»'nrPFvrnviu 
 
 WITNESS FOII JESUS:" 
 
 SERMON 
 
 l'KEACHKD IN SUBSTANCE 
 
 AT ST. PAULS CATHEDRAL, 
 
 Sgetfo] OFbcuing State, 
 
 ON THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTElt EASTER, APRIL 17, 18C4, 
 
 HENRY PARRY LIDDON, M.A. 
 
 student of christ church, oxford, 
 
 examining chaplain to the lord bishof of Salisbury, 
 
 and one of the select freaci1eks in the 
 
 university of oxford. 
 
 LONDON; 
 
 RIVLNGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 AND HIGH STREET, OXFORD. 
 
 1864. 
 
 Price Fourpenoe.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 GILBERT AND KIVINGTON, PRINTERS, 
 
 6T. JOnN'S SQUARE.
 
 SERMON, 
 
 dx. 
 
 Acts i. 8. 
 " Ye shall be witnesses unto Me." 
 
 At this Easter season we naturally turn to the consideration of 
 those precious words which fell from our Blessed Lord during the 
 interval that elapsed between His Resurrection and His Ascension 
 into heaven. And among these sayings, the text has the dis- 
 tinction of being the last, — it is the parting utterance of our 
 ascending Saviour " Te shall be witnesses unto Me both in 
 Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the utter- 
 most part of the earth." And then we are told that " when He 
 had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up ; and 
 a cloud received Him out of their sight." Undoubtedly these last 
 words of Jesus had a meaning for the Apostles which they could 
 have for no other men. The Apostles had been told that they 
 were to " bear witness " because they " had been with" Jesus 
 " from the beginning \" And when afterwards St. Matthias was 
 elected unto the place of Judas, the electors were reminded that 
 their choice was limited to "those men who had companicd with" 
 themselves " all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out 
 among them," since they needed a " witness to the Resurrec- 
 tion *." Thus the text is in fact an epitome of the history which 
 is afterwards unfolded in the Acts of the Apostles ; in which, 
 bursting from the holy city, the circles of missionary effort widen 
 perpetually, passing beyond Judea, beyond Samaria, even beyond 
 the bounds of civilized heathendom, towards the full measure of 
 their predestined range, " the uttermost part of the earth." 
 
 Still, although for the Apostles personally, and for the Apostles 
 as representing their successors in the ministry of the Church, 
 
 1 St. John xv. 27. J Acts i. 21, 22. 
 
 A 2
 
 1 •• w LTNB8S FOB ii Ms. 
 
 our Lord's words had this distinguished and unrivalled sig- 
 nificance, they do contain a wider range of meaning, which leads 
 me to invite your attention to them this evening. For the 
 jtlea standing before their departing Lord impersonate not 
 merely tin* Ministry, hut the Church; and Jesus, in His last 
 words on earth, speaks not merely to the clerical order; He 
 bequeaths a legacy of glory and of suffering to the millions of 
 Christendom : "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me." 
 
 I. " Witnesses unto Me." It at once strikes us that our Lord 
 Himself, — in His sacred Person, — is the truth, the reality, the 
 glorious power to which His servants are to bear their wit 
 Certainly in a parallel passage in St. Luke's Gospel our Lord is 
 represented as saying, "Ye are witnesses of these things" when 
 referring to His Passion and His Resurrection 3 . But there are 
 some grounds for believing that the words in St. Luke may have 
 been uttered at a slightly earlier date than that of the actual 
 Ascension ; and although, as a matter of fact, the " witness to the 
 Resurrection" was, from the necessity of their case, the leading 
 feature of the recorded preaching of the Apostles, and witness to His 
 redemptive work was clearly involved in any true witness to the 
 Person of Jesus, still we may not overlook the precise form of expres- 
 sion which our Lord adopts in the text. "Witnesses unto Me ! 
 " Others might witness to My miracles, they were wrought in the 
 " face of day ; others might repeat My discourses, ' spoken in the 
 "temple whither the Jews always resort;' and you, in witnessing 
 " to Me, will witness likewise to My works and to My teaching. 
 " But My works and My teaching are but the rays which proceed 
 " from My inmost life, My personality, Myself; and it is to this, 
 " to nothing less than this, to all that this implies, that I bid you 
 " witness." Contrast our Lord's words with what we should 
 expect from a great man at the present day. AVe should expect 
 him to tell us that his endowments or his achievements were 
 after all the gift of heaven ; that in himself he was nothing, and 
 unworthy of the greatness which had been forced upon him. If 
 he should forget his native poverty, and claim honour for himself, 
 as distinct from the gift or influence with which he had been 
 endued, then our human sense would be outraged, and we should, 
 in our deep disappointment, proclaim him unworthy of his great- 
 ness, because incapable of that modesty which is so winning in 
 human conduct, because it is so true to the facts of human life. 
 3 St. Luke xxiv. Is. 

 
 "witness FOR JESUS." 5 
 
 Jesus Christ our Lord defies this rule of human judgments, and 
 the conscience of mankind justifies Him in defying it. He who 
 could say to the men of His generation, " Which of you convinceth 
 Me of sin?" He who could dare to utter the tremendous words, 
 " I and the Father are One," could truly feel that it was im- 
 possible for Him to eclipse a higher greatness by drawing atten- 
 tion to Himself. His words were His own, His works were His 
 own ; as God He was the author and giver of the gifts which He 
 received as man ; and therefore He thought it not robbery to 
 draw the eyes of men away from the miracles and words which 
 flashed forth from Him, away from the sights and sounds which 
 heralded a mighty presence, to Himself, the Worker, the Speaker, 
 Who gave their greatness to the words which He spake, and to the 
 works which He wrought. My brethren, the words of Jesus, 
 which challenge " witness," — attention, homage, reverence, love, — 
 to His personal Self, are only not intolerable because nothing 
 less would have been adequate or true. 
 
 II. But you ask, How can we bear witness to a Person ? We 
 can describe a fact like a miracle, or we can repeat an instruc- 
 tion like the Sermon on the Mount. We can witness to that 
 which we know ; but how can we know, how can we seize, feel, 
 see, possess, so subtle, so impalpable a thing as a person ? espe- 
 cially how can we witness to a superhuman person, to One whom 
 His Apostle describes as " over all God blessed for ever," — to One 
 whom we name iu the Creed, " God of God, Light of Light, Very 
 God of Very God?" 
 
 Let me, by way of reply, suggest to you another question 
 in turn. Can we be witnesses to each other ? Unquestionably 
 we can ; for we can know each other. And by this know- 
 ledge we mean not knowledge of the form and colour of the 
 body or features, but knowledge of that which gives to features 
 and to form their interest, — knowledge of the invisible spirit, 
 which underlies them. That which interests man lastingly in his 
 brother man, — that which is the seat and the object of human 
 interest, — is the soul. We cannot, indeed, see the soul with the 
 eye of the body, but with the eye of the mind we can see it, and 
 form a very clear conception of it, which we call "character." 
 For the soul is linked in this life to the body on such terms, that 
 it can come forth from the shadow of the invisible world, and 
 assert its presence. It cannot be seen in its essence; but it can 
 be seen in its effects. The body is but its home, and its instru-
 
 6 " WITNESS FOR JESUS." 
 
 nioiit, wliicli it moulds, bends, subdues, weakens or invigorates, 
 overshadows or illuminates by its presence. By the organs of 
 the body the soul moves forth from its recesses, and enters into 
 communion with other souls. Learned men have recently been 
 discussing afresh that most interesting problem — the origin of 
 language. But the Church of God has from the first seen in 
 human language a special gift of God, complete at the first, and 
 a counterpart of the gift of an immortal soul, — an expression of 
 its life, — a medium of the circulation of its thought and its feel- 
 ing. When a man speaks, we read in his language, in its form, 
 in its tone, in its very accent, the movement of an undying spirit. 
 "We read the strength or weakness of his understanding, the 
 warmth of his heart, the vigour or feebleness of his will ; we read 
 thought, resolve, feeling, character. Language is the living expres- 
 sion of the soul's life ; it flows forth from the soul, as the spring of 
 water from the fountain : " out of the abundance of the heart 
 the mouth speaketh." Man cannot really disguise in the long 
 run the true features of the soul, even though, like the ancient 
 hypocrites of the days of David, he should give fair words with 
 the mouth, but curse with the heart. For language is too true 
 an instrument to be lastingly tampered with ; it is a revelation 
 of soul to soul ; it is a relentless witness, which drags the human 
 spirit forth from its hiding-place to be judged publicly, and before 
 its time, at the bar of humanity ; it is an artist, who traces, 
 without much real exaggeration or disguise, the lines of beauty 
 which grace the inmost features of an invisible spirit. And as 
 through language the soul speaks to the ear of man, so by action 
 the soul addresses itself to the eye of man. Action is a more 
 perfect unveiling of the soul than language ; for it implies more 
 deliberation. When a man acts — specially under circumstances 
 of responsibility or of difficulty, which invest action with em- 
 phasis, and make it the product of the whole force of his being — 
 then his true passions, instincts, lines of thought, capacities, all 
 his littlenesses, and all his greatness, come to the surface, and 
 you read his inmost nature in the text of his action. Once 
 more, the soul is too active and imperious a tenant not to leave 
 its mark upon the texture of the body, which it has inhabited for 
 a term of years. We read something of the soul in the human 
 countenance. This is why when those whom we love or honour 
 have passed away, we love to detain on canvas or in photograph 
 a memorial, which recalls to us something more than an accustomed
 
 " WITNESS FOll JESUS. / 
 
 form, since it is the symbol of a spiritual nature. The eye can 
 rest on nothing beneath the sun so deeply interesting as the 
 face of any child of Adam. Every human face is a point at which 
 we obtain an insight into an unseen world ; since every human 
 face, not less by its reserves than by its disclosures, records the 
 play of thought and passion within a subtle immaterial spirit. 
 Fear, joy, pride, lust, rage, sadness, shame, love, patience, — 
 each by reiterated throbs leaves its mark upon the flesh, till at 
 length the soul has moulded the ductile matter, so that it shall 
 truly pourtray its tale of baseness or of beauty ; till at length 
 we have produced a picture, which we involuntarily exhibit before 
 the eyes of our fellow-men as a speaking revelation of our inmost 
 life. The bright eye and the lofty forehead proclaim to all 
 thought and genius ; while there are lines and features at the 
 disposal of the moral forces of the soul, which can express 
 such scorn, contempt, and hatred as might be natural to devils, 
 or which can brighten up into the tenderness of benevolence, 
 or into the very refinements of high sanctity. Thus, through a 
 man's language, his actions, and his countenance, his soul speaks 
 to the soul of his brother man ; and while the essence of the soul 
 is still necessarily hidden, the outward effects of its action convey 
 a living aud accurate impression of its secret life. 
 
 III. Now in Jesus Christ, God made use of this provision of 
 His creative wisdom to enter into communion with His creatures, 
 lieason may discover God's existence and His attributes ; reason 
 may even attain under favourable conditions to a cold and partial 
 appreciation of His beauty. But to reason, unaided by revela- 
 tion without the soul, and by grace within it, God must ever 
 seem abstract, remote, inaccessible, — too certain and necessary 
 a Fact to be refused a place in thought, yet too wholly discon- 
 nected from human interests to be regarded with any thing 
 approaching to that passionate affection, which is a characteristic 
 of the Christian life. Therefore, that He might embrace His 
 fallen creatures with a revelation of His beauty, so intelligible 
 and so captivating, that resistance and rejection should seem well 
 nigli impossible ; therefore, that in characters, which from long 
 practice man would read at sight, God might reveal to man His 
 inmost Life : the Most High robed Himself in a human body and 
 a human soul. This was the Incarnation. The thoughtful Gen- 
 tile might have read something concerning Him in the natural 
 world ; the devout Jew might have read more of His true cha-
 
 s •• WITNESS K>H MM s." 
 
 meter in the moral law; but a living personal revelation of Hid 
 beauty was reserved for the faith of Christendom. Those who, 
 alas! are strangers to that faith, yet confess that in the Gospels 
 they encounter a form of unapproachable grace and power. In 
 the last age not merely the insulted and suffering Church of 
 France, but infidel writers like Diderot and Rousseau challenged the 
 Bceptice of tin 1 time, in language which has since become classical, 
 to match, if they could, the moral beauty of the Gospel. Tor in the 
 Gospel we meet with One, who in His pre-eminent humanity is 
 perfectly one with us, yet also most mysteriously distinct. 
 
 So rare and refined in His type of manhood that He escapes the 
 peculiarities of either sex, since He combines the tender sympathies 
 of woman -with the strength and decision of man. He is a carpenter, 
 but no trade or calling has dwarfed or narrowed the lofty stature 
 of His life : He is pure benevolence, tied to no one form of human 
 existence, yet adapting Himself to all. He is born in extreme 
 poverty, yet He has no grudge against wealth ; the wealthy classes 
 are in the Gospel "the unfortunates." He is born of the race of 
 Israel, on whom there has ever been stamped a national spirit of 
 fierce and unrivalled intensity, yet His Jewish blood carries with 
 it no trace of Jewish prejudice. He rises in His mighty charity 
 above the barriers of race and character which divide the nations. 
 He is claimed as their representative, by Greek and Roman and 
 African and Teuton, no less truly than by the children of His 
 people ; yet the closest scrutiny can discover in Him as little of 
 the formalism and fanaticism of the Jew, as of the cynical intel- 
 lectualism of the Greek, or of the ambition and statecraft of the 
 Roman: no class prejudice, no professional prejudice, no national 
 prejudice has left its taint upon that Ideal Form, so as to make it 
 less than representative of pure humanity. Yet, so far is 
 He from being a cold, passionless statue, divested of all interests 
 strictly human, that there is a warmth, a vividness in His character 
 which none who have trulv loved or wept can fail to understand and 
 in embrace. Tims He loves with the passionate tenderness that 
 shed tears over the grave of Lazarus, yet His affections contract 
 not the faintest trace of an earthly blemish. He hates evil, and 
 He denounces it in stern and unsparing words, but He is never 
 tor one moment betrayed into an unbalanced statement in the 
 luat of opposition or of reaction; Herod does not make Him a 
 revolutionist, the Pharisees do not force Him to be an Anti- 
 nomian. His triumphs cannot disturb, and His humiliations do
 
 "WITNESS FOR JESUS." 9 
 
 but enhance, the serene, the incomparable grandeur and self- 
 possession of His soul. Earnest and yet calm, full of tenderness 
 yet full of resolution, living in contemplation yet ever ready for 
 action, He combines as none other, that which compels our reve- 
 rence with that which provokes our ecstatic affection. The noble- 
 ness and the loveliness of the human spirit, which ever elsewhere are 
 found apart or joined in unequal proportions, are in Him fused and 
 blended so perfectly, that [I quote with pleasure the words of a 
 layman of our own day] " though the mental eye be strained to 
 aching, it cannot discover whether That on Which it gazes in the 
 Gospel be more an Object of reverence or an Object of love 4 ." 
 
 Well might we surmise that such a character as this was more 
 than human. AVe know ourselves too well, my brethren, to suppose 
 that human nature would conceive the full idea, much less that it 
 could create the reality. Even to the Eomau officer, who stood be- 
 neath the Cross on the evening of Good Friday, the Truth revealed 
 itself; the flash of moral beauty lightening up the darkness which 
 then might seem to have closed in upon the world. " Truly this 
 was the Son of God." Nay, more, Jesus Himself had used lan- 
 guage which no intimacy of union between God and holy souls 
 would warrant if it were not literally true. He speaks to His 
 Father of the " glory which I had with Thee before the world was 5 ." 
 He says solemnly, "Before Abraham was, I am 6 ." Again, "No man 
 hath ascended up to heaven but He which came down from heaven, 
 even the Son of Man which is in heaven V These and such like say- 
 ings, which the Jews understood and condemned as blasphemy, 
 which the Apostles understood and accepted as statements of the 
 literal truth, force us to a dilemma. Eitherwe must resign that vision 
 of beauty which we meet in the character of Jesus, as an untrust- 
 worthy phantom, since it is dashed with a pretension involving at 
 once falsehood and blasphemy, or we must confess that Jesus is 
 Divine — Divine not in the sense in which men in a vague way 
 ascribe divinity to the highest human excellence without meaning 
 to assert literal Godhead — but Divine in that absolute and incom- 
 municable sense, in which we ascribe divinity to the Universal 
 Father,in Whom there meets and from Whom there radiates a mea- 
 sure of power, of wisdom, and of goodness which knows no bounds. 
 Yes ! Jesus is God : and in the acts, the words, the very physiog- 
 
 4 Goldwin Smith. 3 St. John xvii. 5. 
 
 " St. John viii. 58. 7 St. John iii. 13.
 
 10 " WITNESS FOR JES1 8." 
 
 nomy of Jesus, the Apostles came face to face with the Supreme, 
 Infinite, Perfect Being of beings, who, although dwelling in light 
 which no man could approach unto 8 , had thus passed forth from 
 His inaccessible home, had taken our nature as an instrument 
 through which to act upon us, but also as an interpreter who 
 should translate His own matchless perfections into audihle words 
 and visible actions; so that He should be felt, studied, surveyed, 
 known, aye, even handled, and then witnessed to with all the devo- 
 tion that is due to a revelation of the highest truth and of the highest 
 beauty. " That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
 which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our 
 hands have handled of the Word of Life; (for the Life was manifested, 
 and we have seen It, and bear witness, and show unto you That 
 eternal Life "Which was with the Father and was manifested unto 
 us ;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you 9 ." 
 
 Surely this very week we have witnessed, or rather we have 
 experienced, in this metropolis the power which a strong human 
 soul can wield over the thoughts and feelings of men '. Lon- 
 don has just offered to a stranger of world-wide reputation a 
 welcome so hearty, so spontaneous, so universal, that at this very 
 moment the unaccustomed spectacle of your enthusiasm rivets 
 the eyes of astonished Europe. Yet they who study the subtle 
 laws and currents which affect opinion, have told us that, in 
 this remarkable demonstration, it would be an error to recognize 
 sympathy with any particular political doctrine : since the en- 
 thusiasm has been shared by all interests, all classes, all opinions; 
 and if such an enthusiasm had been merely or chiefly political, the 
 traditions of the English pulpit, no less than the high sanctity of 
 the subject before us, would have proscribed an allusion which I 
 trust may not be altogether unwarrantable. We have been paying 
 homage, brethren, to nothing less than to a lofty character, to a 
 rare union of courage, disinterestedness, and simplicity, to a man 
 who having power and wealth within his grasp, cared not to 
 clutch them, to a moral elevation, which always and every where 
 exacts a tribute of admiration and respect, whether we detect 
 it in the past or in the present, whether in a countryman or in a 
 foreigner, whether in the service of a cause which forfeits, or of 
 a cause which commauds our sympathies. But permit me to 
 remind you that an enthusiasm, of which the object is merely 
 
 » 1 Tim. \i. L6. 9 1 St. John i. 1—3. 
 
 1 QeneraJ Garibaldi entered London on .Monday, April 11, 1864. 

 
 "witness FOR JESUS." 11 
 
 human, must pass away, since its object is necessarily transient 
 and imperfect. As you, my countrymen, sit before me, with the 
 ashes of Wellington beneath your feet, you little dre.am of the 
 warmth with which Englishmen named their great general on 
 the morrow of Waterloo. One Only has succeeded in creating 
 an impression, which is as fresh in the hearts and thoughts of 
 His true disciples at this moment as it was eighteen centuries 
 ago ; and as we listen to His words, and watch His actions, and 
 almost seem to gaze on His face, irradiated with superhuman 
 beauty in the pages of the Gospels, we feel that He, as none 
 other, had a right to command distant and unborn generations to 
 echo the enthusiasm of His first followers, and to say to us 
 Englishmen of the nineteenth century, " Ye shall be witnesses 
 unto Me." 
 
 IY. Witnesses unto Me! Brethren, it is a most solemn ques- 
 tion ; is there any thing in our life, or our language, any thing 
 that we do, or any thing that we endure, that really bears witness 
 before the eyes of our fellow-men, to the life and work of our 
 ascended and invisible Saviour ? Or are we living, speaking, 
 feeling, acting, thinking, much as we might have thought, acted, 
 felt, spoken and lived, if He had never brightened our life, if we 
 had been born of pagan parents, and had never heard of Beth- 
 lehem and Calvary ? Or are we bearing Him what our conscience 
 tells us is a partial witness ; a witness of language but not of 
 conduct ; a witness which attests those features of His work and 
 doctrine, which we prefer, rather than all that we know or might 
 know about Him, and that heritage of grace and truth which He 
 has brought from heaven ? Eor, if we believe in our very hearts 
 that Jesus is God, we must see how from this glorious and lofty 
 faith there results a derived faith in all the words and works of 
 Jesus, just as when we stand upon a central mountain height 
 we command a panoramic view, we overlook all lesser elevations, 
 and we understand how all the diverging valleys at our feet are 
 fertilized by the streams which flow from the rock we have climbed, 
 and which towers so conspicuously above them. If we have the 
 happiness sincerely to believe the fact that Jesus is God, it cannot be 
 a difficulty to us that His death is a world-redeeming sacrifice for 
 sin, that His Scriptures are inspired and infallible, that His Sacra- 
 ments are channels of His quickening life. And as we witness to 
 His Person, we must witness, according to our measure, to all 
 that He has attested or authorized or wrought ; because He in
 
 12 " YVITNKSS FOB JESUS." 
 
 "Whose truth and wisdom we place absolute reliance has authorized 
 and attested and worked it. Kising from an analysis of His 
 character to a belief in His Godhead, descending from a faith in 
 J lis Godhead to a perfect acceptance of all which He teacbes us, 
 — we meet the clear, unequivocal, inalienable duty, of witnessing 
 to Him, His Person, His Work, His "Words,— as the distinctive 
 law of the Christian life. 
 
 This witness is the debt which all Christians owe to Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. No class, or sex, or disposition, or age, or race, can claim 
 exemption. AVe cannot delegate our profession of belief in Jesus, 
 and of love for Jesus, to our clergy. It is not merely that we are 
 bound to witness to Him. If we are living Christian lives, we 
 cannot help doing so. The power and beauty of the Christian 
 life does not depend upon the accidents which part men from 
 each other in this world; it has nothing to do with station, 
 education, income, or blood. In Christ Jesus neither the pre- 
 sence nor the absence of these things availeth any thing, but the 
 new creation. There is a ray of heavenly light which plays almost 
 visibly upon the soul which enjoys real communion with Jesus, — 
 a beauty of spirit and temper, which tells its own tale, and which 
 is an eloquent missionary. The soul that believes and prays 
 cannot close up the pores of feeling and of thought ; cannot 
 prevent the escape of that heavenly virtue, of those powers of 
 the eternal world, which have renewed its own deepest life. 
 Such a soul recommends prayer, and sacraments, and all that 
 brings men close to God by the mere fact of its own felt un- 
 earthliness. 
 
 Be Christians indeed, and you will forthwith witness for 
 Jesus. You who are at the summits of society, and you who are 
 at its base; you who teach, and you who learn; you who com- 
 mand, and you who obey ; masters and servants, old and young, 
 unlettered and scholars, each of you may bear his witness to 
 our Almighty Saviour. In a lower and feeble sense they who 
 practise the natural virtues, witness to Him, who is the Source of 
 all goodness; and thus courage under difficulties, and temperance 
 amid self-indulgent livers, and justice truly observed between 
 man and man, are forms of witness. They who are in power, and 
 wlin. renouncing selfish purposes, aim at the good of others; 
 they who have wealth, and who spend it not in perishing baubles, 
 but in relieving the mass of bodily or spiritual Buffering, which 
 in this metropolis presents such a sharp and ghastly contrast to the
 
 "WITNESS FOR JEST'S." 13 
 
 selfish luxury which often ignores its existence, they bear this 
 witness. The friendless young man in London, who leads a pure 
 life amidst strong temptations; the maid-of-all-work, who serves a 
 hard master faithfully and affectionately; the delicately-bred lady, 
 who renounces the empty attractions of society, to nurse the 
 fever-stricken sufferer in the ward of an hospital, or to teach a 
 fallen sister, from whom her own pure nature shrinks, that it is 
 possible to be pure, these turning their eye on Calvary, witness 
 to Jesus. To sacrifice self for others, to sacrifice self for truth, 
 is to bear that witness. Each one whom I see before me, if he 
 loves Jesus Christ, may witness to Him. Tes, my brethren, 
 though you are in weak health, or in narrow circumstances, or 
 elderly and unmarried, or have a sensitive respect for public 
 opinion, and such a dread of putting yourselves forward, that any 
 thing like a public profession seems to you to imply insincerity, 
 you too may forget your prejudices and your sensitiveness in 
 forgetting self-at the feet of your Lord. And you, who have a 
 strong nature, a hard head, or over-mastering impulses • you, 
 who fancy that your self-development into a healthy animal, or 
 into a vigorous thinker, is your highest mark of destiny ; you who 
 cultivate originality, and who proudly disdain the lessons or pre- 
 cepts which would force you, as you deem, into the type and mould 
 of common men ; you, too, after a while, may learn that you were 
 in the heart of Jesus, when He said to the representatives of His 
 Church, "Ye shaJl be witnesses unto Me." For nature is the 
 raw material which grace moulds for God ; and a strong nature 
 does not lose its strength because it has been made holy and 
 pure. Such is the range and power of grace, that we can despair 
 of no man. Out of the very stones of pride and of unbelief it 
 can raise up children to the Father of the faithful. 
 
 But they, especially, who know our Lord in His pardoning 
 mercy — who have looked up from the depths of spiritual agony to 
 the Great Sufferer, from "Whose open wounds there streams a tide 
 of atoning virtue, and who have found in Him rest and peace — 
 they will hardly be content with a silent witness. They will speak 
 for Him, as from a full heart, whenever they can do so. For the 
 disease which He heals is universal, and the efficacy of His cure is 
 undoubted. It is a real distress to them, not merely that He should 
 be wronged or misrepresented, but that He should be forgotten. All 
 of you, Christian brethren, may bear this witness too. The redemp- 
 tive love of Jesus, like the sun in the heavens, is the inheritance
 
 14 " WITNESS FOB JB8TJB." 
 
 of all who will come to have a share in it : and, as with the heart 
 that love is believed in unto righteousness, so with the mouth con- 
 fession of it is made unto salvation. They who have natural 
 opportunities for influence, who teach the young, who write for 
 the press, who come into contact with many friends or many de- 
 pendents, can bear this witness for the Lord who bought them. 
 They need not shrink back from the sense of their own unworthi- 
 ness, since they are witnesses not merely to His person but to His 
 grace. It is indeed easy thus to witness for Christ, in a state of society 
 where there is perfect freedom of opinion. It is hardly difficult to 
 witness for Him, in the face of social pressure, and against esta- 
 blished but disarmed ungodliness. But to witness for Christ, as did 
 the first Christians, when torture and death were the penalty of 
 loyalty, to refuse to scatter the incense to Csesar when refusal was 
 to embrace an agony, to speak for Jesus from the rack or from the 
 scaffold, when the broken accents of the sufferer were raised by tho 
 force of his death-struggle to the sublimest height of impassioned 
 and burning eloquence— this is a witness which Christians have 
 borne, and which is recorded to rebuke our feeble Christianity. Xot 
 merely grey-haired Apostles, like James and Peter and Paul ; not 
 merely saints of high learning and station, and force of character, 
 like Polycarp, or Justin Martyr, or Cyprian ; but rough soldiers, 
 and poor working men, and mothers of families, and young lads 
 and maidens — those in whom the pulse of life was strong, and those 
 in whom it was feeble, have thus carried forward again and again 
 their witness for Christ to a point of heroic endurance — which 
 provokes our wonder while it might well strengthen our weakness 
 or forbid our fears. 
 
 In this witness of suffering, and of silent persevering obe- 
 dience, we see the central element of the growth and victory 
 of the Church. Argument may have done something, but the 
 masses of men have no time for argument, and are inaccessible 
 to its force. Miracles actually witnessed may have done )>iore, 
 but the Gospel-history itself may convince us that the evidence of 
 miracle cannot alone carry conviction to a stubborn unbeliever ; 
 he has many resources for evading it. But the Christian life, in 
 which the love of Jesus Christ has dethroned and crushed out the 
 natural selfishness of the human soul, exerts a silent but resistless 
 fascination over at least a large number of those who are brought 
 into close contact with it. It is not the influence of high educa- 
 tion, or of vigorous intellect, or vigorous will. It is moral beauty
 
 "WITNESS FOR JESUS." 15 
 
 which is seen, as you gaze at it, to be true and to be strong, and 
 which compels first admiration and love, and afterwards reverence 
 and submission. 
 
 Again and again in the early days of Christianity the ordinary 
 current of social influences was reversed, and the aristocracy of 
 birth or wealth learnt to believe and to obey from the plebeian 
 neighbour or the poor slave who was yet the true nobleman of 
 the Church, — a very peer in the aristocracy of sanctity. Again 
 and again the little maid spoke to Naaman of the healing virtue 
 of the waters of Israel ; again and again Daniel prophesied and 
 suffered in the palaces of the second Babylon. St. Paul tells the 
 Philippians that there were worshippers of Christ shedding forth 
 light and truth among the slaves of the Caesar Nero ; and many a 
 Roman lady must have learnt the preciousness of her undying soul, 
 and the power of the Atoning Blood, from the poor Syrian slave- 
 girl who arranged her toilet or who waited at her table. Thus the 
 Church expanded in the midst of a hostile society in virtue of the 
 power of its secret life. And that which we admire in the 
 glorious past must be our hope for the anxious future : not 
 merely because Christianity maintains its ascendancy, by its hold 
 upon the lives of individual Christians, but because society itself 
 would perish if it were not reinforced by an unselfish witness to 
 the life of Jesus. There are vast reservoirs in which all the 
 ambitions, and lusts, and brutalities of men are confined, as it 
 were, within artificial embankments ; and no embankment can 
 permanently resist the pressure, and prevent the overwhelming 
 ruin of a social catastrophe, if the materials of resistance be not 
 welded together by some higher principle than the self-interest 
 of classes ; if it do not rest more or less upon the foundation of 
 a charity which witnesses by word and deed to the transcendent 
 moral majesty, aye, to the glorious Godhead, of the Lord Jesus. 
 
 Look at the inscription which is graven on the tomb of the 
 great architect who built St. Paul's. It bids you look around 
 this cathedral, since this cathedral itself is his true monument : 
 " Si qua?ris monumentum, circumspice." And the scattered 
 company of His faithful witnesses are the true monument of the 
 Lord Jesus ; they represent to other men something of the glory 
 of their invisible Lord. They may be met with less frequently 
 on the highways of power, or fame, or wealth than elsewhere ; 
 but it is true at this moment that our Lord is represented in 
 all classes of society by devoted Christians, who hand on from
 
 16 " WITNESS FOR JESUS." 
 
 this to another generation the lustre of .1 life, which is the beet 
 evidence of the Gospel. " Si qmeris monumentum, eireumspice." 
 Look aronml, watch, and you will see them. Nay, rather, resolve 
 this night by the grace of Christ to join that company of His 
 witnesses. What a power might go forth from beneath this dome 
 into the great city which lies around us, if each Christian who bean 
 Die would resolve, God helping him, to bear a true,uuflinchingwitness 
 to the Lord Jesus ! What glory to Him who shed His blood, what 
 strength to His Church, what blessings to countless souls ! what 
 unspeakable gain to those who witness ! Every hard effort gene- 
 rously faced, every sacrifice cheerfully submitted to, every word 
 spoken under difficulties, raises those who speak or act or suffer 
 to a higher level ; endows them with a clearer sight of God ; 
 braces them with a will of more strength and freedom ; warms 
 them with a more warm and large and tender heart. Blessed 
 they who really lose something, or who suffer something, for Jesus 
 — here in the days of their trial. For beyond there is a vision 
 which no merely human words may dare to paint — a vision which 
 shall one day be true to all who have witnessed for our Lord — 
 a vision of a world, where all has faded from sight, save only the 
 redeemed souls, and the everlasting Object of their love. 
 
 " And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, "What are 
 these which are arrayed in white robes ? and whence came they ? 
 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said unto me, 
 These are .they which came out of great tribulation, and have 
 washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the 
 Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve 
 Him day and night in His temple: and He that sitteth on the 
 throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, 
 neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor 
 any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne 
 shall feed them, and shall lead tbem unto living fountains of 
 waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes 2 ." 
 
 J Rev. vii. 13—17. 
 
 QltBBRT AND RITINOTON, PRINTRBS, -r. JOHN'S SQUARE, LONDON.
 
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