re-
flect the other, and the third is like fire breathed from
both. Here thought and speech fail him; but hence-
forth his desire and will are as a wheel, rolled on in
even motion by the same love
"That moves the sun in heaven, and all the stars.”
So high as that range no poetry has ever reached;
higher than that range the waxen wings of poetry are
melted, and it sinks down through the intense inane.
I hasten to conclude. Dante lived in very wild days;
not in a smooth silken century like this, when so many
are destitute of faith, yet terrified by scepticism. You
must bear this in mind. He lived in the days when the
Sicilian Vespers had deluged Palermo with massacre.
He had heard, as a young man, the grim tragedy of
Ugolino, starved to death with his sons in the Tower of
Famine, and the awful murder of Paolo and Francesca
by her husband and his brother, Giancotto. He had
324
Dante.
seen men burnt alive. He had himself been sentenced
to be burnt alive by his own countrymen, on a charge
which nobody believed. A few years after his poem
was written, Fra Dolcino was torn to pieces with hot
pincers in the public market-place at Vercelli, and his
follower, the rich and beautiful Margarita, consumed at
a slow fire before the eyes of men. Here is a single in-
cident in the family quarrel of the Bianchi and Neri, in
the course of which his fortunes were shipwrecked. A lad
of the Neri family had, in a quarrel, struck one of the
Bianchi, and was sent by his father to apologize to the
head of the Bianchi. This chief took hold of the boy
then and there, chopped off his right hand on a dresser,
and sent him back with the remark, "Injuries are wiped
out by blood and not by words."
It is not strange that such terrible times had terrible
beliefs, and in all those beliefs Dante shared. Whatever
Hell may be, we do not believe that it is like the Hell
of Dante, a burning slaughter-house, a torture-chamber
of endless vivisection and worse than inquisitorial
horrors, where souls welter in the crimson ooze of
Phlegethon, or move about like Nero-torches of ani-
mated flame. Nevertheless, under that dreadful im-
agery, so weird, lurid, and grotesque, lie truths of
eternal import. About the horror and infamies of a
material Hell, about the steep ascents of a Purgatory,
-if such there be-about the glories and employ-
ments of the Paradise of God, Dante knew just as
much, which is just as little, as ourselves. But that
there is a moral Hell and a moral Heaven; that Heaven
and Hell are tempers and not only places; that they
are states of the soul, and not physical fires or golden
Dante.
325
cities in the far-off blue, he knew, as all must know, who
have enough of soul left in them undestroyed by vice and
worldliness to know what God is, and to feel what sin
means. Is there not many a man of whom, as of
Dante, it might be said, "That man has been in Hell ?”
Happy the man who, like Dante, has struggled through
the abyss where sin is punished, to the mountain where
sin is purged, to the Paradise where it is remembered no
more. The poem was not written to give mere poetic
pleasure, but to teach and to warn. He says that for
"The seed of it was
many years it made him lean.
sown in tears, and reaped in misery," and it was in-
tended to describe not merely or chiefly, an obscene Hell
or a material Heaven, but to bring home to us the truth
that this world is the next, in the light of the Eternal
Yea and the Eternal Now.
I will end with two remarks.
i. One is his sense of the awful transcendency of
goodness-the sense that Good and Evil are "the two
polar elements of this creation, on which it all turns,"
and that they differ "not by preferability of one to the
other, but by incompatibility absolute and infinite; that
the one is excellent and high as light and Heaven, the
other hideous, black as Gehenna and the Pit of Hell.” If
you would know how Sin and Holiness appeared to one
of the grandest of human souls, who had the power
also to clothe his symbols in the intensest imagery; if
you would be lifted from that base condition of conven-
tionality and compromise in which good and evil are not
in real and fierce antagonism, but lie flat together, side by
side, in immoral acquiescence and infamous neutrality;
then you may learn a life-long lesson by humble study
F
326
Dante.
of the "Divine Comedy," which strips evil bare from all
its masks and hypocrisies, that you may see it in all its
naked ghastliness, and which shows you what is pure
and good in the white intensity, the seven-fold perfec-
tion of undivided light.
ii. Observe, lastly, that Dante writes avowedly with a
high moral purpose. He knows nothing of the prurient
Tojan talk about art for art's sake, still less of its nudi-
ties, which are naked and not ashamed. He reveals to
us, in the poem, step by step, his own moral ameliora-
tions. He desires to make his readers participate in the
same nobleness. Man, he says, in his prose work on
"6
Monarchy" (iii. 15), stands midway between the cor-
ruptible and the incorruptible. His body is corrupti-
ble; his spirit is incorruptible. Hence his destinies
also are twofold, so far as he is corruptible, and so far
as he is incorruptible. God has set before him two ends
-the happiness of this life in the earthly Paradise,
which may be attained by virtue, and the happiness of
life eternal, which consists in the fruition of the Divine
countenance, to which our own virtue cannot ascend
unless aided by the Divine light, and which is indicated
by the celestial paradise. Human knowledge may help
us to attain the first; Divine knowledge, by working in
us faith, hope and charity, can alone help us to attain
the second, which was revealed by Jesus Christ. Hence
the object of Dante was to hold up "before men's
awakened and captivated minds the verity of God's
moral government; to rouse them to a sense of the
mystery of their state; to startle their commonplace
notions of sin into an imagination of its variety, its
magnitude, and its infinite shapes and degrees; to open
Dante.
327
15
their eyes to the beauty of the Christian temper, both
as suffering and as consummated; to teach them at
once the faithfulness and awful freeness of God's grace; to
help the dull and lagging soul to conceive the possibili-
ties, in its own case, of rising, step by step, in joy with-
out an end-of a felicity not unimaginable by man,
though of another order from the highest perfection of
earth; this is the poet's end." His subject, as he
himself explained it, is not so much the state of souls
after death, as man-man as rendering himself liable,
by the exercise of free will, by good or ill desert, to the
rewards or punishment of justice. It is solely by real-
izing such truths that men can obtain the ideal charac-
ter which Dante pictures forth-the picture of one
who, in boyhood is gentle, obedient, modest; in youth,
temperate, resolute and loyal; in ripe years, prudent,
just and generous; and in age has attained to calm
wisdom and perfect peace in God.
3
LECTURE II.
DELIVERED IN BOSTON, PHILADELPHIA, AND NEW YORK.
Farewell Thoughts on America.
AMONG the commonest questions addressed to the
stranger who visits your hospitable shores are, "What
do you think of our country?" "What do you think
of our institutions ?" The frequency of the questions
proves, I suppose, a real desire to know the general im-
pressions formed by those from the old home, whom you
welcome here. May one who has been received among
you with an overflowing kindness far beyond his deserts,
and with a warmth of recognition to which he has no
claim; who, though a stranger, has been treated as a
friend in every city he has entered; who has received
words of cordial welcome and appreciation from the
members of every religious community among you,
from Roman Catholic Archbishops to Shaker Elders;
who has spoken at nine or ten of your Colleges and
Universities; who has been again and again invited to
preach in your Churches, and to address many assem-
blages of the clergy or of theological students;—may
such a stranger, whom you have encouraged to regard
Farewell Thoughts on America.
329
¡
į
himself as a friend, endeavor to give, or perhaps I should
rather say, to indicate, some shadow of an answer to
the familiar question ?
Such an answer might be given-perhaps has been
sometimes given-in a tone of vanity and arrogance.
Your brilliant representative, Mr. Lowell, who, in spite
of the fact that he has spoken some sharp words to Eng-
land and the English, was honored and beloved in Eng-
land as few of your many popular Ministers have been,
has written a paper on "A certain condescension in For-
eigners." The humbleness of my position, the small-
ness of any claims of mine on your attention, exempt
me from all temptations to vanity and arrogance. Others
again have offended you by flattery, and others have
vexed you by sarcasm and censure. I hope that I shall
not be so unfortunate as to fall either into the Scylla
of flattery-a whirlpool of which I have always tried to
steer clear or into the Charybdis of criticism, which, on
my part, would be purely presumptuous. Thus much,
however, I may say. I have stood in simple astonish-
ment before the growth, the power, the irresistible
advance, the Niagara-rush of sweeping energy, the
magnificent apparent destiny of this nation, wonder-
ing whereunto it would grow. I have been touched
by the large generosity, the ungrudging hospitality of
friends in America whom I had never known before. I
should consider myself privileged beyond anything
which I can express, if any poor word which I have
been asked to speak in America might prove to be an
influence for good; if it could be one more link, even
microscopically small, in the golden chain of mutual
amity which now happily unites the two nations which
330
Farewell Thoughts on America.
yet are, and ought to be one nation; or if it could add
anything to the feeling of essential unity between re-
ligious bodies which, in spite of their differences, have
yet one great end in view. I should indeed rejoice if I
could thus repay some small part of the debt of my
gratitude and contribute my infinitesimal quota to the
efforts of those who-feeling the inherent grandeur of
this mighty people, and impressed with the eternal
truth that righteousness is the sole palladium of the
nations-are devoting heart and soul to the purest
effort of patriotism, the effort which shall enable
their fellow-countrymen to rise to the height of this
great argument, and by their means to elevate the moral
condition of the world. And why should this hope of
mine be condemned as entirely presumptuous? Any-
thing which I can do or say must be in itself of trivial
value; but still it may serve its own small purpose even
as it is the despised mica-flake which helps to build the
bases of the mountain, and the tiny coral-insect which
lays the foundations of the mighty continent, and the
grain of sand which is, "taken up by the wings of the
wind, to be a barrier against the raging of the sea.
""
Surely, your history, so brief yet so memorable, has
been too plainly marked by the interpositions of God to
leave any American unimpressed by the responsibilities
which God has made to rest upon the Atlantean shoul-
ders of this His people. There are some who are fond
of looking at the apparently trifling incidents of history,
and of showing how the stream of the centuries has been
diverted in one or other direction by events the most
insignificant. General Garfield told his pupils at Hiram
that the roof of a certain court-house was so absolute a
Farewell Thoughts on America.
331
water-shed that the flutter of a bird's wing would be
sufficient to decide whether a particular rain-drop
should make its way into the Gulf of St. Lawrence
or into the Gulf of Mexico. The flutter of a bird's
wing may have affected all history. Some students
may see an immeasurable significance in the flight of
parrots, which served to alter the course of Columbus,
and guided him to the discovery of North and not of
South America. There is no need for us to touch on
such curiosities. Suffice it for me to quote a testimony
which you will all reverence-the testimony of Wash-
ington: "When I contemplate," he says, in his letter
to the governors of the States, in 1783, "the interposi-
tion of Providence, as it was visibly manifest in guid-
I feel myself
ing us through the Revolution
oppressed and almost overwhelmed with a sense of
Divine munificence.
No people can be bound
to acknowledge and adore an Invisible hand which
conducts the affairs of men more than the people of
the United States. Every step by which they have
advanced to the character of an independent nation
seems to have been distinguished by some token of
Providential agency.
Of all the dispositions
and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion
In vain
and morality are indispensable supports.
would that man claim the tribute of patriotism whọ
should labor to subvert these great pillars of human
happiness, these firmest proofs of the duties of men and
of citizens." So wrote Washington, the Father of his
Country. Such was his conviction, and such the infer-
ence to which it led him.
In truth, this lesson-the Providence of God in the
!
!
332
Farewell Thoughts on America.
affairs of nations-seems to be stamped upon your his-
tory from the first. When Columbus ceased to speak
before the courtiers at Barcelona, and told them the
discovery of the Western world,
"The king and queen
Sank from their thrones and melted into tears,
And knelt, and lifted hand and heart and voice
In praise of God who led him through the waste,
And then the great 'Laudamus' rose to heaven."
When William Penn founded, among the forest trees
from which its streets are yet named, the City of
Brotherly Love," It is," he said, "a holy experi-
ment, which it depends upon themselves to accom-
plish or ruin ;" and he intended Pennsylvania to be an
endeavor "to improve an innocent course of life on a
virgin Elysian shore." "Let us," said the great Edmund
Burke-"let us auspicate all our proceedings in Amer-
ica with the old Church cry, " Sursum corda." George
Herbert wrote:
"Religion stands on tiptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American strand."
May I try to show that every fact of your early his-
tory emphasizes the religious prophecies which thus at-
tended its early dawn?
I. Who were your Fathers? Look to the rock whence
you were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence you
were digged. The stream of life in some colonies has
been tainted by the blood of criminals. Some of you
may have read Walter Savage Landor's fine address to
Mrs. Chisholm:
Farewell Thoughts on America. 333
"Chisholm! of all the ages that have rolled
Around this rolling world, what age hath seen
Such arduous, such heaven-guided enterprise
As thine? Crime flies before thee, and the shores
Of Australasia, lustrated by thee,
Collect no longer the putrescent weed
Of Europe, flung by senates to infect
The only unpolluted continent."
But, gentlemen, the line you draw from is the line of
men brave and free, and the blood in your veins is the
blood of heroes. "A Syrian ready to perish was thy
father," says the Hebrew prophet to his people. A few
Englishmen ready to perish were your ancestors; but
they were true, brave, godfearing men, and therefore
the irresistible might of their weakness shook the world.
Sicut Patribus, sit Deus nobis !
*
There were Recusants in Maryland, there were Cava-
liers in Virginia, but the type of your manhood was de-
rived from the awful virtue of the Pilgrim Fathers. If
"the feet of a few outcasts pressed Plymouth Rock, and
it became famous," it was because those outcasts were
men of fixed determination, of indomitable courage, of
deep faith, of earnest prayer. The hundred who in their
frail little bark braved the fury of the elements, were
frowned upon alike by kings and priests, but, animated
by a passion for Liberty, they carried to America, as Mr.
Gladstone has said, "all that was Democratic in the
policy of England, and all that was Protestant in her
religion." Well might your orator exclaim, "Victims
of persecution! how wide an empire acknowledges the
sway of your principles! Apostles of Liberty! what
*The motto of Boston.
334 Farewell Thoughts on America.
millions attest the authenticity of your mission." But
what was their safeguard? The power of faith, the
passion for freedom. "We do verily believe and trust,"
wrote Robinson and Brewster to Sir E. Sandys, in 1617,
"that the Lord is with us unto whom and whose ser-
vice we have given ourselves in many trials, and that
He will graciously prosper our endeavors according to
the simplicity of our hearts."
There is scarcely a man whose name is connected with
the early colonization of North America that is not
noble and memorable. There was the brilliant and
unhappy Raleigh-brightest star in the galaxy of stars
which clustered round the Virgin Queen who gave her
name to Virginia. There was Captain John Smith, a
man with the soul of a Crusader, whose favorite book was
"Marcus Aurelius," who "in all his proceedings made
justice his first guide and experience his second, com-
bating baseness, sloth, pride, and iniquity more than any
other dangers." There was William Penn, ever acting
in the spirit of his own conviction that the weak, the just,
the pious, the devout are all of one religion. There was
Bradford, the stern governor. There was Oglethorpe,
with his "strong benevolence of soul." There was the
hero of the Indian wars, Miles Standish.
Williams, the founder of Providence.
throp and Endicott, the worthy founders of worthy lines.
And how clearly is the will of Heaven marked in
your history. It is but "God's unseen Providence
which men nickname chance. Least of all nations can
America prepare a table for chance or furnish a drink-
offering for destiny. *
* See Isa. lxiv. 12.
There was Roger
There were Win-
29
Farewell Thoughts on America. 335
:
It was not Chance which made the history of mankind
hang on the fortunes of handfuls of strugglers in the
forests of Canada. It was not Chance which gave the
New World to the industry of Puritans, the individ-
ualism of busy traders. At one time, as Mr. Parkman
has so finely shown, it seemed certain that America
would have become the appanage of France. That
would have meant the predominance of the principles of
Richelieu and Loyola. It would have meant the sway
of the despot, the noble, and the Jesuit in the continent
of freedom. "Populations formed in the habits of a
feudal monarchy and controlled by a hierarchy pro-
foundly hostile to liberty would have been a hindrance
and a stumbling-block in the way of that majestic ex-
periment of which America is the field." But the hopes
of the Jesuits, in spite of all their noble labors and
heroic martyrdoms, were, in the Providence of God, shat-
tered to pieces by the fierce tomahawks of the Iroquois.
The gigantic ambition of France was foiled by the "lit-
tle, sickly, red-haired hero" at Quebec; and the weak
and broken line of English colonies along the shores of
the Atlantic, the descendants of an oppressed and fugi-
tive people, dashed down the iron hand of monarchy in
the flush of its triumphant power.
At another time it seemed as if the New World were
to belong to the proud, sickly blood of decaying Spain.
St. Augustine, in Florida, founded in 1565, was the
first town built by whites in the United States. That
would have meant the horrible despotism of Alvas
and Philips; it would have meant the narrow and crush-
ing tyranny of the bigot and the monk; it would have
meant the Mass-book, the thumb-screw, and the blood-
336 Farewell Thoughts on America.
hound; it would have meant the inert and execrable
rule of men like Menendez, the outcome of an infernal
ignorance animated by an infernal religious zeal. But
Spain was foiled by De Gourges, who justly hanged, "not
as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers,"
the Spaniards who had hanged Huguenots, "not as
Frenchmen, but as Lutherans; "—and again by General
Oglethorpe, who with eight hundred men attacked and
drove from Frederica their fleet with five thousand men
on board.
•
And so it has been written in God's Book of
Destiny that over America should wave neither the
golden lilies of France, nor the lion and tower, "pale
emblems of Castilian pride;" but first the stainless
semper eadem of England, and then-we do not grudge
them to you—the stars and stripes which you borrowed
from the English tomb of the Washingtons.
America was God's destined heritage, not for tyranny,
not for aristocracy, not for privilege-not for Spanish
bigotry or French ambition-but for England, and for
the Reformation, and for progress, and for liberty, and for
the development-if you fall not short of the vast obliga-
tions which rest upon you-of a great and noble type of
righteous, fearless, and independent manhood.
II. The voices of prophetic insight, from Seneca down-
ward, point to such a destiny.
Alluding to King James and the foundation of James-
town, Shakespeare, in the prophecy which he puts into
the mouth of Cranmer, says:
“His honor and the greatness of his name
Shall make new nations."
Farewell Thoughts on America. 337
ř
Westward," wrote Bishop Berkeley in the four mem-
orable lines, now engraved over the portal of the Uni-
versity of San Francisco-
"Westward the course of empire takes its way,
The first four acts already past,
The fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time's noblest offspring is the last."
Those lines seem to have been written in a flash of
prophetic insight; and years later Emerson wrote:
"Lo! I uncover the land,
Which I hid of old time in the West,
As the sculptor uncovers his statue,
When he has wrought his best."
But it is for America, not to repeat these prophecies
with complacency, but rather to register in heaven the
Vow that they shall be fulfilled. When the sword of
Cornwallis was surrendered to Washington at Yorktown,
some of the Americans, with a want of consideration.
which at such a moment was perhaps venial, began to
cheer. But, turning to them, the noble Virginian said,
with a fine rebuke, "Let posterity cheer for us." Gen-
tlemen, you, as the youngest of the nations, may put
your sickle into the ripened harvest of the world's
experience, and if you learn the lessons which that rev-
elation has to teach, Posterity will raise for you such a
cheer as shall ring through all the ages. But the les-
sons of History are full of warning. "I will overturn,
overturn, overturn," saith the Lord, "till he come
whose right it is." When the representatives of many
nations met Alexander at Babylon, the Roman ambas-
sadors were, it is said, the obscurest among them; yet
Greece was overturned, and Rome snatched the sceptre
...
.་
22
338
Farewell Thoughts on America.
*
from her palsying hands. Babylon, Assyria, Carthage,
Greece, Rome, have passed away. "Since the first domin-
ion of men was asserted over the ocean," says Mr. Rus-
kin, "three empires, of mark beyond all others, have
been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, of Venice,
of England. Of the First of these great powers only
the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the
Third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their
example, may be led through prouder eminence to less
pitied destruction."-Is not the warning thus given to
England as needful for the United States?
III. I have touched on your Fathers, but yet another
mighty impulse for good comes to you from the early
Visitors to your shores. With what interest do we remem-
ber Robert Hunt, Vicar of Reculver, in Kent, who on June
21,1607, celebrated the first English communion ever held
in the New World with the unruly crew of Captain John
Smith. Was it no boon to you that Charles Wesley, the
sweet poet of the Methodist movement, was the secretary
of General Oglethorpe, and accompanied him to Georgia
with his brother John Wesley? In St. Simon's Island
you can still point to Wesley's oak, and in Newbury-
port Church to the grave of George Whitefield. It was he
who suggested the motto, Nil desperandum Christo duce,
"That day when sunburned Pepperell,
His shotted salvoes fired so well;
The Fleur de Lys trailed sulky down,
And Louisburg was George's town."
Thus to you also was communicated, by strange inter-
positions of Providence, the electric thrill of that
awakenment which startled the eighteenth century from
its torpor of indolence and death.
Farewell Thoughts on America.
339
Besides these, there came to you two great visitors of
whose interest and affection any country might be proud.
One was the gallant, the chivalrous, the stainless Lafa-
yette, burning with the passion for freedom and the en-
thusiasm of humanity; the other was that whitest of
human souls, Bishop Berkeley, whose wooden house still
stands at Newport. It is something that you can point
to the sea-cave in which was written the "Minute Philos-
opher;" something that the early streams of your history
are commingled with the purest glories of the French
Revolution, and the serene dawn of modern Philosophy;
with the influence of one who added to the holiness of
a saint the keenness of a philosopher, and to whom one
of the most cynical of poets could ascribe "every virtue
under heaven." Lafayette hung the key of the Bastile
in Mount Vernon; Berkeley left his library to Yale.
Then, still keeping to the earlier stages of American
history, how distinctive and how beautiful are the char-
acteristics of your great men in Church and State :—In
the Church, or, if you prefer it, in the churches-but
to me there is but one great flock of God, however
many may be the folds-you may look back with pride
to the holy enthusiasm and boundless self-sacrifice of
David Brainerd; to the lion-hearted courage of John
Eliot; to those four students at Williamstown who
gave the first impulse to the mighty work of missions;
to the heroic endurance of Adoniram Judson; to John-
son of Yale, who in 1717 was the first to teach the Co-
pernican system in America; to the faith and deter-
mination of Bishop Seabury; to the large-hearted the-
ology and far-seeing wisdom of Bishop White; to the
intense if Cimmerian theology of Jonathan Edwards;
· 340
Farewell Thoughts on America.
to the fiery courage of Theodore Parker; to the conquer-
ing sweetness and charity of William Ellery Channing,
"whose word went forth like morning over the Conti-
nents." In the State, time would fail me to tell of Jef-
ferson, who wrote your immortal Declaration of Inde-
pendence; of Otis, with his tongue of flame, who
"breathed into your nation the breath of life;" of
Patrick Henry, that
"Forest-born Demosthenes,
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the Seas;"
of young Warren, with his death and glory. Yes, in
your old South Church, which I trust you will preserve
inviolate forever,
"Adams shall look in Otis' face,
Blazing with freedom's soul,
And Molyneux see Hancock trace
The fatal word which frees a race;
There in New England's well-earned place,
The head of Freedom's roll!"
And two there are who must have separate and
special mention. One was the true patriot and sage,
who
"Called the red lightning from the o'er-rushing cloud,
And dashed the beauteous terror on the ground,
Smiling majestic ;
""
the other, he who, "first in war, first in peace, first in the
hearts of his countrymen," has been called by an Eng-
lish writer "the greatest of good men, and the best of
great men," and of whom your own great orator has said
that "America has furnished to the world the character
of Washington."
Farewell Thoughts on America. 341
"So sacred! is there aught surrounding
Our lives, like that great Past behind,
Where Courage, Freedom, Faith abounding,
One mighty cord of honor twined?"
IV. Let me pass on to the War of Independence, and
I am certain that every one here will agree with me when
I say that Americans in the last few years have begun
to understand far better the feelings of Englishmen re-
specting it. In reading some of the Fourth of July
utterances we might fancy that you believed us to enter-
tain a sore and sullen feeling, and that no Englishman
could think without a blush of shame and a spasm of
anger of the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga and of
Cornwallis at Yorktown. I hope that I need not in the
year 1885 stop to remove so unfounded an impression.
I have myself preached a Fourth of July sermon in
Westminster Abbey, and have invited your eminent
countryman, Dr. Phillips Brooks, to do the same.
Strange that any American should overlook the fact
that the opponents of the American colonies were not
the English people, but the king and the rulers who
misrepresented them. Have you forgotten the words
of Burke ? Have you forgotten that Barré called you
"Sons of Liberty?" Have you forgotten his daring
words in the House of Commons, once familiar to your
very school-boys ?" They planted by your care! No!
Your oppression planted them in America.
They
nourished by your indulgence! They grew up by your
neglect of them. They protected by your arms! They
have nobly taken up arms in your defence!" Can you
ever forget the volcanic outburst of Chatham ?" The
gentleman tells us that America is obstinate, America is
342
Farewell Thoughts on America.
almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice that America
has resisted! Three millions of people so dead to all
the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be
slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of
all the rest." If our glories are yours, we have learned
also to look on yours as ours. We do not grudge you
your Marathon of Bunker Hill, and we can repeat as
proudly as you-
"By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
In arms the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."
And I will tell you why we can look to the defeat of
our forces without any of that shame which we should
have felt had the defeat come from any hands but yours.
It is because England could say, almost with a smile,
My sons have conquered; it is from me they drew their
strength! When the lioness was taunted with bringing
forth only one cub at a time, she answered: "Yes, but
that is a lion." You fought us in our own spirit. You
retaught us what you had learned from us; your rebel-
lion was but a vibration of "that deep chord which Hamp-
den smote." When American friends gave me a window
in honor of Sir Walter Raleigh, the founder of Virginia,
the Father of the United States, I asked Mr. Lowell to
write the inscription, and he wrote this quatrain :
"The New World's sons, from England's breast we drew
Such milk as bids remember whence we came;
Proud of her Past, from which our Present grew,
This window we erect to Raleigh's name."
Keep your Fourth of July celebrations as long as you
Farewell Thoughts on America.
343
will. Let them teach you to say, with good reason,
“Thank God, I also am an American." But I am sure
that they will be kept no longer in any spirit of hostility
to your mother-land.
mother-land. An Arab in the desert once asked
a traveller if he was an Englishman. "No," was the
answer, “I am an American.” The Arab's only reply
was to hold out two of his fingers. He had never heard
Fluellen's proverb, "As like as my fingers to my fingers,"
but he knew that England and America are one in lan-
guage, one in manner, one in desires and habits and as-
pirations, one in worship and birth and blood.
In the issue, then, of your War of Independence, we
too see the hand of God. Franklin, in 1783, mentions
the daily prayer offered up for the Divine protection.
"Our prayers," he says, "were heard, and they were
graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in
the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a
superintending Providence in our favor. Have we for-
gotten that Divine Friend, or do we no longer need His
assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time, and the
longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of the
truth that God governs in the affairs of men." Perhaps
Franklin was thinking of the sudden tempest which
came in answer to Thomas Prince's prayer, when, in 1746,
Admiral D'Anville had sworn to ravage Boston Town.
V. I pass on to the great crisis of your modern history
-the war of secession, the civil war, the war between the
North and the South. In that war, too, in its origin,
in its issues, in its many incidents, I see as manifestly
as in your origin, and in the War of Independence the
light of God, which shines on so steadily, and shows all
things in the slow history of their ripening.
!
344 Farewell Thoughts on America.
What an awful time it was, and how you learned to
realize, as we had realized two centuries and a half
before you, the horrors of a house divided against itself!
Civil war is at the best a heart-rending word, and if the
younger generation fail to realize all it meant, we can feel
what it meant-we who have lived through the Indian
mutiny and the Crimean war. We know how your
hearts ached to think of those whom God touched with
His finger in the woods of Tennessee and by the green
hill-slopes of the Potomac ; of that disaster at Bull Run,
where your new volunteers were faint with thirst and
hunger, and fell asleep on the greensward for very weari-
ness; of Washington turned into one great hospital;
of those multitudes of terrible oblong boxes which the
trains carried to various cities; of the tears of the nation
which fell so hot and heavy over her dead volunteers.
You can never forget, while life lasts, the days when, as
the eye glanced over the daily papers, the two words,
"mortally wounded," struck an unutterable chill into
so many hearts of mothers and wives; when men, sacri-
ficing all, locked the shops and chalked up, "We have
enlisted for the war;" when those brave hearts went
down in the stream on board the Cumberland, sloop of
war; when the red stains on the woodland leaves were
not only from the maple's conflagration; when your
land, even amid her anguish, rejoiced that she had sons
with hearts like these. In those days God ordained for
you famine and fire and sword and lamentation. The
blood of the gallant and good flowed like a river, and
the dear ones at home hungered for news; and dread
memories were left for years, and the hearts of women
slowly broke. It was not only gray-haired fathers
Farewell Thoughts on America.
345
who sank under the bayonet thrust, and men who
came home crippled for the rest of life, but the shots.
which pierced the breasts of young men drenched in
blood a picture and a lock of woman's hair; and in the
- delirious fever of their wounds bright-eyed, gallant
boys talked of their mothers and babbled of the green
fields at home. How full is that page in your history
of noble and tender memories! "In how many paths,"
said Mr. Lowell, "leading to how many homes, where
proud memory does all she can to fill up the fire-
side gaps with shining shapes, do men walk in pensive
mood? Ah, young heroes, safe in immortal youth as
those of Homer, you at least carried your ideal hence
untarnished. It is locked for you, beyond moth and
rust, in the treasure-chamber of death." Your poets,
even your unknown poets, spoke of it in touching
accents:
"All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walked on the beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing—a private or two now and then
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost-only one of the men
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle.
*
*
*
*
"He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree,
His footstep is lagging and weary,
Yet onward he goes through the broad belt of light,
Though the shades of the forest be dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle- Ha! Mary, good-night!'
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.
346 Farewell Thoughts on America.
"All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
No sound save the rush of the river,
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead ;—
The picket's off duty forever."
Men left at home their pale young wives and sweet
groups of little children, and how many thought—
(6
You have put the children to bed, Alice,
Maud and Willie and Rose;
They have lisped their sweet Our Father,
And sunk to their night's repose.
Did they think of me, dear Alice,
Did they think of me, and say,
'God bless him,' and 'God bless him,
Dear father far away?'"
And then, what indomitable determination was
breathed forth by some of your songs:
"For the birthright yet unsold,
For the history yet untold,
For the future yet unrolled-
Put it through!
"Father Abram, hear us cry-
We can follow, we can die;
Lead your children, then, and try-
Put it through!
"Here's a work of God half done,
Here's the kingdom of His Son,
With its triumph just begun-
Put it through!
"Father Abram, that man thrives
Who with every weapon strives,
Use our twenty million lives—
Put it through!
Farewell Thoughts on America. 347
""Tis to you the trust is given,
'Tis by you the bolt is driven,
By the very God of Heaven,
Put it through!"
Yes, those sad days had their nobleness and their
deep, unbroken human affections amid the horrors of
war. Bad practices and fierce factions were forgotten.
You remember how when two regimental bands were
hurling responsive and defiant strains at each other, at
last one of them struck up "Home! Sweet Home!"
and to that challenge the enemy had no defiance; all they
could do was to join their strains also with the strains
of their foemen in "Home! Sweet Home!" So does
"One touch of nature make the whole world kin.”
You remember how when General Lee lay sleeping
under a tree for weariness, the army of the South
marched by him in utter silence, having passed along
the lines the whisper, "Uncle Robert's asleep; don't
disturb him." You remember how once the two hostile
armies delayed the charge and stopped firing because a
little child had strayed between the lines. In that war,
too, I see distinctly
“God's terrible and fiery finger
Shrivel the falsehood from the souls of men."
You had bitter feelings against England because of the
Alabama, and because you thought she sympathized with
the South more than the North. Well, in the first place,
the great heart of England was in no sense whatever
responsible for the muddle of international law which al-
lowed the escape of the Alabama, and, in the second place,
even for her voluntary entanglement in the doings of that
348
Farewell Thoughts on America.
.
vessel, though they were done against her will, England
has made you frank acknowledgment and has paid you
ample reparation. Nor was it true that the voice which
John Bright raised for you in Birmingham was a voice
without an echo. It woke hundreds and thousands of
echoes; only, you must remember that in those days, if
many of us by no means understood the issue, neither did
many of you. God has flashed the light of history over
the obscurities of those days, and made many things
plain which then were complex. It was He who gave
you grace as a nation to decide aright; for
"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood for the good or evil side.
Some great cause, God's new Messiab, offering each the bloom
or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right;
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt the darkness and the light."
In that hour America had the wisdom given her to de-
cide-
"In whose party she should stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shook the dust against her
land."
And God gave you the right men to guide you. He
gave you that strong, homely, wise, fearless type of
American manhood, Abraham Lincoln, calling him as
clearly from the wood-shanty and the store as ever he
called David from following the ewes great with young
ones. From the leather-store at Galena, He called your
indomitable soldier, Grant, with his clear-sighted pur-
pose and his demands of "unconditional surrender."
From the log-hut and the school-master's desk He
called the firm spirit of James Garfield. The shot of
·
Farewell Thoughts on America.
349
the assassin cut short their martyr-lives, but not until
their work was done; and "when God's servants have
done their day's work He sends them sleep." Each of
"For de-
them has sunk to sleep amid your tears.
parted kings there are appointed honors, and the
wealthy have their gorgeous obsequies; it was their
nobler function to clothe a nation in spontaneous
mourning, and to go down to the grave amid the
benedictions of the poor."
Your civil war ended, and ended gloriously. The
South accepted the terrible arbitrament and read God's
will in its issue, and bowed her head and clasped your
hand in fraternal union. The bow of peace spanned
once more the stormy heaven, and the flag which had
been rent was one again, and without a seam.
"Then hail the banner of the free,
The starry flower of liberty;
Behold, its streaming rays unite
Mingling floods of braided light—
The red that fires the Southern rose
With spotless white from Northern snows,
And spangled o'er its azure sea
The sister stars of Liberty."
Thenceforth the question of slavery is settled on the
right side forever-the life-long effort of Channing, and
Theodore Parker, and Whittier, and Lloyd Garrison,
and Wendell Phillips, and all the glorious army of
Abolitionists was accomplished, and you will remain,
we trust,
"One flag, one land, one heart, one hand,
One Nation evermore,"
while your genius of Liberty holds forth her olive-branch
350 Farewell Thoughts on America.
and tramples the broken fetters of four million slaves
beneath her feet.
VI. And then at once and most gladly, and, let us
hope, for many a century, you laid the sword aside.
"The sword, after all," as Victor Hugo says, "is but
a hideous flash in the darkness," while "Right is an
eternal ray." "As the sword," said Washington, "was
the last resort for the perservation of our liberties, so it
ought to be the first they lay aside when those liberties
are firmly established." When the Duke of Cambridge
asked General Grant to review the English army, he
made the noble answer that a military review was the
one thing which he hoped never to see again. But
the War of the Secession established your national
position. Just as, during the fighting, many a boy,
learning to look death in the face, sprang into manhood
at the touch of noble responsibility, so the war strength-
ened and sobered you, and gave to your thoughts, your
politics, your bearing as a people, a grander and manlier
tone. The nation waved her hand, and her army of
more than a million sank back instantly into peaceful
civil life, as the soldiers of Roderic Dhu sank back
into the heather. "Cincinnatus," says Mr. Gladstone,
"became a commonplace example.
The gen-
erals of yesterday were the editors, the secretaries, and
the solicitors of to-day." It was a noble lesson to man-
kind, and a splendid service to the cause of popular
government throughout the world. And again I say
that the man must be blind indeed who cannot see that
God's manifest Providence led and protected you. "If
a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God's no-
tice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His
Farewell Thoughts on America.
35I
aid?”*
"Stand still and see the salvation of God"
-such was the telegram flashed by President Lincoln on
one memorable occasion. And when Lincoln had fallen;
when the population of New York was wild with pas-
sionate excitement; when, like a spark falling on gun-
powder, a single wrong word might have launched a
terrible multitude into conflagration and massacre, Gar-
field appeared at the window shaking a white flag, and
when he had hushed the attention of the multitude into
breathless silence, what did he say? He said: "Fel-
low-citizens, clouds and darkness are round about him;
righteousness and judgment are the habitations of his
seat." Again and again the words of Scripture have
"That
been potent at the crises of your history.
book, sir," said President Andrew Jackson, pointing to
the family Bible, as he lay on his death-bed, "is the
rock on which our republic rests." The first words
ever flashed along an electric wire in America were the
words, "What hath God wrought?" sent by a young girl
from Washington to Baltimore. And when man's science
subdued the forces of the lightning and the ocean, and
the electric cable first thrilled its flaming messages of
love and hope "through the oozy dungeons of the ray-
less deep," almost the first words flashed from hemi-
sphere to hemisphere were the divine message of Christ-
mas, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good-will toward men."
VII. How quickly, again, by Heaven's blessing you re-
covered from the shock of war; how your prosperity ad-
vanced by leaps and bounds! What the Priest Vimont
* Franklin.
352
Farewell Thoughts on America.
!
+
said to the followers of Maisonneuve, when they landed
at Montreal, in 1642, applies to you: "You are a grain
of mustard-seed that shall rise and grow till its branches
overshadow the earth. You are few, but your work is
the work of God. His smile is on you, and your chil-
dren shall fill the land." It is a theme too familiar to
dwell upon how a handful has become a mighty nation;
how groups of log-huts have sprung in a few years into
splendid cities; how a fringe of precarious seaboard has
become an empire of which the two great seas of the
world wash the one and the other shore; how your com-
merce, reaching to every land and spreading white sails
on every sea, is already a dangerous if friendly rival to the
commerce of England; how in a single century of free-
dom you have sprung from one to fifty millions; how a
band of daring fugitives has become almost in a century
the wealthiest and one of the most powerful of all the
nations on the globe. Are we not startled into aston-
ishment when we hear of those who have spoken to men
whose grandfathers remembered to have been present as
children, in 1704, at the funeral of Peregrine White, the
first English babe born on the New England shores?
And now you have more than three millions of square
miles of territory; 26,000 miles of river-way; 12,000
miles of indented shore; and more than sixty millions
of living souls rich in their "inherent and inalineable
rights!"
Surely, you might apply to yourselves the words of
Tennyson :
"Our enemies have fallen, have fallen; the seed,
The little seed they laughed at in the dark,
Has risen and cleft the soil and grown a bulk
Farewell Thoughts on America.
353
:
Of spanless girth that lays on every side
A thousand arms and rushes to the sun-
A night of summer from the heat, a breath
Of autumn dropping fruits of power; and rolled
With Music in the growing breeze of Time,
The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs
Shall move the stony bases of the world."
VIII. But all this pompous detail of material triumphs
is worse than idle unless the men of the two countries
shall remain and shall become greater than the mere
things that they produce, and shall know how to regard
those things simply as tools and materials for the attain-
ment of the highest purposes of their being. The voice
of Milton tells you, as it told England after her civil dis-
cord, that
"Peace hath her victories
Not less renowned than war.”
In many directions you have been mindful of those vic-
tories. Suffer me to point out some of your immense
gains and advantages. You have shown a marvellous
inventiveness. You develop more quickly, you adapt
more rapidly and unhesitatingly than on the other side
of the Atlantic the latest discoveries and applications
of mechanical science. You have shown multitudes
of examples of that splendid munificence-illustrated
by such names as those of John Harvard, of George
Peabody, of Peter Cooper, of Johns Hopkins, and many
more-which leads men who have made colossal fortunes
among you to spend part at least of those fortunes not
in the endowment of idle families, but in enriching
and benefiting the cities of their birth, the nation
under whose gentlest of sways their path was paved
23
354
Farewell Thoughts on America.
?
from the lot of ragged and laboring boys to that of
an affluence beyond the dreams of avarice. Your libra-
ries, with their admirable card-catalogues, with their
generous facilities, with their ample endowments, with
their accumulated aid to research, ought to make you
a nation of scholars. Your system of education is one
of the freest and most ungrudging in the world. Best
perhaps of all, you have developed and are develop-
ing a fine and original literature. You may well be
proud of your poets: of Bryant, who "entered the
heart of America through the Gate Beautiful;" of
Longfellow, that pure and exquisite singer, whose bust
in Westminister Abbey is the delight of our two na-
tions; of Edgar Poe's weird genius; of the living
fame of such men as Lowell with his generous culture,
of Holmes with his sunny geniality, of Whittier with his
passionate love of right and hatred of wrong. Among
your novelists you count the honored names of Feni-
more Cooper, the delight of our boyhood, of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, whose works have the immortality of true
genius. You have the humor of James, of Howell, of
Bret Harte, of Mark Twain. You have the brilliant
histories of Washington Irving, of Bancroft, of Pres-
cott, of Motley, of Parkman. You have the splendid
oratory of Clay, of Daniel Webster, of Wendell Phillips.
All this is well. To borrow the image suggested by
the late beloved Dean of Westminister when you wel-
comed him among you, the rush and fury of Niagara
is a type of the life of your people—" its devouring,
perplexing, fermenting, bewildering activity;" but it
would lose nine-tenths of its splendor and loveliness, if
it had not the silvery column of spray above it as the
Farewell Thoughts on America. 355
image of your future history-of the upward, heaven-
aspiring destiny which should emerge from the distrac-
tions of your present. And if that glittering column
of heaven-ascending spray is to be the type of your as-
pirations, may I not add that the vivid rainbow-" in
sight like unto an emerald"—which to my eyes lent its
chief glory to the Falls, may also be the symbol of your
nation's hope?
IX. It would be false and idle to imply that you
have no perils that there are no rocks, no whirlpools
which lie in front of your steam-driven ship of state.
It is hardly for me, it is not for any stranger to dwell
on these.
A stranger does not know, he cannot know
much if anything about the spoils system; about bosses
and bossism; about the danger of a secularized educa-
tion; about the subtle oppression of popular opinion;
about frauds, and rings, and municipal corruption ;
about the amazing frivolousness, the triviality, the
tyranny, the ferocity, the untruthfulness, the reckless
personality and intrusiveness of the baser portion of
your Press. He reads, indeed, in your leading jour-
nals, of evils "calculated to humiliate and discourage
those who have both pride and faith in republican
institutions; of political scandals, and commercial dis-
honors; of demagogism in public life; of reckless finan-
cial speculations; of a lessening sense of the sacred-
ness of marriage; of defalcations, malfeasance, sinister
legislation, bought and paid for by those whom it bene-
fits; of a false ideal of life which puts material interest
above the spiritual, and makes riches the supreme ob-
ject of human endeavor and an absorbing passion for
paltry emulations." Of all these he reads in your pa-
356
Farewell Thoughts on America.
-
pers and magazines, and of the warning of your wisest
writers, that "popular government is no better than any
other except the wisdom and virtue of the people make
it so," and that "Democracy has weakness as well as
strength." Clearly all these questions demand most
solemn care. As the same voice has said, "when men
undertake to do their own kingship they enter on the
dangers and responsibilities as well as on the privi-
leges of the function." Times of long peace, times of
growing prosperity are times of serious peril. "About
the river of human life there is a wintry wind but a
heavenly sunshine; the iris colors its agitation, the
frost fixes on its repose." You have
dom demands an eternal vigilance.
you a hundred years ago of the peril
by little, partial, local interests.
liberty without honesty and justice. "You may build
your Capitol of granite," said Wendell Phillips, "and
pile it high as the Rocky Mountains; if it is founded on
or mixed up with iniquity, the pulse of a girl will in
time beat it down." Public spirit, watchfulness, the
participation of all in the burden and heat of the day,
are requisite if America would work out her own salva-
tion, and therewith almost the salvation of the race.
freedom, but free-
Franklin warned
of being divided
There can be no
X. But not for one moment would your most pessi-
mistic citizen despair. To despair of America would be
to despair of humanity; for it would show that men,
after all, have no capacity for governing themselves:
that they have, after all, no nobler destiny than to be
the footstool of the few.*
* See the speech of Franklin in the Convention for forming the
Constitution of the United States in 1783.
Farewell Thoughts on America.
357
And there are two reasons why not even the most
cynical pessimist need despair of America-the one
because your government is a government of manhood,
the other, because you have succeeded in training men.
It is a government of the people, by the people, for the
people. The multitude may sometimes be careless and
supine; it may fail to understand the responsiblities.
which attach to liberty. But sooner or later it awakens
in all its strength and treads wicked laws and base com-
binations under its feet. The rousing of a magnificent
people when it "views its mighty youth, and shakes its
invincible locks," is as when
"The lion shakes the dew-drop from its mane."
Nay, even these metaphors of Shakespeare and Milton
are too weak to image forth the outburst of volcanic
wrath which sometimes, almost in a moment, transforms
a peaceful and careless commonwealth into terrific and
irresistible agitation, as vast subterranean forces in one
moment transform into bellowing eruption the moun-
tain which but yesterday had snow in its long-slumber-
ing crater, and gardens and vineyards upon its sunny
slopes.
I ask, then, with President Lincoln in his first Inau-
gural Address: "Why should there not be a patient con-
fidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there
any better or equal hope in the world ?"
Shakespeare in his day complained that
"Not a man, for being simply man,
Hath any honor, but honor for those honors
That are without him-as place, riches, favor,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit.”
358 Farewell Thoughts on America.
It has not been so with you. You have felt the sacred-
ness of manhood, the dignity of manhood, the illimit
able horizon of its hopes, the immeasurable capability of
its powers.
Your very Declaration of Independence
lays it down as a self-evident truth, "that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If often
upon a small scale in local communities, and upon a
large scale in your national history, you have witnessed
the irresistible revolt of the national conscience against
the growth of intolerable wrongs, the cause of this latent
force is because you have honored men simply as men.
From the street and from the store, from the forest
and from the prairie, you have taken ragged, bright-
eyed boys, with little or no regular education even, but
enriched by the lessons of experience and crowned and
mitred by the hands of invisible consecration, and not
asking who they were but only what they have proved
themselves capable to be-because of their homely wis-
dom, because of their native strength, because of their
undaunted righteousness-you have fearlessly set them
to command a million of your soldiers, to rule over fifty
millions of their fellow-men. Such a man was James
Garfield; such a man was Ulysses Grant; such a man
was Abraham Lincoln. Were manlier words ever spoken
than those with which he ended his New York speech in
1860: "Let us have faith that right makes might; and
in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as
we understand it." A man, in one aspect, may be but
a shadow and a vapor; in another, he is immortal, im-
measurable, infinite, and he is never so great as when he
Farewell Thoughts on America. 359
is uplifted by the aspirations of a great land. "Govern-
ments, religion, property, books," said Humboldt, "are
nothing but the scaffolding to build a man. Earth holds.
up to her Master no fruit but the finished man. "Man-
kind," said Kossuth, "has but one single object-man-
kind itself; and that object has but one single instru-
ment-mankind again." "Men," said Pericles, "are a
city, and not walls." The prayer of every great com-
munity should ever be, O God, give us men.
"What constitutes a State?" asks Sir William Jones
in his ode in imitation of Alcæus.
"Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick walls or moated gate;
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts.
No! Men-high-minded men ;
Men who their duties know,
And know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain ;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain-
These constitute a state:
And sovereign Law that, with collected will,
On crowns and globes elate
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill."
XI. But am I wrong in saying—if I am you will for-
give me, for it is only the impression to which I have
been led by studying the minds of some of your greatest
thinkers-am I wrong in saying that at this moment in
her history America needs nothing more imperatively
than a new and concentrated enthusiasm ? If Prophets
be needed to stir up the monotony of wealth, and re-
360 Farewell Thoughts on America.
awaken the people to the great ideals which are con-
stantly fading out of their minds-"to trouble the waters
that there may be health in their flow"-in what direc-
tions could such Prophets point which should give any
grander aims than the achievement of the old eternal
ideals?"That motionless shaft," said Daniel Webster,
pointing to the pillar on Bunker Hill," will be the most
powerful of speakers. Its speech will be of civil and re-
ligious liberty. It will speak of patriotism and of cour-
age. It will speak of the moral improvement and eleva-
tion of mankind. Decrepit age leaning against its base,
and ingenuous youth gathering round it, will speak to
each other of the glorious events with which it is con-
nected, and exclaim, "Thank God! I also am an
American." But that depends. The boast of ancestral
excellence is worse than unavailing if it be used by the
lips of degenerate descendants. Vast is the work before
America, and if in her the nations of the world are to
be blessed, that work will need all her seriousness and
all her energy.
I have endeavored to emphasize the thought on which
all your own greatest and best men have insisted, that the
hand of God is pre-eminently manifest in your history;
and the correlative thought, that there rests upon the
American nation an immense burden of heaven-imposed
responsibility.
What is that responsibility?
It is to combine the old with the new-the experience
of the East with the daring of the West-"the long past
of Europe with the long future of America."
It is to guard the idea of Freedom as the fabled dragon
guarded of old the very garden of the Hesperides-tak-
Farewell Thoughts on America. 361
ing good heed that liberty be not confound with license;
nor republican government with the shout of popular
anarchy; nor freedom with the freedom to do wrong un-
punished; nor manly independence with lawless self-
assertion. It is to keep the equilibrium between stability
and advance, between liberty and law. "As for me,”
said Patrick Henry, in 1775, "give me liberty or give
me death."
It is to work out the conception of Progress; to recog-
nize that it is your duty not only to preserve but to im-
prove; to bear in mind that the living sap of to-day
outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. You and your
churches will have to decide whether, in the words
of Castelar, you will confound yourselves with Asia,
"placing upon the land old altars, and upon the altars
old idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and
upon the theocracies despotic empires; or whether by
labor and by liberty you will advance the grand work
of universal civilization." Despots, whether priestly or
secular, may they "stand still !" But
"God to the human soul,
And all the spheres that roll
Wrapped by her spirit in their robes of light,
Hath said,The primal plan
Of all the world and man
Is Forward! Progress is your law, your right!""
It is to work out a manly and intelligent correlation
of religious tradition with the advancing knowledge of
mankind. The churches must show to the world the rare
example of religious tolerance; of many folds existing
happily side by side in the one flock. The laity must
teach their churches not to supersede but to supplement
362
Farewell Thoughts on America.
each other. They must beware of stagnant doctrines and
stereotyped formulæ. They must learn the spirit of those
grand words in which John Robinson addressed the Pil-
grim Fathers when they sailed from the shores of Eu-
rope-"I am persuaded that the Lord hath more truth
yet to come for us; yet to break forth out of His Holy
Word. Neither Luther nor Calvin has penetrated into
the counsel of God."
"New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upwards still, and onwards,
Who would keep abreast with Truth.”
Judge Sewell set a noble example when, in 1696, he
stood up in his pew in the Old South Church to confess
his contrition for his share in the witchcraft delusion of
1692.
That preacher of Georgia spoke wise words who,
taunted with a change of opinion about slavery, said in
a Thanksgiving sermon, "I have got new light. I now
believe many things which I did not believe twenty
years ago.
If I live till 1900 I expect to be-
lieve some things which I now reject and to reject some
things which I now believe;-and I shall not be alone."
It is, above all, to show the nations the true ideal
of national righteousness. Two centuries and a half
have passed since Peter Bulkley addressed to his little
congregation of exiles the memorable words: "There is
no people but will strive to excel in something. What
can we excel in if not in holiness? If we look to num-
bers we are the fewest; if to strength we are the weak-
est; if to wealth and riches we are the poorest of all
Farewell Thoughts on America.
363
the people of God throughout the world. We cannot
excel nor so much as equal other people in these things,
and if we come short in grace and holiness we are the
most despicable people under heaven. Strive we there-
fore to excel, and suffer not this crown to be taken from
us."
How has all this been reversed! In numbers you
are now, or soon inevitably must be, the greatest; in
strength the most overwhelming; in wealth the most
affluent of all the Christian nations throughout the
world. In these things you not only equal other people
but excel them. Why? Mainly, I believe, because
your fathers feared God. Shall America then dare to
kick down that ladder, to spurn the low degrees by
which she did ascend, and, despising the holiness which
was once her single excellence, now in the days of her
boundless prosperity to make in the common life of her
citizens a league with death and a covenant with hell?
I do not for a moment believe it. I believe that she
will be preserved from all such perils by the memo-
ries of the dead and the virtues of the living. I believe
that she will cherish the pure homes which have
never lost their ancient English dower of inward
happiness. I believe that she will not suffer the wise
voices of the holy and thoughtful few to be drowned in
noisier and baser sounds. I believe that her aspirations
will dilate and conspire with the breezes from the sea
I be-
which sweep the vast horizons of your territory.
lieve that she will listen to the three great Angels of
History, of Conscience, of Experience, which, as the
great teachers of mankind, ever repeat to us the eternal
accents of the Moral Law. I believe that she will help to
364 Farewell Thoughts on America.
disenchant the nations of the horrible seductions of war,
and of a peace crushed and encumbered under warlike
armaments. I believe that she is linked, that she will
ever desire to be linked, with us of the old home, in the
golden yoke of amity, and that by the blessing of God's
peculiar grace, you with us and we with you, shall be
enabled to "make all things new" for the glory and
happiness of mankind. Then shall hoary-headed selfish-
ness receive its death-blow, and the vilest evils which
have afflicted the corporate life of man
"Shall live but in the memory of Time,
Which like a penitent libertine shall start,
Look back, and shudder at his former years.”
MAY 4 1921

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