',1*..,,,, THE INCARNATION AND COMMON LIFE. THE INCABNATION AND COMMON LIFE BY BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, D.D.; D.C.L.; BISHOP OF DUEHAM. Uonljon : MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK. 1893 [All Eights reserved] THERE CAN BE NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK, THERE CAN BE NEITHER BOND NOR FREE, THERE CAN BE NO MALE AND FEMALE; FOR YE ALL ARE ONE MAN IN CHRIST JESUS. Gal. iii. 28. IN HIM WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING. Acts xvii. 28. PREFACE. IT can very rarely happen that one who has spent long and busy years as student and teacher should be suddenly called at the close of life to the oversight of a Diocese in which the problems of modern life are presented in the most urgent and impressive form. Such a transition brings with it of necessity many strange experiences. It gives by its very unexpectedness a singular reality to earlier thoughts. The Faith which has been pondered in quiet must without preparation be brought into the market-place and vindicated as a power of action. In the following pages I have endeavoured to express what I have felt from time to time when I have been called to consider some particular phase of our present life, and to mark, however w. c. 1 2066631 vi Preface. imperfectly, the application of the Gospel to our own difficulties and sorrows and duties. The highest conceivable attestation of a divine reve- lation lies in its power to meet each new want of man as it arises, and to gain fresh force from the growth of human knowledge. The message of the Incarnation satisfies this criterion in unex- pected ways, and our distresses enable us to feel its wider applications. There is indeed a progress in the interpre- tation and practical apprehension of the Gospel, which, while it is not due to natural forces, is conditioned by them. There is such a progress within the limits of the New Testament. The apostolic teaching in the Epistle of St James remains within the range of the thoughts of the Synagogue, illuminated by the Coming of the Christ. In the Epistle to the Ephesians the noblest conceptions of Imperial Rome are used to give distinctness to the idea of the unity of the Church. Scripture and History alike teach us that Christianity is not defined by the letter of the written Word. Every incident, every precept which the written Word contains, is a germ, fruitful in manifold developments which do not indeed add anything to the substance of the written Word, but witness to its life. Preface. vii This must be so if we believe that ' the Word 'became flesh and tabernacled among us... full of ' grace and truth.' In this central fact of the life of the world, which discloses the capacity and the destiny of man, and of the creation over which man is set as sovereign and representative, there is no change in the Person of the Word. He through Whom and unto Whom all things were created took humanity to Himself and lived a human life. In the fulness of time the Word became not a man as one man of many men, but ' flesh.' In Him humanity found its unity under the conditions of earth, and, if I may so speak, its personality. Such a fact is not a solitary fact though it is unique in the sense that experience cannot furnish any presumption against it, for it admits of no parallel. It is at once the crown and the foundation of a long spiritual growth. The Word became (not was made) flesh in due season according to the orderly unfolding of the divine purpose. The Creation and the Incarnation both answer to the timeless counsel of GOD, Who appointed Him heir of all things, through Whom He also made the world (TOI)>n that by ourselves we cannot reach it. None the less we persist in our effort; and the Gospel comes to encourage and to sustain us. But that we may find and use the power of the Gospel, we must realise it in its whole essence and scope. We are not Theists. Our commission is not simply to call on men to believe in GOD, /^ v but to believe in GOD manifested in the flesh./ By the Incarnation GOD is revealed to us as ' the i~ 1$ * tf~ Father,' so as to give validity to our human con- /c ceptions of His perfection. By the Incarnation i ^.^ He enters through His Son into the world of Nature and delivers us from the tyranny of mate- k c . rialism. By the Incarnation He makes known to ^ j>^ us the spiritual basis of life in virtue of which !., man in the fulness of his nature is shewn to be ^ 11 ? f 11 i -^i /-i capable or lellowship with GOD. But while the Incarnation ' brings all heaven before our eyes,' it guards us from a dreamy mysti- cism. It hallows labour and our scene of labour. It claims the fullest offering of personal service. It embraces all men in the range of its greatest hope, and not only those who have reached a particular stage of culture. It enables us to reverence with a sublime faith, which experience 48 The Incarnation has amply justified, men as men ; for we believe that Christ is the Saviour of the world (St John iv. 42) : that it is the will of GOD that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. ii. 4) : that it was His good pleasure to recon- cile through Christ all things unto Himself having made peace through the blood of His cross, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens (Col. i. 20). All men and all being therefore come within the range of the Christian's hope ; and our most frequent prayer Thy kingdom come reminds us that the Lord presents earth as the scene of our consummation. As His ambassadors we need to assert His claim to be creator and heir of the universe/ (Hebr. i. 2). The apostolic portraiture of the Master, as He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the Devil (Acts /x. 38), must be the pattern of the disciples' labours. To us also, when we are lost in vain speculations on the mysteries of the Divine work- ing, the words come : Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? (Acts i. 11). We need this awakening summons to that which we may think secular work. It has hap- pened now and again that our hesitation has pre- judiced the popular estimate of our Faith. There is unhappily a true sense in which the common a Revelation of Human Duties. 49 people have not heard us gladly. They think, however wrongly, that we are either ignorant of their trials or indifferent to them. In the mean time, while we have hung back, others have sought to bring expression and fulfilment to the generous desires of our race. Their work has been outwardly Christian in type, but they have lacked the spiritual foundation of the Christian Faith. Where they have failed, and all merely material reforms must fail, their ill-success has tended to discredit our efforts. It cannot but discredit them until we make our motive and our aim clear. This we can do and this we are bound M , /i_j^ & . to do. For us each amelioration of man's circum- ^ stances is the translation of a fragment of our Creed into action, and not the self-shaped effort of a kindly nature. It answers, as we believe, to the will of GOD ; and the faith which quickened the purpose is sufficient to accomplish it. Our perfect exemplar exists already. Our citizenship the type of every social privilege and duty exists in heaven v (Phil. iii. 20). That ideal under- lies, limits, transfigures, our earthly citizenship. For us ' love ' is no vague impulse, but the mature fruit of that ' love of the brethren,' which grows out of the common acknowledgment by Chris- tians of their vital union with one Saviour (2 Pet. i. 7). The ' brother ' in the Epistles of St John, 50 The Incarnation whose language has been transferred to attractive if unsubstantial and ineffective common-places, is the fellow Christian and not the fellow-man. The truth which the Apostle emphasised is con- sequently in danger of being forgotten. We all need to recognise more fully than we have yet done the Divine fellowship of Christian with Christian before we can rightly discharge our wider duties. For we all have wider duties. The capacity for influence is given to us, and we are charged to use it. Under three memorable images the Lord describes the office of Christians and of the ^! Christian Church to men at large. Ye are, He said to His disciples gathered round Him, the salt of the earth : Ye are the light of the world. And again, The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. Every phrase requires to be carefully weighed. In the ministry of the Gospel there is work for the individual ; and there is work for the society. There is a work of preservation, of enlightenment, of transformation. Things in themselves cor- ruptible and transitory receive from Christians in Christ that which brings to them soundness and permanence. Dark mysteries in society and nature are illuminated for believers, who are com- a Revelation of Human Duties. 51 missioned to spread the light which they welcome. The unordered mass of human energies is capable of transfiguration, and the Christian Society, so far as it is faithful to itself, silently and slowly extends on every side its quickening force. The Incarnation to connect these duties with their source carries with it all that is requisite for the fulfilment of the Divine counsel of creation : the power of the Resurrection, the glory of the Ascended Christ, the life which He breathed into His Church. The fact, as I have already said, is slowly ap- prehended. The consequences are slowly realised. Yet there is a movement towards the divine goal. The conquests of the first three centuries the successive conquests of the family, the schools, the empire typify on the scene of the Old World the conquests which have to be won on a much larger scale in the New World. Something has been already done, but we have still much to learn in order that we may do our part. Christian ideals have not yet taken a domi- nant place in our higher education ; though I d^*_ believe that it is becoming more and more clear e^c that these alone satisfy the aspirations of the masters of ancient Greece and bring into life the theories which they formed apart from life. In social action we are all tempted to acquiesce 52 The Incarnation in that which is ' lawful.' We consider what we may 'lawfully' do without incurring civil penal- ties and not what we ought to do. But civil law is no rule of positive duty. Its symbol is ' thou shalt not ' and not ' thou shalt.' And for the in- spiration of conduct we require to consider what a quickened sense of duty prompts us to aim at, rather than what a code forbids. In international affairs a narrow 'patriotism' often hinders us from looking at the permanent issues of a policy suggested by present interests or pride. We have then, I say, much to learn. The Christian Faith covers all life the personal life, the life of the citizen and the life of the man. Each least and nearest interest gains in intensity as a wider interest is acknowledged. As Christians therefore we are bound ourselves to study and, as far as we may be able, to lead others to study the Christian ideal of our personal relations, of our class relations, of our national relations ; and then to determine the next step which we can take in each direction towards it. This is the thought which I desire to master and to enforce. The n M Church of Christ has still the right, or rather the duty, of ' binding and loosing,' of declaring with authority what must and what must not be done. The commission given to the Apostles may have V^Wv^-cAv a Revelation of Human Duties. 53 been allowed to fall into abeyance but it has never been revoked. It can be exercised in other ways and more effectively than by the decrees of Coun- cils. That it should be exercised is a pressing need of an age when all men alike claim freedom of judgment and have equal political power. That we in our measure may be enabled to exercise it, we must seek anew the insight, the faith, the courage, which a vital acceptance of the Incarna- tion will bring to us. I. A modern writer commences a sombre essay on the prospects of humanity with these words : "A ruined temple, with its fallen columns and " broken arches, has often been taken as a sug- "gestive type of the transitory nature of all "human handiwork.... Soon the building follows " the builder to an equal dust, and the universal " empire of Death alone survives over the tombs "of departed glory and greatness." In this view nothing is suggested beyond man's effort and man's failure. The same image is used by one of the greatest Puritans of the 17th century and made radiant with hope. " The stately ruins", Howe writes of the soul of man, "are visible to " every eye, that bear in their front, yet extant, 54 The Incarnation " this doleful inscription : Here GOD once dwelt. " Enough appears of the admirable frame and " structure to show the Divine presence did some- "time reside in it. ...The lamps are extinct, the " altar overturned : the light and love are now " vanished, which did the one shine with so "heavenly brightness, the other burn with so "pious fervour." Perhaps we may think that even here the picture is too darkly painted ; but, though it be so, Howe goes on to shew how GOD Who had designed that first temple completed through the Incarnate Word the work which He had begun. Thus we are raised above man both in the conception and in the consummation of his powers. The two passages bring out vividly the con- trast between the non-Christian and the Christian idea of humanity. For the non-Christian there can be no certainty of assurance in the prospect of the desolations of the world. For the Chris- tian, the Incarnation proclaims that the Gospel of Creation has been fulfilled in fact and moves forward to a complete accomplishment. The first words which the Lord taught His disciples to use ' Father ' (Lk. xi. 2) ' Our Father, which art in heaven ' (Matt. vi. 9), express briefly what the Incarnation has wrought for us as men. They invest us with a privilege of divine sonship which a Revelation of Human Duties. 55 finds no place in the Old Testament. The words are a prophecy, an interpretation, a promise. They point to a personal relation between GOD and man which each man is set to realise in life : they shew that we share this potentially with all other men ; and the fact that Christ charges us to claim the double fellowship, fellowship with GOD ('Father') and fellowship with man in GOD ('our Father'), is an assurance that through His help we can obtain it. So then we face our work, sons of GOD, brothers of men ; and this double VV.JU-, master-thought one thought in two aspects will help us in dealing with our personal duties in regard to ourselves and in regard to others, as heirs of GOD'S love and called to fulfil a human ministry. It is indeed impossible to draw a sharp line between these two spheres of personal and social effort and action. It is impossible for anyone to confine the effects of what he does or leaves undone to himself alone. If he withdraws him- self into a desert and spends his years in com- pletest isolation, he defrauds his fellow-men of the fruits of the large heritage which he has received from the past. In the stir of action every man at every moment influences others, consciously or unconsciously, limiting and mould- ing them, scattering seeds of thought and deed 56 The Incarnation which will be fruitful of good or evil while time lasts. If the solitary ascetic is to justify him- self he must shew and there are times perhaps when this would be possible that his impres- sive protest against the spirit of his age is worth the cost at which it is made. If the man of affairs is to justify his life of restless enterprise, he must not appeal to material results but to the signs of character strengthened and purified. The responsibility of living might well appal us by its immeasurable issues, but as chil- dren we can rest gladly in our Father's will. This then is that which we are constrained to seek for in our personal relations through our faith in the Incarnation, a recognition of common Divine sonship and ' equal ' spiritual brotherhood. It is a familiar claim ; but perhaps it has lost much of its force because we have ceased to reflect upon it ourselves and to press it upon others. We assume that the claim is acknow- ledged, and we neglect to consider the fact by which it is established. For when seen in this light, as the application to men individually of the message that the Word became flesh, the asser- tion of the Divine sonship of each man, of the human brotherhood of all men in Christ, is fitted to. chasten, to guide, to inspire us : to furnish at once a solid foundation and a touchstone for our a Revelation of Human Duties. 57 theories of social intercourse. Just so soon and so far as we regard ourselves and others ' jn ' trr****^. Christ,' to use St Paul's phrase, according to the Divine counsel, we shall strive to secure for each * man, as for ourselves, the opportunity of fulfilling JL^- his part in a Divine society, for developing a cor- '/ responding character, for attaining in his measure to the Divine likeness. The apostolic picture i j~ will be constantly before us as our charter and our / law : There is one Body and one Spirit, even as ye were called in one hope of your calling : one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism : one GOD and Father \ of all, Who is over all, and through all and in alt (Eph. iv. 4 6), ruling, uniting, sustaining. The fundamental image of 'the body' guards us from many errors. The rich energy of the whole depends on the variety of the parts. There can be no physical or intellectual or moral equality r"' among men as the members of the Body of Christ. Each man has his own peculiar function. Each man is heir of one past and has some unique heritage to administer and to hallow. The opportunity which we seek for him is not the opportunity of doing anything, but of doing that one thing which answers to his individuality and his place. As he does this he enters on the enjoyment of the fulness of the greater life to which he has contributed. Regarded under this w. c. 5 58 The Incarnation aspect the aspect of our Christian Faith life is an opportunity for service. We are not our own. We were not only redeemed by Christ : we were bought by Him, and are His. The essence of sin lies in selfishness, self-assertion ( i rr\eove^la). Brought to this test the great questions of tem- perance and purity can be dealt with effectually. The virtues are positive and not negative. They are not personal but social. Any indulgence which lessens our own efficiency, or brings injury on another is sinful. St Paul has laid down the principles: If because of meat thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love. Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ died Overthrow not for meat's sake the work of GOD (Rom. xiv. 15, 20). And again: Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ? shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot?' (1 Cor. vi. 15). Our work will be permanently effective when we rest on these fundamental thoughts. The most far- reaching arguments, the highest motives, are the most practical. No self-centred considerations will shield a man in temptation. But the vision 'C^ of Christ will, for He will support the effort that is made in acknowledgment of a duty which is owed to Him. False-dealing in trade and gambling can, I a Revelation of Human Duties. 59 believe, only be overcome by the application of the same truth. They are offences against our fellowship in Christ. We must present them in this light. Nor will anyone think that such a view is exaggerated who has reflected on the reason which St Paul gives for truthfulness. Speak ye truth, he writes, each one with his neighbour, because we are members one of another (Eph. iv. 25). I touch on these most obvious points for I think that we commonly shrink from bringing the great truths of our Faith to bear on the trials and duties of every day. Yet commonplace events make up the staple of our lives. Our ordinary occupations must form nine-tenths of our service our service to GOD and to man and if the power of our Faith is to be felt, we require not only private devotion but open confession* (1 John iv. 3). The obligation lies on the layman no less than on the clergyman. Those who believe must act as believing and because they believe. If they do so, experience tells us that they will speedily influence public opinion; and at the same time they will themselves learn to trust more resolutely to the efficacy of spiritual forces. Life, I have said, is an opportunity for service. The way of the Master is the way of the disciple, and for the most part we are in a position in 52 60 The Incarnation which the discipline and sense of service are natural. We have no difficulty in looking to our day's work, as it is given to us day by day, as something to be done for GOD'S glory and man's welfare in our Father's presence and through His help. So it is with the bulk of our middle class. It is otherwise with the very rich and with the very poor. In this respect extremes meet, and it is hard to say whether superfluity or penury is more unfavourable to the realisation of the true idea of life. On the one side the pressure of con- ventional engagements and pleasures tends to crowd out the thought of service : on the other side the conditions of labour are such as to obscure the truth that this labour may be the service of a son. Such contrasts, such hindrances to the Chris- tian life, demand consideration. They raise prob- lems which -we are called to face. They involve perils against which we are bound to provide. They furnish tests of the sincerity and power of our faith. Has the parable of the manna no application here ? It is true that there can be no 'equal' par- ticipation in wealth or in any concrete 'good' consistent with due regard to the various capaci- ties of men : true that the highest good of society as a whole, taking account of the future, depends a Revelation of Human Duties. 61 on some measure of inequality in opportunities ! and means, corresponding to inequalities of power: 7 r true that wealth accumulated in private hands / has unique power for conferring common benefits ; true that a certain outward magnificence befits great offices : true that the adequate fulfilment of some duties requires exceptional provisions. But while we admit this to the full, there is a wide ffl' ^i agreement that the present distribution of wealth in England is unfavourable to the highest general well-being of the country : that it is as perilous to the moral excellence of those who have in ex- cess as to that of those who have not what they need : that it is unfavourable to healthy con- sumption by developing fictitious wants : that it establishes material wealth as the standard of success : that it tends to destroy the practical sense of the Divine sonship and the spiritual brotherhood of men. Such a judgment demands anxious consideration. It may not be possible to secure at present a better distribution of wealth among us. Violent changes, we have learnt from the past, would work no lasting good. But at least we can endeavour to determine the causes which have produced and are continuing to pro- duce a dangerous inequality, and to ascertain how they can be modified. In the mean time there is abundant scope for 62 The Incarnation private efforts on our part to secure a simpler type of living. We can habitually ask ourselves whether this or that exceptional indulgence is required for the efficiency of our service, and press the question upon others. We can at the same time endeavour to raise the standard of life among the poor. We can, using the lessons of our own experience, strive to bring back employers to live among their own people. We can multiply oppor- tunities for sympathetic intercourse. We can perhaps do something to check the wastefulness of fashion which stimulates vanity and provokes imitation. We can help those who look only on the surface of things to understand something of the burden of great possessions. We can shew that we wish to use all whereby GOD has made us to differ from others not for the assertion of our superiority but for better service, not saying that aught of the things which we possess is our own. Such duties lie upon us first. The clergy have exceptional knowledge of the circumstances of the poor, and, through that knowledge, excep- tional motives for endeavouring to secure them a stable and honourable position. They have at the same time natural opportunities for meeting the wealthy. These opportunities they are bound to use for the accomplishment of their ministry. a Revelation of Human Duties. 63 At the same time they are under no obligation which is not equally binding on the laity, and they need at every point lay counsel and cooperation. Such sympathy and help they must claim in the interest of all alike. It is a commonplace that Christianity has recognised the dignity of manual labour, as true service of children of GOD. But can we shew that we have carried the conviction into life ? Can we shew I do not say that the influence of our Faith in drawing Christians together is stronger, with a simple and natural dominance, than the influences of class and education and taste in separating them but that the acknowledgment of brotherhood in Christ leads the mass of our countrymen to inquire into the conditions under which the majority of those whom they call brethren actually live ? How few, for example, realise the moral and physical dangers of different kinds of employments. How few take account of the cost at which their necessary wants are satis- fied, or their amusements provided. How few pause to estimate the loss of life in many occupa- tions which might be prevented if only attention were fixed upon the facts, and the resources of science patiently brought to bear upon the prob- lems which they suggest. An American writer ventured to say that railways are laid on men 64 The Incarnation for sleepers. Even this exaggeration will repay reflection. For it is to the simplest and the broadest aspects of the life of the poor and not to accesso- ries that attention ought to be directed, to the hours of work rather than to the hours of recrea- tion. A man's daily labour is the chief element in determining his character. It is by this he serves, and by this he grows. It is substantially his life, to be begun and ended, day by day, in the name of GOD. Thus the labour question is in the fullest sense a religious question. The workman is commonly said to offer his work in the market as a commodity. In fact he offers himself. If then the conditions of labour are not such as to make a true human life possible for the labourer, if he receives as the price of his toil a mutilated and impoverished manhood, there can be no last- ing peace : there can be no prevailing Christian Faith. For a true human life the essential ex- ternal requisites are adequate food, shelter, leisure and provision for incapacity or old age. Are we English Churchmen clergy and laity alike satisfied that, speaking generally, these are found among our poorer artisans ? Nay rather, is it not too plain that they are not found ? It is stated on good authority that only one third of our popula- a Revelation of Human Duties. 65 tion are able to live in decent comfort. It is certain that great numbers have no reserve of means, and are unable to make adequate provision for incapacity or old age. I have no wish to exaggerate the shadows of modern life. 'There are two ways,' it has been most wisely said, 'of looking even at mere figures ' It may 'with some show of reason be ' regarded as not so very bad that a tenth of the ' population should be reckoned as very poor in ' a district so confessedly poverty-stricken as East ' London ; but when we count up the 100,000 'individuals, the 20,000 families, who lead so 'pinched a life among the population described, ' and remember that there are in addition double ' that number, who if not actually pressed by want, ' yet have nothing to spare, we shrink aghast ' from the picture.' Still we must calmly face it ; and we have yet to learn how far it represents the condition of our own great towns, of Sunder- land and Gateshead, of Shields and Hartlepool, of Darlington and Stockton. To contemplate such a state of things even afar off is surely to be constrained to leave nothing undone to amend it, relying on GOD'S will for His people, and the unexhausted and untried resources of the Gospel. There was a time when Economists would have said that such an effort was hopeless. Wider 66 The Incarnation experience has taught us another lesson. The institutions of society and the motives of men which determine the facts summarily described as ' economic laws ' are liable to alteration. Forms of inheritance, of land-tenure, of cultivation, of industrial processes and remuneration, influence the distribution of wealth. These have been changed in the past, and are still liable to change. On the other hand men are stirred to energetic action by other impulses than the hope of gain. And these may be called hereafter into wider play. The power of love, the power of the Incar- nation, has hitherto hardly been invoked as the sovereign principle of Christian action. We are bound, as teachers, to consider social problems in their largest range, but our own peculiar duties lie within a definite region. And however widespread the evils may be with which we have to contend, our part can best be done by dealing with them locally as they are found among us, by patient personal intercourse, guided by intelligent sympathy. At present our strength and the strength of our fellow- workers is dissi- pated in fragmentary and spasmodic and ill-pro- portioned efforts. The first requisite for steady and continuous work is full knowledge of the facts ; and I trust that some combined endeavour will be made, with as little delay as possible, to a Revelation of Human Duties. 67 ascertain in detail the facts as to the housing of the poor in the Diocese of Durham and in this I would include the provision on shipboard for our seafaring people their methods of pur- chase, their hours of labour, their provision for old age : how far existing laws are known or enforced : how far existing helps are used. I do not ask the clergy to undertake these wide enquiries. They are already overburdened. But I ask that they invite the laity to undertake them. Every parish can help. Many who are not of our own Communion will, I believe, heartily cooperate in a work in which all Englishmen are alike interested. And when the facts are known, I believe that those who differ on many points will find ways opened for hearty fellowship in solving the problems which they suggest. In seeking your help, your help as ministers of Christ, for obtaining this exact knowledge of the material condition of those who are committed to your charge, as the basis for necessary reforms, I do not confound the external conditions of good with good. I do not suppose that material im- provements can regenerate men or that outward well-being can satisfy them. But I do say that we cannot realise what our Faith is, or teach others to realise it, unless we strive according to our opportunities to secure for those whom we ac- 68 The Incarnation knowledge to be children of GOD and members of Christ opportunities of self-development and ser- vice corresponding to our own. I do say that it is the office of those to whom the message of the Gospel is entrusted to make it known in its apos- tolic breadth and power. I do say that certain outward conditions must be satisfied before a true life can be enjoyed : that our life is one and that each part affects the whole : that, if the conditions of labour for the young are such as to tend neces- sarily to destroy the effects of a brief and crowded education, if the energies of men are exhausted by a precarious struggle for food and shelter, if there is no quiet leisure for thought, if the near future is clouded, as often as thought is turned to it, it is vain to look for a vital welcome of the Faith which deals with the future through the present, and claims the life that now is as well as that which is to come. The teaching of the Lord on spiritual reformation, like the teach- ing of the prophets, was accompanied by active solicitude for the external bettering of the multi- f tudes distressed and scattered as sheep not having a shepherd* (Matt. ix. 36). At the same time the Gospel must be preached in its spiritual sim- plicity and directness and power. Sin must be shewn to be the spring of sorrows and the sting of death. He to whom we appeal as a child of GOD, a Revelation of Human Duties. 69 must be led to look to his Father: he whom we claim as a brother, must be taught to look to Christ, through whose Life and Death and Resur- rection validity has been given to the title. The power to which we appeal is a Divine kinship. Till this is acknowledged with its corresponding duties our work is not done. So far I have spoken only of single workers of the relation of man to man, as sons of GOD and brethren, but the family and not the man is the unit of humanity ; and it is a significant fact that the first converts in Europe were families, ' Lydia and her household,' ' the jailer and all his.' In our schemes of reform the family has too often been forgotten ; though we need, I think above all things, to labour for the restoration or develop- ment of simple family life. Legislative changes have tended to weaken the sense of home respon- sibility. Many popular institutions break up the fellowship of the hearth. If it be said that such fellowship is impossible, I can only answer that if it be so, our state is condemned. It is in the family that the future of a people is shaped. Each true home is a kingdom, a school, a sanc- tuary. The thirty years of silent unnoticed labour at Nazareth teach us, if we ponder over the meaning, what the home may be and in GOD'S counsel is. 70 The Incarnation The lessons and the duties of the family belong to the rich in some sense even more than to the poor. But indeed every thought on which I have touched concerns, if it be in different ways, rich and poor alike. Every question which I have raised claims an answer from every Chris- tian first in the silence of the soul and then in the market-place and in the council-chamber. . I , / J- ^tvJL The equal dignity, the equal destiny of man as j (j man, is a thought due to the Gospel which each generation has to master in dealing with its own problems. Differences of culture or place or wealth are opportunities for characteristic service. They exist only for the welfare of the body, for the fulness of the life in which every member shares. Among Christians there can be, St Paul tells us in comprehensive language which covers the great types of distinction among us, race, social condition, sex, neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female : for ye are all one man in Christ Jesu&(G&\. iii. 28). II. Hitherto I have considered only our personal relations one to another under the necessary con- ditions of life. We are at our birth severally a Revelation of Human Duties. VI members of a family. We are to the end citizens of a state. No seclusion can free us from the responsibility of influence. Our life is from first to last social. As Christians we are ' one man in Christ Jesus,' and in this fellowship we gain the unity which is prepared for all. Recognising this larger life I have endeavoured to shew that our Faith constrains us to strive after the realisation of our brotherhood with our fellows and to secure our own highest good by using our special endowments for the general welfare : to seek for others as for ourselves the opportunity of most effective service : to endeavour to under- stand truly the circumstances and feelings of those who depend on us and on whom we depend: to recognise that we are ' our brothers' keepers.' But if we regard society at large we see that groups of men are differenced no less than in- dividuals ; and the fundamental harmonies of the home lead us to expect that these differences will be permanent. As it is, the nation consists not only of citizens and families, but also of classes. These are shaped and bound together by a common history, by common traditions, interests, duties; and they represent permanent types of service. Philosophers who have framed ideal , commonwealths have recognised that the coexis- \ tence of distinct classes is necessary for the \ 72 The Incarnation general well-being. Early rulers stereotyped them and fenced them round with impassable barriers, though it is a lesson of hope that in the oldest and most permanent Empire in the world free passage from class to class has always been allowed. Going back then to the image of the body, we can truly say that as the nation is one body, so, on this larger scale, the different classes are members of it. That which holds good of the whole Church, holds good of the Christian nation: all the body fitly framed and knit together, through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love. Here then again as Christians we are bound to seek for the greatest human efficiency of each class as of each man : to seek that each class shall fulfil its office under conditions which are favour- able not only to life but to good life. In the Christian state every group of workers ought to be able to take a recognised and honourable place in the whole body. So the social aspect of work will bring to all work equal dignity. It has been said that states grow rich only by labour, even as character is rightly shaped by it. The statement is true in the material sense if we take account of the past no less than of the a Revelation of Human Duties. 73 present; of intellectual, moral and spiritual labour no less than of manual labour. But the individual workman becomes less and less able to claim any result as his own according as society becomes more and more complex. All work depends on fellowship and serves to support it. If we look to the essential relations of things, the material re- ward of work is the provision that it may be done : the end of work is the general welfare. The true wealth of states is men and not merchandise. The true function of government is to watch over the growth of good citizens. Material wealth exists for the development of man not man for the acquisition of property. This principle has in fact hitherto ruled our social legislation, which has been influenced more by moral than by eco- nomic considerations. Our legislation has been, in other words, essentially if unconsciously Chris- tian ; and now our aim as believers in the Divine life of the nation must be to secure, as far as possible, that our national inheritance shall be made fruitful as it is distributed in many parts throughout the people, and that each worker shall be able to thank GOD for the joy of his own task and the share which he has in the common life. To this end we shall not seek to equalise material riches but to hallow large means by the sense of large responsibility: not to palliate the w. c. 6 74 The Incarnation effects of poverty but to remove the causes of it : not to dispense with strenuous and even painful effort but to provide that labour in every form may be made the discipline of noble character. If we look around we must confess that we have hardly faced the problem which is thus set before us. We have just emerged from an industrial revolution. Old ties have been removed. The ne\v ties have not yet been shaped. The spirit of individualism is still invoked to justify boundless self-assertion; and even self-interest is insufficient to restrain ruinous competition. Such anarchy can only last for a brief space. Already we welcome on every side generous if impatient efforts to establish among us a social order more conformable to the facts of Divine sonship and human brotherhood. Nor need we be disheart- ened if discontent increases at the time when there is a growing desire to remove the evils by which it is aroused. Education cannot but stir new wants by awakening new capacities ; and if these take a material form at first, it is because we have not shewn that the highest and most satisfying pleasures are independent of great pos- sessions. What then shall we do as ministers of Christ this is the question which we have to ask to hasten the advent of the better order ? How a Revelation of Human Duties. 75 shall we in the exercise of our office prepare the ready acceptance of new duties answering to the new conditions of capital and labour, of owners employers and artisans ? The first and the most obvious answer is that we shall use our unique power for promoting mutual understanding between different classes. We touch, as I have said, each extreme in the social scale. We have the opportunity of know- ing directly with what disastrous issues, words, motives, feelings, are misinterpreted on this side and that. Our greatest industrial danger lies in the want of mutual confidence between employers and employed. Confidence is of slow growth. It comes most surely through equal intercourse. This in some forms we can further. We are above the suspicion of partisanship. We can en- courage the fullest expression of opinion from the advocates of rival causes. We can sometimes invite an interchange of conflicting views. But it is through fellowship in the highest work that we learn best how much those have in common who seem to be most widely separated by circumstances. And after thirty-five years I look with growing trust for the formation of little bands of Christian workers in every Diocese or even in every Rural Deanery united for common service ' brethren and sisters of the common 62 76 The Incarnation hope ' taken from every class, who by fellowship in aim and labour and devotion shall bring to- gether many hearts. Such associations, growing out of our own circumstances and needs and aspirations, not artificial imitations of brotherhoods framed to meet the conditions of earlier times, would, I believe, interpret the Faith with a new power and reveal believers to themselves. They belong no less to a highly developed than to a primitive form of Christian society. They belong especially to periods of great change and bring satisfaction to the spirit of sacrifice and the spirit of devotion which these tend to awaken. If the leader arise among us, followers will not be wanting. Everything seems to be ready for the new be- ginning. Meanwhile we shall use or endeavour to use every opportunity which is offered to us in ordinary life for learning the feelings and aims of employers and employed, and for bring- ing both classes together on the ground of the common Faith. Free and habitual intercourse between them, both personally and through their accredited representatives, will prepare the way for a satis- factory and lasting settlement of the relative claims of capital and labour on the profits of in- dustry. It is needless to speculate on the form a Revelation of Human Duties. 77 which it is likely to take. But already a great change has taken place in the provision of capital for industrial enterprises, which, since it brings special dangers and opportunities, requires to be noticed. The largest businesses are more and more falling into the hands of Joint Stock Com- panies. It is said that these already engross one third of the commerce of England. In this sense very many of us are capitalists, not as lenders of money merely, but as partners in some industrial undertaking, sharing its fortunes and responsi- bilities, though we are not directly engaged in it. The position is one which calls for serious con- sideration. A divided responsibility is in all cases difficult to discharge, but in this case the respon- sibility is so widely spread that it is practically forgotten. Shares in great companies are re- garded simply as investments (like loans) without any duties of proprietorship. The whole business, with its complicated human relationships, tends to become a profit-making machine. The discus- sions at the Annual Meetings turn mainly upon the dividend. Expenditure which is not directly remunerative is viewed with suspicion or dis- favour. Here then it rests with us to apprehend our- selves and to enforce, as far as we are able, a juster view of the obligations of shareholders. 78 The Incarnation We can feel the temptation, and we can feel the opportunity. The share in a business, small as it may be, carries with it not only responsibility for .the capital as property but also responsibility for the administration of it. The holder is both a trustee in regard to the sum which the shares represent, and an agent in regard to the end for which it is employed. It is his duty to satisfy himself that his money will be put to a good use, and so made to contribute to ends which are mate- rially and morally desirable. He is bound, that is, to consider both the object of the enterprise to which he contributes and the manner in which it is conducted: to consider, in other words, the character and the conditions of the work, and even the more remote results which it may produce. The amount of the dividend, irrespective of the way in which it is earned, cannot justify his choice of the investment. He is required, as one who knows that he has received all for the com- mon good, not only to offer duly of that which he receives but also to be assured in his own mind that what he has is rightly employed. The influence of a single shareholder may be slight, but even one who supports the Directorate in endeavouring to improve the conditions of labour and give those who serve an interest in the prosperity which they help to create, will di- a Revelation of Human Duties, 79 rect attention to a principle and call out sympa- thetic support. A wide proprietorship ought to secure steady and generous consideration for workmen, and provide in due time for those larger forms of cooperation in which many see the best hope for the future. On the other hand the common indifference of shareholders to the conduct of that which is their own business, if only it is financially successful, and their personal ignorance of the work by which they profit, gives plausibility to the popular charge that the capitalist uses the artisan for his own gain. These considerations are, I repeat, of great and far-reaching importance; and we need to weigh them both for the guidance of our own action and for the wise counselling of those who seek our advice. It may be urged that I am pleading to a large extent for a sentiment : that the Directorates of our greatest Companies are alive to their duties and that skilled labour is able to maintain its own cause successfully. Yet sentiment has a domi- nant effect on life and character ; and it makes a difference whether a result is obtained by conflict or by concert. There are also larger possibilities in the administration of great Companies to which I have pointed as deserving attention; 80 The Incarnation and there is even among skilled artisans a pro- portion of partially unemployed whose case is peculiarly sad. But at the same time I readily admit that the most pressing social difficulty now lies in the condition of irregular and unskilled labourers. To them we naturally turn our thoughts chiefly, for they most need help. They have suffered most acutely from the industrial revolution. They have the least capacity for combination, and the least opportunity for com- bining. They seem to be as yet unable to rise to a higher standard of life by their own efforts. They do not even aspire to it. Education has not stirred in them a generous discontent. They suffer in moral force from labour which is uncer- tain and unnaturally protracted, and the value of their labour is seriously lessened. As far as I can yet judge they require some extended legislative protection, and, I will venture to add, some legis- lative coercion. There are classes which are still children, and in their case the Government must not shrink from discipline. It cannot rightly leave uncorrected and unrestrained masses of men whose low type of life spreads corruption. It treats attempted suicide as a crime : it ought to treat ' the slow suicide of idleness ' as a crime no less. Labour refuges and labour colonies, both at home and abroad, may be of good service. The a Revelation of Human Duties. 81 experiments in Holland and Germany give warn- ings and encouragements. But we have yet much to learn. We have to determine particularly the right limits of public and private efforts, of co- ercive discipline and personal influence. And without advocating at present any special solution of the problem, I plead that we should seriously study it. England brought the problem upon us, and England must solve it. For us Durham is our school. And it will be possible, I trust, to form groups of laymen, who will patiently study its lessons : who will inquire and consult and teach : who will ascertain the number and the descent and the distribution of the skilled and un- skilled : who will determine the extent and the causes of the rapid shifting of the population in some places : who will investigate in detail the causes of the pauperism which exists in the Dio- cese : who will trace for us in the history of the last fifty years the great lines of improvement along which we can move further with the confi- dence of faith. I fully recognise the difficulties of bringing class to class in harmonious fellowship, and above all of finding a worthy place in the social body for the lowest class ; but here the Gospel sustains us. For the most desolate Christ died. They too are part of the world which GOD loved. That devo- 82 The Incarnation tion to the common good through which alone men as men can be bound together in widest and closest communion is necessarily included in the Christian Faith. And what we look for, work for, pray for, as believers, is a nation where class shall be bound to class by the fullest participation in the treasures of the one life : where the members of each group of workers shall find in their work the development of their character and the conse- cration of their powers : where the highest ambi- tion of men shall be to be leaders of their own class, so using their special powers without waste and following the common traditions to nobler issues: where each citizen shall know, and be strengthened by the knowledge, that he labours not for himself only, nor for his family, nor for his country, but for GOD. Such a nation ' framed and fitly joined to- gether by that which every joint supplieth,' rising out of the past, new at once and yet old, would rightly embody the social spirit of Christ and prepare the Advent of the Kingdom of GOD. Is it not worth working for? And will not the splendid vision, as we work, cheer us and lead us forward ? a Revelation of Human Duties. 83 III. We must carry our thoughts of the body and the members yet farther. Man, we believe, was broken into men that in every variety of relation he might work out his separate powers before all were summed up in the Christ. As the nation is a whole made up of classes, so the race is a whole made up of nations. This conception is at last coming into prominence in the fulness of time. The unity of the race offers the same problems, the same difficulties, the same hopes as the unity of the nation, though on a vaster scale. We can see that the several nations, in virtue of their character, their circumstances, their history, con- tribute towards the completeness of humanity. The glory of a nation, like the glory of a citizen or of a class, lies not in supremacy but in service. A nation is great when it fulfils its office, and enables other nations to fulfil theirs. There is need of the same self-repressive, and yet self- ennobling, devotion among peoples as among men for their highest development. Here also there are those who seem unable to aspire towards a worthy ideal of human life : those whose energies appear to be exhausted in self- aggrandisement. But wherever we look the promise rises before us : 84 The Incarnation I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. We must then as Christians, as believers in this great unity of life, strive that other nations, no less than our own, may be enabled to gain their full development and cooperate with us for the widest good. As Churchmen we pray for this blessing in the Litany in comprehensive words, which bring out each aspect of its fulfilment, when we beseech the Lord that He will be pleased ' to 'give to all nations unity, peace, and concord,' unity, that they may severally command for use with- out internal distraction all the forces entrusted to their care ; peace, that they may be free from the disasters of foreign conflict ; concord, that they may combine together in generous endeavours to extend the general well-being of men. The peti- tion in its completeness is, as far as I know, unique ; and it is illustrated by a question in the service for the Consecration of Bishops. For while the Candidate for the Priesthood is asked whether he will 'maintain and set forward... 'quietness, peace, and love, among all Christian 'people/ he who is to be consecrated Bishop, seeing that in virtue of his office he must take a wider view of things and bear a heavier responsi- bility, is required to ' maintain and set forward . . . ' quietness, love and peace among all men.' a Revelation of Human Duties. 85 In obedience to this charge I ask you now therefore to consider the question of international peace which, if in its accomplishment it concerns a distant future, is a searching test of the scope and vitality of our own faith. If we believe the Gospel to be what it claims to be, the fellowship of nations is included in its promised victories. The final issue may be remote, but the belief that universal peace lies in the counsel of GOD for mankind will influence our present conduct. In this respect the language of the prophets and of the Apocalypse expresses the truth which is in- volved in the Incarnation. And now at length we can see, in a long retrospect, that in spite of checks and delays the whole movement of life is towards a federation of civilised nations, prepara- tory to the civilisation and federation of all. Such a consummation, however visionary it may seem to be, corresponds, I say, with the course of the development both of human asso- ciation and of moral ideas which we can trace in the past. As we look back, we cannot fail to notice that the social instinct which belongs to man as man has found satisfaction from time to time in widening circles, in the family, the tribe, the nation. The largest sphere of fellowship still remains to be occupied, the race. And when at last the different elements of society were har- 86 The Incarnation moniously combined in the city, as it was organ- v ised in the West by the power of one life, there was a foreshadowing of this crowning fellowship of nations. In the last century two continental revolu- tions have marked stages in the progress towards this largest communion of men. In the revolu- tion of 1789 individualism found its final expres- sion. The inheritance from the past was lightly swept aside. Men were regarded as equal units, and a vague cosmopolitanism was taken to repre- sent the feeling of the brotherhood of mankind. In such impoverishment of our powers and our en- dowments there could be no lasting satisfaction ; and in 1848 there was the beginning of a pro- longed effort to secure for each people the posses- sion of its full treasure with a view to rendering its full service. The movement was essentially a movement of nationalities, and modern Europe is the result. Now we are reaching out to yet another change, through which the nations of Western Europe will, as I believe, be united iu a close confederation, and combine to bring all the resources which they have gathered through their history to the service of the race. We understand and acknowledge as never before that nations no less than men and classes, in spite of all the dis- a Revelation of Human Duties. 87 turbances of selfish ambition, must suffer together and rejoice together: that each nation has its unique endowment and establishes its greatness by the fulfilment of its mission: that each is debtor to all, alike by what it has received and by what it owes: that the end for which we look will then be reached when the kings of the earth, with a common devotion, bring their glory into the city of GOD. I know the difficulties which stand in the way of such a Confederation, the temptations of pride and rivalry which distract popular feeling, the inheritance of past errors and crimes which per- plexes the policy of statesmen. But if Christendom is filled with one desire, I cannot but believe that GOD will fulfil the purpose which He inspires. The object of sincere aspiration in one generation becomes the sure possession of the next. If the thought of international concord is welcomed, the most powerful nations will recognise, as calm students recognise, that there is true strength and glory in generosity ; and then, when they have put aside traditional jealousies through the stronger sense of a common duty, we shall see them islanded by neutral zones in untroubled security. For Englishmen there is an object which is U-o still nearer. Recent experience seems to shew .J4 that a general Arbitration treaty with America is 88 The Incarnation within a measurable distance. There are hopes, like prophecies, which fulfil themselves. Such a hope as this we are bound as Christians to cherish. We can all at least take care, that within the range of our influence no idle or hasty or petulant word, no ungenerous judgment, shall mar it. The stable friendship of the English-speaking peoples would go far to assure the peace of the world. The development of moral ideas, as I have said already, encourages us, no less than the pro- gress of society, to look for the extinction of war. Little by little men have extended ever farther the claims of just consideration. A stranger is no longer an enemy. We have ceased to wish that other peoples should be like ourselves, and we honour their differences. Wars of conquest are universally condemned. The decalogue is held to have a national application. As men have been gathered in wider fellowship, sympathy has grown to match. But it is said that the discipline which comes through military service, and the sacrifices which are required for a campaign, bring vigour to nations not unworthy of the price ; and that the sufferings of war are preferable to the torpor of cowardly and selfish indulgence. But torpor is not peace. Peace calls for sacrifices as great as war, and offers fields for equal heroism. Peace a Revelation of Human Duties. 89 demands courage of body and soul for the accom- plishment of its works and kindles enthusiasm by the prospect of new victories. Perhaps our social evils are still unvanquished because we have not yet approached them with forces marshalled on a comprehensive plan, and stirred by the ardour of a common service. The very fact that the fulfil- ment of Christian duty is described under martial images helps us to feel that the conflict with evil offers scope for every virtue which ennobles war. A patient analysis of the qualities which win our admiration in the soldier proves that the horrors of active service are not required for their develop- ment. A great modern writer has taken the problem in an extreme form, and shewn that all that permanently attracts us in a character like Wallenstein is essentially Christian. It is said again that, if we substitute arbitra- tion for war, arbitration may miscarry. It is enough to reply that we have no security that an appeal to arms will establish a just claim. There is indeed no more reason to suppose that right as right will triumph in war than in a wager of battle. Moreover in a national controversy the question of right is rarely of easy decision. It is certainly not likely to be decided justly by 'the crude, cold, cruel arbitrament' of war. And when once the contest is begun, our own expe- w. c. 7 90 The Incarnation rience will tell us that we think more of the establishment of our own will, than of the deter- mination of the merits of the controversy. We pray for victory and not for the victory of right- eousness. "We resolve, it may be, to be generous if we succeed, but we must first establish our superiority by success. Generosity in such a temper is a tribute to self-assertion and not to justice. If justice is indeed the supreme aim of those who engage in a national dispute, the most imperfect tribunal, which has to give its decision in the face of the world after open discussion, is more likely to secure it than contending armies. Meanwhile public opinion grows more and more powerful ; and, when there is time for reflection, it is substantially fair. Time brings redress for wrong ; and, if we look a little forward, we shall be able to discern that a nation which has sub- mitted to what it holds to be an unjust judgment, will find ample compensation in the increase of moral strength. Even our own recent history teaches us that there are losses which after a time come to be regarded with greater satisfaction than successes which simply witness to strength. If then a policy of peace clearly answers to the teaching of the Gospel: if it is presented to us as preparing the last stage in the progress of human fellowship : if it is, even at the present a Revelation of Human Duties. 91 time, more likely to establish justice than war; what can we do to advance it ? We can avoid and discourage all language in regard to other nations which is in any way in- consistent with the respect due to their position. We can endeavour to understand their feel- ings, difficulties, temptations, and not to measure them even unconsciously by the standard estab- lished for us by our traditions and beliefs. We can adopt as the rule for our own temper the memorable clause in Penn's Treaty with the Indians which bound the contracting parties 'not to believe evil reports of one another '. We can labour with patient and resolute effort to gain judicial impartiality if we are required to act as judges in our own cause where arbitration is inadmissible. We can keep our eyes steadily fixed upon the goal of our Faith, and move towards it, in quiet- ness and confidence, whenever the way is opened. We can do all this while we shew that we are resolved to guard to the uttermost the heritage which we have received in trust for the race. The enforcement of such duties becomes more important as popular power increases ; and at the same time the increase of popular power brings fresh hope. Nations are not only generous, but also, as I have said before, in great crises they 72 92 The Incarnation respond to the claims of justice if the facts are set out clearly. I can never forget the attitude of the masses of Englishmen during the sus- pense in the affair of the 'Trent', and when it was decided. Every one then must have thanked GOD that He had still kept the heart of the people whole in simple devotion to right. So it is that many popular leaders now, who do not avowedly hold the Christian Faith, have stood out boldly as champions of international peace. Their zeal may well awaken us to a sense of our duty and our power, our duty when we recal the words which, as we believe, heralded the Nativity: our power when we reflect on the Divine destiny of man. For nothing less than the conviction that the Word became flesh can sustain us in efforts which assume an essential equality in all who share our nature. No arguments based on mate- rial well-being are adequate to bear the strain of sacrifice. But the Gospel is. We can appeal to a Fact which gives present and permanent validity to universal instincts. If we do not appeal to it : if we do not trust it : so far we disparage it. If on the other hand we do, even with faltering, self-accusing lips, confess it, and strive through all failures to make it the rule of our conduct and our aspirations, GOD Himself will use our weakness for the accomplishment of His will. a Revelation of Human Duties. 93 The position of England among the nations impose? upon us a peculiar responsibility in regard to the problem of peace. Our national freedom, gained through an uninterrupted period of self-development, demands some corresponding service. Our immunity from the local rivalries and temptations which trouble continental powers enables us to judge fairly, and (is it too much to hope T) to plead effectually. The greatness of a nation is measured, I have said, not by its material triumphs but by the . . fulfilment of its office for humanity. The office of England is, if I interpret our history rightly, the harmonising of classes and of peoples. The result will be secured slowly. If we have the promise that we shall win our own souls by patience, there can be no other way for winning the souls of others. We know our aim and, keep- ing our eyes fixed upon it, we can work and wait for the abolition of war, as earlier generations worked and waited for the abolition of slavery. The end must come by the gift of GOD, and therefore I will conclude what I have to say on this subject with one practical suggestion. I think we shall do well, if on some stated day may I name the Sunday before Christmas 1 we combine to turn the thoughts of our people to this largest earthly hope of peace and good-will, 94 The Incarnation and lead them to offer to Him with one heart and soul and voice the familiar supplication that ' He will be pleased to give to all nations unity, peace and concord/ even as on that day we pray ' that He will come among us and with great might succour us/ ' sore let and hindered ' as we are ' in running the race that is set before us/ The prayer will bring us near to those for whom we pray, near in spiritual fellowship. Hit A) (V-eM \oju~k~nl The brotherhood of men, of classes, of nations : humanity fitly framed together by the ministry of every part for the realisation and enjoyment of one harmonious life : the prevailing power of devotion to a common cause: do the phrases seem visionary and unpractical ? Does then, I ask, the phrase the Word became flesh mean less ? Is that unprac- tical ? If I am a Christian, I must hold that GOD wills for men the highest which we can imagine. If I am a Christian, I must for my own part acknowledge the widest issues of the Incar- nation and strive to establish them. I shall not be in haste or impatient ; but I shall watch the general direction of the movement of life and find in that the guidance which I need in my own labours. At present we are beginning to recognise the a Revelation of Human Duties. 95 " ^ <~f~^U. influence of great ideals. They are in a true \ tf sense prophecies. Even if concrete changes are made in fact under the pressure of local and special circumstances, they are then most truly beneficent and lasting when they are made in relation to a recognised ideal. And the Christian ideal is unique in scope and power. It provides r for developing and harmonising all the elements /^ of life, and all life. It offers to us the highest ' * which we can conceive for man in his whole nature, and for man in the widest range. It cor- responds with our loftiest hopes ; and while there is no anticipation of the central Fact in which it is summed up, men have shewn in fragments through the teaching of prae-Christian religions for what they were born. Are we then to sup- pose that the Christian ideal is unpractical ? Are we to believe that these earlier indications of natural desires are not witnessings to the will of GOD, of which social evolution is the imperfect and slow expression ? The_thought of Providence alone makes the thought of progress intelligible. It will be urged that men are swayed by motives which are measurable : that the conclu- sions which are deduced from the spirit of selfish- ness and competition have universal validity, as long as human nature remains the same. But are we to count only on the average motives and forces 96 The Incarnation which we observe at present ? The revolutions of history disprove such a conclusion. It is an ex- ceptional thing that money material wealth should have the value which it has now. This value is due to the dominance of luxury, and will sink as material indulgence loses its power. Other motives may again prevail among men to guide the use of inherited possessions and the creation of new riches. This man may set him- I - *4VW*, self to study no simple problem how he can best make his means serve the commonwealth. That man (to take actual examples) may choose to receive less than ' market value ' for the super- intendence of a great business. Another may de- cline, for a time or permanently, to receive interest for the capital which he advances. And all these, if they are able to describe their experience, will probably move others to follow their examples. If great wealth is used not simply in almsgiving but in the spirit of sonship and brotherhood through the thoughtful ministry of love, it will be used more effectually than in any other way for the amelioration of industrial life in both ex- tremes of need and superfluity. Religious movements have in all ages brought into play exceptional forces. The social move- l- ment which is stirred about us is essentially re- ligious. For us it is avowedly religious, religious a Revelation of Human Duties. 97 in its inspiration, in its strength, in its end. We also live in an age of revelation. There is still spiritual power available for us if we 'believe in the Holy Ghost.' We have still ' the prophetic word,' not an antique record hard of interpretation but a living voice speaking in the events of life, till the day dawn and the daystar arise in our hearts. The clergy are still a truly representative body, in touch with every class; moved by the largest variety of interests and opinions which are har- monised by one devotion ; trained in full fellow- ship with the foremost workers in the state and above the divisions of party. It is our part then to shew that the Church the National Church has a message to the Na- tion : that we bring with fresh conviction the fact of the Incarnation, unlimited in its application, to bear upon the problems of the time : that we believe in the victorious advance of the Christian Society (Matt. xvi. 18): that we have learnt in the family, and make it our business to proclaim the lesson, that social conduct is not ruled by the letter of the law, or by the decisions of 'justice,' or by the dictates of ' self-interest : ' that the , J - _ R. * C- (.>. A-O human, as distinct from the personal, element must enter into the dealings of man with man : that love must interpret and supplement the verdict of exact judgment. 98 The Incarnation Men cannot, even with a shew of reason, press their 'rights' to the uttermost. They ask for for- giveness as they have forgiven forgiven that is real wrongs foregone just claims. We have in- deed ' no rights but duties ; ' and these can never wJl~ cLJIuA ke discharged in full. In strictness of account we must remain debtors to the end; and through the obligations of our Faith we are debtors to all who need us. The social changes then for which we look must be reached not by premature legislation (that is finally by force) in advance of public opinion, but through common feeling. This feel- ing it is our office to quicken by the exhibition of the Faith. Conduct depends upon what we believe, not indeed upon intellectual formulas, but u P on our li ym g views of man, the world, and GOD. In this respect the Church moulds opinion. It has by Divine appointment, as I have already I \+ L Hc~vL v*.^ said, the power *_to bind and to loose/ to pro- nounce that this is of obligation and that not : to "' lay down the great lines of moral duty, not nega- v~- MM^C.,, tively only but positively, in accordance with the movement of life. This she does even uncon- sciously. And all can assist in deepening and extending the influence by pressing quietly and ' M" if" persistently the duty of looking to the Faith, its A~nf"^j^fj^ M* **-t motives, its restraints, its supports, in everyday a Revelation of Human Duties. 99 conduct. Public opinion, the popular idea of right, represents the minimum (so to speak) of Christian opinion. It registers the progress of personal conviction. It finally prevails in shaping government and industry and conduct. It finds expression in effectual legislation within the sphere of law; and outside the sphere of law it exercises a controlling force, so that things (for example) which were common a hundred or fifty years ago are now practically impossible, and cor- responding changes are still silently in progress. In order to extend the range of these effective judgments, we shall strive to concentrate and give consistency to the generous aspirations which rise on many sides towards righteousness and purity and temperance and fellowship. We shall reflect what we can ourselves do to shew our sincerity in advocating reforms which we believe to be needful. Some of us may be able to study special questions : we shall at least spare no pains to provide that they may be studied in order that we may apply to them wisely the teachings of Christ. And I lay great stress on the need of patient study. Our chief danger at present is from the haste of impetuous generosity. We require not only right desires but wise counsels: careful in- vestigation, and then resolute effort. Partial and I 100 The Incarnation premature remedies for evils are directly mis- chievous and bring discouragement afterwards. We must regard each question from many sides and then at last speak what we know. Above all we must confess unwaveringly, as I have said, that the solution of our problems is to be re- ligious. We shall welcome cooperation in our endeavours after the practical embodiment of Christian principles from whatever quarter it is given, but we shall not at any cost dissemble our own conviction that our Faith is our inspi- ration. The results at which we aim finally are spiritual, and these can only be reached, as we hold, by spiritual forces. There is, I believe, good hope of a wide re- sponse to an appeal for social service. The course of the last century and of the last generation is rich in promise. Simple life is greater than we know with 'joy in widest commonalty spread.' Even in things of sense it is only within a narrow range that 'companionship is one with loss.' Men are beginning to understand that ' everything that is supremely precious is com- mon,' that labour is the bringer of all dignity and love the healer of all sorrow. 'The main con- 'ditions of human happiness,' writes one whose knowledge of the poor is intimate and wide, 'I 'believe to be work and affection, and he who a Revelation of Human Duties. 101 'works for those he love fulfils these conditions 'most easily.' Nor would the quickening of interest in our own home problems lessen the interest of Christians in the distant work re- quired of them in heathen countries. The more vivid and practical apprehension of the constrain- ing power of the love of Christ in one field must of necessity increase the sense of obligation in every direction. For the impulse, the encouragement, the strength, which our Faith offers to us, so far as they are felt, are felt to be unlimited in their ap- plication. GOD, we believe, has taken humanity \ to Himself, and man redeemed in Christ is called \ to work out his destiny in reliance on the Holy Spirit. In this Gospel lies the assurance, under the circumstances of human life, that that for which we long is within our reach. We do not make the ideal : we recognise it ; and in striving for its establishment we are fellow-workers with GOD. In such labours the thought of the Com- munion of Saints comforts doubting hearts. This brings home to us naturally our Communion with GOD. It may well be that we shrink from the responsibility of influence while we cling to our private judgments : that we are disheartened by our failures and divisions ; and then, when we ponder the Incarnation not only in its essence 102 The Incarnation but in its circumstances, we come to realise that the Incarnation of the Son of GOD adds to au- thority the grace of sacrifice, to obedience the joy of Divine Fellowship, to the energy of service the endurance of love, while it offers the sense of the presence of GOD as the present pledge of unity. It may be said that these are vague words. Even so they are not vain. This is not the place for discussing details of work. Details must be dealt with in close and familiar debate. But if the Gospel in its widest range is once acknow- ledged, the application will follow. It will become the inspiration of personal zeal which cannot want an object. It will encourage each worker to shew his love to his friend by claiming from him the active devotion in which he finds his own joy. And it is to indefinitely increased personal devotion, to individual ministries of love and faith, to watchful efforts of wise sympathy, we must look for the fulfilment of the work of the Spirit through the Christian Society. Every believer has his own function in the Body of Christ, and in virtue of that he is an Evangelist. The office and the shop and the factory and the ship-yard and the pit, the municipal council- chamber and the board-room of ' the Union/ are meeting-places with GOD where He can be honoured, if those whose duty lies there enter a Revelation of Human Duties. 103 them as having welcomed the message of the Incarnation. For if the message of the Incarnation neces- sarily transcends our thoughts in its fulness, none the less it comes within the range of our ex- perience as far as our thoughts can reach. It touches life at every point, and we are bound to consider what it means for us, for our fellow-men and for the world. It is not enough to hold it as an article of our Creed : we must openly and in secret prove its efficacy in action. By our reticence, by our habitual reserve in dealing with it as the master-power in shaping and sustaining our thoughts, our purposes, our deeds, we en- courage a feeling of secret mistrust as to the validity of the Faith. In order then that we may master our mes- sage so as to deliver it with the persuasiveness of undoubting confidence, we have need of leisure, of quiet, of reflection. The strain of life is painfully intense in every direction. Impatience and excitement bring at last the languor of indifference. The restless engagements of external religion threaten to usurp the place of spiritual worship, and traditions of living faith. Multiplied and stately services may crowd out the exercises of calm and thoughtful devotion. The outward manifestations of spiritual life may exhaust its 104 The Incarnation force. In this respect the pathetic warnings of Jeremiah speak to the heart of our nation and of our Church. GOD grant that we may heed them while there is yet time for both to fulfil their office. History repeats itself in its warnings and op- portunities and hopes. The great hope of the first age, which burns through the New Testa- ment, has been deferred, because the love of the first age grew cold and its faith grew feeble. Perhaps we -can see that the delay was necessary because the discipline of men was not complete. In eighteen centuries we have learnt much, and the Divine promise remains unchanged and un- changeable in the Incarnation. In spite of in- numerable failures the Incarnation has established on a sure foundation the trust of natural optimism. In this confidence we labour on, knowing that He Who began will perfect. During the last two years I have had occasion twice to study afresh the work and the spirit of each of the greatest spiritual leaders of our Northern Church, Columba, Aidan, Hilda. And it has been an encouragement to me to notice how each under different circumstances com- mends as the last lesson of varied experience peace and fellowship. a Revelation of Human Duties. 105 ' These, my little children,' said Columba, ' are my last words. I charge you to keep unfeigned love one with another. If you do so after the pattern of the fathers, GOD, the champion of the good, will help you....' Having said this he passed away the same night, while he made silently the sign of blessing. Of Aidan we know that he was chosen for the Northumbrian Mission because he shewed by un- premeditated words that he was endowed with ' the grace of discretion, which is the mother of virtues': a man, as Bede writes, 'with a passion for peace and charity, and true priestly authority to reprove the proud and powerful, to comfort the weak and cheer the poor and uphold cle- mency.' When Hilda, after bearing, it is said, with thanksgiving the discipline of severe sickness, found that her end was come, she summoned her nuns and charged them to keep ' the peace of the Gospel ' one with another and with all men, and so ' passed from death to life 3 .' Thus our ancestors tell us with one voice that the brotherhood for which we look, the brother- hood of men, of classes, of nations, w r ill come through spiritual fellowship. When we ponder their words, can we not feel that even now the Communion of Saints the truth of which this w. c. 8 106 The Incarnation, &c. '*& \A.j*AAt glorious Chapel is a witness and a herald is a reality ? We cannot, as Christians, accept the phrase 'the struggle for life' as describing the true view of existence for men who are made to gain the likeness of GOD. In proportion as we become fit to enjoy, earth is found to be fuller of treasures, and the treasures of earth are seen to be capable of a wider distribution. In proportion as we understand the Gospel better the Gospel which we are commissioned to proclaim in the language of our own generation we shall see righteousness, joy, peace as the basis and the fruit of the Christian Society (Rom. xiv. 17) in place of self-assertion, excitement, competition. The time is short : the issue is momentous : the hope is great: the promise of GOD cannot fail. We know that the Son of GOD hath come: we look for His coming (1 John iv. 2f; 2 John 7) 4 . My last word must be the first word which I spoke when I came among you, of which I have known the power : Brethren pray for us. THE SPIRIT SENT IN THE NAME OF THE SON. 80 & The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My Name, He shall teach you all things. ST JOHN xiv. 26. YORK MINSTER. Feb. 8th, 1893. THE SPIRIT SENT IN THE NAME OF THE SON. AN illustrious leader of our Church, Bishop Thirlwall, whose language was always severely guarded from exaggeration, said nearly twenty- five years ago : " The great intellectual and re- ligious struggle of our day turns mainly on this question, Whether there is a Holy Ghost ? " I will venture to define this statement more closely and say that the struggle turns on our belief in a Holy Ghost sent in the Name of Jesus Christ according to His own most emphatic promise. The significance of the addition will be felt if we recal the words in which the Lord described His own mission. "/ am come" He said, "in My Fathers Name ; " and looking back upon His accomplished work He summed up its fulfilment in these sentences : " Father, I glorified Thee on the earth "...."/ manifested Thy Name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world " . . . . 110 The Spirit sent " I made known unto them Thy Name, and I will make it known ; that Thy love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them." Our experience is a commentary on the words. By His Life and Death and Resurrection and Ascension the Incarnate Son revealed GOD as Father, and taught us what the Father is, His Father and our Father, in the sovereignty of His infinite power, in the righteousness of His infinite wisdom, in the tenderness of His infinite love. He brought home to us the truth of Divine Fatherhood in the terms of human know- ledge, and taught each man to say, looking to heaven with a new confidence, not " our Father " 'tUv*4>6 , only, but ' Father,' ' my Father.' Even so the Spirit sent in Christ's Name Ux>~oi -3-0^*^0 teaches us, in lessons not less momentous and fa far-reaching, lessons slowly learnt, what the Son is Son of GOD and Son of Man Who has borne humanity to the Father's throne : teaches us the promises and the powers of the Incarnation : ^ teaches us to bring to the interpretation of life kin its whole range and of our lives in their indi- * fru H \ "'* . vidual value, the virtue of Christ's life, the life v " \ not of a man but of man, in which all life and every life finds its consummation. From stage to stage through silence and temptation and suffering Christ remained in perfect harmony with the will in the Name of the Son. Ill of GOD, offering Himself from first to last by the eternal Spirit a perfect sacrifice of victorious obedience available for the redemption of the whole world. And when He said upon the Cross " It is finished," then ' man was made.' By that overthrow of the powers of evil the threefold lifting up from the earth was begun ; and in Him man reached his destiny. Man, I say, was made, and the work of crea- tion reached its goal, when the Son in Whom it was the Father's good pleasure to sum up all things, committed Himself in absolute self-sur- render to the Father's care, and lived through death. In His victory we find, while time lasts, our unfailing assurance. We are not called to enter on a doubtful conflict : He has conquered. Our highest hopes are not hopes only but faint apprehensions of that which He has already gained. We can thus dimly understand how it was expedient that Christ should go away, in order that the faith of disciples, transcending the limi- tations of sense, might realise the boundless sig- nificance of His Person. We can dimly understand how, when raised up the vanquisher of death, He breathed new life, by a creative act, into His Church ; and how, exalted by the right hand of GOD, He poured forth 112 The Spirit sent upon it the Holy Spirit, as a new gift, and clothed it with power. We can dimly understand how all the Days till the end when GOD shall be all in all, the Spirit will take of that which is the Son's and declare it to His people for their continuous growth. We can dimly understand how He, before His Passion and Ascension, left uncompleted that sentence which we are now allowed to complete, and so to say with reverent adoration: No one knoweth the Son save the Father, and he to whom- soever the Spirit willeth to reveal Him. For while " man was made " when Christ was glorified, men are being made still, as each is slowly fashioned into conformity with his Head, through the action of the Spirit, as He ever brings forth more of the treasures of wisdom and know- ledge contained in Him Who is the mystery, the revelation, of GOD, even Christ, through which the ends and ways of life are shewn more clearly. Here then is our trial, our strength, our work. The belief in the Holy Spirit sent in Christ's Name sent to make Him known in the fulness of His being, truly GOD and truly man is decisive of our intellectual and moral struggle. It gives to human knowledge, in all its variety \^ and range, as answering to the conditions of a in the Name of the Son. 113 nature which has been taken into fellowship with GOD. It supplies to Christians a motive and a power sufficient to overcome every temptation of indolence and despondency. This belief we are charged to master and to proclaim. We are standing even now in the presence of a Divine activity. We are called to listen to a voice from heaven : the voice of the Holy Spirit sent to us in Christ's Name, : the voice of " the Spirit of Jesus." "The Spirit of Jesus." It is a memorable title, and it is brought before us on a memorable occasion. When St Paul had passed through the great cities of Asia Minor, he " assayed to go into Bithynia; but the Spirit of Jesus suffered him not 5 ." Yielding to that gentle guidance he crossed over into Europe, and the Gospel was brought to a new world. "The Spirit of Jesus." It is a title to be pondered. We rightly shrink from endeavouring to define Divine relations by human language. Yet as we feel the vital importance of the truth which the Western Church desires to guard by affirming the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, we feel no less surely that relatively to us the activity of the Spirit pro- ceeding " from " the Son, for Whom the Incarna- tion is not potential only but realised, Who has 114 The Spirit sent taken up into Himself, as He is seated at the right hand of the Father, the fulness of humanity, is other than it was, to use the language of time, before He came down on earth. After the Ascen- sion the gift of the Spirit, as the Spirit of ' Jesus the Son of GOD, Who has passed through the heavens,' is different, not only in degree but in kind from that which was before, separating by the whole breadth of human life the Old from the New. Thus the Spirit sent in Christ's Name, the \ ' Spirit sent to us to-day, is characteristically the Spirit of the Son of man. He speaks to us, with \ infinite tenderness and compassion, so that we with our feeble powers can grasp the Truth which He interprets. He reveals to us slowly in the course of ages, as we are enabled to bear the message, the lessons of the Lord's humanity a new thing upon the earth apart from the in- evitable restrictions which belong to our present form of existence. He illuminates through the thought of His glorified manhood the ideas of knowledge and love and fellowship. The union of believers ' in Christ ' opens the way for His action in each least member. And from believers flow forth streams of living waters, to refresh and fertilise and purify the souls of men. The sense of need is a promise of help. No want and in the Name of the Son. 115 weakness is unconsidered by Him 'to whom all things lie open.' The difficulties of an age are signs of the direction of His movement. In His fulness there is relief for our distress ; and while we are apt to lose ourselves in vain regrets for something which has passed away, the Spirit takes of that which is Christ's some new treasure hidden deeper in His Person or His work and declares it unto us for our instruction and strengthening. We all know the trials which wider know- ledge, larger aspirations, more general intercourse bring to our generation. Out of these comes for us fuller light. There are few, I fancy, who look upon the depths of the starry sky without re- peating the old question, with more than the Psalmist's perplexity " Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him ? " The wonders of that which is to our senses infinitely great, and of that which is infinitely small, alike overwhelm the beholder. Our hearts fail us when we attempt to measure now that which once seemed to be a dominion not disproportionate to man's powers. We shrink from presumptuously claiming that one planet, out of one system in countless galaxies of systems, should have been the home of the Son of GOD. " What is man ? " we cry, awe- stricken by our littleness in the face of the im- 116 The Spirit sent mensities of time and space. Then the Spirit ^L opens to us a view of Christ's work which antici- ; / pates our misgivings. The Incarnation accom- plished on earth and every historical fact must .be localised reaches, we learn, in its effects to / the utmost bounds of finite being. All things tin heaven and in earth are summed up in Him JbA v\* fl i, A i * J f J / " /rwho is their heir as He was their creator, and [^ i^ & through Him find reconciliation and peace. All creation there is no limit bound together in the unity of the Divine thought waiteth for the revealing of the sons of GOD, destined to find in their joy the answer to present pain, and in their consummation the fruit of present travail. We are cast down by the daily record of sorrows which appear to admit no earthly as- suagement and evils which, as far as we can see, ft/>*/*~ must produce a progeny like themselves. Then again the Spirit takes of that which is Christ's, and shews us that these sorrows and these evils are not of the essence of human life : shews us that the Incarnate Lord has transfigured every sorrow and overcome every evil : shews us in the victory of the Cross what He has prepared for the world which he made : shews us in the revelation of Jesus, the Son of man Priest and King, the fulness of atonement and the certainty of triumph. in the Name of the Son. 117 We are divided intellectually, personally, socially, one from another by barriers which be- long to the very framework of our constitution. Still the Spirit takes of that which is Christ's, and opens to us something deeper, surer, more enduring than the phenomena which meet the eye, or the imaginations which can be shaped by thought. In the Word become flesh all in virtue of which each man is man, finds its place, and the presence of all humanity in Him becomes for all men a pledge of brotherhood. We can move about in common intercourse as called to be Saints among those who share our calling, striving to see ourselves and others as GOD sees us and watches over us in the tender patience of His eternal love, strong to bid our fellows strive to- wards the ideal which they acknowledge as their true aim. Nation rises against nation in jealous distrust and selfish rivalry. Wars and rumours of wars stir passions which are the more perilous because they appeal to feelings of gratitude and devotion and self-surrendey. Even here the Spirit takes of that which is Christ's, and holds before us, in the silent progress of the ages, the clear prospect that the peoples are slowly moving, through checks and losses and reverses, towards that City which is itself a Holy of Holies, and in the light 118 The Spirit sent of which the nations shall walk at last, when the kings of the earth bring their glory into it. Earth draws us with multitudinous charms, which we cannot refuse to recognise except by the sacrifice of eye and hand. We yield to them, and find that, if we are not weakened by the in- dulgence, we are left unsatisfied. Once more the Spirit takes of that which is Christ's, and interprets our discontent and hallows our instinct. Looking to Him, who is the Truth and the Life, we see that all that art shews that is lovely, is lovely not as separate and self-subsistent, not as apart from Him, but as a fragment of the Truth which He is, a fragment in which He must be recognised if it is to bring lasting joy. Looking to Him in whom all things consist, we discern with adoring thankfulness that the Incarnation is the perfect revelation of the poetry of nature and of life, the revelation to the eye of faith of the 'world as GOD has made it.' Seen in Christ and in the light of His saving work, 'all is beauty, and knowing this is love, and love is duty.' These glorious visions are called up, I say, by our difficulties, and they meet our wants. On many sides men are telling us and it is a pathetic confession that we are in danger of losing the heroic force of manhood in the general diffusion of an average culture ; that there is a in the Name of the Son. 119 dissipation of spiritual energy as there is of physical energy ; that there lies before us as the future of our civilization a dull monotony hardly distinguishable from death. Such a prophecy would be well-founded if the sum of spiritual force were constant. But there is opened for us a fountain of new life. Humanity is placed in vital connexion with the Godhead. The Spirit takes takes according to our necessities of the things of Christ and declares them unto us. His taking, His declaring, however, is not enough. In order that we may receive the teaching, we ourselves need to wait in still patience. As it is, the restlessness, the busy hurry, the intensity of modern life keep us occupied with what has been well called ' the idolatry of work.' The outward and material fills our thoughts, and for a time satisfies our feelings. Worship tends to become a series of observances, and even doctrine to degenerate into scholastic specula- tions. Then in some ' hour of insight ' we recog- nise the weakness of our powers, and the transi- toriness of our own creations. We grow fearful and anxious, timorously seeking for some ancient precedent to support our Creed or our practice. But our justification must lie at last in the present. And we can find it here. GOD is with us. He has a blessing for our labours. He 120 The Spirit sent speaks to us through our experience, our history, our circumstances. We justly rejoice in our ancestry and in our inheritance. If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand. But we do not serve the dead. We are not bound by the tradition of our fathers. The life and movement by which they were strong are ours also, if we on our part jissert our privilege. For we must be active and not passive only, even in dealing with the things of GOD. We must in the Lord's words take the gift of the Holy Spirit (Xa/3ere irvevfia ayiov) and not merely receive it. We must trust with a whole heart GOD Who has given us our commission. Our English Church need not look on this side or that with timid glances for qualified recognition. It is its own witness through the fruitfulness of its activity. It has in itself the vindication of its position. It offers, as I believe, a natural meeting-place for Christians. But we cannot hasten the advent of that unity for which we labour and pray by condoning ' errors and super- stitions which we have rightly and solemnly abjured,' or by sacrificing any part of the Apo- stolic Faith which has been committed to our keeping 6 . in the Name of the Son. 121 The strength of a man, of a class, of a nation, lies in its religious faith. Our Faith covers all life and the whole of man. Every truth con- tributes something to its more complete expres- sion under the form of present human thought. The power which it brings answers to the claims which it makes. The Christian law is matched by corresponding grace. The Gospel brings the Beatitudes within our reach. To him that be- lieveth all things are possible. But to make this possibility a fact, we need, and we all know sadly that we need, the fresh conviction of a Spiritual Presence in our troubled world, and spiritual fellowship with the unseen realised through the fulness of our humanity. Many seek it in strange, unhallowed ways, and all the while the blessing is offered to us by the Spirit sent in Christ's Name, who is disclosing to souls opened to Him fresh mysteries of the Incarnation. Brethren, may GOD Who has laid on us the heavy burden of interpreting His Gospel enable us to read and to proclaim His message to our own generation, the message of a Gospel for the universe, of sin overcome and sorrow transformed, of unity whereby we are all one man in Christ, of the fellowship of nations, of the new heaven and new earth rising out of the old. w. c. 9 122 The Spirit sent in the Name of the Son. We shall join directly in prayer that 'the Holy Spirit who was present at the first gathering of the Apostles, may be present also at ours now, to guide us into all the truth.' GOD grant that the prayer may be to us the glad confession, made one to another and to GOD, of a living faith, the solemn claim of our Divine endowment, the pledge of power corresponding to our wants and sufficient for our weakness, so that humbly trust- ing to the help of the Spirit sent in Christ's Name and acting in the power of our belief, we may fulfil His will without fear, and hand down to those who will continue our work an in- heritance enriched by the treasures which He offers for our welcome. THE AIM AND THE STRENGTH OF CHRISTIAN ACTION. 92 Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of GOD. l COB. x. 31. Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. COL. iii. 17. CHAPEL ROYAL, ST JAMES'S. First Sunday in Lent, 1893. THE AIM AND THE STRENGTH OF CHRISTIAN ACTION. THE day carries our thoughts at once back- wards and forwards. The memories of Christinas and Epiphany are still fresh ; and we are preparing to ponder again the lessons of Holy Week and Easter. It is natural therefore that we should pause for a short space to dwell upon the simplest, the broadest, the most practical aspects of our Faith : to ask ourselves what place the mysteries the revelations of Bethlehem, of Calvary, of Olivet, have in our rule of conduct : to consider how we can bring the truths which we hold by intellectual conviction to bear more continuously and more effectively upon common life, how we can prove their power in action. I assume that we are Christians, that we hold with whatever inevitable weakness of apprehen- 126 The Aim. and the Strength sion, that the Son of GOD came down from Heaven and took our nature upon Him, and lived our life and bore humanity in His Person to the Father's Throne. Such a belief is charged with vital power. The least reflection will shew that it is a revelation of the true glory of nature and life as they answer to the will of GOD : that it affirms a Divine purpose and presence to be looked for and recognised everywhere : that it transforms the simplest powers and opportunities which are given to us into means for making GOD better known : that the Christian has a motive and a strength for social service essentially different from those which avail for unbelievers. His motive is universal ; for the Christian sees in his fellow-men sharers with him of a nature which his Lord has glorified. His strength is as his day; for the Christian knows that the Spirit sent in the Name of the Son takes of the things of Christ, and meets the needs of each age by fresh treasures of wisdom and knowledge included in His Person and Work. Such conclusions if they are distinctly realised change our whole view of life. So it is that when we think of life in the light of the Incarnation, we are startled at the contrast between the ideal and the fact. It is indeed easy to pass sentence in general terms on the failures and the sins of man. It is supposed to be the preacher's office to of Christian Action. 127 do so; and he is judged according to the skill with which he fulfils his part. But at the same time it is taken for granted that his verdicts, his appeals, his claims, belong to a region far remote from the working world. The French Court listens with interest or even with admiration to Bossuet, or Bourdaloue, or Massillon, and goes on to prepare a revolution by its unfeeling licentious- ness, for it does not take their words seriously. Perhaps we who are set to teach give occasion to this grievous misconception of the Gospel by our own inconsistencies. We have not the courage of our faith. We are ashamed of Christ in society. The falling away of a friend hardly seems to sadden us. But even if the knowledge is our own condemnation we do know that our message is intensely practical. Our aim is not to construct a theory of life for an imaginary com- monwealth, but to enforce their duties on citizens of the Kingdom of GOD : to create a quiet, sober, resolute, conviction of the sovereign authority of the law of Christ : to call out a clear, calm, humble, confession of duty :; to persuade those who have acknowledged Christ to meditate, silently, patiently, courageously, as in the sight of GOD and man, on life and death, on the meaning, the obligations, the gifts, of the Creed which they hold. 128 The Aim and the Strength And one thing at least is clear that as know- ledge increases, the range of our Faith is found to extend in the same degree. If life is now seen to be more complex and more dependent than it was formerly held to be, reaching before and behind, fashioned by things above and things below, our Faith prevents and follows it, empha- sising our sense of limitless responsibility and opening doors of hope. This is the message of the Faith which we are commissioned to deliver, which we desire to deliver : this message of unlimited scope, of unlimited power is our Gospel. For Christianity is not a sum of isolated observances. It is the hallowing of all human interests and occupations alike. Worship is a very small fragment of devotion. The Christian does not offer to GOD part of his life or of his endowments in order that he may be at liberty to use the rest according to his own caprice. All life, all endowments, are equally owed to our Lord, and equally claimed by Him. Every human office in every part is holy. Our conduct our whole conduct is a continuous revelation of what we are. At each moment we are springs of influence. Virtue goes out of us also or weakness. Our silence speaks. We who pro- fess to be Christians must from day to day either confirm or disparage our Creed. Our faith our of Christian Action. 129 want of faith must shew itself. It is finally the soul which acts. The body is but its instrument. Under this aspect it is evident that the voice of conscience repeats in our hearts the words of St Paul : Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of GOD. Do all, that is, so as to make the purpose and the will of GOD His love and righteousness, His compassion and grace better known and more inwardly prevailing. For we can, if we realise what the Gospel of the Word Incarnate is, aim at nothing less. And the con- ception which we form of our duty is of more importance than our first most imperfect perform- ance. The days of most of us are filled by routine, but routine may be elevated if we look through it and beyond it to a great ideal. The ideal, if it is cherished, becomes an inspiration, and leads us through failures and sadnesses to forget ourselves and rest only on GOD. Can we then say, when the question rises before us, that we do desire with whatever sorrow- ful confession of inconsistency and weakness, to offer ourselves our souls and bodies a living sacrifice to GOD, and to do all things to His glory ? or do we surrender ourselves without any definite purpose at all to the influence of each day as it comes, and drift with the changing currents of circumstance ? or seek only our own 130 The Aim and the Strength ends of pleasure or interest, satisfied to make the average conduct of those about us the standard of our own endeavours, and the average tradition of popular opinions the measure of our own belief ? If we regard the alternative calmly, in full view of the issues at stake, we cannot hesitate as to the answer which we should wish to make. We know for what we were made, and through what alone we can find rest in the solitude of self-questioning. And if we are awed by the overwhelming solemnity of life, seen as it truly is, our Faith illuminates the vision. St Paul, who fixes the aim of atl action, when he says, Do all to the glory of GOD, reveals also the secret of guidance and support in the effort to reach towards it, when he says in another place, Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the Name of the Lord Jesus. Thus the aim and the rule of the Christian life are plainly set before us. We are charged to realise, as we may be enabled, and to shew the Divine presence even in the commonest things. We are taught that we shall obtain our end by calling to remembrance in every action the truth of the Incarnation. This truth, this fact, adds an element of infinity to all that is of earth ; and it brings "the power of an indissoluble life" to sustain us in view of the startling contrasts and conflicts of human interests. of Christian Action. 131 ' In the name of the Lord Jesus.' To invoke that name is to recognise the fellowship of Heaven and Earth. It is to affirm the brotherhood of men in Him who has taken to Himself our common nature, and the Fatherhood of GOD through Him who is our common Lord. It is to confess that we are debtors to all, holding every advantage which has been given to us, as a trust for those through whom we live. ' A trust for those through whom we live.' Yes. If we believe in the Incarnation we must hold this K '> . *^sCw<,, conviction as the master-law of our conduct. In theory indeed no one will dispute the fact of our social stewardship : no one will maintain that we can confine the influence of any action to our- selves : no one will undertake to shew that we can rightly call anything ' our own ' : no one will deny that we must give some account of all that has been committed to us. But practically we relegate the reckoning to some incalculable future. We are tempted to think that because we are not accountable to an immediate task-master we can blamelessly deal at our will with our leisure and our means. We lack the imagination which would enable us to trace the bitter stream of conse- quences which flow from a light word, or an inconsiderate indulgence, or an act of wilful self- assertion. We forget and it is a thought which 132 The Aim and the Strength we cannot press upon ourselves too persistently that responsibility is measured by opportunity. Stewardship is indeed difficult for those who have much to administer. If our time, our fortune, our acquirements are at our own disposal, the heavy burden is laid upon us and he knows the weight who on rare occasions has endeavoured to bear it of bringing all to GOD as a reasonable and willing service. Such a sacrifice cannot be made at random or improvised in some moment of enthusiasm. It requires the vision of the glory of GOD that it may be prepared with resolute and patient care. It requires the appeal to the name of the Lord Jesus that it may be hallowed by one final act of self-surrender. Eighteen centuries have not modified the pathetic judg- ment : How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of GOD they that have wealth of gold, or land, or intellect, or time, or power, or place, which tempts the possessor to think that he is independent, which flatters and deceives him by the prospect of personal delights. But, thanks be to GOD, difficulty is the call to lofty enterprise. Great possessions may become great blessings to him who matches them with great counsels. And on every side there is now sore need of the utmost help of such as have most. Not for themselves, but for those who have of Christian Acti&n. 133 no reserve, men hold the accumulated fruits of earlier industry. Not for themselves, but for those who are bound by daily toil, they hold the perilous gift of leisure. Not for themselves, but for those who trust the culture which they have not, they hold the treasures of learning and art. Not for themselves, but for those who respond to generous sympathy, they hold the great traditions of birth and rank. We may misapply, or waste, or neglect our resources, whatever they are : we may leave our work unfulfilled. But there is a benediction prepared for the discipline of anxious cares. If we fail to win it, our failure will come not from the largeness of the Divine bounty, but because in the contemplation of our endowments we neglected to look to the glory of GOD, and in our use of them we neglected to act in the name of the Lord Jesus. The simplest, the homeliest, the most universal application of these general reflections is to our personal expenditure. Our Faith emphasises and hallows social differences. It bases the most sacred obligations of service upon them. We are all members of a body, and not units in an aggregate. We are not taught to obliterate the rich varieties of function among men in a colourless uniformity. But our several offices are fulfilled in the unity of one life. The gifts by which we are distinguished 134 The Aim and the Strength one from another are designed for the fulfilment of special duties. They are not to be used accord- ing to personal caprice or for private ends but in effective ministry. A life spent in the pursuit of personal enjoy- ment, cannot justly claim to be a human, still less a Christian life. Every exceptional indulgence in amusement or living which we admit, every use which we make of money or leisure for rest, for travel, for the accumulation of works of art or literature, must satisfy two tests before it can be approved by an awakened conscience. It must be found to contribute directly or indirectly its full value to the efficiency of our work; and it must not be such as to cause even the weak to offend by a perilous example. In each respect we are bound to weigh carefully the results of our conduct as it affects the discharge of our appointed task, and as it affects those whom we naturally influence. Our expenditure as Christians from first to last must be directed not to private gratification but to the good of the whole body, and it is in this good we find our own highest satisfac- tion. There is need of sparing, of self-control, of reserve, for the possession of enduring joy no less than for the noblest exercise of genius. That, therefore, is a culpable luxury for an individual which costs more either in money or of Christian Action. 135 time, or vital energy, than it contributes to his power of service. That is culpable self-assertion which makes a man neglectful or regardless of the remoter consequences of actions reasonable for himself. Nothing which tends to waste labour or force ; nothing which tends to stimulate vanity or nourish pride ; nothing which tends to lead astray by provoking frivolous or blame-worthy imitation ; nothing which tends to exaggerate the importance of material wealth or to encourage ostentation, can be done or enjoyed to the glory of GOD or in the Name of Christ. Tried by such a standard and the standard is final for the Christian there is much in modern life, in popular fashions of dress and entertainment and recreation, which stands condemned beyond appeal : much which continues among us simply, I believe, by the unquestioning toleration of custom, because no one thinks the subject a matter for serious reflection. And meanwhile as characters are marred, so also the resources are wasted which GOD has pre- , L K-' !, c/U '-CC pared for the renovation of the world, resources which lie far more in ourselves than in our ^^J.j^j^ material wealth : the influence of great place /^ ^.f. which might commend the dignity of a simple life and shew that human happiness is won won only by 'labour and love 7 ': the sympathy of 136 The Aim and the Strength culture which might bring grace into the sordid homes of the poor and open the eyes of the blind to the beauties of earth and sky : the tenderness of personal intercourse which might spread a true banquet for the desolate and outcast : the autho- rity of self-restraint which might shew the capaci- ties of the humblest means: the energy of faith which might claim all alike as fellow-heirs of the riches of Christ. Can we not all see how oppor- tunities and calls for service, as manifold as human endowments, offer themselves on this side and that ? But thick, earthborn, clouds rise between us and the glory of GOD.' The babble of in- numerable voices drowns the name of the Lord Jesus when it is sounded in our ears. None the less life, with all it brings, is given us that we may receive and reflect that glory, that we may welcome and proclaim that name. I have only indicated principles but they are luminous for our guidance. If they are accepted they are capable of transforming our whole life, little by little, to a divine pattern. They appear to me to be involved in the central fact of our Creed. We cannot, as far as I can judge, believe the Incarnation without acknowledging them to be of sovereign authority. The circumstances of our own time interpret them with growing clear- ness. They have a direct bearing upon present of Christian Action, 137 and urgent problems. I ask then that at least they may be considered : that we may try our- selves by the standard which they set up : that we may settle in our own hearts what is our aim in life, what is our strength. Our best hope for the future, and it is a hope which, as I believe, is rising upon us with fuller promise, lies in giving reality, as we can give, to the thought of our relations one to another as sharers in one nature which Christ has taken to Himself, and redeemed by His Life and Death, as members of one body in which He is the Head. This conception, this- vital application of the Gospel has power to discipline, to unite, to in- spire : to discipline those who are tempted by their circumstances to self-assertion: to unite those who are kept asunder by the temporary conflict of national interests : to inspire with fresh confi- dences those whose hearts fail them in the prospect of evils to which they can bring no remedy. So may we, turning our Faith into act, do all things for the^glory of GOD, which glory we have seen in the revelation of a Father's love : do all things in the Name of the Lord Jesus, which Name we have read in the records of a Son's self-sacrifice. W.c, 10 Philip saiih unto Him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask Me anything in My name that will I do. (St John xiv, 8, 9, 1214). IDEALS. 102 See that thou make all things according to the pattern that was shewed thee in the mount. HEBK. viii. 5. MANSION HOUSE, LONDON. March 7th, 1891. Annual Address to the Students of the London University Extension Society. IDEALS. MANY of us remember the splendid myth in which Plato connects the position of men in their earthly life with their experience in an earlier existence. There are, he says, festivals in Heaven, when Zeus, followed by the Divine hosts, goes forth to the outer boundary of the universe, and, during its revolution, gazes on the supramundane realms of absolute being. The spectacle is the food of the heavenly nature, and gods and heroes fill themselves with it to the full in serene and untroubled tranquility. Other unembodied souls follow in the celestial train, struggling to share the life-giving vision. Some with grievous effort catch more or less transitory glimpses of right- eousness and beauty and moral order, and so retain for another period their lofty state. Others, baffled and beaten down, fail to gain the glorious sight, and falling to earth, are forthwith confined in mortal frames. But since they still remember 142 Ideals. something of the truth which they have formerly seen, they cannot on their first embodiment sink below the state of man, and their place among men is determined by the measure of their re- membrance. He who has seen and remembered most is born a philosopher. He who has seen and remembers least is born a despot. Now, without discussing in detail the re- markable hierarchy of classes which Plato sketches between these extremes, or entering on any philo- sophical speculation, we can notice two central thoughts, two central truths, I will venture to call them, vividly expressed in this great picture. That which makes us men is the capacity for regarding the eternal. That which fixes our position in the scale of humanity is the energy of the eternal within and upon us, by which we are freed more or less from the dominion of material and selfish aims. Or, to express the teaching in popular language, man is a being who fashions ideals, and the worth of man in relation to his fellows depends upon the ideals which he cherishes. Man partly is and wholly hopes to be. I wish, then, to say a few words now, neces- sarily most fragmentary and imperfect, upon ideals regarded in this aspect. I wish to shew, Ideals. 143 if there is need to shew it, that ideals are the very soul of life ; that the characteristic spirit of University teaching, which this Society desires to bring within the reach of all, tends to quicken, to sustain, to perfect the loftiest ideals; that the circumstances of the time give peculiar import- ance to this aspect of the work of University Extension. Ideals are, I say, the soul of life. The simplest human act is directed to an end ; and life, a series of unnumbered acts, must answer to some end, some ideal mean or generous, seen by the eye of the heart and pursued consciously or often un- consciously, which gives a unity and a clue to the bewildering mazes of human conduct. The word progress is unmeaning without reference to an ideal. And I would say of ideals that which was said here of abstract thoughts by a distin- guished scholar and statesman, that they ' are the meat and drink of life.' They support us, and still more, they rule us. It is, then, momentous that we should pause from time to time to regard our ideals. They exercise their influence upon us insensibly. We grow like the object of our desire perhaps before we have distinctly realised its true nature; and so we may find ourselves like some of the souls at the close of Plato's Republic, involved in un- 144 Ideals. zJL- ft expected calamities through a heedless choice. At the same time, the effort to give distinctness to our ideals brings with it a purifying power. For, after all, there is but one ideal in which we can find rest that which answers to the truth of things. To this alone the name ideal properly belongs. It remains when all illusions pass away. By us ' who are but parts ' it is seen in parts, but it is one. It exists already. And we were born to seek it, to find it, to recognise it, to shew it. ' It is not,' as has been nobly said, ' the creation, but the gradual discovery of the human intellect.' Yes ; the best will be done ; is on the Divine side done now. There is an order in which all frag- ments will find their due place. On the earth the broken arcs : in the heaven a perfect round. This conviction that there is an order in things which we do not make, but can discern and interpret, is the inspiration of the man of science and of the artist, no less than of the man of affairs. The man of science dimly perceives that after which he is feeling. Phenomena speak to him with a voice which others cannot hear, because he has known in some degree their vital coherence, and he trusts to the perfection of the harmony of which he has found the first promise. To the artist outward things are signs rather than Ideals. 145 $*. tM.^i ft copies. He uses them to suggest to others what . he discerns behind them. His work is not an end , , in itself, but a revelation of that which is beyond. And for the statesmen ideals are the adequate support of resolute and unwearied patience. It was said, I think, of Michael Angelo that he often hewed the marble before him without a model, as one who was setting free a figure im- prisoned in the block, clear to his artist eye. The image is a just representation of the work of life. Our work in life is to set free from manifold encumbrances that which is present about us, good and true and lovely. But we must first see the ideal which we desire to bring to view, and the vigour of action depends upon the clearness of our sight, and such clearness comes through discipline. Every prospect on which we look is for us as we are. The phenomena are the material which are offered to us to use and interpret, and as the quickened soul realises their meaning and their relations, seeing becomes beholding, and the partial apprehension of the ideal by which and towards which we have been guided. So to keep the ideal before us in the midst of our common occupations, to guard the conviction ^ o^H ^ that there is an ideal, is to preserve the first L^^^jt freshness of our early impressions of the mys- terious beauty of the world. Poets tell us that 146 Ideals. in the pilgrimage of life we shall watch the glory fade away from the things of earth. But if it be so, the fault lies with us. It will be because with the growth of things we have not grown to match. The halo still encircles the bush in the wilderness when we have learnt to study the material elements by themselves, only it is found to come by the gift of heaven. The sunshine which floods the whole landscape at mid-day is the same as that which was seen as a star of dawn when it lighted the solitary mountain peak, only it is infinitely vaster and therefore harder to comprehend in its fulness. But while this is so, the conditions of living tempt or constrain us more and more to regard phenomena in relation to our own needs, and we come to forget their larger meaning. I have somewhere seen that an American writer has recorded how, when he was engaged as a Pilot on the Mississippi, he was at first filled with adoring wonder at the magnificence of the sunsets, and then in the course of his work came to regard them as useful weather signs. But while we welcome the utilitarian interpretation we need not acquiesce in it. This itself points to some- thing greater by emphasising one of the harmonies of creation. Here, as elsewhere, the part enables us to rise to a fuller conception of the whole, Ideals. 147 if only the thought of the whole is present with us. So, moving from fragment to fragment, we learn to give distinctness to our ideal and to feel the unity and grandeur of the sum of being through our own experience. If the past shews no attainment it shews many advances and points to the hoped-for end. Tracing by intelligible marks how things have come to be, as far as they fall within the range of our powers, we look for- ward with a prophetic trust. We make the power of poetry our own, which a poet has de- fined to be " the feeling of a former world and of o h pgff'W a future one." We come into contact with what has been truly called " the collective thought," and are kindled by the spirit of humanity, that humanity which is " a man that lives and learns for ever 8 ." Exceptional occurrences, oppositions in thought, material phenomena, transcending all conception in their necessary conditions, take their place in our view as indications of a larger order. Man, society, nature, are seen to be in- stinct with one life, and regarded, even as we can now regard them, inspire the spectator with patience at once and hope. Such a temper, which answers to the highest ideal of man and of his dwelling-place, is intensely practical. It is not for intellectual indulgence ; it is a spur to action. It enforces a thought a 148 Ideals. fragment of the ideal till the thought is recog- nised as a principle and in due course the prin- ciple is embodied as a fact. Thoreau has said well ' If you have built castles in the air your labour need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.' The temper is practical and it is attainable. I am inclined to say it is necessary for every human life. The average man, the man of busi- ness, the artisan, the miner, require the vision of the ideal, and they are capable of it. The vision of the ideal guards monotony of work from becoming monotony of life. The simplest home finds a place for it. And no problem is pressed upon now with more continuous urgency than how that place shall be rightly filled. The Uni- versity Extension Movement is one important help towards the solution of the problem. University teaching tends, I believe, with ever accumulating force and directness to quicken and to sustain ideals. It is characteristically structural, catholic, equalising, chastening, historical, personal, spiritual. Let me, in the fewest possible words, endeavour to explain and justify this formidable list of epithets. To every University man each word will, I think, recall a debt which must grow with the growth of life. Ideals. 149 University teaching is, I say, structural. It aims, I mean, at giving a sense of the whole and /, t preserving the proportion of the parts. It insists on a general training and a special training. It brings intelligent sympathy with all studies and guides to the mastery of some one. It provides that the physical student shall understand the aims, the resources, the achievements of litera- ture ; and that the scholar shall understand the methods and the limitations of physical science. It is catholic. A University is strong enough to prevent the overpowering dominance of a popular pursuit. It is hospitable alike to the en- thusiasm which proclaims new thoughts and to the reverence which lingers over the thoughts of a past age. It is tolerant of all things except onesided arrogance. No specialist can move among bands of fellow-students preoccupied with other interests without feeling the amplitude of knowledge and of life, and the manifold relations in which his own subject stands to others on which he cannot enter. The common search for truth and right brings mutual respect; and the teacher who has felt the subtle influence of the University must himself in turn diffuse its spirit. It is equalising. Nowhere is fellowship more ^ complete among representatives of every class 150 Ideals. than at a University. There poverty is no re- proach, and wealth is no title to superiority. The foremost students are bound, perhaps unconsci- ously, in a brotherhood of heart through which comes the power of penetrating to the noblest in each man. The teacher who has learnt his lessons under such social conditions will be eager to bring the best to the humblest as a fellow- heir with him of the wealth of humanity ; and he will not accept as permanent, conditions of life which exclude any class or any man from access to his birthright. It is chastening. The University teacher can- not forget that his office is not to supersede labour, but to stimulate it. He will not enter- tain the vulgar notion that we can bestow on others our thoughts as we can bestow on them our money, so that they can employ them rightly before they have made them their own. He will bear in mind the pregnant saying of an old divine, " We have ourselves as we use ourselves." He will make it clear that great books can only be read in the spirit in which they were written, as serious work and not as indolent amusement. He will, therefore, claim from his hearers the difficult service of thinking, as one who knows that the true teacher, like Nature, gives nothing but materials and opportunities and impulse. J /-.' 0k*d''W^ WMAXLA{ Ideals. 151 It is historical. A University is not a bureau. & It is a living body, a complex result of life and- not an official provision for carrying into effect a formal scheme. The teaching which answers to it is, as a necessary consequence, vital and not intellectual only. It bears the impress of many associations, old and new. It is flexible, in the largest sense human, of the past at once and of the present. A Cambridge man might find it hard to analyse or to estimate the effect which has been produced upon him by the great libraries, by the old buildings wedded to new, by the chapels of Trinity or King's, yet he will know that they have in many undefined ways given him breadth and sympathy and tenderness which will colour his own work. It is personal. The method of learning is, I believe, of scarcely less moment than the matter. - The student who has mastered a subject by the help of a text-book occupies a very different position intellectually and morally from one who has gained his knowledge in continuous contact with a teacher. The frank questioning, the inter- change of thought, the influence of personal en- thusiasm, the inspiring power of living words, which come in the free intercourse of the class- room, give a force and meaning to facts and theories which the book cannot convey.