GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM j^nb other germons BY GEORGE SALMON, D.D. CHANCELLOR OF ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN Hontion MACMILLAN AND CO AND NEW YORK 1887 All rights reserved 1)^ 5530 CONTENTS PAGE I. Gnosticism and Agnosticism . . . i " We know in part, and we prophesy in part : but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child : now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." I Corinthians xiii. 9-11. II. Union with Christ 24 " Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch can- not bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the branches : he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; for without Me ye can do nothing." ^John xv. 4, 5. III. The Pure in Heart shall see God . . 53 " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." Matthewv. 8. IV. Ill Success in Searching after Righteous- ness 74 "The Gentiles, which followed not after righteous- ness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteous- ness which is of faith : but Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness." Romans ix. 30, 31. CONTENTS PAGE V. Pain and Disease loo " For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep." i Corinthians xi. 30. VI. Hunger AND Thirst AFTER Righteousness 124 " Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." Matthew V. 6. VII. The Keynote of the Epistle to the Hebrews 138 "Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God : but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day ; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin : for we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end." Hebrews iii. 12-14. VIII. Bowing IN THE House OF RiMMON . .158 "And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth ? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord. In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon : when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing. And he said unto him, Go in peace." 2 Kings v. 17-19. IX. Shame 174 "Let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith ; who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. " Hebrews xii. 2. CONTENTS PAGE X. The Denial of Peter . . , .188 " When Jesus beheld him, He said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona : thou shalt be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, a stone." ^John i. 42. XI. Charity and Love 205 "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the greatest of these is charity." i Corinthians xiii. 13. In the Revised Version it is: "But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three : and the greatest of these is love." XII. Charitable Belief 223 "Charity believeth all things." i Corinthians xiii. 7. xiii. Slavery 243 "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men ; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance : for ye serve the Lord Christ." COLOSSIANS iii. 23, 24. XIV. The Interpretation of Scripture . .272 "The Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His angels ; and then He shall reward every man according to his works." Matthew xvi. 27. " For by grace are ye saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God : not of works, lest any man should boast." Ephesians ii. 8, 9. XV. Reward according to Work . . . 292 " The Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His angels ; and then He shall reward every man according to his works." Matthew xvi. 27. CONTENTS I'AGE ' ' For by grace are ye saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God : not of works, lest any man should boast." Ephesians ii. 8, 9. XVI. The Two Classes 311 ' * When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory : And before Him shall be gathered all nations ; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats : And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left." Matthew XXV. 31-33. XVII. Working TOGETHER WITH God . . . 327 " We, then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain." 2 Corinthians vi. i. XVIII. The Forgiveness of Sins . . . 349 "And such were some of you : but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." I Corinthians vi. 11. GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM '* We know in part, and we prophesy in part : but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child : now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." I Corinthians xiii. 9-1 1. The history of man's search for knowledge in every branch of study has commonly to pass through three stages. First there is the season of toilsome struggle with difficulties, when perplexing problems are grappled with ; a time of labour, no doubt, but of labour rewarded by a sense of constant progress, as difficulty after difficulty is mastered and problem after problem finds its solution. At length we reach a summit from which we can look round with some complacency on our achievements, when we see below us the heights that had been the object of our early ambition, and can delight ourselves with the harmonious landscape which the fields we had traversed present. There for a time our labours GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM cease and many never care to proceed further ; but at length, if not the individual, at least the generation, catches sight of new heights that must be scaled. The theories that had explained our early difficulties are seen to leave residual diffi- culties behind. If these cannot also be made to disappear the theory is convicted of incomplete- ness if not of error. So further work has to be done : usually what has been already done has carried us some stages on our way ; but it may even be that in order to reach what we now per- ceive to be the real summit, we have to retrace our steps, come down from our boasted eminence, and humbly at the bottom begin the ascent anew. Thus the most successful theories have had to submit to reconsideration and revision. The Newtonian theory of gravitation, for example, triumphantly established its claims by showing that a number of unconnected laws which had been suggested by observation were all simple consequences of one great principle. Yet the further question had to be faced : Will that principle explain not only all the general features of planetary motion but also all the minor in- equalities ? And some of these were at times so stubborn that it was seriously investigated whether the law of gravitation would not have to be modi- fied, or at least some hypothesis added as to the GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM time of transmission of its force. The Newtonian theory of Hght was less fortunate. It too won a first and great success, and Newton's investigations on this subject arrived at some results which can- not be superseded ; but though his theory ex- plained some of the more striking phenomena, when tested by more minute details it failed, and so after a temporary reign it has been forced tq abdicate. From the sketch I have given how the finding the answer to one set of questions is sure to sug- gest other more searching questions, it follows that the difficulty of problems is very differently judged of by a student at different stages of his progress. It is not unnatural to hear that he comes to think of problems as easy which he once esteemed diffi- cult ; but it happens too that conversely he comes to think problems difficult which he had once thought easy. Thus, for instance, a schoolboy's idea as to what is an easy book may be very different from that entertained by an accomplished scholar, who may regard that as full of difficulties which the schoolboy pronounces easy. The Gospel according to St. John will be pronounced a delightfully easy book by a schoolboy, glad to find that his painful work with grammar and dictionary is no longer needed, that there is scarcely a word which he does not recognise or a GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM grammatical form with which he does not think himself familiar. Yet there is no New Testament book which more tries the powers of a commen- tator or presents him with harder problems. How many a crux the scholar will find in the ^neid of Virgil or the odes of Horace in places which a schoolboy would skim over in happy ignorance that there was anything at which he need feel embarrassment. The case is just the same with moral difficulties. To a childish mind what reflections can be more obvious or more satisfactory than those in which it has been stirred up to gratitude towards God ? " Not more than others I deserve, Yet God has given me more, For I have food while others starve And beg from door to door, " Lord, I ascribe it to Thy grace, And not to chance as others do, That I was bom of Christian race And not a heathen or a Jew." It requires a cultured mind to be tormented with the difficulties : " If I deserve no more than others how can it be consistent with the justice of the Father of all that I should be given more ? Am I to admire injustice because I profit by it myself? If it is a disadvantage to be born a heathen or a Jew, how can we defend the ways of GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM Providence which permits so many thousands to suffer the one calamity, so many millions the other?" The difficulty, however, here presented is one that exists independently of Revelation. It is not more certain that the world is peopled by creatures extremely diverse than it is that among human beings also there are infinite diversities of condi- tion, diversities of capacities and of opportunities for happiness. Dr. Watts has but versified the thanksgiving of the heathen philosopher who blessed his gods because they had made him to be born a man not a woman, a freeman not a slave, an Athenian not a barbarian. It has seemed to many that Revelation would be a poor thing if the knowledge it supplied, at least when combined with that which could be otherwise obtained, did not suffice to form the basis of a philosophy capable of solving all the problems of life. Accordingly, no sooner had our religion made such progress as to win the adherence of men of culture than they set themselves to frame by its help a philosophy of the universe. They disdained the simplicity of the vulgar, who merely trusted to their faith as a means of salvation. Christianity must do something more for them, and they claimed to be able to add to their faith knowledge. That knowledge professed to include an account GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM of the origin of all things. It explained the process how from one simple, absolute, uncom- pounded, immaterial essence a multiform and material life had emanated. It traced the different future lots of men to an original radical diversity of nature, and so resembled some modern theories in addressing its message only to an elect seed. To these it professed to teach the true names of the unseen powers and the proper formulae by which their help could be commanded. And some forms of this philosophy promised to release the initiated from the trammels of the ordinary laws of morality, by communicating to him know- ledge which would make it his privilege, nay his duty, to set these laws at defiance. The adepts in this philosophy claimed to be par excellence Gnos- tics. They knew where simpler Christians must be content to believe. And though this knowledge was for a time guarded as a secret treasure, not to be lightly exhibited to the profane, it was not possible to protect it successfully from the search of curious inquirers, and so, very full details have been preserved to our own day. And what is the opinion of our age as to this vaunted know- ledge ? Why, that there are no pages of Church History so dreary as those which give the account of these theories, advanced without proof and, according to our judgment, utterly without GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM probability ; no pages so irksome to read care- fully unless with some special object in view. Yet it would be an error to suppose that the labour bestowed on the Gnostic speculations was absolutely wasted ; for it has left permanent traces in the history of religious thought. If the solu- tions which this philosophy offered of the problems it attacked must be pronounced entirely unsatis- factory, it at least had the merit of inviting the attention of Christian thinkers to some problems of the highest difficulty and interest. Nor was it without contributing something towards their solution. In no controversy is either party so completely in the right as to have nothing to learn from his opponent in the course of the dis- pute. Ordinarily, the victor has to make some approximation to the views of his adversary. He finds that he has made some over -statements which must be withdrawn, that defects or weak places in his own system have been pointed out which need to be remedied. And this was true also of the controversy of the Christian Fathers with the Gnostics. Their theories could not be summarily rejected without an attempt to give some other explanation of the problems with which they had grappled, or even without incorporating into Christian philosophy some elements derived from heretical speculation. GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM For a long time Christian speculators only busied themselves with isolated questions, and it was not for some centuries that an attempt was made to reduce all the results they had arrived at to a complete system. At length the gigantic work was undertaken by the Schoolmen, who, having learned the Aristotelic philosophy and ac- cepted it as the highest product of human science, combined it with principles derived, or supposed to be derived, from Scripture and from the writings of the Fathers, and hoped thereby to obtain a complete philosophy of the universe. There were no questions that could be raised that they had not courage to resolve ; they could give any in- formation that might be demanded about the nature of God, about the species and properties of angelic beings, about the Incarnation and its ob- jects, about the whole scheme of Redemption. A few samples of the problems discussed in the " Summa " of Aquinas will suffice : Concerning God Utriun in Deo sit idem essentia et esse : Utriim Dens intelligat se : Utrnm Deus compreJicndat seipsiim. Concerning angels Utrum angelus sit iji loco : Whether one angel can be in several places at GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM I the same time or several angels in the same place : Whether an angel can change from one place to another without passing through the intervening places : What is the manner of the knowledge and understanding of angels : Whether one can know himself or know another angel : Whether the devil was bad from the first instant of his creation : How long he was in existence before he sinned : Whether a blessed angel is capable of grief : Whether a guardian angel grieves at the sins of his ward : Whether Antichrist will have a guardian angel : What are the different orders of angels and what their respective func- tions. The problems arising on the supposition that men had never fallen are discussed at length. In what condition would their children have been born : what knowledge and powers would they have possessed at the moment of their birth ; would any of them have been of the female sex. Suppose Eve had sinned and Adam not, would the posterity have contracted original sin. Whether, if man had not fallen, the Incarnation would have taken place. Of the reality and certainty of the knowledge arrived at on such subjects no doubt was enter- tained, and it was held that by this knowledge all our other knowledge ought to be regulated and controlled ; and so Theology was consistently GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM held to be the queen and mistress of all other sciences. To any dictum of hers any conclusion of theirs must give way. It would be premature to pronounce a system to be extinct which is still accepted by so many thousands of our fellow- Christians, the present Pope not only holding the greatest of the Schoolmen, Thomas Aquinas, in the highest admiration himself, but having not very long since, in a special allocution, directed the members of his communion to this doctor as their most trustworthy guide. Yet though this system is not dead it has received fatal wounds. One deadly blow was dealt it at the Reformation, and still more injury has been done it by the progress of modern philosophy. The progress of literary research has showed that many of the patristical citations on which the Schoolmen relied as authorities were taken from spurious docu- ments ; the progress of science has showed that the theology of the Middle Ages, so far from being the mistress of all other sciences, was itself the child of the science of its own time, and con- tained in it the seeds of decay through having incorporated a philosophy now antiquated. And so even in the communion, where it is most venerated, it has been forced to receive important modifications. By us of other communions, the volumes which contain the best results of mediaeval GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM labour are either not opened at all or are only dipped into. We acknowledge the industry, the acuteness of intellect of the writers, but we do not care to sit as disciples at the feet of men whose principles of belief, whose habits of thought, were wholly different from ours ; who, assuming as principles some things which we believe to be true, others which we know to be false, or to have been taken for granted without evidence, occupied their lives in drawing out, by logical process, con- clusions from this farrago of truth and falsehood. At the time of the Reformation, although, as I said, much of the scholastic philosophy was re- jected, many of its principles were retained ; but, above all, the hope was retained of giving though it was thought with better success satisfactory solutions of the great problems which had per- plexed the human mind. Calvin, for instance, might vie with any of the Schoolmen for the boldness and completeness of his system, and for the enthusiastic adherence with which thousands accepted him as having satisfactorily explained all the relations between God and the universe which He had formed. To many minds the boldness and completeness of a system is itself evidence of its truth ; for there are many who would be better pleased to get wrong answers to the questions on which they have had pleasure in speculating than GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM have confession made to them of inability to give any answer at all. I daresay my own experience is not an uncommon one, that on first reading Butler's Analogy I felt somewhat scandalised at his timidity in declining to pronounce on such questions as whether God could have saved the world otherwise than by the death of Christ, and by his setting aside other problems, as beyond the reach of human faculties, of which I had thought that I had been in possession of the true answers. But the tendency of modern thought has been to make men dissatisfied with many theories in- tended to throw light on mysteries of Christian doctrine, and has found that such theories fre- quently leave behind residual difficulties as for- midable as the original difficulties which these theories had been intended to explain. Hence has arisen the growth of what has been called Agnosticism, that is to say, the resolute turning aside from questions which it is supposed the human mind is unable to solve, and the adop- tion of the maxim of the philosopher of old, What is above us is nothing to us. This is in truth an extension of the old Stoic philosophy of seeking happiness rather in the suppression of desires than in the gratification of them. That philosophy reached its highest point, and bore its ripest fruits, at the time when the civi- I GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM 13 Used world was tyrannised over by a grinding and meddling despotism, which allowed no man to count on the accomplishment of "any of his schemes for the future. His plans might be wisely framed, and have been well adapted for the attainment of that at which they aimed, if it had not been for that irresistible ruling power, which might at any moment interfere for the destruction of the scheme, and possibly of the speculator himself. Thus the constant reminder how much of life there was beyond man's control gave recom- mendation to a philosophy which proposed to make man independent of external circumstances, and to teach him to make himself happy without what he could have no certainty of attaining. That, however, was after all but a philosophy of despair ; and if it had been found possible to take away from human life the stimulus of hope and of desire we should have been deprived of all that has been gained for man's comfort and happiness by mani- fold inventions, prompted by the spirit which, instead of being content to bear privations and discomforts, struggles to overcome them. When this philosophy of despair is applied to the subject of knowledge, what sacrifices it demands of its disciples ! how much of what for generations has occupied the thoughts and stirred the emotions of men they are condemned to be ignorant of! To 14 GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM i name religion is to name one of the main factors in human history to name what has fixed or formed some of the most intimate combinations of men and stimulated some of their greatest enter- prises. And it is a very incomplete account of the matter to say that it was fear which made the gods ; an ignoble passion from the tyranny of which philosophy might be regarded as doing no mean service in releasing us. Fear can generate no religion worthy of the name unless it be associ- ated with reverence and awe, and enabled thus to pass into trust and love. Religion has consisted not merely in the recognition of something stronger than man : it has taught him to know something higher and better than himself; to believe in a Being of moral perfection whose justice and good- ness are undisturbed by human passions ; who gives authority to that voice which man finds in himself, reviewing his own conduct, and visiting it with censure when he has gone astray. From the belief that the Ruler of the universe is wise and just and good, religion draws the consequence that He is One in whom we can put our trust. One to whose disposal we may resign ourselves, and acquiesce in His decisions in perfect confidence that He doeth all things well. And the Jewish religion did more than teach such resignation as the Stoics inculcated, to the sovereign will of the I GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM 15 irresistible Supreme Ruler : it taught that that Ruler loves us loves us individually ; that He is one whom we may love, to whom we may pour out our whole soul, and be assured of His willingness to hear us. These lessons of Judaism were intensified in Christian teaching, which gave new assurance of the love of Him who spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all. And so the humblest Christian has felt himself entitled to a privilege which it seems marvellous that we creatures of the dust can venture to claim the privilege of communion with God. This short phrase sums up in three words a vast territory of thoughts and feelings, to all which the Agnostic abandons the right to enter. So I repeat it, what a sacrifice it is ! We can think of a world without music, a world without art, a world without poetry. None of these is a world so colourless, so dreary, as a world without God, a world without hope of immortality. We justly feel ourselves higher in the scale of creation than the beasts of the field, who are condemned with downward eye ever to contemplate the world beneath, and know nothing of the glories of the heavens and of the distant worlds they reveal. Is it not also a descent in the scale of being when man, to whom a capacity for something higher had been opened, casts down his dazzled eyes and resigns himself thenceforward to 1 6 GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM i know of none but material earthly interests, and in them to find all his employment and his happi- ness such happiness, at least, as the instability of all things here will allow him ? No doubt it is not without a sigh that the Agnostic resigns himself to do without that in which so many thousands of his fellow-creatures have found their highest happiness. But he con- soles himself perhaps with the flattering sense of his superiority in philosophic modesty : if he has not the knowledge which they value so highly it is because he alone is wise enough to know that he knows nothing. But let it be clearly under- stood that whatever other merits Agnosticism may claim, modesty is the last that can be ascribed to it. It may seem paradoxical to say it, but when it is reflected on it will be found to be an obvious truth, that Agnosticism is the very highest point of Gnosticism. For who can venture to say what cannot be known but one who thoroughly knows all that can be known ? Who can have the pre- sumption to bar the way of explorers by setting finger-posts at different openings Enter not here, for this way there is no thoroughfare unless one who had thoroughly explored the way and had ascertained that there was no outlet ? To arrive at the stage of being able to pronounce problems insoluble is the very highest achievement I GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM 17 of science. Many an aspiring geometer has vexed his soul in fruitless efforts to trisect an angle or to square the circle ; and one of his equals who could only tell him that hitherto none had succeeded in solving these problems might do more to fire his ambition than to cool his ardour. It would require the authority of one who stood on a higher mathematical level than himself to convince him that in attacking these problems he was spending his labour in vain. The same thing may be said of the algebraic solution of the higher equations : the thing has not been done, and all the more eagerly was the problem attempted by one as- pirant after another, each hoping that he might succeed where his predecessors had failed ; but the investigation whether at all the problem is soluble belongs to a far higher department of mathematical science, and is indeed one of such difficulty that you might count on your fingers the living men who had qualified themselves to pronounce an inde- pendent opinion on the validity of the argument. Thus you see that while I myself pointed out at the beginning how much of human labour has been misdirected to the acquisition of pretentious knowledge, falsely so called, and while I therefore freely acknowledge that a service is rendered men by drawing them away from making ropes of sand and from employing their energies in work which c 1 8 GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM i can have no fruitful result, still I hold that to be in a position to render such a service a man must be on a commanding eminence whence he can survey the whole field of labour. It would be a service, I daresay, to weed a library of useless books ; but clearly none but a man of first-rate knowledge could be trusted to perform that service. Otherwise we should have good reason to fear lest some of the chief treasures of the library might be cast out by one incompetent to appreciate their value. In sum, then, while I acknowledge that in the difficulty of finding time and opportunity to learn all that we should wish to know, no mean service is rendered us by one who can tell us with authority what things it is best not to try to know, I say also that it is clear that such a service can only be rendered us by one himself possessed of the highest knowledge. It follows, then, as I have said, that Agnosti- cism is the most arrogant form of Gnosticism. The subject of religion is one which so vitally concerns man's highest interests that ignorance of it, from indifference or from mental indol- ence, would argue total incapacity to enter into some of the most elevating and ennobling thoughts that have filled the human mind. Ag- nosticism, then, would be too contemptible to deserve argument if it did not profess to rest on a I GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM 19 philosophic conviction founded on a survey of the human powers that knowledge on such subjects is unattainable. Others may profess that they know God, but the Agnostic knows that there is none : that is to say for practical purposes none, since a God is for all practical purposes a nonentity if it can do us no good to concern our thoughts about Him or to seek His favour, and if we are in every respect to act just as we should act if we were assured He did not exist. Thus you see that while the Agnostic in words makes a modest confession of ignorance, in reality he lays claim to the possession of certain knowledge on a subject to which mankind have for generations applied their best thoughts, and yet, if this modern school is to be believed, gone hopelessly astray. Is it the case that all who now call themselves Agnostics are entitled to claim the superiority to other men which their theory implies ? I think not. I believe the true type of these Agnostics to be the sailors of Columbus, who begged and implored him to turn his ship round, confident as they were that he was on a path on which nothing could be found. But this confidence arose from no philosophic knowledge that investigation must be fruitless. It was nothing but indolent impatience of the toil of search, inability to recognise the tokens of success which had already presented GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM themselves, incapacity to share the scientific faith in things unseen which assured their master that if they would but persevere in the way by which he led them they should certainly reach the land of promise which lay beyond. We have had reason to see that there was arrogant presumption in the Gnosticism of those Christian speculators who ventured to say " We know": little less presumption in the assertion "We know not, and cannot know." What, then, is the truth ? Is it not as the Apostle has said, " We know in part." We know, as children know the occupations and anxieties of mature life. An intelligent child may easily form a general idea of the character of what is likely to be his future occupation, but his conceptions of the details will be confused and inaccurate ; and as to the plans and interests which it will involve, he can know absolutely nothing. Of the future which is to follow this earthly life we can know far less than any child does of the affairs of man- hood ; nor is it in the least necessary that we should. It is enough for us that we can say with the Apostle, " We know not what hereafter we shall be : but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him." The sense of the necessary dimness and incom- pleteness of our knowledge of the future life ought GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM to teach us the wisdom of modesty and caution in our criticisms and predictions concerning it. Many things, for instance, have been said on the subject of the continuance of evil in the world beyond the grave, in the conclusiveness of which no one can feel much confidence who has realised the extreme fallibility of our moral judgment in cases where our knowledge of the facts is imper- fect. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" is a question to which only one answer can be given. Yet if we proceed to argue, such and such things are in our judgment not right, there- fore it is incredible that the Judge of all the earth can do them, we may easily find ourselves refuted by facts. Thus when Abraham, whose words I have quoted, refused to believe that in the destruction of a doomed city the innocent might share the fate of the guilty, he refused to believe what we in our wider experience know to have happened times without number. Are we then to say that we have no capacity for measuring the morality of the divine actions, and that good- ness and justice in the case of the Supreme are names denoting ideas quite different from those which in human intercourse are attached to these words? It might as well be said that a child is incapable of understanding what a grown person means by truth and justice, purity and goodness. GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM But though on these subjects a child can easily learn enough to guide his own conduct, his moral judgments may be widely astray when he criticises the conduct of his elders. For childish morality ordinarily reduces itself to the observance of cer- tain fixed rules as to the reasons for which no inquiry is made ; and to which no exceptions are recognised, and to the breach of them no indul- gence given. Many of you will know the clever rhetorical use made of this characteristic of childish morality by Southey in his verses on the Battle of Blenheim. He contemplates the battle from a child's point of view, as just the killing or maiming for life of so many thousands of human beings, and has no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that a glorious victory is a very wicked thing. Yet whatever opinion we form as to the lawfulness of war, it is quite plain that the question is a complicated one, and that it is a mere rhetorical artifice to try to dispose of it summarily by the consideration that there is a commandment Thou shalt not kill. If, with regard to the sixth commandment, a child is liable \to form erroneous judgment, it is needless to say that with regard to the seventh he can hardly form any opinion at all. And going through the other commandments it would be easy to give other illustrations how wide of the mark the criticisms of a child might be. I GNOSTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM 23 But fortunately it costs a child no effort to refrain from criticising. Though his understanding is not developed, and his mind ill stored with facts, he is quite capable of trusting and loving. He can know that his father loves him, he can believe that he is wise and good ; and if there are things in his conduct which seem strange to him, they only cause him passing wonder and do not dwell in his mind as sources of serious perplexity. And so with us ; faith can well supply the defects of knowledge. We can be sure that the Judge will do right, even though we cannot be safe in con- cluding that He will do this or that because this or that seems to us to be right. And the clouds that obscure the region of speculation do not descend upon the region of practice. Whatever else we may be ignorant of we have no difficulty in knowing what course of conduct is pleasing to God and approved of men. In the text the Apostle con- trasts our imperfect and provisional knowledge with charity which never faileth. The time will come, he teaches, when our best earthly specula- tions shall be set aside in the light of fuller know- ledge, as a boy's notions about the business of life are replaced by better knowledge. But a character trained up by faith and hope and love will endure and be a source of blessing throughout eternity. II UNION WITH CHRIST ' ' Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the branches : he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; for without Me ye can do nothing." ^John xv. 4, 5. The course of modern controversies has forced us to take notice of the diversity of the authors whose agency has been employed in the com- position of the Holy Scriptures. It was easy for interpreters of former days, in the fulness of their conviction that all was God's Book, to lose sight of the human element in Scripture. Thus they might establish their doctrines by arbitrarily com- bining sayings of writers who lived hundreds of years apart, and were, to all appearance, speaking of different subjects : they might be blind to all differences between the various writers except when their attention was roused by some striking apparent discrepancy which demanded explana- tion. Our tendencies to error lie in the opposite II UNION WITH CHRIST 25 direction. In our days some of the most labori- ous students of the Bible have been men who absolutely refuse to recognise any Divine element in it. They have busied themselves in noting the characteristics of the various writers, their peculi- arities in form of expression or turn of thought. It has been no shock to them to discover, or think they discovered, discordances in statement of fact or in modes of presenting religious truth. Nay, so super-subtle have they been in finding such differences, that they have persuaded them- selves they saw them in what a more sober criticism has no hesitation in recognising as works of the same author, and have been led to cut homogeneous books into fragments, supposed to be inconsistent in their character. But when all exaggeration and fanciful speculation have been stripped away, there remain, as results of modern criticism, a number of facts which no honest student of God's Word can refuse to in- clude in his system ; nor is any theory of inspira- tion now likely to be advocated which does not fully recognise the character imprinted on the Bible by the diversity of agents through whom the Holy Spirit worked. And when we consider the matter we see that, whatever we might beforehand have thought likely, this arrangement, in which our sacred volume is 26 UNION WITH CHRIST ii not a book, but a library, not a single docu- ment written in a uniform style, but coloured with the personality of several individual writers, is intimately connected with the fact that ours is a historical religion. It rests on our belief of certain great facts attested by chosen witnesses who live for us in their writings. We know each by his style, his favourite expressions, his turn of thought. There are few living persons of whose character we have as vivid a conception as that of St. Paul. His character impresses itself on believers and unbelievers alike. All, admit that he was incapable of deceit, and so whatever theory of our Lord's resurrection is framed must reconcile itself with the fact that one who was on the most familiar terms with the first asserters of the miracle, both most fully believed their story and claimed to have had himself personal con- firmation of its truth. Again, the fact that the witnesses are not one, but many, gives a cumu- lative force to their testimony. It is well known to you what use Paley made of the argument from coincidences, in establishing the historical credibility of our documents. But also in ascer- taining the doctrines of the Christian revelation, attention may rightly be called to the force added to the proof when we have the agreement of different witnesses. Divines of a former genera- u UNION WITH CHRIST 27 tion might have been content to point out that such and such a doctrine was proved by so many Scripture texts. It is no disadvantage to us that the course of modern controversies forces us to take notice that these texts are in many cases taken from different writings. We are thus enabled to see how the Church from the first performed her office of witnessing to the truth, when we can call up members of the Apostolic Church and find them in complete agreement, not only with regard to such external facts as our Lord's death and resurrection, but also with respect to what may be called revealed facts, such as our Lord's pre-existence, His share in the work of creation, the rule which He now ex- ercises sitting at the right hand of God, His future return to judgment. It is my purpose in this sermon to exemplify this accordance of teaching with regard to the doctrine contained in the text, the Union of Christ with His Church ; to show that this idea, which is certainly not an obvious one, or one likely to have occurred independently to different disciples (for I do not know that the followers of any philosopher, or of any other religious teacher, imagined any such relation to exist between them and their master), was common to the different New Testament writers, and was made the basis 28 UNION WITH CHRIST ii of their system of doctrines. I will first speak of the surface agreement, I mean the direct state- ment of the doctrine in various passages, and then of the deeper, underlying agreement dis- closed in doctrines which all the Christian teachers included in their system, and which have their root and their justification in this principle of the intimate union between Christ's people and their Head. The Synoptic Gospels professedly deal with the history of our Lord in His life of humili- ation, and therefore cannot be expected to give much evidence as to the relations between the risen Saviour and the Church, which at the time of which these Gospels treat, can hardly be said to have been in existence. But we may take notice of the closing promise which St. Matthew records as made by our Lord ere He parted with His disciples, " Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." In these words we have the difference on which I just remarked between the conception which the Christians en- tertained of the relation between them and their Founder, and that which prevailed in other philo- sophic or religious sects. Others were zealous to venerate the memory of the great man to whose instruction they had been indebted for their know- ledge, or by whose laws they were glad to be ir UNION WITH CHRIST 29 governed, but his activity was in their idea a thing of the past. Christians thought of their Master as ever with them, and trusted for safety in all their trials to the abiding presence of Him who possessed all power in heaven and earth. In an earlier chapter of St. Matthew the doctrine of Christ's identification of Himself with His people is put in a striking way. You remember the description of Christ's coming in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him ; and how He rewards those placed on His right hand, because when He had been an hungered they had given Him meat ; thirsty, they had given Him drink ; a stranger, and they had taken Him in ; naked, and they had clothed Him ; sick and in prison, and they had visited Him, And when they disclaim having rendered Him any such service He tells them, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me." This saying of our Lord is not recorded by St. Luke, yet in his second work the third Evangelist has given different expression to the same idea. When Saul of Tarsus made havoc of the Church and wasted it, Jesus is intro- duced as acknowledging His Church's trials as His own, and as stopping the career of the perse- cutor with the words, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" 30 UNION WITH CHRIST ii But one thing more in the Synoptic Gospels must not be passed over, that story which all three are careful to tell, how our Lord, the same night that He was betrayed, commanded His disciples thenceforward to show forth His death by eating His body and drinking His blood. It would lead us away from our subject if I were to enter into any minute discussion what sense is to be given to these words ; but this lies on the surface of them, that our Lord instructed His disciples that they were in some way to enter into communion of the most intimate kind with His own person- ality. And this is confirmed by the fourth Evangelist. He does not repeat what his pre- decessors had told of the institution of that sacred feast, but he records another discourse in which Jesus describes Himself as the living bread which came down from heaven, speaks of His flesh and His blood, given for the life of the world, as the true meat and drink, makes the participation of them the essential condition of obtaining eternal life, and states as the result of this participation that he that eateth that flesh and drinketh that blood dwelleth in Christ, and Christ in him. One whose attention had not been called to it would scarcely conceive how completely St. John's mind was pervaded by the idea of this mutual indwell- ing of Christ and His people. It runs through II UNION WITH CHRIST 31 his first epistle from one end tQ the other. And as St. John also held the doctrine of a complete union between the Son and the Father, he inter- changes with the assertion of an indwelling of Christ, a similar assertion of an indwelling of the Father. And among the many proofs of common authorship of St. John's Gospel and his Epistles, the identity of language on the subject we are considering deserves to hold a high place. In our Lord's prayer for His disciples, recorded in John xvii., He asks for them " that they all may be one ; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us . . . : that they may be one, even as we are one : I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one." The Epistle opens with the assertion, " Our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." It closes with, " We are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ." To be " in Him " was the privilege to which every professing member of the Church aspired, and of the validity of their claim to which they were bound to assure themselves. " Hereby know we that we are in Him. He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked." " Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not : whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him." " He that keepeth His 32 UNION WITH CHRIST ii commandment dwelleth in Him, and He in him : Hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us." " Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God." Thus all through St. John's Epistle we meet constant echoes of the doctrine formally expressed in the discourse from which the text is taken, that union between Christ and His people is as intimate as that between the vine and his branches ; this union being the source of all the branches' fertility, as, on the other hand, their failing to produce fruit is the mark of separation from Him. Of the New Testament writers there are no two more unlike and independent of each other than St. John and St. Paul, and therefore their complete agreement in a doctrine is strong proof that that doctrine must have been part of the common possession of the Church. Now in this doctrine of the necessity of Christ dwelling in them, St. Paul's language is an echo of St. John's. " Know ye not," he says to the Corinthians, " how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be repro- bates?" To the Romans he says, "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin ; but the Spirit is life because of righteous- II UNION WITH CHRIST 33 ness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the' dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you." One of St. Paul's favourite images, occurring in several distinct letters, is the comparison of Christians to a temple built for the dwelling of the Holy Ghost, of which the several Christians are living stones, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone, language, I may add, with regard to which there is strong coincidence be- tween the Epistle to the Ephesians and St. Peter's First Epistle. But St. Paul uses another compari- son still more closely akin to St. John's figure of the vine : Christians are a body of which Christ is the Head. Each member has its several func- tions, but from Him the nourishment is derived by which the whole body makes its increase. " No man ever yet hated his own flesh ; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church ; for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones." It is unnecessary for me to multiply proofs how completely the belief pervaded the Christian Church, that in some mystical but very real manner a union existed between them and their ascended Lord, which was the source of the spiritual life of every member. I go on then to 34 UNION WITH CHRIST ii speak of the less direct evidence, that the belief of which I am speaking was an essential part of Christian teaching, afforded by the other doctrines which have their explanation and justification in this central truth. And first with regard to the doctrine of the Atonement. We have heard many- discussions in our day as to the ethics of vicarious suffering, on the questions whether it is just and right that one person should suffer for another, and whether such suffering can make satisfaction for that other's sins, questions scarcely touched on by the sacred writers. And, perhaps, the reason is that they did not look so exclusively as some modern writers do, on that aspect of that Atonement in which it may be illustrated by the payment of a debt, a transaction in which it is ot course immaterial whether the satisfaction be made by the person who owes it, or by another for him. But an essential part of the New Testa- ment doctrine of the Atonement is that the satis- faction is performed by no stranger, but by One bound by the closest ties to those for whom it is made, by the Head of the family who are to be thereby reconciled. And in this point of view the Atonement is illustrated by a class of analogies quite different from those which are used when it is regarded as the payment of a ransom or debt. To suffer for others, to make atonement for II UNION WITH CHRIST 35 Others, is one of the most constantly recurring ex- periences of life. Human life owes almost all its security, and the greater part of its happiness, to the fact that, whether by nature or by choice, by the ties of common family, common country, or volun- tary association, different individuals are bound together into one body. And the law of such bodies is not only that if one member be honoured the others rejoice with it, but that if one member suffer the others must suffer with it. For as in the natural body the nerves, along which in health thrill so many sensations of pleasure, at times rack the frame with cruel achings, so those ties of union which in various ways bind us in one body with our fellowmen do at times bring us pain instead of happiness, pain which we are content to accept on account of the vastly greater happi- ness which has come through the same channels. We owe so much, for instance, to our country and its laws, which give us security for property, and life, and family comfort, that it is justly accounted the grossest ingratitude if we do not love our fatherland, or if we hesitate to give our substance or our life for it should its needs require. Yet this tie of union with the other men who inhabit with us the same land may bring on us calamities which no sins of our own had deserved. The misconduct of those who have been chosen to 36 UNION WITH CHRIST ii govern, their unjust ambition, their rashness, their want of foresight leading to measures which we have condemned and against which we have pro- tested, may involve the country in sufferings of which we must take our share ; we must, by our exertions and our sacrifices, contribute to the atonement necessary to undo the evil which has been done. Nor will those without, to whom compensation may be due, distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, bound together in a com- mon solidarity. Not to draw any illustration from current events, how many Frenchmen were there in 1870 who had entirely disapproved the policy which had plunged their country into war, yet had to make bitter atonement for their ruler's mistakes ; and that not wrested from them reluctantly, but given of their own choice, because they deemed that no matter by whose fault their country had been brought into distress, it had a right to claim from them in its hour of trial, their substance, their lives, and their children. Family life, source though it be of our purest enjoyments, will at times bring its pains. The heart of the parent may be wrung by the misconduct of a child, and he may think it the least of his sufferings that he has to make atonement to others for the injury which the prodigal has caused them. On the other hand, often has the Jewish proverb been UNION WITH CHRIST verified, " The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." Often has the son had to pay in health or fortune the penalty of his father's recklessness ; and it has not rarely happened that the son has undertaken the volun- tary burden of making satisfaction for his parent's wrongs by the discharge of his neglected obliga- tions. The innocent wife of a guilty husband must share the penalty of his wrong-doing, having as little the power as the will to separate her lot from his. In theory these may be instances of vicarious suffering, but they are not felt so. Could you dissuade a woman from following her husband into exile on the ground that it was not just that she should suffer for another? Would she not reply that he for whom she was suffering was not another, but in such sense one with herself that their joys and sorrows must of necessity be common ? Thus we see that we give an imperfect repre- sentation of the doctrine of the Atonement if we discuss the possibility or the justice of the penalty of our sins being borne by another. For an essential part of the doctrine is that He who bore our sins and carried our sorrows was no stranger, but One in the closest union with those whom He saved ; the Head of their family; related to them in the same way as Adam to the human race, or, 38 UNION WITH CHRIST ii as the relation is elsewhere figured, bound to them in mystical union closer than that of human mar- riage. When this is borne in mind it seems less to call for explanation that the sorrows of those whom He loves should be His, that His victory over sin and death should be theirs. Thus it would appear that the doctrine of the Atonement is involved in the very fact of the Incarnation. When once it is revealed that Christ took upon Him the nature of men, is not ashamed to call them brethren, made Himself partaker, like them, of flesh and blood, it seems to follow that He must bear the griefs and carry the sorrows of those with whom He entered into so intimate a partnership, and surely also that those sufferings borne by Him who was Himself sinless should avail to make reconciliation for the sins of the people whom He had made His own. Whether there be a logical necessity or not, there is, at all events, complete harmony between the doctrine that Christ took on Him man's nature that he filled the place of the second Adam, that is to say. Head of the redeemed family and the doctrine that He made satisfaction for those with whom He entered into so close a relation, and that He has made them to share in His privileges and benefit by His triumphs. It is on the last point that I have next to speak, the privileges of Christ's people, II UNION WITH CHRIST 39 my object being to show that the New Testament language on this subject is all pervaded by the same conception of the union between them and their Head. And in the first place I would direct your attention to the promises made to prayer in the name of Christ. Twice St. John introduces our Lord solemnly promising, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name. He will give it you." Elsewhere it runs, " If ye shall ask anything in My name I will do it." Consequently that ^^rayer should be offered in the name of Christ has become an elementary and fundamental principle of Christian worship. This rule of worship has existed as far back as we can trace the history of the Christian Church. Within the last few years the earliest extant document of the sub- Apostolic Church, the Epistle of Clement of Rome, has been completed by the recovery of the contents of the missing leaf of the only MS. until lately known to con- tain it. Great part of this is occupied with a prayer, which probably reproduces for us the liturgical use of the Church of Rome before the end of the first century. And how does this prayer end ? " Through the High Priest and Guardian of our souls, Jesus Christ, through whom be glory and majesty unto Thee, both now and for all 40 UNION WITH CHRIST n generations, and for ever and ever." It has been disputed whether the Gospel of St. John was written before the end of the first century. This prayer of Clement's shows us one of two things : either that that Gospel was in A.D. 97 already known and honoured, and that the Church had derived from it the rule of offering its praises and confessions through Christ, or else that that rule expresses the practice of the Church from a time before that Gospel had been committed to writing. But if so, we cannot doubt that that Gospel truly explains the origin of the practice; namely, special promises of acceptance to prayer so offered, made by our Lord Himself during His earthly sojourn. And this rule of prayer has, we all know, con- tinued from the first century to the nineteenth. It is the more striking in our own form of prayer, because, like the other Western Churches, we use not one long continuous prayer, but break up our prayer into a number of collects, each closing with the same formula. Our ears are so familiar with the sounds " through Jesus Christ our Lord," or "for Jesus Christ's sake," that, perpetually as they occur in the course of our service, they scarcely attract our notice, or induce us to ask ourselves what we mean when we utter them. Yet surely if we once allow our minds to dwell on 11 UNION WITH CHRIST 41 the words, we see that they are alive with doctrine. In the first place, what a conception does the use of this form imply of the dignity of Christ : that when addressing our Father and our Maker, who, we may believe, loves the creatures whom His hand has formed, and whose willingness to hear their petitions was recognised by Old Testa- ment saints, we still put forward no other claim for acceptance of our request than that we are privileged to address our prayers through Christ, for whose worthiness we hope to be granted that which in our own name we had not dared to ask ! And in the second place what a con- ception it gives us of our union with Christ that we should feel ourselves warranted to make this use of His name ! In our inter- course with each other, there is no privilege we are more chary of bestowing than the right to use our name. The circumstances must be very special when we would give to one about to ask a favour from a third party authority to say that the benefit bestowed on him might be regarded as an obligation conferred on ourselves. Yet surely nothing less than this is implied when we ask a petition for Jesus Christ's sake. We do really plead in prayer that saying of our Lord to which I have already referred, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did 42 UNION WITH CHRIST ii it unto Me." In these words He taught us that He regarded the meanest of His people as so one with Him that He would own mercy shown to them for His sake as if He were Himself the destitute suppliant who demanded aid. It is wonderful love and condescension that He has thus knit together the members of His mystical body by their common relation to Him, and enabled each to claim the love and good offices of the others, as they love and value their Lord, from whom flows the spiritual life of all. Yet far more wonderful it is that He gives us authority to use the same plea in our addresses to the Supreme, and reveals to us that the love which the eternal Father bears to His only begotten Son must embrace all who are one with Him. Nay, if we examine more closely the phrase, " prayer through Christ," we find reason to think that it has a deeper meaning still. Those words I quoted from Clement, " Through our High Priest Christ," I think allow us to see what the ancient Church understood by them. As in the old dispensation the high priest offered for the sins of the people and presented their incense before the mercy-seat of God, so Christ having once for all made satis- faction for the sins of men, remaining a High Priest for ever, presents the incense of His people's prayers and thanksgivings before the mercy-seat II UNION WITH CHRIST 43 on high. Thus the privilege of making prayer through Christ is represented not by the analogy of one who is entitled to use the name of an absent third person, .but by that of one who has that person as a present advocate and intercessor, who will make the request of the petitioner his own, I think that when we allow our minds to dwell on all that is meant by praying in the name of Christ, and praying through Christ, we cannot appreciate the greatness of the privilege without being forced to ask ourselves. Can I, without any feeling of unreality, come to God and claim bless- ings from Him, on the ground of my being so united to Christ that I am entitled to plead His promise that He counts what is done to His people as done to Himself? And again, Are the objects of my desire, the things that I wish to pray for, such that I can without any sense of unfitness entrust my requests to Christ, and ask Him to make my petitions His ? We are some- times tempted to think of prayer as a kind of magic charm, which will give us the power of getting the benefits we wish for, and turning away the calamities we are afraid of, and overlook that we are only entitled to claim the New Testa- ment promises to prayer on the terms of being united to Christ by living faith, and of being, in 44 UNION WITH CHRIST il virtue of that union, assimilated to His character. Christ's promise is, " If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." Elsewhere the Apostle says, " This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He heareth us." It might seem as if the Apostle's words, "If we ask anything according to His will," put on the success of prayer a limitation not contained in our Lord's promise. Yet the difference be- tween these two phrases, " whatsoever ye will," " whatsoever is according to His will," is found to disappear when it is stated that the suppliant must be in union with Christ, that is to say, in union with One the principle of whose whole life was the doing His Father's will, who made it the daily prayer of His disciples, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven," whose own prayer in His last agony was, " Father, not My will, but Thine be done." In another verse of this fifteenth chapter of John it is implied that the promises of answer to prayer, however absolute in form, are really conditioned, it being required that they who ask should be living and fruitful members of the true Vine verse i6: "I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain ; that whatsoever ye II UNION WITH CHRIST 45 shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you." In these words it is clearly implied that this union with Christ exhibited by the fruits of holiness is a condition necessary in order to enable any to claim the promise that the Father will give what is asked in the name of His Son. And this brings me to speak of the Christian doctrine of sanctification, in which we find sur- prising unity between the doctrine of the New Testament teachers. It is quite intelligible that they who lived in the company of Jesus of Naz- areth, and who had been witnesses of the spotless purity of His life. His meekness, His unselfishness, His implicit trust in His Father, His zeal for His glory, His love for men's souls and bodies, should feel strongly themselves, and should impress on their disciples the duty of imitating so perfect a model. I do not know, therefore, that much stress from an evidential point of view can be laid on the undoubted fact that all the New Testament writers agree in dwelling on Christ as our Example, except that if the case were otherwise, we might have cause to suspect that His life had not been such as we now know it to have been. St. Matthew represents our Lord as saying, " Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart." St. John in his Gospel, " I have given you an example, that ye should do 46 UNION WITH CHRIST ii as I have done to you." St. Paul, " Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." St. Peter, " Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps : who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth : who when He was reviled, reviled not again ; when He suffered. He threatened not ; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously." And St. John in his Epistle gives as the test of union with Christ, " He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked." But the New Testament doctrine goes beyond this inculcation of likeness to Christ as a duty incumbent on all who claim to be united with Him. It asserts that union with Christ bestows a power to attain this likeness to Christ, and is a necessary condition to the attainment of such power. This doctrine, which is fully expressed in the parable from St. John which I have taken as my text, so pervades Paul's Epistles that it is difficult to select quotations to establish it He describes the believer as buried with Christ in baptism ; and, the old man thereby being crucified and slain, as rising again with Him to newness of life. " I am crucified with Christ : never- theless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me II UNION WITH CHRIST 47 and gave Himself for me." So he writes to the Galatians. To the Colossians he says, " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things of the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." This lan- guage might sound mystical if it stood alone, but light is thrown on it by the comparisons elsewhere used by the Apostle, in particular where he com- pares Christ to the Head of the body, " from which all the body by joints and bands having nourish- ment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God." In other words, the doctrine is that the spiritual life of every Christian depends on his being united with Christ, and in virtue of that union drawing from Him continued supplies of grace and strength, by which alone he can make growth and exhibit fruit. Once more the same principle, which is made the root of the Christian's present holiness, is also made that of his future blessedness. It has often been remarked how vague the New Testament is in its description of the happiness of the future state. This much seems to have been regarded as sufficient for us to know, that if we have been united to Christ here, we cannot be separated from Him hereafter, and that whatever we shall be, we 48 UNION WITH CHRIST ii shall be like Him. " If we be dead with Christ we believe that we shall also live with Him." " When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory." " It doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is." The thought perpetually recurs that Christ shares with His people His own glory. In St. Luke our Lord is related to have said to His disciples, " I appoint unto you a kingdom as My Father hath appointed unto Me." We have the same thought in dif- ferent words in the Book of the Revelation : " To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne." And the whole idea is expanded in our Lord's prayer, recorded in John xvii. : " The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one : I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me. Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am ; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me : for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world." Thus you will see that the idea of future II UNION WITH CHRIST 49 blessedness presented in all the New Testament books where it is spoken of is something based on union with Christ, participation through Christ's goodness of the glory which the Father had be- stowed on Him, being with Christ where He is, being in every sense like Christ. The examination we have made enables us to understand why it is that Socinianism proper is now an extinct heresy, a deserted half-way house which no one now stops at. There are many now who believe Jesus of Nazareth to have been mere man, a Jewish sage it may be, of ex- ceptional wisdom and goodness, but still in no essential respect different in nature from other men. But those who so believe do not attempt to establish their creed by Scripture, nor have they any solicitude to reconcile themselves with the teaching of the early Church. If they think but humbly of our Lord, they have still less reverence for His immediate followers, and would not scruple to claim to be on a multitude of points wiser than they. So they have got long past the stage of those who equally taught the bare humanity of our Lord, but who conceived themselves bound to maintain that such a doctrine was primitive Chris- tianity. As I have said, the passages of the New Testament which have come under our study are enough to exhibit the hopelessness of reconciling E 50 UNION WITH CHRIST n Socinian views of our Lord's nature with the belief of His followers as recorded in the New Testa- ment. I have not brought before you to-day any of the texts which are commonly quoted to prove our Lord's divinity ; and I have thrown into the background those which speak of the unity be- tween our Lord and His people as but a feeble counterpart of the unity between our Lord and His Father which existed before the world was. But we have seen evidence that the first disciples looked on their Master as holding a position corre- sponding to that of Adam as federal Head of a new creation ; that they believed that all who find God's favour do so because so united to Christ that their sins brought suffering on Him, that His righteousness brought salvation to them ; that they believed that that righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, must be worked out in the lives of His people ; that they held themselves entitled in coming to God in prayer to plead Christ's merits as giving them a claim to His favour ; and looked forward to no happiness hereafter but what they should gain as joined to their risen and ascended Lord. These are not the views of any single authority, but the evidence is harmonious of every writer from whom we learn anything as to what primitive Christianity was ; and the agreement extends to every detail of the doctrine. II UNION WITH CHRIST 51 It is simply impossible to suppose that they who believed thus of our Lord looked on Him as a man like others ; and, therefore, we feel under no temptation to look for strained methods of interpretation when we read that they worshipped Him as their Lord and their God, that they owned Him as the Word of God by whom all things were made, which was in the beginning with God, and which was God. It needs to say but few words in conclusion as to the practical bearing of the doctrines we have been considering. It is not merely in an eviden- tial point of view that it is important to notice the perfect harmony of the Christian doctrines, some, which at first sight might be supposed to be inde- pendent and distinct, turning out on closer exami- nation to be only different aspects of the same truth. But it is quite as important practically to bear in mind the essential unity of the different parts of the Christian scheme. There have been ungodly men who have turned the grace of our God to lasciviousness, who have caught eagerly at the doctrine that the penalty of our sins has been borne by another, and who have inferred that we ourselves being now secure from paying what has been discharged already, need neither trouble ourselves with sorrow for sin past, nor be solicitous about precautions against sin future. 52 UNION WITH CHRIST ii To all of us it is delightful to think that the eyes of the Lord are upon us, and His ears open to our prayers, joyful to believe that our inheritance shall be with Christ in glory. But we have seen that the privileges and the duties of the Christian life are inseparably connected. Antinomianism is a thing impossible if we once clearly understand that all our hopes, all our claims on God's favour rest on our being one with Christ, a union which implies sympathy with the mind of Christ, zeal for the things for which He was solicitous, hatred of what He hated, perfect likeness to His character. Brethren, may God grant to each of you that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, that you may be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man ; gaining from Him power to overcome your spiritual enemies ; continually changed from glory to glory till you attain complete likeness to His image. Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD ' "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Matthew v. 8. One of the most authentic and most interest- ing accounts of Christian martyrdoms is to be found in the history of the persecution of which Lyons was the centre in the year 177. Beginning in popular clamour and continually urged on by the violence of excited mobs, it was not only taken up by the authority of the local magistrates, but on account of the Roman citizenship of some of the victims it became necessary to consult the Emperor ; and the final deeds of blood were com- mitted under direct imperial sanction. And the notable thing is that the Emperor, who thus became responsible for crimes committed under the name of law, which we cannot read without shuddering to learn what a wild beast man can be to man, was no other than he, the self-denial 1 Preached at Great St. Mary's, Cambridge, June i, 1884. 54 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD m (may we not say the holiness ?) of whose Hfe ap- proached nearest to Christianity, Marcus Aurelius. The world has seldom seen an example of power so unlimited, wielded so conscientiously by a per- fectly irresponsible ruler, whose one object was not to gain enjoyment for himself, but to fulfil what he believed to be his duty. Indeed we feel it now to be the weakest point in his philosophy, that it was so joyless, and could do so little for the happiness of its professors. In this respect the Emperor contrasts unexpectedly with those whom he committed to the sword as criminals. Which might we expect to be the happier, the ruler of the civilised world, who had only to form a wish and his commands were executed, or those outcasts of society whom their fellow -citizens regarded with such horror and loathing that the physical pain they had to endure was a less trial than their knowledge that every fresh cruelty ordered by the magistrates was considered by the clamouring spectators to be punishment too mild for their guilt ? Yet in the history of the martyr- doms the prominent feature is the enthusiastic joy of the sufferers. Those, indeed, whose constancy failed in the trial, hung their heads downcast for shame, but the steadfast were seen with counte- nances radiant with joy, so rapt in ecstatic con- templation that they had scarce consciousness of Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 55 the tortures applied to them. And meanwhile the Emperor himself, at whose word these things were done, rather tolerated than enjoyed life. That he refrained from suicide was due rather to a sense of duty than to any pleasure this life gave him. Whether Stoicism or Chris- tianity be the truer system of philosophy may be a subject for discussion, but if the question were put which was more capable of bringing to its professors happiness and joy, the most ardent Stoic might yield the point without a struggle. The two systems of philosophy, however, agreed in teaching the lesson, " Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world ; " and what has led me to speak of Marcus Aurelius now is in order that we may consider the argu- ment by which he disciplined himself, and justified himself in his disregard of the things in which other men find happiness and pleasure. Consider, he says, any of the things in which other men place their delight, and analyse it, and you will find it undeserving of the esteem they set on it. Do they take pleasure in music ? Well, take one note, sound it, and listen to it, and is there any beauty in it ? sound the next note, listen to that too, is it any better ? and so on for every note. The whole thing when pulled to pieces is found to have nothing in it. So in like manner if they 56 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD in take pleasure in looking at dancing : consider any- one attitude of the dancers, fix it and regard it, and where is the beauty of it ? So likewise for the pancration and everything else in which men imagine they find pleasure ; analyse them and you will find that not one can stand the test ; not one when pulled to pieces will be found to have anything in it. We need not doubt that this argument was used seriously by the Emperor in his reasonings with himself, and that it was part of the process by which he disciplined his mind to that detachment from the world at which he aimed ; but I am sure we must feel, too, that if he hoped by means of it to influence the feelings or the conduct of other people, there are few indeed to whom it would carry any persuasion. But it seems to me that the argument is neither more nor less sophistical than that analysis, claiming to be scientific, by which in the same manner that Marcus Aurelius tried to show that there was nothing real in our conceptions of beauty, others have tried to show that there was nothing real in our notions of God. In fact, the weapons that have been used to demolish old religious beliefs are much more powerful than those who wielded them were aware of. Bishop Butler showed long ago that the chief arguments which had been directed against the special system of Christianity Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD $7 could not in consistency be employed by the Deists who used them, since if the principles involved in their objections were rigorously carried out, it would not be possible to believe that the world we live in was controlled by an intelligent and benevolent Ruler. In the modern state of the infidel controversy this way of repelling assaults on Christianity has lost its effectiveness because a great mass of the most troublesome assailants now are willing to carry out their principles to the full, and to give up not only their Christianity but their old-fashioned Theism ; hoping, however, by some new religion of science or art to give some other satisfaction to the wants in man's nature which religion aimed at supplying. They little know, however, how potent are the instruments they have used in their assaults on traditional beliefs, and how little resistance anything they are minded to retain is able to make to similar attacks. They cannot help acknowledging what an im- portant part religion has played in the history of mankind. They know that to the great majority of their fellow-citizens the beliefs which they reject still continue to be the source of their strongest, purest, and noblest emotions, their con- solation in time of trial, their strength in time of temptation. When affliction befalls where else 58 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD iii can such a foundation for patient submission be found as in the belief that it has been sent by a wise and loving Father ? when the allurements of temptation are most attractive, what thought has such force to repel them as " How can I do this wickedness and sin against God ? " But I need not enlarge on what is not likely to be denied, namely, that the belief that they have a Father in heaven is one held by a great many, and that it is a belief which makes them happier and makes them better. But the question of questions is whether the belief is true. This conception of a divine Friend, whose love it is delightful to con- template, whose purity is our noblest model, has it any objective reality, or is it all but the creation of the minds of those whose thoughts have dwelt upon it ? To those who have habitually walked by faith in the unseen it will seem as unpracti- cal to ask such a question as it is to propound doubts concerning the existence of the external world. Metaphysicians have employed themselves with the question how we can ever get beyond our own sensations and know with any certainty that there are external objects which excite them. When we dream we are for the time convinced of the reality of all we think we see or hear, and yet we wake and find it to have been delusion. Can we be sure that there is anything more substantial Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 59 in our waking perceptions, and that they are any- thing more than a longer- continued, more con- sistent dream ? It is of little consequence whether the answers that have been given to these ques- tions are logically sufficient to bear a searching criticism, for no speculative difficulties that can be raised about the matter disturb for a moment the practical convictions of the most ingenious sceptic. There are many who feel in precisely the same way with respect to doubts raised as to the existence of Him, communion with whom has been their highest happiness, the desire to please whom their habitual rule of life. They care not for speculative difficulties because they have a practical conviction founded on experience and knowledge. But, it will be said, such persons are a minority. It is quite true that it is idle to think that any possible amount of speculative difficulties could shake the practical conviction which every one feels as to the objective existence of an external world ; but then that is precisely because it is a conviction felt by everybody. If there was any- thing like so universal a consensus to belief in the existence of God we should own doubt to be unreasonable. Well, then, let the religious emotions be com- pared with those which are excited by the per- 6o THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD ception of beauty in sights or sounds, and let us see whether we can either scorn the latter as unreal or fantastical, or else deny that the former are quite as essential a part of our nature. It need hardly be said how far indeed from being universal is any agreement as to the objects capable of afford- ing the pleasure of which I speak. We can barely show that a capacity for such pleasure is natural to our race by appealing to the delight which the most untutored savages show in decking themselves with ornament. But how vast is the interval between the aesthetic conceptions of such a savage and those of an art student of the pre- sent day ! It is notorious how slowly men's educa- tion in matters of taste has proceeded. It is little more than a century since it was discovered that the snow peaks and glaciers of a Swiss mountain were capable of inspiring other emotions than those of terror ; about as long a time since a Gothic cathedral was regarded as but a frightful monstrosity exhibiting the rude taste of a barbar- ous age. How widely differences of culture at the present day produce corresponding differences of taste is too notorious to need to be dwelt on. Does it follow, then, that the emotions which the supposed perception of beauty excites are to be despised as unreal, and that we are to hold that the more a man purges his mind from them the more Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 6i he deserves the character of a wise man, resolved to see things as they really are, and freed from the fantastical additions which different men's imaginations have made to them ? I have already told you the process by which Marcus Aurelius imagined he could convince himself that he had demonstrated the nothingness of the vain pleasures by which the unlearned allowed them- selves to be beguiled. It was an attempted demonstration in the success of which the world would have had no cause for rejoicing. What reason for triumph would there have been if the imperial philosopher had succeeded in robbing life of a large portion of its happiness, and render- ing the existence of all others as joyless as his own ? In point of fact, he never had a chance of succeeding ; for he could not get a hearing for speculations which seemed as visionary as attempts to demonstrate the non-existence of the external world. If we have a right to ascribe objective reality to the unknown cause of the sensations which we know other men experience like our- selves, have we not as good a right to ascribe reality to the source of the emotions which we know that others as well as we experience ? When men knew as a matter of fact that certain sights or sounds gave them exquisite pleasure, what availed a demonstration that the pleasure 62 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD in was imaginary, or that it was irrational, when their experience assured them that it was real ? And they felt assured also that to lose a capacity for such pleasure would not be an advance in the direction of simplicity and truth, but a retrograde step in the history of the culture of the human race. But if they had condescended to argument it would have been easy to show that one who should resolve to see things exactly as they are, and to part with all that the human mind has added to the bare facts of nature, must in con- sistency carry out very far the disintegration of ordinary conceptions. Marcus Aurelius refused to own that it was legitimate to derive any pleas- ure from hearing a succession of sounds unless when you attend to each sound by itself you can find the pleasure in that. But even the single musical note has not the unity which he was willing to acknowledge in it. What is it but a succession of pulsations differing only in rapidity from what we should count as distinct noises ? But we may go further. What is now known as to the con- vertibility of forces leads us to regard heat, light, electricity, as all but different modes of motion differing from each other only according to the magnitude or rapidity of the moving particles. That these should present to us now distinct ideas Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 63 may be pronounced to be altogether the work of the human mind. But further still, the grouping of the different atoms into substances regarded as separate units is also the work of the mind. It is a grouping altogether relative to our organs of perception, and we have reason to know that if we could see things exactly as they are, that which now appears to us a single quiescent solid mass would be perceived to be a congeries of molecules each in rapid motion, seeming to be at rest only because the range of their vibrations is too small for our existing organs to take cognisance of, and seeming to form one body only because the intervals of separation are also too small for us to discern, but really only one in the sense that the planetary system may be said to be one. Thus, then, if we could see things precisely as they are, and stript of the illusions with which the constitu- tion of our minds has surrounded them, all that we should see in this universe of ours would be a multitude of independent particles in incessant aimless motion, approaching each other, colliding, repelled again, some making oscillations of small, others of larger, amplitude, some groups continu- ing for a time in the close neighbourhood of each other, until, as in their mad dance they come into collision with other groups, the temporary combination is dispersed. Man is truly, in a 64 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD iii sense Bacon did not contemplate, the interpreter of nature. It is man who discovers the plan that rules the mighty maze, and recognises in some of these groups of vibrating molecules sentient reason- ing beings like himself If we thoroughly understood the function that mind plays in revealing to us the universe which we perceive, we should acknowledge that it is unreasonable to impose on the revelations of our souls the limitations of physical philosophy. All that physical philosophy can do is to tell us the laws of motion. When first that philosophy became a science it made known the laws which regulate the motion of the larger masses. The more recent sciences of chemistry and electricity throw light on the motions of the smaller particles of which our senses cannot take direct cognisance; but in the last analysis it is still of nothing but of motion that they tell. The great modern law of the persistence and conservation of force is no more than a statement that the quantity of motion in the world remains constant. In any other sense it is not true. Ask the mourners by the grave of a great man whether it is true that the world has lost nothing by his death, seeing that the amount of force in the world cannot be dimin- ished. True, accumulated stores of rare learning have been dissipated ; ripe experience from which Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 65 wise counsel had never been sought in vain has now become no longer accessible ; love proved by years and sacrifices has been taken away ; but there is a due equivalent for what is gone in the chemical reactions of the decaying animal matter left behind. The simple fact is that for every- thing in the living man which admitted of being translated into modes of motion there remains an equivalent in some other form of motion, but grief proves that life and thought are felt to be things of a different kind, which when lost are not replaced. If the word " progress " is the watch- word of our civilisation, that word is evidence that we are in a region governed by different laws from those which rule the conservation of motion. The quantity of motion in the world remains constant ; we cannot produce new motion except by the destruction and conversion of some previously existing form, but the nature of life is to propagate itself and increase ; a single seed of life introduced into our globe had within it the potentiality of indefinite multiplication. And so likewise of thought. To employ the phrase ** germs of thought," is scarcely to use a metaphor, so notoriously do ideas communicated to another fructify and expand to results of which the origi- nator never dreamed. And the benefit thus given to another causes no loss of power to him who F 66 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD in gives it. By lighting a neighbour's torch our own taper shines no less brilliantly. When it is understood in how completely different a sphere lie the ideas with which religion is concerned from those which are dealt with by the sciences which undertake to analyse the laws which regulate the transformation of the different modes of motion, it will be felt how idle is the apprehension that the culture of the physical sciences can be injurious to religion. It might as well be feared that the culture of science can be injurious to art by leading to some discovery which would show that the works of the great masters were not fit objects of admiration. On the domain of art true science is able to cast a useful light, but there is no danger that a Helmholtz can either overthrow or replace a Beethoven. Just as little need we fear that religion can be unfavourably affected by any progress of research into the laws which govern the material world. We need not fear that that science which reveals the relation of the soul to God can be overthrown even though an anatomist may have dissected hundreds of bodies and never been able to see a soul, or though an astronomer may have explored the whole of the planetary system without having been able to see anything of that huge brain without which some would tell us that there could Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 67 be no intelligence presiding over nature. Religion like art deals with facts and experiences of its own, and these experiences such that he who has known them understands that they belong to the higher part of his nature, and that not to have felt them would indicate that some part of his consti- tution was either defective or had not been properly cultivated. A philosophy which ignores such facts or treats them as illusions condemns itself as ignorant ; and it is only in proportion as it re- cognises and sympathises with them that it deserves to be listened to. For it is not to be denied that there may be a true philosophy of religion. The savage bowing before his rude image may testify that the instinct of worship is natural to man, but his religious conceptions will no more content a civilised man than the ornaments with which he decks himself will satisfy the demands of civilised art. There is no part of our nature which is not improved by culture and education, and it need not be supposed that what we may call the reli- gious faculty is any exception to this rule, or that our advances in thought and knowledge, if rightly used, will do nothing in elevating our conception of God. How, then, are we to educate and improve in ourselves that faculty which discerns the divine ? Different answers to this question have been given. 68 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD iii There have been many who have thought that since the object was to penetrate into the unseen world and to discover something more than sense could reveal, the more communication with the material world was closed the clearer must be the spiritual discernment ; and so they have striven by fasting and other mortifications to dull the organs of sense in the idea that the things of earth being shut out they might then hope to see God. There are others, again, who think of God as that ever- present force which rules and sustains the material universe, and have thought that in the study of its laws they could best see God, and so they have found a God without justice, without love, without pity, indifferent alike to human suffering or human crime. Very different from either is the way sug- gested in our blessed Lord's utterance, " The pure in heart shall see God." Where in fact do we find the clearest revelation of God ? Not so much in the spectacle of the order of the universe and the manifold contrivances which seem so clearly to indicate a wise and benevolent Designer. Far more in the voice of conscience within, which claims for its dictates an authority superior to ourselves, which warns, rebukes, punishes as if it were something different from and above ourselves. If we disregard her remonstrances, then drifting unruled ourselves on the waves of impulse and Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 69 passion, it costs us less to believe that the world is without a ruler, nor do we much care to discover One whose friend we know we do not deserve to be. But on the contrary, what can more purge the spiritual vision than what is meant by that specially Christian word, purity ? a word meaning so much more than virtue ; not the mere giving other men their due, and so gaining their approval, but the striving under the eye of an invisible Master to become cleansed from all de- filement, and so be made a vessel unto honour, sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and pre- pared for every good work. What way so sure of seeing Him whose will it is our constant aim to do, whose ineffable purity is the pattern we strive to imitate ? Far be it from me to suggest that unbelief must necessarily have its root in moral impurity. There were indeed unbelievers in former days, and the race is not quite extinct, who showed utter want of sympathy with those high and noble aspirations which our religion is certainly an attempt to satisfy ; and who, while by their ribald attacks on things sacred they made many a victim among the vicious and profane, yet repelled and disgusted those whose tone of moral feeling was more lofty. But it is only justice to own that there are among the unbelievers of the present day 70 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD in many with the high tone of whose morality we can find no fault, though we may doubt whether it could have been conceived except by minds trained up in Christianity and from early years imbued with its spirit, and may doubt whether it could retain a permanent hold on the generality of men, if Christianity, the root from which it has sprung, were destroyed. But while we do not judge others, it is right that we should examine ourselves. That time of life at which the growth of our intellectual powers gives us confidence in our capacity to form an independent judgment, and to put to the test the traditional beliefs of early years, is also the time of life when the temptations to fleshly lusts are the strongest. He then whose vision of God has been clouded over has reason to examine himself whether the cause may not be that he has permitted his own organs of spiritual perception to become impaired. There is no such parent of doubt as the trifling with known obligations. Let no one complain that he cannot find the evidences of our religion perfectly convincing, if his own conduct be such as will sufficiently account for the perplexity which he feels : if he have fallen into the habit of neglecting known duties, such as the use of the means of grace private prayer, study of God's Word, public worship ; if he deliberately reject the call which each returning Lord's Day in THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 71 makes on him to lift his thoughts for a time above the petty concerns of this Hfe; if he suffer himself to be always engrossed with this world's pleasures and its cares ; if he go on to be guilty of that against which his conscience still more loudly pro- tests ; if he habitually allow his imagination to be polluted by impure thoughts ; or if he gives him- self up in act to licentious pleasures ; then it is only natural that, his heart being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, the eyes of his understanding also should be darkened ; that he should lose his power of spiritual perception, and have no share in the promise reserved for the pure in heart, that " they shall see God." For the habitual sense of the presence of God, the conviction that there is something higher and nobler than the objects of sense, deserving of our love and affections, is a conviction that can only be preserved by acting in conformity with it, and honestly following where it leads us. It is only by habitual affec- tionate obedience to God that we can preserve the power of realising things not seen. In what I have said to-day I have brought before you no specially Christian doctrine ; for the course of modern assaults on revelation makes it necessary for us from time to time to labour in the defence of principles which are common to us with every one who believes in a God. I will not 72 THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD in conclude, however, without citing another passage of Scripture which may be regarded as comple- mentary to that which I have taken as my text. " No man hath seen God at any time : the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." Our blessed Lord has not only taught His disciples that in moral purity must be laid the foundation of any religion worthy of the name. He showed in His own person how the divine life in this world was practicable. And so in the New Testament we find exhortations not less noble but less vague than the Old Testament precept, " Be ye holy, even as I am holy." The hope of Christ's disciples is that when He shall appear they shall be like Him, and they are taught that every one that hath this hope in Him puri- fieth himself even as He is pure. The exhortations to them run : " Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." " Christ left us an example that we should follow in His steps : who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." " Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness : by whose stripes ye are healed." Nor did Christ merely leave His people an ex- ample. He provided them also with means of attain- ing conformity to it the chief being that gift of the Ill THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD 73 Holy Spirit whose coming we commemorate to-day. His office is to take of the things of Christ and show them to you ; by reveaHng to you what Jesus was, at once to inspire you with the wish and give you the power to be like Him. In the Apostle's words, I then exhort you, " Walk not you as those walk who have the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart: who, being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." " Ye have not so learned Christ ; if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." IV ILL SUCCESS IN SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS! " The Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith : but Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness." Romans ix. 30, 31. Among the moral essays published about the be- ginning of this century, one of the most striking was that by Mrs. Barbauld on the inconsistency of human expectations. It was mainly taken up with insisting on the truth that what a man soweth, that, and not something else, is what he will reap ; and it explained the majority of men's disappointments as arising from the fact that they sow one thing and expect to reap another : they expect to gain the end when they have neglected or disdained to use the means necessary to obtain it You complain, for instance, that the good things of this world are ill distributed, that riches and honours fall to the lot of men uii- ^ Preached at Great St. Mary's, Cambridge, June 8, 1884. IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 75 worthy of them. Examine into the matter and perhaps you find that the man whose riches you envy has given up his whole mind to the pursuit of them. He has been so absorbed in his ventures and his investments that he has had no thought to give, not to say to science, or litera- ture, or art, but scarcely to the enjoyment of the society of his own family. You feel that such a sacrifice is more than you would be willing to make, and perhaps you are right in your decision ; but then do not complain that he who has been willing to pay the price should get what he gave it for. Another has made the pursuit of worldly advancement his great object in life : he has can- vassed, puffed himself, intrigued ; you disdain to employ the arts he has used, yet inconsistently you grudge him what these arts have gained for him. Once more, you complain that dull men get all the honours and prizes of this world, the fact being that you think the plodding industry to which they stoop too degrading to your genius. You would not be guilty of their stupidity in giving up the pleasures of society, or the enjoy- ments of lighter literature or other recreations. Well, you have your reward in whatever pleasures these can yield : do not grudge them theirs. In short, the doctrine of this essay is : make up your mind what objects you consider desirable. 76 ILL SUCCESS IN iv and then give yourself up to the pursuit of them. The world is so constituted that diligent exertion will, in all likelihood, meet with success. If you think riches the greatest good, then give yourself up to the pursuit of wealth. Your mind will prob- ably not be very expanded, nor your sentiments very liberal : but it is likely you will be rich. If you think learning the greatest good, give your days and nights to study. Your body may not be very healthy, but it is likely you will be learned. Whatever you think worth working for you are very likely to get ; but do not complain if you do not also get other things when you have not thought proper to use the means necessary for attaining them. There is much good sense and truth in the doctrine of the essay to which I have referred ; but there is hardly any truth without a counter- truth. The general rule undoubtedly is that men get what they work for ; but there are quite enough of exceptions to it to account for men's calculating that their experience will be otherwise. On the one hand, men sometimes get that on which they have bestowed no labour. A man completely neglects his own interests in his zeal to do some great work for the bodies or souls of other men, and it happens that the gratitude felt for the good he has done makes him more a IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 77 gainer than if he had laboured for himself Or he has had to cast away the good opinion of his fellow-men. In obedience to his conscience he has had to brave their disapprobation, to submit to misrepresentation and calumny, and in time his consistent steadiness vindicates itself; the mists of prejudice clear away, and he stands far higher in their respect and favour than if he had shaped his conduct with a view to win them. Our Lord Himself encouraged His disciples to expect in some such way to receive that which they were forbidden to seek. He bids them to take no thought what they should eat or drink or wherewith they should be clothed : but He adds, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness ; and these things shall be added unto you." He bids them take for themselves the lowest place, but He allows them to hope that the Master will afterwards say to them, " Friend, come up higher." And so the Apostle describes godliness as having the promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come. And it has become a popular saying that it is possible to make the best of both worlds, to get all the good things of this, without losing claim to the blessedness of the future. The result is that we are not disposed to acquiesce in the view that men will reap what they sow ; that it is natural 78 ILL SUCCESS IN iv that men should have riches and honours who have worked hard to get them, and that those should be without them who have taken no trouble for them. We think there ought to be more poetical justice in this life ; that its good things should belong, not to those who work for them, but to those who deserve to have them ; nay, to them so much the more, the less they have grasped them for themselves. And as I have said, the case of rewards being given to those who have not sought them occurs quite often enough to raise the expectation that it may take place in general. But if it were only this, that some get more than they have worked for, it would be less sur- prising ; the really strange thing is that others who do work are disappointed, so that it seems as if they would have had better success if they had not striven for it at all. I do not now speak of such cases as when a man allows his conduct to be guided by the search for popularity, and when his object is plainly seen, the popularity he de- sires cannot be had ; or as when a man so exclusively pursues his own interests that his selfishness provokes the hostility of others, and he finds in the end that he would have advanced his interests more had he thought about them less. In these cases, if the law, " Seek and ye IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 79 shall find," does not strictly hold, we might account for it by the fact that there was something repre- hensible in the seeking. But what are we to say to cases where to seek is not only not wrong but is our bounden duty. To seek to obtain the favour of Almighty God is surely the duty of all His creatures, and yet many who have sought it earnestly have not sought it successfully. I have chosen as my text the passage in which the Apostle Paul observes the paradox that the Jews who had devoted themselves to seeking to obtain righteousness before God by the works of the law which He had given them, had failed in their pur- suit, while the Gentiles without effort had been successful, so that the words spoken by Isaiah long before were verified, " I was found of them that sought Me not : I was made manifest unto them that asked not after Me." It is exactly the same paradox that is pre- sented in the story of the Pharisee and the Publi- can. To gain the favour of God was the great object of the Pharisee's life. To this end he fasted, and made long prayers and paid tithes of mint, anise, and cummin ; he thought it not enough to observe the precepts of the law, but added for further security a multitude of traditional com- mands. That he should avoid the grosser vices was a matter of course. He was not an extortioner, un- 8o ILL SUCCESS IN iv just, an adulterer ; yet we are told that the publi- can, whose life was disfigured by stains which seemed to the Pharisee shocking and disgraceful, went down to his house justified rather than he. And the same story has constantly repeated itself in the history of our own religion. Men have given up all the ordinary business and all the pleasures of life, and made it their one object to seek to save their souls. They have retired to deserts, they have macerated themselves with fasting, they have disciplined themselves with scourging ; in their anxiety to escape hell they have made a hell of this earth ; so that it seems cruel to ask the question. Have all their pains and sacrifices brought them nearer to the end they were aiming at ? One daughter disdains the happiness of this life, and resolves by her sanctity to merit for her- self something higher. She enters a nunnery, and distinguishes herself among the sisters by her peculiar austerities. As far as nature will permit, she denies herself food ; when constrained to take it, lest she should take pleasure in the act, she mixes what she eats with ashes and bitter herbs ; that she may not indulge in sleep she fills her bed with tiles and broken stones ; she disciplines her tender skin with scourging till the walls and floor of her cell are spattered with her blood ; she wears a IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 8i hair shirt, and presses on her brow a metal crown of thorns. As her bodily strength decays her spiritual insight increases ; she sees visions, she becomes an Ecstatica, and when she has brought herself to an early grave, the admiring gratitude of her community obtains her enrolment in the calendar of saints. I am drawing no imaginary picture. I have taken my model from the life of a saint, ^ recorded for the admiration of her co- religionists ; for repeatedly has it happened that by the application of moral force alone tortures which would be thought too severe for an atrocious criminal have been inflicted on an unoffending girl with no other fault than that of a weak and superstitious mind. Meanwhile her sister, who has never aspired to tread any heroic paths of sanctity, discharges with unpretending simplicity the ordinary duties of life. She becomes a happy wife and mother, the ruler of an attached family. She has no title to any higher praise than that she corresponds to the description in the Book of Proverbs : " She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. She stretcheth out her hand to the poor ; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. She openeth her mouth with wisdom ; and in her tongue is the law of ^ St- Rose of Lima. G 82 ILL SUCCESS IN iv kindness. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, for she will do him good, and not evil, all the days of her life. Her children arise up, and call her blessed ; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." She has had all this world's happiness, which her sister whose thoughts were bent upon the future has not dared to touch ; yet I suppose there is scarcely any one here who thinks that the great inequality in their conditions in this life is likely to be compensated by an inverse distribution of happiness in the next, or who believes that the voluntary sufferings of the one will be more likely to gain God's favour than the other's homely fuU filment of duty. But let us not be misled by the clearness with which we can see the mistakes committed by persons of different religion and different habits of thought from ourselves. The way to profit by such mis- takes is to ask ourselves, May not we also deceive ourselves when we think ourselves religious, or admire others as religious or as advancing the interests of religion, and may it not be that a higher place in God's favour may be obtained by others who seem to us to have neglected to seek it ? Perhaps, however, it may be thought that the IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 83 ill-success of many in seeking to earn for them- selves a claim to future happiness is to be accounted for by there being something wrong in the spirit which prompted their search. It may be said that the spirit which urges some men to grasp at happiness in another life may be nothing more than the same selfish spirit which urges them to advance their interests in this, and that it ought not to surprise or offend us more in one case than in the other, if their calculations are disappointed. But this explanation will not suffice to account for the difficulty we are considering. For the same phenomenon of some men obtaining with little effort what others labour for in vain presents itself when the object aimed at is not selfish at all, but is directly to do good to other men. The fact of the complete failure of many ex- ertions made for charitable objects has more than once been brought under public notice. I do not now speak of such cases as charitable endowments dishonestly misappropriated to purposes different from what the founder intended, or of charitable organisations mainly worked for the benefit of the officials employed in promoting them. I refer to cases where the failure arose, not from any mis- adventure in the working of the scheme, but was inherent in the scheme itself. Endowments have been given for the poor of a particular parish, and 84 ILL SUCCESS IN iv instead of the founder's hope being fulfilled that the parish in which he took an interest would be exceptionally free from pauperism, his benefaction has only had the effect of attracting thither a number of the idle and worthless from other places, so that the more that was done to relieve misery the greater seemed the misery that needed to be relieved. And those who have not waited to make their benefactions till they were dead have often not been more successful in their endeavours to diminish the misery of the world. A wealthy and kind-hearted person has flung his money broadcast round the district in which he resided, only with the effect of making his neighbours more helpless and more idle, little better off while they received his bounty than they had been before it was granted, and ready to sink into deeper destitution if it should be withdrawn. He simply verifies in his experience what Archbishop Whately was in the habit of saying : that men will do what they are paid for doing. If you pay men for working you can collect about you an army of workmen. If you pay men for begging you will collect about you an army of beggars. Perhaps such a man is succeeded by another who is little susceptible of benevolent aspirations. Not with any view of doing good to his neighbours, IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 85 but merely in order to make a profit for himself, he establishes a new industry ; and the wretched- ness which when combated directly seemed inex- haustible now completely disappears. The warm- hearted man who tried to help his neighbours fails ; and the cold-hearted man succeeds who has been able to put it in their power to help them- selves. So again it has happened that a despot whose actions have been solely directed to the gratifica- tion of his own ambition, and who has squandered men's lives without scruple when the sacrifice would advance his ends, has yet by his able rule conferred permanent benefits on the people he governed, which they would not have enjoyed under the government of a more amiable and more conscientious sovereign. I suppose, after all deductions have been made, it was better for France to have been ruled by the first Napoleon than by Louis XVI. However this may be, cases are numerous enough in which most good has been done by persons who thought least about it, so that we are reminded of instances in which a wooer by his nervous and awkward solicitude to please has repelled the coy beauty whom he sought to win, and has had to yield the conquest to another, whose chief merit was that he had less set his heart on gaining it. 86 ILL SUCCESS IN What, then, is the practical conclusion to be drawn from the instances I have brought before you? Are we to sum up the result of our experi- ence in the formula, " Seek and you shall not find ; if you want to do good to your fellow- creatures, don't try." Nay, the doctrine arrived at would not stop with teaching us to abandon all charitable exertions ; it would lead us on to the secularist conclusion that, inasmuch as so many who have ruled their lives with the object of gaining God's favour, have clearly failed, the best way to please God, if there be a God, is to think as little as possible about Him ; that our best rule of conduct is to do all we can to advance our own interests; that in so doing we are taking as likely a course as any other to benefit other people, and that if we do all we can to make ourselves happy in this world, we are also making the best provision for our being happy in another life, if there should be one. I know it will not need much discussion to persuade you that there must be some fallacy in the arguments which lead to such a conclusion ; and you will be quite right in not allowing any paradoxical enumeration of contrary instances to make you doubt the truth of the rule that what a man soweth he will reap. The simple truth is that it is what he sows that he reaps, and not IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 87 always what he thinks he sows or what he would like to reap. A man may be very diligent in sowing ; but if it be not the right kind of seed the harvest may be very different from what he wishes to get. God governs the world by laws which will not make allowance for good intentions, and so it happens that a vast amount of mischief is done by perfectly well-meaning people. We are sometimes tempted to be shocked at the hardness, we might almost say the cruelty of our ancestors, and at the indifference with which they witnessed different forms of human suffering. Yet experi- ence is teaching us that for the effectual relief of that suffering a wise head is quite as necessary as a tender heart ; for it has happened more than once that the shrieks of philanthropists have been a real hindrance to the diminution of the misery that is in the world, because in their impatience of some particular form of suffering which has come under their notice, they have never stopped to consider whether in their attempt to suppress it they might not be the cause of much greater misery. The popular conception even still is that any- one can do good to his fellow-creatures if he has only got money enough. It requires experience to teach men that to do good instead of being one of the easiest things in the world is one of 88 ILL SUCCESS IN iv the hardest Many a man in former days has given all his goods to feed the poor with no other result than that there was one pauper more in the world than there had been before. In modern times we have less of zeal to make such sacrifices, but often not more knowledge. The total amount given for charitable objects is probably greater than ever it was ; for if there are fewer who give all they have, there are more who give of their superfluity ; and with the national progress in wealth, the portion available for charitable pur- poses shares in the general increase. But with the majority, giving is so indolent an act that it scarcely deserves the name of charity. Money is given that is not missed ; sometimes as a matter of routine ; sometimes because to refuse it when asked for it is more troublesome than to grant it; some- times because the giving relieves the pain with which amiable people hear or read of stories of distress. But in comparatively few cases do those who give their money give their thoughts, their care, or their personal exertions ; and so it happens that of what is given a large portion is simply wasted, and some is actually injurious. The story is told by those who have worked in the East of London, that in seasons of exceptional distress appeals made by letters in the Times have been instantly responded to by enormous benefactions IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 89 from the wealthy; and that the result has been that notwithstanding all the money that has been poured in, the distress was not only not lightened, but actually became worse the more that was done to relieve it. For industry was discouraged when easier ways of getting money were dis- covered, new claimants flocked to the place where they heard that distributions were made, and prices rose as unworthy recipients were prodigal of their lightly-acquired gain. Yet surely when it has been proved that un- considered reckless giving is useless or mischievous, it does not follow that we are wrong in being solicitous for the good of others and in making sacrifices for that end. If to offer unto God that which costs us nothing does not gain a blessing from Him, it does not follow that we do wrong in dedicating to Him our service. Nay He who has said that even a cup of cold water given in His name shall not lose its reward, has deigned to recompense acts of kindness the moral value of which we must own to be very small. To yield to the instincts of compassion roused by the hear- ing a tale of distress, to give hastily something from our superfluity that we do not miss, and give ourselves little further trouble what becomes of our benefaction, is, as I have said, an act of such slight moral worth that we have no right to complain if 90 ILL SUCCESS IN iv such giving effects little good. Yet we have little doubt which to prefer when we balance this against the alternative of not yielding to the instincts of compassion. To begin with, if it be a doubtful matter whether what has been given has always benefited those on whom it was bestowed, it is quite certain that to stifle the tender voice of pity would injure those who withheld their bounty; its suppression would be a brutalisation of their souls. Take the charitable institutions of England as a whole, and let it be granted that a strong case can be made out that there is much mismanage- ment, much waste, much collision and overlapping of effort, yet what would our land be if there were no such institutions, if there were no signs of sympathy of the rich with the poor, if every one who failed to fight successfully the battle of life were without pity hustled down and trampled on by his more successful neighbour ? And it is exactly because God's call on us to do His work in the world has been, however feebly and in- adequately, obeyed, that He whose rule is that to him that hath shall more be given, is teaching us how that work can be done more effectually. If those ruder methods of charity had not been tried, we should never have set ourselves to find a still more excellent way. And as I have spoken of the abuses of charity, IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 91 let me say that I do not know any form of charity which is less Hable to those abuses than that in which you are asked to assist to-day,^ the hospital relief of the sick poor, I do not deny that even in such institutions there is liability to abuse, and need of caution and good sense on the part of those who manage them ; but at least this has not, like some forms of bounty, a natural tendency to increase the misery it attempts to relieve. The existence of such institutions makes no one more reckless in incurring sickness ; and if we provided the ablest surgeons in the world, no one would break his leg or his arm in order to have the advantage of their skill. Again, if we are con- vinced that we do far less good by helping other people than by enabling them to help themselves, it is surely a wise and economical form of assistance if when a man, who hitherto has been able and willing to help himself, is reduced by God's provi- dence to temporary necessity, we take means to provide that his disablement shall be as short as possible ; when we take care that an accident happening to the breadwinner of a dependent family shall not reduce the whole to pauperism, but that by timely skilful assistance he may be again placed in a condition to work for them. What I have said as to the difficulties which ^ A collection was made for Addenbrooke's Hospital. 92 ILL SUCCESS IN iv have been raised about charitable giving will sufficiently explain how I would deal with cor- responding difficulties on the question how men can find acceptance with God. We have seen that though many men who have tried to do good to others have nearly quite failed, or have even done mischief, it does not follow that the impulse to benevolence ought to be checked. What does follow is that the impulse has need to be guided by the most enlightened knowledge. And in like manner, though many mistakes have been made by men who desire to win God's favour, and even sins committed under the idea of doing Him service, we are not driven to the secularist con- clusion that we are to remove the wish to please Him from among our conscious motives to action. What does follow is the duty of obtaining an enlightened knowledge of His will by every means through which He has been pleased to reveal it, whether through the laws of nature or in His Word, in order that we may be saved from the mistake of hoping to win His favour by actually opposing His will. For if we transgress His laws, neither our ignorance nor our good intentions will save us from having to pay the penalty which the violation entails. Indeed, it has often surprised me to mark how in the ordinary course of God's providential government of the world, the same IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 93 man for the same actions will receive his reward for that which is good in them, and yet have to pay the penalty for that which is evil in them. Some of the most absurd actions done to gain God's favour have not been without their reward at least in this life. I suppose if one were to try to imagine a method of forfeiting all chance of influencing or benefiting one's fellow-men without gaining any compensating divine approbation for himself, he could think of nothing better than the method adopted by the pillar saints of old. To retire as far as possible from the society of his fellow-men, and lest even in the desert his solitude should be invaded, to mount a pillar some forty cubits high, there to spend his time in bowing his body up and down, is, I suppose, a prescription for as unprofitable an existence as the wit of man can devise. Yet it is certain that Simeon the Stylite exercised a very powerful influence on his contemporaries ; the more he seemed to wish to withdraw himself from their society the more they flocked to him : his counsel was taken in political decisions of great moment, the Emperor revoking decrees on his remonstrance, and what seems more surprising, we are told that thousands of heathen were converted to Christ by the spectacle of his aerial martyrdom. Can a bramble bring forth grapes ? we may ask. It certainly cannot. And 94 ILL SUCCESS IN iv if such a life as this effected any good, it must have been that notwithstanding the folly and super- stition of the man there was sincerity and unworld- liness which forced for itself recognition from men, and gained its due reward. So again, the lives of the self-torturing saints were probably not as miserable as the recital of them sounds. It is not so hard to bear suffering when we do so of our own choice, and in recompense they must have been conscious that they were the objects of very pro- found admiration from those who surrounded them. And shall I say that in this world only they had their reward ? If they built on the true foundation : however much of wood, hay, and stubble they built on it, however much their disappointment to see the structure they gave their life to raise swept away, the Apostle teaches us that whatever loss they suffered, they themselves might be saved though so as by fire. I do not think the man a worse Protestant who expressed the charitable belief that many a tonsured head might now be resting in Abraham's bosom ; many a body worn by fasting and disfigured by voluntary suffering, yet have been a temple of the Holy Ghost.^ Still after all charitable care has been taken not to exaggerate the amount of injury which some have suffered from imperfect knowledge of 1 Maitland, Strictures on Milner's Church History, p. 9. IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 95 Christ's way of salvation, there remains beyond dispute a sad history of wasted lives : of " money given for that which is not bread, and labour bestowed on that which satisfieth not," which proves of how little worth religious zeal is if it be not guided by knowledge. On this principle rests the vindication of the importance of dogmatic religion. On this day^ the Church directs our attention to mysteries of our faith, concerning which the light of nature could have told us nothing, and these, no doubt, will have furnished the subject of thousands of discourses to-day. There are many who think time wasted in such discussions, and who hold that the preacher's time could be better occupied in enforcing some practical points of duty. But the question whether a know- ledge of the doctrines of our religion is important is settled if it be granted that our religion is a divine revelation. Experience has proved to us that ignorance of the laws of nature does not excuse a man from having to pay the penalty which attends the violation of them. And so, if God has revealed any truths which it concerns us to know, it cannot be harmless if we neglect to make ourselves acquainted with them, and to apprehend their meaning. If, then, you desire to please God, you must ^ Trinity Sunday. 96 ILL SUCCESS IN begin by striving to know His will by every means by which He has revealed it : striving in a spirit of humility, not supposing your knowledge to be already perfect, or refusing to be taught on any points on which you may now be ignorant or mis- taken. But you cannot expect to gain this further light unless you faithfully act on such light as God has already given you. It is by striving, however feebly and imperfectly, to fulfil the duty which He has enabled you to see that even by your errors and failures He will teach you His way more perfectly. May He, then, from whom every good gift Cometh grant you rightly to perceive and know what things you ought to do, and also give you grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same. I do not think it necessary to add much in the way of advocacy of the institution to which you are invited to contribute to-day. If I had desired to find an illustration of the remark I already made, how God often causes good seed sown at His command to bear fruit, on which they who sow have never calculated, I could find none better than the case of the exertions that have been made for the relief of the sick poor. Those who first founded such institutions as that for which your help is asked, certainly had no other thought than by relieving the distress which they witnessed to IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 97 show themselves true disciples of Him who has declared that He accepts acts of kindness shown to his brethren as if they had been done to Him- self, and owns them with the acknowledgment, "/ was sick and ye visited me." Yet experience has now taught us that if the rich merely followed the dictates of enlightened selfishness, they could, in their own interests, have done nothing more prudent than take steps for the extirpation of disease from among the surrounding poor. For disease once generated is no respecter of bound- aries, and infection passes lightly from the poor man's cottage to the rich man's mansion. But still more in another way has the rich man found the work of benevolence bring a benefit to himself. When sickness invades his own family he calls in the services of a skilled physician ; but where has that physician acquired his skill ? How has he obtained that intimate familiarity with various forms of disease which prevents him from being easily taken by surprise, or being often perplexed at the sight of symptoms such as he had never witnessed before ? I need not tell you how it is that a student of two or three years' standing can now acquire an experience such as without the help of hospitals he could only have gained at the end of a long life of practice, and how, instead of having to buy his experience by trials and failures H ILL SUCCESS IN of his own, he has been able in the very beginning of his career to witness the treatment approved by the best medical science of his day. It is notorious that a young man who had not " walked the hospitals " would be regarded as unfit to enter the medical profession ; so that if you could even be insensible to human suffering we could establish the claims of these institutions as indispensable means of medical education. And this consideration gives appropriateness to an appeal on their behalf from the University pulpit. This University is justly proud of its Medical School. Great as is the vigour with which other branches of learning are pursued in Cambridge, I do not think that any school in the University has shown more activity or made greater advances in public estimation than its Medical School, which in quite recent years has risen from a position of comparative insignifi- cance to take rank with those foremost in reputa- tion for scientific knowledge. But a medical school without means of efficient hospital training is maimed in a vital part. I have not thought it necessary to make myself specially acquainted with the working of the parti- cular institution for which I now ask your help, except that I have learned that it deserves particular praise for the excellence of its nursing arrangements. IV SEARCHING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 99 There are many here who must possess more knowledge of it than any which I as a stranger would be likely to acquire. It is enough for me that I can take for granted that, if you own the duty which lies on those to whom God has given the means to help their poorer brethren in those times of suffering which all the resources of wealth cannot wholly deprive of their terrors, the form in which you in this place can best show your sense of that duty is that which is now pre- sented to you. V PAIN AND DISEASE 1 " For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep." i Corinthians xi. 30. If the collection to be made to-day did not suggest the topic, the subject of sickness is one which it would not have occurred to me to bring before a congregation such as the present, the majority of whom, being in healthy vigorous youth, have had little experience of illness. As a specu- lative question, however, the problem of disease must have presented difficulties to students of natural theology. Some of the strongest argu- ments for the wisdom and goodness of the Creator are drawn from the study of the anatomy of the human frame. Man's body is found to be a machine constructed with consummate art, full of what we can describe by no other word than contrivances, mechanical and chemical laws being dexterously taken advantage of, so as in every ^ Preached on Hospital Sunday, 1886. PAIN AND DISEASE way to provide for the wellbeing of their sub- ject That any one of these arrangements could be the result of undesigning chance is intensely improbable ; but to suppose that chance could account for such a combination of successful arrangements compressed into a small compass is an outrageous absurdity. Nor can we regard the modern explanation as adequate which re- gards existing forms as presenting an appearance of perfection only because they are the survivals of failures which have disappeared. It is indeed an interesting and valuable observation that of what may be called the chance variations that take place in species, only those which give the indi- vidual an advantage in the struggle for existence are likely to be perpetuated. We can see how in this way provision has been made for the modifi- cation of species so as better to adapt themselves to any change in their surroundings. But no predecessor of existing forms of which we have any knowledge can properly be described as a failure. Each, when regarded in connection with the circumstances in which it was destined to live, presents marks of design as apparent as in any existing forms, and might equally be used to give evidence of the wisdom and goodness of its Creator. We must likewise bear in mind the harmony and balance of the organs of existing PAIN AND DISEASE creatures. We can conceive a chance variation causing in an individual a beneficial modification of one organ, but if we look to mere chance the chances are enormous that favourable modifica- tions of other organs would not take place in the same individual. The individual in which the organ of sight had developed itself would not be likely to be capable of rapid motion or gifted with exceptional power to seize its prey. No hypothesis of the origin of living creatures which excludes the notion of plan and design can possibly be modified so as not to be equally at variance with all we know of the history and with antecedent probability. But then we come face to face with the diflfi- culty, How is it that a machine constructed with so much skill should be so liable to get out of order ? The very delicacy and art of its construc- tion multiplies the unfavourable chances to which it is exposed. How easy it would be for an arraigner of Providence to draw a picture of the sorrows and sufferings of human life ; to tell of the privations endured by families whose main support has been prostrated by disease ; to speak of tortures endured by the sufferer himself, which if inflicted by human hands would stamp their author as a monster of cruelty. In the book of Job, for instance, we have description of pains V PAIN AND DISEASE 103 overtasking the sufferer's powers of endurance. " Wearisome nights are appointed to me. When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone ? and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day. . . . My soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life. I loathe it ; I would not live alway : let me alone ; for my days are vanity." And not to take ex- treme cases, the amount of pain and discomfort inflicted by diseases which do not threaten life and which are therefore felt to make scarcely any demand on the sympathy of others, such as tooth- ache, dyspepsia, neuralgia, is such as to suggest many perplexing questions. All this pain and disease does not disprove the goodness of the Creator ; for, as Paley has well remarked, pain seems never to be the object of the Creator's design. There are numberless arrangements in the human body to which I have given the name of contrivances, suggesting as they do irresistibly that they were combined with design and purpose. That purpose is always a beneficent one. Not a single one of these arrangements can be named of which it can be said that the object was to cause pain or inconvenience to the subject of them. But if the goodness of the Creator remains unim- peached, what shall we say of His power ? Does it not seem as if notwithstanding all His skill His I04 PAIN AND DISEASE v work had but an imperfect success, the materials on which He had to work being so refractory that He was unable completely to master them. It is evident, however, that the problem of the existence of pain and disease in the world is only part of the larger question of the existence of evil in the world. The passage I have taken for my text speaks of disease as the punishment, or at least the consequence, of sin a subject on which I shall have more to say presently. Now we can neither wonder nor complain that wherever sin is possible suffering should be possible. Our difficulty on this point is not as to the severity but as to the mercy of the Creator of the universe. We own it to be a proof of His goodness that He has constituted the world so that suffering follows sin ; if we complain, it is that He has not made it follow sin so speedily and so inevitably that no one should be tempted to commit it. But you will easily understand that I am not now going to discuss with you the problem of the origin of evil, and that I am not so confident as to expect to dispose in half an hour of difficulties which have occupied the minds of thinking men for so many generations. The subject, indeed, is one which seems to be beyond human faculties. I daresay the solution lies in the direction indi- cated by Leibnitz, unmercifully ridiculed though V PAIN AND DISEASE 105 his theory was, that ours is the best, not of all imaginable, but of all possible worlds ; and it is certainly easy to show of any suggested improve- ment in the existing constitution of the world that it would introduce a state of things less desirable than that which we experience. But what faculties have we to judge of the possibilities of worlds ? It is likely that for want of know- ledge and want of impartiality our speculations as to the uses of pain have no more value than the results arrived at by a company of young schoolboys who should debate whether or not their master ought to have the power of punish- ment. It is well, however, to point out that those difficulties which we cannot solve lie altogether in the region of speculation, and do not at all affect practice. We are not practically concerned to know why the constitution of things is not other than it is ; what we are practically concerned to know is what that constitution actually is, and how we are to order ourselves in respect of it. What God is in Himself is a purely speculative question, with regard to which both reason and revelation are almost quite silent ; what we need to know are His attributes, which affect us and of which in our conduct we are bound to take account. Now I have already pointed out that io6 PAIN AND DISEASE v the diflficulties which have come before us throw no doubt on the moral attributes of God, but only raise the question whether we can say that there are limits to His omnipotence. We have no cause to doubt that we are right in ascribing to the Author of nature benevolence and moral goodness. These attributes are stamped on all the laws of nature : they are the qualities which He rewards in us, and on the measure of our possessing which our happiness depends. But we can raise the questions, Are the things that are impossible to us impossible to God ? Could He make two contradictory propositions both true ? Can He give creatures a power of choice and at the same time make it impossible for them to choose wrong ? Can He act contrary to His own nature ? Can He make vice happy ? Is it that He cannot or that He will not ? If He cannot, then the impossibilities in the nature of things which we allege are something antecedent to and stronger than God. Now, however, these questions are to be answered, it is plain that they lie altogether in the region of abstract metaphysics. It is practi- cally important to us to know whether two objects of our choice are incompatible ; but whence that incompatibility arises whether from the arbitrary appointment of God, or from the inherent nature of God, or from something in the nature of things V PAIN AND DISEASE 107 antecedent to God, is as purely speculative a question as can be imagined. Supposing that we are satisfied to accept as a fact the existence of those incompatibilities which our experience tells us of, it is easy to see that many of the things we complain of as evils could not be removed except on the terms of having a world so utterly different from ours that we have no power of judging whether or not it would be a better one. Pain and disease, for example, we could not wish removed except on the terms that there should be no such thing as death, that we should have no bodies capable of dissolution. We cannot say that it would be better if death invariably took place at a fixed age, or that it occurred suddenly and without any preparation of natural decay. If our bodily frame is to be sus- ceptible of dissolution it is well that we should have immediate notice of any derangement of its functions ; and, as has been often remarked, that is one of the beneficent uses fulfilled by pain. Pain warns us at once when anything goes wrong, provides, by the immediate penalty it exacts, against imprudent use of the diseased part, and directs us where it is needful that a remedy should be applied. We are not left by slow experience to learn that it is imprudent to walk with a sprained limb or work with an inflamed eye. io8 PAIN AND DISEASE v The pain such conduct at once produces is the best security against our wishing to do it. Pain is constantly the physician's guide in locahsing the seat of a disease ; and often when the patient feels no pain the physician will try by pressure to pro- duce it in order to assist his diagnosis. Without this wholesome warning we should in ordinary life be constantly exposed to the danger to which we are told travellers benumbed by Arctic cold are liable of losing part of our bodies without being aware of it. As things are, the ordinary rule, subject no doubt to some exceptions, is that every derangement of an organ signals its pre- sence by pain. And one at least of the exceptions to that rule may perhaps be taken as indicating the benevolent purpose of the ordinary law, namely, that when mortification has proceeded so far that remedy is no longer possible, pain ceases. What I have said describes the use of pain in causing a remedy to be applied and a stop put to mischief which has already begun to work ; but there is something more important, namely, its educational use in warning him who has suffered once, or known others suffer, to avoid that which would cause like suffering again. And this brings me to the larger subject, the educational use of pain, disease, suffering of all kinds as V PAIN AND DISEASE 109 penalties for the breach of God's laws ; serving alike to diffuse the knowledge of these laws and to deter men from violating them. If I were asked to describe the object of our being placed in this world, the chief end that our Creator ap- pears to have had in view, I should answer, our education. The Author of nature undoubtedly shows that He desires the happiness of His creatures ; but He does not make that the end to which all else is subordinate. He will not grant them happiness unconditionally, but only on the terms of obeying His laws. In the discipline of life rewards as well as punishments are freely used to train and draw forth man's powers. The race as well as the individual makes daily progress in knowledge and in ability to command the forces of nature. The knowledge of those arts of life which we now regard as indispensable to our comfort was no original possession of our race, but was gained in successive generations as en- quirer after enquirer found his diligence and in- genuity rewarded by success. It certainly seems as if our Creator cared less that we should possess knowledge than that we should be induced and trained to search for it. And man himself likes it better so. It were no happy world if what poets have fabled concerning the golden age were realised, if the leaves dropped PAIN AND DISEASE honey, and if you might everywhere see streams run- ning wine, and if the earth spontaneous yielded her fruits without any demand of man. To the cares that have sharpened mortal wits we owe much of our happiness. How wretched would it be if in our childhood we were endowed with all the know- ledge we were ever to gain, and thus were never permitted to know the pleasure of research and discovery ! If all the physical wants of man were supplied without any effort of his, and if that " magister artis ingenique largitor " gave no lessons, the life of contented animal existence we should be apt to lead would, according to our present feelings, not be worth living. Why, at the present day those who are endowed with such riches that all their wants are supplied without any exertion of theirs, find life too monotonous unless they can find something to call forth their powers. If no more worthy pursuit presents itself, they are glad to return, at least in mimic presentation, to the time when man had to live by the produce of the chase. Nor even then can they find pleasure if their task is too easy. Who would think it sport to be invited to join in a slaughter of barn-door fowl? Uncertainty, lia- bility to disappointment, toil, even danger ; these are the things which give to sport its zest. The Alpine climber who courts the pain of fatigue PAIN AND DISEASE and makes light of the perils of his task could not easily be persuaded of the truth of the Eastern saying, that standing is better than walking, and sitting better than standing, and lying better than sitting ; at least he would feel that if this were true it were also true that sleeping is better than wak- ing, death better than life. When we thus see that men will not only disregard pain in order to gain some worthy end, but will even find in the pleasure of an uncalled-for exercising of their powers a sufficient inducement for courting pain and danger, we cannot wonder if the Creator has shown Himself more solicitous to educate man's powers than to spare him risk of pain or dis- appointment. But the drawing out of man's physical powers is a small thing compared with his moral educa- tion, and in this pain is a most potent instrument. It is not easy to see how we should be able to feel any hatred of sin or any dread of falling into it if the practice of it were perfectly consistent with happiness. Suppose that pain of all kinds were abolished, pain of body and pain of mind ; if sin were followed by no bodily inconvenience, by no pain of disapprobation of others, no pain of disapprobation from our own conscience, if we could feel as completely happy after sin as before, how could we persuade ourselves that God was PAIN AND DISEASE really displeased with our conduct ? At present even a delay in retribution tends to lead men to reconcile themselves with the ways of evil ; for as the wise man said of old, " Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." It is through the dis- cipline of pain that our moral judgments have been built up. Just as the child learns by his own experience or by the experience of others that he must not put his finger in the candle- flame, so other less obvious laws of nature become known through the penalties incurred by breaking them. Society follows the same method. By a resolute infliction of penalties it can mould public opinion. It can, for instance, cause bribery at elections, which was once practised without scruple by men of the highest character, to be regarded as a disgraceful offence, whereas on the other hand robbery and murder will be treated as venial transgressions in a community which sees them constantly meet with impunity. Mr. Darwin has, as you know, pointed out that the processes by which man moulds species to his advantage have been anticipated in the ordinary working of nature ; and so likewise it is true that the processes by which human laws and their penalties mould the moral judgments of society have been anticipated V PAIN AND DISEASE 113 in the ordinary working of nature, which by the infliction of penalties teaches man what to avoid and what to condemn. Among these penalties disease is one. Death is the wages of sin, and disease is part-payment of that wages. Are we to suppose- that every sick man is specially a sinner ? I am old enough to remember the first invasion of Asiatic cholera into these kingdoms, and I remember how many well- meaning people undertook to point out the national sins which had brought this national judgment on us. When our Lord was told of the men whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and when He asked, Suppose you that these men were sinners above all that dwelt in Jerusalem ? He did not say that these men were not sinners, He did not say that their fate was entirely undeserved ; but He stirred the con- sciences of His hearers to think of sins of their own just as likely to draw down judgment " Ex- cept ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." As the world is constituted there are some calamities which we describe as accidental ; that is to say, we do not understand the laws of their occurrence, and human prudence is unable to avoid them : others which we recognise as preventible ; and therefore those who suffer by them must be de- scribed as suffering the penalty of a breach of 1 14 PAIN AND DISEASE v nature's laws. Human life thus becomes a game of mingled chance and skill : unskilful play may through favourable chances for a time escape its penalty ; but that element in the game which is independent of chance is so powerful, and acts so perpetually, that it cannot fail to decide the ultimate result. Now if we divide diseases into those which are preventible and those which we must still describe as accidental, we find that as human knowledge increases, the list of the latter is constantly being diminished through a trans- ference of its members to the former class. In some cases, and those more than many persons are aware of, disease is the penalty of what we must call sin, that is to say the breach of laws which we recognise as moral, laws of temperance and chastity, the penalty frequently not falling exclusively on the wrongdoer himself but being extended to his posterity, for we are so interlaced one with another that it is scarcely possible for one man to suffer alone, and when, for example, a profligate squanders his resources, innocent wife and children have to share his poverty. Other diseases result from a breach of laws of which it is only in modern times that we have begun to take notice, the law of cleanliness, for example, and the law of exercise, which is necessary to the healthy condition of every organ. V PAIN AND DISEASE 115 But it may be asked Why inflict penalties for breaches of a law which the transgressor has not been informed of? Ought not ignorance of a law to be a sufficient excuse for having broken it ? Certainly in the course of nature it is not so regarded. Our Creator, as I said before, sub- ordinates our comfort to our education, and scruples not by the infliction of pain to stir us up to exercise our faculties. There are few ways in which the human faculties have been more nobly exercised than in the study of diseases, their causes and their remedies, or in which skil- ful study has obtained more splendid rewards, in the relief of pain, in the averting sorrow from households threatened with the loss of a be- loved member, in the general increase of both the comfort and the duration of human life. If we are tempted to think pain and sorrow such dreadful things that the Author of nature ought not to have used them even for our disci- pline, we must reflect whether we ourselves think pain or danger so very dreadful. The line that separates pain and pleasure is often very shadowy. There are some pains, such as the pain of fatigue, which, as I already said, we court in very sport merely to break the monotony of life. Still more when pain and toil have won some worthy prize, we look back on the pain with more pleasure ii6 PAIN AND DISEASE v than regret, and feel that it endears to us that which we have gained. " A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come : but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." But the woman's sorrows do not come to an end with the birth of the child. What weary hours she still must pass in nursing its helplessness : how many nights are robbed of sleep as she has to quiet its querulous fretfulness ; every pain the infant suffers strikes a pain into the mother's breast. It would be easy to make a picture of the pains which the care of unreasoning infancy involves. But ask the mother herself Are these things pains ? She will tell you they are pleasures. And here we come to a larger subject^the passing of pain into pleasure. I know few things in modern literature more striking, and to a certain extent more true, than the image under which Mr. Huxley has repre- sented human life. He takes as the basis of his metaphor the famous picture in which Retzsch depicted Satan as playing at chess with man for his soul. But for the mocking fiend Huxley sub- stitutes a calm strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win. The chess-board, he says, is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of V PAIN AND DISEASE 117 the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient ; but also we know to our cost that he never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are paid with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong man shows delight in strength ; and one who plays ill is checkmated without haste but without remorse.^ The illustration is admirable for enforcing the lesson which it was intended to teach, namely, the duty of learning the rules of the game on the correct playing of which our happiness depends. I often think of it when I see young men through want of thought or want of knowledge make wrong moves, the mischievous consequences of which will be felt through their whole subsequent life. But the illustration does not fairly represent the character of our antagonist. He is not a calm strong angel, paying his winnings or exact- ing his penalties with equal unconcern. He is always ready to provide consolation for the loser ; and will freely grant him his revenge, not as sharpers will do, with the wish to win more from him, but with the sincere desire that the human ^ Huxley's Lay Sermons, *' On a Liberal Education." ii8 PAIN AND DISEASE v player shall win far more than if he had not been worsted in the first encounter. He who in the path of life has taken a wrong turning, and has exchanged smooth and easy walking for a rough and thorny road, need not imagine that his journey has been brought to a disastrous end. That rugged path made toil- some by his own errors will still, if he pursue it courageously, lead him to the desired goal. On that road he can still find a Father's guidance if he but seek it in faith and repentance ; and struggling on in cloud and storm he may receive a blessing which he would never have known in the full sunshine of prosperity. Many can echo the Psalmist's experience, " It is good for me that I have been afflicted." Nay, I know not whether he who has never known sorrow is more than half a man. That joyous prosperous man with whom things have always gone well is apt to have the best part of his nature undeveloped, and he who has been trained in sorrow's school might wisely say that he would not change with him. What stronger proof have we that He who deals with us does not afflict willingly than when we find that His very punishments are blessings ? For our transgressions a heavy burden is put on our shoulders ; we shrink from it ; we doubt our strength to bear it, but we are forced to submit ; V PAIN AND DISEASE 1 19 and when we have gone away with our burden we find we have carried off a load of treasure. Nothing impresses me more with a sense of the goodness of the Creator than to observe how the very pains and sorrows of life seem unable to resist the universal tendency to turn themselves into sources of happiness. What could seem more destructive of happiness than sickness ? A strong man delighting in the vigorous exercise of his faculties is suddenly reduced to helplessness ; he is not only rendered incapable of carrying on his ordinary work, but he becomes dependent on others for common services, and has the distress of feeling that he is not only useless but is a cause of trouble and anxiety to those about him : pain is added it may be life imperilled, and yet any of you who have known it can tell whether that has been a time of unmixed misery. Far from it, I have no doubt you will say. The causes of pain bring into operation reacting causes of happiness, and these far more powerful. What bodily pain can be set against the happiness of loving and being loved ? and seldom is that happiness felt so keenly as when on the one hand love is called on to show how it delights in sacrifice, and on the other hand that love is appreciated and returned as it never might have been but for those tender ministrations which soothe the hours of nature's weakness. PAIN AND DISEASE Perhaps I ought not to omit to add that but for sickness we should not know the joys of con- valescence; when we learn to set a new value on the common blessings of freedom from pain, and nights of refreshing sleep. At a German water- ing-place may be read lines which declare that though it is commonly said that the greatest happiness on earth is the possession of health : this is not true. A greater is the recovery of health.^ But there are English lines with which you are more likely to be familiar ; so familiar indeed that some apology is needed for making so hackneyed a quotation " See the wretch that long has tost On the thorny bed of pain, At length regain his vigour lost And breathe and walk again. The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are opening paradise." On the whole we may pronounce those to be under a delusion who imagine that the music of life would be made richer if every discord were ^ The reference is to an inscription on a pillar erected on the Promenade by the river at Ischl : " Man nennt als grosstes Gluck auf Erden Gesund zu sein : Ich sage, nein ! Ein grosseres ist, gesund zu werden." PAIN AND DISEASE struck out. Life is a conflict not without its dangers of wounds and defeat, but also one which elevates by its tension of our powers, and which promises a noble victory as its reward. Should we do well to exchange it for an inglorious and enervating peace ? What would become of hero- ism and fortitude were there no ills to bear, no dangers to despise, no difficulties to overcome? Without pain this earth would be no nursery of human virtue, and something tells us that virtue is a higher thing than happiness. Among those virtues for which pain and sick- ness give occasion are those which I have just glanced at sympathy with the sorrows of others, compassion, tenderness, love. You will perceive that I have come very near the subject of our appeal to-day. I have remarked how in family life the sufferings of one member draw out the sympathy and affectionate solicitude of others, that love and sympathy being constantly felt to more than compensate for the sufferings which drew them forth. The inequalities of worldly con- dition too often tempt us to forget that our Master Christ intended that His people should form one great family, and that we should be all members one of another. Happily we are so constituted as not to be able to see with indifference the pain and suffering even of those whom we have allowed our- PAIN AND DISEASE selves to regard as strangers. And when we come to their relief we learn to recognise our kindred, and the mutually estranged members of the family are again drawn together. In many ways the rich have benefited by these institutions primarily intended for the relief of the poor ; benefited by the suppression of infectious disease and by the increase of medical knowledge, but in no way have they profited more than in their moral education. By their exertions for their brethren's sake they are roused out of that state of heartless God- forgetting material prosperity which those who would wish pain banished from the world seem to think of as the ideal perfection of human society, but which a truer view pronounces to be its lowest degradation. It is well that this congregation, though from the circumstances of its members naturally not able to contribute so largely as others, should be allowed to join in the effort which is being made to-day. Perhaps the appeal ought to affect you more strongly than others. Those who give else- where do not contemplate the possibility that they should ever be inmates of these institutions them- selves. But I have known more cases than one where students attacked by sickness, from which no age is exempt, have found in these institutions watchful care and nursing which they could not V PAIN AND DISEASE 123 have had in their lonely college chambers. But I should be sorry to rest the case on any such selfish grounds. It is in another way that I believe you will do yourselves good by opening your hearts to this appeal. In your younger days you experienced all the tender kindnesses of family life. Later you will probably know family life again : happier then because giving more than receiving. But in early manhood the tempta- tion to selfishness is strongest. Then a man stands most alone, and is apt to think it his sole duty to push himself on in the world. Thankfully then accept the opportunity of counteracting this tendency by showing sympathy with the needy and the suffering ; so that however small your means of helping them may be, you may still be entitled one day to receive from our Lord the acknowledgment, " I was sick and ye visited me." VI HUNGER AND THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. " Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled." Matthew v. 6. What is meant by hunger and thirst for food and drink ? Does it mean this, that your under- standings have been convinced that if you neglect to take nourishment you will lose your strength ; that you will be unable to perform the duties of your daily life ; and that if your neglect continue long you will die ? Does it mean, in short, that you choose to take nourishment because of the good consequences that you are persuaded will follow from your doing so ? or rather does it not mean that you feel a craving for the food itself without any thought of future consequences, and that it is immediate pain to you to be deprived of it? Imagine that it were possible for you to travel to some other planet, and that you there heard a VI HUNGER &- THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 125 preacher delivering an eloquent sermon on the duty of taking food and drink ; that he showed by- solid arguments how the tissues of the body are wasted in all the processes of life, and how it is absolutely necessary that this waste should be repaired by nourishment in order that the work of life should be carried on. . If you heard such an argument, the more elaborate and conclusive and thoroughly satisfying it was, the more would the conclusion force itself on you, the people for whom all this reasoning is necessary can have no idea what hunger and thirst are. It is a striking characteristic of our Lord's teach- ing that He puts forward righteousness not so much as a thing, the absence of which will entail certain dangerous consequences, as rather a thing necessary to satisfy the cravings of the soul. He makes a capacity to feel such cravings the essential evidence of the soul's life and health. It is sufficient to compare the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount with the beatitudes of the Pentateuch. The reward promised to obedience in the Book of Deuteronomy is " Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou 126 HUNGER AND THIRST vi be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. . . . The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy store-houses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto ; and He shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." And in fuller detail are enumerated the penalties which would follow on disobedience. All through, righteousness is commended as a thing desirable, not so much for its own sake as in order to gain the external prosperity and escape the plagues which God has instituted as the sanctions for His commands. And in modern preaching this Old Testament method is very commonly adopted. It is true that under our dispensation we are not able, as Moses was, to promise that temporal prosperity and adversity shall correspond to men's deserts ; but we have a clearer view than Moses of the rewards and punishments of another life. And so the Christian preacher has been able to draw more glorious pictures of the happiness that will crown obedience than that given in Deuteronomy xxvii., and more terrible pictures of the misery of God's enemies than that given in the xxviii. And consequently if one of us had to express in his own words the idea of the text in the form in which he has received it, it would be apt to run " Blessed are ye who hunger and thirst for salva- tion, for ye shall obtain it." VI AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 127 It is quite a different key which is struck in our Lord's beatitudes "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the children of God." Thus, then, though it is perfectly true that the righteous- ness spoken of in the text is, according to the rule of God's government of the world, rewarded, and its absence punished, yet the prudential seeking after righteousness in order to gain these rewards or escape those punishments is no more hunger and thirst for righteousness than a sick man's taking food for which he does not care, but which is prescribed as necessary to keep him alive, can be called hunger. The blessedness spoken of in the text is that of those who feel in their souls a real craving for righteousness. The reward offered is nothing external, it is simply that that craving shall be satisfied. The illustration I have just glanced at shows clearly enough that a capacity to feel such cravings is in itself blessedness. It occurs to us from time to time to see realised Job's description of the sick man chastened with pain upon his bed, so that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat. In vain his attendants strive with delicacies 128 HUNGER AND THIRST vi to tempt his appetite; their well-meant efforts are loathed, and it is only as a matter of prudence and duty that he can force himself to accept what they bring. When, as the violence of the disease abates, the natural appetite returns, and he himself begins to desire the food which he had repelled, then he begins to know the blessedness of returning health. The test suggested by the illustration that has been employed induces us readily to acknowledge the truth of the doctrine of Scripture that man's present state is not that perfect state in which he was created, but one which must be described as a state of disease. Can we say that those objects after which men's desires now ordinarily crave con- stitute the true food of the soul .' Their own consciences bear witness to the contrary. They must own that too true an image of their conduct is presented by the prodigal who filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat, the food of beasts, ignoble and unworthy of man, insufficient to satisfy his real wants or give his soul the nourishment it requires. Nay, the objects of their perverted desires may be actually poisonous, destructive of the soul's true life. And when their reason has taught them their need of the righteousness which is the true food of the soul, and the danger of being without it, still this food VI AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 129 is tasteless and insipid to them ; they find they have no appetite for it ; like sick persons they turn from it with disgust, or force themselves to take it without relish. This is surely very unlike the experience described, by the Psalmist : " Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God." " Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee ; my soul thirsteth for Thee in a barren and dry land where no water is." " My soul breaketh out for the very fervent desire that it hath alway unto Thy judgments. Teach me, O Lord, the way of Thy statutes, and I shall keep it unto the end. O Lord what love have I unto Thy law : all the day long is my study in it. I have longed for Thy salvation, O Lord, and Thy law is my delight." And doubtless these descrip- tions of the Psalmist were true of him who wrote them in a far lower sense than they were of Him to whom David and the other prophets bore witness, and who could say, " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." Taught by His example, our Lord's disciples learned to know what righteousness was, and how much they came short of it. They learned from Him the extent of the commandment to love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and strength, and their neighbour as themselves. He K I30 HUNGER AND THIRST vi taught them how defective was that which passed for righteousness in their day ; how merely external it was ; how partial the fulfilment of duties on which men prided themselves. And He insisted that their righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees in other words, must exceed the righteousness of those who passed for the most righteous men in the nation. He taught them the worthlessness of religion itself, if it bore no fruit in the life. The Pharisees might for a show make long prayers, and their condemnation would be all the greater. Devotion to Himself He would not accept, except on the terms of obedience to His commands. " Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" All hypocrisy and self-flattery He condemned ; all saying and not doing ; and when they had done all they could He taught them to know that they were unprofitable servants. Tried by such a standard as this, they felt how much they were below it, and having learned to love the righteousness of which they saw embodied the most perfect pattern, they longed to realise it in their own persons, and so felt the stirrings of that hunger and thirst after righteousness which are the signs of the new life that Christ gives to those that believe on Him ; the signs that the old malady of their nature has begun to be overcome. VI AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 131 Blessed are they who feel such hunger and thirst, not only because these are the signs of health and life, but also because they have the promise that they shall be filled. In this world every desire and appetite God has implanted in His creatures corresponds with a provision He has made for satisfying it. And so it is in this case. That Holy Spirit whose office and work it is to excite the craving for spiritual food leads us to Christ in whom it can be satisfied. He is the bread of life. That our Lord should have used such words about Himself is enough to show that He claimed to be something more than a human teacher, showing by His example the blessedness of those who make it their meat and drink to do God's will. He insists on union with Himself as the means by which that heavenly hunger can be appeased. And Christ has not merely done a work for men which makes their heavenly life possible. That alone would not be enough, as it is not enough that food should be prepared if it be not received, digested, and incorporated. So Christ does not give life to our souls merely by dying for us, or by being exhibited to us in the Gospel, but as He is received by faith, so that dwelling in our hearts He becomes one with us and we with Him. Thus He is able to promise the fullest contentment for those desires which by 132 HUNGER AND THIRST vi His Spirit He creates. " If any man thirst," He cried, " let him come to Me, and drink." " Who- soever drinketh of earthly water shall thirst again : but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." You will have observed that in my exposition of the text I do not interpret the righteousness spoken of as justifying righteousness, the outward righteousness of pardon, but I treat the hunger and thirst described as the eager, earnest, inward desire for personal real goodness and holiness, the constant persevering effort to win higher and higher attainments of righteousness in Christ under the sanctifying Spirit. It is perfectly true that Christ's righteousness is the only real and trustworthy righteousness in which the sinner can abide the severity of God's judgment, and that really to feel the need of pardon, and to long for that righteousness, is the first step towards being filled with it. Still the whole context is opposed to the deduction of this doctrine from this part of the Sermon on the Mount. Our Lord is all through engaged in showing how His disciples must by their lives adorn the Christian profession. They must be caerciful, meek, pure in heart. They are to be VI AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 133 the light of the world. They are to let their light so shine that men may see their good works and glorify their heavenly Father. Our Lord is not come to destroy the law but to fulfil. Whoso- ever shall break one of its least commandments and teach men so, shall be the least in the king- dom of heaven. Whosoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Then He tells them that their righteous- ness must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and goes on to show how much more searching are His precepts than theirs. The whole context then binds us to interpret the righteousness spoken of as that which was to be exhibited in the lives of those who hungered and thirsted after it. It need not be feared that by thus interpreting we should teach men to put confidence in their works of righteousness as means of salvation, for the very notion of hunger after righteousness is opposed to the notion of confidence that we have attained righteousness. It implies a confession of want, an acknowledgment that we have it not in ourselves, and that we must look outside ourselves for the means of obtaining it. On the other hand, as I pointed out at the beginning, it puts far too low a meaning on the text to treat it as if hunger after righteousness meant no more than a desire 134 HUNGER AND THIRST vj to be saved from the wrath to come. There are many who profess to feel a longing for pardon who are merely alarmed as to possible danger in a future state, but who have no real conviction of sin, no craving after righteousness. And this is plain from the vagueness of their language. They complain of the sense of sin, and mourn that they are in the abstract miserable sinners, but their conscience tells them nothing of any particular sins, and they would be angry if some were pointed out to them which are most patent to the eyes of others. And when they believe that they have found pardon they consider that it would be an insult to the freedom of God's grace if they were thenceforward to harass their minds by anxiety about moral conduct, it being assumed that this will be sure to come right of itself in the case of those who have accepted Christ's Gospel. Such was not the method of Paul, to whose strenuous proclamation of the doctrine of justification by faith without the deeds of the law, we owe the promin- ence which that doctrine holds in the teaching of every reformed church. He does not content him- self with using general terms about sin and righteous- ness, but in almost every epistle gives detailed moral precepts, and describes in language familiar to every reader of his epistles what he means by the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit. VI AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 135 Mistakes indeed of opposite kinds have been made. To return to the illustration which I employed . in the beginning, though it is hard even by way of illustration to conceive beings incapable of feeling hunger and thirst ; yet, if we can imagine such beings convinced by argument of the necessity of taking food, but without any appetite to guide them as to the quality or amount of what they were to take, it would be more likely than not that they would make mistakes, that they would spend their money for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not. Of such a kind are the mistakes made by men who being without any real craving for righteous- ness, but convinced that something of the kind is necessary for their safety, attempt to gain their salvation by works of their own devising. The history of religions true and false is a record of strange devices used by men to gain the favour of their divinities ; and though foremost among these methods is the performance of supposed works of righteousness, yet the works recommended commonly have not tended to the advancement in true holiness of him who performs them. And while men were taught that things were essential which God had not required, while in following false ways of salvation His true way was neglected. 136 HUNGER AND THIRST vi the double result was produced which the prophet has described as characterising the work of the false teachers of his time. " With lies you have made the hearts of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad, and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way by promising him life." Again the craving after pardon without any craving after righteousness is as it were a desire to have life on the terms of never having need of food. This, according to any form of life within our experience, is a thing impossible ; for the very essence of life, as we know it, is work, waste, and reparation. And equally impossible is it to have heavenly life without that constant feeding on Christ by faith, the effect of which is assimilation with Him. It does not appear to be the inten- tion of our Maker to give us happiness without righteousness. In His government of the world our happiness is always subordinated to our growth in holiness. He allows us to taste the bitter fruits of misdoing, and by personal experience to learn how evil and bitter a thing it is to forsake the Lord our God. He chastens us with suffering ; He ripens graces in us by the discipline of affliction. Nay, Christ's end in our redemption is stated to be our sanctification. " He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and VI AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS 137 purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." Those then invert Christ's order who treat good works as a means of gaining redemption ; and those mistake His plan altogether who teach that the one great thing is to accept Christ's offer of redemption, and who if they do not in so many words say that subsequent holy living is unnecessary, practically produce this impression by their complete silence on this subject. Good works, as our Article asserts, are not the means of gaining life in Christ; they are the consequences and evidences of that life. But righteousness and true holiness is the very essence of that life. Remember, then, that working for a religious object is not religion : talking about religion is not religion. All the doctrines, all the facts of our religion, are means to the great end of making us such as Christ was. Let nothing else obscure in your minds the importance of the question. Are you proving the reality of your life in Him by daily growing more and more like Him in meek- ness, patience, self-denial, love ? For if these graces be wanting, however much a man may seem to be religious, he deceiveth his own heart, his religion is vain. VII THE KEYNOTE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS " Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God ; but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day ; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin : for we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end." Hebrews iii. 12-14. That Paul was the author of this Epistle to the Hebrews, was from very early times the received belief of the Eastern Church. Even scholars who had difficulties in subscribing to it unreservedly assumed its truth in their popular addresses. In the West the Pauline authorship was for a couple of centuries ignored or denied ; and it was not till the beginning of the fifth century that, mainly through the influence of Jerome and Augustine, the Eastern belief established itself firmly in the West. At the Reformation, with the revival of learning there revived also the difficulties which the early critics had felt as to acknowledging Paul VII THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 139 as the author ; such as the absence of his name from any opening salutation, contrary to the prac- tice of all his acknowledged letters, the difference in style, and still more the unlikeness of this writer's acknowledgment that he had but a second- hand knowledge of the things spoken by the Lord (" which at the first were spoken by the Lord and were confirmed unto us by them that heard him ") to Paul's claim to have himself seen our Lord, and to have derived his doctrines not from men but from the immediate instruction of his Divine Master. It was this last argument especially which weighed with Luther and Calvin, both of whom thought it likely that not Paul, but some member of his circle, such as Apollos, was the author. Since their time not only has popular opinion generally ascribed the authorship to Paul, but that opinion has had its countenance, if not its origin, in the official language of the Church. Twice in our Prayer-Book Paul is spoken of as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the title the book bears in the Authorised Version is " The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews." Even in the recently revised version this title is continued, the revisers explaining in their preface that they had not been expressly directed to ex- tend their revision to the titles. It may reason- ably be doubted whether this limitation of their I40 THE KEYNOTE OF THE vii commission would have been discovered by any one if they had thought proper to disregard it ; but it is very intelligible that a Board of Revisers, including men who represented not only various schools of thought within our own Church, but even different denominations of Christians, might be able to arrive at tolerably unanimous conclusions on questions of grammar or even of textual criti- cism, but would find themselves embarked in long debates if called on to pronounce an authoritative judgment on the authorship of every one of the New Testament books ; and therefore it may have been quite wisely that the entering on such questions was declined. Suffice it then to say that, notwithstanding that our Church appeared to have taken a side on this question, some of her most orthodox members have felt themselves free to separate the question of the authority of this Epistle from that of its authorship, and, on the latter question, to arrive at a conclusion adverse to the Pauline authorship. Such, I am inclined to believe, would have been the conclusion of a majority of the Board of Revisers if they had thought proper to pronounce on the question. At all events the question is a completely open one in our Church. For you will observe that this is not the case of a writer who assumes the name of Paul, and who must be pronounced guilty VII EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 141 of forgery if that name does not really belong to him ; the claim of Pauline authorship is not made by the writer himself, and so it is no disparage- ment to him to inquire whether it has been rightly made for him by others. It is not my intention, however, to enter into that inquiry now, further than may be necessary to bring out the full meaning of the passage I have taken for my text. No unprejudiced critic, I think, can read the Epistle without feeling that the Paulinism of its doctrine is unmistakable. The writer is either Paul himself, or else one who has sat at the feet of Paul ; who not only agrees with him in teaching those truths which every preacher of Christianity must have published, but also who has imbibed from him all that we regard as char- acteristic in the Pauline method of presenting Gospel truths. Nor is it only in the substance of its doctrine that this Epistle is Pauline ; the lan- guage also is so in a high degree. There are many coincidences of expression with Paul's ac- knowledged letters which either prove common authorship or, if they do not, at least show that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews was well acquainted with some of Paul's epistles, in parti- cular that to the Romans. On the other hand, one cannot but be impressed by the fact of which Origen took notice, that the Greek of the Epistle 142 THE KEYNOTE OF THE vii to the Hebrews is of a rhetorical character, unlike that of Paul's writings ; so that even if we believe that the Apostle commissioned the writing of the Epistle, and adopted it when written, still it would be reasonable to think that he had employed in the composition the hand of some other person. But it seems to me that even this suggestion of the Alexandrian critics fails to take account of what I regard as indications of a date a little later than that of the circle of Pauline writings. The question of the final perseverance of the saints, in other words, the question whether it is pos- sible that one who is really a child of God can totally and finally fall away, is one that has been warmly debated among Protestant theologians. Those who on this subject speak in the language of most confident assurance have always found passages in Paul's writings most apposite for quotation, such as " Being confident of this very thing that He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." But I do not know whether it has been sufficiently remarked that if one had to derive a system of doctrine from the Epistle to the Hebrews alone, controversy on the subject of which I speak could scarcely arise, for it would be determined in quite the opposite way. The danger of his disciples falling away seems to be weighing heavily on the VII EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 143 writer's mind. He recurs to the subject again and again, multiplying his exhortations and his warnings. The Epistle opens by contrasting the former dispensations in which God spoke to the fathers by the prophets, with the new dispensation of which His Blessed Son was the Mediator ; and the practical conclusion is immediately drawn that the dignity of the Messenger throws a greater re- sponsibility on those to whom the message has been sent ; makes the duty of adherence to it the greater, and the danger of falling from it the more terrible. It is with a practical, not a dogmatic, object that the superangelic character of the Son of God is insisted on in the first chapter. The conclusion is at once drawn how much more dangerous the rejection of the word spoken by the Son than of that dispensation which was given by the instrumentality of angels. " There- fore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip ;" or, as the Revised Version has it, " lest haply we drift away from them. For if the word spoken through angels proved sted- fast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ? " Then the writer compares Christ with Moses, and goes on, " Moses indeed was faithful in all 144 THE KEYNOTE OF THE vii his house as a servant, but Christ as a son, over His house ; whose house are we, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end." Then he warns his disciples by the example of the Jews to whom Moses spake, and who, as we read in the 95th Psalm, provoked God to swear in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest. Then he proceeds, as you .heard in the text : " Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God : but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day ; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin : for we are become partakers of Christ, if we. hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end." Then, reminding them of the fate of those who were unbelieving and disobedient, and whose car- cases fell in the wilderness, he exhorts again : " Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they : but the word of hearing did not profit them." " Having then a great high priest, who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession." And having spoken somewhat on the high priesthood VII EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 145 of Christ, he comes back to his warnings, in words the sternness of which has made them hard to be received. "As touching those who were once en- lightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance ; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame." " But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and we desire that each one of you may show diligence unto the fulness of hope even to the end, that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." The writer then sets forth at length the superiority of Christ's atonement over the Mosaic sacrifices, and then returns to his constant topic of exhortation : " Let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not ; for He is faithful that promised : and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works ; not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another ; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh. For if we sin wil- fully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sin.s, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, L 146 THE KEYNOTE OF THE vii and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adver- saries. A man that hath set at nought Moses' law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses : of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace ? For we know Him that said. Vengeance belongeth unto Me, I will recompense. And again, The Lord shall judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." The writer then re- minds his disciples of the proofs of the sincerity of their faith, which they had already given, and exhorts : " Cast not away therefore your boldness, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise. For yet a very little while, He that cometh shall come, and shall not tarry. But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrink back my soul hath no pleasure in him. But we are not of them that shrink back unto perdition ; but of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul." In the passage just cited occurs perhaps the only, or nearly the only, instance in which a charge of bias can with any appearance of justice be brought against the VII EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 147 translators of the Authorised Version. For with- out any authority from the original, they inter- polate the words " any man." " The just shall live by faith : but if any man draw back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him," an interpolation apparently dictated by dislike to the doctrinal in- ference suggested by the literal translation : " The just shall live by faith : but if he draw back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him." After this the writer, having in his noble eleventh chapter sung the praises of faith, returns to exhort his disciples to patience under the temporal sufferings they were undergoing. He reminds them of the ex- ample of Christ in enduring the contradiction of sinners, that they wax not weary, fainting in their souls. He tells them of the purposes for which their Father saw it good that they should receive chastening ; and he proceeds, " Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord : looking carefully lest there be any man that falleth short of the grace of God ;" or, as it is in the margin of the Revised Version, " that falleth back from the grace of God ;" " lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby the many be defiled ; lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own, birthright. For ye know that even when he afterward de- 148 THE KEYNOTE OF THE vn sired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears." I have made quotations from the Epistle at great, I only hope not wearisome, length. I have felt this fulness of quotation to be necessary on account of the manner of reading the Bible which is habitual to all of us. In church or in family use we read one chapter at a time ; and in this piecemeal method of study we are altogether un- able to perceive the general drift of a long epistle taken as a whole. It is often even worse in our private study of Scripture. Too many then look out not a chapter, but a text, seeking to find, it may be, in some incidental words a proof by which to establish a doctrine, and scarcely troubling themselves to inquire how their interpretation fits in with what goes before and after. In the present case it would have been impossible without very full quotation to exhibit how the whole letter is pervaded by the thought that the faith of its readers was being subjected to severe trials, tempting them sorely to apostasy, that they had need of patience and endurance to hold fast the good confession they had made, and must be re- minded of the rewards of perseverance, as well as admonished by Old Testament examples of the irretrievable ruin which would follow falling away. VII EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 149 Now I hope you will not imagine that I wish to make out that there is a difference of doctrine between the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews and St. Paul ; that I am arguing that the Epistle to the Hebrews cannot have been written by St Paul because, to state the matter coarsely, St. Paul was a Calvinist, and the writer of that epistle an Arminian. Such an idea could only be sug- gested to any one by our unhistorical method of reading the New Testament, our habit of search- ing it only in order to find out a text which may furnish a ruling on some disputed point of modern controversy, regardless what were the circumstances of the sacred writer, what the thoughts of which his mind was full, and whether it was of that con- troversy it was his object to speak. I have no desire to disparage the interests of the subjects on which in modern days controversy has arisen : what are the beginnings of the spiritual life, what the signs by which it manifests itself, whether the subject of it can recognise those signs by infallible indications, and what confidence he can build on them for the future. But it may easily be that if we read with these questions in view we may fail to throw ourselves into the circumstances of the sacred writer, and to perceive what were the thoughts and feelings of which his mind was full. In the present case the writer of the Epistle to ISO THE KEYNOTE OF THE vu the Hebrews has not in his thoughts the case of the secret decadence of the spiritual life in the soul of one whose heart had at one time burned with zeal for the Gospel cause, but whose love had grown cold, and concerning whose restoration doubts might well be entertained. He has to deal with a patent fact : the case of a Church learning by bitter experience to know the truth of our Lord's warning that there are those in whom the word of life is sown, who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness, and have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time ; afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the Word's sake, imme- diately they are offended. In the Church here addressed there had been some who, under the pressure of persecution, withdrew themselves from the Christian meetings, and forsook the assembling of themselves together ; nay, the apostasy had carried off some who had enjoyed the highest consideration in the Christian community, and had given the strongest evidence of their fitness to advance its interests. Men who had not only been admitted into the Church by baptism, but who had even been partakers of the supernatural gifts of the new dispensation ; who had been en- lightened and had tasted of the heavenly gift, and had been made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and VII EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 151 had tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, had fallen away. What marvel when the demon of unbelief had struck his victims in such high places, if the one pre- dominating thought of the preacher concerning the little band who still remained faithful was. Will ye also go away ? When we thus read the Epistle to the Hebrews with an eye less to its dogmatic than its historic interest, we find ourselves, I think, in a period of the Church's history a little later than that repre- sented in Paul's Epistles. There was no time in the Church's history when some apostasies did not occur. Even in our Lord's lifetime there were those that went back and walked no more with Him. Yet this sin was not the pressing danger at the time when the Church had not yet lost her first love, and when persecution against her had not yet been organised. Even in the first days, as we know from the Acts of the Apostles, the preaching of the Gospel was a work of danger. The mission- aries were liable to be set upon by tumults of mobs, or dragged before tribunals. Yet there they had a certain amount of protection, as in the case of Gallio, in the contemptuous toleration of the Roman magistrates for a silly superstition condemned by no law. Accordingly the diseases of the Church were such as beset a state of worldly prosperity, 152 THE KEYNOTE OF THE vii and Paul, about to visit Corinth, dreaded that God would humble him among them, and that he must be forced to bewail many who had sinned already, and had not repented of the uncleanness and lasciviousness and fornication which they had committed. It was later that persecution assumed a systematic form, and that Christianity became an unlawful profession, so that as we learn from St. Peter's Epistle, Christian became a title of accusation, and to suffer as a Christian was an intelligible phrase. The celebrated letter of Pliny shows clearly that though trials of Christians had not formed part of that magistrate's previous experience, the thing itself was no novelty. And he conceived himself to be taking a humane view when he decided that whatever the Christian profession might be, the refusal to apostatise from it was a piece of obstinacy which might properly be punished with death. In the time of the Epistle to the Hebrews, however, the rigour of persecution had not proceeded so far against the Church addressed. Imprisonment and loss of property were the extreme punishment inflicted. Of these they had had their share. They had been made a gazing stock by reproaches and afflictions. Some of their society were in bonds, towards whom the rest fraternally exhibited compassion. The spoiling of their goods was inflicted on them, and they vii EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 153 took it joyfully. But elsewhere the malice of their enemies had gone farther, and those to whom the Epistle was addressed could not say as these others, that they had resisted unto blood striving against sin. I am disposed to conjecture that " they of Italy," from whom in the Epistle a salutation is sent, could even then tell of the Neronian persecution, which was probably a time of trial, though less severe, for Christians all over the empire. However this may be, it seems to me that this Epistle exhibits a greater strain on Christians from external persecution, greater temp- tation to apostasy than the Pauline Epistles, and therefore may probably be referred to a little later date. Though I have been discussing the Epistle to the Hebrews historically rather than with a view to draw out its doctrinal teaching for our own edification, I must not conclude without saying a few words on that point of doctrine which verses such as I have chosen for my text might seem more naturally to have suggested as the subject for our discussion. And no doubt I shall seem to be uttering a paradox if I say that the doctrine of the possibility of fall from grace, even if theoretically true, is practically false. Yet there are many cases where it is practically more important to enunciate a general proposition than to attend to the excep- IS4 THE KEYNOTE OF THE vii tions and limitations which must be taken into account if we want to bring it into accordance with strict theoretical truth. We make practical use, with great advantage, of the theorems of theoretical mechanics, though there are no mathematical lines or circles to be found in nature, no systems of forces so simple as those which our theory contem- plates. Or to take an illustration which more fairly represents what I have in my mind, we are obliged for practical purposes to lean on our understanding, to adopt the conclusions which, after weighing the arguments as best we can, seem to us most reasonable. Yet it might be objected ; to rely thus on the decisions of your own intellect is to pronounce yourself infallible. Can you deny that it is possible that you are making a mistake ; that what seems to you absurd or incredible may really be true ; that what you regard as practical wisdom may be downright foolishness ? We can- not deny it. If we were to formulate into an abstract proposition any assertion of our infalli- bility, we should no doubt be stating a falsehood. Yet in practice we should fall into a scepticism which would paralyse all our powers of action if we allowed any theoretic conviction of our fallibility to interfere with our taking the course which, after the best prudential calculation we could i VII EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 155 make, seemed to be the best. Thus there is a sense in which it may be said that the statement that we are falHble is theoretically true and practically false. If even yet I have not made my meaning clear let me by a different illustration come a little closer to the matter in hand. Imagine that you had to preach a wedding sermon, and that some one recommended you to address the newly- married couple as follows ; " You have promised to love each other to your life's end, and you think it certain that you will do so, but in real truth you can have no certainty whatever that your feelings will not change. Many marriages have begun as fairly as yours, and love has been succeeded by indifference, nay, by dislike, and unfaithfulness." Could you reject the suggested topics solely on the ground that they stated what was not true ? Could you deny that such changes of feeling as have been described do from time to time occur ? Could you even venture to say that if such a change occurred it proved that the original love professed had not been sincere ; and therefore that, conversely, one who was assured of his own sincerity might also be assured against the possibility of change in the future ? I don't know that this can be said either ; but it is certain that even if there were theoretical truth in such an address it would be practically false, and that it 156 THE KEYNOTE OF THE vii would be mischievous if one was cruel enough to deliver it, and the parties foolish enough to give heed to it. For why is it that true affection resents as an insult the suggestion of the possibility of its discontinuance ? Is it not because there cannot be love without trust ; and trust is incom- patible with doubt, the entertainment of which would very speedily bring its own justification and fulfil its own prophecies by undermining the affection it assailed. Well, whatever reason we have for trusting in the affection of a fellow- creature, we have infinitely more for trusting in the love of Christ. We may discover that we have been mistaken in our opinion of a fellow- creature, and that one on whom we had bestowed our affection was really unworthy of it. It can never happen to us to find that we have thought too highly of Him. It may happen that one on whom we had bestowed our love withdraws affection from us, and that we find it hard to go on loving without return. That disappointment can never befall our love to Christ. Men may prove inconstant, but He abideth faithful : He cannot deny Himself What remains, then, to doubt but the frailty of our own hearts ? Well, if experience of human inconstancy does not deter two human beings from exchanging pledges of lifelong affection with each other, and if we find by a better VII EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 157 experience that their vows, made in God's sight and blessed by His Church, do receive in answer to faithful prayer, grace and strength which exalts human affection into sacred duty, which preserves it unshaken through the trials and changes of life, so that sorrow or adversity borne together only draws it closer, labour endured for the other is no toil, unkindness, even injuries received from the other find ready indulgence and forgiveness ; still more may we be sure that faithful prayer will bring grace and strength to preserve unshaken our union with Christ, on which our spiritual life depends. I do not know how to assert final perseverance as a theory. I can say nothing to encourage a backslider to trust in the memory of a dead past, and rely that his recollections of the love of former days in themselves contain a pledge of future restoration. But to those who hold fast by a present faith in the Son of God, I can confidently say, Doubt not, but earnestly believe in the faith- fulness of Him in whom you trust. He will perfect that which concerneth you. He will not forsake the work of His own hands. VIII BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON " And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth ? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord. In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow my- self in the house of Rimmon ; when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing. And he said unto him, Go in peace." 2 Kings v. 17-19. Of all Old Testament histories there is none with which people are generally more familiar than that of Naaman the Syrian. It is told in a chapter which has always been appointed as one of our Sunday lessons, and which as a mere story arrests attention by its graphic and lively painting of contrasted characters ; while the moral and spiritual lessons which it suggests are so numerous and so obvious that perhaps no chapter in the Bible has afforded texts for more sermons, and so the details of the story are frequently dwelt on and imprinted on our memory. We have VIII BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON 159 first the picture of the Syrian general, distinguished for valour, fortunate in war, high in his master's favour, honoured by his countrymen ; but a leper. We are reminded how often the tale of human prosperity is obliged to be finished with a "but"; how the life to outward appearance the most happy has its secret sorrows, and how often from the midst of the spring of pleasures that something bitter rises which poisons their enjoyment. Then the name " leprosy " suggests a deeper meaning, as typifying that plague of sin which infects the highest as well as the lowest worldly condition ; so that a man may be among his fellow men highly placed, respected, honoured, yet in God's sight a leper. The story goes on to illustrate the converse lesson, how that which is despised among men may be in God's sight of great price, by showing how the greatest benefits temporal and spiritual were brought to this Syrian household by its most insignificant member, the little slave- girl captive from the land of Israel. Here again a number of reflections suggest themselves on the importance of early education, on the unexpected fruits that may spring up from lessons well im- planted in the mind of a child ; on the truth of the wise man's saying, " A word spoken in season, how good is it !" on the opportunities of usefulness which are open even to those whose worldly i6o BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON viii estate is but lowly ; on the return which a single talent may make when he to whom it has been trusted uses it faithfully. Then again we have a contrast between the consternation into which the King of Israel is thrown by the seemingly unreasonable demand of his powerful neighbour that he should recover a man of his leprosy, and the calm assurance of the prophet that what was asked was no more than his God can enable him to accomplish. We have a further contrast be- tween the programme which Naaman in his mind has sketched out of the prophet's manner of deal- ing with him, effecting his cure with all pomp and solemnity and due regard to the dignity of the sufferer, and what he accounts the contemptu- ous treatment he actually receives the prophet not even deigning to see him, but sending him by a messenger directions to follow a mode of treat- ment which he pronounces quite inadequate to effect a cure. It is impossible for any illustration to set in a clearer light how foolish is the pride of rejecting a divine remedy because it seems to us too simple ; and so this story has been used times without number to contrast with the sim- plicity of the Gospel plan the laborious schemes for their own salvation which men have devised, and to show the folly of rejecting God's ordinances because we do not see what natural efficacy they VIII BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON i6i can have to produce spiritual benefit. I need not pursue the history. You will all remember how the Syrian general yields to the persuasions of his servants (whose affectionate relations with him speak well for the kindliness of his character) : you will remember his gratitude when he obtains his healing, the disinterestedness of the prophet who will accept no present from him : frustrated as far as the effects on the stranger's mind are concerned by the covetousness of the prophet's servant, who cannot bear to see so fine an oppor- tunity of gaining riches thrown away : and you will remember how vainly Gehazi tries to hide his crooked practices, and what an appropriate punishment he meets with. Great part of the charm of the story (considered merely as a story) results from the consistency with which the characters are kept up, and from the worthy way in which Elisha maintains the character of God's prophet : despising the things of earth ; neither grasping its riches for himself, nor bestowing un- due veneration on earthly honours. But (for in this case too there is a "but") the verses I have read as the text form an exception ; and I suppose there are few who hear the chapter read without feeling here some little jar, the prophet's answer to Naaman not being such as, if we were writing the story, we should have put into his mouth. M i62 BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON viil First we have what we might call a super- stitious request from Naaman to be allowed to carry home two mules' burden of Israelitish earth to build an altar to the God of Israel in his own land. We might, however, not be greatly startled at Elisha's acquiescing in this without remark, but Naaman's next request puts a greater strain on our sense of fitness. He declares his conviction that Jehovah is the only God, and his resolution thenceforward to offer sacrifice or burnt offering to Him only. But his public duty will require him when attending on his master to present himself in the house of Rimmon the Syrian divinity ; and there he cannot without indecency refuse to join in the outward homage which all present offer to Rimmon. So he asks leave to be, while in his heart a believer in Jehovah, in out- ward appearance a worshipper of Rimmon, and while paying to Rimmon his homage in public, to atone for it at home by his private sacrifice to the God of Israel. We are inclined to smile at the simplicity of the request. Will Jehovah accept a divided allegiance? Will his prophet sanction this plan for making the best of both worlds, and declare it possible to serve both God and Rimmon? Will he not rather give directions to Naaman to act as Daniel afterwards acted, who, when living in a strange land where the worship of Jehovah VIII BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON 163 was forbidden on pain of a terrible death, set his windows open towards Jerusalem and kneeled and prayed, and gave thanks before his God three times a day? Not a word of this do we hear from Elisha. Naaman's profession of belief and his reservation of promised allegiance are alike received without comment, and he is quietly dismissed with the words, " Go in peace." The first point is one that need not delay us long. Earthen altars appear to have been a specialty of Jewish worship. At the end of the twentieth chapter of Exodus immediately follow- ing the account of the giving of the ten command- ments you will find directions given to Moses that only earthen altars should be used for the worship of Jehovah ; or at least that if stone altars were used they should be of rough stone, not hewn stone. Naaman would probably during his visit to the land of Israel have remarked the earthen altars, and it is not strange if in his conviction that the God of Israel was the only God, he resolved on worshipping Him exactly as he had seen His own people worship Him; and not only with an altar of earth, but of Israelitish earth. This does not seem a very important point ; but the difficulty as to the silent acquiescence in his dissembling of his faith requires more thought. i64 BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON viii And first, for even when we cannot solve diffi- culties, it is something done if we can reduce one to another, and see that two apparently different difficulties are the same, one thing to be said about the present difficulty is that it is really one form of the great difficulty. Why did God for so many generations choose one family for His own, and leaving the heathen world in darkness confine all revelation of the higher truths respecting His purposes to the favoured seed of Abraham ? So the Gentile world looked on Jehovah but as the God of the Jews in the same way that Chemosh was the God of Moab, and Rimmon the God of Syria. Even among the Jews themselves there were some who would seem to have no higher view. And such would seem to be the view expressed by Jephtha in his address to the Am- monites (Judges xi. 24): "Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy God giveth thee to possess ? So whomsoever Jehovah our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess." Afterwards when it became clear to the minds of all religious and thoughtful Jews that the truth was, not that their God was greater and stronger than the gods of surrounding nations, but that theirs was the only God, and that the gods of the heathen were no gods, even then we read of no missionary efforts made by Jews to convert sur- I VIII BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON 165 rounding nations to their faith. Individual prose- lytes were not rejected ; but there were no systematic efforts, scarcely any symptom of a desire, to bring in foreign nations to worship by their side ; or any indication of a feeling that it was the duty of a foreigner to worship the God of Israel. So we can understand that a Jew would feel that the duty of confessing his God was to be measured by a different standard in the case of a foreigner and of one of his own nation. Daniel when in a strange land was bound to worship his people's God, and to make no secret that he did so, but how could a like duty of public confession be urged upon Naaman when the Jews had never taken any steps to teach him that it was his duty to worship Jehovah at all ? We may thus, as I have said, reduce the diffi- culty in the text to another larger one. But what about that? Why was the enlightenment of the world so slow ? Why so gradual, and at first so partial ? What need of so elaborate a scheme for the education of that people who were afterwards to be the teachers of the world ? And to this we can only answer that even though we cannot explain the "why," there can be no doubt about the fact that if the God of the Bible and the God of Nature be the same we need not be surprised to find that the processes by which He works His I66 BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON viii ends are slow and gradual. Nothing in Nature is hurried. Development, evolution, have become the watchwords of modern science ; the difficulty that thinkers of the present day declare that they ex- perience is in conceiving any kind of instantaneous creation. If the current scientific belief be well founded that this world took millions of years of preparation before it could be fitted to be the abode of living creatures, we need not be startled to hear that thousands of years were spent in the educa- tion of the human race ; that their religious knowledge was reached by no sudden spring, but followed the same laws of development, evolution, slow gradual growth, which we find to prevail in all the works of Nature. Nor is it strange that the seeds of religious truth grew up in one favoured spot, where they were guarded from injury, fenced round by that barrier of exclusiveness which prevented the nation which had been entrusted with them from adulterating them with the customs of foreign peoples, until, in the fulness of time, when their maturity had been obtained, the treasure of one people was made the property of the whole world. It is of a piece with this law of evolution that we find that favoured people itself slowly advancing from feebler to fuller light, and so we need have no hesitation in acknowledging the moral standard of an earlier age to be below VIII BOWING IN THE BOUSE OF RIMMON 167 that of a later one. Our Lord in His precepts refused to tolerate what Moses, on account of the hardness of the people's heart, had been content to admit ; and frequently, in the Sermon on the Mount, "It hath been said by them of old time," is contrasted with, "But I say unto you." Even in the Christian dispensation we can see that its demands were not made all at once, but by degrees as they were able to bear them. I will not stop to speak of the gradual process by which the exclusive privileges of Jews were done away ; but I cannot take a better illustration than the insti- tution of slavery. It was found existing when the Gospel was first preached, and any attempt to overturn it would have revolutionised society. So no doctrine of the unlawfulness of slavery was taught. The slaves were not told that their masters had no right to their services. A runaway slave was sent back to his master. The slaves were commanded to do good service, as good when their earthly master's eye was off them as when it was on ; for they were to consider their service as rendered not to their master on earth but to one in heaven. So for hundreds of years the institution lasted. Even the Church had its slaves; for when rich men bestowed their posses- sions on it, the Church accepted without scruple gifts of persons as well as of things. But I need i68 BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON viii not go back into the history of early times, seeing that it is comparatively lately that the doctrine of the unlawfulness of slavery has been taught among ourselves. Somewhere about a hundred years ago the well-known John Newton continued for some time after his conversion his employment as supercargo of a slave ship, and though he felt acutely the degradation of his position, counting that the trade of a jailor was not a gentlemanly one, it does not appear to have ever occurred to him that it was an unchristian one. And yet there can be no doubt that the feeling which prevails among ourselves that it is not right to hold our brethren in bondage is the direct offspring of Christianity. The Gospel brought master and slave to partake side by side of the same love feast ; nay, the Church in the very earliest times admitted slaves to the order of the priesthood, so that the master might be forced in the Church assemblies to take a lower place than that assigned to his former slave, and to partake of sacred gifts consecrated by his hands. It united master and slave as brothers with common interests persecuted by common enemies. One of the earliest authentic histories of a Christian martyrdom tells of the heroism of a female slave, suffering with her earthly masters, only subjected to more cruel tortures than they, because the law then allowed torture to be vin BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON 169 used in the examination of slaves which it was not permitted to use in the case of free persons ; and it was hoped, but vainly hoped, that they could wring from her lips some testimony to the impious and immoral practices which it was currently believed the Christians in their secret meetings were guilty of The binding master and slave together in such ties as I have described afforded the best security against the harshness and oppres- sion which so often spring out of that relation, and implanted the seeds of a feeling which only required to be developed in order to bring about the total abolition of slavery. Such an instance as this may teach us that in judging of the conduct of men of former days we must not apply the rules and measures which it might be reasonable to employ in our own case. Christ has said to us, " He that confesseth Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father which is in heaven. Whosoever denieth Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven, and before the holy angels." Nothing like that was said to Naaman, and this need not perplex us even if we could say nothing more in explanation than that this is one of a number of instances in which the requirements of Christ's kingdom are more strict than the demands made in former times from others to whom less light was given. 170 BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON viii Yet we can very well believe it to be possible that as time went on Naaman might have found strength for a confession of which at first he might not think himself capable. Perhaps every one enter- ing on a new sphere of life, or taking up a new posi- tion, might draw back in despair if, at the outset, a detailed list were given him of all that afterwards he might find it his duty to undertake. If present duty is clear it is generally not well to try to look too far forward and speculate whether obedience to that call may not lead to further demands afterwards, no strength to comply with which is felt. If it be so that obedience to one call of duty opens the eyes to further duties. He who gives that insight will also give grace and strength to follow along the path by which He leads. And so it may very well have been that as Naaman acted on his conviction that Jehovah was the only God, and that to Him alone worship ought to be rendered, the further duty of making that convic- tion known to others, which, when the idea first presented itself to him, seemed beyond his strength, may have grown on him into an imperative necessity. Our merciful Lord, who will not bruise the broken reed nor quench the smoking flax, refused to put on His disciples while young in the faith burdens which the Pharisees and which John imposed on their disciples. And it is in the same viii BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON 171 spirit that the prophet sends Naaman away with his case of conscience unsolved, dismissing him without either formally giving him the permission he asks for, or formally condemning his proposed line of conduct. His faith must grow, and his duty will afterwards become clear. I do not apprehend that any of you is likely to be persuaded by our study of the history which has been under our consideration into a belief of the lawfulness of a cowardly conceal- ment of our convictions, or of a refusal publicly to act on them. That, after all, is not the fault to which at the present day there is the strongest temptation. I suppose there never was a time at which there was more freedom of speech in both directions. On the one hand, the man who disbelieves not only in Christianity, but even in Theism, can publicly profess his unbelief, and try to make converts to it, not only without fear from the law of the land, but even without fear that he will not be able to retain a high degree of social consideration ; and on the other hand, the sincerest of Christians who takes the strictest view of his duties, if he boldly proclaims and honestly acts on his convictions, will only command the higher respect of those who do not share his faith. In commenting on our story, therefore, I have felt all along that I need give myself little trouble to 172 BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON viii prove that bowing in the house of Rimmon is not lawful to you ; my only difficulty was to make it conceivable how it could ever seem to have been tolerated in Naaman. One lesson we are safe in drawing from it, that of tolerance and charity in our judgment of others. We cannot do wrong in placing our own standard of duty high, but we may easily be rash in judging severely of those who permit themselves what we condemn. The error is one to which our tempta- tion is the greater the less our experience of life. There are no so severe judges as the young. When they have fixed in their minds their code of duty, they are stern in exacting conformity with it, slow in accepting any excuse for deviating from it. And so also with the uneducated. When they are strict in their acknowledgment of duty and their obedience to it, it is usually to some conven- tional code they give their allegiance, and those who follow a different rule are unsparingly con- demned. I should be sorry to speak in such a way as to lead you to think that the boundaries between virtue and vice were so uncertain that you could not venture to condemn wrongdoing lest haply the error might really be in your own standard of judgment. Yet instances, when a wider experience has convinced us of reasons for modify- ing our first rigour, are numerous enough to make via BOWING IN THE HOUSE OF RIMMON 173 US cautious to let a sense of our own fallibility temper our severity. In particular this may be said, and it has to be borne in mind, that two persons at the same point may be judged very differently according to the direction in which their face is set. One may have reached it in the progress of struggling upwards for more light ; the other fallen to it from shutting his eyes to the light before him. Naaman's bow in the house of Rimmon may be but the last remaining relic of an idolatry which he is in the process of forsaking altogether ; in the case of an Israelitish visitor to Syria it might be the first sinful compliance in the catalogue of those by which his allegiance to his father's God was given up. And this considera- tion may guard our charity in judging of others from depressing our own moral standard. It is possible that we could come to be where they are only by turning our back on the light to which they, in their way, are striving. Let us ever be careful, while we endeavour that our conscience shall be as rightly informed as we can, that our conduct do not fall below the standard of our conscience. May God's Holy Spirit so guide and rule our hearts that we may know what things we ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same. IX SHAME ' ' Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith ; who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews xii. 2. " Despising the shame." These are the words to which I more particularly invite your attention. That part of our blessed Lord's trial which con- sisted in the shame to which He was put, must have affected Christians more forcibly in the first ages of our religion than it does in ours. For the first sufferers for Christ had to brave a trial which was not endured by the stoutest of their succes- sors, from the shame of the confession. In the next age, when the Christian society had been fully formed, the confessors were supported by the public opinion of their own community. They might be brought before the tribunal or cast into prison or threatened with tortures or death ; but the thought most likely to occur to any of them IX SHAME 175 was not, how shameful is my position, but how glorious. I suppose if we asked ourselves what kind of death is the most honourable and glorious we could not make a better answer than the death of a martyr. We honour the brave soldier who dies on the field of battle fighting for his country : yet he has done no more than risk his life, and he might reasonably have hoped to escape ; but the martyr who, with full knowledge that persist- ence in his confession means inevitable death, abides to the end, enduring all that his persecu- tors can inflict on him, and that not in the hurry and excitement of a battlefield, but in cold de- liberate choice, often made when the bodily frame has been depressed by imprisonment and other suffering, surely performs a more difficult and therefore more honourable achievement. Accord- ingly the Christian martyrs were cheered by the almost worshipping admiration of their brethren at the time, and their names have held the most glorious place in the annals of the Church ever since. There was more shame then in drawing back from the confession of Christ than in remain- ing steadfast. Accordingly we read in one of the earliest authentic records of Christian martyrdoms that it was possible, by the aspects of the prisoners as they passed along, to discern the difference of their confessions. Those who had bravely wit- 176 SHAME IX nessed to the truth walked joyous and radiant, so festive in their guise that some of the bystanders could hardly persuade themselves that they had not been actually anointed with perfumes ; but those who had denied the faith, squalid and downcast, while the very heathen jeered at them for their cowardice. In the New Testament, on the contrary, as is natural in the writings of men who as not having been born in the Christian Church were able to enter into the feelings of those outside that body, the disgrace of their sufferings comes out very distinctly as part of the trial which the confessors must brace their minds to endure. I take for example St Paul's second Epistle to Timothy, and you will find that the thought is constantly recurring to him of the shame he is suffering for Christ's name, and which he has forced himself, though evidently not without some struggle, to disregard. " I suffer these things," he says (i. 1 2), " nevertheless I am not ashamed." He remembers gratefully of Onesiphorus that, so far from being ashamed of his chain, he had on his arrival at Rome sought him out the more diligently. He exhorts Timothy not to be ashamed of the testi- mony of our Lord nor of Paul himself his prisoner. And the reason of the shame is very plainly indicated in another incidental expression, IX SHAME 177 " I am suffering like a malefactor even unto bonds " ; that is to say, the punishment he was bearing was that usually inflicted on criminals, and therefore suggested to all who knew of it that he too must have deserved it for his crimes. It is a very strong proof that we have in this Epistle the words of Paul himself that he shows himself so sensitive to the disgrace of his position, for in the next generation persecution for Christ's sake had become common, and the sufferers were in no danger of being confounded with ordinary criminals. No thought could inspire more steadfastness in those called on to face this disgrace than the reflection suggested in the text that their Master had despised worse shame for their sake. No punishment inflicted on our worst criminals sounds in our ears so degrading as the punishment of the cross did in the ears of men of those days. It was the death inflicted on slaves, a class whom the freeborn scarcely regarded as their fellow- creatures. The humanity of the present day is far more revolted by unnecessary suffering in- flicted on one of the brute creation than the feel- ings of the men who then counted for most humane would be by any tortures inflicted on a slave. If others besides slaves were subjected to the punishment of crucifixion, it was because N 178 SHAME IX their crimes were thought to be so bad or their condition so low that no compunction need be felt at inflicting on them the death of a slave. In enduring the cross, then, our blessed Lord submitted to the lowest depth of earthly degrada- tion. And He had to drain the dregs of the cup of shame deeper than any of His followers ever since has done. To scarce any of them has it happened that the trial has been all shame. If a mob cried out against them as evil-doers who de- served their fate, they still might commonly notice some present in the throng who honoured their constancy, and whose sympathy and good opinion helped them to despise the blindness of those who in their ignorance scorned and reviled them. All the early Christian martyrs that we read of could catch sight of sympathising spectators stand- ing round the judgment seat. When Polycarp came before the tribunal he might hear the cry, " Play the man, Polycarp," ring out among the clamours of the heathen. But who was there among the crowd that stood round our Lord's cross who knew of the glorious work which His death was accomplishing? who that read the title over His head, The King of the Jews, could feel assurance to confront those who regarded it as the exposure to just derision of a vain and empty boast, and to dare to assert it as the sufferer's rightful descrip- IX SHAME 179 tion ? He looked for some to have pity on Him ; but there was no man, neither found He any to comfort Him. The shame of the cross remained for some time the stumbling-block, as the Apostle called it, in the way of those who were called to make profession of faith in the Messiahship of Jesus. How were they to own as their Saviour and deliverer him who had not been able to save himself? How proclaim him as king who had been put to open disgrace by the leading men of the nation whom he had claimed to rule ? But it might seem as if now the shame had quite passed away. It took less than 300 years from the time that the cross expressed the lowest ignominy the subjects of the Roman Emperor knew, until the Roman Emperor placed it in the standards of his army and hailed it as the sign of victory. We are under no temptation to be ashamed of the cross. We put that sign every- where in the place of honour, and naturally, since it is the emblem of the religion professed by the most civilised and most progressive peoples of the world. And yet is shame never the terror which keeps us from owning and acting on known ob- ligations ? In the Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan describes the experience of the Christian pilgrim to have been, that of all the enemies which had beset him the most shameless was Shame. No i8o SHAME IX Other had been so pertinacious in his assaults, so hard to baffle, so unwilling to submit to a repulse. Repeatedly has the right course been recognised, and shame has whispered of the ridicule, the censure, the disgrace that following it would entail, and the timid pilgrim has shrunk from acting on his convictions. This allegory needs some correction which places wholly in the ranks of the Christian's ad- versaries that which is so often his help and sup- porter. If weare sometimes ashamed to do what we know to be right, still more often does the shame we shall incur scare us from turning into paths of sin from which conscience alone would have been too weak to deter us. When we meet with examples of very gross vice, it is generally when the restraints of public opinion have been weakened or removed : as men have been too high or too low or too remote to be affected by it. And there is good reason for ordinarily acting on generally accepted rules of conduct. Living as we do in a Chris- tian country it would be a national disgrace if it were not good as a general rule to avoid every- thing that public opinion condemns as shame- ful. But yet there is no authority higher than that of our own conscience. We are cowards if any fear of disgrace from refusing tempts us to do that which our conscience condemns. If in many IX SHAME i8i things the tone of public morality is higher now than it was when the Gospel was first preached, higher even than among many of those who then accepted the Gospel, it is because there have been some who have ventured to question the results which other men have received as authoritative. Whether men own Jesus of Nazareth to be God or not, they cannot deny the greatness of His work as a moral reformer. The very form of His teaching implied a criticism of the traditional rules then accepted as authoritative : " It hath been said by them of old time . . . but I say unto you." He made a discriminating survey of the things which in His time were accounted as righteousness, and ranged them in their true proportions. Those who had been tithing mint, anise, and cummin, setting trivial and ceremonial obligations on a level with the weightier matters of the law, learned from Him the transcendent importance of those things which concerned judgment, justice, and the love of God. The secret of pleasing God was for them no longer a technical mystery dependent on arbitrary rules, but a science resting on intelligible great principles, and they were made to know that if they followed them out, they would find a sufficient reward in the praise of their Father who seeth in secret, though their good deeds might be unknown to men, or though their good might be evil spoken of. 1 82 SHAME IX Christians and unbelievers alike recognise that our Lord's hearers were right in revising under His direction their traditional code of morals, and though in forsaking it they lost the praise of men, contenting themselves with the approbation of God. We cannot make a higher rule of life than that which He has set us, yet it has often happened that in the practice of His disciples a lower standard than His has become so ordinary that those who have tried to raise it have incurred re- proach as over-righteous, as needlessly strict, as ostentatiously setting up to be better than their neighbours. I suppose the consciences of most of us will tell us of times when, though we felt no doubt as to our duty, we shrank from acting on our belief, because we thought we should put ourselves out of sympathy with those about us, and either expose ourselves to their ridicule or lose their good opinion or their liking. And yet we live in the society of those who are all professed disciples of the same blessed Master ; whose praise, there- fore, ought to follow the same rules as His, whose good opinion ought to be best earned by faithfully doing His will. And if we were really all Christians not only in name but in reality, the fear of shame which, as things are, does prevent us from doing many wrong things, or even thinking such conduct IX SHAME 183 possible for us, would never be a temptation to sin, but always a motive on the side of right. I think you hardly know how much good each of you in his small way can do if he strives never to be ashamed of the right course, and always to be ashamed of the wrong one. For you are thus building up that force of opinion which is one of the most powerful rulers of life. I recollect very well that in my young days, when duelling was common, many a man accepted a challenge, believing that in so doing he was committing a sin, and a sin in the very act of which he might be hurried into the presence of his Judge ; and yet he preferred to risk his life, and, as he believed, endanger his hopes of eternal salvation, rather than be branded among his associates as a coward. I could hardly give a more forcible example how strong is the power of public opinion ; and yet I might, without paradox, complain how weak it is. For public opinion is but a bully ; a tyrant to those who submit to it, a coward to those who defy it. It has terrors for the half-hearted offenders who quake under its rod, but let a man have courage to repudiate his obligations, instead of simply failing to discharge them, then if he find others to join him they are able by their counten- ance practically to repeal the law which had held 1 84 SHAME IX them in bondage. If a man fails to observe the law of Christ, the mischief is seldom limited to the single act ; by his example he tempts others to do the like ; then with the relaxation of practi- cal morality follows a corresponding degradation of public opinion. Men will not strongly condemn what they see habitually practised ; and at length there is a risk of falling into that lowest depth of corruption, when men not only do things which the law of God condemns, but avow that they do them and take pleasure in them that do them. On the other hand a knowledge of this weak- ness of public opinion may well give courage to a man tempted to be ashamed of doing what he knows to be right, or of doing what he has no cause to be ashamed of What happened in Paul's case has often happened since. Paul had courage to say, I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ ; I suffer as a malefactor, but I am not ashamed. And soon he found an ever-increasing number to acknowledge that he had no need to be ashamed. Nay, what was a paradox in Paul's mouth has become a truism in ours when we echo his words and say that we glory in the cross of Christ. Often does it happen that there is a widespread secret distrust of the soundness of certain popular judgments, distrust which for a time no one vent- ures to express, through fear of standing alone in IX SHAME 1 85 his opinions, but which when once it finds public utterance rapidly becomes the avowed faith of multitudes. An idol is worshipped, to profane which it is believed will entail fearful penalties. Doubts of its divinity come to be entertained, yet when the first bold man ventures to smite the head of the monster with his axe, the trembling crowd expect to see him fall dead suddenly, or that other vengeance will overtake him. But when they see no harm happen him, the meanest will trample on or burn what he had once adored. Thus it happens that they who have ventured to brave ridicule or censure in the cause of Christ, con- stantly find that penalties most terrible in antici- pation turn out little formidable in reality. And if he who has courage to confess his master before men, himself refuse to be ashamed of what he has done, the wonder or ridicule with which his con- duct is first greeted rapidly pass into respect. I feel almost ashamed to remind you of the considerations brought before us in the text ; they seem to offer motives so much stronger than the necessities of our case can require. " Consider," says the Apostle in the words that follow the text, " consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds." When we reflect what was the shame which He despised, what were the 1 86 SHAME IX sufferings He was content to endure, it seems absurd to mention, as bearing any remote compari- son, any contradiction to which we can be exposed. The words of the text were written in a time of severe persecution, under which many had denied the faith. Yet the Apostle seems to think any persecution short of the infliction of martyrdom as scarcely deserving of compassion. " For," he adds, " ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." Yet for us no less than for them that sacrifice was offered. For us Christ bore the bitter pangs, and hid not His face from shame and spitting. " He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities." And what do we for Him ? How little a thing turns us aside from following Him. Not the threat of imprison- ment or tortures or death, but the fear of a jest, a con- temptuous look, a silent expression of disapproval. I have said enough as to the duty of not being afraid of undeserved shame for doing what you know to be right ; but I must say a word in con- clusion as to the duty of bearing deserved shame. For often does the fear of deserved shame keep those who have gone wrong from retracing their steps. Either they persevere in their course, and in spite of their conscience strive to justify it, or in the attempt to hide their misconduct they add to their sin. And yet if they would but believe it. IX SHAME 187 how easy is the way by confession to forgiveness. God's forgiveness they need not doubt of obtaining, since He is ever ready to receive back repentant wanderers from His fold. And men's forgiveness is also not difficult to get when penitence is real. It is hard even for an offended person to keep re- sentment against one who owns that he has been in the wrong and strives to atone for his offence: so that by manly confession and willingness to accept the shame which is the deserved penalty of wrong-doing, the shame is quickly made to pass into honour. Take care then lest what keeps you back from confession may not be despair of find- ing love and forgiveness after confession, but the knowledge that confessing your sin without for- saking it would be a mockery, and that you cannot yet resolve to abandon it. If so, beware lest in shrinking from shame you fall into deeper shame. Does to lose the praise of men seem terrible to you ? What is it to lose the praise of Him whose praise only is worth having ? What will it be when those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall arise, to wake to shame and everlasting contempt ? What will it be, if in the day when the secrets of all hearts shall be made manifest, He whose name you have been ashamed to con- fess before men, and whose will you have despised and refused to obey, is ashamed of you ? X THE DENIAL OF PETER " When Jesus beheld him, He said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, a stone." ^JoHN i. 42. The text relates at full length what St. Mark and St. Luke had briefly indicated in the words " Simon He surnamed Peter," " Simon, whom He also named Peter." We learn thus that the name Peter, by which we habitually know the Apostle, was not his original name, but a title given him by his Master. And we learn further, that this title was not (as a reader of St. Mat- thew's Gospel might possibly imagine) given at a late period when the ardent disciple, outrunning the rest in his discernment of his Master's true character, had done something to merit a title of honour. We are told that it was conferred on his very first enrolment as a disciple. It ex- pressed then the view of his character taken by Him who could discern the hearts, who knew what was in man. This disciple was a Rock-man. THE DENIAL OF PETER What should we expect from such a title? Firmness, steadiness, stability. We should expect to hear of a calm resolute man on whom implicit reliance might be placed, who would be sure to stand unshaken, however others wavered. But I suppose this would be the last epithet that a student of the life of Peter would apply to him. We find him ardent, eager, impulsive, but easily dis- couraged. The relation which St. Matthew gives of Peter's walking on the sea affords a really typical representation of this Apostle's character. To see his Master, to long to be with Him, to scorn danger, to feel confident that in his Master's presence he must be safe ; all this is his first impulse. But when he actually feels the strength of the boisterous wind, and the tossing of the raging waves, his courage suddenly gives way. And all through his life we have these alternations of confidence and failure. Among the Apostles he was bold to make the first confession of belief in the Messiahship of Jesus, and so was rewarded with the promise that on this Rock Christ would build His Church. Yet immediately after words of commendation so strong that they have given rise in the Christian Church to the very loftiest ideas as to the extent of the privileges conveyed, Peter incurs an equally strong rebuke, and is addressed by his Master in the words " Get thee I90 THE DENIAL OF PETER X behind Me, Satan, for thou art an offence unto Me." A later history equally presents to us an alternation of confidence and cowardice. He tells his Lord : " Although all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended. Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee. Why cannot I follow Thee ? I will lay down my life for Thy sake." The hour of trial comes, and at first his faith is strong. There are but two swords in his little company, and a great multitude armed with swords and staves comes against them. Yet he hesitates not to draw his sword and strike in his Master's defence. But when his Lord disowns his resistance, and does not, as he had expected, supernaturally render it effective, his courage sinks at once. He sees Jesus led off by His enemies, to all appearance a helpless captive, and he follows in painful anxiety to see what the miserable end would be. Then all of a sudden he finds that he has brought himself into danger, and the lie springs to his lips by which he hopes to escape. And having once involved himself in denial, the pertinacity of those who recognised him forces him to plunge deeper and deeper down the path of shame. A still later history displays the same unsteadi- ness of character. The question which then X THE DENIAL OF PETER 191 agitated the Church was the throwing down the barriers that separated Jew and Gentile. Peter goes down to Antioch, the city where first Gentile converts, in any considerable numbers, had been added to the Church. He rejoices in the triumph of the faith, and his warm sympathetic nature expands in manifestations of friendship towards his new brethren. But there come down emis- saries from the parent Church at Jerusalem, men bigotedly attached to the law of their fathers, and Peter dreads to lose caste by letting himself be seen by them eating at the same table with the uncircumcised and unclean, whose society a strict Jew had always regarded as pollution. So he draws back in alarm, and resumes his Jewish exclusiveness. Thus the character of Peter is consistently painted all through the New Testament. There is much to love, much to admire, in his eager im- pulsiveness, his quick sympathies ; but surely, one would say, firmness and steadiness are not the qualities he displays : Rock is not the name by which we should think of describing him. How is it then that this was the title which He who could see the heart bestowed on him ? I believe that by this very title our blessed Lord showed that He really did possess the power of reading men's hearts. Superficial observers 192 THE DENIAL OF PETER x could detect the impulsive unsteadiness of Peter's character ; at one moment crying out, as we are told in a history related by St. John, " Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet," the next moment, " not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." We may be sure it would not have been difficult, on a short acquaintance with Peter, to discover in him inconsistencies of conduct. But our Lord discerned beneath the shifting sands of changing emotions the firm rock of an honest and true heart. We know that Peter's love to his Master was genuine, for, with respect to this, he did not fear to challenge the eye of the All -Seeing. " Lovest thou Me?" his Master asked, and he replied, " Lord, Thou knowest all things ; Thou knowest that I love Thee." Just as in the stormy seas a projecting rock may for a time be buried out of sight by the billows that wash over it, yet in a little while they sink, and the rock is seen unshaken ; so, though the waves of panic terror covered up for a time the rock of Peter's faith and love, yet, though hidden from sight, it was still there, and remained to serve as a foundation for the fabric of his subsequent apostolic labours. The very character which made Peter capable of strong affection, made him specially liable also to the assaults of temptations such as those under X THE DENIAL OF PETER 193 which he succumbed. That rash speech by which he incurred rebuke so soon after the promise that his confession should be made the foundation of the Church's faith, was prompted by his love for his Master. To be told that the leader on whom all his hopes were fixed was to go to Jerusalem, not to be recognised as king, but to suffer many things at the hands of the chief priests and scribes and elders, and be killed, was so inex- pressibly shocking to him that he absolutely refused to believe it, even on his Master's word, and cried : " Be it far from Thee, Lord ; this shall not happen to Thee." Little did he then under- stand that to reject the cross was to reject the salvation of the world. Little did he know that he was making himself an instrument in the tempter's hand, who tried to shake our Lord's human soul by setting before Him the shame and sorrow which lay on His path, and the cruel shock and disappointment which an event so contrary to their expectations would give to the hopes of His followers. And Peter's other temptations owed all their force to his strongly sympathetic nature. There are some to whom it costs nothing to be out of harmony with those who surround them. They will take the course which to them seems right, regardless of the disapprobation they may meet 194 THE DENIAL OF PETER X with. It costs them no pain to express a difference of opinion. They will blurt out their censures, and little care whose feelings they may wound. You might imagine that it would be a man of this stamp who would be chosen for the chief preacher of a new religion, one who could force its truths on unwilling ears, protesting against every form of wrong with the plain-spoken boldness of Elijah or John the Baptist. But such was not the instru- mentality which it was our Lord's will to adopt. Peter was, as I have said, of a peculiarly sympa- thetic character. He readily entered into the feelings of those around him, and could not set himself in opposition to them without pain. Thus when he goes down to Antioch, to the Church of Gentile believers which St. Paul had collected, he quickly recognises the love which they all bore to their common Lord, and gladly owns them as brethren. But when his Jewish brethren come to the same city it is equally repugnant to him to wound their feelings by setting at nought the traditionary restrictions which had served to keep the worshippers of the one true God from being debased by too intimate association with idolatrous heathen. And so likewise we may attribute his denial of our Lord not so much to sheer cowardice as to the facility with which he received impressions. Think X THE DENIAL OF PETER 195 how his heart must have sunk within him as he mixed in the crowd of the chief priests' attendants, and heard the language in which they spoke of the capture that had been made ; as he saw that it was the undoubting behef of all that an impostor had been exposed, and his powerlessness to deliver himself made manifest to everybody ; as he heard their expressions of contempt or pity for the miserable followers who had blindly put their trust in this leader, but had run away when the moment came for testing his pretensions. Even if the protest could have been made without personal risk, what resolute independence of spirit, what reliance on past convictions, it would have needed for the solitary disciple to tell the unfriendly circle, " You are all wrong. My Lord is all we ever believed Him to be ; the triumph of His enemies is only apparent ; and this moment, if He pleased to do so, He could deliver Himself from their hands." It is not only that Peter had not courage and presence of mind on the spur of the moment to say this, but it is likely that he hardly ventured to think it. The apparent failure of all his hopes may well have paralysed his faith ; but yet his love remained to add bitterness to the shame of his denial. Whatever Jesus was, Peter loved Him. He had promised an adherence not to be loosened by worldly adversity, " I will go with Thee to 196 THE DENIAL OF PETER x prison and to death," and when the moment of trial came he failed. No wonder that an agony of contrition and shame seized him when his Master's look in an instant revealed to him how little he had known his own heart, or judged of what base- ness it was capable. But Peter's love shone out in full strength when the miracle of the Resurrection rolled all the clouds of doubt away. The Gospel history tells of one appearance of our Lord to Peter separately, the details of which are not recorded. But St. John teUs of another appearance of our Lord to the disciples as they were fishing on the lake ot Tiberias, and he records the characteristic trait that as soon as the disciple whom Jesus loved had made Peter understand that the stranger on the shore was his Lord, he waited not for the ship to be brought to land, but dashed into the water to get near to Him. Once his faith had been confirmed his love kept him steadfast to brave the threats of power. When rebuked by the high priest in the name of the Jewish council his answer was, " We ought to obey God rather than man " ; and when beaten for his preaching of Christ he de- parted from the presence of the council rejoicing that he had been counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus. There is one service which I believe St. Peter's X THE DENIAL OF PETER 197 love of his Master has rendered to the Church, and which I think is not generally understood. I mean that I believe it to be Peter's loving memory which has preserved for us many of the words and deeds of our blessed Lord, If you read attentively the first three Gospels you cannot fail to notice that there are several narratives and discourses which are found in almost identical words in all three. Now, if three different companions of our Lord had independently related occurrences which they had all witnessed, they would no doubt tell the same story in substance, but there would be sure to be differences in their way of telling it, so that it is rational to believe that where the three evan- gelists agree in words as well as in substance, it is the narrative of one and the same witness that comes to us through the three channels. A very early Church tradition relates that St. Mark was an intimate companion of Peter, and that in Mark's Gospel we have recorded for the permanent instruc- tion of the Church the things that that Apostle used to tell about his Master's life. There are many minute touches in that Gospel which have convinced even sceptical critics that they must have come from an eye-witness. Renan, for instance, says, " Mark is full of minute observations, which, without any doubt, come from an eye- witness. Nothing forbids us to think that this 198 THE DENIAL OF PETER x eye-witness, who evidently had followed Jesus, who had loved Him, and looked on Him very close at hand, and who had preserved a lively image of Him, was the Apostle Peter himself" I think that even if no early tradition had preserved this account of the matter, thoughtful criticism would have led us to the same result. . Take the very commencement of the Gospel. The whole of the first chapter of Mark is occupied with a detailed account of one day of our Lord's ministry. It was the Sabbath which immediately followed the call of Simon and Andrew, John and James. We are told of our Lord's teaching in the synagogue, of the healing there of a demoniac, of the entry of the Saviour into Simon's house, the healing of his wife's mother, and then in the evening, when the close of the Sabbath permitted the moving of the sick, the crowd of people about the door seeking to be healed of their diseases. In whose recollections is it likely that that one day would stand out in such prominence ? Surely we may reasonably conjecture that the narrator must have been one of those four to whom the call to follow Jesus had made that day a turning point in their lives. The narrator could not have been John, whose authorship is claimed for a different Gospel, nor could it have been Andrew, who was not present at another scene described X THE DENIAL OF PETER 199 in this Gospel, and where the traces of an eye- witness are the strongest : I mean the narrative of all that followed the descent from the Mount of Transfiguration. There remain then only Peter, and James the son of Zebedee, and we can hardly doubt that it was the former who has recorded for us the words which he spoke at that scene of the Transfiguration, while heavy with sleep and scarce understanding what he meant by them. I believe that we should not now possess so much knowledge of the words and deeds of our blessed Lord if the Holy Spirit had not used as His instrument for the edification of His Church the loving memory of this Apostle, and thus that it was not only by those labours of Peter's of which we have direct knowledge, but also by a work which we seldom associate with his name that Peter's love has been a foundation of the Church's faith. But my object has been to speak rather of Peter's failures than of his successes. It is his real love for his Lord which makes his fall so full of practical warning for us. If I had chosen now to speak about the treachery of Judas Iscariot I should scarcely have been able to make you feel that you could ever be capable of sin like that. You might pronounce him to have been a mere hypocrite who had never really been a sincere THE DENIAL OF PETER disciple : who had merely followed Jesus for the sake of the dishonest gain he could make as treasurer to the little community ; and who lightly abandoned Him when it seemed that a greater gain could be made by deserting Him. Many have thought that this is not a true repre- sentation of the character of Judas ; concluding from the anguish of his remorse that his heart was open to loftier motives than the sordid love of gain. But, however that may be, if you believe yourself to be conscious of real love to our Lord such as you cannot think that Judas ever had, can you equally flatter yourself that your love to Him is warmer than Peter's, and that you are more exempt from danger of fall than he ? To himself how impossible it seemed that he could deny the Master whom with all his heart he loved, and yet how unlike was his actual conduct to what he had planned and resolved it should be. Does it never happen to you that by the gusts of sudden temptation firm resolves are unexpectedly blown away ? You lose your presence of mind, and almost before you know it the temptation has triumphed to which you had thought your- self incapable of yielding. Sometimes the insig- nificance of the trial to which you are exposed may constitute part of its danger. You might i THE DENIAL OF PETER think that you could stand firm if brought before the tribunal of a heathen persecutor and offered your life only on condition of your denying your faith. But that is not the task imposed on you. Nothing may be required of you but to give faithful utterance to the convictions of your heart, when you incur no danger by speech, but merely put yourself out of sympathy with those with whom you are associating. A scoff at your faith is uttered ; an impure story is told. You feel that some words of protest are demanded of you, and yet you are silent and let it appear as if you took pleasure in that from which you can find no word of dissent. Or your temper may be tried, and you speak unadvisedly with your lips as one ought not to speak who professes to follow Him, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again. To tell a lie you not only believe to be a sin, but also to be dishonourable and ungentlemanly ; and yet does it never happen to you to slip into untruth- fulness to avoid some trifling loss or escape some small inconvenience ? and though the untruthful- ness may be but petty, perhaps the temptation to which you yielded was quite as insignificant. And in this and many another case where you fail at the right moment to say the right word or do the right thing, the shame of owning your fault may lead you like Peter to try to cover sin THE DENIAL OF PETER by the addition of other sin. How often after we have ourselves perceived that we have been in the wrong does unwillingness to acknowledge this keep us silent ; and often induce us to be consistent in going on in a wrong course rather than incur the humiliation of retracing our steps ! I might speak of many other forms of temptation through which men slide into actions of which they had thought themselves incapable : how, for example, men who really desire to be generous will find themselves doing things which they cannot deny were selfish, not to say mean or shabby. We manage to keep on good terms with ourselves because we judge ourselves not by our actions but by the good feelings of which we are conscious, and the good principles which we attri- bute to ourselves. In judging others we do well charitably to remember that the man may be better than his conduct. One would have greatly erred who had supposed that Peter did not love his Lord be- cause he denied Him. But when we judge our- selves we must bear in mind that the good feelings and good principles which are not strong enough to keep us from sin are apt to wear away under the corroding influence of the deceit- fulness of sin. If these feelings are real they X THE DENIAL OF PETER 203 will exhibit their existence by the force of recoil which they produce. An elastic spring will yield to sudden pressure, but if it be not broken it starts back again : it contains a power of reaction. In the Peter of the Acts of the Apostles we find no disposition to be ashamed of his Master, no disinclination to brave suffering for His sake. And what awoke Peter's slumbering con- science ? The look of Jesus. Jesus turned and looked upon Peter. Who can venture to put into words all that that look conveyed to the mind of the Apostle ? Your thoughts would outrun me if I attempted the description. Could we but see that look directed on ourselves, how would it shame our cowardice and rebuke the coldness of our love ! And why do we see it not ? It is because in the deadness of our faith we turn our eyes away from Him. The Apostle directs us to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus. If we strove to keep ever before us the thoughts of what He has done for us, and of what He has asked us to do for Him, even to follow in His steps and to imitate His holy example, there would be ever present in our hearts a force which, even though at times overmastered by sudden temptation, would be strong for reaction and restoration. 204 THE DENIAL OF PETER x God grant, brethren, that the fatal words, " too late," be not stamped on your repentance. Sorrow for sin is sure to come : for sin must always be followed by sorrow. But may yours be that godly sorrow which leadeth to repentance. May yours be the sorrow of Peter whose bitter weeping was the beginning of a happier life who sowed in tears what he should reap in joy not the sorrow of Esau who, when he came too late to value what he had despised before, found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with tears. XI CHARITY AND LOVE^ " And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the greatest of these is charity." i Corinthians xiii. 13. In the Revised Version it is: " But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; and the greatest of these is love." One of the features which distinguishes the new version from the old is that a different rule is followed with regard to the translation of the same Greek by the same English word. This is not a thing that is always possible to be done consist- ently with faithful translation ; for it constantly happens that corresponding words in different languages do not so completely correspond, but that the meaning of one somewhat overlaps that of the other, so that often two words in one language must be used to express all that is meant by one word in the other. But King James's translators of set purpose disregarded any attempt to preserve uniformity of rendering in this respect, and without any neces- ^ Preached on Quinquagesima, 1882. 2o6 CHARITY AND LOVE xi sity, but from mere love of variety, translate the same Greek word differently even when it recurs within a verse or two. In their Preface they defend this method of theirs, and altogether repu- diate the notion that they were to be tied up if they had translated a word " journeying " in one place not to render it " travelling " in another ; if one where " think " never to translate " suppose " ; if one where "pain" never "ache"; if one where "joy" never "gladness." "Thus to mince the matter," they say, "we thought to savour more of curiosity than of wisdom, and that rather it would breed scorn in the atheist than bring profit to the godly reader. For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables ? Why should we be in bondage to them if we may be free ? use one precisely when we may use another no less fit as commodiously ?" And they give other reasons which I need not delay to quote. There is no doubt that King James's trans- lators, than whom no men understood the genius of the English language better, made their version much more agreeable to the ear by the variety with which they enriched their language ; for the simple taste of earlier times had taken no offence against the constant repetition of the same word in a narrative, which English writers have generally thought it an elegance to avoid. But there is a XI CHARITY AND LOVE 207 grave inconvenience from the course followed by King James's translators, namely, that it has made the English Bible inadequate for a very profitable way of studying the Bible. One of the best com- mentaries on Scripture is Scripture itself. To compare one passage with another is often the best way of throwing light on the meaning of both. Now the similarity of two passages is often disguised when the same Greek word is made to wear different English dresses in the two places ; and on the other hand the English reader is some- times put on a false scent when he thinks he has found the same word used in two different texts, when in truth the Greek words are different. For these and other reasons, the late Committee of Re- vision decided that they would aim at rendering as far as they could the same Greek word by the same English. And this gave rise to one of the first complaints that was made against their work. When their version was compared with the old one, it was found that in many a familiar text a word had been changed for another of very nearly the same sense ; whereupon an outcry was made against such needless tampering with the venerable translation to which we have been all accustomed. " We can understand that King James's trans- lators should be corrected if they had made a mistake, but why alter their work gratuitously when 2o8 CHARITY AND LOVE xi the sense is not in the least improved ?" You may take for granted, as a general rule, that when you find the new version differing from the old by a verbal change which does not affect the sense, the reason of it has been in order to preserve uniformity of rendering the same word in different places. I have no doubt it was not without some pangs of regret, and possibly not without some differ- ences of opinion among themselves, that the late revisers found that the application of their rule obliged them to cast out of their New Testament the familiar name of one of the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, a name conse- crated by Church use, as for example in the Collect for this day, which, though one of the latest of our Collects, being only a composition of the Caroline revisers of the Prayer-Book, well bears comparison with the most beautiful of the prayers that have descended to us from the ancient Church. Yet if the rule of uniformity of rendering is to be followed, the case is one that admits of no doubt. The noun aydirTj and the verb ayairda) are of constant occurrence in the New Testament. In the rendering of the verb our translators appear to have found that they had no choice, and uni- formly translate " to love." " Love " is also their ordinary rendering for the noun, but in some ten or XI CHARITY AND LOVE 209 twenty places beside the chapter of the text they introduce the word " charity," without any apparent reason for the preference in these passages, but merely because one of two words which they regarded as synonymous being, according to their principles, equally at their disposal, they took one or other as the suggestion of the moment prompted. In introducing the word charity into this chap- ter, King James's translators adopted an innova- tion on the current practice of English printed Bibles : Tyndale's, the first of them, had " love " ; so had Cranmer's ; so had the Bishop's Bible and the Geneva Bible. It was the Rhemish or Roman Catholic New Testament that introduced the word into English printed Bibles, deriving it naturally from Jerome's Latin Bible, whence that transla- tion was made. In the adoption of the word by King James's translators they may have been influenced by the opinion of Lord Bacon ex- pressed a few years before. He says, " I did ever allow the discretion and tenderness of the Rhemish translation in this point, that finding in the original the word dyaTrr) and never e/jw?, do ever translate charity and never love, because of the indifference and equivocation of the word with impure love." In the words I have quoted. Bacon's " never " is too strong a description of the practice of the Rhemish translators. They sometimes translate p CHARITY AND LOVE love, but more usually " charity," and that in many passages where the word does not occur in the Authorised Version. Even the saying " God is love " becomes " God is charity." The reason given by Lord Bacon was doubtless that which influenced St. Jerome in his appropriation of the word " caritas " to Christian use. In the Latin language " amor " had to do duty as an equiva- lent both for w^amr) and ep