2 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 also by the Spirit of Christ — the key of know- 
 ledge nevertheless is not in every man's hand, 
 but that multitudes still fumble at the lock 
 with the wrong key. The Word himself, 
 the Founder and the Keeper of the Church, 
 when he taught as Jesus the Son of man, was 
 not silent respecting the lasting obstructions 
 to the progress of his gospel. " Strait is the 
 gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto 
 life, and few there be that find it " ; and that, 
 although he can say again, *' I am the way, 
 the truth, and the life " ; ** I am the door." 
 So it happens that the bulk of every gene- 
 ration, even till the last, will either bury the 
 key themselves, or have it hidden from them 
 by their professed and accepted instructors ; 
 and that as a consequence, not to be evaded, 
 every generation, even till the last, would 
 again reject Jesus if God should again assume 
 man's image. There had been anointed 
 messengers of Christ before himself The 
 Jewish church ought to have been the church 
 of Christ waiting for Christ's appearing ; 
 nevertheless, when the promise of these 
 
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 3 
 
 anointed messengers was fulfilled, that church 
 welcomed not Jesus, but denied her Messiah. 
 Who will aver that the like could not happen 
 again, even when in room of a promise the 
 church has now the reality, the presence of 
 Christ assured by the sacraments ? 
 
 I should be willing, perhaps always, to 
 admit the moral truth of what Jesus might 
 say, the leaven of the Word having wrought 
 thus far in my reason as to compel the avowal, 
 ** Never man spake as this man " ; but there 
 are times, I know, hours, and days, and whole 
 weeks, when I should feel irritation, or ran- 
 cour, or resentment, as often as Jesus brushed 
 aside my self-complacency, and revealed to 
 me the Pharisaic conventions and prejudices 
 accumulated in my heart, its lawyer-like re- 
 liance upon rites and ceremonies, its repose in 
 the intellectual grasp of dogmas, its confidence 
 in the knowledge that is ignorance, in as much 
 as it is not knowledge of God, and conse- 
 quently, is not knowledge of self 
 
 I may well ask myself, if with all my 
 advantages, with the life of the Son of man 
 
r 
 
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
THE 
 
 KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Sermons preached in Abbey to 
 Westminster Boys 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM G. RUTHERFORD 
 
 M 
 HEADMASTER OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YOBK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 I 901 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

Tni 
 
 lOA' AnOTOAMH^AI 
 
 xnoeEMENni 
 
 357866 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SERMON I 
 
 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 Election 1900 
 
 Woe unto you, lawyers ! for ye have taken away the key of 
 knowledge : ye entered not in yourselves, and them 
 that were entering in ye hindered. — Luke xi 52. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SERMON 11 
 
 THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 
 
 $th Sunday in Lent 1888 
 
 The heart knoweth his own bitterness ; and a stranger doth 
 
 not intermeddle with his joy. — Proverbs xiv 10 . .15 
 
 SERMON III 
 
 PURPOSEFULNESS 
 
 Election 1890 
 
 Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way ? thou 
 also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of 
 Assyria. — Jeremiah ii 36 . . . . . • 30 
 
 SERMON IV 
 
 SINCERITY 
 
 Election 1892 
 
 Speaking the truth in love. — Ephesians iv 15 . , , 40 
 
viii Contents 
 
 SERMON V 
 
 MAGNANIMITY 
 Election 1893 
 But I say u.ito you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse 
 you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them 
 that despitefully use you and persecute you ; that ye may 
 be the children of your Father, which is in heaven ; for 
 he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, 
 and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. — 
 Matthew v 44 51 
 
 SERMON VI 
 
 THE VALUE OF IDEALISM IN COMMON LIFE 
 Election 1896 
 The voice of him that crieth, In the w^ilderness prepare ye the 
 way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway 
 for our God. — Isaiah xl 3 63 
 
 SERMON VII 
 
 REALITY 
 
 Election 1899 
 
 It is lawful to do well. — Matthew xii 12 . . . .75 
 
 SERMON VIII 
 
 THE SCHOOLING OF THE WILL 
 St. Matthew's Day 1896 
 Barnabas exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they 
 
 would cleave unto the Lord. —Acts xi 23 . . .88 
 
 SERMON IX 
 
 PROPHECY 
 
 St. John Baptist's Day 1898 
 
 Thou shall be called the prophet of the Highest,— Luke i 76, 96 
 
Contents ix 
 
 SERMON X 
 
 WASTEFULNESS 
 
 St. Andrew's Day 1898 
 
 Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost. — 
 
 John vi 12 .108 
 
 SERMON XI 
 
 SPIRITUAL AGGRESSION AND SPIRITUAL DEFENCE 
 St. John Baptist's Day 1899 
 
 He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city .... 
 
 without walls. — Proverbs xxv 28. 
 When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are 
 
 in peace. — Luke xi 21 117 
 
 SERMON XII 
 
 EXPECTATIONS 
 
 St. Peter's Day 1899 
 
 The Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of 
 the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the 
 people of the Jews. — Acts xii 11 126 
 
 SERMON XIII 
 
 IMPEDIMENTS TO PROGRESS 
 Michaelmas 1899 
 It must needs be that offences come : but woe to that man by 
 
 whom the offence cometh. — Matthew xviii 7 . .134 
 
 SERMON XIV 
 
 VIGILANCE 
 
 St. Luke's Day 1899 
 
 Watch thou in all things.— 2 Timothy iv 5 . . . .142 
 
X Contents 
 
 SERMON XV 
 
 THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 AND THE COMMON LIFE 
 
 SS, Simon and Jude 1899 
 
 These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have 
 
 peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation : but be of 
 
 good cheer; I have overcome the world. — ^John xvi 33 . 151 
 
 SERMON XVI 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF SPEECH 
 All Saints 1899 
 Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A 
 good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth 
 forth good things : and an evil man out of the evil treasure 
 bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every 
 idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account 
 thereof in the day of judgment.— Matthew xii 34 ff . 160 
 
 SERMON XVII 
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF WAR 
 St. Andrew's Day 1899 
 Blessed are the peacemakers. — Matthew v 9. 
 What king, going to war against another king, sitteth not 
 down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten 
 thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty 
 thousand?— Luke xiv 31 171 
 
 SERMON XVIII 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 Conversion of St. Paul 1900 
 Ye are the light of the world.— Matthew v 14. 
 If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light : 
 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of 
 darkness. —Matthew vi 22 182 
 
Contents xi 
 
 SERMON XIX 
 
 STRENGTH OF SPIRIT 
 
 Purification of the Virgin Mary IQCXJ 
 
 Strong in spirit.— Luke ii 40 191 
 
 SERMON XX 
 
 THINGS INDIFFERENT 
 St. Matthias' Day 1900 
 
 Why dost thou judge thy brother ? for we shall all 
 
 stand before the judgment seat of Christ. — Rom. xiv 10 . 200 
 
 SERMON XXI 
 
 IDEALS 
 
 Ascension Day 1 900 
 
 A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. — Matthew v 14 . 209 
 
 SERMON XXII 
 
 ENTHUSIASM 
 
 St. Peter's Day 1900 
 
 Fervent in spirit. — Romans xii 11 218 
 
 SERMON XXIII 
 
 THE EDIFYING OF LIFE 
 Michaelmas 1900 
 My son is yet young and tender, and the work is great. For 
 the palace is not for man but for the Lord God. — 
 I Chron. xxix 1 226 
 
 SERMON XXIV 
 
 THE TWO KINGDOMS 
 
 St. Luke's Day 1900 
 
 I send you forth as lambs among wolves. — LUKE x 3 . . 236 
 
xii Contents 
 
 SERMON XXV . 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE 
 
 All Saints 1 900 
 
 When ye shall have done all those things that are commanded 
 you, say, We are unprofitable servants : we have done that 
 which was our duty to do. — Luke xvii 10 . . . 247 
 
 SERMON XXVI 
 
 THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL 
 
 -5"/. Andrew's Day 190D 
 
 The Lord satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry 
 
 soul with goodness. — Psalm cvii 9 . . , . 256- 
 
 SERMON XXVII 
 
 THE SLAVE, THE HIRELING, AND THE SON 
 
 T%e Annunciation of the Virgin Mary 1901 
 
 I am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one 
 
 of thy hired servants. — Luke xv 19 .... 264. 
 
 <k 
 
SERMON I 
 
 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Woe unto you^ lawyers ! for ye have taken away the key of 
 knowledge : ye entered not in yourselves^ and them that 
 were entering in ye hindered. — Luke xi 52. 
 
 There are minds which love to play with 
 the question, What would take place if Jesus 
 Christ were to appear again now, not as he 
 shall appear in the day of the Lord in majesty 
 and with power, but as he once appeared 
 among men, bruised and wounded, stricken 
 and afflicted in his fellows' cause ? As their 
 fancy runs up and down, to and fro, upon the 
 preposterous theme, such persons seem ever 
 to be surprised by their own originality in 
 discovering anew the old certainty that in 
 the world, wherein the leaven of the Word 
 has been at work for the better part of two 
 millenia, and even in the visible church her- 
 self, although possessed for all but the same 
 space of sacramental truth, and possessed 
 
 ff 
 

 f r •' * " 
 
 2 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 also by the Spirit of Christ — the key of know- 
 ledge nevertheless is not in every man's hand, 
 but that multitudes still fumble at the lock 
 with the wrong key. The Word himself, 
 the Founder and the Keeper of the Church, 
 when he taught as Jesus the Son of man, was 
 not silent respecting the lasting obstructions 
 to the progress of his gospel. " Strait is the 
 gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto 
 life, and few there be that find it " ; and that, 
 although he can say again, " I am the way, 
 the truth, and the life " ; ''I am the door." 
 So it happens that the bulk of every gene- 
 ration, even till the last, will either bury the 
 key themselves, or have it hidden from them 
 by their professed and accepted instructors ; 
 and that as a consequence, not to be evaded, 
 every generation, even till the last, would 
 again reject Jesus if God should again assume 
 man's image. There had been anointed 
 messengers of Christ before himself. The 
 Jewish church ought to have been the church 
 of Christ waiting for Christ's appearing ; 
 nevertheless, when the promise of these 
 
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 3 
 
 anointed messengers was fulfilled, that church 
 welcomed not Jesus, but denied her Messiah. 
 Who will aver that the like could not happen 
 again, even when in room of a promise the 
 church has now the reality, the presence of 
 Christ assured by the sacraments ? 
 
 I should be willing, perhaps always, to 
 admit the moral truth of what Jesus might 
 say, the leaven of the Word having wrought 
 thus far in my reason as to compel the avowal, 
 ** Never man spake as this man " ; but there 
 are times, I know, hours, and days, and whole 
 weeks, when I should feel irritation, or ran- 
 cour, or resentment, as often as Jesus brushed 
 aside my self-complacency, and revealed to 
 me the Pharisaic conventions and prejudices 
 accumulated in my heart, its lawyer-like re- 
 liance upon rites and ceremonies, its repose in 
 the intellectual grasp of dogmas, its confidence 
 in the knowledge that is ignorance, in as much 
 as it is not knowledge of God, and conse- 
 quently, is not knowledge of self 
 
 I may well ask myself, if with all my 
 advantages, with the life of the Son of man 
 
4 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 to serve as exemplar, with the cleansing 
 baptism of fire whereby I should partake in 
 his sufferings and rise with him from death, 
 with the other sacrament by which I can keep 
 and knit the spiritual union thus begun — I 
 may well ask if I am better than the lawyers. 
 They were satisfied that they had knowledge, 
 and their countrymen were not concerned to 
 doubt them. Teachers and taught were both 
 content with the law — a Pharisee become 
 Christian afifirms it, — and prided themselves 
 in God, and understood his will, and knew 
 that they, and they alone, possessed the truth. 
 If I, to whom a larger measure of truth is 
 accessible, am never tempted by self-satisfac- 
 tion of the same order as was theirs, if I 
 never think that the truth is so securely mine 
 that in its defence I must defy the authority 
 of the church herself; if I never make sure 
 that I understand God's will more intimately 
 than other men ; if my cry is never any other 
 than *' Christ be merciful to me a sinner"; 
 then perhaps I may not be of those to whom 
 Jesus says " Ye are of your father the devil, 
 
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 5 
 
 and the lusts of your father ye will do": "Ye 
 compass sea and land to make one proselyte, 
 and when he Is made, ye make him two-fold 
 more the child of hell than yourselves": '*Ye 
 neither know me nor my Father": **Ye have 
 taken away the key of knowledge ; ye enter 
 not in yourselves, and them that are entering 
 in ye hinder." 
 
 To the door of the kingdom of heaven 
 there is a key which Jesus Christ names 
 Knowledge. This key men may themselves 
 refuse to take, and they may even hide it 
 away so that others cannot get it. What is 
 this key which men may hide, this knowledge 
 which they may despise ? 
 
 Knowledge has so many denotations that 
 if allowed to jostle one another they produce 
 disorder and confusion. There are several 
 keys so named, and each fits a different lock 
 and opens a different door. 
 
 By knowledge is sometimes meant nothing 
 more than the product of the commonest 
 processes of memory, such as are within the 
 capacity of quite embryonic intelligence. 
 
6 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Everybody other than a natural can acquire 
 this order of knowledge, and make himself 
 master of this key. He can be taught to read 
 and to write better or worse ; and with the 
 key thus put into his hand he may unlock two 
 doors, at his choice, the one opening upon the 
 way of sober secular enjoyment and of secular 
 profit for himself and his fellows ; the other, 
 upon the wide descending road of selfishness 
 and the misuse of life. Everything depends 
 upon the manner in which he uses the petty 
 vulgar knowledge, which the community, 
 wisely or ignorantly, now compels him to 
 acquire. In itself this knowledge has no 
 value. It is moreover just as likely to be 
 misused as used. A man may corrupt his 
 own nature with It, may undermine his will, 
 may sap his own and his neighbour s health, 
 just as readily as he may learn thereby to 
 reinforce his sense of duty, to multiply his 
 worth as a man, to enhance his value as a 
 member of the state. Whatever his social 
 position, the demon steam manipulating the 
 printing-press at the bidding of lust of gain 
 
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE / 
 
 provides him with unexhausted resources, on 
 the one hand for impoverishing his brain, 
 corrupting his volitions, sterilising his spiritual 
 and moral nature ; on the other, for self- 
 instruction, self-education, the chase of truth 
 and light. 
 
 Inadvertently I have gone here almost 
 further than I meant, nearly confounding, not 
 two orders of knowledge, but the same know- 
 ledge with itself carried to a higher plane. 
 For this knowledge as it travels forward, or, 
 in the jargon of the day, as it results from 
 secondary in lieu of primary education, assumes 
 manifold forms. The memory may be trained 
 to many degrees of tenacity and vigour. 
 Above all, she may be put into her proper 
 place as the handmaid of reason and will. A 
 man's mind may amass an astounding treasure 
 in knowledge of facts and opinions and 
 theories, moving freely among them, com- 
 petent perhaps even to express them in several 
 languages. It may make itself familiar with 
 the elements of thought or the elements of 
 things, and may be able to mimic even nature 
 
8 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 herself in putting them together. It may 
 guide the hand to a startHng dexterity in 
 workmanship, in painting, in sculpture, in 
 architecture. There is scarcely a limit to the 
 powers of memory, if she be directed by reason 
 and compelled by will to labour. 
 
 Like the same knowledge in its lower 
 degree, this also is a key unlocking doors. 
 It opens to its possessor high forms of enjoy- 
 ment and usefulness ; and if he so desire, he 
 may unlock therewith the treasure-house of 
 the world, to take out therefrom success and 
 riches and station. Nevertheless, this is not 
 the knowledge which Jesus Christ calls the 
 key. 
 
 Before all the world had been shown how 
 to read and to write, many a man who could 
 do neither, yet possessed a knowledge which 
 is certainly not more common now than it 
 was then. I call to mind patient craftsmen^ 
 plowmen, shepherds, and servants : quite 
 illiterate they would now be called : whose 
 aim and pride was to do the day's work skil- 
 fully and faithfully, who thought rather of 
 
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 9 
 
 their work than of their wage, forgetting 
 self in duty, recognising the dignity of toil, 
 ashamed to scamp what they undertook to 
 do, self-dissatisfied if what they gave was by 
 a nail's-breadth short of their best. Such 
 knowledge is an attitude to life, an affair of 
 conduct, a product of character. It issues 
 sometimes from a long tradition of life spent 
 for generations under natural conditions. It 
 approaches the knowledge of the fowls of the 
 air or of the lilies of the field, which live and 
 thrive just as God has willed. 'Tis a light 
 which may be dimmed or quenched in humble 
 natures by the crude glare of the self-assertive 
 knowledge communicated by the will of 
 parliaments. 
 
 On the higher plane too, if indeed it be 
 not wrong to distinguish by such a name 
 degrees in this order of knowledge — in the 
 case, I mean, of the artist, the explorer of 
 secrets in nature, in morals, or in thought, the 
 theologian, the lawyer, the scholar — is there 
 not a knowledge which receives justly the 
 name of key ? An attitude to work, a temper 
 
10 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 attuned to the Creator's mind ? One example 
 must serve. An artist, if he be a master in 
 his craft, adds to the control of the mechanical 
 resources of his art a knowledge of a wholly 
 different order. He has not the key of 
 knowledge, nor shall he receive it, until he can 
 efface self; that is, the love of fame, the love 
 of money, everything accidental and unreal, 
 and can so sweep and garnish his spirit that 
 the ideal and the divine may enter in and dwell 
 there. What makes this house great with a 
 greatness that takes and holds possession ? 
 Its stones are common stones dug from 
 quarries which have furnished stones as good, 
 but never before or since for such an edifice. 
 Wherein lies the difference between one build- 
 ing and another ? The minds from which 
 this house sprang and grew had gathered 
 their cunning painfully in the common way of 
 men, but in no common way they had learned 
 also to extinguish self, till they were able to 
 catch dimly some little part of the creation's 
 secret. If there be none who now builds so 
 masterfully, it is because none has discovered 
 
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE II 
 
 in the same degree the creative force of self- 
 extinction, of purity of motive, of obedience 
 to truth, of at-one-ment with God in things 
 unspiritual, the key of knowledge which un- 
 locks the mysteries of nature. 
 
 I have called this knowledge divine, and 
 so it is ; a key to nature and truth, and so it 
 is. Nevertheless it is not the key to the 
 kingdom of heaven ; it is not the knowledge 
 which Christ means. It is analogous thereto, 
 no doubt, but it is not the same. The one 
 key and the other alike open mysteries, but 
 the mysteries are different in kind. Before 
 him who carries the one key the door of nature 
 turns and reveals some at least of the secret 
 counsels of God ; but ere long it shuts again, 
 when the eye is obscured and the natural 
 force perishes. He shall not read all the 
 counsel of God, unless he has the other key 
 also, the key of life. 
 
 The key of life, like the key of nature, is 
 a self-extinction, a self-denial ; but whereas 
 the one is an at-one-ment with God in things 
 natural and transient, the other is an at-one- 
 
13 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 ment with God In things spiritual and per- 
 manent. He who has the key of the spiritual 
 world has but to wait for longer or for shorter, 
 and the other key shall be his as well. 
 
 When I have understood this, I should 
 understand why Jesus never commended or 
 taught the self-denial, the self-discontent, that 
 is confined to things unsplritual, and why the 
 one Ideal which he ever held up to his fellow- 
 men was the self-denial, the self-discontent- 
 ment, which is the sole source of spiritual 
 knowledge. I should discern further why 
 among the aids to disclpleship promised by 
 Jesus and conferred by the risen and ascended 
 Christ there are none which avail for other 
 than spiritual progress. Nor Word, nor 
 Sacraments, nor Holy Spirit can abet you 
 or me to explore aught but spiritual mys- 
 teries. The only key df knowledge which 
 Christ offers to men Is that which unlocks 
 himself. 
 
 Therefore, though the Jews at the time 
 of our Lord had long been sterile alike 
 intellectually and morally ; though they begot 
 
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE I3 
 
 no literature, no art, no science, no philo- 
 sophy, it was not on that account that Jesus 
 pronounced this woe upon the leaders of the 
 nation. Rather it was because they had 
 buried the key of spiritual illumination ; 
 because the Light of light could not shine 
 through them undistorted or shine at all ; 
 because the God whom they worshipped was 
 made by themselves in man's image ; because 
 the tradition of the elders over-rode the law 
 of God ; because they set store by the letter 
 and ignored the spirit ; because the Messiah 
 of the prophets was wrested into a temporal 
 deliverer ; because they had eyes but saw 
 not, ears but heard not; because they had 
 no room in their souls for anything but 
 themselves ; because they had no call to hear 
 Moses and the prophets, and would not give 
 ear, even if one rose from the dead ; because 
 they had attained and were content. 
 
 This temper, Jesus implies, is the hiding 
 away of the key of knowledge. Self-content- 
 ment is atheism, and irreligion, and spiritual 
 death. Its contrary in the spiritual field, the 
 
14 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 key of knowledge, must therefore be restless 
 dissatisfaction wuth oneself, a continuous 
 movement towards something never attained, 
 yet plainly described and enunciated by the 
 Word himself, and recognisable by all the 
 self-dissatisfied as indeed the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
SERMON II 
 
 THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 
 
 The heart knoweth his own bitterness j and a stranger dotk 
 not intermeddle with his joy. — Proverbs xiv lo. 
 
 The friends a man loves best and trusts most 
 may never have lived except in art or in 
 literature. Compared with such friends he 
 may often think that the live men and women 
 whom he sees and hears, with whom he 
 speaks, are unsubstantial. Sometimes if he 
 visit spots where are said to have passed their 
 days some of these friends whose bodily shape 
 none ever saw, the solid ground itself, the 
 visible fields and woods, the homesteads and 
 the dwellers in them, appear to be less present 
 and actual than the ideal persons who for him 
 at least haunt the scene. 
 
 The reason for this odd contradiction and 
 flat defiance of the senses is that he finds the 
 ideal and counterfeit persons more easy to 
 
l6 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 comprehend than men and women whose 
 souls are hid by flesh and blood. He can 
 dress them in any features and frame he likes 
 and yet leave their minds and hearts bare. 
 He need not be angry or vexed with them, 
 for they never cross his projects ; they never 
 smile at his infirmities of will or of temper, 
 or offend his self-love. His intercourse with 
 them is tranquil and happy, undisturbed 
 by those misunderstandings and perversions 
 whereby men are apt to misread each other 
 as faces are distorted in a faulty glass. 
 
 Ideal persons may be judged equitably 
 and weighed impartially, a thing impossible 
 when the judge and the judged are living 
 men. My most familiar friend cannot make 
 sure of all my motives and impulses. He 
 and I look at many things from very differ- 
 ent points. What I think one day I may 
 well deny the next, and the inconsistency, 
 inevitable to me, may to him be wholly un- 
 intelligible. No two men can be at one in 
 sentiment or in experience or in judgment. 
 Self-will and self-interest, unsuspected even 
 
THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 1/ 
 
 by myself, may for a time extinguish my 
 candour, and may cause me to misinterpret 
 another's conduct. The devil is subtle enough 
 to dupe the closest of friends and to tear them 
 asunder. 
 
 When two hearts come near beating, as 
 the saying is, in unison, the near is at best 
 uncommonly far off, and the unison is a mis- 
 nomer. When I say of my bosom friend 
 " I have known him long," or " We know 
 each other intimately," I exaggerate, using a 
 common phrase which has acquired a purely 
 conventional meaning. I know next to 
 nothing of him, though I may guess and infer 
 a great deal. In a blind, groping fashion I 
 value him for what I think his character is ; 
 but he Is In truth a closed book. I neither 
 have nor can have any precise, veracious 
 knowledge of his motives, nor can I explore 
 the springs of his conduct. My beliefs con- 
 cerning him are nothing better than a generali- 
 sation based upon such of his actions as may 
 be known to me. There Is a greater or a less 
 balance this way or that, but nothing more. 
 
l8 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 In the field neither of feeling nor of thought 
 do even the best of friends ever meet. Every 
 man knows that his own heart is a sanctuary 
 which others cannot enter, a holy ground 
 which others may not tread even with naked 
 feet. ''The heart knoweth his own bitterness; 
 and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his 
 joy." 
 
 When a man's heart is glad and of good 
 comfort, can any measure its emotion but 
 the man himself? He would be alone, if he 
 could ; and if he must go in and out, his joy 
 is too sacred to be divulged to his acquaint- 
 ance, or even to his friends. It is rather 
 when there is fighting within and alarms 
 without that his face, with an hypocrisy that 
 the angels themselves forgive, puts on the 
 mask of gladness and contentment, that God 
 alone may know the heart's turmoil and terror. 
 Men are indeed a mystery and a problem to 
 one another. 
 
 If the young think otherwise, imagining 
 that they can bare their whole soul to a friend, 
 and can themselves understand another's mo- 
 
THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 1 9 
 
 tives and impulses, despairs and aspirations, 
 it is from lack of knowledge and experience. 
 They only dream that the gulf is bridged, and 
 the despair of their awakening is by the dream 
 made more bitter and dangerous. 
 
 I suppose it is to all something of a shock 
 to discover how little men can know of one 
 another ; to all a critical time when impulse at 
 last gives way to reason, and the illusions of 
 youth are dissipated. The old sanctions of 
 conduct are undermined. The foundation of 
 character itself may shake, and there is some 
 risk of collapse, at all events in the more 
 tender and feminine, the more impulsive and 
 dependent natures. The shock, whenever it 
 makes itself felt, produces one of two results. 
 It may enrich the character or it may im- 
 poverish it. When a man is compelled to 
 realise that it is a condition of his intercourse 
 with others that he cannot himself read with 
 certainty another's mind, and that no other 
 can read his, then, in as much as none is 
 exempt from the operation of this law, it is 
 impossible for any student of character to 
 
20 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 make quite sure how that man will be affected 
 in his attitude towards life by so portentous 
 a discovery. Nevertheless, although it is 
 impossible to make sure of the issue, it is 
 possible at least in some measure to help in 
 determining it. If it is true that none can 
 explore another's heart, it is true also that the 
 character of one man may derive help and 
 force from the character of another. Other- 
 wise, education might as well come to a stop. 
 It would be foolish to attempt it. If education 
 meant no more than the getting of so much 
 information into another's head, it would be 
 a poor business, a mechanic occupation. If 
 the young must be told that character is of 
 no consequence, that every man should travel 
 life's road alone, self-centred and self-sufficient, 
 recognising no claims in others, or duties to 
 his fellows, concerned for nothing but his own 
 profit, devoid of faith and empty of sympathy, 
 then the word 'education' may as well become 
 obsolete. All hope for the progressive en- 
 largement of the ideas which the word em- 
 bodies is delusive. It can solve no social 
 
THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 21 
 
 questions, soften no asperities in the common 
 life of men, nor can it have any part in making 
 the wilderness blossom like the rose. 
 
 Battered, however, and ill-used though the 
 word itself may be — a thing quite natural and 
 indeed unavoidable when men write much, 
 speak much, read much, without thought or 
 reflection — the richer ideas expressed by it 
 are nevertheless in no danger. Talk is no 
 match for conviction and knowledge. The 
 remnant must win in the long run, nor need 
 they fear discomfiture when they contend that 
 education is just so far successful as it fortifies 
 and creates character ; as it braces the will to 
 meet courageously and hardily the disillusions 
 of manhood ; as it prepares and tempers the 
 spirit against the critical time when things 
 that have seemed transparent as day become 
 obscure as night, when despair grapples with 
 hope, and doubt essays to dethrone faith. It 
 is the first concern of education so to in- 
 vigorate character that the issue of the inevit- 
 able conflict be less uncertain ; so to school 
 the will that it may at least be capable of 
 
22 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Victory. There is no need rudely to destroy 
 illusions — time will destroy them only too 
 soon and too effectually — but, if man can 
 indeed aid man, it is the plain duty of such 
 as undertake the charge of educating others 
 to make sure as far as they can that when 
 the illusions of youth burst like a bubble 
 a young man's spirit may gain, not lose, 
 thereby. 
 
 The mind may be prepared in many 
 ways to be content with the undiscovered and 
 undiscoverable secret of man's heart, the un- 
 told mystery of human intercourse. Like 
 everything else obscure and unknowable the 
 thing itself perpetually attracts. If men have 
 never solved this riddle, it is not that they 
 have not tried. If the study of man by man 
 is ineffectual, it is neither dull nor unprofit- 
 able. From it, as from a vigorous root, grow 
 the principal interests of the mind. Literature 
 is begotten of it. It is the origin of tragedy, 
 the motive of history, the heart of philosophy, 
 and art in every form is nothing but an en- 
 deavour to divulge the eternal secret. 
 
THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 23 
 
 I have been brought to speak of the 
 difficulty which men experience in under- 
 standing one another, because the thought 
 can never be long absent from the mind of 
 those who have to deal with the young, and 
 is never so urgent as when year after year 
 the duty comes round, as it has come now, 
 of trying to give some sort of help to such 
 as claim full citizenship in the kingdom of 
 God. The duty would be ill done if it were 
 assumed only for the time. It ought to lie 
 at the heart from the hour that a boy enters 
 the school until the day when he shares for 
 the last time in his school life in the daily 
 prayers under this roof But the weeks 
 before his confirmation bring the duty home 
 to his masters with peculiar insistence. If 
 every influence under which he has come in 
 this place has not been as wholesome and as 
 fortifying to his character as it could be made, 
 the blame in great measure rests with those 
 who have undertaken to train him. If any- 
 thing in their lives have misled him, if they 
 have failed to leave on his character the 
 
24 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 impress of good, can their hopes for him be 
 high ? If on the other hand they have done 
 what they could, though conscious of des- 
 perate shortcomings, they can nevertheless 
 give hopefully the keeping of his heart to God. 
 You and I, who are the fathers, the masters, 
 or the guardians of these boys, may have no 
 certainty concerning the spirit in which they 
 now act — God in his wisdom has drawn a 
 veil between their hearts and ours — but hope 
 and faith and prayer are not denied us. 
 
 If the avenues from heart to heart were 
 wide and open thoroughfares, men might, I 
 conceive, be either too readily depressed or 
 too soon encouraged by the transient moods 
 of their neighbours. There would in any 
 case be less nutriment for faith. The con- 
 ditions of life In the kingdom of God would 
 be greatly altered, but would men be thereby 
 bettered ? I much doubt if anybody would 
 have his attitude to things spiritual and per- 
 manent, or to things temporal and transitory, 
 at all improved if unbelievers and busybodies 
 might explore at their pleasure the byways 
 
THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 2$ 
 
 of his thoughts. The scrutiny of men's mo- 
 tives is better left to the infinite justice, the 
 infinite knowledge, the infinite mercy of God. 
 Faith and hope, humiHty and brotherly love, 
 penitence, goodness itself, inevitably perish, 
 when they are appraised by finite intelligence. 
 The inherent inscrutability of human character 
 is the stronghold of the kingdom of heaven 
 upon earth : " Do thou, when thou fastest, 
 anoint thy head and wash thy face ; that 
 thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto 
 thy Father which is in secret : and thy 
 Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward 
 thee openly." 
 
 Now if it be acknowledged, and acknow- 
 ledged it must be, that it is a law of God that 
 none shall penetrate the secret of any soul 
 except his own, the conviction ought to affect 
 considerably a man's attitude to his fellows 
 and his attitude towards himself Seeing 
 every day his purposes misconceived and his 
 motives misjudged, he must think it likely 
 that he himself is apt to misunderstand others. 
 He may therefore without any self- disparage- 
 
26 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 ment learn to say, "Have I any right to judge 
 another, when it is perhaps with him as it has 
 often been with me ? No one had the means 
 of knowing all the circumstances which pro- 
 duced my action in this matter or in that, and 
 it may be that the man acts now in the only 
 way in which under the conditions known to 
 him he can keep his self-respect. Neither 
 can he disclose all his motives, nor can I 
 interpret them. His character, like that of 
 everybody else, must remain a mystery.'* 
 
 Moreover, human nature being a medley 
 in which good and evil blend confusedly, a 
 hard judgment is for the most part as likely 
 to be wrong as right. Even when a whole 
 life seems to have been spent in manifold 
 wrong-doing, it would still be preposterous 
 to aver that every single action in it is bad ; 
 and if there be at any time the merest chance 
 that the man's motive is good, then his act 
 ought to be construed in his favour in default 
 of evidence to the contrary. 
 
 What applies to judgments Upon the con- 
 duct of others applies also to censure of their 
 
THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 2/ 
 
 beliefs and sentiments. It cannot be often 
 justifiable to speak of these as prejudiced and 
 perverse. In the first place there is no means 
 of getting at the exact truth. If my own 
 creed and my own rule of conduct have never 
 an absolutely clear outline, my impressions in 
 regard to what others believe cannot be very 
 definite or certain. I am aware that in my 
 own mind there is only a greater or a less 
 preponderance of belief or opinion in one 
 direction or in another. Even my intimates 
 might find it hard to say to which side the 
 scale turns. No instinctive sagacity can 
 enable a man to read my mind and soul 
 unerringly. What right have I, therefore, 
 to usurp the ofiice of the Son of man, Jesus 
 Christ, the appointed judge of conduct and 
 of creed ? 
 
 The inclination to put the worst construc- 
 tion upon the actions of others closes the few 
 approaches there are to their souls and hearts ; 
 whereas genial appreciation of all that may 
 conceivably be good does augment the possi- 
 bility of nearer intercourse with them. It 
 
28 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 does more ; it augments the moral force and 
 spiritual strength of him who practises it. 
 Faith in others must be kept at all costs ; for 
 without faith in man there cannot be faith in 
 God. It is this which makes the time so 
 critical at which the illusions of youth take 
 flight. If in room of faith in God the young 
 man puts belief In himself, and in room of 
 faith in others assumes either the sneer of a 
 cynic or the considerate tone of a man of the 
 world, he has discarded not faith only, but 
 humility and charity too. 
 
 So much for the Influence of this thought 
 upon the attitude of men to their fellows. I 
 must say a word or two, before I have done, 
 upon the way In which It may affect their 
 estimate of themselves. Men are miserable 
 judges no doubt of what they can achieve ; 
 nevertheless, if they will only be honest, they 
 ought to make the best judges of their own 
 capacity to achieve. No one but they can 
 tell if in any project they have sought God's 
 strength to Increase their own. No one but 
 they can measure their tenacity of will, their 
 
THE INSCRUTABILITY OF CHARACTER 29 
 
 self-denial, their moral and intellectual and 
 spiritual force. Who does not recollect times 
 when he could not convince others that he 
 was right, although he was himself quite sure 
 that he must take his own way ? It is a 
 foolish person who does not seek counsel, 
 but it is a weak person who always takes it. 
 Manhood is begotten in the moments of life 
 at which thou standest alone, ready to put 
 all to the touch, not in wilfulness or arrogance, 
 but humbly because thou must. 
 
SERMON III 
 
 PURPOSEFULNESS 
 
 Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way f thou 
 also shalt be ashamed of Egypt^ as thou wast ashamed 
 of Assyria. — Jeremiah ii 36. 
 
 It rested with her neighbours on the Nile 
 and on the Euphrates whether Palestine had 
 peace or no. The road from Mesopotamia 
 to Egypt, from Egypt to Mesopotamia, lay 
 through Palestine. Palestine was more than 
 once the battlefield of the two powers ; and it 
 might be thought that her only security lay 
 in allying herself with the one or with the 
 other. Nevertheless Jeremiah rebukes, as 
 Isaiah had rebuked, the policy of this alliance 
 as contradictory to the lessons of Jewish his- 
 tory, as unwise in the light of experience, as 
 disloyal to the God of Israel. 
 
 But I do not wish to dwell upon this 
 direct and primary meaning. It is the 
 
PURPOSEFULNESS 3 1 
 
 secondary or implied meaning of which I 
 would speak. For this censure Is as applic- 
 able to the tendencies and habits of men now 
 as it was to the political opinions and national 
 bias of the contemporaries of Isaiah and of 
 Jeremiah ; nor will the text be strained at all 
 in the assertion that it condemns much that 
 is characteristic in English life at this time. 
 Men are worldly-wise without profit. Always 
 eager to be on the winning side, they often 
 change sides. They are restless and incon- 
 sequent in conduct. They easily tire even of 
 the scene in which their daily round of life 
 goes on. They do not believe that there can 
 be any strength in sitting still. 
 
 It is not easy to compare one age with 
 another, the prevailing temper of men in one 
 generation with that of their fellows in an- 
 other ; but perhaps it is not unjust to say of 
 the present time that it is one of the most rest- 
 less and most unstable ages in history, more 
 rife than most with perverse discontent, with 
 vagueness of purpose and waywardness in 
 aims, with timorousness in action and dis- 
 
32 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 trust of the future. The way in which men 
 constantly speak is tantamount to an admis- 
 sion of this charge. They will have it that 
 modern life is so complex and intricate that 
 those may be forgiven who make nothing of 
 it ; that when there are so many things to 
 choose from, it is excusable to choose ill, or 
 to choose again and again ; that instability, if 
 not a virtue, is at least not a sin. 
 
 Modern life may be more complex than 
 life ever was before ; the contention is dis- 
 putable, but let it pass. If it be more com- 
 plex, that is no reason why man's character 
 should be so complex as to be unstable ; nay, 
 reason all the more for singleness of purpose, 
 and simplicity of plan, for taking a line and 
 sticking to it. If steadfast purpose there be, 
 then life will be all the more interesting for 
 its complexity and variety. There will be 
 all the more to keep the mind alert and 
 active. There will be plenty to fight for, 
 plenty to pray for. What is the use of spirit 
 and courage and character, if they cannot 
 make the complex simple, unravel the intri- 
 
PURPOSEFULNESS 33 
 
 cate, and bring light Into that which is 
 obscure ? The first recorded work of the 
 Spirit was to bring order out of chaos ; and 
 its work is still the same. The Spirit is 
 God's principal gift to man. Everything 
 great is simple ; for everything great Is the 
 Spirit's creation. 
 
 " Why gaddest thou about to change thy 
 way ? " The politician perhaps answers : ''It 
 is difficult not to change it when conviction 
 draws me one way and duty to my con- 
 stituents and to my party draws me another." 
 It is difficult unless for him who believes In 
 truth and sincerity. Perhaps the philanthro- 
 pist will answer : ** A man cannot shut his 
 eyes to the miseries of the many, and spend 
 all his compassion, and thought, and money 
 only upon what is practicable." It is difficult ; 
 but on the one side stand reason and common 
 sense ; on the other, the sentimentality of a 
 self-indulgent man, and a busybody's love of 
 meddling. The ecclesiastic too will have his 
 answer In the necessity for organisation, as It Is 
 called ; for guilds, and meetings, and frequent 
 
34 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 services. Nevertheless the choice he has to 
 make is merely the old choice between much- 
 serving and the better part. The scholar, 
 the man of science, and the artist, are all dis- 
 tracted in much the same way, and all aver 
 that single-hearted devotion to learning, or 
 science, or art, is all the better for tempering 
 with luxury, and society, and change of scene, 
 and other things that cost money and take 
 up time. 
 
 So all their lives many veer and change, 
 sometimes putting their hopes in Egypt, 
 sometimes in Assyria, and only now and 
 then, if ever at all, in the God of Israel. 
 There is no reason for surprise if they find 
 life complex and embarrassing. They drift 
 and hesitate because they postpone their 
 better nature and higher aspirations to their 
 meaner instincts and desires. They will not 
 drive through life great highroads of purpose 
 and resolution, stretching away ahead, clearly 
 marked and not to be mistaken. 
 
 But how is the right direction first to be 
 discovered ? I have no doubt that different 
 
PURPOSEFULNESS 35 
 
 men find it out In different ways, and that 
 most must be content if they can give some 
 sort of direction to their lives from the first. 
 It does not so much matter which line Is 
 taken, so long as some definite aim or design, 
 good in itself. Is persistently and hardily pur- 
 sued. A young man must do what his 
 parents wish, unless he can see his way clear 
 to support himself even in taking the first 
 steps In the career which he prefers. Many 
 other considerations than the necessity of 
 keeping body and soul together may debar 
 him from doing precisely what he knows 
 himself best fitted for. It would be as 
 foolish not to let such things guide him more 
 or less, as it would be foolish for him to cry 
 out like a child if denied that which he has 
 set his heart upon. For Is it after all so im- 
 portant that a man should be at liberty to 
 choose the life for which he believes himself 
 best fitted ? The first and principal thing is 
 that he should determine to do well the work 
 which offers itself. If choose he may, all the 
 better ; but in order to get a choice he may 
 
$6 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 as well not " fly in the face of providence," 
 as the saying is. Perhaps the compulsion 
 against which he is inclined to rebel is God's 
 way of keeping him right, and a token that 
 he may do more valuable work in the field 
 which he would never have visited if left to 
 himself 
 
 But whatever their circumstances, most 
 men have more ways than one open to them ; 
 and between these they must decide with 
 vigour and determination, unless they are 
 willing to be asked, *' Why gad ye about to 
 change your way ? " The decision they have 
 to make for themselves. Nobody else can 
 help them to much purpose. None but they 
 can fathom the deep wells of their life, their 
 character's strength and resources. This no 
 doubt is the reason why it has often been in 
 solitude that men have learnt the significance 
 of life, and formed great resolves, the Son of 
 man himself, Moses, Elijah, Paul. They then 
 remove themselves from the unrealities and 
 hypocrisies of the world, and may apprehend 
 life's source and life's progress towards con- 
 
PURPOSEFULNESS 37 
 
 summation or extinction, Its Issue from God 
 himself, Its besieging by Apollyon, Its reunion 
 with God through Christ, or destruction from 
 God together with Its adversary. The Way 
 then declares himself, and the gadding about 
 therefrom Is known to be sin. '* Abide In me,'* 
 he salth, "and whithersoever thy course on 
 earth carries thee, It Is well." 
 
 The preacher has no right to judge any 
 save himself ; nevertheless It grieves him 
 sometimes to think that the fault must in 
 some measure be his own, if perchance any 
 to whom he has often preached appear to 
 gad about to change their way, going to 
 college, for example, for no better reason 
 than that they care not to decide what else 
 to do, and again, It may be, four years later 
 confessing to the like uncertainty, and drift- 
 ing into some unloved occupation for a morsel 
 of bread. 
 
 It Is urged that the professions, being 
 over-crowded, proffer no prospects. The 
 excuse has been recorded in other ages and 
 in other generations. The reason is very 
 
38 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 different. It Is that many enter the profes- 
 sions before they have sat down and counted 
 the cost. Few succeed in any profession who 
 must have three or four months' hoHday in 
 the year, and cannot do without amusement 
 and social luxuries. There is no consecra- 
 tion of work for those who conceive of it as a 
 task or a fatigue which must be recovered 
 from. First enterprise, then resolution, then 
 self-denial, then contentment, or, if it comes, 
 success. It is a stern sequence, but never- 
 theless, a thing that makes a man's blood 
 tingle like the clash of steel. 
 
 On this day filled full to some here with 
 memories derived from many centuries, and 
 enriched by the ardent hopes of many gene- 
 rations, I shall be forgiven for having thought 
 rather of the adolescent than of grown men. 
 It is the adolescent whom I would remind 
 that there is no permanence, no continuity, 
 no coherency in a life that has not been 
 thought out and deliberately pursued in good 
 report and ill with strength, and endurance, 
 and self-respect, and faith. 
 
PURPOSEFULNESS 39 
 
 Change there will be, and must be, and 
 should be not only In particulars of conduct, 
 but also in attitude ; yet no gadding about 
 from the Way. If a man grows, he may 
 at threescore believe the same things as he 
 believed when he stood on the threshold of 
 manhood, but he must believe them In a 
 wholly different way. The things themselves 
 have not changed ; but If they were at the 
 first worth believing, they must have greatly 
 changed the man who has believed them. 
 He who lets faith and truth enter his heart, 
 takes also with them life and growth. He is 
 without faith and truth altogether who drifts 
 through life disquieted and discontented, 
 demanding money and position as things in 
 themselves good, yet unwilling to pay for 
 himself the price even of these paltry prizes, 
 hoping to find others either in Egypt or In 
 Assyria prepared to pay it for him. 
 
SERMON IV 
 
 SINCERITY 
 Speaking the truth in love. — Ephesians iv 15. 
 
 I DARE say that if the Scribes and Pharisees 
 had ever thought fit to bring to Jesus a man 
 taken in insincerity, as they brought the woman 
 taken in adultery, and Christ had said *' He 
 that is without sin among you shall first 
 accuse him " : all must have crept out con- 
 victed of conscience. All men are insincere. 
 In this matter the best differ from the worst 
 in very little else than the more frequent 
 conviction of conscience. 
 
 It is not easy to speak the truth ; it is less 
 easy still to speak the truth in love, that is, 
 to be sincere. For, as I understand them, 
 sincerity and the speaking of the truth in love 
 are almost equivalents. Some men speak 
 the truth and are rude. Others speak the 
 truth and are blunt. Others speak the truth 
 
SINCERITY 41 
 
 and are frank. The sincere speak the truth 
 not with rudeness, not with bluntness, not in 
 frankness, but in love. There is no sincerity 
 except that which springs at once from a love 
 of truth and from brotherly love. Sincerity 
 does not exist apart from charity. Love of 
 truth untempered by love for man is a harsh 
 mistress, apt to scold and quarrel, effecting 
 less for all her scolding than sincerity effects 
 by a smile. Before men can be sincere they 
 must love their fellows from a sense of fellow- 
 ship with them in Christ Jesus. Charity 
 saves and sweetens the love of truth, nor lets 
 it brew sour products. To change the figure, 
 charity disarms the enemies of truth. Men 
 do not resent sincerity, even when they 
 think him who practises it to be mistaken. 
 Sincerity redeems the worst absurdities and 
 ignorances. A preacher, for example, may 
 appear to his hearers both stupid and ignorant; 
 nevertheless they may be not only impressed 
 but advantaged by his sincerity. A critical 
 contempt for a prophet's or an apostles 
 reasoning is quite compatible with a yearning 
 
42 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 envy for his spiritual sincerity and spiritual 
 sagacity. The most powerful, the most fruitful 
 influences In the world are those like sincerity 
 and charity, which derive from the Indwelling 
 Word, who Interprets God to man. God Is 
 truth ; God Is love ; and this Infinite truth, 
 Infinite love, can in part be apprehended by 
 the believer In Jesus Christ. 
 
 Each generation must re-discover funda- 
 mental truth for itself Men are not now, 
 nor are they ever, better than their fathers. 
 They but think the same things out In another 
 way. They are apt now, as their fathers once 
 were apt, to be tolerant of Insincerity in 
 themselves and In others, and to read the 
 world In a cynical spirit. But cynicism and 
 sincerity have no common ground, and tolera- 
 tion of faults Is an entirely different thing from 
 charity. A cynical man Is not In earnest ; a 
 sincere man cannot be other than in earnest. 
 He who Is tolerant of the more contemptible 
 side of human nature Is certainly not actuated 
 therein by brotherly love. The cynical take 
 human nature as they see it in Its three-score 
 
SINCERITY 43 
 
 years and ten, and shut their eyes alike to its 
 origin and its destination. There is no love 
 of truth in such an attitude ; no love of others ; 
 no glorifying of God or of man. It is plain 
 infidelity and insincerity, a vilifying of the 
 Creator and of his creatures. 
 
 Which side dost thou take thyself? The 
 side of the real, or of the false, of the father of 
 lies, or of the God of truth ? 
 
 It was said very long ago by somebody 
 who was himself of the sort, that to be really 
 great a man must be sincere, must mean what 
 he says, must mean what he does ; in a word, 
 must be so much in love with truth and 
 reality that not only are his words and acts a 
 genuine expression of himself, but the end 
 and aim of his life is the discovering and 
 divulging of truth. Sincerity at its best is a 
 comprehensive attitude of character, a sort of 
 habit of the soul. The sincere man is in 
 chase of truth. It does not matter so much 
 whether he finds truth, but he must search for 
 her as for hid treasure. He may be dull, and 
 slow, and inobservant, and may search in the 
 
44 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 wrong places ; but if he be In earnest, his 
 disability shall not be urged against him in 
 the day of the Lord. 
 
 It is the search for truth, rather than the 
 descrying of truth, which invests a life with 
 dignity and durability. Which is the greater 
 statesman ? the man to whom it is enough 
 that a measure be popular and likely to 
 further his own ambitions ; or the man who 
 in honesty and sincerity of purpose labours to 
 meet what he believes to be the actual social 
 and political needs of his time ? The one 
 may not indeed apprehend the needs of his 
 time, or he may misconceive the aspirations 
 of his contemporaries, but he has at least 
 sought after truth. He has shown faith in 
 God and in humanity, and to that extent he 
 has the elements of greatness in him. And 
 who are the writers that live ? Those only 
 who have pursued truth by some of the many 
 paths on which her vision sometimes stands ; 
 and of them all, the most enduring, the best 
 beloved, are they whose eyes have been 
 opened to that vision by the spirit of brotherly 
 
SINCERITY 45 
 
 love, so that in reading man's heart to men, 
 they make not men cynical or self-contemp- 
 tuous, but inspire a new respect for man. 
 
 The chase of truth, let me repeat, is of 
 greater concern than the attainment of it. 
 There is so much in regard to which man can 
 never be sure whether he has arrived at truth 
 or no. He must often be content to wait 
 upon time. Often also there is nothing to be 
 done but to wait upon the Lord, and to let 
 eternity reveal his success or unsuccess in the 
 pursuit of truth. WilHngness to search and 
 wait is faith. By faith alone man follows 
 truth into the presence of God. 
 
 I do not believe that any man who has 
 really fallen in love with truth will ever con- 
 sent to give up the pursuit of her. He may 
 have fits of disloyalty and unfaith, but on the 
 whole he shall continue to love her. He has 
 the habit of loving truth, and cannot live 
 without her. Happily men are judged at the 
 last by their ideals and their abiding attitude 
 towards them, and not by their performance 
 or successes. It is in abiding attitude that a 
 
46 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 difference lies between the sincere man and 
 the insincere, the veracious and the false, the 
 lover of truth and the respecter of persons and 
 conventions. The difference is a difference 
 in kind, not of degree. No training that man 
 can provide can make the unreal man real, or 
 change an unbeliever into a believer. Love 
 of truth has but one source, the Lord and 
 giver of life. But if men can create the love 
 of truth no more than they can create the 
 fruits of the earth, they may nevertheless 
 cultivate and increase the love of truth as 
 they cultivate and increase the herbs of the 
 field. They may increase it in themselves ; 
 they may increase it In their fellows. 
 
 Speaking as a schoolmaster, I am not sure 
 that sincerity is not the fruit which best 
 rewards him whose work is to dig about and 
 dung the growing plants of human character. 
 Sincerity is not appetite for Information. 
 Love for Information may co-exist, does often 
 co-exist, with shiftlessness and fatuity of nature. 
 Such knowledge may leave the man's best 
 part unfed and lean. But let there be an 
 
SINCERITY 47 
 
 appetite for truth, a love for Ideas ; the 
 character then strengthens and spreads. The 
 sap of sincerity rises ; there Is Hfe and there 
 Is growth. Facts are not educative, unless 
 they be used as a stuff for ideas to work upon ; 
 whereas even erroneous Ideas may educate 
 when they are either formed or accepted from 
 a desire to apprehend truth. Who does not 
 recall some Idea, absurd perhaps, or at least 
 untenable, that set up such a ferment in the 
 soul as to keep it at work for months in the 
 eager chase of truth ? You may fill a mind 
 with information, yet leave It perfectly inert 
 and sterile ; but once tempt a man to speculate 
 and you begin to educate him. Knowledge 
 of facts there must be ; but until such know- 
 ledge begin to be fertilised, education begins 
 not. 
 
 That this conception Is just, that this ideal 
 should be pursued, may be demonstrated, I 
 believe, from the Gospel itself It was thus 
 that Jesus taught. To compel the mind to 
 take the ideas in and turn them over and 
 over, every means Is employed for surprising 
 
48 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and startling ; sometimes irony, sometimes 
 paradox, sometimes exaggeration other than 
 paradox; in a word, anything and everything 
 which can subvert the conventional attitude 
 of man. When a man lets an idea, a vision 
 of truth, occupy him ; suffers it to enter his 
 heart, and as Christ says, set up a ferment 
 there, he begins to become a spiritual being, 
 a lover of truth, a believer in God. He is 
 alive, and has a zest for life. He is sincere. 
 
 The love of truth is an education for the 
 whole man, for mind and body as for character 
 and spirit. He who is most in love with 
 truth will be least inclined to make distinc- 
 tions and see differences between intellectual 
 truth, moral truth, spiritual truth, and — why 
 should I not say it ? — truth of body. Human 
 nature is not made up of separate parts in 
 juxtaposition — the spirit, the character, the 
 mind, the body. It is one, and undivided, 
 and indivisible. To educate one part Is to 
 educate all. That is not education of body, 
 of mind, of soul, in which any one is made 
 much of to the neglect of the rest. Truth 
 
SINCERITY 49 
 
 will accept no partial allegiance. She refuses 
 to be loved at all by those who ask that in 
 some things they may deny her. 
 
 There are some here who are aware how 
 far the preacher himself has fallen short of this 
 ideal — that the principal result of education 
 should be to awaken the love of truth. There 
 is all the more reason why he should affirm 
 on what may perhaps be his last opportunity 
 of addressing them, that however little he 
 may have realised the ideal, he has at least 
 tried to realise it. He may have searched 
 for truth and not found her ; but the finding 
 is a small matter both for them and for him- 
 self. To love truth, and inspire others with 
 the love of truth, is to use life for the purpose 
 for which life was given. How great then 
 shall be his condemnation who accepts the 
 place of a parent for the children of others, 
 and does not at least endeavour to teach that 
 the search for truth, especially where truth 
 cannot be apprehended at all without the aid 
 of the Spirit, is life itself; that thereby re- 
 generation sets in within the soul ; a process 
 
 4 
 
50 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 begins which converts that which is mortal 
 into an immortal and ever-vigorous vitality ; 
 that above all there is no cause to fear failure 
 in this search if only it be eagerly pursued, 
 forasmuch as the Judge at the last shall 
 judge men not by their sagacity but by their 
 persistence, not by their success but by their 
 devotion. 
 
 I wonder if visions of truth await you 
 whom we shall send out two days hence to 
 go up and down among men. Will you 
 choose convention and hypocrisy, or truth 
 and reality ? Will the tree of your life grow 
 out of the love of truth or of the love of self ? 
 What will the Judge say to you in the day of 
 the Lord ? 
 
SERMON V 
 
 MAGNANIMITY 
 
 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse 
 you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them 
 that despitefully use you, and persecute you j that ye may 
 be the children of your Father, which is in heaven; for 
 he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, 
 and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. — 
 Matthew v 44. 
 
 In other words, take God for your pattern in 
 your treatment of those who do not love you, 
 much more in your dealings with men in 
 general. In your relations with one another 
 be magnanimous in act and in thought, just 
 as God in nature is magnanimous. The 
 processes of nature go on entirely irrespec- 
 tive of the moral and spiritual attitude of 
 man. God does not withhold his bounty 
 from anyone simply because he is a bad man. 
 The fields of the good fare no better for rain 
 and sunshine than the fields of the godless. 
 Treat one another with the like absolute 
 
52 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 disregard of desert, with the like patient 
 toleration, as God in nature deals with men ; 
 and you will share in the spirit of God ; you 
 will be the children of your Father which is 
 in heaven. 
 
 It is conceivable, perhaps not wholly im- 
 probable, that in forty centuries the natural 
 truth here employed by Jesus Christ twenty 
 centuries ago to expound and affirm the moral 
 and spiritual obligation to magnanimity, may 
 have become matter of common knowledge, 
 and even of common acknowledgement ; but 
 who can bring himself to believe that in any 
 number of centuries whatsoever the virtue of 
 magnanimity, which it is used to enforce, will 
 manifest itself as an Inherent and inseparable 
 property of human character ? After two 
 thousand years of Christian progress there 
 are still heard in Christian churches prayers 
 that ignore and belie the doctrine of Christ, 
 that the divine government of the natural 
 world is not concerned with the moral be- 
 haviour, or the spiritual attitude of men. It 
 is not likely that the subtle spiritual quality, 
 
MAGNANIMITY 53 
 
 of which it is taken as the sample, will ever 
 be adopted except by the remnant. 
 
 The superstitious belief in supernatural 
 visitations and interventions may indeed be 
 discarded ; the magnanimity of God in the 
 government of nature may indeed be at last 
 confessed by the voice of man ; but confessing 
 is not imitating. Jesus nowhere says that 
 the teaching of Christ will be accepted by all. 
 The world must first become not merely the 
 Christian Church ; it must change to the 
 kingdom of God, the very body of Christ, 
 before magnanimity become at all a common 
 principle of human action. So long as men 
 are men there must be dross of hate and 
 revenge, malice and resentment, pettiness 
 and uncharitableness, misconstruction and 
 attributing of motives, requiring to be puri- 
 fied in human character, to be transmuted 
 painfully and laboriously by all who would 
 imitate God into the undimmed orold of 
 magnanimity. 
 
 Christ here speaks of magnanimity as an 
 essential attribute of God, that may be re- 
 
54 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 produced in man, as made in the image of 
 God, reproduced consciously by imitation. 
 Such in effect is the meaning of the words, 
 ** That you may become the children of your 
 Father which is in heaven " — afi interpreta- 
 tion confirmed, if any wish to have it con- 
 firmed, by the concluding phrase of the 
 passage, " Be ye therefore perfect, even as 
 your Father which is in heaven is perfect." 
 It is a truth long since perceived and 
 accepted that the one faculty which differ- 
 ences men from beasts, and confers the 
 aptitude for progress, is just the capacity 
 for imitating, to which the teaching of Jesus 
 assigns so momentous a part in the spiritual 
 education of man. It is a faculty so spon- 
 taneous, so easily developed, as to be legiti- 
 mately termed instinctive. Mankind owe 
 the better part of their progress to imitation. 
 By its operation every generation may begin 
 where the generation next before it left off. 
 It is the lasting condition and basis of all the 
 arts and the sciences. It is the source of 
 literature, even of language itself The 
 
MAGNANIMITY 55 
 
 instinct of imitation Is a law as universal in 
 its application to thought as the law of gravi- 
 tation Is to nature. Human existence cannot 
 be Imagined divorced from it. 
 
 If I watch children at play, I see for my- 
 self how the Imitative process began which 
 enriches the world with masterpieces In 
 sculpture and architecture, in design and 
 painting, In drama and story. Children re- 
 produce everything and anything they see 
 about them. They play in the market-place 
 at a wedding or at a funeral ; they buy and 
 sell ; they entertain and receive entertain- 
 ment. Every phase of the life of their 
 elders is an occasion for mimicry. The 
 senses' highest office Is to minister to this 
 handmaid of progress. Because It Is so, 
 because the mind of man works naturally 
 in imitation, a man's surroundings are Im- 
 measurably important, example has Infinite 
 moral significance, the incarnation possesses 
 a tremendous spiritual import. 
 
 The methods of educating most often 
 employed by Jesus Christ recognise and 
 
56 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 involve, completely and unreservedly, this 
 primary law of thought. It is his habit to 
 express, so to say, spiritual truths in earthly 
 terms, that they may be made the more easy 
 for men to realise and copy. In the incarna- 
 tion, in his life as the Son of man, Christ 
 addresses to men the parable of parables, 
 whereby they may learn how God himself 
 would act in man's place. The reason is 
 entirely satisfied by the adequacy and the 
 simplicity of the means. Believe in the 
 Godhead of Jesus ; have faith in the Word ; 
 then suffer the most powerful, the most 
 active, instinct of thy nature to assert itself. 
 Imitate Jesus, and thou shalt imitate Christ 
 and God. 
 
 Can there be a better way for overcoming 
 the pettinesses, the resentments, the queru- 
 lousness, the malice and uncharitableness, of 
 which the heart is conscious, than by imita- 
 ting with the whole strength that he himself 
 confers, the divine perfection of attitude 
 manifested in the Son of man ? Shall man 
 be ever able to forgive, unless he take 
 
MAGNANIMITY 57 
 
 Christ's spirit as exemplar for his own ? 
 Shall he ever share in the peace of God, 
 unless he imitate the love of God divulged 
 to him in the charity of Jesus ? 
 
 Study God in his life among men, the 
 Son of man moving among the sons of men ; 
 watch the supreme patience, the generous 
 consideration, the dignity of bearing, the 
 serenity of spirit, which are the plain ex- 
 pression of the divine magnanimity in Jesus 
 Christ. 'Tis the Spirit of God made capable 
 of imitation by human nature. 'Tis in a word 
 the ideal of conduct, wherein self-respect and 
 self-effacement are reconciled. 'Tis the human 
 counterpart of the justice of God united with 
 the love and the mercy of God. 
 
 It would seem as though at one time 
 some particular virtue were more difficult 
 to practise than at another, some vice or 
 fault of character more common. Circum- 
 stances often determine the prevailing virtues 
 and vices of a period in the life of a man or 
 of a community. The soul of man knows it. 
 At times even magnanimity appears to come 
 
58 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 easily, and pettiness to be detestable; and 
 the soul flatters itself that ideals are after all 
 not unattainable, whereas it is not the soul 
 that has improved, but the soul's surround- 
 ings. The self-flatterer's house is swept and 
 garnished for the old spirit to re-enter with a 
 following of seven. 
 
 That temptation takes its shape and 
 colour from circumstances explains perhaps 
 the apparent dearth of magnanimity at the 
 present time. Even the church has expe- 
 rience of the famine. Where the virtue of 
 magnanimity should be most conspicuous, 
 pettiness of spirit and readiness to misin- 
 terpret and misrepresent are not uncommon ; 
 and these declare themselves in respect to 
 questions that for an adult understanding, to 
 say nothing of the Christian temper, have no 
 sort of consequence. Men in a rage are not 
 magnanimous, and perhaps men lose their 
 temper most about things that do not matter. 
 Magnanimity is a plant whose roots go deep 
 down in the strong, generous soil of convic- 
 tion and reason and justice, whereas temper 
 
MAGNANIMITY 59 
 
 thrives best in hot and hungry ground. If 
 Jesus, who knew all men, was magnanimous, 
 then men within the church of Christ, wholly 
 unable as they are to read the heart, might 
 at least reserve judgment in respect to the 
 motives from which others act, or might 
 even interpret their actions magnanimously. 
 Motives are puzzling things. They are often 
 composite when they are thought to be simple, 
 and partake in good when they seem to be 
 wholly evil. The magnanimous man is more 
 likely to be right in his verdicts upon others 
 than the harsh or the cynical. It is a sound 
 principle for the judge of his neighbour to 
 give his neighbour credit for at least as pure 
 motives as the judge himself likes to take 
 credit for. 'Tis a vast help to the judgment, 
 and it makes some degree of equity possible 
 in the interpretation of conduct. 
 
 If to imitate the. magnanimity of Jesus is an 
 ideal constantly forgotten at the present time 
 in the church which Jesus founded, it is not 
 surprising that in politics and in society there 
 should be some lack of magnanimity. Even 
 
6o THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the rules of the game, the show and semblance 
 of magnanimity, are neglected. Men will not 
 shake hands before the swords cross. Is it 
 the case that men are too much in earnest to 
 think of compliments ? It cannot be so. 
 Belief in the justice of a cause, earnestness 
 of conviction and in purpose, the desire to 
 see truth prevail, are qualities that demand 
 good company. They are more in keeping 
 with magnanimity than with jealousy and bit- 
 terness, uncharitableness and recrimination. 
 The tranquillity of spirit and the self-respect 
 begotten of magnanimity are better fitted to 
 advance truth and a just cause than excited 
 feeling and neglect of good manners. 
 
 Those In this congregation whose position 
 to-day compels both sympathy and interest 
 perhaps ask themselves why the preacher 
 has selected such a subject as this for their 
 consideration, at a time when their thoughts 
 rather incline to linger lovingly over their 
 boyhood, or dwell hopefully on the antici- 
 pated triumphs of manhood. It Is because man- 
 hood now begins for them that he so speaks. 
 
MAGNANIMITY 6 1 
 
 Unless the signs of the times are ill discovered, 
 they are sure in regard to many great national 
 interests and public movements to need mag- 
 nanimity sorely. " It will be foul weather 
 to-day, for the sky is red and lowering.'* 
 Times of shock and tumult are at hand, 
 when old ideas must make good their place, 
 or else give ground before the new. Untried 
 social forces are marshalling for war against 
 old-established conditions. There is no saying 
 what the end will be ; but this much may be 
 foretold : that the character of the conflict will 
 primarily depend upon the spirit and temper 
 in which it is fought out. Anyone can see 
 what a difference magnanimity may make if 
 exercised by one side or by both, by few or 
 by many, in a great struggle. Fight, I be- 
 seech you, like men, delighting in the play 
 and clash of swords, and not like children or 
 angry women, sulking or scolding, or calling 
 names. Put all your strength into each stroke, 
 but let it be a fair, not a foul stroke. Let your 
 weapon be the clean white blade of argument 
 and reason. Keep the conflict a war of ideas, 
 
62 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and not of classes or interests ; or it may 
 change, as this century has more than once 
 seen it change, into ** a battle of the warrior 
 with confused noise, and garments rolled in 
 blood." 
 
SERMON VI 
 
 THE VALUE OF IDEALISM IN COMMON LIFE 
 
 The voice of him that crieth, In the wilderness prepare ye 
 the way of the Lord, ?nake straight in the desert a 
 highway for our God. — ISAIAH xl 3. 
 
 Not long ago in debating with somebody 
 what he should do to make a living I sug- 
 gested that he might become a servant of the 
 crown in India. His reply startled me, *' But 
 do not Englishmen often succumb to the 
 climate ? " Others may have thought in the 
 same way before, but to me at least the 
 thought had never been so bluntly expressed. 
 That any capable, generous young English- 
 man should take life in so calculating a spirit 
 was enough to set me thinking whether there 
 was anything in the circumstances of the time 
 which could explain so unusual a contradic- 
 tion to the natural attitude of youth towards 
 adventure and enterprise. Here was a man, 
 
64 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 belonging to the generation which in twenty 
 years time should form the core and pith of 
 the state, who as judged out of his own 
 mouth seemed to believe that the best suc- 
 cess in life is — living. 
 
 As I questioned experience and sought 
 to watch other straws that, like this answer, 
 might indicate how the current of sentiment 
 was setting, the signs on the whole seemed 
 to declare that in this age, which prides itself 
 upon its intellectual and spiritual conquests, 
 the temptation is as powerful as ever to over- 
 esteem the life of the body, and to put carnal 
 well-being and length of days before ideals 
 and before such spiritual facts as self-sacrifice ; 
 or, as Isaiah says in the passage from which 
 the text is taken, to prefer '' the flesh and the 
 goodliness thereof" to " the spirit of the Lord 
 and the word of our God." I shrink from 
 calling the temptation stronger now than in 
 the past ; but if it be the case that men give 
 over crying with their forefathers, " Life to 
 him that has courage to lose it ! " and begin, 
 as I think they do, to cry shamefully, *' Life 
 
IDEALISM IN COMMON LIFE 65 
 
 to him that has the sense to keep it ! " the 
 body is certain ere long completely to master 
 the spirit. But be the case which it may, 
 there is now, as in the age of Isaiah, some 
 need to ruminate that the flesh and the good- 
 llness thereof make not the slim and substance 
 of human life, but that life has dignity, and 
 partakes In permanence just so far as it sub- 
 mits itself to those influences which from 
 their nature must be at odds with the flesh — 
 the voice from on high, the Spirit of the 
 Lord that bloweth upon man, the Word of 
 his God. 
 
 When the prophet speaks of himself as 
 the voice of one crying, he would lay down 
 the burden of the flesh, and become spiritual 
 as his message. Before a man can be called 
 the voice of one crying, he must be detached, 
 as it were, from the life of the flesh, divorced 
 from human relationships, sexless, without a 
 history. To himself the flesh and the ap- 
 purtenances of the flesh have been as steps 
 climbed, upon which he may look down and 
 back, yet not descend; but if he be held 
 
 5 
 
66 : THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 worthy to become thereafter the voice of 
 one crying, others had better be unacquainted 
 with his clambering, or the voice may be 
 diminished in ring and compass. 
 
 That this truth is in the present day 
 wholly ignored : and wholly ignored it cer- 
 tainly is : cannot be otherwise interpreted 
 than as a plain sign that men are as much 
 tempted as ever to deny the ideal and to 
 magnify the flesh. 
 
 This might with truth be described as. 
 an age of biographies. Biographies often 
 colossal, and alas ! too often the biographies 
 of churchmen, appear every other month. By 
 itself this is a demonstration that men do not 
 now believe in the inherent permanence and 
 essential impersonality of ideas. But not 
 content with thus lowering or destroying the 
 fullest tones in the crying voices of their 
 own time, they rummage everywhere in 
 hidden nooks and forgotten corners for the 
 means to disendow the voices of the old 
 prophets of some at least of their spiritual 
 message. They lament that there can be nO' 
 
IDEALISM IN COMMON LIFE 6/ 
 
 biography of either Isaiah or of either EHas. 
 They compass sea and land to discover how- 
 Shakespeare clambered upwards, or Dante, 
 or Chaucer ; and if by accident an inch or 
 two of the worm-eaten steps remain, they 
 peer at them for marks of a stumble or of a 
 halt, and rejoice if they seem to trace it. 
 The voice crying, the Spirit of the Lord 
 calling aloud by these men, is not enough : 
 it is too impalpable and ideal. The picture 
 of a man's person must be made up by the 
 aid of dates and periods, of details concern- 
 ing his friends and acquaintance, his habits 
 and tricks, his looks and gestures. Even 
 with the life of lives as God has let men see 
 it — I say it with reverence — some men are 
 ill content ; and they would try to clothe the 
 crying voice of the Son of man himself with 
 the goodliness of flesh. Yet to contemplate 
 the manner of that record should surely dis- 
 close how God would have man regard the 
 material, carnal setting of a human life. 
 
 The two genealogies in the gospels are 
 and always will be a puzzle. The year io 
 
6S THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 which Jesus was born is uncertain. His age 
 at the crucifixion Is unknown. There Is a 
 lasting doubt as to the precise day of his 
 death. It is left obscure whether he had 
 younger brothers and sisters or no. Of 
 definite notes of time In his life there are 
 few, fewer far than are required to make the 
 narrative clear. There Is not one phrase or 
 word In the gospels descriptive of his bodily 
 presence. Even of his sepulchre no man 
 knoweth unto this day. There must be 
 design here. This dwelling upon the voice 
 crying, this neglect of all material Incidents 
 in the life of him who cries, cannot be mere 
 accident. God would never have denied to 
 men the knowledge of this side of such a life 
 if the knowledge could be of moral or spiritual 
 use. If faith and love and hope, If strength 
 and force of character, could have been aug- 
 mented thereby, men would have been per- 
 mitted to see in their exact correlation all the 
 incidents in the life of the Son of man. It 
 would have been made possible for anyone 
 to contemplate his bodily image, to trace his 
 
IDEALISM IN COMMON LIFE 69 
 
 history from childhood, to reduce his work to 
 a precise chronological order ; in a word, to 
 materialise, or at least to de-spiritualise, the 
 life of man's spiritual master. Instead, it 
 abides for everlasting the voice of one cry- 
 ing. Jesus is the Word, and the Word only. 
 This is a tremendous lesson. It is a 
 veritable arraignment of the view prevailing 
 now, unabashed and assertive, whereby it is 
 thought good to perpetuate the most trivial 
 material accidents of men's lives. Some who, 
 if only let be, might have been for ages cry- 
 ing voices, prophets of the Highest, are 
 degraded and despoiled by ill-judging bio- 
 graphers, who in truth's name lay bare the 
 life, not of the man whom they pretend to 
 honour, but of his meaner and mortal double. 
 Of the greater men in any generation — 
 poets, orators, preachers, prophets — biogra- 
 phies should not be written. Let them be 
 as voices crying. If in that cry they have 
 delivered themselves in some measure from 
 the material encumbrances of life, let them 
 be advantaged thereby themselves and ad- 
 
70 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 vantage their hearers. Why replace the 
 voice in its fleshly tabernacle ? If biogra- 
 phies had been in fashion in the past, the 
 spiritual heritage bequeathed by the past 
 could not have been so rich as it is. They 
 that are voices crying for everlasting, bid- 
 ding the wilderness to rejoice and the desert 
 to blossom as the rose, prophets of Israel, 
 prophets of Greece, and of Italy, and of 
 England, would still be tied fast in the chain 
 of their carnal infirmities, men earthly, and 
 unspiritual, and mortal. 
 
 It is not so easy to contemn the goodli- 
 ness of the flesh that men can afford to 
 surround anew with their carnal environment 
 those whose crying voices help others to 
 understand that he lives best who most 
 effectually detaches himself from the earthly 
 and the carnal, from love of life, love of self, 
 love of fame, and seeks to become but the 
 voice of one crying. 
 
 It is possible by art to preserve for very 
 many years the bodies of men in a sort of 
 ghastly caricature of those who once wore 
 
IDEALISM IN COMMON LIFE /I 
 
 them. The practice of biographers resembles 
 the art of embalmers. For a shorter time or 
 a longer it preserves from entire decay that 
 which had better be suffered to perish ; but 
 It cannot aid in perpetuating the crying voice, 
 or the spirit that begotten from God partakes 
 in God's eternity and infinitude. Nay, it 
 tends to abridge the voice's compass and to 
 curtail the spirit's power to save. 
 
 This criticism, however inadequate and 
 fragmentary, of one noteworthy tendency of 
 the day may serve to bring home to speaker 
 and hearer both, that they have one prime 
 duty — to separate themselves by the strength 
 of Christ, and according to the example of 
 Jesus, from the circle of ideas to which this 
 idea pertains, that the greatest success in life 
 is the postponing of bodily death. 
 
 Let me be forgiven If I now address more 
 particularly those of the audience in whose 
 imaginations the present brief week shapes 
 itself at one moment as the last week of 
 boyhood and in the next as the first week of 
 manhood. It was not one of them who asked 
 
72 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 if a man did not risk an early death by going- 
 to India ; nevertheless, some time they may 
 be tempted to think with him, and it is well 
 for all to be often reminded of that which the 
 Bible declares to be the first duty of man. 
 
 The temptations which you will meet with, 
 whether at the university or in society else- 
 where, are perhaps not so grossly material as 
 those which young men in past generations 
 have often experienced, but they are certainly 
 more subtle, and just as hazardous. The 
 voices of the prophets and false prophets are 
 crying all round you. The din made by the 
 false prophets is so loud that it is not easy 
 to hear the true. But when the ear grows 
 accustomed to the clamour, there is no mis- 
 taking the voice of a true prophet. Distin- 
 guish him by the note in his crying, not by 
 what others tell you about him. Many who^ 
 like David, are true prophets, have yet at 
 times in their lives been enthralled by the 
 goodliness of the flesh. Nor think to hear 
 the prophet's voice more distinctly by giving 
 way to the childish craze, now so easily grati- 
 
IDEALISM IN COMMON LIFE 73 
 
 fied, of making a pilgrimage to the scene of 
 his earthly life. There is one place only, no 
 doubt, in all the world that is part and parcel 
 of a man's being, the fields, namely, on which 
 his eyes first opened, the home wherein he 
 grew ; but it is presumptuous to imagine that 
 you can see with his eyes fields or home. 
 Nor yet seek your prophets by the aid of 
 newspapers, magazines, or reviews. You 
 will hardly hear the voices crying there, but 
 you may thus lose the best instrument to find 
 them with, your concentration of mind, your 
 strength of will. 
 
 Even those of you whose one ideal for 
 the present is to excel in manly exercises, 
 will yet give ear to the true voice, not the 
 false, if they treat the game impersonally, so 
 to speak, esteeming a feat a feat in itself, 
 quite apart from the man who performs it. 
 In other words, learn as little as you can of 
 the private lives of great cricketers, football- 
 players, and sportsmen. 
 
 I hope you will all think me impertinent 
 for bidding you not to be influenced in the 
 
74 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 choice of a profession by any thought of its 
 perils, but only by the conviction that, more 
 than other professions, it will call out your 
 manhood. Nor simply follow with the crowd 
 the line of least resistance. It is no doubt 
 the duty of everybody to support himself as 
 soon as he can, but there is no reason why a 
 strong young man should have luxuries, or 
 require a long holiday every year, or constant 
 amusement or pleasant surroundings. Let 
 him be strong and endure ; then all else will 
 come of itself. There are voices crying 
 aloud to him, as to all, that a man's life con- 
 sists not In the abundance of the things which 
 he possesseth ; that even the Son of man had 
 not where to lay his head. 
 
 ** In the wilderness prepare ye the way 
 of the Lord; make straight in the desert a 
 highway for our God." 
 
SERMON VII 
 
 REALITY 
 
 // is lawful to do well. — MATTHEW xii 12. 
 
 Though I may not judge another, I may be 
 aware that his attitude disarms for the time 
 even omnipotence of the power to help him. 
 Though I may not condemn another, I may 
 nevertheless feign to adopt his standpoint ; 
 then proceeding from it by direct and honest 
 reasoning reduce it to absurdity. Insight into 
 character is no sin. Argument and irony are 
 lawful instruments of persuasion, never denied 
 by Jesus Christ to him who would become an 
 impersonal critic of himself or of another. 
 To search for truth Is neither to judge nor to 
 condemn a fellow-man, but rather to assist 
 him. They who inquired if it was lawful to 
 
^6 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 heal on the sabbath day may have been so 
 Winded by self-complacency as not to under- 
 stand the irony in the answer, " It is lawful 
 to do well " ; yet that answer is become 
 an unspent treasure of truth for the self- 
 despairing. 
 
 Jesus employs irony most often with the 
 Pharisees, but occasionally even with his 
 disciples when they fall into the sin of Phari- 
 sees ; as with the two brothers, who made 
 sure that they could drink of the same bitter 
 cup and be submerged in the same sea of 
 suffering as himself; and with them all 
 together, when even at the last they miscon- 
 ceived the character of his work, saying in 
 their self-deception, '' Here are two swords,'* 
 and he said, '' It is enough." 
 
 In dealing thus with deliberate and self- 
 willed blindness Jesus gives not that which is 
 holy unto the dogs, nor casts his pearls before 
 swine. He takes the prejudiced at their own 
 valuation. Pharisees are, he knows, so com- 
 pletely satisfied with their prvileged condition, 
 their federal relation to God, that nothing can 
 
REALITY JJ 
 
 persuade them that they need saving. Did 
 they not cast his teaching in his teeth even as 
 he died, "He saved others, he cannot save 
 himself" ? They are such staunch adherents 
 of the letter that they are absolved from the 
 spirit. They are not as other men are ; they 
 have eschewed extortion. Injustice, adultery, 
 from their youth up ; they fast ; they support 
 missions ; they build churches ; they pay God 
 money ; they need no mercy like common 
 men. Therefore Jesus takes them at their 
 word. He assumes their point of view, and 
 by the arguments of a scribe proves in 
 despairing irony the legality of doing good, 
 even on the sabbath day. 
 
 Tranquil as it appears, this irony has 
 nevertheless Its counterpart in the tempestuous 
 indignation of the woes pronounced by Jesus 
 Christ upon Pharisees. In the one case 
 'tis a man implying, not even expressing, 
 rebuke ; suggesting In a tone which need 
 scarcely disturb the hearers* self-contentment 
 that men may so fall in love with untruth as 
 to lose the perception of truth. In the other 
 
78 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 case 'tis the Judge of men exercising his 
 office. The irony of Jesus is an admission 
 of the limitations imposed by the human will 
 upon the power of God. It is the Son of 
 man himself who says, '' When the Son of 
 man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?'* 
 What is this which disables the Almighty, 
 which makes man as unconscious of holiness 
 as though he were a dog, as reckless of the 
 pearl of truth as any swine ? It is only the 
 preferring of the letter to the spirit. It is 
 self-righteousness. It is the playing the part 
 of the servant of God rather than the being 
 the servant of God. It is unreality. It is 
 not hypocrisy in the English sense of the 
 word, because hypocrisy is conscious, whereas 
 Pharisees believe themselves to be accepted 
 of God. This is precisely what makes their 
 attitude so desperate. It is not unbelief; it 
 is perverted belief It is not exactly worldli- 
 ness ; it is a worldly religion. It is religion 
 without the spirit. It is the **form of godliness 
 without the power." It is religiosity. It is 
 ecclesiasticism. The unreal man says, " I 
 
REALITY 79 
 
 thank God that I am not as other men are.'* 
 " All these things have I kept from my youth 
 up. What lack I yet ? " '' Lord, Lord, when 
 saw I thee an-hungered, or athlrst, or a 
 stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and 
 did not minister unto thee ? " " Have I not 
 prophesied in thy name and in thy name cast 
 out devils ?" ''I am able to drink of thy 
 cup." He does not say, '* God be merciful to 
 
 me a sinner." 
 
 I have chosen this subject because there 
 are some in this congegation who as inheritors 
 of a privilege have for the last five or six 
 years prayed daily in this church, and now 
 are about to surrender this priyllege; and 
 because the preacher also has had a privilege 
 now to be surrendered, so far at least as these 
 worshippers are concerned, the privilege of 
 reminding them from this pulpit that the 
 cardinal instrument of education Is submis- 
 siveness to the spirit of Jesus Christ. 
 
 What have these two privileges produced 
 between them ? self-distrust, or self-satisfac- 
 tion ? a love of truth, or of untruth ? devotion 
 
80 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 to the reality of Ideals, or absorption In the 
 unrealities of the world ? Each must answer 
 for himself. None can bare his soul to his 
 fellow. If he can say, ** God be merciful to 
 me a sinner," then Jesus Christ has not turned 
 from him, saying, " I came not to call the 
 righteous but sinners to repentance." If he 
 knows that he has broken every law, Jesus 
 has not said to him, '* It is lawful to do good," 
 but only, ** Where are thine accusers ? go and 
 sin no more." 
 
 There are always so many questions that 
 men call urgent and momentous vexing the 
 world, that it Is tranqullllsing and Invigorating 
 to seek the well of truth and Him who sits 
 thereby. For to drink thereof is to discover 
 that after all, these things are neither so urgent 
 nor so momentous as men conceive. They 
 ask, ** Is It lawful to do this or to do that ?" 
 as though Jesus had never said, " It is lawful 
 to do good." They are troubled with much 
 service, as though Jesus had never told the 
 laborious Martha that her sister had chosen 
 better than she. They magnify the church, 
 
REALITY 8 1 
 
 and forget the frequent sayings of its founder 
 that the church is not conterminous with the 
 kingdom of God. They make much of 
 doctrines and uses which at best are only 
 the appurtenances of an organisation, and at 
 worst are contrary to the unglossed teaching 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 In these many questions and controversies 
 they who now go out from this school must 
 in the natural order of things take a part, and 
 perhaps may some of them some day play 
 a great part. But whether their place be 
 humble or considerable, they will help to 
 determine great questions in the best way 
 only if to their solving they bring the convic- 
 tion that the spirit is everything and the letter 
 nothing. They must fight very often on 
 what seems to be the losing side. That is 
 not of consequence. Who can tell in any 
 particular case that in God's sight defeat is not 
 more valuable than victory ? But it is of 
 consequence that at least one man has not 
 taken a side from want of thought, or from 
 prejudice, or from respect for public opinion, 
 
 6 
 
82 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 or from interested motives, but has sincerely 
 endeavoured to explore the truth, and to 
 contemplate the naked spirit hid by the letter 
 of such unrealities and deceptions. 
 
 Truth has not become very much more 
 easy to discover since Pilate's day. The 
 spirit of Christ has no doubt acted as a leaven,, 
 but Christ himself, says that it will never 
 leaven all mankind. There will always be 
 elder brothers who need no repentance, as well 
 as penitent prodigals and abashed sinners. 
 Christ must always be arguing, "It Is lawful 
 to do good." For Is there not another leaven 
 at work among men, that which was once 
 named the leaven of the Pharisees and of 
 Herod ? Christ has still to say to men, as 
 Jesus said to his disciples, ** Do ye not yet 
 understand ?" He has still to say in patient 
 irony when men declare that they have swords 
 wherewith to lop off Malchus' ear, *' It is 
 enough." Human nature is still, and will 
 always remain, loth to confess that the spirit 
 alone imparts truth. 
 
 I know well that some here with whom I 
 
REALITY 83 
 
 have lived like father with sons for some 
 years have seen at least in a measure what 
 this means, and thereby have quickened the 
 life of a little community. Will they go on 
 seeking after truth and reality, and thus in 
 groping faith send the same spirit out from 
 them, growing, as they themselves grow, to 
 greater strength ? They may not easily 
 see the effect ; but effect there will be not- 
 withstanding. If they take orders, will they 
 try the effect of the spirit first ? Even St 
 Paul had often to argue that the spirit is 
 more effectual than organisation. Is it certain 
 that no warning is needed now ? Even St 
 Paul had to fight during his whole life against 
 the bondage of the letter. Is such bondage 
 unheard of now ? If they become school- 
 masters, I wonder whether they will try first 
 if spiritual fire, kindled by their own earnest- 
 ness inspired by Christ, will melt the indolence 
 of their boys, before they try the newest 
 method for packing an unwilling brain with 
 information ? 
 
 And here I cannot but speak of a matter 
 
84 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 that has moved me. There Is a project now- 
 carrying out to exhibit what is called edu- 
 cation in what is called an English Education 
 Exhibition. Either the name is misused, or 
 it is implied that education is a visible process 
 analogous to the visible processes by which 
 one material thing is converted Into another 
 material thing, wool into cloth, rags or fibre 
 into paper, hides into leather, or — to offer a 
 sort of opening for argument — food-stuffs Into 
 bone and flesh. To my mind, I say It In 
 reverence, such an exhibition is as Impossible 
 as an exhibition of the gospel. Nevertheless, 
 the universities of Oxford and Cambridge 
 have given their adhesion to the project, and 
 not a few of the great public schools. The 
 one essential thing is ignored, the accidents 
 are exalted. With Busby's ashes resting a 
 few feet from this pulpit, and with Arnold com- 
 memorated in another place In this church, I 
 venture to affirm that to imagine that any such 
 scheme is calculated to advance education is to 
 misunderstand the spirit of Christ as much as 
 the eleven misunderstood it when they said, 
 
REALITY 85 
 
 " Lord, here are two swords," and in irony 
 Jesus answered, '' It is enough." 
 
 The improving of mechanical methods, 
 and the perfecting of details in management 
 and organisation that there be as few ob- 
 stacles as possible to the march of the spirit, 
 are necessary things, which at one time were 
 neglected no less than more excellent things 
 in English schools ; but the danger now is 
 that being easier, and needing only time 
 and money, method or organisation may be 
 pursued as an end, whereas it is only an 
 instrument conducing to the end. So little 
 are such mechanical methods effective in 
 themselves, that in any school, if they are to 
 aid the spirit, they must be created by the 
 spirit, so much so that what works well in 
 one school may work ill in another. As no 
 two faces are exactly alike, no two minds, no 
 two characters, so no two schools can be alike. 
 They have different antecedents, and are 
 different : and if men try to impose uniformity 
 of method upon all, they will to that extent 
 impede education, and diminish the sole unify- 
 
86 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 ing force, the one spirit which can transmit 
 itself through the most diverse systems and 
 make their effects one. 
 
 Whatever business or profession these 
 sons who now go forth from this home may 
 adopt, they will find therein, if indeed they 
 have been educated, not merely instructed here, 
 a field for un-Pharisaic self-dissatisfaction, 
 un-Pharisaic devotion to the ideal. If at any 
 time they begin to think that they have cause 
 to be well pleased with themselves, to be 
 satisfied with what they know, to flatter 
 themselves with their good deeds, their visit- 
 ing of the sick, their clothing of the naked, 
 with the completeness and certainty of their 
 creed, the punctiliousness of their religious 
 observances, the frequency of their bodily 
 presence in church, their willingness to seek 
 the spirit when other men are content with 
 the letter, their grasp of truth, their power of 
 will, in one word, their superiority to other 
 men — then they have either never had, or 
 they have lost, the one element In human 
 conduct which is distinctively Christian — an 
 
REALITY 87 
 
 undlvulged discontent with themselves, an 
 unconfessed self-despair, an uncommunicated 
 sense of failure, a reticent self-indictment, an 
 unrevealed self-abasement, a secret acknow- 
 ledgement of sin, a prayer for mercy when the 
 door is shut to, when in faltering obedience 
 to the bidding of their master they say to God 
 who seeth in secret, "We are unprofitable 
 servants : we have done that which was our 
 duty to do." 
 
SERMON VIII 
 
 THE SCHOOLING OF THE WILL FOR JESUS 
 CHRIST'S SERVICE 
 
 Barnabas exhorted them all thai with purpose of heart they 
 would cleave unto the Lord. — Acts xi 23. 
 
 Many men are apt to let day follow day in 
 an uncertain and shiftless sequence. Any 
 absorbing purpose shaping the lives of others 
 seems to them something superhuman, and 
 their own love of ease and self-Indulgence are 
 therefore hardly rebuked thereby. Never- 
 theless, all are attracted by any Instance of 
 momentous ends achieved through tenacity of 
 purpose. They look on and envy ; some- 
 times they try to copy; and if they copy, 
 then they also In their turn set a-goIng the 
 everlasting spiritual force of controlled and 
 controlling will. The force Itself they may 
 not be competent to measure, but they feel 
 
THE SCHOOLING OF THE WILL 89 
 
 and know that it alters them for the better, 
 and that virtue goes forth therefrom towards 
 others also. 
 
 Who does not know the helpless per- 
 plexity that comes up over the mind like a 
 mist when an unfamiliar subject is tackled ? 
 It is an inextricable tangle of disordered 
 details ; but when the thoughts have for a 
 time been bent upon It, order arises gradually 
 out of the chaos, and the isolated facts begin 
 to group themselves along lines of first prin- 
 ciples, easy to grasp and to remember. In 
 much the same way life seems first of all to 
 be a veritable tumult of contradicting impulses, 
 opposing wills, drifting habits, flung at each 
 other In disorder. In one sense It is as it 
 seems ; nobody can hope to reconcile the 
 sundry conflicting forces ; nevertheless, it is in 
 the power of anyone who desires to be a 
 profitable servant of God and of man to drive 
 at least through his own life straight and 
 well-marked lines along which his thoughts 
 and actions shall travel. These lines are 
 simple spiritual principles designated by 
 
90 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 common names — truth, love, faith, hope, and 
 the like. But before he can drive these lines 
 through life, a man must school his will. He 
 must be stedfast In effort, tenacious, resolved. 
 Stedfastness In purpose Is sometimes said 
 to be the outgrowth of character, and so In 
 some degree It Is ; but It Is also undoubtedly 
 creative of character. Nobody can go on for 
 long controlling by the spirit of Christ Im- 
 agination, thought, and action In order to 
 serve some definite purpose without by the 
 same process enriching and purifying the 
 source from which this controlling power 
 springs. Will begets will. After each exer- 
 tion of self-control a man becomes better able 
 to exert it again. The opposite Is of course 
 true also. Weakness and uncertainty of 
 purpose Is a disease which eats the will away 
 and produces a decay In character. Every 
 surrender of a purpose prepares the way for 
 worse surrenders, till in the end even the 
 capacity for making resolves at all Is lost. A 
 man gets Into the way of taking the turn that 
 for the moment seems easiest. He begins to 
 
THE SCHOOLING OF THE WILL 9I 
 
 follow at all times the line of least resistance. 
 He is content to drift. 
 
 To train the intelligence, say the men of 
 this generation, is indispensable ; but they 
 often forget that to put the will to school 
 is somewhat more profitable. He who rules 
 his will can compel his intelligence to serve 
 him. What does thought profit if it has no 
 precise work set it by the will ? A weak 
 will can make plenty of thinking unprofitable 
 or pernicious. The thinking of men who 
 have no force of will is as unsubstantial as 
 moonshine. The moonshine may bewitch, 
 but it shows things neither as they are nor as 
 they should be ; whereas will and purpose 
 are like strong, searching, vitalising sunlight, 
 conferring reality and the sense of power. 
 
 He is a poor creature, weak himself and 
 infecting others with infirmity, who has no 
 definite purpose of one kind or another. 
 Even a humble purpose is better than none 
 at all. An aim of any sort goes for much. 
 An aimless life arouses suspicion. Things 
 cannot be quite right with me, if my familiar 
 
92 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 friend cannot discover whether I have an aim 
 in Hfe or no. None can be entirely without 
 interests or pursuits, and those in whom 
 nothing of the kind is apparent lay themselves 
 open to the suspicion that they have Interests 
 so little to their credit that they prefer to 
 keep them hid. 
 
 Very different it is with him who has 
 learned the secret of purpose of heart. Till 
 he learned it he may have had a certain 
 willingness to do what men expected from 
 him, but there were no leaps or bounds, no 
 impetuous, irresistible rush forward. It was 
 a jog-trot and no race. For such Is the 
 difference which purpose of heart makes. It 
 quickens all the powers. It is manhood. 
 
 Nature is the raw material from which 
 each should make the best and richest stuff 
 he can. This must be his prime aim and 
 purpose. But it is an aim too abstract and 
 ideal to be clearly apprehended and followed 
 from the first. It is realised only by degrees. 
 At all events I conceive that such is the 
 course by which, if they look back, most men 
 
THE SCHOOLING OF THE WILL 93 
 
 who have endeavoured to use life well, will 
 see that they have travelled. They first by 
 chance, or the good guidance of the Word, 
 discover a purpose more or less humble, then 
 as they chase It, the prospect widens until 
 they come out upon rising ground from which 
 there is a view backwards over the country 
 already traversed, and forwards also towards 
 a fertile land growing many things that at 
 their setting out they would have thought It 
 presumptuous to covet. They may, or they 
 may not, have made good the paltry aim 
 which they have pursued, but they have 
 certainly found the way whereby alone the 
 true end of life Is reached — the steep and 
 narrow track climbing the mount of God. 
 
 Such are the steps by which character 
 widens, broadens, and deepens. Let the zest 
 and charm conferred upon life by purpose of 
 heart be once revealed, and the man Is willing 
 to sacrifice anything, even life itself, rather 
 than surrender them. He is engrossed in 
 his chase and burns with enthusiasm, and 
 surmounts obstacles that once would have 
 
94 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 checked or intimidated him. This is no race 
 to exhaust the powers, but rather to nerve 
 and exhilarate, every step forward augmenting 
 alacrity, not lassitude ; force, not weariness. 
 
 He learns judgment and discretion too in 
 this journey. He may have begun by doing 
 a great deal too much, going straight up hill 
 and down dale right for his aim. By-and-bye 
 he learns to mend his rate of progress by 
 skirting a hill, by going round a crag, even by 
 travelling back many stages in order to take 
 a new turning. Knowledge and wisdom and 
 self-distrust carry him forward more quickly 
 than his old hurry and confident impetuosity. 
 
 At the root of all true schooling of the 
 will, you know and I know, lies the informing 
 Spirit that proceeds from God and from 
 Christ. If the heart be open to receive this 
 Spirit, then it is as if the soil were prepared 
 for the plant purpose to grow in. Character 
 ripens, manhood increases, life is expounded. 
 The man will not go back into the mire of 
 jealousy and self-will and indolence and self- 
 indulgence and other things that cling and soil, 
 
THE SCHOOLING OF THE WILL 95 
 
 for he has breathed the clear, invigorating^ 
 nimble air of the delectable mountains. He 
 is alive when before he was dead. The 
 creeds do not puzzle him. He is not con- 
 cerned with the plan of salvation, the economy 
 of grace, or any other catchword of the schools. 
 The everlasting controversies of theology are 
 debated afresh, and the church he loves takes 
 to old fashions or invents new, but he takes 
 no heed. These are things outside the soul's 
 life, apart from his aim, **to cleave unto the 
 Lord with purpose of heart." 
 
SERMON IX 
 
 PROPHECY 
 Thou shalt be called the prophet of the Highest. — Luke i 'j^). 
 
 The word prophet Is no longer used in the 
 sense which it commonly bears in the trans- 
 lation of the Bible. There it seldom means 
 a foreteller of the future. It is employed 
 rather of one who so speaks forth or out 
 another's mind as to interpret his purpose 
 and thoughts. A good deal therefore of the 
 Bible is ill understood or wholly misunder- 
 stood if the words prophet, prophesy, and 
 prophecy are taken in the narrow sense in 
 which alone they are now used, and not in 
 their older larger meaning. 
 
 God did not reveal ordinary historical 
 events to the Jews any more than he now 
 reveals them to Englishmen. Revelation is 
 a thing purely spiritual. Hence the scores 
 of errors, and inaccuracies, and downright 
 
PROPHECY 97 
 
 contradictions between one writer and an- 
 other in respect to matters of ordinary history- 
 narrated in the Bible are inevitable there as 
 in every other history, and need not surprise 
 anyone who has once grasped firmly the dis- 
 tinction between the two kinds of truth, that 
 which the Spirit of God alone can make 
 known, and that which men may record if 
 they like for themselves. 
 
 But if in the Bible there is no prediction 
 of common things ; if the sundry writers are 
 left to themselves in their presentment of 
 what befalls to men and nations in time, 
 there is undoubtedly a revelation by the 
 Spirit of God of momentous facts — the 
 coming of a Saviour and the existence of a 
 kingdom of God — which man could never 
 discover or record for himself These are 
 spiritual truths for which time does not 
 count ; they are not incidents to be classed 
 as present, past, or future in any historical 
 sequence. They differ altogether from 
 battles, sieges, victories, and defeats. Of 
 the prediction of such things there was no 
 
 7 
 
98 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 more in Palestine than there may be in 
 Europe now. The mission of the prophets 
 was not to foretell disasters or triumphs^ 
 though these they sometimes were competent 
 to foresee, as they may still be foreseen by 
 sagacious observers of the drift of history. 
 Rather it resembled the mission of the last of 
 the prophets, John the Baptist himself. They 
 went before the face of the Lord to prepare 
 his way, their thoughts ever directed to things 
 above rather than to things before. There 
 can be no prophet of the Highest whose eye 
 is not always turned towards something still 
 unrealised — so far the vulgar conception of 
 his office is true, — but it is merely an accident 
 if that something is fulfilled in the future. 
 His function is to interpret God's will. He 
 carries men's thoughts up to God ; he does 
 not bring the secrets of the future into the 
 present. He cries : This is God's purpose, 
 but not : God reverses the law of man's 
 creation as a creature in time, and by me 
 draws the veil from the future. He is the 
 mouthpiece of God to men because he seeks 
 
PRQPHECY 99 
 
 inspiration from God, and thereby can give 
 men glimpses of the love of God, the mercy 
 of God, the justice of God, the power of God. 
 These all are things spiritual and eternal 
 and infinite, to which from their very nature 
 the ideas of past, present, and future cannot 
 attach. To understand these, and teach men 
 these, is to be a prophet of the Highest, a 
 very different thing from a prophet of the 
 future, or a recorder of the present or the past 
 in the shifting scene of passing time, the rise 
 or the fall of empires, the founding or the 
 overthrow of dynasties, the progress or the 
 decay of civilisations, *'all the kingdoms of 
 the world and the glory of them." 
 
 The one kind of prophecy is not worth 
 attempting, but may be left to fortune-tellers 
 and the like impostors; whereas to seek to 
 be a prophet of the Highest is after all 
 nothing less than to try to be a child of God 
 and a citizen of his kingdom. When a man 
 is in love with ideals, and would make them 
 loved by others, he is in that measure a 
 prophet of the Highest, "the voice of one 
 
100 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way 
 of the Lord, make straight in the desert a 
 highway for our God." The voice is his who 
 putting himself in God's hand, and seeking to 
 be his prophet, gives life and strength and 
 faculties to enlarge the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 How is a man to live that God may 
 through his life reveal himself to others ? 
 
 First, no doubt, he must grasp the idea of 
 God as at once supreme over man, and de- 
 pendent upon man for the advancement of 
 his purpose among men. This is the burden 
 of the prophets — the thought of infinite 
 spiritual power controlling the universe by 
 unaltered purpose certain to be fulfilled, 
 nevertheless advanced or retarded by man. 
 At any time the bulk of mankind may be 
 unconscious of this purpose or careless for its 
 fulfilment, and so far as they are so, may fail 
 to forward God's decree. But there is also 
 at any time a minority or remnant to whom 
 God's purpose is a reality, perhaps the only 
 reality in life, who see that there can be but 
 one issue to God's purpose, and that for the 
 

 PROPHECY 
 
 acceleration of that issue they may make 
 themselves God's instruments. 
 
 The man who by God's help converts this 
 conception into a daily force and familiar 
 influence is become a prophet of the Highest; 
 as indeed is also he who at times is enabled 
 to direct his life thereby. 
 
 All who try to become prophets are often 
 down-hearted, I daresay, at the small measure 
 of their success. It often seems as though 
 the world, indifferent to ideals, perverse, deaf 
 to the Word, must laugh at the remnant and 
 their endeavours ; and the remnant is tempted 
 to give up prophesying and to join the 
 majority. Yet those who on the whole cling 
 to the Word are to that extent prophets of 
 God. 
 
 Anything that lends significance and eleva- 
 tion to life should be welcomed ; and this 
 thought does that. It can sustain men when 
 their worst instincts and passions threaten 
 to overwhelm the spirit altogether. It can 
 harden them to maintain the seemingly des- 
 perate fight of knowledge with ignorance. It 
 
I^i^-Vo" "''THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 gives heart and hope even when things go 
 worst. 
 
 In a week or two a whole school-generation 
 will go forth from this place. All of these, I 
 may hope, will side with the remnant; but 
 there is a risk that some will side with the 
 majority. Nevertheless, why should not all 
 accept the call to be prophets of the Highest? 
 If the thought is once become familiar, it will 
 not be readily discarded or easily remain 
 unfruitful. Let it run like a guiding thread 
 through the maze of life. 
 
 If you go to college, it will save you from 
 what is one of the worst temptations there, 
 the temptation to think that learning stops 
 with the measure of knowledge attainable by 
 a man of twenty-five, and that any means, how- 
 ever mechanical and unintelligent, is sound, 
 if by it that measure can be filled up the more 
 easily. To regard life in that way is to betray 
 the remnant. No man can be a prophet 
 whose life is untrue to conscience. It will 
 surely be one of the rewards, not the most 
 precious indeed, but still precious, vouchsafed 
 
PROPHECY 103 
 
 to the remnant in the end — that they will 
 understand what they had not understood ; 
 that their reason will move unimpeded and 
 unconfined over all that now baffles and 
 torments the intelligence. 
 
 I do not know how it is that the old 
 attitude in respect of education at school and 
 college begins to give way. It used to be 
 thought that the studies there were merely 
 the gateway to knowledge, not knowledge 
 itself. You can help to bring the right view 
 back. On you who go to college I urge this 
 above all : Do not lose faith in the possibility 
 of discovering more and more truth. If 
 learning and investigation have no other 
 function, they have at least this, that they are 
 the nursery of ideas, when ideas are the food 
 by which man grows. If all men learned the 
 same things, and these only up to the con- 
 temptible limit represented by university 
 examinations, the mind of the race would 
 starve. Let us rather endeavour in this 
 sense as in others to become the interpreters 
 of God to men. Every true thought launched 
 
I04 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 by US upon the world, every new aspect of 
 an old truth made familiar, is a revelation of 
 God made by God himself through us, his 
 prophets. 
 
 As in the lower field of intellect, so in the 
 moral and the spiritual field we may take the 
 same road. We must let God speak to us, if 
 we would have him speak through us. He 
 speaks in a thousand ways. If we do not 
 hear, it is because we are not simple enough. 
 We ask, perhaps, how that can be a message 
 from the Source of all Knowledge and power 
 which claims nothing save what a child gives 
 best, unreasoning trust, ill based faith. It 
 does not square with our pride that we should 
 in this be no better than the young and the 
 simple. Or we ask again, how the Spirit of 
 God can dwell in the hearts of men, when in 
 the heart we know best his influence seems 
 so feeble and slow. But has not the Word 
 himself declared that the leaven of the king- 
 dom of heaven ferments slowly ? The spirit 
 of Christ is there, if the heart cherishes ideals 
 and is eager to fight for them. 
 
PROPHECY 105 
 
 Given these two things, the faith of a 
 child and the grown man's resblve to fight on 
 against the temptation to betray the holy 
 spirit of the Highest, a man Is Indeed a 
 prophet. God speaks to others through him. 
 He has the true prophet's Ideal of a kingdom 
 of God. He feels the compulsion to prepare 
 the way of the Lord. 
 
 He will suffer, and suffer greatly. ** Who- 
 soever will come after me, let him deny 
 himself and take up his cross." But of the 
 soul's possessions, past suffering Is one of the 
 most precious. The better part of what Is 
 called character Is made by suffering : and If 
 anyone has not character, that Is, the strength 
 derived from contention with passions and 
 sins, he can have no commission from God to 
 other men. There will be nothing about him 
 to inspire or purify other men. 
 
 Nevertheless, he will influence other men. 
 Even weakness has its influence. Infirmity of 
 character is as great a curse to others as to the 
 infirm of character himself Moreover, there 
 are prophets of the devil as there are prophets 
 
I06 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 of the Highest, the actively wicked and the 
 vicious. 
 
 Nothing has ever produced in me so keen 
 a sense of failure as the hearing that some 
 one once well known here has flagrantly 
 taken the wrong side. The apprehension 
 springs up and will not be choked back that 
 perhaps his error is the fault of his upbringing. 
 For a school, as I have often sought to show 
 from this place, ought to be a nursery in 
 which the plant of character is grown under 
 favouring conditions to such vigour and fulness 
 of life that it can safely be transplanted into 
 the field of the world. If in the transplanting 
 it is dwarfed, or grows awry, men may blame 
 its rearing, thereby disparaging the soil of 
 the nursery, which, unlike common soil, is 
 more enriched by the plants themselves than 
 by the gardener's labour. In a school each 
 sundry life contributes something to the char- 
 acter of all, and is itself reacted upon by all in 
 its turn ; so that those who from time to time 
 go forth from Westminster have inevitably 
 the school's good name in their keeping. 
 
PROPHECY 107 
 
 Nor should the condition of the school be 
 held right or wholesome by its lovers, so long 
 as anyone at all can say that his character 
 was not strengthened by his life at West- 
 minster : And many will justly decry the 
 fame of their school if the common life to 
 which they look back was not penetrated by 
 spiritual ideals like that which has occupied 
 us this morning, whereby the purpose of God 
 is recognised as something which men both 
 singly and together help to fulfil. 
 
SERMON X 
 
 WASTEFULNESS 
 
 Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing 
 be lost. — John vi 12. 
 
 Rich and delicate dyes are produced from 
 the greasy, noisome waste of gas-works, 
 stuff once held to be dirt and refuse. The 
 mounds of slag that have accumulated for 
 years near iron-furnaces are now converted 
 into useful things. Such strange reversals 
 are sometimes recorded in the history of 
 scientific discoveries. What Is thrown away 
 one day may be eagerly sought after the 
 next. Nevertheless, the generations ought 
 each to bequeath to its successors by the 
 saving of waste a far richer inheritance than 
 
WASTEFULNESS IO9 
 
 is now bequeathed by any. As It is, the 
 fragments are ill gathered and much is lost. 
 Man's ignorance and carelessness and per- 
 versity are not to be measured, and in his 
 race to be rich he contemns the slow processes 
 of nature that wastes nothing, and cares not 
 how much he destroys, provided his own 
 purse fill. Perhaps there never was a time 
 in which the gifts of the Creator were more 
 recklessly wasted than they are wasted now. 
 The mark of this century has been waste, the 
 squandering of treasures amassed by nature 
 in millions of years. Whole continents have 
 been devastated, denuded of their forests, 
 despoiled of their fertility, exhausted of their 
 subterranean wealth. It Is but a stage, 
 perhaps, which must be passed through in 
 travelling towards better things, but it is 
 certain nevertheless that many remote genera- 
 tions will curse this age for taking much and 
 giving little back, for violating nature, for 
 defying the decree of Creation. Yet even 
 those who curse are not likely themselves to 
 have learned In their day all the will of the 
 
no THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Creator, nor is it possible to imagine a time 
 when every secret of nature shall be known, 
 and men shall use without waste everything 
 which God has made. 
 
 The passage from which my text is taken 
 describes an act similar to an act of creation, 
 and records that he who performed that act 
 was careful to forbid the waste of any frag- 
 ment of that which was made. He made 
 enough and to spare, yet nothing must be 
 lost. Waste, it is implied, is irreligion. 
 
 In the feeding of the five thousand, as in 
 the feeding of the four thousand, an essential 
 part of the eternal process of creation was 
 accelerated. He who executed God's will in 
 the creation of the world, and continually 
 executes it in the multiplying of every crea- 
 ture, executed it here also in the multiplying 
 of the bread. It is this which gives extra- 
 ordinary impressiveness to the words of the 
 text. God creates for man's use, but not 
 that man may waste. The command to 
 gather up the fragments is, in the mouth of 
 Jesus, the plain expression of the Creators 
 
WASTEFULNESS III 
 
 will, a veritable commandment uttered by the 
 Word himself: Thou shalt not waste. 
 
 Even if this were the only passage in the 
 Bible which taught this lesson, it would in 
 itself determine how God would have men 
 deal with that portion of creation which at 
 any time he commits to them. It declares 
 that as often as anyone wastes either his time 
 or his powers, or food, or clothes, or anything 
 whatsoever, he acts as though God must 
 provide him with more than he can use ; 
 whereas the case is just the contrary. All 
 that God gives, he gives that it should be 
 wisely husbanded. It is a capital to trade 
 with, not a treasure to squander. 
 
 This is a doctrine not easy to put in 
 practice; yet it is essential. No other con- 
 ception of man's duty can be reconciled with 
 the saying : Gather up the fragments that 
 nothing be lost. The command is not to be 
 explained away. It contains nothing less than 
 what I have said. It interprets the divine 
 theory of human life. It furnishes another 
 ideal for men to strive after, or at leasts not 
 
112 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 wholly to forget. For It is, as I have said, 
 one of the spoken words of the Word him- 
 self, as the miracle which gave occasion for it 
 is a word In another kind ; and his words 
 spoken or expressed in act are the first and 
 only source for which you or I can draw any 
 spiritual inspiration worth the having. It is 
 from them that we learn what the kingdom 
 of God Is ; that it grows up from within and 
 cannot be imposed from without j that the 
 spirit of Christ is a force and not a law. 
 
 For this reason each must find out for 
 himself how to Interpret the text in matters 
 of everyday conduct, and to answer the ques- 
 tion : What is waste ? The Jewish rabbis 
 would have drawn up a code of rules to 
 regulate conduct in such a case. No Chris- 
 tian can do that. He will nowhere find any 
 * cut and dried system of life whereby he shall 
 enter the kingdom of heaven. There is no 
 legislation in the gospels, but there Is plenty 
 of a better thing — suggestlveness. 
 
 There is this suggestlveness in the bid- 
 ding : Gather up the fragments that remain 
 
WASTEFULNESS II3 
 
 that nothing be lost. It helps men to deter- 
 mine when they should spend and when they 
 should refrain from spending, when lavishness 
 is in place and when careful husbanding. 
 
 Every man, body, mind, and soul, is 
 himself God's creature. His time is God's, 
 everything that he possesses is God's. He 
 cannot live without either using or wasting 
 some creature of God. There is not, nor has 
 there ever been, anyone at all who has not 
 lived a great part of his life awry in this 
 respect ; not one but has either forgotten 
 again and again to gather up the fragments 
 of his capacity, of his time, of his opportunities, 
 or has squandered them altogether. How 
 much bodily strength, how many gifts of 
 mind or spirit has everyone failed to use ! 
 All have misused money ; all have wasted 
 food and drink ; all have often behaved as 
 though they were free to do as they liked 
 with God's gifts. Who but has need to recall 
 that the Son of God possessed of power to 
 create, taught as the Son of man in unmis- 
 takeable language that his fellow-men have no 
 
114 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 right to waste the most insignificant fragment 
 of created things ? 
 
 Moreover, if it is an obligation never to 
 waste what God has bestowed for a man's 
 own use, it is certainly as binding an obliga- 
 tion to refrain from wasting the bodies, or 
 minds, or labour, or money, or belongings of 
 others. This obligation also is constantly 
 violated. It seems as though to most men 
 the real motive for saving what is their own 
 were not that it is God's gift, but that it is 
 their own. What an incalculable sum of 
 God's gifts is wasted, spoiled, lost, any day of 
 the seven in an opulent country like England, 
 because men are too careless, or thoughtless, 
 or selfish to husband what has been acquired 
 by the labour or riches of others ! For it is 
 the case that the more easily a thing is got, 
 the more likely it is to be wasted. Lightly 
 come lightly goes. Was not this one reason 
 why Jesus told the disciples to gather up the 
 fragments ? The Syrian crowd then, like an 
 English crowd to-day, would otherwise never 
 once have thought of the waste. They 
 
WASTEFULNESS 1I5 
 
 would have satisfied themselves with the 
 gift, then, as I often see some of you doing, 
 they would have thrown aside or even spoiled 
 what they could not use. Men are so apt 
 to take every blessing as their due, and to 
 see no harm in wasting that which they do 
 not care to use themselves. Indeed, they 
 incline even to measure their importance by 
 what they can afford to waste : and this 
 attitude is encouraged, or at any rate con- 
 doned in many parts of English society at 
 the present day, so much so, that it requires 
 no common measure of the conviction that 
 waste is irreligion for a man even in his own 
 household to contend against wastefulness. 
 The husbandry of God's gifts is so rare a 
 thing that even when nothing is grudged the 
 preventing merely of waste is designated by 
 ill names. Yet wastefulness is just as much a 
 sin as generosity is a virtue. *' Gather up 
 the fragments that remain that nothing be 
 lost" are words of the Son of God. The 
 deeper this truth penetrates into the con- 
 science, and the more it pervades the conduct, 
 
Il6 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the more opportunities there must be of 
 imitating God's work of love in creation. 
 There will arise thereby the means for being 
 generous, and for creating out of superfluity 
 new methods of serving God. 
 
SERMON XI 
 
 SPIRITUAL AGGRESSION AND SPIRITUAL 
 DEFENCE 
 
 He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city .... 
 
 without walls. — PROVERBS XXV 28. 
 
 When a strong man armed keepeth his palace^ his goods are 
 in peace. — LUKE xi 21. 
 
 Every soul has an enemy, persistently ag- 
 gressive, either avowedly in open attack, or 
 treacherously by secret sapping and mining. 
 It may even happen that this enemy finds no 
 obstacles and suffers no opposition ; that he 
 has merely to take possession. A soul may 
 lie at his mercy, as in old days an unwalled 
 town might be occupied by anyone who 
 chose. 
 
 To have no rule over one's own spirit, 
 Solomon says, is to be open to every sugges- 
 tion of sin — anger, hate, malice, envy, pride, 
 gluttony, carnal curiosity ; every sundry devil 
 
Il8 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 In Satan's force. The unguarded heart is 
 theirs. They possess It; they devastate It; 
 they destroy It ; and they show Its ruins to 
 their master as their completed work, jesting 
 withal at the simplicity of their victim and 
 the facility of their conquest. 
 
 Judging by the form of this proverb, I 
 have no doubt that he who made it, conceived 
 of the human heart as In continual danger of 
 demoniacal possession, or of attack from the 
 enemy of man. Be this as It may, there Is 
 no room for doubt that in respect to the 
 words of Jesus, " When a strong man armed 
 keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace " — 
 the enemies against whom the palace must be 
 kept are emissaries of Satan himself, devils, 
 demons, unclean spirits. 
 
 It Is now usual to Ignore this conception, 
 or to esteem Its presence In the gospel as a 
 concession to popular Ideas. On the other 
 hand. It Is undeniable that the weight of 
 evidence Is in favour of Its truth. The con- 
 ception is not only accepted but enforced by 
 Jesus Christ. So completely may a man's 
 
SPIRITUAL AGGRESSION II9 
 
 soul be occupied by Satan that the man 
 himself may be addressed as Satan — " He 
 rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, 
 Satan : " or may be spoken of as Satan's 
 son — " Ye are of your father the devil." 
 All the good in men may be devoured by 
 Satan, and nothing left but refuse — " Simon, 
 Simon, Satan hath desired to have thee and 
 the eleven, that he may sift you as wheat." 
 When the Word sows good seed in the 
 world-field, the devil sows tares, or even 
 catches away the seed ere it can take root. 
 No less does Jesus Christ recognise the 
 operation in men's hearts of Satanic agents ; 
 demons they are called, devils, or evil spirits 
 — *' If I cast out devils by the spirit of God, 
 then the kingdom of God is come unto you": 
 **And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he de- 
 parted out of him " : " The devil is gone out 
 of thy daughter " : " Thou dumb and deaf 
 devil, I charge thee come out of him, and 
 enter no more into him " : *' He stood over 
 her, and rebuked the fever " : " Ought not 
 this woman, whom Satan hath bound these 
 
120 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on 
 the Sabbath day ? " 
 
 As certainly as there is a personal God, 
 whose angels are eternally occupied in asslst- 
 ting and comforting men, so there is a per- 
 sonal devil, the enemy of man, whose emis- 
 saries are perseveringly active in assailing 
 not only the spirits but the bodies of men, 
 and spreading disease and corruption through- 
 out their whole nature. There is nothing 
 incomprehensible here ; rather human life 
 becomes incomprehensible, and the light of 
 the world obscure, for him who will not 
 acknowledge the reality of a conflict between 
 the powers of light and of darkness. Can 
 these utterances of the Word be figures only 
 that must be explained away ? The whole 
 passage from which our New Testament text 
 is taken is emptied of meaning, if there be no 
 personal Satan, no personal demons, whose 
 business it is to suggest sin and to harden 
 the heart against virtue. If you rid you, 
 Jesus says, of an unclean spirit, you must at 
 once put into his place a strong man armed 
 
SPIRITUAL AGGRESSION 121 
 
 to keep the heart against him ; that Is, you 
 must put there the spirit of Christ. Other- 
 wise the unclean spirit again enters and brings 
 worse spirits with him. 
 
 I beHeve I know what this means, and 
 all who hear me know. If the kingdom of 
 heaven can be within a man, may not the 
 kingdom of hell be there ? If the spirit of 
 Christ can be within the heart, may not the 
 spirit of Satan be there ? 
 
 I should be well content if I could, and if 
 all here could, realise vigorously this teaching 
 that the soul must be occupied, possessed, 
 and controlled either by good or by evil 
 powers. It cannot be empty. If it be pos- 
 sessed by Satan and his army, the man is 
 unclean, passionate, deceitful, proud, malicious, 
 selfish, lazy, gluttonous : if by Christ and his 
 legions, he is pure in heart, righteous, meek, 
 honest, merciful, charitable, strenuous, self- 
 controlled. He is strong and armed who 
 derives his security from Christ and wears 
 the armour of God. 
 
 But for the most part, or rather always, 
 
122 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the city of the heart Is neither wholly walled, 
 nor wholly open to aggression ; the man who 
 keeps his palace is neither unarmed, nor yet 
 to be rightly called a strong man armed. 
 There is fighting in the streets and lanes of 
 the city, or in the courts and chambers of the 
 palace. At all events, that is my own ex- 
 perience, and no doubt is yours also. 
 
 Now, If it be the case that the heart can- 
 not but be the scene of a conflict between 
 the powers of good and the powers of evil, 
 between angels and demons, is it the case also 
 that each man must fight alone ? or may he 
 draw upon other hearts for reinforcements 
 for the one side or the other ? It is certain 
 that he may find succour from his neighbours. 
 A man's spirit may be helped not only by 
 Christ, but by other hearts too in the building 
 of its walls, in the seating on its throne of the 
 strong man armed. Otherwise there would 
 be no virtue in the common life of school, and 
 I should but waste time In speaking from this 
 place; and you in hearing. It is true that 
 such a common life may reinforce the demons 
 
SPIRITUAL AGGRESSION 1 23 
 
 no less than it reinforces the angels. There 
 have been times at Westminster, as there 
 have been times at every public school, when 
 the common spirit instead of aiding the single 
 soul to fortify itself against sin has actually 
 hindered it, and when the strong man armed 
 has had to resist Satan's crew in isolation 
 without sympathetic fellowship. I know 
 schools now in which the common spirit is 
 on the side of the demons, where pureness of 
 heart must be strongly fortified, if it is to be 
 retained at all. For all I can tell there may 
 be elements in the common spirit operative 
 here now which tend rather to reinforce the 
 devil in his siege of single hearts — you can 
 say more certainly than I can — but I hope 
 that on the whole the sympathies of the 
 school are with him who seeks the help of 
 Christ's spirit to build his walls, and would 
 fain seat in the palace of his heart a strong 
 man armed. That at least must be the ideal 
 for all schools that are to be of any spiritual 
 service to those who attend them. Devoid 
 of this ideal, a school is merely a collection of 
 
124 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 class-rooms in which the knowledge of certain 
 facts or fancies in language, in literature, or 
 in the sciences is more or less effectually con- 
 veyed. It is a place of instruction, not a 
 place of education. I should be sorry to say 
 a word which could tempt any boy to conceive 
 that knowledge of facts and of principles is 
 not a priceless treasure. It is a treasure 
 which only the foolish and the thoughtless 
 and the indolent do not seek. But better 
 than knowledge is the motive from which 
 knowledge is sought. It is the presence of 
 this motive which transforms a school from a 
 place of instruction into a place of education. 
 The knowledge of facts and of principles that 
 boys can acquire is almost worthless compared 
 with the precious things they may make their 
 own by means of the ideals which lead them 
 on to acquire knowledge. I have known 
 many who, without any considerable gifts or 
 aptitudes, have nevertheless at school equip- 
 ped themselves well for the spiritual struggles 
 of manhood by acquiring, in the only way in 
 which it can be acquired, the power to con- 
 
SPIRITUAL AGGRESSION 1 25 
 
 quer the devil and his legions. The boy who 
 ■does that not only rules his own spirit ; he 
 helps others to rule theirs. By expelling from 
 his own palace the demon of indolence he has 
 strengthened and armed others against the 
 same enemy. I have known many who have 
 conquered worse demons than indolence, 
 ousting them from their own palace, rein- 
 forcing others against them ; making, for 
 example, pureness of heart, or self-denial, or 
 truthfulness, more easy of attainment for 
 everybody here. 
 
 Something like this, I take it, is education, 
 •a word on many lips, and therefore difficult 
 of apprehension — an arming of the spirit, a 
 reinforcement of nature, a fencing of the man 
 as with walls. No school which follows after 
 this can fail in attaining to the love of know- 
 ledge, forasmuch as the whole includes the 
 part. 
 
SERMON XII 
 
 EXPECTATIONS 
 
 The Lord hath, sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of 
 the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the 
 people of the Jews. — Acts xii ii. 
 
 It was Herod's purpose to keep Peter in 
 prison for a time and then to sacrifice him to 
 the Jews, and the Jews in turn counted 
 securely upon Peters execution. Both had 
 reason for believing that he could not escape 
 their vengeance. Nevertheless, they were 
 disappointed. Their expectation was not 
 fulfilled. They had formed it without reckon- 
 ing upon God's intervention. It may well 
 be that the prisoner himself did not think his 
 case so desperate. Peter had seen too many 
 example^ of supernatural interference in the 
 affairs of men to imagine that any expectation 
 either of good or of ill could be other than 
 
EXPECTATIONS 12/ 
 
 precarious. The belief that God, not man, 
 shapes and controls events must have grown 
 into a powerful and abiding force in the 
 minds of all who had gone in and out with 
 Jesus, had seen their hopes once wholly 
 extinguished by his death, and again rekindled 
 and assured by his resurrection. Their whole 
 attitude towards the circumstances and inci-, 
 dents of life cannot but have been modified 
 thereby. If the other disciples had this con- 
 viction, Peter must have held It more intensely. 
 Not only did he belong to the group of three 
 whom Jesus adopted into the most Intimate 
 fellowship with himself, but of the three he 
 would appear to have been the principal. 
 He had been present when Jairus' daughter 
 awoke, when the widow's son was restored to 
 her, when Lazarus was recalled. Jesus had 
 once reached out his hand and saved him 
 when he began to sink in the sea. Men do 
 not forget such things ; and Peter guarded 
 closely in prison cannot have forgotten that 
 he had been in a worse plight before, and 
 had been rescued by Jesus himself. 
 
128 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Everybody has his hopes and expecta- 
 tions. There are some here to-day who 
 cherish the definite expectation that in a 
 month's time their career at school will be 
 crowned with some substantial kind of suc- 
 cess. I wonder if they cherish this expecta- 
 tion in the spirit of Herod and of the Jews 
 as a thing in which God has no hand, a thing 
 on which they can confidently count ; or in 
 the Christian spirit as something which God 
 controls, and may even entirely frustrate. It 
 is not that God intervenes now in the manner 
 in which he intervened between Peter and 
 the Jews ; but he does intervene as directly 
 and really, though the manner be changed. 
 Gates do not open or bars fall ; there is 
 nothing that might be called miraculous in 
 the way In which expectations are fulfilled, 
 or modified, or destroyed. Nevertheless, 
 God still disappoints or alters them or fulfils 
 them. There was once a rich man who 
 made quite sure of riches and happiness ; 
 but God said, *' Thou fool, this night thy 
 soul shall be required of thee ; then whose 
 
EXPECTATIONS 1 29 
 
 shall those things be which thou hast 
 provided ? " 
 
 In God's sight a man is a fool who makes 
 certain of anything. The thread of expecta- 
 tion is thin, and easily snaps. The imitator 
 of Jesus Christ tries to entrust himself and 
 all his expectations to God's discretion. The 
 sting is then withdrawn from disappointment. 
 Failure does not surprise or sour. The man 
 who acknowledges that God's will has an 
 influence upon the things which happen to 
 him takes any changes, any disappointments, 
 any successes, as part of a train of events 
 which must have a good result somewhere 
 and somehow. He takes his life as it comes 
 for a creating and schooling of character. 
 When he forms plans and entertains hopes, 
 he does not conceal from himself that from 
 their very nature these plans and hopes are 
 ill secured. They are not of the same real 
 and solid substance as the rock on which his 
 spiritual life is founded. If they be swept 
 away, he may let them go, and be none the 
 worse for the loss ; rather, may be even the 
 
 9 
 
130 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 better, because he has learned one lesson of 
 wisdom the more. 
 
 The wisdom of sitting loose to expecta- 
 tion, and of seeing the finger of God in 
 failure as in success, is a good deal more 
 difficult to put in practice than to acknow- 
 ledge with the reason. It can be acquired 
 in only one way, by the letting the spirit of 
 God mould and school the will to accept 
 what comes as the gift of God ; taking it 
 with resignation and even with cheerfulness 
 if it be what men call evil, and with humility 
 and mistrust when it is what men call good. 
 
 Not to learn a little of this wisdom is a 
 man's own fault. Who cannot recall some 
 disappointment which he can now see was a 
 blessing, or some success which became, or 
 almost became, an irresistible temptation ? 
 The character is all the richer for such 
 experience ; the will is all the stronger. 
 
 If this has happened, if the mind is not 
 so desperately set upon realising ambitions 
 or expectations precisely as they are first 
 framed, if the reason acknowledges that the 
 
EXPECTATIONS I3I 
 
 shock of failure may be of more value than 
 any complete success, then the heart may 
 well have begun to submit to the spirit of 
 Christ. 
 
 God does intervene in the lives of men. 
 Jesus Christ claimed for the Father this 
 authority when he bade men pray, " Thy 
 will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 
 The Son of God lived here as the Son of 
 man in order that men, by his example, might 
 be taught to detach themselves from earthly 
 hopes and earthly ambitions, and might accept 
 God's will as their supreme good. Christ is 
 for man not only a brother but a master, the 
 Lord Christ ; God is for man not only a 
 Father but a king. Man is a subject who 
 should have one will with his master and 
 with his king; but he is also a son who 
 may accept his Father s authority in a spirit 
 of love and confidence, knowing that the 
 brother, who is his master, has done the 
 same. 
 
 These things are uncommonly difficult to 
 put in words that the mind can grip and 
 
132 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 keep. It is thought to be a preacher's 
 business to say them, and a hearer's part to 
 bear with him. They have been often said, 
 often heard, often forgotten already. They 
 are the cry and burden of the prophets. 
 They are nearly as old as the hills. As the 
 generations pass, each hears them afresh, and 
 a remnant in each gives heed when the Word 
 says that failure and disappointment, suffering 
 and tears, endured without repining for right- 
 teousness' sake, are the means whereby a 
 man's spirit is made strong and tranquil, and 
 is prepared for God's service and united with 
 Christ and made worthy of God's glory. I 
 do not find that Jesus ever pronounced a 
 beatitude upon worldly success of any kind ; 
 but he pronounces many upon things that the 
 world connects only with failure and dis- 
 appointment. Nevertheless, it is certain that 
 the blessing is not promised to failure and 
 suffering in themselves, but only as they 
 are borne for Christ's sake. The man who 
 lets the world know his heart's secrets, his 
 tribulations, agonies, despairs, conflicts, dis- 
 
EXPECTATIONS 153 
 
 appointments, failures, is not blessed but 
 contemptible. He can only be blessed, if he 
 never tells. No one, Jesus says again and 
 again, has any right to hear the soul's crying 
 but the Father who seeth in secret ; for no 
 other can give spiritual help and comfort. 
 
 In thy most mortal combats with the 
 unclean spirit of self-love or the devil of 
 despair, yet wear a cheerful face, that thou 
 appear not unto men to fight at all, content 
 that thy master knows thy weakness, and 
 will reinforce thee before thou fail. 
 
SERMON XIII 
 
 IMPEDIMENTS TO PROGRESS AND IMPEDERS 
 OF PROGRESS 
 
 // must needs be that offences come : but woe to that man by 
 whom the offence cometh. — Matthew xviii 7. 
 
 It is said by Scaliger, who was perhaps the 
 most sagacious Interpreter of antiquity, that 
 if men could only recover the proverbial lore 
 and the various turns of speech and habits of 
 thought common In Syria in the time of Jesus, 
 they would find some of the hard sayings of 
 Jesus to be as simple as they doubtless ap- 
 peared to the simple folk who heard them 
 first. This, I conceive, is such a saying, or 
 rather part of such a saying, and I shall try 
 and restore to it some of its simplicity and 
 directness. 
 
 There is an oriental fashion of speaking 
 concerning the way in which men act or suffer 
 that is so unfamiliar to western races that 
 even the Bible, whereby so many oriental 
 
IMPEDIMENTS TO PROGRESS 135' 
 
 ideas have been introduced into Europe, has 
 not made this conception, or the phrases that 
 express it, familiar in any real sense to the 
 ordinary European. It is true indeed that 
 the Jewish phrases are in their English 
 sounds well known to the ear — transgression 
 and trespasses, to walk in the law of the 
 Lord, the way of righteousness, the path of 
 God's commandments, to be out of the way, 
 and the like— but who is not conscious, when 
 he hears, or perhaps himself employs, these 
 expressions that they convey less intimate 
 meaning to him than would be conveyed by 
 genuine English phrases ? The metaphor 
 is not an English metaphor at all. It is 
 borrowed from an alien race, and expresses 
 an alien form of thought. To this group of 
 oriental phrases the words offend and 
 offence belong. A man travelling on a 
 road finds some obstruction, or his foot 
 strikes a stone so that he stumbles, or is 
 even so much hurt that he cannot proceed 
 for a time, or perhaps may never walk 
 sturdily again. The bar across the road, 
 
136 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the obstacle of any kind which stops or 
 maims the traveller is an ofifence, a stum- 
 bling-block, a rock of offence, a fall. 
 
 In the gospel for this day Jesus says to 
 his disciples, that even when men have been 
 converted, that is, have turned about and 
 taken the right road instead of the wrong, 
 there are nevertheless many obstacles to be 
 surmounted, many a stone to stumble against, 
 many a spot of slippery ground. These bars, 
 and stops, and sundry impediments may be 
 placed, he says, in the way by others ; or 
 they may even be in some measure of the 
 travellers' own seeking. For the travellers 
 on this road are men's souls, and the bars, 
 and stops, and impediments are just as likely 
 to arise from the bodies in which the travel- 
 ling souls dwell as from other souls or other 
 bodies. The enemy of men s souls is active 
 and enterprising. 
 
 Jesus does not in this place mention Satan 
 by name, but he does mention the realm of 
 Satan as the ultimate source of all these 
 obstructions to the progress of the soul. 
 
IMPEDIMENTS TO PROGRESS 13/ 
 
 "A curse rests upon the world (i.e., upon the 
 kingdom of Satan) by reason of the Impedi- 
 ments placed thereby in the soul's path. Such 
 impediments are inevitable in this age, but 
 alas for the man who is responsible for this 
 impediment or for that. The curse may even 
 fall on thee thyself: the bar to thy soul's 
 journey may be placed athwart thy path by 
 thine own body, thine hand or thy foot or 
 thine eye, by any member of them all. Bring 
 forward on this journey any humble, child- 
 like soul, and thou servest me ; but if instead 
 thou be tempted to put impediments in that 
 soul's way, better first destroy thine own 
 natural life than bar another's access unto 
 God. As for thyself, be it limb of thine own 
 body which obstructs thy soul's progress, 
 rather deprive that limb of its proper office 
 than let it by perversion of that office drag 
 thy soul into Satan's power for ever." 
 
 Such is Jesus' answer to his disciples' 
 question, ** Who is the greatest in the king- 
 dom of heaven ? " St. Matthew does not 
 record what St. Mark records, that a little 
 
138 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 before they put the question they had dis- 
 puted which of them should receive from 
 their master the highest position in the king- 
 dom of heaven. Jesus took a child, and 
 placing him among them, answered their 
 question thus, saying that they could not 
 enter the kingdom of heaven at all unless 
 they were first rid of the spirit which had 
 prompted such a debate, and were become as 
 humble and simple as the child whom he had 
 placed with them as more worthy of the 
 kingdom of heaven than they. Their quarrel 
 proved that they did not belong to the king- 
 dom of heaven, but to the world or kingdom 
 of Satan, and that instead of helping one 
 another to travel on the right road, they 
 hindered one another. The kingdoms of the 
 world and the glory of them, which they 
 thought to import into the kingdom of God, 
 were in Satan's gift and not in Christ's. The 
 woes of Christ rested upon them. Christ's 
 blessing was to be obtained only by such as 
 could so reverse the world's judgment as to 
 see true greatness in humility or self-depre- 
 
IMPEDIMENTS TO PROGRESS 1 39 
 
 ciation, and true dignity in service or self- 
 denial. The angels thought not of primacy 
 or preeminence, but only how to obey God 
 and serve such souls of men as were humble 
 enough to seek God's help, and accept the 
 angels' succour, and resolute enough to sur- 
 render even God's gifts of body, if they found 
 that these gave advantage to Satan, and pro- 
 vided impediments to their spiritual progress ; 
 nay, to sacrifice even bodily life itself rather 
 than place obstacles in the path of any soul. 
 
 It is impossible to dwell upon this saying 
 of Jesus without shame and self-contempt. 
 Nobody but must be aware that he is often 
 proud, often stands upon his dignity, often 
 takes the world's view, the satanic view, of 
 greatness, arguing that to do things which 
 would be of spiritual service to others cannot 
 consist with his self-respect. Who does not 
 know of things done every day, or of ideas 
 prevailing here in school, that are on any 
 interpretation contrary to this judgment of 
 Jesus Christ, and nevertheless are defended 
 and cherished by some who in many ways 
 
I40 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 try to put in practice Christian ideals ? Yet 
 no disciple can say that the teaching of the 
 Master is not perfectly plain and direct. 
 Anyone can imagine himself standing there 
 with Peter, James, and John, and the rest, 
 and seeing the little child set among them, 
 and hearing Jesus say, as the child stood 
 abasht with these grown men still excited by 
 their quarrel, " Before a man can be the 
 greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he must 
 think as little of worldly rank and greatness 
 as this little child. He will so far partake In 
 my spirit and be mine." Then follows the 
 warning that none shall unpunished put 
 obstructions in the way of such child-like 
 souls, or let his flesh put obstructions in his 
 own soul's way. If thus child-like It would 
 become. It Is as though Jesus had said to 
 each : "In taking part in this controversy, 
 suggested by Satan himself, how can you tell 
 that you have not put an impediment in the 
 way of some other of my disciples, as you 
 have certainly let the lower side of your own 
 nature impede the higher ? " 
 
IMPEDIMENTS TO PROGRESS I4I 
 
 I mean to leave this exposition of to-day's 
 gospel without particularising how its teach- 
 ing ought to affect the attitude and conduct 
 of us masters and you boys at school. Every- 
 body can make sure for himself whether he 
 tries or does not try to let this gospel direct 
 his conduct. It contains, as I have said 
 already, plain teaching, direct teaching, and 
 withal teaching that is at first unwelcome and 
 even repellent to most men. It can only 
 become acceptable and fruitful when a man 
 really endeavours to attain to some share in 
 the spirit of Christ. Like all Christ's teach- 
 ing it is better unglossed. It may be the 
 case, it often is the case, that the words of 
 Jesus spoken immediately to Syrians in the 
 Syrian language have to be rendered into the 
 speech of another people in another age ; but 
 apart from this they need no gloss, and are 
 best let enter the soul as the Word spoke 
 them. 
 
SERMON XIV 
 
 VIGILANCE 
 
 Watch thou in all thi?tgs. — 2 Timothy iv 5. 
 
 This is almost certainly one of the many 
 allusions In the Epistles to sayings of Jesus, 
 whether recorded or not In the Gospels. The 
 word translated ' watch ' Is vri^e, ' be sober,' 
 and rendering It as they do, the translators no 
 doubt correctly suggest a reminiscence of the 
 parable In which Is contrasted the conduct of 
 two servants set by their master over other 
 servants. The one Is represented as faithful 
 to his trust, doing his masters bidding 
 vigilantly, the other as betraying his charge, 
 saying to himself, My master Is long In 
 coming back, and beginning to maltreat the 
 other servants, and as spending his time In 
 idleness and drinking. If further evidence 
 be needed that this view is just, namely, that 
 
VIGILANCE 143 
 
 in writing this part of this letter to Timothy, 
 Paul had the parable in mind, such evidence 
 is found in two other forms of phrase here 
 used. The one is, Make full proof of thy 
 ministry, or better. Make good thy service ; 
 the other is, And not to me only, but unto all 
 them that love his appearing. These taken 
 together with the, Be sober, make up the 
 whole framework of the parable. 
 
 Paul has watched for his Master's return 
 and knows that now he must soon come to 
 commend and to reward him, just as In the 
 parable the faithful, vigilant servant was com- 
 mended and rewarded. He bids Timothy 
 take example by him, and by sober, watchful 
 service earn the like reward and praise when 
 the Master appears to him In his turn. He 
 must give the other servants their meat in 
 due season, or In other words, do the work of 
 an evangelist. He must live for others and 
 not for himself He must not spend his days 
 like the ill servant, as though he had no duties 
 to the others, but had been given his place 
 for his own gratification. He must display a 
 
144 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 self-denying and loyal vigilance and be always 
 ready for his Master's coming. 
 
 St. Paul, like the other Christians of that 
 time, had at first misunderstood what Jesus 
 had meant by the Coming of the Son of man. 
 He had imagined that Jesus Christ was to 
 return to earth within a few years from his 
 resurrection in order to judge the whole world 
 at once. It was only by degrees that he came 
 to see that the final coming of Christ to judge 
 all mankind is of no great concern to the 
 individual disciple. The death of each man 
 is the Coming, the appearing, the return of 
 the Master. In this passage St. Paul has 
 attained to the true interpretation of the 
 parable in which Jesus had conveyed to men 
 the dignity and impressiveness of the two 
 chief gifts of God to man, the gift of life and 
 the gift of death. Perhaps the richness of 
 both has never been more finely suggested. 
 
 I should be uncommonly sorry, I can tell 
 you, ever to say anything to anybody, more 
 particularly, if he were young, calculated to 
 frighten him about death. I do not believe 
 
VIGILANCE 145 
 
 any one was ever made a Christian by fright. 
 
 Fright has nothing to do with faith. Fright 
 
 has very different motives. When our Lord 
 
 in the parable describes the judgment upon 
 
 the ill servant, he simply states what must be 
 
 the consequence of misusing life. He does 
 
 not even hint that faith can be created by the 
 
 terror of judgment. It is the man who says 
 
 that he has faith and accepts the Master's 
 
 work, promising to do it but soon betraying 
 
 his trust, that is appointed his portion with 
 
 the untrue, where there is weeping and 
 
 gnashing of teeth. Jesus could not conceal 
 
 the truth that for each the character of his 
 
 destiny at death is determined by the character 
 
 of his life before death ; but the one point 
 
 which concerns you and me now is, that if a 
 
 man believes what Jesus Christ says, then 
 
 he believes that when he dies Jesus Christ 
 
 does appear to him and judge him. 
 
 In speaking of vigilance I speak of course 
 
 only to those who profess faith, and therefore 
 
 profess also to be servants of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Vigilance, as St. Paul here clearly implies, 
 
 10 
 
146 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 involves fighting and suffering and perse- 
 vefance, but is at the same time made easier 
 by the example of others. 
 
 First, a man must fight himself, the 
 grosser side of himself, which loves food and 
 drink and the perverse gratification of all the 
 bodily senses. If he makes much of these 
 things they soon choke his faith. He begins 
 to say, Why watch day after day, hour after 
 hour, for a master who may not come for 
 many long years ? Time enough to prepare 
 to answer the door when I hear his step 
 approaching. That is not vigilant service. 
 
 Next a man must fight the world, that is, 
 the bad example set him by other men who 
 are either hypocritical servants or not servants 
 at all. These give their opinion of life fine 
 names, worldly wisdom, common sense, know- 
 ledge of life, and the like, and even the best 
 servants are often misled into the same way 
 of reading and glosing human duty and 
 responsibility. Everybody knows how diffi- 
 cult it sometimes is to contend against so 
 natural and so alluring a view of his relations 
 
VIGILANCE 147 
 
 with Other men as is presented by the phrase 
 worldly wisdom. Things are said and done 
 before me, of which, if I were alone, I should 
 feel ashamed, yet in company for good fellow- 
 ship I condone them or take part in them. 
 That is not vigilant service. 
 
 Nor can the watchful servant get through 
 even one day of his life without rubs and 
 troubles, and perhaps hard usage. There is 
 no fighting without sweat and hardship and 
 the risk of wounds. St. Paul has a good 
 name for the scars o-ot in this cause. He 
 calls them the marks of Christ Jesus, signs 
 that he is a servant whom Jesus Christ has 
 made his own by fair purchase. He who 
 has no such scars cannot be a vigilant 
 servant. 
 
 Further, the good servant does not get 
 weary of serving. His vigilance is main- 
 tained, however long his master may delay 
 his coming. Indeed, it should become all 
 the easier by practice — and I think every- 
 one who has tried it will say that it does 
 become easier. Partly it is made easier also 
 
148 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 by the example of others. Nevertheless, the 
 ideal of good service ought always to be 
 enlarging, and to make fresh demands upon 
 the good servant's vigilance. That which 
 satisfied him once ought no longer to satisfy 
 him. Having discovered something of the 
 peace and tranquil patience with which God 
 rewards the honest, simple, unassuming, will- 
 ing attempt to put faith in practice, he is 
 stimulated to fight better, to take hard knocks 
 with more endurance, to persevere more reso- 
 lutely in vigilance, to seek more eagerly in- 
 spiration from other servants of the same 
 master. That in effect is what Paul here 
 encourages Timothy to do. Waiting tran- 
 quilly for Jesus Christ to appear, conscious 
 that he will welcome his appearing, Paul 
 turns his own career into a spur and a force 
 to push Timothy forward on the road which 
 he has himself travelled almost to its end. 
 '' I have fought," he says, " with honour, I 
 have run the race out and fainted not " (this 
 by the way is St. Paul's favourite figure for 
 doing the work of an evangelist, or — shall I 
 
VIGILANCE 149 
 
 say ? — for giving his fellow servants their 
 meat In due season), " I have kept my faith 
 unstained, and I wait quietly for the Lord 
 and for the sense of perfect sinlessness which 
 my Master will assign me as the wage of 
 faithful, vigilant service." " May thou, my 
 son, be encouraged by my example and by 
 my reward to fight against thyself and against 
 the world, to endure hard usage, to labour for 
 others, to make good thy service of Jesus 
 Christ, like the faithful steward who waited 
 so truly and vigilantly for the master's voice." 
 One word before I have done to such as 
 may never have tried to be the Master's 
 servants at all. I need do nothing more than 
 ask them to recollect who It was who drew 
 this picture of the vigilant servant. The man 
 who wrote In this way of the Ideal life for 
 man was the Saul who did all he could to 
 crush the faith at its first beginning. If he 
 could in the end make so sure that he had 
 himself realised this ideal, why should not 
 you or I be able some day to speak In like 
 tones ? In saying this I do not say that we 
 
150 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 are any better to begin with than St. Paul. I 
 only say that there is some reason for hope- 
 fulness. I may not have consented to a 
 martyr s death, but I may have done what is 
 for me as bad a thing — I may have helped to 
 make a martyr. If I have not tried to crush 
 the faith I have done much to weaken it, and 
 little to increase it. Nevertheless, it is in my 
 power, it is much more in your power, yet to 
 secure by means of some space of vigilant 
 service the right to say with St. Paul, " I 
 have fought with honour, I have made good 
 the trust reposed in me." 
 
SERMON XV 
 
 THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE 
 SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE COMMON LIFE 
 
 These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might 
 have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation : 
 but be of good cheer j I have overcome the world. — 
 John xvi 33. 
 
 On the first Christmas the call of the angels 
 announcing to the shepherds the birth of 
 Jesus was ** Peace, goodwill towards men " ; 
 and at the end of his days on earth, when his 
 works and his teaching appeared to the world 
 to be fruitless and nigh extinction, Jesus 
 himself declares that he has indeed secured 
 peace for the heart of man. "In the world 
 ye shall have tribulation ; but be of good 
 cheer ; I have overcome the world.'' Never- 
 theless, during his life he repeatedly affirmed 
 that this message of peace was at the same 
 time a challenge to war. '' Think not that I 
 am come to send peace on earth. I came 
 
1^2 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 not to send peace, but a sword." ** Suppose 
 ye that I am come to give peace on earth ? 
 I tell you, Nay, but rather division." " I am 
 come to kindle fire on the earth, and what 
 will I if it be already kindled ? " 
 
 Both things are true. The laws of men's 
 logic are suspended when Christ speaks. 
 There' is, and must be, this downright con- 
 tradiction in the mode of estimating spiritual 
 facts so long as men are left upon the earth 
 for devils to pervert and torment, or for the 
 spirit of God to save. The way in which a 
 man regards and names certain things depends 
 entirely upon his general attitude towards 
 these two forces, the subtleties of Satan and 
 the strength of God. There can be no truce 
 between these natural enemies. " If I by 
 the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt 
 the kingdom of God is come upon you." 
 " From henceforth there shall be five in one 
 house divided, three against two and two 
 against three." " Two men shall be in the 
 field ; the one shall be taken and the other 
 left." "He that Is not with me is against 
 
THE SPIRITUAL AND THE COMMON LIFE 1 53 
 
 me, and he that gathereth not with me, 
 scattereth abroad." " How can one enter 
 into a strong man's house and spoil his goods, 
 except he first bind the strong man ? and 
 then he will spoil his goods." 
 
 The meaning of all this is that the gospel 
 announced by Jesus Christ has furnished a 
 new measure for things. It has made pos- 
 sible for anybody and everybody an entire 
 revolution in his natural ideas and common 
 estimates. It glorifies human weakness and 
 poverty and humbleness, because it explains 
 how such things may be transmuted more 
 easily than their opposites into power with 
 God. It demonstrates that from a spiritual 
 standpoint the poet's guess is true, that death 
 may be life, and life death. In a word, it 
 turns men's notions upside down, and reverses 
 men's verdicts ; and among other like things 
 it declares a state of spiritual battle to be not 
 only compatible with perfect spiritual peace 
 but even to be essential to its existence. 
 Take up any one of the gospels and read 
 it through at a sitting ; it will leave upon the 
 
154 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 mind in a strong and vivid impression the 
 consistency of a life of hardship and suffering 
 with the most serene spiritual tranquillity. 
 It will prove indeed that life is a field of 
 battle, but it will furnish at the same time an 
 armament so strong and reliable that there 
 can be no cause for doubting the issue of the 
 combat. The Captain is at once a messenger 
 of peace and the declarer of war. In his life 
 among men he held out in the one hand 
 peace, and with the other he wielded every 
 weapon of indignation and scorn and irony 
 against the cruel spiritual host of pride and 
 self-will and hypocrisy. Imitating Jesus, 
 copying the spirit of Christ, men must be at 
 once men of peace and good fighters. In 
 spiritual conflicts the peacemaker is a formid- 
 able antagonist. The poor in spirit will never 
 let the powers of the air domineer over him. 
 The meek are very lions in fighting Abaddan. 
 Travellers on the way of peace not only may, 
 but must be armed, though never was armour 
 called by such contradictious names. The 
 corselet is the corselet of righteousness or 
 
THE SPIRITUAL AND THE COMMON LIFE 157 
 
 way of tribulation may become the way of 
 peace. The shadow that always rests upon 
 the easy way, the shadow of death, all who 
 make their footing good upon the way of 
 suffering are quit of once for all. That in 
 itself should make it reasonable to call this 
 way the way of peace ; but there are good 
 reasons besides. 
 
 God is not only life, but God is love ; and 
 his presence in the heart enriches all the 
 relations of man with men. If the hope of 
 eternal life must be present to everyone who 
 partakes worthily of the Lord's table, the 
 thought of love to others and of reconciliation 
 with unfriends and forgiveness of injurers 
 must be present too, charged with Christian 
 fellowship and spiritual sympathy. *' If ye 
 forgive not men their trespasses, neither will 
 your Father forgive your trespasses." ** These 
 things I command you, that ye love one 
 another." "Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyself" Without sympathy no man can 
 have much tribulation, or much peace. With 
 spiritual sympathy for others a man can be 
 
158 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 neither Pharisee nor fanatic ; but he may be, 
 and to some extent must be, a sustainer of 
 the cause of God, and therefore have some 
 share in peace. 
 
 We read the first three gospels through 
 every year in Abbey. Some of us have 
 listened to them, or at least heard them, for a 
 good many years now. Some, perhaps, have 
 never thought at all about this contradiction, 
 though it is assumed on every page, that to 
 lose life is to save it, that to undergo suffering 
 is to find peace, that the hatred of the world 
 is the love of God ; or, if they have some- 
 times thought about it, they may never have 
 tried to work it into their lives. They may 
 even have armed themselves against it, and 
 deliberately rejected it as the Pharisees, or 
 deliberately ignored it, as did many of the 
 publicans and the harlots when they heard it 
 from the lips of Jesus. Nevertheless, the 
 teaching of Jesus as to this inevitable contra- 
 diction is the one essential thing, without which 
 no education of the mind, no disciplining of 
 temper, is of much consequence. The Phari- 
 
THE SPIRITUAL AND THE COMMON LIFE 1 59 
 
 sees among us will continue to reject it; some 
 of the publicans and harlots among us may- 
 have already begun to take it to heart. But 
 it cannot be from ignorance, if we go on 
 thinking and speaking of the way of peace as 
 the way of tribulation. We read the other 
 day what Jesus said to such as deliberately 
 refused to hear : " It shall be more tolerable 
 for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment 
 than for you," and to day we read his words 
 addressed to those who had recognised this 
 contradiction, and chosen his side rather than 
 the world's — " These things have I spoken 
 unto you that ye might have peace. In the 
 world ye shall have tribulation ; but be of 
 good cheer ; I have overcome the world." 
 
SERMON XVI 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF SPEECH 
 
 Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A 
 good man out of the good treasure of the heart bi inoeth 
 forth good things: and an evil man out .of the evil 
 treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, 
 That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall 
 give account thereof in the day of judgment. — Matthew 
 xii 34 ff. 
 
 St. Paul In his letter to the church in Rome 
 speaks of men who, possessing no direct reve- 
 lation, had nevertheless by faithful obedience 
 to the promptings of conscience and by the 
 legitimate use of reason and of the gift of 
 language attained to a controlling knowledge 
 of God's will, ** their conscience attesting that 
 they act rightly or wrongly, and the conclu- 
 sions of reason arrived at by controversy 
 either arraigning or absolving them." It is 
 one step in a grave argument whereby he 
 demonstrates that the bulk of the Jews, from 
 misinterpreting the spirit and purpose of the 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF SPEECH l6l 
 
 law, and the bulk of the rest of mankind 
 from ignoring the verdicts of conscience and 
 of reason concerning the requirements of God, 
 had merited the wrath of God and made 
 necessary the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 
 
 It is clear from this passage that St. Paul 
 understood, in as liberal and comprehensive a 
 sense as has ever been claimed for them by 
 philosophy, the significance to humanity of 
 the three gifts which difference man from the 
 other creatures of God — the gifts of con- 
 science, reason, and speech. Together they 
 make up a natural revelation, sufficient, in 
 default at least of a better, to expound the 
 way in which a man should use the greatest 
 gift of all, the gift of life. In speaking as he 
 does, St. Paul, it is plain, had principally in 
 mind the lasting achievements of the Greek 
 race In literature, in science, in philosophy. 
 He recognised the reality of these achieve- 
 ments, and their value to the world ; never- 
 theless, at the same time the context leaves 
 no doubt that he recognised also the hideously 
 
 perverse use to which the Greeks had often 
 
 II 
 
l62 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 put their singular endowments of reason and 
 of speech. The good among them out of the 
 good treasure of their heart had brought forth 
 good things, and the evil out of their evil 
 treasure had brought forth evil things. The 
 best of their good has in literature never 
 been surpassed hitherto, and may never be 
 surpassed at all ; in philosophy and in 
 science the richest and most far-reaching 
 conclusions that have ever been attained by 
 controversy must also be conceded to the 
 Greeks. 
 
 It is impossible to say whether St. Paul 
 anticipated that in literature, science, and 
 philosophy, the triumph of reason would be 
 augmented by the new revelation which he 
 gave up his life to make known. It is 
 certain, however, that they have not been so 
 augmented. Why is it that in this respect 
 the ages since Christ compare but ill with the 
 ages before Christ, although men have been 
 free to draw not only upon the experience 
 and the examples of the ancients, but also 
 upon the ideals of the gospel ? It is a. 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF SPEECH 163 
 
 puzzling and intricate question, nor can I do 
 more than hint at part of the answer. 
 
 A great scholar living just at the time 
 when the printing press reached considerable 
 mechanical efficiency, and began to send out 
 books by the score, has recorded that even 
 within his own observation it had been detri- 
 mental to learning, and to that order of know- 
 ledge which cannot be acquired except by 
 laborious thought and patient investigation. 
 The printing press preserved the idle word and 
 reproduced it for the perversion and corrup- 
 tion of more men. There is of course truth 
 in this contention. It is certain that the 
 printing press has done something to de- 
 teriorate reason, and even to degrade speech, 
 the expression of reason. He who has 
 within him an evil treasure, possesses in the 
 printing press an engine for scattering broad- 
 cast among men the evil things issuing 
 therefrom. On the other hand, by the same 
 means to the like degree, the area ought to 
 be enlarged within which good things may 
 become known and be enjoyed. The fault 
 
164 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 therefore lies with man himself, and not with 
 man's invented instrument, the press, if he 
 prefer the evil things to the good, or if from 
 indolence he let the glosses of other men 
 keep him from tackling for himself serious 
 thoughts conveyed in plain-dealing language, 
 or accept the conclusions of another man's 
 reason rather than exert his own reason. I 
 have once or twice had to look through all 
 the books that have been published upon one 
 subject during several centuries, and I have 
 found very few in the whole number to con- 
 tain aught save what has been borrowed from 
 an earlier book. They are for the most part 
 idle words. Their makers have been idle, 
 unpossessed with love for truth, neglectful of 
 the good treasure, if good treasure they have 
 had. To this extent Scaliger is right, that 
 the printing press does embarrass the searcher 
 after truth, obscuring the important by the 
 trivial, distracting the mind of the honest by 
 the accumulations of the dishonest, tempting 
 men to discard strenuous thought, and to 
 speak before they know. 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF SPEECH 165 
 
 This does not concern grown men only ; 
 it concerns boys at school. When I talk 
 with them of the books they read in form, 
 great classics, those, or such as those, to 
 which St. Paul refers as containing the con- 
 clusions of reason, I discover often that they 
 do not know the writer's name, but confound 
 it with that of the person who has glossed a 
 chapter or two for use in school. Even the 
 title of the great book they sometimes do not 
 know. 'Tis buried under the idle word, 
 which projecting to help the mind diverts it 
 from things essential. Busby had reason 
 when he would have his boys read the plain 
 Latin or Greek without glosses. If all had 
 been of Busby's mind, the printing press 
 might have worked less mischief; the brain 
 of the race might have been more virile. If 
 I see a boy always eager to find some sort of 
 help rather than willing to tax his own brain 
 to discover the meaning of what he reads, I 
 do not expect him to say much that implies 
 thoughtfulness when we talk together. There 
 is risk that he will himself grow up to be a 
 
l66 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 speaker of idle words, a reader of magazines 
 and of evening newspapers and of novels, a 
 repeater of the latest trick of speech, a believer 
 in the last crazy poet, a stickler for the newest 
 fashion in handshaking- or the latest cut of a 
 coat. When I meet him after he has left 
 school, I feel that he is a rebuke to West- 
 minster. For these things are all, in one way 
 or another, expressions of a man's character, 
 idle words, evil things. It is inconceivable 
 that they could do anybody any good. They 
 are unrealities, and anyone who lives in them, 
 or even makes much of them, is a speaker of 
 idle words. 
 
 Let us go further together, searching heart 
 rather than head. There are idle words 
 worse than these, such as St. Paul indicates 
 on the same page as that in which he speaks 
 of the Greek efforts to reinforce conscience by 
 reason, downright evil things brought forth 
 out of the evil abundance within. Instead of 
 saying plain ' yes ' or plain ' no,' * it is so,' ' it 
 is not the case,' or some other simple, straight- 
 forward phrase of assent or denial, a man 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF SPEECH 167 
 
 swears or protests in some foolish way, 
 thereby weakening, not affirming, what he 
 says. All these unnecessary enlargements 
 show that he who uses them is aware that 
 his simple word is not valuable. He distrusts 
 his own honour. Jesus Christ's teaching in 
 respect to this there can be no mistaking. 
 Eliciting the spirit of the third commandment 
 he declares, " Let your communication be, 
 Yea, yea : Nay, nay : for whatsoever Is more 
 than these cometh of the evil one." He 
 would abolish even the solemn oath of the 
 Old Testament, " As the Lord liveth, before 
 whom I stand." No man who respects him- 
 self, certainly no obedient copyer of Jesus 
 Christ, will consent to confirm his ' yes ' or 
 * no,' unless when the law, which knows him 
 not, demands it. 
 
 Let us go deeper still. There are Idle 
 words more worthy of condemnation than the 
 needlessly emphatic — those, namely, which 
 do not only betray their speaker's disbelief in 
 his own manhood and truth, but demonstrate 
 his disbelief in another's manhood and good- 
 
l68 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 ness. In this case too, as in all the rest, the 
 idle word, the evil thing, may be written down, 
 remember, as well as spoken. It is not my 
 duty to rake up this ugly heap here, but it is 
 my duty to bring the minds of any present 
 who perhaps bring out such evil things from 
 the evil store within them into the presence of 
 Him, who shall be their judge, as he says to 
 them here and now that every idle word that 
 they may speak, they shall give account 
 thereof in the day of judgment ; and to say 
 also to those who may not themselves speak 
 them, yet do not resent them when spoken in 
 their presence. Speak out ; speak out, and 
 rebuke them. They are the lie direct given 
 to your own manhood. They would not be 
 uttered before you if he who speaks them 
 believed in your pureness of heart. The evil 
 spirit that possesses the speaker of these evil 
 things jeers at you, and hopes to possess you 
 also. Nor is he far from success if you listen. 
 Give him back as good as he gave, and 
 defeat him. 
 
 That which differences man from every 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF SPEECH 169 
 
 Other living thing may bring man down lower 
 than them all. Satan loves the best gifts, 
 that he may twist them into deformity. If he 
 be once permitted to work his will upon them, 
 he makes of them his most revolting and 
 destructive engines. Jesus has told men so, 
 and Jesus Christ knows what is in men, and 
 Jesus the Son of God, shall judge men's 
 secrets in the day of judgment. 
 
 Everybody is thinking now of war, and of 
 his fellows who maintain his cause with the 
 strength and majesty of hardy spirits in 
 faltering bodies, and perhaps himself is eager 
 to face death as their comrade ; but there is 
 another field, on which to fight with strength 
 and majesty requires more manhood. There 
 the evil in a man's nature is embattled against 
 the good. The fighting lasts not for an hour 
 or for a day or for a year, but for a lifetime. 
 Either side can call up reinforcements at any 
 moment at its pleasure. Men are not so 
 eager to take part in this conflict ; neverthe- 
 less, all must share in it. He is on the side 
 of evil who makes no choice between the 
 
I/O THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 sides. He may also be there by frank and 
 open choice ; but no one here, I am sure, has 
 taken that side deliberately. Yet many per- 
 haps are on it, because they have not thought 
 at all which side they must be on if there be 
 manhood in them, and respect for goodness — 
 the side on which good men fight against evil 
 and its backers ; on which those fight who 
 draw their reinforcements to make good the 
 waste of war not from the doomed and 
 reckless power of hell, but from the calm, 
 unexhausted resources of heaven. 
 
 There is a mark by which fighters in this 
 war distinguish friends from enemies, the 
 mark named in these words of Christ, the 
 nature of the things which they bring forth 
 from the treasure of their hearts, the mark of 
 evil, the idle word, visibly worn by such as 
 fight for the kingdom of Satan ; or the mark 
 of good, the badge of truth and sincerity, dis- 
 coverable upon those who know that their 
 manhood shall be judged justly at the last. 
 
. SERMON XVII 
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF WAR 
 
 Blessed are the peacemakers. — Matthew v 9. 
 
 What king, going to war against another king, sitteth not 
 down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten 
 thousand to meet him that cometh against him with 
 twenty thousand? — LuKE xiv 31. 
 
 There might be found in the Old Testament 
 many sentences bearing more directly upon 
 the subject of which I wish to speak than 
 these two texts from the New ; but from the 
 Old Testament it may well be that unchristian 
 conclusions would have been drawn. So many 
 accepted opinions and approved judgments 
 were reversed by the authority of Jesus Christ 
 that even the Old Testament is sometimes a 
 blind guide in matters of conduct. 
 
 War, at least on one side, is so brutal, 
 inhuman, and devilish that he who would 
 justify it in a church must indeed be careful 
 to seek direction from the teaching of Jesus 
 
1/2 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Christ. I believe that it is possible to show- 
 that there are elements in that teaching from 
 which It may be deduced that wars are not 
 likely to cease so long as men continue to 
 be born and beget children and die. Until 
 Christ has finally triumphed over Satan, the 
 sword shall always be, as the sword has 
 always been, the last instrument of arbitra- 
 ment between nations. 
 
 It does not admit of doubt that Jesus 
 never contemplates universal acceptance for 
 his teaching. It would even be difficult to 
 demonstrate that he ever looked for more 
 than a certain number of disciples In any 
 generation among any people ; or that he 
 reckoned upon such increase In the number 
 of his followers as should produce at any 
 time overwhelming superiority for the king- 
 dom of heaven over the despotism of hell. 
 It Is instructive to observe how, In parable 
 after parable, Jesus withholds any precise 
 Indication of the numbers on the one hand 
 of those who accept his spirit, on the other 
 of those who reject it. Either no proportion 
 
THE INEVITABLENESS OF WAR 1/3 
 
 is named at all, or the proportion differs 
 greatly in different parables. Who shall tell 
 how many worthless fish the draw-net takes 
 with the good, how the tares stand to the 
 wheat, how much of the sower's seed is lost, 
 how much germinates and dies, how much 
 springs up and yields increase ; or again, how 
 many refuse the invitation to the supper, how 
 many come from the hedges and highways ? 
 Who shall say how many find the hid trea- 
 sure or seek the pearl of price, how many 
 will act as the publican or how many as the 
 Pharisee, how many the sheep will be and 
 how many the goats ? True, of the ten 
 virgins five are wise and five are foolish, 
 but in the parable of the talents the pro- 
 portion is two to one, in that of the pounds 
 it is nine to one, in another it is ninety-nine 
 to one. Not only is there this persistent 
 variation or persistent uncertainty, the men 
 spoken of in these parables are such as have 
 actually heard Christ's call. Nothing is im- 
 plied concerning the millions who at any 
 time have not heard the call at all. Further, 
 
1/4 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 when the larger number in the proportion 
 refers, as it does in the parables that have 
 been mentioned, invariably to the saved, it 
 has still to be corrected by another plain 
 saying : ** Many are called, but few chosen." 
 It is the larger — who can doubt ?^n order 
 that men may not despond too soon. The 
 one thing on which Jesus Christ supremely 
 insists is the need for his teaching to take 
 root in the • single heart. The few chosen 
 may become, nay, shall become, a vast army, 
 but the recruits come in one by one. Nor 
 can any recruit tell for certain who fight at 
 his side. He cannot himself be quite sure 
 what the king will say to him at last ; much 
 less can he conjecture the judgment that 
 others will receive. He can hope ; he can- 
 not know. Hope, as St. Paul saw, is essential 
 for him who fights in this war. The Christian 
 does not realise here ; he only hopes ; and 
 he who bids him fight is careful not to quench 
 this hope. 
 
 If I have rightly interpreted this side of 
 Christ's teaching, the conclusion is inevitable, 
 
THE INEVITABLENESS OF WAR 1/5 
 
 that in any body of men in the church, much 
 more in the nation, there are always many 
 who are not Christians, however deeply, how- 
 ever widely Christian conceptions and moral 
 ideals generated therefrom may influence and 
 in some degree elevate the whole body, Chris- 
 tian and unchristian, be it church, or nation, 
 or aggregate of nations ; and if this is the 
 case, then at any time a condition of things 
 may arise so perverse and satanic that nothing 
 but war, revolting and satanic as war itself in 
 one aspect always is, can determine it. Jesus 
 Christ certainly said : " Blessed are the peace- 
 makers," but he also said : *' These be the 
 days of vengeance ; there shall be great dis- 
 tress in the land, and wrath upon this people. 
 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, 
 and shall be led away captive into all nations/' 
 And he said also: *' If thou hadst known, 
 even thou, at least in this thy day, the things 
 which belong unto thy peace ! but now they 
 are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall 
 come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast 
 a trench about thee, and compass thee round, 
 
1/6 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay 
 thee even with the ground, and thy children 
 within thee ; and they shall not leave in 
 thee one stone upon another ; because thou 
 knewest not the time of thy visitation." 
 There could not be plainer evidence that 
 war is the scourge with which God chastens 
 men. Before war can become this scourge, 
 men must levy war. Before a nation be thus 
 chastened, another nation must act as God's 
 instrument. 
 
 Men have to reconcile, as they best can, 
 these seemingly contradictory sayings of Jesus 
 Christ ; and in this instance, the blessing upon 
 the peacemaker and the recognition of war 
 as an instrument of divine justice can, I 
 believe, be reconciled in the way I have 
 tried to show. The blessing upon the peace- 
 maker is a blessing upon the individual and 
 for the remnant that is Christian within any 
 nation ; but It cannot and does not mean that 
 the Christian, either singly or as one In a 
 -community, shall not take part In the de- 
 grading and the ennobling business of war. 
 
THE INEVITABLENESS OF WAR 1 7/ 
 
 When Jesus Christ said, " They that take 
 the sword shall perish with the sword," as 
 Peter would have rashly defended him against 
 the civsl power, he said but what any wise 
 man would have said. He did not say that 
 in all circumstances fighting is wrong. Had 
 he meant that, the saying would have taken 
 another form. As it stands, it can signify 
 only this — that armed resistance to the will 
 of the community must be visited by the 
 community with death. Instead of furnish- 
 ing an argument against the view that 1 
 have tried to present, it is an argument in 
 its favour. For man to take man's life is an 
 appalling thing ; nevertheless, communities 
 could not exist as associations of men ordered 
 under law and by contract of each with all, 
 and all with each, if they shrank from carry- 
 ing justice to this conclusion in their common 
 defence. It is a thing more awful still for a 
 nation to bring all its resources together for 
 the end of destroying — yet this is what war 
 is — as many of their enemies as they can in 
 the shortest time they can, with as little loss 
 
 12 
 
1/8 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 as they can to themselves ; nevertheless, it is 
 inevitable, and its inevitableness is contem- 
 plated — the conclusion cannot be escaped — 
 by Jesus Christ, who alone can estimate the 
 resources of Satan. 
 
 Even when thus defined in brutal sim- 
 plicity, war notwithstanding has aspects which 
 are not harrowing but consoling. Many of 
 the men who have fallen in the last six weeks 
 were perhaps never so unselfish and pure as 
 on their last field, when the resolution to 
 make good their manhood against fear, and 
 vindicate the glories of their race, enriched, 
 and perhaps even hallowed, their nature. 
 
 " Thought shall be the harder, heart the keener, 
 Mood the more, as our might lessens." 
 
 When men talk, as some talk now, as if the 
 number were unexampled of lives lost in the 
 few combats and skirmishes that as yet have 
 taken place in this war, they show that they 
 do not understand what war is, or what war 
 has always been. War involves a loss of life 
 at which the heart and soul revolt in awe and 
 horror ; but would not you or I deliberately 
 
THE INEVITABLENESS OF WAR 1 79 
 
 give our life gladly, if need were, as these 
 men have sacrificed theirs ? It matters not 
 whether a man's life be long or short, but it 
 matters much whether he use it well. If 
 misused it last, he is then to be pitied when 
 the worthless frame falls to pieces. 
 
 There cannot be imagined any means 
 whereby the ordinary man may do more for 
 his race, and through advantaging his race 
 advantage more the world, than the risking 
 of life with hardy courage in the field of 
 battle. The foundation on which the great- 
 ness of England reposes, her self-respect, her 
 fairness of temper, her freedom, her influence 
 in the council of nations, has been laid solid 
 and lasting by those who have bled and died 
 in her wars. The very name of England is 
 compounded of the triumphs, whether in 
 defeat or in victory, of the men bred on her 
 soil. Which therefore is the better lot, or 
 the better befits a man — the dying in the fire- 
 light, the familiar faces looking on, or solitary 
 death, whether by sudden stop or even through 
 lingering anguish, on the hill ? 
 
t8o the key of knowledge 
 
 When a nation Is selfish and indolent and 
 sensual, It is apt to cry aloud against war and 
 the loss of life involved in war ; and that 
 nation Is dead, and might as well be extinct. 
 I read the other day a minute account of the 
 so-called civilisation of the later western 
 Roman empire, when the Romans would not 
 fight and could not fight, preferring to make 
 money, and surround themselves with com- 
 forts, and read and write silly books, and 
 discourse upon the glories of Rom.e : and 
 meanwhile the martial races, whom these 
 Romans termed barbarians, were closing in 
 upon them, and preparing to take their place. 
 I read also a history, written by one who 
 proudly speaks of herself as born in the 
 porphyry-chamber at Byzantium, concerning 
 the wars, or rather the disasters, of the later 
 eastern empire. Unintentionally she depicts 
 a condition of things even more contemptible 
 than Is portrayed In any account of the western 
 empire. Theological contentions have dis- 
 placed the stern controversy of war. There 
 is visible a degrading religiosity, an abasing 
 
THE INEVITABLENESS OF WAR 151 
 
 valuing of life as life, but no masculine for- 
 tifying religion, and no manhood or national 
 spirit. 
 
 I do not know, but I believe, that in the 
 future the course of history will proceed as in 
 the past ; and if this be so, then the only 
 means whereby civilisation, as men name it, 
 may be prevented from ending in enervation 
 and decay is the reconciling in the life at least 
 of a remnant of the two Christian duties — 
 the duty of peacemaking, to be realised for 
 the single life by each sundry soul ; and the 
 duty resting upon each, as one in the com- 
 munity of the nation, of maintaining at any 
 cost by war, and the suffering that war 
 entails, that which he holds to be a righteous 
 cause. 
 
SERMON XVIII 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Kf are the light of the world.— MATTH-ENf v 14. 
 
 If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light : 
 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of 
 darkness.^yiA-TTUE^ vi 22. 
 
 There Is no way of revealing or Interpreting 
 the spiritual world to men other than by 
 removing words from their common signifi- 
 cation to a spiritual meaning. Heaven has 
 thus two senses, the sky seen by the natural 
 eye, and the rest from evil and peace from 
 sin descried and desired by the soul. All 
 the elements one after the other are employed 
 as terms to express, or rather to hint, to men 
 something of the primal powers and forces of 
 the spiritual world. At one time it is fire : 
 ** One mightier than I shall baptise you with 
 the Holy Ghost and with fire." At another 
 it is the wind : " The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 1 83 
 
 but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither 
 it goeth : so is every one that is born of the 
 Spirit." At another it is water : ** If any man 
 thirst, let him come unto me and drink." 
 
 Of the words thus transformed to a new 
 use none is commoner than light. It is con- 
 stantly employed to express the effect of the 
 spirit of God upon the mind of the man who 
 welcomes it. He who does not believe in 
 God's power to help him is said in one 
 phrase or another to be in darkness : '' They 
 will not be learned nor understand ; they 
 walk in darkness": "Everyone that doeth 
 evil hateth the light." On the other hand, a 
 man is said to begin to see light when he 
 begins to let the spirit of God influence his 
 hard self. Above all, when the God Christ 
 came as the man Jesus in order to make it 
 more easy for man to suppress self and seek 
 God, the fact is expressed by the same figure : 
 " The men that sit in darkness see a great 
 light " : ** The dayspring from on high hath 
 visited us to give light to them that sit in 
 darkness, and in the shadow of death, and to 
 
1 84 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 guide their feet into the way of peace." It is 
 said of Christ: "In himwaslife,and the life was 
 the Hght of men." Jesus Christ said of him- 
 self : '* I am the light of the world." He said 
 also of those who so believe in him as to 
 reflect the light they borrow of him : '' You 
 are the light of the world." He contrasted 
 the two classes into which men fall, according 
 as they absorb or do not absorb the spiritual 
 light of which he is the source : ** The light 
 of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye 
 be single, thy whole body shall be full of 
 light ; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole 
 body shall be full of darkness." 
 
 In the account of the conversion of St. 
 Paul, read a few minutes ago, the great light 
 out of which came the voice, " Saul, Saul, 
 why persecutest thou me ? " symbolises the 
 spirit of Christ Jesus breaking in upon the 
 great darkness of the man's soul, just as his 
 restoration to sight from the physical blind- 
 ness which ensued symbolises the change by 
 which his spiritual eye became good instead 
 of evil, healthy and sound instead of diseased 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 1 85 
 
 and depraved. It is therefore easy to see 
 why those who adapted the Roman liturgy 
 for the use of the EngHsh church so altered 
 the ancient collect for this day's service as to 
 introduce into it this figure of light. In its 
 old form the prayer in this part ran, '' Who 
 through the preaching of the blessed apostle 
 St. Paul hast taught the whole world " ; and 
 this they changed, so that it now runs, " hast 
 caused the light of the gospel to shine 
 throughout the world." By so doing they 
 brought the collect into harmony with the 
 historical facts, to commemorate which this 
 festival is observed. For St. Paul's conver- 
 sion is indeed the sudden seeing of a great 
 light, and the gradual change in the man's 
 spiritual eye from disease to perfect sound- 
 ness. 
 
 The sound of the words, " You are the 
 light of the world," " The light of the body is 
 the eye," is so familiar that it might seem too 
 superfluous to speak upon this text at all ; 
 but are the things which the words express 
 really familiar to you or to me ? 
 
1 86 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 I can here only speak for myself, and I 
 confess that they are not sufficiently familiar ; 
 are certainly not so intimate with my mind 
 that it takes them as a matter of course, when 
 it has to determine which of two contradictory 
 decisions should be made. The eye of the 
 mind is too seldom single, too often evil. 
 Nevertheless, I profess to believe in Jesus as 
 the Christ, the Light of the world, and there- 
 fore acknowledge that my spiritual blindness 
 may be dispelled, if I so choose, by him. 
 All here profess the same belief; many have 
 publicly promised to carry it out in their lives ; 
 many more will soon so promise. The pro- 
 mise has been a lie for all those who are 
 content with the sound of the words, and let 
 the meaning shift for itself 
 
 Have you ever looked out and seen the 
 sun rise ? Have you ever stumbled along in 
 the dark and then seen the dawn spring, and 
 your path, and the hills, and the fields take 
 the morning ? Anybody who has experienced 
 that may understand what Jesus Christ means 
 when he says, '' I am the Light of the world,'* 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 1 8/ 
 
 may understand what he means when he says, 
 ** In so far as your life reflects my life, you 
 are a light of the world," or again, "In so far 
 as your spiritual eye absorbs light from me, 
 your whole nature is full of light." Do we 
 merit, you or I, to be called lights of other 
 men ? Is our nature full of light and not of 
 darkness ? I am sure you will not say so, 
 nor can I. 
 
 Nevertheless, Jesus Christ encourages the 
 weak in faith, the backward in performance, 
 if only they confess it and are sorry. He 
 does not quench the smoking flax in any 
 farthing candle light. It does give light after 
 all, and that is something. 
 
 It is this gentleness of Christ which ought 
 to inspirit us to try harder. Anybody can 
 better the example that he sets, and be him- 
 self the more humble for so doing, the more 
 wilHng himself to seek more illumination from 
 the Light of the world. In trying to set a 
 better example, to become indeed a lig-ht for 
 other men to walk by, he learns how great is 
 his own darkness. He begins to feel that his 
 
l88 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 own eye is evil. A man must absorb light 
 from Christ before he can Q^ive it out. More- 
 over, in absorbing it, he must not distort it. 
 The eye must be single, that is, take it in just 
 as it is given out by the Light of the world. 
 In one sense of course no seeker after the 
 Light ever gives it out as pure as he takes it 
 in. His spiritual eye is not wholly sound. 
 Such failure, inseparable from man's nature, 
 Christ forgives. He accepts it for what it 
 would be, not for w^hat it is. What Christ 
 accepts not as light is that which has passed 
 through an eye so distorted by pride and 
 self-sufficiency as to be robbed of all its power 
 to purify and illumine. 
 
 Indeed, the sense of dissatisfaction with 
 himself is perhaps the only means by which 
 a man can tell whether his spiritual eye is 
 sound or no. If it is pure when it has passed 
 through the eye, it must so reveal the impuri- 
 ties of his soul that he cannot be other than 
 dissatisfied and humbled. It must on the 
 contrary have been distorted and even ex- 
 tinguished in the passing in, if he has any 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 1 89 
 
 confidence left In his own power to fight the 
 powers of darkness. I might catalogue scores 
 of sins and ask myself and you whether we 
 were conscious of their presence in our hearts, 
 yet come no nearer telling myself or you 
 whether we draw spiritual light from its one 
 source Christ, and give it out again to others. 
 The test is not whether these sins have been 
 committed or no, but whether they have been 
 repented of, and have left us less confident in 
 ourselves, more willing to turn to the love 
 and the strength of God. It was a woman 
 of the city, a sinner, of whom Jesus said to a 
 self-righteous Pharisee, " Her sins which are 
 many are forgiven." It was an adulteress to 
 whom jesus said, '' Neither do I condemn 
 thee ; go and sin no more." It was to a false 
 accuser and a thief that he said, " This day is 
 salvation come to thine house." It was to a 
 robber and a murderer that he said, '' To-day 
 thou shalt be with me in paradise " — and in 
 -each case the sinner, the breaker of the sixth 
 commandment, the seventh, the eighth, or the 
 ninth had hut one merit, the certainty that he 
 
190 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 had no merit at all. He had suffered the 
 Light of the world to break in upon his 
 darkness and had then learned how great 
 that darkness was. 
 
 This is a simple test — worth more to a 
 sinner for the direction of his life than any 
 number of warnings against special sins from 
 a fellow-sinner. If a man gets into the habit 
 of applying this test to his acts, then he draws 
 light continually from the source of light, and 
 gives it out also to the world. For to apply 
 this test at all he must live as it were in the 
 daily presence of Jesus Christ as he is por- 
 trayed in the gospels, and be ever turning to 
 him and questioning him upon points of 
 conduct little and great, ever seeking light 
 from the Light of the world. 
 
SERMON XIX 
 
 STRENGTH OF SPIRIT 
 
 Strong in spirit. — Luke ii 40. 
 
 Strength of body everyone understands and 
 can describe and define. He sees the weight 
 lifted, the blow delivered, the leap made, the 
 race run, and he compares what he sees with a 
 like effort made by himself or by others, and he 
 appraises it accordingly. Strength of mind is 
 not quite so easy to apprehend or to measure ; 
 nevertheless, if a man has himself anything 
 of a mind, he may form at least some sort of 
 conception of strength of mind. He observes 
 how in reasoning some minds brush aside all 
 that is irrelevant, and march straight at what 
 Is essential ; how they depend alone upon 
 themselves and upon the facts known, and 
 rejecting tradition, hearsay of every kind, 
 convention, authority, seek impartially truth 
 and reality. 
 
192 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 If Strength of mind is not so easy to seize 
 or estimate as strength of body, there is an- 
 other sort of strength still more difficult to 
 apprehend and measure, strength of will, 
 strength of character. The stuff on which 
 will works is complex, intractable, and in- 
 scrutable. The instruments which it wields 
 have often been forged by itself, and are not 
 the endowment of nature. Accordingly its 
 achievements are difficult to record and value ; 
 yet recorded and valued they may be, at all 
 events in some measure. 
 
 But there is still another strength which 
 is hardly to be discerned or judged at all by 
 any man, and certainly is completely and 
 intimately known and appreciated only by 
 God — strength of spirit, that strength which 
 some of you have professed to seek, and others 
 now profess that they seek. 
 
 The three kinds of strength first mentioned, 
 strength of body, strength of mind, strength 
 of will, are primarily endowments of nature. 
 Men can do but a little towards acquiring 
 them. Strength of body and strength of 
 
STRENGTH OF SPIRIT I93 
 
 mind some can never acquire at all. A man 
 may live healthily and by rule, yet never be 
 other than a weakling. He may spend his 
 days in training such faculties as he has got, 
 and in the end keep, notwithstanding, a con- 
 fused bram and a shiftless reason. Strength 
 of will some do acquire when they had little 
 of it to begin with, but if they do acquire it, 
 'tis not by cultivating the little germs of it 
 that they may possess, but by a simple 
 exertion of the will easier to a child than to a 
 grown man, whereby they accept the promise 
 of God that he will give them strength. It 
 is the creation of the other strength, strength 
 of spirit, and therefore is in the last resort the 
 gift of God. All the same, if a man, infirm 
 of purpose and vacillating in will, deliberately 
 implores his Creator to strengthen and con- 
 firm his will, when he has not first in peni- 
 tential abasement asked forgiveness for sin, 
 and begged for a portion of God's spirit, that 
 man will not be granted what he asks, any 
 more than if he asked in the like temper for 
 strength of muscle or vigour of brain. 
 
 13 
 
194 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 He must ask for more than strength of 
 will, and ask in the right way. Strength of 
 spirit includes strength of will as the greater 
 encloses the less. More than that, the less 
 can only be obtained by the obtaining of the 
 greater, and by the same means, the confess- 
 ing of utter helplessness, complete demerit. 
 For how can Christ, how can God, dwell in 
 a heart in which self is still strong ? And 
 strength of spirit can only exist through the 
 presence of Christ within a man, the presence 
 of the Creator himself in the nature of his 
 creature. 
 
 I spoke last saint's day of the necessity of 
 removing language from its ordinary sense in 
 order to express spiritual facts. The spiritual 
 fact of which I speak now is like the rest in 
 this respect. It is sometimes expressed in 
 one way, sometimes in another, but always 
 in terms which have been shifted from their 
 ordinary signification. 
 
 In order more clearly to pourtray the 
 Christian conception of man's nature and of 
 human life, I had better try to give the 
 
STRENGTH OF SPIRIT I95 
 
 rudiments of the phraseology which is thus 
 transformed from common to spiritual use. 
 My human nature — my body, brain, and will 
 — is spoken of as a house or as a tent. In 
 this house or in this tent the real * I ' lives, 
 and with him either God or the Devil must 
 dwell. It is not possible for me to live by 
 myself " When the unclean spirit is gone 
 out of a man, he walketh through the wilder- 
 ness seeking rest, and finding none he saith, 
 I will return to my house whence I came out ; 
 and when he is come, he findeth it empty, 
 swept and garnished. Then goeth he and 
 taketh with himself seven other spirits more 
 wicked than himself; and they enter in, and 
 dwell there : and the last state of that man 
 is worse than the first." When God dwells 
 in this house with me, it becomes a temple ; 
 in this tent, it becomes a tabernacle. If God 
 has dwelt in it till I die, it becomes a house 
 from heaven. In the temple of this house 
 God or Christ, the spirit of God, the spirit 
 of Christ, is said to be, to dwell, to abide. 
 ** He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my 
 
Jg6 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 blood dwelleth in me, and I in him." ** At 
 that day ye shall know that I am in my 
 Father, and ye in me, and I in you." '* Know 
 ye not how that Jesus Christ is in you?" 
 '* If a man love me, he will keep my words ; 
 and my Father will love him, and we will 
 come unto him, and make our abode with 
 him." *' If ye abide in me, and my words 
 abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will 
 and it shall be done unto you." " The 
 Spirit of truth dwelleth with you and shall 
 be in you." '' The spirit of God dwelleth 
 in you." ''Your body is the temple of the 
 Holy Ghost." ** Ye are the temple of the 
 living God." The house in which the spirit 
 of God or Christ is, is spoken of as founded 
 upon a rock ; that in which the spirit of God 
 or Christ is not, is spoken of as built upon 
 sand. To have Christ in me is to be 
 strong. " I can do all through Christ who 
 strengtheneth me." To have Christ in me 
 is to have everlasting life. " And this is 
 life eternal, that they might know thee 
 the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
 
STRENGTH OF SPIRIT I97 
 
 thou hast sent." " I am the life," Christ says. 
 "He that beHeveth in me hath everlasting 
 life." 
 
 It is when I consent that in the house 
 composed of my body, brain, and will, the 
 spirit of Christ shall dwell along with me, it 
 is then that I begin to know what strength 
 of spirit is. *' He that belleveth on me, the 
 works that I do shall he do also ; and greater 
 works than these shall he do, because I go 
 unto my Father." You or I can do greater 
 works than Jesus did on earth, because he is 
 no longer a man, but a spirit who can "dwell," 
 "abide," "be in" you and me. Jesus Christ 
 himself declares it. And to reflect is to admit 
 its truth. Are there not as many malignant, 
 unclean, ravening devils in the heart of any 
 man as Jesus ever cast out of a single heart ? 
 Yet by his spirit they may be overpowered, 
 he says, even more completely than they 
 were overpowered by him when his spirit 
 was trammelled and confined by the body. 
 
 Does this give an inkling of what strength 
 of spirit means, the strength that comes to a 
 
198 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 man when he takes Christ into the house 
 built of his body and brain and will ? — when 
 he begins to be certain that the kingdom of 
 heaven is within him, that a life has begun 
 for him which is everlastingly permanent ? 
 Moreover, to discover the chief lineaments 
 of strength of spirit, there is no better way 
 that I can think of than by imagining the 
 heavenly perfection which will one day belong 
 to those in whose earthly house Christ has 
 dwelt when the body has at length ceased to 
 exert its force, and the spirit of evil cannot 
 try to enter into it any more. The disem- 
 bodied spirit knows no passions. Therefore 
 he who in the body has strength of spirit 
 resists his passions, and, as St. Paul says, 
 keeps his body under. The disembodied 
 spirit cannot lie. Therefore the strong in 
 spirit fights for the truth and hates hypoc- 
 risy. The disembodied spirit does not know 
 envy, pride, malice, hatred, uncharitableness. 
 Therefore he who in this life is reinforced by 
 the spirit of God is humble, and loves his 
 neighbour as himself Indeed, if we think 
 
STRENGTH OF SPIRIT I99 
 
 upon It, we have got to confess that this sort 
 of perfection Is plainly what Jesus in his 
 teaching requires from men even in this 
 world when they are still in the body, and 
 subject to all the temptations of the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil. " Be ye perfect," he 
 says, " even as your Father which Is in heaven 
 is perfect." Such perfection Is strength of 
 spirit, and neither you nor I can have it 
 except the spirit of God ** dwells," " abides," 
 '' Is in " us, unless we are each " the temple 
 of God." 
 
SERMON XX 
 
 THINGS INDIFFERENT 
 
 Why dost thou judge thy brother? . . .for we shall alt 
 stand before the judgment seat of Christ. — RoM. xiv lo. 
 
 In the passage from which my text is taken 
 St. Paul shows that indifference to things 
 indifferent, that insistence upon things essen- 
 tial, which makes him who was the least of 
 the Apostles in opportunity the greatest of 
 the Apostles in achievement. " It is not my 
 concern," he argues, ** nor is it yours, what 
 opinion a man may hold if he has once pro- 
 fessed his faith in Jesus Christ and thrown 
 in his lot with our brotherhood. By declaring 
 himself the willing servant of Christ Jesus he 
 has won freedom from all criticism so long as 
 he proves his sincerity by recognising that 
 
THINGS INDIFFERENT 201 
 
 Others have the same freedom as himself in 
 being, like himself, declared servants of 
 Christ. Whether he be weak in his faith or 
 strong, if faith he professes to have, welcome 
 him to your brotherhood without desiring to 
 contest his opinions. These opinions not- 
 withstanding, God has welcomed him already." 
 Anyone who says he is a Christian, every 
 Christian ought to think sincere. In other 
 words, no Christian has any right in Christ 
 to judge another. The one and the other 
 may be separated widely in opinions, even in 
 ecclesiastical and theological opinions, and 
 yet both be followers of Christ, both enam- 
 oured of the kingdom of God. The kingdom 
 of God, St. Paul asserts, is not opinions, *' but 
 is righteousness and peace and joy in the 
 Holy Ghost" — things which none can measure 
 but He who has them and He who imparts 
 them — the same God who will judge men's 
 secrets by Jesus Christ. 
 
 That which I spoke of last saint's day — 
 the dwelling of the spirit of Christ in the 
 temple of a man's heart — was to St. Paul the 
 
202 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 one essential thing. He who could say with 
 all the sincerity and force of his nature, 
 ** Jesus is the Lord," had begun to share In 
 eternal life, and had received forgiveness for 
 his sins, his faith In Christ having put him 
 right with God. To express this thought 
 St. Paul found a phrase already coined for 
 him In the Greek translation of the Old 
 Testament — '* The just shall live by his 
 faith," and this phrase he loved to quote. 
 For a man to say with sincere belief and 
 trust, "Jesus Is the Lord," was, St. Paul saw, 
 to confess that Jesus Christ In dying had 
 delivered him from slavery to the law and 
 slavery to the body, and in rising again had 
 assured him eternal life. The Christ who 
 had died and risen was now by the Holy 
 Spirit within his heart, Imparting life and 
 freedom. 
 
 Accepting baptism the believer so verit- 
 ably accepts the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for 
 him on the cross that he may be said to be 
 in baptism crucified with Jesus Christ ; so 
 veritably intends to die to his old self that he 
 
THINGS INDIFFERENT 203 
 
 may be said in baptism to be buried with 
 Jesus ; so veritably desires spiritual life and 
 seeks glory that he may be said in baptism 
 to rise from the grave of Jesus with the 
 glorified Christ. And then the glorified 
 Christ becomes by his spirit the controlling 
 power in the believer's nature, imparting life 
 and the desire for the perfected spiritual 
 peace and sense of achievement which St. 
 Paul calls "the glory of the sons of God." 
 Is it surprising if St. Paul, penetrated by 
 the reality and the solemnity of these con- 
 victions, would not believe that men who 
 had sought baptism could be other than 
 sincere ? Is it surprising that he would not 
 admit the right of any member of the 
 Christian brotherhood to doubt the sincerity 
 of another ? The Lord himself had said, 
 " Judge not, that you be not judged." The 
 spirit of Christ within St. Paul compels him 
 to reiterate the precept : ** Who are you to 
 judge the servant of Christ ? To his own 
 master he stands or he falls." It may be 
 your own weakness of faith that tempts you 
 
204 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 to doubt him. We shall all stand, you as he, 
 before the judgment seat of Christ, who alone 
 can judge his servants. 
 
 In the presence of realities so tremendous, 
 or should I not rather say — in the presence 
 of Truth Himself, mere opinions, mere con- 
 ventional notions of right and wrong, the 
 eating of one food rather than another, the 
 observing of one day rather than another, are 
 shown to be what they are — trivial, meaning- 
 less things. In that presence there is only 
 one real essential thing, sincerity of faith so 
 intense that it absorbs and keeps that which 
 it realises of the spirit of Christ. The sincere 
 in faith are free from all conventional opinions, 
 all trivial distinctions between day and day, 
 food and no food. Spiritual life is not depend- 
 ent upon observances so trifling. These 
 things, St. Paul avers, are things indifferent 
 to the strong in faith. They are not real, or 
 they are real only to the unbelieving or to 
 men so weak in faith that they have not 
 grasped the spiritual significance of the life 
 of Jesus, of the crucifixion and the death of 
 
THINGS INDIFFERENT 20$ 
 
 Jesus Christ, of the resurrection of Christ and 
 Its sequel, the gift of life to him who believes. 
 He who has Indeed grasped these realities 
 cannot borrow his attitude from the men 
 around him. He Is possessed of a new 
 nature, a new life. His will is so transformed 
 that he can rise above the fog of men's con- 
 ventions and sentiments, and see clearly what 
 God's will is, the one good and admirable and 
 perfect thing. 
 
 Such at least is St. Paul's conception of 
 the place which things indifferent ought to 
 take in the Christian's life. The unrealities, 
 the conventions, the opinions, the sentiments 
 of men, varying from century to century, 
 from generation to generation, from year to 
 year, are of no consequence to the strong in 
 faith. These, guided by the spirit of Christ, 
 occupy themselves with things more per- 
 manent and substantial. Nevertheless, the 
 apostle has no sooner expressed this concep- 
 tion than he sets about showing that it cannot 
 be realised within the Christian brotherhood 
 on earth, and hinting that It will not be realised 
 
206 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 till the glory of the sons of God is attained. 
 The freedom of the strong in faith, absolute 
 in theory, is circumscribed in practice. The 
 brotherhood of Christians includes every 
 degree of faith, and none, however strong in 
 faith himself, can rid himself of the obligation 
 to remove impediments to his brother s pro- 
 gress in faith. There are circumstances in 
 which the strong in faith are not justified in 
 exercising their freedom in respect to things 
 indifferent. If they are indeed Christ's, if 
 the spirit of Christ is in them, they must act 
 as Jesus acted in his life on earth, and sacri- 
 fice this freedom for the good of others. All 
 things are lawful to them, but all things are 
 not expedient. They are bound to consider 
 the effect upon others of everything that they 
 do, and at the same time refrain in brotherly 
 love from resenting the curtailment of their 
 freedom in Christ. They have no reason or 
 right to judge others for attaching value to 
 things which a stronger faith must know to 
 be trivial. 
 
 This teaching, as it happens, is peculiarly 
 
THINGS INDIFFERENT 20/ 
 
 useful for you and me at the present day. 
 The English Church, that part of the Chris- 
 tian brotherhood to which we belong, is 
 disquieted by controversies about things in- 
 different — ceremonies, vestments, symbolical 
 acts, observance of days, partaking of food or 
 refraining from food at certain times, and the 
 like. The unreality, the unspirituality of all 
 such things is seen at once by any one who 
 will take St. Paul's point of view, and will ask 
 himself, ** Are these things an essential part 
 of that life which I draw from Christ, the 
 marks of which are freedom and permanence?'* 
 Everyone who has the faith to put that ques- 
 tion honestly to himself will answer, No. At 
 the same time he cannot stop there — that 
 would be to judge his neighbour — but with 
 St. Paul he must again ask himself, " Which 
 will help my weak brother most, to argue 
 with him about these indifferent, conventional, 
 trivial points, which evidently mean much to 
 him, or to fall in with them when he is by, 
 though he knows perfectly well that in others* 
 presence I should do otherwise ? " St. Pauls 
 
208 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 answer is perfectly clear — " Treat them as 
 things indifferent, sacrifice your freedom for 
 your brothers sake. To the weak become 
 weak, that you may gain the weak ; become 
 all things to all men that you may save 
 some." 
 
SERMON XXI 
 
 IDEALS 
 A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. — Matthew v 14. 
 
 Following hard upon the Beatitudes this 
 saying derives its meaning from them. Merit 
 my blessing, Jesus says, in these respects and 
 you shall become as a city set upon an hill 
 that cannot be hid. If you set no store by 
 yourselves, but stand before God as beggars 
 of his bounty ; if you mourn your sins and 
 shortcomings ; if you endure the scorn and 
 ill usage of the world ; if you hunger and 
 thirst for reconciliation with God ; if you are 
 merciful, -pure in heart, peacemakers; if you 
 are ready to face persecution and reproach 
 and slander for my sake and for favour with 
 God, you become thereby to the traveller in 
 this world as a sign to guide him up and on 
 to the mount of God. Overcome for the 
 sake of others, that is, for my sake, the in- 
 
 14 
 
210 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 cessant temptation to build the city of your 
 life upon the plain. Even if each days 
 labour is made the longer and the more 
 exacting because you must climb the hill, yet 
 the labour is not thrown away. It is repaid 
 not in money, or honour from men, or rank^ 
 or applause, things that do not last, but with 
 treasure in heaven, with the souls of men. 
 
 The plain at the foot of the hill is fertile 
 and populous. It is easy to build there, and 
 the house when built is more snug and 
 pleasant. There are sheltered places and 
 bosomed nooks in the lowland where winds 
 of scorn and abuse and persecution never 
 blow. A city may be made an earthly para- 
 dise if it be placed deftly under the hilL 
 The uplands are bleak and forbidding, stony 
 places swept by cold winds. A city built 
 there among the rocks is a comfortless place 
 to live in. It meets the scorching sun and 
 the remorseless storm. 
 
 Nevertheless, Jesus Christ bids men build 
 on the hill and forsake the level, and this for 
 a reason which nobody can understand wha 
 
IDEALS 211 
 
 has not the spirit of Christ. Men should 
 build on the hill not for their own comfort or 
 pleasure, but that others may see their city 
 and be tempted to climb the hill, and perhaps 
 may end in building a lodge there for them- 
 selves. The discomfort and the hardship of 
 living on the hill are to be endured for the 
 sake of others. 
 
 They are wrong who say that a man's 
 first duty is to try and win heaven for himself, 
 or as they sometimes seem to judge, to try 
 and escape hell. It is not so. No man can 
 be a disciple of Christ who is so selfish. 
 Where is the selfishness in poverty of spirit, 
 in grief, in. meekness, in hunger and thirst for 
 reconciliation with God, in mercy, in pureness 
 of heart, in the desire to be peacemakers, in 
 patience under persecution and calumny ? 
 There is none. Christ blesses men if they 
 adopt an attitude which turns their whole life 
 into a conflict, and he tells them that this 
 conflict must be maintained not in any selfish 
 spirit, but to help others to enter upon the 
 same conflict. The blessing of Christ can 
 
212 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 only be kept If it be passed on to others. If 
 men would keep it for themselves alone, they 
 are denied it. " A new commandment I give 
 unto you, that ye love one another ; as I have 
 loved you, that ye also love one another. 
 By this shall all men know that ye are my 
 disciples, if ye have love one to another." 
 Christ declares in these words that no one 
 can partake of his spirit who does not love his 
 neighbour as himself; and more, that the 
 ideal of discipleship is to love his neighbour 
 better than himself — " That ye love one 
 another in the measure in which I have 
 loved you." 
 
 I dare not say of any other that judged 
 by this standard his life is a failure, but of 
 my own I know this is the case, that my 
 prayer must be for mercy and pity. The 
 vision of discipleship which the spiritual eye 
 discerns when this passage of the gospel is 
 read, is, I confess, from God. It cannot be 
 demonstrated, but demonstrated it is. and I 
 know it. . I know also that it has not always 
 been a vision, but that he who loved to call 
 
IDEALS 213 
 
 himself the Son of man realised it in his life 
 here among men ; and that the lives of some 
 of his disciples plainly reflect its light. It is 
 not, therefore, a thing too high for men. They 
 may painfully and gradually work the spiritual 
 tissue of this dream of goodness into the web 
 of their life ; and he is condemned who does 
 not try. 
 
 Where can such visions come from, if not 
 from a more real and stable world than this ? 
 It is that they may approach nearer to that 
 world and draw others with them, that men 
 are bidden to build their city on the hill. 
 There the vision of discipleship is not so 
 often blurred or concealed by mists. There 
 men are nearer the kingdom of heaven, nearer 
 to righteousness and peace and joy in the 
 spirit of Christ. 
 
 Somebody has said that a man cannot be 
 great who does not attempt to achieve in his 
 lifetime what could scarcely be accomplished 
 in many lifetimes. So no one can be a dis- 
 ciple of Christ who does not attempt to make 
 of his life a picture of discipleship, even if in 
 
214 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 his hours of worldly wisdom and worldly dis- 
 cretion he may judge success impossible. A 
 man lives his life well only if there be devo- 
 tion in it to something unattained, and con- 
 tempt for what has been achieved ; he must 
 spend his life in climbing, or he will not 
 benefit his fellow-men. 
 
 A city set on an hill cannot be hid. It 
 must attract the eye. As a spiritual thing 
 such a city remains conspicuous always — 
 even when its builder is gone. It is a city 
 with foundations, and lasts long after the 
 judgment day. If its courts were built as 
 courts of peace, and humility, and mercy, and 
 sorrow, and righteousness, and pureness of 
 heart, it became in that degree exempted 
 from decay. Where one has built enduringly, 
 another may build also, and build all the 
 better for the example of him who went 
 before. Did ever hands raise earthly build- 
 ings more nearly imperishable than the amphi- 
 theatres, aqueducts, and palaces of Rome ? 
 These are enduring because they were the 
 outcome of an architectural tradition to which 
 
IDEALS 215 
 
 generation after generation of builders con- 
 tributed, till the ideal of one century became 
 the builder s rule for the next. So it is with 
 the men who determine to build their city on 
 an hill. They have the example of thousands 
 who have done the like before. But better 
 than that, there exists a perfect pattern of the 
 city as it should be built. How the master 
 builder built such a city is all narrowly 
 described and known. Thus there are two 
 things to help men in their building — the 
 pattern preserved in the gospel, and the 
 example of other builders. Of those other 
 builders those will teach best the masons' 
 mystery to you or me who may have built 
 before our eyes such a city as we desire our- 
 selves to build. It is easier for us to build 
 the court of peace, or of suffering for Christ's 
 sake, or of love, or of pureness of heart, if we 
 have long watched a former builder at the 
 same work, who built on in the hope that we 
 should one day copy him. A city set on an 
 hill cannot be hid. If it be seen rising day 
 after day, it becomes a mental picture in 
 
2l6 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 which every line and angle are distinct, the 
 whole being as clear and familiar as the fields 
 which a man knows first ; to which the mind 
 travels back when it would fix the points of 
 the compass. 
 
 Not to build on the hill is to build on the 
 plain. If I do not build courts of peace, and 
 mercy, and pureness of heart, then I build 
 courts of strife, and hate, and vain glory, and 
 carnal curiosity. Even if I mean to build on 
 the hill and build well, nevertheless I often 
 build as if the city were on the plain, and as 
 if its streets were to bear different names. 
 What must become of me if I do not try to 
 build on the hill at all ? But if in the main 
 I really try to build on the hill and on the 
 true foundation, then my city shall at least 
 save its builder in that day, and perhaps save 
 others too. " Let every man be careful to 
 build upon the true foundation, Jesus Christ. 
 Some build the walls of gold, and silver, and 
 precious stones, others build them of timber 
 and straw and reeds. The day of the Lord 
 shall reveal and test the work as with fire. 
 
IDEALS 217 
 
 The solid walls shall remain and bring reward 
 to their builder. The timber and straw and 
 reeds shall burn away ; yet if those who built 
 thus foolishly nevertheless built on the true 
 foundation on the hill, their work may perish, 
 but they shall themselves survive the fiery 
 ordeal." 
 
SERMON XXII 
 
 ENTHUSIASM 
 Fervent in spirit. — Romans xii ii. 
 
 The precise cause why one day in the year 
 rather than another is associated with the 
 name of a particular apostle or evangelist is 
 now scarcely ever to be discovered with 
 certainty. Nevertheless, there is a strong 
 presumption that every one of these saints' 
 days does commemorate the most important 
 event in the history of the saint in whose 
 honour it is observed. If tradition is often 
 vague and inarticulate, it is at the same time 
 veracious. It may forget, but it does not 
 intentionally falsify. 
 
 The evidence of tradition, however, is 
 sometimes deliberately ignored ; and this has 
 taken place in respect to the 29th of June. 
 Tradition declares that St. Peter and St. Paul 
 both suffered martyrdom on the same day ; 
 
ENTHUSIASM 219 
 
 and in accord with tradition the Early Church 
 commemorated on this day of the year both 
 apostles together. It is easy to see why a 
 church that paid singular honour to St. Peter 
 should come to think that St. Paul was 
 sufficiently honoured, if the day of his con- 
 version was commemorated, and should be 
 tempted to let the commemoration of his 
 martyrdom fall into abeyance. 
 
 But apart from this circumstance, interest- 
 ing as it is historically, it is matter for regret 
 that both apostles should not be com- 
 memorated together. The two men must 
 always be associated in men's minds. There 
 is a characteristic common to both which 
 makes this inevitable. Fervency of spirit, 
 strength of enthusiasm — this is the mark of 
 both. Take it away from either, and he has 
 lost that which differences him from the bulk 
 of mankind. But for this neither would have 
 been selected for the work of building up the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 It is the case that men are great in pro- 
 portion to the strength of their enthusiasm. 
 
220 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 The Old Testament is one long record of the 
 imperious might of enthusiasm. ** The angel 
 of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of 
 fire." This fire, the symbol of Jehovah's 
 power, manifests itself in all the men who 
 become instruments to perform his will — 
 soldiers like those whose figures depicted on 
 glass you study every morning in this church, 
 Joshua, Gideon, Saul, David, and Jonathan ; 
 prophets like Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah. 
 They are commissioned of God because they 
 are fervent in spirit. It is for the same fire 
 that John the Baptist was commissioned, and 
 Peter, and Paul — a burning enthusiasm, a de- 
 vouring ardour, fit to kindle men. 
 
 The like mark of greatness is visible on 
 the character of men prominent in what is 
 miscalled profane history. Those who make 
 or mar a generation, make it or mar it because 
 they possess in greater measure than others 
 a capacity for enthusiasm. The enthusiasm 
 may be beneficent or it may be malign, but 
 exist it must to a singular degree in every 
 man who greatly influences others. 
 
ENTHUSIASM 221 
 
 At this point a distinction must be drawn, 
 the distinction, namely, between the gifts of 
 God and the gift of God. The gifts are 
 natural endowments, energy, strength, saga- 
 city, powers of body, mind, and character, all 
 of them bestowed upon man without his ask- 
 ing. The gift is the divine fire, the spirit of 
 God himself, the gift of life, which is only 
 bestowed on such as ask for it. Without the 
 gift, the gifts may be put to the very worst 
 uses. They may be a curse to him who has 
 them and to his fellows. But if the gift be 
 added to the gifts, the gifts, as St. Paul would 
 say, become the arms of righteousness wielded 
 in God's cause. The more abundant the 
 gifts, the richer the gift. The gift cannot 
 create the gifts, it can only sanctify them. 
 St. Peter had always been confident, vigorous, 
 intrepid, fervid, and clear-sighted ; St. Paul 
 always logical, original, fiery, indomitable. 
 They were both in nature leaders of men. 
 When to these gifts the gift was added, St. 
 Peter could not become a zealot, St. Paul 
 could no longer remain a persecutor. They 
 
222 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 must work for God ; they could not work 
 against God. 
 
 God has given man much, and would fain 
 give him more. What he has given cannot 
 be used to the best purpose till the something 
 more has been sought. Asked for it must 
 be. Otherwise it cannot be got, the divine 
 fire, the spirit whose name Is Life. I shall 
 never be fervent In spirit until this God-given 
 force Is active not only within me, purging 
 the natural fire, controlling all my being, but 
 active also outside me, creating enthusiasm in 
 others, recruiting from the men around me 
 the army of God. 
 
 It is this contagiousness which makes 
 fervency of spirit such an incalculable force 
 in human life ; so powerful a weapon for 
 good, If it be indeed augmented by the de- 
 vouring, purging fire, which God imparts to 
 the earnest seeker. 
 
 The man of the last generation who of 
 all men did most to relnvigorate the life of 
 the English Church, although he died outside 
 her communion, lets out the secret of his 
 
ENTHUSIASM 22$ 
 
 fertile and lasting influence, when he relates 
 how the thought grew upon him and possessed 
 him, " that deliverance is wrought, not by the 
 many, but by the few, not by bodies but by 
 persons," and how from his schooldays on- 
 wards he loved and prized more every day 
 the motto he had chosen as his own — 
 " Exoriare aliquis." That call must be 
 answered and obeyed by everyone who seeks 
 the gift, and therefore desires to throw in his 
 lot with the kingdom of God. Why, it is 
 obeyed even by those who have never sought 
 the gift, but have been content with the gifts 
 alone. In every great epoch of history this 
 contagion has been at work. The prevailing 
 characteristic of the time has been fervency 
 of spirit. Overtopping their fellows have 
 been men of gigantic energy, possessed as it 
 were by devouring fire, and kindling in their 
 contemporaries an enthusiasm like their own. 
 It is at times like these, and only then, that 
 any country is great, that any people is in 
 truth a nation. For the rest of the time it 
 may have the name and the semblance of 
 
224 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 greatness, but is without the substance, with- 
 out the spirit of life, dry bones without flesh 
 and blood, muscle and sinew. 
 
 It is the same with lesser bodies, such as 
 that which at this time is congregated in this 
 house. Is the school afire and alive? Are 
 the gifts nurtured and used, to say nothing 
 of the seeking for the gift ? If it be the case, 
 and sometimes I think that it is so, that the 
 school as a whole is deficient in fervour, in 
 fire, in enthusiasm ; if it be the case, then the 
 blame rests with each one in the many. It 
 cannot but be that there is a capacity for 
 enthusiasm in plenty here, if only someone 
 would call it forth. Is there none who has 
 fervour among his gifts, and the power to 
 infect us all ? Is there none to respond to 
 the call, " Exoriare aliquis " ? 
 
 If they are right who say that this is a 
 generation devoid of enthusiasm, although it 
 have excitement in plenty, there is the greater 
 cause why someone should arise to infect it. 
 The dry bones may be made to live. The 
 awakening may come at any time, suddenly. 
 
ENTHUSIASM 22$ 
 
 Any day some one of you who are young 
 may arise and help to dispel the lethargy of 
 the time, as wind clears the sky. It has been 
 done before, it will be done again ; and why 
 not by you ? St. Peter and St. Paul both 
 were once but Peter and Paul, boys unknown 
 and unmarked, but possessed of gifts which 
 might be used or not, just as you are possessed 
 of gifts which you may not use, yet may use, 
 if you will. 
 
 Peter and Paul not only used the gifts, 
 they sought the gift. Hence they infected 
 others not only with that life-giving energy 
 or fire which ends in the same place in 
 which it begins and operates, namely, here in 
 this world, but also with a more vital, a more 
 vitalising fire, which cannot be extinguished, 
 and which outlives the body and shall outlive 
 this world, a thing vouchsafed only to such 
 as are — 
 
 " still unsatisfied, 
 Still seeking for a better thing than best, 
 A fairer thing than fairest, without rest." 
 
 .15 
 
SERMON XXIII 
 
 THE EDIFYING OF LIFE 
 
 My son is yet young and tender^ and the work is great. For 
 the palace is not for man but for the Lord God. — 
 I Chron. xxix I. 
 
 There is an allegory in Plato that some have 
 read and more have read of. Men sit, he 
 says, in a cave with their backs to the sun- 
 light. To and fro behind them pass things 
 real and stable and everlasting, the shadows 
 of which fall upon the wall of the cave. The 
 men in the cave are for the most part content 
 with its twilight, which they take for light, 
 and with the shadows on the wall, which 
 they take for realities ; but now and then one 
 of them may bethink himself, and turning 
 his eyes round to the light may understand. 
 He then descries everything, not as it seems 
 to be, but as it is — real manhood, real good- 
 ness, real beauty, real truth, real life — the 
 veritable things which throw the shadows that 
 with most men pass for realities. 
 
THE EDIFYING OF LIFE 22/ 
 
 It is this world of light and of reality into 
 which men are transported, if they like, on 
 Michaelmas day. All the parts of Scripture 
 read in church suggest to them the existence 
 of a very different world from that which they 
 see with the natural eye. They are bidden 
 to turn their heads round, and in room of the 
 shadows cast on the back wall of the cave, to 
 study the things which cast them ; and the 
 real, actual world in which these entities 
 exist eternally, the spiritual world, the world 
 of ideas, the world of ideals, the kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 It was in that world the Jews loved to 
 think that the temple took shape. The 
 palace of the Lord God which Solomon built 
 was modelled, they said, upon the tabernacle 
 set up at each halting place in their vagrant 
 journey from Egypt to Canaan; and that, they 
 made sure, had been designed after a divine 
 pattern divulged to Moses on Sinai, **to be 
 an example or shadow " (mark the word) " of 
 heavenly things " ; and divulged, no doubt it 
 was, in a far truer way than they were used 
 
228 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 to imagine. Moses was of those who are not 
 content with the twilight in the cave, and the 
 flitting, wavering, misleading, ill-apprehended 
 shadows. He had turned him about to the 
 light and had seen God face to face. The 
 palace for the Lord that he builded after the 
 patterns whiph the light revealed was not 
 made of bars and boards, silver sockets, 
 golden rings, and veils of blue and purple and 
 scarlet, as the men in the cave conceived. It 
 was made by impressing somehow by the 
 power of the spirit of God upon the race of 
 Israel the persistent conviction that they had 
 a destiny to fulfil as part of Jehovah's eternal 
 purpose. The tabernacle that Moses builded 
 he framed out of the souls of his countrymen, 
 and being spiritual it exists still, and still in- 
 creases in stateliness and beauty, now in the 
 times of the Gentiles when the times of the 
 Jews have for the present been fulfilled. 
 
 Whensoever a man undertakes to build a 
 palace for the Lord God, he must, like Moses, 
 go to the spiritual world for his pattern. 
 The temple to be raised is not made with 
 
THE EDIFYING OF LIFE 229 
 
 hands. It has more substance : It is not one 
 of those shadows on the wall. It Is real. 
 The pattern Is In fact the veritable Image 
 of God, Christ Jesus himself. The en- 
 deavouring to make out that pattern, to build 
 a palace after that copy In his own soul, will 
 and shall put power and reality Into every- 
 thing a man does. He cannot be satisfied 
 then with things just as he finds them — that 
 would be to be content with the shadows ; 
 he will always be referring to his pattern, and 
 examining things In the searching light of 
 truth, the light that Is the knowledge of God. 
 The foundation of such a palace is laid 
 when anyone begins in this way to frame 
 his life upon the pattern furnished by the 
 gospels. If he Is honest and sticks to his 
 purpose, and does not reject the Comforter, 
 he will continue, if not to raise a palace, 
 nevertheless to build what God for Christ's 
 sake will take for a palace, in judging the 
 builder's work by his motives and ideals and 
 efforts. His would indeed be a desperate 
 case whose building were otherwise judged. 
 
230 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 The one requirement Is that It be raised In 
 intention and by labour upon the one founda- 
 tion, Christ. The honesty of purpose will 
 redeem the whole. The foundation will 
 glorify the whole. 
 
 This Is the beginning of a school year. 
 A good many of you are fresh to West- 
 minster, and know next to nothing of the 
 ambitions and alms, the merits and demerits, 
 the temptations and the Inspirations proper 
 to the place. We who have been longer 
 here welcome you to your room In the lap 
 of this gentle mother, who for some five 
 centuries has reared up children to play their 
 parts as men to the honour and profit of the 
 state. We know that It depends greatly 
 upon us whether the new comers will soon 
 or late learn to cherish her as she deserves 
 to be cherished. If we are true and faithful 
 sons of this loving foster-mother, then from 
 the first we shall esteem the last come not as 
 strangers, but as brothers and kin. 
 
 For us, as for them, this time brings a 
 fresh opportunity, offers a new starting point. 
 
THE EDIFYING OF LIFE 23 1 
 
 Shall we break with old faults, shall we dis- 
 card foolish or evil habits, shall we throw off 
 soiled and Ill-becoming views of life and duty? 
 Shall we turn round from the shadows to the 
 realities ? Shall we build a palace for the 
 Lord God ? 
 
 The new comers ought to find here — do 
 they find It ? — a pure and wholesome air fit 
 to breed hardy spirits. The life In which 
 they now share they ought to discover ere 
 long to be turned to the future, eager for 
 expansion, dissatisfied with performance, dis- 
 contented with the past, a corporate life 
 bursting with vigour, active in every direction, 
 willing in work, ardent In play, jealous of Its 
 good name, quick to abet good and to check 
 evil, determined to be a power and a stay to 
 the cause of truth and godliness. Even on 
 this the third day of term they should have 
 begun to feel that there are spiritual influences, 
 angelic forces, nearer than of old, ready at 
 their call to aid them In eradicating evil and 
 implanting good. 
 
 They come to us, prepared for much. 
 
232 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 perhaps. They may be aware that many 
 great and many famous men have issued out 
 of Westminster, and they may dream haply 
 of inheriting their mantle, and even of re- 
 ceiving a double portion of their spirit. At 
 the least they are eager to be endowed with 
 the sense of great traditions. 
 
 It is our business to make sure that the 
 past with which we endow them is not dead 
 and antiquated, but is a living force compact 
 of animating and invigorating memories ; no 
 fossilised past of customs and forms out of 
 which the vital breath passed long ago, though 
 a tender, if misplaced, affection delay to put 
 it out of sight ; not a past which encumbers 
 the present, but a fertile, fructifying ground, 
 from which spring living flowers of Imagina- 
 tion and thought, of virtuous endeavour, and 
 of manliness and honest rivalry, wherewith to 
 deck the present. 
 
 We can make new comers free of our 
 past, but the future is not entirely ours to 
 give. It is their own quite as much as it is 
 ours, in some respects even more than it is 
 
THE EDIFYING OF LIFE 233 
 
 ours ; and plainly we may claim from them 
 their part in the covenant, executed here in 
 God's presence this day. They are young 
 and tender, and the work is great. Never- 
 theless they may achieve it. They are ex- 
 pected to achieve it, if they can, in the years 
 to be spent with their foster-mother. They 
 have duties by her as she has duties by them. 
 Them and us she would fain see build a far 
 more glorious palace for the Lord God than 
 the temple of Solomon ever was. 
 
 This we shall not accomplish if we take 
 things as we find them, nor try to improve 
 by keeping the ideal pattern always in 
 the soul's eye and working by it. It is 
 fatal to gaze at the shadow which it throws. 
 We must view the thing itself It is not 
 enough to acknowledge the necessity for a 
 pattern to build by. The pattern must be 
 copied faithfully and painfully. It is not 
 enough to turn the face now and again to 
 the light in order to scan the figures, and 
 then return in contentment to the gloom and 
 the shadows of the cave. But we must love 
 
234 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 to carry thoughts and ambitions, impressions 
 and imaginlns^s, fancies and sentiments, In- 
 spirations such as those which emerge from 
 the past in which we glory, out of the cave 
 into the broad light of day. Then we may 
 hope each to rear his life as a holy house, 
 a temple not made with hands ; and the 
 house so reared will In its turn become part 
 of the greater and more stately palace for 
 the Lord God which the school may build, If 
 it will. 
 
 No one can say for sure whether this term, 
 for instance, the foundations of the greater 
 house are already laid deep, each stone rest- 
 ing securely on the rock of the true Founda- 
 tion, each wall built true to the pattern as 
 scanned in the searching light of heaven ; or 
 whether only a few stones are as yet in their 
 place, while the others are either still to lay 
 or are supported by nothing but banks of 
 sand. 
 
 You are young and tender, and the work 
 is great. Sometimes every stone you lay 
 will be raised by a heart-breaking effort, and 
 
THE EDIFYING OF LIFE 235 
 
 even when you think it placed, the stone may- 
 seem to roll back down hill or sink and be 
 lost. Our palace can not be completed in a 
 term, or indeed at all. Nevertheless, it is 
 worth while, we know, to build on. Though 
 it will never be finished, it will go on growing. 
 There are great churches which have been 
 hundreds of years in the building and are not 
 absolutely completed yet. There is always 
 some new grace to add, some old stone to be 
 replaced or secured. But the building is in 
 use all the while, worshipped in, prayed in, 
 lifting men above their work-a-day lives, and 
 teaching them something of the omnipotence 
 and the holiness of God, of the sanctity and 
 the glory of human life. So, as we labour at 
 our palace, we may know that, as the work 
 proceeds, even if it be unending, we are all 
 the while making it easier for those who come 
 after us here, and for many another, uncon- 
 nected in time and place with us, to grasp the 
 notion of a true education, a developing of 
 human nature by the aid of the spirit of God. 
 
SERMON XXIV 
 
 THE TWO KINGDOMS 
 / send you forth as lambs among wolves. — Luke x 3. 
 
 When Herod stopped John the Baptist's 
 mouth, Jesus himself for himself In his own 
 name took up at once John's cry, " Repent; 
 the kingdom of heaven Is at hand." That in 
 effect Is the gospel, the sum of Christ's teaching 
 as a fact in history, attested by contemporary 
 evidence more complete and conclusive than 
 any which can be furnished for most of the 
 events of that time. The teaching In broad 
 outline and sometimes In minute detail has 
 been preserved for posterity by four several 
 men, two of whom did not themselves hear it, 
 while the others did not when they heard it 
 understand much about It ; as indeed is 
 
THE TWO KINGDOMS 237 
 
 admitted in the documents themselves, and 
 is plain from what is said at the beginning of 
 the Acts^ that the risen Christ had still to 
 instruct the disciples concerning the kingdom 
 of God, and that even thereafter they could 
 ask, *' Lord, wilt thou at this time restore 
 again the kingdom to Israel ? " 
 
 Nevertheless, misapprehended as it was, 
 and wrested from its spiritual bearings, the 
 conception of an empire of God had caught 
 the imagination of men. The Word had 
 sown himself in the heart of the race, and 
 should fructify, generation after generation, 
 multiplying and spreading, and withal in- 
 creasing in vigour, just as the natural seed of 
 wheat has spread all the world over from its 
 home in the alluvial banks of the Euphrates, 
 and has lost thereby none of its generative or 
 nutritive power. 
 
 Pilate's question put to Jesus from the 
 Praetorium in Jerusalem, " Art thou a king 
 then ? " was soon to be put to the Christ by 
 thousands in every corner of the seething 
 Roman Empire, from workshop and market- 
 
238 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 place, from school and synagogue, from palace 
 and hovel ; and the answer, '* To this end was 
 I born, and for this end came I into the world, 
 that I should bear witness unto the truth," 
 was not always to be met, as it was met by 
 Pilate, with the cynical retort, " What is 
 truth ? " Two empires clashed when Pilate 
 and Jesus stood face to face — an empire of 
 men, founded, as all such empires must in the 
 last resort be founded, upon physical force, 
 and the empire of God, which not only has 
 nothing at all to do with physical force, but 
 is based upon something antagonistic to it, 
 irreconcilable with the exercise of physical 
 force, upon love and forbearance of man with 
 man. The two sorts of empires will always 
 exist together so long as this world lasts. 
 He is a bad citizen of the one and a mis- 
 guided citizen of the other who confounds 
 them. Christ himself kept the two powers, 
 the spiritual and the temporal, distinct. The 
 power that Pilate represented was conferred 
 "from above." The guilt of Jesus Christ's 
 condemnation, Christ himself said, lay rather 
 
THE TWO KINGDOMS 239 
 
 with the soul of him who had deHvered Jesus 
 by a false accusation Into Pilate's power. 
 
 But be that as It may, the fact that such 
 an argument could be used at all — that the 
 empire of God as proclaimed by Jesus was a 
 menace to the empire of Rome — seems cer- 
 tainly to justify the Inference that the phrase, 
 the kingdom of heaven or empire of God, did 
 bring up by association the Idea of the empire 
 of Rome ; or perhaps It would be more rea- 
 sonable to argue, that the mental picture of a 
 kingdom of God was made possible to ordi- 
 nary men by the mental picture they had 
 already formed of an empire of Rome co- 
 extensive with the discovered world. It is 
 therefore not far from the truth to suppose 
 that the words of Jesus to the Seventy, '* I 
 send you forth as lambs among wolves," did 
 suggest one substantial part of the idea of 
 the Roman empire ever present In the 
 thoughts of the prouder races compelled to 
 accept it. To these Rome was the spoiler 
 of the world, the devastator of the nations ; 
 they spoke of her sons as the she- wolfs suck- 
 
240 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 lings, who had drunk in the lust for plunder 
 with the milk of their wolf-nurse, a lust that 
 neither east nor west could satisfy. 
 
 Was there one of the Seventy who did 
 not think of the contrast when as emissaries 
 of the empire of God they were bidden go 
 forth as lambs among wolves ? The king- 
 dom of the Lamb was other, they must at 
 least have dimly discerned, than the empire 
 of the Wolf, the peace of God than the 
 Roman peace. They saw selfishness and 
 rapacity in the one : as ambassadors from 
 the other they were bidden proclaim gentle- 
 ness and self-denial. 
 
 In the providence of God, Rome taught 
 the world sternly, remorselessly, many a 
 much-needed lesson ; but these lessons were 
 moral, not spiritual. She was God's instru- 
 ment, not God's word. It was a new thing 
 when within the empire of Rome another 
 empire with different claims was announced, 
 an empire best to be extended by those who 
 go out as lambs among wolves, who take no 
 food with them or money to buy it, and 
 
THE TWO KINGDOMS 24I 
 
 neither demand nor seize it, who carry no 
 weapons, and if they meet with hostihty turn 
 their backs, who cannot enforce that for which 
 they go forth. 
 
 The idea was new then, but is it old 
 now ? Is it not always fresh with the dew 
 of heaven upon it every time it visits the 
 heart ? When it comes at all, it cannot come 
 as a thought out-worn, but is always infinite 
 in variety. 
 
 If the seventy ambassadors had asked 
 
 their king what all was implied in his figures 
 
 of lamb and wolf, he would have but repeated 
 
 for interpretation of the one word the thoughts 
 
 which he had expressed already in the sermon 
 
 on the mount, and for the other would no 
 
 doubt have read for them the secrets in the 
 
 hearts of their natural instructors, the Scribes 
 
 and Pharisees. The wolves in spirit, the 
 
 adherents of the empire of the world, are all 
 
 who think first of self, to whom nothing is 
 
 sacred but their own advantage, who to 
 
 gratify their passions trample under foot the 
 
 most precious possessions of other men, the 
 
 16 
 
242 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 honour of others, the love of others, the 
 purity of others. Even here in this Httle 
 community, always changing yet never ex- 
 tinct, this body, framed of some twelve 
 score souls of divers ages, from the youngest 
 new-comer to the grey-headed man who now 
 speaks to him, of divers tempers and expe- 
 riences, from him who sees the golden gates 
 of life turning, and in fiery hope pushes 
 through them, to him who has left them far 
 behind, and begins to debate whether at 
 the end of his journey he may be able to 
 say to the king with sincere self-condemna- 
 tion that he has been but an unprofitable 
 servant,— even in this little community there 
 have shown themselves from time to time, 
 and there will always show themselves, 
 wolfish spirits, persons who devastate like 
 wolves, from whom even the lambs in Christ's 
 fold are not safe. If they do not rend they 
 bite, and their bite is tainted and tainting. 
 And there are other wolves worse than those 
 which frankly display their predatory instinct, 
 wolves, as they are called, in sheep's clothing, 
 
THE TWO KINGDOMS 243 
 
 that pretend to be harmless, but stealthily, 
 cunningly, treacherously, pursue their wolfish 
 designs. 
 
 Nor are these two the only species of 
 wolves that sometimes appear in this land, 
 which, like every other corner of the earth, 
 belongs. in part to the empire of the world 
 and in part to the empire of God. Besides 
 the wolves that ravin openly and the wolves 
 that dog their prey stealthily, there are wolves 
 which hardly know themselves to be such, 
 having worn sheep's clothing so long that 
 they even mistake themselves for sheep. 
 These are the self-deceived who^ cannot 
 measure their own selfishness or wolfishness, 
 nor can divest themselves of it, forasmuch 
 as they descry it not. They have let the 
 habit grow of thinking themselves no worse 
 than their neighbours. When a man is always 
 making excuses for himself it is a certain sign 
 that he has the wolfs nature. Why excuse 
 himself, if sinned he has not ? To make 
 excuses is to forgive himself for selfishness 
 of one kind or another. It is a usurpation. 
 
244 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Forgiveness must be craved ; it cannot be 
 seized. Mercy can never be exercised by- 
 anybody upon himself. God may be merciful 
 and forgive me, if I be sorry for sin. Even 
 men may forgive me ; but I have no manner 
 of right to forgive myself Deep down in 
 the heart of the unconscious hypocrite there 
 is always the feeling that his shortcomings 
 are things which he can or might find pallia- 
 tion for ; that indeed they are not desperate. 
 Moreover, not only am I too ready to forgive 
 myself; I am always too ready to believe 
 myself right. My judgments of my own 
 conduct are as perverse as my judgments 
 of others. I do not detect the wolfs spirit 
 in the one case, in the other I detect it too 
 quickly. 
 
 In this little congregation there is probably 
 none frankly wolfish, purposefully devoted to 
 the empire of Satan, but there are certainly 
 some who thinking themselves lambs, con- 
 ceiving themselves to belong to the empire 
 of God, are nevertheless mistaken. They 
 are mistaken if they do not feel that they 
 
THE TWO KINGDOMS 245 
 
 need God's forgiveness every hour. They 
 are mistaken if they do not see that much 
 must be done before they are quite rid of the 
 wolfs spirit. They are mistaken if they 
 claim to be profitable servants. They are 
 mistaken if they take the promises of God 
 as certainties, but scarcely esteem the warn- 
 ings of God to be certainties too. Why, in 
 this very charge of Jesus Christ to the 
 Seventy there is a warning embarassing and 
 disquieting. " If in any city your message," 
 he says, " be not accepted, it shall be more 
 tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that 
 city." If it were so then, after the Word had 
 been once preached, what of those who may 
 study the Word daily in an open book and 
 yet reject him ? 
 
 There are in life many problems which 
 become neither fewer nor more soluble as we 
 grow older. God s dealings with men in the 
 mass will continue to be mysterious until the 
 last page of history is turned, but for each 
 man singly the one thing that most concerns 
 him may become plainer day by day if he 
 
246 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 desire to apprehend It — the dealing of God 
 with himself, the work of the Spirit in his 
 heart. Faith grows, faith in God, faith in 
 Christ, faith in the Spirit's unseen power. 
 Love grows, love of Christ, and through love 
 of Christ love of God and charity with men. 
 Peace grows, the peace of God w^hich I shall 
 invoke for you ere you separate, the peace 
 that sanctifies Death himself and takes away 
 his sting. The world falls away and its 
 passing ambitions and disappointments, and 
 in the room thereof arises a growing love 
 for the kingdom of God. 
 
SERMON XXV 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE 
 
 When ye shall have done all those things which are com- 
 manded you, say, We are unprofitable servants : we 
 have done that which was our duty to do. — LUKE 
 xvii lo. 
 
 Jesus Christ knowing, as the Son of man, 
 man's bias to self-flattery, and knowing as 
 the Son of God and as man's judge how 
 hazardous this bias is, here corrects it with 
 blunt directness. " Performance of duty is 
 no merit. Do faithfully and punctiliously alt 
 that God commands thee to do ; and having 
 achieved that which thou well knowest none 
 save thyself has ever achieved, thou art never- 
 theless an unprofitable servant. Thou hast 
 not exceeded thy duty. Nay, if thou indeed 
 believe that thou hast performed thy whole 
 duty thou art judged already ; for thou hast 
 judged thyself" 
 
248 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Christians in Christian charity and in 
 gratitude designate as saints some who 
 appear to them to have served God less 
 unprofitably than others ; and in this doubtless 
 they do well, so long at least as they are 
 careful not to confound the judgment of men 
 with the judgment of Christ himself, and are 
 careful to realise that in commemorating men 
 like themselves they but show their thankful- 
 ness for what they believe to be encouraging 
 examples of faithful service of God rendered 
 possible by spiritual strength derived from 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 This, and this only, is the teaching of the 
 Anglican Church in regard to this day's 
 festival, as indeed is plain from the collect for 
 this day, which in the sixteenth century was 
 substituted for an older form which did not 
 inculcate this teaching. Nor could any other 
 teaching accord with the gospel. The one 
 exemplar for the Christian is He after whom 
 he is called. Believing in Him, convinced 
 that he partakes of His Spirit, he believes 
 and is convinced that this indwelling Spirit 
 
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE 249 
 
 admits him into communion with all besides 
 in whom He dwells. 
 
 It is not, however, with the principal 
 thought suggested by the festival of All 
 Saints that I am concerned now, but with the 
 responsibility for the use of the gift of life 
 under which all men lie, under which those 
 whom we commemorate each in his generation 
 once lay. 
 
 Whether men in the bulk recognise this 
 responsibility more than was once the case, 
 there is of course no certain means of telling. 
 It is impossible to make sure what course 
 spiritual movements take, or to measure their 
 intensity. Progress in this kind is made up 
 of innumerable tendencies, each in itself in- 
 significant. A man knows that in the life of 
 his generation there is spiritual movement of 
 many kinds, but he may well be mistaken in 
 determining the set of the current. Acknow- 
 ledging therefore that error is possible, I 
 should be sorry to say in so many words that 
 there is progress in the way in which men 
 regard their duties and responsibilities; never- 
 
250 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 theless, I cannot help thinking that there has 
 been progress, and progress capable even of 
 a rough sort of measurement. There are 
 more men now, perhaps, who put their spare 
 time — the tempora sicbseciva of life — to a wiser 
 use than there were last century, or even 
 last generation. Public sentiment may still 
 condone many forms of selfishness, but it con- 
 dones less readily the more brutal kinds. In 
 a blundering way, no doubt, yet meaning well, 
 it countenances the efforts of those who 
 honestly try to make brotherly love an 
 effectual force in knitting man to man and 
 class to class. It does recognise the duty of 
 service. Hosts of men still see no rule In 
 life but self-advancement and self-enjoyment, 
 but there would seem to be more deserters 
 from their ranks than from the battalions of 
 such as have already learned that the service 
 of man is the service of God. More get to 
 feel that, like every other thing of value 
 possessed by men, life has its obligations 
 which cannot be evaded without detracting 
 from its value. More come to understand 
 
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE 25 1 
 
 that they approach wisdom and happiness 
 just SO far as they learn that the true enjoy- 
 ment of life is commensurate with the willing- 
 ness with which they endeavour to perform 
 its duties ; that they are never happier than 
 when mind and body are occupied every 
 waking hour in doing that work to which 
 their conscience has given its adherence. 
 
 There is no one in this place, for example, 
 who would not acknowledge, if the question 
 were put to him, that he ought to make as 
 much of his life as he can, serving God with 
 it by serving others. He might say, however, 
 that he scarcely saw how he could set about 
 this service until he became a man. You 
 may all be sure that you are in the street 
 Straight if the one thought is never wholly 
 lost sight of, that this is your time of prepara- 
 tion for leading a life of service when you are 
 grown. You are here in order that you may 
 train will and brain and body for manhood, 
 storing your frame with health, your mind 
 with knowledge, and your character with pur- 
 pose and decision. Anything that conflicts 
 
252 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 with this ideal of school-Hfe conflicts also 
 with the ideal of duty involved in these words 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 We masters also, your professed advisers 
 and guides during the years in which you 
 prepare yourselves for men's work, are by 
 the same words constrained to throw heart 
 and soul into the business of making you 
 ready. We are your governors, but we are 
 first of all your servants. The school, we 
 know, does not exist for the masters, but for 
 the boys. It is our first concern to make 
 you ready. We must ourselves continue to 
 study and to learn, that our minds may keep 
 fresh and full for your instruction ; and if we 
 set an ill example in conduct and self-govern- 
 ment, in eagerness, in laboriousness, in punc- 
 tuality, in soberness of life, in contempt for 
 money and comfort, we know ourselves to be 
 hirelings and unfaithful servants. Some of 
 the blame shall lie at our door if you are 
 not ready to face life like men, when men 
 you become. 
 
 When the preparative time ends, life will 
 
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE 253 
 
 change its look and colour not a little. At 
 school every hour is filled with some direct 
 occupation. Most men on the other hand 
 are largely left to themselves. Their day's 
 work at all events ends at some fixed time. 
 They have some leisure to use or to squander. 
 If in the time for making ready they have so 
 learned the duty of labour that it has become 
 a habit with them, they are sure to use their 
 leisure reasonably. More projects will crowd 
 in upon their brain than they can carry out, 
 and their difificulty will be to select the most 
 serviceable to their fellows. I should not 
 give much for any man who at any moment 
 in his life has not more things that he would 
 like to do than time to overtake them. There 
 is no real sense of responsibility for the use 
 of life, the duty of service has not been learned, 
 until the responsibility, the duty, has become 
 attractive ; until the longing for labour of 
 some kind is turned into a sort of instinct. 
 It is this, let me repeat, which makes the 
 many several lives spent together in this 
 place so deeply interesting, so rife with good 
 
254 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 or SO rife with ill. The unstable and moving 
 outcome of the impulses and the thoughts, 
 the words and the actions, of these sundry 
 lives thrown together, clashing together, meet- 
 ing, must act and react upon the character of 
 each person so powerfully, that it becomes a 
 matter of the most serious moment whether 
 that outcome makes in the main for good or 
 for evil. If this thought be not altogether 
 forgotten, if it be at least in the minds of a 
 few ever present and active, then the school 
 will in some degree fulfil its purpose in form- 
 ing for its sons a habit of life incompatible 
 with any abased conception of duty and 
 responsibility. 
 
 But if better than nothing, this is less 
 than the ideal that Jesus held up to the 
 Twelve, and less than the spirit of Christ 
 renders possible for those who suffer him to 
 dwell in them. If always clean and sweet 
 and cleansing, the habit of labour and the 
 pursuit of duty need cleanse and sweeten 
 only the natural man. The character may 
 remain selfish and unsympathetic, even when 
 
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE 255 
 
 it scorns the squandering of time and the 
 misuse of God's other gifts. Such an atti- 
 tude may not be Christian at all. It is not 
 bred from the spirit of Christ, nor is a man 
 born again thereby. Hence the importance 
 of the more prominent spiritual influences for 
 the common life led at school. The few 
 minutes together in Abbey before lessons 
 begin, in the schoolroom when they end, 
 may mean little or much to the single soul — 
 Christ alone can judge — but they do bring 
 one and all together into the presence of God 
 twice each day ; and the few or the many 
 who at these times seek the spirit of Christ 
 understand more clearly day by day what 
 Christ means when he says, that having done 
 all that is commanded them they are un- 
 profitable servants. 
 
SERMON XXVI 
 
 THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL 
 
 The Lord satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry 
 soul with goodness. — Psalm cvii 9 
 
 Somebody has said that '' those who are 
 not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of 
 the world " ; and, bold though the doctrine 
 be, none can prove it untrue. It is true of 
 single men ; it is true of bodies of men. It 
 is true of the mind ; it is just as true of the 
 soul. 
 
 In a Greek writer an enemy of the 
 Athenians is made to say that the hunger of 
 the mind was just the difference which marked 
 them off from other men ; that when they 
 had once conceived some purpose, they 
 thought that they suffered loss if it were not 
 made good ; if they had any success they 
 
THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL 257 
 
 esteemed it a mere instalment of the whole ; 
 and if they failed they could not rest until 
 they had fomented new hopes. In this 
 portrait are seen the lineaments of a great 
 race, of a rich nature — life, vigour, movement, 
 interest, enthusiasm, belief, hope. 
 
 In the case of Athens the craving for 
 something better and greater was in the 
 main intellectual. The thin, unthrifty soil of 
 Attica bred a race that so hungered and 
 thirsted after truth and beauty, that in art 
 and literature these achievements are still the 
 wonder and the despair and the inspiration 
 of the world. In the case of another people, 
 almost as weak in numbers and bred on as 
 sterile a soil, the dissatisfaction with past 
 performance was displayed in things spiritual. 
 The longing soul hungering after righteous- 
 ness, thirsting for the waters of life, eagerly 
 awaiting the coming of the day of the Lord, 
 is the soul of Elijah, and Amos, and Hosea, 
 and Isaiah, and the rest of the prophets. It 
 is the soul of John the Baptist and the sons 
 of Zebedee, of Simon Peter and Andrew. 
 
 17 
 
258 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 " The two disciples followed Jesus. Then 
 Jesus turned, and saw them following, and 
 saith unto them. What seek ye ? They said 
 unto him. Rabbi, where dwellest thou ? " 
 They sought the day of the Lord, and it was 
 come to them. Its dawn was at last visible. 
 They had seen the Messiah. They had 
 begun to discover that "the Lord satisfieth 
 the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul 
 with goodness." 
 
 The text is a sort of beatitude pronounced 
 upon the discontentment of a man with his 
 past life and his present spiritual achieve- 
 ment. It can never be well with anyone if 
 he imagines that progress comes fast enough ; 
 if he is content with what he is, with the 
 measure of knowledge or fervour or courage 
 or goodness which he has reached. To 
 become content is to stop expanding and 
 growing and doing good. It is worse. It 
 is to begin to retrograde, to impede progress^ 
 to produce in other men, as in oneself, stag- 
 nation of spirit. How can anyone inspire 
 others who sees no need for becoming better 
 
THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL 259 
 
 himself ? How can he inform other souls 
 with enthusiasm if he keeps no spark alight 
 wherewith to kindle them ? 
 
 It may not be in me to excel greatly In 
 anything else, but it is my own fault if I 
 excel not in this hunger of the soul. I can 
 at least long to become better, purer in heart, 
 more generous in judging, less ready to envy 
 and jealousy, more courageous In doing my 
 duty, less bound by conventions, more in love 
 with the right, more truthful in word and 
 act and thought. I can prove my affection for 
 home or for school by adding the results of 
 this self-discontent or hunger of the soul to the 
 common stock of good influences from which 
 I have myself derived advantage. Earnest- 
 ness is catching, and if earnestly 1 hunger 
 after goodness, I make others .hunger also. 
 If on the other hand, instead of longing to 
 be better than I am, I do as some have done 
 lately, and crush conscience and openly glory 
 in a lie, and having experience in evil tempt 
 others therewith, I surely cannot do others 
 any good, nor can I cherish any real affection 
 
26o THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 for my home or my school. To act in this 
 way is a sign that the soul is not only content 
 and lethargic, but is bent upon evil against 
 itself and against others. 
 
 A spark may pass from soul to soul as 
 instantaneous as the spark that leaps between 
 the poles of an electric battery, and as potent 
 to alter the nature of the elements through 
 which it passes. The spiritual atmosphere 
 of the school is charged with influences given 
 off by ourselves, some begotten of the soul's 
 hunger for goodness, some of the soul's 
 lethargy, or worse, of the soul's hunger after 
 evil. Let me try to describe what happens 
 when there is hunger for goodness. The 
 other picture I should rather not draw at all. 
 It is the reverse in every point. 
 
 There is no means of estimating the good 
 which any one soul may do by its hunger and 
 thirst after goodness, but everyone knows 
 when this hunger is common in the school. 
 In a subtle, untraceable way there has arisen 
 in place of sloth and torpor a sort of energy 
 which finds its way into all, renovating and 
 
THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL 261 
 
 Strengthening will and soul and mind. I 
 have seen this happen more than once, and 
 have been filled with wonder and with rever- 
 ence, seeing what had seemed to be common 
 and ordinary intelligence assuming strength 
 and clearness and comprehensiveness, and 
 what once appeared to be unambitious and 
 self-satisfied spirits taking the purity and 
 depth of purpose which alone dignify cha- 
 racter ; best of all, feeling the spirit of Christ 
 sought and received and active. 
 
 This magnetic power of one over many, 
 and of many over one, seems to arise no one 
 knows how ; but it is certainly only the last 
 stage of a long continuous process in which 
 many single souls have been longing and 
 hungering after goodness, and many wills 
 have perseveringly been exerted to force 
 weakness to give place to strength, lethargy 
 to ardour, the love of ease to activity, and 
 cowardice to courage. * 
 
 Life in any form is worthy of admiration, 
 but in none does it produce so great an im- 
 pression of majesty as when it is revealed in 
 

 262 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the souls of men. There is no means whereby 
 the bodily life of one man may impart of its 
 strength to the life of another. No man can 
 give to another a share in his vigorous con- 
 stitution or active frame. There is no emana- 
 tion of influence from bodily vitality, however 
 great ; but it is otherwise with men's minds 
 and souls. These give and take. They 
 meet and interpenetrate. They touch and 
 are one. 
 
 It is of concern, therefore, to the school 
 what spirit most are of If at any time there 
 are many within it who are content to go on 
 as they are ; if at any time there are even a 
 few within it who are condoned when they 
 act as though evil were their good, it is not 
 well with the common life, and the evil is 
 certain to grow and to declare itself also ere 
 long. 
 
 There are at least some here who already 
 are possessed by this hunger for something 
 better, this longing for something higher, this 
 discontent with self, this faith, this spirit of 
 Christ. To them the school will never know 
 
THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL 263 
 
 all that it owes ; but be they many in number 
 or be they few, it is they and they alone who 
 produce the best part of any training that the 
 rest receive here. They are the school. They 
 are your schoolmasters and mine. 
 
SERMON XXVII 
 
 THE SLAVE, THE HIRELING, AND THE SON 
 
 / am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as 
 one of thy hired servants. — Luke xv 19. 
 
 The household which the younger son is 
 eager to forsake comprises three several 
 orders under the one householder. There 
 are the sons of the house, the hired servants, 
 and the slaves. The men who make up each 
 class think that they serve, and are thought 
 to serve, the one householder. All would 
 appear to labour in his house or in his fields. 
 The elder son himself works with the rest ; 
 for it is he who says : '* Lo, these many years 
 do I serve thee, neither have I transgressed 
 at any time thy commandment." The ser- 
 vants, whether of one kind or of another, sons 
 and hirelings and slaves, all alike are entrusted 
 
SLAVE, HIRELING, AND SON 265 
 
 with the householder's treasures and gear; 
 they wait at his table or fatten beasts in his 
 stalls. Any one of them all, slave or hireling 
 or elder son, is free to go forth from the 
 house at his pleasure, and travel, as did the 
 younger son, into a far country. 
 
 The key to the interpretation of this 
 parable is to be found, I conceive, in the 
 description that is drawn of the far country. 
 The far country is the world, openly and 
 frankly sought. It is the house of another 
 householder who is known by sundry names, 
 varying with the nature of his lures or of his 
 wages. He is Satan or the Devil when he is 
 regarded as the adversary of God and of 
 man ; he is Belial, as the denier of man's 
 responsibilities to God ; he is the prince of 
 this world, as tempting men by worldly power 
 and secular glory ; he is the father of lies, as 
 rejecting reality and truth ; he is Abaddon or 
 Apollyon, as the destroyer of souls. There- 
 fore, if such be the potentate whom the 
 citizens of the far country are bound to obey, 
 then the household remote from his authority 
 
266 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 must be the opposite of his domain. It is 
 the Church of God, composed of those who 
 by profession at least desire to serve and to 
 love God, and to keep aloof from the far 
 country. This much all the three orders, 
 sons and hirelings and slaves, allege that 
 they do. They do not openly with audacity 
 seek the far country. If they go thither at 
 times, they steal away and steal back. They 
 deceive the rest of the household, and perhaps 
 even imagine that they deceive the house- 
 holder himself. 
 
 The three orders in this great household 
 are not at all times composed of the same 
 men. Single souls pass continually from one 
 class into another. He who is a hireling one 
 day may be a slave the next, or a slave may 
 become a hireling, or the elder son himself 
 may degrade into a servant, working for hire 
 or for a morsel of bread, as when he says to 
 his father : '* Lo, these many years do I 
 serve thee, and yet thou never gavest me a 
 kid that I might make merry with my friends." 
 If the elder son can thus assume the hireling 
 
SLAVE, HIRELING, AND SON 26/ 
 
 spirit, then neither slave nor hired servant 
 can be precluded from joining the order of 
 sons, if only he begin to serve from love. 
 The householder is always saying to him : 
 ^' Thou art ever with me, and all that I have 
 is thine;" and if only he will believe, he shall 
 become son In room of hireling or of slave. 
 
 The more often I read these calm utter- 
 ances of the Eternal Word, these simple 
 histories of man's divers relations with his 
 Maker, I read them with an awe always 
 growing, with a fear that seizes and almost 
 overwhelms, that if I may not go boldly out 
 into the far country, yet in the household of 
 God I am no son at all, but a hireling or a 
 slave. 
 
 Some of you asked me last week why I 
 had called it wrong to pray for anything other 
 than spiritual gifts, for success, say, in any 
 ordinary enterprise. Perhaps you see now, 
 after studying this parable, as you might also 
 see after studying certain other parables, that 
 he who prays for material blessings of any 
 kind Is In danger of ranking as a hired servant 
 
268 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 or a slave. All I have, in strength, in ability, 
 in opportunity, is the gift of God, and must 
 be accounted for. Why therefore pray for 
 success ? What I should pray for is the 
 power in Christ so to love God that I use his 
 gifts to the full in his service, and not for 
 myself. If I pray for success, I pray as the 
 pagans prayed or pray to their several gods ; 
 I pray as a hireling, and not as a son. 
 
 The other day when some here declared 
 before the eyes of their natural and their 
 spiritual kindred, of their comrades and their 
 friends, that they sought the spirit of Christ, 
 they and the congegation that witnessed their 
 act represented the great household in the 
 parable with its three orders of sons and hire- 
 lings and slaves. No eye of man could 
 discern the difference by which each soul fell 
 into one class or into another ; nevertheless, 
 for the time, each single soul present there 
 did belong to one and only one of the three 
 orders. 
 
 There were there those who might be 
 called passive members of the household^ 
 
SLAVE, HIRELING, AND SON 269 
 
 downright slaves, bound in the ties of con- 
 vention, who for fashion^s sake or appearance 
 sake, have suffered the name of Christ Jesus 
 to be invoked upon them, and perform with- 
 out love, yet perhaps punctiliously, the outward 
 forms of service, keeping, it may be, the robes 
 and jewels of the household, providing the 
 vessels and the wherewithal to load them, 
 making merry in festivals, and in fasts fasting, 
 because they are bidden so to do by ecclesias- 
 tical ordinances. " These things they ought 
 to have done and not to leave the others 
 undone." They belong to the order of slaves, 
 men who serve only with the bodily presence 
 in church, who are concerned with the manner 
 of the ceremonies there used, and regard not 
 the weightier matters of the law, mercy and 
 brotherly love and the allegiance of the spirit. 
 They understand not the " glorious liberty of 
 the sons of God." 
 
 There were present also those whose 
 service for the time is of a less ignoble kind, 
 yet not spiritual service springing from love. 
 These are the servants hired by sundry 
 
270 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 qualities or opportunities derived from God, 
 who use them, It may be, Hke free men in the 
 moral service of God, but not for the love of 
 God so much as for their own satisfaction, or 
 even for their own advancement. Whole- 
 hearted men, perhaps, living cleanly, using 
 their bodies and their faculties and character 
 for honourable ends, priding themselves in 
 their assiduous performance of the duties and 
 responsibilities of their several positions, and 
 contented therein, wholly satisfied thereby. 
 Such have their reward in full. The famished 
 prodigal, when he had discovered the spIrltuaP 
 emptiness of the far country, for all Its flaunt- 
 ing plenty in lusts fulfilled and desires made 
 good and the pride of life gratified, conceiving 
 that he had forfeited for ever his birthright 
 as a son, was turned by disgust at the husks 
 of his swinish life to desire the moral con- 
 tentment enjoyed by these hired servants in 
 his father's household. He was only saved 
 therefrom by his self-humiliation and abasht 
 contrition. No sooner did he see his father 
 than he dared not pray for worldly success 
 
SLAVE, HIRELING, AND SON 2/1 
 
 prodigal though he was, any more than he 
 dared claim spiritual restoration ; therefore, 
 he belonged not to the hireling order, but to 
 the order of sons. For the hired servant 
 takes his wage as his due and is satisfied that 
 he has earned it well. How could the pro- 
 digal acquire such contentment ? He had 
 nothing but faith and love, penitence and 
 hope ; and his sins which were many were 
 forgiven him. 
 
 Of others in the far country, save of this 
 sojourner there, I shall say nothing, although 
 it may well be that even In this congregation 
 composed of souls that should not be wholly 
 withdrawn from God, there are yet those who 
 are citizens of that country, satisfied with 
 their master, the prince of this world, tilling 
 their belly with the things he provides, nor 
 ever touched with the sense of famine such 
 as the younger son felt when he inhabited 
 there. Some such I have known even here 
 at times ; and these perhaps may lay It at my 
 door in the judgment day that their content- 
 ment with the husks that the swine eat was 
 
2/2 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 not dispelled during the years that they spent 
 at Westminster. May Christ determine that 
 they speak falsely ; or grant them forgiveness, 
 if I am justly accused. I shall not be able to 
 gainsay them. 
 
 THE END 
 
 J. PALMER, PRINTER ALEXANDRA STREET, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
I 
 

 YB 29484 
 
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