LIBRARY 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Accession 
 
SOCIAL ASPECTS 
 
 OF 
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
SOCIAL ASPECTS 
 
 OF 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 BY 
 
 BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 CANON OF WESTMINSTER 
 AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 Hontron antr CTambrttw : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YOKE. 
 
 1887 
 
 [The Right of Translation is reserved.] 
 
(SI? 
 
 6 KAIpOC, KAI HrnKGN H BAClAeiA TOY 
 0eof. MTANO?T6 KAI niCTYT N TO) 
 
 ST MARK i. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE Sermons in the present volume were 
 preached (with two exceptions) during my resi- 
 dence at Westminster in August and December, 
 1886. I have indeed endeavoured to enforce the 
 main ideas which they contain at various times 
 during the last thirty years ; but the opportunity 
 seemed to require that I should endeavour to bring, 
 as far as I could, into a clear and connected form 
 what had been spoken only fragmentarily before. 
 No one indeed can tell what is the effect which 
 'the Abbey' and the vast congregations which 
 gather there, eager to listen, produce upon one 
 who first experiences it at the close of life. Of 
 all places in the world ' the Abbey/ I think, pro- 
 claims the social Gospel of Christ with the most 
 touching eloquence. 
 
 So it was that when I was called to work at 
 Westminster in 1884 I could not but feel with 
 intense force the power of old thoughts, and in 
 the first sermon of my first residence I indicated a 
 line of teaching which I hoped to pursue if the 
 time were given. Some passages from that Sermon 
 will serve as an introduction to what follows. 
 
 When we are by the force of circumstances, or more 
 truly by the loving providence of God, brought face to 
 w. s. b 
 
 86793 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 face with a great fact, a great duty, a great idea, and 
 stand as it were alone in its presence, we are, I fancy, 
 startled to find how little we have ever really thought 
 upon it, how slenderly we are prepared to give any account 
 of its relation to ourselves. We grow familiar with tradi- 
 tional criticisms : we adopt conventional customs : we 
 repeat popular phrases ; but all these lie for the most part 
 outside our own actual experience : we have not made 
 them our own by resolute reflection and self-questioning. 
 The fact, the duty, the idea, is itself strange to us. 
 
 Is not this true of that which is for each one of us the 
 greatest fact, the greatest duty, the greatest idea, life 
 itself? How few of us pause even at such a time and 
 in such a place as this to consider what life is, not in its 
 circumstances but in its energy, in its capacities, in its 
 issues. We all know, even if the knowledge has little 
 practical effect, that no measure of time or sense gives 
 a standard of its value. Life is more than the sum of 
 personal enjoyments and pains through which it finds 
 expression ; more than the length of days in which it is 
 visible to human eyes ; more than the fulness of means 
 which reveals to us its power. All these pass away, but in 
 the process of their vanishing a spiritual result has been 
 fulfilled. The soul of the man has been brought into 
 fellowship a fellowship welcomed or disregarded with 
 men and with the world and with God. It has consciously 
 or unconsciously learnt much and done much. It has 
 shaped a character for itself; it has helped to shape a 
 character for others. It is at the end, most solemn thought, 
 1 as it has been used.' Life then, we can see, consists not 
 in abundance, in the overflowing richness of unemployed 
 resources : it springs not spontaneously from the things 
 which we possess, from our original endowments, as the 
 necessary product of natural gifts. It is the opportunity 
 of the individual to win for God by God's help that which 
 lies within his reach : to accomplish on a scale little or 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 great the destiny of humanity as it has been committed to 
 him : to consecrate, it may be, splendid wealth to common 
 service : to transfigure sordid cares by a divine vision : 
 to rise to the truth of the Incarnation as the revelation of 
 the purpose of the Father for the world which He made. 
 Life, in a word, as has been most nobly said, 
 
 Life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
 
 And hope and fear, 
 
 Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, 
 
 How love might be, hath been indeed, and is. 
 
 Now it is here, I believe, in this view of life realised 
 among us, of life as individual in its responsibility and social 
 in its aims, that we shall find the sure hope of a solution of 
 the terrible riddles of existence which meet us on all sides. 
 The overwhelming sorrows by which we are surrounded 
 and saddened, if we regard them steadily, make the Gospel 
 of Christ the Son of God and the Son of man intrinsically 
 credible. Nothing less could meet our wants, and this does 
 meet them. But, in order that we may gain the inspira- 
 tion of the glad-tidings, we must strive at least to reach 
 forward to its scope, strive to find how it passes on this 
 side and that beyond the utmost range of human thought, 
 how it covers the whole field of being in which it is 
 revealed, how it encourages and sustains us in the en- 
 deavour to understand practically that we are all bound 
 one to another in the turmoil of our present conflict, bound 
 to the past of which we are the children, bound to the 
 future of which we are the parents, in the fellowship of 
 our manhood which Christ came to save. As long as we 
 isolate ourselves, and strive to stand apart, peace is im- 
 possible. But joy comes the joy of Christ which no one 
 taketh away when we are enabled to sympathise in deed 
 and in truth with the purpose of His redeeming love, to 
 apprehend, however feebly and imperfectly, that below the 
 wastes and wearinesses and wickednesses, on which we 
 look, enduring beyond all that is of time, subsisting beyond 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 all that is of space, He is the Life in whom we live. 1 
 came, He said, that they may have life and may have 
 abundance (John x. 10). 
 
 # # * 
 
 The essential relations of the Family introduce us at 
 once to this vast, unseen, spiritual, eternal life to which 
 every one of our lives is in its measure contributory and in 
 which all find their unity and consummation. 
 
 * -Jf * 
 
 The poorest mother who clasps her newborn infant to 
 her breast has found, if but for a moment, the secret 
 of life. To live for others, to suffer for others, is the 
 inevitable condition of our being. To accept the condition 
 gladly is to find it crowned with its own joy. 
 
 Other relations in the family emphasise in various 
 ways this fundamental fact * * * helping us to feel 
 that isolation is the measure of lasting pain, that we live 
 truly exactly in proportion as we go out of ourselves and 
 enter into the fulness of the experience of those whom we 
 serve and by whom in turn we are served. Let anyone for 
 instance, looking to his own home, put on one side the 
 trivial commonplace occasions on which he has sacrificed 
 others to himself, and on the other those in which he has 
 sacrificed himself to others, and he will see that life is 
 indeed the discipline of love, and that love is the soul 
 of life. 
 
 * * # * Again, we have not only a domestic 
 ancestry, and a domestic heritage. We have also a 
 national ancestry and a national heritage. A great part 
 of our lives is made up of that which we have every one 
 received in common as Englishmen. And this splendid 
 patrimony is not for display, not for pride, but for most 
 laborious and solemn employment. Patriotism, like af- 
 fection, may unhappily degenerate into selfishness ; but it 
 may by God's grace be the devout expression of a duty to 
 humanity. It may be a trembling thanksgiving on the 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 part of those who feel that, as they have received much, 
 much will be required of them. In any case the love 
 of our country, the intense watchful interest in the growth 
 or the waning of its influence, the passionate desire that it 
 may be made a herald of righteousness and peace to the 
 nations, does lie deep in the souls of all of us. 
 
 There is I most sadly know another side to the picture. 
 There are bitter feuds of party, intrigues, seditions, wars, 
 just as there are the jealousies, the quarrels, the estrange- 
 ments of home. The greater body has its grievous sick- 
 nesses, its fevers and its frenzies, even as the less. But 
 the ocean lies deep and still below the storms which trouble 
 its surface. The life, the natural life, is more than its cor- 
 ruptions : more for each one of us, I trust, in actual en- 
 joyment: more assuredly in its promises of hope. For 
 is there one among us who has not known again and 
 again in the last few years the throbbings of this larger 
 life, as his own, when he has waited day after day for 
 tidings of the little army which entered without power 
 of return upon untravelled passes to relieve a beleaguered 
 city, when he has heard of the silent night march of 
 untried troops which made the end of a doubtful struggle 
 possible, when he has found that statesmen could dare to 
 consider the claims of justice in a moment of disaster, 
 when he has entered into the fulness of a royal sorrow? 
 Is there one of us who has not known that this life is 
 fuller, deeper, intenser than his private pleasures and 
 cares. Is there one of us who has not known that the 
 tidings which meet us at such crises are more than the 
 materials of passing excitement, that they call into vital 
 energy the potency of the sympathy within us, through 
 which we grow conscious that as a people we are one. 
 * * * 
 
 Thus the life of the family, the life of the nation, bear 
 us far beyond the visible from which they start. Through 
 those larger forms of life we enter on the unseen. We 
 
x Preface. 
 
 become prepared to understand at last that description of 
 our position as Christians here on earth in which we read 
 that we are comeuoi that we shall come unto mount 
 Zion and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly 
 Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the general 
 assembly and church of the firstborn, who are enrolled in 
 heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits 
 of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of 
 a new Covenant... (Hebr. xii. 22 ff.). We learn to acknow- 
 ledge that these words, glorious as they are, reaching far 
 beyond all that we can think or feel, are written for 
 us ; that that fellowship with men and angels and God is 
 for us ; for us, not at some indefinite future but now, now 
 when we stand like the Hebrews of old, to whom the words 
 were first addressed, in the midst of sore temptations, on 
 the verge of changes which we are unable to anticipate. 
 * * * 
 
 Such ideas of a boundless life reaching from the visible 
 to the invisible, in which we all share, may seem to many 
 to be strange, and visionary and difficult. I should not 
 offer them now as the foundation of all I have to say here, 
 if I did not believe them to be at present of momentous 
 practical importance : if I did not find in them myself, 
 as I said before, the solution of the enigmas of life which 
 our age proposes to us. The pitiless sphinx if I may 
 recal the familiar story sets before each generation the 
 old riddle in a new shape ; and the answer is still always, 
 man in some new form. This is the answer which we have 
 to make good and if by the Spirit's guidance we can read 
 its meaning : if we can win for ourselves for it must be a 
 work of labour and discipline the conviction of the reality 
 of that human life which is made known in Christ, in 
 His suffering and in His triumph : if we can realise that 
 we all are members one of another, members of one body 
 shaped in its unity through all time; then hope rises 
 before us as great as our heart. 
 
Preface. xi 
 
 For the life, the whole life, belongs equally to every 
 part. All that lives, lives with the one life. If we 
 know that we share in this we can wait for the revela- 
 tion of its action. Meanwhile every true human joy is 
 ours ; every true human sorrow is ours ; every brother's 
 weakness and sin is ours also. Sympathy in affliction is 
 the pledge of sympathy in triumph. If we suffer with 
 Christ we shall also reign with Him, sharing His sovereignty 
 over a renovated earth. 
 
 There is much, very much, in the circumstances of life 
 which requires readjustment; but as we believe in the one 
 life in Christ we shall not attempt to deal directly with 
 symptoms and achieve superficial reforms. We shall 
 seek to overcome the disease by quickening the healthy 
 energy of the vital forces. To this end we can all con- 
 tribute. In this labour we are all called to be fellow- 
 workers with God. What the issue may bo we are not 
 careful to prejudge. But we are sure that the spiritual 
 life of a people will find an outward form corresponding to 
 its power and to its beauty. 
 
 For of the soul the body form doth take : 
 For soul is form and doth the* body make. 
 
 For this life, shadowed forth in the life of the Family, 
 the Nation, the Church, we were made ; for this vast, 
 unseen, spiritual, eternal life, a life growing with our growth 
 and widening with our widening thoughts. The sense 
 of such a life restores a real harmony to the facts of the 
 world. It brings the power of the Incarnation and of the 
 Resurrection of Christ near to each one of us. It supplies 
 a motive sufficient to kindle our enthusiasm and consume 
 our selfishness. It is more real, more abiding, more 
 potent, than the shadows which we seem to be and the 
 shadows which we commonly pursue. 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 A man's life is not in his abundance, no, not in the idle 
 overflow of hoarded treasure : a man's life is not from tliat 
 which he pursueth, no, not from the natural gifts of 
 fortune or rank or intellect ; but from the use of every 
 gift which love makes for the service of God in Whom we 
 are and Who is in us. 
 
 # # # 
 
 Such appear to be some of the lessons which 
 the Abbey brings home to us : such is the spirit 
 in which I have endeavoured to interpret them. 
 May others be enabled to enforce them with un- 
 measurably greater power and truer insight. Be- 
 hold, the Judge standeth before the doors. 
 
 Those who are familiar with recent theories of 
 Social Morality will recognise how much I owe to 
 two writers who are not often joined together in 
 an acknowledgment of deep gratitude, Comte and 
 Maurice. In the summer of 1867 I was able to 
 analyse carefully the Politique Positive, and I 
 found in it a powerful expression of many salient 
 features of that which I had long held to be the 
 true social embodiment of the Gospel, of a social 
 ideal which the faith in Christ is alone, I believe, 
 able to realise. Two years later I read Maurice's 
 Social Morality. Few books can teach nobler les- 
 sons ; and I should find it hard to say how much 
 I owe to it directly and by suggestion. 
 
 In the endeavour to realise the social condition 
 of Europe at the time of the rise of the Franciscans 
 
Preface. xiii 
 
 I found great help from Dr Brewer's masterly intro- 
 duction to the Monumenta Franciscana 1 , and from 
 F. Laurent's Etudes sur I'histoire de I'humanite. 
 La Feodalite et VEglise, 1861. 
 
 The remains of Francis himself are collected in 
 a most convenient form in the edition of Von der 
 Burg (1849). The references are made to this 
 edition. 
 
 In the general account of the Society of Friends 
 I owe much to T. Clarkson's Portraiture of 
 Quakerism (1806) ; and also to Canon Curteis' 
 wise and sympathetic estimate of the work of the 
 Quakers in his Bampton Lectures : Dissent in 
 relation to the Church of England (1872). 
 
 The references to Fox's Journal are made to 
 the seventh edition (London, 1852). 
 
 B. F. W. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, 
 April 22, 1887. 
 
 1 An examination of Dugdale will shew that Dr Brewer 
 greatly underrates the importance of the later Franciscan 
 buildings in England. Their buildings at Cambridge ' were 
 not only an ornament and grace, but had great conveniences 
 for holding the assemblies and doing all the business of the 
 University ' (Ascham ap. Dugdale Monasticon, vi. 1509). At 
 Oxford 'their buildings were... stately and magnificent... not 
 to be equalled with other in Oxon, either college or convent, 
 except St Frideswide's and Ousney...' (Ant. Wood, id. p. 1530). 
 
I. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ASPECTS OF THE ELEMENTS 
 OF SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 I. The Foundation. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The general subject ....... 3 
 
 The solution of social problems to be found only in the 
 
 Christian Faith ....... 5 
 
 The ideas of Christianity inseparably united with the 
 
 facts of Christianity ...... 6 
 
 The power of the Living Christ 7 
 
 1. The Incarnation a revelation of the brotherhood 
 
 of man in Christ ...... 9 
 
 Supplies a motive of infinite power ... 11 
 
 2. The Death of Christ a revelation of the Fall and of 
 
 ^Redemption ....... 12 
 
 3. The Eesurrection of Christ a revelation of the 
 
 destiny of man ....... 14 
 
 Incorruption not simply immortality . . . id. 
 These central facts of the Gospel form the foundation of 
 
 social morality 15 
 
xvi Contents. 
 
 II. The Family. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The antithesis of dependence and responsibility harmon- 
 ised by the true idea of freedom .... 19 
 
 The conditions of life a revelation of God's purpose for 
 
 us 20 
 
 Man essentially social 21 
 
 The family the unit of mankind id. 
 
 The estimate of the family a criterion of the morality of 
 
 a state .22 
 
 The three essential relations in a family .... 23 
 
 1. The idea of marriage 24 
 
 Prelude to a larger union 25 
 
 The sacrament of completed manhood . . . id. 
 
 2. The idea of fatherhood . . . . . id. 
 Marriage of choice: fatherhood and brotherhood 
 
 of nature ........ 26 
 
 Authority and obedience 27 
 
 Extends within and without 28 
 
 3. The idea of brotherhood . . . .id. 
 
 A true equality ....... 29 
 
 Its influence ........ id. 
 
 4. The idea of property ...... 30 
 
 The teaching left to us still 31 
 
 III. The Nation. 
 
 The passage from the Family to the Nation ... 35 
 
 Three points to be noticed ...... 36 
 
 1. The idea of the nation involved in the constitution 
 
 of man 37 
 
 Its origin spiritual not material . . . .id. 
 Language, Law, Government give scope for com- 
 mon action: witness to it: reveal it ... 38 
 
 2. Our debt to the past, material and spiritual . . 39 
 The old life is common to all . . . . id. 
 This is felt in great crises ..... 40 
 These touch us, shew us ourselves .... id. 
 
Contents. xvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3. To fulfil our duty we must apply to the larger life 
 
 the three principles of the family ... 42 
 
 (a) Our personal incompleteness : all serve all . id. 
 
 (b) A divine authority above us . . .43 
 
 (c) A true brotherhood ...... 44 
 
 Such thoughts are most truly practical . . 46 
 
 IY. The Race. 
 
 We pass from the Family to the Nation, from the Nation 
 
 to the Eace 51 
 
 The lessons of the larger life slowly learnt : pressed upon 
 
 us now ......... 53 
 
 Our dangers from the spirit of domination, imitation, 
 
 indifference ........ 54 
 
 These tempers fail and then God shews us His way . 56 
 
 We look back and we look forward 57 
 
 The threefold mission of England . . . . .58 
 
 Partly recognised . . . . . . . .59 
 
 Our chief duty to confess our obligation .... 60 
 
 The issue with God 61 
 
 The broad teaching of the Prayer-Book .... 62 
 
 V. The Church. 
 
 We are made, not for the world only, but for God . . 67 
 
 The Church as the Divine Society : its embodiment . 68 
 
 1. The social mission of the Church .... 70 
 (a) The prophet of the unseen and the eternal in 
 
 the light of Creation 71 
 
 (6) The interpreter of the world in the light of the 
 
 Incarnation ....... 72 
 
 (c) The quickener and sustainer of life in the light 
 
 of the ^Redemption 74 
 
 2. The idea of a national Church .... 75 
 Historical position of the Church of England . 76 
 In what sense it has failed ..... 77 
 Want of cooperation and sympathy ... 78 
 A present opportunity 80 
 
xviii Contents. 
 
 II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ASPECTS OF THE ORGANI- 
 SATION OF SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 I. The Kingdom of God. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The proclamation of a Divine kingdom the characteristic 
 
 message of the Gospel in the first age ... 85 
 The idea of a Divine kingdom the moral of Old Testa- 
 ment history ........ 8.6 
 
 The kingdom of God twofold 88 
 
 The work of Christ to establish a kingdom ... 89 
 
 The notes of the kingdom 90 
 
 The Christian correlatives of Equality, Liberty, Fra- 
 ternity ......... id. 
 
 1. " Eighteousness " (Equality) ..... 91 
 
 2. " Peace " (Liberty) 92 
 
 3. "Joy" (Fraternity) 93 
 
 But where can they be found ? . . . . .94 
 
 In spite of failure we cling to our hope .... 95 
 
 "In the Holy Ghost" 97 
 
 II. Mediaeval Efforts: the Franciscans. 
 
 The circumstances of the xinth century . . . 101 
 
 Characteristics of Francis of Assisi .... 103 
 
 His call : his secret 104 
 
 The growth of his work 106 
 
 The foundation of the Third order 108 
 
 The failure of the movement ...... 109 
 
 Disregard of the individual . . . . . .110 
 
 and of the nation id. 
 
 Imperfect view of the Lord's character. Mariolatry . Ill 
 
Contents. xix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lessons : the power of humility, of sympathy, of sacri- 
 fice, of faith 112 
 
 Our present need of the lessons . . . . . 113 
 
 The call of laymen 115 
 
 III. Modern Efforts: the Quakers. 
 
 The failure of Mediaeval efforts . . . . .119 
 
 New thoughts of the Eeformation 121 
 
 Its positive lesson : individuality . .... id. 
 This thought has influenced all later conceptions of the 
 
 kingdom of God ....... id. 
 
 The Jesuits and the Quakers give opposite expressions of 
 
 the idea 122 
 
 G. Fox and Francis 123 
 
 The lessons taught by G. Fox id. 
 
 1. The kingdom of God involves Divine converse . id. 
 The age called for the assertion of this truth . . 124 
 The Gospel a present, living force .... 125 
 The Church lives by the outpoured Spirit . . id. 
 
 2. The privilege of Divine converse for all . . . 127 
 This truth in conflict with the current theology of 
 
 the xvnth century id. 
 
 Importance of the message at the time and for us . 128 
 
 3. Life answers to faith ...... id. 
 
 Christian life a revelation of Christ to the world . 129 
 
 A type of character formed by Fox id. 
 
 The achievements of Quakerism ..... 130 
 
 An encouragement to us for work on a larger scale . 131 
 For the Society failed from neglect of the idea of social 
 
 and national life . . . . . . .id. 
 
 But G. Fox established the fundamental fact of the 
 
 spiritual basis of the kingdom of God . . . 132 
 We need to master the truth of the supremacy of the 
 
 Spirit 133 
 
xx Contents. 
 
 IV. Present Problems. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Past failures . . 137 
 
 Our dangers from individualism 138 
 
 Our needs 
 
 1. A sense of responsibility for endowments . . 140 
 
 2. A conviction of the power of spiritual forces . . 141 
 
 3. The confession of a great ideal .... 143 
 These can be gained through the establishment of 
 
 some Christian fellowship . . . . . 145 
 Such a fellowship must be characteristically 
 
 English 146 
 
 comprehensive ...... id. 
 
 social 147 
 
 open . . . . . . .id. 
 
 rational 148 
 
 spiritual ........ id. 
 
 a fellowship of "brethren and sisters of the 
 
 common hope" ...... 149 
 
 The end attainable and within sight .... itf. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Types of Apostolic Service. 
 
 I. Saintship 155 
 
 II. Authority 165 
 
 HI. Suffering: ST PAUL 175 
 
 IV. Doubting: ST THOMAS . . . . .185 
 
 V. Waiting: ST JOHN 197 
 
I. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ASPECTS OF THE ELEMENTS 
 OF SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 I. The Foundation. 
 
 II. The Family. 
 
 III. The Nation. 
 
 IV. The Race. 
 V. The Church. 
 
 W. S. 
 t 
 
Other foundation can no man lay than that which is 
 laid, even Jesus Christ. 
 
 1 COR. iii. 11. 
 
FOUNDATION. 
 
 TT is iny purpose on the four following Sun- 
 -*- days to carry a little further into detail the 
 thoughts which have occupied us on the last two 
 seasons of our meeting here. We saw then how 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews met difficulties not 
 unlike our own when they first came upon the 
 apostolic Church, by offering new views of the 
 Person of Christ. We saw how the fact of the 
 Incarnation, under various aspects, satisfies and 
 transcends the loftiest aspirations and the largest 
 hopes of men. I wish now to ask you to consider 
 with me how our faith in the historic Gospel, in 
 Christ, Born, Crucified, Ascended, guides, sup- 
 ports, encourages us in dealing with problems of 
 social life. 
 
 I propose then to consider in succession the 
 Christian conceptions of the Family, the Nation, 
 the Race, the Church; but before doing this I 
 desire this afternoon to define the foundation on 
 which our social fabric must rest. I desire to 
 shew how the Apostle's words are literally true for 
 
 12 
 
4 The elements of social life ; 
 
 us, true in their apparent exclusiveness, true in 
 their real universality : other foundation can no 
 man lay than that which is laid, even Jesus Christ. 
 I need not dwell on the importance, nay the 
 necessity, of the inquiry which I have indicated. 
 It is forced upon us by the currents of modern 
 thought. On every side imperious voices trouble 
 the repose which our indolence would wish to 
 keep undisturbed. We can no longer dwell apart 
 in secure isolation. The main interests of men 
 are once again passing through a great change. 
 They are most surely turning from the individual 
 to the society. And if as Christians we are too 
 often engrossed by disputes on points which seem 
 to be for the most part either beneath or beyond 
 the scope of our noblest powers, others are finding 
 expression for inarticulate cries which come from 
 the very centre of our common life. This being so, 
 I do not think that our real controversies in the 
 immediate future are likely to be speculative: 
 they threaten to be terribly practical. Behind 
 the disputes of words, the abstract reasonings 
 about the Being of God or the constitution of 
 man, which occupy a large place even in popular 
 literature, lie the fundamental questionings of 
 social duty : What is the basis and measure of our 
 mutual obligations? What is the source of our 
 weakness and of our strength ? What is or ought 
 
the Foundation. 5 
 
 to be our aim, our ideal, as men living human lives ? i. 
 What, in other words, is the foundation on which 
 a kingdom of God can be built, and how can we 
 do our part in hastening its establishment? 
 
 The answers to such questions as these are, I 
 believe, to be found to be found only as they 
 always have been found since the first age in the 
 Christian life answering to the Christian Faith. 
 But, I repeat, they are to be found. They are not 
 permanent and uniform. They are not ready for 
 our use without effort. They must be sought for, 
 shaped, realised. They must answer to our time, 
 our education, our place in the order of the world. 
 The knowledge out of which they will spring must 
 be immediate, direct, personal, if it is to be vital 
 and availing. We must go back to the very 
 source of Divine energy for the inspiration which 
 we need, if we are to make healthy progress and 
 fulfil our office in the economy of God. We must 
 not, as heirs of the past, rest complacently upon 
 the treasures which we have received : we must by 
 the help of our inheritance look further and 
 deeper into the Divine mysteries than those who 
 have gone before us, that we may in our turn add 
 something to the wealth of our children. 
 
 And if it be said that the problems which the 
 coming generation will have to face, problems of 
 wealth and poverty, of luxury and want, of capital 
 
6 The elements of social life : 
 
 and labour, of population, of class, of national 
 responsibility, of peace and war, are to be solved 
 irrespectively of the Faith, I can only reply that 
 if I am a Christian I must bring every interest 
 and every difficulty of man within the range of 
 my religion: that I must believe that as it is 
 Divine so it is inexhaustible : that I must proclaim 
 at all cost bearing sentence, as I shall do, against 
 my own inconsistency and unbelief that its 
 supremacy extends to all social organisations, to 
 all civil compacts, to all imperial designs, no less 
 than to all doctrine of God and the single soul. 
 
 And if it be said again that the great ideas of 
 Christianity have entered into popular opinion, 
 that they have been so vitally assimilated by 
 society, that we can dispense with further study 
 of the facts by which they were suggested, I can 
 only reply that the ideas of Christianity without 
 the facts of Christianity offer a splendid vision 
 which is shewn to be unattainable. The ideas of 
 Christianity require the fact of a living Christ for 
 their fulfilment. Other foundation can no man 
 lay than that which is laid, even Jesus Christ. 
 Christ Himself, the living Christ Son of man and 
 Son of God alone presents to us, as we have seen 
 on other occasions, the union of the seen and the 
 unseen, of the finite and the infinite, of earth and 
 heaven: the Lord Jesus Christ substitutes for the 
 
the Foundation. 7 
 
 world fleeting and unstable a present kingdom of i. 
 God : He communicates to that which is temporal, 
 what nothing else can do, the spirit of an indis- 
 soluble life: He gives us, if we will open our 
 hearts, a motive strong beyond all indifference, a 
 power prevailing over all sin, a fulness of life 
 victorious over all change. 
 
 And when I speak of this boundless efficacy 
 of the Person of the living Christ, I do not speak 
 of those subtle mysteries in the investigation of 
 which the mind of man is soon wearied and 
 baffled, but of that most Divine, most human 
 Figure whom our heart recognises in the Gospels, 
 of those central facts in which the Saviour of the 
 world stands revealed to us once for all in the 
 history of the race. We feel at once and we ac- 
 knowledge His sovereign authority in general 
 terms, but we are slow to interpret His message. 
 When we look to His Birth, and Death and 
 Resurrection, are we not constrained to confess 
 sadly that we have in Him a revelation which 
 has not yet found that social expression which 
 sooner or later it must find ? For the Christian 
 view of life, answering to the Christian view of the 
 Person of Christ, must be distinguished from every 
 view of life which leaves out Christ. As 
 
 Christians we are not left as other men to quicken 
 our impulses by noble abstractions or splendid 
 
8 The elements of social life : 
 
 guesses. As Christians we are not constrained 
 as other men to acquiesce in the presence of un- 
 conquerable suffering. As Christians we are not 
 condemned as other men to gaze with stern 
 resignation upon the spectacle of lost good. 
 
 If the Word became flesh, the brotherhood of 
 men is a reality for us. 
 
 If the Son of God was crucified, the fall, and 
 with it the redemption, are realities for us. 
 
 If the Son of man rose again from the dead, 
 the eternal significance of our short space of 
 labour is a reality for us. 
 
 Yes : the Person of Christ made known in 
 His Nature and His work gives to us in these 
 three great regions of practical thought historical 
 certainties which answer to the manifold instincts, 
 experiences, imaginings of all ages. Christ sets 
 before us in Himself, in what He has done and is, 
 a final revelation of the relation of man to man, 
 of the actual condition of humanity, of the destiny 
 of life. When we fix our eyes steadily upon Him 
 we see that our conceptions of society, of morality, 
 of providence reflect light from His Image. We 
 see that all men are brethren ; that all men are 
 fallen: that all men are made in the Divine 
 counsel to gain the likeness of God through the 
 completest development of their earthly powers. 
 By this revelation we recognise that Jesus Christ 
 
the Foundation. 9 
 
 is indeed the Foundation of every human fellow- i. 
 ship. And on us therefore the duty is laid of con- 
 fessing Christ, if we believe on Him, of shewing 
 openly to the world that our one Foundation is able 
 to support the fabric which answers to the present 
 needs of society, that it marks out lines of en- 
 during effort, that it gives unity to the varied 
 strivings of all who are looking towards the dawn. 
 
 In the Birth, the Death, the Resurrection of 
 Christ we see, I repeat, the brotherhood, the fall, 
 the destiny of men ; and by these three words we 
 are directed to three social lessons of the Person 
 of Christ which, as it appears to me, we still re- 
 quire to learn. 
 
 1. In Christ all men are brethren. The phrase 
 has become a commonplace before its meaning 
 has been grasped. For our relationship one to 
 another does not depend on any remote descent : 
 it is not perilled by any possible discovery as to 
 the origin or the antiquity of man: it is not 
 bound by the conditions of the outward life : it is 
 not measured by the course of days and years : it 
 is not closed by death. The brotherhood of men 
 seen in Christ is a question not of genealogy but 
 of being. It rests upon the present and abiding 
 fatherhood of God, Who in His Son has taken our 
 common nature to Himself. We may acknow- 
 ledge this God-made kinsmanship, or we may 
 
10 The elements of social life : 
 
 i. neglect it ; but none the less we all are not only 
 brethren in constitution, brethren in death, but 
 brethren in Christ, brethren for evermore. 
 
 Such a conception of human brotherhood is 
 widely different from the conceptions which men 
 have framed for themselves out of connexions of 
 blood or interest, of contiguity or feeling. And if 
 we can once grasp it through the teaching of the 
 Holy Spirit, it cannot be inoperative. Such a 
 conception transforms not the conditions but the 
 meaning of life. It stirs us to spread the power 
 of a spiritual civilisation, for it is our own cause : 
 it supports us in personal failure, for others supply 
 our wants. It prepares the perception of a har- 
 mony between man and the world by emphasising 
 Gen. i. 27. the Divine element in man made in the image 
 of the Creator. According as its influence pre- 
 vails all life becomes an energy of fellowship, of 
 fellowship with God, and of fellowship with 
 men in God, with men not as chosen by any 
 capricious or personal rule, but with men simply 
 as men. In this way the spirit of bro- 
 
 therhood quickens the spirit of sonship. The love 
 which goes out from us comes back to us multi- 
 plied a thousandfold. As we rejoice to acknow- 
 ledge one towards the other an irredeemable debt 
 of service, our strength will grow to meet each 
 fuller acknowledgement of duty. As we rejoice 
 
the Foundation. 11 
 
 to bring up the thought of Him who is not ashamed i. 
 to call us brethren in- our intercourse with those n. 
 most unlike ourselves, our vision of life will be 
 widened. As we rejoice to follow Him, even 
 through the desolations of sin and selfishness, we 
 shall draw light and warmth from His glorious 
 Presence, though our own vision is clouded and 
 our own hearts grow chill. 
 
 Bitter experience teaches us how grievously 
 we need the help of this thought of brotherhood, 
 of the brotherhood of brethren in Christ. We 
 can all see in the retrospect of our lives in the 
 retrospect of the last year or of the last week 
 what hasty judgments, what ungenerous words, 
 what ill-advised plans, would have been avoided 
 if we could have realised at the crisis of decision 
 the eternal bond which underlies our personal 
 differences; if we could have looked forward to 
 the eternal . issues which flow from the circum- 
 stances of our ordinary intercourse. We 
 can all see with what access of devotion we 
 should have laboured for the fallen, for the 
 ignorant, for the absent, if we had regarded 
 them in the moments of our depression or weari- 
 ness as children of our Father, inseparable from 
 ourselves. We can all see how our 
 prayers and confessions and thanksgivings would 
 have gained in intensity and meaning if we had 
 
12 The elements of social life: 
 
 felt that the daily record of human sorrows and 
 crimes and labours is not merely a satisfaction of 
 idle curiosity but a revelation of the movement of 
 a life which reaches every one of us in its glory 
 and in its shame. In that case an energy of 
 infinite power would have been kindled by the 
 light of infinite trust. 
 
 2. All men are brethren in Christ. That is the 
 first principle of the interpretation of life which 
 comes from the thought of Christ's Person. And 
 next in the Death of Christ we have a revelation 
 of the Fall. The sense of this truth is, I will 
 venture to say, a condition of hope. No view of 
 the human state is so inexpressibly sad as that 
 which leaves out the Fall. The existence of evil 
 in its many forms, as self-will, and suffering and 
 vice and crime, cannot be gainsaid; and, if this 
 evil belongs to the essence of man as created, then 
 there can be no prospect of relief here or here- 
 after. Sin will propagate sin in inevitable suc- 
 cession, as the greatest of ancient poets sang. 
 Misery will be as the shadow which man casts 
 when the sun is brightest. There can be nothing 
 in him to drive out that which is part of his true 
 self. The stream as it flows will always fall below 
 its source. And this awful and inexorable rule 
 knows in nature no reversal or repeal. Endless 
 retribution is the plain teaching of that in- 
 
the Foundation. 13 
 
 variable sequence which we call natural law. i. 
 Effectual forgiveness is the revelation of the 
 Gospel. And this mystery of forgive- 
 
 ness is unveiled to us, as far as our sight can look 
 upon it, in the fact of a Redemption answering to 
 the fact of a Fall, in death endured and death 
 overcome. For the rest it is enough for us to 
 know that an enemy hath done this which 
 covers the earth with gloom, and that One 
 stronger than he hath spoiled him. It is 
 enough for us to know that evil is foreign and in- 
 trusive and therefore conquerable. The strength 
 for the conflict in the midst of w T hich we find 
 ourselves comes to us from without, from the 
 Spirit of the Son of man, and therefore we can 
 prevail in spite of our own weakness. The am- 
 bitious restlessness of merit is banished for ever. 
 In its place comes the confident humility of faith. 
 I do not say that all the darkness of sin and 
 suffering is removed by the glory which flows 
 from the Cross of Christ. But I do say that light 
 is given us there sufficient for our journey : that 
 power is given us sufficient for our work : that as 
 our perception of the darkness over the earth 
 grows keener we are moved by the spectacle of the 
 Cross to look with intenser confidence for the help 
 which in the end cannot fail, and to rest with 
 a more complete submission in that will of Love 
 
14 The elements of social life : 
 
 i. which denies to us the vision of an accomplished 
 triumph. 
 
 3. There is yet a third characteristic by 
 which the view of life referred to the Person of 
 Christ differs from all other views. The Resur- 
 rection teaches us that in Christ man is not im- 
 mortal only but incorruptible : that all that be- 
 longs to the fulness of his nature, all that answers 
 to his continuous growth, all that he gathers round 
 him from day to day in habit and action, all that 
 goes to make up that mysterious sum of powers, 
 senses, passions, feelings, limitations, which he 
 calls his body, is part of what shall be. And, if 
 the former points on which I have touched, the 
 social lessons of Christ's Birth and Death, mark 
 new relations in Christ of man to his fellow-men 
 and of man to God, this lesson of Christ's Resur- 
 rection marks, so to speak, a new relation of man 
 to self. It shews us how we are shaping slowly 
 out of things transitory that which will abide for 
 ever : that death will not separate from us that 
 which is of the earth but will invest that which 
 before was of the earth with incorruption, or 
 rather will reveal it as being what it is, eternal ; 
 that, in the words of St Paul, when we put off 
 2 Cor. v. 4. mortality we shall be not unclothed but clothed upon. 
 
 This thought is, as we must feel at once, of 
 overwhelming solemnity. There is no need to 
 
the Foundation. 15 
 
 develop it in words. It would indeed be intoler- 
 able if the believer were not in Christ. But as it 
 is, we can take it with its tremendous conse- 
 quences for our protection and for our encourage- 
 ment : for our protection when temptation comes 
 to us with fair promises of future impunity : for 
 our encouragement when disappointment closes 
 over the unfruitful toil on which we have lavished 
 our best efforts. 
 
 To sum up, then, these three thoughts, men are 
 brethren, men are fallen and redeemed, men are in- 
 corruptible, stand out before us in the Birth and 
 Death and Resurrection of Christ as a solid founda- 
 tion for the Christian fabric of life. They are in their 
 application absolute and universal. They are con- 
 firmed and brought home to us in various ways in 
 the ordinances of the Church. If we contemplate 
 them calmly and patiently, in themselves and in 
 the facts by which they are revealed, we shall find 
 that they reach through our whole being: that 
 they lay open counsels of God which extend be- 
 yoiid the believer and the Church to the whole 
 world : that they must mingle with every specu- 
 lation and colour every purpose of the Christian. 
 But they must be taken as the basis of our social 
 scheme, and not as an appendage to it. We cannot 
 bring them at pleasure to crown an edifice which 
 we have reared independently. Let us 
 
16 The elements of social life : 
 
 i. however only believe the simple message of the 
 Gospel, the plain utterances of our baptismal 
 Creed, or pray with faltering lips for grace to 
 believe them, and we shall know that for the 
 noblest hopes of men, for the fairest constructions 
 of wisdom, for the enduring fabric of society none 
 other foundation can be laid than that which is 
 laid, even Jesus Christ. 
 
 The foundation is laid, laid once for all, and 
 we wait for the glorious consummation when the 
 Lord shall complete what He has begun. Mean- 
 Phil, iii. while it is our part, as we still look to Him. to 
 13 f 
 
 strive towards the end, to strive as those who have 
 
 learnt what is the goal of labour: to strive as 
 those who are assured that in each one lies the 
 
 2 Pet. iii. power of hastening the coming of the Saviour : 
 to strive as those who have found the key to the 
 
 l John ii. great enigma of life, looking on all men as sharers 
 with us of a nature which Christ has raised to 
 heaven : looking on sin as that which only the 
 
 John i. 29. Son of God could take away by taking it to Him- 
 
 1 Cor. xv. self : looking on the little duties and cares of each 
 passing day as the elements out of which we are 
 building an illimitable future ; looking, in a word, 
 to Christ Born, Crucified, Ascended, as to Him 
 in whom is the promise and the power of unity, 
 redemption, perfection which answer to the ut- 
 most wants of man and of the world. 
 
II 
 
 TEE FAMILY. 
 
 w. s. 
 
/ bow my knees unto the Father, from Whom every 
 Family in heaven and on earth is named. 
 
 EPH. iii. 14, 15. 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 "TT7HEN we reflect upon the circumstances of n. 
 
 our life we are at once met by two facts 
 which at first sight appear to be irreconcileable. 
 We feel at each moment that we are responsible, 
 responsible for the past which we recal and for 
 the future to which we look forward. And at the 
 same time we recognise that we are dependent on 
 our descent and on our environment, limited both 
 in action and in thought by laws which we cannot 
 evade. Further reflection opens the 
 
 vision of an underlying harmony between these 
 conflicting experiences. We come to see that the 
 completest conception which we can form of moral 
 freedom is the willing fulfilment of the absolute 
 law of our existence. He is free, he alone is free, 
 who discerns the end and the method of his being, 
 and follows with glad obedience the course which 
 he finds marked out for him. And as Christians 
 we believe that this freedom has been again 
 brought within the reach of fallen humanity by 
 the Incarnation of the Word, in Whom the re- 
 
 22 
 
20 The elements of social life : 
 
 ii. lations of men to the world, to the race, to God, 
 have been set before us with a moving power, 
 John xiv. made effectual to mould our lives by the grace of 
 iS-LlF the Spirit Whom He has sent to us. 
 
 Life then, Christian life, will be best guided 
 according as we know best the conditions under 
 which we are called to live. These conditions are 
 indeed so many present lessons of God given to 
 His children, and like all the lessons of God they 
 have an infinite meaning. The son, as he grows, 
 understands more and more of his Father's 
 counsel. Each fragment of the great order in 
 which we are placed brightens and grows more 
 glorious as we study it; and, if we offer ourselves 
 to the influence of that divine teaching which is 
 for the moment within our reach, w^e shall stand 
 in a right attitude towards the undiscovered sum 
 of heavenly mysteries by which we are surrounded 
 on all sides. 
 
 Now when we inquire into the conditions of 
 our life, one thing is obvious at once. We are not 
 made to live alone. The existence of the world is 
 a fact, a self-luminous fact, of which we must take 
 account, no less than the existence of God and 
 the existence of our own souls. Even our com- 
 munion with God must be through the fulness of 
 life. There may be times when hermit-isolation 
 becomes a duty, as it may be a duty to cut off 
 
the Family. 21 
 
 the right hand or to pluck out the right eye, 
 but it exhibits a mutilation and not an ideal of 
 life. All the anarchy and half the social errors 
 by which we are troubled spring from placing 
 the individual, the self, at the centre of all 
 things. No view can be more flagrantly 
 
 false. It is impossible to resolve the world into a 
 multitude of isolated men. It is impossible to 
 picture in imagination even one isolated man. A 
 man who had grown up alone would not be a 
 man. When we come into being we are sons. 
 When we first begin to act we have been neces- 
 sarily in some degree disciplined and educated. 
 To the last what we have inherited immeasurably 
 outweighs what we have acquired. 
 
 Man in a word is made by and made for 
 fellowship. The Family and not the individual is 
 the unit of mankind. This fact is the foundation 
 of human life to which we must look for the 
 broad lines of its harmonious structure. And 
 we shall not look in vain. For the Family ex- 
 hibits in the simplest and most unquestionable 
 types the laws of dependence and trust, of au- 
 thority and obedience, of obligation and helpful- 
 ness by which every form of true activity is regu- 
 lated. The Family enables us to feel that the 
 destination of all our labours, the crown of all our 
 joys, the lightening of all our sorrows, the use of 
 
22 The elements of social life : 
 
 all our endowments, is social. Under no 
 
 other circumstances are the imperious personal 
 instincts of our nature so happily brought into 
 subjection as under those which the Family sup- 
 plies. In the Family love makes service, as it 
 ought to be, its own reward, and transforms 
 suffering into gladness. In the Family, as has 
 been nobly said, living for others becomes the 
 strict corollary of the patent fact that we live by 
 others. In the Family we learn to set aside the 
 conception of right, and to place in its stead the 
 conception of duty, which alone can give stable 
 peace to peoples or to men. So it is 
 
 that the popular estimate of the Family is an 
 infallible criterion of the state of society. Heroes 
 cannot save a country where the idea of the Family 
 is degraded; and strong battalions are of no avail 
 against homes guarded by faith and reverence and 
 love. Classical history is a commentary on this 
 truth. The national life of Greece lasted barely 
 for three generations in spite of the undying glory 
 of its literature and the unrivalled triumphs of its 
 art, because there the Family fell from its proper 
 place. A constitution and laws reared on a lofty 
 estimate of the Family gave Rome the sovereignty 
 of the world. And more than this : Roman legis- 
 lation which was based on the Family institutions 
 of the old Republic survived the dissolution of the 
 
the Family. 23 
 
 Empire, and after more than two thousand years n. 
 is still powerful in the civil courts of Europe. 
 
 The Family indeed is not only an expression of 
 Divine law. It is, under the conditions of earth, 
 in some sense a reflection of the Divine nature. 
 Every Family, every Fatherhood, derives that in Eph. iii. 
 virtue of which it is from the One Father. We * 7' 
 must therefore strive with reverent patience to 
 enter into the meaning of the Family if we desire 
 to understand the divine conditions of our life. 
 As we do this we shall see that a perfect Family 
 includes three primary relations, those of husband 
 and wife, of parent and child, of brothers and 
 sisters. And these three relations reveal the es- 
 sential laws of all human fellowship. They are, 
 if I may be permitted to use the phrase, the ori- 
 ginal sacraments of Society. They reveal 
 to us the inherent incompleteness of the indi- 
 vidual life completed in a typical union : that is 
 the idea of Marriage. They reveal to us the cor- 
 relative responsibilities of government and devo- 
 tion, hallowed by love : that is the idea of Father- 
 hood. They reveal to us the inalienable ties of 
 a common nature in the direct connexion of blood: 
 that is the idea of Brotherhood. But 
 while the widest differences of position and duty 
 coexist in the Family and find consecration within 
 its circle, the whole Family is one, one in the com- 
 
24 The elements of social life : 
 
 mon heritage of shame and glory, one in the 
 sympathetic response of all to the suffering and 
 joy of every member. 
 
 1. The idea of Marriage, the basis of the 
 Family, is, I have said, the typical completion of 
 our individual incompleteness. Marriage is not 
 simply a relation of contract, established to secure 
 the orderly transmission of special rights in due 
 succession, but the sacred fulfilment of life. Man 
 or woman alone represents only half of the powers 
 and capacities and feelings of humanity. And no 
 real approach can be made to the consummation 
 of our common nature by any attempt on the part 
 of woman to cultivate those elements in it which 
 are characteristic of man, or on the part of man 
 to make his own that which is truly womanly. 
 Such attempts only impoverish the race. Nothing 
 less than the union of man and woman in their 
 developed diversity gives us the image of a per- 
 fect human being, and raises our thoughts to a 
 higher existence than that of our divided person- 
 alities. At the same time each of the 
 natures thus joined together strengthens, elevates, 
 purifies the other, not by the assertion of its own 
 supremacy, not by the communication of its own 
 peculiarities, but by the rendering of its appro- 
 priate service. The husband grows more manly, 
 the wife grows more womanly, as they realise 
 
the Family. 25 
 
 each in the other the possession of that which n. 
 they severally need and yet cannot provide from 
 within themselves. 
 
 As we dwell on these facts we come to per- 
 ceive the meaning of the Lord's words when He 
 said of the man and the wife, with a reference 
 to creation which must as yet remain obscure, 
 the twain shall become one flesh. This is in- Matt. xix. 
 deed a great mystery, a great revelation, and Eph. v. 32. 
 with our present faculties we can master but 
 little of it. Yet we can dimly feel whither it 
 directs us. We can feel how Marriage 
 
 by its necessary conditions provides for the exten- 
 sion of fellowship through the union of different 
 Families. We can feel how this supreme relation- 
 ship invests all the other relationships of life with 
 a divine solemnity. We can feel how it shews 
 with eloquent distinctness that absolute trust is 
 the condition of abiding fellowship and absolute 
 self-surrender the condition of the highest in- 
 fluence. If trust be incomplete Marriage, we 
 know, cannot have its perfect work. If trust be 
 broken, Marriage perishes. But, by interchange 
 of thought and hope and prayer, in Marriage trust 
 ripens into faith. And that faith, carried out 
 into the world, is the secret of the blessedness of 
 life. 
 
 2. Marriage in a word is the divine pattern 
 
26 The elements of social life: 
 
 ii. and ground of human communion, the original 
 sacrament of completed manhood. But the Family 
 has, as we have seen, other lessons ; and though 
 the ideas of authority and equality, of dependence 
 and service are included in the relation of Mar- 
 riage, it is in the other two relations of the Family, 
 Fatherhood and Brotherhood, that we learn most 
 fully how these universal principles are realised 
 under the varying circumstances of age, rank, 
 power, which are necessary for the continuance 
 and for the unity of the social body. Fatherhood 
 is, so to speak, the divine pattern and ground of 
 authority: Brotherhood the divine pattern and 
 ground of equality. And it is instructive 
 
 to observe that while Marriage, as the supreme 
 sign of faith, rests upon choice, these are in their 
 essence independent of it. The son is placed in a 
 position of subjection: the brother is placed in a 
 position of obligation, without the least power 
 of avoiding the consequences which these positions 
 involve. We may for various reasons withhold the 
 confession of love by which we seek outside our- 
 selves for the abiding completion of our own 
 imperfect nature ; but we cannot, while the world 
 lasts, take out of it that which claims our obedi- 
 ence or that which claims our help. These rela- 
 tions of reverence and service are founded not 
 upon choice but in nature. And if once we study 
 
the Family. 27 
 
 them as they are offered for our daily contempla- n. 
 tion in the Family, we shall be delivered from the 
 wild strivings of rebellious selfishness in society 
 at large, whether it is turned by the few into 
 tyranny or by the many into lawlessness. 
 
 Fatherhood is, I have said, the pattern, or, to 
 repeat file phrase which I have used before, the 
 original sacrament of authority : sonship, of rever- 
 ence and obedience. The necessity of the relation 
 lies in the harmony of our constitution. If it 
 were not so, and we must face the alternative, 
 order could only be maintained by selfish fear or 
 by no less selfish hope. But in a Family, even the 
 rudest and simplest, there is, we know, something 
 different from force which gives weight to the 
 parent's voice : something different from terror 
 which inspires the child's answer. The relation 
 of parent and child carries with it that which no 
 external power can create and which no external 
 power can destroy. There is in the very order of 
 things a subtle influence which gives to autho- 
 rity its responsible privilege and to obedience its 
 tender dignity. And this truth of the eter- 
 
 nal majesty of authority, of the eternal loveliness 
 of reverent obedience, commended to us still in 
 our childhood, is not the least precious part of 
 our social heritage as Englishmen. It has hitherto 
 been hallowed and guarded in our homes ; and 
 
28 The elements of social life : 
 
 n - if we take it into our hearts consciously, gladly, 
 thoughtfully, as it is open before our eyes, we 
 shall soon discover how it interprets other rela- 
 tions of life which can be regarded in their true 
 aspect only in the light of Fatherhood. 
 
 For the lesson of Fatherhood passes at once 
 within the Family to the connexion of masters 
 and servants, which cannot with impunity be 
 degraded into a mere bargain, and which may be 
 ennobled by real sympathy. It passes on 
 
 without to the connexion of employer and work- 
 man, which ceases, I cannot but say, to be human 
 if it is made to mean only so much labour for so 
 much money. It passes to the connexion of 
 
 owner and occupier which cannot be stable, if an 
 inherited right is supposed to dispense with pre- 
 sent duties. It passes to the connexion of 
 government and citizen, which is simply a com- 
 pact of limited slavery, unless we recognise above 
 us that which we may modify but which we 
 cannot make, a manifestation of eternal authority 
 which we are born to treat with loyal reverence. 
 
 3. There is still a third essential relation of 
 the Family to be noticed, Brotherhood, the pattern, 
 the original sacrament of equality. But this 
 divine equality is, as we have already seen, widely 
 different from that external equality which men 
 have looked for in some reconstruction of the 
 
the Family. 29 
 
 world. It is inherent and permanent : it is mani- n. 
 fested in variety : it is consummated in sacrifice. 
 The ties of blood may be dissembled, disregarded, 
 disgraced, but they cannot be destroyed. 'Brothers 
 are brothers evermore/ The differences of cha- 
 racter and ability which are found in a Family 
 furnish, in the happy experience of all of us, rich 
 materials which a common love consecrates to 
 the service of all. The sense of equality which 
 home blesses is most perfect, not when we make 
 the claim to receive the payment of a debt owed, 
 but when we feel the power to pay a debt acknow- 
 ledged. 
 
 As brothers and sisters we can learn this 
 lesson of divine Brotherhood, learn it by a teach- 
 ing ever present and absolutely unimpeachable, 
 and the lesson will remain with us for our comfort 
 when we go out into wider fields of activity. 
 Just as the idea of Fatherhood hallows the con- 
 ditions of inequality which belong to the surface 
 of life, seen in the movement of succession, so 
 this idea of Brotherhood reveals to us the great 
 depths of our being in which we are all equal. 
 It enables us to claim and to realise a fellowship 
 with those who are separated from us. It gives 
 hope under the consciousness of the fragmentari- 
 ness of our individual work. It keeps fresh the 
 generous impulses which bind kinsmen together 
 
30 The elements of social life : 
 
 ii. though scattered through distant lands. It tends 
 to counteract that spirit of isolating competition 
 which is eating away the old repose and nobility 
 of English life. It helps us to rise slowly towards 
 the conception of a common humanity, called into 
 existence by one Father, redeemed by one In- 
 carnate Saviour, quickened by one infinite Spirit. 
 4. The constitution of the Family illumi- 
 nates the social relations of men ; and the life 
 of the Family illuminates the meaning and the 
 use of property. In the earliest ordering of the 
 Family all the resources of the household were 
 absolutely at the disposal of the head: wife 
 and child were 'in his hand.' Even now the 
 father practically controls, either by right or by 
 natural influence, the disposal of the common 
 store. But he dispenses it, so far as he obeys 
 the common voice of mankind, not arbitrarily, 
 still less for personal ends, but as the trustee for 
 those who are bound to him. His wealth, in 
 means, in leisure, in power, is the measure of his 
 responsibility. He provides, not by benevolence 
 but by duty, for the education, for the adequate 
 development of the character and endowments, of 
 all who are dependent on him : he guards them, 
 as far as he can do, from the unforeseen con- 
 sequences of the failure of health or strength. 
 The fulfilment of these obligations is required by 
 
the Family. 31 
 
 his position, and it crowns his authority with n. 
 blessing. It reveals to us how the concentration 
 of riches, material or spiritual, becomes a social 
 good, fruitful beyond any equality of possession. 
 And it is obvious that the principle has a wider 
 application, through which we may yet hope to 
 see the varieties of external circumstances har- 
 monised in the fulness of one life. 
 
 For this cause, then, even that we have re- 
 ceived the knowledge of the great counsel of God 
 and been called to work in His Church, of which 
 the Family is the type and sacrament, we 
 bow our knees unto the Father from Whom every 
 Family in heaven and earth is named, that He 
 would shew us His will more clearly from day to 
 day, and give us strength to fulfil it. For those 
 who have followed me so far will acknowledge, I 
 trust, that they have actually about them in 
 their Families a revelation of God in which they 
 can find the principles at least of the right 
 answers to many of the most urgent problems of 
 society: they will acknowledge that the loftiest 
 aspirations and the most difficult labours have in 
 the home hearth that which may kindle them 
 with a holier glow and direct them with a steadier 
 light : they will acknowledge sadly so at least I 
 must acknowledge that these open mysteries of 
 the Family are too often uuhonoured, unread, 
 
32 The elements of social life. 
 
 ii. unheeded: they will acknowledge that where 
 discipline is most attractive we all seek rather to 
 be ministered unto than to minister : that selfish- 
 ness troubles and stains the very spring of sacri- 
 fice. 
 
 But, thanks be to God, the teaching of the 
 Family is still left to us in England, rich in 
 gracious lessons of authority and reverence and 
 service. The ties of the Family are still held 
 sacred by popular sentiment. So may we study 
 them, while there is yet time, study them in the 
 light of God's presence, and we shall need no 
 other school of social duty. May we by the 
 Spirit's help labour to fulfil them, and we shall 
 need no other preparation for the greater offices 
 of life, no other pledge that for these also the 
 Father from Whom every Family in heaven and 
 earth is named will give us the strength which we 
 need. 
 
Ill, 
 
 THE NATION. 
 
 W. S. 
 
The nations shall walk amidst the light [of the city of 
 and the kings of the earth do bring their glory into it. 
 
 APOC. xxi. 24. 
 
THE NATION. 
 
 TT was my object last Sunday, to point out in. 
 -*- that the family and not the individual is the 
 true unit of society : that the essential relations of 
 the family marriage, fatherhood, brotherhood 
 furnish us with the divine conceptions of fellow- 
 ship, authority, equality which rule and animate 
 the harmonious structure of human life: that 
 they are in a true sense the original sacraments 
 of humanity through which we can recognise and 
 receive the blessings of the divine counsel : that 
 we must study them with reverent patience, and 
 yield ourselves to their influence with glad devo- 
 tion, if we desire to fulfil our part in larger fields 
 of action, when we are called to enter them. 
 
 For life cannot be completed within the 
 sheltered precincts of the home. As the years 
 go on the child enters naturally into a wider 
 sphere. The friendships of school, the intercourse 
 of business, reveal to the growing boy new obli- 
 gations, new joys, new temptations, new conflicts, 
 through which the lessons of earlier discipline 
 
 32 
 
36 The elements of social life : 
 
 in. are extended and applied. He is constrained 
 in a sense which he has not realised before to 
 stand alone. He passes from the rule of love 
 to the rule of law. The fact of his personal 
 responsibility is pressed upon him by the ad- 
 ministration of impartial and stern justice. He 
 learns to be one of many, and in a varied com- 
 panionship to give definiteness to that which 
 he has in common with his fellows. In this way 
 the idea of the nation, the society of neighbours, 
 is called into active exercise to supplement 
 the idea of the family, the society of kinsmen 
 in blood. At the same time the life of the family 
 is seen in its continuity and in its breadth in 
 the life of the nation. Thus the nation is found 
 to be the second type, the second broadening 
 circle of social life. 
 
 I wish then this afternoon to mark some fea- 
 tures in the nature and duties of national life. I 
 wish to point out three things especially. I wish 
 to point out that in this relation also we are bound 
 one to another by ties which man did not invent 
 and which man cannot destroy : that as citizens 
 of a fatherland we have received an inheritance 
 of blessings infinitely greater than any results 
 obtainable by our own exertions: that we are 
 constrained by every motive of thankfulness and 
 justice to endeavour to realise, each in our own 
 
the Nation. 37 
 
 place, the great principles which should rule the m. 
 administration of states, and to understand the 
 circumstances which affect the special forms in 
 which those principles ought to be and are em- 
 bodied in our own country. 
 
 1. The idea of a nation is, I say, like the 
 idea of the family, involved in the very consti- 
 tution of man. It takes shape slowly slowly 
 in the individual and slowly in the race : it is 
 profoundly influenced in its realisation by phy- 
 sical circumstances : its growth is hastened or 
 retarded by external forces. But it does grow. 
 The germ lies in the man the son, the brother, 
 the husband, the father. As soon as we begin 
 to think we become conscious of objects beyond 
 our private interests, which we pursue in com- 
 mon with our neighbours and by like methods. 
 All attempts to explain the origin of states by 
 a primitive contract between their members are 
 idle fictions. All attempts to explain the con- 
 tinuance of states by the necessities of indi- 
 vidual protection and convenience leave out of 
 account the social instincts which are not less 
 real, if at first they are less prevailing, than 
 personal instincts. The generating, the sustain- 
 ing, force of states is not material but spiritual. 
 The soul at its noblest is the witness to its destiny. 
 We are born and live, and we feel that we are 
 
38 The elements of social life : 
 
 in. born and live, not for ourselves only, not for our 
 families only, but for all about us. This being so 
 the nation enables us to serve our neighbour, 
 our brother in Christ, and to receive the bene- 
 diction of his service. Language, law, govern- 
 ment, religion, offer scope for the free action of 
 the many and of the one. In these, truth, right, 
 history, feeling, find step by step their permanent 
 expression according to the experience of those 
 who are moulded by the same forces in the same 
 environment. Language, law, government, re- 
 ligion, are in fact the fruit and the proof of the 
 life of the nation. They cannot be referred 
 finally to the will or to the power of any indi- 
 vidual. The poet and the legislator, the states- 
 man and the evangelist, achieve their work by 
 interpreting and not by creating thoughts in 
 many hearts. The humblest human experience 
 goes to form the oracle of the prophet. And, 
 these four, if we will but listen to their voice 
 language, law, government, religion remind us 
 at every moment of a larger being in which we 
 share and to which we may minister. They call 
 us to strive in our turn to make the new thoughts 
 and the new lessons, which are struggling for 
 utterance through us, available, under happy 
 
 Johniv. conditions, for those who shall enter into our 
 38. 
 
 labours. 
 
the Nation. 39 
 
 2. We are then, as citizens of a nation, in. 
 debtors to an incalculable past. This, if often 
 overlooked, is a fact which calls for reverent and 
 thankful acknowledgment. We cannot if we 
 would start afresh from our simple manhood. 
 Our national characteristics surround us with an 
 atmosphere equally subtle and pervading. What 
 we are and what we can be has been in a large 
 measure determined for us by our English ances- 
 tors. They have stored up for our ready use, by 
 toil and thrift, by insight and love, material and 
 spiritual treasures which no one generation could 
 amass. They have fixed the standard of our 
 language, not in the greatest of human poets, 
 but in the Bible. They have handed down from 
 generation to generation safeguards of independ- 
 ence and justice, sealed not unfrequently by 
 suffering and martyrdom. They have united, 
 imperfectly it may be as yet, but still they have 
 united class to class by the sympathy of action 
 and by the sense of responsibility. They have 
 given to us, when the evils of age begin to make 
 themselves felt, the vigour of fresh youth in the 
 ' daughter-lands ' of a new world. They have 
 guarded with tender reverence for our inspiration 
 a faith, of which this Abbey is a symbol, hospit- 
 able to all things true and honourable and just 
 and pure and lovely and of good report, but 
 
40 The elements of social life : 
 
 ni. jealous that all shall be hallowed by His blessing 
 through whom alone we come to the One Father. 
 They have, in a word, transmitted to us their 
 life ; and this life is the heritage not of a party, 
 or of a class, but of all ; and all have entered upon 
 it. It is true that in ordinary circumstances we 
 may not be able to measure the intensity of the 
 common life which quickens us how few ever 
 notice the beating of their own hearts but at rare 
 intervals the words of a great writer, the advocacy 
 of a great cause, the presence of a great trial, 
 bring into view our vital fellowship, and we are 
 allowed to see in its grandeur that which has 
 never ceased to be active within us. 
 
 Two occasions, now in the distant past, rise 
 before me still with unchangeable freshness, when 
 every Englishman, I believe, rejoiced to know 
 even through anxiety and sorrow that the nation 
 was still one, one in the maintenance of law, one 
 in the devotion of loyalty. Five and twenty years 
 ago, when peace or war hung upon the answer to 
 a claim made in the deliberate assertion of a legal 
 right, the issue was awaited throughout the empire 
 with calm resolution ; and when the claim was 
 yielded, not one expression of pride or selfishness 
 marred the thanksgiving for a bloodless victory. 
 
 Again, at a later time, when it seemed that 
 the succession of our royal line would be broken, 
 
the Nation. 41 
 
 the heart of the whole people was moved as the in. 
 heart of 6ne man, not for a son, or a husband, or 
 a father only, but for a prince, who was felt to 
 represent to his people something far more than 
 personal qualities, and to bind us all, as no other 
 could do, to a glorious past. That memorable 
 season of suspense and deliverance and grateful 
 joy was, I cannot doubt, a crisis in the history of 
 our monarchy; and when I think of it my thoughts 
 go back not to the august ceremonial of a nation's 
 thanksgiving at St Paul's, but to a plain white 
 cross in the churchyard at Sandringham, on which 
 are inscribed the words which tell the story of 
 death and life ' One is taken and another left' 
 the servant taken and remembered : the lord left 
 and not unmindful of the awful presence in which 
 he has been. Surely this most touching and open 
 confession of equality reveals to us the secret of 
 that 
 
 Sober freedom, out of which there springs 
 Our loyal passion for our temperate kings. 
 
 For such revelations of national life as these 
 we may well thank God. They open out before 
 us, if only for a moment, its magnificent realities. 
 They enable us to reflect what age-long tributes 
 of courage, of counsel, of suffering have gone to 
 foster and support it. They teach us to under- 
 stand with what splendid capacities of strength 
 
42 The elements of social life : 
 
 ni. and tenderness it endows us. They force us to 
 resolve, as grace may be given us, to transmit 
 that which we have ourselves received purified 
 and enriched to our children. 
 
 3. That we may do so, we must, as I have said, 
 ponder the laws and circumstances of national 
 life. We must not only busy ourselves, as we 
 are bound to do, with the little interests which 
 surround us, but rise to the sight of the eternal 
 purposes which they are designed to further. 
 We must bear in mind in this more extended 
 sphere of action the three principles which the 
 family commends to us, the principles of com- 
 munion, of authority, of equality; and not rest 
 till we can be sure that we are swayed in our 
 political judgments by their salutary influence. 
 
 For the nation no less than the family springs 
 out of the acknowledgment of our personal in- 
 completeness. As citizens we are all, high and 
 low, rich and poor, dependent one on another. 
 We need that is individually, for the fulness of 
 our civic life, the peculiar gifts and offices of 
 others to supply that which is wanting in our- 
 selves. There could be no true nation, 
 even as there could be no true family, without 
 wide differences in power, in fortune, in duty, 
 among those who compose it. And the aim of 
 the Christian patriot will be not to obliterate these 
 
the Nation. 43 
 
 differences but to harmonise them in their ripe in. 
 development by shewing that they can minister 
 to the vigour of one life. He will strive not 
 to confound class with class, but to bind all 
 classes together in their characteristic distinct- 
 ness by the consciousness of mutual service. He 
 will set forth as his great aim the perfection 
 of each part not for its own sake but as a con- 
 tributory to the whole. He will labour to estab- 
 lish everywhere the central truth of morals, the 
 central truth of faith, that man is stronger and 
 more blessed through sacrifice than through self- 
 assertion. He will seek to realise last triumph 
 of noble souls that the brightest crown of action 
 is the feeling of good done for which there is 
 no reward. 
 
 Paid by the world, what dost thou owe 
 Me? God might question: now instead, 
 'Tis God shall repay! I am safer so. 
 
 The nation again, no less than the family, is 
 organised and controlled by an inherent authority. 
 Through whatever instruments the authority may 
 be administered, it is in itself not of man but 
 of God. Authority is not created but recognised 
 even in a successful revolution. Authority may 
 be graced or obscured by the character of him 
 who wields it, but essentially it can receive no 
 glory and suffer no loss from man. St Peter 
 
44 The elements of social life : 
 
 in. and St Paul, as we remember, honoured it in 
 the tyrant Nero: Christ Himself acknowledged it 
 in the selfish Pilate. There have been 
 
 times when the sacredness of the divine ordi- 
 nance has been transferred to the person of the 
 sovereign; and now, on the other hand, we are 
 tempted to derive the sanction of the authority 
 itself from the character of the person who wields 
 it. But it is possible to avoid the falsehood of 
 both extremes. And the Christian patriot will 
 keep the divine and human elements in the 
 ruler separate in thought, while he prays ardently 
 that they may be brought into the truest unison. 
 He will know, and he will help others to know, 
 that the stability of society is assured when 
 we believe that its structure is not wholly of 
 earth. He will rejoice to teach that reverence 
 is the parent of self-respect and dignity. He 
 will feel that the citizen who has learnt to look on 
 government as the reflection, however incomplete, 
 of an eternal order, has found the source of true 
 nobility; for he who sees the Divine must himself 
 be transfigured by it. 
 
 The nation, yet once more, no less than the 
 family calls for the manifestation of a brother- 
 hood, of an equality, that is, which is based upon 
 the acknowledgment of a common nature. The 
 realisation of such a brotherhood, such an equality, 
 
the Nation. 45 
 
 among us is happily not yet beyond hope. The in. 
 power which is exercised by the mere words over 
 the imagination of men shews that they are 
 longing for the fact. And the fact of 
 
 brotherhood, as we have seen, lies at the very 
 foundation of our faith. It exists already wherever 
 the Gospel finds a welcome, even if it be not 
 shewn. The Christian patriot then will bend his 
 energies to this above all things, that he may 
 bring to light the social fellowship of his country- 
 men. He will not tire in urging others to confess 
 in public, what home makes clear, that love and 
 not interest is alone able to explain and to guide 
 our conduct love for something outside us, for 
 something above us, for something more enduring 
 than ourselves : that self-devotion and not self- 
 assertion is the spring of enduring and beneficent 
 influence : that each in his proper sphere work- 
 man, capitalist, teacher is equally a servant of 
 the state, feeding in his measure that common life 
 by which he lives : that work is not measured but 
 made possible by the wages rendered to the doer : 
 that the feeling of class is healthy, like the nar- 
 rower affections of home, till it claims to be pre- 
 dominant : that we cannot dispense, except at the 
 cost of national impoverishment, with the peculiar 
 and independent services of numbers and of wealth 
 and of thought, which respectively embody and 
 
46 The elements of social life : 
 
 m - interpret the present, the past, and the future: 
 that we cannot isolate ourselves as citizens any 
 more than as men, and that if we willingly offer 
 to our country what we have, we shall in turn 
 share in the rich fulness of the life of all. 
 
 Such thoughts as these may appear to some 
 to be vague and unpractical, far removed from the 
 actual controversies and distresses of society. But 
 if so, then the Gospel itself has no social meaning 
 and no social power ; and we must lay aside the 
 sustaining hope that the kings of the earth shall 
 bring their glory into the city of God. But I 
 
 cannot accept for one moment this confession of 
 Matt. xi. 3. despair. I cannot look for another when the 
 Presence of the Risen Christ is revealed over the 
 world. Nay, rather, such thoughts as I have endea- 
 voured to suggest, such thoughts alone, I believe, 
 make our controversies endurable by thoughtful 
 men and prepare relief for our distresses. It 
 
 cannot but be that conflicts of party politics 
 should continue. It cannot but be that we should 
 find ourselves busily engrossed in details. It 
 cannot but be that our souls should be wounded 
 by griefs which as yet we cannot remove. For 
 this very reason it is well that we should look 
 from time to time to the foundation and issues, to 
 the nature and sanctions, of a nation's life and a 
 nation's work as seen through the teachings of 
 
the Nation. 47 
 
 our faith. In that lofty prospect all Christians in. 
 will recognise the one divine if distant goal of all 
 their efforts. And they will carry away from the 
 view on which their eyes have rested a sense of 
 unity which will not be lost even in the struggles 
 which must follow: a sense of dignity in honest 
 service when they are busied with the simplest 
 offices of duty : a sense of confident trust when 
 the laws of God require men still to see the world, 
 for which Christ died, darkened by sorrows for 
 which they can find no remedy. 
 
 Yes : the vision of the Apocalypse is for us 
 also. Beyond these crowded thoroughfares which 
 bewilder us, these crushing palaces of commerce 
 which overwhelm us, this sordid glare which 
 dazzles and saddens us, rises before the believer the 
 holy city, pure and still. There is no 
 
 Temple there that is, the symbol at once of 
 religious fellowship and religious separation 
 for the Lord God Almighty is the Temple thereof 
 and the Lamb. That Divine dwelling- 
 
 place has no need of the sun that is the 
 symbol of the quickening energy of nature and 
 the measure of time for the glory of God 
 lightens it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. 
 And the nations walk amidst the light thereof, 
 and the kings of the earth do bring their glory 
 into it; offering, that is, each their peculiar 
 
48 The elements of social life. 
 
 in. treasures, to fill up the manifested sovereignty of 
 the Lord. 
 
 That is the end. Meanwhile till the end 
 comes, and that the end may come, we must all 
 so labour that our own nation may be enabled to 
 bring her gift made fit for the Master's Presence 
 through the harmonious ministry of every class 
 and of every citizen. 
 
IV. 
 THE RACE. 
 
 w. s. 
 
made of one every nation of men for to dwell 
 on all the face of the earth , having determined their ap- 
 pointed seasons and the bounds of their habitation that 
 they should seek God.... 
 
 ACTS xvii. 26 f. 
 
THE RACE. 
 
 rilHE relations of the Family school us, as we iv. 
 -*- have seen, for our duties in the Nation. 
 Trained by the happy discipline of our homes 
 to feel the need of fellowship, the grace of autho- 
 rity, the joy of service, we soon recognise the 
 divine lineaments of the state. We perceive 
 naturally how the life of this larger body is sus- 
 tained and purified and ennobled by the forces 
 which are first revealed in Marriage, in Father- 
 hood, in Brotherhood. We gladly acknowledge 
 that the forms of political order are something 
 more than convenient provisions for the satisfac- 
 tion of material needs. We find that we are 
 truer men, truer Christians, in proportion as we 
 recognise that the Nation is for the loyal citizen 
 a .revelation, blurred and mutilated it may be, but 
 still a revelation of the original will of God, in 
 behalf of the being whom He made in His own 
 image to reach, through the natural processes of a 
 life sustained by communion with Him, to His 
 likeness. 
 
 42 
 
52 The elements of social life : 
 
 iv. But we cannot rest here. As the teaching of 
 
 the Family leads us to the idea of the Nation, so 
 the teaching of the Nation leads us while the ages 
 go forward, to the idea of the Race. While the 
 ages go forward : for the old Roman had but one 
 word for stranger and enemy. The Greeks sharply 
 separated from themselves all other peoples as 
 essentially inferior. The Hebrews alone of ancient 
 peoples, in this respect true children of Abraham 
 though in others the most exclusive of all, pro- 
 vided from the first for the admission of stran- 
 gers to a full share in their most sacred privi- 
 leges. But none the less the experience 
 of life gradually leads men towards a larger com- 
 munion. The sense of national friendships is 
 slowly established between peoples not unequally 
 matched; and still more slowly the strong are 
 inspired with regard for the rights of the weak. 
 In this way, little by little, the nations are 
 brought to realise that there is in the order of 
 the world a sacred fellowship between them as 
 members of one Race : that what is true of the 
 intercourse and duties of class and class, of party 
 and party, in any single realm, is true of the 
 mutual intercourse and duties of peoples, as ele- 
 ments of one humanity ; that it may be in this 
 greatest organisation of men, as in our own 
 22 ff.' " frames, that the parts which seem to be least and 
 
the Race. 53 
 
 weakest claim most abundant care. And these rv. 
 lessons lie at the very heart of the Gospel in which 
 our one Creator is revealed to us as our one 
 Kedeemer, the Heir of all things. Heb. i. 2. 
 
 Some, perhaps, may think that we can already 
 discern the dawning of a new order which answers 
 to the perception of a fuller truth. A large view 
 . of history encourages the belief. The progress in 
 the old world from the Family through the many 
 nations to the universal Empire seems to fore- 
 shadow the normal course of society. And in the 
 new world, in spite of grave disturbing causes, we 
 can notice how the Christian Faith first purified 
 and confirmed the relations of the Family : then 
 the relations of the state : and now is leading us 
 by many signs to acknowledge the supremacy of 
 wider ties. 
 
 But however this may be, though the lessons 
 are, I have said, slowly learnt, the special circum- 
 stances of our own time have pressed them forward 
 with unusual force. The increased facilities for the 
 interchange of thought : the frequency of foreign 
 travel : the development of commerce : have made 
 the narrownesses and intolerances which were 
 almost habitual in the last century no longer 
 possible. We cannot for a moment forget that 
 we are but one nation among many nations, who 
 are our rivals in power and glory, distinct from us 
 
54 The elements of social life : 
 
 iv. in character and institutions and history, and yet 
 not alien from us as children of one Father on 
 earth and in heaven. 
 
 But the recognition of this fellowship of na- 
 tions is not without danger. We cannot but find 
 it hard to reconcile a just sense of the great things 
 which God has wrought for us with a like respect 
 for His dealings with others. We are tempted to 
 surrender one feeling or the other or both. We 
 are tempted, that is, by the spirit of domination, 
 by the spirit of imitation, and by the spirit of 
 affected indifference ; and these three spirits must 
 be effectually exorcised before we can serve our 
 Race or indeed have any true sense of its vital 
 unity. 
 
 To us perhaps the spirit of domination is 
 peculiarly perilous from the force of individuality 
 in the English nature and from the conditions 
 of our island home. Our first impulse is to claim 
 universal supremacy for our own customs and 
 opinions and forms of government: to regard 
 each variation from our own standards of thought 
 and action as the result of ignorance or degene- 
 racy : to urge the adoption of our social institu- 
 tions as the remedy for evils in other lands : 
 to press patriotism into arrogant self-assertion. 
 
 But then a reaction follows. As our inter- 
 course with neighbouring peoples is increased we 
 
the Race. 55 
 
 are struck by their grace, or their versatility, iv. 
 or their vigour. At once all that is strange in 
 them grows attractive. We endeavour to copy 
 what is not natural to us, that we may gain what 
 we have learnt to admire. We disguise and 
 disparage our own tastes. We assume habits 
 which have not grown out of our circumstances. 
 We treat the characteristic results of our past 
 training as insular prejudices. 
 
 It soon however becomes clear that we cannot 
 make others like ourselves or make ourselves like 
 others, and so in our disappointment we aspire 
 to be ' citizens of the world/ regarding with a 
 lofty indifference the various types of human life 
 by which we are surrounded, using and discarding 
 according to our convenience the fashion of the 
 hour, accepting without conviction and aban- 
 doning without regret the customs of our neigh- 
 bourhood, finding nothing more precious or stable 
 in the form of society than in the many tints of 
 earth-born clouds which veil the immeasurable 
 sky. 
 
 But here also we are disappointed. This 
 temper brings no satisfaction or rest: we find 
 ourselves dwarfed and chilled by the narrowing 
 of our sympathies. We are poorer, and we feel 
 ourselves to be poorer, as men in proportion as 
 we have succeeded in our endeavours after domi- 
 
56 The elements of social life : 
 
 itf. nation, imitation, indifference. Happy are we 
 if we confess that these self-willed interpreta- 
 tions of the facts of the world are vain ; for then 
 
 Eph. i. 18. God opens the eyes of our hearts to see a little 
 more of His wider counsel : to see how the prin- 
 ciples which bring harmony to the life of the Na- 
 tion, bring harmony also to the life of the Race : to 
 see how the ideas of fellowship, authority, service, 
 which hallow the relations of the Family and 
 of the state, hallow the relations of the many 
 peoples among whom the manifold endowments 
 of humanity are distributed for the common 
 blessing: to see how He who made the world 
 and all things therein made of one every nation 
 of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, 
 having determined their appointed seasons and 
 the bounds of their dwelling, that they should seek 
 God if haply they might feel after Him and find 
 Him: to see, in other words, that there is a purpose 
 in the rise and fall of empires, in the spread and 
 repression of races, in the varieties of character 
 which are shaped by the conditions of existence : 
 to see that every natural circumstance is designed 
 to lead men to discern God as He is variously 
 present to them and to bring together the fruits of 
 their experience for the further revelation of His 
 
 John i. 14. will : to see that when the Word became flesh the 
 unity of the race was sealed in a divine fact of life. 
 
the Race. 57 
 
 So taught we look back, and, guided by the iv. 
 prophetic records of the Old Testament, we are able 
 to trace how in many parts and in many fashions Heb. i. 1. 
 the riches and the wants of man's nature were 
 laid open before Christ came through Egypt, Per- 
 sia, Greece, Rome: to trace how since He came 
 the ministry of the nations has in unexpected 
 ways illuminated the truth of the Incarnation. 
 
 We look forward, and, through the troubled 
 confusion of arrogance and ambition and selfish- 
 ness, which distorts the superficial view of poli- 
 tics, we discern that a movement towards a fuller 
 recognition of the kinsmanship of the Race, to- 
 wards the kingdom of God, is still advancing: 
 that might is learning the authority of right- 
 eousness: that privilege is learning the obliga- 
 tion of duty: that the growth of wide dominion 
 is deepening the sense of local responsibility: that 
 the powers of a larger life are beginning to control 
 the passionate outbursts of national feeling. 
 
 Such experiences, such thoughts, cannot but 
 affect us as Englishmen most deeply. A con- 
 viction not only of the brotherhood of men but 
 of the several offices of the many nations as 
 organs in one body is essential for the hallowing 
 of our national work. If the thought of the 
 common life of humanity is a theory for others, 
 for us it must be the inspiration of duty, of duty 
 
58 The elements of social life : 
 
 iv. which seems to be overwhelming when we realise 
 it. For indeed we may well tremble when we 
 reflect on the common interests of mankind which 
 are perilled in the keeping of England. She 
 stands as no other country stands in a threefold 
 relation to great families of men. She stands face 
 to face with the most powerful empires, as their 
 peer, bound to guard her heritage and to commend 
 to others, by courage, by generosity, by self-control, 
 the blessings which she has received. She stands 
 face to face with the weakest tribes, as their 
 sovereign, bound to protect, to foster, to develop 
 human forces which have not yet reached their 
 full growth. She stands yet again face to face 
 with daughter-peoples, jealous of their inde- 
 pendence and loyal in their affection, through 
 whom, as their parent, she is called to mould 
 a new world to sober freedom, not by rigid control 
 but by spiritual quickening. Never has any 
 
 nation received a charge of authority so far reach- 
 ing, and so complex. There is not a social problem 
 of the future of which the elements are not in- 
 cluded within its range. And if we have to de- 
 plore past faults in our dealings with the strong, 
 and the feeble, and the immature, the lessons 
 of past faults have been at least partly mastered. 
 The national conscience has in some degree 
 realised the weight of the nation's burden. Once 
 
the Race. 59 
 
 and again in late years the bitterness of failure rv. 
 has been accepted when an easy victory might 
 have satisfied the first cry for revenge. We have 
 learnt at least not to measure our loyalty to 
 justice by the fear of consequences, or our ca- 
 pacity for sacrifice by the hope of material gain. 
 
 In this way we have caught, I trust, a faint 
 glimpse of the life of the Race and of the solemn 
 grandeur of the office to which we have been 
 called, far too great for idle pride, and too perilous 
 for complacent self-assertion. Some aspects of it 
 even now are being forced upon our sight with 
 startling effect. Few of us, for example, can have 
 looked on the marvellous products of Indian 
 industries at Kensington, and on the vivid por- 
 traiture of the native races there, without feeling 
 that it is a revelation full of sad questionings. 
 One detail, at least, touched me with singular 
 pathos. You will search in vain, I think, in all 
 that multitudinous display of ornament, rich in 
 exquisite harmonies of colour and in delicacy of 
 patient skill, for one trace of reverence for man. 
 Every human form which finds a place there in 
 metal or wood or pottery is either grotesque or 
 hideous, a mockery or a symbol of brute force. 
 And what shall we say ? 
 
 Have we not reason to lament 
 What man has made of man? 
 
60 The elements of social life : 
 
 iv. But we have caught, I repeat, a faint glimpse 
 
 of the office towards mankind to which Eng- 
 land has been called: and do we ask, then, 
 what we can do to fulfil it, we here, in our busy, 
 anxious lives ? For the present, I answer, it is 
 enough that we should acknowledge the office, 
 that we should dwell upon it, that we should 
 devoutly confess it in the sight of God, that we 
 should make our faith in it the touchstone of our 
 judgments on international policy, that we should 
 strive to extend to our dealings with subject peo- 
 Is. i. 17. pies the command to judge the fatherless and 
 plead for the widow ; that we should be careful 
 not to make our power the counsellor of our de- 
 signs, or our material interests the standard of 
 our successes : that we should brand with the 
 contempt which we feel the cynical assumption 
 that the masses of men respond only to the pres- 
 sure of fear or the allurements of pleasure : that 
 we should welcome the truth that we hold every 
 endowment which we have received from nature 
 or from discipline in trust for our race, as mem- 
 bers of one divine Family, citizens in one King- 
 dom of God. 
 
 The way of action will be made clear as soon 
 as the spirit of action has gained power. When 
 a great idea has grown familiar it is not far from 
 accomplishment. A single nation, moved by one 
 
the Race. 61 
 
 thought, could alter the fortunes of the world. iv. 
 And, as has been said by one not of us, 'the power 
 of love as the basis of a state has not yet been 
 tried/ But, if there are prophecies which fulfil 
 themselves, there is also a faith which fulfils 
 itself. The most apostolic man whom I ever saw 
 dared when young to plead the forlorn cause of 
 the American Indians before the Convention of his 
 Church. Every voice was against him: he was 
 confusing, it was urged, politics with religion. 
 Defeated and disheartened, as he told me, he 
 bowed his head upon his hands to hide his tears. 
 Then at length he felt the touch of his senior 
 bishop and heard his words : ' You are right, and 
 you will prevail/ And he has prevailed. The 
 Bishop of Minnesota is now the trusted adviser of 
 the statesmen of the Union. 
 
 Yes : the work of God will prevail. The uni- 
 versal claims of man upon man, the cause of 
 humanity will prevail, not perhaps through those 
 to whom it is first committed, and certainly not 
 without suffering. But the issue of the cause is 
 not for us. The cause itself is. It is our in- 
 heritance. And as we ponder its splendid pro- 
 mise we shall drive out the spirit of domination 
 by the enthusiasm of service : the spirit of imita- 
 tion by reverent sympathy : the spirit of indiffer- 
 ence by adoring gratitude for the variety of the 
 
62 The elements of social life : 
 
 iv. divine gifts. We shall grow conscious of the 
 limits of our own powers, and so we shall better 
 understand that God is preparing His kingdom, 
 not through one nation only but through many 
 nations, and claiming from others ministries which 
 we cannot render. 
 
 We shall watch with something worthier 
 than idle curiosity or complacent prophesying the 
 convulsions of noble races troubled by evil tradi- 
 tions or yielding under terrible disasters to evil 
 dreams. We shall see that the kingdom of God 
 is hindered, and our own resources impoverished, 
 when the work of any one nation is marred or 
 left undone. We shall know that the true patriot 
 seeks the highest good of his own country, not at 
 the cost of other countries, but through their cor- 
 responding advance. 
 
 We shall still fear when we think of the burden 
 of empire which has been laid upon us not for 
 material aggrandisement, not for the accumulation 
 of private wealth, not for the suppression of inde- 
 pendent growth, but that we may educate to 
 generous activity great peoples in the East and 
 West for the fulfilment of one life. We shall 
 still fear, but in our fear we shall turn to God, of 
 
 Kom, xi. whom and throuqh whom and unto whom are all 
 36. . 
 
 things. 
 
 Words in our Prayer-Book which have seemed 
 
the Race. 63 
 
 almost meaningless will grow eloquent with each iv. 
 message that is flashed from scenes of barbarous 
 war or social corruption. We shall pray, as we 
 have never prayed before, that God 'will arise and 
 help us according to the noble deeds which we 
 have heard from our fathers.' We shall pray, 
 with an intense feeling of our own need, ' for all 
 sorts and conditions of men,' ' for all Christian 
 kings, princes, and governors/ We shall pray 
 with a quickened sympathy for the gift of 'peace, 
 unity and concord to all nations.' Every tale of 
 suffering, every threat of vengeance, every record of 
 justice violated and duty abandoned, will breathe 
 power into the petition we bring as children, 
 brethren, to our common Father: Thy kingdom 
 come. 
 
 Nor can we doubt that the prayer which 
 
 springs from faith and which is imaged in life will 
 
 ' receive an answer. The God of revelation the 
 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of 
 
 humanity in Christ is the God of hope. And if ^ om - xv - 
 
 ID. 
 
 politics too often sadden and distress us, it is 
 because we do not approach questions of states- 
 manship with a sense of what men are, of what 
 nations are, of what humanity is, in virtue of the 
 Gospel of the grace of God. 
 
 All will be changed if we remember that the 
 great counsel, on which we have dwelt, whereby 
 
64 The elements of social life. 
 
 iv. the Creator made of one every nation of men for 
 to dwell on all the face of the earth, having deter- 
 mined their appointed seasons and the bounds of 
 their dwelling, that they should seek God, has 
 found accomplishment in the Son of man, Born, 
 Crucified, Ascended; and that it is for us, for 
 each one of us in our measure, to claim, to use, 
 to spread the blessing of His universal victory, 
 in the strength of His Spirit. The bonds 
 
 of commerce may prove too weak to hold the peo- 
 ples together, for they depend upon the variable 
 forces of material interests. The bonds of litera- 
 ture may prove too weak, for they still draw their 
 strength from a part, if it be a nobler part, of 
 man's. nature. But the unity of the life in Christ 
 cannot fail our hopes. It has to be recognised 
 and not to be created. 
 
V. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 W. s. 
 
...The Church, which is His Body. 
 
 EPH. i. 22 f. 
 
THE CHURCH. 
 
 TTTE have seen how man born in a Family is v. 
 
 *^ so constituted as to feel after and to find 
 the larger fellowships of the Nation and of the 
 Race, and to bring to these the master principles 
 of life which he has learnt in the sacred circle 
 of home. But there remains yet another fellow- 
 ship which underlies and sustains all these. 
 Man is born not only for the Family, for the Na- 
 tion, for the Race, but also for God. He lives in 
 communion with the unseen as well as with the 
 seen. The eternal, to which every outward form 
 of social order ministers in due measure, has its 
 own organ on earth though it is not of earth. 
 That organ is the Church. 
 
 And when I speak of the Church now I do not 
 propose to enter on any topic of ecclesiastical con- 
 troversy. I do not propose to touch on the organi- 
 sation of the Church, its ministry, its services, its 
 sacraments. I wish simply to suggest a few 
 thoughts as to its moral office, as to its universal 
 mission, and as to its embodiment among our- 
 
 52 
 
68 The elements of social life: 
 
 v. selves. I wish to regard some features of the 
 Church as being, if I may use the phrase, the 
 social revelation of the Holy Spirit, sent to us 
 in Christ's Name, and then some features of our 
 national Church as the organ of our common 
 spiritual life. 
 
 The Church is indeed finally the realisation 
 of the brotherhood of men, and it is the abiding 
 pledge of that truth in the face of present sepa- 
 rations and rivalries of nations. There 
 has been, we must remember, a Church on the 
 earth, essentially the same in idea and in desti- 
 nation, from the time when Abram the father 
 of the faithful followed the voice of God, as seeing 
 the invisible, and rested in the assurance that 
 
 Gen. xii. the blessing of his work was for all the families of 
 the earth. When the Divine promise 
 
 was afterwards held in suspense by the inter- 
 vention of the Law, even then Israel was charged 
 
 Acts vii. with an office for all men, the Church in the 
 
 OQ 
 
 wilderness, the Church in Canaan. And through- 
 out the Old Testament we can trace the clear 
 and instructive distinction between 'the people' 
 and 'the nations,' 'the Church' and 'the world,' 
 as we should speak, the one Divine society which 
 God was shaping for Himself, and the many 
 human societies, the outgrowth of the natural 
 development of man, as it was unfolded in the 
 
the Church. 69 
 
 progress of time under the manifold conditions v. 
 of human existence. But though the people and 
 the nations were continually brought into the 
 keenest antagonism, they both had offices to 
 fulfil in the education of mankind. And Christ 
 when He came here as elsewhere reconciled what 
 was before in conflict, interpreted what was be- 
 fore obscure, united what was before separate. 
 He was, as we proclaim day by day, a light for Luke ii. 32. 
 revelation to the nations, as well as the glory of 
 Israel, the people of the Lord. So Simeon wel- 
 comed the Infant Saviour, and, as we have already 
 noticed, the Seer of the Apocalypse saw the 
 fulfilment of that which was thus recognised in 
 its beginning when he beheld the kings of the Apoc. xxi. 
 earth bringing their glory into the city of God. 
 
 That is the end : in that vision the Church and 
 the nations are at last one in the open presence 
 of God. But meanwhile, till the end is reached, 
 and that the end may be reached, the Church 
 and the nations have separate works to do in which 
 we all have to take part. To both the 
 
 Family furnishes the laws of order and the In- 
 dividual the principle of progress. Both are 
 natural and not artificial combinations of men. 
 Both contribute to the right disciplining of our 
 characters. Both furnish us with opportunities 
 and instruments of fruitful action. We 
 
70 The elements of social life: 
 
 v - must to apply the truth to ourselves strive 
 to remember that we are Christians the more 
 zealously because we remember that we are 
 Englishmen. We must gratefully yield ourselves 
 to the religious influences which are peculiar to 
 our historical position, while we reverently cherish 
 the universal life of our common Faith. 
 
 1. What then we ask is the social mission of 
 the Church? The Church has been to the world 
 in every age from the call of Abraham the herald 
 and the witness of the revelation of a living God, 
 of the present reality and power of the unseen and 
 the eternal, of the intercourse of earth and heaven, 
 of the love of the Creator for the world which 
 He created, of the provision which He makes to 
 bring His love to man, of the faith by which man 
 takes that love to himself; and for Christians 
 the Church is the herald and witness and minister 
 of the Incarnation, of the fulfilment of the destiny 
 of man by the Son of God, in which Gospel is 
 the seal of every divine promise, the supply 
 of every human want, the satisfaction of every 
 human hope. And more than this the Church is 
 also the organ of the continuous unfolding of the 
 treasures of spiritual wisdom, as the thoughts of 
 men are purified and widened in the experience of 
 life. And yet again : it is the unwearied preacher 
 of the example, and dispenser of the gifts of Christ. 
 
the Church. 71 
 
 In the discharge of each of these three offices v - 
 for sense-bound, wandering, struggling men the 
 Church has one watchword, which marks its 
 strength and its aim, Sursum cor da: 'Lift up 
 your hearts/ 
 
 (a) We all know how overwhelming is the 
 power of things outward and visible upon us : how 
 we are engrossed by material cares: stirred by 
 material hopes : diverted if not satisfied by mate- 
 rial pleasures : how our world tends to be shut in 
 ever closer and closer by limits of time and 
 place ; and how it becomes more exacting as it 
 grows narrower ; how earthly excitements, plea- 
 sures, even helps to devotion require to be in- 
 creased in intensity in order that they may pro- 
 duce their effect till they become a crushing load. 
 Then the Church opens to us a larger and 
 serener realm. It holds before us the end for 
 which we were made, even to become like God. 
 It quickens again the noblest thoughts of our 
 hearts by the calm of holydays, by the fellow- 
 ship of solemn services, by the silent eloquence of 
 stately temples in which the dead still living 
 proclaim the victories of faith : it hallows through 
 the institution of the sacraments every object 
 of sense with something of a sacramental value as 
 a sign of unimaginable glory. It peoples the 
 solitude of our hearts with innumerable hosts 
 
72 The elements of social life : 
 
 v - of heavenly beings. It makes the communion 
 of saints the pledge of a life of which sight is no 
 measure and no test. It gives us when we look 
 upon the vastness of the sea and the sky and 
 the mountains, instead of a vague feeling of 
 mysterious grandeur, a vision of the Presence 
 of God. It brings home to us the power of 
 Matt.xviii. Christ's words that He is with two or three gathered 
 together in His Name. It does not turn us away 
 from the duties of the world but transfigures 
 them by a new sanctity. It adds an element of 
 infinity to common things. It says to the weary, 
 to the defeated, to the disconsolate, in the pro- 
 spect of overwhelming evil, ' The end is not yet/ 
 
 The Church is the prophet of the eternal in 
 the light of creation. 
 
 (6) In virtue of this office the Church becomes 
 the organ of a continuous apprehension of the will 
 of God. We cannot analyse its action but we can 
 recognise the truths which it brings to light out 
 of the treasury of God. In this way it determined 
 the outlines of our Baptismal Creed : in this way 
 it fixed the contents of our Bible. For these results 
 were gained not by any formal decree of theo- 
 logians or scholars, not by any deliberate design, 
 but through the force of that common conscious- 
 ness of the Society which is the voice of the Spirit 
 through the Body of Christ. So the Church has 
 
the Church. 73 
 
 worked in the past : so it is working still. For v - 
 we can feel how the same divine energy is active 
 about us now, guiding our minds to wiser judg- 
 ments, guarding us from the dangers of peremptory 
 confidence, keeping open avenues of light which 
 our impatience is ready to close in the presence 
 of new problems, vast in their range and in their 
 promise. For we cannot hide from ourselves that 
 we are called upon to consider new aspects of 
 Nature and Life. And if many seem to tell us that 
 Nature is only what can be measured, counted, 
 weighed, the soul of the Christian Society touched 
 by the Holy Ghost keeps the fulness of truth for 
 our joy. Nature is not exhausted by science : it 
 is not exhausted by art : here also the Spirit has 
 its work to do. And the Church takes Milton's 
 memorable question 
 
 What if earth 
 Be but the shadow of heaven ? 
 
 and enables us to feel that by that splendid sug- 
 gestion we can pass through the seen to the 
 unseen, and give reality to the immeasurable 
 depths of life, and lay the foundations of a social 
 brotherhood on the fuller acknowledgment of the 
 Divine about us. This, I repeat, is a work of the 
 Church now ; and no one, I believe, can watch 
 the deep current of contemporary religious opi- 
 nion, below the storms which trouble its surface, 
 
74 The elements of social life: 
 
 v. without feeling that God is speaking to us, and 
 that the consciousness of Christendom, in spite 
 of our divisions, is gradually appropriating His 
 message. 
 
 The Church is the interpreter of the world in 
 the light of the Incarnation. 
 
 (c) Then again the Church is above all, as I 
 said, the unwearied preacher of the example of 
 Christ, the appointed organ of the gifts of Christ. 
 It keeps before us through every failure the un- 
 dying record of the victory of love. It shews us 
 the accomplishment of man's destiny through suf- 
 fering. Arrogance may lift its front among us; 
 indolent idleness may squander its treasure : the 
 strong may assert their self-sufficiency, and the 
 privileged may deny their obligations : but the ar- 
 rogant, the indolent the confidence of strength 
 and the isolation of privilege are alike con- 
 demned, so that all men can see their sentence, in 
 the vision of Him who reigns from the Cross. In 
 the presence of that Vision, which every Christian 
 society offers for the adoration of its children, 
 reverence, labour, dependence, service are recog- 
 nised by the soul as the marks of the social life 
 which is established in Christ, and which draws 
 from Him its motion, its benediction, and its 
 support. 
 
 For while the Christian society offers us an 
 
the Church. 75 
 
 ideal, it supplies us with the power to strive v. 
 towards it. It exercises a spiritual influence 
 which works surely and silently. It preserves a 
 perennial connexion with the source of Divine 
 strength. It offers us the gift of life, the gift of 
 the Holy Spirit, the gift of the virtue of Christ's 
 Humanity, according to His own appointment. 
 It guards us from the perils of subjective fanati- 
 cism by the calm strength of an outward organi- 
 sation. 
 
 When the understanding fails and every ap- 
 pearance tends to sadden us, it keeps the great 
 assurance fresh : /, if I be lifted up victorious John xii. 
 
 Of) 
 
 over death, victorious through death will draw 
 by the omnipotence of an endless compassion which 
 subdues the rebellious soul all men unto me. 
 
 The Church is the quickener and sustainer of 
 life in the light of the Redemption. 
 
 2. Such is the universal mission of the 
 Church, and in every nation the mission must 
 be fulfilled according to the peculiar circum- 
 stances of the national history and of the national 
 character. And if the nation is, as we hold, 
 a living whole, its constitution will be incom- 
 plete if it has no organ for the development 
 and for the expression of its spiritual powers : 
 if it has not, in other words, a national Church. 
 
 No one can acknowledge more heartily than 
 
76 The elements of social life: 
 
 v. I do the services which isolated Christian so- 
 cieties in England have rendered to personal 
 religion. They have insisted with victorious 
 resolution on the sacredness of individual con- 
 viction. They have maintained a high standard 
 of individual effort. But this individual aspect 
 of the Faith is not all. Christianity is a social 
 power as well as an individual power. It 
 
 is presented to us from the very first as embodied 
 in a kingdom. A national Church alone can 
 consecrate the whole life of the people. A na- 
 tional Church alone can bring to every citizen 
 the ministrations of religion, not as offering a 
 voluntary gift but as satisfying a rightful claim. 
 
 Now no one will question that the Church 
 of England occupies a historical position which 
 is without parallel. It has borne with the nation 
 the pressure of foreign conquest and domestic 
 revolution, and drawn breadth and vigour from 
 both. It has received the treasures of alien 
 thought and experience, and vindicated its inde- 
 pendence. It has never broken with the past and 
 yet it has put off the accretions of age. But 
 
 I concede at once that we cannot support its 
 claims by its history if its fruits do not answer 
 to its growth. If our national Church does not 
 proclaim a faith which is the soul of our corpo- 
 rate life : if it does not use for the common good 
 
the Church. 77 
 
 an inheritance which is unique and inestimable : 
 if it does not accept a responsibility which no 
 other society admits : then I allow that no pre- 
 scription, no gratitude, no past victories, can 
 justify our allegiance to that which has now 
 lost its virtue. 
 
 Here again however it is clear that the Church 
 of England does externally at least stand out 
 as a witness to our common Faith. It embodies 
 a principle and a power: the principle that re- 
 ligion is an element in the highest national life, 
 the power of a catholic sympathy. It proclaims 
 before the world that our government acknow- 
 ledges a Divine sovereignty. It undertakes the 
 task of coming to all with the message of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 And if it be said that it has failed in its 
 mission : that its representatives have not spoken 
 out boldly in Christ's Name on this occasion and 
 that : that the Truth has not been brought by 
 it effectively to the dense population of our 
 towns ; I confess that many such accusations 
 are true. I confess that the Church of England 
 has failed, if it be failure to fall short of the 
 ideal. The Church of England has failed as 
 Christianity itself has failed. It has failed 
 through the imperfection of the men who have 
 represented it. But it has not failed so as to 
 
78 The elements of social life: 
 
 v. abdicate its charge. It has not failed so as to 
 suppress or to dissemble the message which is 
 the condemnation of its shortcomings, or to 
 withhold the gifts which it is commissioned to 
 minister. It has not failed so as to leave its 
 destination without witness. It has not failed so 
 as to refuse to recognise every new claim which 
 has been made upon its service. 
 
 And therefore at the present time the national 
 Church stands before us rich with unused re- 
 sources of power which God has provided for 
 the necessities of this later age; and we who 
 believe unfeignedly in its future, who believe 
 in its mission and in its grace, rejoice to have 
 learnt in some degree the secret of its past failures. 
 And if I am asked to say what this is in the 
 briefest possible form, I reply without hesitation 
 that it is chiefly that we have forgotten the 
 thought which is expressed in the words which 
 I have taken for my text. We have forgotten 
 that the Church is a Body in which an appro- 
 priate office belongs to every member; and so 
 we have suffered grievously from a loss of power 
 and from a loss of mutual understanding. 
 
 We have suffered grievously from loss of 
 power. Those who are set to be teachers among 
 us, who need ample leisure for calm reading and 
 high thinking in order that they may follow 
 
the Church. 79 
 
 the swift currents of opinion, have been over- v. 
 whelmed with labours not their own, with anxie- 
 ties of finance and with details of parish organi- 
 sation. And those again who have a 
 practical knowledge of affairs, a wide influence 
 in business, a rich endowment of 'saving com- 
 mon sense ' have found no proper sphere for 
 the exercise of their gifts. The clergy by the 
 force of circumstances have added the work 
 of the laity to their own ; and the laity left 
 without work have, almost of necessity, remained 
 without zeal. 
 
 We have suffered grievously also from a loss 
 of mutual understanding, from the want of a 
 free interchange of opinion between all the classes 
 of which the Church is composed. We of the 
 clergy are apt to regard things from a theoretical 
 point of view without a due sense of proportion. 
 You, brethren, of the laity try thought by a 
 rough standard of practice without a clear dis- 
 cernment of the value of opinion. 
 
 We ask then for the free and healthy service 
 of every one that our Church may have her perfect 
 work. The hand cannot delegate its office to 
 the eye or the eye to the heart. If the Church 
 is to fulfil its social functions there must not be 
 a single person in it without a ministry for 
 others. And again if we strive on both 
 
80 The elements of social life: 
 
 v. sides to enter a little more into the feelings of 
 one another, clergy and laity, to acknowledge 
 frankly our common aims and our common du- 
 ties, to claim help and to concede authority, 
 there will be a double gain. We on our 
 
 part shall learn more and more to direct our 
 Matt. teaching to the weightier matters of the law, 
 
 xxiii. 23. . 
 
 judgment and mercy and faith, and you in turn 
 will learn to give a juster value to that exactness 
 of doctrine which is found to be efficacious in 
 conduct. 
 
 This is not the time to suggest the forms 
 which effort should take. Perhaps, if the oppor- 
 tunity be given me, I may do this on some other 
 occasion. Now it must be enough to say, that 
 there are works for ' fathers ' answering to the 
 ripeness of wisdom. There are works for ' young 
 men' answering to the enthusiasm of strength. 
 There are works for women answering to the 
 power of sympathy. Let each one here interpret 
 the voice which comes to the individual heart 
 and follow it to fulfilment. A little sacri- 
 
 fice creates a new interest in that which has been 
 undertaken. Having done something we shall 
 find it easier to do more. Unexpected ways will 
 be opened to us by which we shall be enabled to 
 bring our experience and endowments to the ser- 
 vice of our Church, to the service of Christ. 
 
the Church. 81 
 
 And such service will react upon our own spi- v. 
 ritual life. Life becomes nobler and happier 
 
 as the sympathies and offices of life are enlarged. 
 It is at first an awful thing to know that the 
 voice which we hear is indeed the voice of God. 
 But he has the strength of a prophet who meets 
 it in due time with the offer of himself. 
 
 Again then I ask for the willing service of 
 every one. Through us as a Society, through us 
 as organs, each of some special work, Christ is 
 offered to the nation, to the nation with its sub- 
 ject provinces and its daughter states ; and the 
 increase of the Body comes through that which Eph.iv.16. 
 every joint supplieth. 
 
 There are, no doubt, arrears to be made up ; 
 but already there are signs of quickened and 
 manifold activity which give abundant promise 
 for the future. And more is at stake in the 
 effects of our combined labour than we are in- 
 clined to suppose. The conquest of doubt will 
 come through the conquest of life. Let it be 
 
 seen that what we have received and what we 
 hold enables us to enter with kindlier interest 
 into the struggles of our neighbours ; to join one 
 with another in heartier fellowship for the pur- 
 suit of noble ends ; to discern with readier intelli- 
 gence the way of lasting progress ; to crush down 
 our besetting selfishness and yet to preserve the 
 w, s. 6 
 
82 The elements of social life. 
 
 individual differences with which we have been 
 endowed ; to strive without impatience and with- 
 out weariness that those with whom we have to 
 do may be a little better for our influence; to 
 make it evident that we do believe in an actual 
 communion between earth and heaven; to live, in 
 a word, by faith ; and the issue cannot be uncertain 
 or far distant. What we hold as Christians, 
 
 what we hold as Churchmen, has, I believe, this 
 power ; and it is the part of every one among us 
 to help others to recognise the greatness of the 
 treasure which has been committed to our keeping 
 not for ourselves but for the whole Nation, and 
 not for the Nation only but for the whole Body of 
 Christ. 
 
II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ASPECTS OF THE ORGANI- 
 SATION OF SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 I. The Kingdom of God. 
 II. Mediaeval efforts: the Franciscans (Francis of 
 
 III. Modern efforts: the Quakers (George Fox). 
 
 IV. Present Problems. 
 
 62 
 
The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but 
 righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. 
 
 BOM. xiv. 17. 
 
I. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 Kingdom of heaven/ ' the Kingdom of i. 
 God/ ' the Kingdom of Christ' few phrases 
 are more familiar to us than these : few phrases, 
 if we pause to reflect upon them, are more intelli- 
 gible, more eloquent, more impressive. They 
 bring vividly before us the primitive conception 
 of the embodiment of the Gospel. They express 
 what is offered in Scripture from the first page 
 of Genesis to the last page of the Apocalypse, as 
 the end of the Divine education of the world. 
 They epitomize the record of the Lord's life, and 
 of the work of His apostles. As a King Christ 
 received His earliest homage in the manger at Matt. ii. 
 Bethlehem. As a King He died, ' reigning from 
 the Cross.' The message which His herald was Matt. iii. 2. 
 commissioned to proclaim, the message with which Matt. iv. 
 
 17 
 
 He Himself opened His Ministry, was the Advent 
 
 of the Kingdom. After His resurrection He 
 
 spoke with His disciples the things pertaining to Acts i. 3. 
 
 the Kingdom of God. And they in turn carried 
 
 the glad-tidings wherever they went beyond the 
 
86 Organisation of social life : 
 
 i. borders of Judaea. It was of a Kingdom St Philip 
 i2* S x?v!' s Pke at Samaria: of a Kingdom St Paul spoke at 
 22; xvii. Antioch, Thessalonica, Ephesus. And the last 
 xx. 25. ' historic glimpse which we have of the apostolic 
 working shews us the same ' prisoner of the Lord' 
 Acts preaching the Kingdom of God in his captivity at 
 xxviii. 23, Rome> j n every part O f the New Testa- 
 
 ment, in every region of early Christian labour, 
 the teaching is the same. The object of Re- 
 demption is set before us not simply as the de- 
 liverance of individual souls but as the establish- 
 ment of a Divine Society: the saving not only 
 of men but of the world, the hallowing of life 
 and not characteristically the preparation for 
 leaving it. 
 
 This thought of the Kingdom was, indeed, the 
 moral of the Old Testament, the issue to which all 
 the training of God's chosen people tended. From 
 the first call of their father Abraham to their last 
 struggle with foreign invaders the same lesson 
 was being enforced upon them in many ways. 
 By bondage and wandering, by conquest and op- 
 pression, by brilliant triumphs, by heroic suffer- 
 ings, by desolate exile, by painful return, the 
 Jews were taught to lift their thoughts to the con- 
 templation of a Divine Sovereignty. They 
 were brought into contact with the great nations 
 of the East, and so they learnt to feel the essen- 
 
the Kingdom of God. 87 
 
 tial weakness of the powers beneath which they 
 had fallen for a time only to rise again still 
 stronger. They themselves received a dynasty, in 
 answer to their prayers, which in its first glory 
 seemed to realise by the ways of earth all for 
 which they hoped. But the kingdom of David 
 rapidly descended to the level of human mo- 
 narchies, and served only to furnish the imagery 
 in which the aspirations of later prophets were 
 clothed. So the hope which had been brought 
 home to the mind of the people, became, in its 
 promise and in its failure, fruitful in greater 
 hopes. Step by step the full majesty 
 
 of the Divine ideal was realised in thought, while 
 the organisation of material forces was pressed 
 forward with relentless vigour by Roman conquest. 
 At last, in the fulness of time, the contrast be- 
 tween ' the Kingdom of Heaven/ founded on the 
 eternal basis of truth and justice, and the king- 
 dom of the world, which was the final expres- 
 sion of force and self-will, stood revealed. The 
 one was recognised in the sovereignty of love wel- 
 comed by faith, and seen in the Person of the 
 Word become flesh : the other stood out in the 
 isolation of victorious might, with a deified man 
 as the supreme object of human devotion. 
 
 Thus the Gospel of Christ was in its an- 
 nouncement and in its preparation, as it is in its 
 
88 Organisation of social life : 
 
 i. essence, the Gospel of the Kingdom. To seek the 
 23 Kingdom [of God] and His righteousness is en- 
 
 Matt, vi. j i ne( j upon the believer as his first duty ; and 
 we ourselves at least in word acknowledge the 
 obligation. Morning and Evening we all pray in 
 Christ's own words that l Our Father's Kingdom 
 may come, on earth as in heaven ' : that it may 
 ' come/ not that we may be carried away to it far 
 off, out of this stormy tumult of common cares as 
 to some tranquil haven of rest : that it may come to 
 us ' on earth as in heaven/ For the Kingdom of 
 God is at once spiritual and historical : eternal and 
 temporal : outward and inward : visible and invi- 
 sible : a system and an energy. It is an order of 
 things in which heavenly laws are recognised and 
 obeyed. It depends both for its origin and for 
 its support upon forces which are not of earth 
 It is inspired by the principles and powers of a 
 higher sphere. It implies a harmonious relation 
 between men and the beings of the unseen uni- 
 verse (the Kingdom of Heaven}. It places its mem- 
 bers in a social and personal relationship to a 
 Divine Head, as citizens to a King, as children to 
 a Father (' the Kingdom of God' ' the Kingdom of 
 your Father which is in heaven'). 
 
 But at the same time, though it is not limited 
 by the conditions of our present existence, it is 
 manifested under them. It is in the world though 
 

 Ae Kingdom of God. 89 
 
 it is not of the world. The scene on which it is i. 
 
 shewn to be realised is the scene of human life. 
 
 The Lord speaks habitually of His coming again, 
 
 of His Presence, and in one sense He fixes the Matt - xvi - 
 
 28. 
 
 time of His Coming in the generation of those 
 whom He addressed. He points forward, if I may 
 gather up what I would say in one sentence, to 
 a transfiguration of human society which corre- 
 sponds to the Resurrection of the individual. 
 
 Yes, this is Christ's teaching ; and we believe 
 the fulness of His promise : we acknowledge the 
 universality of His work. He did not come to 
 found a school by unfolding new forms of intel- 
 lectual truth : He did not come to mould a sect 
 by the imposition of an outward rule. He came 
 to deal with the whole of life, with thought, ac- 
 tion, feeling, with life in its largest and noblest 
 forms, with life in every phase of its progressive 
 activity. He came to bring a message to the 
 strong and the wealthy and the gay, as well as to 
 the weary and the heavy-laden. He came to found 
 a Kingdom into which the kings of the earth should Apoc. xxi. 
 bring their glory. And for us that Kingdom, the 
 Kingdom of heaven, the Kingdom of God, the King- 
 dom of the Son of man, is a present reality. We 
 live in it, and yet we look for it. We live in it as 
 recognising the supremacy of a Divine law, the rule 
 of a Divine sovereign, the constitution of a Divine 
 
90 Organisation of social life : 
 
 i. Church. We look for it, as we wait for the re- 
 Eom. viii. 7 , . /, IT -\/r 1-1 
 
 23. aemption oj our own bodies. Meanwhile we are 
 
 bound by the obligations of its citizenship, heirs 
 of its glories, sharers in its destiny. 
 
 What then are the signs by which our loyalty 
 as citizens of the kingdom of God will be proved ? 
 Not any uniform, which can be laid aside when 
 we enter our secret chamber: not any watch- 
 word, which we can learn by an easy tradition ; 
 but a character which clothes itself in deeds, a 
 creed which is translated into a life. The citizen 
 must according to the measure of his powers 
 embody the notes of the kingdom. And the 
 Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but 
 righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost. It is the social incorporation of a spirit, 
 which penetrates and hallows every region of 
 human activity, of a spirit which consecrates for 
 the common service every variety of heritage and 
 endowment, which combines in a harmonious 
 union the manifold energies of enterprise, which 
 crowns every faithful servant with a blessedness 
 which none can take away or disturb. 
 
 ' Righteousness, peace, joy ' : the human heart 
 welcomes these three characteristics as marking 
 the society which answers the promise of creation. 
 In these three, that memorable triad, the battle- 
 cry of revolution, which, in spite of every per- 
 
the Kingdom, of God. 91 
 
 version and misuse, has found a wide response in 
 the souls of nations, receives its highest fulfil- 
 ment. In 'righteousness, peace, joy' we can 
 recognise ' equality, liberty, fraternity/ inter- 
 preted, purified, extended. They tell us that 
 the community and not the individual is the 
 central thought in the life of men. They tell us 
 that the fulfilment of duties and not the asser- 
 tion of rights is the foundation of the social struc- 
 ture. They tell us that the end of labour is not 
 material well-being, but that larger, deeper, more 
 abiding delight which comes from successfully 
 ministering to the good of others. They tell us 
 that over all that is transitory in the form of the 
 kingdom, over all the conditions which determine 
 its growth, there rest the light, the power, of an 
 Eternal Presence. 
 
 ( Righteousness, peace, joy' : these are, I repeat, 
 the Christian translation of Equality, Liberty, 
 Fraternity, in which nothing of the old truth is 
 lost, and all is transfigured. Equality may be so 
 presented as to destroy the richness and the 
 beauty of life. An equality of units in an aggre- 
 gate carries with it sterile monotony. Life en- 
 dures no such equality which obliterates the past. 
 But when we say ' Our Father ' there is opened a 
 vision of that true equality which takes form as 
 righteousness in every relation of life. The varie- 
 
92 Organisation of social life: 
 
 i. ties of gifts and circumstances among men are 
 the conditions of mutual service. Our 
 
 highest is not our own : how then that which is 
 less ? But all that we have received and all that 
 we have gained is a trust to be used in the 
 
 l Tim. ii. Master's cause. And His will is that all men 
 4 
 
 should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the 
 truth. Here therefore is the measure of our duty, 
 the destination of our possessions. Each fellow- 
 man is by God's will made for eternal life, made 
 to discipline and cultivate his powers, made to 
 serve his race and learn the end of his service ; 
 and we are bound, as far as lies in us, to strive 
 that each shall attain his end. His cause is our 
 own. Every inequality of earth is lost in the 
 equality of souls. And the temple of the soul 
 the shrine and the precinct claims even in its 
 ruins the tender reverence of restoring love. 
 
 Liberty again may rapidly degenerate into 
 license. It becomes by an easy transition a 
 specious name for individual caprice and self- 
 assertion. Then the calm strength of the whole is 
 lost in innumerable fragments. But when we say 
 ' Our Father,' there is opened a vision of that true 
 liberty, the obedience of His perfect law, which is 
 the spring of peace. Caprice is excluded 
 
 by a living sense of responsibility. Self-assertion is 
 overcome by loyal devotion to a higher rule. 
 
the Kingdom of God. 93 
 
 Authority and freedom are reconciled by the i. 
 thought of a living God. For the barrenness of 
 egoism : for the weakness of self-indulgence : 
 comes the invigorating, controlling faith in the 
 Divine purpose which enjoins upon all the freest 
 development of personal powers, and inspires the 
 independent toiler with that completeness of self- 
 surrender wherein alone there is rest. 
 
 Yet again fraternity may be made the pre- 
 text for imposing upon the weaker, the younger, 
 the less mature, in the family of men, practices 
 and opinions for which they are not prepared, or 
 even for arresting the growth of the more ad- 
 vanced. But when we say ' Our Father,' there is 
 opened a vision of that true fraternity, the fact of 
 a common spiritual parentage, which brings to all 
 the children the earnest of eternal joy. 'Man/ 
 
 it has been nobly said, ' is the pleasure of man/ 
 ' A living man/ in the words of an early father, Iren. adv. 
 ( is the glory of God/ In every brother, that is, 20,' 7. 1V ' 
 partner in our life, our hope, our end, we have a 
 revelation of the Father's love, offered for our 
 study, for our care, for our thanksgiving. No 
 jealousy can find a place in the fellowship of 
 brethren. No rivalry can trouble the labour of 
 sons who owe everything and bring everything to 
 Him in Whose Presence is the fulness of joy. 
 
 'Righteousness, peace, joy': these, I say, are 
 
94 Organisation of social life: 
 
 i. the notes of the Divine Kingdom. But you will 
 ask, Where are they to be found ? What society 
 can shew them written on its history or embodied 
 in its life ? For the enthusiasm of righteousness 
 and the spontaneous devotion of service and the 
 measuring our work by our capacity, there is 
 on every side submission to an outward ordinance, 
 the discharge of the letter of our bond, the satis- 
 faction of our wants : for the stability of peace and 
 the free concurrence of multitudinous forces and 
 the sure balance of trustful hearts, there is the 
 armed truce where fear witnesses to injustice, 
 the murmuring helplessness of exhaustion, the 
 torpor of tolerant indifference : for the still depths 
 of joy and the vision of a growing dawn and 
 the light of a heavenly Presence, there is the 
 turbulent restlessness of excitement, and the 
 deadening materialism of indulgence. 
 
 I know the terrible indictment. I do not 
 disguise or extenuate one dark trait in it. How 
 can I when every morning brings a fresh arraign- 
 ment of men and nations ? But what then ? 
 Can it be shewn that the Gospel of the Kingdom 
 has failed in one least point to vindicate its 
 claims ? Do we abandon anything of the splen- 
 dour of our hope ? Christians indeed have been 
 unrighteous, tyrannical, morose ; but their Faith 
 is their accuser and their judge. We have 
 
the Kingdom of God. 95 
 
 fallen short of our ideal, but we none the less i. 
 cling to it with inextinguishable desire. And 
 our Faith justifies our confidence. For Faith 
 in the Kingdom of God has entered into life. 
 It has established itself among us in principle 
 and in beginning. It is our Faith in fact which 
 stirs us with passionate discontent : which dis- 
 ciplines us : which assures us that even through 
 our falls we are brought nearer to our goal if 
 only our faces are set towards the light. 
 
 'Righteousness, peace, joy': where are they 
 to be found ? I reply that on us, on all of us, 
 is laid the duty of shewing that these are indeed 
 the notes of the Kingdom to which we belong : 
 the Kingdom which satisfies the social instincts 
 of men. For men are waiting for our work. The 
 social embodiment of the Faith answers to the 
 peculiar temper of the age. Each age 
 
 has its own difficulties and trials, its own sorrows 
 and doubts, its own aspirations and intuitions of 
 truth. Nor can we doubt in which direction the 
 current of present thought is setting. Never 
 before has there been so wide and keen a sense 
 of the unity of life, of social dependence, of the 
 obligation to determine our mutual relations by 
 duties rather than by rights. Never has the 
 call to labour, to love, to sacrifice, to association, 
 to the acceptance of a common belief and a 
 
96 Organisation of social life: 
 
 i. common aim been so loud or so general. Never 
 has the failure of material remedies for distress 
 made the want of a spiritual force, active and 
 visible among men, so obviously urgent. But 
 such feelings, desires, confessions, are vague 
 and scattered and even discordant. Still they 
 are sincere ; and I believe that the ' Gospel of 
 the Kingdom of God/ in its breadth and its 
 simplicity, is able, is alone able, to interpret 
 and to answer and to support every hope and 
 every effort of men, who even from a far country 
 are turning to their common Father. 
 
 I believe it : every Christian must believe it. 
 But we cannot be surprised if those who stand 
 without, either in sad or in bitter alienation 
 from us, say, ' Shew us your works.' ' Shew us 
 your works ' : Brethren, I pray that we may not 
 decline the challenge in whatever spirit it is 
 offered. I pray that we may, God helping us, 
 shew, so that men may see, what the Gospel of 
 the Kingdom, the social Gospel, is. But, that 
 
 we may do so, it will not be enough to shew, as 
 it can easily be shewn, that whatever is noblest 
 and most inspiring in art, whatever is loftiest and 
 tenderest in thought, whatever is most generous 
 and sovereign in action, whatever is purifying 
 in sorrow and lasting in pleasure, is essentially 
 Christian. It will not be enough to shew that 
 
the Kingdom of God. 97 
 
 every crime and every failure of Christians is i. 
 treason against their faith, and that no good 
 throughout the world is alien from it. We must 
 make it clear, clear in a shape which will strike 
 the imagination of the multitude, that the notes of 
 the Christian Society are ' righteousness, peace, j oy \ 
 
 We must, I say, make it clear that the notes 
 of the Christian society are ' righteousness, peace, 
 joy'. This is the subject which I wish to com- 
 mend to your meditation and your prayers during 
 this Advent Season. I propose therefore to con- 
 sider on the next two Sundays how men sought to 
 gain the end in earlier times, with what failures 
 and what encouragements. And then I hope to 
 suggest on the last Sunday of the year some les- 
 sons which we may learn from past experience in 
 dealing with the problems of our own day. 
 
 If the work to which we look were to be 
 wrought by human power, I should not dare 
 to speak. But it is the work of God. He is 
 pleased to work through us, but He Himself 
 works. The righteousness, the peace, the joy, 
 which we are charged to make our own and to 
 bring to the world are in the Holy Ghost. They 
 are the revelation of His Spirit in Whom we live Acts xvii. 
 
 OQ 
 
 and move and have our being. We are not called 
 to found, but to receive a Kingdom, a Kingdom Hebr. xii. 
 that cannot be shaken. Our part is only to offer 
 w. s. 7 
 
98 Organisation of social life. 
 
 i. ourselves to the Divine influence by which we 
 are surrounded : to listen to the ^still Voice which 
 speaks in our souls with whisperings which if 
 they cannot be uttered yet cannot be misunder- 
 
 Hebr.vi.5. stood: to use the powers of the new age. 
 
 Oh, my friends, life is vaster, immeasurably 
 vaster, than we think, richer in resources, more 
 fertile in strength, more blessed in opportunity. 
 The glory of the Lord is still about the pilgrim's 
 path: the Saviour, in His Spirit, is still with 
 
 Luke xxiv. us, though our eyes are holden that we should 
 not know Him. 
 
 We read that of old time, when the servant 
 of the lonely prophet found that his master was 
 encompassed by a vast host of pitiless enemies, 
 
 2 Kings vi. he cried, Alas, my master! how shall we do? 
 And he answered, Fear not: for they that be 
 with us, are more than they that be with them. 
 And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray 
 thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the 
 Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he 
 saw : and, behold, the mountain was full of horses 
 and chariots of fire about Elisha. 
 
 Even so it is now. We too are moving a- 
 
 Hebr. xii. midst the legions of light : we are come unto the 
 city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; 
 but our sight is dim and our faith is feeble. Lord, 
 we pray Thee, open our eyes that we may see. 
 
II. 
 
 MEDIEVAL EFFORTS: THE FRANCISCANS 
 (FRANCIS OF ASSISI). 
 
 72 
 
Blessed are the poor. 
 
 ST LUKE vi. 20. 
 
 Blessed are the poor in spirit. 
 
 ST MATT. v. 3. 
 
II. THE FRANCISCANS. 
 
 THERE are periods in the history of the n. 
 Church the history of the spiritual growth 
 of humanity which are at once an end and a 
 beginning. The material forms of civilisation grow 
 old, and the life which they have at once pro- 
 tected and expressed takes a new shape. Un- 
 expected forces reveal themselves. Unexpected 
 evils make themselves felt. Such periods are 
 periods of intense, disordered, passionate feeling, 
 men's hearts failing them for fear, and for ex- Luke xxi. 
 pectation of the things which are coming on the ' 
 world. They are, in the language of Scripture, 
 periods of a new birth, full of the anguish of John xvi. 
 
 21 f 
 
 travail and yet sustained by the assurance of a 
 greater joy. They are periods in which Christ 
 is pleased to come to His people with some new 
 revelation of His sovereign purpose and power. 
 
 Such a period was the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century. It was a crisis of dissolu- 
 tion and a revelation of strength. The foun- 
 dations of the life of modern Europe, social, 
 
102 Organisation of social life : 
 
 ii. political, intellectual, religious, were laid there 
 silently and deeply, laid in tribulation and per- 
 plexity, laid by men who knew not whereunto 
 their work would grow. The Crusades, 
 
 which had been undertaken in the hope of 
 crowning a united Christendom with a decisive 
 triumph, had brought very different results. It 
 seemed as if the West would be converted by 
 the East. 
 
 The corruption of Oriental life, the influence 
 of Oriental speculation, spread like a flood over 
 the divided and disorganised Christian kingdoms. 
 But meanwhile the power of the commons was 
 being consolidated. Commercial republics be- 
 came in the North the home of freedom, and 
 in the South the nurseries of Art. Guilds of 
 craftsmen were developed. Colleges of scholars 
 were founded. Vernacular literature began to 
 rise on the ruins of Latin. Above all, nations 
 grew to the consciousness of a common life. 
 
 In these movements we can see now the 
 earnest of a better order than the premature 
 unity of the Empire and the Papacy. But there 
 was a terribly dark side to the age. The leprosy 
 which was then the terror and the scourge of the 
 towns was the symbol of evils greater and more 
 subtle which were eating into the heart of 
 society. The Kingdom of God was on the point 
 
the Franciscans. 103 
 
 of becoming a kingdom of the world. The splendid n. 
 churches which serve for the inspiration of modern 
 art were too often built by extortion. Religion 
 was materialised both in its Creed and in its 
 worship. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction was invading 
 the whole sphere of life. The very consolations 
 of the faith were being degraded into a luxury 
 for the wealthy. The poor the poor on whom 
 Christ pronounced His first benediction were in 
 danger of being forgotten. 
 
 But the Spirit of Christ was not left without 
 witness. Preachers arose on many sides who vin- 
 dicated for the Kingdom of God the claim to 
 righteousness and peace and joy. For the most 
 part their work was transitory because it was 
 destructive, but one among them, Francis of 
 Assisi, spoke in life, so that his work can never 
 cease to move. He built up, purified, ennobled 
 what he found, overcoming evil by the good. 
 Through Francis of Assisi the mediaeval efforts 
 after the Kingdom of God found their most 
 characteristic embodiment. Of him then I wish 
 to speak this afternoon, while the echoes of his 
 Hymn of Creation, the most perfect expression of 
 his heart, still linger in our Abbey. 
 
 Bright, joyous, enterprising, thoughtlessly la- 
 vish by nature, untrained in scholastic learning, 
 instinct with poetic enthusiasm, Francis came to 
 
104 Organisation of social life : 
 
 ii. men simply as a man. He knew but one pattern, 
 Ap. 50. the Lord Himself. He knew but one lesson, the 
 story of the Cross. His call reached him under 
 the forms of the popular activity of the time. He 
 heard in a vision that an inestimable prize was to 
 be won by his warfare. Forthwith he sought 
 military service only to learn that he must be the 
 soldier of Christ. A voice came to him as he lay 
 prostrate in a church falling to decay and bade 
 him restore the ruins which he saw. At once 
 he sacrificed all that he had and laboured with 
 his own hands to repair the material fabric, only 
 to learn that he must build up a spiritual temple. 
 While he was pondering in his heart the nature of 
 his future work he is said to have received a sign 
 which interpreted it. He came suddenly upon 
 a leper. The sight filled him with horror. But he 
 remembered that the first victory of the true 
 conqueror must be over himself. So when the 
 miserable outcast stretched forth his hand for alms 
 Francis added a kiss to his gift and then passed 
 on. Shortly afterwards he looked round ; but 
 there was no leper in the wide plain, and he 
 p. 45. knew that he had seen the Lord. 'When I was 
 'in sin/ he writes in his testament, dictated on 
 his death-bed, 'it was a sore trial to me to see 
 'lepers; but the Lord Himself brought me to 
 'them, and I wrought mercy upon them; and 
 
the Franciscans. 105 
 
 'when I left them, my trial was turned to de- n 
 ' light of soul and body/ 
 
 That was the secret which Francis had to dis- 
 close. He placed himself on the level of the 
 most abject and found peace and joy in the com- 
 pleteness of devotion. He offered to the simple, 
 'outward faith of the middle ages, in a shape 
 which they could not fail to understand, a visible 
 image of love, of love to God and love to man. 
 He brought Christ out of the .student's cell into 
 the wild and sordid conflicts of life. He was, if 
 I may so speak, a living Imitatio Ghristi. Self 
 was lost in the call. He threw himself wholly 
 upon God. ' Multiply my pains a hundredfold, p. 43. 
 1 Lord/ was his prayer in sickness, ' if it please 
 ' Thee. The fulfilling of Thy holy will is con- 
 ' solation more than enough/ He sought and 
 touched the leper in body or in soul. ' Are you 
 'thinking of a bride ?' said a friend lightly when 
 he stood suddenly silent under the still night. 
 c Yes/ he replied, ' of a bride nobler, richer, 
 ' more beautiful than your fancy can conceive/ 
 And so he took to him Poverty, or rather 
 Humanity bleeding from a thousand wounds, 
 'whom none had chosen for his own since 
 ' Christ Himself/ to cherish to his life's end with 
 unfailing tenderness. In that mystic companion ~ 
 ship he stood like a prophet of old 'a sign and 
 
106 Organisation of social life: 
 
 ii. a wonder' to a proud and turbulent and lux- 
 urious age. 
 
 The power of the example soon made itself 
 felt. Francis drew to him without effort and 
 without any conscious plan a few followers who 
 found in the new life the Gospel for which they 
 looked, the Gospel for the poor. No wretched- 
 ness was too deep for their hope : no effort was 
 too great for their faith. They did not affect the 
 
 Eeg. ii. 2. right of judging others: it was enough to bless 
 God for what He had taught them. They sought 
 to teach by deed rather than by word, yet not so 
 as to appear better than their fellow men. Their 
 
 Coll. 12. hope was to lift the fallen up to a higher level by 
 quickening the germ of life within them through 
 the spectacle of God's power in themselves. 
 
 In this way their work grew with amazing 
 rapidity. The brethren were sent to and fro in 
 every direction with the salutation of peace to 
 bear the message of repentance and faith abroad. 
 They went as missionaries to the Saracens, and, 
 above all, as missionaries to the miserable multi- 
 tudes who sought shelter in the large towns. 
 They settled among the lowest. Once again they 
 brought thought into life, and theology to the 
 people. The peace of the cloister, securely guarded 
 from the storms of common cares, had no charm 
 for them. They would win peace in the market 
 
the Franciscans. 107 
 
 and in the crowd. And they won it by self-sacri- n. 
 fice. ' You ask me', Francis said, ' whether prayer coll. 14. 
 'or preaching is more pleasing to God. It is a 
 'hard question... In praying we speak to God and 
 1 hear Him, and live, as it were with angels, the 
 ' life of angels : in preaching we must bring our- 
 ' selves down to a low level in dealing with men, 
 'and live among them in the ways of men, and 
 'think men's thoughts and see with men's eyes, 
 'and hear and use men's words. But one con- 
 ' sideration is decisive. The only Son of God 
 'came down from the Bosom of the Father for 
 'the salvation of souls. We, too, must follow 
 ' His pattern. We must give up our quiet and 
 'go forth to toil.' 
 
 Such teaching, such lives, stirred the masses 
 of men. Crowds of eager inquirers gathered round 
 Francis and demanded what they must do, bound 
 as they were by the duties of home and state ? 
 In answer to their prayers he drew up a rule for 
 men and women living in the world. Those who pp. 94 ff. 
 subscribed it were bound to renounce all ill- 
 gotten gains : to abstain from aggressive war, and 
 litigation: to observe the utmost simplicity in 
 dress and intercourse and amusements : to give 
 themselves according to their opportunity to works 
 of devotion : to meet from time to time for com- 
 mon worship and almsgiving. There was nothing 
 
108 Organisation of social life : 
 
 n. strained or fantastic in the provisions which pro- 
 mised consecration and calm and dignity to ordi- 
 nary life. The rule was widely embraced 
 throughout Christendom by people of every rank. 
 Louis of France and Elizabeth of Hungary were 
 among the first royal persons who were enrolled 
 under it, and a multitude of poor were united 
 with them in one sacred fellowship of service. It 
 was a startling innovation on the current concep- 
 tions of holy living. In a solemn and striking 
 form, open to the eyes of all men, the likeness of 
 Christ was recognised as attainable through the 
 offices and powers of every station. 
 
 By the institution of this Third Order of 'the 
 brothers and sisters of penitence', as they were 
 called, the work of Francis was consummated. 
 It seemed for a short space as if the Kingdom of 
 God were indeed about to be established on earth. 
 Then followed a swift decline. Even in the 
 lifetime of Francis the simplicity of his rule 
 was marred. After his death came the corrup- 
 tions of ambition and controversy. Mendicancy 
 was made the rule instead of the exception. Fic- 
 tions were devised to justify the acceptance of pro- 
 perty. The privileges of the secular clergy were 
 disregarded. The Franciscans disputed with the 
 Dominicans the supremacy of the schools, and car- 
 ried Theology back to words. But even 
 
the Franciscans. 109 
 
 while the Order failed to realise the ideal of their n. 
 founder, the spiritual forces which he had called 
 out were still fertile for good. The intense sym- 
 pathy of Francis with the life of Nature gave 
 a fresh impulse to art, and the splendid church 
 which rose over his tomb within seventeen years of 
 his death received some of the earliest treasures 
 of Italian painting, and fresh masters, as they rose 
 to fame, delighted to add their tribute to his 
 honour. Francis had discouraged learn- Coll. 15. 
 
 ing, but his scholars were forced to meet the keen 
 questionings of men for whom life was a real 
 battle. In such encounters they were disci- 
 plined in the search for knowledge and in the use 
 of it. Day by day, in the streets and the hos- 
 pitals, they were forced to consider the changing 
 circumstances of life, and to deal with sickness 
 and suffering. In such service they learnt to 
 question nature patiently, and laid the foundation 
 of inductive science. In thought and work the 
 sense of a divine communion was their strength, 
 and they kindled in innumerable homes that fire 
 of piety which saved Europe in the age of the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 But still the Order, as a type of the Divine 
 Kingdom, failed, and I believe that it was 
 doomed to failure by the very principles of its 
 Founder. Francis aimed at an ideal which ne- 
 
110 Organisation of social life: 
 
 ii. glected essential facts of life. He sought to de- 
 stroy individuality. It is said that he once 
 ordered a disobedient brother to be stripped and 
 placed in an open grave. The earth was then 
 heaped round him, and when his head alone was 
 uncovered, Francis came near and said, 'Art thou 
 
 Coiioqu. dead, brother? art thou dead?' 'Yes.' the peni- 
 40. 
 
 tent replied, 'I am dead now/ 'Rise then/ he 
 
 said, '...! will have dead men, not living, for 
 my followers/ Francis paused, that is, at the 
 first stage in the transformation of the Christian. 
 The death of perfect self-surrender is the con- 
 dition of resurrection to the power of a new 
 life ; but life, deeper, fuller, intenser, must flow 
 from the completed sacrifice. Every gift, every 
 faculty, every circumstance of personal being is 
 transformed by that death, and given back to 
 be used with nobler energy and keener respon- 
 sibility. The living God seeks the service of 
 living men. 
 
 Francis disregarded the sacred individuality 
 of men. He disregarded also the divine office of 
 nations for the race. He strove, in a word, to 
 seize the conception of humanity without recog- 
 nising the form of life through which God is 
 pleased to reveal to us the rich fulness of the 
 whole. So it came to pass that his Friars were 
 made from the first the agents of papal exac- 
 
the Franciscans. Ill 
 
 tions, the servants and representatives in each n. 
 country of a foreign power. 
 
 Yet once again the tender devotion of Francis 
 to the Lord's manhood became the occasion of 
 grievous error. Everything that is compassionate 
 in the character of the Lord was separated from 
 His sovereign righteousness, and then these at- 
 tributes of tender love were transferred to His 
 human Mother, who seemed to be more within 
 the reach of rude and simple minds. In this way 
 a system of Mariolatry was shaped, with what 
 consequence they know who were familiar with 
 the popular religion of modern Italy. Even 
 Francis himself was set by some in the place 
 of the Lord. The evil spread far and wide ; and 
 many who hear me must have looked with shud- 
 dering, as I have looked, on a picture at Brussels, 
 painted by Rubens for the Franciscan Church at 
 Ghent, in which Francis and the Mother of the 
 Lord are shielding the world from the thunder- 
 bolts which the Divine Son is directing against it. 
 
 The Order of Francis failed in its issue, and 
 it is well to take account of the causes of its 
 failure ; but it is far more welcome to mark the 
 causes of its first splendid success, and to con- 
 template in that spontaneous homage of multi- 
 tudes the infinite power of humility, of sympathy, 
 of sacrifice, of faith. 
 
112 
 
 Organisation of social life : 
 
 ii. 
 
 Colloqu. 
 12. 
 
 comp. 19. 
 
 Colloqu. 
 14. 
 
 Ex.5. 
 
 'Why is it, father/ said one of his first com- 
 panions to Francis, 'that all the world goes after 
 you?' 'Why,' he replied, 'even for this: the 
 Lord saw no greater sinner in the world, none 
 less wise, none viler, and so He chose me above 
 all to accomplish a wonderful work in the earth.' 
 'If God were to take from me the treasures of 
 His Grace which He has lent me, what else 
 should I have but body and soul, common to the 
 faithful and the unbeliever alike?' 
 
 Such a spirit of enthusiastic humility cannot 
 but become an inexhaustible source of sympathy. 
 He who feels what God has done for himself, 
 has a measure of what He is ready to do. ' My 
 brothers', Francis said to some of his Order who 
 were discouraged by ill-treatment, 'you will con- 
 vert all men by your word, if in all things you 
 humble yourselves' : if, that is, you enter into the 
 secret of the souls of those whom you approach, 
 if you place yourselves lovingly beside them, if 
 you enable them to feel that all that there is 
 in you of purity and patience and graciousness 
 is theirs as well as yours, because it is God's 
 only and wholly. And at the same time this 
 perfect self-abasement becomes the solid ground 
 of self-reverence. When, on another occasion, 
 some of the companions of Francis were scan- 
 dalised because he allowed the crowds to kiss 
 
the Franciscans. 113 
 
 his feet, he answered, c This honour is not to 
 me, but to God/ From such reverence, be sure, 
 men gain great good while they acknowledge God 
 in His creatures. He is not unaware of God in 
 himself who recognises Him in a creature. 
 
 But not to multiply illustrations, over which 
 the heart loves to linger, three main lessons seem 
 to be pressed upon us by the work of Francis, the 
 capacity of simple humanity for the highest joys 
 of life, so that the poorest even in his utter desti- 
 tution may realise the bliss of saints ; and again 
 the necessity of taking account of the fulness and 
 variety of life in our endeavours to hasten the 
 Kingdom of God : and yet again the importance 
 of the mission of the laity. 
 
 We need sorely all three lessons now. We 
 need, from the highest to the lowest, to feel the 
 essential dignity of life, of life stripped of every 
 accidental vesture ; the dignity of the living man, 
 clothed in the coarsest cloke of patches and fed 
 on fragments, who can look with open eyes to 
 God and call Him 'Father'. We need, 
 
 from the highest to the lowest, to feel the perilous 
 burden of wealth, the responsibility of steward- 
 ship, the cares of authority. Francis lost nothing 
 of his grace and courtesy, nothing of his joyous- 
 ness, nothing of his delight in Sun and Moon and 
 Wind and Fire and Earth, because he had cast off 
 w. s. 8 
 
114 Organisation of social life: 
 
 ii. every perishable help towards sustaining such gifts 
 
 in their freshness. When the Bishop of Assisi 
 
 warned him of the troubles to which he exposed 
 
 himself in refusing to have any goods : ' Nay, 
 
 Ap. 21. rather/ he said, c I think the trouble is in having 
 
 IV ' G, ' them ; for such is the anxiety of defending your 
 
 p * ' possessions that you must be prepared to settle 
 
 the disputes which they engender by force of 
 
 arms.' 
 
 We need, in other words, to know the blessed- 
 Luke xii. ness of the poor, the poor in spirit : to know that 
 our life cometh not of our possessions in their 
 abundance ; but lies deep below the penury which 
 sees the Invisible face to face, deep below the 
 wealth which is given through men to God, our 
 Col. iii. 3. life in Christ, rich beyond all imagination in the 
 power to transform the conditions of its appear- 
 ance by that energy of prayer which is the vital 
 apprehension of a divine fellowship. 
 
 We need also to recognise the boundless com- 
 plexity of life : the many factors which must con- 
 tribute to its completeness : the answering bless- 
 ings of tenderness and reverence : of watchful care 
 and patient trust : of enterprise and waiting : of 
 the love which hopeth all things and the love 
 which beareth all things. We are not 
 
 placed in the world to essay the vain task of 
 creating humanity afresh. Our part is to learn 
 
the Franciscans. 115 
 
 its capacities, its tendencies, its position, its des- n. 
 tiny, and, in the strength and by the light of the 
 Incarnation, to strive unrestingly to bring it a 
 little nearer to its goal. Our aim will be, by the 
 grace of God, not simply to relieve distress but to 
 render relief unnecessary : not to free ourselves 
 from the burden of anxiety by abdicating our 
 heritage, but to use it with thoughtful solicitude 
 for the common weal ; to seek to make the condi- 
 tions of labour for every fellow-man such that he 
 may discharge his office for the family, the na- 
 tion, the race, and in the effort feel the joy of an 
 accepted sacrifice. 
 
 We need, yet once more, to embody the mi- 
 nistry of laymen. The order of the Franciscans 
 was characteristically a lay institution. Francis, 
 with his unmeasured devotion, with his missionary 
 zeal, with his gift of preaching, with his love of 
 souls, never received the priesthood. Of the first 
 group of twelve who received the commission to 
 preach from Innocent, one only, as it appears, was 
 in orders. Thus the lesson of the spirit 
 
 of Francis, the fulfilment of his work, brethren, is 
 for you. His sympathy with every living crea- 
 ture, his feeling for everything without life, as we 
 speak, the hallowing, that is, of all natural science, 
 is for you. The message of peace by which he re- 
 conciled the feuds of nobles and towns is for you. 
 
 82 
 
116 Organisation of social life. 
 
 ii. The message of purity by which he vindicated 
 the sanctities of home is for you. It is for you, 
 with a clear vision of the will of God, with a sure 
 confidence in the might of God, to lift from the 
 nations the paralysing load which is laid upon 
 them by the ambition and the selfishness of men. 
 This, I repeat, is your mission, and it is the 
 will of God. 
 
III. 
 
 MODERN EFFORTS: THE QUAKERS 
 (GEORGE FOX). 
 
If we live ty the Spirit, by the Spirit also let us walk. 
 
 GAL. v. 25. 
 
III. THE QUAKERS. 
 
 T AST Sunday we considered some features in m 
 *-^ the noblest and most characteristic effort 
 which was made in the middle ages to establish 
 on earth the Kingdom of God. We saw how, 
 when the enthusiasm of chivalrous courage, con- 
 centrated in the Crusades, had failed to bring 
 about the glorious vision for which men had 
 looked, that first universal movement of Christen- 
 dom was followed by the enthusiasm of devoted 
 sacrifice, embodied by Francis of Assisi in his 
 threefold order, which aimed at conquest by ab- 
 solute self-denial and humility. We saw 
 how for a brief space the spirit which Francis had 
 aroused stirred the soul of the European nations 
 and united princes and beggars in one sacred 
 fellowship of human service. We saw also how 
 that holier Crusade of love failed to complete 
 what it had begun : how it was doomed to 
 failure by the very principles on which it was 
 founded. For it disregarded the inalienable gift 
 of individuality which is the pledge of each man's 
 
120 Organisation of social life: 
 
 m. worth in the cause of God. It held of no account 
 the forces of national life through which alone we 
 can reach the full measure of humanity. It con- 
 centrated attention, however undesignedly, upon 
 2Cor.v.l6. that which is earthly in revelation, on the Christ 
 after the flesh rather than on the Risen Lord, and 
 deeply corrupted the purity of the Faith. 
 
 So after the death of Francis the long years 
 went on, for God works slowly, and at last in the 
 xvith century the lessons of the time of discipline 
 which Francis inaugurated were disclosed. Then 
 the peoples stood revealed in their strength. The 
 new had met the old face to face. ' Greece/ in 
 the splendid image of a great interpreter of history, 
 ' had risen from the dead with the New Testament 
 'in her hand.' A new world had enlarged the 
 thoughts and kindled the hopes of adventurous 
 spirits. A new art had indefinitely multiplied 
 the legions of students and scholars. Manu- 
 factures and commerce had received a vast de- 
 velopment. The outward unity of Europe, the 
 unity of the Papacy and the Empire, was for ever 
 broken. The sanctity of nations and of men, 
 their separate endowments and responsibilities 
 and duties, I would say rather than their rights, 
 stood out from thenceforth never to be forgotten 
 in the growth and training of the race. 
 
 We must take account of these momentous 
 
the Quakers. 121 
 
 facts in our view of the progress of the Church. in. 
 No view of the Reformation can be more super- 
 ficial than that which regards it simply as nega- 
 tive, as a protest against dominant errors, as a re- 
 moval of widespread corruptions. It was this, but 
 it was far more than this. It was the affirmation 
 final and decisive, it was, I had almost said, in the 
 order of Providence, the revelation of Individu- 
 ality, the assertion that every man, every Christian 
 man, has throned in his own heart a sovereign 
 power whose counsel he must seek, seek with 
 unwearied patience, and whose dictates he must 
 obey : that to subject conscience blindly to any 
 external authority is treason : to fail to bring to 
 it every tribute of light and power is moral 
 suicide. No one can rejoice more than I do 
 
 to maintain that individuality is not the sum of 
 life, but it is an essential part of life in every 
 region of our nature and our work, in our work 
 for the part and for the whole. It is true, though 
 it is not the whole truth, that we must live and 
 die alone, alone with God. 
 
 This truth was the positive message of the 
 Reformation, and it has been the distinguishing 
 mark of the later development of Europe, intel- 
 lectual, social, religious, even where the Refor- 
 mation has not been formally accepted. The 
 truth has not indeed always been welcomed or 
 
122 Organisation of social life: 
 
 in. guarded. It has not prevailed without grievous 
 defeats and still more perilous exaggerations ; 
 but it has prevailed. And in the course of its 
 progress it has influenced the conceptions which 
 men have formed of the Kingdom of God, both 
 in the Roman and in the Reformed Communions. 
 On the one side the Society of Loyola, recog- 
 nising the infinite varieties of life and character, 
 of place and circumstance, have endeavoured 
 to win from men as they are a partial or 
 a promised homage to the cause which they 
 hold to be divine. On the other side the Society 
 of Friends have declared open war against the 
 fashion of the world, and called each hearer 
 to acknowledge his own immediate obligation to 
 follow the light of God within him. In 
 
 these opposite endeavours the Jesuits and the 
 Quakers offer the two extreme types of the re- 
 ligious effects of the Renaissance and the Refor- 
 mation. They both aimed at establishing a King- 
 dom of God upon earth. They did this in dif- 
 ferent ways, with different aims, and with dif- 
 ferent results ; and they both failed. It would 
 be of deep interest to trace out the meaning and 
 the moral of the significant contrast which they 
 present. That however I cannot do now. I wish 
 this afternoon to speak of the Quakers only, of 
 their principles and of their work. For the 
 
the Quakers. 123 
 
 Quakers appear to me to express with the greatest ni. 
 force and exclusiveness the new thought of the 
 Eeformation, the thought of individuality. They 
 give us in a striking form one side of the 
 Gospel, if one side only. And under this aspect 
 their teaching is in many ways a parallel and 
 a complement to that of the Franciscans. 
 
 Outwardly indeed there was little resemblance 
 between George Fox and Francis of Assisi, be- 
 tween the young Leicestershire shepherd of the 
 xvnth century and the young Italian merchant 
 of the xinth, but they both felt the power of 
 God and yielded themselves wholly to it: both 
 left father and mother and home : both defied Journal, 
 the opinions of their time : both won their way *' 
 through bitter opposition to solid success : both 
 cast themselves upon 'the infinite love of God': i. pp. 56, 
 
 fiO 
 
 both were most truly ' surrendered ' souls ; but 
 Francis submitted himself to established au- 
 thority, Fox only to the Spirit of God speaking 
 in the single soul : Francis saw God in nature 
 and man ; and if he sought the woods it was not 
 to commune with nature but to avoid men. He 
 shrank even from the familiar companionship of i. p. 50. 
 friends, lest in this way his sensitiveness to the 
 divine teaching should be impaired. 
 
 1. This then is the first point on which I 
 desire to insist. In solitude and silence Fox 
 
124 Organisation of social life : 
 
 in. found God and heard Him. He proclaimed that 
 the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of a living 
 Spirit Who holds converse with His people. 
 The circumstances of the age called for a bold 
 affirmation of this truth of man's personal con- 
 verse with God. The upheaval of the Refor- 
 mation had been followed by innumerable di- 
 visions and controversies. Men had lost their 
 sustaining sense of a strong external authority, 
 and they had not learnt the grace of inward 
 self-restraint. They were unwilling to bear for 
 
 Lukexxi. a time the reproach of indecision and win their 
 souls by patience. They endeavoured to set 
 up some outward standard by the help of which 
 they might enforce submission to their own 
 judgments. On the one side they fashioned 
 
 an ideal of primitive antiquity to which thought 
 and practice must be conformed: on the other 
 side they relied on the letter of the Bible as 
 capable of a rigid, mechanical application to the 
 problems of a later time. In antagonism to both 
 schools Fox judged truly that the new Protestant 
 scholasticism had not reached to the heart of 
 things in any image of past experience, or in any 
 
 i. p. 53. printed Book, however sacred : that academic 
 learning was not in itself an adequate passport 
 to the Christian ministry: that the words of God 
 could not supersede the Word of God. He realised, 
 
the Quakers. 125 
 
 as few men have ever realised, that we are placed m. 
 under the dispensation of the Spirit : that the 
 power from on high with which the Risen Christ Luke xxiv. 
 promised to endue His people was no exceptional 
 or transitory gift, but an Eternal Presence, an 
 unfailing spring of energy, answering to new 
 wants and new labours. He felt that the Spirit 
 which had guided the fathers was waiting still 
 to lead forward their children : that He who 
 spoke through men of old was not withdrawn 
 from the world, like the gods of Epicurus, but 
 ready in all ages to enter into holy souls and make Wisd. vii. 
 them friends of God and prophets. 
 
 In this conviction Fox himself ' saw ' the i. p. 53. 
 Truth, Christ Himself shewing it. He gained, i. p. 64. 
 that is, the direct assurance that the Gospel is 
 not words, but facts, not a tradition, but a voice 
 even now to the heart of man, which man can 
 recognise and embody in life. He had a vision, 
 partial it may have been but yet distinct, of the Comp.i.p. 
 heavens opened and of angels of God ascending joimi. 51. 
 and descending upon redeemed humanity. And 
 others could see that his eyes had looked upon 
 the King. ' The most awful reverent frame I 
 ever saw or felt' writes W. Penn 'was [that of Pref. 
 
 -^ -i 1 > p. 32 ; 
 
 Fox] m prayer 1 . cf. P . 34. 
 
 1 Fox very rarely touches on the larger problems of life; 
 hut in one passage of unusual beauty he has told us how the 
 
126 Organisation of social life: 
 
 m. N or did Fox claim this privilege as something 
 
 peculiar to himself. Far otherwise. The decisive 
 
 question which he proposed as a test of the 
 
 i. p. 336. vitality of a Church was 'whether it had the Holy 
 
 Ghost poured forth upon it as the apostles ?' 
 
 And, brethren, have we not need to put this 
 question to ourselves? Have we not need to 
 ponder heedfully this first lesson of the Society of 
 Friends? We have not to our shame and loss 
 either as a Church, or as living members of a 
 Church, thrown ourselves with strong dependence 
 on Him Whom we confess to be ' Lord ' and ' Life- 
 giver/ We seek anxiously, when we desire to 
 move, for patterns and precedents instead of 
 listening in devout silence till the first message 
 to ourselves grows articulate through thoughts 
 opened in many hearts. 
 
 2. Here then is the first lesson as to the 
 Kingdom of God which the Society of Friends 
 
 last question of our own days was answered for him. 'One 
 i. p. 65. morning,' he writes, 'as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud 
 came over me, a temptation beset me ; and I sat still. It was 
 said "All things come by Nature" ; and the elements and stars 
 came over me, so that I was in a manner quite clouded with 
 it. But as I sat still and said nothing, the people of the house 
 perceived nothing. And as I sat still under it and let it alone, 
 a living hope and a true voice arose in me, which said, "There 
 is a living God, who made all things." Immediately the cloud 
 and temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all; my 
 heart was glad and I praised the living God.' 
 
the Quakers. 127 
 
 offers to us. It is a kingdom of spiritual con- in. 
 verse : and a second is included in it. For 
 Fox maintained that this power of Divine con- 
 verse belongs to all men by the will of their 
 Creator and Redeemer. He appealed unweariedly 
 without restriction or gloss to the words of St i- pp. 70, 
 John, in which the Evangelist speaks of ' the 225', 251* 
 light, the true light, which lighteth every man' ' a &c *' ' 
 light/ Fox adds, c sufficient to lead unto the day- i. p . 316. 
 star/ because it is a light from God. 
 
 The importance of this affirmation of the 
 actual affinity of man as man to God, by the 
 divine charter of his constitution, is evident when 
 we recal the character of the current theology of 
 the middle of the xvnth century. The doctrine 
 of reprobation was then commonly preached with 
 a crude violence which shook the very founda- 
 tions of morality. In the face of this the message 
 of Fox, given again and again with vigorous sim- 
 plicity, was the indignant answer of a soul touched 
 by the love of God to human systems, whether of 
 Pelagius or Calvin. And if it was met by the 
 fierce denunciations of technical theologians, it 
 was welcomed as indeed a Gospel by many who 
 ' had not heard the like before/ It opened once 
 again the prospect of that universal kingdom to 
 which Isaiah looked. It gave back to the world 
 the idea of a Divine Fatherhood commensurate 
 
128 Organisation of social life: 
 
 m. with the Divine Love. It offered to the preacher 
 of the good tidings of the Kingdom an assurance 
 sufficient to support his largest hope ; for he 
 knew that he could not approach any hearer 
 without having God as his fellow-worker, and the 
 secret voice of the Soul for his witness. 
 
 This truth again, necessary when Fox re- 
 affirmed it in the spirit of Greek theology/though 
 he knew not his forerunners, is necessary for the 
 fulfilment of our own work now. We are en- 
 couraged by it to use with reverence the apostolic 
 language, and say that the great order of re- 
 demption, as it is unfolded to us slowly through 
 Hebr. ii. the ages, became God: to find in the corre- 
 spondence between the divine method and man's 
 condition a sign of the sovereign authority of 
 revelation more impressive than any possible 
 record of material signs : to know that the Gospel 
 cannot have a stronger attestation than that 
 which may be verified at any moment, even that 
 it is able under the greatest variety of circum- 
 stances to fashion believers of every race and 
 every class after the Divine likeness. 
 
 3. For there is still a third lesson as to the 
 Kingdom of God flowing from the other two which 
 is declared to us by the Society of Friends. The 
 facts of intercourse with God, of affinity to God, 
 must, if they are received, find expression in life. 
 
the Quakers. 129 
 
 The life of believers is, in Christ's own words, the in. 
 revelation of God to the world. Fox accepted the 
 consequence and insisted upon it. He could not 
 conceive of religion and morality apart. His 
 labours were from first to last a comment on the 
 text, If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us 
 also walk. For him justification was indeed 
 a making and not an accounting just, not 
 forensic but loyal ; and conduct was the sign of 
 the fact. No one ever required more absolutely 
 than Fox that 'righteousness, peace, joy 1 should be 
 the marks of the Christian commonwealth. No 
 one in his personal work more fully realised the 
 truth of the blessing than he did, even through 
 obloquy and persecution and suffering. Four or ii. 366. 
 five hours before his death some friends inquired 
 how he found himself. ' Never heed/ he replied : 
 1 the Lord's power is over all weakness and death : 
 the Seed reigns : blessed be the Lord.' We may 
 think that many of the details on which he laid 
 stress were trivial ; but in spite of every infirmity 
 and disproportion, he was able to shape a character 
 in those who followed him which for independence, 
 for truthfulness, for vigour, for courage, for purity, 
 is unsurpassed in the records of Christian en- 
 deavour. 
 
 And this he did by connecting the loftiest 
 thoughts and the commonest obligations alike 
 w. s. 9 
 
130 Organisation of social life : 
 
 in. with a personal sense of a divine communion. 
 He made each member of his society responsible 
 for his brethren. He opened to all without dis- 
 tinction the opportunity for spiritual influence : 
 he imposed upon all the charge of social duties. 
 He jealously guarded the sacred dignity of man. 
 No one under his rule could become a ' purchase- 
 able plaything/ And in regard to those without 
 he counselled the Friends no less wisely. He 
 taught them to trust to principles and leave 
 consequences to God : to confess their ideal even 
 when attainment was for the time impossible. 
 
 We cannot wonder therefore that the Society 
 of Friends has achieved results wholly out of 
 proportion to their numbers. No religious order 
 can point to services rendered to humanity more 
 unsullied by selfishness or nobler in far-seeing 
 wisdom. Our prisons purified, our criminal law 
 reformed, our punishments rescued at least in 
 part from the dominion of vindictiveness, witness 
 to the success of Quaker labours. Fox was 
 
 the first who raised his voice against the evils 
 of West Indian slavery, and after 150 years his 
 society was allowed to take a chief part in sup- 
 pressing it. He claimed freedom for opinion in 
 things pertaining to God, and little by little, 
 through calm and patient endurance, his cause 
 was won. He denounced war, and the doubt, 
 
the Quakers. 131 
 
 the waste, the threatening, which make an armed m. 
 peace an almost intolerable burden, must even 
 now be turning the hearts of many to that one 
 experiment of Christian statesmanship which 
 has not yet been tried, the policy of national 
 brotherhood. It may be true, nay, if we 
 
 hold that man is made in God's image, it must 
 be true, that love is stronger than fear. William 
 Penn was, I believe, the only colonist in America 
 who left his settlement wholly unprotected by 
 fence or arms, and his settlement was the only 
 one which was unassailed by the Indian tribes. 
 
 These splendid achievements, these significant 
 promises are written in the annals of Quakerism 
 for our strengthening and for our guidance. 
 They have not yet been placed in their har- 
 monious relation to the fulness of Christian life : 
 they have not yet borne their perfect fruit. For 
 though not one of Fox's positive principles can 
 be shewn to have failed, his society has failed. 
 It has not been the seed of the Kingdom of God 
 on earth. It was indeed condemned to failure, 
 like the Order of Francis, because it was essen- 
 tially incomplete. Francis sacrificed the indi- 
 vidual : Fox left wholly out of account the powers 
 of the larger life of the Church and the race. 
 For him the past was ' a long and dismal night 
 of apostasy and darkness/ He had no eye for 
 
 92 
 
132 Organisation of social life : 
 
 in. the many parts and many fashions in which 
 God is pleased to work. He had no sense of 
 the action of the Holy Spirit through the great 
 Body of Christ. He had no thought of the weak 
 and immature, for whom earthly signs are the 
 appropriate support of faith : no thought for the 
 students of nature, for whom they are the hallow- 
 ing of all life. And so it came to pass that he 
 acknowledged no gracious means for the personal 
 appropriation of God's gifts, as he knew no 
 stages in the popular embodiment of the Truth. 
 He disinherited the Christian society, and he 
 maimed the Christian man. 
 
 But none the less he established, even more 
 impressively from his false negations, one funda- 
 mental fact, which is of momentous importance 
 for us in our present endeavours to bring before 
 the world the majesty of the kingdom of God. 
 He made clear beyond question the power of the 
 simplest spiritual appeal to the consciences of men. 
 He made clear beyond question the efficacy of a 
 childlike trust in the reality of a divine fellow- 
 ship to cleanse the rudest and coarsest life. For 
 he did not labour towards the accomplishment of 
 any special work of mercy or justice. He strove 
 simply for the recognition of a living Christ 
 within every soul. He wrought for God in the 
 conviction that the new life is the consequence 
 
the Quakers. 133 
 
 and not the condition of the quickened Faith; m. 
 that righteousness, peace, joy, are the notes of the 
 believer but not the prerequisites for believing. 
 He struck, in a word, and he encourages us to 
 strike, at the disease of the sinful, which is ig- 
 norance of God, and not at the symptoms of it. 
 
 The fact of his success, far-reaching, deep, en- 
 during, is therefore I repeat of momentous im- 
 portance to us now. We are busied, engrossed, 
 absorbed in dealing with partial evils, with in- 
 temperance, with uncleanness, with dishonesty. 
 We think (is it not true ?) that we can build up 
 the kingdom of God in fragments ; that some 
 breath from heaven will at last animate the frame 
 which we have painfully fashioned bit by bit. 
 
 But there is, as far as I can see, little en- 
 couragement for such a reversal of the processes 
 of nature, for such a denial of the teaching of 
 history. The principle of life fashions the or- 
 ganism, and sustains it. No organism, however 
 delicately constructed, can summon to itself the 
 principle of life. Men of commanding genius and 
 perfect devotion have devised from time to time 
 schemes of social regeneration, but no scheme has 
 ever shewn a power of continuance which has not 
 been based upon religious faith. No scheme 
 which has retained its first faith has ever wholly 
 failed. 
 
134 Organisation of social life. 
 
 m. If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also 
 
 walk. That is the law of the Kingdom. That is 
 the law which we have to realise under the con- 
 ditions of our own age. Next Sunday when the 
 fresh message of the Incarnation has again moved 
 us to believe that all things are still possible, I 
 hope to suggest some thoughts on the form which 
 our work should take. Meanwhile, brethren, in 
 the prospect of that infinite hope, let us all me- 
 ditate on St Paul's charge. Let us, while we 
 think of it, bear ourselves as scholars in Christ's 
 school, the school of the living Spirit, the Spirit 
 of Christ, who brings forth from the treasury of 
 heaven things new and old for our use. The 
 Gospel gave to men the eternal truths of equality, 
 freedom, brotherhood, as the basis of our social 
 life, gave them to us in their final shape for men 
 in righteousness, peace, joy; and the Gospel is 
 able to establish them : to establish them with a 
 power which perfects our weakness and a glory 
 which passes our understanding. 
 
IV. 
 
 PRESENT PROBLEMS. 
 
[Stephen]^ being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stead- 
 fastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God and Jesus 
 standing on the right hand of God. 
 
 ACTS vii. 55. 
 (St Stephen's Day.) 
 
IV. PRESENT PROBLEMS. 
 
 IDESIKE this afternoon to indicate some con- iv. 
 elusions which seem to me to follow from the 
 facts which we have been allowed to consider 
 on the last three Sundays. We have seen, you 
 will remember, that the first message of the 
 Gospel was the Advent of the Kingdom of God 
 upon earth, that the message was essentially social 
 and not individual only, that it dealt with the 
 immediate present and not with a remote fu- 
 ture. We have seen that the notes of 
 the Kingdom are righteousness, peace, joy, in 
 which we found the true interpretation of equality, 
 freedom, brotherhood, as these are embodied in 
 the complex life of men. We have seen 
 that from age to age endeavours have been made 
 to establish the ideal thus offered to hope, which 
 succeeded so far as to reveal the energy of the 
 religious faith by which they were sustained, 
 and which failed so far as to reveal the peril 
 of one-sided developments. We have seen 
 the wide response which was made of old, in 
 
138 Organisation of social life: 
 
 times of sore distress of nations and perplexity, to 
 a call for absolute self-sacrifice, for voluntary beg- 
 gary, and again to an appeal to a divine princi- 
 ple throned in the heart of each man. We 
 have seen that the noblest efforts are doomed 
 to disappointment if they disregard the sacred 
 offices of the individual and of the nation : or 
 if they allow the earthly form of truth to become 
 predominant: or if they cast aside the heritage 
 of the past. We have seen, and this is 
 our final ground of confidence, that spiritual 
 forces are able to quicken and purify the dullest 
 and the coarsest, and to support in healthy vigour 
 the life which they have communicated. 
 
 We turn then to the problems of our own 
 age and country, and ask how we can meet them 
 with the help which we may draw from this 
 teaching of earlier experience. In seeking for 
 an answer it is something that there is a general 
 agreement as to the source of our characteristic 
 dangers. We are suffering on all sides, and we 
 know that we are suffering, from a tyrannical 
 individualism. This reveals itself in social life by 
 the pursuit of personal pleasure : in commercial 
 life by the admission of the principle of unlimited 
 competition : in our theories of life by the ac- 
 ceptance of material standards of prosperity and 
 progress. Nor is it difficult to see why this 
 
present Problems. 139 
 
 should be so. The silent revolution which has iv. 
 taken place within this century in the methods 
 of production and distribution has terribly in- 
 tensified the evils which belong to all late forms 
 of civilisation. The ' great industries ' have 
 cheapened luxuries and stimulated the passion 
 for them. They have destroyed the human fel- 
 lowship of craftsman and chief. They have de- 
 graded trade, in a large degree, into speculation. 
 They have deprived labour of its thoughtful free- 
 dom and turned men into ' hands '. They have 
 given capital a power of dominion and growth 
 perilous above all to its possessor. 
 
 So it has come to pass that in our fierce conflicts 
 we are in peril of guiding our conduct by a theory 
 of rights and not by a confession of duties : of 
 losing life in the search for the means of living : 
 of emptying it meanwhile of everything which 
 gives dignity to manhood, though stripped of the 
 accidents of outward dress, and hope to sorrow, 
 though it must be borne in loneliness even to the 
 end. We need therefore in order that 
 
 we may hold our faith erect in our day of trial 
 to deepen in ourselves the sense of responsibility. 
 We need to shew to the world the reality of 
 spiritual power. We need to gain and to exhibit 
 an idea which satisfies the thoughts, the aspira- 
 tions, the aims of men straining towards the light. 
 
140 Organisation of social life : 
 
 iv. 1. We need, I say, to deepen in ourselves 
 
 the sense of responsibility, the sense of responsi- 
 bility proportioned to our endowments. The first 
 words attributed to man born outside the Paradise 
 of God, are words which disclose the secret of 
 Gen. iv. 9. all social evil. ' Am /', said the earliest mur- 
 
 Gen. iv. derer, ' my brothers keeper ? ' And the answer 
 ii) i^ 
 
 came from the unfruitful earth, silent witness 
 
 of the deed of violence ; came from the soul, 
 filling with remorse the fugitive who could not 
 flee from himself. Yes : and the same answer 
 must come as often as the thoughtless, the self- 
 indulgent, the idle, propose the question now. 
 We are our brothers' keepers even as they are 
 ours ; and unless we accept the charge the scene 
 of our toil and the inexorable sovereign of our 
 hearts will condemn us to unsatisfied desires. 
 
 But let us not be mistaken. What we need 
 is a grave sense of responsibility, and not that 
 generous impulsiveness which is swayed this way 
 and that by successive courses of suffering. We 
 cannot with impunity treat the miseries, the 
 crimes, the vices of men, as excitements, spec- 
 tacles, tragedies, to stir our emotions. They are 
 our grief, our reproach, our shame, because we too 
 are men ; and as men we must take them to our- 
 selves. They cry to us with the voice of an 
 awakened conscience, which knows the tempta- 
 
present Problems. 
 
 tions with which we have dallied and the safe- iv. 
 guards by which we have been protected. They 
 bid us ask with persistent resolution till some 
 reply is gained, what means for us that tending of 
 the leper by Francis of Assisi which was for him 
 the revelation of the Lord ? What means for us 
 that appeal of George Fox to the drunken rustic 
 which was for him the revelation of the Light, the John i. 
 true Light which lighteth every man ? 
 
 2. We need to quicken our sense of respon- 
 sibility, and we need also to shew to the world 
 the reality of spiritual forces. This we must do, 
 by the help of God, in forms which correspond 
 with the trials and the temper of the age. Be- 
 hind every social question there lies not only a 
 moral but also a religious question. And the 
 final solution of every question belongs to the 
 highest sphere. ' You cannot/ in the words of the 
 noblest leader of modern democracy, ' change the 
 c fate of man by embellishing his material dwelling.' 
 We must touch the soul if we are to change the 
 mode of living. And if we believe that the Gospel 
 teaches us not only to relieve distress but to 
 remove it ; not only to alleviate sorrow but to trans- 
 figure it ; we must make good our faith. 
 
 And yet more than this we have a wider duty. 
 Many who allow that Christianity can deal with 
 individuals deny that it has any message for classes 
 
142 Organisation of social life: 
 
 iv. or states. Its virtues, they say, are the petty 
 virtues of private life : its promises, the grati- 
 fication of the small objects of personal aim: 
 towards the struggles of society, of the nation, of 
 the race, it can at the best produce nothing better 
 than a temper of benevolent neutrality. We 
 know that the charge is false, essentially false, 
 but we must admit without reserve that we have 
 given occasion to it. We have not dared, as we 
 should have done, to assert that our Faith in 
 Christ, the Saviour of the world, must be the 
 inspiration of our national policy ; that our Faith 
 in the Divine Fatherhood must be the measure of 
 our social obligations. It is not indeed easy 
 
 to determine in every case the special application 
 of the Truth. It is not necessary that we should 
 determine it; but if we cannot improvise per- 
 emptory judgments, we can always affirm an 
 eternal principle : we can quell in our hearts that 
 spirit of self-assertion which fills us with restless 
 jealousy till our personal demands are fully paid, 
 and that spirit of larger, deadlier, self-assertion, 
 miscalled patriotism, which tempts us to think 
 that the power of a nation is the power of dic- 
 tation and not of service, and that every failure 
 must be washed out in blood. We can do this ; 
 and shall we venture to say that we have done it ? 
 3. We need yet once more to gain and to 
 
present Problems. 143 
 
 exhibit a great ideal. We are troubled on the Iy - 
 one side by a spirit of irony which shrinks from 
 the avowal of its loftiest aims ; and on the other 
 side by the spirit of confidence which assumes 
 that all will be well if we go with the stream. 
 We play with noble thoughts. Now we want 
 insight, and now we want courage. In both cases 
 we want faith in men, and, that which alone can 
 give it, faith in God. No word is used more 
 familiarly than ' progress ', but it is very hard to 
 see the goal towards which we are supposed to be 
 moving. The greatest triumphs of modern science 
 are, as we have seen, fruitful in evils no less than 
 in blessings. They have increased our power, our 
 opportunities, our resources : but in themselves 
 they cannot open the heavens and shew the glory Acts vii. 
 of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of 
 God : they cannot give us that vision of im- 
 measurable majesty which fills the whole soul 
 with the consciousness of its destiny, and that 
 vision of sovereign love which brings the assurance 
 that attainment is within our reach. For 
 
 we do not think too much of life, too much of 
 humanity, too much of men, but infinitely too 
 little, because we allow that which can be seen by 
 the eye of sense to furnish the data of our esti- 
 mate. But let us bring the Gospel of Christ, 
 Maker and Heir of all things, into connexion not Hebr. i. 2. 
 
144 Organisation of social life: 
 
 iv. with ourselves only but with the world, and then 
 there will rise before us a spectacle which must 
 move the dullest with enthusiasm and touch the 
 most disconsolate with hope : a spectacle of a life 
 unfolded through the ages in which, in spite of 
 every partial loss and every temporary check, a 
 divine counsel of righteousness is fulfilled: of a 
 humanity through whose discipline and victory, 
 won by sacrifice offered in the ministry of every 
 member, the end of the whole creation is reached 
 in the peace of an indissoluble harmony : of men 
 who each in their appointed place receive the 
 inheritance of the fathers and transmit it en- 
 riched by their own toils to a new generation and 
 Matt. xxv. enter living and dying into the joy of the Lord. 
 What ideal can be offered to the spirit which is 
 greater or more true ? 
 
 The sense of responsibility, the energy of 
 spiritual force, the power of a divine ideal : how can 
 we gain them? To this question, which is for us 
 the question of all questions, the past returns no 
 uncertain answer. Each new revelation of Christ 
 among men has hitherto found expression in some 
 social movement, in some form of disciplined life 
 which has embodied and interpreted it. And 
 Christ is revealing Himself through the very needs 
 which trouble us. We can see now, as men could 
 not see in earlier times how there has been a law 
 
present Problems. 145 
 
 in the growth of the race : how man was taken IV * 
 from himself by the ancient organisations of the 
 state : how he was taken from the world by the 
 dominant religious communities of the middle 
 ages: how he has been taken from society by the 
 isolating narrowness of many forms of popular 
 Protestantism ; and seeing this we can see also, 
 when we let the Incarnation give its perfect mes- 
 sage, that he is given back to himself, to the world, 
 to society in the Risen Christ. This 
 
 then is the revelation which we have to embody : 
 to embody in the eyes of all by some fellowship 
 which shall strike the imagination; which shall 
 teach by manifold experience the power of social 
 relationships and social obligations in commerce, in 
 politics, in religion; which shall claim for the 
 family and the nation their proper parts in pre- 
 paring the Kingdom of God on earth, in bringing to 
 redeemed humanity the fulness of its life in Christ. 
 I know how utterly unworthy I am to speak of 
 such a fellowship when I look back upon a life of 
 fragmentary efforts and barren convictions, but 
 that which seemed a dream in my own early youth 
 has been I believe brought now within the reach 
 of accomplishment; and among those who hear me 
 may be some whom God is calling to the work of 
 its founding by the thousand voices which in this 
 Abbey bid them take courage from the past. 
 w. s. 10 
 
146 Organisation of social life'. 
 
 tv* I do not venture to suggest the rules of the 
 
 fellowship which I foresee, but I cannot be mis- 
 taken as to its main characteristics. The fellow- 
 ship must be natural. It must not depend for its 
 formation or its permanence on any appeals to 
 morbid or fantastic sentiment. It must accept 
 the facts of life, as seen in the relations of the 
 family, for the ground of its constitution. It 
 must be an attempt not to realise counsels of 
 perfection for a select few, but to give a healthy 
 type of living for all. 
 
 The fellowship must be English. The nation 
 is to the race what the family is to the nation. 
 The nation represents on a sufficiently large scale 
 the lessons which are conveyed by God through a 
 common history, a common language, a common 
 home. The nation is an element no less im- 
 portant in the life of the Church than in the life 
 of humanity. And England, alone among the 
 nations, has received the power which is essential 
 for the task which we contemplate, the power of 
 assimilating new ideas without breaking with the 
 past. 
 
 The fellowship must be comprehensive. It 
 must deal not with opinion, or feeling, or action 
 only, but with the whole sum of life. It must 
 proclaim that God is not to be found more easily 
 in ' the wilderness and the solitary place ' than in 
 
present Problems. 147 
 
 the study, or in the market, or in the workshop, iv. 
 or by the fireside. It must banish the strange 
 delusion by which we suppose that things 
 temporal and spiritual can be separated in human 
 action, or that we can render rightly to Caesar 
 that which is not in the very rendering rendered 
 also to God. 
 
 The fellowship must be social. Every mem- 
 ber of it must hold himself pledged to regard his 
 endowments of character, of power, of place, of 
 wealth, as a trust to be administered with reso- 
 lute and conscious purpose for the good of men: 
 pledged to spread and deepen the sense of one 
 life, one interest, one hope, one end for all, in 
 the household, in the factory, in the warehouse, 
 in the council-room : pledged to strive as he has 
 the opportunity to bring all things that are great 
 and pure and beautiful within the reach of every 
 fellow-worker : pledged to labour so that to the 
 full extent of his example and his influence toil 
 may be universally honoured as service to the 
 state, literature may be ennobled as the spring 
 and not the substitute of thought, art (too 
 often the minister of luxury) may be hallowed 
 as the interpreter of the outward signs of God's 
 working. 
 
 The fellowship must be open. The uniform 
 of the soldier is at once a symbol and a safe- 
 
 102 
 
148 Organisation of social life: 
 
 iv. guard. It reminds others of his obligations, and 
 supports him in the endeavour to fulfil them. 
 It makes some grave faults practically impossible. 
 So too a measured and unostentatious simplicity, 
 a simplicity in dress, in life, in establishment, 
 widely adopted by choice and not of necessity, 
 will be an impressive outward witness to the 
 Christian ideal, and it will help towards the at- 
 tainment of it. 
 
 The fellowship must be rational. It must 
 welcome light from every quarter, as found by 
 those who know that every luminous ray, re- 
 flected or refracted a hundred times, comes finally 
 from one source. It must make it clear that 
 Christians as Christians strive not for victory but 
 for truth, that they, of all men, are least willing 
 to satisfy the soul by mutilating its capacities, or 
 deadening its sensibility. 
 
 The fellowship above all must be spiritual. 
 It must rest avowedly on the belief that the 
 voice of God is not silent among us, and the 
 vision of God not withdrawn from His people. 
 It must labour in the assurance that the differ- 
 ence of our age from the first age is not the 
 difference of the dull, dim twilight from the 
 noon, but that of common earth, flooded with 
 sunshine, from the solitary mountain-top kindled 
 to a lamp of dawn. It must find occasion for 
 
present Problems. 149 
 
 continual praise and thanksgiving in victories of iv. 
 faith, from that of the first martyr St Stephen to 
 that of the last boy in U-Ganda who knew at 
 least how to die for his Saviour. It must not 
 weary of proclaiming that we we poor, frail, 
 erring creatures live and move and have our Acts xvii. 
 
 28 
 
 being in God, and that we are surrounded by 
 sacraments of His Presence and of His grace. 
 It must summon its followers not in the name 
 of well-being and happiness but in the name of 
 duty and love, made known to us in their scope 
 and their efficacy by the Birth and the Passion 
 of Christ. It must bring home to each noblest 
 and each meanest that he he in his great estate, 
 he in his utter desolation is a temple, a priest, 
 a sacrifice to a living God. 
 
 Such a fellowship of 'brethren and sisters of 
 the common hope' may seem to some to be 
 visionary : to others, I think, it will be only the 
 expression of their own deep longings. It is at 
 least, as far as I can judge, nothing more than 
 the translation of our Creed into action according 
 to the conditions of the time. The way to the 
 new and fuller life must still be, as it always has 
 been, through heaven. 
 
 And if it seem visionary, I can only say that 
 I have suggested nothing which has not been 
 realised on a large scale, under harder circum- 
 
150 Organisation of social life : 
 
 iv. stances and with scantier knowledge than our 
 own by Franciscans, by Moravians, by Quakers. 
 Those Societies were not disciplined by that dis- 
 cernment of the laws of national and human 
 growth which has been given to our later years. 
 They were not supported by that catholic sym- 
 pathy with every energy of man which has been 
 quickened among us by a large interpretation of 
 nature and history. We have learnt what they 
 could not know. The counsel of God for humanity 
 has been made clear to us not only in its general 
 character, but also in the mode of its fulfilment. 
 We can estimate fairly the resources of the race. 
 No dark continents, no untried peoples, fill the 
 dim background of our picture of the world with 
 incalculable possibilities. The whole field lies be- 
 fore us. We look upon all the provinces of the 
 kingdom of God. We can communicate to others 
 the noblest which we have and save them from the 
 long pains of our discipline. All things are ready. 
 
 All things are ready : and to you, my younger 
 brethren, the charge is first offered of claiming 
 the final victory for Christ. The issue will, I be- 
 lieve, if we may trust the cycles of the past, be 
 decided in your generation. Look backward, 
 then, for the inspiring encouragement of Christian 
 experience. Look forward for the glorious as- 
 
present Problems. 151 
 
 surance of Christian hope. But look around you, iv. 
 without closing your ears to one bitter cry, or 
 closing your eyes against one piteous sight, or re- 
 fusing thought to one stern problem, for your 
 proper work, and thankfully accept it in the name 
 of God. 
 
 Whether you are moved by the Holy Spirit, 
 sent in Christ's Name, to form for yourselves some 
 fellowship such as I have indicated or not, live at 
 any rate, however hard it is, as Christians, as 
 citizens of that Kingdom of which the notes are 
 righteousness, peace, joy. Confess gladly that the 
 Gospel has not only strong consolation for those 
 whose work is well-nigh over but, even more es- 
 sentially, inspiration for those whose work is yet 
 to be done. Let nothing rob you of the convic- 
 tion that the voice of God can be heard, and is 
 
 heard ' To-day': that the vision of God can be Hebr. i 
 
 i ^ 
 gained, and is gained, ( To-day'. Keep the eyes 
 
 of your heart fixed, not for the present on the 
 Christ pierced and bleeding on the tree, but on 
 the Risen Christ, reigning on the Father's throne. 
 Look upward, eager to live, ready to die, for Him; 
 and you too, like St Stephen, will see the heavens 
 opened, see the communion of the visible and 
 the invisible reestablished, you will see the glory 
 of God, see a fresh manifestation of His puri- 
 fying, quickening love, you will see Jesus the 
 
152 Organisation of social life. 
 
 IV - Son of man, the Creator and Heir of all things, 
 standing at the right hand of God, risen from His 
 royal seat to support and welcome each baffled 
 and fainting servant. 
 
 Mark x. Jesus. ..said. What wilt thou that I should do 
 
 51 52 
 
 unto thee? And the blind man said unto Him, 
 Rabboni, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus 
 said unto him, Go thy way ; thy faith hath made 
 thee whole. And straightway he received his sight 
 and followed Him on the way. 
 
 May God grant to us all the power of vision 
 and the grace of sacrifice, in the light of Christmas, 
 and in the life of the Incarnate Son of God. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 TYPES OF APOSTOLIC SERVICE. 
 
 I. Saintship. 
 
 II. Authority. 
 
 III. Suffering: ST PAUL. 
 
 IV. Doubting: ST THOMAS. 
 V. Waiting; ST JOHN. 
 
We are come to... the heavenly Jerusalem and to in- 
 numerable hosts of angels... and the church of the firstborn 
 enrolled in heaven.... 
 
 HEB. xii. 
 
 St Bartholomew's Day, 1885. 
 
I. SAINTSHIP. 
 
 "YTTE were led to consider yesterday some APPEND. 
 
 aspects of the great spiritual fellowship L 
 to which we have been introduced by the Risen 
 Lord, of the common service rendered to God 
 by the innumerable hosts of angels and the church 
 of the firstborn, our unseen fellow-soldiers in 
 heaven and our unrecognised fellow-soldiers on 
 earth. To-day the thought receives a special 
 shape. The commemoration of Saints is one of 
 the provisions which has been wisely made by 
 our Church to bring home to us our connexion 
 with the invisible life : to help us to confess 
 that they who once lived to God live still ; to 
 know that we are heirs not of a dead past, but 
 of a past fresh with new lessons ; to learn that 
 consecrated gifts become an eternal blessing ; to 
 understand most touching mystery that Christ 
 is pleased to reveal Himself little by little, in 
 many parts and in many fashions in the persons 
 of His servants. 
 
156 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND. Thus it is that each saint receives and shews 
 some trait of the perfect Manhood of his Master. 
 And ' we that are but parts ' can recognise on 
 a scale suited to our weakness now this grace 
 and now that according to our needs. Thus it 
 is that slowly and through manifold energies the 
 members shew us the grandeur and beauty of 
 the One life by which they are inspired: that 
 we come to feel that there is a place for us 
 also in the vast Temple which is reared through 
 the ages on the Foundation of Christ for the 
 glory of God. 
 
 It is therefore of deep interest to strive to 
 seize the individuality of the Saint whom we 
 commemorate ; and there is much in the brief 
 notices of Bartholomew Nathanael whom we 
 commemorate to-day on which I might dwell. 
 But I wish now (in the few minutes which are 
 allowed me) to speak more generally. I wish, 
 if I may, to bring the thought of Saintship a 
 little nearer to us. 
 
 And first let me ask you to remember that 
 the mark of a saint is not perfection but conse- 
 cration. A saint is not a man without faults, 
 but a man who has given himself without reserve 
 to God. In the language of the New Testament 
 every baptized Christian dead and buried and 
 raised in Christ is a saint. We are dwelling 
 
Saintship. 157 
 
 among saints: we are saints. That is the will APPEND. 
 of God for us. If it is unaccomplished, the 
 failure comes through our faithlessness. 
 
 It follows that in the narrower sense of the 
 word the age of saints is not past. There has 
 never been a time when the Gospel has not vindi- 
 cated its sovereignty and Christ has not found 
 His living interpreters. We have not as yet 
 been taught to give an open place in our public 
 services to the later heroes of faith, but I trust 
 nevertheless that they are not forgotten. I trust 
 that we call up in grateful memory saints whom 
 we have known the glory of their devoted 
 service to give distinctness to thanksgiving and 
 hymn. There is not one among us whose study 
 and whose experience may not bring some dear 
 companion, whom he has learnt to recognise in 
 the silent converse of books or in the stirring 
 conflicts of duty, to swell ' the glorious company 
 ' of the Apostles,' and ' the goodly fellowship of 
 ' the prophets/ and ' the noble army of martyrs/ . 
 men who in these later days and in our own 
 Church have heard a call of God and have obeyed 
 it, men who have seen a truth of God and have 
 interpreted it, men who have received a burden 
 at the hands of God and in trust on Him have 
 borne it, saints who have not been reckoned 
 in any calendar. 
 
158 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND. Such thoughts are natural everywhere, but in 
 this Abbey they are even necessary. It has been 
 called 'a temple of silence and reconciliation'. 
 It is far more truly an altar of human endow- 
 ments. Here is laid the memorial of every form 
 of true service which men have rendered to God 
 out of His manifold fulness. Here the world is 
 offered for our meditation as it is in His sight. 
 Here that lives which was given to Him, lives 
 and works still, purified from every admixture of 
 earthly selfishness. And if, as we heard this 
 morning, the patriarch, when his eyes were opened 
 
 Gen. saw in the bare wilderness the house of God and 
 
 xxviii. 17. 
 
 the gate of heaven, shall not we find helps about 
 Hebr. xi. us here to see Him who is invisible? 
 
 And in the Abbey this Chapel [of Henry VII.] 
 has its own peculiar message. It is as it were, the 
 tomb, the monument, of medievalism. Designed 
 to be the shrine of a canonised king it became the 
 resting-place of three dynasties separated out- 
 wardly by sharp differences from his Communion. 
 In both relations it speaks to us something of 
 the nature of the eternal and the unseen. It 
 speaks to us in the long line of statues which 
 encircle it unique in England, in which for the 
 last time the middle age expressed its faith in 
 the great communion of saints. It speaks to us 
 in the costly structures and plain stones of later 
 
Saint ship. 159 
 
 times which cover the dust of those to whom for APPEND. 
 a brief space earthly empire was committed. 
 
 We can hardly look upon that long line sup- 
 ported by the cornices of angels without feeling 
 the conviction which it expresses of the manifold- 
 ness of consecrated service. Philosophers, kings, 
 priests, warriors, doctors, apostles, holy maids and 
 matrons, lead up to the central figure of the 
 enthroned Lord, blessing the world which He 
 rules. 
 
 We can hardly look upon the strange contrast 
 of splendour and bareness in the royal graves 
 without feeling that the soul is not measured by 
 'glory of birth and state'. Nowhere can the 
 famous words of one whose last public act was per- 
 formed here before long years of romantic tragedy 
 find a richer commentary : ' eloquent, just and 
 ' mighty Death ! whom none could advise thou 
 ' hast persuaded : what none have dared thou hast 
 'done: and whom all the world hath flattered 
 'thou only hast cast out of the world and de- 
 'spised: thou hast drawn together all the far- 
 ' stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty and 
 'ambition of men and covered it all over with 
 'these two narrow words: Hicjacet.' 
 
 And so it is that the tomb often speaks with 
 a power of revelation. There is a sad pathos even 
 in the words of idle praises which seek to carry 
 
160 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND, into another order the conventional forms of this. 
 But there are also true voices which come to us 
 with a secret and irresistible force and open the 
 secret of that which is in the words of our 
 Founder ' the land of the living '. 
 
 Let me remind you of three voices which 
 must ever speak to us in this Chapel, three voices 
 from three centuries, which, I think, come from 
 the heart and reach the heart. 
 
 On the monument beneath which lie the two 
 Tudor Queens, inevitably divided by birth, by 
 fortune, by faith, we read : 
 
 Eegno consortes et urna hie obdormimus Elizabetha et 
 Maria sorores in spe resurrectionis. 
 
 Buckingham [Sheffield], statesman, soldier, 
 poet, seems to describe the unsatisfied spirit of 
 his time when he closes the half-faltering con- 
 fession of doubt with a prayer of penitence : 
 
 Dubius sed non improbus vixi : 
 
 Incertus morior, non perturbatus. 
 
 Humanum est nescire et errare. 
 
 Deo confido 
 
 Omnipotenti, benevolentissimo. 
 Ens entium miserere mei. 
 
 And on the latest slab which covers those 
 whom we ourselves were allowed to see ' uniting 
 ' many hearts from many lands and drawing all to 
 ' things above ', the words of St John are a fresh 
 testimony of experience : 
 
Saintship. 161 
 
 We know that we have passed from death unto APPEND. 
 life because we love the brethren. 
 
 The blessing of saintship in the final victory 
 over every difference of earth : the foundation of 
 saintship in the cry of absolute self-surrender to 
 an Almighty Sovereign : the activity of saintship 
 in services of tender ministry: do we not know 
 that the voices are for us ? 
 
 Consecration, as I said, and not perfection is 
 the mark of the Saint. We have all that which 
 we can offer to God : we have all that which God 
 is pleased to seek. We are come to the heavenly Hebr. xii. 
 Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels and 
 to the Church of the firstborn. 
 
 Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed Hebr. xii. 
 
 if 
 about with so great a. cloud of witnesses... run with 
 
 patience the race that is set before us, looking unto 
 Jesus the author and perfecter of faith. 
 
 w. s. 11 
 
II. 
 
 AUTHORITY. 
 
 112 
 
The kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them; and 
 they that have authority over them are called Benefactors. 
 But ye shall not be so; but he that is the greater among you, 
 let him become as the younger; and he that is chief, as he 
 that doth serve. 
 
 ST LUKE xxii. 25 f. 
 
 St Bartholomew's Day, 1886. 
 
II. AUTHORITY. 
 
 nPHESE words from the Gospel of the day indi- APPEND. 
 -*- cate a fundamental difference between hea- Ut 
 then and Christian morality. On the one side 
 there is the supreme authority of force : on the 
 other side the supreme authority of service. The 
 force may be intellectual or physical, but he that 
 exercises it provides that his superiority shall 
 be felt and acknowledged. The service may be 
 rendered by one who has the unquestioned pre- 
 rogative of years or place by one who is older or 
 by one who is called to lead but he who renders 
 it merges every claim to preeminence in the un- 
 affected naturalness of his ministry. In the one 
 case the individual himself asserts and claims 
 homage as he stands alone : in the other case the 
 body enjoys the vital office of the member, and 
 the joy of the member is the consciousness of the 
 common life. 
 
 The conception of life which is expressed in 
 this contrast is characteristic of our Faith. It is 
 the glory of Christianity that it has given dignity 
 
166 Types of Apostolic Service; 
 
 APPEND, to weakness. The first beatitude Blessed are 
 the poor is indeed a moral Gospel : the truth 
 which the Life and Work of Christ has made 
 intelligible and attainable. Yes : we dare to 
 say Blessed are the poor, the poor in spirit, not 
 the poor-spirited, but they who in their inmost 
 souls recognise the nobility of those traits which 
 we habitually connect with the poor, the sense 
 of reverence, the necessity of labour, the con- 
 dition of dependence, the continuity of service. 
 Reverence, labour, dependence, service, these are 
 marks of that social life which is founded in 
 Christ, and which draws from Him its benedic- 
 tion and its strength. 
 
 But here let us not be mistaken. In hallow- 
 ing this ideal Christianity has not lowered the 
 standard of human dignity. It has raised the 
 standard immeasurably, while it has shewn that 
 the highest is within the reach of all. It has 
 opened our eyes to see a glory on the earth, a 
 divine Presence everywhere about us, while it has 
 written the sentence of transitoriness and corrup- 
 tion over all the objects of sense. It has em- 
 phasised the obligation of toil, while it has shewn 
 that its painfulness is due to the disorder of our 
 nature. It has revealed the reality of the one 
 life by which we all live and to which we can all 
 contribute, while it has made clear that isolation, 
 
Authority. 167 
 
 the proud self-containment of the soul which APPEND. 
 dwells alone, is death. It has disclosed the true 
 secret of power while it has defined the manner 
 of its exercise. 
 
 In the light of the Gospel (to sum up all), 
 and, may I not say, in the deep consciousness of 
 the heart which it illuminates, reverence is the 
 acknowledgment of a transforming grace, labour 
 is the glad return for healthy vigour, dependence 
 is the joy of fellowship, service is the secret of 
 prevailing authority. 
 
 This whole ideal is absolutely fulfilled and 
 exhibited and vindicated in the Person of Christ ; 
 and so specially is the last thought, that of the 
 authority of service, which is brought before us 
 to-day ; He that is the greater among you, the 
 Lord says, let him become as the younger ; and he 
 that is chief as he that doth serve , and then He 
 enforces the command, as you will notice, by His 
 own action, for He continues : / am in the midst 
 of you, as he that doth serve. 
 
 This is indeed the meaning for us the essen- 
 tial meaning of the example of the Lord. The 
 example of Christ, so far as it is proposed for our 
 imitation, is always the example of patience, of 
 self-surrender, of serving, of suffering. The voice 
 which calms and strengthens us is that voice 
 of prevailing love which establishes its power on 
 
168 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND, tenderness, and its right to teach on humility. 
 Matt *xi Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, Christ 
 29. said not because I am irresistible with the pleni- 
 
 tude of divine might; not because I am om- 
 niscient with the fulness of divine vision, but 
 because I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall 
 find rest unto your souls. 
 
 This teaching was strange to those who first 
 heard it. It is not surprising therefore that it should 
 have been repeated again and again like the cor- 
 responding revelation of life through death. Each 
 of the first three Evangelists records the substance 
 of the text as spoken twice ; and from a compa- 
 rison of their narratives we can distinguish three 
 occasions, all in the latest stage of the Lord's 
 ministry, when He pressed upon His disciples the 
 authority of service, once immediately after the 
 Luke ix. Transfiguration, again on the last journey to Je- 
 Matt. xx. rusalem, and a third time in the Holy City. On 
 
 ? 5 ?- . each occasion the circumstances naturally gave 
 
 Luke xxii. 
 
 25 f. rise to the hope of an immediate outward triumph, 
 
 the hope of sovereignty for the Lord and of 
 honours for His followers. On each occasion the 
 prospect of success stirred in the twelve thoughts 
 of ambition and rivalry. On each occasion the 
 Lord's words make clear beyond doubt that the 
 blessing of power is ' the blessing of great cares/ 
 that the sign of authority is the readiness to serve. 
 
Authority. 169 
 
 The lesson was strange, I said, when it was APPEND. 
 first given, and if we have now grown familiar 
 with its form we can hardly claim to have mas- 
 tered its spirit. But none the less when we 
 calmly look on the face of things we shall see 
 that the principle of the authority of service is 
 universally true. It is true in regard to nature, 
 to society, to self; it is proved true by the power 
 of insight, of sympathy, of freedom which springs 
 from service. And in spite of our habitual un- 
 willingness to follow the judgements of our hearts 
 we ourselves gladly acknowledge its truth. In 
 the region of thought our highest praise is given 
 to the devotion of patient study : in the region of 
 action to the devotion of self- forgetful labour. 
 
 1. The principle is true, I repeat, in regard 
 to Nature. It is an old maxim that we can rule 
 Nature only by obeying her. And exact know- 
 ledge is the first requisite for right obedience, 
 a knowledge not of the superficial phenomena, 
 of the appearances of things, but of the laws 
 which the phenomena half hide and half reveal. 
 Such knowledge comes only through watchful, 
 self-repressing search. He who carries his own 
 prejudices and prepossessions to the inquiry into 
 physical truth will certainly find them confirmed. 
 For there is a strange irony in Nature. She 
 speaks in parables ; and we must yield ourselves 
 
170 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND, to her spirit before we can apprehend their 
 meaning. If we are self-willed or hasty or con- 
 fident, still more if we are imperious or arrogant, 
 she will betray us, though she 'never did betray 
 the soul that loved her'. But that condition is 
 indispensable. Her disguises, her seeming con- 
 tradictions, are only to be resolved by the loving 
 patience of an unwearied ministry. Insight which 
 is the inspiration of science comes from service. 
 
 2. So it is in regard to Government. The 
 true ruler is not he who enforces his will by 
 the bayonets of strong battalions, but he who 
 divines the worthiest desires of his people and 
 claims their homage by shewing that he has 
 entered into their hearts. It lies in our nature 
 that we should respond to the voice which inter- 
 prets us to ourselves. We cannot but rejoice 
 to obey him who proposes to us that ideal as our 
 own which often we have not the courage to 
 confess, though we inwardly strive towards it. 
 Christ Himself confirms the law in its widest 
 application. He shews that His sovereignty is 
 established on His individual knowledge of His 
 
 John x. 3. servants. He calleth His own sheep by name and 
 then, not till then, not till He has realised this 
 personal relationship, He leadeth them out. His 
 many sheep are not to Him a mere flock. His 
 eye discerns in each that which modifies the 
 
Authority. 171 
 
 common features. For us such individual know- APPEND. 
 ledge can only be gained by the most reverent 
 and untiring observation. We must serve in 
 order that we may understand. We must not 
 overpower by our own force the character which 
 we wish to appreciate and guide in its mature 
 vigour. He is no true leader who drills his 
 subjects into mechanical instruments of his de- 
 signs. The true leader gains the devotion of the 
 soul and the spirit. Sympathy, which is the 
 strength of government, comes by service. 
 
 3. The same principle holds good in our 
 personal discipline. It is by serving that we 
 learn the value and the proportion of our own 
 endowments. The consciousness of a divine 
 presence about us, issuing in continual worship, 
 sustains us under the pressure of distracting 
 anxieties. Out of this rises the spirit of reverence, 
 which becomes the perennial source of self-respect 
 by moving us to a thousand little acts of dutiful 
 attention. For such offices of thoughtful ministry 
 do not abase but exalt us. Christian service is 
 indeed a germ of new power. It is not the 
 inconsiderate scattering of our gifts, but the de- 
 liberate bestowal of them in such a way that we 
 may take them again. If the terrible saying of John x. 17. 
 the Roman historian is true that c it is characteristic 
 of human nature that we should hate those whom 
 we have injured/ it is no less true that we love 
 
172 Types of Apostolic Service. 
 
 APPEND, those whom we have helped. In this way then 
 by serving God in man and man in God we bring 
 ourselves into harmony with all about us. We 
 ascertain the limits of our ability and the right 
 direction of our work. We gain the fulness of 
 our own nature and bring ourselves into obedience 
 to its laws. We become, that is, free in the 
 true sense of the word, untroubled by the way- 
 wardness of caprice and the gusts of restless am- 
 bition. Freedom which is the soul of individual 
 life comes through service. 
 
 In every direction the authority of service 
 is seen to be supreme. To find the purpose of 
 God about us, in the world and in men, and to 
 offer ourselves without reserve for its accomplish- 
 ment, that is the rule of Christ, which He will 
 enable us to obey: that is the measure of the 
 authority which He designs us to exercise in 
 the divine order. And it is a rule for all, a rule 
 of infinite peace and of infinite gladness. 
 
 That is the secret of keeping the temporal 
 greatness which may have been given to some of 
 us ; of winning the eternal greatness which is de- 
 signed for all of us by God's love. Its blessings 
 do not depend upon power or opportunity. They 
 are for each one according to the use which he 
 makes of the little or much which is committed 
 Luke x. 30. to him. There are last, so it is written, which 
 shall be fir st y and there are first which shall be last. 
 
III. 
 
 SUFFERING. (Sr PAUL.) 
 
/ (e'-yoJ) will sheiv him how many things he must suffer for 
 My name's sake. 
 
 ACTS ix. 16. 
 
 St Paul's Day, 1886. 
 
T 
 
 III. SUFFERING. 
 
 HE Festival of St Paul which we celebrate APPEND. 
 
 -*- to-day differs in a most significant manner 
 from the other Festivals of Saints. It commemo- 
 rates his conversion and not his martyrdom, the 
 beginning and not the close of his earthly mi- 
 nistry; his spiritual birth, if I may so speak, 
 into this age, and not his birth into the age to 
 come. 
 
 The reason of the difference is not far to seek. 
 The work of St Paul is brought before us with 
 exceptional fulness in the New Testament. He is 
 shewn to be the founder of the Gentile Churches, 
 the teacher who, in the Providence of God, more 
 than any other, has impressed his own character 
 on the Faith which we have inherited. In him 
 the transition from the persecutor to the apostle 
 was outwardly most sudden and startling. We 
 naturally therefore dwell upon his labours as they 
 flowed from c his marvellous conversion/ on his 
 conversion as the spring of an influence to which 
 history can shew no parallel. 
 
176 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND. Under this aspect to-day's Festival completes 
 the triad of thoughts which the Festivals of this 
 month have offered for our consideration. On 
 New Year's Day we welcomed the general thought 
 of c the dedication of life/ the dedication through 
 suffering. On the Epiphany this common lesson 
 was brought home to us by the special thought 
 of ' offerings ' in which we bring to God the 
 choicest firstfruits of that which He has given 
 to each one of us. And now the thought of 
 offerings is consummated in the thought of 'ser- 
 'vice.' We are encouraged by the example of 
 St Paul to render to the Lord not only what we 
 have but what we are, not our endowments only 
 but ourselves. 
 
 The words which I have taken for a text pre- 
 sent the thought in an unexpected form. They 
 give us the Lord's view of service ; and His view 
 is not as our view. They speak not of achieve- 
 ments, of successes, of long efforts crowned by 
 triumph, but simply of sufferings. The greatness 
 of the accompanying suffering is the one feature 
 which the Ascended Saviour emphasises in the 
 testimony which His new witness is to bear. He 
 overcomes the misgivings of the alarmed disciple, 
 who shrank from receiving the unexpected and 
 suspicious convert with the assurance He is a 
 chosen vessel unto Me .for I will shew him how 
 
Suffering. 177 
 
 many things he must suffer for My Names sake! APPEND. 
 He does not say, C I will shew him how many 
 ' things he will dare and do and win : how many 
 1 things he will learn and teach : how he will bear 
 ' My Gospel to the borders of the West : how he 
 ' will vindicate the spiritual freedom of believers : 
 1 how he will present to the eyes of men the 
 ' vision of a Church as broad as humanity:' but 
 simply this, '/ will shew him how many things 
 ' he must suffer.' This is his service : to bear the 
 cruelties which he had before inflicted: to offer 
 himself as a victim even as he had before made Actsviii.3. 
 havoc of the Church : to endure the punishment 
 of St Stephen, and fulfil the first martyr's inter- 
 rupted work. And we can all feel that this is 
 the true measure of the essence of the Christian 
 life. What we can do for another is the test of 
 power : what we can suffer for another is the test 
 of love. 
 
 / will shew him how many things he must 
 suffer. There is a pathos in the original which 
 is almost necessarily lost in the English ren- 
 dering. In the original the emphasis falls upon 
 the first pronoun. 'I will shew him:' 'I myself 
 1 will reveal to him My counsel : I will make 
 ' known to him the secret of My victory : I who 
 ' have suffered for him and for all men will 
 ' strengthen him to bear his cross after Me. This 
 w. s. 12 
 
178 Types of Apostolic Service : 
 
 APPEND. ' shall be the seal of his commission. This shall be 
 ' the sign of his election. He shall bear, though 
 ' it is a heavy burden (ftacrracrei), the message of 
 ( a Saviour Born, Crucified, Ascended, before scorn- 
 'ful Gentiles and unbelieving Jews. Not one 
 ' grief shall come upon him as an unwelcome 
 ' surprise or a barren trial. For I will shew him 
 f how many things he must suffer for My Names 
 ' sake! 
 
 The destiny was foretold and we all know how 
 it was accomplished. St Paul has left us a sum- 
 mary of his sufferings during the first two-thirds 
 
 2 Cor. xi. of his ministry. Of the Jews five times received 
 I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten 
 with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered 
 shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the 
 
 deep Besides those things that are without, there 
 
 is that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for 
 all the churches. By such discipline he had al- 
 
 2 Cor. xi. ready learnt to glory if he needs must glory 
 of the things that concerned his weakness. But 
 perhaps we hardly realise how large a part that 
 which appeared to be failure and which was pain 
 had in the fulfilment of his Mission. And in 
 saying this, I am not thinking of the effect 
 which disappointment and sorrow have in puri- 
 fying and strengthening personal character, but 
 of their outward results. 
 
Suffering. 179 
 
 To take one illustration only. Most of the APPEND. 
 letters of St Paul through which he speaks with a 
 living voice to all ages were called out by dis- 
 tressing anxieties, or written from confinement. 
 The Epistles to the Thessalonians were due to an 
 exceeding desire to learn something of the state 
 of the Church from which he had been suddenly 
 hurried away, when once and again Satan had 1 Thess. 
 hindered him from visiting them. The Corinthians 
 by their divisions and their disorders, no less than 
 by their questions, drew from him the portraiture 
 of love and the apostolic statement of the Gospel 
 of the Resurrection. The apostasy of the Ga- 
 latians stirred him to a burning denunciation of 
 legal righteousness. Even the studied exposition 
 of the Faith addressed to the Romans was due in 
 part to the frustration of his purpose to visit Kom. i. 13. 
 them. As a prisoner first at Csesarea and then at 
 Rome he might seem to have been kept from the 
 true sphere of his energy, and it is to that period 
 of calm labour that we owe the fuller views of 
 the Person of the Lord and the larger conception 
 of the Church which are given in the Epistles of 
 the Captivity. 
 
 Everywhere there is the same witness. We 
 can see, to use St Paul's own words, how the Phil. i. 12. 
 things which happened unto him the things 
 which overthrew his cherished designs and con- 
 
 122 
 
180 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND, demned him to bear and to wait fell out rather 
 unto the progress of the Gospel. We can see how 
 his service was in those parts in which it proved 
 most fruitful, the service of suffering. 
 
 The service of suffering: St Paul learnt the 
 lesson, and to-day he offers it to us. It is a 
 paradox of faith which we find it hard to learn. 
 We would do some great thing and God, by an un- 
 looked for change of health or fortune or position, 
 forces us to sit still. So His will is accomplished ; 
 and in due time we find that our true end also is 
 
 Apoc. vii. gained. Our robes are washed and made white 
 14. 
 
 in blood. 
 
 The service of suffering : by this God equalises 
 our circumstances. All are on a level of ad- 
 vantage in respect to this ministry. All can ac- 
 cept the place of patient learners in the school of 
 affliction ; and more things are wrought by quiet, 
 uncomplaining, endurance than the world knows of. 
 For a time the eloquence of adversity meekly 
 borne may be unheard, but when it is heard it 
 prevails. 
 
 The service of suffering : it is the compre- 
 Matt. xvi. hensive fulfilment of the Lord's promise, W ho- 
 25> soever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it. 
 
 It gives to us all in simple ways, in the accom- 
 plishment of our common work, in looking calmly, 
 it may be, upon insoluble problems, in surrender- 
 
Suffering. 181 
 
 ing our will to the claims of social duty, the op- APPEND. 
 portunity of gaining the true life. 
 
 The service of suffering: it is the revelation 
 of peace. The man of restless ambition under- 
 goes a thousand martyrdoms. But the trials 
 which are accepted as God's gift, to be borne for 
 His name's sake, are transformed by the accept- 
 ance. Thus they become a double blessing: a 
 blessing to those who regard them from without 
 as a manifest sign of the Divine Presence with 
 such as endure : a blessing to those who sustain 
 them as an occasion for fresh victories of faith. 
 
IV. 
 
 DOUBTING. (Si THOMAS.) 
 
Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger and 
 see My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into 
 My side; and be not faithless but believing. 
 
 ST JOHN xx. 27. 
 St Thomas's Day, 1886. 
 
IV. DOUBTING. 
 
 is nothing which strikes the student APPEND. 
 of the Gospels more deeply than the revela- 
 tion which they give of the personal insight and 
 tenderness of the Lord. This is especially true of 
 the Gospel of St John. The Evangelist whom 
 Jesus loved, who lay upon His bosom, knew, if we 
 may so speak, His Master's heart. The love 
 which he received quickened with a keener intelli- 
 gence the love which he felt. 
 
 So it is that we can see in St John's narrative 
 how Christ graciously trained His Apostles ; how 
 He bore with them, guided them, disciplined 
 them ; how at one time He answered them, and 
 at another time committed them to the silent 
 teaching of life and the solemn exercise of pa- 
 tient, unsatisfied expectation ; how He used even 
 their weaknesses and failings for the fuller mani- 
 festation of His truth. In no case is this divine 
 method of education shewn more impressively or 
 more instructively than in the case of St Thomas, 
 whom we commemorate to-day. In the other 
 
186 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND. Gospels St Thomas is a name and nothing more : 
 in St John he is a living man, hampered by hu- 
 man infirmities and ennobled by human devotion, 
 a living man, nearer perhaps to ourselves, in our 
 day of trial, than any other of- the disciples. St 
 Thomas felt and expressed difficulties by which 
 we are perplexed, and Christ Himself dealt with 
 them. St Thomas doubted, and through his ex- 
 perience we can learn the legitimate issues of 
 doubt. He doubted, in the words of Augustine, 
 which find a place in our own Collect, that we 
 may not doubt, or rather doubt only that we may 
 come to a higher faith. Only four utterances of 
 St Thomas have been recorded and these, as I 
 said, only by St John. They all belong to the 
 last few weeks of the Lord's ministry ; but they 
 are sufficient to make the Apostle known. He 
 had followed the Lord during His public work. 
 He had seen His signs, and heard His words, and 
 lived in His presence; and now at the last the 
 thoughts of his heart are revealed. I desire there- 
 fore to recal the history that we may meditate 
 upon it. It has, I think, a message for us. 
 
 The first occasion on which St Thomas appears 
 
 John xi. is when the tidings came from Bethany, Behold, 
 he whom Thou lovest is sick, which determined the 
 Lord to return to Judaea and place Himself once 
 more in the power of His deadly enemies. After 
 
Doubting. 187 
 
 two days He saith : Let us go into Judcea again. APPEND. 
 There was but one thought among the disciples : 
 They said, Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to 
 stone Thee ; and goest Thou thither again ? Their 
 fear was perfectly well founded. The Lord did 
 not set it aside. The journey was unto death for 
 Himself, but it was unto life for Lazarus, and unto 
 faith for them. So He definitely invited them a 
 second time to share His peril and visit the friend 
 whom they had lost who was still their friend: 
 let us go to him. We can picture the still sadness 
 which fell upon the little band when they heard 
 the words. At last the silence was broken ; bro- 
 ken not by St Peter, dauntless in impetuous 
 courage, not by St John, strong in unquestioning 
 love, but by St Thomas. Thomas said unto his 
 fellow-disciples, Let us also go that we may die 
 with Him. He who perhaps believed least was 
 most prompt to act on what he did believe. He 
 accepted the invitation and what he thought must 
 be the consequence. He saw only a little way, 
 but he saw clearly. He shrank from buoying 
 himself up with illusions. He did not even dwell 
 upon the mysterious result which the Lord con- 
 nected with the journey. It was so much was 
 sure a journey to death : as such he would share 
 it. He could die for the Lord whom he had 
 known, though (or should I say because ?) he 
 
188 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND, could not affect a faith which he had not reached. 
 Ignorance as to the real scope and meaning of 
 the Lord's words left absolute self-sacrifice possi- 
 ble. And we must observe that the 
 sacrifice was accepted. No explanation, as far as 
 we know, was given by the Lord to relieve the 
 dark forebodings of His apostles. They went with 
 Him, Thomas leading, ready to die with Him. 
 
 Doubt as to personal consequences is no bar to 
 the power of devotion. 
 
 So the journey was taken. At once Lazarus 
 was called back from the grave. In one sense 
 death was overcome ; and the enthusiasm of the 
 multitude checked for a moment the designs of 
 chief priests and Pharisees. The immediate fear 
 of the twelve therefore was unfulfilled. As the 
 fear passed away there must have come to them 
 in place of it strange, vague, hopes of a kingdom 
 to be established for Israel, of princely judgment- 
 thrones, of some glorious triumph. But with these 
 hopes other thoughts also were mingled. The 
 disciples could not fail to see that the hostility 
 of the Jewish leaders was only biding its time. 
 They could not fail to notice the warnings of 
 terrible and unexpected sufferings which the 
 Master uttered. Then came the eve of the Pass- 
 over, and while the hearts of all were burning 
 with the memories of the Old Covenant, with the 
 
Doubting. 189 
 
 dim anticipations of the New, the Lord spoke to APPEND. 
 
 IV. 
 
 them of His departure, even as He had spoken to 
 
 the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come. Such Jolm xiii - 
 
 33. 
 
 departure was still more perplexing than death. 
 They could die with Him : why could they not 
 follow Him ? The prophecy of denial by the 
 boldest was the sufficient answer. But consola- 
 tion followed. I go, Christ said, to prepare a John xiv - 
 place for you... And whither I go ye know the 
 way. However dimly even Apostles might realise 
 the goal of the Lord's labours, they could at least 
 see the direction in which He was moving. Still 
 there was room for questioning ; and Thomas 
 frames the question. Thomas saith unto Him, 
 Lord we know not whither Thou goest ; how know 
 we the way ? The difficulty which is thus raised 
 is a real and a natural one. It is true in common 
 life that the knowledge of the end enables us to 
 judge of the road. But it is not so in spiritual 
 things. There the end belongs to another order. 
 It lies beyond our power of distinct apprehension. 
 It is enough therefore for us to know the road, as 
 it is opened to us step by step. And here 
 
 fresh light is given. Christ shews that for us 
 the end and the road are one. f I am' He says John xiv. 
 6 1 am ' and not ' I reveal or f I point to ' as 
 herald or prophet ' the Way and the Truth and 
 the Life! He meets St Thomas's difficulty by 
 
190 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND, fixing his attention upon Himself. He leads 
 him to see that ignorance as to the future 
 and the unseen can be borne when we are 
 able to appeal to present love and present ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Doubt as to the end is no reason for refusing 
 to move along the opened way. 
 
 The scenes of the betrayal, the judgment, the 
 Passion swiftly followed. Death came to the 
 Lord in a form more terrible than could have 
 been foreseen, the death of a slave amidst the 
 mockery of priests and people. What then re- 
 Luke xxiv. mained to those who had hoped that the prophet 
 of Nazareth should have redeemed Israel ? What 
 remained ? The answer was still, Christ Himself 
 remained, transfigured and yet the same. When 
 the desolate company were gathered together on 
 the third day in fear and yet, as we must believe, 
 with some uncertain recollection of sayings un- 
 heeded at the time, but made clearer through 
 John xx. sorrow, Jesus came and stood in the midst and 
 1 spoke to them the double message of peace. But 
 
 Thomas was not with them. He did not (as it 
 seems) share the hope with which the others were 
 assembled. He must wait for fuller knowledge; 
 and when they told their tidings he said to them, 
 Except I shall see in His hands the print of the 
 nails and put my finger into the print of the nails 
 
Doubting. 191 
 
 and put my hand into His side, I will not believe. APPEND. 
 He fashioned for himself a test of the reality of 
 the Resurrection. Nothing short of this could 
 (he thought) satisfy him, and even this might fail. 
 The death he had seen was too real, the gaping 
 wounds which he recalled were too terrible, to be 
 reconciled with thoughts of life by mere hearsay. 
 He frankly and sadly confessed what was in his 
 heart ; and then he endured without losing all 
 hope the long, dreary, days of waiting which 
 followed. For after a full week we read again John xx. 
 
 2fi ff 
 
 the disciples were within and Thomas with them. 
 He had not left their company though he had 
 not shared their joy : they had not disowned him 
 though his faith was clouded. Then Jesus cometh,. . . 
 and said Peace be unto you. Then saithHe to Thomas 
 Reach hither thy finger and see My hands ; and 
 reach hither thy hand, and put it into My side; 
 and be not faithless but believing. Christ then 
 though unseen had heard the words which Thomas 
 had spoken when he was doubting of His Resur- 
 rection, and He offered the test which had been 
 required. But in that most loving Presence, 
 realised by the heart if through the eye, Thomas 
 rose at once beyond every conclusion which the 
 senses could establish. He spontaneously de- 
 clared the utter impotence of the criterion which 
 he had chosen to determine the truth which he 
 
192 Types of Apostolic Service: 
 
 APPEND, grasped at length. He recognised the Lord, 
 
 IV 
 
 living again, the Lord whom he had followed in 
 trustful discipleship. So much hand and eye 
 might have established if earthly life life doomed 
 to death were all. But St Thomas now recognised 
 far more than this life, and this life itself in a 
 higher form. Sight, hearing, touch, were, he now 
 knew, only occasions and starting-points of faith. 
 At one bound at one bound because he had 
 calmly measured the depths of death he reached 
 a height of conviction which none had attained 
 before : he answered and said unto Him, My Lord 
 and my God. 
 
 Doubt as to the validity of historic evidence 
 is no obstacle to the victory of faith. 
 
 The sublime confession of St Thomas a con- 
 fession won through the doubt which clung to love 
 rather than to life, the doubt which was content, 
 though darkness was before, to tread in the steps 
 of Him who was known, the doubt which acknow- 
 ledged the powerlessness of earthly witness to es- 
 tablish heavenly truths, fitly closes the record of 
 St John. The faith in the Lord's Divinity which 
 the Evangelist had proclaimed in his own words at 
 John i. 1. the beginning is now shewn at the end to have 
 been reached by disciples in actual intercourse with 
 the living Lord, and reached through doubts fear- 
 lessly met. For each doubt of St Thomas was in 
 
Doubting. 193 
 
 the end fully justified, while each was shewn to APPEND. 
 lead to a higher and an unexpected truth. The 
 disciples did die with Christ, die to old hopes, 
 but only to rise again to newness of life. They 
 did not know the way, the way of perfect self- 
 surrender, but it was made clear to them from 
 the Cross. No testimony could prove that of 
 which sense is no measure ; but through this 
 admission the authority of the spirit to interpret 
 the partial teaching of facts was solemnly vindi- 
 cated. And so in the end there is opened the 
 prospect of a still happier triumph for a later 
 time. Jesus saith unto him Because thou hast 
 seen me, thou hast believed : blessed ore they that 
 have not seen and yet have believed. Blessed 
 
 are they that have not seen and yet have believed. 
 This is the last and greatest of the Beatitudes : 
 the special heritage which Christ left for those 
 who should come after. This is the Beatitude 
 which is offered again to us all in the prospect 
 of Christmas. First there is the hearing of the 
 ear, and then the seeing with the eye, the eye of 
 the heart, and we fall before the Incarnate Word 
 in humility and adoration and faith. 
 
 w. s. 13 
 
V. 
 WAITING. (ST JOHN.) 
 
 132 
 
If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? 
 
 ST JOHN xxi. 22. 
 
V. WAITING. 
 
 A MONG the apostles of the Lord there is no APPEND. 
 -^*- one to whom we turn with the same af- 
 fectionate and trustful reverence as to St John 
 whom we commemorate to-day. We seem to 
 know him with something of a sympathetic 
 knowledge. He brings the Lord's love near to 
 us in a peculiar way. There is in St Peter a far 
 keener energy of decisive action. There is in St 
 Paul a larger sweep of thought. But in St John 
 there is what to us now is still more precious, a 
 calm strength, a power of spiritual vision which 
 looks on all the riddles and sorrows of life, and 
 looks through them, though it cannot arrange in 
 familiar forms the glory which it sees beyond. 
 The characteristic of St John is 'waiting'; and I 
 think that it will be useful for us to meditate on 
 this grace of ' waiting ' for a few minutes, as it is 
 seen in the disciple whom Jesus loved. John xiii. 
 
 The characteristic comes out very plainly in 2 g! xxi 7 
 the last chapter of his Gospel. It is shewn in ?- A Con ' 
 
 r ? trastxx.2. 
 
 St John's own act : it is shewn by the Lord's 
 
198 Types of Apostolic Service : 
 
 APPEND, words. St John with the instinct of 
 
 y 
 
 John xxi ^ ove discovered that the stranger who had mysteri- 
 7 ff. ously blessed the apostles' unfruitful work must be 
 
 the Lord ; but when St Peter, taking up the con- 
 viction from him, flung himself into the water to 
 reach without delay the Lord whom he had found, 
 St John waited till in the natural order he was 
 borne to Him, waited in the fulfilment of the duty 
 which belonged to him, waited to secure the gift 
 John xxi. which had been received. And so after- 
 
 wards, when a threefold commission had restored 
 to St Peter his promised work, and dark hints of 
 martyrdom had been added as the close, and all 
 had been summed up by the Lord in the words 
 Follow Me, St John silently waited to hear if for 
 him there would be any light upon the future. 
 He silently waited, and St Peter put his thought 
 into words broken and incomplete. He saith to 
 Jesus, Lord, and this man, what? what shall he do ? 
 what shall he suffer ? what shall be his part in 
 the chequered scene of labour and sorrow which 
 fills the period of Thy absence ? Jesus saith unto 
 him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
 that to thee? if I will that he wait, and fulfil his 
 office by waiting and not by following? 
 
 They also serve who only stand and wait. 
 And so indeed from first to last St John did 
 fulfil his work by waiting. He waited on the 
 
Waiting. 199 
 
 threshold of life, in the circle of the Baptist's APPEND. 
 disciples, pondering thoughts which the great 
 herald could stir but could not satisfy, till the 
 decisive sign was given and by that he knew the John i. 35 
 Lamb of God. 
 
 He waited by the Cross, waited perhaps 
 through that awful darkness of three hours, and 
 then he heard the words which set the seal on his 
 
 devotion, when the Lord saith to His mother John xix. 
 
 26 f. 
 Woman, behold, thy son ! ; and to the disciple 
 
 Behold, thy mother ! 
 
 This sacred charge again imposed on St John 
 the duty of waiting. If others could go from 
 city to city bearing the message of the King, it 
 was his place to sit still: to sit still and, in 
 reverent and watchful communion with her who 
 became his mother, look into those awful depths 
 which in after years he opened to the Church. 
 
 One by one the apostolic band passed away, 
 some by martyrdom, some by silent and unnoticed 
 death. The Holy City was laid desolate : the 
 Sanctuary was overthrown for ever. And St John 
 waited still, a stranger in a new age. He waited, 
 and after waiting the full time he had his work 
 to do. Then his Gospel could be written, for all 
 ages, as one of our great poets has told us : 
 
 Since much that at the first, in deed and word, 
 Lay simply and sufficiently exposed, 
 
200 Types of Apostolic Service : 
 
 APPEND. Had grown (or else [his] soul was grown to match, 
 V. Fed through such years, familiar with such light, 
 
 Guarded and guided still to see and speak) 
 Of new significance and fresh result; 
 What first were guessed as points [he then] knew stars 
 And named them... 
 
 And even when this last work was done and he 
 was laid to rest, there was a strange legend widely 
 current that he was waiting still, asleep but not 
 dead in his grave at Ephesus, and men thought 
 that they saw the dust move above the spot where 
 he lay, stirred by the breath of the saint. It is a 
 wild, fantastic story, but yet it enshrines a truth. 
 For spiritually St John is waiting now, waiting 
 for men to learn that message of love which life is 
 given us to learn, and which lies, clothed with a 
 power of glory that it has not yet entered into the 
 heart of man to realise, in the fact that the Word 
 became flesh. 
 
 'Waiting': in the history of the apostle we 
 can see how the discipline was blessed, blessed 
 for him who was so brought ever nearer and 
 nearer to God, blessed for the people whom he 
 served : blessed when he was bidden to leave his 
 first teacher : blessed when he was kept back 
 from the enterprise of missionary service : blessed 
 when he was left the solitary survivor of an old 
 world, weary and yet joyful to bear ' the burthen 
 of the latest time '. 
 
Waiting. 201 
 
 And is not all this, brethren, a parable of life APPEND. 
 
 -y 
 
 for us ? Can we not feel that it is well for us to 
 pause and think of the blessedness of 'waiting', 
 hurried, as we are, to and fro, by the inevitable 
 tumult of modern life ? For it is still through 
 long watching that at last the opportunity is 
 found for mastering the truth towards which our 
 hopes have been turned. It is still not unfre- 
 quently through sorrow that we gain little by 
 little the power of insight by which the meaning 
 of familiar facts is disclosed. It is still by silent 
 ponderings, in the solitude of the inner chamber 
 or in the solitude of the crowd, that we learn 
 the lesson of communing with God. And our 
 anxiety for results which we can measure, our 
 restlessness under conditions which we hold to 
 be unfavourable to our progress, our passion for 
 excitement, tend to deprive us of these highest 
 fruits of life. We cannot remove the 
 
 conditions under which our work is to be done 
 but we can transform them. They are the ele- 
 ments out of which we must build the temples 
 wherein we serve. 
 
 In one sense God gives nothing, while in 
 another sense He gives all things. He requires us, 
 that is, to make His gifts our own by using the 
 power which He inspires. Not all at once and 
 not as we should have expected, and not without 
 
202 Types of Apostolic Service. 
 
 APPEND, many delays, does that which indeed is ours be- 
 v. 
 
 come ours. 
 
 So it is that waiting itself becomes a work ; 
 aDd of all the promises of Scripture none, I think, 
 speaks with fuller encouragement to such as seem 
 to find no fruit of labour or no scope for it, if 
 only they wait for the Lord Who will not leave 
 
 Luke xxi. the desolate, than this : In your patience ye shall 
 19. . 7 
 
 win your souls. 
 
 That is the benediction of waiting ; the bless- 
 ing of this day's Festival. 
 
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