THE 
 
 MISSION WORK OF ST PAUL, 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE RAMSDEN SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE 
 
 ON SUNDAY, MAY 8, 1864, 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD HAROLD, BISHOP OF ELY. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 
 CAMBEIDGE : 
 DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON: BELL AND DALDY. 
 1864.
 
 dambtitigt : 
 
 PRINIEI) BY C. J. CLAY. MA. 
 AT THE UNIVEK3ITY FBESS.
 
 TO 
 
 THE REV. H. W. COOKSON, D.D. 
 
 MASTER OF ST PETER'S COLLEGE, 
 AND VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 My dear Mr Vice-Chancellor, 
 
 This Sermon, preached hy your ajypointtnent and 
 printed at your desire^ I dedicate to you, in memory of 
 thirty years of unbroken respect and regard. 
 
 Tours very sincerely, 
 
 E, H, ELY. 
 
 Palace, Ely, 
 
 M<iy 14, 1864,
 
 UttJ<
 
 A SERMON, 
 
 Acts XVII. 23. 
 
 Whom therefore ye ignoranthj vjorship, Him declare I unto you. 
 
 It lias been said, that Holy Scripture teaches, not 
 by doctrine but by facts; a statement partly true 
 and partly false. It is true, that no where in Holy 
 Scripture is there a consecutive treatise on dogma, 
 no creed, no catechism. It is true, that Holy Scrip- 
 ture does not always, perhaps never does, systema- 
 tically enforce again what has been written by God's 
 hand upon the face of nature and upon the heart 
 of man. So the Bible contains no system of Dog- 
 matic Theology, no system of Natural Theology, 
 and (notwithstanding the Law of Moses and the 
 Sermon on the Mount) no formal system of Moral 
 Philosophy. But it would be as false to say that 
 it was empty of doctrine, as it would be monstrous 
 to say that it was void of morality. In what may 
 be called its doctrinal portions, it indeed teaches
 
 6 
 
 greatly by facts, because facts are essentially truths, 
 and truth comes home to us most forcibly under the 
 form of facts. The unity of God is a great fact, 
 the incarnation of the Son of God is a great fact, 
 the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the 
 ascension of Christ — all are great facts. Even the 
 future judgment, though not a fact, because yet to 
 come, is a promise, which, when accomplished, will 
 have become a fact. But are not all these what 
 we esteem the very ground truths, the great dogmas 
 of Christianity? If the doctrines of our faith are 
 not the same as the facts of our history, yet, at 
 least, the facts are the groundwork of our faith and 
 of the doctrines of our faith. 
 
 But, moreover, though there may be no formal 
 treatises in Holy Scripture on dogmatic theology, 
 can we read our Lord's dialogue with Nicodemus 
 (John iii.), or His discourse to the people of Caper- 
 naum (John vi.), His parable concerning the Good 
 Shepherd and the True Vine, or St John's teaching 
 concerning the Word of God, or St Paul's argument 
 in the Bomans and Galatians concerning justifying 
 faith; and yet doubt that the New Testament has 
 doctrinal passages as express, if not as formal, as the 
 very Creeds themselves? 
 
 And thus much rather by way of caution and 
 as prefatory. For it is very true, that God does 
 chiefly teach us by history; and when He would 
 give us the fullest and the clearest revelation of 
 Himself He gave it to us in the words of a history, 
 the history of a Man, but that Man His own in-
 
 carnate Son ; the Son who is in the Bosom of the 
 Father, and who alone can fully declare the Father, 
 because He is Himself one with the Father. In 
 seeing Christ, watching His steps, and hearing His 
 words, we are indeed beholding as in a mirror the 
 glory of the Lord; and beholding it, as only we can 
 behold it and live, mirrored in the face of Christ, 
 and not in its essential, unbearable brightness, — that 
 light which no man can approach. 
 
 The history of Jesus Christ is the great lesson 
 to us, the lesson of human life, the lesson of Divine 
 life. Yet, on the principle of teaching by example, 
 and sometimes not by example only which we may 
 follow, but by warning also of that which we should 
 shun, the Bible is full of histories of men of like 
 passions with us, men, full of noble purposes, moved 
 by the grace of God, and in the niiiin living under 
 that grace, but with the will of the flesh still strug- 
 gling against the life of the Spirit, and sometimes 
 seeming to stifle, well-nigh to quench, the spiritual 
 life. No code of morality, no system of theology, 
 could so sensibly afiect the minds of two hundred 
 generations as the family histories of patriarchal 
 times, the camp life of David, the court life of 
 Joseph and Daniel, the protest against national 
 corruption and degeneracy, then almost total, in the 
 recluse life of Elijah and the prophets. We pass to 
 the New Testament, and when we have watched 
 Him, whom even infidels have confessed to be the 
 centre Figure of all human history, we catch sight, 
 as in the background^ of a Peter, a John, a Stephen
 
 8 
 
 a Cornelius, and a Paul. They are in the back- 
 ground and the shade^ only because of the self-lumi- 
 nous glory of the One whom they attend. Any of 
 them alone may well be a study, worth almost a life 
 to contemplate and to copy. Let us take the last. 
 If it has pleased the wisdom of God to order that 
 the lives of His servants should be so set down in 
 the pages of His Book, that we may have patterns 
 for all times and for all estates of life; the history 
 of the Apostle Paul stands out as the pattern 
 history of the Christian minister, and, above all, of 
 the Christian missionary. Incidentally we may say 
 that his life, like his Master's life, is fuU of doctrine ; 
 but from the first to the last it is a speaking lesson 
 of practical energy and not less of practical wisdom. 
 It would be vain indeed to attempt in a single 
 sermon to draw out even the most weighty lessons of 
 that whole life. Let it be enough to-day, if we can 
 learn some of the great principles of missionary 
 work from the example of the first and greatest 
 Christian missionary. 
 
 It strikes us first and most naturally, that the 
 great instrument on which St Paul relied, was the 
 preaching of Christ. The very first act recorded of 
 him after his conversion is, that "straightway he 
 preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the 
 Son of God" (Acts ix. 20). The whole record of his 
 life as given in the Acts is a record of his preaching. 
 His own account of himself is that Christ sent him, 
 not merely or chiefiy to baptize, but specially and 
 signally, to preach the Gospel (i Cor. i. 17). He ap-
 
 pears to have been deeply convinced in his own heart 
 and conscience that the knowledge of Christ was the 
 one instrument for converting the soul ; and he acted 
 on that conviction in a simple proclaiming of the 
 incarnation, the death, and the resurrection of the 
 Son of God. It is plain, indeed, that he, who spoke 
 with tongues and wrought miracles more than all, 
 was not indifferent to signs and wonders; that he, 
 who disputed daily in the school of one Tyrannus, 
 who wrote the elaborate argument of the Epistle to 
 the Romans, was not regardless of that reason which 
 God has given us for good ; yet it was his deepest 
 feeling and his fullest experience, that signs and 
 arguments may reach only to the outside of man, 
 but that the knowledge of Christ crucified has a 
 power to arrest his thoughts, to subdue his will, and 
 to change his heart. ^' The Jews require a sign, and 
 the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach, we 
 proclaim, Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling- 
 block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but to them 
 that believe Christ the power of God and the wisdom 
 of God." 
 
 We may then lay this down as an axiom, that 
 St Paul's principle of missionary work, his first secret 
 of missionary success, was a proclaiming to the un- 
 converted world the love of God in sending His Son 
 into the world, to live with them and to die for 
 them. 
 
 And yet, I think, if we look carefully at his 
 history and his letters, we shall see that he was too 
 wise a man to rest satisfied with simply sowing 
 
 1—3
 
 10 
 
 broadcast upon the world the great truth of the 
 Incarnation and the Crucifixion. This was indeed 
 the good seed, and no other seed could bring forth 
 fruit abundantly. But the wise husbandman would 
 look well to the ground on which he was to sow 
 it, and deal differently with the wayside and the 
 rock and the thorns and the good ground. 
 
 "We may see this best by watching his work, 
 first at home and then abroad — his work with the 
 Jews and his work with the heathens, his home 
 missions and his foreign missions. To the Jews, if I 
 may so speak, his work was more simple, more direct. 
 They were not wholly ignorant of Christ, for they 
 were looking out for Him, only that they could not 
 see Him in the Crucified. But, moreover, they were 
 not ignorant of the holiness of God, of the law of 
 God, of their own unfaithfulness to that law, and so 
 first of their duty, and then of their danger. If 
 then it were possible to convince the Jews out of 
 their own Scripture that Jesus was the Christ, the 
 work had been in great measure done to the Apostle's 
 hands. The Law had already been doing the work 
 of a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ. It needed 
 only such words as these : " Be it known unto you, 
 men and brethren, that through this Man is preached 
 unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all 
 that believe are justified from all things from which 
 ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses." (St 
 Paul to the Jews at Antioch inPisidia, Acts xiii. 38, 39.) 
 
 But to the Gentiles it was otherwise. They had 
 in one respect a real advantage over the unbelieving
 
 11 
 
 Jew. Theirs was not a state of privilege neglected, 
 of grace despised. And so, many times, the Gentile 
 sinner was more open to receive the truth than tlie 
 Jewish formalist. Bat there is a terriLe hardening 
 about heathenism. We look at it in classical litera- 
 ture, and are dazzled by the brightness of its genius 
 and the charms of its beauty : but no one can look 
 closely at its social life without feeling, that those 
 who lived that life must at the best have been beset 
 with thoughts and associations strangely destructive 
 to what we have learned to esteem holiness of heart. 
 
 To the Gentile then, if we may judge by the 
 few discourses preserved to us in the Acts, St Paul 
 addressed himself in words somewhat different from 
 those in which he reasoned with the Jews. Look at 
 him before the Jewish King and the Roman Go- 
 vernor. To the one, '^ King Agrippa, believest thou 
 the prophets ? I know that thou believest." (Acts 
 xxvi. 27, 28.) But to Felix, one not under the Law, 
 and whose life had been lawless, '' Paul reasoned 
 of justice and temperance and judgment to come." 
 (Acts xxiv. 25.) There was a voice in the heart of 
 the heathen governor, as there is in the heart of 
 every one of us, but it had been well-nigh silenced, 
 it would perhaps have been silent for ever. Paul 
 knew how to awaken it ; and it awoke so loudly that 
 the judge trembled before the prisoner. 
 
 So in the chapter from which I chose my text, 
 when the Jew missionary stood alone on the Areo- 
 pagus, before the children of men who had heard the 
 oratory of Demosthenes and learned the wisdom of
 
 12 
 
 Plato, his purpose was to rouse the conscience, to 
 convict of the folly of idolatrous worship, and then 
 to awaken an anxiety about the future, a dread of 
 that great day which God had appointed, ''in the 
 which He will judge the world in righteousness by 
 that Man w^hom He hath ordained." (Acts xvii, 
 31.) The Apostle, taught by the Spirit of God 
 dw^elling in him and guiding him, knew well that 
 God had made man for Himself, though man had 
 gone astray from God. He knew, that man's only 
 natural resting-place is in the bosom and on the love 
 of God. He knew, that apart from God he cannot 
 but be miserable, though often so dull-hearted as not 
 to be conscious to himself of the greatness of his 
 misery; and so his mode of dealing with man, and 
 especially with heathen man, was to wake him up to 
 the true sense of his own desolate orphanhood — to 
 make him feel how far he had been wandering from 
 his Father — and, if possible, to shew him too, that 
 even in this wandering there had. often, perhaps 
 always, been a yearning after home. ' To Felix, to 
 the Athenians, probably to all his heathen listeners, 
 his plan was to draw out the natural sense of re- 
 sponsibility — to reveal men's inmost being to them- 
 selves, teaching the heart to know its own secrets, 
 and to speak out to itself — its secrets of sin, its 
 natural approbation of right, its instinctive condem- 
 nation of evil, and then to shew it its own yearning 
 after something to rest upon — the Unknoivn God. 
 
 In this his wise treatment of the Gentiles, there was 
 none of the confounding^ of truth with error, leading
 
 13 
 
 in after times to that corruption of Christian verity 
 with heathen hero-worship which oppressed the me- 
 diasval Church ; there was none of that sickly Hbe- 
 rahty, which in our times tells us that there is no 
 difference in the religions "of saint, of savage, and 
 of sage." The Apostle indeed recognized the unity 
 and the common sympathies of the whole race of 
 man. He knew what was in their hearts by what 
 he read in his own heart; and he saw that even in 
 the " too superstitious" temper of the Athenians there 
 was a struggling of the benighted spirit upwards 
 towards the light of heaven. But whilst he recog- 
 nized the instinctive, perhaps God-inspired, move- 
 ment towards their Father and their home ; he care- 
 fully marked and fearlessly reproved the ignorance 
 with which it was impeded and chained downwards : 
 " whom ye ignorantly worship." The worship was 
 laudable, but the ignorance was deplorable. 
 
 Thus was it that St Paul became all things to all 
 men, that he might by all means save some. The 
 Apostle's heart was truly a large heart. He was a 
 man, and nothing that was in man's nature could be 
 wholly alien from him. Least of all could he, who 
 felt himself the chief of sinners, be without sym- 
 pathy, without pity, for them, who were like him 
 in sin. 
 
 I have been enquiring into the mode in which 
 the Apostle of the Gentiles made his first approaches 
 to the stronghold of the Gentile heart. He was far 
 from resting there. It was a great point gained, if 
 he could awaken its fears and enlist its sympathies —
 
 H 
 
 if he could shew it that it had a home, and how far 
 it had wandered from that home. But it would 
 have been a thankless gift if he had only awakened 
 a cravinof which could never be satisfied — if he had 
 taught the soul its sorrows without imparting com- 
 fort for them — if he had pointed to a home and 
 aroused a lono-jn gr for it, but a home so distant that 
 no pilgrim could hope to reach to it — a home parted 
 by trackless oceans, by yawning gulphs or impass- 
 able mountain barriers. 
 
 This was plainly but the first lesson of the great 
 teacher: the first dioforinof and trenchinsf of the wise 
 master-builder. He does not even call it the founda- 
 tion. A foundation is not placed upon the hard 
 ground. But the more thoroughly the top soil is 
 cleared ofi", and the deeper down we dig, the more 
 surely may the corner stone be laid, and the more 
 safely will the building rise. The great end of all 
 was to shew, not that God was far off, not that there 
 was a dark deep gulph which none could pass, not 
 that the heart was indeed orphan and desolate ; but 
 that God in Christ had been brought nigh, that the 
 gulph had been bridged over, that God was indeed 
 the loving Father even of His erring children, and 
 tliat He had sent His own eternal Son, to bring back 
 those, whom He deigned to call brethren, to the 
 bosom of their Father and their God. 
 
 This was indeed the scope, the telos, the end, 
 to which all the secret misgivings of the heart, all 
 the instinctive yearnings of the soul, as well as all 
 the open teachings of the law, were tending and
 
 •15 
 
 leading. It was this with which the Apostle, mak- 
 ing his first approaches by awakening the conscience, 
 now stormed the tower. This, when he had dug 
 deeply into the soul's secret soil, this he laid as the 
 foundation of all hope and of all holiness. This it 
 was that could alone still the terrors of the con- 
 science, and at the same time give a new life to the 
 will. And so we find him writing at times as if 
 this had been the only thing he ever did, the only 
 truth he ever preached, the only thought he ever 
 harboured. " I determined," he writes, ^' to know 
 nothing amongst you save Jesus Christ, and Him 
 crucified." "■ Other foundation can no man lay, but 
 that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." And 
 indeed we may say that the practical teaching of the 
 New Testament, and most markedly of the sermons 
 and Epistles of St Paul, may be summed up in two 
 short heads, '' the responsibility of the soul to God," 
 and "the redemption of the soul through Christ." 
 All Christian doctrine leads up to this, all Chris- 
 tian duty streams forth from this. And whether 
 in our own dealings with our own hearts, or in our 
 efforts to enlighten and awaken the hearts of those 
 near to us, or in labours among the heathen and the 
 ignorant, we shall be successful, under God, in pro- 
 portion as we keep mainly in view these two great 
 practical truths; not heedless of all that issues out 
 of them, but remembering that they are, the one 
 the great instrument for awakening the sluggish 
 spirit, the other " the power of God unto salvation." 
 But if we follow out the teaching and example
 
 16 
 
 of St Paul, we shall find that in his great missionaiy 
 life he was anything but a shallow theologian, or 
 regardless of the superstructure of the great building, 
 because he gave such earnest heed to lay the founda- 
 tion on the Rock. In reviewins;' the mission work 
 of modern times, we are struck with the zeal and 
 rapid progress of some bodies of Christians, and 
 almost jumj) to the conclusion, that they must have 
 found the true secret of success. The disciples of 
 "Wesley, faithfully following the Apostles in striving 
 to awaken the conscience, and then to lead the soul 
 to Christ, the Jesuit missionaries with a self-devotion 
 worthy of all honour, and with a pious zeal for the 
 Church of which they were the ministers, are both 
 conspicuous examples of such progress and success. 
 The same perhaps cannot be said of the foreign 
 missions, but it is true of the home labours of the 
 Dominicans and their legitimate successors in the 
 Reformed Churches, the Calvinists and Puritans. 
 The "Wesleyan seems to have learned the lesson of 
 laying the foundation, if sometimes too hastily, yet 
 on right principles of truth. The Dominican and 
 the Calvinist knew how to draw out the vast stores 
 of theology to be found in the deep mines of the 
 Scriptures of God. The Jesuit built up a church, 
 grand, stately, and towering to the skies. 
 
 But St Paul did all this. He laid the Founda- 
 tion, and that not hastily or partially, but with 
 steady, patient labouring. He carried on the work 
 in a Theology which has been the storehouse of 
 all future ages, from which Augustine and Cyiil,
 
 17 
 
 Bernard and Anselm, Aquinas, and Calvin, and 
 Hooker, and all whose vast volumes load our 
 libraries, drew their treasures and heaped up their 
 wealth. And when he had once gathered out of the 
 world a little company to be his Master's disciples, 
 he compacted them solidly together into a well 
 disciplined Church, constituting first elders and 
 deacons, then by degrees leaving amongst them chief 
 pastors, to ordain elders, to rule well, to reprove, 
 rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. 
 Look at the first Epistle to Corinth, and see how he 
 dwells on the Foundation. Read the Epistles to 
 Ephesus, to Philippi, to Colossce, and see if almost 
 every sentence is not thick-set with the deepest 
 doctrinal teaching. Turn to the letters to Timothy 
 and Titus, and you have the very model for all after 
 ages of an Evangelical, Apostolical Church polity. 
 
 There are those who well appreciate the vital 
 necessity of preaching Christ, as the hope of souls 
 and the fountain of spiritual life, but who dwarf the 
 full growth of their converts by not giving heed to 
 build upon the Foundation which they have so 
 wisely laid. And there are those, who, before the 
 Foundation is well settled, would tower upwards to 
 high speculation, till they reach a pinnacle whose 
 dizzy height tempts them to leap down from it. 
 Others are so busied about the buttresses that they 
 hardly see the building. Church polity almost takes 
 the place of faith, gives it at least not room and 
 breadth enough. And some, once more, puzzled by 
 the diversity, fly from Creeds and Churches alike,
 
 18 
 
 satisfied with a heartless morality, ''He can't be 
 wrong whose life is in the right." How unlike the 
 narrowness of all these to the depth and breadth of 
 the great Apostle's teaching. Beginning with the 
 foolishness of preaching, the simple 'proclamation of 
 an amnesty between God and man, made by God 
 and founded upon Christ ; he passes on to doctrine 
 such as to satisfy the simple, and yet to engage the 
 thoughts and exhaust the enquiries of minds as 
 mighty as the mightiest of the wise men of old. 
 Issuing out of it is a system, call it of morals, or 
 moral philosophy, or casuistry, or Christian practice, 
 which, though, if collected together, might fill but 
 few pages of writing, is yet a text-book on which 
 may be written a commentary for every page of life. 
 And again, every individual soul, brought by 
 him to Christ, taught by him of God and godliness, 
 trained by him in holiness, faith, patience, piety, is 
 compacted together with other Christian souls into 
 one great body, one great building, the Church. It 
 is not enough to bring home a straying sheep to the 
 Good Shepherd. There was every fear that grievous 
 wolves would enter in and rend the flock. There 
 must be a fold, and those that guard the fold. Faith 
 Cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of 
 God. But if faith is to be preserved in a colony of 
 new converts, there must be the fencing, and the 
 watching, and the binding together, and the reme- 
 dial discipline, and the daily pasture. Never did 
 the God-inspired Apostle lose sight of all this. The 
 preaching of Christ could indeed save the soul ; but
 
 19 
 
 even that could not provide for a continuity of the 
 Church, 
 
 We hear now of Evangelical principles, and we 
 hear of Church principles, as though there was 
 a natural antasfonism between. We see no such 
 antagonism in the Apostle of the Gentiles. With 
 him the truth of Christ was the treasure, but the 
 Church was that which guards the treasure and 
 hands it on undiminished and undimmed. I repeat, 
 that, whilst the simple proclaiming of the glad 
 tidings of the Gospel is the instrument of God for 
 the saving of the single soul, there is need of going 
 onward, to build up, confirm, stablish, strengthen, 
 settle, even that single soul ; and that here at once 
 comes in all that the Church, taught by God's Spirit, 
 has brought round us — pastors, and schools, and 
 catechisms, and the Word of God read to us and read 
 by us, prayers offered by us and for us, preachings, 
 and warnings, and exhortations, and encouragements, 
 psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, sacraments 
 and sacred rites and blessings. Without these, even 
 the single soul, brought home to Christ, would find 
 but scanty food in its own Father's house. And, 
 still more, for the keeping together of many con- 
 verted Christians, for handing on the faith from year 
 to year and from age to age, outward organization 
 is scarcely less needful even than inward faith. 
 
 I am not prepared to ssij, that Apostles and 
 apostolic men, raised the full fabric of the Church 
 at first in every city which they visited and every 
 country which they won to Christ. We have little
 
 20 
 
 to guide us here but the Epistles of St Paul and 
 the few notices in the book of Acts. Early Church 
 History throws little or no further light on this 
 enquiry. As far as we can judge from both, the 
 first effort was to evangelize, to preach Christ, to 
 awaken faith ; then came the grounding, the fenc- 
 ing, the watchmen set to watch. First, " I deter- 
 mined to know nothing among you but Christ and 
 Him crucified." Then, yet many years after, '' I 
 besought thee to abide at Ephesus " (i Tim. i. 3) ; 
 and "I write unto thee. ..that thou mayest know 
 how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of 
 God, which is the Church of the living God, the 
 pillar and ground of the faith" (iii. 15). "This 
 charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy (i. 18). 
 
 I pass on to another point, a sign of great prac- 
 tical wisdom in the great missionary Bishop and 
 Apostle. If ever any man gave his life up to 
 preaching Clirist among the Gentiles, it was Paul. 
 He in very truth sj)ent and was spent for them. 
 Yet he was not unmindful of his own countrymen. 
 There is no more startling saying in the New Testa- 
 ment than his words, however we interpret them, 
 "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, 
 for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh" 
 (Rom. ix. 3). And so, without doubt, his first labours 
 were among his kinsmen in the flesh. From the 
 time of his conversion, "straightway he preached 
 Christ in the synagogues" (Acts ix. 20). And we 
 find unmistakeably both from St Luke's history and
 
 21 
 
 from his own letters, that in every place where he 
 gathered souls to his Saviour, the first little flock 
 was a flock of Jewish converts, or at all events of 
 worshij^ping or half-proselytized Gentiles. It may 
 have sprung partly from that love to his own people, 
 which he so strangely tells us of in the words I 
 just now quoted from him; it was partly, no doubt, 
 that God Himself in long-sufl'ering goodness would 
 have Plis message of mercy carried first to those, 
 who knowing their Lord's Avill yet did it not, and 
 so were, liable to the many stripes, the greater con- 
 demnation than the ignorant, benighted heathen, 
 who could but feel after God in hopes by mere 
 experiment they might find him : but, I doubt not 
 too, that it was partly, because so the Gentiles 
 themselves might be more aptly reached, and the 
 work might advance with less of let or hindrance 
 and with more of steady progress. It was a great 
 gain, if the first preachers of the faith of Christ 
 could found in the great centres of heathenism a 
 church of those, who like Timothy " from childhood 
 had known the Scriptures able to make them wise 
 unto salvation," and had then ''received with meek- 
 ness" the new graft of the Gospel, " the engrafted 
 word which was able to save the soul." I believe 
 it will appear, that all the earliest Christian mis- 
 sionaries, when mission labour was the most largely 
 blessed, did likewise. Their plan was mostly to 
 extend steadily from place to place the kingdom of 
 their Master. Gradually the limits were enlarged, 
 the outposts advanced a little farther and a little
 
 22 
 
 farther yet. The Bishop of each Christian diocese 
 sent out his pioneers to the heathen pagi round 
 him, till they became Christian villagers, not pagan 
 outcasts; and yet farther he sent forth a little colony 
 to lands just abutting on his own land, so that 
 almost insensibly and noiselessly the stately fabric 
 grew wider and wider, as well as higher and higher. 
 
 And may it not be our wisdom too, even in 
 our wish to bring the heathen into Christ's inhe- 
 ritance, that we should keep an anxious eye on our 
 own fellow countrymen, that we should be zealous 
 in home missions, if it were only for their bearing 
 on missions abroad ? Should we not also make our 
 own Colonial Churches, and our own Colonial fel- 
 low-countrymen, the germs of Gentile Churches, the 
 reservoirs, go to speak, from which living waters may 
 flow forth to the barren and dry lands, which lie 
 beyond the present reach of civilizing and Chris- 
 tianizing power ? 
 
 And here perhaps, I should not fail to notice, 
 that in thus looking at St Paul and St Paul's work 
 as types for us and for our work, we find as it were 
 a break in the continuity. There is one point in 
 which almost all modern missionary labour is unlike 
 the missionary labour of the first ages. The Apo- 
 stles, going from a people who had long had the 
 truth, though in an imperfect stage, to those who 
 had wandered from the truth into all the mazes 
 of error, yet had to go from the simple, that we say 
 not the rude, habits of the Jewish people, to the 
 high, if it were the corrupt, civilization of Asia
 
 23 
 
 Minor and Greece and Egypt and Italy. The pro- 
 gress of the Gospel, under their hands and at 
 such a disadvantage, the progress from the fishing- 
 boat of Galilee to the imperial palace of Caesar, bears 
 upon its very face the mark of God's own work 
 and God's own blessing. Such a progress could 
 not have been if truth had not guided and made 
 it irresistible. But our course is diflferent. We go, 
 our mission labourers go, from the centre of civilized 
 society to Kaffres and New Zealanders and Malays 
 and Central Africans. In one respect we have 
 the advantage ; but in others our way is harder still. 
 The intelligent, thoughtful, civilized Koman, or 
 Corinthian, could bring all his cultivated reason to 
 judge of the evidences of the faith of Christ, and, 
 if converted to Christ, he had but to turn, that 
 great turn which also the unfaithful Christian has 
 to take, from a life of worldliness and sensuality, to 
 the self-denying holiness of a follower of the Cruci- 
 fied. But the true barbarian, the untaught and 
 unnurtured savage, has become a degenerate and 
 a degraded animal. His very earthly nature, his 
 very type of manhood, has gone back and become 
 debased from that in which his Maker created him. 
 It has been common to call this a state of nature. 
 It is no state of nature, but a state of utter degene- 
 racy. It is one example of that awful dispensation 
 of God's will, whereby the sins of the fathers fall 
 in judgment on the heads of the children. No ! it 
 can be no state of nature; for never in experience 
 or in history has an}'- race, sunk into utter barbarism.
 
 24 
 
 risen out of such barbarism, but by the influence of 
 something external to itself. Left to itself alone, it 
 falls lower and lower, till by its own utter helpless- 
 ness it dies out and perishes. 
 
 We have therefore in much of the work before 
 us to raise those whom we would deliver, not only 
 to Christianity, but even to manhood. This is one 
 of the great problems of our age, as the dealing 
 wdth a vicious luxury was rather that of the Apo- 
 stles' age. It has been, we may be thankful to 
 confess, well and wisely met by many modern mis- 
 sionaries. By Marsden and Selwyn and Wilson and 
 Patteson in New Zealand, by Livingstone and 
 Mackenzie in Central Africa, by Gray and Arm- 
 strong in South Africa, by Matthew^ Hale in South 
 Australia, by the Kajah of Sarawak in Borneo, 
 by Ellis and bis brethren, of a communion not our 
 own, in the Islands of the Pacific. All honour to 
 them, or rather to the grace of God which was in 
 them. The carrying out of useful arts, the teaching 
 of habits of industry and peace, have proved to be 
 invaluable handmaids to the religion of the Gospel 
 of Christ. I would only farther beg you to ob- 
 serve, that the very names I have cited, in them- 
 selves, are proof that the work is one which needs all 
 the wisdom of the wisest, as well as all the holiness 
 of the holiest men. It is clear enough, that Paul 
 the Apostle, though guided by special light from 
 heaven, used every instrument of worldly wisdom 
 that he might make his way among the wise of this 
 world. It is as hard a task, and needs as much the
 
 25 
 
 master mind to raise the most degraded, as to con- 
 vince the most acute. We are happily learning to 
 believe that he who would teach the ignorant must 
 be himself intelligent. In the mythic legend of 
 antiquity it was not the rude pipe of the shepherd, 
 but the harp of the unequalled Orpheus that could 
 tame the savage heart. 
 
 In conclusion, let us gather up the lessons which 
 I have been trying to draw from the mission life 
 of St Paul ; let us see how it may bear upon the 
 work which God has so largely entrusted to us, 
 of spreading His truth in our own colonies, and 
 from them to lands still farther from ourselves, still 
 farther from God. And perhaps almost all will 
 centre in or well forth from this — a pure source at 
 home and within. Under God, the secrets of St 
 Paul's success were purity of faith, purity of heart — 
 a clear, well-balanced, well- trained mind — simple and 
 hardy habits of life. If we could secure these in 
 England; England, by God's blessing, would con- 
 vert the world. Judsea was in Paul's days well 
 prepared for sending forth the Gospel to the hea- 
 then. Her people were in every city of the Koman 
 empire; and those people, when converted, did con- 
 vert the Koman empire to Christ. Yet they were 
 not a dominant, but a conquered race; aye! then, 
 as ever since then, a people despised and outcast, 
 a proverb and a scorn of men. But England 
 sends her own people where Pome itself had never 
 been. England sends her fleets whither not even 
 the dreams of Greeks and Romans reached. En"--
 
 26 
 
 land has her one hand on the Western and the other 
 on the Eastern sea. Throned in the North, she sets 
 her feet upon the footstool of the farthest South. 
 And whereas the Jew-Christian missionary had to 
 rise up to the Gentile idolater, that he might con- 
 front him in his domain of literature and science ; 
 the Anglo-Christian missionary is, or ought to be, 
 superior to his converts in knowledge, in science, 
 in civilization, in all the arts of life, as well as in 
 the sanctity of his faith. We have everything there- 
 fore which St Paul had, and much more; except — 
 his trust in God, his belief in Christ, his devotion 
 to the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 Oh, my young brethren — you, that are the hope 
 and yet the fear of all Christian hearts — you, who 
 soon will be the great actors in the great act of 
 life, how are you training yourselves for your work ? 
 Is there any of you that can be a Paul ? Are 
 you, is any body or section of you, growing up in 
 the learning of Paul, in the piety of Paul, in the 
 faith of Paul, in the zeal of Paul ? You, and such 
 as you, you, who are in seats of learning, you 
 specially, who are looking onwards to be ministers 
 of Christ, have it in your power, under the Spirit 
 of God, to make the Church of Christ now what the 
 Church of Christ was in the days of Apostles and 
 Apostolic men. 
 
 I said you were the hope of all Christian hearts, 
 and yet that that hope was mingled with fear. Yes ! 
 young men, we, who are growing old, look upon 
 you with the deepest anxiety. We have ourselves
 
 27 
 
 passed through stirring times, times of deep debate, 
 times of moving activity. We see the shadow- 
 thrown before of still busier times for you. And 
 to you is entrusted the destiny of this great Empire, 
 of this Church of England, — of those souls who are 
 here at home growing up heirs of immortality — of 
 those who will go out to lands far off, carrying our 
 Northern race down to the farthest South, our West- 
 ern world to the most distant East — of those hea- 
 thens, Moslems, pantheists and idolaters, with whom 
 our people are daily more and more mingling — 
 carrying to them a purer faith and a purer life — or 
 else making them by the vices of degenerate Chris- 
 tians tenfold more the children of hell than before. 
 Yes, brethren, to you, who by your station in life, 
 by your powers as educated men, by means of your 
 indirect influence, by means of your direct teaching, 
 can, if you be faithful, almost mould society to your 
 will, — to you is entrusted England, and with England 
 well-nigh the world. And how, once more, are you 
 training yourselves for your high destiny ? I will not 
 ask if you are idle, vicious, profligate, impure. If so, 
 I know you are unhappy. You cannot be satisfied. 
 God grant your misery may lead you to seek relief 
 — to fly from your hateful and your hated self — and 
 to find peace in Christ. But I will suppose you 
 moral, intelligent, industrious. Then, let me say to 
 you, though it may seem a hard saying, you are 
 responsible for these very graces (for graces and gifts 
 they are) of morality, of intelligence and of industiy. 
 They are themselves powers; like all good things
 
 28 
 
 they come from God ; and like all that comes from 
 God, they are given for His service. Do not use, 
 brethren, dare not to use, your powers, your time, 
 your labours, but with a deep sense of the responsi- 
 bility of all labour and of all thought. It is an age 
 of much work, of much reading, of much thought ; 
 but still I fear it is an age of reckless work, and 
 careless reading, and of surface thought. Graphic, 
 popular, flippant, half profound writing leads captive 
 most minds, and especially young minds. You can- 
 not train your minds so for truth, you cannot train 
 your souls so for heaven. 
 
 And again, brethren, let me ask you, do you 
 catch at once a popular cry or a popular tone on 
 religious questions ? It is an age of religious un- 
 settlement. A specious enlightenment is always 
 popular with the multitude, is always dangerous to 
 the inexperienced. But oh! think what there is at 
 stake. I will not say your own soul, though I might 
 well say that also. Perhaps, however, you may 
 catch the sound of some popular fallacy and echo it: 
 and in time learn its fallacy and be yourself saved 
 from it. But all the while that you have been care- 
 lessly unsettling your own convictions, you have been 
 inevitably lending your hand and your voice to un- 
 settle the convictions of others, to increase the flood 
 of unsteady speculations which is now hurrying along 
 thousands from truth and godliness. The Apostle, 
 of whom I have spoken so long, lived, as we do, in 
 an age of unsettled thought: but the great secret 
 of his success under God, was the steady fixed pur-
 
 29 
 
 pose of a clear head and an honest heart. He knew 
 in whom he had behoved. He kept his own eye of 
 faith firmly on the Cross of Christ. He determined 
 to know nothing among his disciples save Jesus 
 Christ and Him crucified — and that preaching of 
 Christ, to the formalist a stumblingblock, and to the 
 philosopher foolishness, was in the hand of Paul, 
 the power of God and the wisdom of God — a power 
 and a wisdom which subdued the world. 
 
 Let me pray you, by every hope most dear to 
 you, not to trifle now with religion or religious en- 
 quiries. I have all sympathy with you in all the 
 doubts and trials which must come upon you in 
 these doubting days. What I urge on you is to 
 meet them, not carelessly, not flippantly, but earn- 
 estly, thoughtfully, prayerfully. Do not think you 
 can take up your thoughts on religion and put them 
 down again, as you might your political or your 
 literary thoughts. You cannot. They sink deep 
 into your heart and character. You cannot throw 
 off your faith now, and catch at it again hereafter. 
 Take heed how you part with any of it. Most of 
 all, with my last words, let me say to you. Take heed 
 how you suffer yourselves to be shaken from that 
 great centre of the faith, which Paul preached, on 
 which he rested, on which he built, by which he 
 lived, in and for which he died — faith in the Atoning 
 Sacrifice, faith in the precious Blood of Christ. You 
 cannot live, you cannot work, you cannot die, with a 
 good hope of the hereafter, but in this.
 
 CAilBRIDGE : 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.