Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN ; jpellotosfrip BY THE REV. GEORGE BRETT, M.A. Sometime Secretary of the London Diocesan Council for Preventive, Rescue, and Penitentiary Work EDITED, WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR, BY THE REV. JESSE BRETT, L.Tn. Chaplain oj All Saints' Hospital, Eastbourne A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LIMITED LONDON : 34 Great Castle Street, Oxford Circus, W. OXFORD : 106 S. Aldate's Street 1907 PREFACE ON June 4th, 1906 (Monday in Whitsun Week), there passed to his rest the Rev. George Brett. A short and painful illness ended a devoted life spent in faithful work for others, and for the advance of the Catholic Faith. He was Assistant-Curate succes- sively of East Cowes, I.W. ; Farnham ; S. Andrew's, Worthing; and S. Peter's, Great Windmill Street, W. In each sphere of work he gave proof of the power and spirituality which distinguished the few important years which crowned his life on earth. In Worthing his powers of body and soul were taxed to the utmost during a well-remembered epidemic of typhoid. At a time when all were working nobly for the spiritual and bodily relief of the sufferers, he was among the readiest. But the strain was such that he became himself seriously ill, and for a time his life was almost despaired of. The Parish of S. Peter, Great Windmill Street, W., of which the Rev. W. T. Farmiloe, M.A., was the Vicar, proved a sphere of fresh experience ; and here he was brought into very close touch with the moral and spiritual needs of modern London, and prepared for that which became his own particular work. Resigning his curacy at S. Peter's, he became Secretary of the London Diocesan Council for iv PREFACE Preventive, Rescue, and Penitentiary Work. Into this work he threw himself with whole-hearted energy, mastering the details of widespreading organizations, assisting and guiding the workers, and placing his ever-growing knowledge and experience at the service of the various Committees. But it was not only to this consultative work that he gave himself; the knowledge which he brought to every undertaking, and which he placed so generously at the service of workers and others, was gained in frequent and regular ministry in the various Homes within the Diocese. Here his great sympathy and his simple, but deeply spiritual teach- ing, bore abundant fruit. As Chaplain, in particular, of S. George's Home, Bourdon Street, W., he was enabled to guide many whose lives became memorials of his loving care. In the year 1905 he was appointed by Queen Alexandra to the Royal Collegiate Hospital of S. Katharine. As one of the Brothers of that ancient Foundation he found a fresh field of work. But, although he ceased from some of his former labours, and resigned the Secretaryship of the Diocesan Council, he was ever ready to help where possible, and kept in touch with the principal organizations. So wholly had he given his heart to the work, and his sympathies alike to workers and the souls for whom they laboured, that only death could have broken the tie which made him one with them in the holiest spiritual aims. Broken it is, in one way, since the visible presence, and the voice which always PREFACE v cheered and encouraged them, are no more. But we are sure that, according to the power given him of GOD, he will not fail to help them with better prayers than those offered on earth. Another work which claimed and received his attention was the conduct of Retreats, and the direction of souls, for which he had exceptional gifts. It is to this side of his ministry that we are indebted for this book. After his death there were found among his papers three sets of Retreat Addresses, arranged and corrected in his own hand- writing. It is felt that there are very many among his friends, and those who profited by his ministry, who will welcome their appearance in a permanent form. They will be more especially treasured by those who heard them : and their number far exceeds the few, comparatively, who were retreat- ants. They were repeated, in one form or another, in various places from time to time. These Retreats were arranged for some engaged in teaching, and he prepared for them with great care- fulness. He intended the subjects of the addresses to follow upon one another in such a way as to present a comprehensive view of spiritual life. His purpose was to build up the inner life of those to whom he was called to minister. He was always opposed to everything which appeared indistinct, or indefinite, both in the teaching and in the practice of the spiritual life. Many will recall with gratitude the care with which he would insist upon the necessity for defining our thoughts and arranging our ideas of spiritual things. VI PREFACE Confusion of thought was to him so much mental and spiritual waste, which a devout Christian should be the first to avoid. It would be impertinent of the writer of this Preface to say anything of the subject of the book to which it is but a necessary introduction. Still less may he discuss its treatment. The richness of thought, and the firm grasp of Catholic principles, which characterized the man, are evident in these pages ; and to those who knew the speaker they will appeal almost as with a renewal of the living voice. The verses which stand at the opening of the different sections were written at his own request, and for that purpose ; they have therefore been allowed to remain according to his intention, and not for any supposed merit in themselves. If the publication of this work be welcomed by the many to whom the name of George Brett stands as a reminder of the sympathy and wisdom which were so ungrudgingly placed at their service ; and if it leads to an increase of the fruits of his labours, it will have served its purpose as he himself would wish, if only as he would certainly have added all the merit be ascribed to the great Head of the Church, JESUS CHRIST our LORD. J.B. CONTENTS i NOBLE OBLIGATIONS PAGE I. THE DIVINE CALL - - v - 3 II. DEDICATION ... Ia III. LIFE WORK . . -22 IV. SACRIFICE " " 33 V. THE DIVINE ACCEPTANCE . . 44 II CHRIST THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE I. "HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY?" - - 53 II. THE WAY , . . . 63 III. THE TRUTH - - . -75 IV. THE LIFE . . 84 V. KNOWING AND SEEING - - - 94 III THE REVELATION OF GOD I. TRUTHS OF APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE - - 103 II. GOD is LIGHT .... m III. GOD is RIGHTEOUS .... Ia2 IV. GOD is LOVE . 132 vii There is a power beneath the life we see, The power of will in consecrated souls, A force within, impelling, guiding on To nobler deeds and works of love a band Of souls who once have heard the call of GOD, And evermore must live to love and serve. Oh, sweet behest that binds the human will And turns from self-ordained ways the heart Which only loves too well each grateful sense Of self-sufficing power ! Oh, love of CHRIST Constraining when the world would chill with scorn, Or idle praise enslave the self in man ! What higher end than this, to find what GOD Has set to be the destined goal for each, To feel through every sense the native power Enriched by grace, and every work a joy, As meet for offring to the LORD of life ! Not less than this is life for love for GOD. J.B. I THE DIVINE CALL " Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us ? ... Here am I ; send me." Isa. vi. 8. "I ... beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called." Eph. iv. i. I. The strong saints whom, in all ages, GOD has used for the doing of His will, or for the showing forth of His love, have usually had, as the deter- mining fact of their lives, some clear call of GOD which they have answered in glad, brave self- surrender; or some conviction of truth which has laid hold of their being with transforming power, and made them the prophets and teachers of their times. If there be, in faith, in work, in character, a living response to GOD'S love and truth, life becomes a lesson of His teaching, an interpretation of His will, a reflection of His love to the age in which we live, to those for whom we are called to work. The faith, the knowledge, the enthusiasm of the humblest worker for GOD, are divine energies that live on, fulfilling GOD'S ends in GOD'S time. From many a holy hidden life the sacred fire is caught that will shine in glowing deeds and words when its source is unknown and forgotten by all save 3 4 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS by the FATHER " which seeth in secret." l The call, the appointed work, will not be the same for all. GOD'S holy will is to be done " in earth as it is in heaven," where the angels serve in different orders, not one of which can be spared from the completeness of the heavenly economy. " There are . . . many kinds of voices in the world," 2 each with its own signification, each with its own power to tell out the praises of GOD 3 ; if one be silent, GOD'S self- revealing is less than perfect. As GOD spake in times past, so now in us His will is revealed and done "in many parts and many ways." 4 Take courage, then, and take reverent note that every baptized child of GOD has his or her own personal call to an appointed place in the kingdom of heaven, and in the nature of our response to that call lies the worth and dignity of life which has its " exceeding great reward " in the abiding fruitfulness that is assured to obedience. 5 II. You want to learn this broad truth from encouraging examples ? Consider some of those through whom GOD'S purpose of the ages has had its fulfilment. We may learn helpful lessons of life from them. Abraham, accepting his high vocation with a courageous faith that made him " the friend of GOD." 6 Moses at the Bush, conquering his fear and 1 S. Matt. vi. 4, 6. 2 i Cor. xiv. 10. 3 i S. Pet. ii. 9. 4 Heb. i. i. 5 S. John xv. 16. 6 Gen. xii. 1-5 ; Isa. xli. 8 ; S. Jas. ii. 23. THE DIVINE CALL 5 hesitation, and proving worthy to stand alone as the one prophet " whom the LORD knew face to face." * The child Samuel answering the divine voice, " Speak ; for Thy servant heareth," 2 and through his innocent-hearted obedience becoming " estab- lished to be a prophet of the LORD." 3 Isaiah, gazing upon his glorious vision, hearing a call that was in itself a revelation of highest truth, and answering in all humility, " Here am I ; send me." 4 The Blessed Virgin Mary, receiving with all womanly modesty, humility and self-surrender, the annunciation of the honour and the mystery for which she is for ever called blessed. 5 S. John, living his loving life under the control, and by the inspiration of the eternal truth that "GOD is Love." 6 S. Paul, blinded by the glory which shone from the Presence of the Risen and Ascended CHRIST, crying, "LORD, what wilt Thou have me to do?" 7 and yielding himself to do and to suffer with a lion- hearted courage and a quenchless faith. Many a saint, many a worker, many a thinker, since called, claimed, inspired, impelled by GOD self-revealed in some one flash of truth, some one imperative com- mand of love, some one determining conviction. There they are, a long line of humanity's noblest; 1 Deut. xxxiv. 10. 2 i Sam. iii. 10. 3 i Sam. iii. 20. 4 Isa. vi. 8. 5 S. Luke i. 26-37. 6 i S. John iv. 8. 7 Acts ix. 6. 6 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS they through whose work and witness GOD conquers and reigns; "a great cloud of witnesses," 1 they vouch for the faithfulness of GOD, they show the possibilities of regenerate human life, the influence of their life and work passes into our present heritage of faith, they stand as witnesses whose own lives interpret for us the condition of our lives. These all tell us that He Who calls us, Who cheers us by His promise, is " faithful." 2 III. And now, as we are to consider together our relation to GOD and to our work, it is well (as it seems to me) that we recall, in solemn earnestness, the facts and truths which have been in the past the vehicle or the interpretation of GOD'S call to ourselves. Feelings and ideas may change, our character and aims are modified as life develops, but the divine motive and principle of life must remain unchanged, though even more deeply under- stood, if life is to be strong and fruitful, if we are to have both power and contentment in work, if through the toil and tears of our sowing-time, we are to see, far off, the joy of our harvest-time. We speak living words, we do work that shall abide, when the reason for all we do or say may be found in the fact that GOD has chosen and ordained us by a grace-giving call, 3 that we have answered in an irrevocable self-surrender. What directed us to our work ? How were we called ? Had we a strong unmistakable call such as those we have just now considered ? Most of 1 Heb. xii. i. 2 i Thess. v. 34; Heb. x. 23 ; xi. u. 3 S. John xv. 1 6. THE DIVINE CALL 7 you have had no such call. Was it, then, your liking for intellectual pursuits ? Was it your love of children ? Was it the need of choosing a pro- fession in which you could do well for yourselves, or for those in some way dependent upon you ? Perhaps it was something even less considerable than these things which drew you to the work that you have undertaken. There is not much evidence of a divine call in all this, you say. But do not judge hastily. What we call the accidents and commonplace things of life are generally the vehicle, or the interpretation of a divine call. Did your work lead to a discovery in yourself of power or capacity before unknown ? Did it show you ways of glad usefulness, of wondrous self-realization, of sweet rewards ? While it brings out your individuality, does it also make higher calls upon your being ? Then GOD is calling you, through your work, to that ministry in which you may best glorify Him, and develop each your own peculiar baptismal gift. Has your work helped you to understand, as never before, some truth, some revelation of .GOD to your own soul, which, maybe, first came to you long ago, in childhood, one day when GOD took you in His arms and spoke to you sweet words that your heart has wonderingly cherished ever since ? Does it explain and enforce truth which in the past GOD led you to hear or to read, and at which your soul awoke to a sense both of its dignity and its responsibility ? Then GOD is using the present to interpret His call given in the past. Ah, yes. Look back, there was a day when 8 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS was it ? that GOD looked you in the face, laid His hand upon you, claimed you as His own, gave you a gift of love that should resolve itself into a call for service, and become a pledge of power in yourself for fruitful work. Life took a bright hue then work or pain, trial or conquest, we felt we could meet and bear it all. We gazed into our FATHER'S face through a mist of happy tears ; life was glad, lovely, thrilling, and we thought we had given GOD our whole heart. And all that is now so long ago, and the world, with its sights and sounds of dull routine the world, with its subtle joys, its infinite pains has first dulled our sense of GOD'S love, and then has offered us other love than His. Routine dulls the fire of enthusiasm ; human love and earthly desire dispute with GOD the sovereignty of the heart An inspector's report is of present value, and the Master's " well done " x is so far off. Self, and not the work, for its own sake, and for GOD'S, seems the centre of life and interest. Yes, it is all very depressing, and each struggle with apathy, and with the dread of spiritual failure, seems to leave us with less hope, less confidence in ourselves, and with less faith in GOD. Although it would be no idle word if I assured you of my entire sympathy in the spiritual difficulties that are incident to the life upon which you have entered, I will not offer you so feeble a thing as human sympathy. How can I do so ? There stands among you the Master Himself! As you * S. Matt. xxv. 21. THE DIVINE CALL g work and think and pray He bends over you ! His Sacred Heart feels the manifold pain that vexes you. He gathers up every hope, every act of love and faith, every longing, every effort, into the fullness of His eternal intercession for you. Where the servant is, there is the Master, and every effort of faith, love, obedience, binds the soul closer to Him, and is answered by a gift of grace or power, is rewarded by that smile of divine fellowship that makes the dullest work bright as angels' service. Hear what He would say. " My child, I know thy pain and sorrow and misgiving. I know thy temptations and thy difficulties. In My life, passion, death, I bore them all, I dealt with them all. Even now I am feeling them with thee, and if thou love Me will bear them in thee. Because thou art Mine, because I have set My love upon thee, because I gave My life for thee, I will fulfil My life in thee. Hold thou fast to Me in faith and love, and My strength shall be made perfect in thy weakness." 1 Hear Him, when the strain of life seems too great to be borne, when work is a disappointment, when the days are joyless and weary. Hear Him, too, when work is found to be meat and drink for the soul's life, 2 when the days are swift and glad, when the eager flow of thought and feeling bears you on, and difficulties vanish, and you seem already to gather an " exceeding great reward " in the blossom- ing of the fresh young lives about you. Yes, hear Him ; He has always a message to you that only you can hear, and which only He may speak, of 1 2 Cor. xii. 9. 2 S. John iv. 34. io NOBLE OBLIGATIONS tender sympathy, of strong encouragement, of high command. To the soul that has once heard His call, He has many things to say, and He waits to say them, until our need, our courage, our faith, our love, make it His hour to speak, and make the soul able to hear and to bear His message. IV. Here, in these quiet hours in which we are to rest and think and pray together, let us go back to the starting-points of life, that we may hear again that divine voice that spoke so long ago, that we may learn GOD'S will better, and may take up our life again with a chastened yet bracing perception of what He would have us do, bear, or realize in it. Let us do this, not merely that we may have our enthusiasm of life stirred again, but that we may re-consecrate life with a fuller sense of responsibility, but, please GOD, also with a deeper and happier sense of grace and power. We will tell Him of our sins, our mistakes, our omissions, our failures. We will face the truth about ourselves, with all our faults of will, of thought, of impulse, with all that may have spoilt the past. We will take note of the smallness, the meanness, the insincerity, the selfishness, of our work and our aims. We will see where we have missed the truth, or misused divine grace. We will do this, not that we may become sad, afflicted, morbid, sentimental, but that we may confess our sin, repudiate it, forsake it ; that GOD'S absolution being spoken we may go forward glad, free, strong. And we will take note of GOD'S goodness, of the blessings, the helps, the encouragements, the victories, THE DIVINE CALL n in which He has shown His love, that we may not fear, but be brave enough to forget those things which are behind us, and to reach forth unto those things which are before, pressing " toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of GOD in CHRIST JESUS." x 1 Phil. iii. 13, 14. 12 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS II DEDICATION " LORD, what wilt Thou have me to do ? " Acts ix. 6. " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of GOD, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto GOD, which is your reasonable service." Rom. xii. i. I. The call of GOD has its correspondent in the divine promise. Vocation and grace must go together, as twin facts, if life is to be strong and definite. The will must answer to both. To obey the call is to leave, to outgrow, the past ; to respond to the grace, to accept the promise, is to be self- committed to a higher obedience, and a fuller responsibility. And so, we have not only to review life, in the way we have already considered ; we have also to make or to renew our self-dedication. To answer a divine call that is truly understood is self-dedication. To make an act of self-dedica- tion is to claim the grace, to take our place as heirs of the promise, that ever goes with the divine call. II. But, "self-dedication," the word has in it a ring of sternness and sacrifice. It seems to indicate a point beyond which life must wear a different look, and speak with a changed voice. It seems to tell of a state, or a covenant, or a duty that DEDICATION 13 demands so much denial of self, such uncompromis- ing rejection of the world, such yielding up of the will, such sacrifice, maybe, of what seems to make life sweet and fair, that we are troubled and per- plexed by the thought of it. Is it not a breaking with the past, violently perhaps, or painfully, and a leading of life henceforth in obedience to new obligations ? How can one, by an act of the will, put away the past, and realize a new inspiration, and walk by a new rule ? Have we not tried it again and again, only to find habit, and impulses, and circumstances too hard for us ? Can we trust the feelings which prompt us to this self-dedica- tion ? We dread the effect of the dull, hard realities of daily work, which will put us to many a rude test. No, you scarcely feel ready for such an act. There is something more than the shrinking of self from that which will curb and restrain it. You feel that self-dedication is such a very solemn matter for your soul that you do not like to make it without understanding GOD and yourself better. Now, I believe that GOD never calls us to do anything for which He has not prepared us, and for which He has not ordered our life. It is true that GOD calls us to-day to accept the duties of life with a stronger recognition of His claim upon us in them ; that He calls us to devote ourselves to His service by an irrevocable self-dedication ; that He wills that we deal with the work and circumstances of life, now and henceforward, in a strong purposeful 14 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS way, so that as " all things work together for good to them that love GOD, to them that are the called according to His purpose," z so, in all things we may fulfil that purpose, responding loyally to His call. But you do not come to this day, to this point of life, without a preparation for it. Consider your inward life since you began really to understand the worth, the possibilities, the responsibilities of your being. From time to time the subtle power of some stronger life has influenced you for good. Things honest, pure, lovely, and of good report 2 have appealed to you, and have found response in your hearts. As some ideal of holiness or of great- ness has been shown to you, you have aspired to reach it. You have had longings that only GOD can now satisfy, 3 longings that should show you what GOD means you to be in the heavenly order to which you belong. With all these longings and aspirations, if they were anything better than passing feeling or empty sentiment, there was the impulse to do something ; to strive with the hindering condi- tions of your nature and surroundings ; to put your- self into effective relation with GOD, so that your true self should find the higher satisfaction for which you craved. These longings and aspirations are, as it were, messengers that ever go before the face of the LORD to prepare His way. By them you have been led, taught, prepared for a day of decision. What have you longed and aspired to be in GOD'S service, to do in the world for Him ? That you may 1 Rom. viii. 38. 2 Phil. iv. 8. 3 p s . xlii. i, a. DEDICATION 15 be, that you may do, in the consecrated life that may begin with your present decision. What satisfaction has your spirit craved for in GOD ? That will be yours when the last barrier of pride and selfishness, of doubt and mistrust, is borne down by His love accepted in your self-consecra- tion. Self-dedication, then, is the yielding of yourself to GOD, to be and to do, to realize and to become, all that in your holiest longings and aspirations you have felt to be possible ; all that GOD has shown you and promised you in times of insight, of thought, of prayer. It is life lived so close to GOD, that, we being made strong by the outflow- ing helpful energy of His life, our inspiring ideals may be realized in work and character. It is the yielding of the will, ever withdrawn from self- pleasing, to the will of GOD, to the imperative claim of His love. It is a life of submission, in the obedi- ence which makes perfect. It is life " from GOD, in the face of GOD, unto GOD." III. And now, to you who are resolving upon the life of self-dedication, and to you who have already entered upon it, what shall I say ? Let us think upon its character, its blessedness, its happi- ness. (a) It is quite clear that self-dedication is not an episode, a chapter, in a life's history. A retreat, a mission, an illness, a great repentance, a particular experience, either of these may be the turning point of life, may lead to the great decision that shall determine work and character, may be the beginning 16 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS of self-dedication. Self-dedication itself is a life's resolve, a life's work, a life's sacrifice. It is con- summated, it is accomplished, when life's work is done, and we resign our spirit into our FATHER'S hands " with conscious will." Would you know beforehand the history of self- dedication, the history that must, as of a divine necessity, repeat itself in each dedicated life ? Follow the footsteps of our Holy Redeemer, through all the days of His wondrous life. There were days of sunny sweetness, but there were nights of strenuous prayer; there was the strong, deep love of some souls to cheer Him, but there was hatred, misunderstanding, unbelief, contempt from the many ; there was the joy of doing good, but daily work brought much that caused deep grief of heart ; He had friends and disciples, but not even the best of them could really sympa- thize with Him in His joy or sorrow; there was ever the demand of a selfish and unthankful world upon the rich treasures of His heart and life which He gave so royally, and there was no reward but the Cross. Even His self-dedication was not complete, could not win the end for which He gave Himself, until He had exhausted the possibilities of failure by the uttermost of sacrifice. It was only on the Cross, in the act of death, that He could say, " It is finished," 1 "FATHER, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit." 2 And are we brave, strong, loving enough for this ? From the throne of His glory the CHRIST still asks 1 S. John xix. 30. 2 S. Luke xxiii. 46. DEDICATION 17 the question of His suffering life, " Are ye able to drink of the cup that I drank of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I was baptized with ? " r and it needs an apostolic faith to say " We are able," and we remember that of the two who thus dared to answer, only one could stand by the Crucified. Ah, can we dare all for Him ? He calls, and we yearn to obey ; He loves, and we are constrained by His love 2 ; but, where can we take refuge from our cowardly doubting selves ? How shall our timid love become the strength to do and to suffer ? Hear and answer first another question. At the crisis of a life JESUS presses one question home to the heart, again and again, until, thrown back upon ourselves, forced to question and to scrutinize every part of our inward life, we give Him the answer of truth. It is the old searching question, upon the answer to which will depend all reparation for the past, all the possibilities of the future "Lovest thou Me ? " 3 It is pressed, not as the gentle question of love that inspires response, but as a living incisive word, cutting through every web and growth of self- deception ; revealing the soul to itself 4 ; forcing it to give, as before the bar of GOD, a true answer to the question, so hard and so bitter a question sometimes, as to the reality and worth of our religion, our penitence, our faith ; making us distrust all the emotions that have hitherto swayed our hearts. If, then, we can, in all humility, answer the question as S. Peter did, " LORD, Thou knowest all things ; 1 S. Matt. xx. 22 ; S. Mark x. 38, 39. 2 2 Cor. v. 14. 3 S. John xxi. 15-17. 4 Heb. iv. 12. :8 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS Thou knowest that I love Thee," even though as we say it we recognize the poverty of our affection, it is well. One who can say that is equal to the largest demands of after life. Now, we can answer the question as to our ability to meet the demands of the dedicated life. Love has the secret and the answer in itself. No matter if it be feeble or timid, every emotion, impulse, volition of our love is the answer of our being to the self-revelation of CHRIST. Love is that mystery of being in which heart speaks to heart, and lives yield to each other their best trea- sures ; so, then, love is the secret, the principle of self-dedication, having in itself all that may warrant our repeating the Apostle's answer to the Master's question, " We are able," for, because we love Him Who first loved us, all that is the result of love in our life passes into His and has in Him its eternal acceptance r ; and all that is in Him of grace and truth 2 is given forth, to be in us the strength and wisdom for holy work, to conquer through our faith and patience, to fulfil the eternal purpose of the Incarnation through our self-dedication. No, there is no failure in the life that is lived in humble, persevering love, for there is a divine reciprocity : that is, the redemption of the inward life from the selfishness through which the powers of the world would reach to inflict failure. Love rejoices in that first great mystery of the Gospel which is " CHRIST in you, the hope of glory," 3 but it is gladly, reverently conscious, too, of the second great mystery of the regenerate life, that " we are in Him." 1 i S. John iv. 9. 2 S. John i. 16, 17. 3 Col. i. 27. DEDICATION 19 (/?) If this is the nature of the dedicated life, as it is to be realized in fruitful experience, we may easily understand its blessedness. Blessedness has been well described as a state in which desire is calmed and satisfied by the absolute good. There can hardly be a greater evil than restless, unsatisfied desire. It spoils all work. It makes effort to be desultory and without heart. It makes one selfish and peevish. Present good is lost in a foolish ambition for the unattainable. It cheats us with day-dreams, and leaves us faithless and irreso- lute, unable to stand the test of life when the cause of CHRIST, or our duty as disciples, requires loyalty, consistency, or self-effacing work. But in the life of self-dedication, GOD is chosen as the Object of all desire. In His holy will, in His love, in His sustaining grace, in the manifold satisfaction that is found in all experience when the mysteries of life are understood as the mysteries of GOD, we taste, we know, we possess that absolute perfect good that stills desire by giving the highest and purest satisfaction. And yet further, we may understand blessedness as a certain character which attaches to this divinely- sustained life of dedication. Already it has a dignity, a glory, a sanctity which are of GOD, which the graces of His ineffable Being won, and worn by all when mind and spirit ever seek satisfaction in Him. Already we are kept by the power of GOD, 1 through faith, unto a glory and joy and wonder of salvation beyond our present power to think, but which even 1 i S. Pet. i. 5. 2O NOBLE OBLIGATIONS now sheds upon life its sweet light of blessedness, making it effective for present work, by " the powers of the world to come." 1 There passes into the will the strength of GOD'S eternal purpose, into the heart the peace and gladness of His heaven, into the understanding the light and inspiration of His wisdom, and work is lifted above the level of human praise and blame, and is blessed with the divine recognition. And there is the blessedness of personal character. As we faithfully recognize our " noble obligations " "knowledge of GOD, the memory of a self-dedication, the reception of a supernatural gift " there will be given even here the dignity, the power, the worthi- ness that will have their eternal recognition in " praise and honour and glory at the appearing of JESUS CHRIST." 2 (y) And what shall I say of the happiness of the dedicated life ? Is it all happiness ? Ah, no ; for we have seen the shadow of the Cross upon it. Of that, however, we must think by and by. Now we are held by the thought of its real happiness. Of happiness, as of peace, our LORD would say, " Not as the world giveth, give I unto you." 3 To all of us, I hope, life has brought its joys the love of friends, the charm of beautiful things, the pleasures of work and of healthy amusements. As long as any youth remains in your hearts the world and this present life will offer you joys that you may take with all thankfulness. Yet it is something more than a preacher's commonplace when I say that you 1 Heb. vi. 5. 2 i S. Pet. i. 7. 3 S. John xiv. 27. DEDICATION 21 will enjoy them as GOD means you to enjoy them only when through them all you recognize His infinite all-fulfilling love, and that tenderness that is over all His works. 1 But not in these alone will the dedicated life find its real happiness. The object of CHRIST'S teaching to the heart is that His joy may abide in us, 2 and that our joy may be fulfilled. As we share in His life and His work, as life is daily lived because of Him, the eternal joy of His life, "the joy of complete surrender of love to love," because the abiding con- scious happiness of our souls, and the joy that thus rises from the Sacred Heart of the Eternal SON into personal consciousness in us, becomes ever more and more complete, as our self-surrender is the yielding of desire to be wholly satisfied in the will and love of GOD, as our life, in service and sacrifice, is ever more truly the offering of love to love. 1 Ps. cxlv. 9 2 S. John xv. n. 22 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS III LIFE WORK " We are labourers together with GOD." i Cor. in. g. " Be strong . . . and work : for I am with you, saith the LORD of Hosts." Hag. ii. 4. I. It is the teaching of the Gospel that our LORD has given "to every man his work," 1 to each that work to do, that place to fill in His Church, which will train the individual character, and develop special graces in the best way, as each one sees GOD from the standpoint of personal work and personal need, and realizes himself in relation to GOD. In considering our life work, and our preparation or equipment for it, we need be in no doubt as to its place in the divine economy. Teaching is one of the ministries provided for the Church by the HOLY GHOST, 2 and the gifts needed for it are those that we are taught to ask and to expect of Him. 3 But, obeying the call to work, taking up the work reverently as a charge from GOD, as a sacred ministry, valuing it as the sphere and the discipline of spiritual growth, we yet feel the sense of weakness. Here, in the guarded quiet of our prayer and thought, 1 S. Mark xiii. 34. 2 Eph. iv. 1 1 ; Rom. xii. 7. 3 i Cor. xii. 8. LIFE WORK 23 we do seem to apprehend the divine ideal of our ministry. But we have to go down from the hill-top of our devotion into the plain of effort and practical duty. What truth shall we try to grasp, that, being enshrined in our hearts, shall keep our enthusiasm fresh, shall brace our will, shall give healing consola- tion, when work is hard and painful ? S. Paul has an answer for us, " we are labourers together with Goo." 1 Moses, faltering in his accept- ance of his high vocation, and lacking that self- confidence which is not inconsistent with faith and humility, is assured of GOD'S Presence, " Certainly I will be with thee." 2 " Be strong . . . and work ; for I am with you, saith the LORD of Hosts." 3 That was GOD'S message to the men who represented the renewed and re-dedicated life of Israel. It was a message of something more than encouragement. It claims man as GOD'S fellow-workers. It declares that the moral strength for work depends upon the consciousness of that fellowship. " Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the world," 4 speaks the same voice on a later and more glorious day ; and the promise is given with the great teaching commission of the Church. Let us, then, face the work of our life, with its manifold demands, its perplexing problems, cheered and strengthened with this thought of our fellowship with GOD. Therein is the assurance of power ; thence comes the sustained enthusiasm of work ; in the reality of that is the rectifying of all moral 1 i Cor. iii. 9. 2 Exod. iii. 12. 3 Hag. ii. 4. 4 S. Matt, xxviii. 20, R.V. marg. 24 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS ideals. We declare our privilege and our respon- sibility, our calling and our power, when we say that " our fellowship is with the FATHER, and with His SON JESUS CHRIST." 1 In this faith, with this con- sciousness, we deal day by day with the world's work and needs, and the sweet strengthening reality is ever more deeply felt as experience forces us back again and again upon the beginning and ground of our confidence. 2 How it dwarfs and makes ridiculous all small selfish aims, all petty personal feelings ! How patient, how orderly, how thorough will work become as we catch the spirit and method of GOD ! How hopeful, how ready, how ungrudging, how loving, will our efforts be ! What high principles, what pure motives, what sublime independence, what noble individuality will there be in all that we do ! " My FATHER worketh hitherto, and I work." 3 When the world flatters, and smiles on us so winningly, how healthful is the atmosphere of truth which this awful fellowship will throw around us ! When we are weary, depressed, wronged, mis- understood, how sweet are the consolations of GOD for His fellow-workers! II. Here, then, is the truth that we are in search of, one that will correct, sustain, comfort us in our work the truth of our fellowship with GOD. And now, bearing it in mind, let us consider the devotional side of our work. I will not say that if you do not pray you cannot do good work. I will say more. Your prayer is a 1 i S. John i. 3. 2 Heb. iii. 14. 3 S. John v. 17. LIFE WORK 25 real part of your work. Consider ! As we pray we bring ourselves to be disciplined and strengthened for the tasks and demands of the day. In thought, in the determination of will with GOD, we go over the duties, the needs, the trials that lie before us, and so, in a certain way, in spirit we have done the work. In our prayer we have overcome the slothful temper, the cowardice, the pride, or the misapprehen- sion that would stand in the way of successful work. It is in prayer, too, that our mistaken ideals are corrected, our follies are reproved, our false ambitions are humbled ; sentimentality is replaced by healthy feeling. It is as we pray for the accomplishment of GOD'S glory, and not of our self-will, that we win the "grace to bring our gifts of reason and knowledge, of character and place, our opinions and our argu- ments," our plans and our ambitions, " silent and prostrate before the Presence of GOD, and to take back for use only that which has borne the purifying light of the Eternal " : grace to recognize the true purpose and meaning of personal life and work. But when we have done this, " what strength, what patience, what self-control, what humility, what hope, what cleansing of every spiritual sense " will follow for the healing of our distresses, for the enrichment of service and character ! I But, you say, what time have I to pray ? My home and school duties are so many, and so imperative. How can I take the contents of my life and deal with them, as you suggest, in prayer ? 1 Westcott. 26 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS Yes, I understand your difficulty thoroughly, and I know that for most of you a prayerful life must mean self-discipline, and perhaps difficult readjust- ment of duties. But let me suggest a way. It may cost some trouble, but we can all rise in the morning early enough to secure a fixed and reasonable time for prayer before we leave our room. The school prayers should not be lifeless forms. The Scripture lesson should bring its own thoughts of teaching or of comfort to our own souls. " Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?" We may keep alive the sense of GOD'S Presence by ejaculatory prayers. Can we not find time at least for a brief earnest prayer at midday ? If the day offers no earlier opportunity, the evening's occupations might begin with our Bible-reading or meditation. At night, we owe it to ourselves and to GOD to see that we secure a time for self-examination and prayer before we are too fatigued for proper devo- tion. It is not, however, the length, or even the frequency of our prayers that I would specially insist upon, but the need of putting our whole heart into those acts of devotion for which we have the time and the need, so that each prayer shall be the putting of our work into GOD'S hands for blessing and fulfilment, the bringing of ourselves into touch with Him, that we may deal with work in the sense of our relation to Him and of His sustaining grace in us. You know all this, but I press it upon your attention, not only because it may be advisable for some of you to attend to the duty of prayer and LIFE WORK 27 meditation more carefully and systematically than in the past, but also because I would have you realize, as you can only realize in devotion, not only the glad truth of your fellowship with GOD, but the higher spiritual truth that you are one with the life of GOD, and are therefore equal to the strain of the days : that your will is invincible by evil if you consciously unite it with GOD'S will ; that your work, if prepared for, and dedicated in prayer, is one with the divine working ; because your true life, your sense of fellowship with GOD, the energy of fruitful service, the power of righteousness, is the life of JESUS in you : a truth which you may accept by faith, but which you will realize only as far as com- munion with GOD is the spiritual preparation, and supplies the spiritual elements of all work. III. And what of the practical side of work ? If you set yourselves to teach the prescribed subjects ably and diligently, so that you satisfy an inspector, you have done well according to one standard of judgment, but not according to another. The world asks you for instruction : GOD asks you to educate, to cultivate, train, and teach the whole of a child's complex nature. This is more than instruc- tion. By your instruction you will inform the minds and guide the understanding of the children, but it is by your influence, your personality, your faith, your love, your consistency that you will educate. The natures with which you have to deal are so plastic and sensitive that your own spiritual and moral force will count for a great deal in their education. Your manner and temper, the ideas and 28 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS the principles that are expressed by your work, and, I believe, even the strong thoughts of good or evil in your own souls, will all have their effect upon the children. If, then, you live in the light of GOD'S Presence if your life is, through your faith and devotion, the self- fulfilment of the Incarnate life of JESUS they will learn their part of "the eternal lesson " by every response which their hearts make to your teaching. But if you are not in touch with GOD, if you are not real in faith and love, in prayer and obedience, their inward life will starve, not grow, under your care. If the teacher be selfish, evil, careless, flippant, unmindful of the realities of which he must at least use and teach the symbols, the formal lessons are barren of spiritual good, and the child catches the tone of folly, and the sentiment of practical unbelief. Again, lessons of morality, truthfulness, honour, no less than those of order and cleanliness, are not so much the words which the teacher speaks, or the rules which he makes, as the impress of a CHRlST-made personality upon the child's life of thought and feeling. Education, then, is the life work, to be wrought out through the exercise of spiritual powers, by the outflowing energies of grace, by the subtle influence of personal holiness in a word, by the yielding of the whole self to be the expression, the instrument, of the indwelling power of the CHRIST. You think I am setting before you a high ideal, perhaps only an ideal. That would be a shallow trick, unworthy of an occasion like the present. We meet to gaze upon truth, not to indulge in fancy. LIFE WORK 29 Life without an ideal must be a failure. Work without an ideal is the aimless unordered outcome of selfishness and necessity. Yet it is so fatally easy to have ideals that mislead and disappoint, being only sentimental, imaginative, human. Not so, however, is it with this high ideal which I have tried to shape and set before you. The life of JESUS was something more than the setting up of an ideal for you : it was given, it was lived to be a reality in you. As we learn of Him, and bring our theories or the world's requirements to the test of the Gospel, we shall often have to replace some ideals by others higher and nobler, but this ideal of personal work will never prove a mistake, for since the CHRIST Who is proposed to us as our Ideal in work and in character and in method is the CHRIST in us, the hope and the pledge of all the possibilities of work, of all blessed- ness of life, of all greatness of character, of all glory of reward, it follows that we have grace and power to realize that Ideal, for " of His fullness have we all received, and grace for grace." l One of the holiest of living teachers has said that " in bestowing His gifts GOD never intends to super- sede the individual discipline of those to whom they are given." 2 Because you have received of GOD certain graces and powers, together with His call for your service, " it is your part and duty " now so to discipline your own life, and so to yield to the divine discipline, that grace may not be in vain. The sphere of work is the appointed sphere of self- 1 S. John i. 16. 2 R. M. Benson. 30 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS discipline, effective work is the outcome of a regu- lated and disciplined life. Suffer me to point to three classes of facts that call for brave and prayerful self-discipline : 1. Faults of character. They are so difficult to see in oneself, and " the candid friend " is not very welcome, and is not often believed. Sometimes (such is our strange and subtle self-flattery) much of the evil in ourselves is regarded as good and natural. You may discover, or, rather, GOD will show you, your faults of character if you are in earnest 'to know the truth about yourself. Your most frequent tempta- tions indicate your special weaknesses. Weak parts of work indicate weak points in character. Now, you will strive with all patience and faith and courage to remedy these faults. You will seek daily the grace of the HOLY SPIRIT, and obediently follow His holy leading. You will yield heart and soul and mind and will to be so possessed by Him that the elements of your natural character may be transformed and may become the shining lineaments of CHRIST-likeness. Yes, this will mean toil and patience, faith and courage ; it may cost us manifold suffering, that will mark us, indeed, with the inefface- able sign of the Crucified. But the sign of the proven, accepted life will ever be the bearing of "the marks of the LORD JESUS." 1 2. Professional faults, e.g., a devotion to bad traditions, faults of style or of method, faults caused or allowed by ignorance. It is humiliating to be told of them : it is disagreeable to find them hinted 1 Gal. vi. 17. LIFE WORK 31 at in an inspector's report ; it is painful and disturb- ing to be brought up in face of a difficulty by a sense of incapacity. Now, if we owe it to ourselves to check and correct these faults, since it is our evident duty to ourselves to attain to the best of which we are capable, we owe it still more to GOD and to His work, for a purpose of GOD is entrusted to us, and with it a measure of grace equal to the demands of the best work. Be willing to " pocket pride " and learn. Do not be content with less than the best in yourself, or your work. Practical wisdom is one of the gifts of the HOLY GHOST. " Stir up the gift that is in you," 1 and bravely and steadfastly amend, readjust, your methods, your rules, so that, under GOD, you may become " perfect in every good work." 2 3. Hindrances, in your homes, in school, in cir- cumstances. If we are resolute in doing GOD'S will, if we deal with vexatious matters with the tact, the sweet reasonableness that He will give, there is no hindrance that will not either give way or cease to be felt as a hindrance. It is true that there will often be need that we bear in mind the strong saying of Tennyson, "A man should make the hour, not this the man " ; but we conquer difficulties best as we meet them with the wisdom and determination that come from GOD, for then dealing with a difficulty is a healthful self-discipline. 1 2 Tim. i. 6. 2 Heb. xiii. 21. 32 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS These are plain, prosaic, practical matters. Yes, but it is in them that you are tested, that you succeed, or fail, in life's work. Oh, believe me, religion is not perfected in feeling, opinions, beliefs. Faith has its perfect work ; vocation is fulfilled ; we win our souls in patience ; GOD is glorified by the real strong dealing of the whole self with the contents of daily life, for they are the ordered chain of facts in which GOD'S purpose is either fulfilled or frustrated. SACRIFICE 33 IV SACRIFICE " If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it : and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it." S. Matt. xvi. 24, 25. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." S. John xii. 24. I. Woven into the very texture of life, giving to it its sternness and its pathos, making it ofttimes a marvel or a tragedy, fixed by a mysterious law as the condition of fuller life of fruitful work and of assured glory, 1 is the principle of sacrifice. If we would effect good for others we must do it at the cost of some real sacrifice. Even truth itself cannot be vindicated, it cannot live with regenerating power in the hearts of men, until some have suffered or died for it. Not even the divine compassion can save us from this necessity of sacrifice as a principle or a condition of Christian life and work, for upon the mercies of GOD there is based His claim upon our whole selves. 2 With the call or commission to special service there comes, too, a divine word telling us " by what death " to sin, to self, to the world we must " glorify GOD." 3 1 S. John xii. 24. 2 Rom. xii. i. 3 S. John xxi. 19. F 34 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS II. Sacrifice is the highest and the noblest act of a loving soul. There is a royalty in it that wins our instinctive homage. In it a man's or woman's true self the GOD-like regenerate self that is so generally hidden and cramped by selfishness and conventionality is shown in its beauty and majesty : too loving to be selfish, too great to be conventional, splendid in its scorn of falsehood and wrong, it is a power of GOD which accomplishes an eternal work. Now and then some sublime act of sacrifice that consecrates some principle, or achieves some good for others, wins our admiration and gives living witness to the Presence of GOD, and the power of truth, so that faint hearts are strengthened, and a renewed enthusiasm stirs the hearts of all " men of good will." A nation or an age is poor indeed if it has not such acts, such lives, to enrich it. But not less important, not less worthy, are those holy hidden lives in which the spirit of sacrifice inspires and glorifies the homely deeds and courtesies and charities of everyday existence. Man has ever felt the power and beauty of sacrifice, and he has shown the natural homage of the human heart for so GOD-like a thing by fixing his emotions and convictions in the poetry, the painting, the sculpture that tell to every succeeding age the story of ideals realized, of faith and truth upheld, oi unstained honour, of love stronger than death. Human nature is never so grand, so noble, so worthy of reverence, as when it realizes and fulfills in sacrifice its own magnificent possibilities. Then all SACRIFICE 35 that is strongest, tenderest, truest in man, all that is pure, holy, beautiful in a word, the man's true self triumphing over life and death, claims his immortality, and is crowned with the crown of life. 1 Yes, man is wonderful ; transfigured through love and sacrifice he stands as though clothed in the glory of GOD. But we look away from this idealized manhood and womanhood, and we learn the secret of this transfiguring power of sacrifice. Upon a Cross, uplifted between earth and heaven, pouring out His life in shame and agony, in darkness and dereliction, hangs the Son of Man, conquering the world and the devil, sin and death, by the utter- most sacrifice, and winning the victory and glory and crown of sacrifice for all humanity, consecrating pain and sorrow, and throwing upon the dread mystery of evil the light of the eternal purpose there fulfilled in love. " It is finished." 2 We will not try to frame thoughts and words of praise for His " tremendous sacrifice." He " above all blessing blest " is not best honoured by words. Prostrate before the crucifix, with humble hearts penetrated with love for our Master and Saviour, pierced with sorrow and shame for the pain and woe that were of our making, reverently trying to under- stand and to measure His wondrous sacrifice, we can only adore Him, and so surrender our hearts to Him, that the grace and might of His Passion may work in us " as a principle of transformation," making us, selfish and worldly as we are, " a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto GOD." 3 1 3 Tim. iv. 8 ; Rev. ii. 10. 2 S. John xix. 30. 3 Rom. xii. i. 36 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS III. The disciples of the Crucified should be as their Master. Sharers of His life they must follow Him in sacrifice. Fellowship with JESUS is not full, not beatific, if it be not " the fellowship of His sufferings." I All sides of His life of suffering and obedience must have their true correspondence in our life and character if we are to be " made like unto Him in His eternal and glorious kingdom." The secret, the power of sacrifice its joy as well as its motive is love. It was for love's sake that JESUS lived our life and died the death of the Cross. It is for love's sake, and by the power of love, that we follow Him. Sacrifice will be perfect in its motive, its joy, its fruitfulness as our love is not only the response to but the reproduction of His. This higher love and its development must be sought and attained in definite acts rather than in processes of thought, however devout or soaring. Won and impelled by the love of CHRIST, we yield Him self-denying service, and as we so serve we both know His love better and are won to love Him more ardently. So, then, religion is removed from the sphere of thought to that of work for its proof, its realiza- tion, its completion. It is not feeling, but action ; not receiving, but giving ; it is not a self-regarding matter, it is a GoD-ward exercise of the best in one's nature. It is GOD-ward life in the spirit of sacrifice. In ordinary life no act is so expressive as sacrifice. In it faith, hope, and love speak from the heart 1 Phil. iii. 10. SACRIFICE 37 of man to the heart of GOD. In each act of true sacrifice some energetic thought from the mind of GOD seems to find expression ; and the sacrifice itself is consummated by His blessing and self- revelation. It is the closest act of communion with the FATHER, for His love was shown to us through sacrifice. Yet let us not think that this is so because He delights in our pain. No. " GOD is Love," * and could the best in us be brought out into activity, could evil be destroyed out of our lives, could the righteousness of CHRIST be fulfilled in us by any other means, we are sure that the love of GOD would have devised those means. There is no royal road to blessedness, to holiness, to peace but " the high way of the holy Cross." But let us be definite. We may talk of the Cross of sacrifice, and of the glory to be won through it and only cheat ourselves by a sentiment. Fine ideas, deeply stirred emotions, even religious fervour may be anything but the religion of the Cross, anything but the reality of faith, hope or love. The whole life is to be offered in the spirit of sacrifice. Powers, opportunities, work, our personal gifts, our means, and even our sufferings, will all supply the means and occasions of self-devotion, the material and the opportunity of continual sacrifice. Let us consider first some of the things that concern chiefly the outward life : i. Time is to be offered as a perpetual offering. First, by withdrawing, saving it from selfish uses: 1 i S. John iv. 8. 38 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS that in prayer, in meditation, in the devout study of sacred things, in self-improvement for GOD'S work, we may devote it to His honour and glory as a treasure really given up in love. Secondly, by the watchful seizure and use of opportunities, for they are GOD'S hours, the times of CHRIST, set apart and sanctified by the will of GOD, that is understood by the recollected soul. 2. Work is an acceptable offering as we do it for GOD, and not as only for man; doing it humbly, that it may not minister to the lust of human praise; doing it as the faithful oblation of our powers ; putting our hearts into it, and conquering weariness, pain, disgust, hesitation, or whatever else would take from its heartiness. 3. Speech is a faculty to be used in GOD'S service. In the spirit of sacrifice we should so use it that it may be an instrument for GOD'S grace and truth, an offering humbly made in the practice of self-control, modesty, courtesy, brightness, gentleness. So, too, in the things that belong to the inward life, sacrifice should find scope and material, as the human will is merged in the divine will. i. Thought should be so directed in prayer and watchfulness, so taught by meditation on holy things, that it may be won from the folly and evil, the malice and the passion, the foolish imaginations and the sentimentality that so often hold it, and that it may be surrendered, held as a little kingdom in which GOD only shall reign, a place in which He shall ever speak and be always heard, the voice 01 eternal Truth. SACRIFICE 39 2. The affections^ too, must be sincerely offered, ruled in the spirit of sacrifice, that they may be both centred and satisfied in GOD. So to cherish yet to chasten human affection that it shall never dispute with the love of GOD the first place in our hearts, so to discipline self that lawful affection shall not become a weakness will cost pain ; it may seem like the needless and cruel putting away of life's greatest joys, and inward self-control is so very likely to be misunderstood even by those whom we love best. If all this is necessary then it seems too true that " religion contains an infinite sadness." It is only through experience that we shall learn that joy is reached through pain, that it is through patience that we win our souls x and grow strong. 3. Our inclinations, too, often conflict with the call of GOD, with the duties and claims of life, with Christian principles as we have been made to under- stand them. These also must be yielded lovingly and patiently. In such a sacrifice we win the victory over inward temptation. It is the self-oblation that forms character. It is the most precious form of daily obedience. In the life of sacrifice there is no matter or occasion too small to be considerable, or too trifling to be important. " He that despiseth little things, shall fall by little and little." IV. " It is not," then, " in great matters only that we are continually to offer ourselves for the glory of GOD. The trifles of daily life often tend to promote that as much or more than those rare events wherein He may call some favoured servants 1 S. Luke xxi. 19. 40 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS to magnify His holy Name." * But this view of sacrifice, as a law reaching to, and taking effect in, the small ordinary affairs and contents of life, as well as in the greater matters that do occasionally or specially demand it, does not make it appear heroic. To some it may even seem vexatious and trouble- some. Self-love and spiritual indolence make it more than unwelcome. We ask, " How can we be always remembering such a principle, and consciously applying it to the little things of life and thought and feeling ? " If you needed to make the effort that such a question would seem to contemplate your life would be very strained, joyless, and unnatural ; but one who lives in the strength of CHRIST, who has the mind of CHRIST, whose whole heart is yielded in love to CHRIST, will act naturally, and will fulfil the law of sacrifice in a truly natural-hearted way, ever prompted by the Holy Spirit within. There is nothing dazzling in this quiet work and self-effacement ; and but little to attract us if we only desire that life should be fulfilled in the achievements of certain ends attractive in them- selves, and which will win the admiration of the world. Well, it is good to remember both that " GOD is the Judge," and that the gladdest and best rewards of life and work will be from the hands ot the FATHER " which seeth in secret." 2 And the personal sacrifice thus made in small matters tests your vocation for higher service, or more splendid sacrifice. " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." 3 1 Guillor6. 2 S. Matt. vi. 1-18. 3 S. Luke xvi. 10. SACRIFICE 41 But your love is not satisfied only in such service ! You long, maybe, for some greater and more dis- tinctive service in which you may be more com- pletely and consciously " labourers together with GOD." x It is just this turning from " the trivial round, the common task," to the longing contempla- tion of some wished-for work or place or opportunity that seems greater or more desirable which makes us restless, unsettled, half-hearted, in the work that is given us to do in the present, and in those devotions in which our hearts should still themselves and be rested in GOD. The masters of the spiritual life have always said, what their wonderful experi- ence taught them, that vocation for special work is always shown and proved in small things, in faithfulness and obedience " in that which is least." It is not what you do, but what you are, that makes all service or sacrifice worthy, effective, acceptable. It is possible that some of you may be called to a life of special sacrifice ; e.g., some of you may be called to the religious life. Not all can even understand such a vocation. Very few have it. Yet, in a way, each one has a vocation, a call to a life as truly devoted as that of a religious, though it be lived in the world. Each of you can reflect the character of CHRIST, each may realize a special ideal of the spiritual life, each may live out some one principle of acceptable service as no one else can do. In your inward life, in your character, in your work you have each to answer even here to that new name 1 i Cor. iii. 9. 42 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS which you shall bear for ever in the great world to come. Let it be one steadfast purpose, formed as the outcome of this Retreat, that you will endeavour to understand perfectly what GOD wills you to be in mind and character, in the life of faith and work, in your methods and influence to realize that by all self-discipline, in all obedience, is the sacrifice required of all, for so GOD makes the saints, the workers, the thinkers, who are the selected in- struments of His will in all ages. Yet, I suppose, every one has something which can be made a special offering to GOD, talents, influence, all, in a word, that may mark us out as capable of any particular work for Him, in His Church or in the world, in our homes or in the sphere of private interest or affection. Whatever be our distinctive personal advantages or endowments, they are to be owned and used for GOD only. It will involve a great denial of self, the repudiation of merely personal ends, but " with such sacrifices GOD is well pleased." And there is another form of sacrifice. What is the particular sorrow, suffering, loss, that is the trial of life ? It is a matter in which the will may be offered to GOD. As CHRIST completed the offering of His life upon the Cross, so our spiritual troubles are a cross on which we, too, may truly offer our- selves as a complete and consummated sacrifice, which will effect to the full all that love can ask or desire. Yet one word more. For those who can so love GOD that life shall be one great act of self-oblation SACRIFICE 43 there is the joy of the LORD, the gladness that fills life as the sunshine, the peace that stills all passion and doubt, the healing of all heart-soreness and pain, the sure and certain hope, a glory in which all trial will be forgotten, all darkness dispelled, all evil destroyed, for then our life " is hid with CHRIST in GOD," l and the glory in which His life is fulfilled becomes the promise and the interpretation, the hope and the reality of ours. 1 Col. iii. 3. 44 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS THE DIVINE ACCEPTANCE " Well done, good and faithful servant ; . . . enter thou into the joy of thy LORD." S. Matt. xxv. 23. " GOD is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward His Name." Heb. vi. 10. I. In every period or crisis of life the imperative claims of GOD, of righteousness, of truth, are forced upon us. GOD calls us in a way that can only be answered in self-dedication and earnest work. Obedience is shown as the salvation of life. In self-surrender we find GOD and live. If our souls are awake, faithful, and loving " all that we experience is a communication " of GOD'S will, which is His love for us, ever reaching out to draw us to Himself, to guide, to control us. The heart of the Eternal FATHER seeks divine satisfac- tion in the responsive life of His human children ; and that they may understand it and be won by it, His love is ever being shown in its personal determinations in acts of mercy and providence. In that lies the eternal reason for the mystery of His care over us. " Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me." 1 1 Ps. cxxxix. 5. THE DIVINE ACCEPTANCE 45 In its activity towards us the love of GOD is attractive and winning. In Himself GOD has infinite perfections that can satisfy our mind and heart and conscience. His revelation of them to us is an act of love which attracts by appealing to all that is highest and purest in us, and promising divine satisfaction for all the cravings of the heart. To feel this attraction, to yield to its sweet power, is to have our whole being won, held, and blessed by it. As the will is yielded to GOD we discover the wonder of the love that has drawn us ; we know it as a living power within us, making grandly possible the work and sacrifice which it demands ; we learn in renewed lessons of inward experience that GOD is ever awakening the longing for Himself that He may satisfy it by His Presence and grace. In response to this love we have been led to fuller self-surrender, to higher and more self-forgetting effort; every act of sacrifice and renunciation has been accepted ; GOD'S smile has rested on us, lighting up all life and work. The love that so attracts, wins, inspires, gives to life, then, the helpful certainty of our FATHER'S blessing. Love meets us in all our efforts of work or mind or spirit. It is as though GOD were cease- lessly on the watch to welcome and to meet every movement of our lives towards Himself to give His recognition and approval to all that our faith or love may prompt us to do to give "grace for grace." Life under the cheering control of this love of GOD is full of powers for work, for sacrifice, for 46 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS learning ; it is full of a deeply contenting encourage- ment at every turn, in every development of life ; for GOD'S approval becomes at once the reason and the reward of what we try to do, a fact that sustains courage, a felt benediction that will keep us calm and steadfast in days of conflict. Even the trials and sorrows of life, its multiplied anxieties, its urgent claims, its strenuous fightings, the things that make its strange separateness, no less than those which bind us to one another with the ties of affection or of common interest, are all marks of the approval of GOD, Who rewards faithfulness with higher work, and Who would have each one realize the fullness of life in CHRIST here by entering into the fullness of His work and conflict and suffer- ing, as well as of His joy. And all this is removed for us from the region of feeling to that of fact. "Apart from Me ye can do nothing." 1 All that we do is a part of the mighty working of the Incarnate life of JESUS. All that belongs to our inward life of thought and will, and all the purposes of our work and devotion, are dealt with in His ceaseless intercession. As human life becomes more consciously one with His, in its manifold activities, in its holy eternal purpose, we may become more sensible of the FATHER'S approval and acceptance. " This is My beloved SON, in Whom I am well pleased." 2 The FATHER'S recognition extends to every child of GOD. His pleasure in the SON is His pleasure in the sons and daughters brought unto glory by Him. 3 CHRIST in us is the hope 1 S. John xv. 5, R.V. 2 S. Matt. xvii. 5. 3 Heb. ii. 10. THE DIVINE ACCEPTANCE 47 of this glory, 1 a hope that deepens into ever gladder certainty as "grace for grace" 2 is received in every benediction, in every absolution, in every Eucharist, and the touch and voice of the Master give here and now the earnest of His final judgment and recogni- tion, "Well done, good and faithful servant." 3 In the life thus lived because of CHRIST, failure is but a temporary thing, the momentary suspension of GOD'S approval. The gladness of conscious acceptance is regained the moment that we are renewed in faith, in love, in obedience. As life develops, as we realize more completely what life means and must mean for a Christian, the sense of living in CHRIST grows, giving even to the conscious determination of will the power to do or to suffer, to wait or to sacrifice, which exhausts the possibilities of failure ; and teaching us through experience that every weakness of mortal nature is swallowed up in the victory of His endless life. And in the end, when all the effort, the struggle, the sacrifice, the brave renunciation, the patient endurance, shall be reviewed, owned, accepted, in the Master's " Well done ! " the reward of life will far exceed all hope or sense of deserving. II. The call of GOD, obedience in self-dedication and in work, the sacrifice of self we cannot under- stand these or be ready for them, they will seem but a mistake, an illusion, a folly, unless the reality of the divine acceptance be, as it were, their interpre- tation, their sanction, their inspiration. In other 1 Col. i. 27. 2 S.Johni. 16. 3 S. Matt. xxv. 21 ; S. Luke xix. 17. 48 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS words, the love of GOD must satisfy the soul that it claims, must inspire the obedience that it com- mands, it must prepare and accept the sacrifice that it requires, it must fill the life that is emptied for its sake. And it does all this. For love is constituted the beginning and the end, the law and the inter- pretation, the principle and the fulfilment of life in relation to GOD. Go back into the world to put into practice the principles of this divine life, as the Spirit of GOD may have taught you in the quiet thought 'and devotion of these days. Every helpful perception of grace and truth which these days may have brought you is a whisper of GOD'S acceptance, a smile to cheer you on, a promise of light and strength for the days to come, a self-communication of life that will discover itself when you are again face to face with the needs and trials of daily work. As you live the truth, as you use the grace, you will attain to that GOD-determined individuality of life that is, perhaps, of all things the highest sign vouch- safed here of the divine acceptance ol a life's self- dedication, work, and sacrifice, in response to a personal call or a special gift of grace. III. The great reality of love, to be felt and understood in all thought and work, through every act of faith and will, is the life of JESUS in us. We are attentive to GOD'S call, to His voice as He speaks His will in the facts and conditions of our inward and outward experience, we are strong to do our work and to persevere ; we can bear the strain of sacrifice only when through all the difficulties, THE DIVINE ACCEPTANCE 49 perplexities, temptations, sorrows, through all the happiness, success, and well-being of our days we can realize as the one abiding and satisfying certainty the Incarnate, glorified, endless life of the CHRIST fulfilling itself in us in our being and in our work because we are united with Him. If life be lived because of CHRIST, not only are we blessed divinely, gloriously, ineffably but each life that we touch is blessed through us ; the eternal CHRIST - ministry of "grace and truth" 1 is fulfilled through us ; some one eternal truth, some one heavenly grace, may be made manifest in each personality as it could not be shown or expressed in or by any other. If thus you live, realizing manifoldly the life of the CHRIST in you, all you do will bear healthfully on the lives of others ; from you they will learn their needed lessons of truth ; through your influence will be ministered grace which they have scarcely learned to desire or to ask. Therefore act towards them in the consciousness of the love of GOD, reflect the light in which you live, by letting the peace and the love of GOD rule in your hearts always. Seek, then, daily to realize more powerfully, in all your prayers, your meditation, your communions, your study, your work, the fact of your personal relation to our Divine LORD, and cherish the sense of it, as your happiness and your inspiration. With- out this consciousness of relation to Him life must be a failure. With it, life is glad, fruitful, blessed. Live each day striving to correspond more truly 1 S. John i. 17. H 50 NOBLE OBLIGATIONS and willingly and lovingly to His life, as He mani- fests Himself in your mind and heart and conscience. You will find that He will teach you daily the better to understand your duties and His claims ; He will save you each day from sin and failure ; He will raise you each day to a higher and more perfect likeness to Himself; He will glorify your work and character; He will give you in ever fuller measure His Spirit, that the law of your life in Him may be " from strength to strength," l " from glory to glory." 2 To finish as I began strive to hear, to obey, to love, and to serve, remembering always that life, if it is to be perfect, fruitful, blessed, if it is to be satisfying to ourselves, helpful to others, and for the glory of GOD, must be " from GOD, in the face of GOD, unto GOD." 1 Ps. Ixxxiv. 7. 2 2 Cor. iii. 18. II Jl* tfje antr Htfe Through life's rough tangle and its thorny ways, Made darker still by man's stern questionings, I sought a way wherein to walk secure, But found it not ; nor art, nor learning gave The word on which to rest my heart and life ; And when I sought for truth, I found a lie, Made beautiful, perhaps, but hiding sin, While underneath the age-long question burned : "Oh, what is Truth ? " Shall never science wake To certainty and cease its troubled dream ? And longing yet, I questioned more of life, The mystery of being and its end. No answer came : Each abstract theme was fruitful but in doubts, While every thought became a pain, a toil, And so I knew I was but wandering, For that blest heaven which my soul conceived Could know no pain, nor disappointed sense. And sure its peace would hover o'er the way As truth and life were found and with them peace And sweet encouragement? " I am the Way, the Truth, the Life ! " O CHRIST, 'Tis Thou, Who leading far the soul away From every thought which is not Thee, dost give To me, to all, the answer which is peace. J.B. I "HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY?" " And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. . . . LORD, we know not whither Thou goest ; and how can we know the way? ... I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life : no man cometh unto the FATHER, but by Me." S. John xiv. 4-6. I. Whosoever writes the story of the nineteenth century will have to consider, and, if he can, inter- pret a perplexing fact or phase of its life. He will notice that with its keen activity, and the pressure of its social or economic problems, there has emerged a temper of lawlessness, of selfishness, of alienation from the truth, while at the same time, and in other directions, there has been a real quickening of faith and devotion, a stirring of great enthusiasms, a recognition of noble obligations. There are many forces at work in the sphere of morals or of religion in society, and their conflict or pressure make life so intense, so full, that it is hard to obtain the rest and the quiet that we need to enable us to take breath, and to consider and understand our position in matters of faith and duty. And so it comes to pass that we drift, or we toil on, all uncertain whither the way of life leads, and hardly 53 54 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE understanding even the principles that we are, con- sciously or unconsciously, working out. It is good that sometimes we should go apart, and rest a while, 1 undisturbed, in the company of the Divine Master Himself, that, falling back upon first principles, we may be renewed again in the truth, the purity, the honesty, that are of the essence of faithfulness ; that our ideals, our ambitions, our enthusiasms may be chastened, corrected, and elevated ; that we may learn what GOD has called us to realize and to accomplish in love ; that the illuminative truth of the Divine Fatherhood, and of our dignity as His sons and daughters, may give to life and character the breadth and sweetness of the divine charity, the strength of a divine purpose, the sustaining imperative law of the divine will. 2 II. "What is your life?" What are its aims? What are its principles ? Do you seek to solve its problems, and to win its reward, through devotion to duty ? Duty is a noble word, but if it implies not the living power of faith and love it is meaningless. Are you striving after self-realization ? That is a vague term of modern ethics that may cover the highest and the noblest ends, or it may be only a grand name for what is narrow, mean, selfish. There is no true self-realiza- tion besides that promised in the paradox of the Gospel, "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." 3 Are you serving the world, allured by its promises of 1 S. Mark vi. 31. * S. John iv. 34. 3 S. Matt. x. 39, xvi. 25 ; S. Luke xvii. 33 ; S. John xii. 25. " HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY ? " 55 life ? It will betray, and then mock you. Are you living in the hope of realizing some ideal in work or character ? Then consider, if it is a human ideal, it will disappoint you ; if you are not humble, it will make you both conceited and unnatural ; if it be a thing apart from present possibility, you will lose both the present and the future. " What is your life ? " It is painfully true that as time and energy are consumed, or are lost, in strife or work, in sloth or pleasure, life seems but a vapour, 1 but that is no excuse for weakness or idleness. Life is a time in which to learn eternal lessons, a period of education in which the practical energies may be called out and trained, the graces of personal character won or developed, which will fit us for our special place or work in the economy of the world to come; a time in which we may gather round our- selves fruits of faith and love, of work and suffering, which shall abide, our glory and crown of rejoicing ; a time in which the part of the eternal purpose of GOD intrusted to us may be worked out; the appointed time for the work of grace given that through the power of the HOLY GHOST, manifoldly operative, we may be truly ourselves. We may realize this manifold meaning of life, we may appraise its true value, we shall be encouraged in the midst of its difficulties, we shall be reverent in the presence of its mysteries, we shall know a real joy even in its sorrows if we remember, what we all realize too little, that we live and work in the full tide of GOD'S creative work, of the redeeming work 1 S. Jas. iv. 14. 56 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE of the Atonement, and of the Spirit's sanctifying grace. And this tide and flow of the divine life is from GOD and unto GOD, taking up our weak and petty lives and bearing them on through storm and stress, in sunshine and calm, to the haven where we would be, the peace and ineffable glory, the gladness and the beatitude of the consummation of all things, when GOD shall be all in all, 1 and each one shall stand before Him, holy and complete, a unit not to be spared from the sum of redeemed humanity, gathered up in CHRIST. 2 Yes, life is a way that leads to fullness, beatitude, perfection of personal being in the Presence of the Eternal FATHER. For since humanity in CHRIST is exalted to the right hand of GOD the development of the possibilities of each life in blessedness, in power, in sanctity, has no limit short of the glory and honour with which the Son of Man is crowned, 3 even as He wondrously said, "The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them." 4 III. Such is the way and the goal of life. The way has been traversed, the goal has been reached by One Who has declared that the purpose of this primacy, in conflict and in victory, in toil and in reward, is that He may prepare a place for us, that where He is there we may be also. 5 What this involves for us we should have no difficulty in under- standing if our discipleship is honest, the discipleship of the heart and not only of the intellect. " Whither 1 i Cor. xv. 28. 2 Eph. i. 10. 3 Heb. ii. 7. * S. John xvii. 22. 5 S. John xiv. 2, 3. " HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY ? " 57 I go ye know, and the way ye know." 1 S. Thomas speaks the questioning of the ever-doubting human heart longing for the truth, yet perplexing itself, as the Cross challenges reason and self-love. "LORD, we know not whither Thou goest ; and how can we know the way?" 2 The answer is the message of the Incarnate life of JESUS to the hearts of men, " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life ; no man cometh unto the FATHER, but by Me." 3 IV. When men stand upon "the highest places" 4 of life, at those points of crisis and of revelation where they stand so near to GOD, there cries to them the voice of the Eternal Wisdom, speaking to heart and mind and conscience, giving to the riddle of life and to the voiceless longing of the heart an answer which whoso receives can never be quite the same again in character or in purpose an answer at once stern and loving, simple and penetrating a word of living, illuminating truth that destroys all sophistry, and pierces to the deepest depths of will and reason. 5 Whatever may be the language or the form of the divine answer to the questioning soul, its purpose is to direct it to the Person and the teaching of the CHRIST. None but a disciple of the CHRIST can truly learn the way of life. " Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls." 6 Such discipleship is not idle, selfish contemplation ; it is not the easy indefinite 1 S. John xiv. 4. 2 Ibid. xiv. 5. 3 Ibid. 6. 4 Prov. ix. 3. 5 Heb. vi. ii. 6 S. Matt. xi. 29. 58 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE Christianity which the world courteously allows ; it is not the devitalized religion that will give away its principles by a weak tolerance of evil things ; it is fellowship with CHRIST, in steadfast unselfish work or suffering whichever He wills in loving obedi- ence to His precepts and His counsels, and in the heart-converse with Him, the Master, in which we may catch the tone and spirit of His life, and have our faulty human judgments and affections corrected and purified. Then, and not before, in such disciple- ship and not otherwise, can we become brave enough for life-long denial of self: true enough to repudiate the false that is called Christian : humble enough to yield ourselves to the holy inspiration that will lead us into all the truth * which shall become the satisfy- ing reason of faith and work : self-effacing enough to learn the humility in which alone the highest truths of GOD'S love and will can be either recevied or obeyed. V. Yes, we may, we do know the appointed way of life, " in the face of GOD and unto GOD," for CHRIST has lived, and " that eternal life, which was with the FATHER, was manifested unto us," 2 was lived, fulfilled, given on earth for us, that it might ever outflow to us, and fulfil itself in us. Manifested for us through the Incarnation the eternal Word has still, in every faithful heart, in all steadfast loving work, those epiphanies that give us the assurance of the fellowship without which discipleship is a vague dream, a disappointment or an impossibility. Stored in our minds as the lessons of childhood, 1 S. John xv. 26; xvi. 13. 2 i S. John i. 2. " HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY ? " 5Q declared again and again as His sayings have had their interpretation in experience, the holy and blessed teaching of the CHRIST has become a part of our common knowledge ; witnessed to in the early life of the Church, enshrined in sacred art, told and appealed to in every presentation of the Gospel story, preached for the conversion of sinners and for the strengthening of the faithful, urged passionately even by those " who are out of the way," and who yet would be won by "the truth as it is in JESUS" 1 if only Christians were true the work, the teachings, the humiliation, the suffering, the shame, the grace, the tenderness, the patience, the infinite charity of the Incarnate life of our LORD are ever brought before our minds, facts full of a subtle power and benediction, for "with His stripes we are healed," 2 truths sweetly insistent, lovingly imperative, in the claim which they make upon heart and will. If, then, CHRIST'S life and teaching be comprehen- sively regarded and honestly interpreted : if heart and conscience respond unselfishly to His love and holy will : if, abandoning pride, and renouncing self- love and evil purpose, we will embrace the Cross as the sign of life, and accept the precepts of CHRIST as the rule of our daily conduct, we shall truly know and follow in " the way which leadeth unto life." 3 You say this is a mere truism. I state it as a truth that for two reasons is often forgotten. The human heart does not readily accept the whole Gospel of our salvation ; people assent to the prin- ciples of Christianity while they are unwilling to 1 Eph. iv. 31. 2 Isa. liii. 5. 3 S. Matt. vii. 14. 60 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE follow them out to their practical results ; because the will is withheld, instead of being yielded up to CHRIST in an irrevocable self-surrender, and the common instinct and motive of religion are to seek personal salvation and to rejoice in it, with very little thought of living the life of JESUS. When ignorance is professed in regard to practical Christianity, it is usually self-deception following from one of these two causes : it is the failure to apprehend the CHRIST with the unselfish devotion of heart and will. VI. We are here to think and pray together, that the faults and shortcomings of life and work and character may be seen, understood, dealt with, where alone we can bear to see them, or have the grace to understand them, or the courage to face them in the revealing light of GOD, while the look of His love is bent on us in tenderest sympathy, and the touch of His hand gives healing and strength. We are here taking, for a brief time, refuge from the world and the subtle forces with which it invests our will and understanding, that we may receive a deeper revelation of the FATHER'S love and holy will, as the sweet constraining motive of personal being and service ; that we may know JESUS better in the present power of His Incarnate life ; that the HOLY SPIRIT, solemnly invoked here as the Guide of all thought, the inward Revealer of the things of GOD, may kindle in our hearts a quenchless flame of divine love. Therefore have I tried to suggest to you a broad view of the meaning of our life, and to direct you to the CHRIST. Why ? " HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY ? " 6l He has words to say to you that no human voice may say, gifts for each that no human ministry may give. I would have you press close to Him, I would have you break down and put aside prejudices, doubt, affection, pride, selfishness, all that can spoil or limit your free communion with Him, that you may hear from Him the words your hearts need, that you may take from His hands the gifts wherewith He waits to enrich you. Take to Him all your life that He may judge it and correct it. As you recall, before Him, all the past, with its inspirations, its decisions, its calls and its acts of self-dedication, its temptations and its sins, its mistakes, its hard perplexities, its gifts and its losses, its joys and its sorrows, you will hear His voice, quickening, imperative, loving as on the day when was it ? that He spoke first to you, giving to life a new meaning and a new impulse, as your whole being thrilled to His touch. And as He speaks you will be renewed both in knowledge and in will, in love and in strength. VII. I doubt not that for each and all, if this time be well used, it may be a time of self-revelation. We may come to know our weakness and sinfulness, the dangers in our way, the possibilities of grace and of work, as never before. If we are appalled at the past, or frightened for the future, remember GOD never shows a soul its own sinfulness or danger or weakness without also helping and encouraging it by a revelation of higher possibilities, by promises of help and blessing greater than it has ever learned before to desire or to ask. And so, if this Retreat 62 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE brings you a knowledge or a sense of the past and present that will humble and shame you, be glad and rejoice, for " there is a shame which bringeth glory and grace." With self-revelation comes the assurance in the gladness and the strength of which we may forget those things which are behind, and reach forth to those things which are before, ever pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of GOD in CHRIST JESUS/ 1 Phil. iii. 13, 14. THE WAY 63 II THE WAY " JESUS saith unto him, I am the Way." S. John xiv. 6. " The Way into the holiest."//^, ix. 8. I. " LORD, we know not whither Thou goest ; and how can we know the way ? " z S. Thomas speaks the questioning of the ever-doubting human heart, longing for the truth, yet perplexing it- self, as the Cross challenges reason and self-love, and as the mind reflects upon revelation and experience. The answer, in language universally intelligible, is the message of the Incarnate Life of JESUS to the hearts of men. " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the FATHER, but by Me." 2 There are here three great truths of our LORD'S relation to us in the life of faith and grace and work. Let us try to grasp them with the inward under- standing. Guides of others, how can we lead the young, control the wayward, recall the erring if we know not CHRIST the Way? Teachers, how can we. instruct mind, heart, or conscience : how can we give lessons of human or of heavenly wisdom if we know 1 S. John xiv. 5. 2 Ibid. 6. not CHRIST the Truth ? Set to influence others, to give forth from our lives into theirs a healthy tone, a true enthusiasm, a helpful sympathy, a quickening power, how can we fulfil such a mission if, in our inward being, we know not CHRIST the Life. As we consider one by one to-day these truths of His relation to us, may the CHRIST, by the inspira- tion of His Spirit, remove all the hindrance of selfishness, all the darkness of sin and ignorance, and whatever would stand in the way of His self- revelation or our discernment of the truth, so that we may know Him with that wondrous apprehension which is higher than knowledge, as the absolute is higher than the relative, in that ineffable con- sciousness which is "the mind of CHRIST" 1 acting through our personal intelligence. And what says He to us gathered here to listen to His voice, as He will speak to our inmost souls words that shall send us back to our children His children charged with a living power of truth and love ? " Follow thou Me : ' I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.' Without the Way, there is no going ; without the Truth, there is no knowing ; without the Life, there is no living. I am the Way, which thou oughtest to follow ; the Truth, which thou oughtest to trust ; the Life, which thou oughtest to hope for. I am the inviolable Way, the in- fallible Truth, the endless Life. I am the straitest Way, the supreme Truth, the blessed, the uncreated Life. If thou remain in My Way, thou shalt know 1 i Cor. ii. 1 6. THE WAY 65 the Truth, and the Truth shall make thee free, and thou shalt lay hold on eternal life." z " I am the Way," says CHRIST ; He is the Way to the FATHER ; through Him, by the ministry of the ever-blessed Spirit, we take our place as sons and daughters in the household of GOD, 2 and are enabled so to know that we are His children that life is free and glad and fruitful. He is the Way to that fullness and completeness of life for which we long and pray, and for which, in spite even of our weakness and failure, we do instinctively feel that we are made. He is the Way to that life, that state of glory and beati- tude for which, in all our toil or sorrow here, we hope and wait. He is the Way to that reward of labour and of patience which shall be ours when death is swallowed up of life, when we with Him shall see of our travail of soul, and shall be satisfied. 3 When we say that CHRIST is the Way by which the two worlds are united, we indicate one aspect of the manifold truth ; we state another when we say, in the language of the Athanasian Creed, that He has taken "the manhood into GOD," so bringing man into organic relation with GOD. The whole truth is declared concisely when S. Paul says that through Him we " have access by one Spirit unto the FATHER." 4 Because of our Baptism we are in CHRIST. We are then in the way of life, or, as the Catechism has it, in a " state of salvation " ; but our sense of this 1 The Imitation of Christ, Hi. 56. 2 Rom. viii. 14-16 ; Gal. iv. 5, 6 ; Eph. ii. 19. 3 Isa. liii. ii. 4 Eph. ii. 18. 66 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE depends upon the earnestness of our self-yielding to the impulses of that life in which we are held. In proportion to the reality and the vigour of that self-surrender we are carried on from day to day, through work after work, " from strength to strength"; through varied and fruitful experience we are prompted at every turn of life's road by the filial impulses of the heart of CHRIST we are borne on by the energies of His Incarnate life so that the way " where now the line of GOD hath fallen " for us is always plain, evident to heart and conscience, while the will, the strength to obey, to be patient, to persevere, is the life of JESUS in us, bearing on us, bearing us higher, nearer to the Eternal Triune GOD Self-revealed in all our experience. For while we say that JESUS is the Way to the FATHER, it is only another way of saying that for those who live lovingly responsive to the impulses of His life, whose hearts know the beat of His through love and pain, the FATHER is ever wondrously revealed, because the members of CHRIST must feel, in a measure, that is determined by their love, the joy and strength of the ineffable union of the FATHER and the co-eternal Word. The SON of GOD increasingly unfolds the mystery of His own Being to those with whom He is in actual and sacramental relation, and each one becomes able to know the meaning of his own self- conscious life, because to each one there comes the sanctifying and illuminating Spirit of love, in Whom the FATHER and the SON are One, and by Whom we are able to know the truth which transcends reason, " that we worship one GOD in Trinity, and THE WAY 67 Trinity in Unity." So the way is "from GOD, in the face of GOD, unto GOD." " They will go from strength to strength : and unto the GOD of gods appeareth every one of them in Sion." I Here is truth for the correction of life's mistakes, to " show us that there is an eternal significance in our daily struggles, failures, attainments, and that there is a goal for all being." 2 GOD is the object of our deep instinctive longings. To be in any real sense educated in heart, mind, conscience, is to become conscious to one's self of wants that only GOD can satisfy. We crave for " infinite goodness a beauty beyond what eye hath seen or heart imagined, a justice which shall have no flaw, a righteousness which shall have no blemish," 3 a wisdom which is the sum and the interpretation of all truth, a love which shall heal every ill and nerve us for every conflict, to be held in that holy will, to obey which is to know the satisfying reason for all that is. " My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living GOD ! " 4 II. But too often we strive to reach GOD by ways of our own choosing some human system of thought throws a ray of light upon our way to the FATHER, and we follow it. In self-appointed work, eager, consuming, we press to the FATHER. By self-discipline, or strenuous devotion, we en- deavour to raise ourselves to the cloudless plane of His Self-revealing yet these are not the Way, they do not give us the sustaining joy of that 1 Ps. Ixxxiv. 7. 2 Westcott. 3 Robertson. 4 Ps. xlii. z. 68 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE way, to journey in which is to have the progressive consciousness of the eternal love and life of GOD fulfilled in the inward life of each, through all experience of work or devotion, of happiness or pain. There is but one way to the FATHER one way of joy, one way of sustaining grace that fails never and that Way is CHRIST. Let me say it here as a truth to govern our thoughts about our work, methods, aims, ideals. You are in " the way that leadeth unto life," walking in it, ready for its toils and its trials, ready, too, to pluck as you may its flowers and its fruits, only when you are so con- sciously united with your LORD that you live because of Him, loving, doing, bearing, teaching in the strength and grace of His life given forth for you, ever fulfilling itself in your love, your work, your endurance, your influence. This CHRIST-life is your appointed way to the FATHER, to all the infinite satisfaction that your souls yearn to know. And so I press upon you the questions which I would have you face in self-examination. What are your methods, your aims, your ideals in life and love and work ? Are they such as the CHRIST can approve ? Are they your personal response to His leading ? Will they stand the test of His life and Passion ? Do they result from the inspiration of the Spirit of His love ? Are you what you are in school and at home, in your inward life, and in your life as your friends or enemies see it because of Him ? Do you work for selfish ends, personal credit, human praise, popularity? Or is life THE WAY 69 redeemed from selfishness and weakness by the sense of His claim upon you, and by the imperative direction of His own loving will ? Is there I must urge it upon your consideration is there some more definable wrong in act or will that spoils work and prayer, that destroys happiness or weakens faith ? Yes, I press these questions upon your conscience, even though you come into Retreat tired, or dis- appointed, or perplexed, or humiliated. I press them, not that you may dwell upon the thought or memory of sin to dwell upon the thought of sin is no help to holiness but that, seeing the wrong, you may confess it with love's generous contrition, forsake it with love's brave confidence and hopeful determination, and take refuge from self and from the world in the healing and restoring Presence of JESUS. When we have repudiated sin, when we have once more united heart and will with His in love, the power of sin is gone, and our tired spirits, our weary hearts, our strained minds, can rest ; knowing that our feet are again set upon the way that leads to life, we can rest, and resting, like Mary, at His feet, 1 may learn the truth that makes life glad and free 2 ; we can rest, and resting know and " feel within ourselves the fruit of His redemp- tion," and the invigorating power of His life. 3 III. Yes, face the mistakes, consider the errors, own the faults of the past. Be resolved to know yourselves, but not in a spirit of heaviness, for GOD has for you a garment of praise 4 ; be not cast down, 1 S. Luke x. 39. 2 S. John viii. 33. 3 Gal. ii. 20. 4 Isa. Ixi. 3. jo CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE for GOD is stretching His hand to lift you up, to raise you to a higher work of grace. He has not called you here to lay upon you a cross of sadness, to send you away with less than a joyous hope, a glad confidence. Ah, you say, but I have failed where I should, where I might, have done well ! I have yielded when I could have stood firm ! I have sinned against light and knowledge and grace! Some one has said that failure is " a very token of sonship." " What is a failure here, but a triumph's evidence For the fullness of the days ? " l Failure ! Say now rather that GOD has let you know your weakness, that He may show His strength for you, in you. 2 Hear again, as you may have heard often before without heeding its deep meaning, the great natural law of sanctifi- cation. It is said of the saints of GOD that " out of weakness (they) were made strong " 3 ; character is built up "grace for grace" 4 ; the way of the divine life is " from strength to strength " 5 ; " from glory to glory." 6 The sense of failure, the loss of jv^-confidence, is the first step in this way of onward life that leads to the throne of GOD. " I am the Way." CHRIST, Who knows our complex nature and our manifold needs, 7 offers us no hard precepts or barren maxims. The Gospel 1 Browning. 2 2 Cor. xii. 9. 3 Heb. xi. 34. 4 S. John i. 16. 5 p s . Ixxxiv. 7. 6 2 Cor. Hi. 18. 7 S. John ii. 24, 25. THE WAY 71 is more than a philosophy. Nor need we think of JESUS merely as a Mediator, a Friend, Who intro- duces us, as it were, into the FATHER'S Presence. He proposes Himself to us. He is the Way because He is also the Truth and the Life. The Way is a divine, embracing personal Life in which we are all held. Being baptized into His Body, made organically one with Him, we are upborne by His life, we are being moulded for divine ends, shaped and fitted for our place in His eternal kingdom, by the grace, the love, the inspiration that in manifold ways reach us as the powers of CHRIST'S glorified Incarnate life. All holy thought, every high command or call of GOD, all sweet and helpful influences, every inspiring example, each illuminating truth, all the subtle spiritual movements that result in the determination of the will in love and righteousness are because we are in the mystical Body of CHRIST, within the sphere of His Incarnate life, within that gracious sacra- mental system in which we are bound to one another and to Him. IV. So, then, we follow in GOD'S way, it shows straight before us, we are helped in it by heavenly ministeries, and Christian fellowship, as long as we follow CHRIST, obedient to His love and will, responsive to every movement of His life within and around us. Then to us He is Saviour, Shepherd, Master, Guide. But how shall we reduce this simple rule of deepest life to practice? It is so easy here in our sheltered quiet to see the way, but so hard 72 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE to break with habit, and to be recollected, when we return again to ordinary duty. Let me offer a few briel suggestions. I have nothing new to advise you. I can only hope to commend the old ways that you have tried before. Prayer. Be regular. Use such books as may help you. Do not let your prayers be all vocal. Sometimes we say so much that we do not think, and cannot hear. Be content for a part of your time to still your hearts before GOD, uplifting them that you may feel His love and Presence, and may both hear His voice and know that all you would say and ask has its response in the heart of GOD. You will go from such a holy time of converse with Him knowing in yourselves the reality of the grace that will prepare you for work and neutralize your difficulties. Meditation. Give some time each day not only to the reading of divine truth, but to the quiet thinking of it out in the revealing light of GOD'S Presence, and with the aid of the HOLY SPIRIT. Truth then will pass not only into your mind as knowledge, but into your spirit as living power. Holy Communion. Make your Communions regularly, with real preparation. In the Eucharist you receive JESUS to be in yourself the strength for all that He calls you to be and to do. "As the living FATHER has sent Me, and I live by the FATHER : so he that eateth Me, even he also shall live by Me." 1 1 S. John vi. 57. THE WAY 73 Confession. You will not only daily lay down the burden of sin, that our FATHER may pardon it: you will not only make that daily renunciation and repudiation of it, in His holy Presence, that you may be lifted above it, and take into the crowded ways of life the pure atmosphere of heaven to destroy the evil breath of the world : you will from time to time make a confession in the appointed way, that, absolved through the ministry of reconciliation, 1 you may press on with a gladder sense of freedom. Work. In your work you will strive ever to maintain that sense of the life of JESUS in and around you that will make your words and deeds strong with love and truth and sympathetic purpose. You will so cherish the reality of the divine life in yourself that you will discern it in others, and in the joy and beauty of that discernment much of what is evil and sordid and trying dis- appears. While you dwell in touch with GOD, GOD'S touch through you will overcome evil. V. No, I have no new plan or system to offer you. All I can do is to tell you, in all earnestness, that I am sure, so long as you will strive in all departments and interests of life to be in contact with CHRIST, to recognize His life in you, about you, and to be in all love and faith responsive to it, you will be borne on in the way of life. You will be carried by the energy of His Being through fruitful experiences, through times of trial or of conscious blessedness, through days of work or 1 2 Cor. v. 18, 19. L 74 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE hours of rest, ever on and on nearer to that fullness of being, that fruition of work, which holds for you all your hearts can ever ask, until the Way ends with what we call death, but which we shall then see is only the entrance upon larger life. " If thou remain in My Way, thou shalt know the Truth, and the Truth shall make thee free, and thou shalt lay hold on eternal life." THE TRUTH 75 III THE TRUTH " I am ... the Truth." S. John xiv. 6. " Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free." Ibid. viii. 32. I. Man is endowed for the apprehension of truth ; the vigour, the purity, the conscious reality of his. moral life depends upon his hold of pure truth ; that his spiritual faculties may be both trained and expanded truth is as necessary for the inward life as food is for the body. The spirit of man can be satisfied with nothing less than absolute truth. With a restless activity, urged on by keen desire, it ques- tions, probes, searches, ever demanding to know the truth of things, prepared to forego all else, if only the truth may be won. 1 And, on the other side, GOD, the soul, nature, life, history, art, thought, are ceaselessly alluring and winning man to the high quest of that treasure to possess which is emancipa- tion from the thraldom of earth's manifold errors, 2 " the liberty of the glory of the children of GOD." 3 " Doth not wisdom cry . . . Unto you, O men, I call ; and My voice is to the sons of men ? " 4 1 S. Matt. xiii. 44-46. 2 S. John viii. 32. 3 Rom. viii. 31, R.v. < Prov. viii. i, 4. 76 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE II. "What is truth?" Is it a system of philo- sophy, the perfected result of scientific research, some broad generalization of the facts of life and history? Philosophy, science, experience they are worthy of all respect ; in them the reverent truth-loving student may hear the voice of GOD, may, as Faraday used to say, " think the thoughts of GOD," but they will only give you parts, shadows, reflections of the truth. They are lights, broken, fitful, changing, beautiful, on life's path, but they are not GOD, Who "is Light." 1 " What is truth ?" Is it a sublime revelation to be made to the mind, or to the conscience, or to the heart? At its first real and glad awakening the soul is conscious of something of this sort, and thinks it is the truth, yet it is only a ray of the Infinite Light, one moving thought of the Infinite Mind, lodging in the finite, and kindling there a glow that answers to GOD. " What is truth ? " Do we, then, arrive at it through experience or by reflection ? These may bring us into the Temple, they do not lift the veil that hides the bright glory of the sacred Presence. When the angel of GOD had set free the Apostles, whom the priests and Sadducees had put in prison and for the purposes of our present thought, the prison may stand for all that is hard, conventional, earthly he bade them, " Go, stand and speak in the Temple to the people all the words of this life." : Then followed much that tested their loyalty and courage: but, knowing GOD'S favour, braced and 1 i S. John i. 5. 2 Acts v. 17-20, 41, 42. THE TRUTH 77 not spoilt by the knowledge, rejoicing and not fearing, "they ceased not to teach and preach JESUS CHRIST." There lies the truth of the matter. Would you know the truth ? Would you be saved by its power, uplifted by its inspiration ? Would you teach it to your children ? Would you have it as the reason of all self-devotion, the rule of all service ? Would you know it as a power that the world cannot break, a joy that the world cannot give or take away ? Then follow the leading of the grace of GOD, whether it be given in your own souls, or ministered to you by some messenger of His love, and leave, come out of, all that is hard, coventional, earthly, unloving all that is merely human in thought or prejudice and see in Jesus the Truth to be learned, loved, taught. In Him the SON of GOD, Incarnate, Crucified, Risen, Ascended, Glorified is the Truth that you need, that your children need, that this age needs, ever more fully to know, ever more reverently to love, ever more obediently and unselfishly to follow. In this world, so full of hard prejudices, of strange beliefs, and subtle difficulties, its ancient lies, its age- long wrongs, we must, like S. Paul, determine not to know or teach anything " save JESUS CHRIST, and Him crucified." 1 III. If truth is to be wholly and personally apprehended, as our complex nature demands, it must be personally embodied and revealed. It must appeal to all the motives and instincts of man, it must be revealed to mind, heart, and conscience 1 i Cor. ii. 2. 78 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE through the medium of a perfect human life. Truth is not something which concerns only a part of man, it is not offered either to the intellect, the affections, or the moral sense alone. The great commandment sufficiently indicates this, " Thou shalt love the LORD thy GOD with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind." * It is necessary that the whole man, the whole life, with all its interests, its faiths, its enthusiasms, its principles, be inspired, sustained, corrected by the truth. And this cannot be except as we are brought into relation with a Person, a Life, in which the truth is embodied, presented, commended, interpreted. IV. I do but restate a first principle, a foundation truth of our holy religion, 2 when I say what you all know so well that this necessary condition of our coming to a knowledge of the truth, 3 according to GOD'S will, is provided in the fact that not only is JESUS, Who is the Truth, presented to us in the life and teaching and ordinances of the Catholic Church, or as His Spirit and teaching, like a necessary prin- ciple or law, become manifest in the social or moral progress of the race, but we have been brought indi- vidually into a vital relation to Him, and therefore we have been introduced into that state of disciple- ship in which the personal revelation of the Truth may quicken in us that love which is obedience to it. It is a common fault of our religious life that we do not sufficiently consider or realize our relation to CHRIST as an underlying fact of personal life. To answer in act and will to its breadth of privilege, 1 S. Luke x. 27. 2 Heb. vi. i, 2. 3 i Tim. ii. 4. THE TRUTH 79 to recognize that life holds for us a divine certainty to which we may refer all our moral and intellectual judgments to know that life and faith, generous impulse and soaring thought, lowly work or glad success, have all behind them, as their reason and power, the life and truth of JESUS is to find, to our great joy and comfort, that every unselfish interest has its consecration in the wide truth and sympathy of His life; that belief in GOD, in man, in ourselves is justified by His perfect life towards GOD and man ; that there is not an enthusiasm that sustains unselfish work or sacrifice to-day that has not caught its sacred fire from Him ; that every principle of right, of charity, of purity, has its sanction in His life and teaching ; because in all that He was, in every act that proclaimed the moving principles of the kingdom of heaven, in all the words that He spoke, there breathed infinite truth ; behind all His life, as a background of glorious light throwing up its divine picturesque beauty, there was the grand simplicity and reality of eternal truth the truth of the eternal love and righteousness shown as the first and final cause of all that is. This glorious truth was not only manifested in Him, it was identified with Him Who was the brightness of the FATHER'S glory, the very image of His substance. 1 And, with all our imperfec- tions and mixed motives, with all our eager thought and upward striving, with our glad knowledge and our great ignorance, we stand to-day in the white light of that ineffable truth. Open your heart, mind, conscience to that light ; let it show you what you 1 Heb. i. 3, R.V. 80 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE are, what you may be, what GOD is ; it will transform, sweeten, strengthen your whole life. Thought, work, love, joy, pain will never be quite the same again, for upon all will rest the glory of GOD ; through all will shine the clear wonder of eternal truth ; all truths of your life, all the facts of its joy and pain, will meet to be fused in one clear satisfying reality of the love of GOD. How does your life show in that pure light as it penetrates and enfolds your whole being ? Is your life, as you live it, of that glorious crystal quality that no speck or shadow is revealed as this divine light of awful truth, of love and sanctity, beats upon it ? Think, what of the thoughts that you allow ? the motives not owned very readily even to yourselves ? the desires that are cherished, sometimes in the face of the plainest teaching of GOD'S will ? the lessons that we give ? our influence for good or evil ? our habits and our character in their effect upon others ? Are we in all these true to the teaching of CHRIST, true to the faith we profess, true to ourselves ? As the children take from us their lessons of life and faith, of work and devotion, are we throwing into and upon their hearts and lives the pure rays of divine truth, or are we throwing upon them shadows born of our own sin, ignorance, unreality ? V. Yes ; know the worst of the darkness, the carelessness of thought and word, the want of reality that may have been in the past the very negation of the truth which you hold and would teach for I want you to take a thought of great hope. See what has been wrong, own it humbly, lay it all down THE TRUTH 81 in your confession before GOD, and leave it there. I would not have you dwell long even though in penitence upon the thought of any error or short- coming. I would have you rise above the very con- ditions of such error, by laying hold with strong confidence of the help that is yours, so long as you will live in the recognition of your relation to JESUS CHRIST. You are not alone in the face of the difficulties and perplexities of your days. Ever remember, as you read, think, teach : as you strive to solve life's problems, and to act with wise determination : as you have to resist the deadening influence of those who are undiscerning, unbelieving, or untruthful and, as you remember, be strong and encouraged that you are in touch with the life of Him Who is Infinite Truth ; that, as you need it, truth will come home to you convincingly, sustainingly, through thought and intuition, through faith and love, by the personal operation of the Spirit, Who, taking of the things of CHRIST, and showing them to you, 1 will lead you by no uncertain way into all truth ; for it is written by that Apostle who seems to have been charged with the special message that these times need, " He that believeth on the SON of GOD hath the witness in himself." 2 VI. " Our dear LORD is my Teacher, and I go to Him continually, that I may learn His way." So said a saint of GOD when he was questioned concern- ing his profound knowledge of the things of GOD and of human life. We might learn as he did, we might 1 S. John xvi. 14. 2 i S. John v. 10. 82 each be, in our place and degree, what he was, a teacher of the age, if we would be content to learn where he learnt. If, silent and prostrate before Him, we would bring all our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, to be corrected or confirmed by Him, if then we would still our hearts and listen only to His voice, I am sure that in all the departments of our thought, wherever doubt is possible, wherever we are misbelieving, He will show and teach us truth by His Spirit, for He is the Truth " in which is summed up all that is eternal and abso- lute in the changing phenomena of finite being." x But there are so many voices in the world that claim to speak in the sacred name of Truth voices that are sweet, alluring, stern, compelling ; voices out of the mysterious past ; voices on all sides in the rich and varied present ; voices that seem to belong to the future, and yet are finding strange utterance now how can we discern the false from the true ? The voices that speak waken unexpected echoes in the depths of our being, or they seem to have authority that almost forces recognition. I know the difficulty, and so I would try to point the way to certainty, I would lead you, if so it might be, into that dear and sacred Presence where all voices must be hushed, save one, and that voice, gathering up in its sweetness and power and wisdom all that other voices may try to say of truth, will speak straight to your heart the word of living, saving truth that you need. I would lead you to the Master Himself, and not even then does the gracious wonder of love end, 1 Westcott. THE TRUTH 83 for, if you are willing to follow Him, to learn His manifold lessons in the miry ways of the world's work as well as in the flowery uplands of happy communion, through the wilderness ways of sorrow or on the stormy seas of trouble, He will take you, as His best-beloved disciples, to some mountain-top of high devotion or grand self-dedication ; for a glad moment you will see Him as He is, in a glory too great for mortal eyes to bear ; and then from out of the cloud of mystery which veils His glory, while it witnesses to His Godhead, you will hear the sweet and awful voice of the Eternal FATHER, bearing witness to the Only-Begotten, " This is My beloved SON : hear^Him." x 1 S. Mark. ix. 7. 84 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE IV THE LIFE " I am ... the Life." S. John xiv. 6. " The Life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the Life, the Eternal Life, which was with the FATHER, and was manifested unto us." i S. John i. 2, R.v. We have thought ot great mysteries that only love and faith can apprehend. We have tried to see ourselves in relation to JESUS Who is the Way, to JESUS Who is the Truth. Now we are in the presence of deeper mystery. We come now that together we may see ourselves in relation to JESUS Who is the Life. May the HOLY SPIRIT of Truth and Life open our minds to know, our hearts to receive, JESUS the Life. I. " I am the Life." That truth is so simple yet so profound, so truly personal while yet widely comprehensive, that, were it our present purpose to assert it in answer to the tendencies or the conclu- sions of modern thought, it would seem to be sufficient to declare that JESUS is the Life "by which the entire sum of being fulfils one continuous purpose, answering to the divine will, no less than that by which individual being is enabled to satisfy THE LIFE 85 its own law of progress, and to minister to the whole of which it is a part." 1 " CHRIST is the Life of the individual believer, in Whom all that belongs to the completeness of personal life finds its permanence and consum- mation." " I am the Resurrection and the Life," He said on one occasion, fixing the thought upon the individual. " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," He has said in words that have held our attention to-day, fixing our thought upon the whole sum of existence, to which each one con- tributes his " individual difference." 2 " CHRIST is the same in both relations. He gives unity and stability to each man separately, and at the same time, in virtue of this, to the whole creation." II. Having thus broadly stated the doctrine, let us consider the truth with careful thought and due reverence. It is a truth that is full of encour- agement for us in our difficulties; it will reveal to us the possibilities of grace and life; it will show us the dignity of manhood and womanhood ; it will assure us of the power to become all that in our moments of clearest illumination we aspire to be. CHRIST is our Life, in the power of which, and borne on by its ever-deepening tide, 3 we love, work, suffer, progress, until, the limit or the necessity of toil and sorrow being passed, we stand complete in Him. "I live; yet not I, but CHRIST liveth in me." 4 1 Westcott (S. John xiv. 6). 2 Westcott (S. John xi. 25). 3 Ezek. xlvii. 1-6. * Gal. ii. ao. 86 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE III. Let us state for ourselves again the truth of this Life as we may gather it from Holy Scrip- ture. There the deep mystery is told in words that meet and answer our longings and questionings with simple directness, in luminous statements which dispel the mists of our doubt and ignorance, and throw a broadening light on the way before us. S. Paul says that the whole great mystery of the Gospel is " CHRIST in you, the hope of glory." x JESUS Himself clearly contemplated the outworking of this mystery when He expressed, in His High- Priestly prayer, the destined relation of men to one another, to Himself, and to the FATHER " I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one." 2 S. Paul again speaks of the Life of JESUS being " made manifest in our body," " in our mortal flesh." 3 Death to sin, and life unto righteousness are, he says, the result of CHRIST in us. This presence of the Life of JESUS in us is because we are taken into organic relation with Him. He shows that Himself " I am the true Vine. . . . Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. I am the Vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit : for without Me ye can do nothing," 4 i.e., " ye are dead." Thrice does S. Paul present the same truth, by showing that we are 1 Col. i. 27. * S. John xvii. 23. 3 3 Cor. iv. 10, ii. * S. John xv. 1-5. THE LIFE 87 joined to our LORD as the members of a body to the head. 1 This life, which is ours because of our actual living relation with CHRIST, is continually given and received sacramentally. What is said in many places of our baptismal relation to our LORD is summed up in the statement, " By one spirit are we all baptized into one Body. . . . Ye are the Body of CHRIST, and members in particular." 2 It is, however, in the words of CHRIST Himself that we find the truth most clearly stated as a fact of sacramental life : " Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my Flesh, and drinketh My Blood, hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My Flesh is meat indeed, and My Blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My Flesh, and drinketh My Blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him. As the living FATHER hath sent Me, and I live by the FATHER : so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." 3 Such being the nature of our personal relation to JESUS CHRIST the relation in which we are made partakers of His Life we understand how S. John, having regard to the truth which both ex- perience and intuition, love and faith, had taught him, should gather up the whole glorious truth of life in JESUS, by saying that " of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace." 4 1 Rom. xii. 4, 5 ; i Cor. vi. 15, xii. 12-27 ; Eph. v. 30. 2 i Cor. xii. 13, 27. 3 S. John vi. 53-57. 4 Ibid. i. 16. 88 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE IV. Is it unnecessary that we should thus re-state the Scriptural truth that you all know so well ? It is because we do know it so well as a part of that religious knowledge which it is our daily duty to impart, it is because it is so elementary a principle of faith that we need to respect it. Not now in the class-room where the conditions of work too easily take the life out of dogmatic truths and leave them as mere notions in the mind, instead of realities perceived in love and faith but here in the quiet presence of that enfolding Life, that we may go back to our work re-quickened by its power, re-kindled by its glow. This is what my LORD says is the relation obtaining and to be recognized between Himself and me! If I did realize and recognize it if I did own, and feel, and cherish, the grace and power and truth of it what might not my life be ! Should I not be stronger, truer, holier ? Would not my work be more fruitful of the abiding results that the Master waits to own ? * Would not the children, and the friends I have about me, feel the touch of the CHRIST and be blest ? would there not flow from me, through the work done for Him, the power of His love and sympathy and truth to heal distress and sorrow and discord ? " The fact is true. No want of discernment or of response on our part can rob it of its reality. With all its divine possibilities, its inexhaustible power, its healing love, it waits for our personal apprehension, that it may leap to gladdening con- 1 S. John xv. 16. THE LIFE 8g sciousness in our heart and mind, to conquering activity in our love and will. But only the loving, the faithful, the obedient they who are willing to surrender themselves wholly to its exacting claim, to dedicate themselves wholly to its ends can know it in the joy of personal experience. In your thought and prayer you feel what it might be for yourselves, but it is not in con- templation but in activity, not in sentiment but in service that you discover the glad reality of the Life of " CHRIST in you," saving you from sinning, bracing you for work, nerving you for trial. Carry your faith, your love, your perception of CHRIST out from your holy places of prayer and thought into the busy places of your work the atmosphere of the sanctuary and of the oratory must be taken into the schoolroom and you will find the truth as all truth is to be found, if found at all revealed within you, felt in work, reached in love, as an inflowing divine Life. The divine Life the Life of JESUS within us grows into consciousness in different ways. Some rise to the perception of it gradually, through varied experiences, by many lessons, simple or sweet, perplexing or painful, from the faith and devotion of childhood. Sometimes it is shown to us as the divine answer to the problems of our life, the wondrous divine provision for life's work, just when its manifold demands have brought home to us the poverty of our own affections or powers. Or it may reveal itself to us through the discipline and the consolations of some illness or sorrow ; go CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE through the gentler teaching of some quiet happy time ; we may discern it as work puts us to the proof and tests our principles ; the truth of it may be borne in upon us for the first time in some mission, or retreat, or course of study. But in whatever way the CHRIST reveals Himself in us, the blessed truth finds its gladdest, grandest witness; we know that "we are one with CHRIST, and CHRIST with us," as we yield ourselves, in all obedience, to the fruitful impulses of His Life. Then, furthermore, if with earnest faith and calm judgment of ourselves, in all humility, we seek it in prayer, in meditation, in absolution and benediction, and, above all, in Holy Communion, the weakness of our nature will be reinforced by the Life of JESUS, our shortcomings will be supplied from His fullness ; discipline, trials, conflicts will be found to be the development and enrichment of character, through the operation of His grace and the inward moulding of His will fulfilling itself through us. The full possibilities of grace in us are to be measured by what CHRIST is, for " unto, every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of CHRIST," r and the work of the HOLY SPIRIT in us and for us goes on, building us up "till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the SON of GOD, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of CHRIST." 2 V. Now, it seems to me that there are two thoughts regarding the operation of the life of 1 Eph. iv. 7. 2 Ibid. 13. THE LIFE 91 JESUS in us that we may well try to fix in our minds. But first let me insist upon one important principle. We must be humble. CHRIST can and will work wondrously in us, but only in the meek and lowly in heart. " I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit." ' (a) Not alone for the perfection of our being and character does the CHRIST dwell in each. It was a deep and wonderful saying of a holy man, that "the Christian is another CHRIST." Surely not only in the sanctity of his personal life and character, but that CHRIST'S work should be carried on by him, for, as far as any one yields himself or herself to the loving and righteous determina- tions of the Life of JESUS within him, the CHRIST is living through him, in all his emotions, words, acts, to help, to win, to teach others those others that are equally dear, though perhaps are yet not quite as near to His sacred heart. I speak now, too, of a mystery beyond my power to explain, and yet it is one of deep universal truth. In so far as your life in JESUS is real, you must bear a part of the Cross that saved the world ; JESUS will fulfil a part of His purpose of salvation through you, even as S. Paul wrote : " I ... fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflic- tions of CHRIST in my flesh for His Body's sake, which is the Church." 2 (/3) Again, you know what it is, day by day, in school or at home, to live in the presence of 1 Isa. Ivii. 15. 2 Col. i. 24, R.V. 92 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE worrying elements, of irritating personalities. Evil seems to beset your way, and try as you will to cultivate " the meekness and gentleness of CHRIST " it is still there, a hard, unlovely fact: it obscures the sunshine, it spoils the melody of life, it seems to challenge whatever is unloving or selfish or un- disciplined in yourself, and so the days are spoilt, and happiness seems out of the question till you have left or dismissed the trying presence. Now, it seems to me that if you will unite your- selves to JESUS day by day, falling back in faith and trust upon the reality of His Life in you, holding in mind and heart the glad truths of your life in Him, you will be so lifted above the evil, in the calm security of His Life, that you will be untouched, uninfluenced by it. For you it will be as though it were not, and you will be able to stand in the presence of the conditions that make for evil so strong and calm, so gentle and compelling, in the power and the sweet-reasonable- ness of CHRIST, that you will neutralize them, destroy them. Thus, in doing good and in destroying evil the Incarnate Life of JESUS will fulfil itself, will accomplish some of the eternal purposes of salva- tion through you. But be it never forgotten that there are three necessary and indispensable con- ditions love, humility, and a disciplined will. VI. "I am the Life." What is it, then, to live? It is to love, to serve, to think, to work, to face difficulties and temptations within and without in the power of the Life of JESUS, as THE LIFE 93 though we yielded all that makes the sum of earthly and bodily existence to be, as it were, the instruments, the scope, the functioning of His Incarnate Life. It is to be strong with His strength, enduring through His patience, gentle with His tenderness, wise with His wisdom. It is to do deathless work, it is to win the victory of the world by love, because we know Him, the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings. It is to be hid with Him in GOD, where no power of earth or hell can reach or inflict failure ; where all is seen in the heavenly light, and measured by a divine standard, and lifted above all human praise or blame, because " we have the mind of CHRIST." x It is to be " kept by the power of GOD through faith unto salvation." 2 1 i Cor. ii. 16. 2 i S. Pet. i. 5. 94 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE V KNOWING AND SEEING "From henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him." S. John xir. 7. I. We come together this morning to think and to say our last thoughts on the subject of our Retreat. It is always difficult to say last words, and so they shall be brief. Let them be rather an introduction to what I hope may be your personal conclusion of the Retreat, a deep thanksgiving, a strengthening of the outward defences of life, if need be by some resolution, a loving response of your whole self to the love of GOD in JESUS CHRIST. In particular I hope and pray that better than all else that this time can have offered or given you the CHRIST Himself may have drawn you near to Him in love, may with His own sacred hands have healed and blessed you, may have shed into your hearts the peace and light and love of His own Being, that you may go back enriched by that gift of grace or power, that commission for work or sacrifice, that power to do and to understand, that shall mark you distinc- tively as His, which shall give your life that character, that incommunicable happiness or dignity or bless- ing which He will own when He shall give you your KNOWING AND SEEING 95 new name in His eternal and glorious kingdom r when He shall give you the crown of life. II. We came to take refuge for a while from the concerns of ordinary life ; to be free to think and to pray ; and, above all, if so it might be, that we might with less distraction wait upon GOD and hear His voice, for we felt sure that He would speak to us. " I will hearken what the LORD GOD will say con- cerning me," 2 we thought, and surely the promise implied at the outset of a time like this the promise redeemed in every word of grace and counsel that He has spoken to your hearts, the promise that the coming days will declare to be amply fulfilled is that " He will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints that they turn not again." We came together with busy thoughts of life, of its worth and its dignity, of its splendid opportuni- ties and its great rewards, of its subtle dangers and its many difficulties, of our own mistakes, our deep ignorance, our follies and our feebleness. But, we thought, we will press into the Presence of GOD, we will take refuge in His wisdom and compassion, then all will be well; we will think over the past, the present, the future ; in His light we shall see things as they really are ; we will confess our sins, mistakes, follies, and His absolving Word shall set us free from shame and doubt and fear; we will open our ears to His voice, our hearts to His love, and then life can never fall back again to quite the old level ; we shall be uplifted, renewed, and 1 Rev. ii. 17, iii. 12, xiv. i, xxii. 4. a Ps. Ixxxv. 8. 96 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE strengthened ; we will show Him all our hearts, He shall judge ; we will repudiate, sacrifice, all that He cannot bless ; we will hold as doubly dear and sacred all that He approves; our Retreat shall be the beginning, or the deepening, in all humility, in all earnestness, of a lifelong, irrevocable self-surrender. And now the last hours of our quiet times are passing all too rapidly, and has it all been as you longed and hoped between GOD and your own soul ? If it has you need no word of mine to utter your blessedness ; the sweet secret of the love of GOD, the wonder of His self-revelation to you, is not to be told, it can only be felt. If it has not thus been all that you hoped there is yet time for the breaking down of the last barrier of pride or of selfishness, for the renunciation of whatever holds you back from full self-surrender ; there is yet time to throw your- self upon GOD, to yield all to Him, to accept that willing service of love which is perfect freedom. III. We have endeavoured to understand life and faith, as they only can be understood, in the Presence of GOD, with the conscious comfort of the HOLY GHOST, and we have tried to see and hear CHRIST as He has presented Himself in love, as He has offered Himself to our perception and faith, as He has called us to follow Him in higher ways of devotion and of work. And now, surely in spite of the slowness of our hearts, too little used to the joy and thrill of His touch : in spite of eyes dazzled to dimness because so little accustomed to His light, or blurred in vision by a mist of pain and tears we may say of JESUS, as He said to the disciples con- KNOWING AND SEEING 97 cerning the revelation of the FATHER, " From hence- forth we know Him, and have seen Him." * We pondered sadly upon the uncertain ways of life, it was so difficult to be sure where the line was marked out for us in the loving will of our FATHER ; interests or circumstances seemed to call or to draw us in different directions, no way was clear, all ended in uncertainty. It was the same in the matters of our inward life self-love, pride, prejudice, earthly love, ambition, pleasure, all claimed or controlled us, and each would in turn lead us, by some devious way perhaps, to " some distant, accidental, selfish good," and yet our hearts cried out for a present living certainty that would give abiding peace and satisfaction. We knelt, imploring guidance to be saved from ourselves and from the world and lo ! the CHRIST was by us " I am the Way " ; " My child, ' he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.' 2 ' If any man serve Me, let him follow Me ; and where I am, there shall also My servant be.' " 3 And it seemed that He showed us our life in His own, and so we could see our way of life, no longer devious, dark, or dangerous, but straight, luminous, stretching up to the very throne of GOD. We were in some doubt about matters of faith. " What is the truth ? " Again and again was the question pressed upon heart and mind and con- science. We have to teach ; how can we speak that which we do not know, and testify that which we have not seen? How can we keep the Faith with loyalty 1 S. John xiv. 7. 2 Ibid. viii. 12. 3 Ibid. xii. 26. 98 CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE and intelligence amid the babel of voices that claim to speak truth while few are found to agree ? Who are the true and who are the false witnesses of GOD ? We went into the silence, and a voice sounded which overmastered our doubts, " I am the Truth." Higher than the creeds and philo- sophies and opinions of men, in a great light which seemed to be the convergence of all rays of all the truths which mind, heart, or conscience can feel or know, stood JESUS. " My child, if thou continue in My word, then art thou My disciple indeed ; and thou shalt know the truth, and the truth shall make thee free from every torturing doubt, from all the trammels of ignor- ance, from all bondage of mind." J Life is so hard to live ; we have so little strength, and the work is great. Friends, children, duties, have made such large demands upon us, and we were unequal to them. We wanted a quickened enthusiasm, a renewed inward life, a sense of power in the face of temptation and of difficulty. We knelt, imploring grace ; we heard the Voice, Whose every word is a sacrament of life, crying to us from heaven, from the great heart of things, from within us, " My child, I am the Life ; I gave My life for thee, that I might live it in thee, only yield thyself to Me." Once more we know that it was the LORD, giving out to us, from His fullness, the treasures of being, revealing Himself within us as indeed our Life. From henceforth we live, yet not we, but the CHRIST lives, loves, works in us. 1 S. John viii. 31, 33. KNOWING AND SEEING 99 IV. Or perhaps the Divine Master has come to you in more specially personal ways, displaying some truth or laying upon you some command of love that only the devotion and work, the discipline or the experience, of years will fully explain ; or perhaps discovering to you depths of possibility in yourself, of work or of faith, that you did not even suspect before, so defining your life by some high requirement that calls you to make a great venture of faith, or a great renunciation of self. Whatever it may have been that has marked the time as of any importance in the history of your spiritual life, treasure that proof of your LORD'S love, let it make the gladness, the hope, as well as the seriousness or the motive of the days to come. It will give power to your words and acts, and grace to your character ; it will supply to life a factor of determination when the way seems indistinct, when the truth is obscured, or when the life itself is losing its reality. V. " From henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him." And what must life be henceforward ? What must we be ? Moses, in the mount of GOD, was changed even in personal appearance, 1 the reflection of the glory abode upon him. When S. Stephen gazed up into heaven and saw the LORD his face became as the face of an angel. 2 S. Paul, stricken down by a flash of the glory of CHRIST, was changed from the persecutor to the Apostle 3 ; caught up into the third heaven, and hearing there unspeakable mysteries, 4 he carried within his heart 1 Exod. xxxiv. 29. 2 Acts vi. 15. 3 Ibid. ix. 3-6. 4 2 Cor. xii. 2-9, ioo CHRIST THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE the living, eternal truth that made him able to endure the manifold trials of his eventful life. The Apostles had so caught the tone and spirit of the Master that men " took knowledge of them that they had been with JESUS." z So if you have now been with JESUS you will go back changed, about you will be the atmosphere, the peace, the light, of His Presence. Already upon you He will have begun to trace the lineaments of His likeness. So long as you cherish within you the certainty of His Presence, that light will shine upon your way, making all clear; that peace will dwell in you, a glad reality of safety and calm content ; that atmosphere will be about you, a holy defence before which evil conditions must give way, within which no evil has power to force an entrance or to stay. While He is yours, and you are His : while He is in you, and you in Him, you will be ever and unfailingly guided in the right Way, built up in the Truth, sustained by the Life of GOD. 1 Acts iv. 13. Ill l&ebelatton of 101 LORD, I would know Thee, feel the sweet content Of having Thee, and calling Thee " my God " ; And I may know Thee thus, for Thou art Love, Although I seem far off from loving Thee As Thou dost love. And though my heart be full, Beside Thy fullness it is nothing worth ; Yet, let me hold the truth that Thou art Love, That so, perchance, for love of Love, I too May love. O glory, all-excelling, pure ! O Light expansive, opening to the world The way to GOD, since GOD Himself is Light, What wonder that we love it for its glow And all the mystic fantasies of hue Reflecting all the lustre of His Throne! E'en so the Truth which is man's glory here Is radiant with beauty from His Life. Love and Light ; What shadows fall 'Twixt man and GOD, the darkness of his sin ! Earth's darkest shades are where its sin abides. O GOD of pity, righteous in Thy love, Purge us of aught that would obscure Thy light, Our boasted truth and light are ofttimes dim, And always pale beside Thy light we ask, Thy grace renewing, making us to be Like Thyself. /. B. IO2 I TRUTHS OF APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE " That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us : and truly our fellowship is with the FATHER, and with His SON JESUS CHRIST." i S. John i. 3. I. The greatest joy of active life, and its gladdest inspiration, is the truth that, through all our days, we are borne on the tide of GOD'S ceaseless and manifold working, in grace and in nature, in the Church and in society. As this is realized in consciousness, life's purpose is defined, and its deep mysteries have interpretation ; we know a sustaining gladness, for the joy of the LORD is fulfilled in us x ; our largest hopes make us not ashamed, " because the love of GOD is shed abroad in our hearts by the HOLY GHOST which is given unto us." 2 The early days of work and of self-dedication are gloriously happy, there is no joy like that of seeing and gathering the firstfruits of faith and enthusiasm, 3 and it is well if the glad wonder of power sends us back to the Master for the chasten- 1 S. John xvii. 13. 2 Rom. v. 5. 3 S. Luke x. 17. 103 IO4 THE REVELATION OF GOD ing and confirmation of faith, for there come days when mistakes discover themselves by their results, when we taste the bitterness of failure, when, although we know that we have been led on in the way of the divine life, we see that we have turned aside from the strait path, deflecting from it unconsciously. Thus there arises again and again the need of correction, refreshment, renewal. We want a healthful resting space from which we may make a fresh start, cheered and hopeful, with the promise of more than renewal in the fruition of grace. 1 II. And so, gathered from our work, foregoing, perhaps, some well-earned pleasures, we come for a few hours into guarded and disciplined quiet, not so much to learn or to practise some higher penitence than, possibly, our souls have hitherto been capable of sustaining, but that we may be refreshed in mind and spirit, that our so easily- damped enthusiasm may be requickened, that we may have wisdom and courage for amendment or readjustment, that all inward pain and soreness of heart may be healed, as we bring ourselves into the Presence of JESUS, as we rest in His enfolding peace, as we realize anew, or more deeply, our personal relation to Him, as the objects of His love and the recipients of His life. III. Here, then, we come into the Presence of JESUS. Fill your hearts with the thought. You come here not yet wholly free from dis- tracting thought, the effort to concentrate mind 1 Ezek. xxxvi. 31-36. TRUTHS OF APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE 105 and will seems only to summon to you a throng of trivial things that disturb and discourage, and so I say again, fill your hearts with one thought " O JESUS, I am in Thy dear Presence. Thou wilt forgive all my sin, Thou wilt heal all my infirmities, Thou wilt save my life from destruc- tion, Thou wilt crown me with mercy and loving- kindness, 1 now, now while I wait upon Thee." As you enter into the gracious and restful silence of His Presence, as you breathe into His ear the love or the sorrow, the hope or the need, that only He can truly understand, every thought and emotion of your hearts will have quick and loving response in His, He will draw you within the embrace of His love, He will lay upon you the kingly touch of eternity which imparts healing and a glad reality, He will claim you wholly that He may give Himself to you, He will reveal Himself, so that all reproof and instruction, all warning and encouragement, will sound in your hearts as the voice of infinite love. "Thou art the Life within me O CHRIST, Thou King of kings; Thou art Thyself the answer To all my questionings." IV. He comes to us, Himself the manifestation and the gift of " that Eternal Life which was with the FATHER," " which was manifested unto us " 2 in the Incarnate Life, and upon which we are carried on through all the experience, and to all the ends, in which the eternal love and will of GOD are 1 Ps. ciii. 3, 4. 2 i S. John i. 2. 106 THE REVELATION OF GOD fulfilled. He comes, Himself the Life which we must apprehend if we would know the truth and be freed from the bondage of the world, 1 from the slavery of desire 2 ; He comes, Himself the Life which we must appropriate if work is to be strong and fruitful, if its results are to remain 3 ; He comes, Himself the Life which must become variously articulate and manifoldly operative in our separate lives and characters, 4 if, in the largest experience and in the fullest blessedness, He is to be " made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." s V. Of old, the loving-hearted S. John, meditating deeply upon this manifested Incarnate Life, was able to see clearly and to grasp firmly three great truths of GOD self-revealed in JESUS CHRIST. They declare so much that it is good for us to know and to remember that I shall ask you to-day to consider them with me as the central thoughts of our meditations. They are truths simply stated, yet they are deep and vast 6 ; may the HOLY SPIRIT of Truth enable us rightly to understand them. They are truths full of encouragement and of promise may we go back to our work clothed with the light, the power, the sweetness of them. They are deep truths of the Being of GOD let us learn what they mean, not by speculation, but by seeking " the knowledge of the glory of GOD in the face of JESUS CHRIST." 7 1 S. John viii. 32. 2 i S. John ii. 16; v. 4, 5. 3 S. John xv. 16. * Ibid. xiv. 12. 5 i Cor. i. 30. 6 Job xi. 7-9 ; S. John xiv. 7. 1-2, Cor. iv. 6. TRUTHS OF APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE 107 VI. We are tried, we are wearied, because we live so much among the shadows cast by sin and ignorance. The mind of the flesh remains ever aggressive even in the regenerate, 1 and by its false reading of facts, by its close alliance with our pride, by its innate uncharitableness, it leads us away from GOD and His truth into the darkness. And although the darkness is disquieting, we have not always the honesty or the courage to set our faces to the light and to follow it. Nor perhaps could we bear its untempered ray, ruthlessly revealing the foulness, the crookedness, the wilfully ignored sin of life. But ever and again CHRIST, the Light of the World, 2 lovingly draws us to Himself, and the sweet radiance of His Presence enfolds and bathes our soul ; we stand in it without fear, for it is not the flash of consuming wrath, it is not the blinding, bewildering glory of awful ineffable sanctity, but a soft deepening radiance falls upon us, enwrapping us in the mystic glory of manifold truth, that gladdens while it chastens, that heals while it searches, that teaches and inspires while it convicts. It shines in upon our inmost selves, a light that is like sunshine after a storm, the warm sweet glow of spring after winter, the cheering light that brings life and gladness where once were the shadows of pain and death. It is a light that, let in upon life, shows its imperfections, making all that is coarse or stained appear with startling plainness " Thou hast set our misdeeds before Thee : and our secret sins in the light of Thy 1 Art. ix. 2 S John ix. 5. io8 THE REVELATION OF GOD countenance " z ; yet it is a light that shines with glorifying power upon much that has been painful and hard, so that the past is explained, the present corrected, the future shown in the glow of a GOD- kindled hope. And so we see " the light of the knowledge of the glory of GOD in the face of JESUS CHRIST," 2 and our hearts know that " GOD is Light." 3 VII. But in the holy Presence of JESUS con- science speaks out, upbraiding, condemning. Here, at any rate, we cannot affect to misunderstand its sternest monitions. Look into the sacred face of the crucified and glorified CHRIST, do you not feel that before Him there can be no evasion of moral truth, no special pleading for sin ? Eternal right- eousness pleads, commands, judges in every look. The deep love of the Passion seems to lend force to His judgment, 4 and we are convicted as we recall one after another the sins that have outraged His holiness, flouted His love, denied His precepts " Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight ! " 5 But look again. His appeal, His judgment, His witness for eternal righteousness, are addressed to your heart as well as to your conscience. There is everything to make us fear, but there is all that can melt the hardness of our hearts ; there is everything to lead us to self-condemnation, to a generous contrition, but there is the presence of a complete sympathy to encourage ; there is burn- 1 Ps. xc. 8. 2 z Cor. iv. 6. 3 r S. John i. 5. * S. John xii. 31. 5 p s . H. 4 . TRUTHS OF APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCE log ing anger at sin, but there is tenderest compassion for the sinner. In the Crucified and Divine Saviour " mercy and truth are met together : righteousness and peace have kissed each other." x And as we look in penitence and faith and love we learn that the righteousness of GOD is inexorable because of love; that mercy and judgment are both aspects of eternal righteousness ; and, as the reason alike of reverence and confidence, of fear and of love, we see that GOD is righteous. 2 VIII. We remain held in His Presence by a power which reveals a still greater truth that we must know if life is to be blessed. The light has made life plainer, our hearts hold as a noble obligation the knowledge of the righteousness of GOD, and we are glad and still the mystic wonder deepens ! Our hearts beat in response to a touch that calls up every tender impulse, that replaces bitterness with the sweetness of a possessing and compelling charity. We are conscious of the power of the divine life flowing out to us from the Sacred Heart of JESUS. A glad, glorious reality that has in it the gathered and perfected charm of all beauti- ful things ; like a sweet full note from heaven it harmonizes all earth's feeble voices of prayer and praise, of sadness and of triumph, of warning and of hope ; it speaks as the strong inspiration of all great deeds and noble living ; it fills the child's heart and keeps it pure ; it rests upon the saint and crowns him with glory; it justifies sacrifice, and energizes as the living principle of all work, 1 Ps. Ixxxv. 10. 2 i S. John ii. 39. no THE REVELATION OF GOD transfiguring the lowliest deeds ; it lights even death with a tender glory, and opens the eye to see the way of life stretching up to the throne of GOD. And so the essential life of GOD streams out to us and finds its glad interpretation in every true purpose and impulse of our own our life, with its claims, its work, its hopes, its loves, its joys, its inspirations, is a real communion, a con- scious fellowship " with the FATHER and with His SON JESUS CHRIST,"* and our hearts glow with the truth which inspires and shapes all prayer and faith, the truth that " GOD is Love." 2 IX. "GOD is Light." "GOD is Righteous." " GOD is Love." That light has comes into our lives in the Person of Him Who is the Light of the World. That righteousness has spoken by the lips of the CHRIST, has had its vindication upon the Cross. That love spoke in all the tender words and deeds of JESUS, it gave itself upon the Cross for us, it is pledged in every Sacrament. Come, then, into His Presence. He offers Himself to you, that the light may shine in your heart, that you may be " righteous, even as He is righteous," 3 that your life may be blessed, fulfilled, in His love. 1 i S. John i. 3. 2 Ibid. iv. 8. 3 Ibid. iii. 7. GOD is LIGHT in II GOD IS LIGHT " GOD is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." i S. John i. 5. " The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 5. John i. 9. I. The Scriptural idea of the religious life is that of fellowship with GOD, 1 in work, in devotion, in the mystery of conscious being. " Truly our fellowship is with the FATHER, and with His SON JESUS CHRIST." 2 It is a life in which all things are wholly referred unto GOD, " from Whom, as from the foun- tain, all things proceed ; in Whom all the saints do rest as in their highest fruition." 3 It is life "from GOD, in the face of GOD, unto GOD," in GOD. But such "fellowship must rest upon mutual know- ledge." To know GOD, and to be known of Him, 4 are ever correlative facts in the soul's life. To have fellowship with GOD " we must know truly what He is," 5 with a knowledge which is the illumination alike of His will and of our life. From first to last we learn the manifold truth of life through the 1 Rom. viii. 16, 26 ; i Cor. iii. 9 ; Eph. i. 3. 2 i S. John i. 3. 3 The Imitation of Christ, I, xv. 3. 4 Gal. iv. 9. 5 Westcott. H2 THE REVELATION OF GOD progressive manifestation of GOD, as He draws us to Himself, and as we yield ourselves to Him ; as He imparts to us of His own life, and as we become assimilated to Him. 1 To-day, for the information of faith and life, we are to try to understand more perfectly some truths which S.John "apprehended in apostolic experience," and offers for our guidance, that we may have and know this divine fellowship in beatific experience, in the fulfilment of joy. 2 II. Apostolic experience fostered in the heart of S. John that love which from the first was the characteristic which made him " the disciple whom JESUS loved," 3 and now upon the trained and dis- ciplined wings of that love he soars upwards as an eagle, resting not until, as in the very Presence of GOD, his spirit rests in the contemplation of eternal Being. That glorious reality, which transcends all possibility of thought, he apprehends with the intuition of love, and declares as a positive and definite message to us, " This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." 4 All that he has learned by revelation, by knowledge, by intuition, by faith all that by pure- ness and by love unfeigned He has been enabled to receive concerning GOD self-revealed to man is crystallized in that one luminous saying, God is Light. 1 2 Cor. Hi. 18 ; Eph. iv. 24 ; Heb. xii. 10 ; 28. Pet. i. 4 ; i S. John iii. 2. 2 i S. John i. 3, 4. 3 S. John xxi. 20. *> i S. John i. 5. GOD is LIGHT 113 Another apostolic teacher, thinking of GOD in relation to evil, had said, " Our GOD is a consuming fire," 1 cleansing, illuminating, inflaming; but love and purity of heart had raised S. John to a yet higher level of thought, and even if we cannot rise to stand beside him it is good for us to hear him as he speaks of what he sees and knows. Man is impelled by many forces, and drawn by a mighty attraction to GOD ; our hearts long and yearn to know Him, we feel that in some higher way, more complete and wonderful than any even of our best experiences hitherto, we may attain to that blessed- making knowledge of Him which is essential to that communion, that fellowship with Him which is promised as our portion and delight even here. When, however, we would claim this our covenanted right of access to GOD, it often seems that we can approach only so far, and no farther ; we are brought up by the thought of sin and of GOD'S burning anger against it, and we stop, thrown back upon ourselves, without the revelation that would make us glad, without the happy intuition of the divine life which would lift our hearts and make us strong, brave, patient, content yet, all the while, only two things are needed : pureness and love. " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see GOD." 2 Faith works by love. 3 " If any man love GOD, the same is known of Him." 4 Yes, only two things are ^needed, as the conditions of free near approach to GOD : pureness and love. 1 Heb. xii. 39. 2 S. Matt. v. 8. 3 Gal. v. 6. * i Cor. viii. 3. H4 THE REVELATION OF GOD But these, you say, are so difficult to attain or to secure. We are so often or so peculiarly tempted, we are demoralized by the memory of sin and sinful things, our hearts are sore with the rankling sense of wrong. Yet, I say again, by pureness and by love we enter into the light of GOD. By pureness, which is the completed result in ourselves of true penitence for penitence, surely, is the repudiation of sin, a turning to GOD, the putting of yourself into His gracious Presence, so that you breathe in, as it were, the atmosphere of His holiness absolution is the cleansing of your whole self, the wrapping of you round with the power of the life of GOD. By love, which is the glad yielding of the whole self to the claim and the attraction of the love of GOD, and of His infinite satisfying perfections. Pureness, love, they are perfected penitence and self-dedication, they are the gathered energies of the whole self reaching forth to GOD, they express the willing loss of self that the true life for which we are made may be found in GOD. 1 " O GOD, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart has no rest until it attain to Thee ! " Pureness, love. In will, in prayer, in effort, assert and follow up every holy aspiration, every pure motive, every prompting of grace, every desire of the divine love, for they are the activities of your higher, your true self, as you rise to claim your right as GOD'S children to have access to Him, and they place you above and beyond the shadows cast by sin, through which the light of GOD can flash only in the lurid ways that appal you. These holy 1 S. Matt. x. 39 ; S. Luke xvii. 33 ; Phil. iii. 9. GOD is LIGHT 115 motions of your spirit, like the strong beatings of eagles' wings, will carry you above the shadows, above the fiery glow that reveals GOD'S wrath against sin, into the white light of His Presence. There great truths will be clearer to you ; there you may hold the things of earth under the radiance in which at last you will behold reality ; there you will be taught to reject all vain imaginings, to correct your habitual thoughts ; there GOD, self-revealed, takes each into His peculiar fellowship with Himself, com- municating from Himself to each heart its own incommunicable happiness ; there each one sees himself and his life judged and reproved, yet is not cast down, 1 for he sees GOD, he knows GOD, he is known of GOD, and that is to be shown the highest possibilities of life in the purpose of GOD, and to be made humbly hopeful and reverently glad. III. Yes, in prayer and praise, in every exercise of faith and love, we would reach up to GOD, we would stand in the pure glory of His Presence, feeling that there, from out of the infinite depths of eternal Being, self-communicating as light, there will pass into us a calm strength, a peace inviolable, a joy unspeakable, a wonder of sweetness and power that will satisfy and heal, for as the light of the sun falling upon some rare gem is exhibited or reflected in blending beauties of colour and brilliancy, so the ineffable Light, which is the self-communication of GOD, is seen and felt in graces and beauties of holi- ness, which blending makes the individual character with its own singular personal charm. 1 2 Esdras x. 54-57. u6 THE REVELATION OF GOD " GOD is Light." How shall we state in words this mystery of glory to which we turn with instinctive longing? It means that GOD is absolutely pure and glorious, One Whose very nature and will it is to impart Himself to us, and Whom our spirits were made to receive. He has imparted Himself to us, for His light has passed to us in one unbroken ray in JESUS, Who is the brightness of the FATHER'S glory. 1 And in every gift of grace and truth coming to us by Him, in every rising of our being to answer to the revelation of GOD in CHRIST, in the Sacra- ments which bind us to Him and make us sharers in heavenly things and partakers of the divine nature, in every hour of prayer in which we seek His face and bring all that our life holds into His Presence to be blessed, explained, purified, GOD'S light, peace- giving, transfiguring, is reflected upon us in the self- communication of perfect love. The ineffable glory of awful holiness, upon which no eye of man could bear to rest, is manifested to us as light, " mystic, wonderful," which, falling upon a consecrated life, is interpreted by experience, is resolved, broken up, so to say, into its constituent rays of truth, purity, sanctity, love, and we stand, not under the light of a bewildering intolerable splendour, but in the Presence of the FATHER, of the SON, of the HOLY SPIRIT, with Whom we realize a sweet fellowship in thought and work, both in our quiet guarded times of prayer and meditation and in the busy crowded days when work has to be almost the only expression of our faith, hope, and love. 1 Farrar. GOD is LIGHT 117 Everywhere there shines this gladdening Light, and we may catch some of its rays. Whenever, wherever, human souls have grasped or realized any portion of the truth of things, whether in the sphere of faith or in the varied fields of human thought, there are shining rays of the Infinite Light, dimmed and broken and partial, maybe, because of sin and pride and prejudice, yet shining ever the ceaseless promise of the eternal day when, through truth fully known and by love divinely disciplined, we shall see GOD and shall be satisfied. 1 All that is fair and beautiful in nature, in art, in human life, is the reflection, the embodiment, of some reality of beauty in the life and will and love of GOD, so that nature speaks to us of the Creator, art may be transfigured into worship, and daily life with its strange mixing of joy and hope, suffering and work, prayer and temptation may be so lighted up with glory as to be a revelation of GOD in beatific fellowship. And what deep comfort there is in the certainty that we live in the Light ! Yet we realize it so little and so feebly because we look too much, selfishly or morbidly, upon sin, sorrow, and pain. Refuse to look back upon the dark passages of life ; refuse to think upon the pain and sorrow that so often afflict you ; refuse to dwell in the shadow of regrets and apprehensions ; look out, look up from all these to GOD, Who is Light, to the sacred face of the Crucified, in which shines the eternal love of GOD, then shall you know the measureless consolations of GOD, for the light of GOD is the 1 Ps. xvii. 15. n8 THE REVELATION OF GOD perfect comprehension of omniscient love ; you shall know as the gladdest reality of being that with Him is the well of life, and in His light shall we see light. 1 In that light holy, suffering, oppressed ones, bearing a cross that no other human soul can quite understand, whose hearts are full of more than can be told even in prayer, can rest in glad content, for GOD knows and understands ; the very shadows that fall across life's path are but proofs that it lies in the light of GOD. That light illumines all that concerns us, in this world and in that which is to come. All good that we desire, all that we seem to have lost, all that we strive to reach, is held for us in that light. The good that we would hold cannot always be perfected while we hold it. Only in GOD'S light can it be perfected according to His will. It is what we can surrender in faith and in certain hope that abides still a part of our true life. When we are called into the fullness of the Light of Life we shall find in it, as fair flowers treasured and sheltered in a summer garden, all that our work has wrought, all that our faith and love have surrendered in hopeful trust, all the issues of our sacrifice. In the deepest sense of the words it is true that " unto GOD the LORD belong the issues " of all that we regard as death, 2 and to recognize that truth, as it is to be understood in the revealing of His light, is to learn to say with the prophet, " When I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a Light unto me." 3 1 Ps. xxxvi. 9. 2 Ps. Ixviii. 20- 3 Mic. vii. 8. GOD is LIGHT ng IV. We have tried thus far to think of GOD standing to us in a relation of self-revelation and of self-communication ; we have thought of the glory of His Being as that which we may apprehend through experience, and which is reflected on all sides wherever there is beauty, truth, purity, love; so that, if we will, we may learn through deep and holy experience the first great truth that underlies our fellowship with GOD, that He is Light. But when we have reached this point a solemn question is made personal and imperative Am I living as a child of the Light ? I would have you press the question home to the very heart of conscious being, not as a vague general accusa- tion or inquiry, but with fearless, honest self-judg- ment. () My daily devotion, at home or in church, should be the conscious entering into the Light of GOD'S realized Presence, that I may be judged, corrected, purified, in will and thought that I may open my whole being to receive from GOD what He would impart of Himself to me that I may learn what He has to say to me, and may catch from Him the tone, the look, the character that He in me would manifest in the face of the world. Is my devotion all this ? (/3) My conduct in the world should be governed by the calmness, the sense of responsibility, which belongs to one who has been into the Presence of GOD ; since to be in that Presence is to find the reality of the life of JESUS in me, my work should be the actual and fruitful result of His life in me. I2O THE REVELATION OF GOD All that I do, every interest that I follow, every friendship that I make, should be purified by the touch of GOD, should be the sphere of realized fellowship with Him, should be able to bear the white light of His truth and purity. Is my conduct such as this ? (y) My inward life of thought and feeling should be dominated by the sense of GOD'S Presence, bright with His Light, the personal fulfilment of His joy ; it should be a little world of peace and love, from out of which in conversation, in acts of kindness and sympathy, in manners and in habits the light of GOD may shine undimmed by pride, selfishness. or passion. What are my thoughts ? V. If creed and character, profession and con- duct, do not agree, GOD is dishonoured and man is scandalized, and we ourselves must suffer, in the finest and subtlest parts of our being, the manifold ills that follow upon hypocrisy and untruth. " But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light," I corresponding in thought and word, in will and work, with the purity and truth of GOD, then life is happy with a twofold blessing ; we are bound to one another in the brotherhood of GOD, as the helpful condition of highest personal life and work, and heart and life are cleansed and sanctified by the Blood of CHRIST; the grace that was effective for us in Holy Baptism, which is ever effective in us through Absolution and Holy Communion, destroys sin by its purifying activities continually exerted, for " He which hath begun a good work 1 i S. John i. 7. GOD is LIGHT 121 in you will perform it until the day of JESUS CHRIST." * " O send out Thy light and Thy truth, that they may lead me : and bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy dwelling." 2 1 Phil. i. 6. * Ps. xliii. 3. 122 THE REVELATION OF GOD III GOD IS RIGHTEOUS " He is righteous." i 5. John ii. 39. " That Just One." Acts xxii. 14. I. We have seen that the first of the great truths which express " the revelation of life as apprehended in apostolic experience " is the truth that " GOD is Light." We thought of light in particular as the intelligible manifestation of GOD'S ineffable holiness, and we considered that the glory of GOD, although a mode of His self-communication, needed many forms of life and experience for its due apprehension. But in order that man may correspond in character and in conduct to what he is thus taught of GOD'S holiness, it is necessary that he should not only adore the sanctity of GOD "Holy, Holy, Holy, LORD GOD of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of Thy glory " z but that in his heart and conscience he should under- stand this holiness of GOD as a law, a standard, a sanction, of righteousness to men. The effluence of the glory of GOD'S sanctity upon our human life is a revelation of eternal righteousness, and so every act of GOD (Who is ever consistent with Himself) in relation to the affairs of men reveals, declares, or emphasizes some 1 Isa. vi. 3; Rev. iv. 8. GOD is RIGHTEOUS 123 principle of truth, right, purity, which, being recog- nized by the heart and conscience of men, becomes a formal law of conduct. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the nature of conscience and the moral sanction, nor to offer you a theory of Christian ethics, but we may recognize as a truth that GOD'S righteousness is understood by the heart and con- science of man through those dealings of His with men in which certain moral truths or principles have been shown, and through the accumulated experi- ences of the race, as men perceive that behind great events or moral developments there has been the will of GOD as the determining power. As men struggle with the great questions that ever present themselves to the mind, the heart, or the conscience, and find out that pure reason cannot discover " the secret of the LORD," 1 while yet all that is in them yearns and cries for certainty, they find themselves praying with Moses, " I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory," 2 only to be told " Thou canst not see My face ; for there shall no man see Me, and live," for to see GOD as He is while yet our minds are untutored, our hearts undisciplined, while yet the spirit is wrapped in earth-born imaginations, held to earthly things, would be such a breaking down of the structure of life as we have built it for ourselves, as we have gathered round ourselves the things of time and sense, that the real spiritual self, the ego, would stand stripped, affrighted, tottering under the weight of awful revelation, unable to retain its hold of bodily 1 Job xi. 7 ; Ps. xxv. 14 ; Prov. iii. 32 ; Rom. xi. 33. 2 Exod, xxxiii. 18, 20. 124 THE REVELATION OF GOD existence. But we may learn what GOD is through consideration of His ways and works of righteous- ness. And so, through all our lives, GOD is ever making all His goodness pass before us, ever pro- claiming His Name through all that can appeal to heart and reason and conscience. We cry out that we are in the dark, that we cannot see, and many an one makes Tennyson's words his own "What am I? An infant crying in the night! An infant crying for the light : And with no language but a cry," and does not see that what he thinks is darkness is but the covering of the hand of GOD, Who would protect him against the daring of too presumptuous desire, and train him in ways of faith, since not yet may he be allowed to walk by sight. 1 Yet to those who will still their hearts in patient faith, the experiences of life are the ceaseless repetition of what Moses heard in the Mount of GOD : "The LORD, The LORD GOD, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." 2 In the presence of this moral majesty of GOD life must take a tone and character of great reverence, while yet the heart feels that the revealed character of GOD answers to the facts of life and the instincts of man. 1 2 Cor. v. 7. 2 Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7. GOD is RIGHTEOUS 125 II. The moral nature of GOD, then, satisfies the heart and the conscience in the presence of the facts of life ; but I would have you see in His righteous- ness the adorable reason of all service, a sublime reality that wins and holds you to a life of self- consecration. When you are troubled with per- plexities suggested by the course of the world's affairs, or by the literature and the too daring questionings of the time, I would have you stand by Moses in the holy mount, and hear GOD speaking to your moral and spiritual understanding, while you feel and yield to the loving restraint of His hand that covers you, though it be with a sort of darkness or limitation. When, however, in the course of daily life and work and devotion you desire to rise above the commonplace things that fill so large a place in existence, and to see GOD transfiguring all by His light, manifest in ways that shall inform your inward life and determine your work, I would have you lie silent and prostrate by the side of Isaiah, 1 finding the church, the oratory, the school, a part of the very court of heaven, where you may hear, as the gathering up of your worship, as the personal revela- tion of divine truth, as the strong eternal claim upon your love and reverent service, the ceaseless chant of the Seraphim, the outpouring devotion of ardent spirits with whom you stand and serve 2 " Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of Hosts : the whole earth is full of His glory" 3 and may see GOD revealed to you in some flash of glorious intuition, and may have 1 Isa. vi. 2 Heb. xii. 32 ; Rev. xix. 10 ; xxii. 9. 3 Isa. vi. 3. 126 THE REVELATION OF GOD thought and speech purified by heavenly fire. Then shall your work and service be indeed a ministry of righteousness ; your hearts will be full of love, because they will be satisfied in GOD ; your con- science will be enlightened, it will prompt with holy wisdom, it will ever reflect the glory of that sweet sanctity which you have seen. III. Ah, to hear GOD, to see GOD, the righteous FATHER, the righteous Judge of all men ! What difficulties would be met ! What hard and dark reasonings would be answered ! How sweet and holy would be the compelling sense of His will ! How glorious life would be, if through all its tangle and mystery we could see that glory which calls forth the adoration of the angels ! If only we could see the certain fulfilment of eternal righteousness through all the sin and pain and sordid misery that challenge our faith in truth and right ! We would be so brave then, our work would be so strong and hopeful, our words would be unfaltering, and we how happy and blest to feel that we were fellow- workers with GOD, 1 and our work a " part of an infinite scheme " of perfect righteousness ! But oh, " verily Thou art a GOD that hidest Thy- self," 2 and we Thy children, sore perplexed and ignorant, longing to know Thee as Thou art, seem to wander in darkness ! IV. But need it be so ? No, it need not be, for GOD has drawn so near to man that He may be known by faith to the pure-hearted 3 and the loving. 4 1 i Cor. iii. 9. 2 Isa. xlv. 15. 3 S. Matt. v. 8. 4 i S. John iv. 7. GOD is RIGHTEOUS 127 We must face the disagreeable fact that very much of the difficulty of our knowing GOD is of our own making. If the heart is not pure and loving, some- thing other than faith is made the principle of life and the righteousness of GOD is "revealed from faith to faith." 1 GOD has drawn near to man in the Incarnation. All the righteousness and truth of GOD have had faithful expression to us in the words and deeds and character of the perfect Man ; the mysteries of GOD have been revealed through a human life; humanity stands in organic relation with GOD. If, therefore, we study devoutly the life of JESUS we shall learn with heart and conscience those truths which are the self-revelation of GOD in righteous- ness and love. If we put into practice the precepts of the Gospel we shall find that obedience to the truth is an introduction into the Presence of GOD ; it is the surest way of knowing Him ; and our moral energies being blended with His working, our knowledge is real, and the ground of a lofty intelligent faith. So, then, GOD is apprehended through experience which holds us in His Presence as He works with us and by us in righteousness, taking us into moral and active association with Himself. But more, He is to be known in devotion as the soul lies passive before Him, not breaking the silence of His Presence by any prayer or cry of its own, waiting only for His voice and touch. To those who are thus content to wait upon Him, GOD is 1 Rom. i. 17. ia8 THE REVELATION OF GOD wont to make Himself known, quickening the con- science, thrilling the heart with love, asking for service which it shall be life's greatest joy to do, showing to prepared and obedient minds the truths of righteousness, personal and social, of which He wills that their perception shall " react as a purifying force upon the common mind of the Christian society." 1 V. The righteousness of GOD, understood through work and devotion, revealed to heart and conscience through every lesson of life, does not appeal to the man as a law " thou shalt," " thou shalt not " so much as a divine truth, a constraining principle, an end of being, which he recognizes by an awakened " instinct of relationship," by " a certain inner kinship," that puts morality upon the high ground of spiritual noblesse oblige? So enlightened, a true man does not sin wilfully, 3 his moral vision is cleared, he is not deceived by the world, his will is informed, and so " his heart is established, and will not shrink." 4 The word which we may ever hear behind us, " This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left," 5 is not the coercive " thou shalt," or the prohibitive " thou shalt not," the word is behind us as the moral reason of being, as an eternal principle to be worked out in human life 6 ; the word is very nigh unto us, in every expression of moral judgment, in every true impulse of the heart, that we may hear it and do 1 Gore. 2 Gen. xxxix. 9. 3 i S. John iii. 6, 9. 4 Ps. cxii. 8. s Isa. xxx. 21. 6 Rom. viii. 10. GOD is RIGHTEOUS 129 it. 1 GOD, then, has revealed Himself in righteous- ness that we may be righteous " even as He is righteous 2 ; i.e., that we may become inherently righteous. If our organic relation to JESUS CHRIST be a reality, as, taught by Holy Scripture, we affirm it to be, and not a vague notion held to justify an empty sacramental system, then the Incarnate Life of JESUS fulfils in the Christian all the righteousness of GOD, through the working of the heart, the con- science, and the will. 3 VI. In the presence of life's strange difficulties and many temptations it is good that we lay hold of this truth of the righteousness of GOD, both for the consolation and the strengthening power of it. To live is to tread a difficult path in a shifting light, bearing the cross with meekness and patience, while the world's mocking or unbelief only expresses the thoughts that are all too natural to our im- patience, and pride, and self-love. To know that GOD is righteous, in a sense that corresponds with the deep convictions and the passionate hopes of our own moral nature asserting itself in love and truth to find that duty, charity, honour, justice, are fellowship and correspondence with GOD is to have many doubts and fears laid to rest. He can work and love with unfailing enthusiasm, with undimmed confidence, who learns, through daily experience of life, to reason from the 1 Deut. xxxi. 12. 2 i S. John iii. 7. 3 S. John vi. 53-58 ; xv. 1-7 ; Rom. v. 17, vi., viii. ; i Cor. xii. 12-27 5 Col. i. 27. s 130 THE REVELATION OF GOD dictates of heart and conscience that the Judge of all the earth will do right. 1 But, as we have seen, our knowledge of the right- eousness of GOD is not that only of a fact from which we may draw comfort and assurance, it is a power revealed in each one who will live loyally obedient to the divine will and faithfully responsive to grace. That being so, we may go back to our work braced for it anew, knowing well that in spite of the shortcomings which are too often regarded as claims upon the indulgence of others, instead of reasons for self-culture, we can meet the demands of the days, for the powers of the righteousness of GOD are operative in the consecrated life. What is it that we lack ? Wisdom, tact, patience, self- control, love, gentleness, justice, truth, courage, per- severance ? All these are included in the broad, complete idea of righteousness, and they are ours, for CHRIST is ours, CHRIST is in us, 2 and will abide in us, 3 working out His eternal will and purpose along the lines of our character, our work, our opportunities, our vocation. Yes, CHRIST is in us, ready to do all this unless we have failed or are failing to stand the test of life. Who can fail when, through all trying circum- stances, all temptation, all depressing drudgery, as well as through all happiness and success, he holds ever, as the glad reality of being, the Presence and power of the CHRIST within him, giving to all work a peculiar worthiness because of the divine life of 1 Gen. xviii. 25. 2 2 Cor. xiii. 5. 3 S. John xv. 5. GOD is RIGHTEOUS 131 which he is made a partaker, 1 and sanctifying all the springs of thought and desire ? "I live ; yet not I, but CHRIST liveth in me." 2 To say that is to know the righteousness of GOD energizing as a formative principle of all work and all character, and to have the right to say at the end " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the LORD, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day." 3 1 2 S. Pet. i. 4. 2 Gal. ii. 20. 3 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8. 132 THE REVELATION OF GOD IV GOD IS LOVE " GOD is Love." i S. John iv. 8, 16. " I have loved thee with an everlasting love." Jer. xxxi. 3. I. The highest truth that we can ever learn of GOD, as the reason of service and the joy of fellow- ship, is the truth that " GOD is Love." 1 That is the " gathering up into one sentence of the deepest experiences of the saints of GOD." 2 It is a truth so simple that it may be the creed of a child, so deep and vast that it contains all wisdom, for it declares the whole Being of GOD. It is a truth to satisfy the heart of youth, and to answer the ques- tionings of age. It is the strength of the living, the comfort of the dying. Such a truth, the revelation of GOD to the hearts of men, declaring the cause and the end of all things, might seem to be best understood in calm medita- tion, when the rapt soul, silent and happy, is held by its power, filled with its sweetness, quickened by its life but yet I would hesitate to say that GOD, self- revealed as Love, is best understood in contemplation. Notwithstanding its importance, its necessity, to the life of the soul, meditation may become just that 1 i S. John iv. 8, 1 6. 2 Aubrey Moore. GOD is LOVE 133 exercise of spiritual selfishness that is the missing of the highest. Without meditation the spiritual life is vague and incomplete, but for most of us the deepest knowledge and the highest growth in grace 1 are possible only when meditation and work have each their due place. The brave, steadfast worker who lives for others, so that his life of sympathy, helpfulness, and goodness is a message of the love of GOD to those who can receive it in no other way, is himself learning deeper secrets of that love than the merely contemplative soul can do. Love is not only what GOD is in Himself; it is the energy and the character, the reason and the end of His eternal working, and therefore perfect fellowship with Him in love must be a fellowship of work as well as of thought. The highest Christian life must thus fulfil the law of the life of JESUS. 2 II. That " GOD is Love" is perhaps one of the most important and inclusive statements made in Holy Scripture respecting the Being of GOD. Theo- logically it is the key to the central mystery of the Faith, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It declares the essential Being of GOD in a way that opens to the devout and thoughtful mind the deep truths which we are forbidden alike by reverence, by the poverty of language, and by the inadequacy of our thoughts to express formally. As a dogma the doc- trine of " the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity " is full of perplexity to an ordinary mind, for it seems as though, in assenting to it, the reason has to be silent, and faith is the blind unreasoning accept- 1 S. John xiii. 17 ; S. James i. 25. 2 S. John v. 17, 19, 30. 134 THE REVELATION OF GOD ance of it on the authority of the Church ; but when we understand that " GOD is Love " we see the necessity of personal distinctions within the Being of GOD, and we are enabled to perceive that the SON is the eternal personal reflexion of GOD to Himself, and the Spirit the eternal personal bond of their unity " Person and Person eternally made known to each other, in Their difference and Their unity, by a Person to Whom Both are absolutely known, and Who is absolutely One with Both." 1 While it stands as a proposition from which the heart can deduce its own satisfying theology, and learn through love to " worship one GOD in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity," the declaration that " GOD is Love" is a complete statement of His relation to man. To all who know what love is, it declares that His self-communication is as unlimited as His Being, and we may read in love the law and the promise of a growth, a glory, a blessedness " beyond what eye hath seen, or heart imagined." To all who can understand that love, infinite and divine, must and does trans- cend all the weakness, the sentiment, and the emotion that enter into human love, and therefore fulfils itself in justice as well as in mercy, in the moral discipline of man as well as in beneficence; because it is perfect goodness, guided by perfect wisdom to higher ends than it enters into our hearts to conceive, 2 it must appeal, infinitely tender and strong and wise, calling out and receiving response ; such love must find answer in the hearts of reasonable beings, it befits the glory of GOD and the dignity of man. 1 Mason, Faith of the Gospel. * i Cor. ii. 9. GOD is LOVE 135 III. To say that " GOD is Love " is to say that He stands self-revealed in terms of our gladdest common experience. It is something more than a poetic fancy to say that all things fair and beautiful in nature or in human life are in some way a mani- festation, a voicing, of that Eternal Love which is the Being of GOD. If it is not so, then the heart's natural interpretation of what appeals to it on all sides is but a vain imagination, and we are left to the darkest pessimism. " There is no other call, From wind to wave, from rose to asphodel, Than Love's alone the thing we cannot quell, Do what we will from font to funeral." J " All true and pure love is an extension of GOD the gladness in the eyes of lovers the tears also, and bridals and espousals, the wife's still happiness, the delight of new-made homes, the tinkle of children's laughter. It needs no learned exegete to explain to a true lover what S. John meant when he said ' GOD is Love.' These things are not gifts of GOD, they are parts of Him." 2 Behind the glowing thoughts of poets, or the happy perceptions of the student of life, there is the glad eternal reality which, in many parts and in many ways, is ever being presented for our discernment, that in all experience we may find GOD and be found of Him, that in all learning we may know GOD, and in every sweet and tender and lovely thing may read the truth that we are known of Him. It is not enough for the purposes of life, and for 1 Eric Mackay. 2 Crockett. 136 THE REVELATION OF GOD the needs of our souls, that we accept the simply- stated truth, " GOD is Love," and hold it as a com- forting and cheering doctrine in the face of the darker teachings of the age. To be able to do that is a blessing and a grace for which we cannot be too devoutly thankful, but to hold it firmly as an article of the Faith, which we can oppose to the suggestions of a materialism that knows nothing of love, is almost impossible unless the truth be the finding of both faith and experience. If it be true that, not- withstanding the dark and hideous facts which every one whose finer sensibilities are not yet benumbed by selfishness must see and feel, GOD reaches forth to man with a love which takes a thousand shapes and speaks with a thousand tongues, that each heart may be reached through some avenue of its many- sided life of sense and thought, we should be prepared to recognize this voice and touch of the Infinite. That recognition would be the ever-present reason of faith : that voice and touch would ever call and guide and draw us onward into more complete fellow- ship with GOD in CHRIST. 1 We cannot afford to ignore or to disregard any of the manifold expressions of the love of GOD, for just as no science is perfectly understood while it involves some but not all of the faculties of apprehension, so this sublime truth, the full knowledge of which is the highest good offered to man, is presented to his spirit through every avenue of his perception as the reason and end of all life, its breath and its sunshine, a sweet restful reality, a strong imperative law. 1 S. John vi. 37. GOD is LOVE 137 IV. All experiences, however wide or varied, combine in their results to make one state of con- sciousness, one attitude of devotion or of indifference, one actual relation to GOD and the things of eternity, one state of activity or enthusiasm or of apathy, one purpose of unselfish service or one habit of self-love, and so we must think of GOD'S love as a personal love to each one, and of our own response to it. Think for a moment of all that is implied in the personal truth " GOD loves me? It supplies the motive of a generous contrition ; it is the assurance that GOD will "welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve" us, sinners though we be; it will strengthen and restore " the broken spring of impulse " ; it is a sufficient answer to the doubts suggested by our ignorance of the way along which divine grace is leading us ; it is a ceaseless call for consecrated service; it is a joyous truth speaking through our work a gladsome message to others ; it is the making and the fulfilment in the heart of each of the promise given of old to the Church of GOD " GOD shall lead Israel with joy in the light of His glory with the mercy and righteousness that cometh from Him." 1 Meditate deeply upon the love of GOD as broadly and generally manifested, for where you find love you find GOD ; but dwell also humbly and devoutly upon the personal truth of it, " GOD loves me" We take our place in relation to GOD and our fellow- men according as this truth possesses our hearts, 1 Baruch v. 9. 138 THE REVELATION OF GOD and influences our work and our character. 1 As the truth lays hold of us love to GOD will become the holy passion of our life a passion of joy, of devotion, of service. " There is but one Lover of souls, and He loves each one of us as if there were no one else to love. He died for each one of us as if there were no one else to die for. He died upon the shameful Cross. The love which He inspires lasts, for it is the love of the Unchange- able. It satisfies, for it is inexhaustible. The nearer we draw to Him the more triumphantly does He enter into us ; the longer He dwells in us the more intimately have we possession of Him. It is an espousal for eternity." 2 JESUS CHRIST is the full expression to us of the love which, being of the essence of GOD, is the FATHER'S glory. "To know the love of CHRIST, which passeth knowledge," 3 and because of it to render Him again that love which is the passion of a life, is to live in the light and peace in which is born and cherished the living eternal, hope that " maketh not ashamed," 4 and the unswerving trust that makes the soul brave and confident in the face of all trial or difficulty. What fear, what uncertainty, what darkness can remain in the heart that is filled and enlightened with GOD ? What prayer, what hope, shall be unfulfilled that rises from the heart whose impulses and emotions are directed by the Divine Spirit of Love? He who loves GOD may look through all that may fill time 1 i S. John iii. 10-24; i y - 7~2T. 2 Newman. 3 Eph. iii. 19. * Rom. v. 5. GOD is LOVE 139 or eternity, and see with a conviction that will grow stronger with experience, that the law of all GOD'S work is love, that mercy and judgment are both love, that the goal of all things is love, because GOD, Who is Love, " shall be all in all." * V. Love, then, is not only an affection of the divine nature, it is an eternal purpose that cannot fail of its fulfilment. That fulfilment is being wrought out in time by the power of the Incarnate Life of JESUS, which was not only given for, but energizes in, regenerate men. Here is a truth of particular significance to all who work for others. Parents, teachers, clergy, Church workers, social workers, have many difficulties, trying discouragements, and deferred hopes, but, since " GOD is Love ; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in GOD, and GOD in him," 2 we have the assurance that every faithful desire of the surrendered heart will be satisfied ; every judgment of the illuminated conscience will be justified ; every effort directed by the law of love and made in the power of the life of CHRIST, will be fruitful of abiding results ; for it is said of the living Head and Representative of our race, " He shall see of the travail of His Soul, and shall be satisfied." 3 " GOD is Love." Here is a truth of boundless promise to every worker ; here is a reality of divine life and purpose that satisfies mind and heart and conscience ; here is a word of infinite comfort to hearts that mourn ; here is the gladdest and most glorious message that a life may bear and speak; 1 Cor. xv. 28. 2 i S. John iv. 16. 3 Isa. liii. n. 140 THE REVELATION OF GOD here is truth which shall abide, our joy and glory, when we shall have passed beyond the sphere of faith and hope into the eternal light, and shall know even as we are known. 1 In the light of that truth life is full of gladdest meaning, and work becomes like that of the angels, 2 a form of worship and priestly service, for " GOD is Love," and in love has taken man into fellowship with Himself. Let us, then, repeat the truth, and take it as a counsel of direction for our life " GOD is Love ; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in GOD, and GOD in him." 1 i Cor. xiii. 12. 2 Heb. i. 14. PRINTED BY A. R. MOWBRAY & Co. LIMITED, OXFORD A 000 089 046 7