1111 
 
 imuHi! 
 
 BBH 
 
 
 
 
afe^jfesaagiKr .^^3&9x&9txa*sx?!iK&aga 
 

 labbi Isadore Isaacson 
 
 
 
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY 
 EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS 
 
 THEOLOGY & 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 F. W. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS 
 WITH A COMMENDATION BY 
 CANON BARNETT 
 NEWLY ARRANGED IN THREE 
 VOLUMES VOLUME ONE 
 
THE PUBLISHERS OF 
 
 LIB^A^T WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND 
 FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST 
 OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED 
 VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER 
 THE FOLLOWING TWELVE HEADINGS: 
 
 TRAVEL ? SCIENCE ^ FICTION 
 
 THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY 
 
 HISTORY ^ CLASSICAL 
 
 FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 ESSAYS ^ ORATORY 
 
 POETRY & DRAMA 
 
 BIOGRAPHY 
 
 ROMANCE 
 
 IN TWO STYLES OF BINDING, CLOTH, 
 FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP, AND 
 LEATHER, ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP. 
 
 LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO. 
 
 NEW YORK: E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 
SERMONS21 
 RELIGION 
 
 FREDERICKW 
 ROBERTSON 
 
 LONDONrPUBLlSHED 
 byJ'M DENT- -CO 
 AND IN NEW YORK 
 BY E-PDUTTON &CO 
 

 FIRST EDITION . . . February 1906 
 REPRINTED .... May 1906; May 1907; 
 April 1909 
 
COMMENDATION 
 
 ROBERTSON'S sermons have stood the test of fifty years' use, 
 they have gone through as many editions as a popular novel, 
 they have been the frequent companions of men and women 
 who are not generally found among sermon readers, and they 
 are to-day nearly as modern and as fresh as on the day they 
 were first spoken. 
 
 It is a pleasant task to be called on to commend them in a 
 more companionable form than that in which they have hitherto 
 appeared. This book may easily find a corner in the pocket or 
 luggage of busy people, and whether it be taken up in the quiet 
 of the morning or the evening, or whether it be made the com- 
 panion of a journey, its thoughts and its words seem to be just 
 those most calculated to inspire and comfort the generation now 
 occupying the world's stage. 
 
 The members of this generation, like that to which Robertson 
 spoke, are conscious of coming changes. Old things are passing 
 away and new things are not revealed. This generation has, 
 however, its own characteristics. The scientific spirit has left 
 its mark even where there is no scientific knowledge. The 
 workman as well as the philosopher seems determined to be true 
 to what is within the reach of test and experience, and the truth 
 is sometimes expressed at the cost of brutal roughness towards 
 established and traditional conventions. But the people who 
 are thus scientifically minded show also evident signs of being 
 spiritually minded. There is a widely spread consciousness of 
 the presence of the Unknown, an expectation of some one or some- 
 thing great about to appear the recognition of unseen forces 
 
 943941 
 
8 Commendation 
 
 surrounding life, even when such recognition leads on to what 
 may be called superstition. The people of to-day more and 
 more give up church-going and buy more books about religion. 
 They commit themselves to no belief and are tolerant of every 
 belief. They leave off poetry reading and turn towards nature 
 study. They give up the Bible and become interested in Chris- 
 tian science. The young men refuse to take orders and are 
 keen to save souls. 
 
 There is, it may be said, among all classes of society, a grow- 
 ing dislike of insincerity, a dread of seeming to be committed 
 to any " ism " a shrinking from being called good, a shyness 
 of party domination, and a respect for honesty of thought, wher- 
 ever such honesty may ultimately lead. There is, at the same 
 time, a strange desire for spiritual guidance a sense of some- 
 thing present in the world of to-day like that which gave to 
 former generations their force or their peace, and a demand for 
 association on some higher plane than that which is offered by 
 parties, or even by societies whose object is mutual benefit or 
 other service. Human nature seems to need to look up for its 
 strength as well as to look down and around. 
 
 These characteristics of the present generation may perhaps 
 be traceable only in the words and acts of the few, but their 
 effects are to be found also among the masses of the people, 
 whose words and acts may perhaps have to be read backwards. 
 The wild pursuit of pleasure, for instance, is probably a rebound 
 from the difficulty which the problem of life now offers. The 
 people have realized that they can find no security on the old 
 foundations, they cannot any longer give unquestioning obedience 
 to old laws or traditions, they will not trouble themselves to 
 doubt or to inquire, and they seek to drown care in excitement. 
 In the same way, to take another instance, party zeal the keen 
 devotion to sectarian claims and the importance attached to 
 shows and " big " schemes are perhaps the evidences of that 
 doubt about party and of that desire for a vision which are put 
 into words by the more educated members of society. The 
 braver minds throw off the clothes whose use is doubted, the 
 more timid cling to them with greater tenacity : the doubt and 
 
Commendation 9 
 
 the desire account for both actions. The characteristics of the 
 present generation may then be summed up as (i) a determin- 
 ation to be true or real at the cost of many conceptions which 
 once controlled conduct, and (2) a growing spiritual conscious- 
 ness which is waiting for a new revelation. 
 
 Robertson's sermons seem specially fitted to the needs of 
 such a generation. They are so evidently wrought out of his 
 own personal experience. He testifies to what he himself has 
 seen or known. The readers of these sermons are thus to be 
 found in all classes of society and in all countries. The head of 
 a large Japanese college told me how it was his practice to read 
 to the students one of Robertson's sermons. " Ian Maclaren," 
 in an introduction to a former edition, has the following passage 
 -" A sermon of Robertson's was read when a ship's company 
 were in danger of death, a volume went through the American 
 War in an officer's knapsack. Dean Stanley meets a French 
 military surgeon a revolutionary and an unbeliever who is 
 deeply interested in Robertson, and next day an eminent official 
 and a devout Catholic questions the Dean about "an extra- 
 ordinary preacher whose name was Frederick Robertson.'' 
 Europeans, Asiatics, Catholics and Protestants, Churchmen and 
 Nonconformists, believers and sceptics, have all alike found help, 
 because all have been able to say, " Here is a man who knows 
 what is in man." 
 
 Robertson recognises something deeper than "scoffing" in 
 Pilate's question, " What is truth ? " Every thought he expresses 
 is firmly based on an experience which every reader may test 
 by looking into his own mind and heart. Every conclusion 
 has taken due notice of conclusions reached by human experi- 
 ence, and is fitted into a world where there are classes of 
 society, where science has discovered laws, and trade made 
 new manners. If he speaks of "sin" it is in language every 
 reader recognises as true, if he talks about Sabbath keeping 
 it is with due recognition of what life in a society demands. 
 There is nothing imported or curtailed so that it may be fitted 
 into some scheme or system, there is not a word added for 
 rhetorical effect, and where references are made to Bible tales 
 
io Commendation 
 
 whose authority criticism may have affected, or to Bible authors 
 whose position is no longer admitted, his teaching, based on 
 something deeper than the letter of the Bible, remains unshaken. 
 People weary of unreality find in Robertson a mind which is sure 
 without being insincere, forcible without being partisan, which 
 is brave as well as tender, strong as well as humble. 
 
 The sermons seem therefore specially fitted for a generation 
 determined on truth, while they at the same time give expres- 
 sion to the faith after which it is groping. 
 
 Faith conies from faith as life comes from life. The man 
 who walks as seeing the invisible opens other men's eyes for a 
 like vision. Robertson walks through a real world, he has to 
 do with society, with labour and capital, with doubts, with 
 sorrow and failure, but he deals with everything as one who 
 himself knows the whole of which everything is a part. He 
 takes, for instance, the natural human desire for rest. He, by 
 examples which appeal to every one's experience, shows what 
 sort of rest satisfies and what does not satisfy. He gives due 
 recognition to the other human desires to the desire for action 
 and the desire for fame, which seem to war with the desire 
 for rest. Then, out of the very facts of human nature, he brings, 
 as it were, the present God. His readers are not forced by 
 argument, they feel in themselves that as they become like God 
 they will find rest. 
 
 Robertson's faith often lights up some duty or some course of 
 conduct which wisdom, or even prudence born of the time, may 
 have suggested. It shows God's will to be behind common 
 morality and good business and wise methods of poor relief. He 
 puts men on the firm ground which their own experience has 
 tested, and then he shows the air to be full of the hosts of God 
 ranged on their side. He brings religion to bear on life. He 
 makes some Bible tale which at first sight seems to be concerned 
 only with the coarse passions or barbaric manners of a past age 
 to ring with teaching applicable to modern times. His faith 
 has discovered the spirit behind the letter, and revealed the 
 inspiration of humanity which has been from the beginning 
 and still is. He takes some doctrine hidden in time garments 
 
Commendation 1 1 
 
 which are stiff and heavy with commentaries and expositions, 
 and he brings out a meaning, true always, in all places and 
 for all men. 
 
 Earnest churchmen and earnest nonconformists, the orthodox 
 as well as the unorthodox, may thus read the sermons with 
 profit . They may at times be compelled to say that they are 
 unable to adopt his position. But they will rarely feel irritated 
 by any unfair statement of that position, or by any assumption 
 of superiority, and they will easily forgive any misunderstanding 
 due to ignorance, as they recognise his appreciation of the 
 truth for which they stand. They may continue in their old 
 professions Robertson was no maker of proselytes but from 
 contact with his large mind, so permeated by faith, they will be 
 conscious of wider sympathies, of a larger generosity, and of a 
 surer hold on truth. 
 
 This book so attractive and so convenient is thus com- 
 mended to his fellow-travellers in the world by one who has 
 found the sermons to be among his best companions in a life 
 which has been much absorbed in doing. 
 
 The original four volumes have been broken up and made 
 into three. There was nothing in the former arrangement by 
 which any particular sermon gained, and there is perhaps some 
 gain in grouping them together in special groups. These 
 groups cannot claim to be exclusive. There are sermons on 
 life which are also sermons on doctrine, and there are many 
 sermons on Bible subjects which bear directly on life. The 
 groups, however, do give some clue to the thought or the struc- 
 ture of the various sermons, and may serve to attract readers 
 whose particular interest may be Life, or Doctrine, or The Bible. 
 
 SAMUEL A. BARNETT. 
 
The following is a list of the works of F. W. Robertson : 
 
 Address delivered at Opening of Working Men's Institute, Brighton, 
 1849; Two Lectures on the Influence of Poetry on the Working 
 Classes, 1852 ; Lectures and Addresses on Literary and Social Topics, 
 1858; Translation of Lessing's "Education of the Human Race," 
 1858; Expository Lectures on St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, 
 1859 ; Analysis of " In Memoriam," 1862 ; Sermons preached at Trinity 
 Chapel, Brighton, 4 series, 1855-63 ; 5th series, 1890 ; Letters (with 
 Life), ed. S. A. Brooke, 1865 ; A Few Extracts from the Early 
 Poetical Works of F. W. R., 1870 (?), privately printed; Literary 
 Remains (including Lectures, Addresses, and other Writings), 1876. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 COMMENDATION BY CANON BARNETT ... 7 
 
 THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH TO MEN OF WEALTH 
 
 (JUNE 15, 1851) I.^JAM. l, 0| |l . 15 
 
 CHRIST'S JUDGMENT RESPECTING INHERITANCE (JUNE 
 
 22, 1851) 31 
 
 THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE (jUNE 9, 1850) . . 44 
 
 THE IRREPARABLE PAST (MAY 8, 1853) ... 55 
 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS BY OBLIVION OF THE PAST 
 
 (AUGUST 12, 1849) 68 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE (JANUARY 4, 1852) 82 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST (DE- 
 CEMBER 15, 1849) 9 2 
 
 FREEDOM BY THE TRUTH (JULY 13, 1851) . . 105 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF THE TRUTH . . . .114 
 
 (Preached at the Autumn Assizes, held at Lewes, 1853) 
 
 OBEDIENCE THE ORGAN OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 (MARCH 2, 1851) 127 
 
 RELIGIOUS DEPRESSION (MARCH 30, 1851) ^ii^ T 3? 
 SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT (AUGUST 4, 
 
 1850) 143 
 
14 Contents 
 
 WORLDLINESS (APRIL 25, 1852) . I 5 I 
 
 THE TONGUE (APRIL 28, 1850) . J^^. t 
 
 THE TRANSITORINESS OF LIFE (DECEMBER 28, 1851) 174 
 
 VIEWS OF DEATH (jULY 7, 1850) >i^/* l8 3 
 
 THE POWER OF SORROW (JUNE 30, 1850) 1 88 
 
 THE VICTORY OF FAITH (MAY 5, 1850) . 194 
 
 REST (JANUARY 13, 1850) . . . 206 
 
 UNITY AND PEACE (FEBRUARY 9, 1851) . . 214 
 
 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHARITY (MARCH 13, 1853). 22$ 
 
 CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP (AUGUST 8, 1852) 7^TSJ|^, 239 
 
 PURITY (AUGUST n, 1850) 245 
 
 CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY (JANUARY 4, 1852) . . 251 
 
 THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE (JANUARY 25, 
 
 1852) 262 
 
 THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW (jUNE 27, 
 
 l8 52) 275 
 
 THE WORD AND THE WORLD (1849) . . .281 
 
 A THANKSGIVING DAY AFTER CHOLERA (NOVEMBER 
 
 I Sy l8 49) . ... 293 
 
 AN ELECTION SERMON (jULY 4, 1852) . . . 305 
 
 THE HUMANE SOCIETY 313 
 
 (A Sermon preached on its behalf) 
 
 MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS (JUNE 2O, 
 
 1852) 
 
SERMONS ON RELIGION 
 AND LIFE 
 
 THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH TO MEN 
 OF WEALTH 
 
 I SAM. xxv. 10, n. "And Nabal answered David's servants, and 
 said, Who is David ? and who is the son of Jesse ? There be many 
 servants now-a-days that break away every man from his master. Shall 
 I then take my bread and my water, and my flesh that I have killed 
 for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence they 
 be?" 
 
 I HAVE selected this passage for our subject this evening, 
 because it is one of the earliest cases recorded in the Bible 
 in which the interests of the employer and the employed, 
 the man of wealth and the man of work, stood, or seemed 
 to stand, in antagonism to each other. 
 
 It was a period in which an old system of things was 
 breaking up ; and the new one was not yet established. 
 The patriarchal relationship of tutelage and dependence 
 was gone, and monarchy was not yet in firm existence. 
 Saul was on the throne ; but his rule was irregular and 
 disputed. Many things were slowly growing up into 
 custom which had not yet the force of law ; and the first 
 steps by which custom passes into law from precedent to 
 precedent are often steps at every one of which struggle 
 and resistance must take place. 
 
 The history of the chapter is briefly this. Nabal, the 
 wealthy sheep-master, fed his flocks in the pastures of 
 Carmel. David was leader of a band of men who got 
 their living by the sword on the same hills : outlaws whose 
 
\6 /y'lpJie : Message of the Church 
 
 . r e:KGessc& !h/5 it* s^orrie '^degree restrained, and over whom he 
 retained !~ a, -leader's influence. A rude irregular honour 
 was not unknown among those fierce men. They honour- 
 ably abstained from injuring Nabal's flocks. They did 
 more : they protected them from all harm against the 
 marauders of the neighbourhood. By the confession of 
 NabaPs own herdsmen, " they were a wall unto them both 
 by night and day, all the time they were with them keeping 
 their flocks." 
 
 And thus a kind of Right grew up : irregular enough, 
 but sufficient to establish a claim on Nabal for remunera- 
 tion of these services : a new claim, not admitted by him : 
 reckoned by him an exaction, which could be enforced by 
 no law; only by that law which is above all statute-law, 
 deciding according to emergencies ; an indefinable instinc- 
 tive sense of Fairness and Justice. But as there was no 
 law, and each man was to himself a law, and the sole 
 arbiter of his own rights, what help was there but that 
 disputes should rise between the wealthy proprietors and 
 their self-constituted champions, with exaction and tyranny 
 on the one side, churlishness and parsimony on the other ? 
 Hence a fruitful and ever-fresh source of struggle : the one 
 class struggling to take as much, and the other to give as 
 little as possible. In modern language, the Rights of 
 Labour were in conflict with the Rights of Property. 
 
 The story proceeds thus : David presented a demand, 
 moderate and courteous enough (v. 6, 7, 8). It was refused 
 by Nabal, and added to the refusal were those insulting 
 taunts of low birth and outcast condition which are worse 
 than injury, and sting, making men's blood run fire. One 
 court of appeal was left. There remained nothing but the 
 trial by Force. "Gird ye on," said David, "every man his 
 sword." 
 
 Now, observe the fearful, hopeless character of this 
 struggle. The question had come to this : whether David 
 with his ferocious, needy six hundred mountaineers united 
 by the sense of wrong, or Nabal with his well-fed and 
 trained hirelings bound by interest, not love to his cause 
 
The Message of the Church 17 
 
 were stronger ? Which was the more powerful, want whetted 
 by insult, or selfishness pampered by abundance ; they who 
 wished to keep by force, or they who wished to take? 
 An awful and uncertain spectacle, but the spectacle which 
 is exhibited in every country where Rights are keenly felt 
 and duties lightly where insolent demand is met by insult- 
 ing defiance. Wherever classes are held apart by rivalry 
 and selfishness instead of drawn together by the Law of 
 Love wherever there has not been established a kingdom 
 of heaven, but only a kingdom of the world there exist 
 the forces of inevitable collision. 
 
 I. The causes of this false social state. 
 II. The message of the Church to the man of wealth. 
 
 I. False basis on which social superiority was held to 
 rest. 
 
 Throughout, Nabal's conduct was built upon the assump- 
 tion of his own superiority. He was a man of wealth. 
 David was dependent on his own daily efforts. Was not 
 that enough to settle the question of superiority and 
 inferiority ? It was enough on both sides for a long time, 
 till the falsehood of the assumption became palpable and 
 intolerable. But palpable and intolerable it did become at 
 last. 
 
 A social falsehood will be borne long, even with con- 
 siderable inconvenience, until it forces itself obtrusively on 
 men's attention, and can be endured no longer. The 
 exact point at which this social falsehood, that wealth 
 constitutes superiority and has a right to the subordination 
 of inferiors, becomes intolerable, varies according to several 
 circumstances. 
 
 The evils of poverty are comparative they depend on 
 climate. In warm climates, where little food, no fuel, and 
 scanty shelter are required, the sting is scarcely felt till 
 poverty becomes starvation. They depend on contrast. 
 Far above the point where poverty becomes actual famine, 
 it may become unbearable if contrasted strongly with the 
 VOL. i. B 
 
1 8 The Message of the Church 
 
 unnecessary luxury and abundance enjoyed by the classes 
 above. Where all suffer equally, as men and officers suffer 
 in an Arctic voyage, men bear hardship with cheerfulness : 
 but where the suffering weighs heavily on some, and the 
 luxury of enjoyment is out of all proportion monopolised 
 by a few, the point of reaction is reached long before penury 
 has become actual want: or, again, when wealth or rank 
 assumes an insulting domineering character when con- 
 temptuous names for the poor are invented, and current 
 among the more unfeeling of a wealthy class : then the 
 falsehood of superiority can be tolerated no longer; for 
 we do not envy honours which are meekly borne, nor 
 wealth which is unostentatious. 
 
 Now it was this which brought matters to a crisis. 
 David had borne poverty long nay, he and his men had 
 long endured the contrast between their own cavern-homes 
 and beds upon the rock, and Nabal's comforts. But when 
 Nabal added to this those pungent biting sneers, which sink 
 into poor men's hearts and rankle ; which are not forgotten, 
 but come out fresh in the day of retribution, "Who is 
 David? and who is the son of Jesse? There be many 
 servants now-a-days that break away every man from his 
 master," then David began to measure himself with Nabal, 
 not a wiser man nor a better nor even a stronger. 
 Who is this Nabal? Intellectually, a fool morally, a 
 profligate, drowning reason in excess of wine at the annual 
 sheep-shearing. A tyrant over his slaves over-bearing to 
 men who only ask of him their rights. Then rose the 
 question, which Nabal had better not have forced men to 
 answer for themselves, By what right does this possessor 
 of wealth lord it over men who are inferior in no one 
 particular. 
 
 Now observe two things. 
 
 i. An apparent inconsistency in David's conduct. David 
 had received injury after injury from Saul, and only for- 
 given. One injury from Nabal, and David is striding over 
 the hills to revenge his wrong with naked steel. How came 
 this reverence and irreverence to mix together ? 
 
The Message of the Church 19 
 
 We reply. Saul had a claim of Authority on David's 
 allegiance : Nabal only one of rank. Between these the 
 Bible makes a vast difference. It says, The powers which 
 be are ordained of God. But upper and lower, as belong- 
 ing to difference in property, are fictitious terms : true, if 
 character corresponds with titular superiority; false, if it 
 does not. And such was the difference manifested in the 
 life of the Son of God. To lawful authority, whether 
 Roman or Jewish, even priestly, He paid deference : but to 
 the titled mark of conventional distinction, none. Rabbi, 
 Rabbi was no Divine authority. It was not power, a dele- 
 gated attribute of God : it was only a name. In Saul there- 
 fore David reverenced one his superior in authority ; but 
 in Nabal he only had one surpassing him in wealth. 
 And David refused, somewhat too rudely, to acknowledge 
 the bad, great man as his superior : would pay him no 
 reverence, respect, or allegiance whatever. Let us mark 
 that distinction well, so often confused kings, masters, 
 parents : here is a power ordained of God. Honour it. 
 But wealth, name, title, distinctions, always fictitious, often 
 false and vicious, if you claim homage for these, separate 
 from worth, you confound two things essentially different. 
 Try that by the test of His Life. Name the text where 
 Christ claimed reverence for wealth or rank. On the 
 Mount did the Son of Man bow the knee to the majesty of 
 wealth and wrong, or was His Sonship shown in that He 
 would not bow down to that as if of God ? 
 
 2. This great falsehood, respecting superior and inferior, 
 rested on a truth. There had been a superiority in the 
 wealthy class once. In the patriarchal system wealth and 
 rule had gone together. The father of the family and tribe 
 was the one in whom proprietorship was centred. But the 
 patriarchal system had passed away. Men like Nabal suc- 
 ceeded to the patriarch's wealth, and expected the subordi- 
 nation which had been yielded to patriarchal character and 
 position : and this when every particular of relationship was 
 altered. Once the patriarch was the protector of his de- 
 pendents. Now David's class was independent, and the 
 
20 The Message of the Church 
 
 protectors rather than the protected ; at all events able to de- 
 fend themselves. Once the rich man was the ruler in virtue 
 of paternal relationship. Now wealth was severed from rule 
 and relationship : a man might be rich, yet neither a ruler, 
 nor a protector, nor a kinsman. And the fallacy of Nabal's 
 expectation consisted in this, that he demanded for wealth 
 that reverence which had once been due to men who 
 happened to be wealthy. 
 
 It is a fallacy in which we are perpetually entangled. We 
 expect reverence for that which was once a symbol of what 
 was reverenced, but is reverenced no longer. Here, in 
 England, it is common to complain that there is no longer 
 any respect of inferiors towards superiors : that servants 
 were once devoted and grateful, tenants submissive, subjects 
 enthusiastically loyal. But we forget that servants were once 
 protected by their masters : and tenants safe from wrong 
 only through the guardianship of their powerful lords : that 
 thence a personal gratitude grew up : that now they are 
 protected by the law from wrong by a different social system 
 altogether : and that the individual bond of gratitude subsists 
 no longer. We expect that to masters and employers the 
 same reverence and devotedness shall be rendered which 
 were due to them under other circumstances, and for different 
 reasons : as if wealth and rank had ever been the claim to 
 reverence, and not merely the accidents and accompani- 
 ments of the claim : as if anything less sacred than holy ties 
 could purchase sacred feelings : as if the homage of free 
 manhood could be due to gold and name : as if to the mere 
 Nabal-fool who is labelled as worth so much, and whose 
 signature carries with it so much coin, the holiest and most 
 ennobling sensations of the soul, reverence and loyalty, 
 were due by God's appointment. 
 
 No. That patriarchal system has passed for ever. No 
 sentimental waitings for the past, no fond regrets for the 
 virtues of a bygone age, no melancholy, poetical, retrospec- 
 tive antiquarianism can restore it. In church and state the 
 past is past : and you can no more bring back the blind 
 reverence than the rude virtues of those days. The day has 
 
The Message of the Church 21 
 
 come in which if feudal loyalty or patriarchal reverence are 
 to be commanded, they must be won by patriarchal virtues 
 or feudal real superiorities. 
 
 Second : Cause of this unhealthy social state : A false 
 conception respecting Rights. 
 
 It would be unjust to Nabal to represent this as an act 
 of wilful oppression and conscious injustice. He did what 
 appeared to him fair between man and man. He paid his 
 labourers. Why should he pay anything beyond stipulated 
 wages ? 
 
 David's demand appeared an extravagant and insolent 
 one, provoking unfeigned astonishment and indignation. It 
 was an invasion of his rights. It was a dictation with 
 respect to the employment of that which was his own. 
 " Shall I take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I 
 have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I 
 know not whence they be ? " 
 
 Recollect, too, there was something to be said for Nabal. 
 This view of the irresponsible right of property was not his 
 invention. It was the view probably entertained by all his 
 class. It had descended to him from his parents. They 
 were prescriptive and admitted rights on which he stood. 
 And however false or unjust a prescriptive right may be, 
 however baseless when examined, there is much excuse for 
 those who have inherited and not invented it ; for it is hard 
 to see through the falsehood of any system by which we 
 profit, and which is upheld by general consent, especially 
 when good men, too, uphold it. Rare, indeed, is that pure- 
 heartedness which sees with eagle glance through conven- 
 tionalisms : This is a wrong, and I and my own class are 
 the doers of it. 
 
 On the other hand, David and his needy followers were 
 not slow to perceive that they had their rights over that 
 property of Nabal's. 
 
 Men on whom wrongs press are the first to feel them, and 
 their cries of pain and indignation are the appointed means 
 of God to direct to their wrongs the attention of society. 
 
22 The Message of the Church 
 
 Very often the fierce and maddened shriek of suffering is the 
 first intimation that a wrong exists at all. 
 
 There was no law in Israel to establish David's claims. 
 This guardianship of Nabal's flocks was partly a self- 
 constituted thing. No bargain had been made : no sum of 
 reward expressly stipulated. But there is a Law besides 
 and above all written law, which gives to written laws their 
 authority, and from which, so often as they diverge, it is woe 
 to the framers of the law ; for their law must perish, and the 
 Eternal Law unseen will get itself acknowledged as a truth 
 from heaven, or a truth from hell, a truth begirt with fire 
 and sword, if they will not read it except so. 
 
 In point of fact, David had a right to a share of Nabal's 
 profits. The harvest was in part David's harvest, for with- 
 out David it never could have been reaped. The sheep 
 were in part David's sheep, for without David not a sheep 
 would have been spared by the marauders of the hills. Not 
 a sheaf of corn was carried to Nabal's barn : nor a night 
 passed in repose by Nabal's shepherds, but what told of the 
 share of David in the saving of that sheaf, and the procure- 
 ment of that repose (not the less real because it was past and 
 unseen). The right which the soldier has by law to his pay, 
 was the right which David had by unwritten law ; a right 
 resting on the fact that his services were indispensable for 
 the harvest. 
 
 Here, then, is one of the earliest instances of the Rights 
 of Labour coming into collision with the Rights of 
 Property : rights shadowy, undefined, perpetually shifting 
 their boundaries, varying with every case, altering with every 
 age, incapable of being adjusted except rudely by law, and 
 leaving always something which the most subtle and 
 elaborate law cannot define, and which in any moment may 
 grow up into a wrong. 
 
 Now, when it comes to this, Rights against Rights, there 
 is no determination of the question but by overwhelming 
 numbers or blood. David's remedy was a short, sharp, 
 decisive one. " Gird ye on every man his sword." And it 
 is difficult, for the sake of humanity, to say to which side in 
 
The Message of the Church 23 
 
 such a quarrel we should wish well. If the rich man succeeds 
 in civil war, he will bind the chain of degradation more 
 severely and more surely for years, or ages, on the crushed 
 serf. If the champions of popular rights succeed by the 
 sword, you may then await, in awe, the reign of tyranny, 
 licentiousness, and lawlessness. For the victory of the 
 lawless, with the memory of past wrongs to avenge, is almost 
 more sanguinary than the victory of those who have had 
 power long, and whose power has been defied. 
 
 3. We find another cause in circumstances. Want and 
 unjust exclusion precipitated David and his men into this 
 rebellion. It is common enough to lay too much weight on 
 circumstances. Nothing can be more false than the popular 
 theory that ameliorated outward condition is the panacea for 
 the evils of society. The gospel principle begins from with- 
 in and works outwards. The world's principle begins with 
 the outward condition, and expects to influence inwardly. 
 To expect that by changing the world without in order to 
 suit the world within, by taking away all difficulties and 
 removing all temptations, instead of hardening the man within 
 against the force of outward temptation to adapt the lot 
 to the man, instead of moulding the spirit to the lot, is to 
 reverse the gospel method of procedure. Nevertheless, even 
 that favourite speculation of theorists, that perfect circum- 
 stances will produce perfect character, contains a truth. 
 Circumstances of outward condition are not the sole 
 efficients in the production of character, but they are 
 efficients which must not be ignored. Favourable condi- 
 tion will not produce excellence : but the want of it often 
 hinders excellence. It is true that vice leads to poverty : 
 all the moralizers tell us that, but it is also true that poverty 
 leads to vice. There are some in this world to whom, 
 speaking humanly, social injustice and social inequalities 
 have made goodness impossible. Take, for instance, the 
 case of these bandits on Mount Carmel. Some of them 
 were outlawed by their own crimes, but others doubtless by 
 debts not wilfully contracted one at least, David, by a most 
 unjust and unrighteous persecution. And these men, ex- 
 
24 The Message of the Church 
 
 eluded, needy, exasperated by a sense of wrong, untaught 
 outcasts, could you gravely expect from them obedience, 
 patience, meekness, religious resignation ? Yes, my 
 brethren, that is exactly the marvellous impossibility people 
 do most inconsistently expect; and there are no bounds 
 to our astonishment if we do not get what we expect : 
 Superhuman honesty from starving men, to whom life by 
 hopelessness has become a gambler's desperate chance 
 chivalrous loyalty and high forbearance from creatures to 
 whom the order of society has presented itself only as an 
 unjust system of partiality. We forget that forbearance and 
 obedience are the very last and highest lessons learned by 
 the spirit in its most careful training. By those unhallowed 
 conventionalisms through which we, like heathens and not 
 like Christians, crush the small offender and court the great 
 one that damnable cowardice by which we banish the 
 seduced and half admire the seducer by which, in defiance 
 of all manliness and all generosity, we punish the weak and 
 tempted, and let the tempter go free : by all these we make 
 men and woman outcasts, and then expect from them the 
 sublimest graces of reverence and resignation. 
 
 II. The message of the Church to the man of wealth. 
 
 The message of the Church contains those principles of 
 Life which, carried out would, and hereafter will, realize the 
 Divine Order of Society. The revealed Message does not 
 create the facts of our Humanity it simply makes them 
 known. The Gospel did not make God our Father it 
 authoritatively reveals that He is so. It did not create a new 
 duty of loving one another it revealed the old duty which 
 existed from eternity, and must exist as long as humanity is 
 humanity. It was no "new commandment," but an old 
 commandment which had been heard from the beginning. 
 The church of God is that living body of men who are 
 called by Him out of the world, not to be the inventors of a 
 new social system, but to exhibit in the world by word and 
 life, chiefly by life, what humanity is, was, and will be, in 
 the Idea of God. Now so far as the social economy is con- 
 
The Message of the Church 25 
 
 cerned, the revelations of the church will coincide with the 
 discoveries of a Scientific Political Economy. Political 
 Economy discovers slowly the facts of the immutable laws 
 of social well-being. But the living principles of those laws, 
 which cause them to be obeyed, Christianity has revealed to 
 loving hearts long before. The spirit discovers them to the 
 spirit. For instance, Political Economy, gazing on such a 
 fact as this of civil war, would arrive at the same principles 
 which the church arrives at. She too would say, Not selfish- 
 ness, but love. Only that she arrives at these principles by 
 experience, not intuition : by terrible lessons, not revelation : 
 by revolutions, wars, and famines, not by spiritual impulses 
 of charity. 
 
 And so because these principles were eternally true 
 in humanity, we find in the conduct of Abigail towards 
 David in this early age, not explicitly, but implicitly, the 
 very principles which the Church of Christ has given to 
 the world ; and more, the very principles which a sound 
 economy would sanction. In her reply to David we have 
 the anticipation by a loving heart of those duties which 
 selfish prudence must have taught at last. 
 
 i. The spiritual dignity of man as man. Recollect 
 David was the poor man. but Abigail, the high-born lady, 
 admits his worth : " The Lord will certainly make my lord 
 a sure house ; because my lord fighteth the battles of the 
 Lord, and evil hath not been found in thee all thy days." 
 Here is a truth revealed to that age. Nabal's day, and the 
 day of such as Nabal, is past another power is rising 
 above the horizon. David's cause is God's cause. Worth 
 does not mean what a man is worth you must find some 
 better definition than that. 
 
 Now this is the very truth revealed in the Incarnation. 
 David, Israel's model king ; the king by the grace of 
 God, not by the conventional rules of human choice, 
 is a shepherd's son. Christ, the king who is to reign over 
 our regenerated humanity, is humbly born the poor 
 woman's Son. That is the Church's message to the man of 
 wealth, and a message which it seems has to be learned 
 
26 The Message of the Church 
 
 afresh in every age. It was new to Nabal. It was new to 
 the men of the age of Christ. In His day they "were 
 offended in Him, because He was humbly born. " Is not 
 this the carpenter's son ? " It is the offence now. They 
 who retain those superstitious ideas of the eternal superi- 
 ority of rank and wealth, have the first principles of 
 the Gospel yet to learn. How can they believe in the Son 
 of Mary ? They may honour Him with the lip, they deny 
 Him in His brethren. Whoever helps to keep alive that 
 ancient lie of upper and lower, resting the distinction not 
 on official authority or personal worth, but on wealth and 
 title, is doing his part to hinder the establishment of the 
 Redeemer's kingdom. 
 
 Now the Church of Christ proclaims that truth in 
 baptism. She speaks of a kingdom here in which all are, 
 as spirits, equal. She reveals a Fact. She does not affect 
 to create the fact. She says not hypothetically, "this 
 child may be the child of God if prevenient grace has taken 
 place, or if hereafter he shall have certain feelings and 
 experiences : " nor, " Hereby I create this child magically 
 by supernatural power in one moment, what it was not 
 a moment before : " but she says authoritatively, " I 
 pronounce this child the child of God : the brother of 
 Christ the First-born the son of Him who has taught us 
 by His Son to call Him our Father, not my Father. What- 
 ever that child may become hereafter in fact, he is now by 
 right of creation and redemption, the child of God. Rich 
 or poor, titled or untitled, he shares the spiritual nature of 
 the second Adam the Lord from heaven." 
 
 2. The second truth expressed by Abigail was the Law 
 of Sacrifice. She did not heal the grievance with smooth 
 words. Starving men are not to be pacified by professions 
 of good will. She brought her two hundred loaves (v. 18), 
 and her two skins of wine, her five sheep ready dressed, &c. 
 A princely provision ! 
 
 You might have said this was waste half would have 
 been enough. But the truth is, liberality is a most real 
 economy. She could not stand there calculating the 
 
The Message of the Church 27 
 
 smallest possible expense at which the affront might 
 be wiped out. True economy is to pay liberally and fairly 
 for faithful service. The largest charity is the best 
 economy. Nabal had had a faithful servant. He should 
 have counted no expense too great to retain his services, 
 instead of cheapening and depreciating them. But we 
 wrong Abigail if we call this economy or calculation. In 
 fact, had it been done on economical principles, it would 
 have failed. Ten times this sum from Nabal would not 
 have arrested revenge. For Nabal it was too late. Con- 
 cessions extracted by fear only provoke exaction further. 
 The poor know well what is given because it must be given, 
 and what is conceded from a sense of justice. They feel 
 only what is real. David's men and David felt that these 
 were not the gifts of a sordid calculation, but the offerings 
 of a generous heart. And it won them their gratitude 
 their enthusiasm their unfeigned homage. 
 
 This is the attractive power of that great Law, whose highest 
 Expression was the Cross. " I, if I be lifted up, will draw 
 all men unto Me." Say what you will, it is not interest, 
 but the sight of noble qualities, and true sacrifice, which 
 commands the devotion of the world. Yea, even the 
 bandit and the outcast will bend before that as before 
 a Divine thing. In one form or another it draws all men 
 it commands all men. 
 
 Now this the Church proclaims as part of its special 
 message to the rich. It says that the Divine Death was a 
 Sacrifice. It declares that death to be the law of every life 
 which is to be like His. It says that the Law, which alone 
 can interpret the mystery of life, is the self-sacrifice of 
 Christ. It proclaims the law of His life to have been this : 
 " For their sakes I devote (sanctify) Myself, that they also 
 may be devoted through the Truth." In other words, the 
 Self-sacrifice of the Redeemer was to be the living principle 
 and law of the self-devotion of His people. It asserts that 
 to be the principle which alone can make any human life a 
 true life. " I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions 
 of Christ in my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the 
 
28 The Message of the Church 
 
 church." We have petrified that Sacrifice into a dead 
 theological dogma, about the exact efficacy of which we 
 dispute metaphysically, and charge each other with heresy. 
 That atonement will become a living truth only when we 
 humbly recognise in it the eternal fact that sacrifice is 
 the Law of life. The very mockers at the crucifixion 
 unwittingly declared the principle : " He saved others : 
 Himself He cannot save." Of course How could He save 
 Himself who had to save others? You can only save 
 others when you have ceased to think of saving your own 
 soul you can only truly bless when you have done with the 
 pursuit of personal happiness. Did you ever hear of a 
 soldier who saved his country by making it his chief work to 
 secure himself? And was the Captain of our salvation 
 to become the Saviour by contravening that universal law of 
 Sacrifice, or by obeying it ? 
 
 Brother men, the early Church gave expression to that 
 principle of sacrifice in a very touching way. They had 
 all things in common. " Neither said any of them that 
 aught of the things which he possessed was his own." 
 They failed, not because they declared that, but because 
 men began to think that the duty of sharing was compul- 
 sory. They proclaimed principles which were unnatural, 
 inasmuch as they set aside all personal feelings, which are 
 part of our nature too. They virtually compelled private 
 property to cease, because he who retained private property 
 when all were giving up was degraded, and hence became a 
 hypocrite and liar like Ananias. But let us not lose the 
 truth which they expressed in an exaggerated way : 
 " Neither said any of them that aught of the things which 
 he possessed was his own." Property is sacred. It is 
 private property ; if it were not, it could not be sacrificed. 
 If it were to be shared equally by the idle and the 
 industrious, there could be no love in giving. Property is 
 the rich man's own. Nabal is right in saying, My bread 
 my water my flesh. But there is a higher Right which 
 says, It is not yours. And that voice speaks to every rich 
 man in one way or another, according as he is selfish or 
 
The Message of the Church 29 
 
 unselfish : coming as a voice of terror or a voice of blessing. 
 It came to Nabal with a double curse, turning his heart into 
 stone with the vision of the danger and the armed ranks of 
 David's avengers ; and laying on David's soul the sin of 
 intended murder. It came to the heart of Abigail with 
 a double blessing : blessing her who gave and him who 
 took. To the spirit of the Cross alone we look as the 
 Remedy for social evils. When the people of this great 
 country, especially the rich, shall have been touched with the 
 spirit of the Cross to a largeness of sacrifice of which they 
 have not dreamed as yet, there will be an atonement 
 between the Rights of Labour and the Rights of Property. 
 
 3. The last part of the Church's message to the man of 
 wealth touches the matter of rightful influence. 
 
 Very remarkable is the demeanour of David towards 
 Nabal, as contrasted with his demeanour towards Abigail. 
 In the one case, defiance, and a haughty self-assertion of 
 equality in the other, deference, respect, and the most 
 eloquent benediction. It was not, therefore, against the 
 wealthy class, but against individuals of the class, that the 
 wrath of these men burned. 
 
 See, then, the folly and the falsehood of the sentimental 
 regret that there is no longer any reverence felt towards 
 superiors. There is reverence to superiors, if only it can be 
 shown that they are superiors. Reverence is deeply rooted 
 in the heart of 'humanity you cannot tear it out. Civiliza- 
 tion science progress only change its direction : they 
 do not weaken its force. If it no longer bows before 
 crucifixes and candles, priests and relics, it is not 
 extinguished towards what is truly sacred and what is 
 priestly in man. The fiercest revolt against false authority 
 is only a step towards submission to rightful authority. 
 Emancipation from false lords only sets the heart free to 
 honour true ones. The free-born David will not do homage 
 to Nabal. Well, now go and mourn over the degenerate age 
 which no longer feels respect for that which is above it. 
 But behold David has found a something nobler than 
 himself. Feminine charity sacrifice and justice and in 
 
3 o The Message of the Church 
 
 gratitude and profoundest respect he bows to that. The 
 state of society which is coming is not one of protection 
 and dependence : nor one of mysterious authority, and blind 
 obedience to it nor one in which any class shall be 
 privileged by Divine right and another remain in perpetual 
 tutelage ; but it is one in which unselfish services and 
 personal qualities will command, by Divine right, gratitude 
 and admiration, and secure a true and spiritual leadership. 
 
 Oh ! let not the rich misread the signs of the times, or 
 mistake their brethren : they have less and less respect for 
 titles and riches : for vestments and ecclesiastical preten- 
 sions : but they have a real respect for superior knowledge 
 and superior goodness : they listen like children to those 
 whom they believe to know a subject better than them- 
 selves. Let those who know it say, whether there is not 
 something inexpressibly touching and even humbling in the 
 large, hearty, manly, English reverence and love which the 
 working men show towards those who love and serve them 
 truly, and save them from themselves and from doing wrong. 
 See how David's feelings gush forth (v. 33) " Blessed be 
 the Lord God of Israel which sent thee this day to meet me : 
 and blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou which hast 
 kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from 
 avenging myself with mine own hand." 
 
 The rich and the great may have that love if they will. 
 
 To conclude. Doubtless, David was wrong : he had no 
 right even to redress wrongs thus : patience was his divinely 
 appointed duty ; and doubtless in such circumstances we 
 should be very ready to preach submission and to blame 
 David. Alas ! we, the clergy of the Church of England, 
 have been only too ready to do this : for three long cen- 
 turies we have taught submission to the powers that be, as 
 if that were the only text in Scripture bearing on the rela- 
 tions between the ruler and the ruled. Rarely have we 
 dared to demand of the powers that be, justice; of the 
 wealthy man and the titled, duties. We have produced 
 folios of slavish flattery upon the Divine Right of Power. 
 Shame on us ! we have not denounced the wrongs done to 
 
Judgment respecting Inheritance 31 
 
 weakness : and yet for one text in the Bible which requires 
 submission and patience from the poor, you will find a 
 hundred which denounce the vices of the rich in the 
 writings of the noble old Jewish prophets, that, and almost 
 that only that in the Old Testament, with a deep roll of 
 words that sounds like Sinai thunders : and that in the New 
 Testament in words less impassioned and more calmly 
 terrible from the apostles and their Master : and woe to us 
 in the great day of God, if we have been the sycophants of 
 the rich, instead of the Redressers of the poor man's wrongs : 
 woe to us if we have been tutoring David into respect to 
 his superior, Nabal, and forgotten that David's cause, not 
 Nabal's, is the cause of God. 
 
 CHRIST'S JUDGMENT RESPECTING INHERIT- 
 ANCE 
 
 LUKE xii. 13-15. "And one of the company said unto him> 
 Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. 
 And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over 
 you ? And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness : 
 for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he- 
 possessed!." 
 
 THE Son of God was misunderstood and misinterpreted 
 in His day. With this fact we are familiar ; but we are not 
 at all familiar with the consideration that it was very natural 
 that He should be so mistaken. 
 
 He went about Galilee and Judea proclaiming the down- 
 fall of every injustice, the exposure and confutation of every 
 lie. He denounced the lawyers who refused education to- 
 the people in order that they might retain the key of know- 
 ledge in their own hands. He reiterated Woe ! woe ! woe t 
 to the Scribes and Pharisees, who revered the Past, and 
 systematically persecuted every new prophet and every- 
 
32 Judgment respecting Inheritance 
 
 brave man who rose up to vindicate the Spirit of the Past 
 against the institutions of the past. He spoke parables 
 which bore hard on the men of wealth. That, for instance, 
 of the rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, 
 and fared sumptuously every day : who died, and in hell 
 lift up his eyes, being in torments. That of the wealthy 
 proprietor who prospered in the world ; who pulled down 
 his barns to build greater ; who all the while was in the 
 sight of God a fool ; who in front of judgment and eternity 
 was found unready. He stripped the so-called religious 
 party of that day of their respectability, convicted them, to 
 their own astonishment, of hypocrisy, and called them 
 " whited sepulchres." He said God was against them : that 
 Jerusalem's day was come, and that she must fall. 
 
 And now consider candidly : suppose that all this had 
 taken place in this country ; that an unknown stranger, with 
 no ordination, with no visible authority, basing his authority 
 upon his truth, and his agreement with the mind of God the 
 Father, had appeared in this England, uttering half the 
 severe things He spoke against the selfishness of wealth, 
 against ecclesiastical authorities, against the clergy, against 
 the popular religious party : suppose that such an one 
 should say that our whole social life is corrupt and false 
 suppose that instead of " thou blind Pharisee," the word had 
 been " thou blind Churchman ! " 
 
 Should we have fallen at the feet of such an one, and 
 said, Lo ! this is a message from Almighty God, and He 
 who brings it is a Son of God ; perhaps what He says Him- 
 self, His only Son God of God ? 
 
 Or should we not have rather said, This is dangerous 
 teaching, and revolutionary in its tendencies, and He who 
 teaches it is an incendiary, a mad, democratical, dangerous 
 fanatic ? 
 
 That was exactly what they did say of your Redeemer in 
 His day ; nor does it seem at all wonderful that they did. 
 
 The sober, respectable inhabitants of Jerusalem, very 
 comfortable themselves, and utterly unable to conceive why 
 things should not go on as they had been going on for a 
 
Judgment respecting Inheritance 33 
 
 hundred years not smarting from the misery and the moral 
 degradation of the lazars with whom He associated, and 
 under whose burdens His loving spirit groaned thought it 
 excessively dangerous to risk the subversion of their quiet 
 enjoyment by such outcries. They said, prudent men ! if 
 He is permitted to go on this way, the Romans will come and 
 take away our place and nation. The Priests and Pharisees, 
 against whom He had spoken specially, were fiercer still. 
 They felt there was no time to be lost. 
 
 But still more, His own friends and followers misunder- 
 stood Him. 
 
 They heard Him speak of a Kingdom of Justice and 
 Righteousness in which every man should receive the due 
 reward of his deeds. They heard Him say that this king- 
 dom was not far off, but actually among them, hindered only 
 by their sins and dulness from immediate appearance. 
 Men's souls were stirred and agitated. They were ripe for 
 anything, and any spark would have produced explosion. 
 They thought the next call would be to take the matter into 
 their own hands. 
 
 Accordingly, on one occasion, St. John and St. James 
 asked permission to call down fire from heaven upon a village 
 of the Samaritans which would not receive their message. 
 On another occasion, on a single figurative mention of a 
 sword, they began to gird themselves for the struggle : 
 " Lord," said one, " behold here are two swords." Again, 
 as soon as He entered Jerusalem for the last time, the 
 populace heralded His way with shouts, thinking that the 
 long-delayed hour of retribution was come at last. They 
 saw the Conqueror before them who was to vindicate their 
 wrongs. In imagination they already felt their feet upon 
 the necks of their enemies. 
 
 And because their hopes were disappointed, and He was 
 not the Demagogue they wanted, therefore they turned 
 against Him. Not the Pharisees, but the people whom 
 He had come to save, the outcast, and the publican, and 
 the slave, and the maid-servant ; they whose cause He 
 had so often pleaded, and whose emancipation He had 
 VOL. i. c 
 
34 Judgment respecting Inheritance 
 
 prepared. It was the People who cried, "Crucify Him, 
 crucify Him ! " 
 
 This will become intelligible to us if we can get at the 
 spirit of this passage. 
 
 Among those who heard Him lay down the laws of the 
 Kingdom of God, Justice, Fairness, Charity, there was one 
 who had been defrauded, as it seems, by his brother, of his 
 just share of the patrimony. He thought that the One who 
 stood before him was exactly what he wanted : A redresser 
 of wrongs a champion of the oppressed a divider and 
 arbiter between factions a referee of lawsuits one who 
 would spend His life in the unerring decision of all mis- 
 understandings. 
 
 To his astonishment the Son of Man refused to interfere 
 in his quarrel, or take part in it at all. " Man, who made 
 me a judge or a divider between you ? " 
 
 We ask attention to two things. 
 
 I. The Saviour's refusal to interfere. 
 II. The source to which He traced the appeal for inter- 
 ference. 
 
 I. The Saviour's refusal to interfere. 
 
 i. He implied that it was not His part to interfere. 
 " Who made me a Judge or a Divider ? " 
 
 It is a common saying that religion has nothing to do 
 with politics, and particularly there is a strong feeling 
 current against all interference with politics by the ministers 
 of religion. This notion rests on a basis which is partly 
 wrong, partly right. 
 
 To say that religion has nothing to do with politics is to 
 assert that which is simply false. It were as wise to say 
 that the atmosphere has nothing to do with the principles of 
 architecture. Directly, nothing indirectly, much. Some 
 kinds of stone are so friable, that though they will last for 
 centuries in a dry climate, they will crumble away in a few 
 years in a damp one. There are some temperatures in 
 which a form of building is indispensable which in another 
 
Judgment respecting Inheritance 35 
 
 would be unbearable. The shape of doors, windows, apart- 
 ments, all depend upon the air that is to be admitted or 
 excluded. Nay, it is for the very sake of procuring a 
 habitable atmosphere within certain limits that architecture 
 exists at all. The atmospheric laws are distinct from the 
 laws of architecture ; but there is not an architectural 
 question into which atmospheric considerations do not enter 
 as conditions of the question. 
 
 That which the air is to architecture, religion is to 
 politics. It is the vital air of every question. Directly, 
 it determines nothing indirectly, it conditions every 
 problem that can arise. The kingdoms of this world 
 must become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His 
 Christ. How, if His Spirit is not to mingle with political 
 and social truths ? 
 
 Nevertheless, in the popular idea that religion as such 
 must not be mixed with politics, there is a profound truth. 
 Here, for instance, the Saviour will not meddle with the 
 question. He stands aloof, sublime and dignified. It was 
 no part of His to take from the oppressor and give to the 
 oppressed, much less to encourage the oppressed to take 
 from the oppressor himself. It was His part to forbid 
 oppression. It was a Judge's part to decide what oppression 
 was. It was not His office to determine the boundaries of 
 civil right, nor to lay down the rules of the descent of pro- 
 perty. Of course there was a spiritual and moral principle 
 involved in this question. But He would not suffer His 
 sublime mission to degenerate into the mere task of deciding 
 casuistry. 
 
 He asserted principles of love, unselfishness, order, which 
 would decide all questions : but the questions themselves 
 He would not decide. He would lay down the great poli- 
 tical principle, "Render unto Caesar the things that be 
 Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's." But 
 He would not determine whether this particular tax was due 
 to Caesar or not. 
 
 So, too, He would say, Justice, like Mercy and Truth, is 
 one of the weightier matters of the law : but He would not 
 
36 Judgment respecting Inheritance 
 
 decide whether in this definite case this or that brother had 
 justice on his side. It was for themselves to determine that, 
 and in that determination lay their responsibility. 
 
 And thus religion deals with men, not cases : with human 
 hearts, not casuistry. 
 
 Christianity determines general principles, out of which, 
 no doubt, the best government would surely spring : but 
 what the best government is it does not determine whether 
 Monarchy or a Republic, an Aristocracy or a Democracy. 
 
 It lays down a great social law ; " Masters, give unto 
 your servants that which is just and equal." But it is not its 
 part to declare how much is just and equal. It has no fixed 
 scale of wages according to which masters must give. That 
 it leaves to each master and each age of society. 
 
 It binds up men in a holy brotherhood. But what are 
 the best institutions and surest means for arriving at this 
 brotherhood it has not said. In particular, it has not 
 pronounced whether competition or co-operation will se- 
 cure it. 
 
 And hence it comes to pass that Christianity is the 
 Eternal Religion, which can never become obsolete. If it 
 sets itself to determine the temporary and the local, the 
 justice of this tax, or the exact wrongs of that conventional 
 maxim, it would soon become obsolete : it would be the 
 religion of one century, not of all. As it is, it commits 
 itself to nothing except eternal principles. 
 
 It is not sent into this world to establish monarchy, or 
 secure the franchise : to establish socialism, or to frown it 
 into annihilation : but to establish a Charity, and a Modera- 
 tion, and a sense of Duty, and a love of Right, which will 
 modify human life according to any circumstances that can 
 possibly arise. 
 
 2. In this refusal, again, it was implied that His kingdom 
 was one founded on Spiritual disposition, not one of outward 
 Law and Jurisprudence. 
 
 That this lawsuit should have been decided by the brothers 
 themselves, in love, with mutual fairness, would have been 
 much : that it should be determined by authoritative arbitra- 
 
Judgment respecting Inheritance 37 
 
 tion, was, spiritually speaking, nothing. The right disposi- 
 tion of their hearts, and the right division of their property 
 thence resulting, was Christ's kingdom. The apportionment 
 of their property by another's division had nothing to do 
 with His kingdom. 
 
 Suppose that both were wrong : one oppressive, the 
 other covetous. Then, that the oppressor should become 
 generous, and the covetous liberal, were a great gain. But 
 to take from one selfish brother in order to give to another 
 selfish brother, what spiritual gain would there have been in 
 this? 
 
 Suppose, again, that the retainer of the inheritance was 
 in the wrong, and that the petitioner had justice on his side 
 that he was a humble, meek man, and his petition only 
 one of right. Well, to take the property from the unjust 
 and give it to Christ's servant, might be, and was, the duty 
 of a Judge. But it was not Christ's part, nor any gain to 
 the cause of Christ. He does not reward His servants with 
 inheritances, with lands, houses, gold. The kingdom of 
 God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost. Christ triumphs by wrongs 
 meekly borne, even more than by wrongs legally righted. 
 What we call poetical justice is not His kingdom. 
 
 To apply this to the question of the day. The great 
 problem which lies before Europe for solution is, or will be 
 this : Whether the present possessors of the soil have an 
 exclusive right to do what they will with their own, or 
 whether a larger claim may be put in by the workman for a 
 share in the profits ? Whether Capital has hitherto given to 
 Labour its just part, or not ? Labour is at present making 
 an appeal, like that of this petitioner, to the Church, to the 
 Bible, to God. " Master, speak unto my brother, that he 
 divide the inheritance with me." 
 
 Now in the mere setting of that question to rest, Chris- 
 tianity is not interested. That landlords should become 
 more liberal, and employers more merciful : that tenants 
 should be more honourable, and workmen more unselfish ; 
 that would be indeed a glorious thing a triumph of Christ's 
 
38 Judgment respecting Inheritance 
 
 cause; and any arrangement of the inheritance thence 
 resulting would be a real coming of the Kingdom of God. 
 But whether the soil of the country and its capital shall 
 remain the property of the rich, or become more available 
 for the poor, the rich and the poor remaining as selfish as 
 before, whether the selfish rich shall be able to keep, or 
 the selfish poor to take, is a matter, religiously speaking, of 
 profound indifference. Which of the brothers shall have 
 the inheritance, the monopolist or the covetous ? Either 
 neither who cares ? Fifty years hence what will it matter ? 
 But a hundred thousand years hence it will matter whether 
 they settled the question by mutual generosity and forbear- 
 ance. 
 
 3. I remark a third thing. He refused to be the friend 
 of one, because He was the friend of both. He never was 
 the champion of a class, because He was the champion of 
 Humanity. 
 
 We may take for granted that the petitioner was an 
 injured man one at all events who thought himself injured : 
 and Christ had often taught the spirit which would have 
 made his brother right him : but He refused to take his part 
 against his brother, just because he was his brother, Christ's 
 servant, and one of God's family, as well as he. 
 
 And this was His spirit always. The Pharisees thought 
 to commit Him to a side when they asked whether it was 
 lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not. But He would take 
 no side as the Christ : neither the part of the government 
 against the tax-payers ; nor the part of the tax-payers against 
 the government. 
 
 Now it is a common thing to hear of the rights of man ; 
 a glorious and a true saying : but, as commonly used, the 
 expression only means the rights of a section or class of 
 men. And it is very worthy of remark, that in these social 
 quarrels both sides appeal to Christ and to the Bible as the 
 champions of their rights, precisely in the same way in which 
 this man appealed to Him. One class appeal to the Bible, 
 as if it were the great Arbiter which decrees that the poor 
 shall be humble and the subject submissive : and the other 
 
Judgment respecting Inheritance 39 
 
 class appeal to the same Book triumphantly, as if it were 
 exclusively on their side, its peculiar blessedness consisting 
 in this, that it commands the rich to divide the inheritance, 
 and the ruler to impose nothing that is unjust. 
 
 In either of these cases Christianity is degraded, and the 
 Bible misused. They are not, as they have been made, O 
 shame ! for centuries, the servile defenders of Rank and 
 Wealth, nor are they the pliant advocates of discontent and 
 rebellion. 
 
 The Bible takes neither the part of the poor against the 
 rich exclusively, nor that of the rich against the poor : and 
 this because it proclaims a real, deep, true, and not a 
 revolutionary brotherhood. 
 
 The brotherhood of which we hear so much is often only 
 a one-sided brotherhood. It demands that the rich shall 
 treat the poor as brothers. It has a right to do so. It is a 
 brave and a just demand : but it forgets that the obligation 
 is mutual ; that in spite of his many faults, the rich man is 
 the poor man's brother, and that the poor man is bound to 
 recognise him and feel for him as a brother. 
 
 It requires that every candid allowance shall be made for 
 the vices of the poorer classes, in virtue of the circumstances 
 which, so to speak, seem to make such vices inevitable : for 
 their harlotry, their drunkenness, their uncleanness, their 
 insubordination. Let it enforce that demand : it may and 
 must do it in the name of Christ. He was mercifully and 
 mournfully gentle to those who through terrible temptation 
 and social injustice had sunk; and sunk into misery at least 
 as much as into sin. But, then, let it not be forgotten that 
 some sympathy must be also due on the same score of 
 circumstances to the rich man. Wealth has its temptations : 
 so has power. The vices of the rich are his forgetfulness of 
 responsibility, his indolence, his extravagance, his ignorance 
 of wretchedness. These must be looked upon, not certainly 
 with weak excuses, but with a brother's eye by the poor 
 man, if he will assert a brotherhood. It is not just ^ to 
 attribute all to circumstances in the one case, and nothing 
 in the other. It is not brotherhood to say that the labourer 
 
40 Judgment respecting Inheritance 
 
 does wrong because he is tempted ; and the man of wealth 
 because he is intrinsically bad. 
 
 II. The Source to which He traced this appeal for a 
 division. 
 
 Now it is almost certain that the reflection which arose 
 to the lips of Christ is not the one which would have 
 presented itself to us under similar circumstances. We 
 should probably have sneered at the state of the law in 
 which a lawsuit could obtain no prompt decision, and injury 
 get no redress : Or we should have remarked upon the evils 
 of the system of primogeniture, and asked whether it were 
 just that one brother should have all, and the others none : 
 Or we might, perhaps, have denounced the injustice of 
 permitting privileged classes at all. 
 
 He did nothing of this kind : He did not sneer at the 
 law, nor inveigh against the system, nor denounce the 
 privileged classes. He went deeper : to the very root of 
 the matter. " Take heed and beware of covetousness." It 
 was covetousness which caused the unjust brother to with- 
 hold : it was covetousness which made the defrauded 
 brother indignantly complain to a stranger. It is covetous- 
 ness which is at the bottom of all lawsuits, all social 
 grievances, all political factions. So St. James traces the 
 genealogy. " From whence come wars and fightings among 
 you ? Come they not hence, even from your lusts which 
 reign in your flesh ? " 
 
 Covetousness : the covetousness of all. Of the oppressed 
 as well as of the oppressor ; for the cry " Divide " has its 
 root in covetousness just as truly as " I will not." There 
 are no innocent classes : no devils who oppress, and angels 
 who are oppressed. The guilt of a false social state must be 
 equally divided. 
 
 We will consider somewhat more deeply this covetous- 
 ness. In the original the word is a very expressive one. 
 It means the desire of having more not of having more 
 because there is not enough ; but simply a craving after 
 more. More when a man has not enough. More when 
 
Judgment respecting Inheritance 41 
 
 he has. More, More, ever More. Give. Give. Divide. 
 Divide. 
 
 This craving is not universal. Individuals and whole 
 nations are without it. There are some nations, the con- 
 dition of whose further civilisation is, that the desire of 
 accumulation be increased. They are too indolent or too 
 unambitious to be covetous. Energy is awakened when 
 wants are immediate, pressing, present ; but ceases with the 
 gratification. 
 
 There are other nations in which the craving is exces- 
 sive, even to disease. Pre-eminent among these is Eng- 
 land. This desire of accumulation is the source of all our 
 greatness and all our baseness. It is at once our glory 
 and our shame. It is the cause of our commerce, of 
 our navy, of our military triumphs, of our enormous wealth, 
 and our marvellous inventions. And it is the cause of our 
 factions and animosities, of our squalid pauperism, and 
 the worse than heathen degradation of the masses of our 
 population. 
 
 That which makes this the more marvellous is, that of all 
 the nations on the earth, none are so incapable of enjoyment 
 as we. God has not given to us that delicate development 
 which He has given to other races. Our sense of harmony 
 is dull and rare, our perception of beauty is not keen. An 
 English holiday is rude and boisterous : if protracted, it 
 ends in ennui and self-dissatisfaction. We cannot enjoy. 
 Work, the law of human nature, is the very need of an 
 English nature. That cold shade of Puritanism which 
 passed over us, sullenly eclipsing all grace and enjoyment, 
 was but the shadow of our own melancholy, unenjoying, 
 national character. 
 
 And yet, we go on accumulating as if we could enjoy more 
 by having more. To quit the class in which they are and 
 rise into that above, is the yearly, daily, hourly effort of 
 millions in this land. And this were well if this word 
 "above" implied a reality : if it meant higher intellectually, 
 morally, or even physically. But the truth is, it is only 
 higher fictitiously. The middle classes already have every 
 
42 Judgment respecting Inheritance 
 
 real enjoyment which the wealthiest can have. The only 
 thing they have not is the ostentation of the means of 
 enjoyment. More would enable them to multiply equipages, 
 houses, books. It could not enable them to enjoy them more. 
 
 Thus, then, we have reached the root of the matter. Our 
 national craving is, in the proper meaning of the term, 
 covetousness. Not the desire of enjoying more, but the 
 desire of having more. 
 
 And if there be a country, a society, a people, to whom 
 this warning is specially applicable, that country is England, 
 that society our own, that people are we. " Take heed and 
 beware of covetousness." 
 
 The true remedy for this covetousness He then proceeds 
 to give. " A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of 
 the things which he possesses." 
 
 Now, observe the distinction between His view and the 
 world's view of humanity. To the question, What is a man 
 worth ? the world replies by enumerating what he has. In 
 reply to the same question, the Son of Man replies by 
 estimating what he is. Not what he has, but what he is, 
 that, through time and through eternity, is his real and 
 proper life. He declared the presence of the soul : He 
 announced the dignity of the spiritual man : He revealed 
 the being that we are. Not that which is supported by 
 meat and drink, but that whose very life is in Truth, 
 Integrity, Honour, Purity. " Skin for skin " was the satanic 
 version of this matter ; " All that a man hath will he give 
 for his fife" " What shall it profit a man," was the Saviour's 
 announcement, " if he shall gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soul? " 
 
 For the oppressed and the defrauded this was the true 
 consolation and compensation. The true consolation. This 
 man had lost so much loss. Well ; how is he consoled ? 
 By the thought of retaliation ? By the promise of revenge ? 
 By the assurance that he shall have what he ought by right 
 to have ? Nay, but thus as it were : Thou hast lost so 
 much, but thyself remains. " A man's life consisteth not in 
 the abundance of the things that he possesses." 
 
Judgment respecting Inheritance 43 
 
 Most assuredly Christianity proclaims laws which will 
 eventually give to each man his rights. I do not deny this. 
 But I say that the hope of these rights is not the message, 
 nor the promise, nor the consolation of Christianity. Rather 
 they consist in the assertion of the true Life, instead of all 
 other hopes : of the substitution of blessedness which is in- 
 ward character, for happiness which is outward satisfaction 
 of desire. For the broken-hearted, the peace which the 
 world cannot give. For the poor, the life which destitution 
 cannot take away. For the persecuted, the thought that 
 they are the children of their Father which is in Heaven. 
 
 A very striking instance of this is found in the consolation 
 offered by St. Paul to slaves. How did he reconcile them 
 to their lot ? By promising that Christianity would produce 
 the abolition of the slave-trade ? No ; though this was to 
 be effected by Christianity ; but by assuring them that, 
 though slaves, they might be inly free ; Christ's freedmen. 
 Art thou called, being a slave ? Care not for it. 
 
 This, too, was the real compensation offered by Christianity 
 for injuries. 
 
 The other brother had the inheritance : and to win the 
 inheritance he had laid upon his soul the guilt of injustice. 
 His advantage was the property : the price he paid for that 
 advantage was a hard heart. The injured brother had no 
 inheritance, but instead he had, or might have had, 
 innocence, and the conscious joy of knowing that he was 
 not the injurer. Herein lay the balance. 
 
 Now there is great inconsistency between the complaints 
 and claims that are commonly made on these subjects. 
 There are outcries against the insolence of power and the 
 hard-hearted selfishness of wealth. Only too often these 
 cries have a foundation of justice. But be it remembered 
 that these are precisely the cost at which the advantages, 
 such as they are, are purchased. The price which the man 
 in authority has paid for power is the temptation to be 
 insolent. He has yielded to the temptation, and bought his 
 advantage dear. The price which the rich man pays for his 
 wealth is the temptation to be selfish. They have paid in 
 
44 The Illusiveness of Life 
 
 spirituals for what they have gained in temporals. Now, if 
 you are crying for a share in that wealth, and a participation 
 in that power, you must be content to run the risk of 
 becoming as hard and selfish and over-bearing as the man 
 whom you denounce. Blame their sins if you will, or 
 despise their advantages ; but do not think that you can 
 covet their advantages, and keep clear of their temptations. 
 God is on the side of the poor, and the persecuted, and the 
 mourners a light in darkness, and a life in death. But the 
 poverty, and the persecution, and the darkness are the con- 
 dition on which they feel God's presence. They must not 
 expect to have the enjoyment of wealth and the spiritual 
 blessings annexed to poverty at the same time. If you will 
 be rich, you must be content to pay the price of falling into 
 temptation, and a snare, and many foolish and hurtful lusts, 
 which drown men in perdition ; and if that price be too high 
 to pay, then you must be content with the quiet valleys of 
 existence, where alone it is well with us : kept out of the 
 inheritance, but having instead God for your portion, your 
 all-sufficient and everlasting portion. Peace, and quietness, 
 and rest with Christ. 
 
 THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE 
 
 HEBREWS xi. 8-10. "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go 
 out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed ; 
 and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned 
 in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwell ng in tabernacles 
 with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise : for he 
 looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is 
 God." 
 
 LAST Sunday we touched upon a thought which deserves 
 further development. God promised Canaan to Abraham, 
 and yet Abraham never inherited Canaan : to the last he 
 was a wanderer there ; he had no possession of his own 
 
The Illusiveness of Life 45 
 
 in its territory ; if he wanted even a tomb to bury his dead, 
 he could only obtain it by purchase. This difficulty is 
 expressly admitted in the text, " In the land of promise 
 he sojourned as in a strange country ; " he dwelt there in 
 tents in changeful, moveable tabernacles not permanent 
 habitations ; he had no home there. 
 
 It is stated, in all its startling force, in terms still more 
 explicit, Acts vii. 5. 
 
 Now the surprising point is that Abraham, deceived, as 
 you might almost say, did not complain of it as a deception ; 
 he was even grateful for the non-fulfilment of the promise : 
 he does not seem to have expected its fulfilment ; he did 
 not look for Canaan, but for " a city which had foundations ; " 
 his faith appears to have consisted in disbelieving the letter, 
 almost as much as in believing the spirit of the promise. 
 
 And herein lies a principle, which, rightly expounded, 
 can interpret this life of ours. God's promises never are 
 fulfilled in the sense in which they seem to have been given. 
 Life is a deception ; its anticipations, which are God's 
 promises to the imagination, are never realized ; they who 
 know life best, and have trusted God most to fill it with 
 blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of 
 disappointments. 
 
 And in the spirit of this text we have to say that it is a 
 wise and merciful arrangement which ordains it thus. 
 
 The wise and holy do not expect to find it otherwise 
 would not wish it otherwise ; their wisdom consists in 
 disbelieving its promises. To develope this idea would be 
 a glorious task ; for to justify God's ways to man, to expound 
 the mysteriousness of our present being, to interpret God, 
 is not this the very essence of the ministerial office ? All 
 that I can hope, however, to-day is, not to exhaust the 
 subject, but to furnish hints for thought. Over-statements 
 may be made, illustrations may be inadequate, the new 
 ground of an almost untrodden subject may be torn up too 
 rudely ; but remember, we are here to live and die ; in a 
 few years it will be all over ; meanwhile, what we have to 
 do is to try to understand, and to help one another to 
 
4,6 The Illusiveness of Life 
 
 understand, what it all means what this strange and 
 contradictory thing, which we call life, contains within it. 
 Do not stop to ask, therefore, whether the subject was 
 satisfactorily worked out ; let each man be satisfied to have 
 received a germ of thought which he may develope better 
 for himself. 
 
 I. The deception of life's promise. 
 II. The meaning of that deception. 
 
 Let it be clearly understood, in the first place, the 
 promise never was fulfilled. I do not say the fulfilment was 
 delayed. I say it never was fulfilled. Abraham had a few 
 feet of earth, obtained by purchase beyond that, nothing ; 
 he died a stranger and a pilgrim in the land. Isaac had a 
 little. So small was Jacob's hold upon his country that the 
 last years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a 
 foreigner in a strange land. His descendants came into the 
 land of Canaan, expecting to find it a land flowing with 
 milk and honey; they found hard work to do war and 
 unrest, instead of rest. 
 
 During one brief period, in the history of Israel, the 
 promise may seem to have been fulfilled. It was during the 
 later years of David and the earlier years of Solomon ; but 
 we have the warrant of scripture itself for affirming, that 
 even then the promise was not fulfilled. In the Book of 
 Psalms, David speaks of a hope of entering into a future 
 rest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting 
 this passage, infers from it that God's promise had not been 
 exhausted nor fulfilled by the entrance into Canaan ; for, 
 he says, " If Joshua had given them rest then would he not 
 have spoken of another day." Again, in this very chapter, 
 after a long list of Hebrew saints "These all died in faith, 
 not having received the promises." To none, therefore, had 
 the promise been fulfilled. Accordingly, writers on 
 prophecy, in order to get over this difficulty, take for granted 
 that there must be a future fulfilment, because the first was 
 inadequate. 
 
The Illusiveness of Life 47 
 
 They who believe that the Jews will be restored to their 
 native iand, expect it on the express ground that Canaan 
 has never been actually and permanently theirs. A certain 
 tract of country 300 miles in length, by 200 in breadth 
 must be given, or else they think the promise has been 
 broken. To quote the expression of one of the most 
 eloquent of their writers, " If there be nothing yet future 
 for Israel, then the magnificence of the promise has been 
 lost in the poverty of its accomplishment." 
 
 I do not quote this to prove the correctness of the 
 interpretation of the prophecy, but as an acknowledgment 
 which may be taken so far as a proof that the promise made 
 to Abraham has never been accomplished. 
 
 And such is life's disappointment. Its promise is, you 
 shall have a Canaan ; it turns out to be a baseless, airy 
 dream toil and warfare nothing that we can call our 
 own ; not the land of rest, by any means. But we will 
 examine this in particulars. 
 
 1 . Our senses deceive us ; we begin life with delusion. 
 Our senses deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and 
 colour. That which afar off seems oval, turns out to be 
 circular, modified by the perspective of distance; that which 
 appears a speck, upon nearer approach becomes a vast body. 
 To the earlier ages the stars presented the delusion of small 
 lamps hung in space. The beautiful berry proves to be 
 bitter and poisonous ; that which apparently moves is really 
 at rest ; that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual 
 motion : the earth moves ; the sun is still. All experience 
 is a correction of life's delusions a modification, a reversal 
 of the judgment of the senses ; and all life is a lesson on 
 the falsehood of appearances. 
 
 2. Our natural anticipations deceive us I say natural 
 in contradistinction to extravagant expectations. ^ Every 
 human life is a fresh one, bright with hopes that will never 
 be realized. There may be differences of character in these 
 hopes ; finer spirits may look on life as the arena of success- 
 ful deeds, the more selfish as a place of personal enjoyment. 
 
 With man the turning point of life may be a profession 
 
4 8 
 
 The Illusiveness of Life 
 
 with woman, marriage ; the one gilding the future with the 
 triumphs of intellect, the other with the dreams of affection ; 
 but, in every case, life is not what any of them expects, but 
 something else. It would almost seem a satire on existence 
 to compare the youth in the outset of his career, flushed and 
 sanguine, with the aspect of the same being when it is nearly 
 done worn, soberised, covered with the dust of life, and 
 confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is 
 the land flowing with milk and honey ? 
 
 With our affections it is still worse, because they promise 
 more. Man's affections are but the tabernacles of Canaan 
 the tents of a night ; not permanent habitations, even for 
 this life. Where are the charms of character, the perfection, 
 and the purity, and the truthfulness, which seemed so 
 resplendent in our friend ? They were only the shape of 
 our own conceptions our creative shaping intellect pro- 
 jected its own fantasies on him ; and hence, we outgrow our 
 early friendship ; outgrow the intensity of all : we dwell in 
 tents ; we never find a home, even in the land of promise. 
 Life is an unenjoyable Canaan, with nothing real or 
 substantial in it. 
 
 3. Our expectations, resting on revelation, deceive us. 
 The world's history has turned round two points of hope ; 
 one, the first the other, the second coming of the Messiah. 
 The magnificent imagery of Hebrew prophecy had described 
 the advent of the Conqueror ; He came " a root out of a 
 dry ground, with no form or comeliness ; and when they 
 saw Him there was no beauty in Him that they should 
 desire Him." The victory, predicted in such glowing terms, 
 turned out to be the victory of Submission the Law of our 
 Humanity, which wins by gentleness and love. The pro- 
 mise in the letter was unfulfilled. For ages the world's 
 hope has been the second advent. The early church 
 expected it in their own day. " We, which are alive, and 
 remain until the coming of our Lord." 
 
 The Saviour Himself had said, "This generation shall 
 not pass till all things be fulfilled." Yet the Son of Man 
 has never come, or rather, He has been ever coming. Un- 
 
The Illusiveness of Life 49 
 
 numbered times the judgment eagles have gathered 
 together over corruption ripe for condemnation. Times in- 
 numerable the separation has been made between good and 
 bad. The promise has not been fulfilled, or it has been 
 fulfilled ; but in either case anticipation has been foiled and 
 disappointed. 
 
 There are two ways of considering this aspect of life. One 
 is the way of sentiment ; the other is the way of faith. The 
 sentimental way is trite enough. Saint, sage, sophist, 
 moralist, and preacher, have repeated in every possible 
 image, till there is nothing new to say, that life is a bubble, 
 a dream, a delusion, a phantasm. The other is the way of 
 faith : the ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist could 
 feel the brokenness of its promises ; they confessed that 
 they were strangers and pilgrims here ; they said that they 
 had here no continuing city ; but they did not mournfully 
 moralize on this ; they said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that 
 it was so. They felt that all was right ; they knew that the 
 promise itself had a deeper meaning ; they looked un- 
 dauntedly for " a city which hath foundations." 
 
 II. The second inquiry, therefore, is the meaning of this 
 delusiveness. 
 
 i. It serves to allure us on. Suppose that a spiritual 
 promise had been made at first to Israel ; imagine that they 
 had been informed at the outset that God's rest is inward ; 
 that the promised land is only found in the Jerusalem which 
 is above not material, but immaterial. That rude, gross 
 people, yearning after the fleshpots of Egypt willing to go 
 back into slavery, so as only they might have enough to 
 eat and drink would they have quitted Egypt on such 
 terms? Would they have begun one single step of that 
 pilgrimage, which was to find its meaning in the discipline 
 
 of ages ? 
 
 We are led through life as we are allured upon a journey. 
 Could a man see his route before him a flat, straight road, 
 unbroken by bush, or tree, or eminence, with the sun's heat 
 burning down upon it, stretched out in dreary monotony 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
50 The Illusiveness of Life 
 
 he could scarcely find energy to begin his task ; but the 
 uncertainty of what may be seen beyond the next turn keeps 
 expectation alive. The view that may be seen from yonder 
 summit the glimpse that may be caught, perhaps, as the 
 road winds round yonder knoll hopes like these, not far 
 distant, beguile the traveller on from mile to mile, and from 
 league to league. 
 
 In fact, life is an education. The object for which you 
 educate your son is to give him strength of purpose, self- 
 command, discipline of mental energies ; but you do not 
 reveal to your son this aim of his education ; you tell him of 
 his place in his class, of the prizes at the end of the year, of 
 the honours to be given at college. 
 
 These are not the true incentives to knowledge; such 
 incentives are not the highest they are even mean, and 
 partially injurious ; yet these mean incentives stimulate and 
 lead on, from day to day and from year to year, by a process 
 the principle of which the boy himself is not aware of. So 
 does God lead on, through life's unsatisfying and false 
 reward, ever educating : Canaan first ; then the hope of a 
 Redeemer; then the millennial glory. Now what is 
 remarkable in this is, that the delusion continued to the 
 last ; they all died in faith, not having received the promises ; 
 all were hoping up to the very last, and all died in faith 
 not in realization ; for thus God has constituted the human 
 heart. It never will be believed that this world is unreal. 
 God has mercifully so arranged it, that the idea of delusion 
 is incredible. You may tell the boy or girl as you will that 
 life is a disappointment ; yet however you may persuade 
 them to adopt your tone^ and catch the language of your 
 sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright 
 distant hope the rapture of the next vacation, or the 
 unknown joys of the next season and throwing into it an 
 energy of expectation which a whole eternity is only worth. 
 You may tell the man who has received the heart-shock from 
 which, in this world, he will not recover, that life has nothing 
 left ; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the 
 prize" wealthiest when most undone : " he has reaped the 
 
The Illusiveness of Life 51 
 
 whirlwind, but he will go on still, till life is over, sowing 
 the wind. 
 
 Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this 
 indestructible power of believing in spite of failure. In the 
 first centuries, the early Christians believed that the 
 millennial advent was close ; they heard the warning of the 
 apostle, brief and sharp, " The time is short." Now 
 suppose that, instead of this, they had seen all the dreary 
 page of Church history unrolled; suppose that they had 
 known that after two thousand years the world would have 
 scarcely spelled out three letters of the meaning of 
 Christianity, where would have been those gigantic efforts, 
 that life spent as on the very brink of eternity, which 
 characterize the days of the early Church, and which was, 
 after all, only the true life of man in time ? It is thus that 
 God has led on His world. He has conducted it as a father 
 leads his child, when the path homeward lies over many a 
 dreary league. He suffers him to beguile the thought of 
 time, by turning aside to pluck now and then a flower, 
 to chase now a butterfly; the butterfly is crushed, the 
 flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, 
 invigorated and full of health, and scarcely wearied yet. 
 
 2. This non-fulfilment of promise fulfils it in a dteper\\xy. 
 The account we have given already, were it to end there, 
 would be insufficient to excuse the failure of life's promise ; 
 by saying that it allures us would be really to charge God 
 with deception. Now life is not deception, but illusion. We 
 distinguish between illusion and delusion. We may paint 
 wood so as to be taken for stone, iron, or marble ; this is 
 delusion : but you may paint a picture, in which rocks, trees, 
 and sky are never mistaken for what they seem, yet produce 
 all the emotion which real rocks, trees, and sky would 
 produce. This is illusion, and this is the painter's art : 
 never for one moment to deceive by attempted imitation, 
 but to produce a mental state in which the feelings are 
 suggested which the natural objects themselves would create. 
 Let us take an instance drawn from life. 
 
 To a child the rainbow is a real thing substantial and 
 
52 The Illusiveness of Life 
 
 palpable ; its limb rests on the side of yonder hill ; he 
 believes that he can appropriate it to himself; and when, 
 instead of gems and gold, hid in its radiant bow, he finds 
 nothing but damp mist cold, dreary drops of disappoint- 
 ment that disappointment tells that his belief has been 
 delusion. 
 
 To the educated man that bow is a blessed illusion, yet 
 it never once deceives ; he does not take it for what it is 
 not, he does not expect to make it his own ; he feels its 
 beauty as much as the child could feel it, nay infinitely more 
 more even from the fact that he knows that it will be 
 transient ; but besides and beyond this, to him it presents a 
 deeper loveliness ; he knows the laws of light, and the laws 
 of the human soul which gave it being. He has linked it 
 with the laws of the universe, and with the invisible mind of 
 God ; and it brings to him a thrill of awe, and the sense of 
 a mysterious, nameless beauty, of which the child did not 
 conceive. It is illusion still; but it has fulfilled the 
 promise. In the realm of spirit, in the temple of the soul, 
 it is the same. All is illusion ; but " we look for a city 
 which hath foundations ; " and in this the promise is fulfilled. 
 
 And such was Canaan to the Israelites. To some doubt- 
 less it was delusion. They expected to find their reward in 
 a land of milk and honey. They were bitterly disappointed, 
 and expressed their disappointment loudly enough in their 
 murmurs against Moses, and their rebellion against his 
 successors. But to others, as to Abraham, Canaan was the 
 bright illusion which never deceived, but for ever shone 
 before as the type of something more real. And even 
 taking the promise literally, though they built in tents, and 
 could not call a foot of land their own, was not its beauty 
 theirs ? Were not its trellised vines, and glorious pastures, 
 and rich olive-fields, ministers to the enjoyment of those 
 who had all in God, though its milk, and oil, and honey, 
 could not be enjoyed with exclusiveness of appropriation? 
 Yet over and above and beyond this, there was a more 
 blessed fulfilment of the promise ; there was a city which 
 had foundations built and made by God toward which 
 
The Illusiveness of Life 53 
 
 the anticipation of this Canaan was leading them. The 
 Kingdom of God was forming in their souls, for ever 
 disappointing them by the unreal, and teaching them that 
 what is spiritual, and belongs to mind and character, alone 
 can be eternal. We will illustrate this principle from the 
 common walks of life. The principle is, that the reward we 
 get is not the reward for which we worked, but a different 
 one ; deeper and more permanent. The merchant labours 
 all his life, and the hope which leads him on is perhaps 
 wealth : well, at sixty years of age he attains wealth ; is that 
 the reward of sixty years of toil ? Ten years of enjoyment, 
 when the senses can enjoy no longer a country seat, 
 splendid plate, a noble establishment ? Oh, no ! a reward 
 deeper than he dreamed of. Habits of perseverance ; a 
 character trained by industry : that is his reward. He was 
 carried on from year to year by, if he were wise, illusion ; if 
 he were unwise, delusion ; but he reaped a more enduring 
 substance in himself. 
 
 Take another instance: the public man, warrior, or 
 statesman, who has served his country, and complains at 
 last, in bitter disappointment, that his country has not 
 fulfilled his expectations in rewarding him that is, it has 
 not given him titles, honours, wealth. But titles, honours, 
 wealth are these the rewards of well-doing? can they 
 reward it? would it be well-doing if they could? To be 
 such a man, to have the power of doing such deeds, what 
 could be added to that reward by having? This same 
 apparent contradiction, which was found in Judaism, subsists 
 too in Christianity; we will state it in the words of an 
 apostle : "Godliness is profitable for all things; having the 
 promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to 
 come." Now for the fulfilment : " If in this life only we 
 have hope in Christ, then are we of all men most miserable." 
 Godliness is profitable ; but its profit, it appears, consists 
 in finding that all is loss : yet in this way you teach your 
 son. You will tell him that if he will be good all men will 
 love him. You say that " Honesty is the best policy," yet 
 in your heart of hearts you know that you are leading him 
 
54 The Illusiveness of Life 
 
 on by a delusion. Christ was good. Was He loved by all ? 
 In proportion as he your son is like Christ, he will be 
 loved, not by the many, but by the few. Honesty is not 
 the best policy ; the commonplace honesty of the market- 
 place may be the vulgar honesty which goes no further 
 than paying debts accurately ; but that transparent Christian 
 honesty of a life which in every act is bearing witness to the 
 truth, that is not the way to get on in life the reward of 
 such a life is the Cross. Yet you were right in teaching 
 your son this : you told him what was true ; truer than he 
 could comprehend. It is better to be honest and good ; 
 better than he can know or dream ; better even in this life ; 
 better by so much as being good is better than having good. 
 But, in a rude coarse way, you must express the blessedness 
 on a level with his capacity ; you must state the truth in a 
 way which he will inevitably interpret falsely. The true 
 interpretation nothing but experience can teach. 
 
 And this is what God does. His promises are true, though 
 illusive; far truer than we at first take them to be. We 
 work for a mean, low, sensual happiness, all the while he is 
 leading us on to a spiritual blessedness unfathomably deep. 
 This is the life of faith. We live by faith, and not by sight. 
 We do not preach that all is disappointment the dreary 
 creed of sentimentalism ; but we preach that nothing here is 
 disappointment, if rightly understood. We do not comfort 
 the poor man, by saying that the riches that he has not now 
 he will have hereafter the difference between himself and 
 the man of wealth being only this, that the one has for time 
 what the other will have for eternity ; but what we say is, 
 that that which you have failed in reaping here, you never 
 will reap, if you expected the harvest of Canaan. God has 
 no Canaan for His own ; no milk and honey for the luxury 
 of the senses ; for the city which hath foundations is built 
 in the soul of man. He in whom Godlike character dwells 
 has all the universe for his own "All things," saith the 
 apostle, " are yours ; whether life or death, or things present, 
 or things to come ; if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's 
 seed, and heirs according to the promise '." 
 
The Irreparable Past 55 
 
 THE IRREPARABLE PAST 
 
 MARK xiv. 41, 42. " And he cometh the third time, and saith unto 
 them, Sleep on now, and take your rest : it is enough, the hour is 
 come ; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 
 Rise up, let us go ; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand. " 
 
 IT is upon two sentences of this passage that our attention 
 is to be fixed to-day sentences which in themselves are 
 apparently contradictory, but which are pregnant with a 
 lesson of the deepest practical import. Looked at in the 
 mere meaning of the words as they stand, our Lord's first 
 command given to His disciples, " Sleep on now, and take 
 your rest/' is inconsistent with the second command which 
 follows almost in the same breath, " Rise, let us be going." 
 A permission to slumber, and a warning to arouse at once, 
 are injunctions which can scarcely stand together in the 
 same sentence consistently. 
 
 Our first inquiry therefore is, what did our Redeemer 
 mean ? We shall arrive at the true solution of this difficulty 
 if we review the circumstances under which these words 
 were spoken. The account with which these verses stand 
 connected, belongs to one of the last scenes in the drama 
 of our Master's earthly pilgrimage : it is found in the history 
 of the trial-hour which was passed in the Garden of Geth- 
 semane. And an hour it was indeed big with the destinies 
 of the world, for the command had gone forth to seize the 
 Saviour's person: but the Saviour was still at large and 
 free. Upon the success or the frustration of that plan the 
 world's fate was trembling. Three men were selected to 
 be witnesses of the sufferings of that hour : three men, the 
 favoured ones on all occasions of the apostolic band, and 
 the single injunction which had been laid upon them was, 
 " Watch with me one hour." That charge to watch or 
 keep awake seems to have been given with two ends in 
 view. He asked them to keep awake, first that they might 
 sympathize with Him. He commanded them to keep awake 
 
56 The Irreparable Past 
 
 that they might be on their guard against surprise: that 
 they might afford sympathy, because never in all His career 
 did Christ more stand in need of such soothing as it was in 
 the power of man to give. It is true that was not much ; 
 the struggle, and the agony, and the making up of the 
 mind to death had something in them too Divine and too 
 mysterious to be understood by the disciples, and therefore 
 sympathy could but reach a portion of what our Redeemer 
 felt. Yet still it appears to have been an additional pang 
 in Christ's anguish to find that He was left thoroughly 
 alone to endure, while even His own friends did not 
 compassionate His endurance. We know what a relief it is 
 to see the honest affectionate face of a menial servant, or 
 some poor dependant regretting that your suffering may be 
 infinitely above his comprehension. It may be a secret 
 which you cannot impart to him : or it may be a mental 
 distress which his mind is too uneducated to appreciate : 
 yet still his sympathy in your dark hour is worth a world. 
 What you surfer he knows not, but he knows you do suffer, 
 and it pains him to think of it : there is balm to you in 
 that This is the power of sympathy. We can do little 
 for one another in this world. Little, very little, can be 
 done when the worst must come ; but yet to know that the 
 pulses of a human heart are vibrating with yours, there is 
 something in that, let the distance between man and man 
 be ever so immeasurable, exquisitely soothing. It was this, 
 and but this, in the way of feeling, that Christ asked of 
 Peter, James, and John : Watch be awake : let Me not 
 feel that when I agonize, you can be at ease and comfort- 
 able. But it would seem there was another thing which 
 He asked in the way of assistance. The plot to capture 
 Him was laid; the chance of that plot's success lay in 
 making the surprise so sudden as to cut off all possibility of 
 escape. The hope of defeating that plot depended upon 
 the fidelity of apostolic vigilance. Humanly speaking, had 
 they been vigilant they might have saved Him. Breathless 
 listening for the sound of footsteps in the distance ; eyes 
 anxiously straining through the trees to distinguish the 
 
The Irreparable Past 57 
 
 glitter of the lanterns ; unremitting apprehension catching 
 from the word of Christ an intimation that He was in 
 danger, and so giving notice on the first approach of 
 anything like intrusion, that would have been watching. 
 
 That command to watch was given twice first, when 
 Christ first retired aside leaving the disciples by themselves ; 
 secondly, in a reproachful way when He returned and found 
 His request disregarded. He waked them up once and 
 said, "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?" He 
 came again, and found their eyes closed once more. On 
 that occasion not a syllable fell from His lips ; He did not 
 waken them a second time. He passed away sad and 
 disappointed, and left them to their slumbers. But when 
 He came the third time, it was no longer possible for their 
 sleep to do Him harm, or their watching to do Him good. 
 The precious opportunity was lost for ever. Sympathy 
 vigilance the hour for these was past. The priests had 
 succeeded in their surprise, and Judas had well led them 
 through the dark, with unerring accuracy, to the very spot 
 where his Master knelt ; and there were seen quite close, 
 the dark figures shown in relief against the glare of the red 
 torchlight, and every now and then the gleam glittering 
 from the bared steel and the Roman armour. It was all 
 over, they might sleep as they liked, their sleeping could do 
 no injury now ; their watching could do no good. And 
 therefore, partly in bitterness, partly in reproach, partly in a 
 kind of earnest irony, partly in sad earnest, our Master said 
 to His disciples : Sleep on now : there is no use in watching 
 now : take your rest for ever if you will. Sleep and rest 
 can do me no more harm now, for all that watching might 
 have done is lost. 
 
 But, brethren, we have to observe that in the next sen- 
 tence our Redeemer addresses Himself to the consideration 
 of what could yet be done ; the best thing as circumstances 
 then stood. So far as any good to be got from watching 
 went they might sleep on : there was no reparation for the 
 fault that had been done : but so far as duty went, there 
 was still much of endurance to which they had to rouse 
 
58 The Irreparable Past 
 
 themselves. They could not save their Master, but they 
 might loyally and manfully share His disgrace, and if it 
 must be, His death. They could not put off the penalty, 
 but they might steel themselves cheerfully to share it. 
 Safety was out of the question : but they might meet their 
 fate, instead of being overwhelmed by it : and so, as respected 
 what was gone by, Christ said, "Sleep," what is done 
 cannot be undone : but as respected the duties that were 
 lying before them still, He said, We must make the best of 
 it that can be made : rouse yourselves to dare the worst : on 
 to enact your parts like men. Rise, let us be going we 
 have something still left to do. Here then we have two 
 subjects of contemplation distinctly marked out for us. 
 
 I. The irreparable Past. 
 II. The available Future. 
 
 The words of Christ are not like the words of other men : 
 His sentences do not end with the occasion which called 
 them forth : every sentence of Christ's is a deep principle of 
 human life, and it is so with these sentences : " Sleep on now " 
 that is a principle. " Rise up, and let us be going " 
 that is another principle. The principle contained in " Sleep 
 on now " is this, that the past is irreparable, and after a certain 
 moment waking will do no good. You may improve the 
 future, the past is gone beyond recovery. As to all that is 
 gone by, so far as the hope of altering it goes, you may 
 sleep on and take your rest : there is no power in earth or 
 heaven that can undo what has once been done. 
 
 Now let us proceed to give illustrations of this principle. 
 
 It is true, first of all, with respect to time that is gone by. 
 Time is the solemn inheritance to which every man is born 
 heir, who has a life-rent of this world a little section cut 
 out of eternity and given us to do our work in : an eternity 
 before, an eternity behind ; and the small stream between, 
 floating swiftly from the one into the vast bosom of 
 the other. The man who has felt with all his soul the 
 significance of time will not be long in learning any lesson 
 
The Irreparable Past 59 
 
 that this world has to teach him. Have you ever felt it, my 
 Christian brethren ? Have you ever realized how your own 
 little streamlet is gliding away, and bearing you along with 
 it towards that awful other world of which all things here 
 are but the thin shadows, down into that eternity towards 
 which the confused wreck of all earthly things are bound ? 
 Let us realize that, beloved brethren : until that sensation 
 of time and the infinite meaning which is wrapped up in 
 it, has taken possession of our souls, there is no chance of 
 our ever feeling strongly that it is worse than madness to 
 sleep that time away. Every day in this world has its work ; 
 and every day as it rises out of eternity keeps putting to 
 each of us the question afresh, What will you do before 
 to-day has sunk into eternity and nothingness again ? And 
 now what have we to say with respect to this strange solemn 
 thing Time? That men do with it through life just what 
 the apostles did for one precious and irreparable hour of it 
 in the garden of Gethsemane : they go to sleep. Have you 
 ever seen those marble statues in some public square or 
 garden, which art has so fashioned into a perennial fountain 
 that through the lips or through the hands the clear water 
 flows in a perpetual stream, on and on for ever ; and the 
 marble stands there passive, cold making no effort to 
 arrest the gliding water ? 
 
 It is so that time flows through the hands of men swift, 
 never pausing till it has run itself out ; and there is the man 
 petrified into a marble sleep, not feeling what it is which is 
 passing away for ever. It is so, brethren, just so, that the 
 destiny of nine men out of ten accomplishes itself, slipping 
 away from them, aimless, useless, till it is too late. And 
 this passage asks us with all the solemn thoughts which 
 crowd around an approaching eternity, what has been 
 our life, and what do we intend it shall be? Yesterday, 
 last week, last year they are gone. Yesterday, for example, 
 was such a day as never was before, and never can be again. 
 Out of darkness and eternity it was born a new fresh day : 
 into darkness and eternity it sank again for ever. It had a 
 voice calling to us, of its own. Its own work its own 
 
60 The Irreparable Past 
 
 duties. What were we doing yesterday? Idling, whiling 
 away the time in light and luxurious literature not as life's 
 relaxation, but as life's business ? thrilling our hearts with 
 the excitements of life contriving how to spend the day 
 most pleasantly ? Was that our day ? Sleep, brethren ! all 
 that is but the sleep of the three apostles. And now let us 
 remember this : there is a day coming when that sleep will 
 be broken rudely, with a shock : there is a day in our future 
 lives when our time will be counted not by years nor by 
 months, nor yet by hours, but by minutes the day when 
 unmistakeable symptoms shall announce that the Messengers 
 of Death have come to take us. 
 
 That startling moment will come which it is vain to 
 attempt to realize now, when it will be felt that it is all over 
 at last that our chance and our trial are past. The 
 moment that we have tried to think of, shrunk from, put 
 away from us, here it is going too, like all other moments 
 that have gone before it : and then with eyes unsealed at 
 last, you look back on the life which is gone by. There is 
 no mistake about it : there it is, a sleep, a most palpable 
 sleep self-indulged unconsciousness of high destinies, and 
 God and Christ : a sleep when Christ was calling out to you 
 to watch with Him one hour a sleep when there was some- 
 thing to be done a sleep broken, it may be, once or twice 
 by restless dreams, and by a voice of truth which would 
 make itself heard at times, but still a sleep which was only 
 rocked into deeper stillness by interruption. And now 
 from the undone eternity the boom of whose waves is dis- 
 tinctly audible upon your soul, there comes the same voice 
 again a solemn sad voice but no longer the same word 
 " Watch " other words altogether, " You may go to sleep." 
 It is too late to wake: there is no science in earth or 
 heaven to recall time that once has fled. 
 
 Again, this principle of the irreparable past holds good 
 with respect to preparing for temptation. That hour in the 
 garden was a precious opportunity given for laying in 
 spiritual strength. Christ knew it well. He struggled and 
 fought then : therefore there was no struggling afterwards 
 
The Irreparable Past 61 
 
 no trembling in the judgment-hallno shrinking on the 
 cross, but only dignified and calm victory; for He had 
 fought the Temptation on His knees beforehand, and con- 
 quered all in the garden. The battle of the Judgment-hall, 
 the battle of the Cross, were already fought and over, in 
 the Watch and in the Agony. The apostles missed the 
 meaning of that hour ; and therefore when it came to the 
 question of trial, the loudest boaster of them all shrunk 
 from acknowledging Whose he was, and the rest played the 
 part of the craven and the renegade. And if the reason 
 of this be asked, it is simply this : They went to trial un 
 prepared : they had not prayed : and what is a Christian 
 without prayer but Samson without his talisman of hair ? 
 
 Brethren, in this world, when there is any foreseen or 
 suspected danger before us, it is our duty to forecast our 
 trial. It is our wisdom to put on our armour to consider 
 what lies before us to call up resolution in God's strength 
 to go through what we may have to do. And it is marvel- 
 lous how difficulties smooth away before a Christian when 
 he does this. Trials that cost him a struggle to meet even 
 in imagination like the heavy sweat of Gethsemane, when 
 Christ was looking forward and feeling exceeding sorrowful 
 even unto death come to their crisis ; and behold, to his 
 astonishment they are nothing they have been fought and 
 conquered already. But if you go to meet those temptations, 
 not as Christ did, but as the apostles did prayerless, trusting 
 to the chance impulse of the moment, you may make up 
 your mind to fail. That opportunity lost is irreparable : it 
 is your doom to yield then. Those words are true, you may 
 " sleep on now, and take your rest," for you have 1 betrayed 
 yourself into the hands of danger. 
 
 And now one word about prayer. It is a preparation for 
 danger, it is the armour for battle. Go not, my Christian 
 brother, into the dangerous world without it. You kneel 
 down at night to pray, and drowsiness weighs down your 
 eyelids. A hard day's work is a kind of excuse, and you 
 shorten your prayer and resign yourself softly to repose. 
 The morning breaks, and it may be you rise late, and so 
 
62 The Irreparable Past 
 
 your early devotions are not done, or done with irregular 
 haste. No watching unto prayer wakefulness once more 
 omitted. And now we ask, is that reparable? Brethren, 
 we solemnly believe not. There has been that done which 
 cannot be undone. You have given up your prayer, and 
 you will suffer for it. Temptation is before you, and you 
 are not fit to meet it. There is a guilty feeling on the soul, 
 and you linger at a distance from Christ. It is no marvel if 
 that day in which you suffered drowsiness to interfere with 
 prayer, be a day on which you betray Him by cowardice 
 and soft shrinking from duty. Let it be a principle through 
 life, moments of prayer intruded upon by sloth cannot be 
 made up. We may get experience, but we cannot get 
 back the rich freshness and the strength which were wrapped 
 up in these moments. 
 
 Once again this principle is true in another respect. 
 Opportunities of doing good do not come back. We are 
 here, brethren, for a most definite and intelligible purpose 
 to educate our own hearts by deeds of love, and to be the 
 instrument of blessing to our brother men. There are two 
 ways in which this is to be done by guarding them from 
 danger, and by soothing them in their rough path by 
 kindly sympathies the two things which the apostles were 
 asked to do for Christ. And it is an encouraging thought, 
 that he who cannot do the one has at least the other in his 
 power. If he cannot protect, he can sympathize. Let the 
 weakest let the humblest in this congregation remember, 
 that in his daily course he can if he will, shed around him 
 almost a heaven. Kindly words, sympathizing attentions, 
 watchfulness against wounding men's sensitiveness these 
 cost very little, but they are priceless in their value. Are 
 they not, brethren, almost the staple of our daily happiness ? 
 From hour to hour, from moment to moment, we are sup- 
 ported, blest, by small kindnesses. And then consider : 
 Here is a section of life one-third, one-half, it may be three- 
 fourths gone by, and the question before us is, how much 
 has been done in that way ? Who has charged himself with 
 the guardianship of his brother's safety ? Who has laid on 
 
The Irreparable Past 63 
 
 himself as a sacred duty to sit beside his brother suffering ? 
 Oh ! my brethren, it is the omission of these things which is 
 irreparable : irreparable, when you look to the purest enjoy- 
 ment which might have been your own : irreparable, when 
 you consider the compunction which belongs to deeds of 
 love not done ; irreparable, when you look to this groaning 
 world, and feel that its agony of bloody sweat has been dis- 
 tilling all night, and you were dreaming away in luxury ! 
 Shame, shame upon our selfishness ! There is an infinite 
 voice in the sin and sufferings of earth's millions, which 
 makes every idle moment, every moment that is which is 
 not relaxation, guilt ; and seems to cry out, If you will not 
 bestir yourself for love's sake now, it will soon be too late. 
 
 Lastly, this principle applies to a misspent youth. There 
 is something very remarkable in the picture which is placed 
 before us. There is a picture of One struggling, toiling, 
 standing between others and danger, and those others 
 quietly content to reap the benefit of that struggle without 
 anxiety of their own. And there is something in this 
 singularly like the position in which all young persons are 
 placed. The young are by God's Providence exempted in a 
 great measure from anxiety : they are as the apostles were 
 in relation to their Master: their friends stand between 
 them and the struggles of existence. They are not called 
 upon to think for themselves: the burden is borne by 
 others. They get their bread without knowing or caring 
 how it is paid for : they smile and laugh without a suspicion 
 of the anxious thoughts of day and night which a parent 
 bears to enable them to smile. So to speak they are 
 sleeping and it is not a guilty sleep while another 
 watches. 
 
 My young brethren youth is one of the precious oppor- 
 tunities of life rich in blessing if you choose to make it 
 so, but having in it the materials of undying remorse if you 
 suffer it to pass unimproved. Your quiet Gethsemane is now. 
 Gethsemane's struggles you cannot know yet. Take care 
 that you do not learn too well Gethsemane's sleep. Do you 
 know how you can imitate the apostles in their fatal sleep ? 
 
64 The Irreparable Past 
 
 You can suffer your young days to pass idly and uselessly 
 away: you can live as if you had nothing to do but to enjoy 
 yourselves : you can let others think for you, and not try to 
 become thoughtful yourselves, till the business and the 
 difficulties of life come upon you unprepared, and you find 
 yourselves like men waking from sleep, hurried, confused, 
 scarcely able to stand, with all the faculties bewildered, not 
 knowing right from wrong, led headlong to evil, just because 
 you have not given yourselves in time to learn what is good. 
 All that is sleep. And now let us mark it. You cannot 
 repair that in after-life. Oh ! remember every period of 
 human life has its own lesson, and you cannot learn that, 
 lesson in the next period. The boy has one set of lessons 
 to learn, and the young man another, and the grown-up man 
 another. Let us consider one single instance. The boy 
 has to learn docility, gentleness of temper, reverence, sub- 
 mission. All those feelings which are to be transferred 
 afterwards in full cultivation to God, like plants nursed in a 
 hot-bed and then planted out, are to be cultivated first in 
 youth. Afterwards, those habits which have been merely 
 habits of obedience to an earthly parent, are to become 
 religious submission to a heavenly parent. Our parents 
 stand to us in the place of God. Veneration for our parents 
 is intended to become afterwards adoration for something 
 higher. Take that single instance ; and now suppose that 
 that is not learnt in boyhood. Suppose that the boy sleeps 
 to that duty of veneration, and learns only flippancy, in- 
 subordination, and the habit of deceiving his father, can 
 that, my young brethren, be repaired afterwards ? Humanly 
 speaking not. Life is like the transition from class to class 
 in a school. The school-boy who has not learnt arithmetic 
 in the earlier classes cannot secure it when he comes to 
 mechanics in the higher : each section has its own sufficient 
 work. He may be a good philosopher or a good historian, 
 but a bad arithmetician he remains for life ; for he cannot 
 lay the foundation at the moment when he must be building 
 the superstructure. The regiment which has not perfected 
 itself in its manoeuvres on the parade-ground cannot learn 
 
The Irreparable Past 65 
 
 them before the guns of the enemy. And just in the same 
 way, the young person who has slept his youth away, and 
 become idle, and selfish, and hard, cannot make up for that 
 afterwards. He may do something, he may be religious 
 yes ; but he cannot be what he might have been. There is 
 a part of his heart which will remain uncultivated to the end. 
 The apostles could share their Master's sufferings they 
 could not save Him. Youth has its irreparable past. 
 
 And therefore, my young brethren, let it be impressed 
 upon you, NOW is a time, infinite in its value for eternity, 
 which will never return again. Sleep not : learn that there 
 is a very solemn work of heart which must be done while 
 the stillness of the garden of your Gethsemane gives you 
 time. Now or Never. 
 
 The treasures at your command are infinite. Treasures 
 of time treasures of youth treasures of opportunity that 
 grown-up men would sacrifice everything they have to 
 possess. O for ten years of youth back again with the 
 added experience of age ! But it cannot be : they must be 
 content to sleep on now, and take their rest. 
 
 We are to pass on next to a few remarks on the other 
 sentence in this passage, which brings before us for con- 
 sideration the future which is still available : for we are to 
 observe, that our Master did not limit His apostles to a 
 regretful recollection of their failure. Recollection of it He 
 did demand. There were the materials of a most cutting 
 self-reproach in the few words He said : for they contained 
 all the desolation of that sad word never. Who knows not 
 what that word wraps up Never it never can be undone. 
 Sleep on. But yet there was^no sickly lingering over the 
 irreparable. Our Master's words are the words of one who 
 had fully recognized the hopelessness of his position, but 
 yet manfully and calmly had numbered his resources and 
 scanned his duties, and then braced up his mind to meet 
 the exigencies of his situation with no passive endurance ; 
 the moment was come for action" Rise, let us be going." 
 
 Now the broad general lesson which we gam from this is 
 not hard to read. It is that a Christian is to be for ever 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
66 The Irreparable Past 
 
 rousing himself to recognize the duties which lie before him 
 now. In Christ the motto is ever this, " Let us be going." 
 Let me speak to the conscience of some one. Perhaps 
 yours is a very remorseful past a foolish, frivolous, dis- 
 graceful, frittered past. Well, Christ says, My servant, be 
 sad, but no languor; there is work to be done for me yet 
 Rise up, be going ! Oh, my brethren, Christ takes your 
 wretched remnants of life the feeble pulses of a heart 
 which has spent its best hours not for Him, but for self and 
 for enjoyment, and in His strange love He condescends to 
 accept them. 
 
 Let me speak to another kind of experience. Perhaps we 
 feel that we have faculties which never have and now never 
 will find their right field ; perhaps we are ignorant of many 
 things which cannot be learnt now ; perhaps the seed-time 
 of life has gone by, and certain powers of heart and mind 
 will not grow now ; perhaps you feel that the best days of 
 life are gone, and it is too late to begin things which were 
 in your power once : still, my repentant brother, there is 
 encouragement from your Master yet. Wake to the oppor- 
 tunities that yet remain. Ten years of life five years one 
 year say you have only that, Will you sleep that away 
 because you have already slept too long ? Eternity is crying 
 out to you louder and louder as you near its brink, Rise, 
 be going : count your resources : learn what you are not fit 
 for, and give up wishing for it : learn what you can do, and 
 do it with the energy of a man. That is the great lesson of 
 this passage. But now consider it a little more closely. 
 
 Christ impressed two things on His apostles' minds. 
 i. The duty of Christian earnestness u Rise." 2. The 
 duty of Christian energy " Let us be going." 
 
 Christ roused them to earnestness when He said, " Rise." 
 A short, sharp, rousing call. They were to start up and 
 wake to the realities of their position. The guards were on 
 them : their Master was about to be led away to doom. 
 That was an awakening which would make men spring to 
 their feet in earnest. Brethren, goodness and earnestness 
 are nearly the same thing. In the language in which this 
 
The Irreparable Past 67 
 
 Bible was written there was one word which expressed them 
 both : what we translate a good man, in Greek is literally 
 " earnest." The Greeks felt that to be earnest was nearly 
 identical with being good. But however, there is a day in 
 life when a man must be earnest, but it does not follow that 
 he will be good. " Behold the bridegroom cometh ; go ye 
 out to meet him." That is a sound that 'will thunder 
 through the most fast-locked slumber, and rouse men whom 
 sermons cannot rouse. But that will not make them holy. 
 Earnestness of life, brethren, that is goodness. Wake in 
 death you must, for it is an earnest thing to die. Shall it be 
 this, I pray you ? Shall it be the voice of death which first 
 says, " Arise," at the very moment when it says, " Sleep on 
 for ever ? " Shall it be the bridal train sweeping by, and the 
 shutting of the doors, and the discovery that the lamp is gone 
 out ? Shall that be the first time you know that it is an 
 earnest thing to live ? Let us feel that we have been doing ; 
 learn what time is sliding from you, and not stopping when 
 you stop : learn what sin is : learn what " never" is : " Awake, 
 thou that sleepest." 
 
 Lastly, Christian energy " Let us be going." There 
 were two ways open to Christ in which to submit to His 
 doom. He might have waited for it : instead of which He 
 went to meet the soldiers. He took up the Cross, the cup 
 of anguish was not forced between His lips, He took k with 
 His own hands, and drained it quickly to the last drop. In 
 after-years the disciples understood the lesson, and acted on 
 it. They did not wait till persecution overtook them ; they 
 braved the Sanhedrim ; they fronted the world : they pro- 
 claimed aloud the unpopular and unpalatable doctrines of 
 the Resurrection and the Cross. Now in this there lies a 
 principle. Under no conceivable set of circumstances are 
 we justified in sitting 
 
 " By the poison'd springs of life, 
 
 Waiting for the morrow which shall free us from the strife. 
 
 Under no circumstances, whether of pain, or grief, or dis- 
 appointment, or irreparable mistake, can it be true that there 
 
68 Christian Progress by Oblivion 
 
 is not something to be done, as well as something to be 
 suffered. And thus it is that the spirit of Christianity draws 
 over our life, not a leaden cloud of Remorse and 
 Despondency, but a sky not perhaps of radiant, but yet 
 of most serene and chastened and manly hope. There is a 
 past which is gone for ever. But there is a Future which is 
 still our own. 
 
 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS BY OBLIVION OF 
 THE PAST 
 
 PHIL. iii. 13, 14. "Brethren, I count not myself to have appre- 
 hended ; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are 
 behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I 
 press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 THE first thing which strikes us on reading these verses 
 is, that the Apostle Paul places himself on a level with the 
 persons whom he addresses. He speaks to them as frail, 
 weak men; and he gives them in himself a specimen of what 
 frailty and weakness can achieve in the strength of Christ. 
 And it is for this reason that the passage before us is one of 
 the most encouraging in all the writings of St. Paul. For 
 there is one aspect in which the apostle is presented to us, 
 which is perhaps a depressing one. When we look at his 
 almost superhuman career, reverence and admiration we 
 must feel, but so far does he seem removed from ordinary 
 life, that imitation appears out of the question. Let us select 
 but two instances of this discouraging aspect of the apostle's 
 life. Most of us know the feeling of unaccountable depres- 
 sion which rests upon us when we find ourselves alone in a 
 foreign town, with its tide of population ebbing and flowing 
 past us, a mass of human life, in which we ourselves are 
 nothing. But that was Paul's daily existence. He had 
 
Christian Progress by Oblivion 69 
 
 consecrated himself to an almost perpetual exile. He had 
 given up the endearments of domestic life for ever. Home, 
 in this world, St. Paul had none. With a capacity for the 
 tenderest feelings of our nature, he had chosen for his lot the 
 task of living among strangers, and as soon as they ceased 
 to be strangers, quitting them again. He went on month by 
 month attaching congregations to himself, and month by 
 month dooming himself to severance. And yet I know not 
 that we read of one single trace of depression or discourage- 
 ment suffered to rest on the apostle's mind. He seems to 
 have been ever fresh and sanguine, the salient energy of his 
 soul rising above the need of all human sympathy. It is the 
 magnificent spectacle of missionary life, with more than 
 missionary loneliness. There is something almost awful in 
 the thought of a man who was so thoroughly in the next 
 world that he needed not the consolations of this world. 
 And yet, observe, there is nothing encouraging for us in this. 
 It is very grand to look upon, very commanding, very full of 
 awe ; but it is so much above us, so little like anything 
 human that we know of, that we content ourselves with 
 gazing on him as on the gliding swallow's flight, which we 
 wonder at, but never think of imitating. 
 
 Now, let us look at one other feature in St. Paul's 
 character his superiority to those temptations which are 
 potent with ordinary men. We say nothing of his being 
 above the love of money : of his indifference to a life of 
 comfort and personal indulgence. Those temptations only 
 assail the lower part of our nature ; and it is not saintliness 
 to be above these : common excellence is impossible other- 
 wise. But when we come to look for those temptations 
 which master the higher and the nobler man, ambition, 
 jealousy, pride, it is not that we see them conquered by the 
 apostle; they scarcely seem to have even lodged in his 
 bosom at all. It was open to the apostle, if he had felt the 
 ambition, to make for himself a name, to become the leader 
 of a party in Corinth and in the world. And yet remember 
 we not how sternly he put down the thought, and how he 
 laboured to merge his individuality in the cause, and make 
 
yo Christian Progress by Oblivion 
 
 himself an equal of inferior men? "Who, then, is Paul, 
 and who is Apollos, but ministers, servants, by whom ye 
 believed?" 
 
 Again, in respect of jealousy. Jealousy seems almost 
 inseparable from human love. It is but the other side of 
 love, the shadow cast by the light when the darker body 
 intervenes. There came to him in prison that most cutting 
 of all news to a minister's heart, that others were trying to 
 supplant him in the affections of his converts. But his was 
 that lofty love which cares less for reciprocation than for the 
 well-being of the objects loved. The rival teachers were 
 teaching from emulation ; still they could not but bless by 
 preaching to his disciples. What then ? Notwithstanding 
 every way, whether in pretence or in truth, "Christ is 
 preached ; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." 
 Not a trace of jealousy in these words. 
 
 Once more Degrading things were laid to his charge. 
 The most liberal minded of mankind was charged with 
 bigotry. The most generous of men was suspected of 
 avarice. If ever pride were venial, it had been then. Yet 
 read through the whole of the Second Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, and say if one spark of pride be visible. He 
 might have shut himself up in high and dignified silence. 
 He might have refused to condescend to solicit a renewal of 
 the love which had once grown cold ; and yet we look in vain 
 for the symptoms of offended pride. Take this one passage 
 as a specimen. "Behold this third time I am willing to 
 come unto you . . . and I will very gladly spend and be 
 spent for you, though the more abundantly I love you, the 
 less I am beloved." 
 
 In this there is very little encouragement. A man so 
 thoroughly above human resentment, human passions, human 
 weakness, does not seem to us an example. The nearer 
 humanity approaches a perfect standard, the less does it 
 command our sympathy. A man must be weak before we 
 can feel encouraged to attempt what he has done. It is not 
 the Redeemer's sinlessness, nor his unconquerable fidelity to 
 duty, nor His superhuman nobleness, that win our desire to 
 
Christian Progress by Oblivion 71 
 
 imitate. Rather His tears at the grave of friendship, His 
 shrinking from the sharpness of death, and the feeling of 
 human doubt which swept across His soul like a desolation. 
 These make Him one of us, and therefore our example. 
 
 And it is on this account that this passage seems to us so 
 full of encouragement. It is the precious picture of a frail 
 and struggling apostle precious both to the man and to the 
 minister. To the man, because it tells him that what he 
 feels Paul felt, imperfect, feeble, far from what he would 
 wish to be ; yet with sanguine hope, expecting progress in 
 the saintly life. Precious to the minister, because it tells 
 him that his very weakness may be subservient to a people's 
 strength. Not in his transcendent gifts not in his saintly 
 endowments not even in his apostolic devotedness is 
 St. Paul so close to our hearts, as when he makes himself 
 one with us, and says, " Brethren, I count not myself to 
 have apprehended." And we know not how otherwise any 
 minister could hope to do good, when he addresses men 
 who are infinitely his superiors in almost everything. We 
 know not how else he could urge on to a sanctity which he 
 has not himself attained ; we know not how he could dare 
 to speak severely of weaknesses by which he himself is over- 
 powered, and passions of which he feels in himself all the 
 terrible tyranny, if it were not that he expects to have tacitly 
 understood that in his own case which the apostle urged in 
 every form of expression : Brethren, be as I am, for I am as 
 ye are struggling, baffled, but panting for emancipation. 
 
 We confine ourselves to two subjects : 
 
 I. The apostle's object in this life. 
 II. The means which he used for attaining it. 
 
 I The apostle's object or aim in this life was " perfec- 
 tion " In the verse before" Not as though I had already 
 attained, either were already perfect." Perfection was his 
 unreached mark. 
 
 And less than this no Christian can aim at. 
 given to us " exceeding great and precious promises, that 
 
72 Christian Progress by Oblivion 
 
 by means of these we might be partakers of the Divine 
 Nature. Not to be equal to the standard of our day, 
 nor even to surpass it. Not to be superior to the men 
 amongst whom we live. Not to forgive those who have 
 little to be forgiven. Not to love our friends But to be 
 the children of our Father to be pure even as Christ is 
 pure to be " perfect even as our Father which is in Heaven 
 is perfect." 
 
 It is easily perceivable why this perfection is unattainable 
 in this life. Faultlessness is conceivable, being merely the 
 negation of evil. But perfection is positive, the attainment 
 of all conceivable excellence. It is long as Eternity ex- 
 pansive as God. Perfection is our mark : yet never will 
 the aim be so true and steady as to strike the golden 
 centre. Perfection of character, yet even to the dying hour, 
 it will be but this, " I count not myself to have appre- 
 hended." Christian life is like those questions in mathe- 
 matics which never can be exactly answered. All you can 
 attain is an approximation to the truth. You may labour 
 on for years and never reach it ; yet your labour is not in 
 vain. Every figure you add makes the fraction nearer than 
 the last to the million millionth ; and so it is with holiness. 
 Christ is our mark the perfect standard of God in Christ. 
 But be as holy as you will, there is a step nearer, and 
 another, and another, and so infinitely on. 
 
 To this object the apostle gave himself with singleness of 
 aim. " This one thing I do" The life of man is a vagrant 
 changeful desultoriness ; like that of children sporting on 
 an enamelled meadow, chasing now a painted butterfly, 
 which loses its charm by being caught now a wreath of 
 mist, which falls damp upon the hand with disappointment 
 now a feather of thistle-down, which is crushed in the 
 grasp. In the midst of all this fickleness, St. Paul had 
 found a purpose to which he gave the undivided energy of 
 his soul. ^" This one thing I do I press toward the mark." 
 
 This is intelligible enough in the case of a minister ; for 
 whether he be in the pulpit or beside a sick man's bed or 
 furnishing his mind in the study, evidently and unmistakably 
 
Christian Progress by Oblivion 73 
 
 it is his profession to be doing only one thing. But in the 
 manifold life of the man of the world, and business, it is not 
 so easy to understand how this can be carried out. To an- 
 swer this, we observe, there is a difference between doing 
 and being. Perfection is being, not doing it is not to 
 effect an act but to achieve a character. If the aim of life 
 were to do something, then, as in an earthly business, except 
 in doing this one thing the business would be at a stand- 
 still. The student is not doing the one thing of student- 
 life when he has ceased to think or read. The labourer 
 leaves his work undone when the spade is not in his hand, 
 and he sits beneath the hedge to rest. But in Christian 
 Hfe, every moment and every act is an opportunity for doing 
 the one thing of becoming Christ-like. Every day is full of 
 a most impressive experience. Every temptation to evil 
 temper which can assail us to-day will be an opportunity to 
 decide the question whether we shall gain the calmness and 
 the rest of Christ, or whether we shall be tossed by the 
 restlessness and agitation of the world. Nay, the very 
 vicissitudes of the seasons, day and night, heat and cold, 
 affecting us variably, and producing exhilaration or depres- 
 sion, are so contrived as to conduce towards the being which 
 we become, and decide whether we shall be masters of 
 ourselves, or whether we shall be swept at the mercy of 
 accident and circumstance, miserably susceptible of merely 
 outward influences. Infinite as are the varieties of life, so 
 manifold are the paths to saintly character : and he who 
 has not found out how directly or indirectly to make every- 
 thing converge towards his soul's sanctification, has as yet 
 missed the meaning of this life. 
 
 In pressing towards this " mark," the apostle attained a 
 prize ; and here I offer an observation, which is not one of 
 mere subtlety of refinement, but deeply practical. The 
 mark was perfection of character the prize was blessedness. 
 But the apostle did not aim at the prize of blessedness : he 
 aimed at the mark of perfectness. In becoming perfect he 
 attained happiness, but his primary aim was not happiness. 
 
 We may understand this by an illustration. In student- 
 
74 Christian Progress by Oblivion 
 
 life there are those who seek knowledge for its own sake, 
 and there are those who seek it for the sake of the prize, 
 and the honour, and the subsequent success in life that 
 knowledge brings. To those who seek knowledge for its 
 own sake the labour is itself reward. Attainment is the 
 highest reward. Doubtless the prize stimulates exertion; 
 encourages and forms a part of the motive ; but only a 
 subordinate one : and knowledge would still have "a price 
 above rubies," if there were no prize at all. They who 
 seek knowledge for the sake of a prize are not genuine 
 lovers of knowledge they only love the rewards of know- 
 ledge : had it no honour or substantial advantage connected 
 with it, they would be indolent. 
 
 Applying this 'to our subject, I say that is a spurious 
 goodness which is good for the sake of reward. The child 
 that speaks truth for the sake of the praise of truth, is not 
 truthful. The man who is honest because honesty is the 
 best policy, has not integrity in his heart. He who 
 endeavours to be humble, and holy, and perfect, in order to 
 win heaven, has only a counterfeit religion. God for His 
 own sake Goodness because it is good Truth because it 
 is lovely this is the Christian's aim. The prize is only an 
 incentive : inseparable from success, but not the aim itself. 
 
 With this limitation, however, we remark that it is a 
 Christian duty to dwell much more on the thought of future 
 blessedness than most men do. If ever the apostle's steps 
 began to flag, the radiant diadem before him gave new 
 vigour to his heart ; and we know how at the close of his 
 career the vision became more vivid and more entrancing. 
 " Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory ! " 
 It is our privilege, if we are on our way to God, to keep 
 steadily before us the thought of home. Make it a matter 
 of habit. Force yourself at night, alone, in the midst of the 
 world's bright sights, to pause to think of the heaven which 
 is yours. Let it calm you and ennoble you, and give you 
 cheerfulness to endure. It was so that Moses was enabled 
 to live amongst all the fascinations of his courtly life, with 
 a heart unseduced from his laborious destiny. By faith . . . 
 
Christian Progress by Oblivion 75 
 
 " esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the 
 treasures of Egypt." Why? "for he had respect unto the 
 recompense of the reward." It was so that our Master 
 strengthened His human soul for its sharp earthly endurance. 
 " For the joy that was set before him, He endured- the cross, 
 despising the shame." If we would become heavenly- 
 minded, we must let the imagination realize the blessedness 
 to which we are moving on. Let us think much of rest, 
 the rest which is not of indolence, but of powers in perfect 
 equilibrium. The rest which is deep as summer midnight, 
 yet full of life and force as summer sunshine, the sabbath of 
 Eternity. Let us think of the love of God, which we shall 
 feel in its full tide upon our souls. Let us think of that 
 marvellous career of sublime occupation which shall belong 
 to the spirits of just men made perfect ; when we shall fill a 
 higher place in God's universe, and more consciously, and 
 with more distinct insight, co-operate with God in the rule 
 over His Creation. " I press toward the mark for the 
 prize." 
 
 II. We pass to our second topic. The means which 
 Paul found available for the attainment of Divine and 
 perfect character. His great principle was to forget the 
 things which were behind, and to reach forward to the 
 things which were before. The wisdom of a divine life 
 lies hid in this principle. I shall endeavour to expand the 
 sentiment to make it intelligible. 
 
 What are the things behind, which are to be forgotten ? 
 
 i. If we would progress in Christian life, we must forget 
 the days of innocence that lie behind us. Let not this be 
 misunderstood. Innocent, literally, no man ever is. We 
 come into the world with tendencies to evil; but there was 
 a time in our lives when those were only tendencies. A 
 proneness to sin we had ; but we had not yet sinned. 
 moment had not yet arrived when that cloud settles down 
 upon the heart, which in all of after-life is never entirely 
 removed : the sense of guilt, the anguish of lost innocence, 
 the restless feeling of a heart no longer pure. Popularly, 
 
76 Christian Progress by Oblivion 
 
 we call that innocence; and when men become bitterly 
 aware that early innocence of heart is gone, they feel as if 
 all were lost, and so look back to what they reckon holier 
 days with a peculiar fondness of regret. I believe there is 
 much that is merely feeble and sentimental in this regret. 
 Our early innocence is nothing more than ignorance of evil. 
 Christian life is not a retaining of that ignorance of evil : 
 nor even a returning of it again. We lose our mere negative 
 sinlessness. We put on our firm manly holiness. Human 
 innocence is not to know evil. Christian saintliness is to 
 know evil and good, and prefer good. It is possible for a 
 parent, with over-fastidious refinement, to prolong the 
 duration of this innocence unnaturally. He may lock up 
 his library, and prevent the entrance to forbidden books ; 
 he may exercise a jealous censorship over every book and 
 every companion that comes into the house; he may 
 remove the public journal from the table lest an eye may 
 chance to rest upon the contaminating portion of its pages ; 
 but he has only put off the evil hour. He has sent into the 
 world a young man of eighteen or twenty, ignorant as a child 
 of evil, but not innocent as an angel who abhors the evil. 
 No, we cannot get back our past ignorance, neither is it 
 desirable we should. No sane mind wishes for that which 
 is impossible. And it is no more to be regretted than the 
 blossom is to be regretted when fruit is hardening in its 
 place ; no more to be regretted than the slender graceful- 
 ness of the sapling, when you have got instead the woody 
 fibre of the heart of oak of which the ship is made ; no 
 more to be regretted than the green blade when the ear 
 has come instead, bending down in yellow ripeness. Our 
 innocence is gone, withered with the business-like contact 
 with the great world. It is one of the things behind. 
 Forget it. It was worth very little. And now for something 
 of a texture more firm, more enduring. We will not mourn 
 over the loss of simplicity, if we have got instead souls 
 indurated by experience, disciplined, even by fall, to refuse 
 the evil and to choose the good. 
 
 2. In the next place, it is wise to forget our days of 
 
Christian Progress by Oblivion 77 
 
 youth. Up to a certain period of life it is the tendency of 
 man to look forwards There is a marvellous prodigality 
 with which we throw away our present happiness when we 
 are young, which belongs to those who feel that they are 
 rich in happiness, and never expect to be bankrupts. It 
 almost seems one of the signatures of our immortality that 
 we squander time as if there were a dim consciousness that 
 we are in possession of an eternity of it ; but as we arrive at 
 middle age, it is the tendency of man to look back. To a 
 man of middle life, existence is no longer a dream, but a 
 reality. He has not much more new to look forward to, for 
 the character of his life is generally fixed by that time. His 
 profession, his home, his occupations, will be for the most 
 part what they are now. He will make few new acquaint- 
 ances no new friends. It is the solemn thought connected 
 with middle age that life's last business is begun in earnest ; 
 and it is then, midway between the cradle and the grave, 
 that a man begins to look back and marvel with a kind 
 of remorseful feeling that he let the days of youth go by so 
 half enjoyed. It is the pensive autumn feeling, it is the 
 sensation of half sadness that we experience when the 
 longest day of the year is past, and every day that follows 
 is shorter, and the lights fainter, and the feebler shadows 
 tell that nature is hastening with gigantic footsteps to her 
 winter grave. So does man look back upon his youth. 
 When the first grey hairs become visible, when the unwel- 
 come truth fastens itself upon the mind, that a man is 
 no longer going up the hill, but down, and that the sun is 
 already westering, he looks back on things behind. Now 
 this is a natural feeling, but is it the high Christian tone of 
 feeling? In the spirit of this verse, we may assuredly 
 answer, No. We who have an inheritance incorruptible and 
 undefiled, and that fadeth not away, what have we to do 
 with things past ? When we were children we thought as 
 children. But now there lies before us manhood, with its 
 earnest work : and then old age, and then the grave, and 
 then home. And so manhood in the Christian life is a 
 better thing than boyhood, because it is a riper thing ; and 
 
78 Christian Progress by Oblivion 
 
 old age ought to be a brighter, and a calmer, and a more 
 serene thing than manhood. There is a second youth for 
 man, better and holier than his first, if he will look on and 
 not back. There is a peculiar simplicity of heart and a 
 touching singleness of purpose in Christian old age, which 
 has ripened gradually and not fitfully. It is then that to the 
 wisdom of the serpent is added the harmlessness of the 
 dove ; it is then that to the firmness of manhood is joined 
 almost the gentleness of womanhood ; it is then that the 
 somewhat austere and sour character of growing strength, 
 moral and intellectual, mellows into the rich ripeness of an 
 old age, made sweet and tolerant by experience ; it is then 
 that man returns to first principles. There comes a love 
 more pure and deep than the boy could ever feel ; there 
 comes a conviction, with a strength beyond that which the 
 boy could ever know, that the earliest lesson of life is 
 infinite, Christ is all in all. 
 
 3. Again ; it is wise to forget past errors. There is a 
 kind of temperament which, when indulged, greatly hinders 
 growth in real godliness. It is that rueful, repentant, self- 
 accusing temper, which is always looking back, and micro- 
 scopically observing how that which is done might have been 
 better done. Something of this we ought to have. A 
 Christian ought to feel always that he has partially failed, 
 but that ought not to be the only feeling. Faith ought ever 
 to be a sanguine, cheerful thing ; and perhaps in practical 
 life we could not give a better account of faith than by 
 saying, that it is amidst much failure having the heart to 
 try again. Our best deeds are marked by imperfection ; but 
 if they really were our best, "forget the things that are 
 behind" we shall do better next time. 
 
 Under this head we include all those mistakes which 
 belong to our circumstances. We can all look back to past 
 life and see mistakes that have been made, to a certain 
 extent, perhaps, irreparable ones. We can see where our 
 education was fatally misdirected. The profession chosen 
 for you perhaps was not the fittest, or you are out of place, 
 and many things might have been better ordered. Now, 
 
Christian Progress by Oblivion 79 
 
 on this apostolic principle, it is wise to forget all that. It is 
 not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be 
 done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by 
 complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using 
 well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are, is 
 God's providential arrangement God's doing, though it 
 may be man's misdoing ; and the manly and the wise way is 
 to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be 
 made out of them. Life, like war, is a series of mistakes, 
 and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who 
 makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure 
 that ; but he is the best who wins the most splendid 
 victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes : 
 organize victory out of mistakes. 
 
 Finally ; Past guilt lies behind us, and is well forgotten. 
 There is a way in which even sin may be banished from the 
 memory. If a man looks forward to the evil he is going to 
 commit, and satisfies himself that it is inevitable, and so 
 treats it lightly, he is acting as a fatalist. But if a man 
 partially does this, looking backward, feeling that sin when 
 it is past has become part of the history of God's universe, 
 and is not to be wept over for ever, he only does that which 
 the Giver of the Gospel permits him to do. Bad as the 
 results have been in the world of making light of sin, those 
 of brooding over it too much have been worse. Remorse 
 has done more harm than even hardihood. It was remorse 
 which fixed Judas in an unalterable destiny ; it was remorse 
 which filled the monasteries for ages with men and women 
 whose lives became useless to their fellow-creatures; it is 
 remorse which so remembers bygone faults as to paralyze 
 the energies for doing Christ's work ; for when you break a 
 Christian's spirit, it is all over with progress. Oh ! we want 
 everything that is hopeful and encouraging for our work, for 
 God knows it is not an easy one. And therefore it is that 
 the Gospel comes to the guiltiest of us all at the very outset 
 with the inspiring news of pardon. You remember how 
 Christ treated sin. Sin of oppression and hypocrisy 
 indignantly, but sin of frailty" ' Hath no man condemned 
 
8o Christian Progress by Oblivion 
 
 thee?' 'No man, Lord.' * Neither do I condemn thee, 
 go and sin no more.' " As if He would bid us think more of 
 what we may be than of what we have been. There was 
 the wisdom of life in the proverb with which the widow of 
 Tekoah pleaded for the restoration of Absalom from banish- 
 ment before David. Absalom had slain his brother Amnon. 
 Well, Amnon was dead before his time ; but the severity of 
 revenge could never bring him back again. " We must all 
 die," said the wise woman, "and are as water spilt upon the 
 ground, which cannot be gathered up again. 1 ' Christian 
 brethren, do not stop too long to weep owr spilt water. 
 Forget your guilt, and wait to see what eternity has to say 
 to it. You have other work to do now. 
 
 So let us work out the spirit of the apostle's plan. 
 Innocence, youth, success, error, guilt let us forget 
 them all. 
 
 Not backward are our glances bent, 
 But onwards to our Father's home. 
 
 In conclusion, remember Christian progress is only 
 possible in Christ. It is a very lofty thing to be a Chris- 
 tian; for a Christian is a man who is restoring God's 
 likeness to his character ; and therefore the apostle calls it 
 here a high calling. High as heaven is the calling where- 
 with we are called. But this very height makes it seem 
 impracticable. It is natural to say all that was well 
 enough for one so transcendently gifted as Paul to hope 
 for : but I am no gifted man I have no iron strength of 
 mind I have no sanguine hopefulness of character I am 
 disposed to look on the dark side of things I am undeter- 
 mined, weak, vacillating ; and then I have a whole army of 
 passions and follies to contend with. We have to remind 
 such men of one thing they have forgotten. It is the high 
 calling of God if you will ; but it is the high calling of God 
 in Christ Jesus. What the world calls virtue is a name and 
 a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human 
 excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's 
 cross, and in the power of His Resurrection. First let a 
 
Christian Progress by Oblivion 8r 
 
 man know that all his past is wrong and sinful ; then let 
 him fix his eye on the love of God in Christ loving him, 
 even him, the guilty one. Is there no strength in that ? no 
 power in the knowledge that all that is gone by is gone, and 
 that a fresh clear future is open? It is not the progress 
 of virtue that God asks for, but progress in saintliness, 
 empowered by hope and love. 
 
 Lastly, let each man put this question to himself, " Dare 
 I look on?" With an earnest Christian, it is "reaching 
 forth to those things which are before." Progress ever. 
 And then just as we go to rest in this world tired, and wake 
 up fresh and vigorous in the morning, so does the Christian 
 go to sleep in the world's night, weary with the work of life, 
 and then on the resurrection-day he wakes in his second and 
 his brighter morning. It is well for a believer to look on. 
 Dare you ? Remember, out of Christ, it is not wisdom, but 
 madness to look on. You must look back, for the longest 
 and the best day is either past or passing. It will be winter 
 soon desolate, uncheered, hopeless winter old age, with 
 its dreariness and its disappointment, and its querulous 
 broken-heartedness ; and there is no second spring for you 
 no resurrection morning of blessedness to dawn on the 
 darkness of your grave. God has only one method of 
 salvation, the Cross of Christ. God can have only one ; for 
 the Cross of Christ means death to evil, life to good. There 
 is no other way to salvation but that, for that in itself is, and 
 alone is, salvation. Out of Christ, therefore, it is woe to 
 the man who reaches forth to the things which are before. 
 To such I say My unhappy brethren, Omnipotence itself 
 cannot change the darkness of your destiny. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
82 The Christian Aim and Motive 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE 
 
 MATTHEW v. 48. " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father 
 which is in heaven is perfect." 
 
 THERE are two erroneous views held respecting the 
 character of the Sermon on the Mount. The first may 
 be called an error of worldly-minded men, the other an 
 error of mistaken religionists. Worldly-minded men men, 
 that is, in whom the devotional feeling is but feeble are 
 accustomed to look upon morality as the whole of religion ; 
 and they suppose that the Sermon on the Mount was 
 designed only to explain and enforce correct principles of 
 morality. It tells of human duties and human proprieties, 
 and an attention to these, they maintain, is the only religion 
 which is required by it. Strange, my Christian brethren, 
 that men, whose lives are least remarkable for superhuman 
 excellence, should be the very men to refer most frequently 
 to those sublime comments on Christian principle, and 
 should so confidently conclude from thence, that themselves 
 are right and all others are wrong. Yet so it is. 
 
 The other is an error of mistaken religionists. They 
 sometimes regard the Sermon on the Mount as if it were a 
 collection of moral precepts, and consequently, strictly 
 speaking, not Christianity at all. To them it seems as if the 
 chief value, the chief intention, of the discourse was to show 
 the breadth and spirituality of the requirements of the law 
 of Moses its chief religious significance, to show the utter 
 impossibility of fulfilling the law, and thus to lead to the 
 necessary inference that justification must be by faith alone. 
 And so they would not scruple to assert that, in the highest 
 sense of that term, it is not Christianity at all, but only 
 preparatory to it a kind of spiritual Judaism ; and that the 
 higher and more developed principles of Christianity are to 
 be found in the writings of the apostles. Before we proceed 
 further, we would remark here that it seems extremely 
 
The Christian Aim and Motive 83 
 
 startling to say that He who came to this world expressly to 
 preach the Gospel, should, in the most elaborate of all His 
 discourses, omit to do so : it is indeed something more than 
 startling, it is absolutely revolting, to suppose that the letters 
 of those who spoke of Christ should contain a more 
 perfectly-developed, freer and fuller Christianity than is to 
 be found in Christ's own words. 
 
 Now you will observe that these two parties, so opposed 
 to each other in their general religious views, are agreed in 
 this that the Sermon on the Mount is nothing but 
 morality. The man of the world says "It is morality 
 only, and that is the whole of religion." The mistaken 
 religionist says " It is morality only, not the entire essence 
 of Christianity." In opposition to both these views, we 
 maintain that the Sermon on the Mount contains the sum 
 and substance of Christianity the very chief matter of the 
 gospel of our Redeemer. It is not, you will observe, a pure 
 and spiritualized Judaism; it is contrasted with Judaism 
 again and again by Him who spoke it. Quoting the words 
 of Moses, he affirmed, " So was it spoken by them of old 
 time, but / say unto you For example, " Thou shalt 
 not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine 
 oaths." That is Judaism. " But I say unto you swear not 
 at all, but let your yea be yea, and your nay nay." That is 
 Christianity. And that which is the essential peculiarity of 
 this Christianity lies in these two things. First of all, that 
 the morality which it teaches is disinterested goodness 
 goodness not for the sake of the blessing that follows it, but 
 for its own sake, and because it is right. "Love your 
 enemies," is the Gospel precept. Why ? Because if you 
 love them you shall be blessed ; and if you do not, cursed ? 
 No ; but " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, 
 do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which 
 despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the 
 children of "that is, may be like "your Father which is 
 in Heaven." The second essential peculiarity of Christianity 
 
 and this, too, is an essential peculiarity of this Sermon 
 
 is, that it teaches and enforces the law of self-sacrifice. " If 
 
84 The Christian Aim and Motive 
 
 thy right eye offend thee pluck it out ; if thy right hand 
 offend thee cut it off." This, brethren, is the law of self- 
 sacrifice the very law and spirit of the blessed Cross of 
 Christ. 
 
 How deeply and essentially Christian, then, this Sermon 
 on the Mount is, we shall understand if we are enabled in 
 any measure to reach the meaning and spirit of the single 
 passage which I have taken as my text. It tells two things 
 the Christian aim and the Christian motive. 
 
 ist. The Christian aim perfection. 2nd. The Christian 
 motive because it is Godlike and right to be perfect. 
 
 I. We will in the first place take the first of these. 
 
 The Christian aim is this to be perfect. " Be ye there- 
 fore perfect." Now distinguish this, I pray you, from mere 
 worldly morality. It is not conformity to a creed that 
 is here required, but aspiration after a state. It is not 
 demanded of us to perform a number of duties, but to yield 
 obedience to a certain spiritual law. But let us endeavour 
 to explain this more fully. What is the meaning of this 
 expression, " Be ye perfect ? " Why is it that in this discourse, 
 instead of being commanded to perform religious duties, we 
 are commanded to think of being like God ? Will not that 
 inflame our pride, and increase our natural vainglory ? Now 
 the nature and possibility of human perfection, what it is 
 and how it is possible, are both contained in one single 
 expression in the text. " Even as your Father which is in 
 Heaven is perfect." The relationship between father and 
 son implies consanguinity, likeness, similarity of character 
 and nature. God made the insect, the stone, the lily ; but 
 God is not the Father of the caterpillar, the lily, or the 
 stone. When, therefore, God is said to be our Father, 
 something more is implied in this than that God created 
 man. And so when the Son of Man came proclaiming the 
 fact that we are the children of God, it was in the truest 
 sense a revelation. He told us that the nature of God 
 resembles the nature of man, that love in God is not a mere 
 figure of speech, but means the same thing as love in us, 
 and that divine anger is the same thing as human anger 
 
The Christian Aim and Motive 85 
 
 divested of its emotions and imperfections. Therefore, 
 when we are commanded to be like God, it implies that 
 God has that nature of which we have already the germs. 
 And this has been taught by the incarnation of the 
 Redeemer. Things absolutely dissimilar in their nature 
 cannot mingle. Water cannot coalesce with fire water 
 cannot mix with oil. If, then, humanity and divinity were 
 united in the person of the Redeemer, it follows that there 
 must be something kindred between the two, or else the 
 incarnation had been impossible. So that the incarnation 
 is the realization of man's perfection. 
 
 But let us examine more deeply this assertion, that 
 our nature is kindred with that of God for if man has 
 not a nature kindred to God's, then a demand such as 
 that, " Be ye the children of, that is like, God," is but a 
 mockery of man. We say then, in the first place, that 
 in the truest sense of the word man can be a creator. The 
 beaver makes its hole, the bee makes its cell ; man has 
 the power of creating. The mason makes, the architect 
 creates. In the same sense that we say God created the 
 universe, we say that man is also a creator. The creation 
 of the universe was the Eternal Thought taking reality. 
 And thought taking expression is also a creation. When- 
 ever, therefore, there is a living thought shaping itself 
 in word or in stone, there is there a creation. And, there- 
 fore it is, that the simplest effort of what we call genius is 
 prized infinitely more than the most elaborate performances 
 which are done by mere workmanship, and for this reason : 
 that the one is produced by an effort of power which 
 we share with the beaver and the bee, that of making, and 
 the other by a faculty and power which man alone shares 
 with God. 
 
 Here, however, you will observe another difficulty. It 
 will be said at oncethere is something in this comparison 
 of man with God which looks like blasphemy, because one 
 is finite and the other infinite man is bounded, God 
 boundless; and to speak of resemblance and kindred 
 between these two, is to speak of resemblance and kin- 
 
86 The Christian Aim and Motive 
 
 dred between two natures essentially different. But this is 
 precisely the argument which is brought by the Socinians 
 against the doctrine of the incarnation ; and we are bound 
 to add that the Socinian argument is right, unless there be 
 the similarity of which we have been speaking. Unless 
 there be something in man's nature which truly and 
 properly partakes of the divine nature, there could be no 
 incarnation, and the demand for perfection would be a 
 mockery and an impossibility. 
 
 Let us then endeavour to find out the evidences of this 
 infinitude in the nature of man. First of all, we find it in 
 this that the desires of man are for something boundless 
 and unattainable. Thus speaks our Lord " What shall it 
 profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his 
 own soul ? " Every schoolboy has heard the story of the 
 youthful prince who enumerated one by one the countries 
 he meant to conquer year after year ; and when the 
 enumeration was completed, was asked what he meant 
 to do when all those victories were achieved, and he 
 replied to sit down, to be happy, to take his rest. 
 But then came the ready rejoinder why not do so now ? 
 But it is not every schoolboy who has paused to consider 
 the folly of the question. He who asked his son why 
 he did not at once take the rest which it was his 
 ultimate purpose to enjoy, knew not the immensity and 
 nobility of the human soul. He could not then take his 
 rest and be happy. As long as one realm remained 
 unconquered, so long rest was impossible ; he would weep 
 for fresh worlds to conquer. And thus, that which was 
 spoken by our Lord of our earthly gratification, is true of 
 all " Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again." 
 The boundless, endless, infinite void in the soul of man can 
 be satisfied with nothing but God. Satisfaction lies not in 
 having, but in being. There is no satisfaction even in doing. 
 Man cannot be satisfied with his own performances. When 
 the righteous young ruler came to Christ, and declared that 
 in reference to the life gone by, he had kept all the 
 commandments and fulfilled all the duties required by the 
 
The Christian Aim and Motive 87 
 
 Law, still came the question" What lack I yet ? " The 
 Scribes and Pharisees were the strictest observers of the 
 ceremonies of the Jewish religion, " touching the righteous- 
 ness which is by the Law " they were blameless, but yet 
 they wanted something more than that, and they were 
 found on the brink of Jordan imploring the baptism of 
 John, seeking after a new and higher state than they had 
 yet attained to, a significant proof that man cannot be 
 satisfied with his own works. And again, there is 
 not one of us who has ever been satisfied with his own 
 performances. There is no man, whose doings are 
 worth anything, who has not felt that he has not 
 yet done that which he feels himself able to do. 
 While he was doing it, he was kept up by the spirit of hope ; 
 but when done, the thing seemed to him worthless. And 
 therefore it is that the author cannot read his own book 
 again, nor the sculptor look with pleasure upon his finished 
 work. With respect to one of the greatest of all modern 
 sculptors, we are told that he longed for the termination of 
 his earthly career, for this reason that he had been satisfied 
 with his own performance : satisfied for the first time in his 
 life. And this expression of his satisfaction was but 
 equivalent to saying that he had reached the goal, beyond 
 which there could be no progress. This impossibility 
 of being satisfied with our own performances is one of the 
 strongest proofs of our immortality a proof of that 
 perfection towards which we shall for ever tend, but which 
 we can never attain. 
 
 A second trace of this infinitude in man's nature we find 
 in the infinite capacities of the soul. This is true, intellec- 
 tually and morally. With reference to our intellectual 
 capacities, it would perhaps be more strictly correct to say 
 that they are indefinite, rather than infinite ; that is, we can 
 affix to them no limit. For there is no man, however low 
 his intellectual powers may be, who has not at one time ^ or 
 another felt a rush of thought, a glow of inspiration, which 
 seemed to make all things possible, as if it were merely the 
 effect of some imperfect organization which stood in the 
 
88 The Christian Aim and Motive 
 
 way of his doing whatever he desired to do. With respect 
 to our moral and spiritual capacities, we remark that they 
 are not only indefinite, but absolutely infinite. Let that 
 man answer who has ever truly and heartily loved another. 
 That man knows what it is to partake of the infinitude of 
 God. Literally, in the emphatic language of the Apostle John, 
 he has felt his immortality "God in him and he in 
 God." For that moment, infinitude was to him not a name, 
 but a reality. He entered into the infinite of time and 
 space, which is not measured by days, or months, or years, 
 but is alike boundless and eternal. 
 
 Again, we perceive a third trace of this infinitude in man, 
 in the power which he possesses of giving up self. In this, 
 perhaps more than in anything else, man may claim kindred 
 with God. Nor is this power confined to the best of man- 
 kind, but is possessed, to some extent at least, by all. 
 There is no man, how low soever he may be, who has not 
 one or two causes or secrets, which no earthly consideration 
 would induce him to betray. There is no man who does 
 not feel towards one or two at least, in this world, a devotion 
 which all the bribes of the universe would not be able 
 to shake. We have heard the story of that degraded 
 criminal who, when sentence of death was passed upon him, 
 turned to his accomplice in guilt, in whose favour a verdict 
 of acquittal was brought in, and in glorious self-forget- 
 fulness exclaimed " Thank God, you are saved ! " The 
 savage and barbarous Indian whose life has been one 
 unbroken series of cruelty and crime, will submit to a slow, 
 lingering, torturing death, rather than betray his country. 
 Now, what shall we say to these things ? Do they not tell 
 of an indestructible something in the nature of man, of 
 which the origin is divine? the remains of a majesty 
 which, though it may be sullied, can never be entirely 
 lost? 
 
 Before passing on, let us observe that were it not for this 
 conviction of the divine origin, and consequent perfectibility 
 of our nature, the very thought of God would be painful to 
 us. God is so great, so glorious, that the mind is over- 
 
The Christian Aim and Motive 89 
 
 whelmed by, and shrinks from, the contemplation of His 
 excellence, unless there comes the tender, ennobling thought 
 that we are the children of God, who are to become like 
 our Father in Heaven, whose blessed career it is to go on in 
 an advance of love and duty towards Him, until we love 
 Him as we are loved, and know Him almost as we are 
 known. 
 
 II. We pass on now, in the second place, to consider the 
 Christian motive " Even as your Father which is in Heaven 
 is perfect." Brethren, worldly prudence, miscalled morality, 
 says " Be honest ; you will find your gain in being so. Do 
 right ; you will be the better for it even in this world you 
 will not lose by it." The mistaken religionist only magnifies 
 this on a large scale. "Your duty," he says, "is to save 
 your soul. Give up this world to have the next. Lose here^ 
 that you may gain hereafter" Now, this is but prudence 
 after all it is but magnified selfishness, carried on into eter- 
 nity, none the more noble for being eternal selfishness. 
 Now, in opposition to all such sentiments as these, thus 
 speaks the Gospel "Be ye perfect/' Why? "Because 
 your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." Do right, 
 because it is God-like and right so to do. Here, however, 
 let us be understood. We do not mean to say that the 
 Gospel ignores altogether the personal results of doing right 
 This would be unnatural because God has linked together 
 well-doing and blessedness. But we do say that this 
 blessedness is not the motive which the Gospel gives us. 
 It is true the Gospel says " Blessed are the meek, for they 
 shall inherit the earth ; blessed are the merciful, for they 
 shall obtain mercy ; blessed are they which do hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." But 
 when these are made our motives when we become meek 
 in order 'that we may inherit here then the promised 
 enjoyment will not come. If we are merciful merely that 
 we may ourselves obtain mercy, we shall not have that in- 
 dwelling love of God which is the result and token of His 
 forgiveness. Such was the law and such the example of our 
 
90 The Christian Aim and Motive 
 
 Lord and Master. True it is that in the prosecution of the 
 great work of redemption He had " respect to the recom- 
 pense of reward." True it is He was conscious how could 
 He but be conscious that when His work was completed 
 He should be " glorified with that glory which He had with 
 the Father before the world began ; " but we deny that this 
 was the motive which induced Him to undertake that work ; 
 and that man has a very mistaken idea of the character of 
 the Redeemer, and understands but little of His spirit, who 
 has so mean an opinion of Him as to suppose that it was 
 any consideration of personal happiness and blessedness 
 which led the Son of God to die. " For this end was He 
 bom, and for this end came He into the world to bear 
 witness unto the Truth," and " to finish the work which 
 was given Him to do/' 
 
 If we were asked, Can you select one text in which more 
 than in any other this unselfish, disinterested feature comes 
 forth, it should be this, " Love ye your enemies, do good 
 and lend, hoping for nothing again/' This is the true spirit 
 of Christianity doing right disinterestedly, not from the 
 hope of any personal advantage or reward, either temporal 
 or spiritual, but entirely forgetting self, " hoping for nothing 
 again." When that glorious philanthropist, whose whole life 
 had been spent in procuring the abolition of the slave-trade, 
 was demanded of by some systematic theologian whether in 
 his ardour in this great cause he had not been neglecting 
 his personal prospects, and endangering his own soul, this 
 was his magnanimous reply one of those which show the 
 light of truth breaking through like an inspiration. He 
 said, "I did not think about my own soul, I had no 
 
 tim f t0 ^ nk ab Ut myself ' l had for gotten all about my 
 
 The Christian is not concerned about his own hap- 
 
 Diness; he has not time to consider himself; he has not 
 
 time to put that selfish question which the disciples put to 
 
 their Lord when they were but half baptized with His spirit, 
 
 Lo we have left all and followed thee, what shall we have 
 
 therefore ? " 
 
 In conclusion, we observe, there are two things which are 
 
The Christian Aim and Motive 91 
 
 to be learnt from this passage. The first is this, that 
 happiness is not our end and aim. It has been said, and 
 has since been repeated as frequently as if it were an indis- 
 putable axiom, that " Happiness is our being's end and 
 aim." Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. 
 The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness, and every 
 one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit 
 which marked their Master ; that holy sadness, that peculiar 
 unrest, that high and lofty melancholy which belongs to a 
 spirit which strives after heights to which it can never 
 attain. 
 
 The second thing we have to learn is this, that on this 
 earth there can be no rest for man. By rest we mean the 
 attainment of a state beyond which there can be no change. 
 Politically, morally, spiritually, there can be no rest for man 
 here. In one country alone has that system been fully 
 carried out which, conservative of the past, excludes all 
 desire of progress and improvement for the future : but it is 
 not to China that we should look for the perfection of human 
 society. There is one ecclesiastical system which carries 
 out the same spirit, looking rather to the Church of the past 
 than to the Church of the future ; but it is not in the Roman 
 that we shall find the model of a Christian Church. In 
 paradise it may have been right to be at rest, to desire no 
 change, but ever since the Fall every system that tends to 
 check the onward progress of mankind is fatally, radically, 
 curelessly wrong. The motto on every Christian banner is 
 " Forwards." There is no resting in the present, no satis- 
 faction in the past. 
 
 The last thing we learn from this is the impossibility of 
 obtaining that of which some men speak the satisfaction of 
 a good conscience. Some men write and speak as if the 
 difference between the Christian and the worldly man was 
 this, that in the one conscience is a self-reproaching hell, 
 and in the other a self-congratulating heaven. Oh, brethren, 
 is this the fact ? Think you that the Christian goes home 
 at night counting up the noble deeds done during the day, 
 saying to himself, " Well done, good and faithful servant ? " 
 
92 Principle of Spiritual Harvest 
 
 Brethren, that habit of looking forwards to the future 
 prevents all pride and self-righteousness, and makes our best 
 and only rest and satisfaction to consist in contemplating the 
 future which is bringing us nearer and nearer home. Our 
 motto, therefore, must be that striking one of the Apostle 
 Paul, "Forgetting those things which are behind, and 
 reaching forth to those things which are before, I press 
 towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SPIRITUAL 
 HARVEST 
 
 GAL. vi. 7. 8. " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked ; for what- 
 soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to 
 his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the 
 Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." 
 
 THERE is a close analogy between the world of nature 
 and the world of spirit. They bear the impress of the 
 same hand ; and hence the principles of nature and its laws 
 are the types and shadows of the Invisible. Just as two 
 books, though on different subjects, proceeding from the 
 same pen, manifest indications of the thought of one mind, 
 so the worlds visible and invisible are two books, written 
 by the same finger, and governed by the same Idea. Or 
 rather, they are but one Book, separated into two only by 
 the narrow range of our ken. For it is impossible to study 
 the universe at all without perceiving that it is one system. 
 Begin with what science you will, as soon as you get 
 beyond the rudiments, you are constrained to associate it 
 with another. 
 
 You cannot study agriculture long without rinding that it 
 absorbs into itself meteorology and chemistry : sciences 
 run into one another till you get the " connexion of the 
 
Principle of Spiritual Harvest 93 
 
 sciences ; " and you begin to learn that one Divine Idea 
 connects the whole in one system of perfect Order. 
 
 It was upon this principle that Christ taught. Truths 
 come forth from His lips not stated simply on authority, 
 but based on the analogy of the universe. His human 
 mind, in perfect harmony with the Divine Mind with which 
 it mixed, discerned the connexion of things, and read 
 the Eternal Will in the simplest laws of Nature. For 
 instance, if it were a question whether God would give His 
 Spirit to them that asked, it was not replied to by a truth 
 revealed on His authority ; the answer was derived from 
 facts lying open to all men's observation. "Behold the 
 fowls of the air " " behold the lilies of the field "learn 
 from them the answer to your question. A principle was 
 there. God supplies the wants which He has created. He 
 feeds the ravens He clothes the lilies He will feed with 
 His Spirit the craving spirits of His children. 
 
 It was on this principle of analogy that St. Paul taught 
 in this text. He tells us that there is a law in nature 
 according to which success is proportioned to the labour 
 spent upon the work. In kind and in degree success is 
 attained in kind ; e.g., he who has sowed his field with 
 beech mast does not receive a plantation of oaks : a literary 
 education is not the road to distinction in arms, but to 
 success in letters : years spent on agriculture do not qualify 
 a man to be an orator, but they make him a skilful farmer. 
 Success, again, is proportioned to labour in degree : be- 
 cause ordinarily, as is the amount of seed sown, so is the 
 harvest : he who studies much will know more than he 
 who studies little. In almost all departments it is " the 
 diligent hand which maketh rich." 
 
 The keen eye of Paul discerned this principle reaching 
 far beyond what is seen, into the spiritual realm which is 
 unseen. As tare-seed comes up tares, and wheat-seed 
 wheat, and as the crop in both cases is in proportion to two 
 conditions, the labour and the quantity committed to the 
 ground, so in things spiritual, too, whatsoever a man soweth, 
 that shall he also reap. Not something else, but "that? 
 
94 Principle of Spiritual Harvest 
 
 The proportion holds in kind it holds too in degree, in 
 spiritual things as in natural. " He which soweth sparingly 
 shall reap also sparingly ; and he which soweth bountifully 
 shall reap also bountifully." If we could understand and 
 rightly expound that principle, we should be saved from 
 much of the disappointment and surprise which come 
 from extravagant and unreasonable expectations. I shall 
 try first to elucidate the principle which these verses con- 
 tain, and then examine the two branches of the principle. 
 
 I. The principle is this, " God is not mocked : for what- 
 soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
 
 There are two kinds of good possible to men : one 
 enjoyed by our animal being, the other felt and appreciated 
 by our spirits. Every man understands more or less the 
 difference between these two : between prosperity and 
 well-doing : between indulgence and nobleness : between 
 comfort and inward peace : between pleasure and striving 
 after perfection : between happiness and blessedness. 
 These are two kinds of Harvest ; and the labour necessary 
 for them respectively is of very different kinds. The 
 labour which procures the harvest of the one has no 
 tendency to secure the other. 
 
 We will not depreciate the advantages of this world. It 
 is foolish and unreal to do so. Comfort, affluence, 
 success, freedom from care, rank, station these are in 
 their real way goods : only, the labour bestowed upon them 
 does not procure one single blessing that is spiritual. 
 
 On the other hand, the seed which is sown for a spiritual 
 harvest has no tendency whatever to procure temporal 
 well-being. Let us see what are the laws of the sowing 
 and reaping in this department. Christ has declared them : 
 :< Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.' 1 
 " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness : 
 for they shall be filled (with righteousness.) " " Blessed are 
 they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." You 
 observe the beatific vision of the Almighty fulness of 
 righteousness comfort. There is nothing earthly spiritual 
 
Principle of Spiritual Harvest 95 
 
 results for spiritual labour. It is not said that the pure in 
 heart shall be made rich ; nor that they who hunger after 
 goodness shall be filled with bread; nor that they who 
 mourn shall rise in life and obtain distinction. Each 
 department has its own appropriate harvest reserved 
 exclusively to its own method of sowing. 
 
 Everything in this world has its price, and the price buys 
 that, not something else. Every harvest demands its own 
 preparation, and that preparation will not produce another 
 sort of harvest. Thus, e.g., you cannot have at once the 
 soldier's renown and the quiet of a recluse's life. The 
 soldier pays his price for his glory he sows and reaps. His 
 price is risk of life and limb, nights spent on the hard 
 ground, a weather-beaten constitution. If you will not pay 
 that price, you cannot have what he has military reputa- 
 tion. You cannot enjoy the statesman's influence together 
 with freedom from public notoriety. If you sensitively 
 shrink from that, you must give up influence ; or else pay 
 his price, the price of a thorny pillow, unrest, the chance of 
 being to-day a nation's idol, to-morrow the people's execra- 
 tion. You cannot have the store of information possessed 
 by the student, and enjoy robust health : pay his price, and 
 you have his reward. His price is an emaciated frame, a 
 debilitated constitution, a transparent hand, and the rose 
 taken out of the sunken cheek. To expect these opposite 
 things : a soldier's glory and quiet a statesman's renown 
 and peace the student's prize and rude health, would be 
 to mock God, to reap what has not been sowed. 
 
 Now the mistakes men make, and the extravagant ex- 
 pectation in which they indulge, are these : They sow 
 for earth, and expect to win spiritual blessings ; or they 
 sow to the Spirit, and then wonder that they have not 
 a harvest of the good things of earth. In each case they 
 complain, What have I done to be treated so? 
 
 The unreasonableness of all this appears the moment 
 we have understood the conditions contained in this 
 principle, " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap." 
 
96 Principle of Spiritual Harvest 
 
 It is a common thing to hear sentimental wonderings 
 about the unfairness of the distribution of things here. 
 The unprincipled get on in life: the saints are kept 
 back. The riches and rewards of life fall to the lot of 
 the undeserving. The rich man has his good things, 
 and Lazarus his evil things. Whereupon it is taken for 
 granted that there must be a future life to make this 
 fair : that if there were none, the constitution of this world 
 would be unjust. That is, that because a man who has 
 sown to the spirit does not reap to the flesh here, he 
 will hereafter; that the meed of well-doing must be 
 somewhere in the universe the same kind of recompense 
 which the rewards of the unprincipled were here, comfort, 
 abundance, physical enjoyment, or else all is wrong. 
 
 But if you look into it, the balance is perfectly adjusted 
 even here. God has made His world much better than 
 you and I could make it. Everything reaps its own 
 harvest, every act has its own reward. And before you 
 covet the enjoyment which another possesses, you must 
 first calculate the cost at which it was procured. 
 
 For instance, the religious tradesman complains that 
 his honesty is a hindrance to his success : that the tide 
 of custom pours into the doors of his less scrupulous 
 neighbours in the same street, while he himself waits for 
 hours idle. My brother! do you think that God is going 
 to reward honour, integrity, high-mindedness, with this 
 world's coin? Do you fancy that He will pay spiritual 
 excellence with plenty of custom ? Now, consider the price 
 that man has paid for his success. Perhaps mental degra- 
 dation and inward dishonour. His advertisements are 
 all deceptive. His treatment of his workmen tyrannical: 
 his cheap prices made possible by inferior articles. Sow 
 that man's seed, and you will reap that man's harvest. 
 Cheat, lie, advertise, be unscrupulous in your assertions, 
 custom will come to you. But if the price is too dear, 
 let him have his harvest, and take yours ; yours is a clear 
 conscience, a pure mind, rectitude within and without 
 Will you part with that for his ? Then why do you com- 
 
Principle of Spiritual Harvest 97 
 
 plain? He has paid his price, you do not choose to pay 
 it. 
 
 Again, it is not an uncommon thing to see a man rise 
 from insignificance to sudden wealth by speculation. With- 
 in the last ten or twenty years, England has gazed on many 
 such a phenomenon. In this case, as in spiritual things, the 
 law seems to hold : He that hath, to him shall be given. 
 Tens of thousands soon increase and multiply to hundreds 
 of thousands. His doors are besieged by the rich and 
 great. Royalty banquets at his table, and nobles court his 
 alliance. Whereupon some simple Christian is inclined to 
 complain : " How strange that so much prosperity should 
 be the lot of mere cleverness ! " Well, are these really 
 God's chief blessings ? Is it for such as these you serve 
 Him ? And would these indeed satisfy your soul ? Would 
 you have God reward His saintliest with these gauds and 
 gewgaws all this trash, rank, and wealth, and equipages, 
 and plate, and courtship from the needy great ? Call you 
 that the heaven of the holy? Compute now what was 
 paid for that. The price that merchant prince paid, 
 perhaps with the blood of his own soul, was shame and 
 guilt. The price he is paying now is perpetual dread of 
 detection : or worse still, the hardness which can laugh 
 at detection : or one deep, lower yet, the low and 
 grovelling soul which can be satisfied with these things 
 as a Paradise, and ask no higher. He has reaped enjoy- 
 ment yes, and he has sown, too, the seed of infamy. 
 It is all fair. Count the cost. " He that saveth his 
 life shall lose it." Save your life if you like : but do not 
 complain if you lose your nobler life yourself: win the 
 whole world : but remember you do it by losing your 
 own soul. Every sin must be paid for : every sensual in- 
 dulgence is a harvest, the price for which is so much ruin 
 for the soul. "God is not mocked" 
 
 Once more, Religious men in every profession are sur- 
 prised to find that many of its avenues are closed to 
 them. The conscientious churchman complains that his 
 delicate scruples, or his bold truthfulness, stand in the 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
98 Principle of Spiritual Harvest 
 
 way of his preferment ; while another man, who conquers 
 his scruples, or softens the eye of truth, rises, and sits 
 down a mitred peer in Parliament. The honourable 
 lawyer feels that his practice is limited, while the unprin- 
 cipled practitioner receives all he loses ; and the Christian 
 physician feels sore and sad at perceiving that charlatanism 
 succeeds in winning employment ; or, if not charlatanism, 
 at least that affability and courtly manners take the place 
 that is due to superior knowledge. Let such men take 
 comfort, and judge fairly. Popularity is one of the things 
 of an earthly harvest for which quite earthly qualifications 
 are required. I say not always dishonourable qualifica- 
 tions : but a certain flexibility of disposition a certain 
 courtly willingness to sink obnoxious truths, and adapt 
 ourselves to the prejudices of the minds of others : a cer- 
 tain adroitness at catching the tone of those with whom 
 we are. Without some of these things no man can be 
 popular in any profession. But you have resolved to be 
 a liver a doer a champion of the truth. Your ambition 
 is to be pure in the last recesses of the mind. You have 
 your reward : A soul upright and manly a fearless bear- 
 ing, that dreads to look no man in the face a willingness 
 to let men search you through and through, and defy them 
 to see any difference between what you seem and what 
 you are. Now, your price your price is dislike. The 
 price of being true is the Cross. The warrior of the truth 
 must not expect success. What have you to do with 
 popularity ? Sow for it, and you will have it. But if 
 you wish for it, or wish for peace, you have mistaken 
 your calling you must not be a teacher of the truth 
 you must not cut prejudice against the grain you must 
 leave medical, legal, theological truth to harder and nobler 
 men, who are willing to take the martyr's cross and win 
 the martyr's crown. This is the mistake men make. 
 They expect both harvests, paying only one price. They 
 would be blessed with goodness and prosperity at once. 
 They would have that on which they bestowed no labour. 
 They take sinful pleasure, and think it very hard that they 
 
Principle of Spiritual Harvest 99 
 
 must pay for it in agony, and, worse than agony, souls 
 deteriorated. They would monopolize heaven in theii 
 souls, and the world's prizes at the same time. This is 
 to expect to come back, like Joseph's brethren from the 
 land of plenty, with the corn in their sacks, and the money 
 returned, too, in their sacks' mouths. No, no ; it will not 
 do. " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked.'' Reap what 
 you have sown. If you sow the wind, do not complain 
 if your harvest is the whirlwind. If you sow to the 
 Spirit, be content with a spiritual reward invisible 
 within more life and higher life. 
 
 II. Next, the two branches of the application of this 
 principle. 
 
 First : He that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh 
 reap corruption. There are two kinds of life : one of the 
 flesh another of the spirit. Amidst the animal and selfish 
 desires of our nature, there is a Voice which clearly speaks 
 of Duty : Right : Perfection. This is the Spirit of Deity in 
 man it is the life of God in the soul. This is the evidence 
 of our divine parentage. 
 
 But there is a double temptation to live the other life 
 instead of this. First, the desires of our animal nature are 
 keener than those of our spiritual. The cry of Passion is 
 louder than the calm voice of Duty. Next, the reward in 
 the case of our sensitive nature is given sooner. It takes 
 a less time to amass a fortune than to become heavenly- 
 minded. It costs less to indulge an appetite than it does 
 to gain the peace of lulled passion. And hence, when men 
 feel that, for the spiritual blessing, the bread must be cast 
 upon the waters which shall not be found until after many 
 days (scepticism whispers " never ! "), it is quite intelligible 
 why they choose the visible and palpable instead of the 
 invisible advantage, and plan for an immediate harvest 
 rather than a distant one. 
 
 The other life is that of the flesh. The " flesh " includes 
 all the desires of our unrenewed nature the harmless as 
 well as sinful. Any labour, therefore, which is bounded by 
 
ioo Principle of Spiritual Harvest 
 
 present well-being is sowing to the flesh : whether it be the 
 gratification of an immediate impulse, or the long-contrived 
 plan reaching forward over many years. Sowing to the 
 flesh includes therefore, 
 
 i. Those who live in open riot. He sows to the flesh 
 who pampers its unruly animal appetites. Do not think 
 that I speak contemptuously of our animal nature, as if it 
 were not human and sacred. The lowest feelings of our 
 nature become sublime by being made the instruments of 
 our nobler emotions. Love, self-command, will elevate 
 them all : and to ennoble and purify, not to crush them, is 
 the long, slow work of Christian life. Christ, says St. Paul, 
 is the Saviour of the Body. But if, instead of subduing 
 these to the life of the spirit, a man gives to them the rein 
 and even the spur, the result is not difficult to foresee. 
 There are men who do this. They " make provision for 
 the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." They whet the 
 appetites by indulgence. They whip the jaded senses to 
 their work. Whatever the constitutional bias may be, 
 anger, intemperance, epicurism, indolence, desire, there are 
 societies, conversations, scenes, which supply fuel for the 
 flame, as well as opposite ones which cut off the nutriment. 
 Now to indulge in these, knowing the result, is to foster the 
 desire which brings forth the sin that ends in death. This 
 is " sowing to the flesh." 
 
 If there be one to whom these words which I have used, 
 veiled in the proprieties due to delicate reserve, are not 
 without meaning, from this sentence of God's word let him 
 learn his doom. He is looking forward to a harvest wherein 
 he may reap the fruit of his present anticipations. And he 
 shall reap it. He shall have his indulgence he shall enjoy 
 his guilty rapture he shall have his unhallowed triumph : 
 and the boon companions of his pleasures shall award him 
 the meed of their applause. He has sown the seed : and in 
 fair requital he shall have his harvest. It is all fair. He 
 shall enjoy. But tarry awhile : the law hath yet another hold 
 upon him. This deep law of the whole universe goes 
 further. He has sown to the flesh, and of the flesh he 
 
Principle of Spiritual Harvest I'OT 
 
 has reaped pleasure : he has sown to the flesh, and of che 
 flesh he shall reap corruption. That is, in his case, the ruin 
 of the soul. It is an awful thing to see a soul in ruins : like 
 a temple which once was fair and noble, but now lies over- 
 thrown, matted with ivy, weeds, and tangled briers, among 
 which things noisome crawl and live. He shall reap the 
 harvest of disappointment the harvest of bitter, useless 
 remorse. The crime of sense is avenged by sense, which 
 wears by time. He shall have the worm that gnaws, and 
 the fire that is not quenched. He shall reap the fruit of 
 long-indulged desires, which have become tyrannous at last, 
 and constitute him his own tormentor. His harvest is a soul 
 in flames, and the tongue that no drop can cool. Passions 
 that burn, and appetites that crave, when the power of enjoy- 
 ment is gone. He has sowed to the flesh. " God is not 
 mocked." The man reaps. 
 
 2. There is a less gross way of sowing to the flesh. 
 There are men of sagacity and judgment in the affairs of 
 this life, whose penetration is almost intuitive in all things 
 where the step in question involves success or failure here. 
 They are those who are called in the parable the children of 
 this world, wise in their generation. They moralize and 
 speculate about eternity : but do not plan for it. There is 
 no seed sown for an invisible harvest. It they think they 
 have sown for such a harvest, they might test themselves by 
 the question, What they would lose if there were to be no 
 eternity ? For the children of God, so far as earth is con- 
 cerned, " If in this life only they have hope in Christ, then 
 are they of all men most miserable." But they these 
 sagacious, prudent men of this world they have their 
 reward. What have they ventured, given up, sacrificed, 
 which is all lost for ever, if this world be all ? What have 
 they buried like seed in the ground, lost for ever, if there be 
 no eternity ? 
 
 Now we do not say these men are absolutely wicked. 
 We distinguish between their sowing to the flesh, and the 
 sowing of these profligates last spoken of. All we say is, 
 there is " corruption " written on their harvest. It was for 
 
102 PHriciple of Spiritual Harvest 
 
 earth'':* arrd'wfth :eiith*it' perishes. It may be the labour of 
 the statesman, planning, like the Roman of old, the govern- 
 ment and order of the kingdoms of the earth : or that of the 
 astronomer, weighing suns, prescribing rules of return to 
 comets, and dealing with things above earth in space, but 
 unspiritual still : or that of the son of a humbler laborious- 
 ness, whose work is merely to provide for a family : or, 
 lastly, the narrower range of the man of pleasure, whose 
 chief care is where he shall spend the next season, in what 
 metropolis, or which watering-place, or how best enjoy the 
 next entertainment. Objects more or less harmless all. 
 But they end. The pyramid crumbles into dust at last. 
 The mighty empire of the eternal city breaks into fragments 
 which disappear. The sowers for earth have their harvest 
 here. Success in their schemes quiet intellectual enjoy- 
 ment exemption from pain and loss the fruits of worldly- 
 wise sagacity. And that is all. " When the breath goeth 
 forth, they return to their dust, and all their thoughts 
 perish." The grave is not to them the gate of paradise, 
 but simply the impressive mockery which the hand of death 
 writes upon that body for which they lived, and with which 
 all is gone. They reap corruption, for all they have toiled 
 for decays ! 
 
 Ye that lead the life of respectable worldliness ! let these 
 considerations arrest your indifference to the gospel. You 
 have sown for earth Well. And then what ? Hear the 
 gospel. A Saviour whose Sacrifice is the world's life 
 whose death is the law of life : from whose resurrection 
 streams a Spirit which can change carnal into spiritual men 
 whose whole existence, reflecting God, was the utterance 
 of the Divine truth and rule of heavenly life, the blessedness 
 of giving To live so, and to believe so, is to sow to the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Lastly, Sowing to the Spirit. " He that soweth to the 
 Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." 
 
 What is meant by sowing to the Spirit here is plain. 
 "Let us not be weary in well-doing," says the apostle 
 directly after : "for in due season we shall reap if we faint 
 
Principle of Spiritual Harvest 103 
 
 not." Well-doing: not faith : but works of goodness, were 
 the sowing that he spoke of. 
 
 There is proclaimed here the rewardableness of works. 
 So in many other passages : " Abounding in the work of the 
 Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain 
 in the Lord." " Laying up a good foundation for the time 
 to come/' was the reason alleged for charging rich men to 
 be willing to give and so all through. There is an irrever- 
 sible principle. The amount of harvest is proportioned to 
 the seed sown exactly. There are degrees of glory. The 
 man who gives out of his abundance has one blessing. She 
 who gives the mite, all she had, even all her living, has 
 another, quite different. The rectitude of this principle, 
 and what it is, will be plainer from the following considerations. 
 
 1. The harvest is Life Eternal. But Eternal Life here 
 does not simply mean a life that lasts for ever. That is the 
 destiny of the Soul : all souls, bad as well as good. But 
 the bad do not enter into this " Eternal life." It is not 
 simply the duration, but the quality of the life which con- 
 stitutes its character of Eternal. A spirit may live for ever, 
 yet not enter into this. And a man may live but for five 
 minutes the life of Divine benevolence, or desire for perfect- 
 ness : in those five minutes he has entered into the life which 
 is Eternal, never fluctuates, but is the same unalterably for 
 ever, in the Life of God. This is the Reward. 
 
 2. The reward is not arbitrary, but natural. God's 
 rewards and God's punishments are all natural. Distinguish 
 between arbitrary and natural. Death is an arbitrary punish- 
 ment for forgery : it might be changed for transportation. 
 It is not naturally connected. It depends upon the will of 
 the law-maker. But trembling nerves are the direct and 
 natural results of intemperance. They are in the order of 
 nature the results of wrong-doing. The man reaps what he 
 has sown. Similarly in rewards. If God gave riches in 
 return for humbleness, that would be an arbitrary connexion. 
 He did give such a reward to Solomon. But when He gives 
 Life Eternal, meaning by Life Eternal not duration of 
 existence but heavenly quality of existence, as explained 
 
IO4 Principle of Spiritual Harvest 
 
 already, it is all natural. The seed sown in the ground 
 contains in itself the future harvest. The harvest is but the 
 development of the germ of life in the seed. A holy act 
 strengthens the inward holiness. It is a seed of life growing 
 into more life. " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
 reap." He that sows much, thereby becomes more con- 
 formed to God than he was before in heart and spirit. 
 That is his reward and harvest. And just as among the 
 apostles, there was one whose spirit, attuned to love, made 
 him emphatically the disciple whom Jesus loved, so shall 
 there be some who, by previous discipline of the Holy 
 Ghost, shall have more of His mind, and understand more 
 of His love, and drink deeper of His joy than others They 
 that have sowed bountifully. 
 
 Every act done in Christ receives its exact and appro- 
 priate reward. They that are meek shall inherit the earth. 
 They that are pure shall see God. They that suffer shall 
 reign with Him. They that turn many to righteousness 
 shall shine as the stars for ever. They that receive a 
 righteous man in the name of a righteous man that is, 
 because he is a righteous man, shall receive a righteous 
 man's reward. Even the cup of cold water, given in the 
 name of Christ, shall not lose its reward. 
 
 It will be therefore seen at once, Reward is not the 
 result of merit. It is, in the order of grace, the natural 
 consequence of well-doing. It is life becoming more life. 
 It is the soul developing itself. It is the Holy Spirit of God 
 in man, making itself more felt, and mingling more and 
 more with his soul, felt more consciously, with an ever- 
 increasing heaven. You reap what you sow not something 
 else but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. 
 A deed of humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing 
 reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundredfold 
 You have sown a seed of life you reap life. 
 
Freedom by the Truth 105 
 
 FREEDOM BY THE TRUTH 
 
 JOHN viii. 32. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
 make you free." 
 
 IF these words were the only record we possessed of the 
 Saviour's teaching, it may be that they would be insufficient 
 to prove His personal Deity, but they would be enough to 
 demonstrate the Divine Character of His mission. 
 
 Observe the greatness of the aim, and the wisdom of the 
 means. 
 
 The aim was to make all men free. He saw around Him 
 servitude in every form man in slavery to man, and race 
 to race : His own countrymen in bondage to the Romans 
 slaves both of Jewish and Roman masters, frightfully 
 oppressed : men trembling before priestcraft ; and those 
 who were politically and ecclesiastically free, in worse 
 bondage still, the rich and rulers slaves to their own 
 passions. 
 
 Conscious of His inward Deity and of His Father's 
 intentions, He, without hurry, without the excitement 
 which would mark the mere earthly Liberator, calmly said, 
 "Ye shall be free." 
 
 See, next, the peculiar wisdom of the means. 
 
 The craving for liberty was not new it lies deep in 
 human nature. Nor was the promise of satisfying it new. 
 Empirics, charlatans, demagogues had promised, and men 
 who were not charlatans nor demagogues, in vain. 
 
 i. First they had tried by force. Wherever force has 
 been used on the side of freedom we honour it ; the names 
 which we pronounce in boyhood with enthusiasm are those 
 of the liberators of nations and the vindicators of liberty. 
 Israel had had such : Joshua the Judges Judas Macca- 
 beus. Had the Son of God willed so to come, even on 
 human data the success was certain. I wave the truth of 
 His inward Deity : of His miraculous power : of His power 
 
io6 Freedom by the Truth 
 
 to summon to His will more than twelve legions of angels. 
 I only notice now that men's hearts were full of Him : ripe 
 for revolt : and that at a single word of His, thrice three 
 hundred thousand swords would have started from their 
 scabbards. 
 
 But had He so come, one nation might have gained 
 liberty ; not the race of man : moreover, the liberty would 
 only have been independence of a foreign conqueror. 
 
 Therefore as a conquering king He did not come. 
 
 2. Again, it might have been attempted by legislative 
 enactment. Perhaps only once has this been done success- 
 fully, and by a single effort. When the names of conquerors 
 shall have been forgotten, and modern civilisation shall 
 have become obsolete when England's shall be ancient 
 history, one act of hers will be remembered as a record 
 of her greatness, that act by which in costly sacrifice she 
 emancipated her slaves. 
 
 But one thing England could not do. She could give 
 freedom she could not fit for freedom, not make it lasting. 
 The stroke of a monarch's pen will do the one the dis- 
 cipline of ages is needed for the other. Give to-morrow a 
 constitution to some feeble Eastern nation, or a horde of 
 savages, and in half a century they will be subjected again. 
 
 Therefore the Son of Man did not come to free the world 
 by legislation. 
 
 3. It might be done by civilisation. Civilisation does 
 free intellect equalizes. Every step of civilisation is a 
 victory over some lower instinct. But civilisation contains 
 within itself the elements of a fresh servitude. Man con- 
 quers the powers of nature and becomes in turn their slave. 
 The workman is in bondage to the machinery which does 
 his will : his hours, his wages, his personal habits deter- 
 mined by it. The rich man fills his house with luxuries, 
 and cannot do without them. A highly civilised commu- 
 nity is a very spectacle of servitude. Man is there a slave 
 to dress, to hours, to manners, to conventions, to etiquette. 
 Things contrived to make his life more easy become his 
 masters. 
 
Freedom by the Truth 107 
 
 Therefore Jesus did not talk of the progress of the 
 species nor the growth of civilisation, He did not trust the 
 world's hope of liberty to a right division of property. But 
 He freed the inner man, that so the outer might become 
 free too. " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
 make you free." 
 
 I. The truth that liberates. 
 II. The liberty which truth gives. 
 
 The truth which Christ taught was chiefly on these three 
 points God : Man : Immortality. 
 
 1. God. Blot out the thought of God, a Living Person, 
 and life becomes mean, existence unmeaning, the universe 
 dark, and resolve is left without a stay, aspiration and duty 
 without a support. 
 
 The Son exhibited God as Love : and so that fearful 
 bondage of the mind to the necessity of Fate was broken. 
 A living Lord had made the world ; and its dark and unin- 
 telligible mystery meant good, not evil. He manifested 
 Him as a spirit ; and if so, the only worship that could 
 please Him must be a spirit's worship. Not by sacrifices is 
 God pleased : nor by droned litanies and liturgies : nor by 
 fawning and flattery : nor is His wrath bought off by blood. 
 Thus was the chain of superstition rent asunder ; for super- 
 stition is wrong views of God, exaggerated or inadequate, 
 and wrong conceptions of the way to please Him. 
 
 And so when the woman of Samaria brought the conver- 
 sation to that old ecclesiastical question about consecrated 
 buildings, whether on Mount Gerizim or on Mount Moriah 
 God was the more acceptably adored, He cut the whole 
 controversy short by the enunciation of a single truth : 
 " God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth." 
 
 2. Truth respecting man. 
 
 We are a mystery to ourselves. Go to any place where the 
 nations have brought together their wealth and their inven- 
 tions, and before the victories of mind you stand in reverence. 
 
io8 Freedom by the Truth 
 
 Then stop to look at the passing crowds who have attained 
 that civilisation. Think of their low aims, their mean lives, 
 their conformation only a little higher than that of brute 
 creatures, and a painful sense of degradation steals upon 
 you. So great, and yet so mean ! And so of individuals. 
 There is not one here whose feelings have not been deeper 
 than we can fathom nor one who would venture to tell 
 out to his brother man the mean, base thoughts that have 
 crossed his heart during the last hour. Now this riddle He 
 solved He looked on man as fallen, but magnificent in 
 his ruin. We, catching that thought from Him, speak as 
 He spoke. But none that were born of woman ever felt 
 this or lived this like Him. Beneath the vilest outside he 
 saw that A human soul, capable of endless growth : and 
 hence He treated with what for want of a better term we 
 may call respect, all who approached Him : not because 
 they were titled Rabbis, or rich Pharisees, but because they 
 were men. 
 
 Here was a germ for freedom. It is not the shackle on 
 the wrist that constitutes a slave but the loss of self- 
 respect To be treated as degraded till he feels degraded- 
 to be subjected to the lash till he believes that he deserves 
 the lash : and liberty is to suspect and yet reverence self : 
 to suspect the tendency which leaves us ever on the brink 
 of fall : to reverence that within us which is allied to God, 
 redeemed by God the Son, and made a temple of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 Perhaps we have seen an insect or reptile imprisoned in 
 wood or stone. How it got there is unknown how the 
 particles of wood in years, or of stone in ages, grew round it, 
 is a mystery, but not a greater mystery than the question of 
 how man became incarcerated in evil. At last the day of 
 emancipation came. The axe stroke was given : and the 
 light came in, and the warmth : and the gauze wings 
 expanded, and the eye looked bright : and the living Thing 
 stepped forth, and you saw that there was not its home. Its 
 home was the free air of heaven. 
 
 Christ taught that truth of the human soul. It is not in 
 
Freedom by the Truth 109 
 
 its right place. It never is in its right place in the dark 
 prison-house of sin. Its home is freedom, and the breath of 
 God's life. 
 
 3. Truth respecting immortality. 
 
 He taught that this Jife is not all : that it is only a miser- 
 able state of human upancy. He taught that in words : by 
 His life, and by His Resurrection. 
 
 This, again, was freedom. If there be a faith that cramps 
 and enslaves the soul, it is the idea that this life is all. If 
 there be one that expands and elevates, it is the thought of 
 immortality : and this, observe, is something quite distinct 
 from the selfish desire of happiness. It is not to enjoy, but 
 to be that we long for. To enter into more and higher life : 
 a craving which we can only part with when we sink below 
 humanity, and forfeit it. 
 
 This was the martyrs' strength. They were tortured, not 
 accepting deliverance, that they might attain a better Resur- 
 rection. In that hope, and the knowledge of that truth, 
 they were free from the fear of pain and death. 
 
 II. The nature of the liberty which truth gives. 
 
 i. Political freedom. 
 
 It was our work, last Sunday, to show that Christianity 
 does not directly interfere with political questions. But we 
 should have only half done our work, if we had not also 
 learned that, mediately and indirectly, it must influence 
 them. Christ's gospel did not promise political freedom, 
 yet it gave it : more surely than conqueror, reformer, patriot, 
 that gospel will bring about a true liberty at last 
 
 This, not by theories nor by schemes of constitutions, but 
 by the revelations of Truths. God a Spirit : man His 
 child : redeemed and sanctified. Before that spiritual 
 equality, all distinctions between peer and peasant, monarch 
 and labourer, privileged and unprivileged, vanish. A better 
 man, or a wiser man than I, is in my presence, and I feel it 
 a mockery to be reminded that I am his superior in rank. 
 
 Let us hold that truth : let us never weary of proclaiming 
 it : and the truth shall make us free at last. 
 
no Freedom by the Truth 
 
 2. Mental independence. 
 
 Slavery is that which cramps powers. The worst slavery 
 is that which cramps the noblest powers. Worse therefore 
 than he who manacles the hands and feet, is he who puts 
 fetters on the mind, and pretends to demand that men shall 
 think, and believe, and feel thus and thus, because others so 
 believed, and thought, and felt before. 
 
 In Judaea life was become a set of forms, and religion a 
 congeries of traditions. One living word from the lips of 
 Christ, and the mind of the world was free. 
 
 Later, a mountain mass of superstition had gathered 
 round the Church, atom by atom, and grain by grain. Men 
 said that the soul was saved only by doing and believing 
 what the priesthood taught. The heroes of the Reformation 
 spoke. They said the soul of man is saved by the grace of 
 God : a more credible hypothesis. Once more the mind of 
 the world was free : and free by Truth. 
 
 There is a tendency always to think, in the masses not 
 what is true : but what is respectable, correct, orthodox, 
 authorized, that we ask. Now, truth known and believed 
 respecting God and man frees from this, by warning of 
 individual responsibility. It comes partly from cowardice : 
 partly from indolence : from habit : from imitation : from 
 the uncertainty and darkness of all moral truths, and 
 the dread of timid minds to plunge into the investigation 
 of them. But responsibility is personal. It cannot be 
 delegated to another, and thrown off upon a church. 
 Before God, face to face, each soul must stand, to give 
 account. 
 
 Do not, however, confound mental independence with 
 mental pride. It may, it ought to coexist with the deepest 
 humility. For that mind alone is free which, conscious ever 
 of its own feebleness, feeling hourly its own liability to err, 
 turning thankfully to light from whatever side it may come, 
 does yet refuse to give up that right with which God has 
 invested it, or to abrogate its own responsibility, and so, 
 humbly, and even awfully, resolves to have an opinion, a 
 judgment, a decision of its own. 
 
Freedom by the Truth in 
 
 3. Superiority to temptation. 
 
 It is not enough to define the liberty which Christ 
 promises as freedom from sin. Many circumstances will 
 exempt from sin which do not yet confer that liberty 
 " Where the Spirit of the Lord is." Childhood, paralysis, 
 ill health, the impotence of old age, may remove the 
 capacity and even the desire of transgression ; but the child, 
 the paralytic, the old man, are not free through the truth. 
 
 Therefore, to this definition we must add, that one whom 
 Christ liberates is free by his own will. It is not that he 
 would, and cannot : but that he can, and will not. Christian 
 liberty is right will, sustained by love, and made firm by 
 faith in Christ. 
 
 This may be seen by considering the opposite of liberty 
 moral bondage. Go to the intemperate man in the morning, 
 when his head aches, his hand trembles, his throat burns, 
 and his whole frame is relaxed and unstrung : he is ashamed, 
 hates his sin, would not do it. Go to him at night, when 
 the power of habit is on him like a spell, and he obeys the 
 mastery of his craving. He can use the language of Rom. 
 vii. : "That which he would, he does not; but the evil that 
 he hates, that does he." Observe, he is not in possession of 
 a true self. It is not he, but sin which dwelleth in him, that 
 does it. A power which is not himself, which is not he, 
 commands him against himself. And that is Slavery. 
 
 This is a gross case, but in every, more refined instance 
 the slavery is just as real. Wherever a man would and 
 cannot, there is servitude. He may be unable to control 
 his expenditure, to rouse his indolence, to check his 
 imagination. Well he is not free. He may boast, as 
 the Jews did, that he is Abraham's son, or any other great 
 man's son : that he belongs to a free country : that he 
 never was in bondage to any man ; but free in the freedom 
 of the Son he is not. 
 
 4. Superiority to Fear. 
 
 Fear enslaves, courage liberates and that always. What- 
 ever a man intensely dreads, that brings him into bondage, 
 if it be above the fear of God, and the reverence of duty. 
 
H2 Freedom by the Truth 
 
 The apprehension of pain, the fear of death, the dread of 
 the world's laugh, of poverty, or the loss of reputation, 
 enslave alike. 
 
 From such fear Christ frees, and through the power of 
 the truths I have spoken of. He who lives in the habitual 
 contemplation of immortality cannot be in bondage to 
 time, or enslaved by transitory temptations. I do not say 
 will not. " He cannot sin," saith the Scripture, while that 
 faith is living. He who feels his soul's dignity, knowing 
 what he is and who, redeemed by God the Son, and freed 
 by God the Spirit, cannot cringe, nor pollute himself, nor be 
 mean. He who aspires to gaze undazzled on the intoler- 
 able brightness of that One before whom Israel veiled their 
 faces, will scarcely quail before any earthly fear. 
 
 This is not picture-painting. This is not declamation. 
 These are things that have been. There have been men 
 on this earth of God's, of whom it was simply true that it 
 was easier to turn the sun from its course than them from 
 the paths of honour. There have been men like John the 
 Baptist, who could speak the truth which had made their 
 own spirits free, with the axe above their neck. There 
 have been men, redeemed in their inmost being by Christ, 
 on whom tyrants and mobs have done their worst, but 
 when, like Stephen, the stones crashed in upon their brain, 
 or when their flesh hissed and crackled in the flames, were 
 calmly superior to it all. The power of evil had laid its 
 shackles on the flesh : but the mind, and the soul, and the 
 heart were free. 
 
 We conclude with two inferences : 
 
 i. To cultivate the love of truth. I do not mean 
 veracity : that is another thing. Veracity is the correspon- 
 dence between a proposition and a man's belief. Truth is 
 the correspondence of the proposition with fact. The love 
 of truth is the love of realities : the determination to rest 
 upon facts, and not upon semblances. Take an illustration 
 of the way in which the habit of cultivating truth is got. 
 Two boys see a misshapen, hideous object in the dark. 
 One goes up to the cause of his terror, examines it, learns 
 
Freedom by the Truth 113 
 
 what it is; he knows the truth, and the truth has made 
 him free. The other leaves it in mystery and unexplained 
 vagueness, and is a slave for life to superstitions and 
 indefinite terrors. Romance, prettiness, "dim religious 
 lights," awe and mystery these are not the atmosphere of 
 Christ's gospel of liberty. Base the heart on facts. The 
 truth alone can make you free. 
 
 2. See what a Christian is. Our society is divided into 
 two classes. Those who are daring, inquisitive, but re- 
 strained by no reverence, and kept back by little religion. 
 Those who may be called religious. But with all their 
 excellencies we cannot help feeling that the elements of 
 their character are feminine rather than masculine, and 
 that they have no grasp or manly breadth, and hold on 
 feeling rather than on truth. 
 
 Now, see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of 
 Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God 
 has set the stamp of truth : one whose very eye beams 
 bright with honour ; in whose very look and bearing you 
 may see freedom, manliness, veracity : a brave man a 
 noble man frank, generous, true ; with, it may be, many 
 faults : whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity 
 or rashness, the form of meanness never. Young Men ! 
 if you have been deterred from religion by its apparent 
 feebleness and narrowness, remember It is a manly thing 
 to be a Christian. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
H4 The Kingdom of the Truth 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF THE TRUTH 
 
 ASSIZE SERMON 
 
 JOHN xviii. 37. " Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king 
 then ? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end 
 was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should 
 bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my 
 voice." 
 
 THE Church is the kingdom of God on earth, and the 
 whole fabric of the Christian Religion rests on the 
 monarchy of Christ. The Hebrew prisoner who stood 
 before the Roman Judge claimed to be the King of men : 
 and eighteen centuries have only verified His claim. There 
 is not a man bearing the Christian name, who does not in 
 one form or another acknowledge Him to be the Sovereign 
 of his soul. 
 
 The question therefore at once suggests itself On what 
 title does this claim rest ? 
 
 Besides the title on which the Messiah grounded His 
 pretensions to be the Ruler of a kingdom, three are con- 
 ceivable. The title of force: the title of prescriptive 
 authority : or the title of incontrovertible reasoning. 
 
 Had the Messiah founded His kingdom upon the basis 
 of Force, He would have simply been a rival of the Caesars. 
 The imperial power of Rome rested on that Principle. 
 This was all that Pilate meant at first by the question, 
 "Art thou a king?" As a Roman he had no other 
 conception of rule. Right well had Rome fulfilled her 
 mission as the iron kingdom which was to command by 
 strength, and give to the world the principles of Law. But 
 that kingdom was wasting when these words were spoken. 
 For seven hundred years had the Empire been building 
 itself up. It gave way at last, and was crumbled into 
 fragments by its own ponderous massiveness. To use the 
 language of the prophet Daniel, miry clay had mixed with 
 the kingdom of iron, and the softer nations which had 
 been absorbed into it broke down its once invincible 
 
The Kingdom of the Truth 115 
 
 strength ; by corrupting and enervating its citizens : the 
 conquerors of the world dropped the sword from a grasp 
 grown nerveless. The Empire of strength was passing 
 away ; for no kingdom founded on force is destined to 
 permanence. " They that take the sword shall perish with 
 the sword." 
 
 Before Pontius Pilate, Christ distinctly disclaimed this 
 Right of Force as the foundation of His sovereignty. " If 
 my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants 
 fight : but now is my kingdom not from hence." (v. 36). 
 
 The next conceivable basis of a universal kingdom is 
 prescriptive authority. The scribes and priests who waited 
 outside for their victim conceived of such a kingdom. They 
 had indeed already an ecclesiastical kingdom which dated 
 back far beyond the origin of Rome. They claimed to rule 
 on a title such as this " It is written." But neither on this 
 title did the Saviour found His claim. He spoke lightly of 
 institutions which were venerable from age. He contra- 
 vened opinions which were gray with the hoar of ages. It 
 may be, that at times He defended Himself on the authority 
 of Moses, by showing that what He taught was not in op- 
 position to Moses ; but it is observable that He never 
 rested His claims as a teacher, or as the Messiah, on that 
 foundation. The scribes fell back on this " It has been 
 said," or, "It is written." Christ taught, as the men of 
 His day remarked, on an authority very different from that 
 of the scribes. Not even on His own authority He did 
 not claim that His words should be recognised because He 
 said them : but because they were true. " If I say the 
 truth, why do ye not believe me ? " Prescription personal 
 authority these were not His basis of a kingdom. 
 
 One more possible title remains. He might have claimed 
 to rule over men on the ground of incontrovertible demon- 
 stration of His principles. This was the ground taken by 
 every philosopher who was the founder of a sect. Appa- 
 rently, after the failure of his first guess, Pilate thought in 
 the second surmise that this was what Jesus meant by call- 
 ing Himself a king. When he heard of a kingdom, he 
 
n6 The Kingdom of the Truth 
 
 thought he had before him a rival of Caesar ; but when 
 truth was named, he seems to have fancied that he was 
 called to try a rival of the philosophers : some new candi- 
 date for a system : some new pretender of a truth which 
 was to dethrone its rival system. 
 
 This seems to be implied in the bitter question, " What 
 is Truth ? " For the history of opinion in those days was 
 like the history of opinion in our own : religions against 
 religions, philosophies against philosophies : religion and 
 philosophy opposed to one another : the opinion of to-day 
 dethroned by the opinion of to-morrow : the heterodoxy of 
 this age reckoned the orthodoxy of the succeeding one. 
 And Pilate, feeling the vainness and the presumption of 
 these pretensions, having lived to see failure after failure of 
 systems which pretended to teach That which is, smiled 
 bitterly at the enthusiast who again asserted confidently his 
 claims to have discovered the indiscoverable. There broke 
 from his lips a bitter, half-sarcastic, half-sad exclamation of 
 hopeless scepticism, " What is Truth ? " 
 
 And, indeed, had the Redeemer claimed this to over- 
 throw the doctrine of the Porch and of the Academy, and 
 to enthrone Christianity as a Philosophy of Life upon their 
 ruins by argument, that sceptical cry would have been not 
 ill-timed. 
 
 In these three ways have men attempted the Propagation 
 of the Gospel. By force, when the church ruled by perse- 
 cution by prescriptive authority, when she claimed infalli- 
 bility, or any modification of infallibility in the Popery of 
 Rome or the Popery of the pulpit by reasoning, in the age 
 of " evidences," when she only asked to have her proofs 
 brought forward and calmly heard, pledged herself to rule 
 the world by the conviction of the understanding, and laid 
 the foundations of rationalism deep and broad. Let us 
 hear the claim of the King Himself. He rested His royal 
 rights on His testimony to the Truth. " Thou sayest, for I 
 am a king (correcter translation) ; to this end was I born, 
 to bear witness to the truth." The mode in which the 
 subjects of the kingdom were brought beneath His sway 
 
The Kingdom of the Truth 117 
 
 was by assimilation. " Every one that is of the Truth, 
 heareth My voice." These, then, are our points. 
 
 I. The basis of the kingly rule of Christ. 
 II. The qualifications of the subjects of the kingdom. 
 
 I. The basis of the kingly rule of Christ. 
 
 Christ is a king in virtue of His being a witness to the 
 truth. " Thou sayest right, To this end was I born, and for 
 this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness 
 unto the truth." 
 
 Truth is used here in a sense equivalent to reality for 
 " truth " substitute reality, and it will become more intelli- 
 gible. For " the truth " is an ambiguous expression, limited 
 in its application, meaning often nothing more than a 
 theological creed, or a few dogmas of a creed which this or 
 that party have agreed to call " the truth." It would indeed 
 fritter down the majesty of the Redeemer's life, to say that 
 He was a witness for the truth of any number of theological 
 dogmas. Himself His Life, were a witness to Truth in 
 the sense of Reality. The realities of Life the realities of 
 the universe to these his every act and word bore testi- 
 mony. He was as much a witness to the truth of the purity 
 o( domestic life as to the truth of the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation : to the truth of Goodness being identical with 
 greatness as much as to the doctrine of the Trinity : and 
 more His mind corresponded with Reality as the dial with 
 the sun. 
 
 Again, in being a witness to Reality, we are to under 
 stand something very much deeper than the statement that 
 He spoke truly. There is a wide difference between truth- 
 fulness and mere veracity. Veracity implies a correspond- 
 ence between words and thoughts : truthfulness, a corre- 
 spondence between thoughts and realities. To be veracious, 
 it is only necessary that a man give utterance to his con- 
 victions : to be true, it is needful that his convictions have 
 affinity with Fact. 
 
 Let us take some illustrations of this distinction. The 
 
n8 The Kingdom of the Truth 
 
 Prophet tells of men who put sweet for bitter, and bitter for 
 sweet : who called good evil, and evil good : yet these were 
 veracious men ; for to them evil was good : and bitter was 
 sweet : There was a correspondence between their opinions 
 and their words : this was veracity. But there was no cor- 
 respondence between their opinions and eternal Fact : this 
 was untruthfulness. They spoke their opinions truly, but 
 their opinions were not true. The Pharisees in the time of 
 Christ were men of veracity. What they thought they said. 
 They thought that Christ was an impostor. They believed 
 that to tithe mint, anise, and cummin, was as acceptable to 
 God as to be just, and merciful, and true. It was their 
 conviction that they were immeasurably better than publi- 
 cans and profligates : yet veracious as they were, the title 
 perpetually affixed to them is, " Ye hypocrites." The life 
 they led being a false life, is called, in the phraseology of 
 the Apostle John, a lie. 
 
 If a man speak a careless slander against another, believing 
 it, he has not sinned against veracity : but the carelessness 
 which has led him into so grave an error, effectually bars his 
 claim to clear truthfulness. He is a veracious witness, but 
 not a true one. Or a man may have taken up second-hand, 
 indolently, religious views : may believe them : defend them 
 vehemently, Is he a man of truth ? Has he bowed before 
 the majesty of truth with that patient, reverential humbleness 
 which is the mark of those who love her ? 
 
 Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in which every 
 one who enters should be compelled to speak only what he 
 thought, and pleased itself by calling such domain the Palace 
 of Truth. A palace of veracity, if you will : but no temple 
 of the truth : a place where every one would be at liberty 
 to utter his own crude unrealities to bring forth his 
 delusions, mistakes, half-formed hasty judgments : where the 
 depraved ear would reckon discord harmony : and the 
 depraved eye mistake colour : the depraved moral taste take 
 Herod or Tiberius for a king, and shout beneath the 
 Redeemer's Cross, "Himself He cannot save." A temple 
 of the truth ? Nay, only a palace echoing with veracious 
 
The Kingdom of the Truth 119 
 
 falsehoods : a Babel of confused sounds, in which egotism 
 would rival egotism, and truth would be each man's own lie. 
 Far, far more is implied here than that the Son of Man 
 spoke veraciously, in saying that He was a Witness to the 
 Truth. 
 
 Again, when it is said that He was a Witness to the 
 Truth, it is implied that His very Being here manifested to 
 the world Divine realities. Human nature is but meant to be 
 a witness to the Divine, the true Humanity is a manifestation 
 or reflection of God. And that is Divine Humanity, in 
 which the Humanity is a perfect representation of the Divine. 
 "We behold," says the Apostle Paul, "in Christ, as in a 
 glass, the glory of the Lord." And, to borrow and carry on 
 the metaphor, the difference between Christ and other men 
 is this ; they are imperfect reflections, He a perfect one, of 
 God. 
 
 There are mirrors which are concave, which magnify the 
 thing that they reflect : there are mirrors convex, which 
 diminish it. And we, in like manner, represent the Divine 
 in a false, distorted way. Fragments of truth torn out of 
 connexion : snatches of harmony joined without unity. We 
 exaggerate and diminish till all becomes untrue. We bring 
 forth our own fancies, our own idiosyncrasies, our own 
 imaginations : and the image of God can be no longer 
 recognised. 
 
 In One alone has the Divine been so blended with the 
 Human, that, as the ocean mirrors every star and every tint 
 of blue upon the sky, so was the earthly Life of Christ the 
 Life of God on earth. 
 
 Now, observe, that the perfection of humanity consists in 
 faithful imitation of, or witness borne to, the Mind and Life 
 of God. Whoever has studied and understood the Life of 
 Christ will have remarked, not without surprise, that the 
 whole principle of His existence was the habit of unceasing 
 imitation. Listen to a few instances of this. 
 
 " The Son can do nothing of Himself, but that which He 
 seeth the Father do." " The words which I speak I speak 
 not of myself, but the Father which is with me, He doeth 
 
I2O The Kingdom of the Truth 
 
 the works." Do we remember the strange and startling 
 principle on which He defends His infraction of the literal, 
 legal Sabbath ? " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." 
 God the Father works all the Sabbath-day. So may Man, 
 His Son. Do we recollect the ground on which He enforces 
 forgiveness of injuries? A strange ground surely, which 
 would never have occurred except to One whose life was 
 habitual imitation. " Love your enemies : do good to them 
 that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, 
 and persecute you ; that ye may be the children of (that is, 
 resemble) your Father ... for He sendeth His rain upon 
 the just and upon the unjust." 
 
 This, then, is Man's : this was the Son of Man's relation 
 to the Truth. Man is but a learner a devout recipient of 
 a revelation here to listen with open ear devoutly for that 
 which he shall hear ; to gaze and watch for that which he 
 shall see. Man can do no more. He cannot create Truth : 
 he can only bear witness to it : he has no proud right of 
 private judgment : he can only listen and report that which 
 is in the universe. If he does not repeat and witness to 
 that, he speaketh of his own, and forthwith ceaseth to be 
 true. He is a liar, and \hefather of it, because he creates it. 
 Each man in his vocation is in the world to do this. As 
 truly as it was said by Christ, may it be said by each of us, 
 even by those from whose trades and professions it seems 
 most alien, "To this end was I born, and for this cause 
 came I into the world, to bear witness to the Truth." 
 
 The architect is here to be a witness. He succeeds only 
 so far as he is a witness, and a true one. The lines and 
 curves, the acanthus on his column, the proportions, all are 
 successful and beautiful, only so far as they are true : the 
 report of an eye which has lain open to God's world. If he 
 build his lighthouse to resist the storm, the law of imitation 
 bids him build it after the shape of the spreading oak which 
 has defied the tempest. If man construct the ship which is 
 to cleave the waters, calculation or imitation builds it on the 
 model upon which the Eternal Wisdom has already con- 
 structed the fish's form. The artist is a witness to the truth ; 
 
The Kingdom of the Truth 121 
 
 or he will never attain the beautiful. So is the agriculturist ; 
 or he will never reap a harvest. So is the statesman, building 
 up a nation's polity on the principles which time has proved 
 true, or else all his work crumbles down in revolution : for 
 national revolution is only the Divine Rejection stamped on 
 the social falsehood which cannot stand. In every depart- 
 ment of life, man must work truly as a witness. He is 
 born for that, nothing else : and nothing else can he do. 
 Man the Son can do nothing of Himself, but that which 
 He seeth God the Father do. 
 
 This was the Saviour's title to be a King; and His king- 
 dom formed itself upon this law : " Every one that is of the 
 Truth heareth my voice," that Eternal law which makes 
 truth assimilate all that is congenial to itself. Truth is like 
 life : whatever lives, absorbs into itself all that is congenial. 
 The leaf that trembles in the wind assimilates the light of 
 heaven to make its colour, and the sap of the parent stem : 
 innumerable influences from heaven, and earth, and air, to 
 make up its beautiful being. 
 
 So grew the Church of Christ ; round Him as a centre, 
 attracted by the truth : all that had in it harmony with His 
 Divine Life and words, grew to Him (by gradual accretions) : 
 clung to Him as the iron to the magnet. All that were of 
 His Spirit believed : all that had in them the spirit of sacri- 
 fice were attracted to His Cross. " I if I be lifted up will 
 draw all men unto me." 
 
 He taught not by elaborate trains of argument, like a 
 scribe or a philosopher : He uttered His truths rather as 
 detached intuitions, recognised by intuition, to be judged 
 only by being felt. For instance, " Blessed are the pure in 
 heart : for they shall see God." " It is more blessed to give 
 than to receive." " Blessed are ye when men shall revile 
 you, and persecute you." Prove that by force by author- 
 ity by argument you cannot. It suffices that a man 
 reply, " It is not so to me : it is more blessed to receive 
 than it is to give." You have no reply : if he be not of the 
 truth, you cannot make him hear Christ's voice. The truth 
 of Christ is true to the unselfish : a falsehood to the selfish. 
 
122 The Kingdom of the Truth 
 
 They that are of the truth, like Him, hear His voice : and 
 if you ask the Christian's proof of the truth of such things, 
 he has no other than this, It is true to me, as any other 
 intuitive truth is true equals are equal, because my mind is 
 so constituted that they seem so perforce. Purity is good, 
 because my heart is so made that it feels it to be good. 
 
 Brother men, the truer you are, the humbler, the nobler, 
 the more will you feel Christ to be your King. You may be 
 very little able to prove the King's Divine genealogy, or to 
 appreciate those claims to your allegiance which arise out of 
 His Eternal generation : but He will be your Sovereign and 
 your Lord by that affinity of character which compels you 
 to acknowlege His words and life to be Divine. " He that 
 receiveth His testimony hath set to his seal that God is 
 true." 
 
 II. We pass to the consideration of the qualification of 
 the subjects of the Empire of the Truth. Who are they 
 that are of the Truth. 
 
 1. The first qualification is to be true: "He that is of 
 the truth heareth My Voice." Truth lies in character. 
 Christ did not simply speak truth : He was truth : true 
 through and through ; for truth is a thing, not of words, but 
 of Life and Being. None but a Spirit can be true. 
 
 E. g. The friends of Job spoke words of truth. Scarcely 
 a maxim which they uttered could be impugned : cold, 
 hard, theological verities : but verities out of place, in that 
 place cruel and untrue. Job spoke many words not strictly 
 accurate hasty, impetuous, blundering, wrong : but the 
 whirlwind came, and, before the Voice of God, the 
 veracious falsehoods were swept into endless nothingness : 
 the true man, wrong, perplexed, in verbal error, stood firm : 
 he was true though his sentences were not : turned to the 
 truth as the sunflower to the sun : as the darkened plant 
 imprisoned in the vault turns towards the light, struggling 
 to solve the fearful enigma of his existence. 
 
 Job was a servant of the truth, being true in character. 
 
 2. The next qualification is integrity. But by integrity I 
 
The Kingdom of the Truth 123 
 
 do not mean simply sincerity or honesty : integrity rather 
 according to the meaning of the word as its derivation 
 interprets it entireness wholeness soundness : that which 
 Christ means when He says, "If thine eye be single or 
 sound, thy whole body shall be full of light." 
 
 This integrity extends through the entireness or whole- 
 ness of the character. It is found in small matters as well 
 as great ; for the allegiance of the soul to truth is tested by 
 small things rather than by those which are more important. 
 There is many a man who would lose his life rather than 
 perjure himself in a court of justice, whose life is yet a 
 tissue of small insincerities. We think that we hate false- 
 hood when we are only hating the consequences of falsehood. 
 We resent hypocrisy, and treachery, and calumny, not 
 because they are untrue, but because they harm us. We 
 hate the false calumny, but we are half pleased with the 
 false praise. It is evidently not the element of untruth 
 here that is displeasing, but the element of harmfulness. 
 Now he is a man of integrity who hates untruth as untruth : 
 who resents the smooth and polished falsehood of society 
 which does no harm : who turns in indignation from the 
 glittering whitened lie of sepulchral Pharisaism which injures 
 no one. Integrity recoils from deceptions which men would 
 almost smile to hear called deception. To a moral, pure 
 mind, the artifices in every department of life are painful : 
 the stained wood which passes for a more firm and costly 
 material in a building, and deceives the eye by seeming 
 what it is not, marble : the painting which is intended to 
 be taken for a reality : the gilding which is meant to pass 
 for gold : and the glass which is worn to look like jewels ; 
 for there is a moral feeling and a truthfulness in architecture, 
 in painting, and in dress, as well as in the market-place, and 
 in the senate, and in the judgment-hall. 
 
 " These are trifles." Yes, these are trifles but it is just 
 these trifles which go to the formation of character. He 
 that is habituated to deceptions and artificialities in trifles, 
 will try in vain to be true in matters of importance : for 
 truth is a thing of habit rather than of will. You cannot in 
 
124 The Kingdom of the Truth 
 
 any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be 
 true, if the habit of your life has been insincerity. And it 
 is a fearful question, and a difficult one, how all these things, 
 the atmosphere which we breathe of our daily life, may sap 
 the very foundations of the power of becoming a servant 
 of the truth. Life becomes fictitious : and it passes into 
 religion, till our very religion bases itself upon a figment 
 too. We are not righteous, but we expect God to make 
 believe that we are righteous, in virtue of some peculiar 
 doctrines which we hold ; and so our very righteousness 
 becomes the fictitious righteousness of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees, instead of the righteousness which is by faith, 
 the righteousness of those who are the children of the 
 kingdom of the truth. 
 
 3. Once more. He is qualified to be the subject of 
 the king who does the truth. Christianity joins two things 
 inseparably together : acting truly, and perceiving truly. 
 Every day the eternal nature of that principle becomes 
 more certain. If any man will do his will, he shall know 
 of the doctrine whether it be of God. 
 
 It is a perilous thing to separate feeling from acting : to 
 have learnt to feel rightly without acting rightly. It is a 
 danger to which, in a refined and polished age, we are 
 peculiarly exposed. The romance, the poem, and the 
 sermon, teach us how to feel. Our feelings are delicately 
 correct. But the danger is this : feeling is given to lead 
 to action ; if feeling be suffered to awake without passing 
 into duty, the character becomes untrue. When the emer- 
 gency for real action comes, the feeling is, as usual, 
 produced : but accustomed as it is to rise in fictitious cir- 
 cumstances without action, neither will it lead on to action 
 in the real ones. "We pity wretchedness and shun the 
 wretched." We utter sentiments, just, honourable, refined, 
 lofty but somehow, when a truth presents itself in the 
 shape of a duty, we are unable to perform it. And so such 
 characters become by degrees like the artificial pleasure- 
 grounds of bad taste, in which the waterfall does not fall, 
 and the grotto offers only the refreshment of an imaginary 
 
The Kingdom of the Truth 125 
 
 shade, and the green hill does not strike the skies, and the 
 tree does not grow. Their lives are a sugared crust of 
 sweetness trembling over black depths of hollowness : more 
 truly still, " whited sepulchres " fair without to look upon, 
 " within full of all uncleanness." 
 
 It is perilous again to separate thinking rightly from 
 acting rightly. He is already half false who speculates on 
 truth and does not do it. Truth is given, not to be contem- 
 plated, but to be done. Life is an action not a thought. 
 And the penalty paid by him who speculates on truth, is 
 that by degrees the very truth he holds becomes to him a 
 falsehood. 
 
 There is no truthfulness, therefore, except in the witness 
 borne to God by doing His will to live the truths we hold, 
 or else they will be no truths at all. It was thus that He 
 witnessed to the truth. He lived it. He spoke no touch- 
 ing truths for sentiment to dwell on, or thought to speculate 
 upon. Truth with Him was a matter of life and death. 
 He perilled His life upon the words He said. If He were 
 true, the life of men was a painted life, and the woes He 
 denounced unflinchingly would fall upon the Pharisees. 
 But if they were true, or even strong, His portion in this 
 life was the cross. 
 
 Who is a true man ? He who does the truth ; and 
 never holds a principle on which he is not prepared in any 
 hour to act, and in any hour to risk the consequences of 
 holding it. 
 
 I make in conclusion one remark. The kingly character 
 of truth is exhibited strikingly in the calmness of the 
 bearing of the Son of Man before His judge. Veracity 
 is not necessarily dignified. There is a vulgar effrontery 
 a spirit of defiance which taunts, and braves, and challenges 
 condemnation. It marks the man who is conscious of 
 sincerity, but of nothing higher whose confidence is in 
 himself and his own honesty, and who is absorbed in the 
 feeling, " I speak the truth and am a martyr." Again, the 
 man of mere veracity is often violent, for what he says rests 
 upon his own assertion ; and vehemence of assertion is the 
 
126 The Kingdom of the Truth 
 
 only addition he can make to it. Such was the violence of 
 Paul before Ananias. He was indignant at the injustice of 
 being smitten contrary to the law ; and the powerlessness 
 of his position, the hopelessness of redress, joined to a 
 conviction of the truth of what he said, produced that 
 vehemence. 
 
 It has been often remarked that there is a great difference 
 between theological and scientific controversy. Theologians 
 are proverbially vituperative : because it is a question of 
 veracity : the truth of their views, their moral perceptions, 
 their intellectual acumen. There exists no test but argu- 
 ment on which they can fall back. If argument fails, all 
 fails. But the man of science stands calmly on the facts of 
 the universe. He is based upon reality. All the opposition 
 and controversy in the world cannot alter facts, nor prevent 
 the facts being manifest at last. He can be calm because 
 he is a witness for the Truth. 
 
 In the same way, but in a sense far deeper and more 
 sacred, the Son of Man stood calm^ rooted in the Truth. 
 There was none of the egotism of self-conscious veracity in 
 those placid, confident, dignified replies. This was not the 
 feeling " I hold the truth," but " I am witness to the 
 truth." They might spit upon Him kill Him crucify 
 Him give His ashes to the winds they could not alter 
 the Truth by which He stood. Was not that His own 
 feeling ? " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words 
 shall not pass away." 
 
 There was the kingly dignity of One, who, in Life and 
 Death, stood firm on Truth as on a Rock. 
 
 In the name of Christ, I respectfully commend these 
 thoughts for the special consideration of the present week, 
 to those who will be pledged by oath to witness to the 
 whole truth they know, and nothing but the truth : to those 
 who, permitted by the merciful spirit of English jurispru- 
 dence, to watch that their client, if condemned, shall be 
 condemned only according to the law, are not justified by 
 the spirit of the life of Christ in falsifying or obscuring facts ; 
 and who, owing a high duty to a client, owe one yet higher 
 
Obedience 127 
 
 to the truth : and, lastly, to those whom the severe intel- 
 lectual, and much more, moral training of the English bar 
 has qualified for the high office of disentangling truth from 
 the mazes of conflicting testimony. 
 
 From the trial-hour of Christ from the Cross of the Son 
 of God there arises the principle to which all His life bore 
 witness, that the first lesson of Christian life is this, Be true 
 and the second this, Be true and the third this, Be 
 true. 
 
 OBEDIENCE THE ORGAN OF SPIRITUAL 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 JOHN vii. 17. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." 
 
 THE first thing we have to do is to put ourselves in 
 possession of the history of these words. 
 
 Jesus taught in the temple during the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles. The Jews marvelled at His spiritual wisdom. The 
 cause of wonder was the want of scholastic education: 
 "How knoweth this man letters, never having learned?" 
 They had no conception of any source of wisdom beyond 
 learning. 
 
 He Himself gave a different account of the matter. 
 " My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me." And 
 how He came possessed of it, speaking humanly, He taught 
 (chap. v. 30) : " My judgment is just, because I seek not 
 mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath 
 sent me/' 
 
 That principle whereby He attained spiritual judgment 
 or wisdom, He extends to all. " If any man will do his 
 will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, 
 or whether I speak of myself." Here, then, manifestly, 
 
128 Obedience 
 
 there are two opinions respecting the origin of spiritual 
 knowledge : 
 
 1. The popular one of the Jews : relying on a cultivated 
 understanding. 
 
 2. The principle of Christ, which relied on trained 
 affections and habits of obedience. 
 
 What is Truth ? Study, said the Jews. Act, said Christ, 
 and you shall know. A very precious principle to hold by 
 in these days ; and a very pregnant one of thought to us, 
 who during the next few days must be engaged in the con- 
 templation of crime, and to whom the question will suggest 
 itself, How can men's lives be made true ? 
 
 Religious controversy is fast settling into a conflict 
 between two great extreme parties. Those who believe 
 everything, and those who believe nothing: the disciples 
 of credulity, and the disciples of scepticism. 
 
 The first rely on authority. 
 
 Foremost among these, and the only self-consistent ones, 
 are the adherents of the Church of Rome and into this 
 body, by logical consistency, ought to merge all Dis- 
 senters, Churchmen, Bible Christians, who receive their 
 opinions because their sect, their church, or their docu- 
 ments assert them, not because they are true eternally in 
 themselves. 
 
 The second class rely solely on a cultivated understanding. 
 This is the root principle of Rationalism. Enlighten, they 
 say, and sin will disappear. Enlighten, and we shall know 
 all that can be known of God. Sin is an error of the 
 understanding, not a crime of the will. Illuminate the 
 understanding, show men that sin is folly, and sin will 
 disappear. Political Economy will teach public virtue : 
 knowledge of anatomy will arrest the indulgence of the 
 passions. Show the drunkard the inflamed tissues of the 
 brain, and he will be sobered by fear and reason. 
 
 Only enlighten, and spiritual truths will be tested. When 
 the anatomist shall have hit on a right method of dis- 
 section, and appropriated sensation to this filament of the 
 brain, and the religious sentiment to that fibre, we shall 
 
Obedience 129 
 
 know whether there be a soul or not, and whether conscious- 
 ness will survive physical dissolution. When the chemist 
 shall have discovered the principle of life, and found cause 
 behind cause, we shall know whether the last cause of All 
 is a Personal Will or a lifeless Force. 
 
 Concerning whom I only remark now, that these disciples 
 of scepticism become easily disciples of credulity. It is 
 instructive to see how they who sneer at Christian mysteries 
 as old wives' fables, bow in abject reverence before Egyptian 
 mysteries of three thousand years' antiquity ; and how they 
 who have cast off a God, believe in the veriest imposture, 
 and have blind faith in this most vulgar juggling. Scepticism 
 and credulity meet. Nor is it difficult to explain. Dis- 
 trusting everything, they doubt their own conclusions and 
 their own mental powers ; and that for which they can- 
 not account presents itself to them as supernatural and 
 mysterious. Wonder makes them more credulous than 
 those they sneer at. 
 
 In opposition to both these systems, stands the Christianity 
 of Christ. 
 
 1. Christ never taught on personal authority. "My doc- 
 trine is not mine." He taught " not as the scribes." They 
 dogmatized : because " it was written " stickled for maxims, 
 and lost principles. His authority was the authority of 
 Truth, not of personality : He commanded men to believe, 
 not because He said it ; but He said it because it was true. 
 Hence John xii. 47, 48, " If any man hear my words and 
 believe not, I judge him not the word that I have spoken, 
 the same shall judge him in the last day." 
 
 2. He never taught that cultivation of the understanding 
 would do all : but exactly the reverse. And so taught His 
 apostles. St. Paul taught, " The world by wisdom knew 
 not God." His Master said, not that clear intellect will 
 give you a right heart, but that a right heart and a pure life 
 will clarify the intellect. Not, Become a man of letters and 
 learning, and you will attain spiritual freedom : but, Do 
 rightly and you will judge justly : Obey and you will know. 
 " My judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will, 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
130 Obedience 
 
 but the will of the Father which sent me." " If any man 
 will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it 
 be of God, or whether I speak of myself." 
 
 I. The knowledge of the Truth, or Christian knowledge. 
 II. The condition on which it is attainable. 
 
 Christian knowledge "he shall know." Its object 
 "the doctrine." Its degree, certainty "shall know" 
 
 Doctrine is now, in our modern times, a word of limited 
 meaning ; being simply opposed to practical. For instance, 
 the Sermon on the Mount would be called practical : St. 
 Paul's epistles doctrinal. But in scripture, doctrine means 
 broadly, teaching : anything that is taught is doctrine. 
 Christ's doctrine embraces the whole range of his teaching 
 every principle and every precept. Let us select three 
 departments of " doctrine " in which the principle of the 
 text will be found true. " If any man will do His will, he 
 shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether 
 I speak of myself." 
 
 i. It holds good in speculative truth. If any man will 
 do God's will, he shall know what is truth and what is error. 
 Let us see how wilfulness and selfishness hinder impartiality. 
 How comes it that men are almost always sure to arrive at 
 the conclusions reached by their own party ? Surely because 
 fear, interest, vanity, or the desire of being reckoned sound 
 and judicious, or party spirit, bias them. Personal prospects : 
 personal antipathies : these determine most men's creed. 
 How will you remove this hindrance ? By increased culti- 
 vation of mind ? Why the Romanist is as accomplished as 
 the Protestant ; and learning is found in the Church and 
 out of it. You are not sure that that high mental cultivation 
 will lead a man either to Protestantism or the Church of 
 England. Surely, then, by removing self-will, and so only, 
 can the hindrance to right opinions be removed. Take 
 away the last trace of interested feeling, and the way is 
 cleared for men to come to an approximation towards unity, 
 even in judgment on points speculative ; and so he that will 
 do God's will shall know of the doctrine. 
 
Obedience 131 
 
 2. In practical truths the principle is true. It is more 
 true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and 
 habits, than to say that our lives depend upon our opinions, 
 which is only now and then true. The fact is, men think 
 in a certain mode on these matters, because their life is 
 of a certain character, and their opinions are only invented 
 afterwards as a defence for their life. 
 
 For instance, St. Paul speaks of a maxim among the 
 Corinthians, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 They excused their voluptuousness on the ground of its 
 consistency with their sceptical creed. Life was short. 
 Death came to-morrow. There was no hereafter. There- 
 fore it was quite consistent to live for pleasure. But who 
 does not see that the creed was the result, and not the 
 cause of the life ? Who does not see that first they ate and 
 drank, and then believed to-morrow we die ? " Getting and 
 spending we lay waste our powers." Eating and drinking 
 we lose sight of the life to come. When the immortal is 
 overborne and smothered in the life of the flesh, how can 
 men believe in life to come? Then disbelieving, they 
 mistook the cause for the effect. Their moral habits and 
 creed were in perfect consistency : yet it was the life that 
 formed the creed, not the creed that formed the life. 
 Because they were sensualists, immortality had become 
 incredible. 
 
 Again slavery is defended, philosophically. The negro 
 on his skull and skeleton, they say, has God's intention of 
 his servitude written : he is the inferior animal, therefore it 
 is right to enslave him. Did this doctrine precede the 
 slave-trade? Did man arrive at it, and then, in con- 
 sequence, conscientiously proceed with human traffic ? Or 
 was it invented to defend a practice existing already the 
 offspring of self-interest ? Did not men first make slaves, 
 and then search about for reasons to make their conduct 
 plausible to themselves ? 
 
 So, too, a belief in predestination is sometimes alleged in 
 excuse of crime. But a man who suffers his will to be 
 overpowered, naturally comes to believe that he is the sport 
 
132 Obedience 
 
 of fate : feeling powerless, he believes that God's decree has 
 made him so. But let him but put forth one act of loving 
 will, and then, as the nightmare of a dream is annihilated 
 by an effort, so the incubus of a belief in tyrannous destiny 
 is dissipated the moment a man wills to do the will of God 
 Observe, how he knows of the doctrine, directly he does 
 the will. 
 
 There is another thing said respecting this knowledge of 
 Truth. It respects the degree of certainty "he shall 
 know" not he shall have an opinion. There is a wide 
 distinction between supposing and knowing between fancy 
 and conviction between opinion and belief. Whatever 
 rests on authority remains only supposition. You have an 
 opinion, when you know what others think. You know 
 when you feel. In matters practical you know only so far 
 <s you can do. Read a work on the "Evidences of 
 Christianity," and it may become highly probable that 
 Christianity, &c., are true. That is an opinion. Feel God : 
 Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks 
 as with a living voice Thou shalt, and thou shalt not ; and 
 then you do not think, you know that there is a God. 
 That is a conviction and a belief. 
 
 Have we never seen how a child, simple and near to 
 God, cuts asunder a web of sophistry with a single direct 
 question? How, before its steady look and simple argu- 
 ment, some fashionable utterer of a conventional falsehood 
 has been abashed ? How a believing Christian scatters the 
 forces of scepticism, as a morning ray, touching the mist on 
 the mountain side, makes it vanish into thin air? And 
 there are few more glorious moments of our humanity than 
 those in which Faith does battle against intellectual proof : 
 when, for example, after reading a sceptical book, or hearing 
 a cold-blooded materialist's demonstration, in which God, 
 the soul, and life to come, are proved impossible up rises 
 the heart in all the giant might of its immortality to do 
 battle with the understanding, and with the simple argument 
 " I feel them in my best and highest moments to be true," 
 annihilates the sophistries of logic. 
 
Obedience 133 
 
 These moments of profound faith do not come once for 
 all : they vary with the degree and habit of obedience. 
 There is a plant which blossoms once in a hundred years. 
 Like it, the soul blossoms only now and then in a space of 
 years : but these moments are the glory and the heavenly 
 glimpses of our purest humanity. 
 
 II. The condition on which knowledge of Truth is attain- 
 able. " If any man will do His will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." 
 
 This universe is governed by laws. At the bottom of 
 everything here there is a law. Things are in this way and 
 not that : we call that a law, or condition. All departments 
 have their own laws. By submission to them, you make them 
 your own. Obey the laws of the body : such laws as say, 
 Be temperate and chaste : or of the mind : such laws as say, 
 Fix the attention ; strengthen by exercise : and then their 
 prizes are yours health, strength, pliability of muscle, 
 tenaciousness of memory, nimbleness of imagination, &c. 
 Obey the laws of your spiritual being, and it has its prizes 
 too. For instance, the condition or law of a peaceful life is 
 submission to the law of meekness : " Blessed are the meek, 
 for they shall inherit the earth." The condition of the 
 Beatific Vision is a pure heart and life : " Blessed are the 
 pure in heart, for they shall see God." To the impure God 
 is simply invisible. The condition annexed to a sense of 
 God's presence in other words, that without which a sense 
 of God's presence cannot be is obedience to the laws of 
 Love : " If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His 
 love is perfected in us." The condition of spiritual wisdom, 
 and certainty in truth, is obedience to the will of God, 
 surrender of private will : " If any man will do His will, he 
 shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether 
 I speak of myself." 
 
 In every department of knowledge, therefore, there is an 
 appointed " organ," or instrument for discovery of its specific 
 truth, and for appropriating its specific blessings. In the 
 world of sense, the empirical intellect : in that world the 
 
134 Obedience 
 
 Baconian philosopher is supreme. His Novum Organon 
 is Experience : he knows by experiment of touch, sight, 
 &c. The religious man may not contravene his assertions 
 he is lord in his own province. But in the spiritual world, 
 the " organ " of the scientific man, sensible experience, is 
 powerless. If the chemist, geologist, physiologist, come back 
 from their spheres and say, we find in the laws of affinity, in 
 the deposits of past ages, in the structure of the human 
 frame, no trace nor token of a God, I simply reply, I never 
 expected you would. Obedience and self-surrender is the 
 sole organ by which we gain a knowledge of that which 
 cannot be seen nor felt. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard. " And just as by copying perpetually a master-painter's 
 works we get at last an instinctive and infallible power of 
 recognising his touch, so by copying and doing God's will, 
 we recognise what is His we know of the teaching whether 
 it be of God, or whether it be an arbitrary invention of a 
 human self. 
 
 2. Observe the universality of the law. " If any man will 
 do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of 
 God, or whether I speak of myself." The law was true 
 of the Man Christ Jesus Himself. He tells us it is true of 
 all other men. 
 
 In God's universe there are no favourites of heaven who 
 may transgress the laws of the universe with impunity 
 none who can take fire in the hand and not be burnt no 
 enemies of heaven who if they sow corn will reap nothing. 
 The law is just and true to all : " Whatsoever a man soweth, 
 that shall he also reap." 
 
 In God's spiritual universe there are no favourites of 
 heaven who can attain knowledge and spiritual wisdom 
 apart from obedience. There are none reprobate by an 
 eternal decree, who can surrender self, and in all things 
 submit to God, and yet fail of spiritual convictions. It is 
 not therefore a rare, partial condescension of God, arbitrary 
 and causeless, which gives knowledge of the Truth to 
 some, and shuts it out from others ; but a vast, universal, 
 glorious law. The Light lighteth every man that cometh 
 
Obedience 135 
 
 into the world. " If any man will do His will, he shall 
 know." 
 
 See the beauty of this Divine arrangement. If the 
 certainty of truth depended upon the proof of miracles, 
 prophecy, or the discoveries of science ; then Truth would 
 be in the reach chiefly of those who can weigh evidence, 
 investigate history, and languages, study by experiment ; 
 whereas as it is, " The meek will He guide in judgment and 
 the meek will He teach His way/' " Thus saith the high 
 and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy ; 
 I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a 
 contrite and humble spirit" The humblest and the weakest 
 may know more of man, of moral evil and of good, by a 
 single act of charity, or a prayer of self-surrender, than 
 all the sages can teach : ay, or all the theologians can 
 dogmatize upon. 
 
 They know nothing perhaps, these humble ones, of 
 evidence, but they are sure that Christ is their Redeemer. 
 They cannot tell what matter is, but they know that they 
 are Spirits. They know nothing of the argument from 
 design, but they feel God. The truths of God are spiritually 
 discerned. They have never learned letters, but they have 
 reached the Truth of Life. 
 
 3. Annexed to this condition, or a part of it, is earnest- 
 ness. " If any man will do His will." Now that word 
 41 will" is not the will of the future tense, but will meaning 
 volition. If any man wills, resolves, has the mind to do 
 the will of God. So then it is not a chance fitful obedience 
 that leads us to the Truth : nor an obedience paid while 
 happiness lasts, and no longer but an obedience rendered 
 in entireness and in earnest. It is not written, If any man 
 does his will but if any man has the spirit and desire. If 
 we are in earnest, we shall persevere like the Syrophenician 
 woman, even though the ear of the universe seem deaf, and 
 Christ Himself appear to bid us back. If we are not in 
 earnest, difficulties will discourage us. Because will is 
 wanting, we shall be asking still in ignorance and doubt, 
 What is Truth? 
 
136 
 
 Obedience 
 
 All this will seem to many time misspent. They go to 
 Church because it is the custom : all Christians believe it is 
 the established religion. But there are hours, and they 
 come to us all at some period of life or other, when the 
 hand of Mystery seems to lie heavy on the soul when some 
 life-shock scatters existence, leaves it a blank and dreary 
 waste henceforth for ever, and there appears nothing of 
 hope in all the expanse which stretches out, except that 
 merciful gate of death which opens at the end hours when 
 the sense of misplaced or ill-requited affection, the feeling of 
 personal worthlessness, the uncertainty and meanness of all 
 human aims, and a doubt of all human goodness, unfix the 
 soul from all its old moorings, and leave it drifting drifting 
 over the vast Infinitude, with an awful sense of solitariness. 
 Then the man whose faith rested on outward Authority and 
 not on inward life, will find it give way : the authority of the 
 Priest : the authority of the Church : or merely the authority 
 of a document proved by miracles and backed by prophecy : 
 the soul conscious life hereafter God will be an awful 
 desolate Perhaps. Well ! In such moments you doubt all 
 whether Christianity be true : whether Christ was man, or 
 God, or a beautiful fable. You ask bitterly, like Pontius 
 Pilate, What is Truth ? In such an hour what remains ? I 
 reply, Obedience. Leave those thoughts for the present. 
 Act be merciful and gentle honest : force yourself to 
 abound in little services : try to do good to others : be true 
 to the Duty that you know. That must be right whatever 
 else is uncertain. And by all the laws of the human heart, 
 by the word of God, you shall not be left to doubt. Do 
 that much of the will of God which is plain to you, " You 
 shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." 
 
Religious Depression 137 
 
 RELIGIOUS DEPRESSION 
 
 PSALM xlii. 1-3. "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so 
 panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the 
 living God : when shall I come and appear before God ? My tears have 
 been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, 
 Where is thy God?" 
 
 THE value of the public reading of the Psalms is, that 
 they express for us indirectly those deeper feelings which 
 there would be a sense of indelicacy in expressing directly. 
 
 Example of Joseph : asking after his father, and blessing 
 his brothers, as it were under the personality of another. 
 
 There are feelings of which we do not speak to each 
 other : they are too sacred and too delicate. Such are most 
 of our feelings to God. If we do speak of them, they lose 
 their fragrance ; become coarse ; nay, there is even a sense 
 of indelicacy and exposure. 
 
 Now the Psalms afford precisely the right relief for this 
 feeling : wrapped up in the forms of poetry (metaphor, &c.,) 
 that which might seem exaggerated is excused by those who 
 do not feel it : while they who do can read them, applying 
 them, without the suspicion of uttering their own feelings. 
 Hence their soothing power, and hence, while other 
 portions of Scripture may become obsolete, they remain the 
 most precious parts of the Old Testament. For the heart 
 of man is the same in all ages. 
 
 This forty-second Psalm contains the utterance of a 
 sorrow of which men rarely speak. There is a grief worse 
 than lack of bread or loss of friends : man in former times 
 called it spiritual desertion. But at times the utterances of 
 this solitary grief are as it were overheard, as in this Psalm. 
 Read verse 6-7. And in a more august agony, " My God, 
 my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " 
 
 I. Causes of David's despondency. 
 II. The consolation. 
 
138 Religious Depression 
 
 I. Causes of David's despondency. 
 
 1. The thirst for God. "My soul thirsteth for God, 
 for the living God : when shall I come and appear before 
 God ? " 
 
 There is a desire in the human heart best described as 
 the cravings of infinitude. We are so made that nothing 
 which has limits satisfies. 
 
 Hence the sense of freedom and relief which comes 
 from all that suggests the idea of boundlessness : the deep 
 sky the dark night the endless circle the illimitable 
 ocean. 
 
 Hence, too, our dissatisfaction with all that is or can be 
 done. There never was the beauty yet than which we 
 could not conceive something more beautiful. None so 
 good as to be faultless in our eyes. No deed done by us, 
 but we feel we have it in us to do a better. The heavens 
 are not clean in our sight : and the angels are charged with 
 folly. 
 
 Therefore to never rest is the price paid for our greatness. 
 Could we rest, we must become smaller in soul. Whoever 
 is satisfied with what he does has reached his culminating 
 point, he will progress no more. Man's destiny is to be not 
 dissatisfied, but for ever unsatisfied. 
 
 Infinite goodness a beauty beyond what eye hath seen 
 or heart imagined, a justice which shall have no flaw, and a 
 righteousness which shall have no blemish to crave for 
 that, is to be "athirst for God." 
 
 2. The temporary loss of the sense of God's personality. 
 " My soul is athirst for the living God." 
 
 Let us search our own experience. What we want is, we 
 shall find, not infinitude, but a boundless One, not to feel 
 that love is the law of this universe, but to feel One whose 
 name is Love. 
 
 For else, if in this world of order there be no One in 
 whose bosom that order is centred, and of whose Being it 
 is the expression : in this world of manifold contrivance, no 
 Personal Affection which gave to the skies their trembling 
 tenderness, and to the snow its purity : then order, affection, 
 
Religious Depression 139 
 
 contrivance, wisdom, are only horrible abstractions, and we 
 are in the dreary universe alone. 
 
 Foremost in the declaration of this truth was the Jewish 
 religion. It proclaimed not " Let us meditate on the 
 Adorable Light, it shall guide our intellects," which is the 
 most sacred verse of the Hindoo Sacred books : but " Thus 
 saith the Lord, I am, that I am." In that word I am, 
 is declared Personality ; and it contains, too, in the expres- 
 sion, thus saith, the real idea of a Revelation, viz., the 
 voluntary approach of the Creator to the creature. 
 
 Accordingly, these Jewish Psalms are remarkable for that 
 personal tenderness towards God those outbursts of 
 passionate, individual attachment which are in every page. 
 A Person, asking and giving heart for heart inspiring love, 
 because feeling it that was the Israelite's Jehovah. 
 
 Now distinguish this from the God of the philosopher 
 and the God of the mere theologian. 
 
 The God of the mere theologian is scarcely a living God 
 He did live ; but for some eighteen hundred years we 
 are credibly informed that no trace of His life has been 
 seen. The canon is closed. The proofs that He was are 
 in the things that He has made, and the books of men to 
 whom He spake ; but He inspires and works wonders no 
 more. According to the theologians, He gives us proofs 
 of design instead of God : doctrines instead of the Life 
 indeed. 
 
 Different, too, from the God of the philosopher. The 
 tendency of philosophy has been to throw back the personal 
 Being further and still further from the time when every 
 branch and stream was believed a living Power, to the 
 period when "principles" were substituted for this belief: 
 then " Laws : " and the philosopher's God is a law into 
 which all other laws are resolvable. 
 
 Quite differently to this speaks the Bible of God. Not 
 as a Law : but as the Life of all that is the Being who 
 feels and is felt is loved and loves again feels my heart 
 throb into His, counts the hairs of my head: feeds the 
 ravens, and clothes the lilies : hears my prayers, and 
 
140 Religious Depression 
 
 interprets them through a Spirit which has affinity with 
 my spirit. 
 
 It is a dark moment when the sense of that personality 
 is lost : more terrible than the doubt of immortality. For 
 of the two eternity without a personal God, or God for 
 seventy years without immortality no one after David's 
 heart would hesitate, " Give me God for life, to know and 
 be known by Him." No thought is more hideous than 
 that of an eternity without Him. " My soul is athirst for 
 God." The desire of immortality is second to the desire 
 for God. 
 
 3. The taunts of scoffers. "As the hart panteth after 
 the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." 
 Now the hart here spoken of is the hart hunted, at bay, the 
 big tears rolling from his eyes, and the moisture standing 
 black upon his side. Let us see what the persecution was. 
 "Where is now thy God?" ver. 13. This is ever the way 
 in religious perplexity : the unsympathizing world taunts or 
 misunderstands. In spiritual grief they ask, why is he not 
 like others? In bereavement they call your deep sorrow 
 unbelief. In misfortune they comfort you, like Job's friends, 
 by calling it a visitation. Or like the barbarians at Melita, 
 when the viper fastened on Paul's hand : no doubt they 
 call you an infidel, though your soul be crying after God. 
 Specially in that dark and awful hour, "Eloi, Eloi," He 
 called on God : they said, " Let be ; let us see whether 
 Elias will come to save Him." 
 
 Now this is sharp to bear. It is easy to say Christian 
 fortitude should be superior to it. But in darkness to have 
 no sympathy : when the soul gropes for God, to have the 
 hand of man relax its grasp ! Forest-flies, small as they 
 are, drive the noble war-horse mad : therefore David says, 
 "as a sword in my bones," ver. 13. Now, observe, this 
 feeling of forsakenness is no proof of being forsaken. 
 Mourning after an absent God is an evidence of love as 
 strong as rejoicing in a present one. Nay further, a man 
 may be more decisively the servant of God and goodness 
 while doubting His existence, and in the anguish of his 
 
Religious Depression 141 
 
 soul crying for light, than while resting in a common creed, 
 and coldly serving Him. There has been One at least 
 whose apparent forsakenness, and whose seeming doubt, 
 bears the stamp of the majesty of Faith. " My God, my 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " 
 
 II. David's consolation. 
 
 i. And first, in hope (see ver. 5): distinguish between 
 the feelings of faith that God is present, and the hope of 
 faith that He will be so. 
 
 There are times when a dense cloud veils the sunlight : 
 you cannot see the sun, nor feel him. Sensitive temperaments 
 feel depression : and that unaccountably and irresistibly. 
 No effort can make you feel. Then you hope. Behind 
 the cloud the sun is : from thence he will come : the day 
 drags through, the darkest and longest night ends at last. 
 Thus we bear the darkness and the otherwise intolerable 
 cold, and many a sleepless night. It does not shine now 
 but it will. So too, spiritually. 
 
 There are hours in which physical derangement darkens 
 the windows of the soul ; days in which shattered nerves 
 make life simply endurance ; months and years in which 
 intellectual difficulties, pressing for solution, shut out God. 
 Then faith must be replaced by hope. " What I do thou 
 knowest not now ; but thou shalt know hereafter." Clouds 
 and darkness are round about Him : but Righteousness and 
 Truth are the habitation of His throne. " My soul, hope 
 thou in God : for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health 
 of my countenance, and my God." 
 
 2. This hope was in God. 
 
 The mistake we make is to look for a source of comfort 
 in ourselves : self-contemplation instead of gazing upon 
 God. In other words, we look for comfort precisely where 
 comfort never can be. 
 
 For, first, it is impossible to derive consolation from our 
 own feelings, because of their mutability : to-day we are 
 well, and our spiritual experience, partaking of these 
 circumstances, is bright : but to-morrow some outward 
 
142 Religious Depression 
 
 circumstances change the sun does not shine, or the wind 
 is chill, and we are low, gloomy, and sad. Then, if our 
 hopes were unreasonably elevated, they will now be 
 unreasonably depressed ; and so our experience becomes 
 flux and reflux, ebb and flow ; like the sea, that emblem of 
 instability. 
 
 Next, it is impossible to get comfort from our own acts : 
 for though acts are the test of character, yet in a low state 
 no man can judge justly of his own acts. They assume a 
 darkness of hue which is reflected on them by the eye that 
 contemplates them. It would be well for all men to 
 remember that sinners cannot judge of sin least of all 
 can we estimate our own sin. 
 
 Besides, we lose time in remorse. I have sinned well 
 by the grace of God I must endeavour to do better for 
 the future. But if I mourn for it overmuch all to-day, 
 refusing to be comforted, to-morrow I shall have to mourn 
 the wasted to-day ; and that again will be the subject of 
 another fit of remorse. 
 
 In the wilderness, had the children of Israel, instead of 
 gazing on the serpent, looked down on their own wounds 
 to watch the process of the granulation of the flesh, and 
 see how deep the wound was, and whether it was healing 
 slowly or fast, cure would have been impossible : their only 
 chance was to look off the wounds. Just so, when, giving 
 up this hopeless and sickening work of self-inspection, and 
 turning from ourselves in Christian self-oblivion, we gaze 
 on God, then first the chance of consolation dawns. 
 
 He is not affected by our mutability : our changes do not 
 alter Him. When we are restless, He remains serene and 
 calm : when we are low, selfish, mean, or dispirited, He is 
 still the unalterable I AM. The same yesterday, to-day, 
 and for ever, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of 
 turning. What God is in Himself, not what we may chance 
 to feel Him in this or that moment to be, that is our hope. 
 " My soul, hope thou in God." 
 
Spiritual Excitement 143 
 
 SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT 
 
 EPHKSIANS v. 17, 18. " Wherefore be ye not unwise, but under- 
 standing what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, 
 wherein is excess ; but be filled with the Spirit." 
 
 THERE is evidently a connection between the different 
 branches of this sentence for ideas cannot be properly con- 
 trasted which have not some connection but what that 
 connection is, is not at first sight clear. It almost appears 
 like a profane and irreverent juxtaposition to contrast ful- 
 ness of the Spirit with fulness of wine. Moreover, the 
 structure of the whole context is antithetical. Ideas are 
 opposed to each other in pairs of contraries; for instance, 
 " fools " is the exact opposite to " wise ; " " unwise," as 
 opposed to " understanding," its proper opposite. 
 
 And here again, there must be the same true antithesis 
 between drunkenness and spiritual fulness. The propriety of 
 this opposition lies in the intensity of feeling produced in 
 both cases. There is one intensity of feeling produced by 
 stimulating the senses, another by vivifying the spiritual life 
 within. The one commences with impulses from without, 
 the other is guarded by forces from within. Here then is the 
 similarity, and here the dissimilarity, which constitutes the 
 propriety of the contrast. One is ruin, the other salvation. 
 One degrades, the other exalts. 
 
 This contrast then is our subject for to-day. 
 
 i. The effects are similar. On the day of Pentecost, 
 when the first influences of the Spirit descended on the 
 early Church, the effects resembled intoxication. They 
 were full of the Spirit, and mocking bystanders said, " These 
 men are full of new wine ; " for they found themselves 
 elevated into the ecstasy of a life higher than their own, 
 possessed of powers which they could not control ; they 
 spoke incoherently and irregularly ; to the most part of 
 those assembled, unintelligibly. 
 
144 Spiritual Excitement 
 
 Now compare with this the impression produced upon 
 savage nations suppose those early ages in which the 
 spectacle of intoxication was presented for the first time. 
 They saw a man under the influence of a force different 
 from, and in some respects inferior to, their own. To 
 them the bacchanal appeared a being half inspired ; his 
 frenzy seemed a thing for reverence and awe, rather than 
 for horror and disgust; the spirit which possessed him 
 must be, they thought, divine ; they deified it, worshipped 
 it under different names as a god ; even to a clearer insight 
 the effects are wonderfully similar. It is almost proverbial 
 among soldiers that the daring produced by wine is easily 
 mistaken for the self-devotion of a brave heart. 
 
 The play of imagination in the brain of the opium- 
 eater is as free as that of genius itself, and the creations 
 produced in that state by the pen or pencil are as wildly 
 beautiful as those owed to the nobler influences. In years 
 gone by, the oratory of the statesman in the senate has 
 been kindled by semi-intoxication, when his noble utter- 
 ances were set down by his auditors to the inspiration of 
 patriotism. 
 
 It is this very resemblance which deceives the drunkard : 
 he is led on by his feelings as well as by his imagination. 
 It is not the sensual pleasure of the glutton that fascinates 
 him ; it is those fine thoughts and those quickened sensi- 
 bilities which were excited in that state, which he is power- 
 less to produce out of his own being, or by his own powers, 
 and which he expects to reproduce by the same means. The 
 experience of our first parent is repeated in him : at the 
 very moment when he expects to find himself as the gods, 
 knowing good and evil, he discovers that he is unexpectedly 
 degraded, his health wrecked, and his heart demoralized. 
 Hence it is almost as often the finer as the baser spirits of 
 our race which are found the victims of such indulgence. 
 Many will remember while I speak, the names of the gifted 
 of their species, the degraded men of genius who were the 
 victims of these deceptive influences. The half-inspired 
 painter, poet, musician, who began by soothing opiates to 
 
Spiritual Excitement 145 
 
 calm the over-excited nerves, or stimulate the exhausted 
 brain, who mistook the sensation for somewhat half divine, 
 and became morally and physically wrecks of manhood, 
 degraded even in their mental conceptions. It was, there- 
 fore, no mere play of words which induced the apostle to 
 bring these two things together. That which might else 
 seem irreverent appears to have been a deep knowledge of 
 human nature; he contrasts, because his rule was to 
 distinguish two things which are easily mistaken for each 
 other. 
 
 2. The second point of resemblance is the necessity of 
 intense feeling. We have fulness fulness, it may be, pro- 
 duced by outward stimulus, or else by an inpouring of the 
 Spirit. What we want is life, " more life, and fuller." To 
 escape from monotony, to get away from the life of mere 
 routine and habits, to feel that we are alive with more of 
 surprise and wakefulness in our existence. To have less of 
 the gelid, torpid, tortoise-like existence. " To feel the years 
 before us." To be consciously existing. 
 
 Now this desire lies at the bottom of many forms of life 
 which are apparently as diverse as possible. It constitutes 
 the fascination of the gambler's life : money is not what he 
 wants were he possessed of thousands to-day, he would risk 
 them all to-morrow but it is that being perpetually on the 
 brink of enormous wealth and utter ruin, he is compelled to 
 realize at every moment the possibility of the extremes of 
 life. Every moment is one of feeling. This, too, constitutes 
 the charm of all those forms of life in which the gambling 
 feeling is predominant where a sense of skill is blended 
 with a mixture of chance. If you ask the statesman why it 
 is, that possessed as he is of wealth, he quits his princely 
 home for the dark metropolis, he would reply " That he 
 loves the excitement of a political existence." It is this, too, 
 which gives to the warrior's and the traveller's existence such 
 peculiar reality; and it is this in a far lower form which 
 stimulates the pleasure of a fashionable life which sends 
 the votaries of the world in constant round from the 
 capital to the watering place, and from the watering place 
 VOL. i. K 
 
146 Spiritual Excitement 
 
 to the capital ; what they crave for is the power of feeling 
 intensely. 
 
 Now the proper and natural outlet for this feeling is the 
 life of the Spirit. What is religion but fuller life ? To live 
 in the Spirit, what is it but to have keener feelings and 
 mightier powers to rise into a higher consciousness of life ? 
 What is religion's self but feeling ? The highest form of 
 religion is charity. Love is of God, and he that loveth is 
 born of God, and knoweth God. This is an intense feeling, 
 too intense to be excited, profound in its calmness, yet it 
 rises at times in its higher flights into that ecstatic life which 
 glances intuitively through ages in a moment. These are 
 the pentecostal hours of our existence, when the Spirit 
 comes as a mighty rushing wind, in cloven tongues of fire, 
 filling the soul with God. 
 
 II. The dissimilarity or contrast in St. Paul's idea. The 
 one fulness begins from without, the other from within. 
 The one proceeds from the flesh and then influences the 
 emotions. The other reverses this order. Stimulants, like 
 wine, inflame the senses, and through them set the imagina- 
 tions and feelings on fire; and the law of our spiritual 
 being is, that that which begins with the flesh, sensualizes 
 the Spirit whereas that which commences in the region of 
 the Spirit, spiritualizes the senses, in which it subsequently 
 stirs emotion. But the misfortune is that men mistake this 
 law of their emotions ; and the fatal error is, when having 
 found spiritual feelings existing in connection, and associated 
 with, fleshly sensations, men expect by the mere irritation of 
 the emotions of the frame to reproduce those high and 
 glorious feelings. You might conceive the recipients of the 
 Spirit on the day of Pentecost acting under this delusion ; 
 it is conceivable that having observed certain bodily phe- 
 nomena for instance, incoherent utterances and thrilled 
 sensibilities co-existing with those sublime spiritualities 
 they might have endeavoured, by a repetition of those 
 incoherencies, to obtain a fresh descent of the Spirit. In 
 fact, this was exactly what was tried in after ages of the 
 
Spiritual Excitement 147 
 
 Church. In those events of church history which are 
 denominated revivals, in the camp of the Methodist and 
 the Ranter, a direct attempt was made to arouse the 
 emotions by exciting addresses, and vehement language. 
 Convulsions, shrieks, and violent emotions, were produced, 
 and the unfortunate victims of this mistaken attempt to 
 produce the cause by the effect, fancied themselves, and 
 were pronounced by others, converted. Now the misfortune 
 is, that this delusion is the more easy from the fact that the 
 results of the two kinds of causes resemble each other. 
 You may galvanize the nerve of a corpse till the action of a 
 limb startles the spectator with the appearance of life. It 
 is not life, it is only a spasmodic hideous mimicry of life. 
 Men having seen that the spiritual is always associated with 
 forms, endeavour by reproducing the forms, to recall spirit- 
 uality ; you do produce thereby a something that looks like 
 spirituality, but it is a resemblance only. The worst case of 
 all occurs in the department of the affections. That which 
 begins in the heart ennobles the whole animal being, but 
 that which begins in the inferior departments of our being 
 is the most entire degradation and sensualizing of the soul. 
 
 Now it is from this point of thought that we learn to 
 extend the apostle's principle. Wine is but a specimen of 
 a class of stimulants. All that begins from without belongs 
 to the same class. The stimulus may be afforded by almost 
 any enjoyment of the senses. Drunkenness may come from 
 anything wherein is excess ; from over-indulgence in society, 
 in pleasure, in music, and in the delight of listening to 
 oratory, nay, even from the excitement of sermons and 
 religious meetings. The prophet tells us of those who are 
 drunken, and not with wine. 
 
 The other point 6f difference is one of effect. Fulness 
 of the Spirit calms ; fulness produced by excitement satiates 
 and exhausts. They who know the world of fashion tell us 
 that the tone adopted there is, either to be, or to affect to 
 be, sated with enjoyment, to be proof against surprise, to 
 have lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have all keen- 
 ness of wonder gone. That which ought to be men's 
 
148 Spiritual Excitement 
 
 shame becomes their boast unsusceptibility of any fresh 
 emotion. 
 
 Whether this be real or affected, matters not ; it is, in 
 truth, the real result of the indulgence of the senses. The 
 law is this : the " crime of sense is avenged by sense which 
 wears with time ; " for it has been well remarked that the 
 terrific punishment attached to the habitual indulgence of 
 the senses is, that the incitements to enjoyment increase in 
 proportion as the power of enjoyment fades. 
 
 Experience at last forbids even the hope of enjoyment ; 
 the sin of the intoxicated soul is loathed, detested, abhorred ; 
 yet it is done. The irritated sense, like an avenging fury, 
 goads on with a restlessness of craving, and compels a 
 reiteration of the guilt though it has ceased to charm. 
 
 To this danger our own age is peculiarly exposed. In 
 the earlier and simpler ages, the need of keen feeling finds 
 a natural and safe outlet in compulsory exertions. For 
 instance, in the excitement of real warfare, and in the 
 necessity of providing the sustenance of life, warlike habits 
 and healthy labour stimulate, without exhausting life. But 
 in proportion as civilisation advances, a large class of the 
 community are exempted from the necessity of these, and 
 thrown upon a life of leisure. Then it is that artificial life 
 begins, and artificial expedients become necessary to sharpen 
 the feelings amongst the monotony of existence ; every 
 amusement and all literature become more pungent in their 
 character ; life is no longer a thing proceeding from powers 
 within^ but sustained by new impulses from without. 
 
 There is one peculiar form of this danger to which I 
 would specially direct your attention. There is one nation 
 in Europe which, more than any other, has been subjected 
 to these influences. In ages of revolution, nations live 
 fast ; centuries of life are passed in fifty years. In such a 
 state, individuals become subjected more or less to the 
 influences which are working around them. Scarcely an 
 enjoyment or a book can be met with which does not 
 bear the impress of this intensity. Now, the particular 
 danger to which I allude is French novels, French 
 
Spiritual Excitement 149 
 
 romances, and French plays. The overflowings of that 
 cup of excitement have reached our shores. I do not say 
 that these works contain anything coarse or gross better if 
 it were so : evil which comes in a form of grossness is not 
 nearly so dangerous as that which comes veiled in graceful- 
 ness and sentiment. Subjects which are better not touched 
 upon at all are discussed, examined, and exhibited in all 
 the seductive forms of imagery. You would be shocked at 
 seeing your son in a fit of intoxication; yet, I say it 
 solemnly, better that your son should reel through the 
 streets in a fit of drunkenness, than that the delicacy of 
 your daughter's mind should be injured, and her imagina- 
 tion inflamed with false fire. Twenty-four hours will 
 terminate the evil in the one case. Twenty-four hours will 
 not exhaust the effects of the other; you must seek the 
 consequences at the end of many, many years. I speak 
 that which I do know ; and if the earnest warning of one 
 who has seen the dangers of which he speaks realized, can 
 reach the heart of one Christian parent, he will put a ban 
 on all such works, and not suffer his children's hearts to be 
 excited by a drunkenness which is worse than that of wine. 
 For the worst of it is, that the men of our time are not yet 
 alive to this growing evil; they are elsewhere in their 
 studies, counting-houses, professions not knowing the 
 food, or rather poison, on which their wives' and daughters' 
 intellectual life is sustained. It is precisely those who are 
 most unfitted to sustain the danger, whose feelings need 
 restraint instead of spur, and whose imaginations are 
 inflammable, that are specially exposed to it. 
 
 On the other hand, spiritual life calms while it fills. 
 True it is that there are pentecostal moments when such 
 life reaches the stage of ecstasy. But these were given to 
 the Church to prepare her for suffering, to give her martyrs 
 a glimpse of blessedness, which might sustain them 
 afterwards in the terrible struggles of death. True it is 
 that there are pentecostal hours when the soul is surrounded 
 by a kind of glory, and we are tempted to make taber- 
 nacles upon the Mount, as if life were meant for rest ; but 
 
150 Spiritual Excitement 
 
 out of that very cloud there comes a voice telling of the 
 Cross, and bidding us descend into the common world 
 again to simple duties and humble life. This very principle 
 seems to be contained in the text. 
 
 The apostle's remedy for this artificial feeling is 
 "Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns, and 
 spiritual songs." 
 
 Strange remedy ! Occupation fit for children too 
 simple far for men : as astonishing as the remedy prescribed 
 by the prophet to Naaman to wash in simple water, and 
 be clean; yet therein lies a very important truth. In 
 ancient medical phraseology, herbs possessed of healing 
 natures were called simples : in God's laboratory, all things 
 that heal are simple all natural enjoyments all the 
 deepest are simple too. At night, man fills his banquet- 
 hall with the glare of splendour which fevers as well as 
 fires the heart; and at the very same hour, as if by 
 intended contrast, the quiet stars of God steal forth, 
 shedding, together with the deepest feeling, the profoundest 
 sense of calm. One from whose knowledge of the sources 
 of natural feeling there lies almost no appeal, has said that 
 to him, 
 
 " The meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. " 
 
 This is exceedingly remarkable in the life of Christ. No 
 contrast is more striking than that presented by the 
 thought, that that deep and beautiful life was spent in the 
 midst of mad Jerusalem. Remember the Son of man 
 standing quietly in the porches of Bethesda, when the 
 streets all around were filled with the revelry of innumer- 
 able multitudes, who had come to be present at the annual 
 feast. Remember Him pausing to weep over his country's 
 doomed metropolis, unexcited, while the giddy crowd 
 around Him were shouting " Hosannas to the Son of 
 David ! " Remember Him in Pilate's judgment-hall, meek, 
 self-possessed, standing in the serenity of Truth, while all 
 around Him was agitation agitation in the breast of 
 
Worldliness 151 
 
 Pilate, hatred in the bosom of the Pharisees, consternation 
 in the heart of the disciples. 
 
 And this, in truth, is what we want : we want the vision 
 of a calmer and simpler Beauty, to tranquillize us in the 
 midst of artificial tastes we want the draught of a purer 
 spring to cool the flame of our excited life ; we want, in 
 other words, the Spirit of the Life of Christ, simple, natural, 
 with power to calm and soothe the feelings which it rouses : 
 the fulness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate ' 
 
 WORLDLINESS 
 
 I JOHN ii. 15-17. " If any man love the world, the love of the Father 
 is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and 
 the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of 
 the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he 
 that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 
 
 RELIGION differs from morality in the value which it 
 places on the affections. Morality requires that an act 
 be done on principle. Religion goes deeper, and inquires 
 the state of the heart. The Church of Ephesus was 
 unsuspected in her orthodoxy, and unblemished in her 
 zeal : but to the ear of him who saw the apocalyptic vision, 
 a voice spake, " I have somewhat against thee in that thou 
 has left thy first love." 
 
 In the eye of Christianity he is a Christian who loves 
 the Father. He who loves the world may be in his way a 
 good man, respecting whose eternal destiny we pronounce 
 no opinion : but one of the Children of the Kingdom he is 
 not. 
 
 Now, the boundary lines of this love of the world, or 
 worldliness, are exceedingly difficult to define. Bigotry 
 pronounces many things wrong which are harmless : laxity 
 permits many which are by no means innocent : and it is a 
 
152 Worldliness 
 
 question perpetually put, a question miserably perplexing to 
 those whose religion consists more in avoiding that which 
 is wrong than in seeking that which is right, what is 
 Worldliness? 
 
 To that question we desire to find to-day an answer in 
 the text ; premising this, that our object is to put ourselves 
 in possession of principles. For otherwise we shall only 
 deal with this matter as empirics ; condemning this and 
 approving that by opinion, but on no certain and intel- 
 ligible ground we shall but float on the unstable sea of 
 opinion. 
 
 We confine ourselves to two points. 
 
 I. The nature of the forbidden world. 
 II. The reason for which it is forbidden. 
 
 I. The nature of the forbidden world. 
 
 The first idea suggested by " the world " is this green 
 earth, with its days and nights, its seasons, its hills and its 
 valleys, its clouds and brightness. This is not the world 
 the love of which is prohibited; for, to forbid the love 
 of this would be to forbid the love of God. 
 
 There are three ways in which we learn to know Him. 
 First, by the working of our minds. Love, Justice, Tender- 
 ness : if we would know what they mean in God, we must 
 gain the conception from their existence in ourselves. But 
 inasmuch as humanity is imperfect in us, if we were to learn 
 of God only from His image in ourselves, we should run 
 the risk of calling the evil good, and the imperfect divine. 
 Therefore He has given us, besides this, the representation 
 of Himself in Christ, where is found the meeting-point of 
 the Divine and the human, and in whose Life the character 
 of Deity is reflected as completely as the sun is seen in the 
 depth of the still, untroubled lake. 
 
 But there is a third way still, in which we attain the idea 
 of God. This world is but manifested Deity God shown 
 to eye, and ear, and sense. This strange phenomenon of 
 a world, what is it ? All we know of it all we know of 
 
Worldliness 153 
 
 matter is, that it is an assemblage of Powers which pro- 
 duce in us certain sensations : but what those Powers are in 
 themselves we know not. The sensation of colour, form, 
 weight, we have ; but what it is which gives those sensations 
 in the language of the schools, what is the Substratum 
 which supports the accidents or qualities of Being we 
 cannot tell. Speculative Philosophy replies, It is but our 
 ownselves becoming conscious of themselves. We, in our 
 own being, are the cause of all phenomena. Positive 
 philosophy replies, What the Being of the world is we 
 cannot tell, we only know what it seems to us. Phenomena 
 appearance beyond this we cannot reach. Being itself 
 is, and for ever must be, unknowable. Religion replies, 
 that something is God. The world is but manifested Deity. 
 That which lies beneath the surface of all Appearance, the 
 cause of all Manifestation, is God. So that to forbid the 
 love of all this world, is to forbid the love of that by which 
 God is known to us. The sounds and sights of this lovely 
 world are but the drapery of the robe in which the Invisible 
 has clothed Himself. Does a man ask what this world is, 
 and why man is placed in it? It was that the invisible 
 things of Him from the creation of the world might be 
 clearly seen. Have we ever stood beneath the solemn 
 vault of heaven, when the stars were looking down in their 
 silent splendour, and not felt an overpowering sense of His 
 eternity ? When the white lightning has quivered in the sky, 
 has that told us nothing of Power, or only something of 
 electricity ? Rocks and mountains, are they here to give us 
 the idea of material massiveness, or to reveal the conception 
 of the Strength of Israel ? When we take up the page of past 
 history, and read that wrong never prospered long, but that 
 nations have drunk one after another the cup of terrible 
 retribution, can we dismiss all that as the philosophy of 
 history, or shall we say that through blood, and war, and 
 desolation, we trace the footsteps of a presiding God, and 
 find evidence that there sits at the helm of this world's 
 affairs, a strict, and rigorous, and most terrible justice ? To 
 the eye that can see to the heart that is not paralyzed, 
 
154 Worldliness 
 
 God is here. The warnings which the Bible utters against 
 the things of this world bring no charge against the glorious 
 world itself. The world is the glass through which we see 
 the Maker. But what men do is this : They put the dull 
 quicksilver of their own selfishness behind the glass, and so 
 it becomes not the transparent medium through which 
 God shines, but the dead opaque which reflects back 
 ourselves. Instead of lying with open eye and heart to 
 receive ', we project ourselves upon the world and give. So 
 it gives us back our own false feelings and nature. There- 
 fore it brings forth thorns and thistles. Therefore it grows 
 weeds weeds to us. Therefore the lightning burns with 
 wrath, and the thunder mutters vengeance. By all which it 
 comes to pass that the very Manifestation of God has 
 transformed itself the lust of the flesh, and the lust of 
 the eye, and the pride of life : and all that is in the world 
 is no longer of the Father, but is of the world. 
 
 By the world, again, is sometimes meant the men that 
 are in the world. And thus the command would run 
 Love not men, but love God. It has been so read. The 
 Pharisees read it so of old. The property which natural 
 affection demanded for the support of parents upon that 
 they wrote "Corban," a gift for God, and robbed men that 
 they might give to God. Yet no less than this is done 
 whenever human affection is called idolatry. As if God 
 were jealous of our love, in the human sense of jealousy. 
 As if we could love God the more by loving man the less. 
 As if it were not by loving our brother whom we have seen, 
 that we approximate towards the love of God whom we 
 have not seen. This is but the cloak for narrowness of 
 heart. Men of withered affections excuse their lovelessness 
 by talking largely of the affection due to God. Yet, like the 
 Pharisees, the love on which Corban is written is never 
 given to God, but really retained for self. 
 
 No, let a man love his neighbour as himself. Let him 
 love his brother sister wife with all the intensity of his 
 heart's affection. This is not St. John's forbidden world. 
 
 Again. By the world is often understood the worldly 
 
Worldliness 155 
 
 occupation, trade, or profession, which a man exercises. 
 And, accordingly, it is no uncommon thing to hear this 
 spoken of as something which, if not actually anti-religious, 
 is, so far as it goes, time taken away from the religious life. 
 But when the man from whom the legion has been expelled, 
 asked Jesus for the precepts of a religious existence, the 
 reply sent him back to home. His former worldliness had 
 consisted in doing his worldly duties ill his future re- 
 ligiousness was to consist in doing those same duties better. 
 A man's profession or trade is not only not incompatible 
 with religion (provided it be a lawful one) it is his religion. 
 And this is true even of those callings which at first sight 
 appear to have in them something hard to reconcile with 
 religiousness. For instance, the profession of a lawyer. 
 He is a worldling in it if he use it for some personal greed, 
 or degrade it by chicanery. But in itself it is an occupation 
 which sifts right from wrong ; which, in the entangled web 
 of human life, unwinds the meshes of error. He is by pro- 
 fession enlisted on the side of the Right directly connected 
 with God, the central point of Justice and Truth. A nobler 
 occupation need no man desire than to be a fellow-worker 
 with God. Or take the soldier's trade in this world 
 generally a trade of blood, and revenge, and idle licentious- 
 ness. Rightly understood, what is it? A soldier's whole 
 life, whether he will or not, is an enunciation of the greatest 
 of religious truths, the voluntary sacrifice of one for the sake 
 of many. In the detail of his existence, how abundant are 
 the opportunities for the voluntary recognition of this. 
 Opportunities such as that when the three strong men brake 
 through the lines of the enemy to obtain the water for their 
 sovereign's thirst opportunities as when that same heroic 
 sovereign poured the untasted water on the ground, and 
 refused to drink because it was his soldiers' lives he could 
 not drink at such a price. Earnestness in a lawful calling is 
 not worldliness. A profession is the sphere of our activity. 
 There is something sacred in work. To work in the ap- 
 pointed sphere is to be religious as religious as to pray. 
 This is not the forbidden world. 
 
156 
 
 Worldliness 
 
 Now to define what worldliness is. Remark, first, that it 
 is determined by the spirit of a life, not the objects with 
 which the life is conversant. It is not the " flesh," nor the 
 u eye," nor " life," which are forbidden, but it is the lust of 
 the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It is 
 not this earth nor the men who inhabit it nor the sphere of 
 our legitimate activity, that we may not love ; but the way in 
 which the love is given which constitutes worldliness. Look 
 into this a little closer. The lust of the flesh. Here is 
 affection for the outward : Pleasure, that which affects the 
 senses only : the flesh, that enjoyment which comes from 
 the emotions of an hour, be it coarse or be it refined. The 
 pleasure of wine or the pleasure of music, so far as it is 
 only a movement of the flesh. Again, the lust of the eye. 
 Here is affection for the transient, for the eye can only 
 gaze on form and colour and these are things that do not 
 last. 
 
 Once more the pride of life. Here is affection for the 
 unreal. Men's opinion the estimate which depends upon 
 wealth, rank, circumstances. Worldliness then consists in 
 these three things : Attachment to the Outward attach- 
 ment to the Transitory attachment to the Unreal : in oppo- 
 sition to love for the Inward, the Eternal, the True : and the 
 one of these affections is necessarily expelled by the other. 
 If a man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 
 But let a man once feel the power of the kingdom that is 
 within, and then the love fades of that emotion, whose life 
 consists only in the thrill of a nerve, or the vivid sensation of 
 a feeling : he loses his happiness and wins his blessedness. 
 Let a man get but one glimpse of the King in his beauty, 
 and then the forms and shapes of things here are but the 
 types of an invisible loveliness : types which he is content 
 should break and fade. Let but a man feel truth that 
 goodness is greatness that there is no other greatness and 
 then the degrading reverence with which the titled of this 
 world bow before wealth, and the ostentation with which the 
 rich of this world profess their familiarity with title : all the 
 pride of life, what is it to him ? The love of the Inward 
 
Worldliness 157 
 
 Everlasting, Real the love, that is, of the Father, annihi- 
 lates the love of the world. 
 
 II. We pass to the reasons for which the love of the 
 world is forbidden. 
 
 The first reason assigned is, that the love of the world is 
 incompatible with the love of God. If any man love the 
 world, the love of the Father is not in him. Now what we 
 observe in this is, that St. John takes it for granted that we 
 must love something. If not the love of the Father, then of 
 necessity the love of the world. Love misplaced, or love 
 rightly placed you have your choice between these two : 
 you have not your choice between loving God or nothing. 
 No man is sufficient for himself. Every man must go out of 
 himself for enjoyment. Something in this universe besides 
 himself there must be to bind the affections of every man. 
 There is that within us which compels us to attach ourselves 
 to something outward. The choice is not this Love, or be 
 without love. You cannot give the pent-up steam its choice 
 of moving or not moving. It must move one way or the 
 other : the right way or the wrong way. Direct it rightly, 
 and its energy rolls the engine-wheels smoothly on their 
 track : block up its passage, and it bounds away, a thing of 
 madness and ruin. Stop it you cannot ; it will rather burst. 
 So it is with our hearts. There is a pent-up energy of love, 
 gigantic for good or evil. Its right way is in the direction 
 of our Eternal Father : and then let it boil and pant as it 
 will, the course of the man is smooth. Expel the love of 
 God from the bosom what then ? Will the passion that is 
 within cease to burn ? Nay. Tie the man down let there 
 be no outlet for his affections let him attach himself to 
 nothing, and become a loveless spirit in this universe, and 
 then there is what we call a broken heart : the steam bursts 
 the machinery that contains it. Or else let him take his 
 course, unfettered and free, and then we have the riot of 
 worldliness a man with strong affections thrown off the line, 
 tearing himself to pieces, and carrying desolation along with 
 him. Let us comprehend our own nature, ourselves, and our 
 
158 Worldliness 
 
 destinies. God is our Rest, the only One that can quench 
 the fever of our desire. God in Christ is what we want. 
 When men quit that, so that " the love of the Father is not 
 in them," then they must perforce turn aside : the nobler 
 heart to break with disappointment the meaner heart to 
 love the world instead, and sate and satisfy itself as best it 
 may on things that perish in the using. Herein lies the 
 secret of our being, in this world of the affections. This ex- 
 plains why our noblest feelings lie so close to our basest 
 why the noblest so easily metamorphose themselves into the 
 basest. The heart which was made large enough for God, 
 wastes itself upon the world. 
 
 The second reason which the apostle gives for not squander- 
 ing affection on the world is its transitoriness. Now this 
 transitoriness exists in two shapes. It is transitory in itself 
 the world passeth away. It is transitory in its power of 
 exciting desire the lust thereof passeth away. 
 
 It is a twice told tale that the world is passing away from 
 us, and there is very little new to be said on the subject. 
 God has written it on every page of his creation that there 
 is nothing here which lasts. Our affections change. The 
 friendships of the man are not the friendships of the boy. 
 Our very selves are altering. The basis of our being may 
 remain, but our views, tastes, feelings, are no more our 
 former self than the oak is the acorn. The very face of the 
 visible world is altering around us : we have the gray 
 mouldering ruins to tell of what was once. Our labourers 
 strike their ploughshares against the foundations of buildings 
 which once echoed to human mirth skeletons of men, to 
 whom life once was dear urns and coins that remind the 
 antiquarian of a magnificent empire. To-day the shot of 
 the enemy defaces and blackens monuments and venerable 
 temples, which remind the Christian that into the deep 
 silence of eternity, the Roman world, which was in its 
 vigour in the days of John, has passed away. And so things 
 are going. It is a work of weaving and unweaving. All 
 passes. Names that the world heard once in thunder are 
 scarcely heard at the end of centuries good or bad, they pass. 
 
Worldliness 159 
 
 A few years ago and we were not. A few centuries further, 
 and we reach the age of beings of almost another race. 
 Nimrod was the conqueror and scourge of his far-back age. 
 Tubal Cain gave to the world the iron which was the 
 foundation of every triumph of men over nature. We have 
 their names now. But the philologist is uncertain whether 
 the name of the first is real or mythical and the traveller 
 excavates the sand-mounds of Nineveh to wonder over the 
 records which he cannot decipher. Tyrant and benefactor, 
 both are gone. And so all things are moving on to the 
 last fire which shall wrap the world in conflagration, and 
 make all that has been the recollection of a dream. This 
 is the history of the world, and all that is in it. It passes 
 while we look at it. Like as when you watch the melting 
 tints of the evening sky purple-crimson, gorgeous gold, a 
 few pulsations of quivering light, and it is all gone : we 
 are such stuff as dreams are made of. 
 
 The other aspect of this transitoriness is, that the lust of 
 the world passeth away. By which the apostle seems to 
 remind us of that solemn truth that, fast as the world is 
 fleeting from us, faster still does the taste for its enjoyments 
 fleet : fast as the brilliancy fades from earthly things, faster 
 still does the eye become wearied of straining itself upon 
 them. 
 
 Now there is one way in which this takes place, by a 
 man becoming satiated with the world. There is something 
 in earthly rapture which cloys. And when we drink deep 
 of pleasure, there is left behind something of that loathing 
 which follows a repast on sweets. When a boy sets out in 
 life, it is all fresh freshness in feeling zest in his enjoy- 
 mentpurity in his heart. Cherish that, my young brethren, 
 while you can lose it, and it never comes again. It is not 
 an easy thing to cherish it, for it demands restraint in 
 pleasure, and no young heart loves that. Religion has only 
 calm, sober, perhaps monotonous pleasures to offer at first. 
 The deep rapture of enjoyment comes in after-life. And 
 that will not satisfy the young heart. Men will know what 
 pleasure is, and they drink deep. Keen delight feverish 
 
160 Worldliness 
 
 enjoyment that is what you long for : and these emotions 
 lose their delicacy and their relish, and will only come at 
 the bidding of gross excitements. The ecstasy which once 
 rose to the sight of the rainbow in the sky, or the bright 
 brook, or the fresh morning, comes languidly at last only in 
 the crowded midnight room, or the excitement of com- 
 mercial speculation, or beside the gaming-table, or amidst 
 the fever of politics. It is a spectacle for men and angels, 
 when a man has become old in feeling and worn out before 
 his time Know we none such among our own acquaint- 
 ance ? Have the young never seen those aged ones who 
 stand amongst them in their pleasures, almost as if to warn 
 them of what they themselves must come to at last ? Have 
 they never marked the dull and sated look that they cast 
 upon the whole scene, as upon a thing which they would 
 fain enjoy and cannot ? Know you what you have been 
 looking on ? A sated worldling one to whom pleasure 
 was rapture once, as it is to you now. Thirty years more, 
 that look and that place will be yours : and that is the way 
 the world rewards its veterans ; it chains them to it after 
 the " lust of the world " has passed away. 
 
 Or this may be done by a discovery of the unsatisfactori- 
 ness of the world. That is a discovery not made by every 
 man. But there are some at least who have learned it 
 bitterly, and that without the aid of Christ. Some there 
 are who would not live over this past life again even if it 
 were possible. Some there are who would gladly have done 
 with the whole thing at once, and exchange oh ! how joyfully 
 the garment for the shroud. And some there are who 
 cling to life, not because life is dear, but because the future is 
 dark, and they tremble somewhat at the thought of entering it. 
 Clinging to life is no proof that a man is still longing for 
 the world. We often cling to life the more tenaciously as 
 years go on. The deeper the tree has struck its roots into 
 the ground, the less willing is it to be rooted up. But 
 there is many a one who so hangs on just because he has 
 not the desperate hardihood to quit it, nor faith enough to 
 be " willing to depart." The world and he have under- 
 
Worldliness 161 
 
 stood each other. He has seen through it. He has ceased 
 to hope anything from it. The love of the Father is not 
 in him : but " the lust of the world " has passed away. 
 
 Lastly, A reason for unlearning the love of the world is 
 the solitary permanence of Christian action. In contrast 
 with the fleetingness of this world, the apostle tells us of 
 the stability of labour. " He that doeth the will of God 
 abideth for ever." And let us mark this. Christian life is 
 action : not a speculating not a debating : but a doing. 
 One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped 
 upon it. Feelings pass : resolves and thoughts pass : 
 opinions change. What you have done lasts lasts in you. 
 Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for 
 Christ, that and only that you are. " They rest from their 
 labours," saith the Spirit, " and their works do follow them." 
 If the love of the Father be in us, where is the thing done 
 which we have to show ? You think justly feel rightly yes 
 but your work. Produce it. Men of wealth men of 
 talent men of leisure : What are you doing in God's world 
 for God ? 
 
 Observe, however, to distinguish between the act and the 
 actor : It is not the thing done, but the Doer who lasts. 
 The thing done often is a failure. The cup given in the 
 name of Christ may be given to one unworthy of it : but 
 think ye that the love with which it was given has passed 
 away ? Has it not printed itself indelibly in the character 
 by the very act of giving ? Bless, and if the Son of peace 
 be there, your act succeeds : but if not, your blessing shall 
 return unto you again. In other words, the act may fail ; 
 but the doer of it abideth for ever. 
 
 We close this subject with two practical truths. 
 
 First of all, let us learn from earthly changefulness a 
 lesson of cheerful activity. The world has its way of look- 
 ing at all this but it is not the Christian's way. There has 
 been nothing said to-day that a worldly moralist has not 
 already said a thousand times far better. The fact is a 
 world-fact. The application is a Christian one. Every 
 man can be eloquent about the nothingness of time. 
 VOL. i. L 
 
1 62 Worldliness 
 
 But the application ! Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die ? That is one application. Let us sentimentalize 
 and be sad in this fleeting world, and talk of the instability 
 of human greatness, and the transitoriness of human 
 affection? Those are the only two applications the world 
 knows. They shut out the recollection and are merry : or 
 they dwell on it and are sad. Christian brethren, dwell on 
 it and be happy. This world is not yours : thank God, it is 
 not. It is dropping away from you like worn-out autumn 
 leaves ; but beneath it, hidden in it, there is another world 
 lying as the flower lies in the bud. That is your world, 
 which must burst forth at last into eternal luxuriance. All 
 you stand on, see, and love, is but the husk of something 
 better. Things are passing our friends are dropping off 
 from us : strength is giving way : our relish for earth is 
 going, and the world no longer wears to our hearts the 
 radiance that once it wore. We have the same sky above 
 us, and the same scenes around us ; but the freshness that 
 our hearts extracted from everything in boyhood, and the 
 glory that seemed to rest once on earth and life has faded 
 away for ever. Sad and gloomy truths to the man who is 
 going down to the grave with his work undone. Not sad to 
 the Christian ; but rousing, exciting, invigorating. If it be 
 the eleventh hour, we have no time for folding of the hands : 
 we will work the faster. Through the changefulness of life : 
 through the solemn tolling of the bell of Time, which tells 
 us that another, and another, and another, are gone before 
 us : through the noiseless rush of a world which is going 
 down with gigantic footsteps into nothingness. Let not the 
 Christian slack his hand from work : for he that doeth the 
 will of God may defy hell itself to quench his immortality. 
 
 Finally, The love of this world is only unlearned by the 
 love of the Father. It were a desolate thing, indeed, to 
 forbid the love of earth, if there were nothing to fill the 
 vacant space in the heart. But it is just for this purpose, 
 that a sublimer affection may find room, that the lower is to 
 be expelled. And there is only one way in which that 
 higher love is learned. The cross of Christ is the measure 
 
The Tongue 163 
 
 of the love of God to us, and the measure of the meaning 
 of man's existence. The measure of the love of God. 
 Through the death-knell of a passing universe, God seems at 
 least to speak to us in wrath. There is no doubt of what 
 God means in the cross. He means love. The measure of 
 the meaning of man's existence. Measure all by the cross. 
 Do you want success ? The cross is failure. Do you want 
 a name ? The cross is infamy. Is it to be gay and happy 
 that you live ? The cross is pain and sharpness. Do you 
 live that the will of God may be done, in you and by you 
 in life and death ? Then and only then the Spirit of the 
 cross is in you. When once a man has learned that, the 
 power of the world is gone ; and no man need bid him, in 
 denunciation or in invitation, not to love the world. He 
 cannot love the world : for he has got an ambition above 
 the world. He has planted his foot upon the Rock, and 
 when all else is gone, he at least abides for ever. 
 
 THE TONGUE 
 
 ST. JAMES iii. 5,6. "Even so the tongue is a little member, and 
 boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindJeth ! 
 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity : so is the tongue among 
 our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the 
 course of nature ; and it is set on fire of hell." 
 
 IN the development of Christian Truth, a peculiar office 
 was assigned to the Apostle James. 
 
 It was given to St. Paul to proclaim Christianity as the 
 spiritual law of liberty, and to exhibit Faith as the most 
 active principle within the breast of man. It was St. John's 
 to say that the deepest quality in the bosom of Deity is 
 Love ; and to assert that the life of God in man is Love. 
 It was the office of St. James to assert the majesty of 
 Moral Rectitude : his very name marked him out peculiarly 
 
164 The Tongue 
 
 for this office ; he was emphatically called, " the Just : " 
 integrity was his peculiar characteristic. A man singularly 
 honest, earnest, real. Accordingly, if you read through his 
 whole epistle, you will find it is, from first to last, one 
 continued vindication of the first principles of morality 
 against the semblances of religion. 
 
 He protested against the censoriousness which was 
 found connected with peculiar claims of religious feelings. 
 " If any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth 
 not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's 
 religion is vain." He protested against that spirit which 
 had crept into the Christian Brotherhood, truckling to the 
 rich, and despising the poor. "If ye have respect of 
 persons ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as 
 transgressors." He protested against that sentimental 
 fatalism which induced men to throw the blame of their 
 own passions upon God. " Let no man say, when he is 
 tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot tempt 
 to evil ; neither tempteth He any man." He protested 
 against that unreal religion of excitement which diluted the 
 earnestness of real religion in the enjoyment of listening. 
 " Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only ; deceiving 
 your own souls." He protested against that trust in the 
 correctness of theological doctrine which neglected the 
 cultivation of character. " What doth it profit, if a man 
 say that he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith 
 save him ? " 
 
 Read St. James's epistle through ; this is the mind 
 breathing through it all : all this talk about religion, 
 and spirituality words, words, words nay, let us have 
 realities. 
 
 It is well known that Luther complained of this epistle, 
 that it did not contain the Gospel ; for men who are 
 hampered by a system will say even of an inspired Apostle 
 that he does not teach the Gospel if their own favourite 
 doctrine be not the central subject of his discourse ; but 
 St. James's reply seems spontaneously to suggest itself to us. 
 The Gospel ! how can we speak of the Gospel, when the 
 
The Tongue 165 
 
 first principles of morality are forgotten? when Christians 
 are excusing themselves, and slandering one another ? How 
 can the superstructure of Love and Faith be built, when 
 the very foundations of human character Justice, Mercy, 
 Truth have not been laid? 
 
 i st. The license of the tongue. 
 
 2nd. The guilt of that license. 
 
 The first license given to the tongue is slander. I am 
 not, of course, speaking now of that species of slander 
 against which the law of libel provides a remedy, but of 
 that of which the Gospel alone takes cognisance ; for the 
 worst injuries which man can do to man, are precisely those 
 which are too delicate for law to deal with. We consider, 
 therefore, not the calumny which is reckoned such by the 
 moralities of an earthly court, but that which is found guilty 
 by the spiritualities of the courts of heaven; that is, the 
 mind of God. 
 
 Now observe, this slander is compared in the text to 
 poison "the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly 
 poison." The deadliest poisons are those for which no test 
 is known : there are poisons so destructive that a single 
 drop insinuated into the veins produces death in three 
 seconds, and yet no chemical science can separate that 
 virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic 
 particles of poison glittering palpably, and say, "Behold, 
 it is there ! " 
 
 In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the 
 smallest insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is 
 concentrated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that 
 the microscope cannot distinguish it, and yet so virulent 
 that it can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, 
 and convert day and night into restless misery. 
 
 In St. James's day, as now, it would appear that there 
 were idle men and idle women, who went about from house 
 to house, dropping slander as they went ; and yet you could 
 not take that slander and detect the venom there. You 
 could not evaporate the truth in the slow process of the 
 crucible, and then show the residuum of falsehood glittering 
 
i 66 The Tongue 
 
 and visible. You could not fasten upon any word or 
 sentence, and say that it was calumny ; for in order to 
 constitute slander it is not necessary that the word spoken 
 should be false half truths are often more calumnious than 
 whole falsehoods. It is not even necessary that a word 
 should be distinctly uttered ; a dropped lip, an arched 
 eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, an incre- 
 dulous expression of countenance, nay, even an emphatic 
 silence may do the work ; and when the light and trifling 
 thing which has done the mischief, has fluttered off, the 
 venom is left behind, to work and rankle, to inflame hearts, 
 to fever human existence, and to poison human society at 
 the fountain springs of life. Very emphatically was it said 
 by one whose whole being had smarted under such infliction, 
 " Adder's poison is under their lips." The second license 
 given to the tongue is in the way of persecution : " there- 
 with curse we men which are made after the similitude of 
 God." " We ! " men who bear the name of Christ curse 
 our brethren ! Christians persecute Christians. Thus even 
 in St. James's age that spirit had begun, the monstrous fact 
 of Christian persecution; from that day it has continued, 
 through long centuries up to the present time. The Church 
 of Christ assumed the office of denunciation, and except in 
 the first council, whose object was not to strain, but to relax 
 the bonds of brotherhood, not a council has met for eighteen 
 centuries which has not guarded each profession of belief 
 by the too customary formula, " If any man maintain other- 
 wise than this, let him be accursed.' 7 
 
 Myriad, countless curses have echoed through those long 
 ages : the Church has forgotten her Master's spirit and 
 called down fire from heaven. A fearful thought to con- 
 sider this as the spectacle on which the eye of God has 
 rested. He looks down upon the creatures he has made, 
 and hears everywhere the language of religious impreca- 
 tions, and who is proved right after all by curses? 
 
 The Church of Rome hurls her thunders against 
 Protestants of every denomination : the Calvinist scarcely 
 recognises the Arminian as a Christian : he who considers 
 
The Tongue 167 
 
 himself as the true Anglican, excludes from the Church of 
 Christ all but the adherents of his own orthodoxy ; every 
 small minister and congregation has its circle, beyond 
 which all are heretics ; nay, even among that sect which is 
 most lax as to the dogmatic forms of truth, we find the 
 Unitarian of the old school denouncing the spiritualism 
 of the new and rising school. 
 
 This is the state of things to which we are arrived. 
 Sisters of Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be 
 done by a Samaritan; ministers of the Gospel fling the 
 thunderbolts of the Lord ; ignorant hearers catch and 
 exaggerate the spirit, boys, girls, and women shudder as 
 one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who 
 adores the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, 
 struggles in the same life-battle, and all this because they 
 have been taught to look upon him as an enemy of God. 
 
 There is a class of religious persons against whom this 
 vehemence has been especially directed. No one who can 
 read the signs of the times can help perceiving that we are 
 on the eve of great changes, perhaps a disruption of the 
 Church of England. Unquestionably there has been a 
 large secession to the Church of Rome. 
 
 Now what has been the position of those who are about 
 to take this step ? They have been taunted with dishonest 
 reception of the wages of the Church ; a watch has been 
 set over them : not a word they uttered in private, or in 
 public, but was given to the world by some religious busy- 
 body ; there was not a visit which they paid, not a foolish 
 dress which they adopted, but became the subject of bitter 
 scrutiny and malevolent gossip. For years the religious 
 press has denounced them with a vehemence as virulent, 
 but happily more impotent than that of the Inquisition. 
 There has been an anguish and an inward struggle little 
 suspected, endured by men who felt themselves outcasts 
 in their own society, and naturally looked for a home 
 elsewhere. 
 
 We congratulate ourselves that the days of persecution 
 are gone by ; but persecution is that which affixes penalties 
 
i 68 The Tongue 
 
 upon views held^ instead of upon life led. Is persecution 
 only fire and sword? But suppose a man of sensitive 
 feeling says, The sword is less sharp to me than the 
 slander : fire is less intolerable than the refusal of sympathy ! 
 Now let us bring this home : you rejoice that the faggot 
 and the stake are given up; you never persecuted you 
 leave that to the wicked Church of Rome. Yes, you never 
 burned a human being alive you never clapped your hands 
 as the death-shriek proclaimed that the lion's fang had gone 
 home into the most vital part of the victim's frame ; but did 
 you never rob him of his friends ? gravely shake your head 
 and oracularly insinuate that he was leading souls to hell ? 
 chill the affections of his family ? take from him his good 
 name ? Did you never with delight see his Church placarded 
 as the Man of Sin, and hear the platform denunciations 
 which branded it with the spiritual abominations of the 
 Apocalypse ? Did you never find a malicious pleasure in 
 repeating all the miserable gossip with which religious 
 slander fastened upon his daily acts, his words, and even 
 his uncommunicated thoughts ? Did you never forget that 
 for a man to " work out his own salvation with fear and 
 trembling " is a matter difficult enough to be laid upon a 
 human spirit, without intruding into the most sacred 
 department of another's life that, namely, which lies 
 between himself and God? Did you never say that "it 
 was to be wished he should go to Rome," until at last life 
 became intolerable, until he was thrown more and more 
 in upon himself; found himself, like his Redeemer, in this 
 world alone, but unable, like his Redeemer, calmly to 
 repose upon the thought that his Father was with him? 
 Then a stern defiant spirit took possession of his soul, and 
 there burst from his lips, or heart, the wish for rest rest at 
 any cost, peace anywhere, if even it is to be found only in 
 the bosom of the Church of Rome ! 
 
 II. The guilt of this license. 
 
 The first evil consequence is the harm that a man does 
 himself: "so is the tongue among the members, that it 
 
The Tongue 169 
 
 defiles the whole body." It is not very obvious, in what 
 way a man does himself harm by calumny. I will take the 
 simplest form in which this injury is done; it effects a 
 dissipation of spiritual energy. There are two ways in 
 which the steam of machinery may find an outlet for its 
 force : it may work, and if so it works silently ; or it may 
 escape, and that takes place loudly, in air and noise. There 
 are two ways in which the spiritual energy of a man's soul 
 may find its vent : it may express itself in action, silently ; 
 or in words, noisily : but just so much of force as is thrown 
 into the one mode of expression, is taken from the other. 
 
 Few men suspect how much mere talk fritters away 
 spiritual energy, that which should be spent in action, 
 spends itself in words. The fluent boaster is not the 
 man who is steadiest before the enemy ; it is well said to 
 him that his courage is better kept till wanted. Loud 
 utterance of virtuous indignation against evil, from the 
 platform, or in the drawing-room, do not characterize the 
 spiritual giant : so much indignation as is expressed, has 
 found vent, is wasted, is taken away from the work of 
 coping with evil ; the man has so much less left. And 
 hence he who restrains that love of talk, lays up a fund of 
 spiritual strength. 
 
 With large significance, St. James declares, " If any man 
 offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, able also to 
 bridle the whole body." He is entire, powerful, because he 
 has not spent his strength. In these days of loud profes- 
 sion, and bitter, fluent condemnation, it is well for us to 
 learn the divine force of silence. Remember Christ in the 
 Judgment Hall, the very Symbol and Incarnation of 
 spiritual strength ; and yet when revilings were loud around 
 Him and charges multiplied, " He held His peace. " 
 
 2. The next feature in the guilt of calumny is its uncon- 
 trollable character : "the tongue can no man tame." You 
 cannot arrest a calumnious tongue, you cannot arrest the 
 calumny itself; you may refute a slanderer, you may trace 
 home a slander to its source, you may expose the author of 
 it, you may by that exposure give a lesson so severe as to 
 
170 The Tongue 
 
 make the repetition of the offence appear impossible ; but 
 the fatal habit is incorrigible : to-morrow the tongue is at 
 its work again. 
 
 Neither can you stop the consequences of a slander ; you 
 may publicly prove its falsehood, you may sift every atom, 
 explain and annihilate it, and yet, years after you had 
 thought that all had been disposed of for ever, the mention 
 of a name wakes up associations in the mind of some one 
 who heard the calumny, but never heard or never attended 
 to the refutation, or who has only a vague and confused 
 recollection of the whole, and he asks the question doubtfully, 
 "But were there not some suspicious circumstances con- 
 nected with him ? " It is like the Greek fire used in ancient 
 warfare, which burnt unquenched beneath the water, or like 
 the weeds which when you have extirpated them in one 
 place are sprouting forth vigorously in another spot, at the 
 distance of many hundred yards ; or, to use the metaphor of 
 St. James himself, it is like the wheel which catches fire as 
 it goes, and burns with a fiercer conflagration as its own 
 speed increases : " it sets on fire the whole course of nature " 
 (literally, the wheel of nature). You may tame the wild 
 beast, the conflagration of the American forest will cease 
 when all the timber and the dry underwood is consumed ; 
 but you cannot arrest the progress of that cruel word which 
 you uttered carelessly yesterday or this morning, which 
 you will utter, perhaps, before you have passed from this 
 church one hundred yards : that will go on slaying, poisoning, 
 burning beyond your own control, now and for ever. 
 
 3. The third element of guilt lies in the unnaturalness of 
 calumny. " My brethren, these things ought not so to be ; " 
 ought not that is, they are unnatural. That this is St. 
 James's meaning is evident from the second illustration 
 which follows: "Doth a fountain send forth at the same 
 place, sweet water and bitter?" "Can the fig tree, my 
 brethren, bear olive berries, or a vine, figs ? " 
 
 There is apparently in these metaphors little that affords 
 an argument against slander ; the motive which they suggest 
 would appear to many far-fetched and of small cogency; but 
 
The Tongue 171 
 
 to one who looks on this world as a vast whole, and who 
 has recognised the moral law as only a part of the great law 
 of the universe, harmoniously blending with the whole, 
 illustrations such as these are the most powerful of all 
 arguments. The truest definition of evil is that which 
 represents it as something contrary to nature : evil is evil, 
 because it is unnatural; a vine which should bear olive 
 berries, an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be 
 diseased; an unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an un- 
 natural act, is the strongest term of condemnation. It is this 
 view which Christianity gives of moral evil : the teaching of 
 Christ was the recall of man to nature, not an infusion of 
 something new into humanity. Christ came to call out all 
 the principles and powers of human nature, to restore the 
 natural equilibrium of all our faculties ; not to call us back 
 to our own individual selfish nature, but to human nature as 
 it was in God's ideal the perfect type which is to be realized 
 in us. Christianity is the regeneration of our nature, not 
 the destruction of one atom of it. 
 
 Now the nature of man is to adore God and to love what 
 is god-like in man. The office of the tongue is to bless. 
 Slander is guilty because it contradicts this ; yet even in 
 slander itself, perversion as it is, the interest of man in man 
 is still distinguishable. What is it but perverted interest 
 which makes the acts, and words, and thoughts of his 
 brethren, even in their evil, a matter of such strange delight ? 
 Remember, therefore, this contradicts your nature and your 
 destiny ; to speak ill of others makes you a monster in God's 
 world : get the habit of slander, and then there is not a 
 stream which bubbles fresh from the heart of nature, there 
 is not a tree that silently brings forth its genial fruit in its 
 appointed season, which does not rebuke and proclaim 
 you to be a monstrous anomaly in God's world. 
 
 4. The fourth point in guilt is the diabolical character of 
 slander ; the tongue is set on fire of hell. Now, this is no 
 mere strong expression no mere indignant vituperation it 
 contains deep and emphatic meaning. 
 
 The apostle means literally what he says, slander is 
 
172 The Tongue 
 
 diabolical. The first illustration we give of this is contained 
 in the very meaning of the word devil. " Devil," in the 
 original, means traducer or slanderer. The first introduction 
 of a demon spirit is found connected with a slanderous 
 insinuation against the Almighty, implying that His command 
 had been given in envy of His creature : "for God doth 
 know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be 
 opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." 
 
 In the magnificent imagery of the book of Job, the accuser 
 is introduced with a demoniacal and malignant sneer, attri- 
 buting the excellence of a good man to interested motives. 
 " Doth Job serve God for nought ? " There is another mode 
 in which the fearful accuracy of St. James's charge may be 
 demonstrated. There is one state only from which there 
 is no recovery there is but one sin that is unpardonable. 
 The Pharisees beheld the works of Jesus. They could not 
 deny that they were good works, they could not deny that 
 they were miracles of beneficence, but rather than acknow- 
 ledge that they were done by a good man through the 
 co-operation of a Divine spirit, they preferred to account for 
 them by the wildest and most incredible hypothesis ; they 
 were done by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of the 
 devils. It was upon this occasion that our Redeemer said 
 with solemn meaning, " For every idle word that men shall 
 speak, they shall give account in the day of judgment." It 
 was then that He said, for a word spoken against the Holy 
 Ghost there is no forgiveness in this world, or in the world 
 to come. 
 
 Our own hearts respond to the truth of this to call 
 evil, good, and good, evil to see the Divinest good, and 
 call it Satanic evil below this lowest deep there is not 
 a lower still. There is no cure for mortification of the flesh 
 there is no remedy for ossification of the heart. Oh ! 
 that miserable state, when to the jaundiced eye all good 
 transforms itself into evil, and the very instruments of health 
 become the poison of disease. Beware of every approach of 
 this ! Beware of that spirit which controversy fosters, of 
 watching only for the evil in the character of an antagonist I 
 
The Tongue 173 
 
 Beware of that habit which becomes the slanderer's life, 
 of magnifying every speck of evil and closing the eye to 
 goodness ! till at last men arrive at the state in which 
 generous, universal love (which is heaven) becomes impos- 
 sible, and a suspicious, universal hate takes possession of the 
 heart, and that is hell ! 
 
 There is one peculiar manifestation of this spirit to which 
 I desire specially to direct your attention. 
 
 The politics of the community are guided by the political 
 press. The religious views of a vast number are formed by 
 that portion of the press which is called religious ; it becomes, 
 therefore, a matter of deepest interest to inquire what is the 
 spirit of that "religious press." I am not asking you what 
 are the views maintained whether Evangelical, Anglican, 
 or Romish but what is the spirit of that fountain from 
 which the religious life of so many is nourished? 
 
 Let any man cast his eye over the pages of this portion 
 of the press it matters little to which party the newspaper 
 or the journal may belong he will be startled to find the 
 characters of those whom he has most deeply reverenced, 
 whose hearts he knows, whose integrity and life are above 
 suspicion, held up to scorn and hatred ; the organ of one 
 party is established against the organ of another, and it is 
 the recognised office of each to point out with microscopic 
 care the names of those whose views are to be shunned ; 
 and in order that these may be the more shrunk from, the 
 characters of those who hold such opinions are traduced 
 and vilified. There is no personality too mean there 
 is no insinuation too audacious or too false for the reck- 
 lessness of these daring slanderers. I do not like to use 
 the expression, lest it should appear to be merely one 
 of theatrical vehemence; but I say it in all seriousness, 
 adopting the inspired language of the Bible, and using it 
 advisedly and with accurate meaning, the spirit which guides 
 the " religious press " of this country, which dictates those 
 personalities, which prevents controversialists from seeing 
 what is good in their opponents, which attributes low 
 motives to account for excellent lives, and teaches men 
 
174 The Transitoriness of Life 
 
 whom to suspect, and shun, rather than point out where it 
 is possible to admire and love is a spirit " set on fire of 
 hell." 
 
 Before we conclude, let us get at the root of the matter. 
 " Man," says the Apostle James, " was made in the image of 
 God : " to slander man is to slander God ; to love what is 
 good in man is to love it in God. Love is the only remedy 
 for slander : no set of rules or restrictions can stop it ; we 
 may denounce, but we shall denounce in vain. The radical 
 cure of it is Charity " out of a pure heart and faith un- 
 feigned," to feel what is great in the human character ; to 
 recognise with delight all high, and generous, and beautiful 
 actions ; to find a joy even in seeing the good qualities of 
 your bitterest opponents, and to admit those qualities even 
 in those with whom you have least sympathy be it either 
 the Romanist or the Unitarian this is the only spirit which 
 can heal the love of slander and of calumny. If we would 
 bless God, we must first learn to bless man, who is made 
 in the image of God. 
 
 THE TRANSITORINESS OF LIFE 
 
 PSALM xc. 12. "So teach us to number our days, that we may 
 apply our hearts unto wisdom." 
 
 THIS is the key-note of the goth Psalm. It numbers 
 sadly the days and vicissitudes of human life ; but it does 
 this, not for the sake of mere sentiment, but rather for 
 practical purposes, that it may furnish a motive for a wiser 
 life of the heart. We know nothing of the Psalm except 
 that it was the composition of " Moses, the man of God." 
 It was written evidently in the wilderness, after years of 
 apparently fruitless wandering : its tone is that of deep 
 sadness retrospective; its images are borrowed from the 
 
The Transitoriness of Life 175 
 
 circumstances of the pilgrimage the mountain-flood, the 
 grass, the night-watch of an army on the march. 
 
 See here again, what is meant by inspiration. Observe 
 the peculiarly human character of this Psalm. Moses, " the 
 man of God," is commissioned not to tell truths superhuman, 
 but truths emphatically human. The utterances of this 
 Psalm are true to nature. Moses felt as we feel, only God 
 gave him a voice to interpret, and he felt more deeply than 
 all, what all in their measure feel. His inspiration lay not 
 in this, that he was gifted with legislative wisdom ; but 
 rather in this, that his bosom vibrated truly and healthfully 
 to every note of the still sad music of humanity. 
 
 We will consider 
 
 I. The feelings suggested by a retrospect of the past. 
 II. The right direction of those feelings. 
 
 i. The analogies of nature which correspond with human 
 life. All the images in this Psalm are suggested by the cir- 
 cumstances of their forty years' pilgrimage. Human life 
 felt to be like a flood the withering grass a sleep broken 
 the pain the start death the awakening a night- 
 watch a tale told, whose progress we watched with interest, 
 but of which when done, the impression alone remains, the 
 words are gone for ever. These are not artificial images, 
 but natural. They are not similes forced by the writer into 
 his service because of their prettiness, but similes which 
 forced themselves on him by their truthfulness. Now this 
 is God's arrangement. All things here are double. The 
 world without corresponds with the world within. No man 
 could look on a stream when alone by himself, and all noisy 
 companionship overpowering good thoughts was away, with- 
 out the thought that just so his own particular current of 
 life will fall at last into the " unfathomable gulf where all is 
 still." 
 
 No man can look upon a field of corn, in its yellow 
 ripeness, which he has passed weeks before when it was 
 green, or a convolvulus withering as soon as plucked, without 
 
176 The Transitoriness of Life 
 
 experiencing a chastened feeling of the fleetingness of all 
 earthly things. 
 
 No man ever went through a night-watch in the bivouac 
 when the distant hum of men and the random shot fired 
 told of possible death on the morrow ; or watched in a sick 
 room, when time was measured by the sufferer's breathing, 
 or the intolerable ticking of the clock, without a firmer grasp 
 on the realities of Life and Time. 
 
 So God walks His appointed rounds through the year : 
 and every season and every sound has a special voice for 
 the varying phases of our manifold existence. Spring 
 comes, when earth unbosoms her mighty heart to God, and 
 anthems of gratitude seem to ascend from every created 
 thing. It is something deeper than an arbitrary connection 
 which compels us to liken this to the thought of human 
 youth. 
 
 And then comes Summer, with its full stationariness, its 
 noontide heat, its dust, and toil, an emblem of ripe man- 
 hood. The interests of youth are gone by. The interest of 
 a near grave has not yet come. Its duty, is work. And 
 afterwards Autumn, with its mournfulness, its pleasant 
 melancholy, tells us of coming rest and quiet calm. 
 
 And now has come Winter again. This is the last Sunday 
 in the year. 
 
 It is not a mere preacher's voice performing an allotted 
 task. The call and correspondence are real. The young 
 have felt the melancholy of the last two months. With a 
 transient feeling even amounting to a luxury the prophetic 
 soul within us anticipates with sentiment the real gloom of 
 later life, and enables us to sympathize with what we have 
 not yet experienced. The old have felt it as no mere 
 romance an awful fact a correspondence between the 
 world without and the world within. We have all felt it in 
 the damp mist, in the slanting shadows, the dimmer skies, 
 the pale, watery glow of the red setting sun, shorn of half 
 its lustre. In the dripping of the woodland, in the limp 
 leaves trodden by heaps into clay, in the depressing north 
 wind, in the sepulchral cough of the aged man at the corner 
 
The Transitoriness of Life 177 
 
 of the street under the inclement sky, God has said to us, as 
 He said to Moses, " Pause, and number thy days, for they 
 are numbered. " 
 
 2. There is also a sense of loss. Every sentence tells us 
 that this Psalm was written after a long period was past. It 
 was retrospective, not prospective. Moses is looking back, 
 and his feeling is loss. How much was lost? Into that 
 flood of Time how much had fallen? Many a one con- 
 sumed, like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, by the wrath of 
 God. Many a Hebrew warrior stricken in battle, and over 
 him a sand-heap. And those who remembered these things 
 were old men " consuming" his strong expression, "their 
 strength in labour and sorrow." 
 
 Such is life! At first, all seems given. We are 
 acquiring associations sensations new startling feelings; 
 then comes the time when all give pleasure or pain by 
 association by touching some old chord, which vibrates 
 again. And, after that, all is loss something gone, and 
 more is going. Every day, every year this year, like all 
 others. Into that flood have fallen treasures that will not be 
 recovered. Intimacies have been dissolved that will not be 
 reunited. Affections cooled, we cannot say why. Many a 
 ship foundered, and the brave hearts in her will be seen no 
 more till the sea shall give up her dead. Many a British 
 soldier fallen before Asiatic pestilence, or beneath the 
 Kaffir assegai, above him the bush or jungle is waving green, 
 but he himself is now where the rifle's ring is heard, and the 
 sabre's glitter is seen, no more. Many a pew before me is 
 full, which at the beginning of the year was filled by others. 
 Many a hearthstone is cold, and many a chair is empty that 
 will not be filled again. We stand upon the shore of that 
 illimitable sea which never restores what has once fallen into 
 it ; we hear only the boom of the waves that throb over all 
 for ever. 
 
 3. There is, too, an apparent non-attainment. 
 A deeper feeling prevades this Psalm than that of mere 
 transitoriness : it is that of the impotency of human effort. 
 " We are consumed " perish aimlessly like the grass. No 
 VOL. i. M 
 
178 The Transitoriness of Life 
 
 man was more likely to feel this than Moses. After forty 
 years, the slaves he had emancipated were in heart slaves 
 still idolaters. He called them rebels, and shattered the 
 stone tables of the Law, in sad and bitter disappointment. 
 After forty years, the Promised Land was not reached. He 
 himself never entered it. 
 
 No wonder if Life appeared to him like a stream, not 
 merely transitory, but monotonous. Generation after 
 generation, and no change ; much lost, apparently nothing 
 was won. No prospect of better time had been. "The 
 thing that hath been, it is that which shall be." Here, too, 
 is one of the great trials of all retrospect the great trial of 
 all earthly life. 
 
 The cycles of God's providences are so large that our 
 narrow lives scarcely measure a visible portion of them. So 
 large that we ask, What can we effect ? Yet there is an 
 almost irrepressible wish in our hearts to see success attend 
 our labours, to enter the Promised Land in our own life. It 
 is a hard lesson : to toil in faith, and to die in the wilder- 
 ness, not having attained the promises, but only seeing them 
 afar off. 
 
 So in the past year, personally and publicly. Personally 
 we dare not say that we are better than we were at the 
 beginning. Can we say that we are purer ? more earnest ? 
 Has the lesson of the Cross been cut sharply into our hearts ? 
 Have we learnt only self-denial, to say nothing of self- 
 sacrifice ? And stagnation thus being apparently the case, 
 or, at most, but very slow progress, the thought comes, Can 
 such beings be destined for immortality ? 
 
 On a larger scale, the young cries of Freedom which 
 caused all generous hearts to throb with sympathy have been 
 stifled; itself trodden down beneath the iron heel of 
 despotism all over Europe and rendered frantic and 
 ferocious. Can we wish for its success ? Are there better 
 times coming at all ? So does the heart sicken over the 
 Past. Every closing year seems to say, Shall we begin the 
 old useless struggle over again ? Shall we tell again the oft- 
 told tale ? Are not these hopes, so high, a mockery to a 
 
The Transitoriness of Life 179 
 
 moth like man ? Is all but a mere illusion, a mil age in 
 the desert ? Are the waters of life and home ever near, yet 
 never reached, and the dry hot desert sand his only attain- 
 ment? 
 
 Let us consider 
 
 II. The right use of these sad suggestions. "So teach us 
 to number our days." 
 
 " So," because the days may be numbered, as in this 
 Psalm, and the heart not applied to wisdom. There are 
 two ways in which days may be numbered to no purpose. 
 
 1. That of the Epicurean "Let us eat and drink ; foi 
 to-morrow we die." 
 
 There is a strong tendency to reckless enjoyment when 
 the time is felt to be short, and religion does not exist 
 to restrain. 
 
 [For example. In times of plague. Athens. Milan. 
 London. Danger only stimulates men to seize to-day the 
 enjoyments which may not be theirs to-morrow. Again, at 
 the close of the last century, when the prisons of Paris 
 resounded with merriment, dance, and acting, a light and 
 trivial people, atheists at heart, could extract from an hourly 
 impending death no deeper lesson than this, " Let us eat and 
 drink ; for to-morrow we die."] 
 
 2. That of the sentimentalist. 
 
 It is no part of our Christian duty to think of decay in 
 an abject spirit. That which the demoniac in the Gospels 
 did, having his dwelling among the tombs, has sometimes 
 been reckoned the perfection of Christian unworldliness. 
 Men have looked on every joy as a temptation ; on every 
 earnest pursuit as a snare the skull and the hour-glass their 
 companions, curtaining life with melancholy, haunting it with 
 visions and emblems of mortality. This is not Christianity. 
 
 Rather it is so to dwell on thoughts of death " that we 
 may apply our hearts unto wisdom." If the history of these 
 solemn truths does not stimulate us to duty and action, 
 
180 The Transitoriness of Life 
 
 it were no duty to remind ourselves of them. Rather the 
 reverse. Better shut out such gloomy and useless thoughts. 
 But there is a way of dwelling amidst these facts which 
 solemnizes life instead of paralyzing it. He is best prepared 
 to meet change who sees it at a distance and contemplates 
 it calmly. Affections are never deepened and refined until 
 the possibility of loss is felt. Duty is done with all energy, 
 then only, when we feel, " The night cometh, when no man 
 can work," in all its force. 
 
 Two thoughts are presented to make this easier. 
 
 I. The Eternity of God. "Before the mountains were 
 brought forth, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art 
 God." With God there is no Time it is one Eternal Now. 
 This is made conceivable to us by a recent writer, who has 
 reminded us that there are spots in the universe which have 
 not yet been reached by the beams of light which shone from 
 this earth at its creation. If, therefore, we were able on an 
 angel's wings to reach that spot in a second or two of time, 
 the sight of this globe would be just becoming visible as it 
 was when chaos passed into beauty. A few myriads of miles 
 nearer, we should be met by the picture of the world in the 
 state of Deluge. And so, in turn, would present themselves 
 the spectacles of Patriarchal Life ; of Assyrian, Grecian, 
 Persian, Roman civilisation ; and, at a short distance from 
 the earth, the scenes of yesterday. Thus, a mere trans- 
 position in space would make the Past present. And thus, 
 all that we need, is the annihilation of Space to annihilate 
 Time. So that if we conceive a Being present everywhere 
 in Space, to Him all past events would be present. At the 
 remotest extremity of the angePs journey, he would see the 
 world's creation. At this extremity, the events that pass 
 before our eyes to-day. Omnipresence in Space is thus 
 equivalent to ubiquity in Time. And to such a being, 
 demonstrably, there would be no Time. All would be one 
 vast Eternal Now. 
 
 Apply this to practical wisdom. And this comes in to 
 correct our despondency. For with God, " a thousand years 
 are as one day." In the mighty cycles in which God works, 
 
The Transitoriness of Life 181 
 
 our years and ages are moments. It took fifteen hundred 
 years to educate the Jewish nation. We wonder that Moses 
 saw nothing in forty years. But the thought of the Eternity 
 of God was his consolation. And so, shall we give up our 
 hopes of heaven and progress, because it is so slow, when 
 we remember that God has innumerable ages before Him ? 
 Or our hopes for our personal improvement, when we 
 recollect our immortality in Him who has been our refuge 
 " from generation to generation ? " Or for our schemes and 
 plans which seem to fail, when we remember that they will 
 grow after us, like the grass above our graves ? 
 
 II. Next, consider the permanence of results. Read the 
 conclusion of the Psalm, " Prosper Thou the work of our 
 hands upon us, O prosper Thou our handiwork." It is a 
 bright conclusion for a Psalm so dark and solemn. To 
 correct the gloom that comes from brooding on decay, it is 
 good to remember that there is a sense in which nothing 
 perishes. 
 
 1. The permanence of our past seasons. Spring, summer, 
 autumn, are gone, but the harvest is gathered in. Youth and 
 manhood are passed, but their lessons have been learnt. The 
 past is ours only when it is gone. We do not understand the 
 meaning of our youth, our joys, our sorrows, till we look at 
 them from a distance. We lose them to get them back again 
 in a deeper way. The past is our true inheritance, which 
 nothing can take from us. Its sacred lessons, its pure affec- 
 tions, are ours for ever. Nothing but the annihilation of our 
 being could rob us of them. 
 
 2. The permanence of lost affections. Over the departed 
 ones Moses mourned. But take his own illustration " A 
 tale that is told." The sound and words are gone, but the 
 tale is indelibly impressed on the heart. So the lost are not 
 really lost. Perhaps they are ours only truly when lost 
 Their patience, love, wisdom, are sacred now, and live in us. 
 The Apostles and Prophets are more ours than they were the 
 property of the generation who saw their daily life " He 
 being dead, yet speaketh." 
 
 3. The permanence of our own selves " The beauty of 
 
1 82 The Transitoriness of Life 
 
 the Lord our God be upon us." Very striking this. We 
 survive. We are what the past has made us. The results 
 of the Past are ourselves. The perishable emotions, and 
 the momentary acts of bygone years, are the scaffolding on 
 which we build up the being that we are. As the tree is 
 fertilized by its own broken branches and fallen leaves, and 
 grows out by its own decay, so is the soul of man ripened 
 out of broken hopes and blighted affections. The law of 
 our Humanity is the common law of the universe. Life out 
 of death, Beauty out of decay. Not till those fierce young 
 passions, over the decay of which the old man grieves, have 
 been stilled into silence ; not until the eye has lost its fire, 
 and the cheek its hot flush, can "the Beauty of the Lord our 
 God be upon us " the Beauty of a spirit subdued, chastened, 
 and purified by loss. 
 
 4. Let us correct these sad thoughts by the thought of 
 the permanence of work. " Prosper thou the work of our 
 hands." Feelings pass, thoughts and imaginations pass: 
 Dreams pass : Work remains. Through eternity, what you 
 have done, that you are. They tell us that not a sound has 
 ever ceased to vibrate through space ; that not a ripple has 
 ever been lost upon the ocean. Much more is it true that 
 not a true thought, nor a pure resolve, nor a loving act, has 
 ever gone forth in vain. 
 
 So then will we end our year. 
 
 Amidst the solemn lessons taught to the giddy traveller 
 as he journeys on by a Nature hastening with gigantic foot- 
 steps down to a winter grave, and by the solemn tolling of 
 the bell of Time, which tells us that another, and another, 
 and another, is gone before us, we will learn, not the lesson 
 of the sensualistenjoy while you can : not that of the feeble 
 sentimentalist mourn, for nothing lasts : but that of the 
 Christian work cheerfully. 
 
 " The beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." 
 
 " O prosper Thou our handiwork." 
 
Views of Death 183 
 
 VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 ECCLES. ii. 15, 1 6. " Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to 
 the fool, so it happeneth even to me ; and why was I then more wise ? 
 Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no 
 remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever ; seeing that 
 which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how 
 dieth the wise man ? as the fool." 
 
 THIS is the inspired record of a peculiar view of life. 
 Paul, with his hopefulness of disposition, could not have 
 written it, neither could John, with his loving, trustful spirit. 
 We involuntarily ask who wrote this ? Was it written by a 
 Voluptuary ? a Sceptic ? or a Philosopher ? What sort of 
 man was it? We detect the sated voluptuary in the ex- 
 pressions of the first eleven verses of this chapter. We see 
 the sceptic in those of the iQth to the 22nd verses of the 
 third chapter. And the philosopher who in avoidance of 
 all extremes seeks the golden medium, is manifested in such 
 a maxim as "Be not righteous overmuch ; neither make 
 thyself overwise : why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be 
 not overmuch wicked, neither be thou foolish : why shouldest 
 thou die before thy time ? " Or was it written by a man 
 deeply and permanently inspired? 
 
 I believe it to have been written by none of these, or 
 rather by all four. It records different experiences of the 
 same mind different moods in which he viewed life in 
 different ways. It is difficult to interpret, or to separate 
 them ; for he says nothing by which they can be marked off 
 and made distinct from each other. Nowhere does Solomon 
 say, " I thought so then, but that was only a mood, a phase 
 of feeling that I have since seen was false, and is now 
 corrected by the experience and expressions of the present." 
 Here is, at first sight, nothing but inextricable confusion and 
 false conclusions. 
 
 The clue to the whole is to be found in the interpreter's 
 own heart. It is necessary to make these few preliminary 
 
1 84 Views of Death 
 
 remarks, as there is a tone of disappointment which runs 
 through all this book, which is not the tone of the Bible in 
 general. Two lines of thought are suggested by the text. 
 
 I. The mysterious aspect presented by death. 
 II. That state of heart in which it is mysterious no 
 longer. 
 
 I. To Solomon, in his mood of darkness, " there is no 
 remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever." 
 But it is not only in moods of dark perplexity, it is always 
 a startling thing to see the rapidity with which the wisest 
 and the best are forgotten. We plough our lives in water, 
 leaving no furrow ; two little waves break upon the shore, 
 but no further vestige of our existence is left. 
 
 [An accident happens to one of England's greatest sons ; 
 an announcement is made, which stagnates the blood in a 
 country's veins for a moment, and then all returns to its 
 former channel. (Tennyson.) "In Memoriam." "Let 
 them rave," he sleeps well. 
 
 Country church-yard yew-tree upheaving roots clasping 
 round bones a striking fact that vegetable life outlives and 
 outlasts animal life.] 
 
 There is something exquisitely painful in the thought 
 that we die out and are forgotten ; therefore it is, that in 
 the higher walks of life people solace themselves with the 
 hope of posthumous reputation ; they think, perhaps, that 
 then only their true worth will be known. That posthumous 
 reputation : when the eye is for ever closed, and the heart 
 for ever chilled here what matters it to him, whether 
 storms rage over his grave or men cherish his memory ? he 
 sleeps well. The commentators on this book have dis- 
 agreed among themselves about Solomon's character- 
 some have even doubted whether he was finally saved or 
 no. What matters it to him now what is said of him ? what 
 does it signify to him what posterity thinks of him ? And 
 
Views of Death 185 
 
 so with us all : to the ear that is turned into dust the voice 
 of praise or of censure is indifferent. One thing is certain. 
 God says, "Time is short, eternity is long." The solemn 
 tolling of the bell seems to cry, There is something to 
 be done ; there is much to be done ; do it ! and that 
 quickly ! 
 
 Then again, there are some who say, " What use is there 
 in doing anything in this world ? It scarcely seems worth 
 while, in this brief span of life, to try to do anything." A 
 man is placed in a high situation, receives an expensive 
 education at school and college, and a still more expensive 
 one of time and experience. And then, just when we think 
 all this ripe wisdom, garnered up from so many fields, shall 
 find its fullest use, we hear that all is over, he has passed 
 from among us, and then the question, hideous in its 
 suggestiveness, arises, " Why was he then more wise ? " 
 
 Asked from this world's stand-point if there is no life 
 beyond the grave, if there is no immortality, if all spiritual 
 calculation is to end here, why, then, the mighty work 
 of God is all to end in nothingness : but if this is only 
 a state of infancy, only the education for eternity, in which 
 the soul is to gain its wisdom and experience for higher 
 work, then to ask why such a mind is taken from us is just 
 as absurd as to question why the tree of the forest has its 
 first training in the nursery garden. This is but the nursery 
 ground, from whence we are to be transplanted into the 
 great forest of God's eternal universe. There is an absence 
 of all distinction between the death of one man and 
 another. The wise man dies as the fool with respect to 
 circumstances. 
 
 In our short-sightedness we think there ought to be a 
 certain correspondence between the man and the mode of 
 the man's death. We fancy the warrior should die upon the 
 battle-plain, the statesman at his post, the mean man should 
 die in ignorance ; but it is not so ordered in God's world, 
 for the wise man dies as the fool, the profligate man dies as 
 the hero. Sometimes for the great and wise is reserved a 
 contemptuous death, a mere accident ; then, he who is not 
 
1 86 Views of Death 
 
 satisfied unless the external reality corresponds with the 
 inward hope, imagines that circumstances such as these 
 cannot be ordained by Eternal Love, but rather by the 
 spirit of a mocking demon. 
 
 There is always a disappointment of our expectations. 
 No man ever lived whose acts were not smaller than himself. 
 We often look forward to the hour of death in which a man 
 shall give vent to his greater and nobler emotions. The 
 hour comes, and the wise man dies as the fool. In the 
 first place, in the case of holiness and humbleness, thoughts 
 of deep despondency and dark doubt often gather round 
 the heart of the Christian in his last hour, and the narrow- 
 minded man interprets that into God's forgetfulness ; or 
 else delirium shrouds all in silence ; or else there are only 
 commonplace words, words tender, touching, and gentle, 
 but in themselves nothing. Often there is nothing that 
 marks the great man from the small man. This is the 
 mystery of death. 
 
 II. It depends on causes within us and not without us. 
 Three things are said by the man of pleasure : i. That all 
 things happen by chance. 2. That there is nothing new. 
 3. That all is vanity and nothing is stable. 
 
 There is a strange special penalty which God annexes to 
 a life of pleasure : Everything appears to the worldly man 
 as a tangled web a maze to which there is no clue. 
 Another man says, "There is nothing new under the sun." 
 This is the state of the man who lives merely for excitement 
 and pleasure his heart becomes so jaded by excitement, 
 that the world contains nothing for him which can awaken 
 fresh or new emotions. Then, again, a third says, "All is 
 vanity/ This is the state of him who is afloat on the vast 
 ocean of excitement, and who feels that life is nothing but 
 a fluctuating, changeful, heartless scene. 
 
 Some who read the Book of Ecclesiastes think that there 
 is a sadness and uneasiness in its tone inconsistent with the 
 idea of inspiration, that it is nothing but a mere kaleido- 
 scope, with endlessly shifting moods. Therein lies the 
 
Views of Death 187 
 
 proof of its inspiration. Its value lies as much in the way 
 of warning as of precept. Live for yourself here live the 
 mere life of pleasure, and then all is confusion and bewilder- 
 ment of mind ; then the view which the mighty mind of 
 Solomon took, inspired by God, will be yours : life will 
 seem as nothing, and death a mere mockery. Be in harmony 
 with the mind of Christ, have the idea He had, be one with 
 Him, and you shall understand the machinery of this world. 
 "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." To 
 the humble pious heart there is no mystery. The world is 
 intelligible only to a mind in harmony with the Mind that 
 made it. Else all is confusion, unless you are in possession 
 of His idea, moved by His Spirit. 
 
 Hence, it lies in a pure heart much more than in a clear 
 intellect, to understand the mystery of life and death. 
 Solomon's wisdom has left us only a confused idea. 
 
 Turn we now from the views of Solomon to the Life of 
 the Son of Man. Men asked, "How knoweth this man 
 letters, having never learned ? " He gave a different expla- 
 nation of His wisdom. " My judgment is just ; because I 
 seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which 
 hath sent me." 
 
 He gives directions to us how to gain the same discern- 
 ment. " If any man will do His will, he shall know." 
 ***** 
 
 [One has just been taken from us to whom all eyes 
 turned Sir Robert Peel.] 
 
1 88 The Power of Sorrow 
 
 THE POWER OF SORROW 
 
 2 CORINTHIANS vii. 9, 10. "Now I rejoice, not that ye were 
 made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance : for ye were made 
 sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in 
 nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be 
 repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death." 
 
 THAT which is chiefly insisted on in this verse, is the 
 distinction between sorrow and repentance. To grieve over 
 sin is one thing, to repent of it is another. 
 
 The apostle rejoiced, not that the Corinthians sorrowed, 
 but that they sorrowed unto repentance. Sorrow has two 
 results ; it may end in spiritual life, or in spiritual death ; 
 and, in themselves, one of these is as natural as the other. 
 Sorrow may produce two kinds of reformation a transient, 
 or a permanent one an alteration in habits, which, origin- 
 ating in emotion, will last so long as that emotion continues, 
 and then, after a few fruitless efforts, be given up, a repent- 
 ance which will be repented of; or, again, a permanent 
 change, which will be reversed by no after thought a 
 repentance not to be repented of. Sorrow is, in itself, 
 therefore, a thing neither good nor bad ; its value depends 
 on the spirit of the person on whom it falls. Fire will 
 inflame straw, soften iron, or harden clay; its effects are 
 determined by the object with which it comes in contact. 
 Warmth developes the energies of life, or helps the progress 
 of decay. It is a great power in the hot-house, a great 
 power also in the coffin ; it expands the leaf, matures the 
 fruits, adds precocious vigour to vegetable life, and warmth 
 too ; developes, with tenfold rapidity, the weltering process 
 of dissolution. So too with sorrow. There are spirits in 
 which it developes the seminal principle of life ; there are 
 others in which it prematurely hastens the consummation 
 of irreparable decay. Our subject therefore is the twofold 
 power of sorrow. 
 
The Power of Sorrow 189 
 
 I. The fatal power of the sorrow of the world. 
 II. The life-giving power of the sorrow that is after God. 
 
 The simplest way in which the sorrow of the world works 
 death, is seen in the effect of mere regret for worldly loss. 
 There are certain advantages with which we come into the 
 world. Youth, health, friends, and sometimes property. 
 So long as these are continued we are happy ; and, because 
 happy, fancy ourselves very grateful to God. We bask in 
 the sunshine of his gifts, and this pleasant sensation of 
 sunning ourselves in life we call religion ; that state in which 
 we all are before sorrow comes, to test the temper of the 
 metal of which our souls are made, when the spirits are 
 unbroken and the heart buoyant, when a fresh morning is to 
 a young heart what it is to the skylark. The exuberant 
 burst of joy seems a spontaneous hymn to the Father of all 
 blessing, like the matin carol of the bird ; but this is not 
 religion : it is the instinctive utterance of happy feeling, 
 having as little of moral character in it, in the happy human 
 being, as in the happy bird. Nay more the religion which 
 is only sunned into being by happiness, is a suspicious 
 thing : having been warmed by joy, it will become cold 
 when joy is over; and then, when these blessings are 
 removed, we count ourselves hardly treated, as if we had 
 been defrauded of a right ; rebellious, hard feelings come ; 
 then it is you see people become bitter, spiteful, discon- 
 tented. At every step in the solemn path of life, something 
 must be mourned which will come back no more; the 
 temper that was so smooth becomes rugged and uneven ; 
 the benevolence that expanded upon all, narrows into an 
 ever dwindling selfishness we are alone; and then that 
 death-like loneliness deepens as life goes on. The course 
 of man is downwards, and he moves with slow and ever 
 more solitary steps, down to the dark silence the silence of 
 the grave. This is the death of heart ; the sorrow of the 
 world has worked death. 
 
 Again, there is a sorrow of the world, when sin is grieved 
 for in a worldly spirit. There are two views of sin : in one 
 
190 The Power of Sorrow 
 
 it is looked upon as wrong in the other, as producing loss 
 loss, for example, of character. In such cases, if char- 
 acter could be preserved before the world, grief would not 
 come ; but the paroxysms of misery fall upon our proud 
 spirit when our guilt is made public. The most distinct 
 instance we have of this is in the life of Saul. In the midst 
 of his apparent grief, the thing still uppermost was that he 
 had forfeited his kingly character : almost the only longing 
 was, that Samuel should honour him before his people. 
 And hence it comes to pass, that often remorse and anguish 
 only begin with exposure. Suicide takes place, not when 
 the act of wrong is done, but when the guilt is known, and 
 hence, too many a one becomes hardened who would other- 
 wise have remained tolerably happy; in consequence of 
 which we blame the exposure, not the guilt ; we say, if it had 
 been hushed up, all would have been well ; that the servant 
 who robbed his master was ruined by taking away his char- 
 acter ; and that if the sin had been passed over, repentance 
 might have taken place, and he might have remained a 
 respectable member of society. Do not think so. It is 
 quite true that remorse was produced by exposure, and that 
 the remorse was fatal ; the sorrow which worked death arose 
 from that exposure, and so far exposure may be called 
 the cause: had it never taken place, respectability, and 
 comparative peace, might have continued; but outward 
 respectability is not change of heart. 
 
 It is well known that the corpse has been preserved for 
 centuries in the iceberg, or in antiseptic peat; and that 
 when atmospheric air was introduced to the exposed surface, 
 it crumbled into dust. Exposure worked dissolution, but it 
 only manifested the death which was already there ; so with 
 sorrow, it is not the living heart which drops to pieces, or 
 crumbles into dust, when it is revealed. Exposure did not 
 work death in the Corinthian sinner, but life. 
 
 There is another form of grief for sin, which the apostle 
 would not have rejoiced to see ; it is when the hot tears 
 come from pride. No two tones of feeling, apparently 
 similar, are more unlike than that in which Saul exclaimed 
 
The Power of Sorrow 191 
 
 " I have played the fool exceedingly," and that in which the 
 Publican cried out, " God be merciful to me a sinner." 
 The charge of folly brought against oneself only proves that 
 we feel bitterly for having lost our own self-respect. It is a 
 humiliation to have forfeited the idea which a man had 
 formed of his own character to find that the very excellence 
 on which he prided himself, is the one in which he has 
 failed. If there were a virtue for which Saul was conspicuous, 
 it was generosity ; yet it was exactly in this point of gener- 
 osity in which he discovered himself to have failed, when he 
 was overtaken on the mountain, and his life spared by the 
 very man whom he was hunting to the death, with feelings 
 of the meanest jealousy. Yet there was no real repentance 
 there ; there was none of that in which a man is sick of 
 state and pomp. Saul could still rejoice in regal splendour, 
 go about complaining of himself to the Ziphites, as if he 
 was the most ill-treated and friendless of mankind ; he was 
 still jealous of his reputation, and anxious to be well thought 
 of. Quite different is the tone in which the Publican, who 
 felt himself a sinner, asked for mercy. He heard the con- 
 tumelious expression of the Pharisee, "this Publican." 
 With no resentment, he meekly bore it as a matter naturally 
 to be taken for granted " he did not so much as lift up his 
 eyes to heaven ; " he was as a worm which turns in agony, 
 but not revenge, upon the foot which treads it into the dust. 
 Now this sorrow of Saul's, too, works death : no merit 
 can restore self-respect ; when once a man has found him- 
 self out, he cannot be deceived again. The heart is as a 
 stone : a speck of canker corrodes and spreads within. 
 What on this earth remains, but endless sorrow, for him who 
 has ceased to respect himself, and has no God to turn to ? 
 
 II. The divine power of sorrow. 
 
 i. It works repentance. By repentance is meant, in 
 Scripture, change of life, alteration of habits, renewal of 
 heart. This is the aim and meaning of all sorrow. The 
 consequences of sin are meant to wean from sin. The 
 penalty annexed to it is, in the first instance, corrective, not 
 
192 The Power of Sorrow 
 
 penal. Fire burns the child, to teach it one of the truths of 
 this universe the property of fire to burn. The first time 
 it cuts its hand with a sharp knife, it has gained a lesson 
 which it never will forget. Now, in the case of pain, this 
 experience is seldom, if ever, in vain. There is little chance 
 of a child forgetting that fire will burn, and that sharp steel 
 will cut ; but the moral lessons contained in the penalties 
 annexed to wrong-doing are just as truly intended, though 
 they are by no means so unerring in enforcing their applica- 
 tion. The fever in the veins and the headache which 
 succeed intoxication, are meant to warn against excess. On 
 the first occasion they are simply corrective; in every 
 succeeding one they assume more and more a penal character 
 in proportion as the conscience carries with them the sense 
 of ill desert. 
 
 Sorrow, then, has done its work when it deters from evil ; 
 in other words, when it works repentance. In the sorrow of 
 the world, the obliquity of the heart towards evil is not 
 cured ; it seems as if nothing cured it : heartache and trials 
 come in vain ; the history of life at last is what it was at 
 first. The man is found erring where he erred before. The 
 same course, begun with the certainty of the same desperate 
 end which has taken place so often before. 
 
 They have reaped the whirlwind, but they will again sow 
 the wind. Hence, I believe, that life-giving sorrow is less 
 remorse for that which is irreparable, than anxiety to save 
 that which remains. The sorrow that ends in death hangs 
 in funeral weeds over the sepulchres of the past. Yet the 
 present does not become more wise. Not one resolution is 
 made more firm, nor one habit more holy. Grief is all. 
 Whereas sorrow avails only when the past is converted into 
 experience, and from failure lessons are learned which never 
 are to be forgotten. 
 
 2. Permanence of alteration; for after all, a steady re- 
 formation is a more decisive test of the value of mourning 
 than depth of grief. 
 
 ^ The susceptibility of emotion varies with individuals, 
 borne men feel intensely, others suffer less keenly; but this 
 
The Power of Sorrow 193 
 
 is constitutional, belonging to nervous temperament, rather 
 than moral character. This is the characteristic of the 
 divine sorrow, that it is a repentance "not repented of;" no 
 transient, short-lived resolutions, but sustained resolve. 
 
 And the beautiful law is, that in proportion as the 
 repentance increases the grief diminishes. " I rejoice," 
 says Paul, that " I made you sorry, though it were but for a 
 time" Grief for a time, repentance for ever. And few 
 things more signally prove the wisdom of this apostle than 
 his way of dealing with this grief of the Corinthian. He 
 tried no artificial means of intensifying it did not urge the 
 duty of dwelling upon it, magnifying it, nor even of gauging 
 and examining it. So soon as grief had done its work, the 
 apostle was anxious to dry useless tears he even feared lest 
 haply such an one should be swallowed up with overmuch 
 sorrow. " A true penitent/' says Mr. Newman, "never for- 
 gives himself." O false estimate of the gospel of Christ, and 
 of the heart of man ! A proud remorse does not forgive 
 itself the forfeiture of its own dignity ; but it is the very 
 beauty of the penitence which is according to God, that at 
 last the sinner, realizing God's forgiveness, does learn to 
 forgive himself. For what other purpose did St. Paul 
 command the Church of Corinth to give ecclesiastical 
 absolution, but in order to afford a symbol and assurance of 
 the Divine pardon, in which the guilty man's grief should 
 not be overwhelming, but that he should become reconciled 
 to himself? What is meant by the Publican's going down 
 to his house justified, but that he felt at peace with himself 
 and God ? 
 
 3. It is sorrow with God here called godly sorrow ; in 
 the margin, sorrowing according to God. 
 
 God sees sin not in its consequences but in itself; a 
 thing infinitely evil, even if the consequences were happiness 
 to the guilty instead of misery. So sorrow according to 
 God, is to see sin as God sees it. The grief of Peter was as 
 bitter as that of Judas. He went out and wept bitterly; 
 how bitterly none can tell but they who have learned to 
 look on sin as God does. But in Peter's grief there was an 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
194 The Victory of Faith 
 
 element of hope ; and that sprung precisely from this that 
 he saw God in it all. Despair of self did not lead to 
 despair of God. 
 
 This is the great, peculiar feature of this sorrow : God is 
 there, accordingly self is less prominent. It is not a 
 microscopic self-examination, nor a mourning in which self 
 is ever uppermost : my character gone ; the greatness of my 
 sin; the forfeiture of my salvation. The thought of God 
 absorbs all that. I believe the feeling of true penitence 
 would express itself in such words as these : There is a 
 righteousness, though I have not attained it. There is a 
 purity, and a love, and a beauty, though my life exhibits 
 little of it. In that I can rejoice. Of that I can feel the 
 surpassing loveliness. My doings ? They are worthless, I 
 cannot endure to think of them. I am not thinking of them, 
 I have something else to think of. There, there; in that 
 Life I see it. And so the Christian gazing not on what he 
 is, but on what he desires to be dares in penitence to say, 
 That Righteousness is mine : dares, even when the recol- 
 lection of his sin is most vivid and most poignant, to say 
 with Peter, thinking less of himself than of God, and 
 sorrowing as it were with God "Lord, Thou knowest all 
 things, Thou knowest that I love Thee." 
 
 THE VICTORY OF FAITH 
 
 i JOHN v. 4, 5." For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the 
 world : and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our 
 faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that 
 Jesus is the Son of God ? " 
 
 THERE are two words in the system of Christianity which 
 have received a meaning so new, and so emphatic, as to be 
 in a way peculiar to it, and to distinguish it from all other 
 systems of morality and religion ; these two words are the 
 
The Victory of Faith 195 
 
 World, and Faith. We find it written in Scripture that to 
 have the friendship of the world is to be the enemy of God 
 whereupon the question arises The World ? did not 
 God make the world ? Did He not place us in the world ? 
 Are we not to love what God has made ? And yet meet- 
 ing this distinctly we have the inspired record, " Love not 
 the World." 
 
 The object of the Statesman is, or ought to be, to 
 produce as much worldly prosperity as possible but 
 Christianity, that is Christ, speaks little of this world's 
 prosperity, underrates it nay, speaks of it at times as 
 infinitely dangerous. 
 
 The legislator prohibits crime the moralist transgression 
 the religionist sin. To these Christianity superadds a 
 new enemy the world and the things of the world. " If any 
 man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." 
 
 The other word used in a peculiar sense is Faith. It is 
 impossible for any one to have read his Bible ever so negli- 
 gently, and not to be aware that the word Faith, or the 
 grace of Faith, forms a large element in the Christian system. 
 It is said to work miracles, remove mountains, justify the 
 soul, trample upon impossibilities. Every apostle, in his 
 way, assigns to faith a primary importance. Jude tells us to 
 " build up ourselves in our most holy faith." John tells us 
 that " he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is the born 
 of God ; " and Paul tells us that, not by merit nor by works, 
 but by trust or reliance only, can be formed that state of 
 soul by which man is reckoned just before God. In these 
 expressions, the apostles only develope their Master's mean- 
 ing, when He uses such words as these, "All things are 
 possible to him that believeth : " " O thou of little faith, 
 wherefore didst thou doubt ? " 
 
 These two words are brought into diametrical opposition 
 in the text, so that it branches into a two-fold line of 
 thought. 
 
 I. The Christian's enemy, the world. 
 II. The victory of Faith. 
 
196 The Victory of Faith 
 
 In endeavouring to understand first what is meant by 
 the world, we shall feel that the mass of evil which is com- 
 prehended under this expression, cannot be told out in any 
 one sermon ; it is an expression used in various ways, some- 
 times meaning one thing, sometimes meaning another ; but 
 we will endeavour to explain its general principles and 
 these we will divide into three heads ; first, the tyranny of 
 the present; secondly, the tyranny of the sensual; and 
 lastly, the spirit of society. 
 
 i. The tyranny of the present. 
 
 "Christ," says the Apostle Paul, "hath redeemed us 
 from this present evil world ; " and again, " Demas hath 
 forsaken me, having loved this present world." 
 
 Let a stress be laid on the word present. Worldliness 
 is the attractive power of something present in opposition 
 to something to come. It is this rule and tyranny of the 
 present that constitutes Demas a worldly man. 
 
 In this respect, worldliness is the spirit of childhood 
 carried on into manhood. The child lives in the present 
 hour to-day to him is everything. The holiday promised at 
 a distant interval is no holiday at all it must be either now 
 or never. Natural in the child, and therefore pardonable, 
 this spirit, when carried on into manhood, is coarse is 
 worldliness. The most distinct illustration given us of this, 
 is the case of Esau. Esau came from the hunting-field 
 worn and hungry ; the only means of procuring the tempting 
 mess of his brother's pottage was the sacrifice of his father's 
 blessing, which in those ages carried with it a substantial 
 advantage ; but that birthright could be enjoyed only after 
 years -the pottage was present, near, and certain ; therefore 
 he sacrificed a future and higher blessing, for a present and 
 lower pleasure. For this reason Esau is the Bible type of 
 worldliness : he is called in Scripture a profane, that is, not 
 a distinctly vicious, but a secular or worldly person an 
 overgrown child; impetuous, inconsistent, not without 
 gleams of generosity and kindliness, but ever accustomed 
 to immediate gratification. 
 
 In this worldliness, moreover, is to be remarked the 
 
The Victory of Faith 197 
 
 gamester's desperate play. There is a gambling spirit in 
 human nature. Esau distinctly expresses this : "Behold 
 I am at the point to die, and what shall my birthright profit 
 me ? " He might never live to enjoy his birthright ; but the 
 pottage was before him, present, certain, there. 
 
 Now, observe the utter powerlessness of mere preaching 
 to cope with this tyrannical power of the present. Forty 
 thousand pulpits throughout the land this day, will declaim 
 against the vanity of riches, the uncertainty of life, the sin 
 of worldliness against the gambling spirit of human nature ; 
 I ask what impression will be produced by those forty thou- 
 sand harangues ? In every congregation it is reducible to 
 a certainty that, before a year is passed, some will be 
 numbered with the dead. Every man knows this, but he 
 thinks the chances are that it will not be himself; he feels 
 it a solemn thing for humanity generally but for himself 
 there is more than a chance. Upon this chance he plays 
 away life. 
 
 It is so with the child : you tell him of the consequences 
 of to-day's idleness but the sun is shining brightly, and he 
 cannot sacrifice to-day's pleasure, although he knows the 
 disgrace it will bring to-morrow. So it is with the intem- 
 perate man : he says " Sufficient unto the day is the evil, 
 and the good thereof; let me have my portion now." 
 
 So that one great secret of the world's victory lies in the 
 mighty power of saying " Now" 
 
 2. The tyranny of the sensual. 
 
 I call it tyranny, because the evidences of the senses 
 are all powerful, in spite of the protestations of the reason. 
 In vain you try to persuade the child that he is moving, and 
 not the trees which seem to flit past the carriage in vain 
 we remind ourselves that this apparently solid earth on which 
 we stand, and which seems so immoveable, is in reality 
 flying through the regions of space with an inconceivable 
 rapidity in vain philosophers would persuade us that the 
 colour which the eye beholds, resides not in the object 
 itself, but in our own perception ; we are victims of the 
 apparent, and the verdict of the senses is taken instead of 
 
198 The Victory of Faith 
 
 the verdict of the reason. Precisely so is it with the enjoy- 
 ments of the world. The man who died yesterday, and 
 whom the world called a successful man for what did he 
 live? He lived for this world he gained this world. 
 Houses, land, name, position in society all that earth could 
 give of enjoyments he had : he was the man of whom the 
 Redeemer said that his thoughts were occupied in planning 
 how to pull down his barns and build greater. We hear 
 men complain of the sordid love of gold, but gold is merely 
 a medium of exchange for other things : gold is land, titles, 
 name, comfort all that the world can give. If the world 
 be all, it is wise to live for gold. There may be some little 
 difference in the degree of degradation in different forms of 
 worldliness ; it is possible that the ambitious man who lives 
 for power is somewhat higher than he who merely lives for 
 applause, and he again may be a trifle higher than the mere 
 seeker after gold but after all, looking closely at the 
 matter, you will find that, in respect of the objects of their 
 idolatry, they agree in this, that all belong to the present. 
 Therefore, says the Apostle, all that is in the world " the 
 lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is 
 not of the Father but of the world," and are only various 
 forms of one great tyranny. And then when such a man is 
 at the brink of death, the words said to the man in our 
 Lord's parable must be said to him. "Thou fool, the houses 
 thou hast built, the enjoyments thou hast prepared ; and all 
 those things which have formed thy life for years when 
 thy soul is taken from them, what shall they profit thee ? " 
 
 3. The spirit of society. 
 
 The World has various meanings in Scripture ; it does 
 not always mean the Visible, as opposed to the Invisible ; 
 nor the Present, as opposed to the Future : it sometimes 
 stands for the secular spirit of the day the voice of society. 
 
 Our Saviour says, " If ye were of the world, the world 
 would love his own." The apostle says, " Be not conformed 
 to this world ; " and to the Gentiles he writes, " In time past 
 ye walked according to the course of this world, the spirit 
 which now worketh in the children of disobedience/' In 
 
The Victory of Faith 199 
 
 these verses, a tone, a temper, a spirit is spoken of. There 
 are two things the Church and the World two spirits per- 
 vading different bodies of men, brought before us in these 
 verses those called the Spirit-born, and those called the 
 world, which is to be overcome by the Spirit-born, as in the 
 text, " Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." 
 Let us understand what is meant by the Church of God. 
 When we speak of the Church we generally mean a society 
 to aid men in their progress God-wards ; but the Church of 
 God is by no means co-extensive in any age with that 
 organized institution which we call the Church ; sometimes 
 it is nearly co-extensive that is, nearly all on earth who 
 are born of God are found within its pale, nearly all who 
 are of the world are extraneous to it but sometimes the 
 born of God have been found distinct from the Institution 
 called the Church, opposed to it persecuted by it. The 
 Institution of the Church is a blessed ordinance of God, 
 organized on earth for the purpose of representing the 
 eternal Church and of extending its limits, but still ever 
 subordinate to it. 
 
 The Eternal Church is " the general assembly and church 
 of the first-born which are written in heaven ; " the selected 
 spirits of the Most High, who are struggling with the evil of 
 their day ; sometimes alone, like Elijah, and, like him, longing 
 that their work was done ; sometimes, conscious of their 
 union with each other. God is for ever raising up a succes- 
 sion of these His brave, His true, His good. Apostolical 
 succession, as taught sometimes, means simply this a 
 succession of miraculous powers flowing in a certain line. 
 The true apostolic succession is not a succession in a 
 hereditary line, or line marked by visible signs which men 
 can always identify, but a succession emphatically spiritual. 
 The Jews looked for a hereditary succession ; they thought 
 that because they were Abraham's seed, the spiritual 
 succession was preserved ; the Redeemer told them that 
 "God was able of those stones to raise up children unto 
 Abraham." Therefore is this ever a spiritual succession 
 in the hands of God alone ; and they are here called the 
 
2OO The Victory of Faith 
 
 God-born, coming into the world variously qualified ; some- 
 times baptized with the spirit which makes them, like James 
 and John, the " Sons of Thunder," sometimes with a milder 
 spirit, as Barnabas, which makes them "Sons of Consola- 
 tion," sometimes having their souls indurated into an ada- 
 mantine hardness, which makes them living stones rocks 
 like Peter, against which the billows of this world dash 
 themselves in vain, and against which the gates of hell shall 
 not prevail. But whether as apostles, or visitors of the 
 poor, or parents of a family, born to do a work on earth, to 
 speak a word, to discharge a mission which they themselves 
 perhaps do not know till it is accomplished these are the 
 Church of God the children of the Most High the noble 
 army of the Spirit-born ! Opposed to this stands the mighty 
 confederacy called the world. But beware of fixing on 
 individual men in order to stigmatize them as the world. You 
 may not draw a line and say " We are the sons of God, ye 
 are of the world." The world is not so much individual as 
 it is a certain spirit ; the course of this world is " the spirit 
 which now worketh in the children of disobedience." The 
 world and the Church are annexed as inseparably as the 
 elements which compose the atmosphere. Take the smallest 
 portion of it that you will in a cubic inch, the same pro- 
 portions are found as in a temple. In the ark there was 
 a Ham; in the small band of the twelve apostles there 
 was a Judas. 
 
 The spirit of the world is for ever altering impalpable ; 
 for ever eluding, in fresh forms, your attempts to seize it. In 
 the days of Noah, the spirit of the world was violence. In 
 Elijah's day it was idolatry. In the day of Christ it was 
 power concentrated and condensed in the government of 
 Rome. In ours, perhaps, it is the love of money. It enters 
 in different proportions into different bosoms; it is found 
 in a different form in contiguous towns ; in the fashionable 
 watering place, and in the commercial city : it is this thing 
 at Athens, and another in Corinth. This is the spirit of the 
 world a thing in my heart and yours : to be struggled 
 against, not so much in the case of others, as in the silent 
 
The Victory of Faith 201 
 
 battle to be done within our own souls. Pass we on now 
 to consider 
 
 II. The victory of faith. 
 
 Faith is a theological expression ; we are apt to forget 
 that it has any other than a theological import ; yet it is the 
 commonest principle of man's daily life, called in that region 
 prudence, enterprise, or some such name. It is in effect 
 the principle on which alone any human superiority can be 
 gained. Faith, in religion, is the same principle as faith in 
 worldly matters, differing only in its object : it rises through 
 successive stages. When, in reliance upon your promise, 
 your child gives up the half-hour's idleness of to-day for the 
 holiday of to-morrow, he lives by faith ; a future supersedes 
 the present pleasure. When he abstains from over-indul- 
 gence of the appetite, in reliance upon your word that the 
 result will be pain and sickness, sacrificing the present 
 pleasure for fear of future punishment, he acts on faith: 
 I do not say that this is a high exercise of faith ; it is a very 
 low one but it is faith. 
 
 Once more : The same motive of action may be carried 
 on into manhood ; in our own times two religious principles 
 have been exemplified in the subjugation of a vice. The 
 habit of intoxication has been broken by an appeal to the 
 principle of combination, and the principle of belief. Men 
 were taught to feel that they were not solitary strugglers 
 against the vice ; they were enrolled in a mighty army, 
 identified in principles and interests. Here was the prin- 
 ciple of the Church, association for reciprocated strength ; 
 they were thus taught the inevitable result of the indulgence 
 of the vice. The missionaries of temperance went through 
 the country contrasting the wretchedness and the degrada- 
 tion and the filth of drunkenness with the domestic comfort, 
 and the health, and the regular employment, of those who 
 were masters of themselves. So far as men believed this, 
 and gave up the tyranny of the present for the hope of the 
 future so far they lived by faith. Brethren, I do not say 
 that this was a high triumph for the principle of faith; 
 
2O2 The Victory of Faith 
 
 it was, in fact, little more than selfishness ; it was a high 
 future balanced against a low present ; only the preference 
 of a future and higher physical enjoyment to a mean and 
 lower one. Yet still to be ruled by this influence raises 
 a man in the scale of being : it is a low virtue, prudence, a 
 form of selfishness ; yet prudence is a virtue. The merchant, 
 who forecasts, saves, denies himself systematically, through 
 years, to amass a fortune, is not a very lofty being, yet he 
 is higher, as a man, than he who is sunk in mere bodily 
 gratifications. You would not say that the intemperate 
 man who has become temperate in order, merely, to gain 
 by that temperance honour and happiness is a great man, 
 but you would say he was a higher and a better man than 
 he who is enslaved by his passions, or than the gambler 
 who improvidently stakes all upon a moment's throw. The 
 worldly mother who plans for the advancement of a family, 
 and sacrifices solid enjoyments for a splendid alliance, is only 
 worldly wise, yet in that manoeuvring and worldly prudence 
 there is the exercise of a self-control which raises her above 
 the mere giddy pleasure-hunter of the hour ; for want of 
 self-control is the weakness of our nature to restrain, to 
 wait, to control present feeling with a large foresight, is 
 human strength. 
 
 Once more, instead of a faith like that of the child, 
 which over-leaps a few hours, or that of the worldly man, 
 which over-passes years, there may be a faith which 
 transcends the whole span of life, and, instead of looking 
 for temporal enjoyments, looks for rewards in a future 
 beyond the grave, instead of a future limited to time. 
 
 This is again a step. The child has sacrificed a day; 
 the man has sacrificed a little more. Faith has now reached 
 a stage which deserves to be called religious ; not that this, 
 however, is very grand ; it does but prefer a happiness here- 
 after to a happiness enjoyed here an eternal well-being 
 instead of a temporal well-being ; it is but prudence on a 
 grand scale another form of selfishness an anticipation 
 of infinite rewards instead of finite, and not the more noble 
 because of the infinitude of the gain : and yet this is what is 
 
The Victory of Faith 203 
 
 often taught as religion in books and sermons. We are told 
 that sin is wrong, because it will make us miserable here- 
 after. Guilt is represented as the short-sightedness which 
 barters for a home on earth a home in heaven. 
 
 In the text-book of ethics studied in one of our universi- 
 ties, virtue is defined as that which is done at the command 
 of God for the sake of an eternal reward. So, then, religion 
 is nothing more than a calculation of infinite and finite quan- 
 tities ; vice is nothing more than a grand imprudence ; and 
 heaven is nothing more than selfishness rewarded with 
 eternal well-being ! 
 
 Yet this, you will observe, is a necessary step in the 
 development of faith. Faith is the conviction that God is a 
 rewarder of them who diligently seek Him ; and there is a 
 moment in human progress when the anticipated rewards 
 and punishments must be of a Mahometan character the 
 happiness of the senses. It was thus that the Jews were 
 disciplined ; out of a coarse, rude, infantine state, they were 
 educated by rewards and punishments to abstain from 
 present sinful gratification : at first, the promise of the life 
 which now is, afterwards the promise of that which is to 
 come; but even then the rewards and punishments of a 
 future state were spoken of, by inspiration itself, as of an 
 arbitrary character ; and some of the best of the Israelites, 
 in looking to the recompense of reward, seemed to have 
 anticipated coarsely, recompense in exchange for duties 
 performed. 
 
 The last step is that which alone deserves to be called 
 Christian Faith " Who is he that overcometh but he that 
 believeth that Jesus is the Christ ? " The difference between 
 the faith of the Christian and that of the man of the world, 
 or the mere ordinary religionist, is not a difference in 
 mental operation, but in the object of the faith to be- 
 lieve that Jesus is the Christ is the peculiarity of Christian 
 faith. 
 
 The anticipated heaven of the Christian differs from the 
 anticipated heaven of any other man, not in the distinctness 
 with which its imagery is perceived, but in the kind of 
 
204 The Victory of Faith 
 
 objects which are hoped for. The apostle has told us the 
 character of heaven. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
 neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive 
 the things which God hath prepared for them that love 
 Him " which glorious words are sometimes strangely mis- 
 interpreted, as if the apostle merely meant rhetorically to 
 exalt the conception of the heavenly world, as of something 
 beyond all power to imagine or to paint. The apostle 
 meant something infinitely deeper : the heaven of God is 
 not only that which " eye hath not seen,' 7 but that which eye 
 can never see ; its glories are not of that kind at all which 
 can ever stream in forms of beauty on the eye, or pour 
 in melody upon the enraptured ear not such joys as 
 genius in its most gifted hour (here called " the heart of 
 man ") can invent or imagine : it is something which these 
 sensuous organs of ours never can appreciate bliss of 
 another kind altogether, revealed to the spirit of man by the 
 Spirit of God joys such as spirit alone can receive. Do 
 you ask what these are ? " The fruits of the Spirit are love, 
 joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
 ness, temperance." That is heaven, and therefore the 
 Apostle tells us that he alone who " believeth that Jesus is 
 the Christ,'' 7 and only he, feels that. What is it to believe 
 that Jesus is the Christ? that He is the Anointed One, 
 that His life is the anointed life, the only blessed life, the 
 blessed life divine for thirty years? Yes, but if so, the 
 blessed life still, continued throughout all eternity ; unless 
 you believe that, you do not believe that Jesus is the 
 Christ. 
 
 What is the blessedness that you expect ? to have the 
 joys of earth with the addition of the element of eternity ? 
 Men think that heaven is to be a compensation for earthly 
 loss : the saints are earthly-wretched here, the children of 
 this world are earthly-happy ; but that, they think, shall be 
 all reversed Lazarus, beyond the grave, shall have the 
 purple and the fine linen, and the splendour, and the 
 houses, and the lands which Dives had on earth : the one 
 had them for time, the other shall have them for eternity. 
 
The Victory of Faith 205 
 
 That is the heaven that men expect this earth sacrificed 
 now, in order that it may be re-granted for ever. 
 
 Nor will this expectation be reversed except by a 
 reversal of the nature. None can anticipate such a heaven 
 as God has revealed, except they that are born of the Spirit ; 
 therefore, to believe that Jesus is the Christ, a man must be 
 born of God. You will observe that no other victory over- 
 comes the world : for this is what St. John means by saying, 
 "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that 
 believeth that Jesus is the Christ ? " For then it comes to 
 pass that a man begins to feel, that to do wrong is hell ; and 
 that to love God, to be like God, to have the mind of Christ, 
 is the only heaven. Until this victory is gained, the world 
 retains its stronghold in the heart. 
 
 Do you think that the temperate man has overcome 
 the world, who, instead of the short-lived rapture of 
 intoxication, chooses regular employment, health, and pros- 
 perity ? Is it not the world in another form, which has his 
 homage ? Or do you suppose that the so-called religious 
 man is really the world's conqueror by being content to 
 give up seventy years of enjoyment in order to win 
 innumerable ages of the very same species of enjoyment ? 
 Has he not only made earth a hell, in order that earthly 
 things may be his heaven for ever? 
 
 Thus the victory of faith proceeds from stage to stage : 
 the first victory is, when the present is conquered by the 
 future ; the last, when the visible and sensual is despised 
 in comparison of the invisible and eternal. Then earth has 
 lost its power for ever ; for if all that it has to give be lost 
 eternally, the gain of faith is still infinite. 
 
206 Rest 
 
 REST 
 
 MATTHEW xi. 28, 29. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and 
 learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls." 
 
 No one, perhaps, ever read these words of Christ without 
 being struck with their singular adaptation to the necessities 
 of our nature. We have read them again and again, and we 
 have found them ever fresh, beautiful, and new. No man 
 could ever read them without being conscious that they 
 realized the very deepest and inmost want of his being. 
 We feel it is a convincing proof of His Divine mission that 
 He has thus struck the key-note of our nature, in offering 
 us Rest. 
 
 Ancient systems were busy in the pursuit after happiness. 
 Our modern systems of philosophy, science, ay, even of 
 theology, occupy themselves with the same thought ; telling 
 us alike that " happiness is our being's end and aim." But 
 it is not so that the Redeemer teaches. His doctrine is in 
 words such as these : "In the world ye shall have " not 
 happiness, but " tribulation ; but be of good cheer, I have 
 overcome the world." " In Me ye shall have peace/' Not 
 happiness the outward well-being so called in the world 
 but the inward rest which cometh from above. And He 
 alone who made this promise had a right to say, " Take my 
 yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly 
 in heart ; and ye shall find Rest unto your souls." He had 
 that Rest in Himself, and therefore could impart it ; but it 
 is often offered by men who have not the peace themselves. 
 There are some, high professors of religion too, who have never 
 known this real rest, and who at fifty, sixty, seventy years of 
 age, are as much slaves of the world as when they began, 
 desiring still the honours, the riches, or the pleasures it has 
 to give, and utterly neglecting the Life which is to come. 
 
 When we turn to the history of Christ we find this repose 
 
Rest 207 
 
 characterizing His whole existence. For example, first, in 
 the marriage feast at Cana, in Galilee. He looked not upon 
 that festivity with cynical asperity; He frowned not upon 
 the innocent joys of life : He made the wine to give enjoy- 
 ment, and yet singularly contrasted was His Human and His 
 Divine joy. His mother came to Him full of consternation, 
 and said, "They have no wine;" and the Redeemer, with 
 calm self-possession, replied, " Woman, what have I to do 
 with thee ? mine hour is not yet come." He felt not the 
 deficiency which He supplied. 
 
 We pass from the marriage feast to the scene of grief at 
 Bethany, and still there we find that singular repose. Those 
 words which we have seen to possess an almost magical 
 charm in soothing the grief of mourners congregated round 
 the coffin of the dead " I am the resurrection and the life : 
 he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
 live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never 
 die," speak they not of repose ? But in the requirements 
 of these great matters many men are not found wanting ; it 
 is when we come to the domesticities of their existence that 
 we see fretting anxiety comes upon their soul. Therefore 
 it is that we gladly turn to that home at Bethany where 
 He had gone for quiet rest. Let us hear His words on 
 the subject of every-day cares : " Martha, Martha, thou 
 art careful and troubled about many things ; but one thing 
 is needful." 
 
 We pass on from that, to the state in which a man is tried 
 the most : and if ever we can pardon words of restlessness 
 and petulance, it is when friends are unfaithful. Yet even 
 here there is perfect calmness. Looking steadfastly into the 
 future, He says, " Do ye now believe ? Behold, the hour 
 cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every 
 man to his own, and shall leave Me alone : and yet I am 
 not alone, because the Father is with Me." 
 
 Once more, we turn to the Redeemer's prayers. They 
 are characterized by a calmness singularly contrasted with 
 the vehemence which we sometimes see endeavouring to 
 lash itself into a greater fervour of devotion. The model 
 
208 Rest 
 
 prayer has no eloquence in it ; it is calm, simple, full of 
 repose. 
 
 We find this again in the lyth chapter of St. John. If 
 a man feels himself artificial and worldly, if a man feels 
 restless, we would recommend him to take up that chapter 
 as his best cure. For at least one moment, as he read it, 
 he would feel in his soul calmness and repose; it would 
 seem almost as if he were listening to the grave and solemn 
 words of a divine soliloquy. This was the Mind of Him 
 who gave this gracious promise, " Come unto Me all ye 
 that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 We repeat these words as a matter of course; but I ask, 
 Has that repose been found ? has this peace come to us ? 
 for it is not by merely repeating them over and over again 
 that we can enter into the deep Rest of Christ. 
 
 Our subject this day will be to consider, in the first place, 
 the false systems of rest which the world holds out, and to 
 contrast them with the true Rest of Christ. The first false 
 system proposed is the expectation of repose in the grave. 
 When the spirit has parted from the body after long-protracted 
 sufferings, we often hear it said that the release was a happy 
 one ; that there is a repose in the grave ; that there " the 
 wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." 
 Nay, at times, perhaps, we find ourselves hazarding a wish 
 that our own particular current of existence had come to 
 that point, when it should mingle with the vast ocean of 
 eternity. 
 
 There is in all this a kind of spurious Pantheism, a sort 
 of feeling that God is alike in every heart, that every man 
 is to be blessed at last, that death is but a mere transition 
 to a blessed sleep, that in the grave there is nothing but 
 quiet, and that there is no misery beyond it. And yet one 
 of the deepest thinkers of our nation suggests that there 
 may be dreams even in the sleep of death. There is an 
 illusion often in the way in which we think of death. The 
 countenance, after the spirit has departed, is so strangely 
 calm and meek that it produces the feeling of repose within 
 us, and we transfer our feelings to that of the departed spirit, 
 
Rest 209 
 
 and we fancy that body no longer convulsed with pain, those 
 features so serene and full of peace, do but figure the rest 
 which the spirit is enjoying; and yet, perhaps that soul, a 
 few hours ago, was full of worldliness, full of pride, full of 
 self-love. Think you that now that spirit is at rest that it 
 has entered into the Rest of Christ ? The repose that belongs 
 to the grave is not even a rest of the atoms composing our 
 material form. 
 
 There is another fallacious system of rest which would 
 place it in the absence of outward trial. This is the world's 
 peace. The world's peace ever consists in plans for the 
 removal of outward trials. There lies at the bottom of all 
 false systems of peace, the fallacy that if we can but produce 
 a perfect set of circumstances, then we shall have the perfect 
 man ; if we remove temptation, we shall have a holy being : 
 and so the world's rest comes to this merely happiness and 
 outward enjoyment. Ay, my Christian brethren, we carry 
 these anticipations beyond the grave, and we think the 
 Heaven of God is but like the Mahometan paradise a 
 place in which the rain shall beat on us no longer, and 
 the sun pour his burning rays upon us no more. Very 
 often it is only a little less sensual, but quite as ignoble as 
 that fabled by Mahomet. 
 
 The Redeemer throws all this aside at once as mere 
 illusion. He teaches just the contrary. He says, " Not as 
 the world giveth, give I unto you." The world proposes a 
 rest by the removal of a burden. The Redeemer gives Rest 
 by giving us the spirit and power to bear the burden. " Take 
 my yoke upon you, and learn of Me, and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls." Christ does not promise a rest of inaction, 
 neither that the thorns shall be converted into roses, nor 
 that the trials of life shall be removed. 
 
 To the man who takes this yoke up in Christ's spirit, 
 labour becomes blessedness rest of soul and rest of 
 body. 
 
 It matters not in what circumstances men are, whether 
 high or low, never shall the Rest of Christ be found in ease 
 and self-gratification ; never, throughout eternity, will there 
 VOL. i. o 
 
2io Rest 
 
 be rest found in a life of freedom from duty : the paradise 
 of the sluggard, where there is no exertion ; the heaven of 
 the coward, where there is no difficulty to be opposed, is 
 not the Rest of Christ. " Take my yoke upon you." Nay, 
 mO re if God could give us a heaven like that, it would be 
 but misery ; there can be no joy in indolent inaction. The 
 curse on this world is labour ; but to him who labours 
 earnestly and truly, it turns to blessedness. It is a curse 
 only to him who tries to escape from the work allotted to 
 him, who endeavours to make a compromise with duty. To 
 him who takes Christ's yoke, not in a spirit of selfish ease 
 and acquiescence in evil, but in strife and stern battle with 
 it, the Rest of Christ streams in upon his soul. 
 
 Many of us are drifting away from our moorings ; we are 
 quitting the old forms of thought, and faith, and life, and 
 are seeking for something other than what satisfied the last 
 generation : and this in a vain search for rest. 
 
 Many are the different systems of repose offered to us, 
 and foremost is that proposed by the Church of Rome. 
 Let us do her the justice, at all events, to allow that she 
 follows the Redeemer in this it is not happiness she 
 promises, she promises rest. The great strength of Roman- 
 ism lies in this, that she professes to answer and satisfy the 
 deep want of human nature for rest. She speaks of an 
 infallibility on which she would persuade men, weary of the 
 strain of doubt, to rest. It is not to the tales of miracles, 
 and of the personal interference of God Himself; but to 
 the promise of an impossibility of error to those within her 
 pale, that she owes her influence. And we say, better far 
 to face doubt and perplexity manfully ; to bear any yoke 
 of Christ's than be content with the rest of a Church's infal- 
 libility. There is another error among many Dissenters ; in 
 a different form, we find the same promise held out. One 
 says that if we will but rely on God's promise of election, 
 our soul must find repose. Another system tells us that the 
 penalty has fallen upon Christ, and that, if we believe, we 
 shall no longer suffer. Narrowing their doctrines into one, 
 as if all the want of the soul was to escape from punish- 
 
Rest 2 1 1 
 
 ment, they place before us this doctrine, and say, believe 
 that, and your soul shall find repose. 
 
 We have seen earnest men anxiously turning from view to 
 view, and yet finding their souls as far from rest as ever. 
 They remind us of the struggles of a man in fever, finding 
 no rest, tossing from side to side, in vain seeking a cool spot 
 on his pillow, and forgetting that the fever is within himself. 
 And so it is with us ; the unrest is within us : we foolishly 
 expect to find that tranquillity in outward doctrine, which 
 alone can come from the calmness of the soul. 
 
 We will not deny that there is a kind of rest to be found 
 in doctrine for a time : for instance, when a man, whose 
 only idea of evil is its penalty, has received the consoling 
 doctrine that there is no suffering for him to bear : but the 
 unrest comes again. Doubtless, the Pharisees and Saddu- 
 cees, when they went to the baptism of John, found some- 
 thing of repose there ; but think you that they went back to 
 their daily life with the Rest of Christ? We expect some 
 outward change will do that which nothing but the inward 
 life can do it is the life of Christ within the soul which 
 alone can give repose. There have been men in the Church 
 of Rome and in the ranks of Dissent who have indeed erred 
 grievously, but yet have lived a life of godliness. There 
 have been men in the true Church as Judas, who was a 
 member of the true Church who yet, step by step, have 
 formed in themselves the devil's nature : the Rest of Christ 
 pertains not to any one outward communion. 
 
 Before we go farther, let us understand what is meant by 
 this Rest ; let us look to those symbols about us in the 
 world of nature by which it is suggested. It is not the lake 
 locked in ice that suggests repose, but the river moving on 
 calmly and rapidly in silent majesty and strength. It is not 
 the cattle lying in the sun, but the eagle cleaving the air 
 with fixed pinions, that gives you the idea of repose com- 
 bined with strength and motion. In creation, the Rest of 
 God is exhibited as a sense of Power which nothing wearies. 
 When chaos burst into harmony, so to speak, God had Rest. 
 
 There are two deep principles in Nature in apparent 
 
2 1 2 Rest 
 
 contradiction one, the aspiration after perfection ; the 
 other, the longing after repose. In the harmony of these 
 lies the rest of the soul of man. There have been times 
 when we have experienced this. Then the winds have been 
 hushed, and the throb and the tumult of the passions have 
 been blotted out of our bosoms. That was a moment when 
 we were in harmony with all around, reconciled to ourselves 
 and to our God; when we sympathized with all that was 
 pure, all that was beautiful, all that was lovely. 
 
 This was not stagnation, it was fulness of life life in its 
 most expanded form, such as nature witnessed in her first 
 hour. This is life in that form of benevolence which 
 expands into the mind of Christ. And when this is work- 
 ing in the soul, it is marvellous how it distils into a man's 
 words and countenance. Strange and magical is the power 
 of that collect wherein we pray to God, "Who alone can 
 order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men, to grant 
 unto His people that they may love the thing which He 
 commands, and desire that which He promises; that so 
 among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our 
 hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be 
 found." There is a wondrous melody in that rhythm ; the 
 words are the echoes of the thought. The mind of the man 
 who wrote them was in repose all is ringing of rest. We 
 do not wonder when Moses came down from the mount on 
 which he had been bowing in adoration before the harmony 
 of God, that his face was shining with a brightness too 
 dazzling to look upon. 
 
 Our blessed Redeemer refers this Rest to meekness 
 and lowliness. There are three causes in men producing 
 unrest: i. Suspicion of God. 2. Inward discord. 3. Dis- 
 satisfaction with outward circumstances. For all these 
 Meekness is the cure. For the difficulty of understanding 
 this world, the secret is in meekness. There is no mystery 
 in God's dealings to the meek man, for " the secret of the 
 Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will show them 
 His covenant ; " there is no dread of God's judgments when 
 our souls are meek. 
 
Rest 213 
 
 The second cause of unrest is inward discord. We are 
 going on in our selfishness. We stand, as Balaam stood, 
 against the angel of the Lord, pressing on whilst the angel 
 of Love stands against us. Just as the dove struggling 
 against the storm, feeble and tired, is almost spent, until 
 gradually, as if by inspiration, it has descended to the 
 lower atmosphere, and so avoided the buffeting of the 
 tempests above, and is then borne on by the wind of 
 heaven in entire repose : like that is the rest of the soul. 
 While we are unreconciled, the Love of God stands against 
 us, and, by His Will, as long as man refuses to take up that 
 yoke of His, he is full of discord; he is like the dove 
 struggling with the elements aloft, as yet unconscious of 
 the calm there is below. And you must make no com- 
 promise in taking up the burden of the Lord. 
 
 Lastly, unrest comes from dissatisfaction with outward 
 circumstances. Part, perhaps the greater part of our misery 
 here, comes from over-estimation of ourselves. We are 
 slaves to vanity and pride. We think we are not in the 
 right station ; our genius has been misunderstood ; we have 
 been slighted, we have been passed by, we have not been re- 
 warded as we ought to have been. So long as we have this 
 false opinion of ourselves, it is impossible for us to realize 
 true rest. Sinners in a world of love, encircling you round 
 on every side ; blessings infinite upon infinite, and that 
 again multiplied by infinity : God loves you : God fills you 
 with enjoyment ! Unjustly, unfairly treated in this world of 
 love ! Once let a man know for himself what God is, and 
 then in that he will find peace. It will be the dawn of an 
 everlasting day of calmness and serenity. I speak to some 
 who have felt the darkness, the clouds, and the dreariness 
 of life, whose affections have been blighted, who feel a 
 discord and confusion in their being. To some to whom 
 the world, lovely though it be, is such that they are obliged 
 to say, " I see, I do not feel, how beautiful it is." 
 
 Brother men, there is Rest in Christ, because He is Love; 
 because His are the everlasting Verities of Humanity. God 
 does not cease to be the God of Love because men are 
 
214 Unity and Peace 
 
 low, sad, and desponding. In the performance of duty, in 
 meekness, in trust in God, is our rest our only rest. It is 
 not in understanding a set of doctrines ; not in an outward 
 comprehension of the " scheme of salvation," that rest and 
 peace are to be found, but in taking up in all lowliness and 
 meekness, the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 " For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth 
 eternity, whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy 
 place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, 
 to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of 
 the contrite ones." 
 
 UNITY AND PEACE 
 
 COLOSSIANS iii. 15. " And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, 
 to the which also ye are called in one body ; and be ye thankful." 
 
 THERE is something in these words that might surprise 
 us. It might surprise us to find that peace is urged on us 
 as a duty. There can be no duty except where there is a 
 matter of obedience ; and it might seem to us that peace is 
 a something over which we have no power. It is a privilege 
 to have peace, but it would appear as if there were no control 
 within the mind of a man able to ensure that peace for itself. 
 " Yet," says the apostle, " let the peace of God rule in your 
 hearts." It would seem to us as if peace were as far beyond 
 our own control as happiness. Unquestionably, we are not 
 masters on our own responsibility of our own happiness. 
 Happiness is the gratification of every innocent desire ; but 
 it is not given to us to ensure the gratification of every 
 desire; therefore, happiness is not a duty, and it is nowhere 
 written in the Scripture, "You must be happy." But we 
 find it written by the Apostle Paul, "Be ye thankful," 
 
Unity and Peace 215 
 
 implying, therefore, that it is a duty. The apostle says, 
 " Let the peace of God rule in your hearts ; " from which 
 we infer that peace is attainable, and within the reach of 
 our own wills ; that if there be not repose there is blame ; 
 if there be not peace, but discord in the heart, there is some- 
 thing wrong. This is the more surprising when we remember 
 the circumstances under which these words were written. 
 They were written from Rome, where the apostle lay in 
 prison, daily and hourly expecting a violent death. They 
 were written in days of persecution, when false doctrines 
 were rife, and religious animosities fierce; they were 
 written in an epistle abounding with the most earnest and 
 eager controversy, whereby it is therefore implied, that 
 according to the conception of the Apostle Paul, it is 
 possible for a Christian to live at the very point of death, 
 and in the very midst of danger that it is possible for 
 him to be breathing the atmosphere of religious controversy 
 it is possible for him to be surrounded by bitterness, 
 and even take up the pen of controversy himself and yet 
 his soul shall not lose its own deep peace, nor the power 
 of the infinite repose and rest of God. Joined with the 
 apostle's command to be at peace, we find another doctrine, 
 the doctrine of the unity of the Church of Christ. " To 
 the which ye are called in one body," in order that ye may 
 be at peace ; in other words, the unity of the Church of 
 Christ is the basis on which, and on which alone, can 
 be built the possibility of the inward peace of individuals. 
 
 And thus, my Christian brethren, our subject divides 
 itself into these two simple branches : in the first place, 
 the unity of the Church of Christ; in the second place, 
 the inward peace of the members of that Church. 
 
 The first subject, then, which we have to consider, is the 
 Unity of the Church of Christ. 
 
 And the first thing we have to do is both clearly to 
 define and understand the meaning of that word "unity." 
 I distinguish the unity of comprehensiveness from the 
 
216 Unity and Peace 
 
 unity of mere singularity. The word one, as oneness, is 
 an ambiguous word. There is a oneness belonging to the 
 army as well as to every soldier in the army. The army is 
 one, and that is the oneness of unity ; the soldier is one, 
 but that is the oneness of the unit. There is a difference 
 between the oneness of a body and the oneness of a 
 member of that body. The body is many, and a unity of 
 manifold comprehensiveness. An arm or a member of a 
 body is one, but that is the unity of singularity. Without 
 that unity, my Christian brethren, peace must be impossible. 
 There can be no peace in the one single soldier of an 
 army. You do not speak of the harmony of one member 
 of a body. There is peace in an army, or in a kingdom 
 joined with other kingdoms ; there is harmony in a member 
 united with other members. There is no peace in a unit ; 
 there is no possibility of the harmony of that which is but 
 one in itself. In order to have peace you must have a 
 higher unity, and therein consists the unity of God's own 
 Being. The unity of God is the basis of the peace of God 
 meaning by the unity of God the comprehensive manifold- 
 ness of God, and not merely the singularity in the number 
 of God's Being. When the Unitarian speaks of God as 
 one, he means simply singularity of number. We mean 
 that He is of manifold comprehensiveness that there is 
 unity between the various powers. Amongst the personal- 
 ities or powers of His Being there is no discord, but 
 perfect harmony, entire union ; and that, brethren, is repose, 
 the blessedness of infinite rest, that belongs to the unity 
 of God " I and my Father are one." 
 
 The second thing which we observe respecting this 
 unity, is that it subsists between things not similar or alike, 
 but things dissimilar or unlike. There is no unity in the 
 separate atoms of a sand-pit : they are things similar ; there 
 is an aggregate or collection of them. Even if they be 
 hardened in a mass they are not one, they do not form a 
 unity : they are simply a mass. There is no unity in a 
 flock of sheep : it is simply a repetition of a number of 
 things similar to each other. If you strike off from a 
 
Unity and Peace 217 
 
 thousand five hundred, or if you strike off nine hundred, 
 there is nothing lost of unity, because there never was 
 unity. A flock of one thousand or a flock of five is just 
 as much a flock as any other number. 
 
 On the other hand, let us turn to the unity of peace 
 v.-hich the apostle speaks of, and we find it is something 
 different ; it is made up of dissimilar members, without 
 which dissimilarity there could be no unity. Each is 
 imperfect in itself, each supplying what it has in itself to 
 the deficiencies and wants of the other members. So, if 
 you strike off from this body any one member, if you cut 
 off an arm, or tear out an eye, instantly the unity is 
 destroyed ; you have no longer an entire and perfect body, 
 there is nothing but a remnant of the whole, a part, a 
 portion ; no unity whatever. And this will help us to 
 understand the unity of the Church of Christ. If the 
 ages and the centuries of the Church of Christ, if the 
 different Churches whereof it was composed, if the different 
 members of each Church, were similar one in this, that 
 they all held the same views, all spoke the same words, 
 all viewed truth from the same side, they would have no 
 unity ; but would simply be an aggregate of atoms, the 
 sand-pit over again units, multiplied it may be to infinity, 
 but you would have no real unity, and, therefore, no peace. 
 No unity ; for wherein consists the unity of the Church of 
 Christ ? The unity of ages, brethren, consists it in this 
 that every age is merely the repetition of another age, and 
 that which is held in one is held in another ? Precisely in 
 the same way, that is not the unity of the ages of the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 Every century and every age has held a different truth, 
 has put forth different fragments of the truth. In early 
 ages, for example, by martyrdom was proclaimed the eternal 
 sanctity of truth, rather than give up which a man must 
 lose his life. ... In our own age it is quite plain those 
 are not the themes which engage us, or the truths which 
 we put in force now. This age, by its revolutions, its 
 socialisms, proclaims another truth the brotherhood of 
 
218 Unity and Peace 
 
 the Church of Christ ; so that the unity of ages subsists 
 on the same principle as that of the unity of the human 
 body ; that as every separate ray the violet, the blue, and 
 the orange make up the white ray, so these manifold 
 fragments of truth blended together make up the one entire 
 and perfect white ray of Truth. And with regard to in 
 dividuals, taking the case of the Reformation, it was given 
 to one Church to proclaim that salvation is a thing received, 
 and not local ; to another to proclaim justification by faith ; 
 to another the sovereignly of God; to another the 
 supremacy of the Scriptures ; to another the right of 
 private judgment, the duty of the individual conscience. 
 Unite these all, and then you have the Reformation one 
 one in spite of manifoldness ; those very varieties by which 
 they have approached this proving them to be one. Dis- 
 joint them, and then you have some miserable sect 
 Calvinism, or Unitarianism ; the unity has dispersed. And 
 so, again, with the unity of the Churches. Whereby would 
 we produce unity? Would we force on other Churches 
 our Anglicanism ? Would we have our thirty-nine articles, 
 our creeds, our prayers, our rules and regulations, accepted 
 by every Church throughout the world ? If that were 
 unity, then in consistency you are bound to demand that 
 in God's world there shall be but one colour instead of 
 the manifold harmony and accordance of which this uni- 
 verse is full ; that there should be but one chaunted note 
 which we conceived most beautiful. This is not the 
 unity of the Church of God. The various Churches 
 advance different doctrines and truths. The Church of 
 Germany something different from those of the Church of 
 England. The Church of Rome, even in its idolatry, 
 proclaims truths which we would be glad to seize. By the 
 worship of the Virgin, the purity of women ; by the rigour 
 of ecclesiastical ordinances, the sanctity and permanence 
 of eternal order ; by the very priesthood itself, the necessity 
 of the guidance of man by man. Nay, even the dissent- 
 ing bodies themselves mere atoms of aggregates as they 
 are stand forward and proclaim at least this truth, the 
 
Unity and Peace 219 
 
 separateness of the individual conscience, the right of 
 independence. 
 
 Peace subsists not between things exactly alike. We 
 do not speak of peace in a single country. We say peace 
 subsists between different countries where war might be. 
 There can be no peace between two men who agree in 
 everything; peace subsists between those who differ. 
 There is no peace between Baptist and Baptist ; so far 
 as they are Baptists, there is perfect accordance and 
 agreement. There may be peace between you and the 
 Romanist, the Jew, or the Dissenter, because there are 
 angles of sharpness which might come into collision if 
 they were not subdued and softened by the power of love. 
 It was given to the Apostle Paul to discern that this was 
 the ground of unity. In the Church of Christ he saw men 
 with different views, and he said, so far from that variety 
 destroying unity, it was the only ground of unity. There 
 are many doctrines, all of them different, but let those 
 varieties be blended together in other words, let there 
 be the peace of love, and then you will have unity. 
 
 Once more, this unity, whereof the apostle speaks, con- 
 sists in submission to one single influence or spirit. 
 Wherein consists the unity of the body? Consists it not 
 in this, that there is one life uniting, 'making all the separ- 
 ate members one ? Take away the life, and the members 
 fall to pieces ; they are no longer one ; decomposition 
 begins, and every element separates, no longer having any 
 principle of cohesion or union with the rest. There is not 
 one of us who, at some time or other, has not been struck with 
 the power there is in a single living influence. Have we 
 never, for instance, felt the power wherewith the orator unites 
 and holds together a thousand men as if they were but one ; 
 with flashing eyes and throbbing hearts, all attentive to his 
 words, and by the difference of their attitudes, by the variety 
 of the expressions of their countenances testifying to the 
 unity of that single living feeling with which he had in- 
 spired them? Whether it be indignation, whether it be 
 compassion, or whether it be enthusiasm, that one living 
 
22O Unity and Peace 
 
 influence made the thousand for the time, one. Have 
 we not heard how, even in this century in which we live, 
 the various and conflicting feelings of the people of this 
 country were concentrated into one, when the threat of 
 foreign invasion had fused down and broken the edges 
 of conflict and variance, and from shore to shore was 
 heard one cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes 
 and orders of this manifold and mighty England were 
 as one ? Have we not heard how the mighty winds hold 
 together, as if one, the various atoms of the desert, so that 
 they rush like a living thing, across the wilderness? 
 And this, brethren, is the unity of the Church of Christ, 
 the subjection to the one uniting spirit of its God. 
 
 It will be said, in reply to this, "Why, this is mere 
 enthusiasm. It may be very beautiful in theory, but it is 
 impossible in practice. It is mere enthusiasm to believe, 
 that while all these varieties of conflicting opinion remain, 
 we can have unity ; it is mere enthusiasm to think that so 
 long as men's minds reckon on a thing like unity, there 
 can be a thing like oneness." And our reply is, Give us the 
 Spirit of God, and we shall be one. You cannot produce 
 a unity by all the rigour of your ecclesiastical discipline. 
 You cannot produce a unity by consenting in some form 
 of expression such as this, " Let us agree to differ/' 
 You cannot produce a unity by Parliamentary regulations 
 or enactments, bidding back the waves of what is called 
 aggression. Give us the living Spirit of God, and we shall 
 be one. Once on this earth was exhibited, as it were, a 
 specimen of perfect anticipation of such an unity, when 
 the " rushing mighty wind" of Pentecost came down in the 
 tongues of fire and sat on every man ; when the Parthians, 
 and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Meso- 
 potamia, the "Cretes and Arabians," the Jew and the 
 Gentile, each speaking one language, yet blended and 
 fused into one unity by enthusiastic love, heard one 
 another speak, as it were, in one language, the manifold 
 works of God ; when the spirit of giving was substituted 
 for the spirit of mere rivalry and competition, and no 
 
Unity and Peace 221 
 
 man said the things he had were his own, but all shared 
 
 in common. Let that spirit come again, as come it will, 
 
 and come it must ; and then, beneath the influences 
 
 of a mightier love, we shall have a nobler and a more 
 real unity. 
 
 We pass on now, in the second place, to consider the 
 individual peace resulting from this unity. As we have 
 endeavoured to explain what is meant by unity, so now, 
 let us endeavour to understand what is meant by peace. 
 Peace then, is the opposite of passion, and of labour, toil, 
 and effort. Peace is that state in which there are no 
 desires madly demanding an impossible gratification ; that 
 state in which there is no misery, no remorse, no sting. 
 And there are but three things which can break that peace. 
 The first is discord between the mind of man and the 
 lot which he is called on to inherit; the second is dis- 
 cord between the affections and powers of the soul ; and 
 the third is doubt of the rectitude, and justice, and love, 
 wherewith this world is ordered. But where these things 
 exist not, where a man is contented with his lot, where 
 the flesh is subdued to the spirit, and where he believes 
 and feels with all his heart that all is right, there is 
 peace, and to this, says the apostle, " ye are called," and 
 that is the grand, peculiar call of Christianity, the call, 
 " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest." This was the dying bequest of 
 Christ : '* Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you : 
 not as the world giveth give I unto you : " and therein lies 
 one of the greatest truths of the blessed and eternal char- 
 acter of Christianity, that it applies to, and satisfies, the very 
 deepest want and craving of our nature. The deepest want 
 of man is not a desire for happiness, but a craving for peace ; 
 not a wish for the gratification of every desire, but a 
 craving for the repose of acquiescence in the will 
 of God ; and it is this which Christianity promises. 
 Christianity does not promise happiness, but it does 
 promise peace. " In the world ye shall have tribulation," 
 
222 Unity and Peace 
 
 saith our Master, " but be of good cheer ; I have 
 overcome the world." Now, let us look more closely 
 into this peace. 
 
 The first thing we see respecting it is, that it is called 
 God's peace. God is rest : the infinite nature of God is 
 infinite repose. The " / am " of God is contrasted with 
 the / am become of all other things. Everything else is in a 
 state of becoming, God is in a state of being. The acorn has 
 become the plant, and the plant has become the oak. The 
 child has become the man, and the man has become good, 
 or wise, or whatever else it may be. God ever is ; and I 
 pray you once more to observe, that this peace of God, this 
 eternal rest in the Almighty Being, arises out of His unity. 
 Not because He is a unit, but because He is a unity. 
 There is no discord between the powers and attributes of 
 the mind of God ; there is no discord between His justice 
 and His love ; there is no discord demanding some miserable 
 expedient to unite them together, such as some theologians 
 imagined when they described the sacrifice and atonement 
 of our Redeemer by saying, it is the clever expedient 
 whereby God reconciles His justice with His love. God's 
 justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite 
 love. Justice is but another sign of love. The infinite rest 
 of the " / am " of God arises out of the harmony of His 
 attributes. 
 
 The next thing we observe respecting this divine peace 
 which has come down to man on earth is, that it is a living 
 peace. Brethren, let us distinguish. There are several things 
 called peace which are by no means divine or Godlike peace. 
 There is peace, for example, in the man who lives for and 
 enjoys self, with no nobler aspiration goading him on to 
 make him feel the rest of God ; that is peace, but that is 
 merely the peace of toil. There is rest on the surface of 
 the caverned lake, which no wind can stir ; but that is the 
 peace of stagnation. There is peace amongst the stones 
 which have fallen and rolled down the mountain's side, and 
 lie there quietly at rest ; but that is the peace of inanity. 
 There is peace in the hearts of enemies who lie together, 
 
Unity and Peace 223 
 
 side by side, in the same trench of the battle-field, the 
 animosities of their souls silenced at length, and their hands 
 no longer clenched in deadly enmity against each other ; but 
 that is the peace of death. If our peace be but the peace 
 of the sensualist satisfying pleasure, if it be but the peace of 
 mental torpor and inaction, the peace of apathy, or the 
 peace of the soul dead in trespasses and sins, we may 
 whisper to ourselves, " Peace, peace," but there will be no 
 peace ; there is not the peace of unity, nor the peace of God, 
 for the peace of God is the living peace of love. 
 
 The next thing we observe respecting this peace is, that 
 it is the manifestation of power it is the peace which comes 
 from an inward power : " Let the peace of God," says the 
 apostle, " rule within your hearts." For it is a power, the 
 manifestation of strength. There is no peace except there 
 is the possibility of the opposite of peace although now 
 restrained and controlled. You do not speak of the peace 
 of a grain of sand, because it cannot be otherwise than 
 merely insignificant, and at rest. You do not speak of the 
 peace of a mere pond ; you speak of the peace of the sea, 
 because there is the opposite of peace implied, there is 
 power and strength. And this, brethren, is the real 
 character of the peace in the mind and soul of man. Oh ! 
 we make a great mistake when we say there is strength in 
 passion, in the exhibition of emotion. Passion, and emotion, 
 and all those outward manifestations, prove, not strength, 
 but weakness. If the passions of a man are strong, it 
 proves the man himself is weak, if he cannot restrain or 
 control his passions. The real strength and majesty of the 
 soul of man is calmness, the manifestation of strength ; 
 " the peace of God " ruling ; the word of Christ saying to 
 the inward storms " Peace ! " and there is "a great calm." 
 
 Lastly, the peace of which the apostle speaks is the peace 
 that is received the peace of reception. You will observe, 
 throughout this passage the apostle speaks of a something 
 received, and not done : " Let the peace of God rule in 
 your hearts." It is throughout receptive, but by no means 
 inactive. And according to this, there are two kinds of 
 
224 Unity and Peace 
 
 peace ; the peace of obedience " Let the peace of God 
 rule " you and there is the peace of gratefulness " Be ye 
 thankful." Very great, brethren, is the peace of obedience : 
 when a man has his lot fixed, and his mind made up, and 
 his destiny before him, and quietly acquiesces in that, his 
 spirit is at rest. Great and deep is the peace of the soldier 
 to whom has been assigned an untenable position, with the 
 command, " Keep that, or die," and he obediently remains 
 to die. 
 
 Great was the peace of Elisha very, very calm are those 
 words by which he expressed his acquiescence in the divine 
 will. " Knowest thou," said the troubled, excited, and 
 restless men around him " Knowest thou that the Lord 
 will take away thy master from thy head to-day ? " He 
 answered, " Yea, I know it ; hold ye your peace." Then 
 there is the other peace, it is the peace of gratefulness : " Be 
 ye thankful." It is that peace which the Israelites had when 
 these words were spoken to them on the shores of the Red 
 Sea, while the bodies of their enemies floated past them, 
 destroyed, but not by them : " Stand still and see the 
 salvation of the Lord." 
 
 And here, brethren, is another mistake of ours : we look 
 on salvation as a thing to be done, and not received. In 
 God's salvation we can do but little, but there is a great deal 
 to be received. We are here, not merely to act, but to be 
 acted upon. " Let the peace of God rule in your hearts ;" 
 there is a peace that will enter there, if you do not thwart 
 it ; there is a Spirit that will take possession of your soul, 
 provided that you do not quench it. In this world we are 
 recipients, not creators. In obedience and in gratefulness, 
 and the infinite peace of God in the soul of man, is alone 
 deep rest and repose. 
 
The Pre-eminence of Charity 225 
 
 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHARITY 
 
 i PETER iv. 8. " And above all things have fervent charity among 
 yourselves : for charity shall cover the multitude of sins." 
 
 THE grace of charity is exalted as the highest attainment 
 of the Christian life by St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John. 
 These three men were very different from each other. 
 Each was the type of a distinct order of character. And it 
 is a proof that the Gospel is from God, and that the sacred 
 writings are inspired from a single Divine source, that 
 personal peculiarities are not placed foremost in them, but 
 the foremost place is given by each to a grace which 
 certainly was not the characteristic quality of all the three. 
 
 It is said in these modern days that Christianity was a 
 system elaborated by human intellect. Men, they say, 
 philosophized, and thought it out. Christianity, it is main- 
 tained, like ethics, is the product of human reason. Now 
 had this been true, we should have found the great teachers 
 of Christianity each exalting that particular quality which 
 was most remarkable in his own temperament. Just as 
 the English honour truthfulness, and the French brilliancy, 
 and the Hindoos subtlety, and the Italians finesse and 
 naturally, because these are predominant in themselves we 
 should have found the Apostles insisting most strongly on 
 those graces which grew most naturally in the soil of their 
 own hearts. 
 
 Indeed in a degree it is so. St. John's character was 
 tender, emotional, and contemplative. Accordingly, his 
 writings exhibit the feeling of religion, and the predominance 
 of the inner life over the outer. 
 
 St. Paul was a man of keen intellect, and of soaring and 
 aspiring thought which would endure no shackles on its 
 freedom. And his writings are full of the two subjects we 
 might have expected from this temperament. He speaks a 
 great deal of intellectual gifts; very much of Christian liberty. 
 
 St. Peter was remarkable for personal courage. A soldier 
 VOL. i. P 
 
226 The Pre-eminence of Charity 
 
 by nature : frank, free, generous, irascible. In his writings 
 accordingly, we find a great deal said about martyrdom. 
 
 But each of these men, so different from each other, 
 exalts love above his own peculiar quality. It is very 
 remarkable. Not merely does each call charity the highest, 
 but each names it in immediate connection with his own 
 characteristic virtue, and declares it to be more divine. 
 
 St. John, of course, calls love the heavenliest. That we 
 expect from St. John's character. " God is Love. He that 
 dwelleth in love dwelleth in God." " No man hath seen 
 God at any time : if we love one another God dwelleth in us/' 
 
 But St. Paul expressly names it in contrast with the two 
 feelings for which he was personally most remarkable, and, 
 noble as they are, prefers it before them. First, in contrast 
 with intellectual gifts. Thus (i Cor. xii.), "Covet earnestly 
 the best gifts : and yet show I unto you a more excellent 
 way : though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, 
 and have not charity, it is nothing." Gifts are nothing in 
 comparison of charity. Again, " We know that we all have 
 knowledge : knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up." 
 Knowledge is nothing in comparison. 
 
 Next, in comparison of that liberty which was so dear to 
 him. Christian liberty permitted the converts the use of 
 meats, and the disregard of days from which the strict law 
 of Judaism had debarred them. Well ; but there were cases 
 in which the exercise of that liberty might hurt the scruples 
 of some weak Christian brother, or lead him to imitate the 
 example against his conscience. " If thy brother be grieved 
 with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably" Liberty 
 said, You have a right to indulge; but Charity said, 
 Refrain. 
 
 So that, according to St. Paul, there is one thing, and 
 one only, to which Christian liberty must be sacrificed. 
 That one is Christian love. 
 
 Now let us see how St. Peter does honour to the same 
 grace, at the expense of that which we should have expected 
 him to reckon the essential grace of manhood. Just before 
 the text, we find the command, " Be sober, and watch unto 
 
The Pre-eminence of Charity 227 
 
 prayer." This is a sentence out of St. Peter's very heart. 
 For in it we have prayer represented as the night-watch of a 
 warrior, armed, who must not sleep his watch away. " Be 
 sober, and watch " the language of the soldier and the 
 sentinel ; words which remind you of him who drew his 
 sword to defend his Master, and who in penitence remem- 
 bered his own disastrous sleep when he was surprised as a 
 sentry at his post. But immediately after this, "And, 
 above all things^ have fervent charity amongst yourselves." 
 Sobriety, self-rule, manhood, courage, yes ; but the life 
 of them all, says St. Peter, the very crown of manhood, 
 without which sobriety is but prudent selfishness, and 
 courage is but brute instinct is Love. 
 
 Now I take that unanimity as a proof that the Gospel 
 comes from one Living Source. How came St. Peter and 
 St. John, so different from each other, and St. Paul, who 
 had had almost no communion with either of them, to 
 agree, and agree so enthusiastically, in this doctrine Love 
 is over all and above all ; above intellect, freedom, courage 
 unless there had streamed into the mind and heart of 
 each one of them Light from One Source, even from Him 
 the deepest principle of Whose Being, and the law of Whose 
 life and death, were love ? 
 
 We are to try, to-day, to understand this sentence of St. 
 Peter. It tells us two things 
 
 I. What charity is. 
 II. What charity does. 
 
 I. What charity is. 
 
 It is not easy to find one word in any language which 
 rightly and adequately represents what Christ and His 
 Apostles meant by charity. All words are saturated with 
 some imperfect meaning. Charity has become identified 
 with almsgiving. Love is appropriated to one particular 
 form of human affection, and that one with which self and 
 passion mix inevitably. Philanthropy is a word too cold 
 and negative. 
 
228 The Pre-eminence of Charity 
 
 Let us define Christian charity in two sentences : 
 i. The desire to give. 2. The desire to bless. 
 
 1. The desire to give. Let each man go deep into his 
 own heart. Let him ask what that mysterious longing 
 means which we call love, whether to man or God, when 
 he has stripped from it all that is outside and accidental ; 
 when he has taken from it all that is mixed with it and 
 perverts it. Not in his worst moments but in his best, 
 what did that yearning mean ? I say it meant the desire 
 to give. Not to get something, but to give something. 
 And the mightier, the more irrepressible this yearning was, 
 the more truly was his love love. To give whether alms 
 in the shape of money, bread, or a cup of cold water, or 
 else self. But be sure, sacrifice, in some shape or other, is 
 the impulse of love, and its restlessness is only satisfied and 
 only gets relief in giving. For this, in truth, is God's own 
 love, the will and the power to give. "It is more blessed 
 to give than to receive." Therefore God is the only blessed 
 One, because He alone gives and never receives. The 
 universe, teeming with life, is but God's Love expressing 
 itself. He creates life by the giving of Himself. He has 
 redeemed the world by the giving of His Son. " God so 
 loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." 
 The death of Christ was sacrifice. The Life of God is one 
 perpetual sacrifice, or giving of Himself and shedding forth 
 of His Spirit. Else it would not be love. 
 
 And so, when the poor sinful woman gave her costly 
 ointment with a large profuseness, Christ saw in it an 
 evidence of love. " She loved much." For love gives. 
 
 2. The desire to bless. 
 
 All love is this in a degree. Even weak and spurious 
 love desires happiness of some kind for the creature that it 
 loves. Almsgiving is often nothing more than indolence. 
 We give to the beggar in the street to save ourselves the 
 trouble of finding out fitter objects. Still, indolent as it is, 
 it is an indolent desire to prevent pain. 
 
 What we call philanthropy is often calm and cool too 
 calm and cool to waste upon it the name of charity. But it 
 
The Pre-eminence of Charity 229 
 
 is a calm and cool desire that human happiness were pos- 
 sible. It is in its weak way a desire to bless. Now/ the 
 love whereof the Bible speaks, and of which we have but 
 one perfect personification viz., in the Life of Christ, is 
 the desire for the best and true blessedness of the being 
 loved. It wishes the well-being of the whole man body, 
 soul, and spirit ; but chiefly spirit. 
 
 Therefore, He fed the poor with bread. Therefore, He 
 took His disciples into the wilderness to rest when they 
 were weary. Therefore " He gave Himself for us, that we, 
 being dead unto sin, might live unto righteousness/' For 
 the Kingdom of God is not bread only and repose, which 
 constitute physical happiness, but goodness, too ; for that 
 is blessedness. 
 
 And the highest love is, therefore, the desire to make 
 men good and godlike; it may wish, as a subordinate 
 attainment, to turn this earth into a paradise of comfort by 
 mechanical inventions ; but far above that, to transform it 
 into a Kingdom of God, the domain of love, where men 
 cease to quarrel and to envy, and to slander and to retaliate. 
 " This, also, we wish," said St. Paul, " even your perfection." 
 
 Concerning this charity we remark two points : i. It 
 is characterized as fervent. 2. It is capable of being 
 cultivated. 
 
 i. "Fervent." 
 
 Literally, intense, unremitting, unwearied. Now, there 
 is a feeble sentiment which wishes well to all so long as 
 it is not tempted to wish them ill, which does well to 
 those who do well to them. But this being merely senti- 
 ment, will not last. Ruffle it, and it becomes vindictive. 
 In contrast with that St. Peter calls Christ's spirit, which 
 loves those who hate it, " fervent " charity, which does not 
 tire, and cannot be worn out ; which loves its enemies, and 
 does good to them that hate it. For Christian love is not 
 the dream of a philosopher, sitting in his study, and benevo- 
 lently wishing the world were better than it is, congratulating 
 himself, perhaps, all the time on the superiority shown by 
 himself over other less amiable natures. Injure one of these 
 
230 The Pre-eminence of Charity 
 
 beaming sons of good humour, and he bears malice : deep, 
 unrelenting, refusing to forgive. But give us the man who, 
 instead of retiring to some small, select society, or rather 
 association, where his own opinions shall be reflected, can 
 mix with men where his sympathies are unmet, and his 
 tastes are jarred, and his views traversed, at every turn, and 
 still can be just, and gentle, and forbearing. 
 
 Give us the man who can be insulted and not retaliate ; 
 meet rudeness and still be courteous ; the man who, like 
 the Apostle Paul, buffeted and disliked, can yet be generous, 
 and make allowances, and say, " I will very gladly spend 
 and be spent for you, though the more abundantly I love 
 you, the less I be loved." That is " fervent charity." 
 
 2. Again, it is capable of being cultivated. 
 
 We assume that, simply because it is enjoined. When 
 an Apostle says, " Have fervent charity among yourselves," 
 it is plain that it would be a cruel mockery to command 
 men to attain it if they could do nothing towards the attain- 
 ment. It would be the same insult as saying to the deformed, 
 " be beautiful." For it is wanton cruelty to command 
 where obedience is impossible. 
 
 How shall we cultivate this charity ? 
 
 Now, I observe first, love cannot be produced by a direct 
 action of the soul upon itself. You cannot love by a resolve 
 to love. That is as impossible as it is to move a boat by 
 pressing it from within. The force with which you press on 
 is exactly equal to that with which you press back. The 
 reaction is exactly equal to the action. You force back- 
 wards exactly as much as you force on. There are religious 
 persons who, when they feel their affections cooled, strive to 
 warm them by self-reproach, or by unnatural effort, or by the 
 excitement of what they call revivals trying to work them- 
 selves into a state of warm affection. There are others who 
 hope to make feeble love strong by using strong words. 
 Now, for all this they pay a price. Effort of heart is 
 followed by collapse. Excitement is followed by exhaustion. 
 They will find that they have cooled exactly in that propor- 
 tion in which they warmed, and at least as fast. 
 
The Pre-eminence of Charity 231 
 
 It is as impossible for a man to work himself into a state 
 of genuine fervent love as it is for a man to inspire himself. 
 Inspiration is a breath and a life coming from without. 
 Love is a feeling roused not from ourselves, but from some- 
 thing outside ourselves. 
 
 There are, however, two methods by which we may culti- 
 vate this charity. 
 
 j. By doing acts which love demands. It is God's 
 merciful law that feelings are increased by acts done on 
 principle. If a man has not the feeling in its warmth, let 
 him not wait till the feeling comes. Let him act with such 
 feeling as he has ; with a cold heart if he has not got a warm 
 one ; it will grow warmer while he acts. You may love a 
 man merely because you have done him benefits, and so 
 become interested in him, till interest passes into anxiety, 
 and anxiety into affection. You may acquire courtesy of 
 feeling at last, by cultivating courteous manner. The 
 dignified politeness of the last century forced man into a 
 kind of unselfishness in small things, which the abrupter 
 manners of to-day will never teach. And say what men will 
 of rude sincerity, those old men of urbane manners were 
 kinder at heart with real good will, than we are with that 
 rude bluffness which counts it a loss of independence to be 
 courteous to any one. Gentleness of manner had some 
 influence on gentleness of heart. So, in the same way, in 
 things spiritual. If our hearts are cool, and we find it hard 
 to love God and be affectionate to men, we must begin with 
 duty. Duty is not Christian liberty, but it is the first step 
 towards liberty. We are free only when we love what we 
 are to do, and those to whom we do it. Let a man begin 
 in earnest with I ought he will end, by God's grace, if he 
 persevere, with the free blessedness of I will. Let him 
 force himself to abound in small offices of kindliness, atten- 
 tion, affectionateness, and all those for God's sake. By-and- 
 by, he will feel them become the habit of his soul. By-and- 
 by, walking in the conscientiousness of refusing to retaliate 
 when he feels tempted, he will cease to wish it : doing good 
 and heaping kindness on those who injure him, he will learn 
 
232 The Pre-eminence of Charity 
 
 to love them. For he has spent a treasure there : " And 
 where the treasure is there will the heart be also." 
 
 2. The second way of cultivating Christian love is by 
 contemplating the love of God. You cannot move the boat 
 from within ; but you may obtain a purchase from without. 
 You cannot create love in the soul by force from within 
 itself; but you may move it from a point outside itself. 
 God's Love is the point from which to move the soul. 
 Love begets love. Love believed in, produces a return of 
 love : we cannot love because we must. " Must " kills 
 love ; but the law of our nature is that we love in reply to 
 love. No one ever yet hated one whom he believed to love 
 him truly. We may be provoked by the pertinacity of an 
 affection which asks what we cannot give ; but we cannot 
 hate the true love which does not ask but gives. Now, this 
 is the central truth of Christ's Gospel: "We love Him 
 because He first loved us." " Beloved, if God so loved us, 
 we ought also to love one another." " God is love." 
 
 It is the one, almost only struggle of religious life, to 
 believe this. In spite of all the seeming cruelties of this life ; 
 in spite of the clouded mystery in which God has shrouded 
 Himself ; in spite of pain, and the stern aspect of human life, 
 and the gathering of thicker darkness and more solemn silence 
 round the soul as life goes on, simply to believe that God is 
 Love, and to hold fast to that, as a man holds on to a rock 
 with a desperate grip when the salt surf and the driving 
 waves sweep over him and take the breath away I say 
 that is the one fight of Christian life, compared with which 
 all else is easy. When we believe that, human affections are 
 easy. It is easy to be generous, and tolerant, and bene- 
 volent, when we are sure of the Heart of God, and when the 
 little love of this life, and its coldnesses, and its unreturned 
 affections are more than made up to us by the certainty that 
 our Father's Love is ours. But when we lose sight of that, 
 though but for a moment, the heart sours, and men seem no 
 longer worth the loving: and wrongs are magnified, and 
 injuries cannot be forgiven, and life itself drags on, a mere 
 death in life. A man may doubt anything and everything, 
 
The Pre-eminence of Charity 233 
 
 and still be blessed, provided only he holds fast to that con- 
 viction. Let all drift from him like seaweed on life's ocean. 
 So long as he reposes on the assurance of the eternal faith- 
 fulness of the Eternal Charity, his spirit at least cannot drift. 
 There are moments, I humbly think, when we understand 
 those triumphant words of St. Paul, " Let God be true, and 
 every man a liar." 
 
 II. What charity does. 
 
 It covereth a multitude of sins. 
 
 Now the only question is, whose sins does charity cover ? 
 Is it that the sins of the charitable man are covered by his 
 charity in God's sight? Or is it the sins of others over 
 which charity throws a mantle so as not to see them? 
 
 Some wise and good men have said the first. Love 
 obliterates sin in the sight of God ; and assuredly it might 
 be this that St. Peter meant. No doubt whole years of 
 folly we outlive " in His unerring sight, who measures life 
 by love." Recollect our Master's own words, " Her sins, 
 which are many, are forgiven her : for she loved much." 
 
 Nevertheless, that does not seem to be the meaning of 
 this passage. A large number of deep thinkers have been 
 convinced that St. Peter is here describing Christianity, and 
 the description which he gives of it as most characteristic is, 
 that it hides out of sight, and refuses to contemplate, a 
 multitude of sins which malevolence would delight to see. 
 It throws a veil over them and covers them. At all events, 
 this is true of Christian charity : and we shall consider the 
 passage in that sense to-day. 
 
 There are three ways, at least, in which Love covers sin. 
 
 i. In refusing to see small faults. 
 
 Every man has his faults, his failings, peculiarities, eccen- 
 tricities. Every one of us finds himself crossed by such 
 failings of others, from hour to hour. And if he were to 
 resent them all, or even notice all, life would be intolerable. 
 If for every outburst of hasty temper, and for every rudeness 
 that wounds us in . our daily path, we were to demand an 
 apology, require an explanation, or resent it by retaliation, 
 daily intercourse would be impossible. The very science of 
 
234 The Pre-eminence of Charity 
 
 social life consists in that gliding tact which avoids contact 
 with the sharp angularities of character, which does not 
 argue about such things, does not seek to adjust or cure 
 them all, but covers them, as if it did not see. 
 
 Exceedingly wise was that conduct of the Roman pro- 
 consul at Corinth which we read of in the Acts. The Jews, 
 with Sosthenes at their head, had brought a charge of heresy 
 against the Christians, and tried it at the Roman law. 
 Gallio perceived that it was a vexatious one, and dismissed 
 it ; drove them from the judgment seat. Whereupon the 
 Greeks, indignant at the paltry virulence of the accusation, 
 took Sosthenes, in his way from the judgment seat, and beat 
 him even in Gallio's presence. It is written, " Gallio cared 
 for none of these things." He took no notice. He would 
 not see. It was doubtless illegal and tumultuous, a kind 
 of contempt of court a great offence in Roman law. But 
 Gallio preferred permitting a wholesome outburst of healthy 
 indignation, to carrying out the law in its letter. For he 
 knew that in that popular riot human nature was throwing 
 off an incubus. It was a kind of irregular justice, excusable 
 because of its provocation. And so Gallio would not see. 
 He covered the transgression in a wise and wilful blindness. 
 
 That which the Roman magistrate did from wise policy, 
 the Christian spirit does in a diviner way. It throws over 
 such things a cloak of love. It knows when it is wise not 
 to see. That microscopic distinctness in which all faults 
 appear to captious men, who are for ever blaming, dissecting, 
 complaining, disappears in the large, calm gaze of Love. 
 And oh ! it is this spirit which our Christian society lacks, 
 and which we shall never get till we begin each one with 
 his own heart. What we want is, in one word, that graceful 
 tact and Christian art which can bear and forbear. 
 
 That was a rude, " unpardonable " insult offered by 
 Peter to his Master when he denied Him. In His hour 
 of trial, he refused to seem even to know Him. We should 
 have said, I will never forget that. The Divine charity 
 covered all. Ask ye how ? " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
 thou me? Feed my sheep." 
 
The Pre-eminence of Charity 235 
 
 2. Love covers sin by making large allowances. 
 
 In all evil there is a "soul of goodness." Most evil is 
 perverted good. For instance, extravagance is generosity 
 carried to excess. Revenge is sometimes a sense of justice 
 which has put no restraint upon itself. Woman's worst 
 fault is perverted self-sacrifice. Incaution comes from 
 innocence. Now there are some men who see all the evil, 
 and never trace, never give themselves the trouble of 
 suspecting the root of goodness out of which it sprung. 
 There are others who love to go deep down, and see why 
 a man came to do wrong, and whether there was not some 
 excuse, or some redeeming cause : in order that they may 
 be just. Just, as " God is just, and the justifier of him that 
 believeth in Jesus." 
 
 Not as the passage is sometimes quoted just, and yet 
 the justifier ; as if there were some difficulty in reconciling 
 God's justice and God's mercy : but just and the justifier, 
 just and therefore the justifier. Merciful because just. 
 
 Now human life, as it presents itself to these two different 
 eyes, the eye of one who sees only evil, and that of him 
 who sees evil as perverted good, is two different things. 
 Take an instance. Not many years ago, a gifted English 
 writer presented us with a history of Ancient Christianity. 
 To his eye the early Church presented one great idea, 
 almost only one. He saw corruption written everywhere. 
 In the history of the ascetics, of the nuns, of the hermits, 
 of the early bishops, he saw nothing noble, nothing aspiring. 
 Everywhere the one dark spectacle of the Man of Sin. In 
 public and in private life, in theology and practice, within 
 and without, everywhere pollution. Another historian, a 
 foreigner, has written the history of the same times, with an 
 intellect as piercing to discover the very first germ of error, 
 but with a calm, large heart, which saw the good out of 
 which the error sprung, and loved to dwell upon it, delighting 
 to trace the lineaments of God, and discern His spirit 
 working where another could see only the spirit of the Devil. 
 And you rise from the two books with different views of the 
 world ; from the one, considering the world as a devil's 
 
236 The Pre-eminence of Charity 
 
 world, corrupting towards destruction; from the other, 
 notwithstanding all, feeling triumphantly that it is God's 
 world, and that His Spirit works gloriously below it all. 
 You rise from the study with different feelings : from the 
 one, inclined to despise your species ; from the other, able 
 joyfully to understand in part, why God so loved the world, 
 and what there is in man to love, and what there is, even in 
 the lost, to seek and save. 
 
 Now that is the " charity which covereth a multitude of 
 sins." 
 
 It understands by sympathy. It is that glorious nature 
 which has affinity with good under all forms, and loves to 
 find it, to believe in it, and to see it. And therefore such 
 men God's rare and best ones learn to make allowances ; 
 not from weak sentiment, which calls wrong right, but from 
 that heavenly charity which sees right lying at the root of 
 wrong. So the Apostle Paul learned to be candid even 
 towards himself. " I obtained mercy, because I did it 
 ignorantly, in unbelief." His very bigotry and persecuting 
 spirit could be justified by God, and by men who see like 
 God. It was wrong, very wrong ; he did not palliate it ; he 
 felt that it had made him " the chief of sinners," but he 
 discerned that his had been zeal directed wrongly, not 
 hate, but inverted love. 
 
 So too, over the dark grave of Saul the suicide, the love 
 of friendship could shed one ray of hope. He who remem- 
 bered of Saul, only his nobler nature and his earlier days, 
 when his desolate character was less ambiguous, the man 
 after God's own heart whose love refused to part with the 
 conviction that that light which was from God was not 
 quenched for ever, though it had set in clouds and thick 
 darkness dared to say, " Saul and Jonathan were lovely in 
 their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided." 
 Would you or I have dared to hope over a grave like 
 Saul's ? So too, over the grave of the prophet whose last 
 act was disobedience, love still dared to hope, and the 
 surviving prophet remembered only that he had shared the 
 gift of prophecy with himself. "Alas, my brother!" A 
 
The Pre-eminence of Charity 237 
 
 sinner, who had died in sin, but as our own Burial Service 
 nobly dares to say, in the hope of intense charity, " To rest 
 in Thee, as our hope is this our brother doth." And so, 
 lastly, in the blackest guilt the earth has seen in memory 
 of which we, in our Christian charity, after eighteen hundred 
 years, brand the descendant Jews with a curse, which is 
 only slowly disappearing from our minds there was one 
 Eye which could discern a ground on which to make 
 allowance, " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what 
 they do." 
 
 Let us dismiss from our minds one false suspicion. The 
 man who can be most charitable is not the man who is 
 himself most lax. Deep knowledge of human nature tells 
 us it is exactly the reverse. He who shows the rough and 
 thorny road to heaven, is he who treads the primrose path 
 himself. Be sure that it is the severe and pitiless judge 
 and censor of others' faults, on whom, at a venture, you 
 may most safely fix the charge, " Thou art the man ! " I 
 know not why, but unrelenting severity proves guilt rather 
 than innocence. How much purity was proved by David's 
 sentence of an imaginary criminal to death ? How much, 
 by the desire of those Pharisees to stone the woman taken 
 in adultery? Convicted by their own consciences, they 
 went out one by one; yet they had longed to stone her. 
 No. Be sure you must be free from sin in proportion as 
 you would judge with the allowance and the charity of 
 Christ Jesus. " Tempted in all points, yet without sin." 
 "Wherefore also, He is a merciful High Priest." 
 
 3. Lastly, charity can tolerate even intolerance. 
 
 Let no man think that he can be tolerant or charitable 
 as a matter of self-indulgence. For real charity and real 
 toleration he must pay a price. So long as they are merely 
 negative so long as they mean only the permission to every 
 one to think his own thoughts and go his own way the 
 world will bear them. But so soon as charity becomes 
 action, and toleration becomes earnest, basing themselves on 
 a principle, even this -the conviction that at the root of 
 many an error there lies a truth, and within much evil a 
 
238 The Pre-eminence of Charity 
 
 central heart of goodness, and below unwise and even 
 opposite forms, the same essential meaning so soon 
 Chanty and Toleration exasperate the world secular, or 
 so-called religious. 
 
 For instance, if with St. Paul, you affirm, " He that 
 observeth the day, observeth it to the Lord ; and he that 
 observeth not the day, to the Lord he observeth it not," 
 tolerating both the observance and the non-observance, 
 when you perceive the desire of doing God's will existing in 
 both, you cannot avoid the charge of being careless about 
 the question of the sanctities of a day of rest. Or if, with 
 St. Paul, you say of some superstitious idolatry, that men 
 ignorantly worship God in it, their worship being true, their 
 form false you cannot avoid the stigma of seeming for the 
 time to be tending to that idolatry. Or if, with the Son of 
 God, you recognize the enthusiasm of nature, which passion 
 had led astray in devious paths, you cannot escape the 
 imputation of being "a friend of publicans and sinners." 
 This is the price which a man must pay for Charity. His 
 Master could not escape the price, nor can he. 
 
 And then comes the last and most difficult lesson of 
 Love, to make allowances even for the uncharitable. For 
 surely below all that uncharitableness which is so common, 
 there is often a germ of the Life of Love ; and beneath that 
 intolerance, which may often wound ourselves, a loving and 
 a candid eye may discern zeal for God. Therefore St. Paul 
 saw even in the Jews, his bitterest foes, that " they had a 
 zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." And there- 
 fore St. Stephen prayed, with his last breath, " Lord, lay not 
 this sin to their charge." Earth has not a spectacle more 
 glorious or more fair to show than this Love tolerating 
 intolerance ; Charity covering, as with a veil, even the sin 
 of the lack of charity. 
 
Christian Friendship 239 
 
 CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP 
 
 MALACHI iii. 16. "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one 
 to another : and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of 
 remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and 
 that thought upon his name." 
 
 THE first division of our subject is suggested by the word 
 " then" When ? They did thus in the times of Malachi. 
 It is only in reference to those times that we can extract 
 the true lesson from the conduct of the holy men whose 
 behaviour he praises. We will consider 
 
 I. The times of Malachi. 
 II. The patience of the saints in evil times. 
 
 I. Not much is known of the Prophet Malachi, or his 
 exact date. We are sure, however, that he was the last 
 prophet of the old dispensation. He lived somewhere 
 between the restoration from captivity and the coming of 
 Christ. 
 
 Thus much we know of those times from history : The 
 Jews were restored. From chap. iii. v. 10, we learn that the 
 Temple had been rebuilt. But Israel's grandeur was gone, 
 although still enjoying outward prosperity. The nation had 
 sunk into a state of political degradation, and had become 
 successively subject to the Persians, Syrians, Romans. It 
 is precisely that political state in which national virtues 
 do not thrive, and national decay is sure. (Italy Spain.) 
 They had a glorious past. They had the enlightenment 
 of a present high civilization. But with this there was a 
 want of unity, manhood, and simple virtues. There was 
 just sufficient gallingness in the yoke to produce faction and 
 sullenness; but not enough curtailment of all physical 
 comforts to rouse the nation as one man to reconquer 
 
240 Christian Friendship 
 
 freedom. It was a state in which there was no visible 
 Divine interference. 
 
 Compare this period of Israel's history with all which had 
 preceded it. These 400 years belong to profane history. 
 The writings of that period are not reckoned inspired, so 
 widely do they differ from the Scripture tone. There were 
 no prophets, no flood of light, " no open vision.' 1 The Word 
 of God was precious as in that time between the death of 
 Joshua and the calling of Samuel. 1 Except this solitary 
 voice, prophecy had hushed her harp. 
 
 Now, what was given to Israel in that period ? 
 
 I reply, Retrospect, Pause, and Prospect. 
 
 Retrospect, in the sublime past which God had given her 
 for her experience. " They have Moses and the prophets, 
 let them hear them." On them they were to live their 
 nation's sacred history; God's guidance and faithfulness; 
 the sure truth that obedience was best. 
 
 Prospect^ in the expectation of better times. 
 
 Dim, vague hints of the Old Testament had pointed them 
 to a coming revelation a day in which God should be 
 nearer to them, in which society should be more pure. An 
 Advent, in short. 
 
 And between these two there was a Pause. 
 
 They were left by God to use the grace and knowledge 
 already given by Him. 
 
 Now this is parallel to God's usual modes of dealing. 
 For example, the Pause of 400 years in the land of Egypt, 
 between the bright days when Abraham talked with God, 
 and the deliverance by Moses. 
 
 The Pause in Canaan when the Israelitish commonwealth 
 was left, like a building to settle down before being built 
 higher, between the times of Joshua and of Samuel. 
 
 The Pause in the Captivity, arid now again a Pause. 
 
 A pause after each revelation until the next. 
 
 So, in the natural world. Just as in summer there is a 
 gush of nature's forces and a shooting forth; and then the 
 
 1 Four hundred and thirty-one years. 
 
Christian Friendship 241 
 
 long autumn and winter, in which is no growth, but an 
 opportunity, taught by past experience, for the husbandman 
 to manure his ground, and sow his seed, and to wait for a 
 new outpouring of life upon the world. 
 
 And just as in human life, between its marked lessons 
 there is a pause, in which we live upon past experience 
 looking back and looking on. Experience and hope, that 
 is human life : as in youth, expecting manhood, and then 
 looking for future changes in our condition, character, so 
 in all God's revelation system, there have been periods of 
 " open vision," and periods of pause waiting ; men are left 
 to experience and hope. 
 
 It is in vain that we have studied God's Word if we 
 do not perceive that our own day and circumstances are 
 parallel with those of the Prophet Malachi. We live in the 
 World's fourth great Pause. 
 
 Miracles have ceased. Prophecy is silent The Son of 
 God is ascended. Apostles are no longer here to apply 
 infallible judgment to each new circumstance as it arises, as 
 St. Paul did to the state of the Corinthian Church. 
 
 But we are left to the great Gospel principles which have 
 been already given, and which are to be our food till the 
 next flood of God's Spirit, the next Revelation that which 
 the Scripture calls "the Second Advent." 
 
 And the parallel holds in another respect. The Jews had 
 but undefined hints of that which was to be. Yet they knew 
 the general outlines and character of the coming time ; they 
 knew that it would be a searching time, it was to be the 
 " Refiner's " day ; they knew that he should turn the hearts 
 of the fathers to the children: and they knew that the 
 messenger age must be preceded by a falling back on 
 simpler life, and a return to first principles, as Malachi had 
 predicted, and as John the Baptist called them to. They 
 knew that it was an age in which the true sacrifice would be 
 offered. 
 
 And so now we know not yet what shall be ; " but we 
 know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for 
 VOL. i. Q 
 
242 Christian Friendship 
 
 we shall see Him as He is/' "And every man that hath 
 this hope in Him purifieth himself." 
 
 We know that it will be the union of the human race 
 they will be "onefold? 
 
 This is the outline and character of the Revelation ; and 
 we may work at least, towards it. "Ye are not in dark- 
 ness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye 
 are all the children of the light, and the children of the 
 day." " Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify 
 one another, even as also ye do." To strive after personal 
 purity and attempt at producing unity, that is our work. 
 
 We rest on that we have, and hope for that we see not. 
 And only for the glimpse that hope gives us of that, is life 
 worth having. 
 
 II. Let us consider the conduct of different classes in 
 these evil times. 
 
 1. Some lived recklessly. 
 
 Foremost among these were the priests, as has been 
 always found in evil times. The riot of a priest is worse 
 than that of the laity. Mutual corruption. Against the 
 priests Malachi's denunciations are chiefly directed. 
 
 He speaks of the profanation of the sacred places 
 (chap. i. 6, 7). Of sacrifice degraded (verses 12, 13). Vice 
 honoured (chap. ii. 17). In that they called good evil and 
 evil good. By these men belief in God was considered 
 ridiculous. 
 
 And then it was that one of those glorious promises was 
 made, to be fulfilled in after times. Malachi foresaw that 
 the Gentiles would take up the neglected service (chap. i. 
 10, IT), and the vision of an universal Kingdom of God 
 became the comfort of the faithful few. 
 
 2. Others lived uselessly, because despondingly. 
 
 The languor and despair of their hearts is read in the 
 words (chap. iii. 14, 15); and indeed it is not surprising: 
 to what point could good men look with satisfaction ? The 
 
Christian Friendship 243 
 
 nation was enslaved, and worse they had become slaves in 
 spirit. Their ancient purity was gone. The very priests had 
 become atheists. Where was the promise of His coming ? 
 Such, too, is the question of these latter times. And our 
 reply is from past experience. 
 
 That dark day passed, and a glorious Revelation dawned 
 on the world. From what has been, we justly infer what 
 will be. Promises fulfilled are a ground of hope for those 
 yet unfulfilled. Where is the promise now of holier times ? 
 Yes, but remember the question seemed to be just as un- 
 answerable then ; it was just as unanswerable in the days of 
 the Judges, and in the captivity in Egypt and in Babylon. 
 
 This "Scripture was written for our admonition, on 
 whom the ends of the world are come." Then the consola- 
 tion of St. Peter becomes intelligible, " We have a more 
 sure word of prophecy ; whereunto ye do well that ye take 
 heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the 
 day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts." 
 
 3. But in these evil times there were a few who compared 
 with one another their hopes, and sought strength in 
 Christian communion and fellowship. Of them the text 
 speaks. 
 
 This communion of saints is twofold : it includes church 
 fellowship and personal friendships. 
 
 It is plain that from church fellowship in those days they 
 could gain little. Unity there was not, but only disunion. 
 Over that state Malachi lamented in that touching appeal 
 " Have we not all one father ? hath not one God created 
 us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his 
 brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers ? " (Mai. 
 ii. 10) Israel had forgotten that she was a family. 
 
 And it is true that in our day church fellowship is almost 
 only a name. The Christianity of the nation does not bind 
 us as individuals. Well, does the Church? Are there 
 many traces of a common feeling ? When church privileges 
 are insisted on to produce unity, do they not produce 
 division ? Are not these words of the Prophet true of us ? 
 Where are the traces of Christian brotherhood ? 
 
244 Christian Friendship 
 
 Here in this town ? here in this congregation ? at the 
 Holy Supper which we join in to-day? Shall we meet to 
 get private good, or to feel we are partakers of the same 
 Body and the same Blood ? Therefore to insist on church 
 union as the remedy would be to miss the special meaning 
 of this verse. The malady of our disunion has gone too 
 deep to be cured by you or me. 
 
 We will consider it, therefore, in reference to Christian 
 friendship. We find that within the outward Jewish Church 
 there was an inner circle, knit together by closer bonds 
 than circumcision or the passover by an union of religious 
 sympathies. " Then they that feared the Lord spoke often 
 one to another : " they "thought upon His name." 
 
 Let us consider the blessing of Christian friendship. In 
 such times it discharges a double office. 
 
 1. For the interchange of Christian hope and Christian 
 feeling. It is dreary to serve God alone ; desolate to have 
 no one in our own circle or family from whom we can 
 receive sympathy in our hopes. Hopes die. 
 
 2. It is a mighty instrument in guarding against tempta- 
 tion. It is a safeguard, in the way of example, and also as 
 a standard of opinion. We should become tainted by the 
 world if it were not for Christian friends. 
 
 Therefore, in conclusion, cultivate familiar intimacy only 
 with those who love good and God. 
 
 Doubtless there are circumstances which determine 
 intimacies, such as rank, station, similarity of tastes. But 
 
 one thing must be paramount to and modify them all 
 
 Communion in God. Not in a sectarian spirit. We are 
 not to form ourselves into a party with those who think as 
 we do, and use the formulas that we do. But the spirit of 
 the text requires us to feel strongly that there is a mighty 
 gulf between those who love and those who do not love 
 God. To the one class we owe civility, courtesy, kindness, 
 even tenderness. It is only those who love the Lord who 
 should find in our hearts a home. 
 
Purity 245 
 
 PURITY 
 
 TITUS i. 15. " Unto the pure all things are pure : but unto them 
 that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure ; but even their mind 
 and conscience is defiled." 
 
 FOR the evils of this world there are two classes of 
 remedies one is the world's, the other is God's. The 
 world proposes to remedy evil by adjusting the circum- 
 stances of this life to man's desires. The world says, give 
 us a perfect set of circumstances, and then we shall have a 
 set of perfect men. This principle lies at the root of the 
 system called Socialism. Socialism proceeds on the prin- 
 ciple that all moral and even physical evil arises from unjust 
 laws. If the cause be remedied, the effect will be good. 
 But Christianity throws aside all that as merely chimerical. 
 It proves that the fault is not in outward circumstances, but 
 in ourselves. Like the wise physician, who, instead of 
 busying himself with transcendental theories to improve the 
 climate, and the outward circumstances of man, endeavours 
 to relieve and get rid of the tendencies of disease which are 
 from within, Christianity, leaving all outward circumstances 
 to ameliorate themselves, fastens its attention on the spirit 
 which has to deal with them. Christ has declared that the 
 kingdom of heaven is from within. He said to the Pharisee, 
 "Ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but 
 within ye are full of extortion and excess." 
 
 The remedy for all this is a large and liberal charity, so 
 overflowing that " Unto the pure all things are pure." To 
 internal purity all external things become pure. 
 
 The principle that St. Paul has here laid down is, that 
 each man is the creator of his own world ; he walks in a 
 universe of his own creation. 
 
 As the free air is to one out of health the cause of cold 
 and diseased lungs, so to the healthy man it is a source of 
 greater vigour. The rotten fruit is sweet to the worm, but 
 
246 Purity 
 
 nauseous to the palate of man. It is the same air and the 
 same fruit acting differently upon different persons. To 
 different men a different world to one all pollution to 
 another all purity. To the noble all things are noble, 
 to the mean all things are contemptible. 
 The subject divides itself into two parts. 
 
 I. The apostle's principle. 
 II. The application of the principle. 
 
 Here we have the same principle again; each man 
 creates his own world. Take it in its simplest form. The 
 eye creates the outward world it sees. We see not things 
 as they are, but as God has made the eye to receive them. 
 
 In its strictest sense, the creation of a new man is the 
 creation of a new universe. Conceive an eye so constructed 
 as that the planets and all within them should be minutely 
 seen, and all that is near should be dim and invisible like 
 things seen through a telescope, or as we see through a 
 magnifying glass the plumage of the butterfly, and the 
 bloom upon the peach ; then it is manifestly clear that we 
 have called into existence actually a new creation, and not 
 new objects. The mind's eye creates a world for itself. 
 
 Again, the visible world presents a different aspect to 
 each individual man. You will say that the same things 
 you see are seen by all that the forest, the valley, the 
 flood, and the sea, are the same to all ; and yet all these 
 things so seen, to different minds, are a myriad of different 
 universes. One man sees in that noble river an emblem of 
 eternity; he closes his lips and feels that God is there. 
 Another sees nothing in it but a very convenient road for 
 transporting his spices, silks, and merchandise. To one this 
 world appears useful, to another beautiful. Whence comes 
 the difference ? From the soul within us. It can make of 
 this world a vast chaos " a mighty maze without a plan ; " 
 or a mere machine a collection of lifeless forces ; or it can 
 make it the Living Vesture of God, the tissue through 
 which He can become visible to us. In the spirit in which 
 
Purity 247 
 
 we look on it the world is an arena for mere self-advancement, 
 or a place for noble deeds, in which self is forgotten, and 
 God is all. 
 
 Observe, this effect is traceable even in that produced by 
 our different and changeful moods. We make and unmake 
 a world more than once in the space of a single day. In 
 trifling moods all seems trivial. In serious moods all seems 
 solemn. Is the song of the nightingale merry or plaintive ? 
 Is it the voice of joy, or the harbinger of gloom ? Some- 
 times one, and sometimes the other, according to our 
 different moods. We hear the ocean furious or exulting. 
 The thunder-claps are grand, or angry, according to the 
 different states of our mind. Nay, the very church-bells 
 chime sadly or merrily, as our associations determine. They 
 speak the language of our passing moods. The young 
 adventurer revolving sanguine plans upon the milestone, 
 hears them speak to him as God did to Hagar in the wilder- 
 ness, bidding him back to perseverance and greatness. The 
 soul spreads its own hue over everything; the shroud or 
 wedding garment of nature is woven in the loom of our 
 own feelings. This universe is the express image and direct 
 counterpart of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble-minded, 
 and all Nature replies I am divine, the child of God be 
 thou, too, His child, and noble. Be mean, and all Nature 
 dwindles into a contemptible smallness. 
 
 In the second place, there are two ways in which this 
 principle is true. 
 
 To the pure, all things and all persons are pure, because 
 their purity makes all seem pure. 
 
 There are some who go through life complaining of this 
 world ; they say they have found nothing but treachery and 
 deceit ; the poor are ungrateful, and the rich are selfish. 
 Yet we do not find such the best men. Experience tells us 
 that each man most keenly and unerringly detects in others 
 the vice with which he is most familiar himself. 
 
 Persons seem to each man what he is himself. One 
 who suspects hypocrisy in the world is rarely transparent ; 
 the man constantly on the watch for cheating is generally 
 
248 Purity 
 
 dishonest ; he who suspects impurity is prurient. This is 
 the principle to which Christ alludes when he says, " Give 
 alms of such things as ye have ; and behold all things are 
 clean unto you." 
 
 Have a large charity ! Large " charity hopeth all 
 things." Look at that sublime apostle who saw the 
 churches of Ephesus and Thessalonica pure, because he 
 saw them in his own large love, and painted them, not as 
 they were, but as his heart filled up the picture ; he viewed 
 them in the light of his own nobleness, as representations of 
 his own purity. 
 
 Once more, to the pure all things are pure, as well as all 
 persons. That which is natural lies not in things, but in the 
 minds of men. There is a difference between prudery and 
 modesty. Prudery detects wrong where no wrong is ; the 
 wrong lies in the thoughts, and not in the objects. There 
 is something of over-sensitiveness and over-delicacy which 
 shows not innocence, but an inflammable imagination. And 
 men of the world cannot understand that those subjects and 
 thoughts which to them are full of torture, can be harmless, 
 suggesting nothing evil to the pure in heart. 
 
 Here, however, beware ! No sentence of Scripture is 
 more frequently in the lips of persons who permit them- 
 selves much license, than the text, " To the pure, all things 
 are pure." Yes, all things natural, but not artificial scenes 
 which pamper the tastes, which excite the senses. Inno- 
 cence feels healthily. To it all nature is pure. But, just as 
 the dove trembles at the approach of the hawk, and the 
 young calf shudders at the lion never seen before, so 
 innocence shrinks instinctively from what is wrong by the 
 same divine instinct. If that which is wrong seems pure, 
 then the heart is not pure, but vitiated. To the right 
 minded all that is right in the course of this world seems 
 pure. Abraham, looking forward to the destruction of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, entreated that it might be averted, 
 and afterwards acquiesced ! To the disordered mind " all 
 things are out of course." This is the spirit which pervades 
 
Purity 249 
 
 the whole of the Ecclesiastes. There were two things which 
 were perpetually suggesting themselves to the mind of 
 Solomon ; the intolerable sameness of this world, and the 
 constant desire for change. And yet that same world, 
 spread before the serene eye of God, was pronounced to be 
 all " very good." 
 
 This disordered universe is the picture of your own mind. 
 We make a wilderness by encouraging artificial wants, by 
 creating sensitive and selfish feelings ; then we project 
 everything stamped with the impress of our own feelings, 
 and we gather the whole of creation into our own pained 
 being " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
 together until now." The world you complain of as impure 
 and wrong is not God's world, but your world ; the blight, 
 the dullness, the blank, are all your own. The light which 
 is in you has become darkness, and therefore the light itself 
 is dark. 
 
 Again, to the pure, all things not only seem pure, but are 
 really so because they are made such. 
 
 i. As regards persons. 
 
 It is a marvellous thing to see how a pure and innocent 
 heart purifies all that it approaches. The most ferocious 
 natures are soothed and tamed by innocence. And so 
 with human beings, there is a delicacy so pure, that vicious 
 men in its presence become almost pure ; all of purity which 
 is in them is brought out ; like attaches itself to like. The 
 pure heart becomes a centre of attraction, round which simi- 
 lar atoms gather, and from which dissimilar ones are repelled. 
 A corrupt heart elicits in an hour all that is bad in us ; a 
 spiritual one brings out and draws to itself all that is best 
 and purest. Such was Christ. He stood in the world, the 
 Light of the world, to which all sparks gradually gathered. 
 He stood in the presence of impurity, and men became pure. 
 Note this in the history of Zaccheus. In answer to the in- 
 vitation of the Son of man, he says, " Behold, Lord, the half 
 of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have done wrong 
 to any man 1 restore him fourfold." So also the Scribe, 
 " Well, Master, thou hast well said, there is one God, and 
 
250 Purity 
 
 there is none other than He." To the pure Saviour, all 
 was pure. " He was lifted up on high, and drew all men 
 unto Him." 
 
 Lastly, all situations are pure to the pure. According to 
 the world, some professions are reckoned honourable, and 
 some dishonourable. Men judge according to a standard 
 merely conventional, and not by that of moral rectitude. 
 Yet it was, in truth, the men who were in these situations 
 which made them such. In the days of the Redeemer, the 
 publican's occupation was a degraded one, merely because 
 low base men filled that place. But since He was born into 
 the world a poor, labouring man, poverty is noble and 
 dignified, and toil is honourable. To the man who feels 
 that " the king's daughter is all glorious within," no outward 
 situation can seem inglorious or impure. 
 
 There are three words which express almost the same 
 thing, but whose meaning is entirely different. These are, 
 the gibbet, the scaffold, and the cross. So far as we know, 
 none die on the gibbet but men of dishonourable and base 
 life. The scaffold suggests to our minds the noble deaths 
 of our greatest martyrs. The cross was once a gibbet, but 
 it is now the highest name we have, because He hung on it. 
 Christ has purified and ennobled the cross. This principle 
 runs through life. It is not the situation which makes the 
 man, but the man who makes the situation. The slave may 
 be a freeman. The monarch may be a slave. Situations 
 are noble or ignoble, as we make them. 
 
 From all this subject we learn to understand two things. 
 
 Hence we understand the Fall. When man fell, the 
 world fell with him. All creation received a shock. Thorns, 
 briars, and thistles, sprang up. They were there before, but 
 to the now restless and impatient hands of men they became 
 obstacles and weeds. Death, which must ever have existed 
 as a form of dissolution, a passing from one state to another, 
 became a curse ; the sting of death was sin unchanged in 
 itself, it changed in man. A dark, heavy cloud, rested on it 
 the shadow of his own guilty heart. 
 
 Hence, too, we understand the Millennium. The Bible 
 
Christian Casuistry 251 
 
 says that these things are not to be for ever. There are 
 glorious things to come. Just as in my former illustration, 
 the alteration of the eye called new worlds into being, so 
 now nothing more is needed than to re-create the soul the 
 mirror on which all things are reflected. There is realized 
 the prophecy of Isaiah, " Behold, I create all things new," 
 " new heavens and a new earth." 
 
 The conclusion of this verse proves to us why all these 
 new creations were called into being "wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness." To be righteous makes all things new. 
 We do not want a new world, we want new hearts. Let the 
 Spirit of God purify society, and to the pure all things will 
 be pure. The earth will put off the look of weariness and 
 gloom which it has worn so long, and then the glorious 
 language of the prophets will be fulfilled "The forests 
 will break out with singing, and the desert will blossom as 
 the rose." 
 
 CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY 
 
 I CORINTHIANS vii. 18-24. " Is any man called being circum- 
 cised ? let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircum- 
 cision? let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and 
 uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments 
 of God. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was 
 called. Art thou called being a servant ? care not for it : but if thou 
 mayest be made free use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, 
 being a servant, is the Lord's freeman ; likewise also he that is called 
 being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price ; be not 
 ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man wherein he is called 
 therein abide with God." 
 
 THE whole of these seven chapters of the First Epistle 
 of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, is occupied with 
 questions of Christian casuistry. In the application of the 
 principles of Christianity to the varying circumstances of 
 
252 Christian Casuistry 
 
 life, innumerable difficulties had arisen, and the Corinthians 
 upon these difficulties had put certain questions to the 
 Apostle Paul. This seventh chapter contains the apostle's 
 answer to many of these questions. There are, however, 
 two great divisions into which these answers generally fall. 
 St. Paul makes a distinction between those things which he 
 speaks by commandment and those which he speaks only 
 by permission ; there is a distinction between what he says 
 as from the Lord, and what only from himself ; between that 
 which he speaks to them as being taught of God, and that 
 which he speaks only as a servant, " called of the Lord and 
 faithful." It is manifestly plain that there are many questions 
 in which right and wrong are not variable, but indissoluble 
 and fixed ; while there are questions, on the other hand, 
 where these terms are not fixed, but variable, fluctuating, 
 altering, dependent upon circumstances. As, for instance, 
 those in which the apostle teaches in the present chapter 
 the several duties and advantages of marriage and celibacy. 
 There may be circumstances in which it is the duty of a 
 Christian man to be married, there are others in which it 
 may be his duty to remain unmarried. For instance, in the 
 case of a missionary it may be right to be married rather 
 than unmarried ; in the case, on the other hand, of a pauper, 
 not having the wherewithal to bring up and maintain a 
 family, it may be proper to remain unmarried. You will 
 observe, however, that no fixed law can be laid down upon 
 this subject. We cannot say marriage is a Christian duty, 
 nor celibacy is a Christian duty ; nor that it is in every case 
 the duty of a missionary to be married, or of a pauper to be 
 unmarried. All these things must vary according to cir- 
 cumstances, and the duty must be stated not universally, 
 but with reference to those circumstances. 
 
 These, therefore, are questions of casuistry, which depend 
 upon the particular case : from which word the term " casu- 
 istry " is derived. On these points the apostle speaks, not 
 by commandment, but by permission ; not as speaking by 
 God's command, but as having the Spirit of God. A dis- 
 tinction has sometimes been drawn with reference to this 
 
Christian Casuistry 253 
 
 chapter between that which the apostle speaks by inspira- 
 tion, and what he speaks as a man uninspired. The 
 distinction, however, is an altogether false one, and beside 
 the question. For the real distinction is not between 
 inspired and uninspired, but between a decision in matters 
 of Christian duty, and advice in matters of Christian 
 prudence. It is abundantly evident that God cannot give 
 advice ; He can only issue a command. God cannot say, 
 " It is better to do this ; " His perfections demand some- 
 thing absolute : " Thou shalt do this ; thou shalt not do 
 this." Whensoever, therefore, we come to advice there is 
 introduced the human element rather than the divine. 
 In all such cases, therefore, as are dependent upon cir- 
 cumstances the apostle speaks not as inspired, but as 
 uninspired ; as one whose judgment we have no right to find 
 fault with or to cavil at, who lays down what is a matter of 
 Christian prudence, and not a bounden and universal duty. 
 The matter of the present discourse will take in various 
 verses in this chapter from the tenth to the twenty-fourth 
 verse leaving part of the commencement and the con- 
 clusion for our consideration, if God permit, next Sunday. 
 There are three main questions on which the apostle here 
 gives his inspired decision. The first decision is concerning 
 the sanctity of the marriage-bond between two Christians. 
 His verdict is given in the tenth verse : " Unto the married 
 I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife 
 depart from her husband." He lays down this principle, 
 that the union is an indissoluble one. Upon such a sub- 
 ject, Christian brethren, before a mixed congregation, it 
 is manifestly evident that we can only speak in general 
 terms. It will be sufficient to say that marriage is of all 
 earthly unions almost the only one permitting of no change 
 but that of death. It is that engagement in which man 
 exerts his most awful and solemn power, the power of 
 responsibility which belongs to him as one that shall give 
 account, the power of abnegating the right to change, 
 the power of parting with his freedom, the power of doing 
 that which in this world can never be reversed. And yet it 
 
254 Christian Casuistry 
 
 is perhaps that relationship which is spoken of most frivol- 
 ously, and entered into most carelessly and most wantonly. 
 It is not an union merely between two creatures, it is an 
 union between two spirits ; and the intention of that bond 
 is to perfect the nature of both, by supplementing their 
 deficiencies with the force of contrast, giving to each sex 
 those excellencies in which it is naturally deficient ; to the 
 one strength of character and firmness of moral will, to the 
 other sympathy, meekness, tenderness. And just so solemn, 
 and just so glorious as these ends are for which the union 
 was contemplated and intended, just so terrible are the con- 
 sequences if it be perverted and abused. For there is no 
 earthly relationship which has so much power to ennoble 
 and to exalt. Very strong language does the apostle use in 
 this chapter respecting it : " What knoweth thou, O wife, 
 whether thou shalt save thy husband ? or how knowest thou, 
 O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife ? " The very power 
 of saving belongs to this relationship. And, on the other 
 hand, there is no earthly relationship which has so much 
 power to wreck and ruin the soul. For there are two rocks 
 in this world of ours on which the soul must either anchor 
 or be wrecked. The one is God ; the other is the sex 
 opposite to itself. The one is the " Rock of Ages," on which 
 if the human soul anchors it lives the blessed life of faith ; 
 against which if the soul be dashed and broken, there 
 ensues the wreck of Atheism the worst ruin of the soul. 
 The other rock is of another character. Blessed is the man, 
 blessed is the woman whose life-experience has taught a 
 confiding belief in the excellencies of the sex opposite to 
 their own a blessedness second only to the blessedness of 
 salvation. And the ruin in the other case is second only to 
 the ruin of everlasting perdition the same wreck and ruin of 
 the soul. These, then, are the two tremendous alternatives : 
 on the one hand the possibility of securing in all sympathy 
 and tenderness, the laying of that step on which man rises 
 towards his perfection ; on the other hand the blight of all 
 sympathy, to be dragged down to earth, and forced to be- 
 come frivolous and common-place ; to lose all zest and 
 
Christian Casuistry 255 
 
 earnestness in life, to have heart and life degraded by mean 
 and perpetually-recurring sources of disagreement; these 
 are the two alternatives, and it is the worst of these alterna- 
 tives which the young risk when they form an inconsiderate 
 union, excusably indeed because through inexperience; 
 and it is the worst of these alternatives which parents risk 
 not excusably but inexcusably when they bring up their 
 children with no higher view of what that tie is, than the 
 merely prudential one of a rich and honourable marriage. 
 The second decision which the apostle makes respecting 
 another of the questions proposed to him by the Corinthians, 
 is as to the sanctity of the marriage bond between a 
 Christian and one who is a heathen. When Christianity 
 first entered into our world, and was little understood, it 
 seemed to threaten the dislocation and alteration of all 
 existing relationships. Many difficulties arose; such, for 
 instance, as the one here started. When of two heathen 
 parties only one was converted to Christianity, the question 
 arose, What in this case is the duty of the Christian ? Is 
 not the duty separation ? Is not the marriage in itself null 
 and void ? as if it were an union between one dead and one 
 living? And that perpetual contact with a heathen, and 
 therefore an enemy of God, is not that, in a relation so close 
 and intimate, perpetual defilement ? The apostle decides 
 this with his usual inspired wisdom. He decides that the 
 marriage-bond is sacred still. Diversities of religious 
 opinion, even the farthest and widest diversity, cannot 
 sanction separation. And so he decides in the i3th verse, 
 " The woman which hath an husband that believeth not, if 
 he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him." 
 And, " if any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she 
 be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away," v. 12. 
 Now for us in the present day, the decision on this point is 
 not of so much importance as the reason which is adduced 
 in support of it. The proof which the apostle gives of the 
 sanctity of the marriage is exceedingly remarkable. Practically 
 it amounts to this : If this were no marriage, but an unhal- 
 lowed alliance, it would follow as a necessary consequence 
 
256 Christian Casuistry 
 
 that the offspring could not be reckoned in any sense as 
 the children of God; but, on the other hand, it is the 
 instinctive, unwavering conviction of every Christian parent, 
 united though he or she may be to a heathen, " My child is 
 a child of God," or, in the Jewish form of expression, " My 
 child is clean." So the apostle says, " the unbelieving hus- 
 band is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is 
 sanctified by the husband : else were your children unclean ; 
 but now they are holy," for it follows, if the children are 
 holy in this sense of dedicated to God, and are capable of 
 Christian relationship, then the marriage relation was not 
 unhallowed, but sacred and indissoluble. The value of 
 this argument in the present day depends on its relation 
 to baptism. The great question we are deciding in the 
 present day may be reduced to a very few words. This 
 question the Baptismal question is this : whether we 
 are baptized because we are the children of God, or, 
 whether we are the children of God because we are bap- 
 tized ; whether, in other words, when the Catechism of the 
 Church of England says that by baptism we are " made 
 the children of God," we are to understand thereby that we 
 are made something which we were not before magically 
 and mysteriously changed ; or, whether we are to under- 
 stand that we are made the Children of God by baptism 
 in the same sense that a sovereign is made a sovereign by 
 coronation. Here the apostle's argument is full, decisive, 
 and unanswerable. He does not say that these children 
 were Christian, or clean, because they were baptized^ but 
 they were the children of God because they were the 
 children of one Christian parent ; nay, more than that, such 
 children could scarcely ever have been baptized, because, 
 if the rite met with opposition from one of the parents, it 
 would be an entire and perfect veto to the possibility of 
 baptism. You will observe that the very fundamental idea 
 out of which infant-baptism arises is, that the impression 
 produced upon the mind and character of the child by the 
 Christian parent, makes the child one of a Christian com- 
 munity ; and, therefore, as Peter argued that Cornelius had 
 
Christian Casuistry 257 
 
 received the Holy Ghost, and so was to be baptized, just 
 in the same way, as they are adopted into the Christian 
 family, and receive a Christian impression, the children of 
 Christian parents are also to be baptized. 
 
 Observe also the important truth which comes out colla- 
 terally from this argument namely, the sacredness of the 
 impression, which arises from the close connection between 
 parent and child. Stronger far than education going on 
 before education can commence, possibly from the very 
 first moments of consciousness, we begin to impress our- 
 selves on our children. Our character, voice, features, 
 qualities modified, no doubt, by entering into a new 
 human being, and into a different organization are im- 
 pressed upon our children. Not the inculcation of opinions, 
 but much rather the formation of principles, and of the tone 
 of character, the derivation of qualities. Physiologists tell 
 us of the derivation of the mental qualities from the father, 
 and of the moral from the mother. But, be this as it may, 
 there is scarcely one here who cannot trace back his present 
 religious character to some impression, in early life, from 
 one or other of his parents a tone, a look, a word, a habit, 
 or even, it may be, a bitter, miserable exclamation of 
 remorse. 
 
 The third decision which the apostle gives, the third 
 principle which he lays down, is but the development of the 
 last. Christianity, he says, does not interfere with existing 
 relationships. First, he lays down the principle, and then 
 unfolds the principle in two ways, ecclesiastically and civilly. 
 The principle he lays down in almost every variety of form. 
 In the i;th verse, " As God hath distributed to every man, 
 as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk." In 
 the 2oth verse, " Let every man abide in the same calling 
 wherein he was called." In the 24th verse, " Brethren, let 
 every man wherein he is called therein abide with God." 
 This is the principle. Christianity was not to interfere with 
 existing relationships; Christian men were to remain in 
 those relationships in which they were, and in them to 
 develope the inward spirituality of the Christian life. Then 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
258 Christian Casuistry 
 
 he applies this principle in two ways. First of all, ecclesi- 
 astically. With respect to their church, or ecclesiastical 
 affairs, he says " Is any man called being circumcised ? 
 Let him not become uncircumcised. Is any man in un- 
 circumcision ? Let him not be circumcised." In other 
 words, the Jews, after their conversion, were to continue 
 Jews, if they would. Christianity required no change 
 in these outward things, for it was not in these that the 
 depth and reality of the kingdom of Christ consisted. So 
 the Apostle Paul took Timothy and circumcised him ; so, 
 also, he used all the Jewish customs with which he was 
 familiar, and performed a vow, as related in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, " having shorn his head in Cenchrea ; for he had 
 a vow." It was not his opinion that it was the duty of a 
 Christian to overthrow the Jewish system. He knew that 
 the Jewish system could not last, but what he wanted was 
 to vitalize the system to throw into it not a Jewish, but a 
 Christian feeling ; and so doing, he might continue in it so 
 long as it would hold together. And so it was no doubt, 
 with all the other apostles. We have no evidence that, 
 before the destruction of the Jewish polity, there was any 
 attempt made by them to overthrow the Jewish external 
 religion. They kept the Jewish Sabbath, and observed the 
 Jewish ritual. One of them, James, the Christian Bishop 
 of Jerusalem, though a Christian, was even among the Jews 
 remarkable and honourable for the regularity with which he 
 observed all his Jewish duties. Now let us apply this to 
 modern duties. The great desire among men now, appears 
 to be to alter institutions, to have perfect institutions, as if 
 they would make perfect men. Mark the difference between 
 this feeling and that of the apostle, " Let every man abide 
 in the same calling wherein he was called." We are called 
 to be members of the Church of England what is our duty 
 now ? What would Paul have done ? Is this our duty to 
 put such questions to ourselves as these ? "Is there any 
 single, particular sentence in the service of my Church with 
 which I do not entirely agree ? Is there any single cere- 
 mony with which my whole soul does not go along ? If so, 
 
Christian Casuistry 259 
 
 then is it my duty to leave it at once ? " No, my brethren, 
 all that we have to do is to say, "All our existing institu- 
 tions are those under which God has placed us, under 
 which we are to mould our lives according to His will." It 
 is our duty to vitalize our forms, to throw into them a holier, 
 deeper meaning. My Christian brethren, surely no man 
 will get true rest, true repose for his soul in these days of 
 controversy, until he has learned the wise significance of 
 these wise words " Let every man abide in the same calling 
 wherein he was called." He will but gain unrest, he will 
 but disquiet himself, if he says, " I am sinning by con- 
 tinuing in this imperfect system," if he considers it his duty 
 to change his calling if his opinions do not agree in every 
 particular and special point with the system under which 
 God has placed him. 
 
 Lastly, the apostle applies this principle civilly. And 
 you will observe he applies it to that civil relationship which, 
 of all others, was the most difficult to harmonize with 
 Christianity slavery. "Art thou called," he says, "being 
 a servant ? Care not for it." Now, in considering this 
 part of the subject we should carry along with us these two 
 recollections. First, we should recollect that Christianity 
 had made much way among this particular class, the class 
 of slaves. No wonder that men cursed with slavery em- 
 braced with joy a religion which was perpetually teaching 
 the worth and dignity of the human soul, and declaring 
 that rich and poor, peer and peasant, master and slave, 
 were equal in the sight of God. And yet, great as this 
 growth was, it contained within it elements of danger. It 
 was to be feared, lest men, hearing for ever of brotherhood 
 and Christian equality, should be tempted and excited to 
 throw off the yoke by force, and compel their masters and 
 oppressors to do them right. 
 
 The other fact we are to keep in remembrance is this 
 that all this occurred in an age in which slavery had reached 
 its worst and most fearful form, an age in which the 
 emperors were accustomed, not unfrequently, to feed their 
 fish with living slaves ; when captives were led to fight in 
 
260 Christian Casuistry 
 
 the amphitheatre with wild beasts or with each other, to 
 glut the Roman appetite for blood upon a Roman holiday. 
 And yet, fearful as it was, the apostle says, " Care not for it." 
 And, fearful as war was in those days, when the soldiers 
 came to John to be baptized, he did not recommend them 
 to join some " Peace Association," to use the modern term ; 
 he simply exhorted them to be content with their wages. 
 And hence we understand the way in which Christianity 
 was to work. It interferes indirectly and not directly with 
 existing institutions. No doubt it will at length abolish 
 war and slavery, but there is riot one case where we find 
 Christianity interfering with institutions, as such. Even 
 when Onesimus ran away and came to Paul, the apostle 
 sent him back to his master Philemon, not dissolving the 
 connection between them. And then, as a consolation to 
 the servant, he told him of a higher feeling a feeling that 
 would make him free, with the chain and shackle upon his 
 arm. And so it was possible for the Christian then, as it is 
 now, to be possessed of the highest liberty even under 
 tyranny. It many times occurred that Christian men found 
 themselves placed under an unjust and tyrannical govern- 
 ment, and compelled to pay unjust taxes. The Son of 
 Man showed his freedom not by refusing, but by paying 
 them. His glorious liberty could do so without any feeling 
 of degradation, and obey the laws, not because they were 
 right, but because institutions are to be upheld with 
 cordiality. 
 
 One thing in conclusion we have to observe. It is 
 possible from all this to draw a most inaccurate conclusion. 
 Some men have spoken of Christianity as if it was entirely 
 indifferent about liberty and all public questions as if with 
 such things as these Christianity did not concern itself at 
 all. This indifference is not to be found in the Apostle 
 Paul. While he asserts that inward liberty is the only true 
 liberty, he still goes on to say, " If thou mayst be free use 
 it rather." For he well knew that although it was possible 
 for a man to be a high and lofty Christian, even though he 
 were a slave, yet it was not probable that he would be so. 
 
Christian Casuistry 261 
 
 Outward institutions are necessary partly to make a perfect 
 Christian character ; and thus Christianity works from what 
 is internal to what is external. It gave to the slave the 
 feeling of his dignity as a man, at the same time it gave to 
 the Christian master a new view of his relation to his slave, 
 and taught him to regard him " not now as a servant, but 
 above a servant, a brother beloved." And so by degrees 
 slavery passed into freed servitude, and freed servitude, 
 under God's blessing, may pass into something else. 
 There are two mistakes which are often made upon this 
 subject ; one is, the error of supposing that outward 
 institutions are unnecessary for the formation of character, 
 and the other, that of supposing that they are all that is 
 required to form the human soul. If we understand rightly 
 the duty of a Christian man, it is this : to make his brethren 
 free inwardly and outwardly; first inwardly, so that they 
 may become masters of themselves, rulers of their passions, 
 having the power of self-rule and self-control ; and then out- 
 wardly, so that there may be every power and opportunity 
 of developing the inward life; in the language of the 
 prophet, " To break the rod of the oppressor and let the 
 oppressed go free." 
 
262 Law of Christian Conscience 
 
 THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE 
 
 i CORINTHIANS viii. 7-13. " Howbeit there is not in every man 
 that knowledge : for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour, 
 eat it as a thing offered unto an idol ; and their conscience being weak 
 is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God : for neither if we eat 
 are we the better ; neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take 
 heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block 
 to them that are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge, 
 sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which 
 is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols ; 
 and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom 
 Christ died ? But when ye sin so against the brethren and wound their 
 weak conscience ye sin against Christ. Wherefore if meat make my 
 brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I 
 make my brother to offend." 
 
 WE have already divided this chapter into two branches 
 the former portion of it containing the difference between 
 Christian knowledge and secular knowledge, and the second 
 portion containing the apostolic exposition of the law of 
 Christian conscience. The first of these we endeavoured to 
 expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to recapitu- 
 late the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different 
 form. Corinth, as we all know and remember, was a city 
 built on the sea coast, having a large and free communication 
 with all foreign nations ; and there was also within it, and 
 going on amongst its inhabitants, a free interchange of 
 thought, and a vivid power of communicating the philosophy 
 and truths of those days to each other. Now it is plain 
 that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, 
 the gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar 
 attraction, presenting itself to them as it did, as a law of 
 Christian liberty. And so, in Corinth the gospel had " free 
 course and was glorified," and was received with great joy 
 by almost all men, and by minds of all classes and all sects ; 
 and a large number of these attached themselves to the 
 teaching of the Apostle Paul as the most accredited ex- 
 
Law of Christian Conscience 263 
 
 pounder of Christianity the " royal law of liberty." But 
 it seems, from what we read in this epistle, that a large 
 number of these men received Christianity as a thing 
 intellectual, and that alone and not as a thing which 
 touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the affec- 
 tions. And so, this liberty became to them almost all they 
 ran into sin or went to extravagance they rejoiced in their 
 freedom from the superstitions, the ignorances, and the 
 scruples which bound their weaker brethren ; but had no 
 charity none of that intense charity which characterized 
 the Apostle Paul for those still struggling in the delusions 
 and darkness from which they themselves were free. 
 More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian 
 liberty of expressing their opinions in the church, merely for 
 the sake of exhibiting the Christian graces and spiritual gifts 
 which had been showered upon them so largely ; until by 
 degrees those very assemblies became a lamentable exhibi- 
 tion of their own depravity, and led to numerous irregularities 
 which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle Paul. Their 
 women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given 
 to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits of 
 attire which had been consecrated so long by Grecian and 
 Jewish custom, and appeared with their heads uncovered in 
 the Christian community. Still further than that, the Lord's 
 Supper exhibited an absence of all solemnity, and seemed 
 more a meeting for licentious gratification, where " one was 
 hungry, and another was drunken" a place in which 
 earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, 
 had taken the place of Christian charity towards each other. 
 And the same feeling this love of mere liberty liberty 
 in itself manifested itself in many other directions. 
 Holding by this freedom, their philosophy taught that the 
 body, that is the flesh, was the only cause of sin ; that the 
 soul was holy and pure ; and that, therefore, to be free from 
 the body would be entire, perfect, Christian emancipation. 
 And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine, exhibited in 
 Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from, and 
 in opposition to, the doctrine of the resurrection. And 
 
264 Law of Christian Conscience 
 
 afterwards they went on with their conclusions about liberty 
 to maintain that the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, 
 was no longer capable of sin ; and that in the evil which 
 was done by the body, the soul had taken no part. And 
 therefore sin was to them but as a name, from which a 
 Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that 
 when one of their number had fallen into grievous sin, and 
 had committed fornication, " such as was not so much as 
 named among the Gentiles," so far from being humbled by 
 it, they were "puffed up," as if they were exhibiting to the 
 world an enlightened, true, perfect Christianity separate 
 from all prejudices. To such a society and to such a state 
 of mind, the Apos-tle Paul preached in all its length, 
 breadth, and fulness, the humbling doctrines of the Cross of 
 Christ. He taught that knowledge was one thing that 
 charity was another thing ; that " knowledge puffeth up, but 
 charity buildeth up." He reminded them that love was the 
 perfection of knowledge, that, " if any man loved God, the 
 same was known of Him." In other words, his teaching 
 came to this : there are two kinds of knowledge ; the one the 
 knowledge of the intellect, the other the knowledge of the 
 heart. Intellectually, God never can be known. He must 
 be known by Love for, " if any man love God the same is 
 known of Him." Here, then, we have arrived in another 
 way at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived 
 last Sunday. Here are two kinds of knowledge, secular 
 knowledge and Christian knowledge; and Christian know- 
 ledge is this to know by Love. 
 
 Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which 
 treats of the law of Christian conscience. You will observe 
 that it divides itself into two branches the first containing 
 an exposition of the law itself, and the second the Christian 
 applications which flow out of this exposition. 
 
 I. The way in which the apostle expounds the law of 
 Christian conscience is this : Guilt is contracted by the 
 soul, in so far as it sins against and transgresses the law of 
 God, by doing that which it believes to be wrong : not so 
 much what is wrong as what appears to it to be wrong. 
 
Law of Christian Conscience 265 
 
 This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the yth and 8th 
 verses. The apostle tells the Corinthians these strong- 
 minded Corinthians that the superstitions of their weaker 
 brethren were unquestionably wrong. " Meat," he says, 
 " commendeth us not to God ; for neither if we eat are we 
 the better ; neither if we eat not are we the worse." He then 
 tells them further, that "there is not in every man that 
 knowledge ; for some, with conscience of the idol, eat it as a 
 thing offered unto an idol." Here, then, is an ignorant, 
 mistaken, ill-informed conscience; and yet he goes on to 
 tell them that this conscience, so ill-informed, yet binds 
 the possessor of it : " and their conscience, being weak, is 
 defiled." For example ; there could be no harm in eating 
 the flesh of an animal that had been offered to an idol or 
 false god ; for a false god is nothing, and it is impossible for 
 it to have contracted positive defilement by being offered to 
 that which is a positive and absolute negation. And yet if 
 any man thought it wrong to eat such flesh, to him it was 
 wrong ; for in that act there would be a deliberate act of 
 transgression a deliberate preference of that which was 
 mere enjoyment, to that which was apparently, though it 
 may be only apparently, sanctioned by the law of God. 
 And so it would carry with it all the disobedience, all the 
 guilt, and all the misery which belongs to the doing of 
 an act altogether wrong; or, as St. Paul expresses it, the 
 conscience would become defiled. 
 
 Here, then, we arrive at the first distinction the dis- 
 tinction between absolute and relative right and wrong. 
 Absolute right and absolute wrong, like absolute truth, can 
 each be but one and unalterable in the sight of God. The 
 one absolute right the charity of God and the sacrifice of 
 Christ this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole 
 measure of eternal right. But human right or human 
 wrong, that is, the merit or demerit of any action done by 
 any particular man, must be measured, not by that absolute 
 standard, but as a matter relative to his particular circum- 
 stances, the state of the age in which he lives, and his own 
 knowledge of right and wrong. For we come into this 
 
266 Law of Christian Conscience 
 
 world with a moral sense ; or, to speak more Christianly, 
 with a conscience. And yet that will tell us but very little 
 distinctly. It tells us broadly that which is right and that 
 which is wrong, so that every child can understand this. 
 That charity and self-denial are right this we see recognised 
 in almost every nation. But the boundaries of these two 
 when and how far self-denial is right what are the bounds 
 of charity this it is for different circumstances yet to bring 
 out and determine. And so, it will be found that there is a 
 different standard among different nations and in different 
 ages. That, for example, which was the standard among the 
 Israelites in the earlier ages, and before their settlement in 
 Canaan, was very different from the higher and truer standard 
 of right and wrong recognised by the later prophets. And 
 the standard in the third and fourth centuries after Christ 
 was truly and unquestionably an entirely different one from 
 that recognised in the nineteenth century among ourselves. 
 Let me not be mistaken. I do not say that right and 
 wrong are merely conventional, or merely chronological or 
 geographical, or that they vary with latitude and longitude. 
 I do not say that there ever was or ever can be a nation 
 so utterly blinded and perverted in its moral sense as to 
 acknowledge that which is wrong seen and known to be 
 wrong as right ; or, on the other hand, to profess that which 
 is seen and understood as right, to be wrong. But what I 
 do say is this : that the form and aspect in which different 
 deeds appear, so vary, that there will be for ever a change 
 and alteration in men's opinions, and that which is really 
 most generous may seem most base, and that which is really 
 most base may appear most generous. So, for example, as 
 I have already said, there are two things universally recog- 
 nised recognised as right by every man whose conscience 
 is not absolutely perverted charity and self-denial. The 
 charity of God, the sacrifice of Christ these are the two 
 grand, leading principles of the Gospel ; and in some form 
 or other you will find these lying at the roots of every pro- 
 fession and state of feeling in almost every age. But the 
 form in which these appear, will vary with all the gradations 
 
Law of Christian Conscience 267 
 
 which are to be found between the lowest savage state and 
 the highest and most enlightened Christianity. 
 
 For example: in ancient Israel the law of love was 
 expounded thus : u Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and 
 hate thine enemy." Among the American Indians and at 
 the Cape, the only homage perchance given to self-denial, 
 was the strange admiration given to that prisoner of war who 
 bore with unflinching fortitude the torture of his country's 
 enemies. In ancient India the same principle was exhibited, 
 but in a more strange and perverted manner. The homage 
 there given to self-denial, self-sacrifice, was this that the 
 highest form of religion was considered to be that exhibited 
 by the devotee who sat in a tree until the birds had built 
 their nests in his hair until his nails, like those of the King 
 of Babylon, had grown like birds' talons until they had 
 grown into his hands and he became absorbed into the 
 Divinity. We will take another instance, and one better 
 known. In ancient Sparta it was the custom to teach children 
 to steal. And here there would seem to be a contradiction 
 to our proposition here it would seem as if right and wrong 
 were matters merely conventional ; for surely stealing can 
 never be anything but wrong. But if we look deeper we 
 shall see that there is no contradiction here. It was not 
 stealing which was admired ; the child was punished if the 
 theft was discovered; but it was the dexterity which was 
 admired, and that because it was a warlike virtue, necessary 
 it may be to a people in continual rivalry with their neigh- 
 bours. It was not that honesty was despised and dishonesty 
 esteemed, but that honesty and dishonesty were made 
 subordinate to that which appeared to them of higher 
 importance, namely, the duty of concealment. And so we 
 come back to the principle which we laid down at first. In 
 every age, among all nations, the same broad principle 
 remains ; but the application of it varies. The conscience 
 may be ill-informed, and in this sense only are right and 
 wrong conventional varying with latitude and longitude, 
 depending upon chronology and geography. 
 
 The principle laid down by the Apostle Paul is this : 
 
268 Law of Christian Conscience 
 
 A man will be judged, not by the abstract law of God, not 
 by the rule of absolute right, but much rather by the 
 relative law of conscience. This he states most distinctly 
 looking at the question on both sides. That which seems 
 to a man to be right is, in a certain sense, right to him ; and 
 that which seems to a man to be wrong, in a certain sense 
 ts wrong to him. For example : he says in his Epistle to 
 the Romans (v. 14) that "sin is not imputed when there is 
 no law," in other words, if a man does not really know a 
 thing to be wrong there is a sense in which, if not right to 
 him, it ceases to be so wrong as it would otherwise be. 
 With respect to the other of these sides, however, the case 
 is still more distinct and plain. Here, in the judgment 
 which the apostle delivers in the parallel chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Romans (the i4th), he says, " I know, and 
 am persuaded of the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing 
 unclean of itself : but to him that esteemeth anything to be 
 unclean, to him it is unclean." In other words, whatever 
 may be the abstract merits of the question however in 
 God's jurisprudence any particular act may stand to you, 
 thinking it to be wrong, it manifestly is wrong, and your 
 conscience will gather round it a stain of guilt if you do it. 
 In order to understand this more fully, let us take a few 
 instances. There is a difference between truth and veracity. 
 Veracity mere veracity is a small, poor thing. Truth is 
 something greater and higher. Veracity is merely the 
 correspondence between some particular statement and 
 facts truth is the correspondence between a man's whole 
 soul and reality. It is possible for a man to say that which, 
 unknown to him, is false ; and yet he may be true : because 
 if deprived of truth he is deprived of it unwillingly. It is 
 possible, on the other hand, for a man to utter veracities, 
 and yet at the very time that he is uttering those veracities 
 to be false to himself, to his brother, and to his God. One 
 of the most signal instances of this is to be seen in the 
 Book of Job. Most of what Job's friends said to him were 
 veracious statements. Much of what Job said for himself 
 was unveracious and mistaken. And yet those veracities of 
 
Law of Christian Conscience 269 
 
 theirs were so torn from all connection with fact and truth, 
 that they became falsehoods ; and they were, as has been 
 said, nothing more than " orthodox liars " in the sight of 
 God. On the other hand, Job, blundering perpetually, and 
 falling into false doctrine, was yet a true man searching 
 for and striving after the truth ; and if deprived of it for a 
 time, deprived of it with all his heart and soul unwillingly. 
 And therefore it was that at last the Lord appeared out 
 of the whirlwind, to confound the men of mere veracity, 
 and to stand by and support the honour of the heartily 
 true. 
 
 Let us apply the principle further. It is a matter of less 
 importance that a man should state true views, than that he 
 should state views truly. We will put this in its strongest 
 form. Unitarianism is false Trinitarianism is true. But 
 yet, in the sight of God, and with respect to a man's eternal 
 destinies hereafter, it would surely be better for him 
 earnestly, honestly, truly, to hold the doctrines of Uni- 
 tarianism, than in a cowardly or indifferent spirit, or 
 influenced by authority, or from considerations of interest, 
 or for the sake of lucre, to hold the doctrines of Trinitari- 
 anism. For instance : Not many years ago the Church of 
 Scotland was severed into two great divisions, and gave to 
 this age a marvellous proof that there is still amongst us the 
 power of living faith when five hundred ministers gave up 
 all that earth holds dear position in the church they had 
 loved ; friendships and affections formed, and consecrated by 
 long fellowship, in its communion ; and almost their hopes 
 of gaining a livelihood rather than assert a principle which 
 seemed to them to be a false one. Now, my brethren, 
 surely the question in such a case for us to consider is 
 not this, merely whether of the two sections held the 
 abstract right held the principle in its integrity but 
 surely far rather, this : who on either side was true to 
 the light within, true to God, true to the truth as God had 
 revealed it to his soul. 
 
 Now it is precisely upon this principle that we are 
 enabled to indulge a Christian hope that many of those who 
 
270 Law of Christian Conscience 
 
 in ancient times were persecutors, for example, may yet be 
 justified at the bar of Christ. Nothing can make persecu- 
 tion right it is wrong, essentially, eternally wrong in the 
 sight of God. And yet, if a man sincerely and assuredly 
 thinks that Christ has laid upon him a command to perse- 
 cute with fire and sword, it is surely better that he should, 
 in spite of all feelings of tenderness and compassion, cast 
 aside the dearest affections at the command of his Redeemer, 
 than that he should, in mere laxity and tenderness, turn 
 aside from what seemed to him to be his duty. At least, 
 this appears to be the opinion of the Apostle Paul. He 
 tells us that he was "a blasphemer and a persecutor and 
 injurious," that "he did many things contrary to the name 
 of Jesus of Nazareth," that " being exceedingly mad against 
 the disciples, he persecuted them even unto strange cities." 
 But he tells us further that, "for this cause he obtained 
 mercy, because he did it ignorantly in unbelief." Now 
 take a case precisely opposite. In ancient times the 
 Jews did that by which it appeared to them that they 
 would contract defilement and guilt they spared the lives 
 of the enemies which they had taken in battle. Brethren, 
 the eternal law is, that charity is right, and that law is 
 eternally right which says, " Thou shalt love thine enemy." 
 And had the Jews acted upon this principle they would 
 have done well to spare their enemies : but they did it 
 thinking it to be wrong, transgressing that law which com- 
 manded them to slay their idolatrous enemies not from 
 generosity, but in cupidity not from charity, but from lax 
 zeal. And so doing, the act was altogether wrong. 
 
 II. Such is the apostle's exposition of the law of Christian 
 conscience. Let us now, in the second place, consider the 
 applications both of a personal and of a public nature, 
 which arise out of it. 
 
 i. The first application is a personal one. It is this : 
 Do what seems to you to be right : it is only so that you will 
 at last learn by the grace of God to see clearly what is right. 
 A man thinks within himself that it is God's law and God's 
 
Law of Christian Conscience 271 
 
 will that he should act thus and thus. There is nothing 
 possible for us to say there is no advice for us to give, but 
 this " You must so act." He is responsible for the opinions 
 he holds, and still more for the way in which he arrived at 
 them whether in a slothful and selfish, or in an honest and 
 truth-seeking manner ; but being now his soul's convictions, 
 you can give no other law than this " You must obey your 
 conscience." For no man's conscience gets so seared by 
 doing what is wrong unknowingly, as by doing that which 
 appears to be wrong to his conscience. The Jews' con- 
 sciences did not get seared by their slaying the Canaanites, 
 but they did become seared by their failing to do what 
 appeared to them to be right. Therefore, woe to you if you 
 do what others think right, instead of obeying the dictates 
 of your own conscience ; woe to you if you allow authority, 
 or prescription, or fashion, or influence, or any other human 
 thing, to interfere with that awful and sacred thing 
 responsibility. "Every man," said the apostle, " must give 
 an account of himself to God/ 1 
 
 2. The second application of this principle has reference 
 to others. No doubt to the large, free, enlightened mind 
 of the Apostle Paul, all these scruples and superstitions 
 must have seemed mean, trivial, and small indeed. It was 
 a matter to him of far less importance that truth should be 
 established than that it should be arrived at truly a matter 
 of far less importance, even, that right should be done, than 
 that right should be done rightly. Conscience was far more 
 sacred to him than even liberty it was to him a prerogative 
 far more precious to assert the rights of Christian conscience, 
 than to magnify the privileges of Christian liberty. The 
 scruple may be small and foolish, but it may be impossible 
 to uproot the scruple without tearing up the feeling of the 
 sanctity of conscience, and of reverence to the law of God, 
 associated with this scruple. And therefore the Apostle 
 Paul counsels these men to abridge their Christian liberty, 
 and not to eat of those things which had been sacrificed to 
 idols, but to have compassion upon the scruples of their 
 weaker brethren. And this, for two reasons. The first of 
 
272 Law of Christian Conscience 
 
 these is a mere reason of Christian feeling. It might cause 
 exquisite pain to sensitive minds to see those things which 
 appeared to them to be wrong, done by Christian brethren. 
 Now, you may take a parallel case. It may be, if you will, 
 mere superstition to bow at the name of Jesus. It may be, 
 and no doubt is, founded upon a mistaken interpretation of 
 that passage in the Epistle to the Philippians (ii. 10), which 
 says that "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow." But 
 there are many congregations in which this has been the 
 long-established rule, and there are many Christians who 
 would feel pained to see such a practice discontinued as 
 if it implied a declension from the reverence due to " that 
 name which is above every name." Now, what in this case 
 is the Christian duty? Is it this to stand upon our 
 Christian liberty ? Or is it not rather this to comply with 
 a prejudice which is manifestly a harmless one, rather than 
 give pain to a Christian brother ? Take another case. 
 It may be a mistaken scruple ; but there is no doubt 
 that it causes much pain to many Christians to see a 
 carriage used on the Lord's day. But you, with higher 
 views of the spirit of Christianity, who know that "the 
 Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath " 
 who can enter more deeply into the truth taught by our 
 blessed Lord, that every day is to be dedicated to Him and 
 consecrated to His service upon the high principle of 
 Christian liberty you can use your carriage you can exer- 
 cise your liberty. But if there are Christian brethren to 
 whom this would give pain then I humbly ask you, but 
 most earnestly What is the duty here ? Is it not this to 
 abridge your Christian liberty and to go through rain, and 
 mud, and snow, rather than give pain to one Christian con- 
 science ? To give one more instance. The words, and garb, 
 and customs of that sect of Christians called Quakers may be 
 formal enough ; founded, no doubt, as in the former case, 
 upon a mistaken interpretation of a passage in the Bible. 
 But they are at least harmless ; and have long been asso- 
 ciated with the simplicity, and benevolence, and Christian 
 humbleness of this body of Christians the followers of one 
 
Law of Christian Conscience 273 
 
 who, three hundred years ago, set out upon the glorious 
 enterprise of making all men friends. Now, would it be 
 Christian, or would it not rather be something more than 
 unchristian would it not be gross rudeness and coarse 
 unfeelingness to treat such words, and habits, and customs, 
 with anything but respect and reverence ? 
 
 Further : the apostle enjoined this duty upon the Corin- 
 thian converts, of abridging their Christian liberty, not 
 merely because it might give pain to indulge it, but also 
 because it might even lead their brethren into sin. For, 
 if any man should eat of the flesh offered to an idol, feeling 
 himself justified by his conscience, it were well : but if any 
 man, overborne by authority or interest, were to do this, 
 not according to conscience, but against it, there would be 
 a distinct and direct act of disobedience a conflict between 
 his sense of right and the gratification of his appetites, or 
 the power of influence ; and then his compliance would as 
 much damage his conscience and moral sense as if the act 
 had been wrong in itself. 
 
 Now, in the personal application of these remarks, there 
 are three things which we have to say. The first is this : 
 Distinguish, I pray you, between this tenderness for a brother's 
 conscience and mere time-serving. This same apostle whom 
 we here see so gracefully giving way upon the ground of 
 expediency when Christian principles were left entire, was 
 the same who stood firm and strong as a rock when any- 
 thing was demanded which trenched upon Christian prin- 
 ciple. When some required, as a matter of necessity for 
 salvation, that these converts should be circumcised, the 
 apostle says "To whom we gave place by subjection, no, 
 not for an hour!" It was not indifference it was not 
 cowardice it was not the mere love of peace, purchased by 
 the sacrifice of principle, that prompted this counsel but it 
 was Christian love that delicate and Christian love which 
 dreads to tamper with the sanctities of a brother's conscience. 
 
 2. The second thing we have to say is this that this 
 abridgement of their liberty is a duty more especially incum- 
 VOL. i. s 
 
274 Law of Christian Conscience 
 
 bent upon all who are possessed of influence. There are 
 some men, happily for themselves we may say, who are so 
 insignificant that they can take their course quietly in the 
 valleys of life, and who can exercise the fullest Christian 
 liberty without giving pain to others. But it is the price 
 which all who are possessed of influence must pay that 
 their acts must be measured, not in themselves, but accord- 
 ing to their influence on others. So, my Christian brethren, 
 to bring this matter home to every-day experience and 
 common life, if the landlord uses his authority and influence 
 to induce his tenant to vote against his conscience, it may 
 be he has secured one voice to the principle which is right, 
 or, at all events, to that which seemed to him to be right : 
 but he has gained that single voice at the sacrifice and 
 expense of a brother's soul. Or, again if for the sake of 
 ensuring personal politeness and attention, the rich man puts 
 a gratuity into the hand of a servant of some company which 
 has forbidden him to receive it, he gains the attention, he 
 ensures the politeness, but he gains it at the sacrifice and 
 expense of a man and a Christian brother. 
 
 3. The last remark which we have to make is this : 
 How possible it is to mix together the vigour of a masculine 
 and manly intellect with the tenderness and charity which is 
 taught by the gospel of Christ ! No man ever breathed so 
 freely when on earth the air and atmosphere of heaven as 
 the Apostle Paul no man ever soared so high above all 
 prejudices, narrowness, littlenesses, scruples, as he : and yet 
 no man ever bound himself as Paul bound himself to the 
 ignorance, the scruples, the prejudices of his brethren. So 
 that what in other cases was infirmity, imbecility, and 
 superstition, gathered round it in his case the pure high 
 spirit of Christian charity and Christian delicacy. And 
 now, out of the writings, and sayings, and deeds of 
 those who loudly proclaim the " rights of man >; and the 
 " rights of liberty," match us if you can with one sentence 
 so sublime, so noble, one that will so stand at the bar of 
 God hereafter, as this single, glorious sentence of his, in 
 
Use of Law 275 
 
 which he asserts the rights of Christian conscience above 
 the claims of Christian liberty " Wherefore, if meat make 
 my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world 
 standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." 
 
 THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW 
 (A FRAGMENT) 
 
 I TIMOTHY L 8. "But we know that the law is good, if a man 
 use it lawfully." 
 
 IT is scarcely ever possible to understand a passage 
 without some acquaintance with the history of the circum- 
 stances under which it was written. 
 
 At Ephesus, over which Timothy was bishop, people had 
 been bewildered by the teaching of converted Jews, who 
 mixed the old leaven of Judaism with the new spirituality 
 of Christianity. They maintained the perpetual obligation 
 of the Jewish law (v. 7). They desired to be teachers of 
 the law. They required strict performance of a number of 
 severe observances. They talked mysteriously of angels 
 and powers intermediate between God and the human 
 soul (v. 4). The result was an interminable discussion at 
 Ephesus. The Church was filled with disputations and 
 controversies. 
 
 Now there is something always refreshing to see the 
 Apostle Paul descending upon an arena of controversy, 
 where minds have been bewildered ; and so much is to be 
 said on both sides, that people are uncertain which to take. 
 You know at once that he will pour light upon the question, 
 and illuminate all dark corners. You know that he will 
 not trim, and balance, and hang doubtful, or become a 
 partisan ; but that he will seize some great principle which 
 
276 
 
 Use of Law 
 
 lies at the root of the whole controversy, and make its 
 true bearings clear at once. 
 
 This he always does, and this he does on the present 
 occasion (v. 5 and 6). He does not, like a vehement 
 polemic, say Jewish ceremonies and rules are all worthless, 
 nor some ceremonies are worthless, and others essential \ 
 but he says, the root of the whole matter is charity. If you 
 turn aside from this, all is lost ; here at once the controversy 
 closes. So far as any rule fosters the spirit of love, that is, 
 is used lawfully, it is wise, and has a use. So far as it 
 does not, it is chaff. So far as it hinders it, it is poison. 
 
 Now observe how different this method is from that 
 which is called the sober, moderate way the via media. 
 Some would have said, the great thing is to avoid extremes. 
 If the question respects fasting fast only in moderation. 
 If the observance of the Sabbath day, observe it on the 
 Jewish principle, only not so strictly. 
 
 Paul, on the contrary, went down to the root; he said, 
 the true question is not whether the law is good or bad, 
 but on what principle ; he said, you are both wrong 
 you, in saying that the observance of the law is essential, 
 for the end of it is charity, and if that be got what matter 
 how you, in saying rules may be dispensed with entirely 
 and always, " for we know that the law is good." 
 
 I. The unlawful use. 
 II. The lawful use of law. 
 
 I. The unlawful use. 
 
 Define law. By law, Paul almost always means not the 
 Mosaic law, but law in its essence and principle, that is, 
 constraint. This chiefly in two forms expresses itself 
 ist, a custom ; 2nd, a maxim. As examples of custom, we 
 might give Circumcision, or the Sabbath, or Sacrifice, or 
 Fasting. 
 
 Law said, thou shalt do these things ; and law, as mere 
 law, constrained them. Or again, law may express itself in 
 maxims and rules. 
 
Use of Law 277 
 
 In rules, as when law said, " Thou shalt not steal " not 
 saying a word about secret dishonesty of heart, but simply 
 taking cognisance of acts. 
 
 In maxims, as when it admonished that man ought to 
 give a tenth to God, leaving the principle of the matter 
 untouched. Principle is one thing, and maxim is another, 
 A principle requires liberality, a maxim says one-tenth. A 
 principle says, " A merciful man is merciful to his beast," 
 leaves mercy to the heart, and does not define how ; a 
 maxim says, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out 
 thy corn. A principle says, Forgive; a maxim defines 
 " seven times ; " and thus the whole law falls into two 
 divisions. 
 
 The ceremonial law, which constrains life by customs. 
 
 The moral law, which guides life by rules and maxims. 
 
 Now it is an illegitimate use of law. First. To expect 
 by obedience to it to make out a title to salvation. 
 
 By the deeds of the law, shall no man living be justified. 
 Salvation is by faith : a state of heart right with God ; 
 faith is the spring of holiness a well of life. Salvation 
 is not the having committed a certain number of good 
 acts. Destruction is not the having committed a certain 
 number of crimes. Salvation is God's Spirit in us, leading 
 to good. Destruction is the selfish spirit in us, leading to 
 wrong. 
 
 For a plain reason then, obedience to law cannot save, 
 because it is merely the performance of a certain number of 
 acts, which maybe done by habit, from fear, from compulsion. 
 Obedience remains still imperfect. A man may have obeyed 
 the rule, and kept the maxim, and yet not be perfect. " All 
 these commandments have I kept from my youth up." " Yet 
 lackest thou one thing." The law he had kept. The spirit 
 of obedience in its high form of sacrifice he had not. 
 
 Secondly. To use it superstitiously. 
 
 It is plain that this was the use made of it by the 
 Ephesian teachers (v. 4). It seemed to them that law was 
 pleasing to God as restraint. Then unnatural restraints 
 came to be imposed on the appetites, fasting; on the 
 
278 
 
 Use of Law 
 
 affections, celibacy. This is what Paul condemns (ch. iv., 
 v. 8). "Bodily exercise profiteth little." 
 
 And again, this superstition showed itself in a false 
 reverence wondrous stories respecting angels respecting 
 the eternal genealogy of Christ awful thoughts about 
 spirits. The apostle calls all these, very unceremoniously, 
 " endless genealogies " (v. 4), and " old wives' fables " 
 (ch. iv., v. 7). 
 
 The question at issue is, wherein true reverence con- 
 sists : according to them, in the multiplicity of the objects 
 of reverence ; according to St. Paul, in the character of the 
 object revered. . . . God and Right the true object. 
 
 But you are not a whit the better for solemn and reverential 
 feelings about a mysterious, invisible world. To tremble 
 before a consecrated wafer is spurious reverence. To bend 
 before the Majesty of Right is Christian reverence. 
 
 Thirdly. To use it as if the letter of it were sacred. 
 The law commanded none to eat the shewbread except the 
 priests. David ate it in hunger. If Abimelech had scrupled 
 to give it, he would have used the law unlawfully. 
 
 The law commanded no manner of work. The apostles 
 in hunger rubbed the ears of corn. The Pharisees used the 
 law unlawfully, in forbidding that. 
 
 II. The lawful use of law. 
 
 i. As a restraint to keep outward evil in check . . . 
 "The law was made for sinners and profane." . . . 
 Illustrate this by reference to capital punishment. No 
 sane man believes that punishment by death will make a 
 nation's heart right, or that the sight of an execution can 
 soften or ameliorate. Punishment does not work in that 
 way. It is not meant for that purpose. It is meant to 
 guard society. 
 
 The law commanding a blasphemer to be stoned, could 
 not teach one Israelite love to God, but it could save the 
 streets of Israel from scandalous ribaldry. 
 
 And therefore clearly understand, law is a mere check to 
 bad men : it does not improve them ; it often makes them 
 
Use of Law 279 
 
 worse; it cannot sanctify them. God never intended that 
 it should. It saves society from the open transgression ; it 
 does not contemplate the amelioration of the offender. 
 
 Hence we see for what reason the apostle insisted on the 
 use of the law for Christians. Law never can be abrogated. 
 Strict rules are needed exactly in proportion as we want the 
 power or the will to rule ourselves. It is not because the 
 Gospel has come that we are free from the law, but because, 
 and only so far, as we are in a Gospel state. " It is for a 
 righteous man " that the law is not made, and thus we see 
 the true nature of Christian liberty. The liberty to which 
 we are called in Christ, is not the liberty of devils, the liberty 
 of doing what we will, but the blessed liberty of being on 
 the side of the law, and therefore unrestrained by it in doing 
 right. 
 
 Illustrate from laws of coining, housebreaking, &c. We 
 are not under them. Because we may break them as we 
 like ? Nay the moment we desire, the law is alive again 
 to us. 
 
 2. As a primer is used by a child to acquire by degrees, 
 principles and a spirit. 
 
 This is the use attributed to it in verse 5. " The end of 
 the commandment is charity." 
 
 Compare with this, two other passages " Christ is the 
 end of the law for righteousness," and " love is the fulfilling 
 of the law." " Perfect love casteth out fear/' 
 
 In every law there is a spirit; in every maxim a prin- 
 ciple; and the law and the maxim are laid down for the 
 sake of conserving the spirit and the principle which they 
 enshrine. 
 
 Paul compares God's dealing with man to a wise , 
 parent's instruction of his child. See the Epistle to the 
 Galatians. Boyhood is under law; you appeal not to the 
 boy's reason, but his will, by rewards and punishments : 
 Do this, and I will reward you ; do it not, and you will be 
 punished. So long as under law, salutary and necessary, 
 but only while under law. He is free when he discerns 
 principles, and at the same time has got, by habit, the 
 
280 Use of Law 
 
 will to obey. So that rules have done for him a double 
 work, taught him the principle, and facilitated obedience 
 to it. 
 
 Distinguish however. In point of time, law is first in 
 point of importance, the Spirit. 
 
 In point of time. Charity is the " end " of the command- 
 ment m point of importance^ first and foremost. 
 
 The first thing a boy has to do, is to learn implicit 
 obedience to rules. The first thing in importance for a man 
 to learn is, to sever himself from maxims, rules, laws. Why ? 
 That he may become an Antinomian, or a Latitudinarian ? 
 No. He is severed from submission to the maxim because 
 he has got allegiance to the principle. He is free from the 
 rule and the law because he has got the Spirit written in his 
 heart. 
 
 This is the Gospel. A man is redeemed by Christ so 
 far as he is not under the law ; he is free from the law so 
 far as he is free from the evil which the law restrains ; he 
 progresses so far as there is no evil in him which it is an 
 effort to keep down; and perfect salvation and liberty are 
 when we, who though having the first fruits of the Spirit, 
 yet groan within ourselves, " waiting for the adoption, to wit, 
 the redemption of our body" shall have been freed in 
 body, soul, and spirit, from the last traces of the evil which 
 can only be kept down by force. In other words, so far as 
 Christ's statement is true of us, "The Prince of this world 
 cometh, and hath nothing in me." 
 
The Word and the World 281 
 
 THE WORD AND THE WORLD 
 
 ACTS xix. i, 2. "And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at 
 Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts, came to 
 Ephesus : and finding certain disciples, He said unto them, Have ye 
 received the Holy Ghost since ye believed ? And they said unto him, 
 We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost,'* &c. 
 
 WE consider today the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of 
 the Apostles, but first we must make some preliminary 
 remarks. 
 
 The second missionary journey of St. Paul was done, and 
 he had left Europe for Asia. The object of his travel was 
 threefold, i. To complete in the temple of Jerusalem the 
 vow which he had begun at Corinth (xviii. 18, 21). 2. To 
 visit Antioch, the mother church of Gentile Christianity, 
 where his presence was much needed (xviii. 22). 3. To 
 revisit the churches of Galatia, and strengthen those who 
 had been tempted by false teaching in his absence 
 (xviii. 23). 
 
 The two last of these objects were connected with one 
 single point of interest. It was the Jewish controversy, 
 which was then at its height. The council of Jerusalem 
 had decided that a Gentile was not dependent for salvation 
 on the Jewish law (xv. 23-29). But another question 
 remained still open : Was a Christian who did not obey 
 the law, on the same level as a Christian who did obey it ? 
 Was it not a superior religious standing-ground, to add the 
 ritual life to the life of faith ? 
 
 With this question the whole of the Epistle to the Gala- 
 tians is occupied. That Epistle does not deal with the 
 question, whether the ritual law is necessary for salvation ; 
 but with this whether a Gentile Christian became a higher 
 man than before by a ceremonial life ; whether, in St. Paul's 
 words, " having begun in the spirit," he could be " made 
 perfect through the flesh." 
 
282 The Word and the World 
 
 At Antioch that question assumed a practical form. The 
 Jewish and Gentile Christians had lived in harmony, until 
 certain zealous ritualists came from Jerusalem, where 
 St. James presided. Then a severance took place. The 
 Law-observing disciples admitted these new converts to be 
 Christians, but would not admit their standing in the Church 
 to be equal to their own. They denied their complete 
 brotherhood. They refused to eat with them. A Christian, 
 not observing the ceremonial law, was to a Christian who 
 did observe it, very much what a proselyte of the gate was 
 to an ancient Jew. 
 
 Two men of leading station yielded to this prejudice 
 though it was destructive of the very essence of Christianity. 
 These were St. Peter and Barnabas. The " dissimulation," 
 as St. Paul calls it, of these two apostles suggests two 
 instructive lessons. 
 
 The yielding of Barnabas reminds us of the insecurity of 
 mere feeling. Barnabas was a man of feeling and fine 
 sensibilities. He could not bear to have his relative, Mark, 
 severely judged (Acts xv. 36-39, and Col. iv. 10). It pained 
 him to the heart to see that Paul, when he first essayed to 
 join himself to his disciples, was misunderstood (Acts ix. 26, 
 27). He was a "Son of Consolation." He sold his pro- 
 perty to distribute to the Christian poor (Acts iv. 36, 37). 
 He healed many a broken heart. But he wanted just that 
 firmness which men of feeling so often want the power of 
 standing steadily by a principle. 
 
 The unsteadiness of St. Peter exhibits a different truth. 
 It tells that a fall, however it may qualify a man for giving 
 advice to others similarly tempted, does not qualify for 
 future consistency, nor for the power of showing mercy in 
 the highest way. No doubt St. Peter's fall, after his con- 
 version, peculiarly fitted him for strengthening his brethren. 
 But sin weakens the power of resistance. He who yields 
 once will more easily yield the second time. He who 
 shrunk from standing by his Master found it fearfully easy 
 to shrink from abiding by a principle. Sin indulged breaks 
 down the barriers between good and evil, and turns strength 
 
The Word and the World 283 
 
 into weakness ! And failure does not make men merciful 
 to others. St. Peter is just as hard to the Gentile Christians, 
 expelling them from Christian society for that which he 
 knew to be indifferent, as if he had always been firm in his 
 own integrity. He only can judge of error and show mercy, 
 who has been " tempted, yet without sin." 
 
 This nineteenth chapter is divisible into three chief 
 subjects : 
 
 I. The baptism of John's disciples. 
 II. The burning of the " Ephesian letters." 
 III. The tumult occasioned by the worshippers of Diana. 
 
 I. When St. Paul came to Ephesus, he found twelve 
 disciples of John, bearing the name of Christians, but 
 having a very imperfect form of Christianity. Now the 
 baptism of John, which was all these men knew, means the 
 doctrine of John that cycle of teaching which is briefly 
 symbolized by the chief ritual act of the system. The 
 system of John was contained in a very narrow range of 
 truth. It was such truth as we might have expected from a 
 man who had been so disciplined. It was John's lot to be 
 born into the world in a period of highly-advanced society ; 
 and in that hot-bed of life-fictions, Jerusalem, the ardent 
 mind of the young man found nothing to satisfy the cravings 
 of its desire. He wanted something deeper and truer than 
 the existing systems could afford him. He went to the 
 Sadducee and the Pharisee in vain. He found no life in 
 the Jewish ritual no assistance from the Rabbis. He went 
 into the wilderness to commune with God, to try what was 
 to be learned from Him by a soul in earnest, without 
 church, ministers, or ordinances. The heavens spoke to 
 him of purity, and the river by his side of God's eternity. 
 Locusts and honey, his only food, taught him that man has 
 a higher life to nourish than that which is sustained by 
 epicurean luxuries. So disciplined, John came back to his 
 countrymen. As might be expected, no elaborate theology 
 formed any part of his teaching. " We want a simpler, 
 
284 The Word and the World 
 
 purer, austerer life. Let men be real. Fruits worthy of 
 repentance fruits, fruits, not profession. A new life. 
 Repent." That was the burden of John's message. 
 
 A preparatory one evidently, one most incomplete in 
 itself. It implied the need of something additional, as 
 St. Paul told these converts. "John verily baptized with 
 the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they 
 should believe on Him who should come after him, that is, 
 on Christ Jesus." And none felt more distinctly than John 
 that his was merely an initial work. That was a touching 
 acknowledgment of the subordinate part he had to perform 
 in the construction of the World's new life. " He must 
 increase, but I must decrease." The work of John was 
 simply the work of the axe. "The axe is laid to the root 
 of the trees ; " to destroy, not to build ; to cut up by the 
 roots ancient falsehoods ; to tear away all that was unreal ; 
 to make a clearance that the light of day might come in. A 
 great work, but still not the greatest. 
 
 And herein lay the difference between the two baptisms. 
 John baptized with water, Christ with the Holy Ghost and 
 fire. The one was simply the washing away of a false and 
 evil past ; the other was the gift of the power to lead a pure, 
 true life. 
 
 This was all that these disciples knew ; yet, remark, they 
 are reckoned as Christians. They are called "certain 
 disciples "^ that is, of Jesus. They knew little enough of 
 Christianity ; they had not so much as heard whether there 
 be any Holy Ghost, The doctrine of the Trinity they knew 
 not, nor that of Sanctification, nor probably that of the 
 Atonement. And yet in the Word of God they are called 
 disciples of Christ. 
 
 Let us learn from that a judgment of charity. Let not 
 the religious man be too prone to talk with contempt of a 
 legal spirit. Let him not sneer at " merely moral men." 
 Morality is not religion, but it is the best soil on which 
 religion grows. He who lives an honest, sincere, honour- 
 able life, and has strong perceptions of moral right and 
 moral wrong, may not have reached the highest stages of 
 
The Word and the World 285 
 
 spirituality ; he may " know only the baptism of John ; " 
 he may aim as yet at nothing higher than doing his duty 
 well, " accusing no man falsely, being content with his 
 wages," giving one coat out of two to the poor ; and yet that 
 man, with scanty theology and small spiritual experience, 
 may be a real " disciple " in the school of Christ, and one 
 of the children of the Highest. 
 
 Nay, it is the want of this preparation which so often 
 makes religion a sickly plant in the soul. Men begin with 
 abundance of spiritual knowledge ; they understand well 
 the " scheme of salvation ; " they talk of religious privilege, 
 and have much religious liberty; they despise the formal 
 spirit and the legal spirit. But if the foundation has not 
 been laid deep in a perception of the eternal difference 
 between right and wrong, the superstructure will be but 
 flimsy. I believe it is a matter of no small importance that 
 the baptism of John should precede the baptism of Christ; 
 that is, that a strict life, scrupulous regularity, abhorrence of 
 evil perhaps even something too austere, the usual accom- 
 paniment of sincerity at the outset should go before the 
 peace which comes of faith in Christ. First the blade, then 
 the ear, then the full corn in the ear. You cannot have the 
 harvest first. There is an order in the development of the 
 soul as there is in the development of the year of nature, 
 and it is not safe to force. Nearly two thousand years were 
 spent in the Divine government in teaching the Jews the 
 meaning of holiness, the separation of right from wrong. 
 And such must be the order of the education of children 
 and of men. The baptism of Repentance before the bap- 
 tism of the Spirit. 
 
 The result which followed this baptism was the gifts of 
 tongues and prophecy. On a former occasion I endea- 
 voured to explain what is meant by the gift of tongues. It 
 appeared then that *' tongues" were not so much the power 
 of speaking various languages, as the power of speaking 
 spiritual truths with supernatural and heavenly fervour. 
 This passage favours that interpretation. The apostle was 
 there with twelve new converts. To what purpose was the 
 
286 The Word and the World 
 
 supposed use of various languages among such a number, 
 who already understood one another ? It would seem more 
 like the showing off of a new accomplishment than the 
 humble character of Christian modesty permits. If this 
 gift simply made them linguists, then the miracle was of a 
 temporary and earthly character. But if it consisted in 
 elevating their spiritual intuitions, and enabling them to 
 speak, "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, 
 but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual 
 things with spiritual," then you have a miracle celestial 
 indeed, worthy of its Spirit-Author. If it were only a gift 
 of languages, then the miracle has nothing to do with us ; 
 but if it were the elevating of the natural faculties by God's 
 Spirit to a higher and diviner use, then we have a marvel 
 and a truth which belongs to all ages. The Life is the light 
 of men. Give life, and light follows. Expand the heart, 
 and you enlarge the intellect. Touch the soul with love, 
 and then you touch the lips with hallowed fire, and make 
 even the stammering tongue speak the words of living 
 eloquence. 
 
 This was the gift of tongues that followed the reception 
 of the Divine spirit. 
 
 II. The second subject in the chapter is the burning of 
 the " Ephesian letters." 
 
 Ephesus was the metropolis of Asia. Its most remark- 
 able feature was the Temple of Diana one of the wonders 
 of the world. It contained a certain image, misshapen, of 
 a human form, reported by tradition to have fallen from 
 the skies ; perhaps one of those meteoric stones, which, 
 generated in the atmosphere, and falling to the ground, 
 are reckoned by the vulgar to be thunderbolts from 
 heaven. 
 
 This image represented Nature, the prolific nurse and 
 source of all life, and the worship was a worship of Nature. 
 Upon the base of the statue were certain mysterious sen- 
 tences, and these, copied and written upon papers and 
 amulets, were known far and wide by the name of " Ephe- 
 
The Word and the World 287 
 
 sian letters." This was the heathen form of magical super- 
 stition. But it seems there was a Jewish practice of the 
 occult art besides. They used certain incantations, herbs, 
 and magical formulas, said by tradition to have been taught 
 by Solomon, for the expulsion of diseases and the exorcism 
 of evil spirits. 
 
 The state of Ephesus, like that of Corinth and Athens, 
 was one of metropolitan civilization ; and it is nothing 
 strange that in such a stage of social existence, arts and 
 beliefs like these should flourish. For there is always a 
 craving in the soul of man for something supernatural, 
 an irrepressible desire for communion with the unseen 
 world. And where an over-refined civilization has choked 
 up the natural and healthy outlets of this feeling, it will 
 inevitably find an unnatural one. The restless spirit of 
 those times, dissatisfied with their present existence, in 
 spite of itself feeling the degradation of the life of epicu- 
 rean indolence and selfishness, instinctively turned to the 
 other world in quest of marvels. We do not wonder to 
 find atheism and abject superstition co-tenants of the same 
 town or the same mind. We do not marvel that in the very 
 city where reasonable Christianity could scarcely find a 
 footing, a mob could be found screaming for two hours, 
 " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ; " that when men had 
 " not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost," 
 wise men and men in authority should be believers in " the 
 image which fell down from Jupiter." Ephesus was exactly 
 the place where Jewish charlatans and the vendors of 
 "Ephesian letters" could reap a rich harvest from the 
 credulity of sceptical voluptuaries. 
 
 It is difficult to know what to say about this Oriental 
 magic. Shall we say that it was all imposture ? or account 
 for its success by the power of a highly-excited imagination ? 
 or believe that they were really making use of some unknown 
 powers of nature, which they themselves in ignorance sup- 
 posed to be supernatural? Little can now be decided. 
 That the magicians themselves believed in their own art 
 is plain, from the fact of the existence of these costly 
 
288 The Word and the World 
 
 " Ephesian letters " and scientific " curious books," which 
 had apparently reached the dignity of an elaborate system ; 
 and also from the fact that some of them, as the seven sons 
 of Sceva, believed in Christianity as a higher kind of magic, 
 and attempted to use its formula, as more efficacious than 
 their own. " We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth." 
 Had they been only impostors, they would have taken Paul 
 for an impostor too. 
 
 Here was one of those early attempts, which in after 
 ages became so successful, to amalgamate Christianity with 
 the magical doctrines. Gnosticism was the result in the 
 East, Romanism the result in the West. 
 
 But the spirit of Christianity brooks no amalgamation. 
 The essence of magic consists in this : the belief that by 
 some external act, not connected with moral goodness, 
 nor making a man wiser or better, communication can be 
 ensured with the Spiritual World ; and the tutelage of God 
 or some superior spirit be commanded for a mortal. It 
 matters not whether this be attempted by Ephesian letters, 
 amulets, charms, curious books, or by Sacraments, or by 
 Church ordinances or Priestly powers, whatever professes 
 to bring God near to man, except by making man more 
 like to God, is of the same spirit of Antichrist. 
 
 The spirit world of God has its laws, and they are 
 unalterable. They are such as these : " Blessed are the 
 pure in heart, for they shall see God." " Blessed are the 
 merciful the peacemakers the meek the poor in spirit." 
 "If any man will do His will, he shall know." " If a man 
 love Me he will keep my words : and My Father will love 
 him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode 
 with him,* This is Christianity. There is no way of 
 becoming a partaker of "the powers of the world to 
 come," except by having the heart right with God. God's 
 presence, God's protection, is the privilege of the humble, 
 the holy, the loving. These are the laws of the kingdom 
 of God's Spirit, and no magic can reverse them. The 
 contest was brought to an issue by the signal failure of 
 these magicians to work a miracle the man possessed 
 
The Word and the World 289 
 
 leaped upon the exercisers, and they fled wounded, upon 
 which there was great consternation in Ephesus. The 
 possessors of curious books came, confessed their guilt, 
 and burnt them with their own hands in the apostle's 
 presence. 
 
 You will observe in all this the terrible supremacy of 
 conscience. There was struck a chord deep in the moral 
 nature of these men, and it vibrated in torture. They could 
 not bear their own secret, and they had no remedy but 
 immediate confession. It is this arraigning accuser within 
 the bosom, that compels the peculator, after years of con- 
 cealed theft, to send back the stolen money to his employer, 
 with the acknowledgment that he has suffered years of 
 misery. It was this that made Judas dash down his gold 
 in the Temple, and go and hang himself. It is this that 
 again and again has forced the murderer from his unsus- 
 pected security in social life, to deliver himself up to justice, 
 and to choose a true death rather than the dreadful secret of 
 a false life. Observe how mightily our moral nature works 
 for health and peace, if there be no obstruction ; but for 
 disease and torture, if it be perverted. But, anyhow it 
 works, and with living, indestructible force, as the juices 
 of vigorous life, if obstructed, create and feed gigantic 
 disease. 
 
 Consider, in the next place, the test of sincerity furnished 
 by this act of burning the Ephesian letters. First of all it 
 was a costly sacrifice. They were valued at fifty thousand 
 pieces of silver. In those days, copies were not multiplied 
 by printing ; and the possessor of a secret would take care 
 not to multiply it. Rarity created costliness. The posses- 
 sion of one such book was the possession of a fortune. 
 Then again, there was the sacrifice of livelihood. By these 
 books they got their living. And a man who had lived to 
 thirty or forty years of age in this mode of life was not 
 young enough to begin the world again with a new pro- 
 fession. It was to throw themselves almost into beggary. 
 Moreover, it was the destruction of much knowledge that 
 was really valuable. As in the pursuit of alchemy real 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
290 The Word and the World 
 
 chemical secrets were discovered, so it cannot be doubted 
 that these curious manuscripts contained many valuable 
 natural facts. To burn them was to waste all these to 
 give the lore accumulated for years to the winds. 
 
 Once more, it was an outrage to feeling. Costly manu- 
 scripts, written with curious art, many of them probably the 
 heirlooms of a family, many which were associated with a 
 vast variety of passages in life, old feelings, old teachers, 
 and companions, these were to be committed mercilessly 
 to the flames. Remember, too, how many other ways there 
 were of disposing of them. Might they not be sold, and 
 the proceeds "given to the poor ? " Might they not at least 
 be made over to some relative who, not feeling anything 
 wrong in the use or possession of them, would not have his 
 conscience aggrieved ? Or might they not be retained, the 
 use of them being given up, as curious records of the past, 
 as the treasure stores of so much that was beautiful and wise? 
 
 And then Conscience arose with her stern, clear voice. 
 They are the records of an ignorant and guilty past. There 
 must be no false tenderness ; the sacrifice must be real, or 
 it is none. To the flames with them, till their ashes are 
 strewed upon the winds, and the smoke will rise up to 
 heaven a sweet savour before God. 
 
 Whoever has made such a sacrifice as this and every 
 real Christian in the congregation in some shape or other 
 has will remember the strange medley of feeling which 
 accompanied the sacrifice. We should err if we expected 
 such a deed to be done with feelings entirely single. There 
 is a mixture in all such sacrifices. Partly fear constrained 
 the act, produced by the judgment on the other exorcists ; 
 partly genuine remorse ; partly there was a lingering regret 
 as leaf after leaf perished in the flames ; partly a feeling of 
 relief, and partly a heavy sense of loss in remembering that 
 the work of years was obliterated, and that the past had to 
 be lived afresh as a time wasted ; partly shame, and partly 
 a wild tumult of joy, at the burst of new hope, and the 
 prospect of a nobler life. We cannot, and dare not, too 
 closely scan such things. The sacrifice was made, and He 
 
The Word and the World 291 
 
 who knows the mixture of the earthly and the spiritual in 
 His creatures' hearts doubtless accepted the sacrifice. 
 
 There is no Christian life that has not in it sacrifice, and 
 that alone is the sacrifice which is made in the spirit of the 
 conflagration of the "Ephesian letters," without reserve, 
 without hesitation, without insincere tenderness. If the 
 slaveholder, convinced of the iniquity of the traffic in man, 
 sells the slaves on his estate to the neighbouring planter, 
 the mark of sincerity is wanting ; or if the trader in opium 
 or in spirits quits his nefarious commerce, but first secures 
 the value of all that remains in his warehouse or in his 
 ships, again there is a something which betokens the want 
 of a heart true and honest ; or if the possessor of a library 
 becomes convinced that certain volumes are unfit for his 
 shelves, immoral, polluting the mind of him that reads 
 them, and yet cannot sacrifice the brilliant binding and the 
 costly edition without an equivalent, what shall we say of 
 these men's sincerity? 
 
 Two things marked these Ephesians' earnestness the 
 voluntariness of their confession, and the unreserved 
 destruction of these records and means of evil. And I say 
 to you, if there be a man here before me with a sin upon 
 his heart, let him remember Conscience will arise to do 
 her dreadful work at last. It may be when it is too late. 
 Acknowledgment at once, this is all that remains for him 
 to relieve his heart of its intolerable load. If he has 
 wronged a man, let him acknowledge it, and ask forgive- 
 ness ; if he has defrauded him of his due, or kept from him 
 his rights, let him repair, restore, make up ; or, if the guilt 
 be one with which man intermeddleth not, and of which 
 God alone takes cognizance, on his bended knees this night, 
 and before the sun of to-morrow dawn, let him pour out the 
 secret of his heart, or else, it may be, that in this world, and 
 in the world to come, Peace is exiled from his heart for ever. 
 
 III. We shall consider, thirdly, the sedition respecting 
 Diana's worship. First under this head let us notice the 
 speech of Demetrius in which observe : 
 
292 The Word and the World 
 
 1. The cause of the slow death which error and falsehood 
 die : shot through and through they still linger on. Existing 
 abuses in Church and State are upheld because they are 
 intertwined with private interests. The general good is 
 impeded by private cupidity. The welfare of a nation, 
 the establishment of a grand principle, is clamoured against 
 because destructive of the monopoly of a few particular 
 trades. The salvation of the world must be arrested that 
 Demetrius may continue to sell shrines of Diana. This is 
 the reason why it takes centuries to overthrow an evil, after 
 it has proved an evil. 
 
 2. The mixture of religious and selfish feelings. Not 
 only " our craft/' but also the worship of the great goddess 
 Diana. Demetrius was, or thought himself sincere ; a man 
 really zealous for the interests of religion. And so it is with 
 many a patriotic and religious cry. " My country" "my 
 church" "my religion" it supports me. "By this craft 
 we have our wealth." 
 
 3. Numbers are no test of truth. What Demetrius said, 
 and the town-clerk corroborated, was a fact that the whole 
 world worshipped the great goddess Diana. Antiquity, 
 universality, popularity, were all on her side ; on the other, 
 there were only Paul, Gaius, Aristarchus. If numbers 
 tested truth, Apollos in the last chapter need not have 
 become the brilliant outcast from the schools of Alexandria, 
 nor St. Paul stand in Ephesus in danger of his life. 
 
 He who seeks Truth must be content with a lonely, 
 little-trodden path. If he cannot worship her till she has 
 been canonized by the shouts of the multitude, he must 
 take his place with the members of that wretched crowd 
 who shouted for two long hours, "Great is Diana of the 
 Ephesians," till truth, reason, and calmness, were all 
 drowned in noise. 
 
 Let us notice the judicious speech of the town-clerk, or 
 chamberlain more properly, in which observe 
 
 i. The impression made by the apostle on the wiser 
 and calmer part of the community. The Asiarchs, or 
 magistrates, were his friends. The town-clerk exculpated 
 
A Thanksgiving Day 293 
 
 him, as Gallic had done at Corinth. Herein we see the 
 power of consistency. 
 
 2. The admitted moral blamelessness of the Christians. 
 Paul had not " blasphemed " the goddess. As at Athens 
 he had not begun by attacking errors, or prejudices, or 
 even superstitions. He preached Truth, and its effect 
 began to be felt already, in the decline of the trade which 
 flourished by the sale of silver models of the wondrous 
 Temple a statistical fact, evidencing the amount of success. 
 Overcome evil by good, error by truth. Christianity 
 opposed by the force of governments, counterfeited by 
 charlatanism, sneered at by philosophers, cried down by 
 frantic mobs, coldly looked at from a distance by the 
 philosophical, pursued with unrelenting hatred by Judaism, 
 met by unions and combinations of trades, having arrayed 
 against it every bad passion of humanity went swiftly on, 
 conquering and to conquer. 
 
 The continental philosophers tell us that Christianity is 
 effete. Let this narrative determine. Is that the history 
 of a Principle which has in it the seeds of death ? Comes 
 that from the invention of a transient thought of man's, or 
 from the Spirit of the Everlasting ages ? 
 
 A THANKSGIVING DAY 
 
 JOHN v. 14, 15. "Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and 
 said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole : sin no more, lest a worse 
 thing come unto thee. The man departed, and told the Jews that it 
 was Jesus which had made him whole. " 
 
 THE man to whom these words were spoken, had been 
 lying only a few days before, a helpless, hopeless sufferer 
 among the porches of Bethesda, together with a number of 
 others affected in a similar manner. By a singular, un- 
 expected, and miraculous event, he was rescued from his 
 
294 A Thanksgiving Day 
 
 calamity, while the remainder were left to the mercies of 
 public charity, or to avail themselves of the mysterious 
 spring of Bethesda. 
 
 It was a time of festival in Jerusalem, the streets were 
 probably echoing with the voice of mirth and festivity, 
 with the sounds of them that kept holiday : but it was to 
 this congregation of the sick and the miserable that the 
 Redeemer bent his steps ; it was what might have been 
 expected from the Son of Man " The whole need not a 
 physician, but they that are sick." It was the office of the 
 Man of Sorrows to soothe the wretched ; and of all the 
 crowded scenes that day enacting in the Holy City, the 
 "great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered," 
 found that their abode was the most congenial atmosphere 
 to the soul of the Redeemer. 
 
 And in all this we have but a miniature representation 
 of the world as it is now. Jerusalem contained within its 
 walls, within its proud battlements, and amidst its stately 
 temples, as much wretchedness and as much misery, 
 separated only by a thin partition from its abodes of luxury 
 and state, as our own metropolis does now. It is a minia- 
 ture representation of the world in this, so full of outward 
 show and of inward wretchedness. It is a representation of 
 the world we live in, inasmuch as it is a place where selfish- 
 ness prevails ; for there was affixed a certain condition to 
 the healing of the spring, that the man should be the 
 first ; if he were not the first, no miracle took place, and 
 there was one more friendless wretch. This man had no 
 one to give him the little assistance required. For thirty- 
 eight years he had been lingering here, and there appeared 
 to have been no visitor who would supply what was 
 wanting of the ties of blood or relationship. It is, I say, 
 but a representation of what this world is, when the love 
 of God has not touched the heart of man. It is a repre- 
 sentation of the world too, in this, that with suffering there 
 is frequently appointed the remedy. The remedy is often 
 found side by side with the pain it may relieve, if we 
 could but make use of it. It is so in both bodily and 
 
A Thanksgiving Day 295 
 
 spiritual maladies there is a remedial system, a pool of 
 Bethesda, everywhere springing up by the side of sin and 
 suffering. 
 
 It is a representation of the world, also, that the presence 
 of the Son of Man should be felt rather in scenes of sorrow 
 than of joy. It is not in the day of high health and strength, 
 when our intellect is powerful, our memory vigorous, when 
 we feel strong in our integrity and our courage, but when 
 our weakened powers have made us feel that we are "a 
 worm and no man ; " when our failing faculties convince us 
 that, except for our connection with immortality, our minds 
 would be as nothing ; when we feel temptation getting too 
 strong for us, and that we are on the brink of falling then 
 it is that we are taught there is a strength not our own, 
 beyond anything that we possess of our own. It is then 
 that the presence of the Son of Man is felt ; then is the 
 day of our merciful and mysterious deliverance. And 
 there is another resemblance to be noted. The Saviour 
 of the world went into the Bethesda porches, and out 
 of the great number of sufferers He selected one not 
 because of his superior righteousness, not for any merit on 
 his part, but for reasons hidden within His own Almighty 
 Mind. So it is in the world one is taken, another is left ; 
 one nation is sterile, another is fertile ; one is full of diseases 
 from which another is exempted ; one man is surrounded 
 with luxuries and comforts, another with every suffering 
 which flesh is heir to. So much for the miniature of the 
 world exhibited by the Pool of Bethesda. 
 
 Now in connection with this subject there are two 
 branches in which we will arrange our observations. 
 
 I. The cause of this man's disease. 
 II. The history of his gratitude. 
 
 I. Concerning the cause of his disease, we are not left 
 in any doubt, the Redeemer's own lips have told us what it 
 was " Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." 
 So we see there was a strange connection between this 
 
296 A Thanksgiving Day 
 
 bodily malady and moral evil, a connection that would 
 have startled all around if it had been seen. No doubt the 
 men of science, versed in the healing art, would have found 
 some cause for his malady connected with the constitution 
 of his bodily frame ; but the Redeemer went beyond all 
 this. Thirty-eight years before, there had been some sin 
 committed, possibly a small sin, in our eyes at least, of 
 which the result had been thirty-eight years of suffering ; 
 and so the truth we gather from this is, there is a connection 
 between physical and moral evil ; a connection, my Christian 
 brethren, more deep than any of us have been accustomed 
 to believe in. 
 
 But, most assuredly, many of the most painful forms of 
 disease that come upon the body depend upon the nervous 
 constitution; and the nervous system is connected in- 
 separably with the moral state more than men suppose; 
 often where we have been disposed to refer the whole to 
 external causes, there has been something of moral disorder 
 in the character which makes that constitution exquisitely 
 susceptible of suffering, and incapable of enjoyment. Every 
 physician will tell us that indulged passions will lead to a 
 disturbed state of body ; that want of self-control in various 
 ways will end in that wretched state when the light that 
 falls on the eye inflicts torture, the sounds that are heard in 
 the ear are all discord, and all this beautiful creation, so 
 formed for delight, will only minister to the sufferings of the 
 diseased and disorganized frame. Thus we see that ex- 
 ternal suffering is often connected with moral evil, but we 
 must carefully guard and modify this statement, for this is 
 not universally the case; and it is clear this was the 
 Saviour's opinion, for when the disciples came to Him 
 asking whether the blind man or his parents did sin, 
 He answered that neither had sinned, plainly showing 
 that there was sometimes physical suffering for which there 
 was no moral cause. It was not for his own sin, or even 
 that of others it baffled all the investigations of man to 
 explain it. 
 
 Now, we must remember this when we see cases of 
 
A Thanksgiving Day 297 
 
 bodily suffering : we must consider that there is a great 
 difference between the two senses in which the word 
 punishment is used. It may be a penalty, it may be a 
 chastisement one meaning of punishment is, that the law 
 exacts a penalty if it is broken notice having been given 
 that a certain amount of suffering would follow a certain 
 course of action. All the laws of God, in the physical 
 world, in the moral world, or in the political world, if 
 broken, commonly entail a penalty. Revolutions beset a 
 nation, shaking its very foundations, owing to some defects 
 in the justice or wisdom of its government, and we cannot 
 say that all this comes from the dust, or springs out of the 
 ground. There are causes in the history of past events that 
 will account for it. The philosophical historian of future 
 years will show the results of some political mistake, con- 
 tinued perhaps for centuries, by the rulers of this nation. 
 So in the moral and in the physical world there are laws, as 
 it were, that execute themselves. If a man eat a deleterious 
 herb, whether he does it willingly or unconsciously, the 
 penalty will fall on his body. If a man touch the lightning- 
 conductor, not knowing that the air is charged with 
 electricity, no holiness on his part will prevent the deadly 
 stroke. But there is another kind of law, written in the 
 hearts of men, and given to the conscience, when the 
 penalty is awarded as the result of moral transgression, and 
 then it becomes a chastisement, and the language of 
 Scripture then becomes the language of our hearts. It is 
 the rod of God that hath done all this. 
 
 There is another thing that we must bear in mind, that 
 there are certain evils which fall upon man, over which he 
 can have no control. They come as the result of circum- 
 stances over which he has no power whatever. So, in 
 the second book of Kings, the child of the Shunammite 
 went out amongst the reapers ; he was suddenly seized with 
 a deadly pain in his head, was taken to his mother, sate 
 upon her lap, and died at noon. A sunstroke had struck 
 that child ; but to say that from any fault of his he was 
 selected as the object of suffering, when the rest of the 
 
298 A Thanksgiving Day 
 
 reapers were spared, would be as unjust as to say that those 
 upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all 
 the Galileans. 
 
 Moreover, to understand this we must recollect that the 
 laws of God and the penalties of God are not miracles. If 
 the penalty comes as the consequence appointed by God 
 Himself, to follow certain sins, it is a natural punishment, 
 but if it comes with no connection it is then an arbitrary 
 punishment. So, if a man educates a child ill, and he turns 
 out a bad man, there is a natural connection between the 
 penalty and the guilt. But if a man, pursuing his journey, 
 is struck with lightning, there is no penalty there. Now, in 
 the Old Testament we find a natural punishment falling on 
 Eli. He allowed his children to grow up without correction, 
 and the contempt and scorn of the whole nation fell upon 
 that family, and the father actually died in consequence of 
 the shock of his children's misconduct. But if the father 
 had died in battle, or by an accident, then it would have 
 been unjust to say that there was any connection between 
 his misconduct and his sudden death ; it would have been 
 an arbitrary connection. The punishments of God are 
 generally not arbitrary : each law, as it were, inflicts its own 
 penalty. It does not execute one that belongs to another. 
 So, if the drunkard lead a life of intoxication, the conse- 
 quence will be a trembling hand and a nerveless frame ; but 
 if he be drowned in the seas when sailing in the storm, he 
 is punished for having broken a natural law, not a moral law 
 of God. Let us then bear in mind that if the ship convey 
 across the ocean the heavenly-minded missionary and the 
 scoffing infidel, if the working of the vessel be attended to, 
 and there is nothing unusual in the winds and the waves, 
 they will convey the one to his destination as safely as the 
 other. 
 
 Now, the application we would make of all this is, if a 
 man perish when out on a Sabbath-day, we have no right to 
 say that he dies because he has broken the Sabbath. If 
 famine or pestilence visit the land, it may be explained by 
 the infringement of some of God's natural laws ; the earth 
 
A Thanksgiving Day 299 
 
 may not be rightly cultivated, sanitary means have not been 
 taken to stop the pestilence ; but we have no right to say 
 that they come in consequence of political relations which 
 are not to our mind, or of regulations of policy of which we 
 disapprove. 
 
 There is one thing more. It is perfectly possible that 
 transgressions against the natural laws of God may, in the 
 end, become trespasses against His moral law, and then the 
 penalty becomes chastisement. The first man that drank 
 the fermented juice of the grape was perfectly innocent, 
 even if it caused intoxication ; but when he found how it 
 affected his brain, it became sin to him thenceforward. 
 The first time that a man enters into society which he finds 
 hurtful to his religious feelings, he may have done it inno- 
 cently ; but when he sees how it lowers the tone of his 
 character, he must mingle amongst them no more. So want 
 of cleanliness in some Alpine regions may result from 
 ignorance of the laws of nature; but when, in more 
 crowded populations, it is ascertained that it is productive 
 of disease, and injurious to those around them, then the 
 infraction of the natural law is stigmatized as a higher 
 degree of turpitude. That which was a penalty becomes 
 something more of chastisement from the wrath of God. 
 So it is that science goes on enlightening men more and 
 more as to the laws of God's physical world, and telling 
 them what they must, and what they must not do, in 
 order to lessen the amount of bodily suffering around 
 us. 
 
 My Christian brethren, we have spoken of these things at 
 some length, because all these considerations have been 
 brought into our view by that pestilence, 1 from which we cele- 
 brate our deliverance this day ; partly the result of causes 
 over which man has no control, and partly the result of the 
 disregard of natural laws ; partly, also, from the presence of 
 moral evil amongst us. That these three distinct classes of 
 causes have been present may be proved by tracing its 
 
 1 The cholera. 
 
300 A Thanksgiving Day 
 
 history. They who have made it their duty to trace out its 
 progress tell us that its origin was in 1818, in Bengal, when 
 it arose during the overflow of the river Ganges ; and then, 
 dividing into two streams of pestilence and death, it passed 
 through the world ; one going to the east, the other to the 
 west. The eastern current passed on till it reached the 
 shores of China ; the western moved slowly on with gigantic 
 tread, decimating nations as it went, cutting off nine thousand 
 of the British army ; and, passing through Persia and Arabia, 
 it destroyed twelve thousand of the pilgrims to Mecca, till it 
 paused mysteriously and strangely on the very verge of 
 Europe as if the voice of God himself had said, " There 
 is danger near ; set thine house in order. By 1830 it had 
 reached the metropolis of Russia. In 1831 it was doing its 
 dreadful work in our own capital, while eighteen thousand 
 fell in Paris alone; and it then passed on, as a winged 
 messenger, across the ocean to America. 
 
 There was then a strange disappearance of the pestilence 
 for four or five years, till 1837, when it appeared first in the 
 southern parts of Europe, and gradually rolled its relentless 
 course onward to our shores. In all this you will perceive 
 something over which we have no control. It has pursued 
 its way not guided by moral evil or by physical causes, but 
 by some cause, explain it as you will as electricity, or any 
 other conjecture it is one that baffles every effort to stay 
 its progress. It has taken the same road, too, that it took 
 on its former visitation. The common food of man seems 
 changed into something poisonous; the very air is charged 
 with contagion ; everything proclaims it as a visitation from 
 the Almighty. And in the very character of the disease 
 there is something that marks it out from all other 
 diseases : it has been truly said, that in its worst cases there 
 is but one symptom, and that one is death. A man is full of 
 health and strength, and in two hours he is gone. It is a 
 disease which in its best form is terrific. That being who 
 just now stood before you in perfect health, is in a moment 
 a cold, livid, convulsed mass of humanity, fighting with the 
 foe that threatens to overcome him. 
 
A Thanksgiving Day 301 
 
 But yet we find, in spite of all this, that in the 
 progress of this strange disease, great mistakes have been 
 made by man. From the circumstance of the poorer 
 classes being the chief sufferers, they fancied that it was 
 inflicted by the higher ; and in some places they rose against 
 them, accusing them of poisoning the wells. And we find 
 Christians so mistaken, as to look on all this suffering, not 
 as the natural connection between sin and its penalty, but as 
 having some arbitrary connection with the sin of others, 
 from which they themselves and their own party are free. 
 
 But in the next place we find that it really has been 
 caused in some degree by the transgression of the laws 
 of nature ; for whatever may have been the secret origin of 
 the disease, whatever may be the mystery of its onward 
 course, still we know that there are certain conditions 
 usually necessary to make it destructive. So we find that 
 in India it was the natives who for the most part suffered, 
 those whose constitutions had less stamina than our own. 
 And here we see that debility produced by over-work, bad 
 air, crowded dwellings, have been the predisposing causes ; 
 and this tells us, if ever visitation could speak, that affliction 
 cometh not out of the dust, neither does sorrow spring from 
 the ground. It has no direct connection with moral char- 
 acter, except on peculiar points. Place a worldly man and 
 a holy man in the same unfavourable circumstances for 
 receiving the disorder, and you will not find the one has 
 any charm to escape the fate of the other. 
 
 But we do find that this disease is increased and propa- 
 gated by human selfishness. We read of the crowds at 
 Bethesda, of whom it was said, there was no man to put 
 them into the water : and so it is now. The poor, the help- 
 less, the neglected, have been the chief sufferers. Out of 
 243 who in this place have suffered from that and similar 
 causes, 163 were receiving parish relief. And in this there 
 is something that tells us not merely of ignorance, but of 
 selfishness ; for when commissioners went through the length 
 and breadth of the country to examine into the statistics of 
 the disease, we were met by the startling fact that medical 
 
302 A Thanksgiving Day 
 
 science, that careful nursing could do nothing while our 
 crowded graveyards, our teeming and airless habitations, our 
 worn-out and unhealthy population, received and propagated 
 the miasma ; and every time that a man in the higher classes 
 perished, it was as if the poor neglected man had spoken 
 from the grave ; or, as if God himself had been heard to 
 speak through him. He seems to say, " I can prove to you 
 now my relationship. You can receive evil from me, if 
 nothing else has ever passed between us ; the same consti- 
 tution, the same flesh and blood, the same frame were once 
 ours ; and if I can do it in no other way, I can prove, by 
 infecting you, that I am your brother still." 
 
 Once more : it has been produced in a degree by moral 
 evil ; vice has been as often the predisposing cause, as any 
 other external circumstance, in certain cases. I say in 
 certain cases, not in all. A man might have been a blas- 
 phemer, or a slanderer, but neither of these sins would affect 
 him ; but those sins which are connected with the flesh, 
 sensuality, drunkenness, gradually pervade the human frame, 
 and fit it for the reception of this disease. 
 
 II. But we will pass on to consider the history of this 
 man's recovery, and of his gratitude. The first cause for 
 gratitude was his selection. He alone was taken, and others 
 were left. He had cause for gratitude, also, in that he had 
 been taught the connection between moral evil and its 
 penalty. He had been taught the certainty of God's laws, 
 how they execute themselves, and, more blessed than all, he 
 had been taught that there was a Personal Superintendence 
 over all the children of men. The relief had come from the 
 personal interposition of the Son of Man. He went and 
 told the Jews that it was Jesus who had done this. And 
 this explains to us the meaning and the necessity of a 
 public acknowledgment of our gratitude. It is meant to 
 show this nation that it is not by chance, nor by the opera- 
 tion of science, nor by the might of man that we have been 
 rescued, but that our deliverance comes direct from God. 
 
 Let us observe the popular account (for John gives us 
 the popular account) of the angel troubling the water. It 
 
A Thanksgiving Day 303 
 
 matters not whether it is scientifically to be proved or not, 
 the secret causes lie hid beyond our investigation ; but this 
 you can observe, that it was a religious act, that it was not 
 done by chance, that there were living agents in the healing 
 process. The man of science in the present day would tell 
 you what were the ingredients in the spring how it told on 
 the cellular tissue, or on the nervous fabric ; but whatever 
 he may make of it scientifically, it is true morally and 
 religiously ; for what is every remedy but the angel, the 
 messenger of God sent down from the Father of all mercy, 
 the Fountain of all goodness ? So when we celebrate a day 
 of national thanksgiving, it is but the nation's voice, arising 
 in acknowledgment of a Parent's protection that these 
 things come not by chance, but that there is personal 
 superintendence over this world, and this deliverance is the 
 proof of a Father's love. 
 
 Once more : a day of thanksgiving is meant to be a 
 warning and a reminder against future sins. " Sin no more, 
 lest a worse thing come unto thee." And it has ever been 
 so, that the result of panic has been reaction. After excite- 
 ment comes apathy ; after terror has been produced, by 
 danger especially, comes indifference, and therefore comes 
 the warning voice from the Redeemer " Sin no more, lest 
 a worse thing come unto thee." 
 
 But we may perhaps say, "My sin did not produce this 
 disease. It was no doing no fault of mine ; it came from 
 causes beyond my control. The pestilence now has wreaked 
 its vengeance ; I find I had nothing to do with it, and I 
 may dismiss the subject from my mind." My brethren, let 
 us look into this a little more deeply. It was not directly 
 your sin that nailed your Redeemer to the cross, but the 
 sin of the cruel Pharisees, of the relentless multitude ; yet 
 it is said " the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us 
 all." It arises all from this circumstance, brethren there 
 are two worlds, a world of evil, and a world of good. The 
 Son of Man came as the perfect and entire representation 
 of the kingdom of holiness. He came in collision with the 
 world of evil ; He died for sinners for the sins of others 
 
304 A Thanksgiving Day 
 
 of all who partake of the nature of moral evil : and therefore 
 by their sin they nailed the Redeemer to the cross. All 
 those who opposed themselves to Jesus, would have opposed 
 themselves to Moses, Zacharias, and Abel; they allowed 
 the deeds of their fathers, and were partakers of the blood 
 of all the prophets that had been slain upon the earth. 
 The men who join in a crowd, aiding and abetting the 
 death of any individual, by the law of every country are 
 held guilty ; and now, though there may have been no dis- 
 tinct act of selfishness by which any man has perished at 
 your hands; though there have been no distinct want of 
 care for the poor still I may fearlessly ask you all, Christian 
 brethren, does not your conscience tell you how little the 
 welfare and the comfort of others has been in your thoughts? 
 As far as we have taken a part in the world's selfishness ; as 
 far as we have lived for self and not for our neighbours ; 
 as far as we have forgotten the poor sufferers lying in 
 the porches of Bethesda not directly, but indirectly, all 
 that has fallen upon this land may have been sent as a 
 chastisement to us. 
 
 And there is this to be explained "Sin no more;" 
 meaning apparently, that if a man did not sin, nothing more 
 would happen. Are we to understand then, that if a man 
 has been blameless, he will never suffer from sorrow or 
 sickness ? or that if a man will avoid sin, he will never be 
 visited by death? To have said that, would have been to 
 contradict the history of the Redeemer's own life and death. 
 He died, though He sinned not. How then, brethren, can 
 we understand it ? Why, we can but understand it in this 
 way, by recalling to our memory what has been already said 
 of the difference between the punishment and the penalty. 
 If a man live a humble and holy life in Christ Jesus, there 
 is no promise that if plague visits his land it shall not come 
 nigh him. Live in purity, live in unselfishness ; there is no 
 promise that you shall not be cut down in a day ; there is 
 nothing in religion that can shield you from what the world 
 calls trouble from penalty ; but there is this that which 
 would have been chastisement is changed into penalty. 
 
An Election Sermon 305 
 
 The Redeemer suffered death as a penalty ; but by no 
 means as chastisement ; on the contrary, it was the richest 
 blessing which a Father's love could bestow upon His 
 well-beloved Son, in whom He was well-pleased. So it will 
 be with every one of us. He who lives to God, rests in his 
 Redeemer's love, and is trying to get rid of his old nature 
 to him every sorrow, every bereavement, every pain, will 
 come charged with blessings, and death itself will be no 
 longer the king of terrors, but the messenger of grace, the 
 very angel of God descending on the troubled waters, and 
 calling him to his Father's home. 
 
 AN ELECTION SERMON 
 (UNFINISHED) 
 
 ACTS i. 23-26. "And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, 
 who was sun.amed Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed, and said, 
 Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, shew whether of 
 these two thou hast chosen, That he may take part of this ministry 
 and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might 
 go to his own place. And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell 
 upon Matthias ; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles." 
 
 THIS is the account of the earliest appointment of an 
 apostle or bishop over the Church of Christ. 
 
 It stands remarkably distinguished from the episcopal 
 elections of after ages. Every one acquainted with Church 
 history knows that the election of a bishop in the first 
 centuries, and indeed for many ages, was one of the bitterest 
 and fiercest questions which shook the Church of Christ. 
 * + * * * 
 
 [Appointment by the people. Presbyters. Various cus- 
 toms. Anecdote of Ambrose of Milan. Appointment by 
 the Emperor or Bishop of Rome. Quarrel of ages between 
 the Emperor and the Pope.] 
 
 VOL. i. U 
 
306 An Election Sermon 
 
 Contradistinguished from this in spirit was the first 
 appointment which ended in the selection of Matthias. 
 Holy, calm, wise presided over by an apostolic and 
 Christian spirit. 
 
 It will be obvious at once why this subject has been 
 selected. During the course of this week, England will be 
 shaken to her centre with the selection of representatives 
 who shall legislate for her hereafter, either in accordance 
 with, or in defiance of, the principles of her constitution. 
 In some places, as fiercely as the battle was formerly carried 
 on between Guelph and Ghibelline, or between faction and 
 faction in the choice of bishops, so fiercely will the contest 
 rage in the choice of representatives. 
 
 Delicate and difficult as the introduction of such a 
 subject from the pulpit must be, yet it seems to me the 
 imperative duty of a minister of Christ from which he 
 cannot, except in cowardice, shrink to endeavour to make 
 clear the great Christian landmarks which belong to such an 
 occurrence. But let me be understood. His duty is not to 
 introduce politics in the common sense of the word, mean- 
 ing thereby the views of some particular party. The pulpit 
 is not to be degraded into the engine of a faction. Far, far 
 above such questions, it ought to preserve the calm dignity 
 of a voice which speaks for eternity, and not for time. If 
 possible, not one word should drop by which a minister's 
 own political leanings can be discovered. 
 
 Yet there must be broad principles of right and wrong in 
 such a transaction as in any other. And, in discharge of 
 my duty, I desire to place those before you. 
 
 I. The object of the election spoken of in my text. 
 II. The mode of the election. 
 III. The spirit in which it was conducted. 
 
 I. The object of the election. To elect a bishop of the 
 universal Church. 
 
 It might be that in process of time the apostle so chosen 
 should be appointed to a particular city as St. James was 
 
An Election Sermon 307 
 
 to Jerusalem. But it is plain his duty as an apostle was 
 owed to the general assembly and Church of Christ, 
 not to that particular city; and if he had allowed local 
 partialities or local interests to stand before the interests 
 of the whole, he would have neglected the duty of his high 
 office. 
 
 Also, that if those who appointed him considered the 
 interest of Jerusalem in the first instance, instead of his 
 qualifications as a bishop of the Church universal, they 
 would have failed in their duty. 
 
 In the third century, a bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, in a 
 celebrated sentence has clearly and beautifully stated this 
 principle " Episcopatus unus est, cujus" &c. The Episco- 
 pate, one and indivisible, held in its entirety by each bishop, 
 every part standing for the whole. That is, if he were a 
 bishop of Carthage or Antioch, he was to remember that it 
 was not the interests of Carthage over which he had to 
 watch, but those of the Church of Christ ; Carthage being 
 his special allotment out of the whole. And in a council 
 he was to give his voice not for that which might be 
 good for the men of Carthage, but for the Church of 
 Christ. 
 
 The application is plain. 
 
 The nation is one its life is a sacred life. The nation 
 is the Christian people, for whom Christ shed His blood. 
 Its life is unity. Its death is division. The curse of a 
 Christian is sectarianism. The curse of a nation is faction. 
 Each legislator legislates for the country, not for a county 
 or town. Each elector holds his franchise as a sacred trust, 
 to be exercised not for his town, or for a faction of his town, 
 not for himself, or his friends, but for the general weal of 
 the people of England. 
 
 Let me expose a common fallacy. 
 
 We are not to be biassed by asking what charity does a 
 candidate support, nor what view does he take of some 
 local question, nor whether he subscribe to tractarian or to 
 evangelical societies. We are, in our high responsibility, 
 selecting, not a president for a religious society, nor a patron 
 
308 An Election Sermon 
 
 of a town, nor a subscriber to an hospital, but a legislator 
 for England. 
 
 II. The mode of the election. 
 
 It was partly human, partly divine. 
 
 The human element is plain enough in that it was popular. 
 The choice lay not with the apostles, but with the whole 
 Church. One hundred and twenty met in that upper 
 chamber : all gave in their lots or votes. The Divine 
 element lay in this, that it was over-ruled by God. 
 
 Here is the main point observable. They at least took 
 for granted that the popular element was quite separate 
 from the Divine. The selected one might be the chosen 
 of the people, yet not the chosen of God. Hence they 
 prayed, " Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, 
 show whether of these two thou hast chosen." 
 
 The common notion is, vox populi vox Dei. In other 
 words, whatever the general voice wills is right. A law is 
 right because it is a people's will. I do not say that we 
 have got the full length of this idea in England. On the 
 Continent it has long been prevalent. Possibly it is the 
 expression of that Antichrist "who sheweth himself that 
 he is God ; " self-will setting itself up paramount to the will 
 of God. 
 
 The vox populi is sometimes vox Dei, sometimes not. 
 The voice of the people was the voice of God when the 
 children of Israel rescued Jonathan from his father's unjust 
 sentence (i Sam. xiv. 45); and when the contest between 
 Elijah and the prophets of Baal having been settled, they 
 cried, "The Lord he is God." 
 
 Was the voice of the people the voice of God when, 
 in Moses' absence, they required Aaron to make them a 
 golden calf for a god ? Or when, led on by the demagogue 
 Demetrius, they shouted, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians "? 
 Or when, at the instigation of the priests, led blindfold by 
 them they cried, "Crucify Him"? 
 
 The politicians of this world eagerly debate the question, 
 how best to secure a fair representation of the people's voice, 
 
An Election Sermon 309 
 
 whether by individuals or by interests fairly balanced ? a 
 question, doubtless, not to be put aside. But the Christian 
 sees a question, deeper far than these not how to obtain 
 most fairly an expression of the people's will, but how that 
 will shall truly represent the will of God. 
 
 There is no other question, at last, than this. 
 
 And we shall attain this, not by nicely balancing interest 
 against interest, much less by manoeuvring, or by cunningly 
 devised expedient, to defeat the cause which we believe the 
 wrong one ; but by each doing all that in him lies to rouse 
 himself and others to a high sense of responsibility. 
 
 It is a noble thought, that of every elector going to vote, 
 as these men did, for the Church, for the People, for God, 
 and for the Right, earnestly anxious that he and others 
 should do right. 
 
 Else to speak humanly this was an appeal to chance 
 and not to God; and every election, by ballot or by 
 suffrage, is else an appeal to chance. 
 
 All, therefore, depends upon the spirit in which the 
 election is conducted. 
 
 What constitutes the difference between an appeal to 
 God and an appeal to chance? 
 
 III. The Spirit. 
 
 i. A religious spirit. Ver. 24 "They prayed and said, 
 Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show 
 whether of these two Thou hast chosen." Now, we shall be 
 met here at once, by an objection. This was a religious 
 work the selection of an apostle; but the choice of a 
 representative is not a religious work, only a secular one. 
 
 Here we come, therefore, to the very pith and marrow of 
 the whole question. The distinction between religious and 
 secular is true in a sense, but, as we make it, it is false. 
 It is not the occupation, but, the spirit which makes the 
 difference. The election of a bishop may be a most secular 
 thing. The election of a representative may be a religious 
 thing. St. Paul taught that nothing is profane. Sanctified 
 
310 An Election Sermon 
 
 by the Word of God and prayer, St. Peter learned that 
 nothing is common or unclean. 
 
 [Many relics remain to us from our religious forefathers 
 indicative of this truth. Grace before meals. Dei gratia on 
 coins of the realm. "In the name of God," at the com- 
 mencement of wills. Oath in court of justice. Prayers in 
 universities before election of scholars. All proclaim that 
 the simplest acts of our domestic and political life are 
 sacred or profane according to the spirit in which they are 
 performed ; not in the question whether they are done for 
 the State or the Church, but whether with God or without 
 God.] 
 
 Observe It is not the preluding such an election with 
 public prayer that would make it a religious act. It is 
 religious so far as each man discharges his part as a duty 
 and solemn responsibility. 
 
 If looked on in this spirit by the higher classes, would 
 the debauchery and the drunkenness which are fostered 
 by rich men of all parties among the poor for their 
 own purposes, be possible? Would they, for the sake 
 of one vote, or a hundred votes, brutalize their fellow- 
 creatures ? 
 
 2. It is implied in this, that it must be done conscien- 
 tiously. 
 
 Each Christian found himself in possession of a new 
 right that of giving a vote or casting a lot. 
 
 Like all rights, it was a duty. He had not a right to 
 do what he liked. His right was only the duty of doing 
 right. And if any one had swayed him to support the 
 cause of Barsabas or that of Matthias on any motives 
 except this one " You ought " he had so far injured his 
 conscience. 
 
 The conscience of man is a holy, sacred thing. The 
 worst of crimes is to injure a human conscience. Better 
 kill the body. Remember how strongly St. Paul speaks, 
 "When ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their 
 weak conscience, ye sin against Christ." And that sin, 
 
An Election Sermon 311 
 
 remember, consisted in leading them to do a thing which, 
 though right in itself, they thought wrong. 
 
 Now, there is an offence against the laws of the State 
 which all men agree in treating with a smile. 
 
 My brethren, bribery is a sin a sin against God. Not 
 because a particular law has been made against it, but 
 because it lowers the sense of personal responsibility, blunts 
 the conscience, dethrones the God within the man's soul, 
 and erects selfishness, and greed, and interest, in His stead. 
 And whether you do it directly or indirectly directly by 
 giving, indirectly by withdrawing assistance, or patronage 
 you sin against Christ. 
 
 3. It was not done from personal interest. 
 
 There were two candidates, Barsabas and Matthias. Now, 
 if the supporters of these two had been influenced chiefly 
 by such considerations as blood-relationship, or the chance 
 of favour and promotion, manifestly a high function would 
 have been degraded. 
 
 In secular matters, however, we do not judge so. A man 
 generally decides according to his professional or his personal 
 interests. You know almost to a certainty beforehand which 
 way a man will vote, if you know his profession. If a man 
 be a farmer, or a clergyman, or a merchant, you can pretty 
 surely guess on which side he will range himself. 
 
 Partly, no doubt, this is involuntary the result of those 
 prejudices which attach to us all from association. But it 
 is partly voluntary. We know that we are thinking not of 
 the general good, but of our own interests. And thus a 
 farmer would think himself justified in looking at a question 
 simply as it affected his class, and a noble as it affected his 
 caste, and a working-man as it bore upon the working- 
 classes. 
 
 Brethren, we are Christians. Something of a principle 
 higher than this ought to be ours. What is the law of the 
 Cross of Christ ? The sacrifice of the One for the whole, 
 the cheerful surrender of the few for the many. Else, what 
 do we more than others ? 
 
 These are fine words patriotism, public principle, purity. 
 VOL. i. u 2 
 
312 An Election Sermon 
 
 Be sure these words are but sentimental, except as they 
 spring out of the Cross of Christ. 
 
 Application. 
 
 I have endeavoured to keep entirely unseen my own 
 political views. I may have failed, but not voluntarily. 
 
 Remember, in conclusion, the matter of paramount im- 
 portance to be decided this week is, not whether a pre- 
 ponderance shall be ensured for one of the great parties 
 which divide the country, or the other. That is important, 
 but it is secondary. The important thing to be devoutly 
 wished, is that each man shall give his vote as these men 
 did conscientiously, religiously, unselfishly, lovingly. 
 
 Better that he should support the wrong cause con- 
 scientiously than the right one insincerely. Better be a 
 true man on the side of wrong than a false man on the 
 side of right. 
 
The Humane Society 313 
 
 THE HUMANE SOCIETY 
 
 (A Sermon preached on its Behalf} 
 
 MARK v. 35-43. " While he yet spake, there came from the ruler 
 of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead : 
 why troublest thou the Master any further ? As soon as Jesus heard 
 the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, 
 Be not afraid, only believe. And he suffered no man to follow him, 
 save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. And he cometh 
 to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and 
 them that wept and wailed greatly. And when he was come in, he 
 saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep ? the damsel is not 
 dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he 
 had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, 
 and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was 
 lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha 
 cumi ; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. 
 And straightway the damsel arose, and walked ; for she was of the age 
 of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. 
 And he charged them straitly that no man should know it ; and 
 commanded that something should be given her to eat." 
 
 I PLEAD to-day for a society whose cause has not been 
 advocated in this chapel for many years. It is now exactly 
 ten years since a collection was made in Trinity Chapel for 
 the Humane Society. 
 
 Its general objects, as everybody knows, are the preserva- 
 tion of the life of drowning persons, by precautions previously 
 taken, and by subsequent remedies. But this vague state- 
 ment being insufficient to awaken the interest which the 
 Society deserves, I propose to consider it in its details, and 
 to view these as in the pulpit we are bound to do from 
 the peculiar Christian point of view. 
 
 It is remarkable that there is a Scripture passage which, 
 point by point, offers a parallel to the work of this Society, 
 and a special sanction and a precedent, both for its peculiar 
 work and the spirit in which it is to be done. I shall 
 consider 
 
3 14 The Humane Society 
 
 I. This particular form of the Redeemer's work. 
 II. The spirit of the Redeemer's work. 
 
 I. We find among the many forms of His work 
 
 1. Restoration from a special form of death I cannot 
 class this case with that of Lazarus. 
 
 The narrative seems to distinguish this from the other 
 miracle. Christ says, " She is not dead, but sleepeth." 
 Hence this particular case was one of restoration from 
 apparent death. The other case was that of restoration 
 from real death. 
 
 Here then is our first point of resemblance. 
 
 Before this Society was formed, persons apparently suffo- 
 cated were left to perish. Myriads, doubtless, have died 
 who might have been saved. But the idea of restoration 
 was as far from them as from the friends of Jairus. They 
 would have laughed the proposer "to scorn." But, Christ- 
 like, this Society came into the world with a strange 
 message revealed by science, but vitalized by love a 
 Christ-like message : " Be not afraid ; he is not dead, but 
 sleepeth." 
 
 Now the sphere of the Society's operations is thus defined : 
 " To preserve from premature death persons apparently 
 dead from either drowning, hanging, lightning, cold, heat, 
 noxious vapours, apoplexy, or intoxication." They are, con- 
 sequently, large, taking cognizance not merely of cases of 
 drowning only, but all of the same generic character- 
 suspended animation, apparent death, asphyxia. 
 
 [Causes foul air, in drains and brewers' vats, accidental 
 hanging, mines, cellars, wells.] 
 
 In England their causes are more peculiarly extensive, 
 because of our sea-girt shores, and because of the variable 
 climate, which to-day leaves the ice firm, and to-morrow has 
 made it rotten and unsafe. 
 
 2. Here was the recognition of the value of life. The 
 force of the whole petition lay in one single consideration 
 " she shall live." 
 
The Humane Society 315 
 
 It has been often said that Christianity has enhanced the 
 value of life, and our charitable societies are alleged in 
 evidence ; our hospitals ; the increased average of human 
 life, which has been the result of sanitary regulations and 
 improvements in medical treatment. But this statement 
 needs some qualification. 
 
 The value attached to life by the ancient Egyptian was 
 quite as great as that attributed to it by the modern English- 
 man. When Abraham went into Egypt he found a people 
 whose feeling of the sacredness of life was so great that 
 they saw God wherever life was; and venerated the bull, 
 and the fish, and the crocodile. To slay one of them was 
 like murder. 
 
 And again : it could not be said that we owe to Chris- 
 tianity the recognition of the honour due to one who saves 
 life. The most honourable of crowns was that presented to 
 one who had saved the life of a Roman citizen. 
 
 Nay more : instead of peculiarly exalting the value of 
 life, there is a sense in which Christianity depreciates it. 
 " If a man hate not his own life he cannot be my disciple." 
 The Son of Man came to be a sacrifice ; and it is the 
 peculiar dignity of the Christian that he has a life to give. 
 
 Therefore we must distinguish. 
 
 It is not mere life on which Christianity has shed a richer 
 value. It is by ennobling the purpose to which life is to be 
 dedicated that it has made life more precious. A crowded 
 metropolis, looked at merely as a mass of living beings, is 
 no more dignified, and far more disgusting, than an ant-hill 
 with its innumerable creeping lives. Looked on as a place 
 in which each individual is a temple of the Holy Ghost, 
 and every pang and joy of whom has in it something of 
 infinitude, it becomes almost priceless in its value. 
 
 And again : Christianity differs from heathenism in this, 
 that it has declared the dignity of the life of man not 
 merely that of certain classes. It has not " saved citizens," 
 but saved men. 
 
 [Consider the worth of a single soul.] 
 
316 The Humane Society 
 
 Hence this is appropriately called the Humane Society, 
 that word originally meaning human. It is no Brahminical 
 association, abstaining from shedding animal blood and 
 living on no animal food, but it recognizes the worth of a 
 life in which God moves, and which Christ has redeemed. 
 
 It is human life, not animal, that it cares for. The life of 
 man as man, not of some peculiar class of men. 
 
 3. We consider the Saviour's direction respecting the 
 means of effecting complete recovery. He " commanded 
 that something should be given her to eat." 
 
 Observe His reverential submission to the laws of nature. 
 He did not suspend those laws. It did not seem to Him 
 that where law was, God was not ; or that the proof of God's 
 agency was to be found only in the abrogation of law. He 
 recognized the sanctity of those laws which make certain 
 remedies and certain treatment indispensable to health 
 
 [Sanitary regulations are as religious as a miracle.] 
 
 And in doing this He furnished a precedent singularly 
 close for the operations of this Society. It is one great part 
 of the object of its existence to spread a knowledge of the 
 right methods of treatment in case of suspended animation. 
 It has compiled and published rules for the treatment of the 
 drowned, the apparently suffocated, and those struck by 
 sudden apoplexy. 
 
 And consider the indirect results of this, as well as the 
 direct. 
 
 Such cases occur unexpectedly. No medical aid is near. 
 Friends are alarmed. Presence of mind is lost. The vulgar 
 means resorted to from superstition and ignorance are 
 almost incredible. But gradually the knowledge is spread 
 through the country of what to do in cases of emergency. 
 Many here would be prepared to act if a need arose. I have 
 been present at such a case, and have seen life saved by 
 arresting the rough treatment of ignorance acting tradition- 
 ally. But in that and most cases, the knowledge had been 
 gained from the publications of this Society. 
 
The Humane Society 317 
 
 An immense step is gained by the systematic direction of 
 attention to these matters. Every one ought to know what 
 to do on a sudden emergency, a case of strangulation, of 
 suffocation, of apoplexy ; and yet, this forming no definite 
 part of the general plan of education, there are compara- 
 tively few who have the least idea what should be done 
 before medical aid can be obtained. Probably, thousands 
 would be helpless as a child, and human life would be 
 sacrificed. 
 
 II. We consider the spirit of the Redeemer's work. 
 
 1. It was Love. 
 
 It was not reward not even the reward of applause 
 which was the spring of beneficence in the Son of Man. 
 He desired that it should be unknown. He did good 
 because it was good. He relieved because it was the 
 expression of His own exuberant loving-kindness. 
 
 2. It was a spirit of retiring modesty. 
 
 He did not wish that it should be known. But His 
 disciples have made it known to the world. 
 
 Now observe first, the evidence here afforded of His real 
 Humanity. Why did Christ wish to conceal, and the 
 apostles wish to publish abroad His miracles? Take the 
 simple view, and all is plain. Christ, the man, with un- 
 affected modesty, shrank from publicity and applause. The 
 Apostles, with genuine human admiration, record the deed. 
 But seek for some deeper and more mysterious reason, and 
 at once the whole becomes a pantomime, an unreal trans- 
 action acted on this world's stage for effect, as though we 
 should say that He was wishing to have it known, but for 
 certain reasons He made as if He wished it to be concealed. 
 Here, as usual, the simple is the sublime and true. 
 
 Observe, however, secondly : 
 
 That publication by the apostles sanctions and explains 
 another part of this Society's operations. Its office is to 
 observe, to record, and to reward acts of self-devotion. 
 Certain scales of reward are given to one who risks his life 
 
318 The Humane Society 
 
 to save life, to the surgeon whose skill restores life, to the 
 publican who opens his house to receive the apparently dead 
 body. And every year lists of names are published of those 
 who have been thus distinguished by their humanity. The 
 eyes of the Society are over all England, and no heroic act 
 can pass unnoticed or unhonoured by them. 
 
 Now distinctly understand on what principle this is done. 
 It is an apostolic office. It is precisely the principle on 
 which the apostles were appointed by God to record the 
 acts and life of Christ. Was this for Christ's sake ? Nay, 
 it was for the world's good. That Sacrifice of Christ 
 recorded, pronounced Divine, has been the spring and life 
 of innumerable sacrifices and unknown self-devotion. 
 
 And so the rewards given by this Society are not given 
 as recompense. Think you that a medal can pay self-devo- 
 tion ? or a few pounds liquidate the debt due to generosity ? 
 or even, that the thought of the reward would lead a man to 
 plunge into the water to save life, who would not have 
 plunged in without any hope of reward ? No ! But it is 
 good for the world to hear of what is generous and good. 
 It is good to appropriate rewards to such acts, in order to 
 set the standard. It is right that, in a country where enor- 
 mous subscriptions are collected, and monuments are erected 
 to men who have made fortunes by speculation, there should 
 be some visible, tangible recognition of the worth and value 
 of more generous deeds. 
 
 The medal over the fire-place of the poor fisherman is to 
 him a title ; and, truer than most titles, it tells what has 
 been done. It descends an heirloom to the family, saying 
 to the children, Be brave, self-sacrificing, as your father was. 
 
 3. It was a spirit of perseverance. 
 
 They laughed Him to scorn, yet He persisted. Slow calm 
 perseverance amidst ridicule. 
 
 In the progress of this Society we find again a parallel. 
 When the idea of resuscitation was first promulgated, it was 
 met with incredulity and ridicule. Even in 1773, when 
 Dr. Hawes laid the first foundation of the Humane Society, 
 it was with difficulty he could overcome the prejudice which 
 
Man's and God's Greatness 319 
 
 existed against the idea, and he had to bear the whole cost 
 of demonstrating the practicability of his theory. For one 
 whole year he paid all the rewards and expenses himself, 
 and then, attracted by the self-sacrificing ardour with which 
 he had given himself up to the idea of rescuing human life, 
 thirty-two gentlemen, his own and Dr. Cogan's friends, 
 united together in furtherance of this benevolent design, and 
 thus laid the foundation of the Humane Society. 
 
 Here note the attractive power of self-denying work : the 
 Redeemer's Life and Death has been the living power of the 
 world's work, of the world's life. 
 
 MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS 
 
 ISAIAH ivii. 15." For thus saith the High and Lofty One that 
 inhabiteth Eternity, whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high and 
 holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit." 
 
 THE origin of this announcement seems to have been 
 the state of contempt in which religion found itself in 
 the days of Isaiah. One of the most profligate monarchs 
 that ever disgraced the page of sacred history, sat upon the 
 throne of Judah. His court was filled with men who 
 recommended themselves chiefly by their licentiousness. 
 The altar was forsaken. Sacrilegious hands had placed 
 the abominations of heathenism in the Holy Place ; and 
 Piety, banished from the State, the Church, and the 
 Royal court, was once more as she had been before, and 
 will be again, a wanderer on the face of the earth. Now, 
 however easy it may be to contemplate such a state of 
 things at a distance, it never takes place in a man's own 
 day and time without suggesting painful perplexities of 
 a twofold nature. In the first place suspicions respecting 
 
320 Man's and God's Greatness 
 
 God's character ; and, in the second place, misgivings as 
 to his own duty. For a faithless heart whispers, Is it worth 
 while to suffer for a sinking cause ? Honour, preferment, 
 grandeur, follow in the train of unscrupulous conduct. To 
 be strict in goodness, is to be pointed at and shunned. To 
 be no better than one's neighbours is the only way of being 
 at peace. It seems to have been to such a state as this 
 that Isaiah was commissioned to bring light. He vindicated 
 God's character by saying that He is " the High and Lofty 
 One that inhabiteth Eternity." He encouraged those who 
 were trodden down to perseverance, by reminding them 
 that real dignity is something very different from present 
 success. God dwells with him, " that is of a contrite and 
 humble spirit/' 
 
 I. That in which the greatness of God consists. 
 II. That in which man's greatness consists. 
 
 The first measurement, so to speak, which is given us of 
 God's greatness, is in respect of Time. He inhabiteth 
 Eternity. There are some subjects on which it would be 
 good to dwell, if it were only for the sake of that enlarge- 
 ment of mind which is produced by their contemplation. 
 And eternity is one of these, so that you cannot steadily fix 
 the thoughts upon it without being sensible of a peculiar 
 kind of elevation, at the same time that you are humbled by 
 a personal feeling of utter insignificance. You have come 
 in contact with something so immeasurable beyond the 
 narrow range of our common speculations that you are 
 exalted by the very conception of it. Now the only way we 
 have of forming any idea of eternity is by going, step by 
 step, up to the largest measures of time we know of, and so 
 ascending, on and on, till we are lost in wonder. We 
 cannot grasp eternity, but we can learn something of it by 
 perceiving, that, rise to what portion of time we will, 
 eternity is vaster than the vastest. We take up, for in- 
 stance, the history of our own country, and then, when 
 we have spent months in mastering the mere outline of 
 
Man's and God's Greatness 321 
 
 those great events which, in the slow course of revolving 
 centuries, have made England what she is, her earlier 
 ages seem so far removed from our own times, that they 
 appear to belong to a hoary and most remote antiquity. 
 But then, when you compare those times with even the 
 existing works of man, and when you remember that, when 
 England was yet young in civilization, the pyramids of 
 Egypt were already grey with 1500 years, you have got 
 another step which impresses you with a doubled amount of 
 vastness. Double that period, and you come to the far 
 distant moment when the present aspect of this world 
 was called by creation out of the formless void in which 
 it was before. 
 
 Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought 
 beyond even this. It has commanded us to think of 
 countless ages in which that formless void existed before 
 it put on the aspect of its present creation. Millions of 
 years before God called the light day, and the darkness 
 night, there was, if science speaks true, creation after 
 creation called into existence, and buried in its own ruins 
 upon the surface of this earth. And then, there was a time 
 beyond even this there was a moment when this earth 
 itself, with all its countless creations and innumerable ages, 
 did not exist. And, again, in that far back distance it is 
 more than conceivable, it seems by the analogy of God's 
 dealings next to certain, that ten thousand worlds may have 
 been called into existence, and lasted their unnumbered 
 ages, and then perished in succession. Compared with 
 these stupendous figures, 6000 years of our planet sink 
 into nothingness. The mind is lost in dwelling on such 
 thoughts as these. When you have penetrated far, far 
 back, by successive approximations, and still see the illimit- 
 able distance receding before you as distant as before, 
 imagination absolutely gives way, and you feel dizzy and 
 bewildered with new strange thoughts, that have not a name. 
 But this is only one aspect of the case. It looks only to 
 time past. The same overpowering calculations wait us 
 when we bend our eyes on that which is to come. Time 
 
322 Man's and God's Greatness 
 
 stretches back immeasurably, but it also stretches on and 
 on for ever. Now it is by such a conception as this that 
 the inspired prophet attempts to measure the immeasurable 
 of God. All that eternity, magnificent as it is, never was 
 without an Inhabitant. Eternity means nothing by itself. 
 It merely expresses the existence of the High and Lofty 
 One that inhabiteth it. We make a fanciful distinction 
 between eternity and time there is no real distinction. 
 We are in eternity at this moment. That has begun to be 
 with us which never began with God. Our only measure 
 of time is by the succession of ideas. If ideas flow fast, 
 and many sights and many thoughts pass by us, time seems 
 lengthened. If we have the simple routine of a few 
 engagements, the same every day, with little variety, the 
 years roll by us so fast that we cannot mark them. It is 
 not so with God. There is no succession of ideas with 
 Him. Every possible idea is present with Him now. It 
 was present with Him ten thousand years ago. God's 
 dwelling-place is that eternity which has neither past nor 
 future, but one vast, immeasurable present. 
 
 There is a second measure given us of God in this verse. 
 It is in respect of Space. He dwelleth in the High and 
 Lofty place. He dwelleth, moreover, in the most insignifi- 
 cant place even the heart of man. And the idea by which 
 the prophet would here exhibit to us the greatness of God 
 is that of His eternal Omnipresence. It is difficult to say 
 which conception carries with it the greatest exaltation 
 that of boundless space, or that of unbounded time. When 
 we pass from the tame and narrow scenery of our own 
 country, and stand on those spots of earth in which nature 
 puts on her wilder and more awful forms, we are conscious 
 of something of the grandeur which belongs to the thought 
 of space. Go where the strong foundations of the earth lie 
 around you in their massive majesty, and mountain after 
 mountain rears its snow to heaven in a giant chain, and 
 then, when this bursts upon you for the first time in life, 
 there is that peculiar feeling which we call, in common 
 language, an enlargement of ideas. But when we are told 
 
Man's and God's Greatness 323 
 
 that the sublimity of those dizzy heights is but a nameless 
 speck in comparison with the globe of which they form the 
 girdle; and when we pass on to think of that globe itself 
 as a minute spot in the mighty system to which it belongs, 
 so that our world might be annihilated, and its loss would 
 not be felt ; and when we are told that eighty million of 
 such systems roll in the world of space, to which our own 
 system again is as nothing ; and when we again are pressed 
 with the recollection that beyond those furthest limits 
 creative power is exerted immeasurably further than eye 
 can reach, or thought can penetrate; then, brethren, the 
 awe which comes upon the heart is only, after all, a tribute 
 to a portion of God's greatness. Yet we need not science 
 to teach us this. It is the thought which oppresses very 
 childhood the overpowering thought of space. A child 
 can put his head upon his hands, and think and think 
 till it reaches in imagination some far distant barrier of 
 the universe, and still the difficulty presents itself to his 
 young mind, "And what is beyond that barrier?" and the 
 only answer is "The high and lofty place." And this, 
 brethren, is the inward seal with which God has stamped 
 Himself upon man's heart. If every other trace of Deity 
 has been expunged by the fall, these two at least defy 
 destruction the thought of Eternal Time, and the thought 
 of Immeasurable Space. 
 
 The third measure which is given us of God respects 
 His character. His name is Holy. The chief idea which 
 this would convey to us is separation from evil. Brethren, 
 there is perhaps a time drawing near when those of us who 
 shall stand at His right hand, purified from all evil taint, 
 shall be able to comprehend absolutely what is meant by the 
 Holiness of God. At present, with hearts cleaving down to 
 earth, and tossed by a thousand gusts of unholy passion, we 
 can only form a dim conception relatively of that which it 
 implies. None but the pure can understand purity. The 
 chief knowledge which we have of God's holiness comes 
 from our acquaintance with unholiness. We know what 
 
324 Man's and God's Greatness 
 
 impurity is God is not that. We know what injustice is 
 God is not that. We know what restlessness, and guilt, 
 and passion are, and deceitfulness, and pride, and wayward- 
 ness all these we know. God is none of these. And 
 this is our chief acquaintance with His character. We 
 know what God is not. We scarcely can be rightly said to 
 know, that is to feel, what God is. And, therefore, this is 
 implied in the very name of holiness. Holiness in the 
 Jewish sense means simply separateness. From all that is 
 wrong, and mean, and base, our God is for ever separate. 
 
 There is another way in which God gives to us a concep- 
 tion of what this holiness implies. Tell us of His justice, 
 His truth, His loving-kindness. All these are cold abstrac- 
 tions. They convey no distinct idea of themselves to our 
 hearts. What we wanted was, that these should be exhibited 
 to us in tangible reality. And it is just this which God has 
 done. He has exhibited all these attributes, not in the 
 light of speculation, but in the light of facts. He has given 
 us His own character in all its delicacy of colouring in the 
 history of Christ. Love, Mercy, Tenderness, Purity these 
 are no mere names when we see them brought out in the 
 human actions of our Master. Holiness is only a shadow 
 to our minds, till it receives shape and substance in the life 
 of Christ. All this character of holiness is intelligible to us 
 in Christ. " No man hath seen God at any time, the only 
 begotten of the Father He hath declared Him." 
 
 There is a third light in which God's holiness is shown 
 to us, and that is in the sternness with which He recoils from 
 guilt. When Christ died for man, I know what God's love 
 means ; and when Jesus wept human tears over Jerusalem, 
 I know what God's compassion means ; and when the stern 
 denunciations of Jesus rung in the Pharisees' ears, I can 
 comprehend what God's indignation is ; and when Jesus 
 stood calm before His murderers, I have a conception of 
 what serenity is. Brethren, revelation opens to us a scene 
 beyond the grave, when this shall be exhibited in full 
 operation, There will be an everlasting banishment from 
 
Man's and God's Greatness 325 
 
 God's presence of that impurity on which the last efforts 
 have been tried in vain. It will be a carrying out of this 
 sentence by a law that cannot be reversed " Depart from 
 me, ye cursed." But it is quite a mistake to suppose that 
 this is only a matter of revelation. Traces of it we have 
 now on this side the sepulchre. Human life is full of God's 
 recoil from sin. In the writhings of a heart which has been 
 made to possess its own iniquities in the dark spot which 
 guilt leaves upon the conscience, rising up at times in a 
 man's gayest moments, as if it will not come out in the 
 restlessness and the feverishness which follow the efforts of 
 the man who has indulged habits of sin too long, in all 
 these there is a law repelling wickedness from the presence 
 of the Most High, which proclaims that God is holy. 
 
 And now, brethren, it is in these that the greatness of 
 God consists Eternal in Time Unlimited in Space 
 Unchangeable Pure in character His serenity and His 
 vastness arise from His own perfections. 
 
 We are to consider, in the second place, the greatness of 
 
 man. 
 
 1. The nature of that greatness. 
 
 2. The persons who are great 
 
 Now, this is brought before us in the text in this one fact, 
 that man has been made a habitation of the Deity "I 
 dwell with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit." 
 There is in the very outset this distinction between what is 
 great in God and what is great in man. To be independent 
 of everything in the universe is God's glory, and to be in- 
 dependent is man's shame. All that God has, He has from 
 Himself all that man has, he has from God. And the 
 moment man cuts himself off from God, that moment he 
 cuts himself off from grandeur. 
 
 There are two things implied in Scripture, when it is said 
 that God dwells with man. The first is that peculiar presence 
 which He has conferred upon the members of His church. 
 Brethren, we presume not to define what that Presence is, 
 
326 Man's and God's Greatness 
 
 and how it dwells within us we are content to leave it as a 
 mystery. But this we know, that something of a very 
 peculiar and supernatural character takes place in the heart 
 of every man upon whom the gospel has been brought to 
 bear with power. " Know ye not," says the apostle, " that 
 your bodies are the temples, &c." And again in the Epistle 
 to the Ephesians " In Christ ye are builded for an habita- 
 tion of God, &c." There is something in these expressions 
 which refuses to be explained away. They leave us but 
 one conclusion, and that is that in all those who have 
 become Christ's by faith, God personally and locally has 
 taken up His dwelling-place. 
 
 There is a second meaning attached in Scripture to the 
 expression God dwells in man. According to the first 
 meaning, we understand it in the most plain and literal 
 sense the words are capable of conveying. According to 
 the second, we understand His dwelling in a figurative sense, 
 implying this that He gives an acquaintance with Himself 
 to man. So, for instance, when Judas asked, " Lord, how 
 is it, that Thou wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the 
 world ? " Our Redeemer's reply was this " If a man love 
 me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, 
 and We will come unto him and make Our abode with him." 
 In the question it was asked how God would manifest 
 Himself to His servants. In the answer it was shown how 
 He would make His abode with them. And if the answer 
 be any reply to the question at all, what follows is this 
 that God making His abode or dwelling in the heart 
 is the same thing exactly as God's manifesting Himself to 
 the heart. Brethren, in these two things the greatness of 
 man consists. One is to have God so dwelling in us as 
 to impart His character to us; and the other is to have 
 God so dwelling in us that we recognize His presence, 
 and know that we are His and He is ours. They are 
 two things perfectly distinct. To have God in us, this 
 is salvation ; to know that God is in us, this is assurance. 
 
 Lastly, we inquire as to the persons who are truly great. 
 
Man's and God's Greatness 327 
 
 And these the Holy Scripture has divided into two classes 
 those who are humble and those who are contrite in heart. 
 Or rather, it will be observed that it is the same class of 
 character under different circumstances. Humbleness is 
 the frame of mind of those who are in a state of innocence, 
 contrition of those who are in a state of repentant guilt. 
 Brethren, let not the expression innocence be misunder- 
 stood. Innocence in its true and highest sense never 
 existed but once upon this earth. Innocence cannot be the 
 religion of man now. But yet there are those who have 
 walked with God from youth, not quenching the spirit which 
 He gave them, and who are therefore comparatively innocent 
 beings. All they have to do is to go on, whereas the guilty 
 man has to stop and turn back before he can go on. 
 Repentance with them is the gentle work of every day, not 
 the work of one distinct and miserable part of life. They 
 are those whom the Lord calls just men which need no re- 
 pentance, and of whom He says, " He that is clean needeth 
 not save to wash his feet." 
 
 Now they are described here as the humble in heart. Two 
 things are required for this state of mind. One is that a 
 man should have a true estimate of God, and the other is 
 that he should have a true estimate of himself. 
 
 Vain, blind man places himself on a little corner of this 
 planet, a speck upon a speck of the universe, and begins to 
 form conclusions from the small fraction of God's govern- 
 ment which he can see from thence. The astronomer looks 
 at the laws of motion and forgets that there must have been 
 a First Cause to commence that motion. The surgeon 
 looks at the materialism of his own frame and forgets that 
 matter cannot organise itself into exquisite beauty. The 
 metaphysician buries himself in the laws of mind and 
 forgets that there may be spiritual influences producing all 
 those laws. And this, brethren, is the unhumbled spirit of 
 philosophy intellectual pride. Men look at Nature, but 
 they do not look through it up to Nature's God. There 
 is awful ignorance of God, producing an unhumbled 
 heart, which arisies from indulged sin. God may be shut 
 
328 Man's and God's Greatness 
 
 out from the soul by pride of intellect, or by pride of 
 heart. 
 
 Pharaoh is placed before us in Scripture almost as a type 
 of pride. His pride arose from ignorance of God. " Who 
 is the Lord that I should obey His voice ? I know not the 
 Lord, neither will I let Israel go." And this was not intel- 
 lectual pride ; it was pride in a matter of duty. Pharaoh 
 had been immersing his whole heart in the narrow politics 
 of Egypt. The great problem of his day was to aggrandize 
 his own people and prevent an insurrection of the Israelites ; 
 and that small kingdom of Egypt had been his universe. He 
 shut his heart to the voice of justice and the voice of 
 humanity ; in other words, great in the pride of human 
 majesty, small in the sight of the High and Lofty One, he 
 shut himself out from the knowledge of God. 
 
 The next ingredient of humbleness is, that a man must 
 have a right estimate of himself. There is a vast amount of 
 self-deception on this point. We say of ourselves that which 
 we could not bear others to say of us. A man truly humbled 
 would take it only as his due when others treated him in the 
 way that he says that he deserves. But, my brethren, we 
 kneel in our closets in shame for what we are, and we tell 
 our God that the lowest place is too good for us ; and then 
 we go into the world, and if we meet with slight or disrespect, 
 or if our opinion be not attended to, or if another be pre- 
 ferred before us, there is all the anguish of a galled and 
 jealous spirit, and half the bitterness of our lives comes from 
 this, that we are smarting from what we call the wrongs and 
 the neglect of men. My beloved brethren, if we saw our- 
 selves as God sees us, we should be willing to be anywhere, 
 to be silent when others speak, to be passed by in the world's 
 crowd, and thrust aside to make way for others. We should 
 be willing to put others in the way of doing that which we 
 might have got reputation for by doing ourselves. This 
 was the temper of our Master this is the meek and the quiet 
 spirit, and this is the temper of the humble with whom the 
 High and Lofty One dwells. 
 
 The other class of those who are truly great are the 
 
Man's and God's Greatness 329 
 
 contrite in spirit. At first sight it might be supposed thai 
 there must ever be a vast distinction between the innocent 
 and the penitent. It was so that the elder son in the parable 
 thought when he saw his brother restored to his father's 
 favour. He was surprised and hurt. He had served his 
 father these many years his brother had wasted his sub- 
 stance in riotous living. But in this passage God makes no 
 distinction. He places the humble consistent follower and 
 the broken-hearted sinner on a level. He dwells with both, 
 with him that is contrite, and with him that is humble. 
 He sheds around them both the grandeur of His own 
 presence, and the annals of Church history are full of 
 exemplifications of this marvel of God's grace. By the trans- 
 forming grace of Christ men, who have done the very work 
 of Satan, have become as conspicuous in the service of 
 heaven as they were once conspicuous in the career of guilt. 
 So indisputably has this been so, that men have drawn 
 from such instances the perverted conclusion, that if a man 
 is ever to be a great saint, he must first be a great sinner. 
 God forbid, brethren, that we should ever make such an in- 
 ference. But this we infer for our own encouragement, 
 that past sin does not necessarily preclude from high attain- 
 ments. We must " forget the things that are behind." We 
 must not mourn over past years of folly as if they made 
 saintliness impossible. Deep as we may have been once in 
 earthliness, so deep we may also be in penitence, and so 
 high we may become in spirituality. We have so many 
 years the fewer to do our work in. Well, brethren, let 
 us try to do it so much the faster. Christ can crowd the 
 work of years into hours. He did it with the dying thief. 
 If the man who has set out early may take his time, it 
 certainly cannot be so with us who have lost our time. 
 If we have lost God's bright and happy presence by our 
 wilfulness, what then ? Unrelieved sadness ? Nay, brethren, 
 calmness, purity, may have gone from our heart; but all. is 
 not gone yet. Just as sweetness comes from the bark of the 
 cinnamon when it is bruised, so can the spirit of the Cross 
 of Christ bring beauty and holiness and peace out of the 
 
330 Man's and God's Greatness 
 
 bruised and broken heart. God dwells with the contrite as 
 much as with the humble. 
 
 And now, brethren, to conclude, the first inference we 
 collect from this subject, is the danger of coming into collision 
 with such a God as our God. Day by day we commit sins 
 of thought and word of which the dull eye of man takes no 
 cognizance. He whose name is Holy cannot pass them by. 
 I may elude the vigilance of a human enemy and place 
 myself beyond his reach. God fills all space there is not 
 a spot in which His piercing eye is not on us, and His uplifted 
 hand cannot find us out. Man must strike soon if he would 
 strike at all ; for opportunities pass away from him, and his 
 victim may escape his vengeance by his death. There is no 
 passing of opportunity with God, and it is this which makes 
 His long suffering a solemn thing. God can wait, for He 
 has a whole eternity before Him in which He may strike. 
 " All things are open, and naked to Him with whom we have 
 to do." 
 
 In the next place we are taught the heavenly character of 
 condescension. It is not from the insignificance of man that 
 God's dwelling with him is so strange. It is as much the 
 glory of God to bend His attention on an atom as to uphold 
 the universe. But the marvel is that the habitation which 
 He has chosen for Himself is an impure one. And when 
 He came down from His magnificence to make this world 
 His home, still the same character of condescension was 
 shown through all the life of Christ. Our God selected the 
 society of the outcasts of earth, those whom none else would 
 speak to. Brethren, if we would be Godlike, we must follow 
 in the same steps. Our temptation is to do exactly the reverse. 
 We are for ever wishing to obtain the friendship and the 
 intimacy of those above us in the world. To win over men 
 of influence to truth to associate with men of talent and 
 station, and title. This is the world-chase, and this, brethren, 
 is too much the religious man's chase. But if you look 
 simply to the question of resemblance to God, then the 
 man who makes it a habit to select that one in life to do 
 good to, and that one in a room to speak with, whom others 
 
Man's and God's Greatness 331 
 
 pass by because there is nothing either of intellect, or power, 
 or name, to recommend him, but only humbleness, that man 
 has stamped upon his heart more of heavenly similitude by 
 condescension, than the man who has made it his business 
 to win this world's great ones, even for the sake of truth. 
 
 Lastly, we learn the guilt of two things of which this world 
 is full vanity and pride. There is a distinction between these 
 two. But the distinction consists in this, that the vain man 
 looks for the admiration of others the proud man requires 
 nothing but his own. Now, it is this distinction which makes 
 vanity despicable to us all. We can easily find out the vain 
 man we soon discover what it is he wants to be observed, 
 whether it be a gift of person, or a gift of mind, or a gift of 
 character. If he be vain of his person, his attitudes will tell 
 the tale. If he be vain of his judgment, or his memory, or 
 his honesty, he cannot help an unnecessary parade. The 
 world finds him out, and this is why vanity is ever looked 
 on with contempt. So soon as we let men see that we are 
 suppliants for their admiration, we are at their mercy. We 
 have given them the privilege of feeling that they are above 
 us. We have invited them to spurn us. And therefore 
 vanity is but a thing for scorn. But it is very different with 
 pride. No man can look down on him that is proud, for he 
 has asked no man for anything. They are forced to feel 
 respect for pride, because it is thoroughly independent of 
 them. It wraps itself up in the consequence of its own 
 excellences, and scorns to care whether others take note of 
 them or not. It is just here that the danger lies. We 
 have exalted a sin into a virtue. No man will acknowledge 
 that he is vain, but almost any man will acknowledge that 
 he is proud. But tried by the balance of the sanctuary, 
 there is little to choose between the two. If a man look for 
 greatness out of God, it matters little whether he seek it in 
 his own applause, or in the applause of others. The proud 
 Pharisee, who trusted in himself that he was righteous, was 
 condemned by Christ as severely, and even more, than the 
 vain Jews who "could not believe because they sought 
 honour from one another, and not that honour which 
 
332 Man's and God's Greatness 
 
 cometh from God only." It may be a more dazzling, and 
 a more splendid sin to be proud. It is not less hateful in 
 God's sight. Let us speak God's word to our own unquiet, 
 swelling, burning hearts. Pride may disguise itself as it 
 will in its own majesty, but in the presence of the High and 
 Lofty One, it is but littleness after all. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 4Jun5 3 1 W 
 953 U 
 
 iOMfl 
 
 :sz 
 
 AUG161986 
 
 RECEIVED feY 
 CIRCULATION DEPT. 
 
 LD 21-100m-n,'49(B7146sl6)476 
 
1 
 
 ' 
 
 
 GENERAL LIBRARY U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 B0008MM137 
 
 a& 
 
 943941 
 
 8X6*133 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY